The enduring image for many of the hypocrisy of the ruling elite in the Soviet Union was the Zil lane – the fact that Politburo members were whisked in Zil limousines past the ‘peasants’ stuck in the very traffic jams that were the consequences of the ‘elite’s’ own planning failures was the defining expression of ‘Us versus them’.

The last year has seen an extra-ordinary suspension of logic in a lot of policy announcements, with Governments seemingly requiring positive proof from those opposing their Covid restrictions that their (often random) policies don’t work, rather than the Government having to prove that they do.

After, yet another, glossy puff piece in the Times about ‘Buff Billionaire’ Matt Moulding of THG, I posted a comment suggesting that they should consider tagging it as Advertorial. I got a few likes and replies before the comment was deleted as seemingly contradicting the Times’ Policies – presumably on objectivity. Truth hurts obviously.

There is a meaningful risk emerging that the quiescence of the public so far in response to lockdown is going to erupt into civil unrest over the summer as the bread and circuses employed so far are no longer enough to control the mob.

The retreat of leveraged retail from Equity markets is leaving a lot of ‘concept stocks’ friendless, (no profit, no bid as Bob Marley almost said) but this looks to us more like 1987 than 2000, despite the noise and nonsense of SPACs etc.