Hitler's neighbour. Here.

Mark Carney appointed new BoE governor. Here.

Decisions of The Governor of The Bank of England have material effects on our lives - sometimes substantially. Why can an unelected official make such decisions independently of our elected representatives? Shouldn't the BoE Governor be in the cabinet, answerable to Parliament and the electorate? What would we say if (important) tax decisions (the fiscal side of the coin) was made by an independent body - if we made the ‘taxing’ bit of HM Treasury independent of government?

In fact, parts of HM Treasury - the monetary policy parts - was made ‘independent of government’. Gordon Brown in 1997 took this bit of Treasury powers and gave it away to the BoE. It wasn't always thus and is by no means fully accepted that such powers should be independent.

Arguments for independence are pretty clear. Instead of monetary policy being held hostage by the election cycle, we remove policy making from the laps of fickle politicians and give it to independent experts who are able to take ‘objective’ decisions.

But isn't the above an argument to get rid of a whole host of powers from government (‘the executive’) and give them to ‘objective experts’? Why democracy at all - why not ‘enlightened dictatorship’?

Bill Grimsey, veteran retailer & former CEO at Wickes, Iceland and more writes here about the 'vanishing' High Street. He has written a book on the subject. He blogs here.

Douglas Alexander, shadow foreign-secretary writes an article in Haaretz -Time for Israel to take risks for peace.

Ironic Economist covers re French. Here.

Entrepreneurs 'are not gamblers'. Here.