Ross Clark

Profile: Full name: Areas of interest: Business (esp. the impact of regulation); The Countryside; Climate Change; Housing and Property Journals/Organisation: The Times | The Spectator | The Sunday Telegraph | Daily Mail | Daily Express | Real Business Email: ross.clark@mailonsunday.co.uk Personal website: Website: Blog: Representation: http://www.harriman-house.com/authors/view?id=9497&name=Ross_Clark pr@harriman-house.com Networks:

Biography: About: Education: Career: Writes comment pieces for The Times and property and housing features for The Telegraph and the Mail. Wrote the 'Banned Waggon' column for the Spectator and still contributes regularly. Also writes a regular column for Real Business Current position/role: Regular Op-Ed contributor, columnist also writes/written for: Other roles/Main role: Author Other activities: Disclosures: Viewpoints/Insight: Broadcast media: Video: Controversy/Criticism: Awards/Honours: Scoops: Other:

Books & Debate: The Great Before: a satire (Cambridge: greatbefore.com, 2005) OCLC 64735234 How to Label a Goat: Silly Rules and Regulations That Are StranglingBritain (Petersfield, Hampshire: Harriman House, 2006) OCLC 137222427 Latest work: The road to Southend Pier : one man's struggle against the surveillance society OCLC 173499712, 2007 Speaking/Appearances: Debate:

The Times: Column name: Remit/Info: Business, The Countryside, Climate Change, Housing and Property Section: Role: Columnist Pen-name: Email: Website: TimesOnline / Guest Contributors Commissioning editor: Day published: varies Regularity: regular Column format: Average length:

Articles: Plagued by travellers? Then build more sites - Force councils to accommodate Gypsies and the problem of unauthorised camps will end - 31st August 2011 Council fat cats ensure that the poor suffer - Nothing is being done to guarantee that power devolved locally is used responsibly - 10th February 2011 (writing in The Daily Telegraph) High-speed U-turn needed on our railways - It’s the unglamorous commuter services that need government investment, not vastly expensive vanity projects - 26th November 2010 You’d cling on to your nice council home too - The Tories partly created this mess. But turfing people out of houses won’t solve it - 5th August 2010 Criminals, not citizens, should be behind bars - Electric gates are not just lethal to children, they also destroy community spirit - 8th July 2010 Gardens are not the place to build houses. Try the countryside - The new Tory policy is right. Labour has been too afraid of the Nimbys - 10th June 2010 Why should BA’s cabin crew be paid more than nurses? - Travel doesn’t seem to have broadened the mind in their case - 24th May 2010 Ditching the third runway risks breaking up the UK - We should be able to reach every corner of the country quickly - 14th May 2010 We don’t need Big Brother to work out council taxes - There’s no more accurate way to value a house than its selling price - 7th May 2010 Dog biscuits won’t work. Electric dog collars will - You can’t train Fido by “reward-based methods” alone - 25th March 2010 We eat GM food now. Why not grow it? - Britain is missing out on a vital new technology by letting Luddites make all the running - 10th February 2010 Guess who’s behind some odd education ads - Something called Edge seems to dislike the snobbery of A levels - 20th January 2010 The irresistible rise of the aid industry - Millions will give money to victims of the Haiti earthquake. But will their cash get to the right place? - 15th January 2010 Can we really trust chief scientific officers? - The predictions for swine flu (and bird flu, Sars, vCJD) were embarrassingly inaccurate - 11th January 2010 We’re picking up the bill for right-to-buy - It’s folly that taxpayers pay for poor families to live in luxury homes. We need more social housing - 4th January 2010 Mandelson’s cuts follow years of futile expansion - Labour has got the universities it deserves - 24th December 2009 Ambulance-chasing lawyers are the real sickness - Accident claims are draining the NHS budget - 19th December 2009 What is more important, religious freedom or sex education? - Unless Labour decides, it can expect some almighty battles - 7th November 2009 Cohabiting couples can’t have their cake and eat it - If they don’t like the law, there’s a solution: get married - 30th October 2009 Think again about the postal strike - Private firms cherry-pick the profitable routes. The Royal Mail needs some sympathy - 24th October 2009 If only Gordon Brown was selling off the family silver - There’s no point getting rid of assets that could turn a decent profit - 13th October 2009 Harriet Harman, hit all perks with a prawn sandwich tax - Ordinary people pay for train fares; executives can subtract the cost of their expensive jollies - 19th September 2009 The Rover debacle is down to sheer cowardice - We have not been a great car-making nation for years - 12th September 2009 No industry beats road haulage at whining - We love it when lorry drivers are criticised - 25th August 2009 Sir John Sawers should know better - Playing with social networking sites when you’re middle-aged is embarrassing - 6th July 2009 Taking kids to the pool? Sorry, you need a card - ID cards voluntary? Don’t you believe it - 2nd July 2009 Armageddon looms. Why not build flood defences? - When it comes to practical measures to cope with the effects of climate change, the Government doesn't want to know - 19th June 2009 English Heritage has dropped a clanger - Diocese of Worcester is told it may not change a frame on to which are mounted the bells of Malvern Priory - 12th June 2009 No power, no influence, no need for fear - The BNP will go the way of all small parties after a good European showing. It will implode - 1st June 2009 High-speed rail must be for the people - If this London-to-Scotland project aims shamelessly at the well-heeled, we should forget it - 6th April 2009 There's only one way to stop boozers - How does a government deal with an alcohol problem? Have a look around Europe for a solution - 18th March 2009 A fascist bid to improve road safety - Petrolheads think speed limits are tantamount to dictatorship, but they are a sign of civilisation - 10th March 2009 A business-like public sector? We wish - Private companies are freezing pay as they struggle to survive the recession, unlike their counterparts in local government - 2nd March 2009 We're under the thumb of the worst kind of aristocracy - May this scandal hasten the day when the House of Lords becomes a fully elected chamber - 26th January 2009 How incineration could generate electricity - What a mess: the way we recycle paper is rubbish - 5th January 2009 Once heard, who can forget Port Sunlight? - We've lost the romance in place names - 30th December 2008 More power to bailiffs is a thugs' charter - Weren't human rights supposed to protect us from arbitrary justice? - 22nd December 2008 The peculiar case of middle-class benefits - So it's bad for mothers to stay at home on welfare but it's OK to get state aid for your big mortgage? - 8th December 2008 Prudishness is a rite of passage for the educated - Universities always have a Taleban tendency - 24th November 2008 They might run the economy just like British Rail - The hotel on the shortlist to host the next G20 meeting has a chequered past - 18th November 2008 The interest rate cut is bad economics and bad politics - This is nothing but financial hair of the dog - to cheer up credit-bingers - 7th November 2008 The Scouts should stick to tying knots - More and more sex education is failing to curb teenage pregnancy. Scoutmasters need not join in - 21st October 2008 Dubai beach-sex couple weren't just stupid - There is no better recruiter for al-Qaeda than Westerners thumbing their noses at the laws of Islamic countries - 17th October 2008 Burn your bra before 20, in a cardigan by 30 - If you want a real rebel, don't go to someone who stripped off at Woodstock - 10th October 2008 Don't sacked ministers have rights too - When a reshuffle beckons; employment law is chucked out of No 10's window - 29th September 2008 It's just as wrong to use drugs as it is to sell them - George Michael is intelligent enough to know that taking crack is not just an issue of personal liberty - 23rd September 2008 Who says that travel would broaden Sarah Palin's mind? - If global travelling makes a good political leader, Judith Chalmers would be prime minister - 16th September 2008 Bad building, not heavy rain, made houses flood - If we persist in covering land with concrete and tarmac, we must expect more devastated homes - 8th September 2008 How not to help first-time homebuyers - If you don't own property already, falling prices are the best way to get you on the housing ladder - 2nd September 2008 Talk of a windfall tax is just hot air - Even after the rises of the past two years, energy consumers are paying little more in real terms than they were in 1987 - 27th August 2008

The Spectator: Column name: Remit/Info: Business, The Countryside, Climate Change, Housing and Property Section: Role: Columnist Pen-name: Email: Website: Spectator.co / Ross Clark Commissioning editor: Day published: Wednesday Regularity: Weekly or fortnightly Column format: Average length:

Articles: 2009 The G20 summit is lousy value for money. Cancel it - Ross Clark looks ahead to Gordon Brown’s summit at which he will try to revive his own political fortunes, found a new global economic order and stage a Bretton Woods for our times. No chance: the whole thing is an expensive sham - 18th March 2009 You’d be bonkers to buy abroad. Here’s why - The advert, in a Sunday newspaper, couldn’t have presented a happier scene: a smiling couple, looking as if they were about to go dancing off into the sunset - 13th March 2009 Want a big bonus? Get yourself a public sector job - Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling rail against bankers’ bonuses. But, says Ross Clark, the really appetising salaries, perks, expense packages and pensions are to be found in the public sector. A terrible reckoning lies ahead for the last fat cats - 18th February 2009 Insolvency - A formula for fecklessness: The Insolvency Service has sent me a questionnaire seeking my views on bankruptcy. At first, I was enthused by this chance to say what I think about Gordon Brown’s reforms... - 11th February 2009 Whatever happened to the housing shortage? - The village of Kibworth Harcourt in Leicestershire is an unremarkable place, except that it could reasonably claim to be the front line of Britain’s ailing housing market - 10th February 2009 A boom market in economic nonsense - Ross Clark says the current financial crisis has produced a glut of illiteracy and woolly thinking - 28th January 2009 Savers are Britain’s new underclass - We are divided into two nations once more, says Ross Clark. Reckless borrowers are helped by government bail-outs, while those who have sacrificed to save are abandoned - 28th January 2009 Could house prices fall for 16 years straight? Yes, they could – just look at Japan - If someone had told you in the summer of 2007 that, 18 months on, the Bank of England base rate would be 1.5 per cent and that still your home would be plummeting in value to the tune of 2 per cent a month, you would very likely have told them they were bonkers - 14th January 2009

News & updates:

References:

Links: The First Post