The JSPrice Perception

British prison (Image: BBC) What does it take for someone to be put in prison? It is the done punishment for somebody who has committed wrongdoing, whether it is moral or physical. You can go behind bars for a wide spectrum of things including perverting the court of justice, tax dodging and robbery. Of course you can go down for murder or rape, among the worst possible crimes but I wonder if the line is drawn between going to prison and not is a little too close to over-the-top. When I was a child in the 90s, a prison sentence was the ultimate punishment if you committed notoriously bad crimes. Now it seems that if you're about to commit something awful, or the wrongdoing you did was petty, the court cannot wait to put you behind bars. According to The Howard League of Penal Reform, 85,567 are in a jail in England and Wales. More people are in prison than those who live in places like Cotswold, Durham and Lincoln. There were two news stories this past week that caught ...

Ed Miliband campaigning at a High Street (Image: Daily Mail) Economics is a funny subject. As money is becoming increasingly important to many of us, every minute of the day we make decisions which have financial consequences. We think to ourselves "If I spent this amount on that item, I'd have this much to spend until my next pay day". That is how I tend to operate anyway. So bearing that in mind, you have to spare a thought or two for business owners. Particularly owners of larger businesses, they feel obliged to make professional viewpoints and financial decisions by media speculation and how the economy is generally heading. At the moment, the economy is doing okay. As a whole, Britain is in a healthy state in the sense that it is doubtful that we'd see ourselves in a recession for a considerable time yet. Unless something disastrous happens, of course - which businesses are starting to dread. With the UK general election around the corner, we have Ed Mi...

10 Downing Street (Image: Spectator) It is hard to believe that we are less than 100 days until the general election. It's tougher to think that it was nearly five years ago when David Cameron occupied 10 Downing Street. In this instance, time has absolutely flown by and yet sandwiched between these two days, so much has gone on - it is impossible to consider where to start reflecting.  You can start with November 2010 when the student riots after the government's decision to increase University tuition fees to £6-9,000 per year. You can then go on and mention the riots that damaged businesses across the UK after thousands raged against austerity in August 2011. You can then argue that there was a state of equilibrium in 2012 when the Olympic and Paralympic Games in London was embraced by the world. But things got a little paranoid soon afterwards when the Eurozone entered crisis point while statistically the British economy was starting to pick up. Then UK saved face ...