Is the gold industry getting a wee bit nervous? It seems unlikely, with the world so invested in it, but in the last few months my LinkedIn feed has been in frequent receipt of messages pleading with me to “explore all gold’s potential benefits” and then invest in the stuff

In the UK, Christmas 2022 is going to be mainly notable for strikes, many of them by ‘essential workers’. Which does rather beg the question – If the services being provided are so essential, how is it that the people who provide them are not decently paid?

Among the people whom Ayn Rand consigned to their fate in the Winston Tunnel disaster was ‘the woman in Roomette 6, Car no. 8, …. a lecturer who believed that, as a consumer, she had “a right” to transportation, whether the railroad people wished to provide it or not’. But railway workers in the UK are to be denied the right to withhold their labour, should they not wish to provide it. Would Rand have approved?

Liz Truss wants to be seen as the queen deregulator, and a tool is ready to hand. Unhampered by a written constitution, she wields the power of the King-in-Parliament and also has the Brexit-delivered opportunity of fulfilling her ambitions by the simple act of removing all EU-derived legislation. And she can cut taxes at the same time.

According to our new prime minister. British workers are inherently lazy. This is well illustrated by her most fervent supporter, Jacob Rees-Mogg, and the teachers at Eton, the school he attended.

At least two British Conservative MPs are known to be fans of Ayn Rand. Despite this, they manage to be on opposite sides in the current leadership wars.

After the chaos of British politics, it is almost a pleasure to turn to the simple certainties of Ayn Rand, So certain that those who disagreed with her deserved nothing better than to be packed onto a train and sent into a dark tunnel from which they would never emerge.

It was probably not a good idea on my part to get involved in a purely American tragedy, but I had an excuse. A fellow Brit had posted a comment suggesting that he thought that US-style gun control, or lack of it, would be a good idea in the UK. I thought some opposition to that would be worth while.

One of the criticisms faced by Ayn Rand in her lifetime was that her ‘rational men’simply did not exist. To this she had a standard answer. “I know they do. I married one. His name is Frank O’Connor.”

To her credit, Ayn Rand did not approve of slavery. Through the mouth of John Galt, she not only said “I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man” but added “nor ask another man to live for mine”. Whether she actually lived by the second part of that creed is another matter,