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Who Runs Britain? How Britain's new elite are changing our lives
 
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Who Runs Britain? How Britain's new elite are changing our lives (Hardcover)

by Robert Peston (Author)
3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 352 pages
  • Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton General (7 Feb 2008)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0340839422
  • ISBN-13: 978-0340839423
  • Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 15.6 x 3.6 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 179,761 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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  • See Complete Table of Contents

Product Description

Review
'Who Runs Britain? is essential reading' --The Times

'Peston has written an absorbing book, essential reading for anyone who wants to know how the British economy, which has become hugely dependent on financial services, now operates.' --Guardian

'The villain of Peston's piece is not the market but its political custodians. This book is a catalogue of cluelessness on the part of Blair, Brown and their advisers, on everything from pension funds, capital taxes and non-domiciles to the wider shores of private equity. The much-vaunted Treasury was most clueless of all.' --The Sunday Times

Review
'A compelling portrait of early 21st century casino capitalism...essential reading.' (Howard Davies The Times )

'This lucid and timely guide to the world of turbo-capitalism...absorbing book, essential reading for anyone who wants to know how the British economy now operates.' (Peter Wilby Guardian )

'A devastating account of Blair's producer capture by high finance...Peston navigates with ease the shark-infested waters of hedge funds, sub-prime borrowing, defined-benefit pensions and loans for honours.' (Simon Jenkins The Sunday Times )

'Fluent, incredibly up to the minute look at Britain...Peston, in relaxed, conversational; style is a great travelling companion along the highways of finance.' (Observer )

'starkly lucid...Reading Peston's book, you can only be flabbergasted all over again at how Labour kowtowed to wealth, glorified the City and put the nations economic eggs into one dangerous basket of fizzy finance.' (Polly Toynbee Guardian )

'Peston catches the zeitgeist of Britain and the paradox that is Gordon Brown'

(Financial Times )

'engaging'

(Harry Mount Telegraph )

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Customer Reviews

8 Reviews
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2 star:
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Average Customer Review
3.0 out of 5 stars (8 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars important book looking at the financial problems that affect us all, 30 Mar 2008
Depsite an overlong and rather tedious chapter on M&S and a poor title, this book offers fascinating insights into the global financial crisis we are all facing. For those who want to be inducted into the arcane - but nevertheless important - mysteries of "hedge funds" and "private equities", Peston offers clear, jargon-free explanations. Also an eye-opening account of Gordon Brown's / the Treasury's intense wooing, via tax-breaks, of financiers making speculative bets rather than building robust wealth-creating businesses. The "Morning Star" gave this book a big thumbs up - which certainly says something about Peston's ability to strip bare the mechanisms of capitalism... An important and extremely knowlegeable account of what will doubtless prove to be a major turning point in history.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars So Who Does Run Britain?, 2 Aug 2008
By Michael D. Peevey "peevey" (Singapore) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This is a curate's egg of a book -- good in parts. What ultimately makes it weak is that it is difficult to discern a theme. It asks the question: who runs Britain? but never actually, in say the way Anthony Sampson does, answers it.

From time to time it provides some analysis and commentary but by and large it is weak and doesn't really arrive at any sensible or compelling conclusions -- mostly, it provides an argument that the 'rich' are too rich that this is not good (though never really says why) and suggests that the nations of the world should unite to tax them more highly after conceding that unilateral higher taxation in the UK would lead to an exodus of these individuals. If you like old fashioned socialism then some of his comments and conclusions may resonate but it really is half baked stuff.

On the positive side it has some interesting chapters on Marks and Spencers, Philip Green, the Post Office and Hedge Funds -- all of which to the lay person are interesting and absorbing. The problem again is that there is no real coherent theme or conclusions that compel.

This book could do with a great deal more focus and might have even been better as a series of essays.

For the reader interested in a book to dip into and take pot luck this one provides a few chapters of genuine interest. For the reader interested in who runs Britain, what is wrong with the current set up and how it can be fixed will find this a poor attempt indeed.
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17 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars AN INADEQUATE ANALYSIS, 17 Mar 2008
By J. Scott (SCOTLAND) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
The Guardian in its 'Digested Reads', reviewed this book in the form of an interview between the author and Jeremy Paxman.
In reply to Paxman's suggestions that the book had little substance, Robert Peston was reduced to protesting 'I know a lot about Allan Leighton and the Post Office'.
Unfortunately even this is not true.

The chapter on Leighton and Royal Mail is a shoddy one.
Peston admits that Leighton's grand scheme to save £350 million by ending the second delivery achieved next to nothing. At this point an enquiring journalist would set out to find out why Leighton's promise had proved to be empty. It would not have been hard. Tens of thousands of posties could have told him. The second delivery had almost disappeared already in a death of a thousand cuts and axing it was bound to save little.
Sadly, Peston failed to do the leg work.
In a newpaper article that might have been excusable but not in a book.
His assumption that privatization would have been the way forward is never properly justified. It does not occur to him that Margaret Thatcher decided not to privatize Royal Mail and British Rail for sound reasons.
There is also the question of why is there a chapter on Royal Mail in a book called 'Who Runs Britain ?'. Its inclusion is the strangest since Edward Gibbon's decision to include a chapter on Manchester United in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

2.0 out of 5 stars approachable, but not enlightening
The title of the book poses a great question, but unfortunately the book itself makes very little attempt to actually answer it. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Mr. A. L. Clare

3.0 out of 5 stars Incoherent set of stories
This basically feels like a collection of newspaper articles joined together. There is little attempt at providing a coherent argument. Read more
Published 9 months ago by A. I. Mackenzie

5.0 out of 5 stars Useful insights into the failings of capitalism
Financial journalist Robert Peston has written a splendidly informative book on how the super-rich are harming democracy. Read more
Published 12 months ago by William Podmore

4.0 out of 5 stars An insightful book
Robert Peston has rare gifts; explaining simply the crude and often ugly manipulation of our money or our debts to benefit a few insiders. Read more
Published 15 months ago by John Anderson

1.0 out of 5 stars Dire
Robert Peston is the hysterical - in more senses than one - Financial Editor for BBC News.

I have often wondered if there is anything beyond hyperbole and lowest... Read more
Published 15 months ago by Sian B

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