Adair Turner is a smart guy, and when he ruminates about the causes of the crash and how we might seek out some remedies, it’s worth listening. Being a Prospect magazine fan (I once read an whole edition from cover to cover and it passed nearly a quarter of a 12-hour flight back to London) I’d read the piece in bed last night that caused all the front page headlines this morning: 'Tax socially useless banks, says FSA chief'.

What Turner says in the article is far more subtle and nuanced than he’s being given credit for. He very rarely shows his hand by advocating firm policy answers to all the problems, merely considering options. One of the points he makes is that: 'It is hard to distinguish between valuable financial innovation and non-valuable... I think that some of it is socially useless activity'.  

The relationship between money and social usefulness has occupied economists and philosophers for hundreds of years, but it's on all our minds at the moment. I worry that if bankers were to be reduced to funding what is 'socially useful', that might lead to quite a few problems. Even if what they do behind their Canary Wharf terminals has no more immediate social use than an hour's blackjack in a casino, the trickle-down effects of their huge tax contributions still pays for nurses and teachers.

And further, what does the manager at Barclays or HSBC do when approached by Richard Desmond seeking a nice little loan to set up his latest version of 'Skinny and Wriggly' or 'Big and Bouncy'? Porn may be legal and a good way of making a living, but socially useful it normally isn’t. Also, why is the engagement in credit default swaps and other weird financial devices any more socially useless than a dam in China that will despoil the environment and wreck the lives of tens of thousands? Many pension funds that will enable you and me to live comfortable secure lives in our retirements had their coffers swelled by such devices (before, of course, it all went belly-up and they went on to wreck them).

On the subject of social usefulness, one cannot allow the passing of Big Brother to go unremarked. I lost interest a long while ago in a programme that appeared to defy its audience to derive viewing interest from the very essence of banal mediocrity. That, of course, was its schtick: making a bunch of ignorant, no-talent nobodies famous not for 15 minutes but a whole Summer. And very nicely it did for Channel 4, too. At its peak, it was providing the channel with some 25% of its revenue - and it's still profitable today, despite the suits stretching it thinner and thinner with numerous multi-platformed spin-offs. C4 provided live feeds online and overnight, so we could watch all the time, kidding us that this was some sort of deeply interesting and worthy social experiment. A less malign Truman Show.

The point of Big Brother and much other reality TV offering is quite precisely to defy that sort of social usefulness that Reith had in mind for TV and other media in the good old days. It’s cheap, garbage entertainment - two fingers up to edification and what used to be termed 'the higher things in life'. The problem for Channel 4 is that it’s in a parlous state financially - which serves it right, because that is the result of the utter lack of original programming ideas from its management. Pushing boundaries is what it is supposed to be there to do. But it now wants government cash – top-sliced from the BBC or wherever it can lay its hands on it – to continue on its dubious mission. But if it goes on the way it has been in the last decade, it will be barely more 'socially useful' than Diva TV +1 or ITV 12. In which case it can fight for its own place in the market.       

In today's bulletin:
FSA chairman mulls new tax to cut City down to size
Diageo growth hit as drinkers shun premium booze
Editor's blog: Socially useful banks, and Big Brother
Lego declines to Tap new market
Delivering change as a new leader

I can vividly remember my first trip on our first (and still only) high-speed line to the Channel Tunnel, fifteen years ago. There I was in my seat at the old Eurostar terminus at Waterloo, expecting the train to be travelling at Warp Factor Three by the time we hit Brixton. For someone who had mis-spent his youth between the age of 10 and 12 collecting train numbers, this was a big deal. I was cruelly disappointed. We trundled along at barely walking pace through South London, stopping for signals, to admire the playing fields of Dulwich and to allow elderly ladies across the line. Things barely sped up once we hit Kent, and it took ages to reach the coast. 

The humiliation of all Brits on board was complete when we eventually emerged from the tunnel on the French side, the train extended its overhead pantograph, and the conductor smugly announced: 'Nous allons maintenant a trois cent kilometres a l’heure'.

Fans of high-speed train travel will be heartened by today’s announcement that Network Rail thinks we ought to built a new super-quick line, to open in 2025. All the arguments appear highly convincing. Passenger numbers continue to grow, and by 2020 the main line to Birmingham and the North-West will be full. By 2025, our paltry 70 miles of high-speed track will be outnumbered by Spain (4415 miles) France (4135 miles) and even Morocco (422 miles). A new line would reduce the journey time to Manchester to 1 hour and 6 minutes and Glasgow to 2 hours and 16 minutes.

Having just returned from a Ryanair-enabled holiday, I’m also persuaded that short-haul air travel – even if it isn’t wasn’t planet-wrecking in terms of passenger miles per unit of energy - is now the most uncivilised way of travelling since the coffin ships.      

So the new line is probably a good idea: create quite a few jobs, emit a lot less carbon at a cost of just £34bn. Although any one who believes it would actually come in at that price is living in la-la land. Nothing to do with railways ever comes in either on time or at budgeted cost.

But it will require a monumental effort to make it happen. This is because the other aspect of the development of the line to the Channel Tunnel, as many will recall, is what a protracted planning nightmare it was. Nobody wanted it in their backyard and the battles with Kentish protestors went on for years. In a small country like ours, the line will have to go straight to bring any benefit. But we are small and densely-populated. Any attempt to rip a straight line for the Iron Horse through Buckinghamshire – complete with the necessary sound baffles – is likely to result in a second Peasant’s Revolt. And where you build huge new terminals in the centre of London, Birmingham and Manchester is anyone’s guess, despite the property slump. 

The French, of course, have an entirely different attitude towards this: most areas actively lobby for new high speed lines, and any objectors get their skulls cracked by the CRS if they kick up too much fuss. And in Morocco the number of Nimbys throwing themselves in front of earth movers as the line advances from Marrakech to Agadir is guaranteed to be small.

In today's bulletin:
WPP adds to gloom as profits halve
Fiat may buy Vauxhall - as Toyota scales back
Editor's blog: Watch out for Nimbys on high-speed track
Millions delay retirement as pensions nose-dive
Coffee eases strain as recession lengthens daily grind

So Rupert Murdoch has found the answer to the woes of the media world. And it’s been sitting there right in front of his face all this time without anyone realising: there’s no such thing as a free lunch, so make ‘em pay.

Murdoch has been well and truly battered by a collapse in advertising revenue, as the recession combined with the advent of online has torn Fleet Street's traditional business model to pieces. The News Corp holding company slumped to a $3.4bn (£2bn) net loss for the financial year to June.  If what is contained in the current edition of Private Eye is to be believed, some of News Corp's biggest cash cows are now making a loss or seeing profits tumble. So, Rupert, in between doing some serious BBC-bashing, has declared that the online news free-for-all is over.

'Quality journalism is not cheap,' he noted this week. 'The digital revolution has opened many new and inexpensive distribution channels but it has not made content free. We intend to charge for all our news websites.' He is, as is often the case, quite right and I wish him well in his quest. Indeed there’s nothing more I’d like than to prize a couple of bob out of you for reading this on your screen at the moment. (Incidentally, don’t shout about it but MT’s website makes a profit from the advertising it carries.) 

However I fear that this all has a touch of 'shutting the stable door while the nag is cantering through the neighboring state' about it. Once punters have experienced something for nothing, trying to persuade them to fork out cash for it is a tough sell.

The charging model will even be extended to red-top tabloids such as the Sun and the News of the World. Murdoch was particularly keen to generate revenue via the popularity of celebrity stories: 'When we have a celebrity scoop, the number of hits we get now are astronomical'. Sure – the latest shot of Jordan, top off in the pool with her latest cage-fighting beau gets gazillions of hits (and not, sadly, just in August). But it’s all over cyberspace within seconds. News Corp’s legal department is going to have to multiply its staff twenty-fold in order to chase copyright abusers.

But there’s a wider problem. News is now utterly commoditised. Indeed, who knows what 'news' is any more. The whole news universe has become a blur of facts, contention, gossip and tidal waves of digital opinion. You can get your eyeful of Jordan, if that’s your fancy, all over the place – I just got 4.55 million hits in 0.23 seconds. However the kind of dross churned out by OK and Hello still sells, so it might just work.

All this in a week in which it has been admitted by its owner The Guardian that the Observer faces the possibility of closure. I have a soft spot for The Obs because back in 1986 it was the first national newspaper I ever wrote for. I could hardly believe it when I opened the pages of the magazine and found my name there. I kept thinking they’d spiked my piece and not bothered telling me.

My father had read it ever since he was a student, and I’d grown up with it on the kitchen table every Sunday morning. One of the first things I can recall reading out loud from a newspaper was Clive James’s review of Abba winning Eurovision in 1974. It struck me as very witty at the time. In those days the paper sold three quarters of a million copies. It now sells a less-impressive  400,000 copies, and appears doomed.  With the exception of the excellent and innovative Food and Women’s monthly magazines, it’s all been pretty lifeless in recent years. I click through the contents online hidden within The Guardian’s website.

There’s no reason why we should be especially sentimental about newspapers. Things change. There’s also no greater reason to mourn job losses among hacks than among LDV or Corus Steel workers. Newspapers have been pretty dozy in waking up to the changes that the digital world brings and have made the fatal mistake of giving content away for nothing as they compete desperately for clicks.

So, although The Observer’s fate makes me sad, then I think of the South Park clip – instantly available via YouTube – highlighted on today’s MT bulletin. Vile, filthy but instantly amusing.  Also the picture I took on my Nokia E75 this morning of my nine-week old daughter that I’ve just shown to colleagues - who smile politely - and might whizz over to a mate in New York later. And I also wonder about electronic tablets such as Kindle which might offer a lifeline. And, finally, I think about the hundred and fifty quid which I’ve just slightly begrudgingly forked out to the FT for online access to their stuff for a year - only to be told today that they are going onto a pay-per-view system. Rupert still has hope and he’s right to. It ain’t all media Armageddon yet.  

In today's bulletin:
RBS gloomy despite being back in the black
Are women directors bad for a company's bottom line?
Editor's blog: Murdoch declares end to online free-for-all
Bribe migrants to stay, says think-tank
Be more diplomatic, with YouTube

The annual release of the photos of Vladimir Putin on his hols never cease to amaze. Here in the West we find the shots of the old KGB brute, topless and astride his throbbing stallion – with his gently sagging, late middle-aged moobs bobbing up and down - little short of hilarious.

Hilarious until you remember that the KGB thug with the Napoleon complex is held in such high esteem by the average Russian. This is highly effective PR. He is the tough guy who brooks no nonsense and if you get on the wrong side of him - whether you’re a political opponent or a Siberian bear - he’ll sort you out with his bare hands (though just where his backward policies have got his country is dealt with in this month’s MT).

Putin’s remain the sort of images of leadership that meet with strong approval all over the world. By contrast, our leader Gordon Brown is spending his holiday not strangling the wildlife and white-water rafting through Siberia but doing a spot of voluntary work in the East Fife area. OK, so it’s faintly risible in its piety, and Gordon is said to be more than a little shaky in his dealings with the opposite sex. But think how the averagely intelligent and enlightened Italian feels about their political leadership at the moment.  

It’s hard to imagine what sort of dalliance involving the opposite sex Berlusconi could possibly indulge in to drag his character any lower. If he got caught in the back of a Fiat Punto with Dame Edna, a hamster and a vial of crystal meth, the average Italian would probably merely shrug and accept it. You could write a book – and several have – about the trouble women have being taken seriously in Italy.

Outside Europe, other kinds of 'strong leadership' include giving women who dare to wear trousers in public a damn good whipping (Sudan) and shooting those young females who dare to protest without a veil against the regime in Iran. How apt – and how disastrous – that the militia felt it necessary to eradicate someone so young and so beautiful as Neda Soltani for stepping out of line. They couldn’t control her, tame her and have their way with her so they killed her.

The point is, I suppose, that strutting machismo, has had its time for us in the liberal West - whether in politics, public life or business. But trying to find the new way of doing things is awkward and long drawn-out. We just have to endure Harman’s sometimes wrong-headed sermonising along the way.   

In today's bulletin:
Lloyds sinks to massive loss as it writes off £73m per day
Betfair worth backing as revenues soar again
Editor's blog: Machismo has had its day
Could the recession cause two decades of income loss?
Seven ways to... Manage interns better

What is it about Harriet Harman that makes many people react to her as if the anti-Christ has arrived on their doorstep? Those of us who are still around in Blighty enduring this wretched Summer had our patience tried still further yesterday by Harriet’s cosy little interview with the Sunday Times, during which she offered the opinion that: 'Men cannot be left to run things on their own. I think it’s a thoroughly bad thing to have a men-only leadership. In a country where women regard themselves as equal, they are not prepared to see men just running the show themselves. I think a balanced team of men and women makes better decisions.'

On the face of it this might not seem too unreasonable. After all, the blokes have made yet another hash of it, whether economically or politically. We’ve all wondered just a little bit if the crunch and crash would have been so bad if there hadn’t been so much testosterone-fuelled machismo charging around the City and Wall Street. We’ve also considered how women in management might possibly hold some advantages when leading organisations through difficult times, particularly when horrible choices about staffing have to be made. One can even almost cope with the news that Harriet intends to set up an international summit of women leaders to be called the ‘Gender 20' (Item 1 on the agenda: What do do about the Berlusconi problem).

No, it’s Harriet herself who's the problem. It’s an ad hominem (or ad feminam?) argument. It’s the bossy, bureaucratic, slightly third-rateness of the woman. It takes some deputy prime minister to make you long for a Prescott return. It’s the 'cannot be left to run things on their own' bit that gets my goat. That is pure sexist claptrap, and if it came from the mouth of a man he’d be drummed out of polite company. It’s like a bored parent talking about naughty kids – 'leave them on their own and the place will look like a bomb’s hit it after half an hour'. They just cannot be trusted. Nanny knows best.

As the goddess of Equalities in the UK, one can only imagine what horrors have been going on inside Harriet’s pet Equality and Human Rights Commission, an organisation that makes ten rabid ferrets in a sack look like a Carmelite Nunnery. And one can be sure that Harman’s Equality Bill will contain a fair bit of the usual ham-fisted box-ticking that typifies government’s attempt to get stuck into such areas.

In today's bulletin:
Northern Rock sinks again as losses widen
Toyota and BMW caught in worldwide car crash
Workers follow French lead with sit-in protests
Editor's blog: More nonsense from Harman
Too skint to sack people?