Warm congratulations to David Cameron and the Conservative Party for their unexpected and welcome win. Years will pass before we fully understand exactly what happened on 7 May and during these years, no doubt chivvying him all the way, will be his Tory right-wing critics, who find themselves suddenly empowered by the narrowness of his parliamentary majority. To have won, instead of gone into another coalition, might be the best and worst thing that he has ever done.

Back to April, an undistinguished month for Athelney Trust which, true, did see it’s unaudited NAV increased by 1.6% but the FTSE Small Cap index rose 1.2% and the Fledgling and AIM All-share did much better at 3.7% and 5.1% respectively. With monetary policy so very loose, I continue to feel perfectly happy with the level of asset prices although I have longer-term worries about where economic growth might come from. Productivity is extremely poor and its lack of growth is not nearly so mysterious as one might think: It stems from a failure to improve the efficiency with which land, labour and capital are used in professional services, manufacturing, IT and banking. Planning limitations prevent the productive use of land and raise the price of housing far above that in other countries. We need a new runway at Heathrow.

We also need a much simpler system of taxation to encourage the population to get on with productive work rather than wasting time arranging affairs to minimize the tax payable. Productivity would be much improved if we could make progress with these three things but I don’t think that anybody out there is listening.