On our little list of things not to worry about

OK, so this is only a letter to The Guardian but it still betrays a certain mindset that we find ourselves being very confused by:

He talks about the future of businesses based on a new Companies Act, but it’s not clear how this would address the problems presented by 40% of shares in major UK companies (including utilities) being foreign owned.

We're confused because we simply cannot see why this might be a problem. The foreign capitalists are sending their lovely foreign capital into our country. This means that there is, other things being equal, more capital in this country than there would be without that lovely foreign capital. Given that it is capital added to labour that increases the productivity of labour, the average productivity of labour is what will determine the average income in the country, this means that foreigners sending their lovely capital to our rainy little island means that wages are higher here in the rain than they otherwise would be.

And we think this is a good idea.

As to why there is this concern our best bet is that old problem of the British left. All too many socialists are also quite ghastly nationalists. A combination we had rather too much of in Europe in the last century so hopefully not something that's going to become popular again.