Further steep rises in house prices don't prove that those who predict a collapse are wrong. On the contrary, they make such a collapse all the more likely

When I was a city editor at the peak of the dotcom boom in early 2000, I used to get letters from irate and triumphant readers pouring scorn on me because I had dismissed this or that high-tech company as rubbish. "Dear Mr Hosking," they would go, "I ignored your advice to steer clear of Suchandsuch.com and bought the shares at £1 last month. They are now £10. I am worth £5m on paper and you are a complete prat."

These letters were unanswerable. I would ultimately be proved right, as the bubble eventually burst and such companies folded in their droves. But my correspondents were, in the meantime, right. They had ridden the manic wave, and the few smart ones who sold at the right time did very well.

Some of the same contempt is reserved today for pundits who suggest the housing market is going through a similar bubble. Amateur buy-to-let landlords sneer at the economists who dare to suggest that roaring house prices could go into reverse. In recent weeks, both Goldman Sachs and Tony Dye - the fund manager known as Doctor Doom - have joined the economist Roger Bootle and the investment bank Durlacher in warning that it could all end in tears.

There are reasonable arguments on both sides, but I come down firmly in the bears' camp. Rental yields are falling fast and an army of buy-to-letters will all scramble for the exit at the same time, making a soft landing all but impossible.

What irritates me are those bulls - estate agents and some mortgage lenders are the worst culprits - who dim-wittedly seize on every monthly house-price index rise as further evidence that they are right and the bears wrong. They seem to think that each price increase adds another brick in the wall of evidence proving that property is somehow immune from the laws of economics.

The truth is surely the exact opposite - every price rise makes an eventual reversal all the more likely.

That still sometimes potent democratic right - to turn up at an annual shareholders' meeting and ask awkward questions - is under threat. BP the other day excluded seven shareholders, environmentalists and trade union members who wanted to ask questions about a pipeline project in the Caucasus.

They owned shares. Their proxy forms were in order. They were reportedly willing to be searched before going into the meeting. But security guards stopped them, flourishing new company rules approved last year giving the directors "power to take any action . . . to ensure the security of the meeting". According to BP, the banned shareholders were either recognised as people who had disrupted last year's AGM (when stink bombs were thrown) or they arrived in a group which contained such people. "Buying a £5 share does not give you the right to disrupt the meeting," a spokesman told me.

Companies do need to tread carefully here. They owe a duty of care to staff and shareholders to ensure no one equipped to do physical harm can get in. But at the same time, it is essential they are not seen to stifle debate. BP does seem to have been heavy-handed. If the shareholders had started to cause problems, they could always have been chucked out then.

Companies the size of BP are inevitably seen as remote, powerful and unheeding. The AGM is the only day of the year when the directors are obliged to appear in semi-public and have their decisions challenged. The new era of security consciousness should not be exploited by directors to silence their critics.

Sir Terence Conran, on last week's letters page, took me to task for my scepticism over the commercial value of good design. Of course, good design is important for business. But my definition of good design is probably different from Conran's. If he means products that function well, are user-friendly, don't go wrong, age well and can take the knocks of modern-day living, all for reasonable cost, then I agree. If he primarily means products that meet his personal views on aesthetics, I don't. There is a difference between good design and mere fashion.

It is because the design industry and the judges of design awards are too interested in appearance and other surface qualities, rather than substance, that the shops are full of overpriced tat. The problem is summed up by the industry's gushing approval for Philippe Starck's famous lemon squeezer - attractive maybe, but almost impossible to squeeze lemons with.

It gives me no pleasure to say so, but Conran's hero, Vittorio Radice, is already discovering that the British shopping public isn't so far buying in to his particular design revolution. Radice, the former Selfridges boss brought in by Marks & Spencer to head its homeware division, has produced poor sales figures - down every quarter in the past year and slumping by an egregious 13.7 per cent in the past three months.

Post your comment

Please note: you will need to login or register before you can comment on the website