Financial Times

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The Financial Times in paper form

Sir Humphrey: Didn't you read the Financial Times this morning?

Sir Desmond Glazebrook: Never do.

Sir Humphrey: Well, you're a banker. Surely you read the Financial Times?

Sir Desmond: Can't understand it. Full of economic theory.

Sir Humphrey: Why do you buy it?

Sir Desmond: Oh, you know, it's part of the uniform.

~ Yes, Prime Minister


The Financial Times (or FT for short) was founded in 1888 by James Sheridan and Horatio Bottomley, and merged with its closest rival, the Financial News (which had been founded in 1884) in 1945. The Financial Times owns 50% of The Economist. According to a study of people who personally managed asset funds worth $5 billion or more, the FT is the number one most trusted publication with The Economist coming in third. The FT also has a website and a magazine for rich people about the best ways to spend all their money.

The FT is generally in favour of globalisation and free markets. The paper supported Thatcher during the 1980s but switched to backing Neil Kinnock's Labour Party in 1992. It's also vaguely pro-EU provided the EU is all about markets and not social policy issues.

In 2010 the paper liked things about all the parties - civil liberties stuff from the Liberal Democrats, Gordon Brown's handling of the financial crisis - but in the end backed the Conservatives. At the 2015 general election, the FT backed a continuation of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, so it's got half of what it wanted.

Most people understand absolutely nothing written in the paper and those that do generally aren't going to be on this wiki (although, who knows?).

In fandom, the FT is important because if someone links and article from them it looks like they know stuff. Also sometimes politicians have articles in there. It is also important in fandom because Ed Balls used to work there and if he hadn't then Gordon Brown never would have seen how much he knew about economics and he never would have got hired as a SpAd and the fandom would be a very different place.