LONDON, England – Though I’ve lived in London for 18 years, I had never been invited to the historic Mansion House speech of Britain’s finance minister — or Chancellor of the Exchequer. It was well worth going last night given that it was the first speech by someone other than Gordon Brown, who had the job for nine years before he became prime minister last year.

And while the Mansion House speech is usually just a few brief words given before the great and the good of the City of London financial district, this time there was a lot to be said by the Chancellor Alistair Darling and maybe more importantly by the governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King.

They talked about sub prime, Northern Rock and reforming the Bank of England so the country’s inflation target is not the bank’s only raison d’etre.

But, I’d rather write first about the pomp and circumstance of this very British of evenings.

It’s a black tie affair and hosted by the Lord Mayor of London. You may know that the square mile, known as the City, has its own mayor, police force, courts, cathedral (St. Paul’s) and is quite separate from Greater London, the City of Westminster (where the British government is based) and the Docklands area of East London where all those tall towers house American banks.

The Lord Mayor changes every year and likes to be considered at the unpaid CEO of the City. He (and it’s always a he) has lived in the Mansion House since 1753 and Invites the chancellor and Bank of England governor to speak yearly.

What I didn’t know was that the mayor has to be an alderman of a city ward and also a sheriff of London and he has to live in the famed court building, the Old Bailey before becoming mayor. I also didn’t know, and still don’t understand, why those gathered for the dinner have to greet the chancellor and governor with a slow clap on their arrival and departure (the kind that would be considered derisory at a sporting event).

London of course loves to call itself the financial capital of the world, which New York might dispute. But as the Lord Mayor’s office likes to point out, London has a 42 percent share of global equity trading, 70 percent of the global trade in international bonds, and is easily the world’s biggest in foreign exchange with about one third of that market. Then, greater London is home to a one third of the European HQ of the Fortune 500 companies.

The Lord Mayor also pointed out that one third of those working in London’s financial services sector is foreign born (its now jokingly known as the seventh largest French city).

Governor King gave the last speech and made the most headlines. He started by saying he would loved to have been able to give his speech from last year and that things could scarcely be difference from a year ago. He warned about inflation, house prices, unemployment and that the bank was not afraid to raise interest rates to bring inflation down. Many analysts think he’s talking tougher now hoping he doesn’t have to raise rates later.

Here’s hoping his Mansion House speech was enough for now.

LONDON, England – I just missed this wave when it first hit a few years ago. Four companies have been started that allow people to pitch up to any of their cars to rent on the spot, for an hour or for a week.

People all over London are now ditching the cars and joining car clubs to save money and only rent a car when they need it. Members pay about $100 a year and then go online to see if the car near them is available when they need it.

One company, Streetcar, claims a regular user can save $4,000 a year by not paying insurance, road tax, repair bills and not paying for the gas for the first 30 miles.

With gas prices here in the UK now topping $10 a gallon, membership is soaring.

Nationally, membership rose 22 percent in the first quarter of the year to 45,000 drivers. Car companies are also now adding vans because companies are clambering for the quick rental to take employees on day trips.

We interviewed a guy who ditched his Jaguar and now just rents a car when he needs it. He does it for green reasons. Ironically he agrees with other members who say they actually use public transport more because they don’t want to pay an hourly rate to pop to a shop. So they pay to drive … less.

This has caught the eye of local governments. A number of them in London have marked out spots for these private companies to park their cars. They see it as a way to cut down on traffic. One study claims that for every car share automobile, 20 cars are taken off the road. Families seem willing to attempt this system instead of buying a second car.

What impressed me was how the companies have been created around technology which was not widespread and reliable even five years ago or so. You can book your car through a secure Web site after you look on an interactive map to see what cars are available.

You can also pitch up to a car and use your mobile phone to send a text and then receive a confirmation back on your phone. The car is then unlocked remotely.

Why it seems to be working for busy people is this: We all know we are going to drive. It’s not much use taking a bicycle to IKEA. So this is a way to save money and cut down on our carbon footprint.

Watch my report

What do you think about car sharing?

LONDON, England – It might seem like an easy question. With oil companies posting record profits and Gulf countries buying up assets around the world, it’s easy to see where much of it is going. Still, they will tell you they don’t set the oil price; that is done in the futures markets in New York and London.So I set out to break down where all the money goes.

How difficult it is to extract the oil plays into the cost equation.

It’s very easy to find out who makes money in the United States from a gallon of gas. Those stats are published every month by the Department of Energy. In March, four percent of the price went to those who transport the fuel and another four percent went to marketing; those who sell it on the retail side (it’s often said they only really make a profit from the bad food and cigarettes people buy after filling up). Then eight percent of the price went to those who refine crude oil into fuel.

The government then takes its share (12 percent is tax in the USA compared to tax of 50 percent in France and Germany and more than 60 percent here in the UK). OPEC likes to point out that from 2002-2006 the G-7 countries earned $460bn from tax on oil while OPEC countries earned $410bn from selling oil.

Now, let’s go back to that gallon of gas. The biggest chunk (72 percent) of the price is crude oil. That is where the sticker shock is coming from; $130 plus in the futures market for a barrel of crude.

So, where does that money go? BP spent some considerable time trying to explain this to me. It’s much harder to break it down because it can cost around $1 to get a barrel out of places like Saudi Arabia, while it can cost $70 to extract oil from deep water. With that in mind, BP says in 2007 it earned on average $67.35 for every barrel extracted — it rose to $90.92 for Q1 2008 – and that it cost on average $20.17 to get that 2007 barrel.

The green lobby will of course say they should spend those profits on alternatives to fossil fuels. Others will say big oil must spend more of its profits to find new sources of oil. One survey found that three big oil firms, Shell, BP and Exxon Mobil had a combined $29bn in capital spending during the first quarter of this year. But the three gave $20.7bn back to shareholders.

Mike Watts of Cairn Energy said that his company for one will spend more to find sources of oil because it looks like high prices are here to stay. Cairn is willing to risk the enormous cost of exploring for oil in places that would have been to expensive to contemplate when oil was at $60.

He likes the look of oil in Greenland.

Of course the private oil companies don’t get all the money. No one can drill for oil without striking a deal with the government lucky enough to have black gold. Some contracts include a 50-50 split while other contracts have built-in royalties. What’s interesting here is that the state oil companies in the developing world have learned a great deal from the likes of Shell, BP, Chevron, Total and Eni and are now becoming bigger players themselves.

It’s thought they will start to bid on contracts in places like the Arctic giving the vast amount of money they are earning from the current climate. Look for India and China’s state-owned oil companies to become competitors forcing the private companies to spend even more to get oil contracts.

That could mean even higher oil prices.

LEWES, England — It sounds a bit crazy really. Why would a small town mint its own currency to use in local shops?

But there are a few places that do just that and Lewes, in the southern English county of East Sussex, wants to join that list by the end of the year.

The theory goes like this - you get £1.10 ($2.20) worth of goods in a shop with one Lewes pound. That discount is the incentive to use it. The local shop absorbs that loss but gets more business to make up for the discount. The shop would then use that Lewes pound to buy its goods, from a local farmer or craftsman.

Advocates say a pound that stays in town is recycled four or five times, while a pound spent a chain store leaves town immediately - the so-called leaky economic theory.

It also part of the green agenda. After all, walking to local shops and buying your veg, milk, cheese etc. from local suppliers cuts down on transportation costs.

One store owner we talked to loved it. So did the local brewery, but only if it could use the alternative pounds to buy its supplies. That will be the test. The few townies we talked to actually made fun of the whole thing. It just seems a nuisance to them.

Totnes in Devon has had a local currency for a few years. And in Western Massachusetts (where else?) local stores take BerkShares which look a bit like euros but for the pictures of local notables.

The questions asked include how are they different from gift certificates? (They don’t expire, can be used for anything in the store, can be used multiple times, can be used in any participating store). Are they legal? (Of course, they are just promissory notes like any other “currency” and aren’t backed up by anything more than confidence — like any other “currency.”)

The backers in Lewes say we have reached peak oil, and that prices will only rise as the amount of oil shrinks. That of course is debatable. But they want to voluntary return to a time when people shopped locally and there were plenty of local farmers etc. to meet that need. They fear a time when it will just be too expensive to ship food in from far away suppliers, but by then the local suppliers will already be out of business.

But for people to now make the effort to use a parallel currency there will have to be a lot of local goodwill.

Watch my video report from Lewes

LONDON, England – I have been to the High Court in London many times over the last two decades: I have seen Richard Branson win the “Dirty Tricks” suit against British Airways, I have seen George Michael lose a contract dispute with Sony, I have seen the Beatles’ Apple Records lose to Steve Jobs’ Apple (that was the one and only time I laid eyes on the Beatles’ legendary and now late confidant Neil Aspinall). I have even been there for the adoption of my two sons.

Star Wars prop designer Andrew Ainsworth.

But the current civil trial in Court 52 pitting a costume maker against the mighty “Star Wars” empire of George lucas is most unusual.

When the hearing began last week, I counted on the front bench a dozen “Star Wars” helmets and off to the side two mannequins, one dressed as a full sized storm trooper. Some were originals taken from the Lucasfilm Archives in Marin County, California.

Sitting before them was the judge dressed formally with his gray wig (wonderfully known in court as “Mr. Justice Mann” — sounds like a cartoon character) and two barristers also donning their gray wigs. That is not unusual in Britain of course, but as the opening statements included references to tusken raiders, storm troopers, even characters some of my favourite cartoons, I knew this was going to be different. And if I was a real “Star Wars” fanatic, I would see this as a once in a lifetime opportunity. After all, the Lucas side was flying in three Academy Awarding winning production designers to testify. The two sides even spent 10 minutes on the first day debating with the judge about how many breathing holes can be seen in the first drawings of helmets. After the judge left at the end of the first day, there was then a spat over which helmets should be labeled and displayed for the judge. The issue being the shape of a mohawk on the back of one helmet that I don’t even remember from the films.

The case is self is serious for one man. Andrew Ainsworth, of Shepperton Design Studios, made the original helmets for the first film back in 1977. He started to make replica helmets in 2004 from the original mould which sat in the basement of his west London studio for nearly 30 years. His Web site, sdsprops.com, offers replica helmets for up to $1,000.

Lucasfilm accuses him of violating its copyright. Its lawyer said in his opening argument that Ainsworth manufactured the helmets based on detailed drawings and paintings sent to him through a costume designer. Ainsworth says he made sufficient and unique changes to the original design so that he should own the copyright.

The Lucasfilm barrister made the point that all these bits in front of him were more than movie props. “There are no helmets, there is no armour.” His point: this was intellectual property.

Mr. Justice Mann, the same judge who ruled in favour of Apple Computers (he had to confess in that case he owned an iPod — he has not disclosed while I was there whether he was a “Star Wars” fan), will have to decide who owns the rights to the helmets.

Ainsworth wants a slice of the $12 billion Lucas has made just from the products sold around the six films. The question is, do freelance workers on projects retain the rights to their work, if there is no contract (as is the case here)?

This is Ainsworth’s last chance really to tilt at the Lucas empire. He’s already lost this case before a California judge in 2006 and he nearly went broke defending himself then. His London lawyers are working on a no-win-no-fee basis. Not a problem for Lucas of course.