Redundant need not mean obsolete if managed calmly May 2, 2012 REDUNDANT isn’t the kindest of words. Synonymous with unwanted, inessential and obsolete, a redundant employee can be forgiven for feeling negative. Redundancy itself is often just the terminal act of a long played-out drama, the culmination of months of anxiety as the final curtain falls. But such understandable feelings need not reflect impending disaster. A [...]
Why Boris Johnson is by far the best choice for Londoners | City A.M. May 2, 2012 TOMORROW is decision time for Londoners. Our great city is at a crossroads: it must choose who to elect as its mayor at a time of extreme economic uncertainty and just months before the Olympics, when the eyes of the world will be on London. Having carefully examined all the candidates, this newspaper believes that [...]
It’s time for supporters of the single currency to apologise May 1, 2012 SOME of the stories coming out of the Eurozone are heart-breaking. Greece’s retail sales are down 13 per cent over the past year, a tragic and all too painful collapse for millions of families. Economists sometimes compare the UK’s recession with the great depression: while technically true in various narrow, statistical ways, such a parallel [...]
Secret collapse in corporate profits is hurting UK’s recovery April 30, 2012 IF you repeat a myth often enough, it eventually becomes the received wisdom. That is as true in the City as it is politics. Take the supposedly well-established “fact” that profits are booming despite the recession. That is certainly the story in America and in emerging markets. But while most large UK-based quoted firms are [...]
A recession made in Downing Street – but not caused by cuts April 26, 2012 IS this a recession made in Downing Street? In part, yes. Obviously, Gordon Brown is the main culprit. It will take years to recover from his mismanagement of fiscal, monetary, tax and regulatory policies, as well as from the global, cheap money bubble. But George Osborne can no longer escape blame either. His desire to [...]
France’s hopeless politicians will determine all of our futures April 23, 2012 WHAT a race. And what a mess. The useless Nicolas Sarkozy was given a bloody nose; the awful, economically illiterate Francois Hollande is in the lead ahead of the second round of the French presidential elections; and the horrendous national front grabbed almost a fifth of the vote. Listening to the candidates last night, it [...]
UK is wrong to have turned its back on individual freedom April 17, 2012 LIBERTY. Freedom. When did you last hear these two words in the UK political debate? Well, I certainly can’t remember. Our country is dominated by busybodies and collectivists who believe that they and the state have the right and duty to tell us all what to do, to spend our money for us and to [...]
Government wrong to demonise generous philanthropists April 13, 2012 IT has become increasingly difficult to understand what the coalition government is up to. Take its decision to demonise those who donate large amounts to charity, depicting them in a grossly unfair manner as tax avoiders who should be ashamed of themselves. This is an astonishingly stupid and nasty thing to imply. The government claims [...]
We need an open contest to decide who will run the Bank April 12, 2012 THERE is no doubt that George Osborne’s most important decision over the next few months will be who he appoints as the next governor of the Bank of England. That job, which becomes vacant next year, is by a huge distance the most powerful unelected position in the UK; its formal powers now span monetary [...]
Attracting attention in your job hunt is a subtle science April 11, 2012 WHAT value is there in seeking attention? The practice has a bad reputation, known as part of the power-play of ill-disciplined little children. But in a competitive job market, where even the best must struggle to win over recruiters or potential employers, some argue that there’s virtue in trying to be noticed in the early [...]