We need an open contest to decide who will run the Bank April 11, 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 [...]
Time for a few home truths about Britain’s housing crisis April 10, 2012 EVERY so often, a piece of research comes along which is a must-read. A document yesterday from the Institute of Economic Affairs is one such report: it reveals in no uncertain terms why house prices are so high in the UK, and what needs to be done to ensure that generations of young people are [...]
Facebook must beware a return to the dot.com bubble days April 9, 2012 WHILE the City was enjoying its Easter Monday off, Wall Street was out in force. The most astonishing deal signed yesterday was Facebook’s $1bn purchase of Instagram. This was the social network’s biggest purchase to date and comes as a prelude to Facebook’s flotation – but the real story was that Instagram is just 551 [...]
Boris is right to want to transform London into a city-state April 4, 2012 BORIS is right: London should keep more of its tax money. Too much of London’s GDP is transferred via the tax system to other parts of the UK, a situation which is bad for both sides. Londoners pay too much tax, and those in receipt of the cash become too dependent on it. The Mayor’s [...]
Murdoch and Hannam’s departures symbolise power shift April 4, 2012 THERE can be no doubt that James Murdoch’s decision to step down as chairman of BSkyB is good news for the company. It will allow its highly capable chief executive, Jeremy Darroch, to continue building one of Britain’s most successful firms without being distracted by endless speculation about the future of its chairman. That said, [...]
We need peace and free trade – not crazed war-mongering April 2, 2012 PEACE and prosperity, fuelled by free trade and open markets: that is what the world needs. In the main, that is what it is getting, to a degree unprecedented in modern history and fuelled by modern communications. So it is terribly disappointing that the Argentine government seems so desperate to inflame tensions between itself and [...]
UK’s over-taxed public is running out of patience April 1, 2012 EXORBITANT: that is the only way to describe the cripplingly high levels of Air Passenger Duty (APD) now facing everybody flying from the UK. The era of cheap flights which had done so much to make international travel accessible to the vast majority of the public is coming to a sorry end: the tax on [...]
An incompetent government hit by a Spring of Discontent March 29, 2012 WHAT a shambles. The police and fire services are shutting petrol stations to prevent riots in parts of the country; Stansted’s baggage controllers are striking over Easter; Britain’s nuclear energy programme is in chaos after E.ON and Npower ditched plans to build new reactors, fuelling fears the lights could go out in a decade’s time; [...]
Not just pasties: Inflation will remain too high for comfort March 28, 2012 FOR a Prime Minister whose only private sector job was working in public relations, it is astonishing how bad his government’s communications skills have become. From implausible anecdotes about their pasty eating habits to panic-mongering about petrol shortages, David Cameron, George Osborne and Francis Maude, the cabinet office minister, have been blundering as if there [...]
Coalition fails to shake-up UK’s antiquated planning rules March 27, 2012 IT was the government’s great opportunity to rip up red tape and make Britain an easier place in which to conduct business. For a while, the coalition had me convinced: I thought they would really do something about the UK’s obsolete planning rules, which were first dreamt up by the post-war socialist Clement Attlee government [...]