IT consultant ordered to pay £50,000 after being accused of stealing Soho House members’ personal details
Building an Opportunity Society is critical to Britain’s competitiveness July 9, 2015 While bolstering Britain’s economic growth and giving working people financial security is rightly this government’s most pressing priority, building the Opportunity Society must be its distinct legacy. A society where everyone can fulfil their potential, no matter what their starting point in life, is what a new generation of Conservatives is determined to help deliver, [...]
How can George Osborne revive UK productivity? Reform regulation and the public sector July 9, 2015 In Wednesday’s Budget, George Osborne announced that he would publish a Productivity Plan today. After growing by about 2 per cent a year for many decades, the UK’s productivity growth appears to have come to a juddering halt since the financial crisis. So what should be in the plan – in addition to the measures [...]
China is, isn’t and may not be the world’s number one July 9, 2015 Until the late nineteenth century, China was the world’s largest economy. It lost that status roughly 150 years after the industrial revolution began in the West. After the Chinese economic revolution of recent decades, it is taken as axiomatic that the crown and mantle of the world’s largest economy will return to Beijing – as [...]
As it presents reform plans, is Greece’s position in the Eurozone untenable without debt relief? July 9, 2015 Konstantinos Venetis is an economist at Lombard Street Research, says Yes Greece’s position has been untenable without debt relief for a number of years, but for a time that debt relief was forthcoming. Debt restructuring has already reduced the value of Greek debt in net present value (NPV) terms. This process could go further, with [...]
July Budget 2015: George Osborne embraced political cunning at the expense of economic prudence July 8, 2015 On the one hand, this was the first fully Conservative Budget in nearly two decades. On the other hand, it is effectively George Osborne’s third Budget in just eight months. He has become a master magician at the politics of presentation. Almost every sentence was crafted to confound and confuse the Labour opposition or to [...]
The 2015 July Budget did far too little to reform Britain’s highly damaging taxes on banks July 8, 2015 I've been taken aback in recent months by the number of international bank executives who have been telling me just how damaging the UK’s bank taxation policies are. The global banks constantly review where they base their business around the world. They carry out detailed cost-benefit analyses in pounds and pence, or dollars and cents, [...]
How the chancellor used his new-found luck: Easing the squeeze on public services July 8, 2015 GEORGE Osborne has not, up to now, been a very lucky chancellor. He inherited a huge fiscal deficit and has presided over a recovery that, in the early years, repeatedly disappointed. Initial plans to eliminate the deficit over the life of the last Parliament morphed, year by year, into plans to halve the deficit over [...]
July Budget 2015: Will George Osborne’s new national living wage hit the number of people in work? July 8, 2015 Sam Bowman, deputy director of the Adam Smith Institute, says Yes. There is lots of research into what the minimum wage does to jobs. Of the 103 papers reviewed by economists David Neumark and William Wascher in a 2006 study, most of them showed that raising the minimum wage reduces long-term employment. Of the 33 [...]
Budget for a greater Britain: What the City needs from the chancellor July 7, 2015 Amid the deluge of news about EU reform and the Greek debt crisis, you could be forgiven for forgetting there’s a Budget today. But that would be to overlook an opportunity for the City. This is George Osborne’s first Budget since the Conservatives were elected to govern alone and we’ll get a clear sense of [...]
UK bank deposit guarantees: High finance and the market for lemons July 7, 2015 One aspect of the Eurozone crisis which will affect many readers is the reduction in the amount of cash in a UK bank deposit which is protected. As a consequence of the decline in the value of the euro against the pound, the Bank of England announced that the current guaranteed amount of £85,000 will [...]