On tax and spending, the voters are right: Our politicians are all the same April 13, 2015 There are still 23 days to go, and the signs are bleak. Astonishingly, the rest of this election campaign could be even more trivial, insubstantial and tedious than we have witnessed to date. This week, the political parties unveil their manifestos. This will have the effect of locking them all into a pattern of endless [...]
Politics and business must collaborate to solve UK ills April 13, 2015 We are in the run-up to the most unpredictable election of the modern age, having also experienced a seismic shift in the economic and technological environment. But what does this mean for business, and what can policymakers do to create a competitive market for UK firms within an ever-changing global arena? Today, we are hosting [...]
As the Chinese economy sees exports plunge in March, are fears of a hard landing justified? April 13, 2015 Alessandro Theiss, an economist at Oxford Economics, says Yes Slow starts to the year are not uncommon in China – and the timing of the Lunar New Year makes it hard to draw inferences from just a few months’ data. But plummeting exports and a contraction in import volumes suggest that Chinese domestic demand has [...]
General Election 2015: Introducing the business wish list April 12, 2015 As we enter the final days of the election, we have decided to ask a select group of business leaders what would make them vote for one of the parties. We’ve not asked them to name the party they support because for many this would count them out of giving an opinion. [...]
The Eurozone will remain mired in crisis unless it faces up to the facts April 12, 2015 During my years in the trenches in Washington, my staff christened one of my favourite analytical canaries in the coalmine the “we are where we are moment”. That is, you can determine whether a crisis is actually being dealt with simply by looking at the rhetoric of the opposing forces involved. If they hadn’t moved [...]
Why politicians should stop using employment law as an electioneering tool April 12, 2015 Faced with stubbornly unchanging polls and less than a month before the General Election, what can a party leader do to prevent the nation drawing the duvet over its collective head on 7 May? Into the arena is pulled employment relations law. All the main parties have something to say here – the coalition points [...]
A strong partnership between the City and Scotland benefits all April 12, 2015 As the Easter weekend fades into distant memory, my programme of visits to the City’s key trading partners kicks back into action. Instead of a far-flung, emerging market on the other side of the globe, however, my travels this week take me to economic partners a lot closer to home – the cities of Edinburgh [...]
Are markets too sanguine about the risks that the impending General Election poses? April 12, 2015 Nick Peters, co-portfolio manager of Fidelity Multi Asset Income fund, says Yes. Over the last six months, the FTSE 100 has risen just over 10 per cent, lagging behind US and European markets. But this hasn’t been a result of markets worrying about May’s election: it’s driven more by the heavy bias of the FTSE [...]
Ryanair’s charm offensive is a breath of fresh air April 10, 2015 It’s no surprise Ryanair reported a 28 per cent increase in passenger number this week. Spokesman Kenny Jacobs put it best, when he attributed it to “not unnecessarily pissing people off”. Don’t get me wrong – I used to love reading chief executive Michael O’Leary’s latest ruse for making press noise: standing room only [...]
General Election 2015: There’s a deafening political silence around those who opt to go private April 9, 2015 Anthropologists argue that, to explain a situation, you have to examine its “silences”. The General Election is no different. In almost every area where government remains active, there is a growing group of voters who pay their taxes and then “go private”, but remain politically unacknowledged. In healthcare, the UK is already a world away [...]