Which visual aids should you use in presentations? January 28, 2015 Public speaking or presenting can appear complex. So many sources of "advice" all offering different and often competing points of view. It can be tough deciding what advice to take and what to ignore. I have seen people use multiple trainers and get screwed up as a result – choose one coach and stick to [...]
The City must stand up and be counted at this election: Its future is now at stake January 27, 2015 It must have seemed like a jolly jape, dreamt up behind the Parliamentary bike sheds. The coalition had a brilliant wheeze to stitch up the unions by introducing a spending cap at elections. No longer would Labour have access to limitless pots of cash from their union barons. Better still, the brothers would be forced [...]
Markets are crucial to human progress: We need more of them, not less January 27, 2015 Many outrageous things happened around the world over the course of the last week. But judging by both the level of popular interest in the story and the reaction to it, the most heinous was the decision of a mother to send an invoice to the parents of a boy who did not turn up [...]
UK angel investors are spreading their wings – and fuelling our enterprise revolution January 27, 2015 Yesterday it was confirmed that Britain was the fastest growing major economy last year. New business creation is a big part of that story. With 760,000 more businesses now than in 2010, we are rapidly becoming a nation of entrepreneurs. It’s within our grasp to make Britain the best place in the world to start [...]
After the economy lost momentum in the fourth quarter of 2014, should the UK fear a slowdown? January 27, 2015 Nancy Curtin, chief investment officer of Close Brothers Asset Management, says Yes The figures for the fourth quarter point to UK growth losing pace, and we are likely to see this continue into the first half of 2015. Economic growth remains too imbalanced. While improved consumer spending is supporting a buoyant services sector, production and construction [...]
Why Syriza’s fairy tales will devastate Greece – and the wider Eurozone too January 26, 2015 When I was 16 years old, my family (bless them) scraped together enough money to send me to Europe; the first place I touched down on the continent was Athens. A longstanding – and correct – family joke makes it clear that, in many ways, I intellectually never came back from that first trip. It’s [...]
The populist crusade against tax avoidance has turned into an assault on justice January 26, 2015 If “tax avoidance” is the answer, what is the question? For many years it might have been: “what subject excites only a small number of tax lawyers and HMRC officials?” But in the age of attempted deficit reduction, “tax avoidance” – or rather “clamping down on tax avoidance” – is the answer you hear every [...]
Misguided anti-fracking campaigners jeopardise our economy and climate January 26, 2015 If I told you I had a technology that could create tens of thousands of jobs, many in parts of the North of England with relatively high unemployment, support domestic manufacturing, and help us reduce carbon emissions, I imagine I would have your attention. If I added that the technology has already been in large-scale [...]
With public borrowing still high, is David Cameron right to renew his pledge of £7bn in tax cuts? January 26, 2015 John Longworth, director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, says Yes The Prime Minister is absolutely right to go into the General Election campaign with a plan to cut taxes – even in the face of continued public spending restraint and necessary belt tightening. Lower personal taxes can be a fillip to businesses, who [...]
Is 2015 the year digital disruption goes physical? January 26, 2015 Now that our environments are increasingly embedded with sensors and overlaid with software, digital is extending its reach beyond the domain of ones and zeroes and into the physical world. This shift is bolstered by a new breed of startups with broad visions for how to mix digital and physical services for the first [...]