Flooding crisis: A case study in the failure of government on all levels February 11, 2014 THE STATE’S many faces have been tearing pieces out of each other as the water level rises around London commuter towns. Who is to blame for England’s flooding crisis? Eric Pickles said it was the Environment Agency, but now thinks everyone should work together. Labour’s Lord Smith, the Agency’s head, has criticised spending cuts. David [...]
Business is under attack: It’s time for companies to stand up for themselves February 11, 2014 THERE was a time when corporate communication was straightforward. The chief audiences were shareholders and analysts. There was a well-established way of reaching them through the financial media. The combination of the financial crisis and technological change has created a new landscape. The crisis brought into sharp relief the negative externalities that business can create. [...]
The Docklands legacy can help fix London’s chronic housing crisis February 11, 2014 LONDON’S housing crisis is caused largely by a chronic shortage of new homes, which is pushing the average house price in the capital north of £500,000. Only 18,000 new homes were completed last year, barely a third as many as are needed to match population growth and household formation. There is no silver bullet to [...]
Letters to the Editor – 12/02 – Eurozone failings, The praise game, Best of Twitter February 11, 2014 Eurozone failings [Re: Globalisation lay behind the Eurozone crisis – but it has also rescued the euro, yesterday] An interesting analysis, but let’s not diminish the role of economic mismanagement and deep structural issues in the Eurozone crisis. As is shown by the current emerging markets chaos, it can be all too easy to blame [...]
Globalisation lay behind the Eurozone crisis – but it has also rescued the euro February 10, 2014 THE ARCHITECTS of the European single currency apparently paid little heed to globalisation or the rise of China. The Delors Report in 1989, which set up economic and monetary union in Europe, didn’t mention either of them. Nor did the first official European proposal for monetary union, the Werner Plan in 1970. In retrospect this [...]
Of course we blame politicians for everything – they bring it on themselves February 10, 2014 IN OUR age,” George Orwell once remarked, “there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics’. All issues are political issues.” This, of course, is mainly because politicians have made it so. Politics is everywhere and politicians have an opinion on everything. In 1998, for example, Tony Blair and William Hague expressed concern about [...]
Diversity is great – but quotas for corporates are not the right answer February 10, 2014 THERE are only ten individuals from ethnic minority groups among the 289 top executives at FTSE 100 listed companies, a study by Green Park Diversity Analytics has found. Chuka Umunna, the shadow business secretary, is accordingly threatening that Labour would introduce quotas to get more minority directors on boards. Given the campaign for more women [...]
Letters to the Editor – 11/02 – White-collar jobs, Best of Twitter February 10, 2014 White-collar jobs [Re: Will the spread of automation mean the end of the white-collar worker?, yesterday] Automation is already a reality in financial services. Banks have automated risks systems in place, and vast amounts of money is generated from electronic and algorithmic trading. But the complete replacement of white-collar specialist roles with robots and machines [...]
Nasty, brutish, short: Why businesses prosper then die at an ever faster pace February 9, 2014 IF THOMAS Hobbes found himself walking down City streets today, he wouldn’t blink an eye. Business life seems to be getting increasingly short and rather nasty. Due to the accelerating rate of technological change, some economists believe we are heading toward a “winner takes all” era of unprecedented competition, enabled by an enormous number of [...]
City Matters: The City and Scotland are natural allies in protecting our global competitiveness February 9, 2014 SCOTLAND’S future relationship with the rest of the UK has once again been making headlines, as we edge closer to the September independence referendum. For Londoners, the “Scottish question” can seem far removed. But having visited Edinburgh and Aberdeen last week, it is clear to me that this relationship is crucial to firms on both [...]