Letters to the editor – 10/09 – Licence fee, Best of Twitter September 9, 2013 Licence fee [Re: Scrap the licence fee – and drag British TV into 21st century, yesterday] Surely the biggest scandal at the BBC is that, for an organisation with revenues of £3.5bn, the quality of programmes is so poor. A change in the way the BBC is funded would not only cut costs, but would [...]
A new breed of super-entrepreneurs could leave HS2 looking antiquated September 8, 2013 FOR A mode of transport that first arrived in the nineteenth century, railways have been remarkably resilient. All three major political parties currently support the creation of a new high speed rail network, High Speed 2 (HS2), a £43bn plan to connect London Euston, Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, Sheffield, and the East Midlands in two phases. [...]
City Matters: Why the City’s buildings must adapt to suit a vibrant and commercial future September 8, 2013 THE STORY of the “Walkie-Scorchie” has taken the world by storm – following City A.M.’s revelation last week that a Jaguar had “melted” in the heat on Eastcheap. This brought global attention to the new buildings that are nosing skywards in the east of our Square Mile. It also highlighted the difficult and delicate process [...]
How to tackle Britain’s NIMBYs and end crisis in new house building September 8, 2013 THE STORY is familiar. Figures from Halifax show that house prices rose by 5.4 per cent in the year to August 2013 – the highest rate since June 2010. In 2010, Policy Exchange also published a report called Making Housing Affordable. It argued that housing was getting more expensive, largely because we were building too [...]
Letters to the Editor – 09/09 – Twitter complaint, AI developments, Best of Twitter September 8, 2013 Twitter complaint [Re: Twitter complaint signals the start of a revolution for corporate reputations, Friday] This is a wonderful story. So many companies, of which British Airways is one, do not dedicate sufficient resources towards dealing with customers. The resultant media coverage, not to mention the thousands who saw the comment on Twitter, should set [...]
Twitter complaint signals the start of a revolution for corporate reputations September 5, 2013 BRITISH Airways has just been exposed to the future of corporate communications. When one disgruntled passenger decided to complain about the quality of BA’s customer service, he ignored the traditional route of an angry call or email. Instead, he bought a promoted Tweet on Twitter – guaranteeing visual prominence for other users – to tell [...]
The Long View: We should honour the unknown UK economist who quietly changed the world September 5, 2013 BRITAIN has lost a giant. Ronald Coase, the brilliant economist who shone new light on how and why companies form, died this week at the age of 102. It was too soon: his most influential paper was published half a century ago, but Coase remained sharp to the end, fighting for his countercultural approach. He [...]
Why central banks are hurting their credibility with forward guidance September 5, 2013 THE ECONOMIST Michael Woodford created quite a stir at the annual monetary conference at Jackson Hole in the US just over a year ago. The basic thrust of his argument was that central banks had deployed all sorts of conventional and unconventional monetary policies since the credit crunch, and even central bankers had begun to [...]
Letters to the editor – 06/09 – Defending Wonga, Green Deal, Best of Twitter September 5, 2013 Defending Wonga [Re: Wonga defends reputation as profits rocket, yesterday] Payday lenders mean different things to different people. For many on low incomes, they provide a cash bridge until pay day. For others, they are viewed as taking advantage of people in financial need. Those in the latter group are unlikely to have a need [...]
Syria crisis highlights a new model for how the Special Relationship can work September 4, 2013 I REMEMBER the exact moment I knew I was a dinosaur. I was included in high-level meetings, aimed at assembling a coalition to buttress George W. Bush’s effort to remove Saddam Hussein. When the topic of whether the British would come along arose, everyone laughed, regardless of party or foreign policy orientation. Confused, I asked [...]