China’s astonishing growth trajectory holds few lessons for democratic Britain October 21, 2013 I’VE SEEN the future and it works.” That was US journalist Lincoln Steffers’s message after visiting the Soviet Union in the 1920s. It’s worth remembering how wrong he turned out to be. Why? George Osborne and Boris Johnson have just come back from China, and they’ll be tempted to use the impressive things they’ve seen [...]
Nick Clegg’s guarantee for schools will damage standards in education October 21, 2013 SOMETIMES a minister will say something so straightforwardly ignorant, so uninformed of the history and facts of the issue, that I feel a kind of despair. A good example is Nick Clegg’s comments on schools this week. Clegg claims to have discovered the Holy Grail in state education: to provide a “guarantee” to “every parent” [...]
Letters to the Editor – 22/10 – UK tech failures, Cost of nuclear, Best of Twitter October 21, 2013 UK tech failures [Re: UK efforts to nurture a tech startup revolution are worryingly trivial, yesterday] The world laughs at our abject failure to build global tech companies. Sadly Tech City will go the way of other innovation initiatives like the Cabinet Office’s Skunkworks, the Innovation Launch Pad, the Solutions Exchange and ICT Futures, which have [...]
Defective EU carbon trading scheme is adding billions to UK energy costs October 20, 2013 YOU MAY never have heard of it, but a European scheme, designed to achieve carbon emissions targets that have already been met, is adding billions to consumer energy bills. This year and every year until 2020, the UK government will auction hundreds of millions of carbon credits – called European Union Allowances (EUAs) – into [...]
City Matters: Tangible steps forward in the UK-China relationship will deliver real benefits October 20, 2013 WITH both George Osborne and Boris Johnson flying the flag for British business in China last week, it is worth taking stock of this increasingly important UK-Sino relationship. As the government rightly recognises, the UK and London need to be plugged into fast-growing global markets like China in order to succeed in the global race. [...]
Letters to the Editor – 21/10 – Royal Mail sale, Prince Charles, Best of Twitter October 20, 2013 Royal Mail sale [Re: Cable pens another defence of Royal Mail selloff as shares soar to 500p, Friday] Vince Cable is right to say that it is too soon to criticise the government’s pricing of Royal Mail. Only half of the government’s stake has been sold so far, and the shares have just been trading [...]
US radicals have dealt a serious blow to the struggle for small government October 17, 2013 A SCENE from Steven Spielberg’s film Lincoln came to me while watching the US Republican surrender over the debt ceiling crisis. President Abraham Lincoln’s advice to Thaddeus Stevens, a leading opponent of slavery, is almost unmatchable as a universal dialogue between the world’s radicals and the men and women who hope to get things done [...]
The Long View: Pray for your profits: The economist’s eye should never pass over faith October 17, 2013 WHAT has Chicago got to do with Jerusalem? Economics and religion can seem an unlikely match. Yet this weekend I will be discussing at the Barbican Battle of Ideas festival how these very different fields of human knowledge, each questing after its own set of slippery certainties, can inform one another. Studying patterns of religious [...]
Reform the regulators to ensure markets work in the consumer’s interest October 17, 2013 WHEN should governments intervene in markets? George Osborne recently described the Help to Buy scheme as a “necessary intervention” to fix a specific market failure – the shortage of high loan-to-value mortgages. Aside from concerns that this may pump up a housing bubble, Osborne’s comments – and Ed Miliband’s earlier proposal to inject more competition [...]
Letters to the Editor – 18/10 – EU trade falsehoods, Uncertain investors, Best of Twitter October 17, 2013 EU trade falsehoods [Re: The EU debate is critical for business, Wednesday] Helen Brand is wedded to the false argument that EU membership equals jobs. Trade creates jobs, and EU membership is not essential for it to continue. The UK now exports more to the rest of the world than to the EU, enjoying job-creating trade [...]