RAPID RESPONSES January 29, 2012 Skin in the game Naturally any reference to stripping is bound to have a distracting effect, but readers seem to have missed the point of Jamie Whyte’s comparison in his column [Strippers can show us bankers’ just rewards, last Wednesday]. On Friday Tim Shoebridge complained that strippers are not sufficiently focused on the long-term profits [...]
Free Cities: How countries worldwide are unleashing new economic prosperity January 26, 2012 AN ASTONISHING 3.3bn people will move from the countryside to live in cities over the next forty years. How will we handle that influx? By installing better legal systems worldwide. Legal institutions determine whether nations are rich or poor. Think of East and West Germany and North and South Korea, two controlled experiments in which [...]
Six months to go – get in shape to win Olympic gold January 26, 2012 TODAY we hit six months to go until the start of the Olympic Games. Amid the daily diet of doom and gloom about the prospects for the UK economy, the Games offer a potential bright horizon in an otherwise challenging year. It certainly appears that many companies feel this way. Deloitte’s latest Games Readiness research [...]
RAPID RESPONSES January 26, 2012 Data deluge Craig Drake rightly emphasises the importance of institutions making big data “work for their business” [Big industry responses are needed to big data explosion, yesterday]. Data must be seen as an asset for businesses and managed properly. If it’s not, then it just becomes a liability. The financial services industry is only now [...]
Britain’s healthcare system is on the critical list – why are medical unions in denial? January 25, 2012 IT REALLY is time public sector unions stopped taking the lazy option. And those representing the medical profession, above all, should be showing the rest of their comrades leadership – for decisions made over the nation’s healthcare are a matter of life and death. Yet the doctors’ union is threatening to strike over the current [...]
The music stops for UK breaks on bankruptcies January 25, 2012 THE singer Kenny Rogers once sang “you’ve got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away, know when to run”. While Rogers was singing about a gambler, he could just as easily have been singing about the Irish people’s attitude to their bankruptcy regime. Increasingly the people [...]
There isn’t any debate: Voters want openness January 25, 2012 THIS bar stool observation from a stranger on Monday evening may well have nailed it. “I’d like to see Mitt Romney as my president, but I’d love to see Newt Gingrich debate Barack Obama.” Gingrich has something the Republican base values – combativeness, as well as a veneer of near-invincibility on the stage before a [...]
RAPID RESPONSES January 25, 2012 Reduce naked risk Jamie Whyte’s proposal for amending bankers’ pay structure [Strippers can show us bankers’ just rewards, yesterday] is certainly worth consideration but needs further refinement. In Whyte’s model the bank is still subject to losing large amounts of capital at the hands of its trader, whereas Stringfellow faces no such capital risk with [...]
It’s a fix: Coalition plans for Britain’s energy market are likely to boost fuel poverty January 24, 2012 OVER twenty years since Britain laid the groundwork for electricity privatisation and delivered the most liberalised electricity market in the world, the coalition’s new energy “market” reforms will artificially fix the price of electricity in an effort to support more wind energy and kick-start the building of new nuclear power stations. Top-down controls will distort [...]
Forget the Kate Effect: we need Maggie Power January 24, 2012 IT’S a very dreary landscape out there right now for retailers. Unless, of course, you happen to be one of the lucky few – Burberry is one such brand. It can do no wrong, it seems, and never less so than when the Duchess of Cambridge is seen sporting its togs. After being spotted wearing [...]