Fewer voters would be a boost for democracy January 3, 2012 A FEW days before Christmas, a by-election chose a new MP for Feltham and Heston. Voter turnout was only 29 per cent. This prompted familiar laments about public disengagement from politics. Yet the problem with British democracy is not that too few people vote but that too many do. To see why, consider a question [...]
RAPID RESPONSES January 3, 2012 Cogs and couches Interesting article from Dennis Hayes [2012 should be the year we get off the couch and make companies more productive, yesterday]. I would be intrigued to know how the likes of Google, Facebook and Amazon view the point he makes. I suspect that employee well-being is core to their respective strategies. Where [...]
2012 should be the year we get off the couch and make companies more productive January 2, 2012 WELL-BEING in the workplace is a value to which employers and workers alike have signed up. Psychology textbooks, that hardly mentioned the subject in the recessionary 1970s, are now full of strategies to promote emotional “well-being at work”. It’s not about old-fashioned pay and conditions, but how you feel at and about work. Even when [...]
Romney remains the right choice to defeat Obama January 2, 2012 CONSERVATIVE commentator William F. Buckley once set out a rule for the Republican nomination: “pick the most principled conservative who can win”. Since 1968, the GOP has largely got the Buckley balance between electability and ideology right. In 2000, they chose the electable and moderately conservative George Bush over conservative and unelectable Steve Forbes or [...]
Central bankers aren’t to blame for the crisis January 2, 2012 THE conventional story of the credit crunch is that following the dot-com boom the US Federal Reserve cut interest rates, creating an inflationary debt-fuelled boom that manifested itself in housing. But is the Fed to blame? US economists Jeffrey R. Hummel and David Henderson prompted controversy by lending support to Ben Bernanke’s theory of a [...]
RAPID RESPONSES January 2, 2012 Frozen liquidity Peter Warburton’s call for the reintroduction of the Bank of England’s Special Liquidity Scheme [A wholesale improvement, 22 December] will not solve the problem. This is because his argument does not look at the micro-issues affecting the macro. Simply put, the main problem is the FSA’s implemented liquidity requirements soak up a lot [...]
Test your wits with our quiz December 22, 2011 1. In a Which? magazine blind taste test of champagnes by experienced champagne tasters, Moet & Chandon’s Brut NV, priced at £30.99, received a score of 74%. But which of the following champagnes received the highest score of 85%? a. Veuve Clicquot Yellow Label Brut NV (£34.49) b. Lanson Black Label (£31.99) c. Morrisons Brut [...]
In dark days let Christmas spirit shine in the City December 22, 2011 JOYFUL and triumphant” are not the most appropriate words to describe the City at the end of 2011. It feels more like being “in the bleak mid-winter”. Yet the Christmas story is one that still inspires. It can lift us from the “woes of sin and strife”, dispel “the mighty dread” and renew a sense [...]
RAPID RESPONSES December 22, 2011 HMV fills a gap [Re: HMV’s last stand has new toys but not much future, Tuesday] The sale of CDs is engrained in the HMV brand and it has not moved on from this and did not move quickly enough to embrace the download age. Its HMVDigital website does not feel user-friendly and is somewhat [...]
A wholesale improvement is the only way for UK banks to weather the Eurozone storm December 21, 2011 FOR the past fifteen months, the Bank of England (BoE) has been backpedalling. Instead of coasting, the UK economy has stalled. The government’s bold and sensible plans for budget deficit reduction are broadly on track for the next few months, but will not remain so unless the central bank shapes up to the challenge of [...]