Going green isn’t easy when we’re so far in the red January 4, 2012 GOING green is important. But costs matter too, and never more so than at present. Household incomes are going through a decade of stagnation and businesses and jobs face a big hit this year if the euro crisis is not resolved. The potential consequences, positive and negative, of British energy policy are huge, but right [...]
Our hunt for beauty is costing women dearly January 4, 2012 GIVING up alcohol is not going to happen. But there is one new year’s resolution that I’m going to try to stick to this year. It is to find self-validation in my achievements – professional, moral, intellectual – not in my appearance. As up to 50,000 British women face the risk of their PIP silicone [...]
RAPID RESPONSES January 4, 2012 Wellbeing matters While some workplaces may now have strategies aimed at improving staff wellbeing [2012 should be the year we get off the couch and make companies more productive, Tuesday], few yet have addressed the more significant need to support the one in six of the working population who will be at risk of a [...]
Politicians have been thumb twiddling over care reforms for 15 years. It’s time to act January 3, 2012 AN OPEN letter to the Prime Minister argued for reform of social care funding yesterday. But we have been here before. Fifteen years ago the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) published the results of their Inquiry into the Costs of Continuing Care. The 1997 Labour government made reforming the funding of care a priority. A Royal [...]
Why dot London is a capital plan for a digital age January 3, 2012 ICANN, the governing body for internet web addresses, last year gave the green light to the most significant shake-up to the domain name structure in 25 years. The decision to widen the current system of internet domain names means that from 12 January until 12 April this year, organisations can apply for the domain name [...]
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 [...]