The real England football shirt scandal is the prices March 29, 2024 Forget messing around with the St George’s Cross, Nike’s worst offence is charging £124.99 for an England football shirt that will be out of date by the World Cup, says Steve Allen Football shirts have always been a source of controversy. In the 1980s if you wore the wrong one near the Millwall ground it [...]
Has London gone quackers? How a rubber duck shop is staying afloat in the City March 28, 2024 Amid a backdrop of struggling UK retail, a chain of rubber duck shops in London is thriving. Anna Moloney investigates.
Will it work? Taxing private school fees March 28, 2024 It’s an election year. Politicians are giving us a barrage of policies. But we often forget to ask the most important question: will they actually work? In this column Sam Fowles take policies on their own terms and asks whether they solve the problem they’re supposed to solve. Labour’s pledge to end the VAT exemption [...]
Is AI turning recruitment into the new online dating? March 28, 2024 As businesses and job seekers alike outsource applications to AI, are we seeing the ‘Tinderfication’ of our careers? Asks Eliza Filby You crack jokes, you make small talk, and as much as it even crosses your mind you assume you are being interviewed by an actual person. But then it dawns on you, your interviewer [...]
Worst corporate jargon of the week: Blue sky thinking March 28, 2024 City A.M.'s stand against corporate jargon this week takes aim at blue sky thinking, domain of self-help gurus who we'd rather see on Mars.
E.coli, sewage and leaks: Water firms must get their sh*t together March 28, 2024 Few people want to be thrown into the River Thames, bar perhaps two – the winning coxes of the Oxford-Cambridge boat race. It has been tradition for the very vocal brains of the operation for the winning boat to be hoyed unceremoniously into the water. Except this year, charities have urged whoever wins to remain [...]
Why the BBC must stay publicly funded March 28, 2024 The licence fee needs to change, but only taxpayer funding can ensure a distinctively British voice in domestic and global media, says Will Cooling Ronald Reagan once joked that the scariest words in the (American) English language were “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help”. It increasingly feels like the modern British version [...]
Square Mile and Me: Admiral CFO Geraint Jones on heading up the FTSE 100’s only Welsh company March 28, 2024 Geraint Jones, chief financial officer at Admiral Group, takes a trip down memory lane to tell us about his career, from exercise tech to insurance.
In defence of men-only members’ clubs March 27, 2024 Barracking the Garrick for excluding women isn’t exactly clubbable – how about some healthy competition instead? Asks James Price Is the male-only Garrick Club a posh creche for old dinosaurs or a bastion of the patriarchy? It’s an interesting question because it engages a clash of principles. There is the right to freedom of association [...]
The big challenge isn’t funding public services, it’s making them productive March 27, 2024 With the public sector no more efficient than it was in the late 1990s, it's time to start seriously scrutinising our public services, writes Paul Ormerod.