India’s Covid battle exposes GDP growth as an ineffective measure of economic success May 26, 2021 India is in the throws of a double-headed infrastructure threat: a medical breakdown and a drastic water shortage. The latter has been obscured and worsened by the focus on the former. Even with these fierce crises, India continues to have one of the highest GDP growth rates in the world. It sits sixth in the [...]
A world wide web of regulation: tech giants need a tough new set of rules to fix global problems May 26, 2021 The end of the Internet free-for-all is nigh. Or so we are told, again and again. Big technology companies need – and even want – regulation; yet fears of stifling freedom of speech has made it a political hot potato. Debate about regulation has been raging since the internet began. Technology companies scored an early [...]
Businesses face a fresh tipping point of staff shortages and wage hikes May 26, 2021 For years, inflation has not been an issue. Since the late 1990s, annual inflation in the UK has averaged 2 per cent, with a peak of just over 4 per cent. In the US, there was a similar story, with even less variability. This is in stark contrast to the 1970s and 1980s, when the [...]
Global inflation outlook more complicated than polarised debate suggests May 25, 2021 It sometimes feels as there is little more to be said about the outlook for inflation, such has been the volume of ink spilt on the subject in recent weeks. However, much of the discussion has tended to miss important nuances in the situation faced by different countries. So there are several issues worth keeping [...]
Boris Johnson’s interventionist obesity strategy will fail. We need more choice, not less to slim down May 25, 2021 Obesity is on the rise like never before. More than one in four people in the UK are now obese, one of the driving forces behind the mortality rate from Covid. In the year leading up to the pandemic, more than a million people were admitted to hospital for obesity-related treatment in England. Record hospitalisations [...]
We stayed home, now we have to protect the NHS with structural reforms May 25, 2021 If a single line has permeated every facet of the government’s communications during the Covid-19 pandemic, it has been the cultish imperative to “protect the NHS.” This instruction has been, implicitly or explicitly, the justification for every restriction implemented. By reducing transmission, we would prevent the NHS from being overwhelmed by patients with coronavirus and [...]
Belarus’ act of aviation piracy and kidnapping proves the obvious: anyone can bully the EU May 25, 2021 Yesterday, within about five minutes of one another, both my partner and a colleague drolly made the same comment: “I know Ryanair is tough about customer service, but I didn’t realise you had to pay extra to avoid being kidnapped.” There were, of course, referring to the dreadful act of piracy that occurred over the [...]
Shadow Trade Minister: The future of Britain’s steel industry is at risk if Liz Truss slashes tariffs May 24, 2021 In 1971, the UK’s steel manufacturing industry employed around 320,000 people. By 2016, just 24,000 worked in steel manufacturing – and that number is even lower today. The steel industry has been in decline ever since its peak in the 1970s. Despite its national strategic importance in supporting our nation’s defence and manufacturing sectors, not [...]
Flood the streets with art: traffic-free weekends and an all-night celebration in the City for a cultural comeback May 24, 2021 The City’s reopening is building up to a crescendo with the return of visitors and audiences to some of the Square Mile’s iconic cultural institutions. One of the things that I – like many others – have missed the most during lockdown has been the opportunity to enjoy world-class art and culture in person rather [...]
After the Martin Bashir scandal, the BBC must claw back its status as a cultural embassy for Britain May 24, 2021 It has been a bad weekend for the BBC. The fall-out from Lord Dyson’s report on Martin Bashir and his infamous interview with Diana, Princess of Wales, has exposed not just individual wrongdoing by a rogue journalist but an institutional desire—and ability—to look the other way and excuse appalling behaviour because it delivered a scoop [...]