Shamima Begum’s radicalisation was our failure to address online extremism and protect our kids February 26, 2021 Regardless of who Shamima Begum is today, the fact that a group of British teenage girls could be groomed online for sex and violence in a faraway land, should be taken as a cautionary tale for us all. Earlier this month, a 16 year old from Cornwall was sentenced for terrorist offences. He was 13 [...]
Goldman Sachs CEO was right, a remote workforce will sow division, not creativity February 26, 2021 For much of the last year, chatter amongst business leaders has been on the “new normal” and how we’ve adapted to it. Businesses of all shapes and sizes have quickly and comfortably adjusted to a Zoom-based reality. We’ve all heard the doomsayers claiming the transition is the death knell for the office A few large [...]
Screenshot: Is Uber nearing the end of the road? February 26, 2021 This week **Media Moment of the Week: Boris’ career coaching **Is Uber nearing the end of the road? **Apple’s merger madness Media Moment of the Week: Boris’ career coaching Social media is a fickle beast, but if there’s one sure-fire way to generate outrage it’s to insult journalists. That’s what Boris Johnson did this week, [...]
Kalifa Review: UK Fintech competition must play out on the global stage, not the national February 26, 2021 It’s a well-known fact that the UK is a global leader in Fintech, and that London sits at its helm. In 2020 alone, UK Fintech attracted $4.6 billion of venture capital investment, and some 44 per cent of Europe’s Fintech companies valued at over $1 billion (tech unicorns), hail from the UK. What is less [...]
Bitcoin: Cryptocurrency investment is a digital wild west of fraud February 25, 2021 Cryptocurrency investment has seen a resurgence during the many Covid-19 lockdowns, and with Elon Musk piling into Bitcoin, interest is unlikely to diminish any time soon. But, with the upswing, there has also been a corresponding spike in the volume of cryptocurrency related fraud. Many of the victims of crypto fraud are savvy investors in [...]
Texas was a cascade failure of energy infrastructure, not renewables February 25, 2021 What we have witnessed in Texas was a cascade failure of energy infrastructure. The storms tripped an increased demand while power plants were undergoing routine maintenance, which was made worse by insufficient regulatory oversight meaning Texan authorities didn’t require energy assets to be resilient enough for winter. Suddenly, there were issues with water, food, heat [...]
Britain must harness the online innovation of Covid crisis and embrace a digital world February 25, 2021 The UK has a defining opportunity to create the blueprint for future success and position itself at the forefront of innovation and economic growth. Over the last 12 months, people across the UK have turned to digital to keep connected with loved ones and hundreds of thousands of businesses have experimented for the first time [...]
Extending the stamp duty holiday won’t avoid a cliff-edge, it will make the eventual fall steeper February 24, 2021 The stamp duty holiday created a bloated and false economy in the housing market; it’s time to scrap the policy, not extend it. Rishi Sunak introduced the policy last summer. The idea was simple enough – add a bit of fuel to the property market and stoke consumer spending by only making buyers cough up [...]
PM must pull G7 back from the dusty halls of diplomatic irrelevancy to tackle Covid, China & climate change February 24, 2021 Last Friday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson hosted the first leadership meeting of the UK’s 2021 presidency of the G7. While the western club may appear ill-suited to tackling the global crisis from the pandemic, it has always been at its best reacting to the big issues of the moment. Indeed, the very fact that it [...]
Let’s celebrate the number of women on FTSE boards, but smaller companies will face regulatory hurdles if they don’t step up February 24, 2021 It is worth taking a moment to celebrate that the number of women on FTSE 350 boards has jumped by 50 per cent over the last five years, according to the Hampton-Alexander review published yesterday. But we must not take our foot off the pedal, the work is far from done. Another recent report from [...]