Bubble trouble: Lessons from three centuries of boom and bust August 6, 2020 While 2020 has seen its fair share of market turbulence, it has some way to go to match the volatility of 1720. This month marks the 300th anniversary of the peak of the South Sea Bubble — one of the first financial bubbles, and still one of history’s greatest. The bubble began when the South [...]
DEBATE: Is Elon Musk right to predict that AI will overtake humans within five years? August 6, 2020 Is Elon Musk right to predict that artificial intelligence will overtake humans within five years? Chetan Dube, chief executive of IPsoft, says YES. Elon Musk is right. For the last few years we have been saying that by 2025 we will pass someone in the corridor and not know if they are human or android. [...]
For young Londoners, working from home is a cramped and dismal experience August 5, 2020 Ah the great British work from home experiment: levelling the playing field, redressing work-life balance, enabling millions of people to work when and where best suits them. After a brief period of chaos at the end of March when the nation struggled to get to grips with Zoom and Amazon sold out of laptop stands, [...]
Without reform, the government’s Ponzi Pension Scheme will bankrupt us all August 5, 2020 For the past decade, financial markets have been dominated by the ongoing distortions set in motion by the last financial crisis in 2008. Regulatory overkill of City dealing, quantitative easing (QE) and zero interest rate policies (ZIRP) have combined to drive financial assets — stocks and shares — to record prices. Now, the consequences are [...]
The costs of lockdown can no longer be justified August 5, 2020 In an otherwise depressing week, two pieces of very good news emerged from India. In Mumbai, blood tests conducted by the city authorities on 6,936 randomly selected people found that some 40 per cent had coronavirus antibodies. Just 6,000 deaths have been reported so far in a city of 20 million. A similar exercise in [...]
A trade deal with Japan flickers on the horizon August 5, 2020 Time is running out to put the finishing touches on the highly anticipated UK-Japan Free Trade Agreement (FTA), among the most important of the UK’s trade treaties in the new post-Brexit era. If one is looking for a way to capture the spirit of global Britain, surely this is it. Japan is the UK’s fourth [...]
Ennobling your mates maintains the finest tradition of the House of Lords August 4, 2020 Britain’s upper chamber is a place of tradition: the Woolsack, the ermine, the outrage over who a Prime Minister has placed there. Boris Johnson’s latest ennoblements have been no exception. Since the honours were announced last week there has been much said about both the size and content of this newest cohort. Yet really, his [...]
Covid-19 shone a spotlight on hidden abuse — now we cannot afford to stop fighting August 4, 2020 The Covid-19 crisis has thrown the issue of domestic abuse into sharp focus. The sudden shift to working from home as offices closed meant that many victims were unable to access what is often their only safe space: the workplace. With those at risk suddenly forced to remain at home with their abusers during lockdown, [...]
DEBATE: Is the Eat Out To Help Out scheme the solution our struggling restaurant sector needs? August 4, 2020 Is the Eat Out To Help Out scheme the solution our struggling restaurant sector needs? Benedict Spence, a freelance writer and avid gourmand, says YES. It seems fitting that a government led by a man so perplexingly successful in the bedroom would launch a national recovery initiative with a name carrying such potential for smut. [...]
Britain cannot stand by in the face of shocking human right abuses across Hong Kong August 4, 2020 On 9 March, the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Hong Kong, of which I am a vice chair, launched an inquiry into human rights abuses perpetrated by the Hong Kong Police Force against medical and humanitarian workers during the 2019 protests. One thousand submissions later, we are ready to publish our findings. Our report, published [...]