No fly zone: As coronavirus fears grow, airlines must brace for the worst March 3, 2020 One of last month’s more outlandish news stories was the report that the coronavirus outbreak had caused an upsurge in private jet inquiries. More wealthy travellers than ever, it seems, are willing to pay thousands of pounds an hour for a plane unto themselves, in an attempt to dodge the risk of getting infected. The [...]
It may be a while before the fog lifts on Italy March 3, 2020 The Italian economy was already looking rather parlous at the start of this year, with global bodies like the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and European Commission all predicting almost negligible growth rates. Even the January forecast from Italy’s official statistics agency suggested that GDP would increase by just 0.2 per cent over the course [...]
How your old laptop could change a life March 3, 2020 At a late age I found myself homeless. I was homeless for 15 years.” This statement may sound shocking, but for Ann, this was reality — until she became a member of Thames Reach’s Step-Up project. The Step-Up project is a free support service helping low-paid Londoners progress into better paid work. As Dominika Milowka, [...]
Jack Welch: A business giant by any definition March 3, 2020 There are corporate titans — and then there is Jack Welch, who led General Electric through an extraordinary expansion as its totemic chief executive in the go-go days of the 1980s and ‘90s. Fortune magazine named him Manager of the Century and considering that the market capitalisation of the firm went from $13bn (£10.2bn) to [...]
DEBATE: Could Sir Philip Rutnam’s resignation turn into a major headache for the government? March 3, 2020 Could Sir Philip Rutnam’s resignation turn into a major headache for the government? Eliot Wilson, head of research at Right Angles and a former House of Commons official, says YES. The resignation of Sir Philip Rutnam is not just a spat between a Whitehall mandarin and his minister. Its impact goes much further than that, [...]
We are blind to the soft-left bias across British institutions March 3, 2020 A few weeks ago, I went to an art exhibition at Somerset House called 24/7. Billed as “a wake-up call for our non-stop world”, it promised to explore the many ways in which technology is speeding up our lives. This was, admittedly, something of a busman’s holiday. Back in 2016, I wrote a book called [...]
Hungary for UK growth March 2, 2020 Last Friday, after four years, I stepped down as the ambassador of Hungary to the Court of St. James’s. I arrived just days before the Brexit referendum — a referendum that, of course, shaped almost everything I did in the role here. It became apparent that the two priorities for me would be the representation [...]
How Yorkshire Tea turned a storm in a teacup into a marketing success March 2, 2020 Yorkshire Tea unwittingly found itself in the middle of a Twitter storm last week when the new chancellor, Rishi Sunak, published a seemingly innocuous image of himself “making tea for the team”. The photo featured the brand like a poorly orchestrated influencer marketing campaign. Soon after, the company was faced with a torrent of abuse [...]
Home Office chaos looks none too Priti March 2, 2020 The perpetual conflict between Eastasia, Oceania and Eurasia’ in Orwell’s 1984 is a warning, not a how-to. Yet Number 10 and Boris Johnson’s government seem to be creating their own version of permanent war, finding enemies real and imagined right across the ranks of the civil service, the backbenches and Britain’s oldest institutions. The latest [...]
It is staggering that breastfeeding at work is still an issue anywhere March 2, 2020 In January, House of Commons speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle finally overturned a 20-year-old ban on breastfeeding in the chamber, saying: “If it happens, it happens. I won’t be upset by it.” It’s about time. I have just returned to work after having my second child, who I am still breastfeeding. As an employer myself, I [...]