The Rugby World Cup has lessons for business September 27, 2019 After being dumped out of the 2015 Rugby World Cup early, England will be hoping to improve on their performance this time round in Japan. So far, the team has beaten both Tonga and the USA. It’s been a long wait for redemption – four years in the making – and, as well as their [...]
Blame the Fixed-term Parliaments Act for this utter chaos in Westminster September 27, 2019 The BBC podcast series The Political Butterfly Effect explores the theory that even the tiniest of events can have vast and unintended consequences. If you’re curious how a bar fight may have caused Brexit, or what the meat extract product Bovril has to do with keeping Britain out of the euro, it’s worth a listen. [...]
DEBATE: Did Jacques Chirac leave France in a better state than he found it when he became President? September 27, 2019 Did Jacques Chirac leave France in a better state than he found it when he became President? Alastair Benn, news editor of Reaction, says YES. Jacques Chirac’s legacy is hard to define – he was certainly not a great President, and the old fox, as he was often known, never really shook off a (justified) [...]
If Jeremy Corbyn really cares about ‘the many’, he should rethink his aversion to markets September 27, 2019 A common complaint over the past three years is that no one can talk about anything other than Brexit. But that wasn’t true at the Labour party conference this week. Unlike the Liberal Democrats, who barely gave way to any policy discussion beyond revoking Article 50, both the Labour leader and shadow chancellor confronted all [...]
There’s more to worry about with Justin Trudeau than fancy dress September 27, 2019 In 2015, Justin Trudeau was elected the 23rd Prime Minister of Canada, following the footsteps of his father Pierre. And next month, Trudeau junior is seeking a second term in what opinion polls suggest will be a closely fought contest. The main coverage of the election campaign in Britain has been the revelations that the [...]
The private sector can unlock Africa’s promise September 27, 2019 The success of Africa matters to us all. The continent is home to four of the five fastest growing economies in the world. But still African countries currently receive less than four per cent of all global foreign direct investment. Around 20m jobs a year need to be created just to keep pace with its [...]
DEBATE: Does the Hong Kong Exchange boss have any chance of winning over LSE shareholders? September 26, 2019 Does the Hong Kong Exchange boss have any chance of winning over LSE shareholders? YES, says Benedict Spence, a freelance writer. The Hong Kong Stock Exchange’s takeover attempt may not sit well with some elements of the city, nor with some in Westminster, but at a time of insecurity over the future of the nation’s [...]
Reality is finally catching up with overblown Silicon Valley rhetoric September 26, 2019 Rhetoric, the art of persuasion, was the backbone of a classical education. Today the term is more often pejorative: rhetoric is found wherever reality isn’t. No fantasy, however, can be long sustained. If rhetoric is to deliver its original purpose and persuade, it cannot escape reality for long. So Silicon Valley is discovering. For over [...]
Mind the gap: The daily commute is exacerbating inequality September 26, 2019 Now that summer is over and that holiday feeling has worn off, millions of UK employees are back to the grind of the daily commute. For many of us, it is the least inspiring part of the day, and most organisations do not give a second thought to how their employees make it to their [...]
Bottle Opener: The best wines for this week’s Rugby World Cup matches September 26, 2019 The 2019 Rugby World Cup is upon us. Despite my status as a proud Welshman, even I cannot bring myself to recommend Welsh wines as an accompaniment to savouring an international rugby match (to all those Welsh wine producers out there, I look forward to being proven wrong). Indeed, many British rugby fans would regard [...]