Why attacking billionaires doesn’t help the poor January 17, 2017 Oxfam was founded nearly 75 years ago with the noble aim of preventing war-time governments from blocking the provision of urgently needed supplies to Europe’s suffering civilians. On top of the horrors of war, the world was a far more harsh and impoverished place back then. Globally, nearly 24 per cent of infants failed to reach [...]
China’s Baidu targets artificial intelligence with appointment of former Microsoft executive January 17, 2017 Chinese search giant Baidu has named a former Microsoft executive as its chief operating officer in an effort to push towards artificial intelligence. Baidu's core search engine business hasn't been performing well – new advertising regulations caused Baidu to lose 16 per cent of its ad customers in the quarter ending September 2016 – so the company is refocusing its [...]
National Audit Office: Concentrix £1bn tax credit outsourcing delivered savings of less than a fifth than was expected January 17, 2017 A catalogue of errors in relation to outsourcing tax credits has been laid bare in a damning report by the public spending watchdog. Highlighting a series of shortcomings, the National Audit Office (NAO) today released its findings into HM Revenue & Customs’ (HMRC) controversial outsourcing arrangement with Concentrix. HMRC estimated £1bn of savings could be [...]
Are you travelling with Britain’s worst train operator? Here’s the definitive list January 17, 2017 Southern's customer satisfaction has plummeted on everything from punctuality to reliability and seat availability. According to Which?'s annual rail survey, the train operator recorded its lowest ever score of 21 per cent customer satisfaction, down from 44 per cent last year. It received one star ratings for seat availability, frequency, punctuality, reliability and value for [...]
Why Davos elites should invite the populists to the table January 17, 2017 The year has barely kicked off and 2017’s biggest business get-together, held in the Swiss mountain resort town of Davos, has already begun. And, this year, the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting is headlining under the theme of “Responsive Leadership”. This theme leaves plenty of room for interpretation and imagination. My sense of what best [...]
Donald Trump’s business meddling: Crony capitalism to a Tea January 17, 2017 To understand why many large businesses and pro-market US policy wonks are anxious about a Donald Trump presidency, one has to understand the lessons of the Tea Party. No, not the recent grassroots phenomenon caricatured in the UK media. I’m talking about the Boston Tea Party of 1773 – in which American colonists, belonging to [...]
Why the Bank of England could turn more hawkish in 2017 January 17, 2017 Suppose the UK had voted to stay in the EU. Would the Bank of England have hiked its benchmark interest rate by now? Yes, probably. But that didn’t happen. Instead, the central bank aggressively expanded monetary policy in August, shortly after the UK voted for Brexit. The Bank's efforts, in conjunction with Theresa May’s ship-steadying [...]
Oxfam is wrong to imply free markets make the rich richer at the poor’s expense January 17, 2017 Every year Oxfam releases statistics comparing the wealth of the global poor and the global rich, showing a stunning, often widening, gap between the two. They heavily imply that the poor are getting poorer while the rich are getting richer – but only half of this is correct. The lot of the world’s worst off [...]
Davos elites should look to UK fintech to see responsive leadership in action January 17, 2017 With the rise of digital, information networks, robotics, and the smartphone, the pace of technological change is accelerating. This has coincided with increasing populism, creating political and market volatility that some analysts are forecasting as the new normal. Across the political, business and academic landscape, leaders must be more in tune with their communities, and [...]
Is Donald Trump right that Nato is obsolete? January 17, 2017 Mary Dejevsky, a writer and broadcaster, says Yes. Nato was an alliance of the Cold War and became obsolete as soon as the Soviet Union was dissolved. The West’s failure to disband it – or at the very least rename it and reform its purpose – in response to the demise of the Warsaw Pact [...]