The UK must close its digital skills gap — or face an unemployment crisis August 18, 2020 With the economy plunging a catastrophic 20 per cent between April and June, the magnitude of challenges facing UK industries is becoming clearer. A wave of unemployment is likely, and when the furlough scheme officially ends there is no knowing how many people employers will let go. Even with additional taxpayer bailouts, there are large [...]
How tax is transforming in the digital age January 17, 2020 | City Talk Driven by a desire for more revenue, greater efficiency and improved compliance in an atmosphere of shrinking resources, tax authorities are increasingly relying on digital tax data gathering and analysis — using digital platforms to facilitate real-time or near real-time collection and assessment of taxpayer data. This move toward tax “digitalisation” is allowing tax authorities [...]
Confidence tricks: How advertising can predict a recession November 25, 2019 “There’s going to be a recession,” someone says at a dinner table or boardroom meeting, certain of the fact. “You can see it coming.” In advertising, we’re at the coal-face of confidence — the barometer and engine room of recession and recovery. What we look for are three measures of confidence which correlate with historic [...]
The internet can help left-behind constituencies step into the future November 21, 2019 It can sometimes be easy to forget that the internet plays a vital part of everyday life. It makes a substantial economic contribution to the UK, creating approximately 400,000 jobs, 80,000 businesses, and £45bn in gross value added to the UK’s GDP. Most importantly, the internet improves people’s lives with products and services that make [...]
The Lovie Awards show Europe’s creativity is a force for good October 28, 2019 My entire career has been fuelled by a love for the European creative industry. And now, at a time when our digital lives feel chaotic, when business often feels overly challenging, when political issues invade our every waking moment, that fuel is more essential than ever. This is precisely why Nicolas Roope and I founded [...]
With Boris onside, we can boost connectivity across the country August 2, 2019 The successful economies of the future will be those that effectively seize the potential of digital technology. It is particularly important that we in the UK take heed of this message, as businesses face ongoing uncertainty in the approach to the government’s Halloween Brexit deadline. So what progress is being made to realise this potential? [...]
Getting a better deal for the consumer? That’s music to my ears June 27, 2019 It’s hard to recall now how long we’ve been hearing that the music industry is changing: in flux, in transition, in crisis, most recently in the development of reliable music streaming; like any other industry, the music business is always on the lookout for the next big thing, the opportunity to get in at the [...]
When women ruled the coding world: Female programmers have been written out of history – it’s time to turn back the clock May 9, 2019 Coding was once a field dominated by women. From the 1940s to the 1960s, about 90 per cent of computer programmers and systems analysts in the US were female. Hardware was largely run by men, but software was treated as clerical work and offered to women who were good at maths and logical thinking. In [...]
DEBATE: Are MPs right that the UK needs an independent watchdog to regulate internet sites? April 11, 2019 Are MPs right that the UK needs an independent watchdog to regulate internet sites? Ruth Manielevitch, vice president of global business development at Taptica, says YES. At a time when concerns over our data, privacy, and wellbeing on the internet are growing at a rapid rate, this new regulation would reassure millions of UK consumers [...]
Facebook and the tech giants are welcoming government regulation – that’s a panic signal for all of us April 9, 2019 Last year, I met someone who had previously worked for a big tech firm in its “free speech” unit. What had happened to make him come and slum it among us mortals in the (badly paid) policy world? Answer: the unit had been shut down. It’s in this context that you should see the milquetoast [...]