Employers to boost graduate jobs by record nine per cent in 2019 despite Brexit concerns January 21, 2019 The UK’s top employers are set to boost graduate jobs by a record nine per cent this year despite growing uncertainty over Brexit. The country’s leading 100 graduate employers have indicated a surge in recruitment could be on the horizon in 2019, according to a report conducted by research firm High Fliers. It comes after [...]
Flood, fire, even an earthquake: businesses must protect themselves against the event of a natural disaster January 16, 2019 Technical issues were enough to hit TSB with a brutal three-week outage in April last year. The damage from that event is well documented – an eightfold increase in customers choosing to bank elsewhere, a bill for compensation and repairs costing roughly £176m, and a chief executive who decided to walk. The events suffered by [...]
DEBATE: If Theresa May’s deal fails to pass, is another referendum the best way to break the stalemate? January 15, 2019 If Theresa May’s deal fails to pass, is another referendum the best way to break the stalemate? Jo Swinson MP, deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats, says YES. Brexit has become a national embarrassment. In the last few weeks, the Conservative government has lost control in parliament, and the Labour frontbench – supposedly the official [...]
A year on from Carillion: 12 months that brought outsourcing to its knees January 15, 2019 On the anniversary of Carillion’s dramatic collapse, two more public sector outsourcing giants, Interserve and Kier Group, are up against the ropes. In the intervening 12 months, outsourcers have lurched from one crisis to another, with profit warnings, massive project failures and revelations of systemic late payment of suppliers. City A.M. charts a year which [...]
NHS England says new 10-year plan could save up to 500,000 lives a year January 7, 2019 NHS England has unveiled its 10-year plan for the health service, which sets out how the £20.5bn funding injection announced by Theresa May will be spent over the next five years. NHS England said the money could save around 500,000 lives by preventing life-threatening diseases such as strokes, heart problems and cancer by detecting them [...]
Theresa May’s survival as Prime Minister will leave an impact long after Brexit December 18, 2018 Nothing has changed. That was the widely held conclusion from Theresa May surviving her no confidence vote last week. The Prime Minister has kicked the can down the road on putting her proposed withdrawal agreement to parliament. But parliamentary arithmetic is unaltered. Her deal, as it stands, still looks dead on arrival. In the absence of [...]
Whitehall ploughs one-third of annual budget into outsourced services, despite ongoing financial misery of the sector December 11, 2018 Whitehall could not abandon the outsourcing of public services even if politicians wanted to because it costs so much, according to research. The government ploughs £284bn – almost one-third of its overall budget – into work done by external suppliers every year, think tank Institute for Government (IfG) said today. The huge outlay is despite the [...]
The NHS faces another winter crisis, but politicians continue to fail to learn the lessons of public sector failures December 7, 2018 On Thursday, the British Medical Association warned that NHS England is likely to be 10,000 beds short over the coming winter. The next few months are possibly going to be the “the worst on record”, as projections for A&E admissions are looking to increase by 100,000 this year alone. It’s remarkable that the healthcare season [...]
How the UK can work with Japan to make the world a safer and more stable place December 4, 2018 The language of diplomacy can sometimes be very general. Diplomats and politicians invoke the idea of “partnerships” and “strong bilateral relations” without making clear to their citizens why they matter or what the benefits might be. Talk about trading opportunities gives a sense of something practical emerging from these sorts of relationship, but trade and investment is just [...]
Google and DeepMind are playing fast and loose with society’s trust November 20, 2018 Last week, we were greeted by the disturbing news that DeepMind, an artificial intelligence subsidiary owned by Google’ s parent company Alphabet, is moving some of its healthcare activities into the newly formed Google Health. This isn’t the first time that one of the tech giants has been accused of making misrepresentations to consumers, using [...]