He could work on the delivery, but Bailey’s warnings were right August 16, 2023 So was he right? Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey’s comments that Brits shouldn’t ask for a pay rise looked tin-eared at the time, and it didn’t help when the Bank then upped its bonus pool. But his warnings of a wage price spiral appear to be coming to fruition. Now, what brought on the [...]
The BBC needs a chief ‘why?’ officer if it’s to regain its relevance August 15, 2023 The BBC is struggling for its survival. It sees a hostile government, new agile competition from streamers and social media, and may soon find out what life is like without the guaranteed income of a licence fee. Faced with this dilemma, the BBC announced a new show yesterday sure to change the institution’s fortunes: a [...]
It is time Britain rid itself of its entrenched tall poppy syndrome August 3, 2023 Britain has a tendency to chop down the tallest of our poppies, from growing tech businesses to promising young footballers. Some try to do that with one of our more appealing recent success stories: English wine.One recent article elsewhere said the red tasted like vimto and the good stuff was too expensive; buy French, seemed [...]
Housing crisis is not just an issue for avo-loving millennials, but one for the UK at large August 2, 2023 House prices crash – first time buyers, rejoice? Hardly. The near four per cent fall over the past year takes house prices back to where they were only a couple of years ago; and with interest rates and therefore the price of mortgages rocketing, the end result is housing remaining out of reach for all [...]
The tide is finally turning on working from home – and so is the evidence August 1, 2023 It’s an open secret. We all work a little less hard when we work from home. Anecdotally, we’ve all heard someone quip, “it’s alright, I’m working from home tomorrow”, as they make a beeline for the bar to order the fourth round of drinks during a midweek evening pub session. But now there’s a new [...]
Natwest should have stuck to its guns and kept politics out of the City July 26, 2023 Even the most trigger-happy of football chairmen usually leave a few days or weeks in between expressing full confidence in a manager and giving them the heave. Natwest board supremo Lord Howard Davies gave Alison Rose a matter of hours. What happened between the announcement just before 6pm that the Natwest CEO would be staying, [...]
Farage’s row with Coutts matters more than you might think July 20, 2023 The ongoing row between Coutts and Nigel Farage has, predictably, turned into a he-said, they-said brouhaha that does nobody any favours. But that does not mean that it isn’t worth tuning into, for the right to a bank account – and a bank’s decision on whether to give you one – does, indeed, matter. As [...]
Ministers are obliged to find a fudge to end rail strike misery July 17, 2023 One of the skills of the modern politician is to be close to success and far from failure. For reasons best known to them, a host of greasy pole-climbers felt obliged to tweet out appropriately statesmanlike congratulations to Carlos Alvarez yesterday after his victory at Wimbledon, basking in some kind of reflected glory. Yet many [...]
Hong Kong a reminder that firms must match words with actions July 12, 2023 Last week in this space we suggested that Hong Kong’s decision to place a bounty on the head of eight effectively-exiled pro-democracy protestors, including the young campaigner Nathan Law, showed the true autocratic colours of the territory’s government and its Beijing masters. That Hong Kong police yesterday raided the home of Law’s family, and questioned [...]
The real winners of marketplace battles are the consumers July 6, 2023 A Finnish mobile phone maker, an American social media network and a Japanese camera company walk into a bar, and the barman says: “oh, my dad told me about you.” Not necessarily the most promising comedy material but as a jumping off point for a discussion of the value of competition, the fates of once-seemingly-impregnable [...]
