Letters: Heigh ho, off to work we go TO THE EDITOR [Re: Central London continues to feel hit of plan B measures, January 11]We’ve seen footfall in Central London dropping again as plan B measures keep many office workers at home. In December, office occupancy reached 10 per cent, a new low for London. This can’t go on. We must return to the office en masse, [...]
Letters: When the chips are up Letters [Re: Samsung estimates 52 per cent profit boost as demand for chips rockets, January 7] Last week, Samsung reported a 52 per cent increase in profits for the end of 2021. The tech giant estimated that it made 13.8tn won (£8.5bn) in the period, thanks to strong demand for server memory chips and higher profit [...]
Letters: Regulations are needed to stop crypto fraud Letters [Re: Google searches for ‘Sell Ethereum’ up 972 per cent following crypto plunge, January 7] Your article on the drop in value of Ethereum and its likely alignment to recent changes in crypto-regulation in China, highlights to me the need for multilateral regulation around cryptocurrency. This feels like a necessity if we are to protect [...]
Letters: PM’s short-sightedness on visas for Indians January 10, 2022 [Re: PM announcing no easing of immigration rules for Indians, January 5] As an Indian migrant it was dismaying to hear the PM explain last week that the UK will not offer visa concessions to India in exchange for a free trade deal. Mr Johnson is being short-sighted. This knee-jerk capitulation to some of his [...]
Letters: Get down the pub to save our community hubs January 7, 2022 [Re: Flood of Omicron cases and plan B curbs combine to deliver heavy blow to UK economy, January 6] The hospitality industry has been given the green light to remain open, but the impact of December trade losses has been utterly devastating and somewhat irreversible. Due to Omicron sweeping across the country, many businesses took [...]
Letters: UK’s valued food industry risks losing its sweetness thanks to virus isolation rules January 6, 2022 [Re: Bosses call for Covid isolation period to be cut as health agency warns this could be ‘counterproductive’, January 4] It is clear that Omicron is less severe than previous Covid-19 variants. While incredibly welcome that doomsday predictions of 3000 daily deaths this January have proven unfounded, government policy enforcing seven-day isolation is putting the [...]
Best of the year: the business stories of 2021 December 29, 2021 Back in April, Credit Suisse got entangled in a “disaster pile-up” involving Greensill and Archegos. Eliot Wilson wrote of how the Swiss bank lost billions of dollars because of its relationship with the US based hedge fund Archegos and the now infamous Greensill Capital. This kind of economic catastrophe happens when banks have risk management [...]
Best of the year: a look at foreign politics, from Afghanistan to China December 27, 2021 Australia was in the midst of a social media storm in February, when it tried to force tech giants to pay for linked news content on their platforms. Things went terribly wrong, wrote Anna-Sophie Harling, as Facebook proceeded to block all news content on its platform. Australian users were kept in the dark, unable to [...]
Best of the year: Political opinion and Westminster analysis to make sense of 2021 December 25, 2021 Artificial intelligence has been at the very centre of the news agenda this year, with the government announcing a national AI strategy as part of its “levelling up agenda”. But how can ministers make use of this technology and regulate it if they don’t understand how it works? Brian Mullins was making this point back [...]
Letters: A lockdown in plain sight December 17, 2021 [Re: Precaution is a useful thing, but policy can’t be based on maybes, yesterday] Paul Ormerod’s piece yesterday was a welcome intervention into the hysteria that has broken out since the emergence of the Omicron variant. South Africa, the birthplace of the new strain, has stayed at the lowest level of possible restrictions. Yet the [...]
