This government will be more radical on savings and pensions than you think October 27, 2016 For all her bold ambitions to reshape Britain’s economy in a more interventionist direction, Theresa May is unlikely to spend as much time on domestic matters as she might like. Brexit is said to be the most fiendishly complicated task Whitehall has had to undertake since the Second World War, touching nearly every area of [...]
It’s an unfortunate time to hit small City firms with a massive business rate hike October 21, 2016 NULL
Don’t kid yourself Hillary will be a good President October 7, 2016 For all the attention lavished on Donald Trump’s many flaws, there’s a deafening silence in the UK media about Hillary Clinton’s own defects as a US presidential candidate. They are not unconnected. Given the Republican’s illiberalism, nobody seems to want to say anything that might undermine the only person standing between him and the most [...]
Preparing for lift-off: How a Kent-based SME became an export powerhouse September 29, 2016 For a small, family-owned firm based in Kent, Cajero certainly punches above its weight. Founded in 1992, it sits at the heart of the supply chains of some of the world’s biggest aerospace companies, its main line of business the design and manufacture of the cutting tools used to construct the parts of airplanes. “In very [...]
How an 85 year-old coffee roaster perked up a business September 22, 2016 A coffee roaster looks like a washing machine on top of a barbecue,” says Joe O’Hara, owner of premium coffee importer, roaster and retailer Alchemy. “You put the beans in the drum on top while the burners underneath heat the drum as it turns.” And O’Hara has just acquired a rather special one. “It’s from a [...]
Roger Bootle of Capital Economics talks Brexit, macroeconomics and making a market for research September 12, 2016 Is there ever a tension between being one of Britain’s most influential economists, writer of multiple best-sellers and an opinionated column in the Telegraph, and a businessman, head of Europe’s largest independent macroeconomic consultancy? “There is sometimes,” says Roger Bootle, founder and executive chairman of Capital Economics. “We saw it with the Brexit debate. I was [...]
Theresa May is right to back academic selection in schools – as long as we don’t return to the rigid grammar system of the 1950s September 9, 2016 The chattering classes often complain that debates about schools are dominated by anecdote, as if ordinary people’s experience of education is totally irrelevant. So what if parents feel their local school is sub-standard? Who cares if most unskilled workers believe permitting more academic selection would give their children a better chance in life? Grammar schools are [...]
School reform’s biggest winners are the poor August 25, 2016 At the height of the last government, an online petition was launched calling for the then education secretary to resign. “Remove the elitist Michael Gove from office” it screamed. “Gove who has experienced private school education and Oxbridge is completely out of touch”. Like so much cyber activism, it was nonsense. For as today’s GCSE results [...]
GCSE results: The biggest winners from education reform have been the poor August 25, 2016 At the height of the last government, an online petition was launched calling for the then education secretary to resign. “Remove the elitist Michael Gove from office” it screamed. “Gove who has experienced private school education and Oxbridge is completely out of touch”. Like so much cyber activism, it was nonsense. For as today’s GCSE results will [...]