Explainer-in-brief: January, another month when you can’t afford to buy a home January 16, 2023 Over the weekend, I received an innocuous looking email. “Dear Elena,” wrote a reader, ” I hope you don’t mind me emailing you. Is there any hope for young people buying their own house?” While I can’t possibly comment on his own individual circumstances, today was not good news: house prices have jumped up again [...]
Explainer-in-brief: Trust thy neighbour could be a lesson for Michael Gove January 13, 2023 People who trust their neighbours tend to have better economic opportunities and social outcomes, according to a report for Onward. So where's the most trusting parts of the country?
Explainer-in-brief: Government u-turns on foreign lobbying rules January 12, 2023 Plans to prevent hostile states intervening in UK politics with a foreign lobbying register are under review, after global businesses complained investment into Britain could dry up if there are too many bureaucratic hurdles. The new rules would have required most foreign organisations to register all exchanges with British ministers, officials and MPs. The government’s [...]
Explainer-in-brief: No industry seems to be safe from layoffs January 11, 2023 In keeping with the trends of 2022, this year opened with more announcements of layoffs in all kinds of sectors. Corporate law firms in the City have hinted they might follow in their US counterparts’ footsteps and start sacking staff. Amazon has declared it will let more than 18,000 people go. And Goldman Sachs has [...]
Explainer-in-brief: What’s inside the anti-strike laws the government is introducing today? January 10, 2023 Today the government proved it wasn’t prepared to abandon its carrot and stick approach to the unions just yet, bringing in anti-strike legislation. Business secretary Grant Shapps said there was a “duty to protect the public access to essential public services”, and called it a “common sense approach”. The rules will mandate that critical industries [...]
For Gove to make a dent in the housing crisis, he has to look back on Grenfell January 10, 2023 The tragedy at Grenfell left a scar on our housing sector. Michael Gove did a lot last year to make developers and builders accountable for their errors through the Building Safety Act, but nuance will be needed too, writes Elena Siniscalco
Explainer-in-brief: Twitter leak shows danger of phishing is round the corner January 9, 2023 Last year saw a rise in cyber security breaches and cyber crimes. Attempts at hacking, phishing and frauding targeted both companies and individuals. With reports emerging last week of more than 200m Twitter users’ email addresses stolen by hackers, the problem is not going away in 2023. Experts have defined the Twitter leak as one [...]
Opinion-in-brief: Consuming social media content with care as a New Year’s resolution December 26, 2022 As we approach the start of 2023, a good New Year’s resolution could be handling information we find on social media with a lot more care. Research published last week found that a quarter of tweets posted by premium Twitter subscribers on climate change, vaccines and Ukraine contain misinformation. This number is perhaps not surprising [...]
Explainer-in-brief: Two years on, Brexit is still creating hurdles for businesses December 23, 2022 Brexit is again in the spotlight – is anyone surprised? – as a new survey published this week found that more than three quarters of companies doing business with the EU think the deal is of no help in growing their economic activity. More than half of the British Chambers of Commerce members said they [...]
Opinion-in-brief: The government can’t get a grip on migration December 22, 2022 Yesterday, Home Secretary Suella Braverman had the chance to reiterate her commitment to protecting the country’s borders while reducing the asylum applications backlog in front of the Lords justice and home affairs committee. She was grilled about the avenues available to Afghan refugees, particularly women. The questioning was all the more poignant given that on [...]
