Bank timidity over interest rate rises risks a destabilising build-up in debt December 8, 2013 THE BANK of England’s revised mandate may push the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) to leave interest rates on hold for too long, complicating efforts to bring down inflation and household debt to more prudent levels. Key to the timing of interest rate rises will be unemployment, since the Bank is highly unlikely to hike rates [...]
City Matters: It’s time for financial results to reflect the new face of post-crisis business December 8, 2013 ONE OF the charges that has often been laid against the City in recent years is that it has been too focused on short-term value. Many things have changed as a result of the crash, and one of them has been an increased awareness that the way companies currently report results is not fit for [...]
The miracle of Robben Island: Why Mandela matters internationally December 8, 2013 AFTER the oceans of ink that have rightly been spilled these past few days lauding Nelson Mandela, is there anything left to say? Perhaps just this. Those of us who analyse the world for a living think in terms of large macro phenomena: rates of GDP, demographic trends, military capabilities, national political cultures. We are [...]
Letters to the Editor – 09/12 – Toll roads, Labour flailing, Best of Twitter December 8, 2013 Toll roads [Re: Government scraps plans for toll pricing as taxpayers pick up tab, Tuesday] It is a shame that the government seems to have ignored the economic argument for toll roads. Pricing mechanisms have proven themselves in other areas of transport as an efficient means of allocating scarce resources, like road space. Moreover, technological [...]
Autumn Statement 2013: What it means for UK entrepreneurs December 8, 2013 ENTREPRENEURS are rarely political animals and don’t often get involved in the dirty business of politics. However, there are few people who are more impacted – for better or worse – by public policy. As such, every time the chancellor stands up to speak, entrepreneurs and small business owners should take note. The news from [...]
Innovation Diary: Tech City turns three: Cluster changes shape while the quango seeks scale December 8, 2013 TECH City has just turned three. There is some confusion over what this actually means, however. Tech firms have been located around Old Street roundabout since at least the 1990s, so it’s really just the anniversary of the government quango dedicated to stimulating them. Yet despite criticism (Sir James Dyson has attacked an obsession with [...]
Searching for Santa in the Arctic December 8, 2013 Katie Hope and her four-year-old son James embark on an 18-hour journey to find the real Father Christmas TRACKING down Father Christmas in Lapland is akin to hunting an extremely rare and precious species. Come December, his impersonators are lurking everywhere you look, but the genuine article is tucked away in the icy depths of [...]
Fresh magic gets cast by Daniel Radcliffe December 8, 2013 FILM KILL YOUR DARLINGS Cert 12A | By Alex Dymoke Four Stars KILL Your Darlings revels in the cliché-saturated aesthetic of the Beats – think fusty professors, impromptu poetry recitations and furious typewriting in smoke-fugged Columbia dorm rooms – but admirably avoids hero-worship. Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe), Jack Kerouac and co are presented not as [...]
A respectable remake still beaten by the original December 8, 2013 FILM OLDBOY Cert 18 | By Simon Thomson Three Stars IT’S COMMONLY assumed American audiences can’t handle foreign films. As a result, whenever you get a successful foreign film, somewhere in Southern California a producer will be asking whether it could translate into a Hollywood movie; this is the only reason Spike Lee’s 2013 remake [...]
Spectacle but no Disney sparkle December 8, 2013 FILM FROZEN Cert PG | By Melissa York Two Stars IT’S ABOUT time Disney set a film in Scandinavia – and what better time to do it than Christmas? Frozen is very loosely based on Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen; thankfully, there are no children running around with shards of troll mirror glass in [...]
