Tech resentment in San Francisco is ignoring the real culprit: Government February 3, 2014 RENTS are rising, pushing people on low incomes out of the neighbourhoods they’ve lived in for years. Resentment towards the rich is growing, with the most profitable and dynamic industries singled out for the most ire. Talk of a cost of living crisis, driven above all by the cost of housing, is dominating politics. This [...]
Federal Reserve’s selfishness triggered emerging markets chaos January 28, 2014 IF you want to know what old fashioned, hard-core monetary policy used to look like – the kind that those readers who lived through the UK’s European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) humiliation will remember – look no further than what happened to Turkey, a country at the epicentre of the growing emerging market crisis, last [...]
The grave crises facing Putin’s Russia lay bare its fundamental weaknesses January 28, 2014 CHAOS in Kiev must feel uncomfortably close to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Ukrainian parliament yesterday annulled laws that sought to clear the streets of protesters against Ukraine’s increasingly authoritarian pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych. Ukraine’s prime minister and government have quit, and the country stands perilously on the edge of deeper conflict – prompted initially [...]
As Miliband also sets sights on the SME vote January 26, 2014 SPEAKING after David Cameron’s keynote speech at the Federation of Small Businesses this morning, Labour’s Chuka Umunna will announce that the party would set up a Small Businesses Administration (SBA) if it wins the 2015 general election. The new forum would work across government departments to promote the small business agenda. “We need government to [...]
Why more young people than ever are living with their parents January 21, 2014 (ONS) Over a quarter of British adults between the ages of 20 and 34 were living with their parents last year – that’s 3.3m people and the biggest increase since the crisis, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics. Increasing living costs and job pressures carry on preventing people from moving out. [...]
How regenerating failed high rises can gift London thousands of extra homes January 20, 2014 A QUIET announcement, with potentially significant implications for London’s housing crisis, lay hidden in the detail of last year’s Autumn Statement: the government will “explore options for kick-starting the regeneration of some of the worst housing estates through repayable loans.” Is this just another excuse to spend taxpayers’ money? I hope not. It could be [...]
Labour to make jobseekers take basic skills test January 20, 2014 JOBSEEKERS will have to pass a basic skills test and could lose their unemployment benefits, under tough new measures being pledged by Labour’s shadow work and pensions secretary today. In her first major policy speech since taking up the post in October, Rachel Reeves will set out Labour’s latest plans for tackling the cost of [...]
More competition would be good but Miliband is proposing little that’s new January 19, 2014 ED MILIBAND appears to be in the process of reinventing the Labour Party as the consumer party. His central theme is the “cost of living crisis”. He tells us how he is on the side of consumers in gas and electricity, freezing prices, in banks forcing competition, and in general by having consumer bodies report [...]
Springbok spicing up the wine market January 19, 2014 Annabel Palmer talks to Rowan Gormley, the South African taking on wine’s giants with venture Naked Wines THE DAYS of the wine snob – so brilliantly caricatured by Richard E Grant’s the Hon Simon Marchmont in the BBC’s Posh Nosh – could be coming to an end. It’s an industry long characterised by an assumption [...]
Technology and the minimum wage: A big rise could harm the lowest skilled January 17, 2014 POLITICIANS of all parties, including Treasury minister Sajid Javid, have stated that there’s a strong case for a significant increase in the minimum wage. Their arguments were perhaps best summarised in a blog by Paul Kirby, the former head of the Number 10 Policy Unit. His economic case for a big rise is based on [...]