The nanny statists have been proven wrong – plain cigarette packaging does not work November 30, 2017 Tomorrow will mark the fifth anniversary of the introduction of plain packaging of tobacco in Australia. But don’t expect much in the way of celebrations. In the first 12 months of the branding ban, the number of cigarettes sold in Australia rose for the first time in years, and smoking rates proceeded to flatline for [...]
London living wage to rise faster than inflation to break through £10 per hour for first time November 6, 2017 Thousands of Londoners will enjoy a pay rise today with the London living wage to rise above £10 per hour for the first time. Mayor of London Sadiq Khan will today announce the rise from £9.75 to £10.20 per hour. The independently-calculated living wage aims to set a value based on what people need to [...]
From food and hotels, to where to find the best jenever, here’s our guide to the perfect long weekend in Antwerp August 18, 2017 Antwerp is the largest city in Flanders and a cultural Pandora’s box. It’s home to the largest diamond district in the world, whose official language of trade was Yiddish until the 1930s. It is also in this city that the printing trade was invented, and where artist Sir Peter Paul Rubens lived and worked for [...]
French presidential elections 2017: Apres Emmanuel Macron, le deluge: This is the European elites’ last chance to avert disaster May 2, 2017 You have to hand it to Louis XV of France. He may have been a mediocrity, but at least as a political risk analyst he knew the price of continual policy failure. A lowlight of his long, stagnant reign (1715-1774) was the Battle of Rossbach in 1757, where Frederick the Great of Prussia rang strategic [...]
Spain over Gibraltar, Argentina over the Falklands: Who will be next to stake a claim in Brexit? April 13, 2017 With Article 50 now triggered, both the UK and the EU are drawing up their opening red lines for the Brexit negotiations. The UK has said that it is ready to walk away from the talks with no deal and base future trade relations with the EU on World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules. There is [...]
Why markets are so calm about the coming triggering of Article 50 March 13, 2017 Brexit is back and this time it looks for real. The UK government’s decision to trigger Article 50 imminently means the start of official negotiations with the European Union on the exit plan. But while financial markets remain cautious, the tension seems to be less as compared to the 23 June referendum vote. There are [...]
Leaving the EU without a deal would bring significant tariff and regulatory barriers to trade, the CBI is set to warn at Mansion House March 2, 2017 The CBI has warned that leaving the EU without a deal and reverting to World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules would open a pandora’s box of economic consequences, hurting firms on both sides of the Channel. In a speech this evening to the Lord Mayor’s business and investment dinner at Mansion House, CBI president, Paul Drechsler, [...]
Britain is an oasis of calm amid Europe’s political chaos February 24, 2017 In a fit of pique at the Brexit vote, the Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte told MEPs last July that Britain had “collapsed – politically, economically, monetarily and constitutionally”. Embarrassingly for him, events have proven otherwise, with the UK posting the strongest growth in the G7 in the final quarter of 2016, the Bank of England still [...]
Europe must reinvent itself or markets will tear it apart February 24, 2017 As I sit on an over-crowded train at rush hour for the fourth time this week after a 12 hour shift (I hope my American co-anchor who doesn’t believe in European holidays is reading this), I look around and wonder how many people in the carriage still believe in Europe. On 23 June 2016, 59.9 [...]
A tale of two Eurozones: Greater Germany and Club Med are drifting ever further apart February 15, 2017 At the end of last week Federica Mogherini met leading members of the Trump administration. Mogherini, yet another Italian politician turned Euro-bureaucrat, is in fact the foreign policy chief of the European Union. She stood on her dignity, or rather the dignity of the European Commission, issuing a warning to America not to interfere with [...]