All the world’s a sound-stage March 13, 2019 Johnny Hon loves a show and he loves a stage. Unlike most globe-trotting international investors, he also finds time to invest in them. Hon, the founder and chairman of venture capital business and angel investor the Global Group, is a showbiz impresario, acting as an executive entertainment producer as an enjoyable sideline. UK-educated Hon is [...]
Focus On Stratford: Around 30,000 new homes are planned for the east London Olympic hub by 2030 March 13, 2019 The 2012 Olympic Games may feel like they happened last century, but their legacy lives on in Stratford. Though it resides in Newham, one of the most deprived boroughs in the capital, the host neighbourhood of the Games has attracted a phenomenal amount of property investment in both commercial and residential sectors. There are currently [...]
Economics could teach Theresa May a thing or two about tackling knife crime March 13, 2019 Knife crime continues to dominate the headlines. What can be done about it? Economics does not pretend to provide all the answers. But, perhaps surprising to some, it has a lot of useful insights to offer on crime. Gary Becker was a professor of both economics and sociology at Chicago. One day he was pushed [...]
How the arrival of the World Wide Web has changed the mortgage market March 12, 2019 In 1989, the Swiss physics laboratory, CERN, was buzzing with information but it had one big problem: ideas, data and knowledge held by the lab was stored across incompatible computers. A young scientist, Tim Berners-Lee, envisioned creating a unifying structure for sharing information across its computer systems. He wrote a proposal for a linked information [...]
Deal or no deal, let’s make the UK the most attractive place for business March 12, 2019 What happens if there’s no Brexit deal? Over the past year, we’ve had various answers to this question – most ranging from the alarming to the apocalyptic. But while we’ve heard an awful lot about the problems, we haven’t heard much about solutions. That’s why our think tank, the Centre for Policy Studies, has just [...]
30 years since the dawn of the World Wide Web, Britain is still at the heart of tech success March 12, 2019 It has been 30 years since Sir Tim Berners-Lee sat down at his desk at Cern and changed the world with a humble sounding document called “Information Management: A Proposal”. The memo, piloting a system to allow computers to share information via an emerging technology called hypertext, did not catch many people’s eyes as it [...]
Norway has grown rich on oil, so why is its state-owned fund divesting from fossil fuels? March 12, 2019 Last week, one of the largest planned divestments of fossil fuel assets in history was announced. The Norwegian government publicly declared its intention to sell off ownership in oil and gas companies, to the tune of 66bn Norwegian krone (£5.7bn). This massive decision sent ripples through the markets, and the international benchmark Brent Crude was [...]
Horse Racing Betting Tips: Apple’s can prevent Buveur D’Air winning for a third time March 11, 2019 WHEN BUVEUR D’AIR routed the highly-regarded Samcro on his seasonal reappearance at Newcastle back in December, a third Champion Hurdle victory appeared almost inevitable. That was his 11th straight win over hurdles since switching back from chasing and the big young pretender had failed to lay a glove on him. However, the shock defeat that [...]
Monica Seles: “I really don’t care about my legacy. I care about the present and being a good person.” March 11, 2019 “I really don’t reflect. I kind of stay in the moment,” says Monica Seles. It seems a remarkable sentiment for someone with such a glorious career to look back on, but then the past is a complicated place for the 45-year-old Tennis Hall of Famer. Even in sport’s vivid canon, few stories can touch that [...]
New kids on the grid: Lando Norris and George Russell set for Formula One debuts in Melbourne opener March 11, 2019 It was 12 years ago when a young, hungry driver bursting with talent took his first seat in Formula One. His name was Lewis Hamilton. This season, as he goes in search of a sixth World Championship, there are two new British drivers – inspired by Hamilton’s generation – ready to make their own mark [...]