The future of giving: The rise of micro-donation is revolutionising charity June 23, 2015 Philanthropy is thriving, but it is growing at a grass roots level, as well as among the wealthy, as technology drives change. A record number of wealthy philanthropists gave more than 1 per cent of their wealth to charitable causes in the UK last year. According to The Sunday Times Giving List, £2.58bn was [...]
As June PMIs point to continuing recovery, has the Eurozone finally turned the corner? June 23, 2015 Anna Stupnytska is global economist at Fidelity Solutions. @AnnaStupnytska, says Yes The Eurozone recovery is becoming well-entrenched, with Flash Purchasing Managers’ Indices for June pointing to further acceleration in the second quarter. Labour market healing continues and inflation is out of deflationary territory. Crucially, this improvement has been broad-based across the Eurozone. Four main tailwinds [...]
I’m a male chief executive and I want pay transparency – so should you June 23, 2015 It’s time for business leaders to end the culture of secrecy over salaries and what men and women earn. Whether you’re the head of a FTSE 100 conglomerate or a small business entrepreneur, your people need to know that you support transparency and equality over pay. I’m fully prepared to put my own money where [...]
National Women in Engineering Day: Stereotypes are creating a huge skills gap in the UK’s engineering sector June 23, 2015 National Women in Engineering Day isn’t just a celebration. It’s a landmark opportunity to draw attention to a critical economic factor that can no longer be ignored: women need to fill an ever-growing engineering skills gap. Quite simply, the UK economy will not do well without engineers. Without skilled workers it is hard for [...]
Airport expansion is now too urgent for the government to delay further June 22, 2015 According to recent media reports, the decision to build a new runway could face further delay. It seems the government may not respond to the Airports Commission’s imminent report until the end of this year, or possibly early next year. This is slow: the Airports Commission it helped establish has already spent the best part [...]
The left is wrong: The welfare state didn’t make Scandinavia successful June 22, 2015 Bruce Springsteen may have been “Born in the USA”, but he says he’d prefer the US to be more like Sweden. With its generous welfare state, many hold up the Swedes, and other Scandinavian countries, as role models for what can be achieved by a large redistributive state. With high life expectancy and relative income [...]
Greece will only have a fighting chance of revival if it leaves the Eurozone June 22, 2015 There are, apparently, still hopes that some deal can be done with Greece this week so that the final €7.2bn tranche of the current €240bn bailout can be released. If this is the case then, presumably, talks will go ahead for a third bailout and thus the Greek saga struggles on. Sadly, however, all this [...]
Has the Greek government been its own worst enemy during debt negotiations? June 22, 2015 Dr Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Berenberg, says Yes Rarely has a new government done so much damage so fast. Without actually passing many laws, the left-right radicals in Athens have scared Greek savers and entrepreneurs so badly that about €60bn in capital has fled the country within six months, equal to one third of [...]
The EU is dead: The Grexit crisis has laid bare Europe’s inability to rescue itself June 21, 2015 Jumping the shark” is one of my favourite American idioms. It was first used in the context of a particularly notorious episode of the 1970s classic US television show Happy Days, which centred on the unlikely but enduring friendship between a young, square, 1950s good guy, Richie Cunningham, and his cool, but from-the-wrong-side-of-the-tracks ally Fonzie. [...]
A booming West End will be fatally undermined unless we pedestrianise Oxford Street June 21, 2015 Oxford Street needs to be pedestrianised. There is a growing consensus about this among traders, transport operators, and local councils. The question is when and how. The “when” is easiest to answer. The new east-west Crossrail line starts operating through Central London in four years’ time. It will generate a new surge of people coming [...]