Explainer-in-brief: The tumultuous history of the online safety bill July 15, 2022 The Online Safety Bill – drafted with the aim of making “Big Tech” accountable for the content published on their platforms – has been delayed in Parliament. It will be inherited by a new prime minister and culture secretary in the autumn. The bill’s history traces back to David Cameron’s premiership, when the idea of [...]
As legal salaries jump again, firms need to adapt to a changed workforce July 15, 2022 If you whisked the lawyers, accountants and consultants of five years ago to the present day, they would be pretty surprised by the way we do business. Unprecedented flexibility about working from home and an intense focus on retaining talent are standard across our industry, and our businesses are better for it. Look five years [...]
Rest (hopefully) in peace: tech safety laws would have spelt disaster for free speech July 15, 2022 The Online Safety Bill has been pushed until the autumn, which hopefully means it will finally be dead in the water.
As public money for net zero stalls, the US has charged ahead of British investors July 15, 2022 The next clean-tech boom – engineered carbon removal – is on the horizon. In the long run, it will be private investors at the front of this. And for our future economic growth, we should make sure they are British ones. For some time, carbon removal technologies – which range from methods such as direct [...]
Letters: Paying up and paying out July 15, 2022 [Re: Lawyers should stop telling clients to pay ransoms to hackers, UK watchdogs say] The issue of paying ransoms to hackers is not as cut and dry as it appears in your article. Many businesses retrieve their stolen data through data backups and therefore do not pay a penny to the attackers. This illustrates the [...]
Explainer-in-brief: Net Zero pledges are largely absent in Conservative race July 14, 2022 As the Conservative leadership contest unfolds, the pledge to keep on track with net zero seems to be lost. Green policies were a staple of Boris Johnson’s premiership, determined by a belief in green energy’s potential to create new jobs and economic growth. The contenders don’t all seem to agree. Suella Braverman and Kemi Badenoch [...]
The lack of space for this year’s grain is another hard blow to war-torn Ukraine July 14, 2022 As hot weather hits Europe, it’s time for those who are still able to farm in Ukraine to start this year’s harvest. Even amidst a renewed, brutal Russian offensive, farmers have to choose between going bankrupt or picking up this year’s crops despite the risks. Most choose the latter. Letting the crops rot under the [...]
The next government should learn there’s no British revival without our great capital July 14, 2022 Whilst Tory party candidates scrap about who is most committed to levelling up the regions, the latest data suggests that it’s London that will lead a British revival. Most Brits underestimate what a powerful magnet this metropolis is and wrongly consider London to be a typical capital city. The latest survey from Ten Lifestyle Group [...]
Police forces must undergo a serious change to attract the best and brightest out there July 14, 2022 On his first day in office, Boris Johnson stood on the steps of Downing Street and committed to recruiting an additional 20,000 police officers by 2023. The commitment was central to the Conservative Party’s manifesto at the 2019 election. What the government is attempting to achieve is no mean feat. As well as recruiting the [...]
Letters: Time for some regulation July 14, 2022 [Re: Fund managers call for FCA blockchain taskforce in plans for ‘Investment Fund 3.0’, July 7] The complete absence of regulation in the face of technological innovation is the worst of all worlds. The Investment Association’s report is right to call for the legislative and regulatory authorities to step up their efforts in determining how [...]