Explainer-in-brief: what difference would agency workers make in the rail strikes? June 20, 2022 The biggest rail strikes in thirty years kick off this week. The government has been unable to conduct successful negotiations with the rail union RMT and is now scrambling to look like it’s doing something. Last week, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps suggested agency workers might be brought in to replace rail staff during the strikes. [...]
The disarray of Johnson’s government exposes a disdain for Britain’s rules June 20, 2022 When Christopher Geidt joined the Royal Household in 2002, he could scarcely have imagined that he would, two decades later, be front-page news. Yet that is what happened last week: Lord Geidt’s resignation as independent adviser on ministers’ interests was the political story of the week, and its implications are still emerging. What does it [...]
Our labour market has been squeezed for the right skills and jobs for young people June 20, 2022 Right now, one of the most pressing concerns for City businesses is a shortage of workers with the right skills. According to research by London Councils, almost a quarter of all vacancies in the capital are due to a lack of applicants with the necessary talents. Meanwhile, the number of cases where employers have been [...]
Interest rate hikes are a hard lesson for investors who relied on central banks bailouts June 20, 2022 In May last year, I wrote in this newspaper about the risks of moral hazard and the pandemic, with a generation of investors who had developed a skewed sense of risk. After the unprecedented level of central bank intervention, many believed policymakers would always ride to their rescue, providing portfolio safety nets with cheap money [...]
Letters: A vital crypto winter June 20, 2022 [Re: Coinbase to cut staff by 18 per cent as it warns of crypto winter, June 14] Hailed by many cynics as the downfall of crypto, the recent crypto crash is symptomatic of the broader volatility of the crypto market and of the wider economy. Crypto exchanges have grown at a rapid rate over the [...]
Central banks face tough journey to ‘Goldilocks’ policy setting June 19, 2022 Goldilocks found the perfect bowl of porridge through trial and error. The US Federal Reserve, Bank of England and the rest of the central banking elite are following a similar rationale right now. They are grasping for that “just-right” policy setting which allows an economy to reach its full potential without knowing what that setting [...]
London Tech Week, Day Five: Into an Inclusive Metaverse June 17, 2022 As London Tech Week draws to a close, it’s amazing to look back at the progress the sector has made in the nine years since Tech London Advocates joined the very first edition as a founding partner. Across all events, more than 20,000 attendees heard from tech leaders at the cutting edge of the emerging [...]
Explainer-in-brief: A curious saga of An ethics adviser, partygate and… steel June 17, 2022 On Wednesday evening, Boris Johnson’s ethics adviser quit his post. Lord Geidt sent a forthright letter to the PM in which he complained he had been put in “an impossible and odious position”. The partygate saga clearly had its toll on Lord Geidt, who was grilled over the independence of his position. Yet the ethics [...]
Inside Britain’s food wars: exaggerated veggie claims risk a diet culture war June 17, 2022 Remember being told an apple a day keeps the doctor away? Not so simple, it turns out, as the government discovered with its new Food Strategy, with its plans to halve childhood obesity and make farming in the UK more resilient. The strategy follows an independent review by Henry Dimbleby, the co-founder of restaurant chain [...]
A decade on, the London Olympics were a lightning rod for urban regeneration June 17, 2022 The London Olympics helped a decade of regeneration in Stratford