In September Germany went to the polls to elect a new government – and a successor to Angela Merkel, who had decided not to seek a fifth term as Chancellor. The result was inconclusive. The Social Democrats (SPD) topped the poll with 25.7% of the vote and a provisional 206 seats in the Reichstag, with …
There have been a thousand-and-one articles written since the pandemic on people’s changing attitude to work. Millennials and the generations that follow them – so we are told – want different things from work. Flexibility, the option of working from home and, above all, to work for a company that shares their values: that values …
As the UK economy has gradually recovered from the effects of the pandemic there has been the usual mixture of good and bad news. The glass could be half full, with the UK growing at the fastest rate of G20 countries, or half-empty, with worker shortages threatening to derail the recovery, both being headlines within …
At the end of August the CEO of Australian airline Qantas said that the pandemic had cost “billions” in lost revenue. No shock there – but on the same day another airline did come out with a surprising announcement. America’s third-largest airline, Delta, said that it would impose a $200 (£145) monthly surcharge on employees …
Last month Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and boss of carmaker Tesla, announced that his firm had bought $1.5bn (£1.1bn) of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin and expects to start accepting it as payment in the future. The announcement caused the price of Bitcoin to jump to $44,220 (£32,072) – a rise of 17% and a record …
The newspapers are constantly full of stories about the ‘richest men in the world.’ We are all familiar with some of the historical names on the list such as John D Rockefeller and Henry Ford, and today the title is being disputed by Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, depending on the respective share prices of …
Whichever side you were on in the Brexit debate there was little doubt about one of the central arguments: leaving the EU would free the UK to do its own trade deals with countries and trading organisations around the world. At the end of January the BBC reported that the UK was applying to join …
Back in 2018 Mike Ashley, owner of Sports Direct and other high street brands, famously declared that ‘the British high street will be dead by 2030.’ The targets of his anger were MPs in general and the then-Chancellor Philip Hammond in particular. Any more taxes on the high street, Ashley argued, and it would collapse …
In December 2019, the Conservatives won an 80 seat majority in the General Election and three months later, new Chancellor Rishi Sunak presented his first Budget. But by then there was a large cloud on the horizon – the outbreak of Covid-19. The Chancellor used his Budget speech in March to present a raft of …
Introduction Today (23rd September) marks exactly six months since the UK went into lockdown. On Monday, 23rd March we started social distancing, millions of people were furloughed and, for millions more, working from home became the ‘new normal’. Six months on and the UK is gradually getting back to work. Or is it? We started …
