UK national rail strike: Disruption could ruin bank holiday Monday, cause train travel chaos and cost Britain £600m May 18, 2015 Yesterday’s peace talks continue into today in a bid to avert a strike that could cost Britain £600m. In terms of timing, next week’s proposed national rail strike, the first in 21 years, could hardly be worse. Starting on Bank Holiday Monday, the planned day-long industrial action by 25,000 workers would cut short [...]
The Vote is a funny, touching love letter to the British democratic system May 7, 2015 Donmar Warehouse | ★★★☆☆ ”I only just wrote some of this… I hope it works out.” These aren’t the words you expect to hear from a playwright seconds before his latest work is performed, but The Vote is no ordinary play. It was broadcast in real-time on More4 last night as the final [...]
China is not in trouble: Its economic potential is only just being realised April 16, 2015 The question of whether China will experience a hard or soft slowdown from the towering growth figures it has become accustomed to crashed back into the news this week. The latest official figures showed that GDP grew at its slowest pace for six years in the first quarter of 2015, at an annualised rate of [...]
Facebook sued: Data protection trial opens in Vienna as 25,000 users seek damages for privacy violation April 9, 2015 A Vienna court yesterday started hearing a class action lawsuit against Facebook over the social media giant’s alleged violations of European privacy laws. However, the first, four-hour, session was bogged down by Facebook’s lawyers, who presented a long list of procedural objections to the court. The suit has been brought by law student Max Schrems, [...]
The housing crisis could extinguish London’s growth: No party has a solution April 9, 2015 For the best part of 30 years, London’s renaissance has seemed unstoppable. The 1980s “big bang” created a tidal wave of regeneration which swept over the city, reinvigorating areas of decline and nurturing a globally competitive super region. While an exodus of businesses and investment once appeared inevitable, London is now a hive of startup [...]
Sport Comment: Future looks uncertain in Wild West of football agents April 9, 2015 IT WAS an astonishing Easter weekend of football, full of action and mouth-watering goals of the highest class. But after being persuaded by someone other than Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers to spill his guts to the BBC, young forward Raheem Sterling was not one of those heroes. I am sure he will reflect on that [...]
HP’s claims against Autonomy management and Mike Lynch just made us even more confused: Here’s who’s suing who April 1, 2015 After years of HP and the former management of Autonomy merrily hurling various threats at one another, yesterday HP finally made the first move, filing a lawsuit in the High Court alleging "fraudulent activity" by former Autonomy executives Mike Lynch and Sushovan Hussain. The move came after nearly three years of to-ing and fro-ing between [...]
Turn failing council estates into city villages to provide the homes Londoners need March 23, 2015 There is no single solution to London’s housing crisis. But a key element is the systematic regeneration of the huge tracts of land owned by the capital’s 32 local authorities, much of it occupied by council estates in desperate need of renewal. Hundreds of new “city villages” should be created, improving the lot of existing [...]
Budget 2015: Here are George Osborne’s best quotes plus his Budget speech in full March 18, 2015 George Osborne's final Budget during this parliament had few surprises but plenty of great quips, including – to the dismay of bookies everywhere – a quip about Ed Miliband's now-infamous second kitchen. Here's a selection of our favourites from today's big speech. (Source: Getty/City A.M.) (Source: Getty/City A.M) (Source: Getty/City A.M.) [...]
Green Belt shouldn’t be sacred: It can help solve London’s housing crisis February 25, 2015 There’s a good chance that, when you picture the Green Belt, it’s scenes of parkland, forests, and wetlands, thronging with animal and birdlife, that come to mind. So here is a question for you: how much of London’s Green Belt do you think is actually made up of environmentally-protected land, parks and public access land? [...]