Do these five charts explain the productivity puzzle? May 4, 2016 What do the UK’s jobs boom, the rise of self-employment, the plethora of start-ups, short-term investors, meetings, access to finance, employee wellbeing, the skills shortages, too much government and not enough government have in common? They’ve all been blamed for the UK’s productivity crisis. “Productivity” – a slightly woolly measure which basically divides total economic output by [...]
These are the MPs Mark Carney will be up against at the Treasury Select Committee May 24, 2016 Nobody enjoys select committee hearings. Mark Carney, however, might be the exception to that rule. For a man who wears a pained expression every time he is probed on something Brexit-related, the governor of the Bank of England has really been stepping up the warnings of late. And it's set to make for a tasty showdown at [...]
Blockchain: The president of the San Francisco Fed tells City A.M. why he’s excited about the distributed ledger technology April 12, 2016 RSCoin is the bitcoin alternative the Bank of England proposed to launch last month. Having its own digital currency would give the central bank a faster payments system, and more of an idea of what’s happening when and where within that system. Speaking to the president of the San Francisco Fed, John C Williams, at [...]
Discover Pompeii and the Gulf of Naples, a luxury destination in the shadow of Vesuvius June 22, 2016 So this huge cloud of scalding steam, which reached temperatures of around 600 degrees centigrade and contained toxic gases, caused people’s brains to basically boil and explode through their skulls, after which their skin began to melt off,” says historian Dr Francesca Del Vecchio to her frankly horrified audience, who are hanging on her every [...]
Feeling awkward? Here are 19 icebreakers to make a success of any networking event August 11, 2016 If your go-to conversation topics revolve around work and weather, then you probably don't enjoy going to networking events. But talking to new people doesn't have to be such a drag. There are ways to get the conversation going without resorting to irritating clichés. Check out these 19 icebreakers that will help ease you into [...]
Why is Britain becoming less productive? Economists blame everyone from government to investors to statisticians April 7, 2016 The UK’s productivity has been trundling along at a less than spectacular pace for a number of years. This morning, figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) revealed it actually fell 1.2 per cent in the final quarter of 2015, raising concerns about the general state of the UK economy. But what is productivity, why [...]
The Harcourt restaurant review: Reindeer and meatballs are reimagined as pub grub in Marylebone April 12, 2016 There are enough fancy ways to dine in London to fill your fancy pants several times over. You have 12-course tasting menus and sprawling art deco palaces and molecular gastronomy and precise fine dining and sharing concepts and foraged ingredients and organic gluten-free superfoods and authentic indigenous cuisines from previously undiscovered nations. But sometimes you [...]
How are the alternative finance industry and the $1.6 trillion wealth management market approaching each other? July 14, 2016 If you use an independent financial adviser or wealth manager, they’ve probably never mentioned P2P lending. This might seem strange: there’s been a lot of talk of how the peer-to-peer industry is “moving mainstream”, and volumes reflect that. In 2015, the online alternative finance industry in the UK grew to £3.2bn – an 84 per [...]
London Marathon 2016: What time it starts, where to watch, what the weather forecast is and the best pubs along the route April 18, 2016 Carb-loading, hamstring-stretching and thanking your lucky stars that you can actually have a lie in from next weekend onwards? Welcome to the London Marathon…. This weekend the capital will be over-taken by more than 35,000 runners (and more than a few walkers) looking to finish the 26.2m course. If you haven’t been sleeping, eating and [...]
I spent the entire day on the sofa using only my smartphone to feed, clean, entertain, wash and supply me. Here is my story. April 7, 2016 There’s never been a better time to have an aversion to effort. Fuelled by a heady mix of collective laziness and a perceived lack of free time, a new breed of smartphone app has rocketed to popularity: the convenience app; the concierge app; the can’t be bothered doing it myself app. All of them developed [...]