Monthly Archives: March 2017

Sometimes the stream of  Brexit hysteria in the Daily Express yields the odd interesting nugget. Last week the paper reported that the European Commission wants to “torpedo” the Brexit negotiations by putting “a legal lock on discussions about the UK’s access to … Continue reading →

If people voted Leave to stick it to the metropolitan elite they might be disappointed. A piece of research published in Regional Studies journal this month found that London is a lot less dependent on EU trade than most other parts of the … Continue reading →

This week’s special report focuses on the extraordinary situation in Bongobongoland. Once considered one of the world’s most stable and well-governed states, its rapid slide into reactionary autocracy and the increasingly erratic behaviour of its rulers has shocked the world. The … Continue reading →

A quick plug for the CIPD’s Future of Work event later this month. The context is the CIPD’s Profession for the Future initiative, part of which is the need for HR professionals to be more aware of the megatrends shaping … Continue reading →

The self-employment NI increase grabbed most of the headlines last week, so the general state of the economy didn’t get much of a look in. It was very similar this time last year when all the headlines were about the … Continue reading →

Are lots of people going self-employed to avoid tax? That suggestion comes through in the reporting of the widely expected increase in national insurance for the self-employed. The Independent, for example: ‘dramatic increase’ in number of people registering as self-employed to cut tax … Continue reading →

I was out of the country when the Office for Budget Responsibility published its Fiscal Sustainability Report, so I have a vaguely plausible excuse for missing it. That said, it sounds like it didn’t attract much comment. As you might expect, the … Continue reading →

Before I learnt to read I made sense of the world by conjuring up images in my mind, particularly for abstract concepts. I could count before I could read and had an image for each number. Many of them were … Continue reading →

Singapore is like a porn star for the free-market right. They project all sorts of lurid fantasies onto it and get very excited. Every so often, an article appears breathlessly proclaiming the virtues of the island state and its rapid GDP … Continue reading →