Author Archives: Rick

There’s a lot of ‘End of an Era’, Turning Point’ and ‘Watershed Moment’ stuff around at the moment. The decision by Mc Donald’s to pull out of Russia after thirty years is another significant event. The three decades since the collapse of … Continue reading →

How is the government’s levelling up agenda going to work when so many forces are pushing in the opposite direction? The economic developments over the next year or so look set to hit hardest the parts of the country the … Continue reading →

The Resolution Foundation launched its Economy 2030 Inquiry last week. The 2020s, it says, will be a decisive decade for the UK in a way that no other decade has been since the 1980s. It listed five ‘seismic’ changes that will hit … Continue reading →

The Labour Party is in danger of losing its nerve again. Ten years ago, the story that Labour spent all the money and caused the country’s massive debt was allowed to go unchallenged. The Labour Party, paralysed by the shock … Continue reading →

Is the corporate zeitgeist changing? After 30 years of shareholder primacy and focus on shareholder value, the language seems to have shifted. In what may be a sign of the times, the FT has started a Moral Money Forum, focusing … Continue reading →

We knew the latter half of 2020 would see arguments about Brexit, lockdown restrictions, masks and the US election. What we didn’t foresee was that, in many places, the row of the summer and autumn would be about Low Traffic … Continue reading →

The latest forecast for the UK economy from the Office for Budget Responsibility shows an almost-but-not-quite recovery. It starts off v-shaped with a rapid bounceback, then becomes tick-shaped as the recovery slows. The tick has a long tail and, over … Continue reading →

“It’s begun,” said Resolution Foundation chief executive Torsten Bell, as the increase in unemployment fed through into the labour market statistics for the first time. He also reminded employers that there were 45 days to go until the end of … Continue reading →