It pays to riot
Last week Britain's "top GP" launched a scathing attack on widespread "reckless behaviour towards food, alcohol and cigarettes", which he claims is causing growing levels of disease and early death. In this dramatic intervention in the public health debate, Professor Steve Field criticises parents, mothers-to-be, the very overweight, smokers and drinkers (and pretty much everyone other than Zen Buddhists) for damaging their own health, or their children's, through irresponsible actions. "You need to face facts and take responsibility. Support is out there and it could save your life - and save the NHS a fortune."
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Holy crow…
A new report published this week identified that Britons spend about 45% of their waking hours absorbing media from technology ranging from laptop computers and mobile phones to television and radio. Of that time we spend 25% of the day on the internet and more specifically on social networking sites - if you see someone using the internet on their phone, there is apparently a 45% chance that they are on Facebook.
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On or off balance sheet?
You can’t handle the truth…
Tony Benn, the left wing Labour MP, wrote a book recently called Letters to my Grandchildren: Thoughts on the Future. In one of the letters he writes: "When your parents were your age, and the United States and Soviet Union were racing to land on the moon, the Russians put down a little robotic machine onto the lunar surface. One of my constituents in Bristol, where I was then the MP, wrote to me:
Dear Tony,
I see the Russians have put a space vehicle on the moon. Is there any chance of a better bus service in Bristol?"
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The Not-So Nuclear Deterrent
Under the old driving regulations in Ireland there was no 'points' system for speeding related offences - it was a purely financial based fines system. In old money, pre-Euro, it was around £30 punts, and latterly 50 euros for anything but obscene speeding offences. No wonder Ireland has had one of the worst records in Europe for driving accidents (although that record has improved in recent years along with the introduction of a points system).
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The Stress Test
One of the ironies of the recent oil spill debacle in the Gulf of Mexico is that the oil and gas industry is most often credited with devising and putting to use so-called scenario planning. This management tool is meant to anticipate major changes in the environment – from disaster to depression, to blown pipes in deepwater rigs – and to enable organizations to create plans for immediate strategic response. //Read More
The Fudge Factor
Over the past couple of years many millions of words have been written by a whole host of different commentators on the whys and wherefores of the global economic crisis. Some of those commentators are highly respected, some are less so, some are old and experienced and some less so. With the benefit of 20-20 hindsight, however, much of this analysis isn't particularly revelationary - by and large it points to the same basic contributory factors: Global trade imbalances, excessively loose monetary policy, poorly regulated financial institutions, undercapitalised banks, and misaligned incentives for those running our financial institutions. All undoubtedly played their part.
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Beyond Austerity
On Wednesday morning last week the £1 sterling in my pocket could buy a full $1.47 worth of George Washington's on the foreign exchange markets. On Wednesday afternoon the UK's Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, stood up in the House of Commons to present his emergency budget, which outlined a virtually unprecedented set of cuts in public sector spending and tax rises which will affect "every man, woman and child" in the whole of the UK. //Read More
The Great Global Competition
I recently read a book called the The Post American World - which opened with the line: "This is not a book about the decline of America, but rather about the rise of everyone else." Fareed Zakaria, the book's author, describes a world in which the US will no longer dominate the global economy, orchestrate geopolitics, or "overwhelm" cultures.
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It’s great to be an economist…
The prize for the most cheerful headline of the week, goes to the Daily Telegraph for its most read finance article: "Euro 'will be dead in five years'". This was the most striking conclusion of a survey carried out by the paper of 25 London based economists covering a variety of topics. //Read More
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A few thoughts on the world for a Monday morning //Read More |
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