Business and Economics

By Darragh Roche Sitting in a packed Starbucks across from the Brandenburg Gate a few years ago, a Berlin-based friend pointed out the former Soviet embassy across the street, once the largest in the world. Sipping a frothy cappuccino in a café where the staff spoke English, I didn’t realise we were in the former East Berlin. The old heart of the repressive communist state is now crowded with pricey shops, American coffee chains and oblivious tourists. Starbucks, the shibboleth of...

By Nathan Lee, TLE Correspondent  Charities could be irrelevant by 2030 if business leaders put global prosperity on a par with profit, according to eco-entrepreneur Arthur Kay. The 24-year-old founder of innovative green energy business bio-bean and recent Green Challenge and Guardian Sustainable Business Leader of the Year winner, will call on fellow entrepreneurs to spell out how their future business models will actively create a fair, clean, green and equal world at the UCL Institute of Global Prosperity (IGP) event, Countdown 2030,...

By James Clark The Thatcherite legacy has remained ingrained in the centre right consensus of mainstream political politics for decades. The Winter of Discontent hammered the final nail of stigma into the British Trade Union movement. Whilst a crisis of supply side inflationary pressure eat away at pay packets, strikes were the only reasonable means of maintaining a decent standard of living for the average public sector worker. Thatcher’s response in countering these external supply shocks was to obliterate workers pay,...

By Harold Stone Austerity comes from the Ancient Greek austērós meaning harshness, sourness or bitterness. It roughly translates as “to singe the tongue”. From this idea of discomfort, an austere person came to mean a stern person, someone who treats others harshly. One of the slaves in the Bible for example, says to his master “I feared thee, because thou art an austere man”. Around the time Christians started to denounce the world (“do not love the world nor the...

 By Nathan Lee, TLE Correspondent  British shoppers say they will be avoiding the high street this Black Friday after the events of 2014 which led to police involvement in several major retailers. The research shows ‘Black and Blue Friday’ is now competing with boozy ‘Mad Friday’ as emergency services are pushed to the limit. Indeed, a whopping 82 per cent of those polled say the mayhem of last year’s event has put them off shopping instore because they would feel...

By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor A City University report has revealed that the Chancellor could be forced to borrow billions of pounds more than predicted by 2020 if he continues with his huge spending cuts. The Chancellor's autumn statement will be announced this week and the University study claims the Treasury has drastically underestimated the impact of departmental and welfare cuts on the wider economy. The report singled out the cuts to public sector investment as a major factor in...

By Nathan Lee, TLE Correspondent  Ahead of the ONS latest report on the highest paid jobs in Britain new research has found 12.5 per cent of jobs in the UK pay over £50,000, but just 5 per cent of candidates are seeking premium salaries. Job site CV-Library looked at roles advertised between 1st November 2014 to 31st October 2015 and discovered that over 189,000 of the 1.5 million jobs offered a salary of over £50,000. Furthermore, data from the same...

By Nathan Lee, TLE Correspondent  The third public consultation for Crossrail 2 is under way with drop-in sessions on how the route will impact Londoners being held across the city. But what will the proposed line look like, when will it be completed and how do TfL envisage doing it? Where  The proposed route looks to benefit cities across the South East and stations in Surrey and Hertfordshire by providing more direct routes in to central London from connecting stations such as...

By Nathan Lee, TLE Correspondent  Hollywood star George Clooney arrived in Scotland today and visited a social enterprise sandwich shop that trains, employs and feeds local homeless people. Staff at Social Bite, which gives 100 per cent of its profits to charity, recruits a quarter of its staff from homeless backgrounds, and runs a ‘suspended’ service where customers can pre-pay food for homeless people to claim later, welcomed Mr Clooney to their Rose Street shop in Edinburgh city centre. Whilst in the...