Business and Economics

By Steve Taggart David Cameron tops poll, but almost two thirds believe British politicians don’t know enough about technology  Twitter fan David Cameron is the UK’s most tech-savvy politician with Nigel Farage polling in a distant fifth place, according to new research released today by Crucial.com. However, the insights also show that almost two thirds (64%) of people do not believe that Britain’s top politicians boast sufficient knowledge of technology to help boost the economy. Last year, Boris Johnson vowed...

By Brett Scott  Money pervades our everyday economic interactions. But, despite its importance, it is also pervasively misunderstood. Here are three common monetary myths – frequently perpetuated by economists – that need challenging. Myth 1: Money emerges from barter Economists often tell a tale about how old communities first used barter to exchange goods and services. Bartering throws up tricky situations. Take as an example a farmer trying to exchange a cow for bread from a baker, a clumsy and...

By Darragh Roche The term 'job creator' has crept into the political lexicon on both sides of the Atlantic. It sounds harmless, but don't be fooled - it is the quiet vanguard of a political and economic nightmare. Calling Ayn Rand a novelist is generous, calling her a philosopher borders on the ludicrous. But her corpus of regressive ideas has ignited the hard right in the United States. The coming Republican presidential primaries will give deficit hawks and would-be economic...

New research has revealed it takes the average employee a massive eight years and four months before they’re seen as 'part of the furniture' at their place of work. The study found that even though 78 per cent of people believe being called a 'part of the furniture' at work is a good thing, it takes almost a decade on average to achieve it, with employees feeling at home at work when they’ve stuck at the same job for many years,...

Britain has often been criticised for looking to other countries for ideas and solutions instead of solving things for itself, and now it seems that Mayor Boris Johnson has taken some inspiration from Indonesia for a way to alleviate traffic problems in the city. Boris was taken on a bicycle tour of Jakarta by President Joko Widodo and was rather impressed with the car-free Sunday system that the city has implemented for the last 16 years. Although he admitted that...

By Dr Nigel Mellor Buddhist economics will be forever associated with the work of Ernst Friedrich (Fritz) Schumacher. He brought us the powerful ideas of ‘intermediate technology’ and ‘small is beautiful’. In promoting ‘limits to growth’ and ‘sustainable development’, he was far ahead of his time. Schumacher wanted to restore the dignity of work, within economies built around a ‘middle way’, with ‘appropriate scale’ production. These concepts helped build his enlightened Buddhist economics which is still very relevant today (the...

The annual economic outlook for 2015 has been released by Invesco, revealing that faster growth of the quantity of money is desperately needed to avoid deflation. Despite a more positive economic outlook in 2014 we’re still hearing warning signs about the state of the global economy from all directions. Figures from Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, have shown that the Eurozone experienced deflation of 0.2 per cent in December compared to the same month last year and...

A new study has revealed electricians are Britain’s most trustworthy tradespeople, with a survey of 2,000 Brits finding sparky's are trusted over all other tradespeople. The research examined modern perceptions of today’s tradespeople to see who we believe to be the most trustworthy, with window cleaners and plumbers also deemed to be honourable folk. But scaffolders, glaziers, and tilers still have a lot to do – featuring bottom of the list of trusted tradesmen. The research, which was commissioned by...

Jack Peat on TLE's story so far “While Jack Peat reports a far more balanced article concerning the failings of the Football League and not just Leeds bashing it doesn't cover up the inept report from one of his journalists which is why it had so many replies. If this is some sort of half-hearted attempt of an apology for the aforementioned report it doesn't come close.” – Steve Perception is a funny thing in publishing. When we were a one-man blog nobody really gave a toss about...