SAVE THE LAST PENCE
By Valentina Magri The Bank of England (BoE) gave us both good and bad news during the presentation of the last inflation report in February. The good news: the UK will be one of the fastest-growing advanced economies, with a GDP growth equal to +2.6 per cent. The bad news: this growth relies too much on consumer spending. Indeed, the inflation report shows that consumption contribution to GDP have risen from 0.4 percentage points of the second quarter of 2013...
The big Twitter study
Why did you click through? We’ve set up a phony feature to plug on Twitter in order to decipher how people think and act on the internet. The results from the survey below will form part of an editorial called ‘Klout’, which will be published when the figures have been collated. Please vote and retweet if you’re interested in this social media experiment. Which Tweet would most likely make you click through? We asked a 12 year-old what they thought...
President Clinton: The Sequel
By Haridos Apostolides, US Correspondent Hillary Rodham Clinton will run for President of the United States in 2016 OK. It’s not confirmed yet, but it does seem fairly certain; Hillary Clinton will run for presidency in 2016. There won’t, of course, be an announcement for another twelve months or so as the focus for now will most likely be on the midterm elections in November as the Democrats and Republicans try to regain control of the House and Senate respectively. Already,...
The great London housing crisis
By Jack Peat, Editor of The London Economic The great London housing crisis is a potent example of how capitalist structures fail when left to their own devices. Mayor of London Boris Johnson believes we would be utterly nuts as a society if we "slammed the door" on wealthy foreigners buying property in the capital. Loosely translated, this means that London residents are competing with the top one per cent of wealth in the world in a market that is...
Environmental challenges of urbanisation
By Stephen Angus Peter Junor China’s urbanisation plan is designed to boost the economy by increasing domestic consumption and connecting more people to the global workplace. The government also hope to improve living standards for everyone, but urbanisation can have drastic and irreversible effects on the environment while also reshaping the cultural fabric of the country which has historically been very rural. The last couple of years have seen the urban population outnumber the rural population for the first time in...
A Nation once again?
By Tomás McGoldrick, Ireland Correspondent The recent Vision Critical poll of people in what could be known as ‘rest of the UK’ found that 62 per cent wanted Scotland to stay in the Union and 38 per cent are happy to see Scotland go it alone. It would have been interesting to see results from Northern Ireland separately as politicians and the public there have started to wake up to the possible ramifications of Scottish independence. Some unionists have called Alex Salmond...
As the violence ends, the guns are drawn
By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor As Viktor Yanukovych became the world’s most wanted man, the US declares Ukraine is “under new management.” But could this inflammatory language further damage relations with a wounded Russia? Ukraine's interim President Olexander Turchynov has warned of the dangers of separatism following the ousting of President Viktor Yanukovych. Many in Ukraine's Russian-speaking regions oppose his overthrow and the installation of a more European-leaning interim administration. Yanukovych, like recently unseated Egyptian leader, Mohamed Morsi, was democratically...
A new dawn in Italy
By Luca Foschi “Plain living and high thinking,” declared Italy’s incoming Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, quoting William Wordsworth during his speech at the Democratic Party’s (PD) national assembly on February the 13th. He entered the rooms of Via del Nazareno in Rome as Mayor of Florence and Secretary General of the government’s ruling party, a position he gained with a landslide victory in December’s primary elections. “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by”,...
Techonomics
By Adam Walker, Economics Correspondent The Digital-Savvy Generation Rises To Power Facebook has acquired mobile phone messaging app WhatsApp for a total of $19 billion, giving them a bigger corporate value than giants such as American Airlines, Ralph Lauren and Tiffany. Launched in 2009 the app was based on a £0.79 subscription model for all of its users. Following the explosive growth of smartphone ownership and the immense popularity of the application it became one of the most prominent pieces of software...