The Great Debate UK
Good eco-sense is good business sense too
- Juliet Davenport is founder and CEO of Good Energy, a renewable electricity supplier. She is unique in being the only female founder in the UK of an energy supply business, traditionally a male-dominated sector. The opinions expressed are her own. Reuters will host a “follow-the-sun” live blog on Monday, March 8, 2010, International Women’s Day. Please tune in. -
Regardless of their views on climate change and man’s contribution to it, most business leaders agree on one point – as fossil fuels get scarcer and the UK decarbonises our economy, our energy prices will continue to rise.
The UK’s recent cold snap gave us a foretaste of what we could be in for – with some businesses having their gas supplies cut to relieve pressure on pipelines – although it appears that the widely reported claim that the UK had just eight days’ gas supply left was political bluster and scaremongering.
The Department of Business, Energy and Regulatory Reform’s 2008 Energy Markets Outlook projects that the UK could rely on imports for 80 percent of its gas needs by 2020, with huge implications for cost and energy security – and that income pouring out of the country. And the International Energy Association forecasts serious energy “crunches” occurring within the next 10 years.
from MacroScope:
Britain heading for rude awakening?
There is a divisive election ahead for Britain, the threat of a ratings downgrade on its sovereign debt and a deficit that has ballooned into the largest by percentage of any major economy. UK stocks, bonds and sterling, however, are trundling along as if all were well. What gives?
For a fuller discussion on the issue click here, but the gist is that all three asset classes are being support by factors that may be masking the danger of a broad reversal. UK equities have been driven higher by the improving global economy, bonds held up by the Bank of England's huge buying programme and sterling by valuation and the distress of others.
from Breakingviews:
Brown’s financial tax call falls flat
Brown's bid to depict himself as the saviour of the world economy and champion of Joe Taxpayer against Big Finance fell flat at the weekend.
So keen is the British prime minister to airbrush out his decade as a "light touch" finance minister that he embraced the heretical idea of a levy on financial transactions as one way to make banks pay for future bail-outs -- the so-called Tobin tax.
from UK News:
Drawing the line against the Taliban
Fight them there or fight them here?
Former Foreign Office minister Kim Howells poses the question in the Guardian in a piece made grimly relevant by Wednesday's shooting dead of five British soldiers by an Afghan policeman.
Howells says troops should be brought back from Afghanistan and that the billions of pounds saved should be used to beef up homeland security in Britain -- drawing the front line against al Qaeda around the UK rather than thousands of miles away in Helmand province.
Will politicians come clean on tax hikes?
As political parties step up their campaigning ahead of a general election due by June 2010, voters need to know exactly how politicians plan to tackle a projected deficit of 175 billion pounds, says Stephen Herring, senior tax partner at accountancy firm BDO LLP.
In a report titled “Time to Break the Silence” BDO suggests there will not only be cuts in public spending, but substantial business tax increases.
from FaithWorld:
Will Queen Elizabeth give the pope a warm welcome next year?
One can guess what Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams will say to Pope Benedict when the spiritual head of the Anglican Communion travels to the Vatican later this year. The more interesting question might be what Queen Elizabeth is likely to say when she hosts the pope next year.
(Photo: Queen Elizabeth, 13 June 2009/Luke MacGregor)
The timing of the trips couldn't be more intriguing, especially the second one. The pope is due to visit Britain in September 2010 and is expected to preside there over the beatification of the late Cardinal John Henry Newman, a famous 19th-century convert from Anglicanism to Catholicism.
You never know when rates will rise
-David Kuo, Director at the financial website The Motley Fool. The opinions expressed are his own.-
Go on. Admit it. You didn’t see it coming, did you? You never thought a member of the G20 nations would dare to break ranks and raise interest rates this soon.
from Matt Falloon:
Labour lays down policy gauntlet
The Conservatives might be wishing they could have held their party conference before Labour.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown's address to his party conference in Brighton on Tuesday has thrown down a flood of new ideas, policies and initiatives from faster cancer diagnosis to choosing how Britain votes in what read more like an mini-election manifesto than a speech.
Brown played to his strengths (policy) and avoided trying to overcome his well-known weaknesses (not much of a political entertainer) in public. Trying to be someone else could have been a disaster for a man way behind in the polls to the Conservatives.
Whether it will be enough to make any difference to the polls remains to be seen -- Labour needs a miracle there after all.
But, for now, going for the policy jugular seems to have done the trick -- giving his browbeaten party something to get excited about and hitting the Conservatives where it hurts.
David Cameron's Conservatives have been accused of not giving enough detail on how they would govern the country if the polls are correct and they are to win power next year.
They will have to start showing their hand soon if they are going to convince voters that they have the ideas to run the country and aren't just a vote for change for the sake of it.
from Commentaries:
“Tobin tax” gaining ground in Europe
No longer just a hopeless cause for anti-capitalist activists, the idea of a global tax on financial transactions is gaining ground in Europe.
European Union leaders could not agree to put it on the agenda of this week's G20 summit on reforming the financial system in Pittsburgh, but the leaders of France, Germany and the European Commission endorsed the concept.
More strikingly, the head of Britain's Financial Services Authority, which regulates the world's second biggest banking centre, said last month that such a levy could help shrink a swollen financial sector.
from UK News:
Can Britain still afford nuclear weapons ?
As the public spending axe starts swinging, attention inevitably turns northwards to the chilly waters of the Clyde where Britain's nuclear deterrent is based.
The four Vanguard class submarines which make up what is left of the UK deterrent come to the end of their lives around 2019 and their Trident missiles will need updating in the 2020s.
