Is anyone surprised by the news that Royal Mail profits have fallen by 21 percent in the first half of this year? Before we start to dissect the scandal of RM recent history we have to remember that it is still a very profitable company and its shares are still...
Our blogs
The imminent policy shift we know is coming
Something is in the air. Change doesn't happen very often, but now it is hard to find anyone who doesn't subscribe to the following premises: 1. The UK is too centralised and power needs to be handed back to cities. 2. The mainstream economy appears to be devoted to...
The true story of the sandwich makers
Here’s a sandwich story with a very messy filling… On Monday The Daily Mail, which as we know can't see a bacon buttie without spotting the politics within, devoted its front page to the fact that no one in the UK wanted to make sandwiches any more. Greencore ...
Help! Another Banking Reform!
Its hard to work up much enthusiasm for the latest banking reform announcement- and knowing that the banks are already warning of the usual huge costs, worse outcomes, mayhem if it goes ahead, does not mean that we should automatically be on the opposite side to them...
Action at the Cinema
This is today's edited post- I wrote a much more anodyne version yesterday, before I read the detail of the Ritzy Cinema workers battle with their owners, mega cinema chain Cineworld..... The other night I went to our local Odeon to see the excellent A Much Wanted...
We all now rely so much on debt
The coalition is once again struggling to keep down the size of the deficit and is missing their targets for this year. It is down, of course, from the worrying levels of 2010. But my New Economics Foundation colleague James Meadway has written a very interesting blog...
Pattern for the people
We’re collecting patterns. It is our way of getting to know our new home in West Sussex. There’s the great flyover at Shoreham that shoots over the Adur Valley, the gothic turrets of Lancing College across the river and the endless variety of flint walls. My...
Redefining ultra-micro economics
New Weather is excited to be launching this new project in partnership with Friends Provident Foundation which we hope will help heal the rift between the emerging ultra-local economic sector and mainstream economic policy makers. The underlying problem is...
Towards the next devolution of power
What if Andrew Adonis and George Osborne are right? What if the key question for re-balancing the economy (not a phrase Adonis used) was to force through a major new devolution of economic power to the city regions? What if Michael Heseltine’s was right in his 2012...
The next devolution is economic
We have been working with the New Banking group, and the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust Ltd, to develop practical policy detail about how to develop a more effective banking system in the UK - one that works for SMEs and local economies. The present banking system is...

