Organisations advance by asking ‘what went wrong’ rather than ‘who is to blame?’
Things go wrong in organisations. Doctors make mistakes, traders take foolish risks. Drugs are marketed that have adverse s...
Lower business rates would benefit property owners not retailers
Business rates, which raise about £27 bn (4% of total UK tax revenue) may be the least conspicuous of major taxes.
But recently they...
Beware ‘mathiness’: the use of algebra and data to reinforce ideological preconceptions
The American economist Paul Romer has recently written of ‘mathiness’, by analogy with ’truthiness’, a term coined by American talkshow...
Let’s challenge our fixation on the principle of one share, one vote
What did the late Sir Hugh Wontner, Lord Mayor of London and Clerk of the Royal Kitchens, have in common with Larry Page and Sergey Bri...
The move towards a cashless society is bad news for criminal activity
Last week I left home without my wallet. I realised that it didn’t really matter. I could even manage without a plastic car...
The rich and powerful obstruct criticism of their actions through ‘Maxwellisation’
Sir John Chilcot began his Inquiry into the events around the Iraq War in 2009. In his latest explanation of continued delay he explain...
Limited liability led to limited care for other people’s money
In 1776, Adam Smith warned of the dangers of limited liability. Company directors were “the managers of other people’s money”. They cou...
Politico
Modern societies need finance. The evidence for this is wide-ranging and conclusive, and the relationship is clear and causal. The fi...
We were better served by old-fashioned relationship-focused bank managers
I was a schoolboy in Edinburgh in the 1960s. The head office of the Bank of Scotland was an imposing building on the Mound, the street ...
Other People’s Money
What do the people who occupy the skyscrapers of the City of London and Canary Wharf actually do?’...