Along with worrying about the price of fags and booze, obviously one major concern for all of us on budget day last week was how to protect the UK’s long-term competitiveness. And who better to convey that concern than the management consultant ‘industry’?
I went on a course this week – ‘Effective copywriting’ – all part of my plan to transform myself from grubby B2B sub to highly-paid marketing professional. It was a pretty good course and I think I may have picked up some useful tricks about lateral thinking. But, the tutor would insist that we should avoid using the same word twice. He called this ‘elegant variation’. › Continue reading
Britons are – according to the pollsters this week – more pessimistic about their country’s economy than the people of other ‘leading’ nations. And Stephen Roach, Chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, has warned of:
“a further destabilising outbreak of asset bubbles”.
Of course I don’t understand these words, but I suspect it means that we’re all going to lose our jobs and homes. That is everyone except my contact in the Employment Service who, in cheerful mood, has sent me a sample of the ‘Jobcentre Plus Lean’ newsletter. › Continue reading
It was only about a week ago that the news was full of foreboding, doom, depression, debate on quantitative easing and pictures of Gordon Brown, frowning like a constipated puppy next to headlines about deficit forecasts. But now we have all been saved (again) apparently – or have we? Could it just be that very few of us – economists included – really understand any of the words being used to describe the present ‘global economic crisis’? › Continue reading