Credit agencies yet to be called to account for part in 2008 crash
IT'S HARD TO OVERSTATE the impact of the great financial crash of 2008: around 40% of the world’s apparent wealth disappeared practically...
Why I'm 'un-friending' my 'Friend for Life'
OH DEAR. I find I have to 'un-friend' my 'Friend for Life'. It does seem quaint that any bank these days could get away with such a...
Concentration of wealth leaves many UK regions lagging behind
EUROSTAT, THE STATISTICAL OFFICE of the EU has recently published their annual report on the relative wealth of the various sub-regions...
Innovation needs more long-term support in the wider economy
THE ‘SCIENCE LOBBY’ is on the offensive. Sir Paul Nurse, the President of the Royal Society, speaking on behalf of the four major UK...
English political agenda may propel Scots towards independence
AS WE SQUARE UP for Scotland’s independence vote 18 months from now, the dynamic of the contest is beginning to shape up, and it doesn’t...
Scotland doesn't have a monopoly on infrastructure incompetance
ON A RECENT trip to Berlin I was somewhat taken aback by the relative shabbiness of the city’s Schönefeld airport, which didn't seem to...
How would an independent Scotland fund its research?
NOW THAT we have fixed both the date and the question for the referendum on Scottish independence maybe we can expect our politicians to...
Strengths and weaknesses in Scots attitude to entrepreneurship
THE LATEST ‘Global Entrepreneurship Monitor’ (GEM) report has just been published and as usual it makes interesting reading. GEM is a...
When it comes to national trade figures should we mind the gap?
YOU KNOW these “Whatever happened to…” columns that appear in newspapers and magazines now and then. They are usually commissioned...
Economic ‘level playing field’ undermined by inequality
THOMAS FRIEDMAN STATED ‘The World is Flat’ in his bestselling book of the same name on the effects of globalisation which was first...
Lessons should be learned from Finnish approach to education
WHEN UK EDUCATION MINISTER Michael Gove appeared on the BBC’s The Andrew Marr Show a few weeks ago, he remarked that every guest on the...
The evolution of espionage and hacking
A FEW WEEKS AGO I visited the global control room of a company called Akamai in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The scene could have come...
Scotland risks irrelevance after independence
A RECENT VISIT TO New Zealand gave the opportunity to observe how a small independent country exists in the modern global economy – much...
Is Google getting too nosey for its own good?
ONE OF THE MIRACLES of modern technology is undoubtedly Google, without which we might never be able to find anything on the internet....
Telecoms old guard need to show their mettle
WAY BACK IN 1953, a Canadian businessman called Roy Thomson rescued the then troubled Scotsman newspaper group by buying a majority share...
EIS shortcomings stymie creation of larger businesses
IN A WORLD in which economic growth has largely stalled, Governments are keen on anything which can encourage new companies to be set up....
Is the corporation tax break gamble one worth taking?
WHEN I WAS on the board of Scottish Enterprise (SE) we received regular updates on the amount of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) which...
Scots miss out on exclusive ‘Festival of Ideas’
A NEW EVENT has joined the ranks of Edinburgh’s summer festivals. It is probably the most intelligent, exclusive, and international of...