Published on
1 February 2012
The recent debate over the bonus of the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) Chief Executive, Stephen Hester, has reached its all-but-inevitable conclusion. He has decided it would be inappropriate in the present climate to accept it. Two arguments were made against his receiving a bonus. Firstly, it was argued that in a bank effectively owned […]
Published on
7 December 2011
Posted in Ethics in Business, Human Rights, Social Commentary, World Affairs
Both the newspapers and the televised media constantly remind us of our current economic difficulties. The revenues and profit-margins of firms large and small are shrinking. Many shops and factories are reducing workforces, and some are closing-down altogether with larger-scale job losses. It is therefore refreshing to read that workers at the Caparo Merchant Bar […]
Published on
30 November 2011
Posted in Built Environment, Ethics in Business, Human Life, Social Commentary
Across from where the writer is sitting there is a rather forlorn and neglected house of considerable size. In its heyday it must have been the home of a prosperous upper-middle-class family. For a number of years now it has been allowed to crumble and deteriorate. It has of late hosted a seemingly variable number […]
Published on
31 October 2011
From a Guest Blogger: And so we enter another week of the ‘OccupyLSX’ protest outside St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. Once again the protest is in the headlines as not only Dr. Giles Fraser but also the Dean Graeme Knowles have resigned their posts. Meanwhile ‘evil’ capitalists are still beavering away just as ‘feckless’ protestors […]
Published on
14 October 2011
From a Guest Blogger: The garden is mourning, the rain sinks coolly into the flowers. Summer shudders as it meets its end. Herman Hesse Many have mourned the passing of Steve Jobs, in testament to a legacy of ingenuity rarely equalled in recent years. Even those with only half an eye on the media and […]
Published on
21 September 2011
The Government is currently undertaking a consultation about the National Policy Framework for house-building. The aim is to simplify the policies binding local councils and house-builders. The responses of groups such as the National Trust, Woodland Trust and Campaign for the Protection of Rural England have – predictably – been negative. The National Trust is […]
Published on
16 September 2011
Posted in Ethics in Business, Europe, World Affairs
From a guest blogger: Since its inception one of the principle reasons regularly served up for ever more integration in the European Union (as now is) has been, in the wake of two World Wars, to prevent armed conflict by making war ever more unattractive and impossible to conceive. As integration progressed, it was decided […]
Published on
8 March 2011
Posted in Ethics in Business, Europe, Human Rights, Legal Affairs, Public Policy, Social Commentary
From a guest blogger: If I were to describe a friend as possessed of ‘discriminating taste’ many would think I had proffered a compliment. Images of a man who knows his Virgil from his Wagner come to mind, not to mention the knowledge that ‘V’ and ‘W’ in those names should be pronounced in the […]