Quantcast
Channel: Paul Sellers – ToUChstone blog
Browsing all 125 articles
Browse latest View live

For whom the road tolls?

Hidden away in the budget report is a suggestion that the Government might look at  ”a feasibility study into new ownership and financing models for the national road network, learning lessons from the...

View Article



House prices continue to fall – but strong growth in London

According to the latest  figures published today by the Land Registry for England and Wales *, house prices across the UK continued to decline in February, down 0.6 per cent on a year earlier, with an...

View Article

Alternatives to redundancy summit 26 April

As with previous recessions, far too many employees are still being made redundant. The latest ONS figures record 612,000 redundancies in the last 12 month period – up 30,000 on the previous year’s...

View Article

Big business still provides most employee jobs

I’ve heard it said twice in the last couple of weeks that small businesses provide most of the jobs in the UK. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this is not actually born out by the figures. Rumours of the...

View Article

May Day 2012

The coming May Day bank holiday will be the 34th since it was introduced way back in in 1978. In those far-off days of Government incomes policies, the TUC had a series of meetings with the Government...

View Article


Bosses should do the right thing for the Diamond Jubilee

With just days to go until the Diamond Jubilee , some companies are rethinking their decision to treat this one-off bank holiday as a normal day. Most notably, major retail employer Marks and Spencers...

View Article

England match sparks sensible employer response in Staffordshire

News just in from Staffordshire shows employers letting staff change their working hours to watch the England game. Others have brought in TV screens so that employees can watch the match. This is...

View Article

“Message to the TUC: the minimum wage causes youth unemployment”

“Message to the TUC: the minimum wage causes youth unemployment”  says Tim Worstall, senior fellow at the right-wing Adam Smith Institute in his Daily Telegraph blog today.  Fortunately, the evidence...

View Article


Managers working too many hours means we all suffer

Bad work cultures are weakening British firms and adding to economic decline say bosses in new survey by the Chartered Management Institute. In particular, the amount of unpaid overtime has increased...

View Article


Policy Exchange on “expensive social housing”– reasons to be miserable.

The Policy Exchange report “Ending Expensive Social Tenancies” is in the news this morning.  The basic premise is that  ”selling expensive social housing as it becomes vacant could create the largest...

View Article

5 million staff paid less than living wage

A new study commissioned by KPMG found that 4.8 million UK employees are paid less than the living wage, which is currently £8.30 in London and £7.20 throughout the rest of the UK. This is a timely...

View Article

British men are working the longest hours in Europe

A new study published today shows that full-time male workers in Britain work two hours per week longer than the European average. The long hours culture is still a problem for many workers in this...

View Article

Is the working time directive really as inflexible as ministers say?

Ministers often say that the Working Time Dircetive is too inflexible. Before this debate gets red-hot again, let’s just pause to consider what happens when the country gets freezing cold. When there...

View Article


Burnout bigger heart attack risk than smoking, says new research

A new study published in the latest Journal of Psychosomatic Medicine finds that people suffering work-related burnout are even more likely to develop heart disease than smokers. People in the top 20%...

View Article

Raise a very tentative half a cheer for budget support for housing

There is an entrenched housing crisis in this country, so any attempt by government to address it must be worth at least one cheer. The budget includes some new initiatives on housing, but sadly the...

View Article


Anywhere Working Week

Turning away from the budget for a minute, I am pleased to report  that we are currently in the middle of Anywhere Working Week.  This is therefore an excellent time to think about how the proper use...

View Article

National Minimum Wage – increase more likely than freeze

There have been rumours that the Government may freeze the NMW this year. I find them very hard to credit. Whilst it is certain that some employers’ organisitions like the British Chambers of Commerce...

View Article


Homeworking has been on the rise despite the economic crisis

The number of people who work from home has continued to rise in recent years, increasing by 470,000 since 2007. In some ways this is rather surprising, since in a time of economic crisis we might have...

View Article

Local government funding to be slashed again in 2015

Local government funding is set to be slashed again in 2015. According to today’s government spending review, the funding given to local councils by the Department of Communities and Local Government...

View Article

Council tax ice age set to continue, says government

In today’s government spending plans for 2015/16, it was announced that the “council tax freeze”, due to come to an end next April, would be extended for the next two years. “This settlement supports...

View Article
Browsing all 125 articles
Browse latest View live




Latest Images