by BBC Ideas 6 December 2019
Category: Featured Articles
More rubbish burnt than recycled
The Times 29 November 2019
England burnt more waste than it recycled last year, prompting campaigners to call for a moratorium on all new incinerator projects.
‘You can’t really win’: 4m Britons in poverty despite having jobs
The Guardian 14 May 2019
“I’m a bit scatty with things like this,” Gemma* admits when talking about her finances. It was not scattiness that meant she struggled to make ends meet when taking home £399.69 a month for working 18 hours a week as a cashier at Betfred. Even with tax credits and child benefit topping up her meagre wages, it was a constant struggle to pay for the essentials and Gemma fell behind on her bills. She was already receiving letters, phone calls, texts and emails threatening legal action over previous unpaid bills, as well as £400 of benefit overpayments that had to be repaid.
‘I met my rapist on Tinder’: The truth behind the rise in online date rape
The Telegraph 28 November 2018
Rachel met her attacker on Tinder. They had messaged for a week before their first date. “He sent me a photo and a song that he had written. He was sweet at first,” she recalls. On their second date, he forced her into a recording booth and locked the door. Rachel says, “I didn’t want to do what he wanted me to do. He said if you don’t do it, you will end up in hospital.” He then subjected her to a brutal attack, lasting around 45 minutes.
NHS body ‘wastes millions on flawed financial advice’
The Observer 21 July 2018
A large NHS body has spent millions of pounds on management consultants for a plan designed to save money – but which could cost more than £1bn to put into practice. Over the past six years, the North West London Clinical Commissioning Groups has spent £66m on 41 different management consulting firms – including the big four: McKinsey, EY, Deloitte and PwC – for a five-year programme to improve healthcare in the area while closing a £1.4bn budget gap forecast by 2021. However, costs have ballooned and the trust said it now needs £1.3bn to implement the programme. It declined to quantify the savings that have been made to date.
Migrants used as forced labour, charity claims
The Times 15 November 2017
Migrant workers on Scottish fishing boats are doing dangerously long hours in unsafe working conditions, according to a seafarers’ charity. Scottish fishing vessels are routinely using workers from outside the European Economic Area (EEA) as cheap labour due to a legal loophole that leaves them vulnerable to exploitation, the charity says.
Developing a taste for activist investors
The Times 6 June 2017
It was called a $143 billion flop, but Kraft Heinz’s failed attempt to buy Unilever was a classic tale of the pressures that modern companies face. Unilever under Paul Polman has become the model of a “good” company: only two years into the job as chief executive, he launched a sustainable living plan, an attempt to halve Unilever’s environmental impact. His efforts have been applauded by NGOs and activist groups, but the question was always whether investors would give him the time to prove that responsible capitalism made good business sense.
The Friday Interview: Dennis Nally of PwC
The Guardian 15 December 2011
Dennis Nally, global chairman of PwC, is a master of dodging tricky questions. Asked about his salary, he looks at his PR man, who quickly steps in to say it is not disclosed. We can presume it was in the millions, as PwC’s UK chairman, Ian Powell, took home £3.7m this year. “I would say I earn every dollar I make,” says Nally, a fit-looking 59-year-old. It is a bold claim in a climate where executive pay is under scrutiny. But Nally knows all about scrutiny: for three years, the European commission has been investigating the big auditing companies, culminating in recent proposals for a radical overhaul of the industry.
Five years on, did first mass asbo succeed?
The Guardian 27 August 2008
They were dubbed the Malevolent Seven. At the height of asbomania, a group of youths earned what is thought to be the first mass antisocial behaviour order for terrorising their local area, urinating on doorsteps and stealing. The media leapt on the story, keen to reprint tales of these “monsters” who had racked up more than 100 convictions between them, and the new “get tough” powers of the police. Asbos, it was hoped, would stop the criminals of tomorrow falling deeper into crime.