There was a siege mentality in the city back then underlined by a perception that Margaret Thatcher's 'Death Star' Government would happily have let off a cruise missile and wiped Merseyside off the map, if it could have gotten away with it.
At times, the then Prime Minister pursued her political ideology beyond the boundaries of decency and humanity and the results were devastating. However, she also made painful but necessary changes to the structure of the British economy ...
]]> By the time she entered 10 Downing Street in May 1979 she was already a loathed figure in many quarters, having earned the nickname "Maggie Thatcher, milk snatcher".Her quoting of St Francis of Assisi - "Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. Where there is despair, may we bring hope" - only seemed to further antagonise her detractors.
The prosecution case against Margaret Thatcher is a long list...
Mass unemployment blighted communities for a generation, with Merseyside hit harder than most.
She employed the police as a paramilitary force against striking miners and turned a blind eye to police brutality and racism in the inner cities.
She introduced the nauseating Section 28 which forbid the "promotion of homosexuality" in schools, whatever that meant.
She was reluctant to join the international condemnation of Apartheid South Africa, denouncing the great Nelson Mandela as a terrorist. Husband Denis had business interests in the country.
Her dealings with Irish Republicans only served to widen sectarian divisions in Belfast.
She introduced the Poll Tax although it was her hubris on that issue that proved to be the beginning of the end for her premiership.
However, it is also necessary to recall what a basket case Britain was in 1979 and how the measures she put in place sowed the seeds for a subsequent economic expansion.
In the mid to late 70s we had the three-day week, power cuts, wildcat strikes, rubbish piling up on the streets and bodies left unburied. Inflation was spiralling out of control. Today, we worry about inflation of 3-4% - in those days a near-20% rate wasn't unusual. Shops were having to change price tags on a daily basis.
Just three years earlier Britain had been forced to accept a humiliating bailout from the International Monetary Fund. We were known as the "sick man of Europe" and Margaret Thatcher knew that radical change was necessary.
In order to get inflation under control, her Chancellor Geoffrey Howe pushed up interest rates and squeezed public spending.
It was the right policy but its timing was lousy. Around the same time political turmoil in the MIddle East, in particular the overthrow of the Shah of Iran, caused a huge spike in global oil prices.
The combination of high interest rates and soaring oil prices had a devastating effect on large swathes of British industry. Many manufacturers went to the wall, pushing up unemployment.
And yet in later years the policy of taming inflation, combined with the slashing of punitive top tax rates, proved to have a transformational effect on the economy. The medicine had been harsh but effective.
The process of deregulation and privatisation was radical and, again, was the right path to take. Could the revolution in telecommunications have happened if the only place you could still get a telephone was from the Post Office?
By the late 70s the unions were running amok and holding large parts of British industry to ransom. Closed shops, strikes without ballots and flying pickets were rightly consigned to history.
I hope history will see the striking miners of 1984-5 as heroic, staunch defenders of their livelihoods and communities. But the decision of their leader - Arthur Scargill - to call a strike without a ballot played right into the Prime Minister's hands.
I'm not fan of Margaret Thatcher, even though the years have mellowed my attitude towards her time in power. Analysis of those years throws up a complex picture, full of contradictions.
I've heard it said she made Britain a meaner place - fostered the cult of individualism. I'm not sure it was her conscious intention but there is something in that all the same.
Ironically, that meanness was in evidence in some of the reaction to her death. The fact that she was despised was not a surprise but the outpouring of visceral hate seen in public, including here in Liverpool, was an unedifying sight.
Social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook have filled up with the predictable bile. Have we got nastier and angrier or are there simply more outlets now through which our rage can be vented?
I'm not sure I ever hated anyone enough to have felt compelled to revel in their death and I wonder about the mindsets of those who do.
We know that David Blaine and Paul Daniels don't perform real magic but we suspend our belief and gasp in awe. We are complicit in the deception.
And so it is with the state of the public finances. We are complicit as the finger is pointed at "benefit scroungers" and immigrants. The bigger the lie, the more people will believe it.
]]> Much of the media focus over the past week has been on reforms to the benefits system.Chancellor George Osborne plumbed new depths when he linked the manslaughter of six children to Britain's welfare culture.
Just like Pinocchio, the noses of those who seek to falsely blame those people at the bottom of the economic pile for our ills grow ever longer.
Britain's debt mountain has now hit £1.39 trillion and it is still rising. Who do we see about that? Who is responsible? The jobless, the sick, the disabled? The "tide" of immigrants from Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia? No, it wasn't them.
The story you may have missed this week was the damning reports into the culture of greed and mismanagement at two of the UK'S biggest banks - Barclays and HBOS.
To give Barclays a little credit, it commissioned its own report. It cost £18m, runs to 236 pages and "makes for uncomfortable reading in parts", according the bank's chairman, Sir David Walker.
A key focus was on Barclays' investment banking division. Between 2002 and 2009, 60 investment bankers shared performance-related bonuses of around £170m each year, equating to £3m a year for each banker.
That was on top of salaries and annual bonuses (yes, that's right, two lots of bonuses).
So determined were some bankers to maximise returns that they rigged the Libor interest rates, which directly relates how much millions of people pay for their mortgages, For this, Barclays was fined £290m.
It was that scandal which prompted it to commission the report, which laid bare the "arrogance" of its investment bankers.
They believed, the report stated, that they were "immune from the ordinary rules of society". A "win at all costs" culture was fostered and some people in the bank "lost all sense of proportion and humility".
It doesn't stop there. In 2011, Barclays was fined £7.7m for mis-selling high-risk stock market investment products to pensioners that put their savings in jeopardy. It will have to pay out around £60m in compensation.
And, of course, we are now all well versed on the PPI mis-selling scandal.
Perhaps worst of all was Barclays' rather innocuous-sounding and now defunct Structured Capital Markets division. The bank, in its own words, described how it worked:
"There are some areas that relied on sophisticated and complex structures, where transactions were carried out with the primary objective of accessing the tax benefits."
In plain English that is tax avoidance on an industrial scale. The unit was minimising clients' tax liabilities and at the height of its powers was generating revenues of £1bn a year for the bank.
Tax avoidance/evasion, depending on your definition and the calibre of your lawyer, is estimated to cost the UK Treasury at least £70bn a year. In contrast, benefit fraud costs less than £1bn a year.
Is where the blame for our precarious financial state lies becoming clearer?
Let's move onto HBOS. This is the bank that swooped on the festive savings of thousands of low-paid people when the Christmas club firm Farepak went bust in 2006. Farepak's parent company was heavily indebted to the bank.
The savers' money, running into tens of millions of pounds, hadn't been ringfenced and so the bank took it. It did nothing illegal but the episode prompted one High Court judge - Mr Justice Peter Smith - to question the morals of HBOS executives.
Anyway, that was merely the aperitif. HBOS has ultimately cost us all £20bn after having to be bailed out by the taxpayer to avoid collapse.
Until this week there was widespread belief that that bank had fallen victim to the financial crisis that engulfed the globe in 2008.
But no, it was worse than that.
A report published in the last few days by the parliamentary commission on banking standards - An Accident Waiting to Happen - laid bare the full horror.
The bank, which was formed by a merger of Bank of Scotland and Halifax in 2001, had amassed £47bn of losses through reckless lending.
The report concluded that even if the 2008 global meltdown had not occurred, HBOS would still have gone bust. It was, it stated, a "colossal failure" of management.
It laid much of the blame on former chairman Lord Stevenson and former chief executives Sir James Crosby and Andy Hornby. Former Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive Fred Goodwin has already lost his knighthood. Will Sir James soon be known simply as "James"?
The investigation into HBOS was led by Lord Turner who said: "This is a story of a retail and commercial bank, rather than an investment bank, brought down by ill-judged lending, poor risk control and inadequate liquidity. Its strategy was flawed from the start."
Bailing out the UK banks, necessary though it was, has cost the British taxpayer hundreds of billions of pounds and it was an action prompted by the behaviour of investment bankers in the City of London and in Wall Street who were simply out of control.
The result has been the age of austerity and hardship for millions.
And yet, too many of us remain fooled by the sleight of hand which pins the blame on the poor, the dispossessed and the disenfranchised.
It's called divide and rule. Encourage people at the lower end of the economic ladder to blame each other.
This was enshrined in the New Poor Law of 1834 which regarded poverty as "the fault of the poor".
How depressing that almost two centuries later, we don't appear to have moved on at all.
By the way you may be delighted to learn that the 643 UK bankers who currently earn more than £1m a year will be better off to the tune of around £54,000 a year thanks to UK top tax rate being cut from 50p to 45p this week.
All in it together, indeed.
The Cost of Value, by Ben Ashton
WHEN you buy something how often do you stop to consider its worth - not its price, but its value?
In recent times we have experienced so much economic doom and gloom - from rising food and fuel prices to the loss of the UK's AAA credit rating ...
]]> Now when you wonder the cause of all this, most likely your mind goes to things such as the Government, the markets or the banks. The more economics-savvy amongst you may think about falling demand and the effects of uncertainty.However, at the core of all this is an oft' overlooked and enigmatic concept that everything is based on - value. But what is value?
Economists struggle with this question. The Oxford English Dictionary can only suggest examples and fails to define it conceptually.
One popular definition comes from the 18th century political and economic theorist, Adam Smith. He generally held to a theory of value based on exchange - that is the value of an item is worth as much as it can command in trade (which is why it is sometimes refered to as command value) or by how useful an item is to the individual (use value).
Traditionally, the trade is agreed when the exchange value is roughly equivalent to the use value of both parties. Obviously the buyer wants it lower and the seller higher. It is this premise that makes the study of economics so mercurial. If something is only worth what two people decide in transactions or what one person deems personally, then all concept of value and thus price is subjective.
The loss of sterling's purchasing power and currency fluctuations are an effect of this subjectivity.
Adam Smith's "invisible hand" (or the equally aethereal "market forces") is an attempt at bringing stability to this issue. The idea being that with enough people involved, an equilibrium between the buyer and the seller becomes inevitable.
Sellers refuse low offers, buyers refuse too high ones, thus balance and stability is achieved. Supply and demand is a central premise for most business schools but it is far from perfect.
To work it requires freedom of choice and knowledge of the product from both sides, two things in our market that the seller has more of than the buyer. Without these supply and demand can only function retrospectively where examples of it are highlighted and the many cases of failure ignored as irrelevant mishaps.
For an example, take the pharmaceutical industry. It knows you need its products (needing its products to live makes you a super-motivated customer). It's not like you can go to a local apothecary or start your own drug company.
They know alot more of what's actually in those drugs than you do and are not obligated to tell you if another company's version is better or worse than theirs.
The recent horsemeat scandal is another example. If buyers had known the meat content they would not have bought it. Misinformation and a hostage consumer gives those companies the ability to raise prices to gross proportions unless there is government intervention.
Supply and demand is controlled far more by the buyers than the sellers and one of the reasons why controlling the price of products is becoming more difficult even at the state level.
But it goes deeper. The nature of value itself has seen a paradigm shift. The idea of value as use or trade has changed. Now value can be placed onto an object without needing any intrisic worth. The prime example of the age is Apple.
Some "tecchies" will tell you that Android's smartphone operating system is superior to Apple's in terms of functionality and usefulness - but superior in value? Not a chance.
Apple is the king of smartphones even with, what is for some, an inferior product, It is why it can charge more, it is why Apple fans jump up and down at the idea of an Apple TV or the next (almost identical to the old) iphone 5s.
So if it's not the best phone then what are you buying? You're buying Apple and it's not just marketing not just brand, for those are but the arrow. The target is commodity fetishism, the idolation of stuff. The object is valuable precisely because its valued, because it's in the limelight.
It makes society consume even more unnecessary products in the pursuit of some il-defined never reached image.
Even charity is part of it. The recent push for the arrest of African warlord Joseph Kony was a particularly distasteful use of the spectacle to create commodity fetishism.
Complete rejection is not required (or possible) but knowledge and understanding of the things we are capable of making each other believe can help. Like Valentine's Day - it only matters and is real if you want to participate in it.
Christmas is the same and so, deep down is money. While you can't simply reject money and take everything, like the ubermensch. Unless you are a hermit or a monk society is something you value. You can make yourself aware of the trappings of the society of the spectacle and choose your level of engagement.
So, again, what is value? For me, value at its core is a relationship.
It's a dialogue whereby a judgment on what can be gained from the relationship is made.
A soldier's relationship is to defend and we value him or her for that. A doctor's is to heal, the merchant's is to provide and with all the institutions and complex business structures and models and all other things that go in between, the simple act of exchange, the alienation of buyer and seller makes it harder for merchants to provide.
Assessing the worth of individuals becomes more difficult, the distance creates uncertainty.
The uncertainty is caused by the separation of exchange value and use value. This leads to exchange value usurping use value whereby the seller has less influence on the price they will be expected to accept. This works both economically and unconciously with only the flawed system of supply and demand to fall back on.
While big corporations and government institutions are now too distanced to be reached effectively by the individual, the local level is now where value can, to a point, still be reached.
We are capable of forging a much stronger relationship with our local shops, community, council than on the national level meaning you'll stand a better chance of effectively conveying your value and the use value of things you want.
A local shop is more likely to forgive you for being 20p short, more likely to start stocking that product you've just heard of and less likely to let money stop them from providing. This is their value.
The uncertainty of the global economy as part of the spectacle will do what it will - no country, business or individual can stop it now but most likely it will be the local level where the economic recovery begins, where the relationship between buyer and seller has remained strongest and relationship of value is better understood.
"I am a showman by profession and all the gilding shall make nothing else of me," he once said. He was also credited with coining the phrase "there's a sucker born every minute".
Early on during Osborne's speech the Deputy Speaker Lindsay Hoyle had cause to admonish shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, telling him: "Let's not let this become a circus."
I fear, by then, it was already too late ...
]]> This was a Budget of smoke and mirrors - of obfuscation, misdirection and contradiction.It was just days ago when David Cameron was solemnly informing us that cheap booze was sending us all to hell in a handcart. Something must be done, he insisted. And so his Chancellor stepped up to the plate and, er, promptly cut the price of a pint by 1p.
Then there is the plan to spend billions underwriting home loans for first-time buyers meaning a return of 95% mortgages. So personal debt, already at unsustainable levels, is to be pushed higher possibly leading to an asset bubble of rising property prices. Billions of pounds disappearing up its own backside. Sound familiar?
A Government committed to cutting carbon emissions once again puts off increases in fuel duty. Because, of course, the way to cut emissions is to encourage people to use more petrol.
And there is Osborne's old favourite - cuts to the welfare budget and public sector pay. So those at the bottom of the economic pile pay the price for a crisis created by those at the top in the City and in Wall Street.
What's that? Crisis you say - there's a crisis?
Yes indeed, In case you didn't notice, the UK economy is now 3% smaller than it was in 2008 and national debt as a share of GDP is hurtling towards 90%.
In 2010 it was forecast that Government borrowing next year would stand at £60bn - it will actually have ballooned to £120bn.
The Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR) has halved its growth forecast for 2013 to 0.6% and that is without taking into account possible shockwaves from eurozone calamities like the one currently hovering over Cyprus like the Sword of Damocles.
Osborne's party piece - the deficit reduction plan - has now been pushed back well into the next Parliament.
In comparison to the truly appalling statistics above, the housing market stimulus, freeze in fuel duty and the 1p reduction in the the price of a pint of beer, are small beer indeed in a £1.5trn economy.
There were some small chinks of light. Raising the personal tax allowance to £10,000 is a step in the right direction and cutting corporation tax and changes to national insurance, which means up to 450,000 small businesses would now be exempt from NI contributions next year, could help private sector job creation.
Taking up Heseltine's plan to give more money to the English regions also has promise. Let's hope the Liverpool City Region Local Enterprise Partnership can spend it better than the Government.
Yet living standards are plummeting. The gap between falling wages and rising prices grows ever wider. The obvious remedy of cutting VAT, a regressive tax which costs those who earn the least the most, was once again ignored.
Osborne is betting the farm on a sudden recovery - an unexpected leap in growth. However, with little demand in the economy it is hard to see where this will come from.
His tight fiscal approach contrasts with his encouragement of the Bank of England to loosen up monetary policy. Yet with interest rates already at rock bottom there is only so much more ithe Bank can do.
One idea is to crank up the quantitative easing - printing more money to buy up not just Government debt but also mortgage and corporate debt. Yes, printing lots of money is a fantastic solution - it worked really well in Zimbabwe.
Amidst all the tricks, sleight of hand, flashbangs and glitter lies a simple truth - the real economy is stuck in the mud and it is going to take more than the above to get it shifted.
If you don't believe me, ask the OBR which stated that the Budget would have "no impact on the level of GDP at the end of the forecast horizon".
A circus indeed. No need to send in the clowns - they're already here.
]]>It wasn't one of his best (his 'Noddy' routine is much funnier).
Did the man from the credit rating agency Moody's ring Chancellor George Osborne at the end of last week and crack a similar joke - with an extra "eh"? If he did, it's doubtful George would have laughed ...
]]> Britain lost its AAA credit rating following that call. It was politically calamitous for Mr Osborne as he stated more than two years ago that keeping the top rating was a test for the coalition Government's political and economic credibility.So what does losing the AAA rating actually mean for the UK. In economic terms, probably very little.
A credit rating for a country or a large institution (the Bank of England was also downgraded at the same time) is pretty similar to credit ratings that you or I have.
If you apply for a loan or a credit card the amount of interest you will pay will depend very much on your credit worthiness - that is your ability to repay the debt and the likelihood that you may default.
The lender will use a scoring system to assess this and will charge you accordingly.
For example, at the moment Barclays is offering personal loans with a headline interest rate of 5.7%. However, your credit history would have to be particularly good to get this rate and it is likely that of your loan application was successful the interest rate would be much higher.
The UK Government is currently having to borrow in the region of £100bn every year to balance its books. So any variation in the interest it pays could have serious consequences.
Should we be worried?
Not really. The bond markets from which countries borrow money are a little more sophisticated in their approach than high street banks. They don't wait to see what the ratings agencies do. They anticipate the lowering and raising of the ratings well in advance.
So, it is very likely the UK has already been paying the rate reflected by the downgrade for months anyway.
And it needs to be put into some perspective. Britain is still very much seen as a safe haven by investors so it is likely the country will be able to continue borrowing money at an affordable rate.
However, all of the above is of little comfort to Mr Osborne. As the March Budget fast approaches he faces a desperate battle to try to restore his credibility.
It only took a matter of weeks for last year's Budget to unravel as the "pasty tax", the "granny tax" and the tax cut for the wealthy all exploded in his face.
This year he has even less room for manoeuvre.
Conservative backbenchers, who are already running out of patience with the Government, are demanding significant tax cuts. Fat chance.
There is no money for such a move unless he makes huge savings elsewhere. And given that he is already going to have to make budget cuts of £10bn just to stand still, that is not a realistic proposition.
I almost (and I do stress almost) feel sorry for the Chancellor. Britain's public finances are in as bad a shape as they have been for decades and the prospects for growth over the next two to three years are sluggish at best. There are simply no rabbits left in the hat.
It illustrates very well how little power politicians now have over the economy. Economic forces are global and individual Governments are limited in their ability to control them.
They don't like to admit this, of course. Come election time they will make grand promises about "creating economic stability".
It's mostly an illusion and when they make pledges like the ones George Osborne made about keeping the AAA rating then they are simply hostages to fortune.
The only thing that Osborne and Prime Minister David Cameron having going for them is the weakness of the opposition on the economy.
Labour leader Ed Miliband and Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls remain tainted by the calamities of Gordon Brown's Government and seem to be offering no credible alternative.
We definitely do not live in a time of giants.
]]>Watched by her mother Blanche, played by the brilliantly comedic and now sadly deceased Maggie Jones, Deidre takes a packet of ready-made Yorkshire puddings out of the freezer.
Blanche screws up her face in disgust and exclaims: "Shop-bought Yorkshires - it's the convenience culture gone mad!"
Her point is well made - often there is great value in the effort ...
]]> I have already broken off from writing this blog as another 'via LinkedIn' email has landed in my inbox.It is an endorsement - how kind. Except that it is from someone who, while they may be on my contacts list, I have never met, spoken to or to my knowledge had any dealings with professional or otherwise.
Flattering as it may be it is also baffling. Why would such a person endorse me? For all they know I am a hopeless incompetent who could not be trusted to boil an egg.
This process began last year when LinkedIn, a business-focused social media site, simplified its mechanism for endorsements.
Previously, endorsing someone required a little bit of effort. You actually had to describe in your own words why you were so impressed by the person you were endorsing.
However, now the act of endorsing someone merely requires a couple of mouse clicks - job done.
Hence we have now an epidemic of people on LinkedIn endorsing one another.
I remarked on my Twitter feed: "Within a few months everyone on LinkedIn will have endorsed each other - so what really was the point?"
Within seconds a number of people had re-tweeted my tweet and others sent me a message saying they agreed, so this is obviously not just an issue for me.
I haven't endorsed anyone on this new system. This is partly because as a business journalist I have to try to maintain a degree of objectivity and mainly because I believe the mechanism is so simple to use that the value of such endorsements is now questionable.
In recent years, people have often talked about the "power of social media".
And powerful it is indeed and in the LinkedIn endorsement mechanism we now also see an example of its limitations.
As a marketing tool or as a way of furthering a cause its power comes from being part of a wider effort.
Thus, the online petition to have the Hillsborough disaster cover-up debated in Parliament was part of a much bigger co-ordinated campaign on which people had beavered away for years.
The influence of Twitter in the popular uprisings of the Arab Spring has been frequently cited, however it was direct action that brought about real change.
Anyone who uses Facebook or Twitter will be aware of the various causes that pop up on timelines.
"Click here/retweet if you support blah blah blah ..." each one will say. And we click on it and retweet and it makes us feel like we've done something real that day. And how convenient it was.
In many cases that feeling is an illusion. That mouse click, even if it's one of millions, has made not a jot of difference to anything.
Technology has opened up avenues of direct communication barely conceivable not so long ago. However, taking that extra bit of time, making that extra bit of effort, still carries huge value.
If you really want to endorse someone then do it properly. Articulate why you think this person or business is worth checking out. If you believe in a cause, then get involved, stand up.
If these things really matter to us then they deserve more than just the click of a mouse.
David Ost, North West region director of EEF, the manufacturers' organisation, said it was right that Mr Cameron should seek a better deal with Europe, but added: "This strategy is not without risk."
You can say that again ...
]]> There is little doubt it is in the UK's interests to renegotiate its relationship with the EU but Mr Cameron's all or nothing approach seems reckless.And he may try to sell this strategy as a reflection of the will of the British people but in reality it is about preventing Eurosceptic backbenchers from eating him alive.
This is a political strategy not an economic one. He is putting a gun to the head of the other members of the EU and hoping they will conclude that keeping Britain in the EU is in their interests as much as ours.
And I doubt the Prime Minister would be pushing the envelope so much if it wasn't for the malcontents in his own party.
The point made clear by Merseyside business leaders this week was that many businesses here depend on the trade they have in the single market.
The uncertainty that will prevail until at least the general election in 2015 potentially puts those vital trading relationships at risk.
The Forum of Private Business is firm in its conviction that a total exit from the EU would be bad for the UK economy.
But given the anti-EU feeling among many people in the UK a complete withdrawal is a real possibility.
And I don't want to cast aspersions on the British public but I worry there is not enough of an understanding about the complexities of the issue for a simple in/out vote to be appropriate.
Many people get bogged down with infantile debates about the shape of bananas and other obscure regulations. Others incorrectly confuse the Human Rights Act with the EU when in fact the two are completely separate.
In many ways the EU is an unaccountable, grossly bloated bureaucracy that desperately needs to be reformed and Mr Cameron is right to seek a renegotiation.
But that doesn't mean we would be better off out than in. One Chinese commerce leader recently stated that "the future is continents".
What he means is they only way to have real clout in a global economy is to be part of a very large nation like China or the US - or a major trading bloc like the EU.
There are around 80 free trade agreements currently in place between the EU and the rest of the world. Later this year it is due to negotiate a new agreement with the US.
Were we to leave the EU we would be excluded from all those treaties and would have to negotiate our own. That could take decades and the terms we would get would almost certainly be a lot worse. On our own, we would simply be a tiddler among economic giants.
As a nation, we still punch above our weight and that is something to be proud of. And it is our membership of the EU that enhances our appeal to foreign investment.
Last year, the North West alone benefited from more than £1bn in overseas investment.
And the truth is many of those investors view a UK base as a springboard for trade in mainline Europe.
Exiting the EU puts that at risk. If you don't believe me then listen to global car manufacturers like Ford and Honda who in recent days have said they may have to reconsider their huge investments in factories in the UK were we to go it alone.
Maybe they are bluffing but it is a high stakes game and Mr Cameron appears to be betting the farm on the outcome.
]]>I had turned up at Anfield for a Liverpool football match and was attempting to gain entry via the cheaper under-16s gate, when the man behind the glass said to me: "Ah eh lad, this is supposed to be for the kids."
The days of 14-year-olds turning up at a cash turnstile at Anfield are now long gone. Apart from the odd one-off game, the typical entry fee is £40-plus and a ticket in advance is usually required. So how far has English football strayed from its roots? ...
]]> The high price of gaining entry to a Premier League match was brought into sharp focus last week when it was revealed that Manchester City had returned 900 tickets from it allocation for the league clash with Arsenal at the Emirates stadium.Many City fans, it seemed, had baulked at paying £62 for a seat.
The chairman of the Football Supporters Federation, Malcolm Clark, has urged the Premier League and its clubs to "wake up" to the growing resentment among football fans about rising ticket prices.
Clarke believes there is no justification for such pricing structures with clubs set to share the proceeds of new TV deals which, including overseas rights, have broken the £4bn barrier for the first time.
He said: "We have not done the final calculations but we estimate clubs could cut £32 off the cost of every single ticket purely from the increase in the TV pot this time around."
That is probably unlikely. Like most large businesses, investors in Premier League football clubs demand sequential growth for their investments and the TV money now represents a major slice of those returns.
England's top-flight division has undergone a complete transformation since the dark hooligan-ridden days of the 1970s and 80s.
All-seater stadia became the norm after the Hillsborough tragedy and Sky TV's entry into football in early 1990s brought staggering wealth to the game.
An influx of foreign star players followed and wages spiralled. I remember how we all gasped when Liverpool made John Barnes England's first £10,000-a-week footballer back in the last 1980s.
That would barely be a minimum for a Premier League player today and the top weekly wages are now nudging the £200,000-a-week bracket.
So the league is now a premium product that every week plays to a global TV audience. On that basis higher ticket prices are not unjustified.
But one of the main reasons the English Premier League has more worldwide popularity than the technically superior Spanish or Italian leagues is the pace of the game and the passion of the fans.
A German player on Liverpool's books once described English football as "gladiatorial" as opposed to the sterile chess-like encounters found on the continent.
It is a magnificent spectacle and the passion of the crowd is a key part of that.
I've noticed in recent years that, even at Anfield, the changing demographic of the crowd has meant the noise level at some games is not what it used to be. At Manchester United's ground, Old Trafford, people complain that you can sometimes hear a pin drop, so subdued are the supporters.
By pricing so many of its traditional fans out of going to the match regularly the clubs risk killing the goose that laid the golden egg.
And this is also a dilemma for the fans. We all complain about prices and about football losing touch but we also want the best players wearing the shirts of our favourite teams - and they cost a lot of money.
There needs to be a middle ground and it is encouraging to see some of the top clubs, including Liverpool and Manchester United, lobbying UEFA to enforce financial fair play rules more strictly and limit the amount of cash flowing into the pockets of players and their agents.
English football needs its passionate crowds and if it loses them it may find its overseas audience might look elsewhere for its entertainment.
]]>Seven hours later, at midnight, Tesco re-opened and continued trading until 7pm on Christmas Eve. Such is the craziness of Britain's Sunday trading laws.
At every hour of the day and night over Christmas, millions of people bought goods online without restriction. Is it any wonder so many on the high street are struggling to survive? ...
]]> This week, shadow business secretary Chuka Umunna has said the UK should adopt a US initiative to encourage shoppers to use small local shops - Small Business Saturday.Sounds a bit of a gimmick to me. I've said before in this blog that if people choose to shop online rather than on the high street, then so be it. However, it sees unfair if high street stores have to compete with one hand tied behind their backs.
In the run-up to Christmas, the chief executives of two of Britain's biggest supermarket chains wrote to the Government asking for a temporary lifting of Sunday trading restrictions on December 23.
But Dalton Philips of Morrisons and Andy Clarke of Asda were rebuffed by ministers who told them there were "legal issues" preventing such a move.
Mr Philips said: "Businesses go out of business if they are not fleet of foot, because they can't adapt. The Government hasn't been able to adapt on this Sunday. I worry that if they can't adjust on something small like that, how on earth are they going to be able to adapt on the big stuff?"
It is a fair point. Internet shopping is getting bigger and bigger. On Boxing Day alone Britons spent a record 14m hours trawling websites paying around 113m visits to online retailers.
In the last few days one retail analyst, Professor Joshua Bamfield predicted 50,000 job losses on the high street this year as the online boom sends more shops to the wall.
Our current Sunday trading laws date back to 1994 and it restricts shops of more than 3,000 sq ft in size to just six hours of trading and only between 10am and 6pm.
Typically, outlets in city centres and out-of-town retail parks will open for trading from 11am to 5pm with some opening their doors half an hour before to allow customers "browsing time".
There are those that point out that having a day when shops are not open for as long isn't going to kill us. It's a view with some validity but it misses the point.
As detailed above, 24/7 online shopping means that ship has well and truly sailed. It's simply absurd that I can buy a TV from Currys online at 5.30pm but not from one of its stores.
The main opponents of liberalised Sunday trading are the Christian churches and trade unions.
We live in a mult-cultural, multi-faith society so I think its time we stopped allowing the reverend gentlemen to dictate how we live our lives.
As for the unions. It is right that they should safeguard the interests of shop workers. However, there are now countless business sectors, including the one I work in, that operate seven days a week and in some cases 24 hours a day.
There is no longer any logic to making retail workers a special case.
Restricting shop opening hours in an era of 24/7 online trading makes no sense.
]]>There was a time I wasn't that keen on flying. The first time I flew wasn't in a plane but in an airship.
It started well, with myself and a colleague admiring spectacular views of Liverpool from the air. It ended less well with my colleague and the pilot enjoying spectacular views of me projectile vomiting.
My early relationship with planes was also an uneasy one but regular trips to the south coast on propeller-driven 50-seater aircraft that was tossed around by high winds proved effective shock therapy and I can now happily sit on a 737 without a murmur of complaint ...
]]> Since becoming a business journalist a decade ago I have become much more familiar with the aviation sector.In 2003 I ran a campaign for the Daily Post which sought to re-establish the air link between Liverpool John Lennon Airport (JLA) and London.
During the three-month campaign - which was a success - I learned how important the airport was to the Liverpool city region economy.
The then managing director of JLA, Neil Pakey, told me that every aircraft that an airline based at the airport was worth around £8m annually to the wider economy.
The airport itself provided employment, it and airlines like Ryanair and Easyjet helped to stimulate the local economy and it provided vital transport links to the UK and Europe for tourists and business travellers - both inbound and outbound.
These benefits are replicated across the UK wherever there is an airport and yet the aviation policies of successive governments has failed to fully appreciate this.
The global market for passenger air traffic is fierce and airports all over Europe and around the world compete hard to persuade airlines to come and open up routes.
Only this week JLA announced that Scandinavian low-cost carrier, Norwegian, was to operate a service from Liverpool to Copenhagen from next April.
However, over the past year the airport also suffered a major blow when it lost its regular KLM link to Amsterdam.
When this route was opened it was seen as a watershed. For the first time in years people flying out of JLA could directly access KLM Dutch hub which offered onward connections across the world.
But after a couple of years KLM decided the route was no longer lucrative enough and took its plane elsewhere.
This week the Institute of Directors (IoD) published a report which outlined how UK airports were operating at a competitive disadvantage to their European counterparts.
It said one of the biggest drags on the growth of UK airports was Air Passenger Duty (APD).
Introduced in 1994, APD is a tax levied on every flight out of the UK. It has risen from £5 for flights within Europe and £10 for outside Europe to between £13 and £184 depending on distance and class of travel.
In 2011-12, APD raised £2.6bn - three times more than a decade ago, and seven times more than 1995-96, its first full year in operation.
The IoD report claims this tax actually damages the UK economy, despite the money it raises. It said: "This tax is not just high, it is out of keeping with the international direction of travel.
"Only six of the 27 EU states have an air passenger tax, and several, including Ireland, the Netherlands and Denmark, have recently reduced or abolished their tax due to the damaging economic effects
"The Netherlands found that their air passenger tax generated revenue of 300m euros but cost the wider Dutch economy 1.3bn euros. If APD has a comparable damaging effect on the UK economy, that would mean it costs Britain £12bn a year."
JLA has been campaigning against APD for years claiming it means it is having to compete with European airports with one arm tied behind its back.
Ryanair chief executive, Michael O'Leary, claims that over the past five years the UK has missed out on 30m foreign visitors because of the tax. Other airlines agree and have called for it to be scrapped.
Environmental campaigners disagree saying that APD helped combat global warming.
Richard Dyer of Friends of the Earth has said: "Air Passenger Duty plays an important part in tackling aviation's significant impact on climate change. Ministers must stand up to this unfair lobbying."
There is certainly a debate to be had about the level of emissions from planes and the effect that may have on out climate.
However, the reality is APD does nothing to cut those emissions. As UK airports constantly point out, if an airline closes a route due to APD it simply moves that plane and that route to an airport in a country that does not have the tax. It is not reduction, just displacement.
The IoD report is also scathing about the UK government's dithering over the issue of hub capacity in the South East of England.
Heathrow is currently handles more international passengers than an other airport in the world. However, its dominant position is under threat.
The IoD explains: "Heathrow is falling behind international competitors - since 1990 the number of destinations it serves has fallen from 227 to 180 today.
"In effect we have outsourced our hub to Amsterdam's Schiphol airport (313 destinations), Frankfurt (250+) and Paris Charles de Gaulle (250+).
"IoD polling shows that IoD members flying indirectly to European destinations are as likely to travel via Amsterdam as they are to fly via Heathrow. In the North East, 42% fly via Amsterdam compared to 11% doing so via Heathrow."
Without a third runway, Heathrow cannot expand its route offering. This is a critical issue as more and more airports are opening up in fast-growing economies like China, Russia and India.
If the UK doesn't increase its hub capacity, either at Heathrow or at one of London's other airports, then the UK economy will lose out on billions of pounds in inward investment.
As the report points out: "Goldman Sachs project that currently emerging markets will make up 70% of global GDP by 2050. British trade is 20 times higher with countries which have a daily direct flight to the UK than with countries without such an air link."
Yet, the Government continues to dither. Airport expansion is politically sensitive, however you do it but doing nothing is not an option. As the Government dithers, the UK falls further behind.
]]>Earlier this year that number peaked at more than 1.1m - the highest figure for 25 years.
There is much evidence to suggest that many women, who are still the primary carers in our society, are bearing the brunt of austerity as cuts to childcare support make it more difficult for them to remain in the workplace ...
]]> Anna Bird, acting chief executive of equality campaign group, the Fawcett Society, said earlier this year: "Women are being asked to take on the role of shock absorbers for the cuts."As well as the job losses, they're also facing cuts to their income as a result of cuts to benefits and services they rely on to support their lives.
"We're really concerned that cuts to childcare support combined with the rising cost of living make it difficult for women to put in place support that allows them to go out to work."
If this is the case then not only is it clearly discriminatory but is also a ridiculous false economy.
Over the past couple of decades many more women have entered the workplace, increasing their numbers in skilled jobs and in the professions as well as in higher education.
At some point many will choose to start a family and will become the primary carers of their children. But resuming a career isn't so straightforward for the reasons outlined above.
It makes no sense. The skills and experience they have to offer can be a key factor in driving the recovery of the UK economy.
There are signs that the Government has recognised this issue and is about to do something about it.
A BBC Newsnight report earlier this week claimed that in January, Prime Minister David Cameron and his deputy, Nick Clegg, will announce changes to help people with the prohibitive cost of childcare.
They are reported to include making some provisions tax deductible and making changes to both the qualifications of child minders, and the number of children they are permitted to care for.
If this is true then it is a move in the right direction.
One report published last year by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development shows that Britain spends 1.1% of GDP on pre-primary spending for children, higher than the average national spend for other countries. This has been put at £7bn in total.
However the Institute for Public Policy Research in its recent report on childcare costs, Double Dutch, said this figure wrongly incorporated elements which should not be classified as childcare, such as the cost of school for five and six year olds.
A fairer calculation, they say, would put the amount spent by the government on childcare lower. The report authors write: "This makes the UK a middle ranking spender at best, well behind the Nordic nations."
I wonder whether the business world is doing enough on this. Are enough companies taking a progressive approach by offering more flexible arrangements for those who have to care for children?
Surely it is better to have a talented, motivated person working flexibly in an organisation than not at all. There is an increasing amount of anecdotal evidence that suggests forward-thinking businesses are reaping the benefits of such an approach.
And this issue goes beyond making it easier for skilled and talented women to get back into the workplace.
An increase in pre-school provision could also give a boost to the economy and to society as a whole in the years to come.
A US study, the Abecedarian Project, looked at the long-term benefits of pre-school education and it found that those who had benefited from earlier access to education achieved significantly higher scores on intellectual and academic measures as young adults.
It also show such children were less likely to end up going to university and less likely to become teenage parents.
Another US-based group, the Ounce of Prevention Fund, also published research which showed that those children who didn't receive a high-quality early childhood education were 25% more likely to drop out of school, 40% more likely to become a teen parent, 50% more likely to be placed in special education and 70% more likely to be arrested for a violent crime.
The implication is clear. Cutting childcare and pre-school provision today to make short-term savings, could cost us billions in the decades to come.
But if we spend a bit more now, the eventual benefits could be huge. So what are we waiting for?
]]>So sang Leonard Cohen back in 1968. Does George Osborne sit alone late at night, lost in melancholy and softly sing those words to himself?
The Chancellor is running out of road. The promises on which he staked his and the coalition Government's reputation are unravelling ...
]]> His austerity programme has failed to stimulate growth, he has failed to meet his own debt/deficit reduction targets and many analysts now believe it is only a matter of time before Britain loses its coveted AAA credit rating.His autumn statement today there were a few headline-grabbing initiatives - cuts in personal tax allowance, cuts in corporation tax, the scrapping of petrol duty rises and an increase in capital spending.
But that increase in spending will be funded by further austerity. There will be cuts in benefits for those in and out of work and it reminds us that the biggest squeeze is yet to come.
Overall it was "revenue neutral" and what was missing was the big ideas. Where is the plan for growth? Shuffling the deck can only get us through for so long - only growth can fuel the recovery.
The debate seems to have moved on from the merits of austerity versus Keynesian public spending sprees to the competency of Mr Osborne himself.
On the eve of the autumn statement it was revealed that one of the flagship policies announced by the Chancellor at the Tory conference in October - workers taking shares in exchange for abandoning employment rights - had been given the thumbs down by the private sector.
Under the proposal, employees would give up rights in unfair dismissal, redundancy, flexible working and maternity leave in exchange for shares in their employers worth between £2,000 and £50,0000 and would be exempt from capital gains tax.
However, a consultation exercise undertaken by the Government saw the idea almost universally rejected by some 209 businesses that responded. Just five said they thought it was a workable idea.
Major employers' organisations including the EEF and the Federation of Small Businesses said the scheme had little appeal to their members.
The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development said: "There is very little evidence as to why this policy is needed or what impact it will have."
Politics is about vision and big ideas. Love them or hate them both Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair understood this. At times of national and international crisis they stood up and offered clarity and vision.
George Osborne and prime minister David Cameron do not have an easy jobs. We live in times of economic turmoil and many of the factors driving the overall dynamic are outside of his control. Nevertheless, we look to them for leadership.
However, Mr Osborne's response is merely: "There is no miracle cure."
That may be true but from supposed leaders and statesmen we expect more. Where is the gravitas, the heroic Churchillian rhetoric?
The Chancellor stands in the gaze of history with his pants around his ankles.
Mr Osborne and Mr Cameron's time is surely running out yet who are the men and women of stature who can step into the vacuum and drive us forward?
A nation turns its lonely eyes to ... Ed Miliband and Ed Balls?
God help us.
]]>Prime Minister David Cameron's latest spat with the European Union (EU), this time over the setting of its budget, seems to be part of a drift towards a possible UK withdrawal.
Former Labour PM Tony Blair said this week that withdrawal would be "a monumental error of statesmanship". It may be unfashionable to agree with Mr Blair but on this issue he is spot on ...
]]> Addressing a business audience in London, Mr Blair said leaving the EU would be "politically debilitating, economically damaging and hugely destructive of Britain's true long-term interests".He added: "Europe is a destiny we will never embrace easily. But it is an absolutely essential part of our nation remaining a world power politically and economically."
The Conservative Party tearing itself apart on Europe is nothing new. It was the Eurosceptics who back in the 1990s caused huge damage to John Major's Government.
He supposedly referred to Eurosceptics in his own cabinet as "bastards".
But the anti-EU bandwagon seems to be gathering pace and it feels like many people in the UK would now favour us going it alone.
Some have a romantic Rule Britannia-esque notion of the UK going it alone and being a major economic player on the world stage. This may be a delusion.
While Britain does still punch above its weight in some respects the global trend is now very much towards immense trading blocs.
There is the BRIC countries - Brazil, Russia India, China - the US of course and the EU.
The EU has negotiated dozens of free trade treaties with these major powers. Once we leave we would have to renegotiate each one. It could take years and our bargaining position would be considerable weaker.
While there maybe a significant amount of anti-EU sentiment among the public, within the business community there is very little.
It knows that 47% of UK exports go to EU member states while 50% of foreign direct investment is from EU countries.
Last week the CBI president, Sir Roger Carr, said UK membership of the EU was the "launchpad" for much international business.
He added: "Whatever the popular appeal may be of withdrawal, businessmen and politicians must keep a bridge to Europe firmly in place."
Cameron, and his Chancellor George Osborne, are well aware of this and may be just playing a political game by pandering to the anti-EU lobby - albeit a dangerous one.
They are leaving open the door for Ed Miliband to form a powerful pro-EU alliance with the business sector in the run up to the next General Election.
There is much talk of a possible referendum on EU membership but at the risk of sounding arrogant I'm not sure there is enough understanding among the general public of the complexities of the issue and the possible implications of withdrawal.
For example, there is complete confusion in relation to the European Human Rights Act, which generally gets a very bad press.
In many peoples' minds, the act is an instrument of the EU and withdrawal would free us from its evil clutches.
In fact, the Human Rights Act has nothing at all to do with the EU. It originated from the Council of Europe and the European Convention on Human Rights in 1951. Even outside the EU, we would still be bound by the treaty.
Nigel Farage, leader of the anti-EU UK Independence Party appeared to be taking advantage of this confusion only this week.
Responding to Tony Blair's speech, he said: "Britain is not at the heart of Europe, we are not in the euro, we do not share Schengen (free movement arrangements) and we will not accept legal control from the European courts over our justice system."
What we need is informed analysis - not Farage's empty and misleading rhetoric.
Is the EU an expensive, bloated bureaucracy in desperate need of reform? Yes, but that is not a good enough reason to cut off our nose to spite our face by leaving.
Tony Blair says the crisis in the eurozone actually presents Britain with an opportunity to take a leading role in its restructure.
He said: "The field is wide open for the UK to seize the initiative on shaping the future of the bloc, rather than "waiting passively to consider an agenda set by others.
.
"If the strategic rationale for Europe remains strong, then it cannot be in Britain's interests either for us to be marginal to the debate about its future or indifferent to its outcome.
"But if we want to participate we have to do so not just as Brits but as Europeans, not semi-detached because we are contemplating the option of leaving, but in the thick of it because we intend fully to remain at the heart of it."
In, out - shake it all about? It is not a decision we can take lightly and definitely not in a fit of Little Englander pique.
]]>Starbucks, Amazon and Google have been getting a kicking over their tax affairs and on Newsnight this week I heard someone compare high-interest payday lenders to drug dealers.
Strong stuff and yet I can't help feeling a little uneasy when morality is brought into business ...
]]> Of course, I can talk, I've moralised in this blog on a number of occasions. Yet in truth there are few moral absolutes in this world and we can find ourselves on rocky ground when we decide to mount that horse.Rushing to judgement can have consequences. Imagine the hell experienced by Lord McAlpine as he faced the most vile, and as it transpired, false accusations via social networking site Twitter. No wonder he is now seeking redress from all those responsible.
Google, Amazon and Google found themselves hauled before a committee of MPs to explain why they were paying so little corporation tax when their UK revenues were so huge.
The righteous indignation of some members of the committee was a sight to behold.
On more than one occasion in recent weeks I have heard the tax policies pursued by these companies described as "immoral".
Seems a bit over the top. Is it fair that such large companies can structure their affairs in such a way to minimise the amount of tax they pay? Probably not but to call them immoral feels like a bit of stretch.
Many companies, big and small, use accountants to cut down the amount of tax they pay.
Des Heney, a partner at Liverpool accountancy firm, Haines Watts whom I met last week, is bemused by the moralising tone that seems to have crept into the tax debate.
He told me: "Tax evasion is clearly wrong but as a profession we accountants are quite clear - we have a duty to minimise our clients' tax liabilities."
It is a free country and if people want to boycott the likes of Starbucks then good luck to them - but I think they may be picking on the wrong target.
If companies are operating legally within the parameters set by Governments then I'm not sure what else we can ask them to do.
This is not a business issue, it is a political one. If politicians believe these companies need to pay more tax then they need to change the regulations to make it happen.
And what of payday lenders like Wonga?
Newsnight interviewed a man from the Citizens Advice Bureau who said such companies were "toxic and dangerous" and likened the social effects of their business models to drug dealing.
I can understand where he is coming from. Working at the sharp end for the CAB he will see daily the effect that debt can have on individuals and families. He wants to see payday lenders banned altogether.
There has always been a market for sub-prime credit and to a certain extent companies operating in that end of the market do at least keep people out of the clutches of the illegal and often violent loan sharks.
There is an argument for tighter regulation. Wonga's boast that the money can be in your account "within 15 minutes" does make me a little uneasy. It would be preferable if these lenders had to carry out more rigorous checks on peoples' ability to repay the loans.
But to ban them would seem unnecessary. Many people do use such lenders responsibly and find them a vital outlet when short-term funding is needed quickly.
Yes, people do get in over their heads with debt of all kinds. At the end of my 20s I crashed and burned with unsecured debts totalling more than £30,000. But I could blame no one but myself. There has to be a big element of personal responsibility.
Each of us has our own model of the world - our own morals, our own values. Reaching for absolutes is a dangerous game.
]]>Two weeks ago I interviewed Lorraine Dodd, chair of the Liverpool branch of the Institute of Directors. She is against an EU proposal for enforceable quotas of women on the boards of companies.
She believes such a move would be "demeaning". I wasn't so sure I agreed with her. I believed something needed to be done to kick-start a cultural change in the boardroom. Then last week, I read a book ...
]]> I'd just like to point out that I have read books before. But this one was different.I'd first come across The End of Men and the Rise of Women, by American journalist and author, Hanna Rosin, on BBC2's Review Show and was intrigued enough to immediately order a copy from Amazon.
Its premise is straightforward - women are now gaining the upper hand in society, especially in the workplace.
The book aims to be more scientific than polemical. Throughout the text, Rosin backs up her analysis with both statistics and real-life examples.
The story is this: the decline in traditional manufacturing and manual jobs has left swathes of the male population bereft - having slowly seen their role as society's breadwinners eroded.
This process has been in motion for decades but has accelerated over the past few years. Technology has transformed our working lives and so-called soft skills - communication, empathy, emotional intelligence - have become increasingly important in the workplace.
Rosin claims too many men have been too slow to adapt to this changing dynamic and women have eagerly filled the vacuum.
Her research reveals that of the 30 trades or professions in the US that are projected to add the most jobs over the next decade, women already dominate 20 including nursing, accountancy, home health assistance, childcare and food preparation.
She also found that in 2009, American women outnumbered their male counterparts in the workplace for the first time and on higher education courses by a margin of three to two.
She adds that she has found this phenomenon is occurring across the world, including here in the UK.
On the evening I began reading the book, I was initially a little sceptical. I accepted the premise that female influence in business and the workplace was growing but I was unconvinced we were as far down the road as Rosin believed we were.
However, the next day I found myself looking at the world through a different prism. I looked around the office, in the street (I work in Liverpool's central business district), in Starbucks at lunchtime, on the commuter train.
It felt very much like the moment I stepped out of Specsavers Opticians in Lord Street in Liverpool when I was 28 - wearing glasses for the first time - and exclaiming audibly (to strange looks from passers-by): "Oh my God, is this what the world looks like?"
For the first time I was seeing the dramatic change in gender balance. Even though I had worked with, and for, many women over the years I still harboured a lazy belief that men retained a firm grip on the workplace in terms of numbers.
However, what was blurred had now become clear. Women were everywhere.
In the office that day, I had made a note of the gender balance of the people I spoke to on the phone - eight women, three men.
It prompted me to do some research of my own. I found a study compiled by the statistics team in the House of Commons about women in public life, published earlier this year.
The report, which you can read by logging onto www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN05170, reveals that in the UK, women now make up the majority of journalists, teachers, laboratory technicians, therapists, editors, librarians, public relations officers and insurance underwriters.
And even in professions where they are still in the minority, they are catching up fast. Women now make up 45% of GPs, solicitors, lawyers, judges and coroners. Among scientists, that figure rises to 46%,
Data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency reveals that 57% of first degree graduates in the UK in 2010/11 were women - a trend that has remained constant for the past five years. The same agency also reports that 66% of first degrees achieved by women during the same period were at first or upper second level compared to 61% of those achieved by men.
I also contacted the so-called 'big four' accountancy firms in the UK - Deloitte, KPMG, PwC, and Ernst & Young - to ask them for a gender breakdown of their graduate intake in recent times.
Deloitte told me that over the past five years its graduate intake has ben around 60% male and 40% female but adds they are seeing evidence of this gap closing. KPMG's graduate and school-leaver intake for 2012 was 55% male and 45% female but again believe it will not be long before it is 50/50.
PwC didn't offer figures for recruitment but said it had implemented a "shadow a female leader scheme", which allows students to shadow a female partner or director to see how business works at the top. Student recruitment manager, Andrew Bargery, said: "The project has been so successful that over 1,000 students applied in 2012 with 50 receiving an offer and the scheme will be extended as a result."
At the time of writing I had heard nothing back from Ernst & Young.
However, despite the clear change in dynamic, even Rosin has to admit that women are still significantly under-represented in the corridors of corporate and political power. In the UK, just 22% of MPs are women and they make up just 15% of FTSE 100 boards.
A report by the Institute for Chartered Management last week highlighted the continuing pay gap between male and female executives. It showed that senior women will earn on average more than £400,000 less over the course of their careers than their male counterparts.
Rosin does address these issues in the book but they maybe need more investigation. Perhaps we are close to a tipping point and that it is only a matter of time before the final bastions of male dominance crumble.
The author also identified another curious phenomenon. Although women are fast advancing in traditional male environments they are still not relinquishing their previous roles as the primary carers of children - and as chief cooks and bottle washers.
Many are forging high-flying careers while still keeping the house in order - as men stand by like rabbits in the headlights.
This scenario was succinctly illustrated last week by Angela Ahrendts, chief executive of fashion house Burberry, who, like Lorraine Dodd, is firmly against statutory boardroom quotas.
She said: "I think it (a boardroom quota) is dangerous. Whether it's countries or companies, it's about putting the best person in the job who can unite people and create value.
"I don't spend a lot of time thinking about this, what with three kids, running the company and being flat-out busy."
Rosin also offered examples in the book about how the rise of women in the workplace had led to a more widespread implementation of flexible working practices and offered some evidence of the resulting positive effects on productivity.
If this really is the case then the Government's proposals this week to increase flexible working in the UK workplace are to be welcomed.
What I liked most about The End of Men and the Rise of Women is that it is neither a feminist rant nor a lament for a bygone era. What Rosin is attempting to present is a snapshot of where we are and where we may be heading. She doesn't say it's good, she doesn't say it's bad - she simply lays out the facts as she sees and interprets them.
And what is the future for us men? The answer is that it is rather up to ourselves. The fact that women are now eagerly grabbing opportunities in education and the workplace with both hands doesn't mean that doors are being closed in men's' faces.
Both men and women can have an equally bright future if they are prepared to get smarter and adapt to a changing world where emotional intelligence will not be optional.
How many times have you heard a man say "I don't go in for all that touchy-feely stuff" or something similar? As a blacksmith once said: "That internal combustion engine will never catch on."
I'll leave the final word to Hanna Rosin in an extract from her book ...
"What will it take to succeed in the economy of the future? Education will remain essential; the premium a college degree will set on income is likely to remain at an all-time high.
"Technology will continue to affect jobs - and increasingly high-skills jobs - in unpredictable ways (law firms, for example, now use computers to scan documents for discovery, replacing a key source of low-level legal work). But the sure bets for the future are still jobs than cannot be done by a computer or someone overseas.
"They are the jobs that require human contact, interpersonal skills, and creativity, and these are all areas where women excel."
]]>