Are we so worried about losing our jobs we’re reluctant to take time off sick? Or so worried about out work that we have go absent with illness? Should we be worried that the long-term trend in falling sick leave has suddenly reversed?
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The BRIC countries accounted for a third of world growth in the past five years, thanks partly to a huge supply of cheap labour. Yet the growth in China’s working population is set to slow sharply and Russia’s will actually fall. So where will future global growth come from?
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Remember when Japan had China’s role in the world? A manufacturer of cheap goods, a giant trade surplus and enough finance to support the western world? Well for the first time in 30 years, Japan is importing more than it exports.
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HS2, the proposed high-speed rail route from London northwards, risks becoming blocked by Nimbies when it is the financial cost, not the environmental impact, that ought to be causing concern. If the benefits so obviously outweigh the £33bn cost, the private sector would be fighting to build it.
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What George Osborne tried to hide in his Autumn Statement is that Britain faces a lost decade: it’ll be 2016 before we are better off than we were in 2002. But while it will be at least as bad as that, it won’t seem so.
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Paying £750,000 a year for a brace of pandas! The same question applies to the monochrome mammals as to all other immigrants: can they pay their way or will they be a burden on the public sector? Well, maybe the bamboo eaters can be self-sufficient or even profit centres.
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The world of pop music and the reality of economics have impacted. Faced with falling record sales, the stars are doing more gigs to increase their income. But fans are finding times tough and ticket prices are being cut to fill the venues.
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You can see why Europe is trying to tap China for funds – it’s desperate – but why would Beijing invest in a clapped out western economy that is neither developing nor emerging?
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This blog won’t win Lord Wolfson’s £250,000 prize for saying how to exit the euro in an orderly manner. But neither will anyone else. The peer knows he has set an impossible question.
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How long before the whole United Kingdom is one continuous enterprise zone? Designating the sites where BAE Systems is axing 3,000 jobs as these zones is a good sop to the locals but there are 2.5m unemployed people in Britain. Should they be declared enterprise zones too?
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