As readers will know – I’ve been recommending for years that shareholders should be given a statutory role (shareholder power) to get more involved in companies’ activities. Prime Minister David Cameron and Business Secretary Vince Cable are now talking about making it a legal requirement for shareholders to have mandatory oversight on directors’ pay. However […]
Things have been changing this year – especially in the corporate world. Not only is society coming to terms with credit crunch and eurozone crises, it is also beginning to challenge some of the traditional approaches to running things in general. Take the third sector. Lots of well-intentioned and enthusiastic people who are trying to […]
Yesterday I was among the audience listening intently to Sir David Attenborough as he gave a lecture entitled People and Planet. The thrust of much of his argument is that we need to deal with the taboos surrounding the issue of ever-expanding population growth and the impact on planet earth. Given that the lecture was […]
I was having a discussion the other day with a senior Civil Servant about the impacts of Primary and Secondary Legislation on workload in government. Historically Government has always distrusted minor errors creeping into administrative areas even when it can be shown that their incidence is very small, paling to insignificant. The response has mostly […]
Something happened the other day that set me musing on doing as we are told. Fundamental changes have crept in to the way we interact in our society over the last years. This has a lot to do with the introduction of ever-increasing regulation and a reluctance on the part of many people to take […]
Now this is going to be quite short but covers the important issue of Civil Service accountability. Over recent years I have come across a number of instances where the Civil Service in the execution of their duties have seen fit to impose an interpretation of the Law that has no foundation in legislation. All […]
The world is going crazy – or at least it seems so. Despite all the fuss about executive pay – nobody with the power to act appears to have the guts to challenge the proposed executive package for Stephen Hester at RBS (reputedly worth £9.6m) I agree with Roger Lawson, of the UK Shareholders Association […]
Just who is there in the media and the political elite who is actually asking the real questions? Is anybody thinking? The current brou-ha-ha about the demise of Labour at the polls may be great political entertainment but it is not getting to the nub of the real problem. So what do I think that […]
There has been plenty splashed all over the media in the last weeks about sleaze and lack of integrity in general. Whether that has been the expenses issue in Parliament, the treatment of retired Gurkhas or the contempt for shareholders in setting the remuneration of senior execs at Royal Dutch Shell and elsewhere. What much […]
Right now there are projects all over that are based on cutting costs in business through application of Lean Techniques and outsourcing of services. Only the other day I listened as a spokesman set out the reasoning behind Essex Council’s outsourced approach to cost-cutting in an attempt to balance their budget. But surely this is […]
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