The Ferguson riots: economics and bias in the American justice system
The riots in Ferguson, Missouri continue to dominate headlines around the world. Even the brutal dictatorship of North Korea has got in on the act, accusing the United States of being a ‘human rights tundra’. The disturbances follow a grand jury decision not to indict a police officer for the fatal shooting of a black […]
Report prepared by Volterra Partners for TfL and TFGM calls for transport funding reform
Transport for London and Transport for Greater Manchester recently commissioned Volterra to produce a report looking at long term investment in transport in cities. The report investigates how the current approach to evaluating and funding transport projects is likely to lead to ‘damaging underinvestment’ and calls for more devolved decision making capabilities for cities giving […]
Northern Line Extension gets the green light
Volterra, led by Bridget Rosewell, advised on the case for Transport for London’s Northern Line Extension (NLE) to Nine Elms and Battersea. The project was given the go-ahead by the Secretary of State for Transport earlier this month. Bridget was responsible for providing the Economic and Business Case. Her analysis showed that the NLE has […]
Planning permission granted to new hotel development in Finsbury Square following Volterra Report
Permission was granted earlier this month for The Montcalm Hotel Group to convert the Royal London House in Finsbury Square to a 256 room hotel. Islington Council initially refused planning consent as they did not want to lose office space and stated that a hotel would compromise the economic function of the area. Volterra were […]
Bridget puts QE ‘In the balance’
Volterra’s Bridget Rosewell was featured on BBC World Service’s In the Balance programme earlier this month in a programme where economics correspondent Andrew Walker led a discussion on whether or not Quantitative Easing has worked in the USA. Bridget talked of how she feels QE was essential in the first instance and greatly helped in […]
What the Emily Thornberry saga tells us about macroeconomic policy
It has been a wretched week for Emily Thornberry. The high-flying MP for Islington was sacked as Shadow Attorney General, and widely pilloried in both social media and conventional newsprint for tweeting a picture of a white van and England flags in Strood. Yet the saga tells us more about perception, about the narrative which […]
Corporate tax is getting easier to avoid. Time to abolish it.
Corporate tax avoidance is once again prominent in the news. When Jean-Claude Juncker, the new European Commission president, was prime minister of Luxembourg, the country seems to have operated as a vast tax shelter. Leaked documents have revealed that special tax arrangements were agreed by his country with over 300 multi-national companies. Getting a handle […]
Is Ed Miliband secretly a Rational Economic Person?
Recently, we have seen a very effective piece of forward guidance. Ed Miliband’s statement that Labour would bring in a mansion tax on properties worth more than £2 million has had a dramatic impact. The market for expensive properties in London has more or less ground to a halt, with very few transactions taking place. […]
All we are saying: give capitalism a chance
Is there a secret Leninist cell operating at a high level in the European Commission’s headquarters in Brussels? One which is dedicated to the overthrow of the capitalist structures of the European Union? The evidence from this past week is certainly consistent with this hypothesis. The demand for an additional £1.7 billion payment from the […]
Public sector pay and pensions are why the deficit stays high
Why can’t the UK government get its deficit down? This question has been exercising commentators recently, in the light of the latest assessment from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) that George Osborn will once again miss his target for the deficit in the 2014/15 financial year. Of course, the size of the deficit has […]
