Johnny Runge (Senior Social Researcher, NIESR) & Rose Lasko-Skinner (Demos)
“I just feel that some people are of the opinion that you’re not fired up, you’re not ambitious. I think it’s hard for someone to understand that… I’m nearly 60, but I’m still ambitious.” – Interview participant, woman, 59, working in retail, Yorkshire and the Humber.
The current shortage of heavy goods vehicle (HGV) drivers in the UK is hitting consumers hard, leading to distribution problems in food, fuel and groceries. Long queues have been seen at petrol stations across the UK and service stations are rationing fuel for customers.
Prosecco is probably the most famous Italian wine, a byword for sparkling good times and popping corks. But behind the fizz, Italy is in a major dispute over whether Croatia can sell a premium dessert wine by the name of prošek in stores across the EU.
A trade deal between the UK and the US was once counted as a great potential prize of Brexit. But now those plans have been delayed, with no clear timetable in sight.
Stand well back. RHJPhtotoandilustrationIt is a year since Horizon Nuclear Power, a company owned by Hitachi, confirmed it was pulling out of building the £20 billion Wylfa nuclear power plant on Anglesey in north Wales.
Angela Merkel 2015 portrait by Colin Davidson.
A handful of small energy suppliers in the UK have collapsed in recent weeks because they have been caught out by the massive rise in wholesale gas and electricity prices – and dozens more are in danger of going the same w
On the money? Sean Pollock/Unsplash, CC BY-SAAt the heart of the global financial crisis of 2007-09 was an obscure credit derivative called the collateralised debt obligation (CDO). CDOs were financial products based on debts – most notoriously, residential mortgages –which were sold by banks to other banks and institutional investors.
Shutterstock/Petra FigueroaIn 1969, Don Fisher was having difficulty finding the right size of Levi’s jeans in traditional clothing stores. His solution was quite radical. Together with his wife Doris, he opened his own store, The Gap, selling a large selection of the product Fisher had found so hard to buy.
Everyone over the age of 50 remembers the year in which rubbish piled up in the streets and graves were left undug. With Boney M and Gloria Gaynor dominating the airwaves and Superman as the big Christmas movie, there was no one to save Jim Callaghan’s ailing government from imminent collapse in 1978-79. Those famous Conservative election posters that would soon say that Labour Isn’t Working summed it up with devastating simplicity.
