A couple of days ago I took part in a webinar organised by the admirable Transparency Task Force. The TTF promotes reform of our dubiously accountable finance sector. The speaker on this occasion was Nicholas Shaxson. I'd read and enjoyed his exposé of tax havens, Treasure Islands, some years ago. I'd also read and been impressed by his more recent The Finance Curse, which argues that the UK suffers from its overdeveloped finance sector just as other countries have suffered from over-reliance on a natural resource such as oil. Of course we need banks and financial institutions. They enable businesses to start up and grow, and individuals to use their…

Yesterday was International Women's Day, and I thought this was the time to get going again on the PP blog, which I've neglected for months. Technology dictated otherwise, so I'm a day late... We had the usual surge of impressive stats underlining the issues still impeding progress towards equality at work. I want to focus on just three of these. The first is the way the GPG expands hugely over the life cycle. The TUC's excellent annual report shows this so clearly: This is very familiar. But in recognising how this age profile has persisted over the years we need to remember that the qualifications profile by age has changed.…

A couple of days ago I took part in a webinar organised by the admirable Transparency Task Force. The TTF promotes reform of our dubiously accountable finance sector. The speaker on this occasion was Nicholas Shaxson. I'd read and enjoyed his exposé of tax havens, Treasure Islands, some years ago. I'd also read and been impressed by his more recent The Finance Curse, which argues that the UK suffers from its overdeveloped finance sector just as other countries have suffered from over-reliance on a natural resource such as oil. Of course we need banks and financial institutions. They enable businesses to start up and grow, and individuals to use their…

Yesterday was International Women's Day, and I thought this was the time to get going again on the PP blog, which I've neglected for months. Technology dictated otherwise, so I'm a day late... We had the usual surge of impressive stats underlining the issues still impeding progress towards equality at work. I want to focus on just three of these. The first is the way the GPG expands hugely over the life cycle. The TUC's excellent annual report shows this so clearly: This is very familiar. But in recognising how this age profile has persisted over the years we need to remember that the qualifications profile by age has changed.…