news opinion Oxford and Reading on top It’s an outrage …
… same packaging, same price – then you open it up and it’s a different shape. Yes, Toblerone still has its Alpine peaks, only now they come with several millions of years’ worth of erosion.
To brand-loyal consumers, the new shape with larger gaps, feels like a betrayal. They opted for tried-and-tested and got something else.
Then take the trusted household item – a toaster or baby monitor for example – no longer just for breakfast and childcare, but now also an aid to hacking – Twitter and PayPal being recent victims. Considering the number of Internet-connected appliances in our homes, we might all soon have to accept our vulnerability.
On a more serious note – but not to undermine the significance of the spying toaster – these small examples suggest we’re headed for an era of uncertainty and mistrust.
‘Post-truth’, right at the core of the issue, has in fact been announced the word of the year. It describes situations in which solid facts and reason lose out to emotion, and it seems both sides of the Atlantic have helped bump it into top spot.
The double shock of the Brexit vote and Trump’s alarming election seem to have left both countries divided and insecure. And this feeling is even wider spread as the wrong kind of nationalism gains ground across the globe – breeding fear of immigrants, fear of minorities, fear of anyone not just like us.
From chocolate bars and toasters to leaders of superpowers, mistrust is the order of the day. And with mistrust comes uncertainty.
What’s next with Trump’s shoot-from-the- hip style of leadership? Will Britain leave the European single market? How much say will Parliament have in the negotiations?
And closer to home, what price will businesses pay for this instability?
We’re heading into a year of uncertainty; but with change comes opportunity. So let’s choose to adapt and thrive, and to make 2017 a truly good year.
Carry de la Harpe Editor
4
businessmag.co.uk THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – THAMES VALLEY – DECEMBER 16/JANUARY 17
Oxford and Reading are again the highest- performing cities in the 2016 Good Growth for Cities index when it comes to jobs, health, income, skills and business start-ups – with Oxford pulling slightly ahead to top the table this year. The index is produced by PwC and think-tank Demos and is based on pre-Brexit figures.
The fifth annual index measures the performance of 42 of the UK’s largest cities, England’s Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) and the new Combined Authorities, against a basket of categories defined by the public and business as key to local socio-economic success.
Moving beyond a simple measure of gross value-added (GVA), the 10 factors comprising the index include jobs, health, income and skills, work-life balance, house-affordability, travel-to-work times, income equality and pollution, as well as business start-ups. Overall, more than two-thirds of the 42 cities now score more highly than the 2011-13 average, suggesting that the improvement has been broadly spread across the UK.
As in the 2012-14 Good Growth index, Oxford and Reading score the most highly, widening the gap between them and the other cities in the index. This result is largely driven by the large number of business start-ups within these cities – a new category for this year’s index. Both cities however are beginning to experience the price of success in terms of pressure on housing affordability and work-life balance.
Miles Saunders, office senior partner of PwC in Reading, commented: “The challenge is to make sure that there is scope for future growth. Local authorities and business need to continue to work together to create and maintain an environment that encourages good growth.”
The report also identifies a few elements of the index which are most likely to be materially affected by Brexit.
One element of the index which is most likely to be positively affected is housing affordability. PwC’s most recent Housing Market Outlook projects that house price growth in 2017 will be only around 1% following Brexit, as compared to a pre- Brexit scenario of around 5% growth. On the negative side, most forecasters predict that Brexit will lead to somewhat higher unemployment and slower growth in household incomes over the next few years.
Taking these three elements of slower growth in household incomes, some increase in unemployment, and an offsetting improvement in housing affordability, PwC estimates that average city scores could fall by just over 0.04 as a result of Brexit. This would have a modest but noticeable effect on the overall good growth index, reversing nearly one-third of the improvement in average scores since 2011-13.
A copy of the Demos-PwC Good Growth for Cities Index 2016 can be downloaded from
pwc.co.uk/goodgrowth
Oxford
Reading
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