Mark Leftly



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Area of interest: Business

Journals/Organisation: The Independent | The Independent on Sunday

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Website: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/

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Website: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/

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Articles: 2014

 * Government information on the future of fracking is buried far too deep - Westminster Outlook - 27th June
 * A second bite of the Royal Mail cherry - please don’t mess it up - Westminster Outlook: Sadly for Vince Cable, if his five-year tenure as Business Secretary in this bastard hybrid of a government is remembered for anything, it will be for the messed up privatisation of Royal Mail - 20th June
 * Whitehall will be sold off in the name of reform - Westminster Outlook: Royal Mail aside, this Tory-led Coalition has not been a government marked by grand privatisations - 6th June
 * Labour’s young pretender waits in the wings... at Milton Keynes - Westminster Outlook: Only a political party could hold “Warwick 3” an hour’s drive away in Milton Keynes – and Labour’s top brass are working hard to ensure that the trilogy is concluded on a more peaceful note than the previous two instalments - 30th May
 * The Tories' handling of data protection undermines a key UK industry - Westminster Outlook: The Tories were not happy with Jane Frost. In March, they said she had made "unfounded and baseless accusations regarding ethics" in an article in our Sunday sister title. These accusations were about the integrity of Conservative Party research - 23rd May
 * Suspend all your disbelief and the drug chiefs' claims are compelling - Westminster Outlook Wow, this must be some sort of personal record for Vince Cable: one of the Business Secretary's many curiously emphatic opinions proved wrong within 48 hours - 15th May
 * The reactors are coming but the nuclear inspectors are going - Westminster Outlook: We are at the start of the most ambitious civil nuclear programme in this country's history - 9th May
 * How battling Binley put his stamp on the Royal Mail sell-off inquisition - Westminster Outlook: Mr Binley has absolutely thundered at what passes for the financial logic of the Royal Mail flotation - 2nd May
 * HS2 would create thousands of engineering and building jobs to help the UK economy - 26th April
 * Austerity and pension problems leave PCS facing a takeover, not a merger - Westminster Outlook: The Public & Commercial Services Union was forged in trauma and will end in capitulation - 18th April
 * If we want to bridge the North-South divide, let's send the Lords to Salford - Westminster Outlook: The North of England has been under-represented in terms of peers since Mauger le Vavasour made the 180-mile trek from Denton in Yorkshire to Westminster as one of the initial clutch of 14 commoners 766 years ago - 11th April
 * Nick Clegg's refusal to take Nigel Farage seriously could cost the UK economy dear - Westminster Outlook: More than four million jobs; £211bn in exports; peace - 4th April
 * MPs dig for the truth and prepare for a crackdown on mining companies - Westminster Outlook - 28th March
 * It's ridiculous that Miliband wasn't given time to form a Budget response - Westminster Outlook: The newly trim 5:2 dieter George Osborne won't even risk a gin and slimline tonic on Budget day - 21st March
 * The track isn't built yet but the gravy train is running - Westminster Outlook Sir David Higgins publishes his much-anticipated report into revamping High Speed Two on Monday - 14th March
 * High Speed 2 is going nowhere fast with its trainloads of spin doctors - Westminster Outlook: In Plato at the Googleplex, the American novelist Rebecca Goldstein imagines the pre-eminent Ancient Greek philosopher alive today and his likely reactions to the internet, television and the modern world in general - 7th March
 * Public transport should be an asset, not a penalty, for developers - Westminster Outlook In 1897, a golden key was used to unlock the northern gates for the opening of what, at 6,200 feet, was then the world's longest underwater tunnel - 22nd February
 * To find someone ready to clean up Sellafield's mess, turn to the Lords - Westminster Outlook: Lord Avebury was plain Eric Lubbock when he rose to political fame more than half a century ago - 14th February
 * Margaret Hodge, feared basher of bosses, may be ready to step up to a bigger stage - Westminster Outlook: There she was, Margaret Hodge, blasting big business bosses, reducing them to guilty-looking schoolboys, as she has done week on week, year after year since 2010 - 7th February
 * He may be an octopus but the minister for everything has only got two hands - Westminster Outlook: Michael Fallon is Westminster's – and the world's – first land-dwelling, four-limbed octopus, his tentacles wrapped around Whitehall, circular suckers incapable of being removed from powerful ministries of state - 31st January
 * British business must make contingency plans in case the Scots decide to go their own way - Westminster Outlook: North of the border, BAE builds an array of warships for the Ministry of Defence - 24th January
 * Business dominates British politics as the two become inextricably linked - Westminster Outlook: In 1826, many years before he embarked on a Westminster career that would eventually see him reach 10 Downing Street, Benjamin Disraeli wrote: "In politics, nothing is contemptible." - 10th January



Articles: 2013

 * Two giants let us down, but at least they have now made the necessary sacrifices - Serco's parallels with G4S grow more astonishing by the day, even allowing for the fact that both have been implicated in the electronic tagging scandal - 27th October
 * Keep track of criminals? Serco is so big that it can't keep track of itself - Serco needs to slim down. It should sell off big parts of the business and focus on core operations - 1st September
 * Putting PwC on Serco's case adds another stink to a very smelly situation - Outlook: That accountant PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) is investigating Serco on behalf of the Ministry of Justice is "hilarious", according to a source close to Whitehall - 30th August
 * Hiding results is bad news in any language - In The City: Virtually every company is trying to bluff its way to a profit - 25th August
 * Will Tony Hayward be given his old life back – to chair Glencore Xstrata? - Outlook: It was an astute question, but Ivan Glasenberg doesn't slip up easily. More importantly, the billionaire South African usually gets what he wants and we now have a good idea of what – or who – his latest target might be - 21st August
 * For the health of the NHS, private operators need drastic surgery - The only danger is that Mr Wicomb backs away from pushing for the stronger demand - 19th August
 * Audacious they may be, but defence reforms look a complete mess - Outlook: Bernard Gray is a yo-yo dieter, but when it comes to philosophical conviction he is as steadfast as the sturdiest dreadnought - 16th August
 * We have every right to know about the banks' £27bn black hole - Outlook: One of the stranger questions raised after the Prudential Regulatory Authority (PRA) revealed that five of the country's biggest lenders have a £27bn black hole in their balance sheets was whether or not the gap should have been disclosed at all - 21st June
 * Network Rail challenge is like running a marathon but there's no gold medal - Outlook: Sir David Higgins must think that the Olympics was a doddle - 7th June
 * Making moves towards a Britain where graduates don't need to go to extreme measures to get a job - There’s little doubt that universities have become more commercial in their outlook - 29th May
 * How guerrilla tactics are forcing boardrooms to man the battle stations - Campaigners are carrying on with the legacy of the shareholider spring - 12th May
 * Andy Hornby should pick up the phone as a first step towards real repentance - Outlook: "In the Abrahamic Bible that unites Christians, Jews and Muslims there are 2,350 verses on wealth and power and just 100 on sex," says Paul Moore. "So we know what God thinks" - 12th April
 * Why it isn't right to make a mere financier a knight - Tycoons set out to make a fortune and that should be their reward, instead of bestowing on them the nation's highest honour - 7th April
 * Why we should engineer better careers for our best and brightest youngsters - Outlook: Engineers are problem solvers, and the more we look for infrastructure to stimulate the economy, be it rail, roads or hospitals, the more we will need them. As a country, we need to recognise that there are great engineers beyond Brunel - 29th March
 * Whitehall battle of egos could make our energy strategy blow a fuse - Outlook: Forget for a few minutes whether you are extremely pro-new nuclear or utterly against it - 22nd March
 * Keeping HS2 on the rails might mean taking a fresh look at what it costs - Outlook: The weekend's Independent on Sunday revealed that High Speed Two (HS2) is already threatening to bust its eye-watering £33bn budget - 14th March
 * Why the big cover-up just won't work when it comes to choking off smokers - Outlook: I always wanted to smoke but couldn't inhale. At least, not without nearly coughing up my guts - 7th March
 * Hoare Govett has a chance for absolution in Countrywide's float - Outlook: The news that the UK's biggest estate agent by revenue, Countrywide, is looking to again sell shares on the London Stock Exchange has been painted as marking one or more of the following - 21st February
 * There's no need to read last rites for the high street – it will survive - Outlook: A cliché sure to boil the ice-cold blood of many a City retail correspondent is that there are "only xx number of weeks/days/hours/minutes to save the high street" - 14th February
 * Let's leave Mark Carney's pay on the back burner and see if he can earn it first - Outlook: I'm not sure if anyone is really worth a £480,000 salary, but what I do know is that such a figure is far from egregious for the person who is supposed to sort out the UK's monetary policy and help to drag us out of this interminable economic mire - 8th February
 * Big two put frighteners on M&B investors - Outlook: Given that Mitchells & Butlers owns Harvester, perhaps the group's then-chairman, John Lovering, should have treated fund managers to some early-bird specials on the outskirts of a provincial town, like one of the company's six eateries in-and-around Bournemouth - 1st February
 * point reversing to the 1990s on rail franchising if the model is so flawed'' - Outlook: Ah, the 1990s… MC Hammer, puffa jackets, grunge, Gazza's tears, This Life, the private finance initiative, negative equity, high interest rates and John Major desperately clinging on to his premiership - 25th January
 * Supermarkets' jargon can't hide problems - Outlook: For places that you visit to simply do the weekly shop or pick up a quick ready-meal, supermarkets don't half get caught up in increasingly irritating technical jargon - 9th January



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