1 UK economy shrinks in July (Larry Elliott in The
Guardian) One of Britain’s leading economic thinktanks has said the UK economy
shrank last month as the impact of the Brexit vote led to a pronounced
weakening in activity. The National Institute of Economic and Social Research
estimated that gross domestic product contracted by 0.2% in July.
Niesr published the findings after official
government figures showed that the UK trade deficit widened and factory production
eased back in the weeks immediately before and after the EU referendum on 23
June.
The thinktank came to a gloomy conclusion after data
from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed that a spurt in
manufacturing came to an end in June, with output dropping by 0.3%. Meanwhile,
UK exports failed to match imports, with the trade deficit rising by £0.9bn to
£5.1bn.
However the ONS said there was little evidence of
industry adopting a cautious approach because of uncertainty caused by the
closely fought referendum campaign. The organisation’s chief economist, Joe
Grice, said: “As we previously highlighted in our preliminary estimate of GDP,
production and the wider economy grew strongly in April, and then remained at
roughly the same level throughout May and June.
2 Executive pay at 144 times average pay (Ian
Pollock on BBC) The average pay for chief executives of firms in the FTSE 100
index is now 144 times that of the UK's average salary, says the High Pay
Centre.
But such apparently excessive pay is not a new
concern. Back in the early 1960s the Conservative government was interested in
cutting back the sprawling and loss-making British railway network. The man who
was chosen for the job was a senior ICI director called Dr Richard Beeching.
He was appointed as chairman of the new British
Railways Board in 1961 and two years later published his first, and infamous,
report on "The Reshaping of British Railways". Even before he devised
his controversial plans for pruning British Rail, there was another
controversy, at least in the newspapers - over his pay. The Times reported in
1961 that Dr Beeching would be paid the same as his ICI salary while he was on
secondment to the government.
That was the then huge figure of £24,000, which was
thirty times higher than the average annual UK salary of just over £800 a year
and £14,000 more than that of the then Prime Minister Harold Macmillan.
Let's fast forward a couple more decades to the
1980s. It was then that the current trend for spiralling executive pay took
root. In 1987, the boss of the Burtons men's clothing firm, Sir Ralph Halpern,
was paid £1.3m, becoming the first million-pound-a-year-businessman in the
process. Since then, we have seen a parade of ever-higher pay packages for
supposedly top executives.
In 1994, the then chief executive of privatised
British Gas, Cedric Brown, was pilloried as Cedric the Pig. He had enjoyed a
75% pay rise to £475,000 a year, for running what had been a boring state owned
utility only a few years before.
The economist Paul Ormerod, who famously wrote a
book "The Death of Economics" more than 20 years ago, wrote last year
that we shouldn't look to his profession for an explanation. "Economics
has no theory with which to explain the distribution of income," he said.
But not everyone thinks "excessive"
executive pay really matters. That reliable supplier of contrary economic views,
the Adam Smith Institute, said in a blog: "Ultimately, it's hard to see
the public interest argument here." "If shareholders are really
missing a trick and overpaying their chief executives, who loses out? "Well,
shareholders, in the form of lower profits. And they're the ones who stand to
gain if they can fix that problem."
3 Facebook blocks ad-blockers (San Francisco
Chronicle) Facebook is blocking ad blockers on the desktop version of its
service, saying well-made, relevant ads can be "useful." At the
same time, the world's biggest social media company says it is giving users
easier ways to decide what types of ads they want to see — unless, of course, the answer is
"none."
Ad blockers filter out ads by refusing to display
page images and other elements that originated with a known ad server. But
Facebook has found a way around this. Beginning Tuesday, the desktop version of
Facebook will show users ads even if they have ad blockers installed.
The changes don't affect the mobile Facebook app,
which brings in the bulk of the company's advertising revenue. As with most new
Facebook features, the changes are being rolled out to users over time, so some
people might see it before others.
Facebook's ad-blocker blocker works by making it
difficult for software to distinguish advertisements from other material
published on Facebook, such as photos or status updates. Facebook says it wants
to make it easier for people to control the types of ads they want to see. For
example, if you don't want to see ads from a specific business, or ads that
target a specific category like travel, cat owners or wine lovers, you can say
so.
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