1 UK home ownership at lowest in 30 years (Hilary
Osborne in The Guardian) Home ownership in England has fallen to its lowest
level in 30 years as the growing gap between earnings and property prices has
created a housing crisis that extends beyond London to cities including
Manchester.
The struggle to get on the housing ladder is not
just a feature of the London property market, according to a new report by the
Resolution Foundation thinktank, with Greater Manchester seeing as big a slump
in ownership since its peak in the early 2000s as parts of the capital, and
cities in Yorkshire and the West Midlands also seeing sharp drops.
Home ownership across England reached a peak in
April 2003, when 71% of households owned their home, either outright or with a
mortgage, but by February this year the figure had fallen to 64%, the
Resolution Foundation said.
The figure is the lowest since 1986, when
homeownership levels were on the way up, with a housing market boom fuelled by
the deregulation of the mortgage industry and the introduction of the right-to-buy
policy for council homes by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government.
The Resolution Foundation’s analysis highlights the
scale of the job faced by the prime minister, Theresa May, who has pledged to
tackle the housing deficit. May warned last month that unless the issue was
dealt with “young people will find it even harder to afford their own home. The
divide between those who inherit wealth and those who don’t will become more
pronounced. And more and more of the country’s money will go into expensive
housing.”
Stephen Clarke, policy analyst at the Resolution
Foundation, said: “London has a well-known and fully blown housing crisis but
the struggle to buy a home is just as big a problem in cities across the north
of England.”
2 KPMG changes interview style to suit millennials
(BBC) Accountancy firm KPMG has changed its graduate recruitment process to
suit people born between 1980 and 2000 - the so-called millennial generation.
Instead of conducting three separate assessments
over several weeks, it will now combine the process into one day. The firm says
the change will mean applicants will find out if they have got a job within two
working days. It made the change following research suggesting millennials were
frustrated by lengthy recruitment processes.
The biggest complaint, made by more than half of
those surveyed, was about not receiving any feedback if they were unsuccessful.
KPMG chairman Simon Collins said the company felt it had to make the changes to
make sure it could compete with smaller start-up or tech firms, which often
offer a faster recruitment process, to secure the best graduate employees.
In June, Goldman Sachs said it had scrapped
face-to-face interviews on university campuses in a bid to attract a wider
range of talent. The US investment bank has now switched to video interviews
with first-round undergraduate candidates, in a move aimed at helping it to
attract graduate recruits from a broader range of disciplines.
And last year, professional services firm
professional services firm Deloitte said it had changed its selection process
so recruiters did not know where candidates had gone to school or university. It
said the move was aimed at preventing "unconscious bias" and
recruiting a more diverse "talent pool".
Millennials will make up 75% of the global workforce
by 2025. Several surveys suggest that these younger workers are not motivated
by the same factors as previous generations, such as a job for life, but
instead value a good work-life balance and a sense of purpose beyond financial
success.
3 Norway paradox: Climate leader and oil explorer
(San Francisco Chronicle) Norway wants to get rid of gasoline-fueled cars,
plans to become carbon neutral by 2030 and spends billions on helping poor
countries reduce their carbon footprints. Meanwhile, it's pushing ever farther
into the Arctic Ocean in search of more oil and gas.
"We know there is a paradox," admits Vidar
Helgesen, Norway's climate and energy minister. "We have been living well
from oil and gas. But there is no country in the world that has done more to
undermine the oil and gas industry than Norway."
The mountainous Scandinavian country of 5 million
people is torn between its ambition to be a global leader on climate change and
the awareness that its wealth is linked to the world's dependence on fossil
fuels.
This apparent contradiction is particularly striking
in Stavanger, Norway's oil capital. The streams of Teslas driven by oil workers
through the streets of Stavanger attest to the rich subsidies the government
has poured into the electric car market. E-cars have zero import duty, sales
tax is a quarter less than for conventional vehicles and most roads are free.
In June, lawmakers forced through a commitment for
Norway to become carbon neutral by 2030 — some 20 years ahead of schedule. But
Norway is accused of environmental hypocrisy, grandstanding overseas with
environmental projects while allowing its domestic oil and gas industry to pump
ever larger quantities of carbon into the atmosphere. Plans for carbon
neutrality involve buying credits for helping reduce emissions abroad.
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