My blog

Category: Opinion

  • India’s Prospects for 2024

    Dinesh Dhamija

    We’re almost a quarter through the 21st century and the predictions of Jeff Bezos and others that this would be “India’s Century” are well on their way to fruition.

    What should we be looking out for in 2024, as the country exerts its ever more powerful economic and political muscles? Here are my top seven predictions:

    Major announcements from global corporates

    We’ve seen global manufacturers like Apple increase their operations in India over recent years. I predict there will be an acceleration of these deals: Apple itself wants to make 25 per cent of its iPhones in India by 2025, so watch out for multi-billion-dollar investments.

     

    India takes diplomatic centre stage

    Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the stand-off between China and the United States, conflict in the Middle East… these are all disputes between polarised adversaries which a calm, neutral moderator can help to resolve. India is increasingly seen as a trusted mediator in global affairs and will accentuate this role in 2024 I believe.

     

    New Indian sporting heroes

    As the Indian population gains more leisure time, we’ll see more examples of world-class sporting performance. For example, 17-year-old Dommaraju Gukesh from Chennai became the second-youngest chess Grandmaster when he was 12 years old and has already defeated world number one Magnus Carlson. I predict that India will win more medals at the Paris Olympics this summer than ever before.

     

    India will host the 2036 Olympics

    There have been years of behind-the-scenes lobbying for India to host the 2036 Olympics, probably in Delhi. I predict that there will be an announcement in 2024 as Narendra Modi brings the greatest festival of international sport to the country for the first time, just as China won the 2008 games in recognition of its rising global status.

     

    UPI will gain international acceptance

    The Unified Payments Interface (UPI) which has helped to transform the Indian economy, reducing payment costs and corruption, will reach broad international acceptance in 2024, helping to bring ever more populations out of poverty and strengthen global cooperation. It is another great example of Indian leadership in technology and development.

     

    Political continuity

    As far as there is a sure thing in politics, Narendra Modi is sure to regain the Prime Ministership in this year’s Indian General Election, reassuring the markets and investors that they can plan for the future with confidence. I expect to see an upsurge in economic activity following the election as people make their bets on the next five years.

     

    India’s GDP could overtake Germany’s

    On current projections, India’s GDP will reach $4 trillion sometime in 2024 and could pass that of Germany (currently $4.4 trillion) and Japan ($4.2 trillion) by the end of the year to attain third spot globally. This would have profound implications for the world economy and encourage yet more investment into the country.

     

    Happy New Year!

     

    Dinesh Dhamija founded, built and sold online travel agency ebookers, before serving as a Member of the European Parliament. His latest book, The Indian Century, will be out soon.

     

  • Dinesh Dhamija: Indian Stock Markets End Year on a High

    Dinesh Dhamija

    In a year of milestones for India – most populous country, fastest growing large economy – here comes another: the country’s National Stock Exchange (NSE) is poised to overtake Hong Kong’s bourse and become the world’s seventh-largest exchange. For market-watchers, this is dramatic news. Indian stocks have traditionally failed to ignite global interest after false dawns created anxiety among investors.

    In 2023 those worries were replaced by sustained enthusiasm. The NSE virtually doubled its total market cap during the year to reach $3.7 trillion, while the fallout from China’s property market liquidity crunch hit Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index. As one analyst put it: “Strong consumption in India is attracting investors, with increased spending on property, luxury and higher-end goods by affluent Indians, as well as growing government capital expenditure on infrastructure.” Fund managers have taken note, diverting asset allocation from China to India and banking on a smooth political continuation in 2024, since Narendra Modi appears very likely to be re-elected in April and May’s General Election.

    The Nifty 50 Index – a weighted average of the largest listed Indian companies – reached a historic high in mid-December, having risen by more than 8 per cent in four weeks, while the Hang Seng fell by 6.7 per cent over the same period. “China continues to underperform, and there are relatively few alternatives for investors who are focused on emerging equities,” said a Mumbai-based analyst.

    Brokers and fund managers report unprecedented interest from international investors, including many who “never bothered about investing in India,” according to Abhay Agarwal at Piper Serica Advisors. “For the first time, I’m seeing interest from very long-term investors, both strategic and financial, who are coming in taking a 10-year view rather than just a one-year view.”

    There is a self-sustaining aspect to this growth, as ever more observers, writers, analysts and investors jump on the Indian bandwagon. Could it be yet another mirage, destined to evaporate in 2024? Cautious commentators note that the overall Indian economy – as distinct from its stock markets – remains plagued by high unemployment among the fast-rising youth population, that government debt levels are high, and that the SME sector is struggling.

    As the Financial Times noted recently: “A sustained boom will require greater liberalisation from a government that had tended towards economic nationalism,” while state-backed companies and tariffs on foreign-made parts remains a drag on inward investment.

    Dinesh Dhamija founded, built and sold online travel agency ebookers, before serving as a Member of the European Parliament. His latest book, The Indian Century, will be out soon.

     

  • Book Review: Richard Osman’s The Last Devil to Die

    Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club series is very popular – don’t underestimate it, writes Christopher Jackson

    In our age, there is an increasing suspicion that reading isn’t really that popular a pursuit at all. If we ask why this might be, we can alight on the Internet and television as explanations – but only partially. It is no coincidence that at the same time that the novel has declined, many newspapers are in thrall to the notion of ‘literary fiction’. This umbrella term, unhelpful as it is, broadly refers to writers who have no interest in story or character but are instead ‘noted for their prose’. Really they’re writing poetry without form or rhyme.

    One might legitimately add that almost all these writers are of the left and therefore coming at the world with a series of preconceived ideas about things: the passivity of their prose feels allied to an inherited world view. Independent thought cedes to long waffly passages of description, where the psychological condition of a character is told not by exposure to event but as one-noted perception.

    We’ve forgotten what’s difficult – to tell a good story and to show how people really go through the world. In certain circles you can be met with gales of hatred if you say you prefer CJ Sansom to Ian McEwan as I do, or Ursula K. Le Guin to Zadie Smith; but I am prepared to take this a step further and announce to an astonished world that I prefer Richard Osman to Salman Rushdie.

    Within the world of books which are actually fun to read, the hardest of all genres is crime fiction. The main reason for this is that you are writing for an audience largely made up of people who have read thousands of such novels before. They’re a tough crowd. In addition to this, you have to work within a formula – in the same way that a formal poet will be caught up in metre and rhyme, the writer of murder mystery must have a victim and a murderer, a series of clues and red herrings, and at least one desirable detective. To do all this successfully is sufficiently rare for readers to want to punch the air when they encounter it.

    Richard Osman’s achievement in The Thursday Murder Club series is to create funny and joyful narratives in a genre which you might think of as staid. Simultaneously he manages to say something definitely true about human nature: you shouldn’t count out the old.

    The Thursday Murder Club series is set in a Kent retirement village and is now into its fourth book. In order of publication, these are: The Thursday Murder Club (2020), The Man Who Died Twice (2021), The Bullet that Missed (2022), and the new book The Last Devil to Die (2023). The inspiration behind the books was delightfully simple. Osman, best known for being the presenter of TV’s Pointless, was visiting his mother at one such place, having lunch with her and her intelligent friends, and he looked around and thought: “This is a perfect place for a murder.” Then came the ensuing thought: “And I bet these old folk would be the ones to solve it.”

    What is good about the conception is that it reminds us that we tend to look through the old when we really shouldn’t. Almost by definition they know more than we do – even if, as one character does in the series, they’re beginning to lose their marbles. Osman knows that dementia is a terrible thing, but it is also a kind of experience and therefore a kind of wisdom.

    In a world where judges retire at 70, and accountants somewhat earlier, these books can be read as a quiet broadside to the way we treat the elderly: in forgetting what they did for us, we also forget what they’re now capable of.

    The Thursday Murder Club itself consists of Elizabeth, a retired spook, who is very much the ring-leader; her best friend the widow Joyce, through whose eyes we see many events in the books; Ibrahim, a gay retired psychotherapist; and Ron, a left-wing divorcee, whose boxer son Jason also features from time to time in the books.

    It is worth sampling Joyce’s voice to get an idea of the comedy of Osman’s world:

    We’ve had the most wonderful New Year’s bash. We drank, we counted down to midnight and watched the fireworks on TV. We sang ‘Auld Lang Syne’, Ron fell over a coffee table, and we all went home.

    The humour is almost always dropped in like this, incidental to the plot – or perhaps bundled in with it. We can see the comedy of Ron falling over, but it rushes past us and doesn’t hold us up: this is what distinguishes the books from those of, say, PG Wodehouse, where we are always building towards set pieces like the Gussy Fink-Nottle prizegiving scene in Right Ho, Jeeves. Wodehouse is pure knockabout comedy; Osman’s laughs are part of the fabric of a world where crime occurs.

    The crimes themselves lead onto another set of characters – specifically Chris and Donna, the likeable detectives whose love lives the Thursday Murder Club quartet also mind about. Chris has been given Osman’s own eating addiction, which the writer has been open about in interview. The image of the police which the books gives is broadly favourable – but then this is to be expected of a writer whose overall view of humanity is generous. In fact, if it comes to that he’s generous also to the criminals. Here is a representative passage about Mitch Maxwell in The Last Devil to Die who is probably Osman’s funniest creation to date:


    Here’s the thing. It’s a great deal easier being interviewed by the police than another criminal. Mitch Maxwell has been interviewed by the police many times, and their resources and opportunities are limited. Everything is on tape, your overpaid solicitor gets to sit next to you shaking her head at the questions, and, by law, they have to make you a cup of tea.

    Sometimes this sort of writing has led critics, who should be enjoying the books, to tut and say that Osman doesn’t in the end take crime very seriously at all. Personally, I think he is just a better writer than the people writing about him. Who’s to say that it’s not slightly annoying to be a book reviewer dealing in prose – and perhaps with an unpublished novel or two sitting in the desk drawer – and to find that a mere TV man can write so well?

    The other magnificent thing about these books is that because we’re dealing with a group of elderly detectives, we get a sense of how much time matters. The action across all four books probably takes place over a mere calendar year. This means that a new set of murders is usually kicking off a matter of weeks after the previous. This creates a sense that the characters are packing lots into their lives, and we feel we might emulate this in ours, even if we’re not solving murders ourselves.

    But this is not to say that Osman turns his attention away from the aging process: without wishing to give spoiler alerts, in The Last Devil to Die, he confronts it head on with great wisdom and tenderness. About the plot itself I shall say little for fear of giving it away. But in this book Elizabeth, the leader of the gang, is undergoing some personal difficulties which mean that Joyce now takes centre stage in solving the murders: the Thursday Murder Club is evolving over time. I was pleased to see we also get to know Ibrahim better in this book too.

    Naturally, we mustn’t go too far. Osman isn’t Shakespeare; the real poetic pleasures aren’t to be found in these books as they might be in those rare literary novels which tell exciting stories. But the joy they give is far better than what we’re all too often faced with in literary fiction today: no joy at all.

  • Indians Head London Property Rankings

    Dinesh Dhamija

    When he paid £138 million for Aberconway House in Mayfair last week, Adar Poonawalla joined a growing list of Indian billionaires with trophy assets in central London.

    He is now within a bicycle rickshaw ride of fellow Indian billionaire Ravi Ruia, who paid £113 million for Hanover Lodge in Regent’s Park earlier this year, and GP Hinduja’s redevelopment of the 1,100-room Old War Office in Whitehall, for which he paid £350 million in 2016 and has transformed into a world-class hotel and apartments.

    Ownership of ultra-prestigious London real estate goes in waves. In the late 20th century, the Middle Eastern Sheikhs made their nests in Mayfair. In the early 20th century, it was the turn of the Russian oligarchs. Adar Poonawalla’s purchase brings the number of Indian billionaires with a London pad to at least a dozen, including Lakshmi Mittal and Sri Prakash Lohia, each with top-of-the-scale mansions.

    After concentrating their property investments at home during the pandemic, Indian High Net Worth Individuals have returned to global markets, with the UK as the most popular destination, followed by the UAE and the United States. Some buy for a second home, others as a route to citizenship, others to educate their children.

    Adar Poonawalla is flush with Serum Institute of India’s successful drug revenue: it manufactured India’s most important pandemic vaccine Covidshield. Started by his father Cyrus in 1966, Serum Institute pioneered vaccines for diphtheria, tetanus, and measles, saving tens of millions of lives. Adar took over management in 2011 and rented Aberconway House in 2021, finally deciding to buy it outright from wealthy Polish heiress Dominika Kulczyk this December.

    I predict that 2024 will see a further influx of Indian wealth into the British capital, as more prime London real estate comes up for sale. If anyone really wants to make a splash, they should buy The Holme – the extraordinary Regent’s Park mansion which resembles The White House in Washington DC – currently on sale for £250 million.

    It’s been on the market since last February, so you could probably knock a few million off the asking price. But with 40 bedrooms, eight garages, a tennis court, sauna, whirlpool, grand dining room and library, besides the ornamental lake and four-acre gardens, it costs hundreds of thousands of pounds a year to maintain.

     

    Dinesh Dhamija founded, built and sold online travel agency ebookers, before serving as a Member of the European Parliament. His latest book, The Indian Century, will be out soon.

     

  • Dinesh Dhamija: India Will Take Off Like China in the 90s

    Dinesh Dhamija

    I love reading sharp economic analysis. You can always tell when someone has mastered their subject and can deploy statistics like small bombs – bang, bang, bang and the argument is over.

    One such piece appeared this week on Reuters.com, written by the energy analyst John Kemp. He compared the current rise of India with that of China in the 1990s and early 2000s.

    Of course, there are many differences, as he admits. India is a democracy, China a communist dictatorship. China’s cities are further north, so they need more energy for heating. China had a stronger manufacturing base; many Indians speak English.

    But the similarities are remarkable:

    India’s median population age is now 27.9, which China reached in 1998.
    35 per cent of India’s population lives in urban areas, just as it did in China in 2000.
    GDP per capita at purchasing power parity is $7,100, which China reached in 2007.
    Energy consumption is now above 26 gigajoules per person, just like China in the mid-1990s.
    What Kemp deduces from these parallels is that India will now enjoy two decades of rapid and sustained economic growth, just as China forged ahead in the years before and after the millennium, following the liberalising measures of the 1980s and 1990s.

    There is a “large rural population ready to migrate to urban areas in pursuit of better paid work and a large potential to industrialise by catching up with more advanced economies,” he points out.

    Kemp believes that India is on the brink of ‘take-off’, the point where urbanisation, industrialisation, household incomes and energy consumption increase most rapidly, usually for several decades at a time.

    The implications of this 20-year-long transformation are astonishing. The country will see a huge increase in demand for energy, goods and services, for travel, food and drink, technology and healthcare… anything that is sold in the West will be wanted in the subcontinent.

    As I describe in my book The Indian Century, it will provide the opportunity of a lifetime for a new generation of entrepreneurs.

    Strikingly, there are few other such economies anywhere else in the world. At a predicted 6 per cent per annum, next year India will grow faster than China (4-5 per cent), twice as fast as the global average (3 per cent) and four times as fast as advanced economies such as the EU and the United States (1.5 per cent).

    From an emerging markets point of view, India is becoming the only game in town.

     

    Dinesh Dhamija founded, built and sold online travel agency ebookers, before serving as a Member of the European Parliament. His latest book, The Indian Century, will be published in early 2024

     

  • Cameron Kerr on the restaurant chain that beat the Covid crisis

    Cameron Kerr

    When the world economy ground to a halt in 2020, the hospitality sector was amongst those by far the worst hit.

    Restaurants, pubs and bars can’t operate through Zoom meetings, and unlike a supermarket we don’t go there to take our food home with us. So in March 2020, the only option for the hospitality sector was to go into hibernation.

    Workers were furloughed, premises closed up and lights turned off, waiting for vaccines that at the time were estimated to be 18 months away… which experts thought was actually a worryingly fast rollout.

    So when French dining chain Côte went into administration during 2020, the news may have seemed predictable.

    What may have been more surprising to some, is that its’ financial savior, Partners Group, was able to save 94 out of 98 of the chain’s restaurants.

    In 2023 that number had reduced to 82 restaurants, but for comparison, Byron Burgers, a restaurant chain founded in 2007 – the same year as Côte – had 70 restaurants across the UK at its’ peak.

    Once considered ‘the darling of the better burger scene’ according to Restaurant Online, a series of setbacks including three insolvency procedures has left its total number of remaining restaurants in single figures.

    So why has Côte – a chain focused on steak frites and beef bourguignon – stood the test of time, and not a brand specialising in crowd pleasing burgers?

    “We’re quite generous in our interpretation of dining. We’ve got a big menu and intentionally so,” former Côte CEO Alex Scrimgeour told The Telegraph in 2015.

    “We’re not setting the world on fire and trying to do anything too crazy in a culinary sense.

    “We’re trying to deliver very simple, high quality food that you would expect to pay quite a lot more for if eating in an independent restaurant.”

    Browsing the menu for my local Côte branch, I find a steak tartare starter priced at just £10.25, confit duck à l’orange for £18.50, and even that beef bourguignon comes in at under £20.

    This is 2023, when a London pub can charge you £20 for fish and chips – a dish once considered a cheap and nourishing Friday night takeaway.

    So to see dishes with the kinds of names you’d expect to hear when watching Masterchef: The Professionals, followed by the number £18.50, is a surprising sight.

    Perhaps this best demonstrates the gap in the market that Côte has been able to fill.

    Byron Burgers has plenty of competition that springs to mind: Honest Burgers, Gourmet Burger Kitchen, Shake Shack, every major chain pub that offers a food menu (and a lot of pubs these days operate more as restaurants).

    That’s before we get to the usually cheaper, fast-food alternatives.

    Burger King, McDonald’s, Five Guys, your local kebab shop.

    If you want burgers, you are spoilt for choice – but french food?

    Café Rouge, another French food competitor, had to publicly deny that it was in receivership earlier this year, after a columnist for the Sunday Times wrote that the chain was “struggling” and “the last few outlets are on the verge of closing forever”.

    Gordon Ramsay’s French restaurant ‘Petrus’ in London offers an A La Carte menu at £120 per person.

    But Ramsay’s expertise has found its way to Côte for a far cheaper price.

    Last year as part of a brand refresh Steve Allen, the former head chef of Gordon Ramsay’s at Claridges, took over the role of head chef at Côte.

    Allen rose from Junior Sous Chef, to Head Chef and then Executive Chef during his time at Claridge’s, and worked on Gordon Ramsay books including ‘Secrets’ and ‘World Kitchen’.

    When Allen introduced a new spring menu for Côte this year, he told reporters: “I have been cooking French cuisine since the age of 13 and this menu is a reflection of everything I love about French food in the Spring. Our main focus is and always will be about the taste of our food at Cote. Simple, yet complex and delicious.”

    More than three years on from the pandemic and lockdowns when Partners Group rescued Côte, the French restaurant chain has a new head chef and has carried out a refurbishment of its’ restaurants.

    The refurb aimed to create ‘contemporary and elegant French-inspired’ interiors, accompanying a new in-house butchery and development kitchen.

    The company reported a turnover of £144.9 million for the 2022 financial year, a flat turnover compared to 2019 – but money that was made amid the backdrop of the Omicron variant and the cost of living crisis.

    Commenting on the figures, executive chair, Jane Holbrook, seemed optimistic about the future:

    “We’ve built our foundations for growth and are very well supported by Partners Group.  We are excited about our recent progress and have embarked on a brand renaissance supported by a brilliant team.”

     

    Cameron Kerr is a freelance journalist

     

  • Tim Clark on the Future of Education

    Tim Clark

     

     

    “If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is a failure”.

    Commonly, but probably wrongly, attributed to Einstein

     

     

    The Challenge

    How do we prepare young people for the future and “future proof” our education system?

    In 2017, the shocking assertion was made that, “around 85 per cent of the jobs that today’s learners will be doing in 2030 haven’t been invented yet”.  [“The next era of human/machine partnerships” published by Dell Technologies and the Institute for the Future] As a consequence of revolutionary changes in the jobs market, the same report controversially highlights the need for far more “in-the-moment” learning so that, “the ability to gain new knowledge will be valued higher than the knowledge people already have”. Transferable skills and the appropriate mindset will, therefore, be paramount.

    The Historical Context

    Sadly, the history of technical, vocational and practical education in this country has been one of neglect and missed opportunities.  In 1918, the Fisher Act (which raised the school leaving age from 12 to 14) recommended the introduction of “continuation schools” for those who left school at 14: pupils would be required to attend for 320 hours each year whilst holding down jobs. Many provisions of the Act were, however, cut owing to the post war depression. In 1926, the report by Sir W.H. Hadow, had, as its ideal, “the awakening and guiding of the practical intelligence, for the better and more skilled service of the community in all its multiple business and complex affairs……It has been amply shown that for many children the attainment of skill in some form of practical work in science, handwork or the domestic arts may be a stimulus to higher intellectual effort”. The need for a broader curriculum was repeated by the Norwood Committee in 1941:

    “At the primary stage the main preoccupation lies with basic habits, skills and aptitudes of mind…. It is the business of secondary education, first, to provide opportunity for a special cast of mind to manifest itself, if not already manifested in the primary stage, and, secondly, to develop special interests and aptitudes to the full by means of a curriculum and a life best calculated to this end.”

    Despite the dated language, the demand for a curriculum that recognised both that all pupils are different but also that all could and should benefit from schooling, is manifest. Such reports, of course, envisaged the use of “selection” and the provision of different types of school for pupils of different abilities and aptitudes. It is one of the tragedies of post-war education that very few technical schools were built so that in most areas the existence of only two types of secondary school, grammar and secondary modern, reinforced the idea of pass or fail rather than of “selection” for the most appropriate type of school.

    There is, however, absolutely no need to return to the idea of providing different types of school: wide ability schools should simply be able to offer courses that are appropriate for all their intake. This was recognised by the seminal Butler Act of 1944 (which raised the leaving age from 14 to 15 and to 16 as soon as was “practicable” – eventually enacted in 1973) which did not insist on selection but simply required Local Authorities to ensure that schools were “sufficient in number, character and equipment to afford for all pupils opportunities for education offering such variety of instruction and training as may be desirable in view of their different ages, abilities and aptitudes”. Although most LA’s did opt for selection, the Act was permissive and allowed for both selective and comprehensive systems.

    The Current Government’s Action

    In recent years, the prime manifestation of the government’s commitment to skills has been through the development of the apprenticeship programme and this commitment has, without doubt, been impressive. To date, 691 “standards” (ie approved apprenticeships) have been offered, ranging from 12-18 month Level 2 (GCSE standard) qualifications, through to Level 7, degree level qualifications, lasting up to six years. The various routes or disciplines include agriculture, catering and hospitality, construction, digital, education, engineering and manufacturing, health (up to and including becoming a fully qualified doctor), legal, finance and transport.

    Unlike traditional school/college-based courses, apprenticeships permit students to learn on the job in the workplace, to earn a salary but to also spend at least 20% of their working hours training or studying. To complete the course, apprentices must undertake both ongoing assessments and end-point assessments. One major and very positive organisational change is that from 2024 students will be able to apply for an apprenticeship through UCAS, the charity currently responsible for undergraduate degree applications. This “one-stop-shop” will help youngsters to compare the full range of occupations, training and education opportunities open to them. It will also help to build parity of esteem between technical, vocational and academic career paths. John Cope, Executive director at UCAS and board member of IfATE [Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education] has commented that, “AT UCAS, we know over 50% of those who set up their account with us are interested in doing an apprenticeship, while data from IfATE shows 84% of those who become an apprentice feel they made the right choice. This new partnership will boost numbers and make sure more people are making the right choice.”

    Two Areas for Consideration

    The current and recent governments’ drive to increase practical, technical and vocational opportunities is to be much applauded. Two aspects of current policy should, however, be challenged. Firstly, to start an apprenticeship, students must be at least 16 years old: much less is currently being offered to broaden the curriculum pre-16. Secondly, there is amongst some, a misunderstanding of the term “skills”.

    1.     Pre-16 Education

    The insistence on waiting until 16 before a pupil can commence most practical courses is unhelpful, not least because for most who embark on some form of apprenticeship, this only becomes an option after they have “failed” traditional academic subjects at GCSE. Every year, over one quarter of teenagers fail to attain basic passes at GCSE (a Level 4) with many of them knowing one or two years before they even get into the exam room that they are not going to be successful. What incentive is there for a young person to work hard, to behave or even to attend if they know at the end of the course, they will achieve little? As I have argued many times before, this is definitely not a call for “prizes for all” but it is a simple recognition that by having a broader Key Stage 4 (14-16 years old) curriculum we shall be able to engage far more youngsters in their learning, see many more achieve worthwhile outcomes (rather than a string of poor GCSE grades) and, most importantly, prepare them much more effectively for the uncertain and ever changing world of employment. The other, often overlooked, consequence of moving away from the one size fits all GCSE approach is that we could also raise standards in traditional academic subjects as programmes of study and examinations could be targeted more to those who are academically able.

    “We are not indulging in the fallacy of supposing that there are two types of pupil, the able and “academic” and the less able and “practical”; but we do strongly believe that many, though not all, of our average and less than average pupils may find through practical activities a sense of achievement which can energize the rest of their work.

     

     

    The pride and pleasure of a measurable achievement is considerable.

    There can be, too, an intense creative satisfaction in making and doing which is especially important for those who do not easily achieve expression in words.”

    “Half Our Future”, 1963, Sir John Newsom, a report into the education of 13-16 year olds “of average and less than average ability”

     

    2.     What Are “Skills”?

     

    The whole skills vs knowledge debate is one of the most puerile and unnecessary arguments in education. Education must be based on knowledge otherwise we are in the realms of fiction or make believe, but knowledge is only really important when it leads to understanding and when the student has the skills necessary to use and apply the knowledge. Unfortunately, for some, “skills” are seen purely as practical, hands-on skills, whereas every subject, including (and perhaps, especially) the traditional academic subjects such as literature and history, require skills – the skills of comprehension, application, manipulation and evaluation. A minister stated a few years ago that he was “in favour of Shakespeare and skills”, completely missing the point that the skills required to study Shakespeare are equally important to, but different from, the skills required to programme a computer. Society and the economy require a wide range of skills and examinations should be geared even more to the application and use of knowledge rather than the pure Gradgrindian retention of facts (although the process of changing the nature of examinations has been evident for some time).

     

     

    “Knowledge is essential for learning. It underpins all higher order skills. If we want our pupils to be able to analyse and evaluate, we must first ensure they know and understand what they are analysing or evaluating.”

    During the weekly subject quizzes at Michaela School, the questions pupils are asked “force them to think about, apply and manipulate their knowledge.”

    Katherine Birbalsingh, “The Power of Culture”, Headmistress of Michaela School

     

    The continuation of traditional academic subjects, at least to a basic level, is also essential to avoid a utilitarian approach to education and to ensure that every young person has at least some understanding of the country and world in which we live. Every child should also, regardless of background or ability, be exposed to high culture: Shakespeare, Dickens, Mozart and Monet should not be the preserve of the rich or academically able.

    The need for a broader range of skills was reinforced by the World Economic Forum’s “The Future of Jobs” report published in 2020. It argues that by 2025, the top fifteen skills needed globally include:

    1. Analytical thinking and innovation,

    3. Complex problem-solving,

    4. Critical thinking and analysis

    9. Resilience, stress tolerance and flexibility [“soft” skills]

    “Soft skills” are life skills that are not subject specific, but which are essential for young people to become active and valuable members of society. Skills such as resilience, stress tolerance, teamwork, leadership, creativity, enterprise, critical thinking, problem solving and the ability to be flexible should be taught from the sandpit onwards and, again, are successfully inculcated through traditional academic subjects as well as through sport, music, drama, school trips and activities such as the Duke of Edinburgh Award. They are most successfully ingrained when they are part of the whole school ethos – what used to be termed the “hidden curriculum” – whereby pupils are immersed in an environment which challenges (but equally, supports) and which develops character as well as specific knowledge and skills.

    This need for the development of broader, more generic and transferable skills was also identified by Carl Frey and Michael Osborne of University of Oxford in 2013. Their research into “The Future of employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerisation?” considers the impact of AI, technological developments, computerisation and sophisticated algorithms on employment. “Our findings thus imply that as technology races ahead, low-skill workers [interestingly, earlier technological advances tended to impact on skilled workers] will relocate to tasks that are non-susceptible to computerisation – i.e. tasks requiring creative and social intelligence. For workers to win the race, however, they will have to acquire creative and social skills.”

    As I argued in “Better Schools – The Future of the Country”, the introduction of a non-academic leaving certificate at 16 or 18, which records and evaluates attendance, punctuality, behaviour, attitude, application and commitment to extra-curricular activities and to school life, would raise the importance of such soft, but crucially important, skills. It would also remind youngsters that they, and no one else, are accountable for their attitude, behaviour and work ethic. What could be better preparation for adult life than the teaching personal responsibility?

     

    Tim Clark has had a very distinguished career in education. He was a teacher for 32 years and a Head for 18, firstly of a grammar school which he led to be “outstanding” in all areas and to be one of the highest performing schools in the East Midlands. Latterly, he took over an out-of-control academy in the London Borough of Hackney, sited on one of the largest and most deprived council estates in the country. In the words of Ofsted, he “transformed” the academy and left it as a well-disciplined, high performing school of first choice. In 2019 he moved into education consultancy and professional development training, working with schools across the UK and abroad, most recently in Nigeria and Spain. He stood for parliament against David Blunkett in 2005 and remains an active member of the Party.

  • Dinesh Dhamija: India has a new Greta Thunberg

    Dinesh Dhamija

     

    Prasiddhi Singh from Tamil Nadu, who will attend the Dubai COP28 climate summit this week with the Indian delegation, is just 11 years old and already has a Foundation which has planted tens of thousands of trees and earned the praise of Narendra Modi.

     

    As a keynote speaker at the Harvard World Model United Nations and on TedX, she has astonished audiences with her maturity and wisdom. “Trees never eat their fruit nor rivers drink their water,” she says. “Rather than looking up to the government and leaders, we should focus on the actions we can take to make a change.”

     

    When the COP28 begins later this week, Prasiddhi’s energetic optimism will contrast with lethargic inaction elsewhere.

     

    There will be no US President Biden. No Chinese President Xi.

     

    There will also be some embarrassing silences. What new fossil fuel deals does the COP28 president (and chief executive of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company) Sultan al-Jaber hope to sign during the event? What does UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak have to say about backtracking from previous climate pledges on emissions and oil drilling?

     

    India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, meanwhile, will arrive at COP28 with a tailwind of achievement in renewable energy generation, goodwill from his successful chairing of the G20 talks in Delhi, and a package of ambitious emissions-reduction plans.

    India has pledged to build 500 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity by 2030, tripling the current level and making up half of the country’s energy mix. Alongside are green hydrogen projects, low-cost finance for energy transition, plans for carbon capture and storage technology, and steps to phase out old and inefficient coal plants.

    “Government policies and incentives have positioned India as a rapidly growing clean energy market,” says Sandiip Bhammer at venture capital fund Green Frontier Capital. “India is committed to a low carbon future.”

    As a solar energy entrepreneur, with a 270-hectare photovoltaic park in development in Romania, I’m very pleased to see India taking the lead on renewable energy and emissions reductions. There are always short-term political temptations to shy away from climate action and energy transformation. Doing something new is never easy.

    But the alternative is potentially catastrophic. It is unconscionable that so few world leaders are prepared to act for the good of future generations, pandering to the fossil fuel lobbies that donate to their parties and ignoring the evidence of their own eyes.

    If we want the 11 years olds of today to inherit a world worth living in, we need to pay attention to what people like Prasiddhi Singh are saying.

     

    Dinesh Dhamija founded, built and sold online travel agency ebookers, before serving as a Member of the European Parliament. His latest book, The Indian Century, will be published imminently.

  • Harvey Soning on the importance of not going to university and learning on the job

    Harvey Soning

    My education wasn’t what you’d expect. My grandparents on my mother’s side came from Russia and Poland – that was in 1912. Within two years my grandfather was conscripted into the First World War. He spoke very little English but learnt very quickly in the trenches – mostly swear words.

    On the other hand, my father’s parents were here a generation before and were quite anglicised. My father’s father – a second generation immigrant – was an entrepreneur who built one of the first cinemas in the country in Staines. One month he had money – the next he didn’t: in that sense, he was a typical entrepreneur. In 1945, my Dad came out of the Air Force Bomber Command with £300 and went into the retail business. He became a successful businessman with a property portfolio.

    At the age of 14¾, I had the most diabolical school report: I was drawing aeroplanes and battleships when I was supposed to be doing schoolwork. We lived in Willesden at the time and my father said enough was enough. The headmaster said the best thing my father could do, was to send me to an aircraft factory in Cricklewood and see if they would give me a job and draw aeroplanes for the rest of my life.  Fortunately, my father phoned George Farrow, of Peachey Property, his friend in Kent, and said: “I’ve got this boy Harvey, and I don’t know what I’m going to do with him”.  George said: “Send him to me and we will make a man of him.” Peachey Property was based in Petts Wood, Kent, and so it was quite a commute: Willesden Green to Charing Cross, then Charing Cross to Petts Wood. I was paid £24 a week, of which £15 went on the fares even in those days. That’s how I got into the real estate industry.

    My education was, as they say, on the job. It was January 1st, 1960, when I started.  There were no bank holidays not the three-days-a-week in the office like there is now; it was full-on office work. The Corps of Commissionaires Sergeant used to clip me round the ear quite hard to make sure I had a clean desk –it’s how I was brought up and trained. You had to be the first in and last out: eight in the morning to eight o’clock at night.

    You could almost say that the old work ethic has now been all but destroyed and in the same way the mobile phone is destroying the art of communication, but this is the world we’re living in. In the 1960’s, London was being rebuilt. The smart money was buying the plentiful bomb sites, especially in the City and the East End.

    Despite the long hours, I got the property bug. Shelter is fundamental to human beings, whether that be a cave or modern home. We all must buy food and clothes – so retail is inevitable – and the retail has a supply chain, so you need warehousing and factories and so on. All of which makes real estate one of the most important factors of human life on earth, after food and water.

    It was on my 15th birthday that I started working in real estate. I have always admired the architecture and the sheer guts of these people to put these buildings up, From the early entrepreneurs such as Thomas Cubitt (1788-1855) and John Nash (1752-1835) who built this country, and then latterly for Irvine Sellar and Renzo Piano who built the Shard in the midst of a recession.

    Of course, you mainly read of the successes, but there have been lots of disasters as well.   More people have lost fortunes than the few who have succeeded. There are tens of thousands of people in this country involved in real estate as agents, architects, builders, and developers. I go to cocktail parties at Christmas, and look around me and think: “Wow, how do all these people earn a living in the Real Estate Industry”.

    I started life at Peachey Property Corporation who seconded me to estate agents for experience. I stayed there until the late 60s – a good 10 years – then I joined a company called Guardian Properties in which my father was a shareholder. Unfortunately, that went the way of many other real estate companies in 1974, which was the first crash after the Second World War. It was a secondary banking crash that brought down public-private real estate companies. At that point I thought: “Sod this business of working for other people” and I formed James Andrew as a commercial estate agency. I certainly didn’t think it was going to last for 50 years!

    I had £5,000 and named the company after my two eldest sons. I immediately received a desist letter to stop using the name because there was already a company with the same name in existence. I couldn’t afford new notepaper – you had to write letters to each other in those days, so I reversed the names. One of my first clients was Gerald Ronson who is still a client after 50 years, Sir Martin Sorrell followed a few years later. We have some very loyal clients including Sir Lloyd Dorfman, a Sovereign Wealth Fund, and a major Japanese Institution, who have been with us for 35 years.

    I don’t think setting up a business has changed all that much since we came out of the dark ages. Human beings are great at invention – whether that invention takes the form of technology, medicine, electronics, or some other commercial enterprise, and look at the tech businesses that have grown in the last 20 years. It’s the human drive. You have got to prove in a very small way that what you are trying to do actually works – and I would advise doing that with as little money as possible.

    The 1980s was amazing to witness. You have to hand it to Margaret Thatcher and her advisers as well: she had a great vision. When you met Thatcher, she was always straight to the point: no pleasantries about family life or anything like that. Right away the facts came out: she had a great brain.

    After what her successors have done to the economy, we’re now in a different world. We are still suffering from austerity and Covid 14 years after the last financial meltdown. There has always been tax, the only consolation being if you are paying tax, you are making a profit; tax runs the country. Has tax been a disaster for the real estate industry? Not really.  Corporation tax hasn’t moved too much either way with the changing of the governments. For private individual rates have not been the problem it’s the removal of allowable expenditure. Local taxation whether it be residential or commercial property is starting to hurt more and more, especially if you have a vacant property where there is no income. I am pleased Entrepreneurs’ Relief is still 10%-20%, depending on the circumstances, and CGT on most transactions.

    I would prefer to see entrepreneurial relief, at even lower levels to encourage new start-up businesses, as we talked about before. I think there should be at least a 5-year period before any tax on start-up businesses is charged. The government should also be providing more money for young entrepreneurs; we certainly need to encourage young people in this country to create the growth the economy requires.

    We need more bursary schemes for students and apprenticeships.  I am involved in a bursary for the Worshipful Company of Chartered Surveyors.   We have been very successful and have got 30 youngsters going through university that would have had no chance of being involved in higher education or know about the real estate and construction industry. It’s a great country of opportunity.   We need governments to encourage people to try and progress themselves out of the mire.

    Harvey Soning FRICS, is the founder, Chairman and CEO of James Andrew International

    Ambassador to the Royal Air Force Museum

    Founding Member of the Natural History Museum Foundation

     

  • Opinion: 2024 will be the year of the jobs elections

    Finito World

    Around election time, everybody always quotes Jimmy Carville’s dictum: “It’s the economy, stupid.” This is fine insofar as it goes, but it still begs the question of what makes a winning economy.

    The answer isn’t as clear-cut as one thinks. Both Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and US President Joe Biden face re-election in 2024 and both can point to certain improvements in their respective economies, with inflation significantly reduced from its peak: nearing five per cent in the UK, and three per cent in the US.

    So far so good. But voters can be forgiven for looking at these statistics and refusing to cast automatic votes for the incumbents. That’s because the price rises we experienced along the way are now embedded in the economy. Everything from your weekly shop to your Netflix subscription is more expensive – and ongoingly so.

    On a day-to-day level, what the consumer wants isn’t so much lowering inflation as deflation. Only deflation makes an individual cheer as they leave the supermarket, but few economists think it’s the solution: it makes CFOs squint sceptically at their spreadsheets, mulling what to do about the niggling fact they’re now making less money. Their only recourse is to spend less, which lowers growth.

    That’s why 2024 is likely to be the year of the jobs elections. If falling inflation is actually the optimal position but doesn’t feel great for consumers, then more will depend on psychological factors in the economy related to people’s experience of the workplace.

     

    For a start, how painful all the price rises really are will depend on whether your employer was kind enough to meet your financial anxieties with a salary rise. To their credit many have, but workers usually attribute salary rises to their own brilliance and in 2023 many regarded these as a necessity: besides, a salary rise is meant to put you in a better economic position – not to be a symptom of treading water.

    Secondly, your overall mood will depend on how you feel psychologically about your work and career. Ronald Reagan famously asked during the 1980 Presidential election which he would go on to win handsomely against the then incumbent Jimmy Carter: “Are you better off?” We tend to answer this in the affirmative if we’re fulfilled at work.

    When the likely challengers Sir Keir Starmer or Donald Trump ask this question in 2024 what will the response be? In the UK, it’s unlikely that the demons of the Truss interregnum will have been laid to rest.

    Between now and election day, homeowners will all the time be coming off fixed rate mortgages into a higher interest rate environment, and they are unlikely to blame their own failure to secure a better paid job for the pain they will be feeling. They’re more likely to blame Truss and her successors.

    The Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has done a good job of steadying the ship, but people don’t vote in droves on that score: they might tacitly respect a degree of competence, but they’re unlikely to be in a celebratory mood.

    Besides, unless you had a very large salary rise, or secured a better job than the one you had before, it’s unlikely that you’re going to have much spare change out of the rise in the cost of living (including mortgage costs), and the likelihood you will have been caught up in some sort of ‘fiscal drag’ – that’s to say, you’re probably in a higher tax bracket than you feel you should be. If you are, then you’re part of a £45 billion problem, which the government is hoping you won’t notice. What they’re hoping is that you will notice the £15 billion cut from National Insurance.

    This is why Sunak and Hunt – and to a lesser extent Biden – are in such an electoral pickle. There simply isn’t enough good news in the economy to offset the bad. Most economists agree that the situation is solveable only with better growth, but both economies are lower on productivity than they should be – in the UK, it is a miserable 0.3 per cent less than what it was during 2022.

    Of course, the dip in productivity has its own story to tell about the pandemic and its aftermath. With hybrid working now the norm, many workers are less productive and happy to be so if it leads to a superior work-life balance. As much as this might be very lovely, there remains the deeper question as to whether it’s a financially sustainable happiness.

    To look at the slow growth figures is to suppose that it isn’t: it might be that the strain we all feel in relation to prices is intimately related to the sense of relief many feel at not having to commute so often.

    There is a sense, then, that something has to give. Liz Truss has shown that we can’t cut taxes in an unfunded way without the bond markets intervening. Sir Keir Starmer and the Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves may find that with the tax burden at a historic post-War high they have less wiggle-room than they to raise taxes and increase spending. The bond markets are not in a good mood.

    We can already see signs that Reeves understands all this: her much-touted £25 billion Green commitment has now mysteriously vanished, in acknowledgement of the fact that the cost of it injures the very people Labour need in order to win a handsome majority, which is clearly in reach.

    That has its own story to tell in terms of sustainability jobs: if even Labour has come to believe that there is no way to afford a Corbynesque injection of money into the renewables sector, then either the green agenda is gone by consensus for the time being, or Labour is more exposed on its left flank that it realises.

    Even when it comes to immigration – traditionally considered a separate subject to the economy – the apparent failure of Sunak’s Rwanda policy means that the conversation has moved onto jobs. Specifically, anyone who is trying to tackle the problem at all is now looking at what constitutes viable skilled labour entering the country and what doesn’t. Former prime minister Boris Johnson is already arguing that an annual salary of £40,000 is a sensible threshold at which to secure a visa, though he doesn’t say why he failed to introduce such a policy while he had the chance to do so as prime minister.

    This opens up onto broader questions about what jobs UK nationals are prepared to do and what they won’t. This in turn opens up onto the gigantic question of welfare reform, so far left largely alone by Conservative governments since the streamlining exercise of Universal Credit.

    Whether we like it or not, this election year is an opportunity to look in the mirror. It is as if the old challenge which JFK uttered in his Inaugural Address 60 years ago is about to be laid down all over again: “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” Perhaps the world is always raising that question, for the simple reason that the global economy is competitive and we can’t afford not to answer it. But in 2024, it is being raised with particular urgency – and especially with regard to our working lives.