Corporate Citizenship

The Copenhagen Conference is not just crunch time for efforts to combat destructive climate change. It also questions what are the limits of voluntary corporate responsibility. 
Three months to go and already my desk groans under reports and analyses about the Copenhagen Conference. If there were a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Desks it [...]

One of the key stories in this section tells us that an “advisory body” is promoting “draconian measures” in a “crack down” on ill-insulated homes.
“Advisory body” is so bland its etymological origins must lie deep in a civil service lexicon of buck-passing and obfuscation. On the other hand “draconian measures” and “crack down” are from [...]

When Private Eye features a spoof newspaper article the name of the fictitious journalist raises a chuckle: Polly Filler, the yummy-mummy columnist; Lunchtime O’Booze, the music correspondent and, a particular favourite, Phil Space.
At first glance I thought that the CIPD employee survey story was a Phil Space special.  “Redundancies leave employees hacked off SHOCK”.  No, [...]

The climate change debate is hotting up.  (Sorry, couldn’t resist that one).  At the recent G8 summit leaders committed to an 80% cut in carbon emissions by 2050.  Forget the caveats about which countries have or haven’t agreed to do what by when, the increasing clarity about what the target is has big implications for [...]

The FT is not where you normally find what the Chief Executive of the Australian Rugby Union would call “a statement of the bleeding obvious”.
Yet Tuesday 2nd June was an exception.  The FT had a statement of the bleeding obvious from no less than Dave Hartnett, permanent secretary at the Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. [...]