Climate change activitists invade book festival event!

At the Joseph Stiglitz event on Sunday - yes, I know I also attended it on Saturday but blame Edinburgh Book Festival for not making it clear that it was the same event! - his address was interrupted by four young climate change protesters who invaded the tent. As three of them started dropping newspapers entitled "Never Mind The Bankers", the young female spokesperson demanded two minutes to speak out against the sponsor of the event, the RBS. Needless to say, the audience were not entirely sympathetic to their viewpoint and booed and jeered the proetesters as they were escorted from the premises by Book Festival staff.

With the protests against RBS escalating in recent days, perhaps it was just as well that the protest was peaceful and they left with minimum fuss. There didn't appear to be adequate security to deal with the problem and the onus fell on the young, mainly female, staff to deal with a situation surely outwith their remit. There was also a sense of irony that the protesters should invade an event in which the speaker was berating the banks, including the RBS, for their role in the economic downturn and the need to change the way the finance sector works.

Thankfully, it made my second viewing of the event quite interesting!

Economics at the Edinburgh International Book Festival

This evening I had the pleasure of attending a talk by Joseph Stiglitz, an American economist and professor at Columbia University, at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. He was the Chief Economist at the World Bank and won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2001. Mr Stiglitz was at the festival to promote his new book Freefall – Free Markets and the Sinking of the Global Economy. During the hour, he talked about why the global economy is in the mess it is in, what the underlying causes are, who is to blame and why the current action by both the American and UK governments may not be the correct solution. He also took questions about the increasing financial power of China, the lack of competition in the banking sector and the lack of progress in developing an environmentally friendly economy. An hour well spent!

Farewell.......

After two excellent years at St Ninian’s High School, I am leaving for a new role as a Teacher of Economics and Business Management at Stewart’s Melville College in Edinburgh. During my time at St Ninian’s, I have worked with some wonderful people who have supported me, offered me invaluable advice and helped develop me further as a teacher. I have also had the pleasure of teaching some fantastic pupils and I wish all of them all the best for their future education – I know you are in safe hands! Both teachers and pupils alike will be greatly missed.

Are Facebook friends really friends?

On Sunday, I attended "Are Friends Electric", an event at the Edinburgh Book Festival which looked at the rise of social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Twitter etc. The speakers were Jason Bradbury from Channel 5's "The Gadget Show" and Dr Mariann Hardey, a social media researcher who writes a blog on social networking etiquette.

The event raised some really interesting questions about the rise of social networking sites in general and I was very interested in the impact they have on young people. Both speakers were understandably enthusiastic about the potential of a much more connected world but what is the greater impact? Eric Schmidt, the boss of Google, today warned that young people lack an understanding of the consequences of posting so much personal information online and may have to change their names to escape their online history in the future.

Scaremongering? Possibly. Cynical? Maybe.

But real issues remain.....

• Stories already exist of employees being caught for insulting employees, benefit cheats defrauding the system, people being sacked for using social networking sites while off sick and even one girl who was sacked for branding work "boring" on her first day at work - forgetting that she had added her new boss as a friend!


• Rumours abound of employers using social networking sites as part of their recruitment process - could an inappropriate picture of you posted on a site affect your employment opportunities in the years to come?


• You may be careful about what you publish - but what about what others put on about you?


• What about the concerns regarding cyber bullying?


• If the information is in the public domain, is it fair game for large businesses to use it to market products and services to you?

As a Business Studies teacher, I need to look at the rise of social networking sites from two sides - the costs and benefits from a business perspective as it changes the way businesses operate, and the impact it has on the young people I teach. With no sign of a downturn in their popularity, their impact on both in the future will be very interesting to monitor.

And for me, one of the main questions is: is an electric friend truly a real friend? If I have 500 friends on Facebook, do I truly have 500 friends?

I would be interested to hear any views from my readers.

Fall in rise of inflation - but still well above MPC target!

The rate of inflation in the UK dropped slightly from 3.2% to 3.1% in July but still remains well above the Bank of England's 2% target.

Mervyn King, the governer of the Bank of England, said that the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) believed the recent strength of inflation was down to "temporary" factors including the recent increase in the rate of VAT to 17.5%, past oil price rises and more expensive imports due to depreciation in the pound since 2007. The Bank expect inflation to fall below the 2% target in 2012.

The slight fall in the rise of inflation was due to a fall in transport costs (price of second hand cars and fuel) as well as a fall in the price of clothing and footwear, which managed to offset rises in food and non-alcoholic drinks.

Consumer Price Index (CPI) - Measure of changes in the purchasing-power of a currency and the rate of inflation. CPI expresses the current prices of a 'basket' of goods and services in terms of the prices during the same period in a previous year, to show effect of inflation on purchasing power.