Ships are able to slice thousands of kilometres from journeys if they can take a route through the Arctic Circle. Credit:Christopher Debicki/MCT via Getty Images and FT
Regular readers will know that I am not really a Financial Times type of person, but my favourite cafe in Teddington is Cafe Mimmo. What? Well the food and service at Cafe Mimmo are excellent but they have a choice of just two newspapers: the Daily Mail or the Financial Times. Well, which would you choose?
And to my surprise I have learned that the Financial Times is full of something that many other news papers shy away from: News. Their web site is still open to all, but you do need to register.
So today I read about The Thawing Arctic (free but registration required). The article described the opportunities for business and trade that are likely to open up when [my italics] the summer melting of sea-ice extends further over the coming decades. There was no real discussion about the reality of climate change. They simply showed a graph…
The summer minimum of sea-ice extent in millions of square kilometres versus year. Can you spot the trend? Graph from FT.com and data from NSIDC
…and let their numerate readers draw their own conclusions. This is much more dramatic that the headline graphs at the NSIDC news centre!
Back on August 12th I read, Doubts raised over UK energy investments (free but registration required), an insightful article reviewing the financial situation of RWE and Eon, and the extent to which the financial returns available to these German companies would affect their choice to invest, or not, in the UK’s energy infrastructure. In my head I had previously imagined that somehow our government made these decisions, but that is not how Financial Times sees it.
And today I read that Young Britons [are] opting to study sciences which is good news in my book. And I know it must be true because the story is also covered on the BBC who ask inanely:
Well as anyone who reads this blog knows, physics has always been cool, and it always will be.
All in all, my perspective on the Financial Times has changed. Although I don’t feel part of the Financial Times ‘tribe’, neither do I feel comfortable as part of any newspaper tribe. But the Financial Times seems to be the only newspaper which is still focussed on reporting ‘actual facts about things that matter’. It’s a novel idea for a newspaper: perhaps it will catch on.
Tags: Financial Times
August 29, 2011 at 10:12 am |
Hi Michael, “”In my head I had previously imagined that somehow our government made these decisions”" … I’d refer you to Kenichi Ohmae’s 1992 ‘The Borderless World: Power and Strategy in the Interlinked Economy’ for pointers to the envisioned role of governments in the unfolding ‘new’ ‘market economy’ and the redrawing of the world in the light of developing technologies… Essentially governments were/are to take a facilitating role in supporting the development of corporate markets and enable the use of national resources in their development. Contemporary and developng WTO legislation, supporting international treaties and agreements (cf. NAFTA, the GATT, later GATS etc.) would override national legislation where ‘barriers to trade’ might arise. WTO hearings are, by and large ‘in camera’ and not open to appeal). Democracy, shmocracy. The ignorance of national politicians to this unfolding picture, and its scope and consequences, was astounding, if understandable. The FT was the only paper that came close to reporting it, as it is /was a source for ‘decision-makers’. … sorry, bit of a rant! Ohmae is a consultant to Chinese and other governmets in trade and development etc. You’re right about the FT. It’s always worth a look to get a fix on ‘what’s going on…. Be well. R
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Nice topic i think the same about it.
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