Under TheThe RadarLabour Leadership While the media landscape is preoccupiedContest by COVID-19, 2020 politics and business grinds on. ‘Under the Radar’ provides a concise overview and thoughtful analysis of critical stories currentlySummary being &overlooked. Analysis Rooney Rules Campbell had to make his start at the very bottom of the footballing pyramid with Macclesfield Town. What happened? And the disparity doesn’t end there. Kick It Out, an anti-racism campaign Lampard failed to achieve promotion but group, have criticised the Football was then awarded with the manager’s Association (FA) for failing to properly job at Chelsea, one of the biggest and implement the ‘Rooney Rule’. richest clubs in the country. Meanwhile, Campbell performed a miracle by The ‘Rooney Rule’ requires football clubs rescuing Macclesfield from seemingly to interview at least one BAME candidate inevitable relegation, but then had to walk for vacant coaching positions. But since away due to the club’s financial issues. He adopting the rule in 2016, coaching now manages Southend in the third tier demographics have hardly changed and of English football, where he cannot sign there is currently just one players due to financial restraints. manager from a BAME background. So, one privately educated footballer Raheem Sterling has provided backing with pre-existing family connections to to Kick It Out, pointing to the disparity the game has quickly risen to the top between the post-playing careers of of management, despite barely meeting and , expectations, while a working class son of compared to their former BAME a Jamaican factory worker has struggled teammates, and Sol to get his foot in the door, even after out- Campbell. performing expectations. It’s true that football is a microcosm of society, but What does it mean? unfortunately this is a more illustrative example than the national team’s starting Football has often been described as a line-up. microcosm of society. And while the current national team is certainly diverse, Like other industries, football is facing the lack of BAME coaches is becoming huge structural changes in the post- increasingly damaging for the FA. COVID world. There are growing calls for quotas on foreign players, tighter The comparison between Frank Lampard spending regulations and closer scrutiny and Sol Campbell is particularly of takeover deals. But these reforms will compelling. They were both world class mean little if England’s brightest talent players who won Premier League titles continue to be disenfranchised from the and represented England at the World game. Cup. But Lampard walked into a top job at Derby County, a team chasing promotion to the Premier League, while Cut me some Slack deal also represents a significant step forward in the transition to ‘the new normal’. While emails and text messages What happened? can be missed (or ignored), chat rooms and video calls create a virtual office, Amazon and Slack have signed a multi- offering real time conversations. These year agreement that will see Slack services have been put to the test unlike become the conglomerates in-house any other in recent months - passing with communications provider. flying colours.

Slack, the business communications Slack has played its part in this platform, will be rolled out across experiment, adding 12,000 new paying Amazon’s Web Services’ (AWS) teams. In customers since lockdown, but this is a return, Slack will benefit from Amazon’s pretty poor figure considering the global storage, database, security, analytics, and shift to working from home. Indeed, the machine learning capabilities. company has admitted that the home working trend has barely lifted its revenue Slack will also benefit from using growth rate, which triggered a 15% drop Amazon Chime, Amazon’s current in share prices. Meanwhile, they have communications platform, which will been eclipsed by Zoom and Microsoft power Slack’s voice, video, and screen- teams, who have become household sharing features. names and WFH essentials overnight.

What does it mean? But Zoom and Microsoft Teams will be looking over their shoulder. In This is a win for all involved. By moving February, Slack became IBM’s official all AWS employees over to a single communications app, adding 250,000 communications platform, internal more users. Amazon could potentially top communications will be a lot more that, which will be a huge boost to their efficient. Rather than employees using funding and reputation, not to mention different communications services, the their stock price. move ensures everyone is effectively working on the same page. In the battle to become the king of comms, the real winner will be the And Slack’s customers will now have a far businesses using these services - the better experience when using the service better technology becomes, the less will – the ability to leverage Amazon’s global be spent on office space. Meanwhile, the infrastructure will massively improve its real loser will be commercial property own features and services. developers. Just as Amazon killed the high street, Slack and their competitors And beyond the practical benefits, this are set to permanently alter the urban landscape. Turkey gets the all interest rate for the ninth time in a row, putting pressure on the lira and deterring clear from Euroclear foreign investors. Turkey also froze UBS, Citi and BNP out of their currency market to prevent a wave of selling and What happened? make it harder to bet against the lira. These interventions have understandably Turkey is set to join Euroclear, one of troubled investors. Europe’s largest securities depositories. The Turkish Treasury hopes this agreement will enable greater investor access to the local government bond “Now there is a regulatory market. The Belgian settlement house is widely used by international investors and legal framework that to finalise their deals and safeguard minimises the risks of collateral on their behalf. Some only investment” invest in markets that have an agreement with the depository, meaning Turkey would have been excluded. Turkey is now going to launch a “euroclearable link” But investors caution did not start with and would benefit from access to wider the pandemic. President Erdogan has liquidity pools while reducing overall been increasing his spending year on year volatility of borrowing costs. since he took office in 2014, both at home and abroad. Domestically he has invested What does it mean? heavily in expensive infrastructure projects, while his foreign policy has seen Turkey’s agreement with Euroclear is the military budget jump by 86% over the a way for the country to attract some last decade. While the increased spending much-needed international capital, after may have had positive effects on his foreign investment has hit a record low. domestic support, debt has been soaring Foreign holdings of domestic government and analysts have long been warning that bonds had already been in steady decline they are too costly to sustain. since 2018 but plummeted in the second quarter of 2020. This is seen as a damning But now there is a regulatory and legal indictment of President Erdogan’s framework that minimises the risks of management of the economy, particularly investment, Turkey is confident that his iron grip over the country’s fiscal investors will flock to the government’s policy. debt market. Understandably, not all are convinced, perceiving this as an The recent tumble has been attributed to agreement that merely papers over the economic impact of coronavirus. To the cracks of Turkey’s unsustainable re-energise the economy after lockdown monetary policy. restrictions, Turkey’s central bank cut its What Trafalgar Is Reading

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