Dan Lewis » Innovation

www.ukcrimestats.com launches today

Dan Lewis — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 17:58:38 +0000

At last – after many months of difficult development, the Economic Policy Centre , the think tank which I am proud to be Chief Executive of, is launching today a new ground-breaking platform – www.ukcrimestats.com

UKCrimeStats is the UK’s only crime ranking platform for neighbourhoods, Police Forces and Streets with maps, analysis and reports – starting with this one here – Decoding the Crime Data Dec 10 to Feb 11.

I don’t know why crime isn’t researched by economists more – it’s so expensive. The last Home Office report in 2000 priced it at £60 billion a year and it’s a safe bet that it’s gone up since then. At the very least, government should start measuring that cost. How can you start to deal with a problem without knowing the true cost of it?

Regional and Regeneration policies share the same fallacies . . .

Dan Lewis — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 11:36:45 +0000

Writing in the Yorkshire Post today, I described what was wrong with typical regional policy and how to do it much better. I suggested doing effective, boring and unpopular stuff like moving workers to the work (not the other way round) with more low cost roads and buses and paying lower wages and benefits in poorer areas to increase employment. This would do so much more than taking a bet on low-return but glamorous infrastructure projects like high speed rail or shovelling taxpayer funds towards the latest fashionable industries – remember Scotland’s semiconductor industry?

It occurred to me later that much the same could be said about regeneration policies. Which brings me back to this event I covered for Planning IN London 5 years ago and a speech I gave to the British Urban Regeneration Association a couple of months later. Apart from big budget quangos of course, they generally share the fallacy of the Big Man – they know what’s best.

If only they did !

Shale Gas – a new European energy revolution?

Dan Lewis — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 05:15:29 +0000

Under the aegis of Future Energy Strategies, I’ve organised an evening seminar on 20th January 2011 which seeks to answer this question, with the help of these three experts – Leigh Bolton of Holmwood Consulting, Nick Grealy of No Hot Air and Dr John Buggenhagen of San Leon Energy plc. To attend, please see here for details – it promises to be a fascinating evening.

Don’t download Trusteer Rapport if you use Gotomypc !

Dan Lewis — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 12:49:53 +0000

HSBC is telling all its customers to download this programme – Trusteer Rapport. Unfortunately, it never occured to them to do the work and check for programme compatability with major software for small business customers. And www.gotomypc.com is very clearly not compatible – my pc is completely unaccesible !

It doesn’t help that Trusteer support said to me today that there is “a known problem with gotomypc” but fails to make it known to the wider world anywhere on their website. Oh well, I’m writing this blog to warn others and hurry them up on a fix of some sort. And I will write again when HSBC, Trusteer and Gotomypc get back to me with a solution.

Now, more than ever, I understand the rationale for a move towards cloud computing.

The Global State of Carbon Capture and Storage

Dan Lewis — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 21:53:48 +0000

It’s here!

The Global State of Carbon Capture and Storage 2009

A one-stop report for all you need to know on CCS. What is happening, what are the technologies, what are the problems, where are the opportunities?

Read it at Future Energy Strategies