Last week the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) launched a report written by the Bristol University academic, Professor Sarah Smith, looking at the growing gap between the amount given by different generations currently and monitoring the historical trends to worrying conclusions.

Over the years, I have written many times about the integral role that Christianity played in the evolution of English liberalism, arguing that English liberalism is in fact a specifically Christian doctrine, an application of broad Church Protestant Episcopalian doctrine to the political realm, and arguing that we should not expect classical English liberalism to be able to survive long without Christian underpinnings.

The City: Is it socially useful? Join the debate, shape the future!

A response to the overwhelming need for ethical engagement, JustShare is a collection of churches and charities collaborating to bring significant discussion and further action to the areas of social justice and global development.

415 years ago the City looked very different to the way it does now: Elizabeth I was on the throne, Shakespeare was still to write Hamlet or Macbeth, and the English were yet to settle in America. So it is little wonder that an institution that dates back to 1597 should occupy a curious place on the capital’s cultural and intellectual landscape. But we at Gresham College would like to think that this is what makes us more, not less, relevant in today’s economic climate.

Ethics and financial services

It’s easy to wonder sometimes what might have been. In 2002, when head of ethics at the FSA, I published ‘An ethical framework for Financial Services’ setting out core values for the industry, a route map for greater maturity and engagement and tools for improving ethical challenge, in the boardroom and across the industry. This Discussion Paper 18 was developed with input from the then industry chaplain of St. Paul’s – Canon Ed Newell – and many other stakeholders.

In the early part of the twentieth century business ethics and values were scarcely discussed. It was generally assumed that the standards of behaviour in society were reflected in the way business was conducted. Businesses were trusted implicitly. Perhaps I look back through rose-tinted spectacles, but my recollection of trading real cargoes of crude oil in the early 80’s was that business was done differently then. It was a time when ‘my word was my bond’ and ‘a deal was a deal’. Mostly by telephone, then confirmed by telex, complex negotiations led to cargoes worth many millions of dollars changing hands.

The issue of corporate governance is rarely off the agenda these days. Whether it is the composition of boards, voting procedures, accountability or remuneration; corporate governance is nearly always in the headlines.

Bob Diamond has an ability to capture newspaper headlines in a way that I suspect he wished he didn’t.

Rebuilding a place for Individual Social Responsibility inspired by our Philanthropic Legacy
By Joseph Colman
Trustee of The Bread Tin

The adage on which commerce in the City has been built, “My word is my Bond”, has been all but lost. Despite all the compulsory regulation to ‘Treat Customers Fairly’, in the few years since the crash trust is at an all time low.

At first it was the small voice in the communities, but now the political classes have taken to
highlighting the perceived failures of those operating in the City.

Not so very long ago, a short time after the fall of the Berlin Wall, there were those who felt that history had reached its goal and we needed no more deliverers. The construction of heaven on earth [without God of course] was in sight. Humanity had attained its destiny with the victory of liberal democracy and market economics. In 1992 one sage, Francis Fukuyama, wrote a book simply entitled “The End of History”.