Trusted, purpose-driven, agile, community-focused - there are reasons why charities are great at supporting people.
But we should worry about the sustainability of the charity sector as it is now, facing into the cost of living crisis and recession (1/4) ft.com/content/4a1c48… Worry 1⃣: Financial sustainability
As this chart shows, public donations to charity roughly track consumer confidence. Which is in the 🚽
Longterm, we've seen the sector rely on a shrinking donor pool. The % of the UK pop. giving regularly fell from 32% in 2000 to 26% in 2018 2/4

I read the government’s evidence review of community initiatives so you don’t have to!
If community infrastructure and social capital is your thing, this is for you (and maybe see you at #Restitch later??)
If it's not your thing but could be, there are diagrams to help! 1/ Quick context. The Levelling Up WP set out the economic theory behind levelling up – that you need to leverage 6 kinds of capital to achieve your goals or risk communities falling into a viscous spiral of decline they can’t escape 2/ (read this for more) civilsocietycommission.org/essay/inclusiv…

Was honestly infuriating to work on this review of the costs the Home Office creates for itself and other government departments by making so many wrong initial decisions on asylum applications, and taking such a long time to do so (1/) 🧵

https://twitter.com/stand_for_all/status/1462362618149187584

Of the 14,600 initial asylum applications the Home Office rejects each year, 11,500 lodge appeals and around 3,700 of those appeals are successful. So mistakes have been made in the initial process.
Now if I made 3,700 mistakes each year, I’d be fired but... (2/)

✅UK has taken back control
✅EU has protected the integrity of the (now smaller) single market
🤷‍♀️But business has been the awkward teen caught in the divorce.
So bring the leftovers and let’s figure out what this deal means for an A-Z of some of our leading sectors shall we? 1/ ✈️Aerospace
So this industry obvs v. worried about reality of customs, but also departure from the EU agency EASA.
This is the first annex I read in full. And it feels like the negotiating teams have pulled off a pretty impressive job here, forging a process to allow 2/

As we twiddle our thumbs waiting for white smoke from Brussels, this prompted me to reflect on how badly business lost this game. Deal or not, whatever emerges, whenever it emerges, will be a million miles from what business hoped for. How did it go so badly wrong? 🧵(1/)

https://twitter.com/MileEndInst/status/1335910782836633600

I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve been told over the last 5yrs that it’s because business wasn’t loud enough. 1st during the referendum (though post-🗳️ analysis tends to agree the economic argument was won, it just wasn’t important enough). 2nd during the negotiations (2/)

I know, I know. A lot of news today. But gimme like… 70% of your attention for 2mins.

We know that charities have seen a buttload of additional demand this year. 55% tell @probonoecon they may not be able to service it all. But where’s it coming from? This gives us a clue (1/) Charities like @DeafBlindUK make up some of the 19% seeing more demand from their existing clients as they help them literally navigate the pandemic.
For them, it's mostly the first kind of demand we've identified - direct Covid consequences such as loneliness, isolation etc (2/)

Now 4 months into working in the charity sector and… boy. Those 5 years I spent sarcastically muttering at the void about government needing better partnership with and support for business… I didn’t know how good the private sector had it. THREAD (1/10) At every corner during the Covid crisis, financial support schemes have been designed for the private sector and (with the noteable exception of the £750m fund) charities have to make do with it. But it’s like charities have been handed their big brother’s oversized jumper (2/10)

Yesterday’s GDP numbers showed a wee uptick in June, but we’re all still expecting jobs to keep bouncing down the rocky hill for a long while yet. Some of the reasons are obvious -end of furlough, second wave- but, in case of interest, some of the other less obvious ones: (1/6) 1. JRS/loans were designed for firms facing immediate loss of demand. But a bunch will experience a lag eg. The visual effects artists still able to work on film shot over Winter over Spring. But once processed, there’s nothing new to work on & help is less useful/withdrawn (2/6)

So you’re a CEO trying to run a business from your study. Your husband’s looking after the kids for the afternoon, you miraculously have a spare 5 minutes. With the news about negotiations, Brexit has been nagging at the back of your mind. What are we doing on that again? THREAD You start emailing the lead of your Brexit planning team. Damn. They’ve been seconded onto your coronavirus team because crisis management skills are useful.
After 15 minutes of digging you give up, ask your PA if they can find the plans, call your CFO about the latest figures 2/

Brexit has started to be A Thing again. Which is weird. But I’m told it’s my job to… you know… engage with it. So. Storytime.

Companies have obviously been dealing with the much bigger fire that is a global pandemic and the many resulting crises.
(1/something) Turns out “all my customers are shut, all my suppliers are shut, I’m shut, how do I pay my staff/rent/bills?” is a more important question than “what about diagonal cumulation?” Also if your firm goes bust in May you care less about possible non-tariff barriers from January (2/)

This idea that businesses doing everything that they can to prepare for no deal and as such will be fine and dandy seems to be pretty persistent, so let’s have a look at 10 sectors’ preparedness – some more commonly known, and some where less attention is being paid (1/x) (Dearest members, forgive me for a few sweeping generalisations here as I try to summarise what I know is very complex and nuanced, and varies on your exposure, business structure etc etc in 560 characters) (2/x)

Ah, I see we're going to be talking about business preparations for Brexit again today.
A reminder. Preparing for Brexit isn't necessarily good for the economy. And doing everything you can to prepare for Brexit, doesn't mean your business won't be hurt by the fallout (1/7) The clothing firm that distributes their tshirts & jumpers round Europe from the Midlands. The only way they would have to avoid tariffs/delays into the EU is to move their distribution there. Moving jobs from the UK, something they don’t want to do. Readiness = jobs lost (2/7)

Been thinking a lot about tariffs this week.

Because we’ve been on a journey with tariffs right? (1/9) They were kind of the first thing people understood were economically bad in Brexit. We’ve had the pretty huge offer of zero for zero tariffs in an FTA early on, the curveball of the no deal tariff schedule and the Article XX1V nonsense, all set against the US-China drama (2/9)

I'm aware there's been some drama about this... And while there's no point fighting over who's more prepared, I think it's an objective fact that the EU has offered fewer short-term no deal mitigations than the UK has
🛫 for 6 months
🚛 for 9 months
That's about it (THREAD)

https://twitter.com/EUlondonrep/status/1155875118670909440

And there's politics, negotiation dynamics, international law in the way. I get it.
But in a world where the EU did want to reduce some of the damage of no deal, we at @CBItweets have some thoughts about what it could do (2/15)

Lots of chat today about no deal preparations. Again. And we at @cbitweets have some thoughts. About 120 pages of thoughts.

After 18 months of preparing our members for no deal, we asked:
Are we ready?
What needs to be done?
Would it make a difference? (1/9) @CBItweets Turns out, we're not ready. We looked at 27 areas of no deal preparations and we're expecting disruption of some form in all 27 at present - 24 of them in the short-term after no deal and 3 of them in the long-term (2/9)

Folks understand the £39bn doesn’t just appear in our bank account if we leave without a deal?
That it covers ~£4bn pensions and sickness insurance liabilities we’d be billed for every year from 2022 for decades?
And ~£20bn is for payments spread over 6 years up to 2026... Plus it includes our net budget contributions for 2019-2020. Which, if we’re still in the EU up to October 31st, is almost half of the remaining ~£15bn.

So if you refused to pay, maybe you have an unexpected ~£10bn to play with next year. Then £3bn and change each year to 2026.

So you may have seen @CBItweets out today banging our well-weathered drum on no deal. And (having spent a proportion of my week going through 1678 bits of feedback from members on Brexit since the extension of Article 50 in April) here’s why (1/11) The gap between the intrigue of politics and the reality in our economy is gaping. This is the kind of thing we hear from members every single day at @cbitweets (2/11)

We're 25 days from exit day, there's no sign of a plan that will deliver a deal, and businesses... not super happy.

The @CBItweets Brexit and @CBI_Economics teams were in Edinburgh, Newcastle, Nottingham and Leeds last week talking to companies and... some observations (1/x) 1⃣ There's no sign of contingency plans abating or slowing down, even if Article 50 is extended.
We hear of stockpiling all over the place. £8million spent by one firm on parts of heavy machinery, companies in construction, retail, even housing associations (2/x)

Ok. I want to talk about stockpiling because it's a really good example of why, every day politicians dither, our economy is bleeding more and more money.
Stockpiling isn't the most common Brexit contingency action, but it's up there and it's caught the public's imagination (1/9) The @CBI_Economics team have started to see the level of stockpiling become is so high it's coming through in surveys, not just anecdote.
Stocks of raw materials have been growing for the past 6 months, while stocks of work in progress goods and finished goods are flat (2/9)

Let's put the #PeoplesVoteMarch and Raab's no deal backstop comments in the context of the economy. Because today the @cbitweets quantifies the impact of Brexit uncertainty and the risk of a cliff edge in a new survey. And it's a big deal. Buckle up (1/) The big headline:
80% of firms say Brexit has meant they've cancelled or delayed investments.
This time last year it was 36-40%. That's a HUGE spike. And it's because it's not just pre-referendum plans shelved, but the UK being left out when new decisions are being made (2/)

I've been away for a week. Making my way through the inbox on the train in, and it's reminder after stark reminder that the JLR and BMW stories are the tip of the iceberg.

Here's just a hint of what's going on in the business world right now (1/4) In just the first few emails I've read about:
🔸️ UK firms contacting EU customers warning they reserve the right to not make any deliveries from April 19
🔸️ EU firms contacting UK suppliers stating they'll only deliver to addresses within the EU from the start of March (2/4)