About Alex
- Alex Singleton is a journalist at the Daily Telegraph who has been described by Lord Malloch Brown (former Deputy General Secretary of the UN) as "the high priest of globalisation" and whose work has been discussed in a Rowan Williams sermon.
He is part of the daily PoliticsHome survey of 100 leading opinion formers.
He has previously written for The Guardian and The Daily Express, and for wide a range of newsstand magazines.
Alex is a regular commentator on the television and radio, and has appeared on programmes and stations such as the BBC's Newsnight, the Today programme, The Moral Maze, Richard Bacon, CNN, Al Jazeera, Channel 4 News, CNBC, Bloomberg and Sky News.
Current affairs
- A dinner party on the Underground
Saturday was the last night that consuming alcohol was allowed on the London Underground. On Three Line Whip, I criticise the violent hooliganism that took place to mark the ban: there is “something deeply unpleasant about sharing public transport late at night with large groups of shouting drunk people”. In researching YouTube footage of Saturday, [...]
Economics
- How call centres destroy customer loyalty
A classic example of how to lose friends and alienate people
- A podcast on The Best Book on the Market
Eamonn Butler has written a new book called The Best Book on the Market. It is aimed at the general public, in much the same way as Freakonomics and The Undercover Economist. Yesterday I did a podcast interview with Eamonn about his book: you can listen to it here.
- Learning from America’s entrepreneurial culture
Brits should have a different attitude to business failures
International development
- People and profits go hand in hand
On Telegraph.co.uk, I put the case for private sector management of poor country water systems, arguing that opponents:
…do not have the empirical evidence on their side. The main cause of water poverty in poor countries is state mismanagement, both of water systems and of resources. 97% of the water distribution in poor countries is run [...]- World Bank spends aid money producing blog-reading software
The World Bank puts out many interesting publications but out on the ground, its legacy is one of failure. Remarkably, 65% to 70% of World Bank projects in Africa fail. Its efforts to fight corruption were fundamentally undermined this year by the Bank’s own board in its decision to remove Paul Wolfowitz (based on spurious [...]
- The rise of the private sector shows future for the World Bank
Political interference in the World Bank by the likes of Britain’s Hilary Benn is bad news for developing countries. While organisations like Transparency International rightly point out the damage corruption does to the fight against global poverty, political pressure means the Bank’s anti-corruption agenda is being seriously undermined. Thankfully, private capital markets are making the [...]
Globalisation
- Latin American banana growers lose out to those with preferential access
Preferential tariffs artificially skew trade to less efficient producers
- Fairtrade sugar leaves a bitter aftertaste
Why Tate & Lyle’s latest announcement is less welcome that it seems
- Why the European Union must reject steel tariffs
President George W. Bush’s steel tariffs cost jobs
Photography
- A jetty in Dorset
Taken in thick fog with a Nikon D40 in manual mode at f22
- Winter evening at Portland Bill
Taken around sunset at Portland Bill on a Nikon D40 in aperture priority mode at f/11
- Daybreak in Dorset
Early morning at Church Ope Cove, Portland, taken on a Nikon D40 on a tripod, probably with a graduated neutral density filter
- The best photography magazine
How users of digital SLR cameras can make a good choice
- How to clean your flatbed scanner
Fingerprints and dust on a scanner’s glass will impair the quality of scans: here’s the fool-proof way to fight back