Donald Trump met the leaders of some of America’s biggest tech companies on Wednesday and right from the outset, it was all about scale. Around the big table in Trump’s big boardroom were gathered the big names of our technological past, present and future: Bezos, Musk, Nadella, Brin and Page. Even the lesser known names were […]
The night was laid out before me: cheesy nibbles, caffeine drinks, and, for when things got ugly, an old school bar of Toblerone, being a prescient but sad reminder of a world that used to make sense. By the time I made it to my bed at around 7am, the fate of the world had […]
Allow me to be the first to congratulate Theresa May on becoming Britain’s longest-serving Prime Minister. It’s a bit presumptuous, I know, given that Sir Robert Walpole’s record can only be beaten in 2037. Yet May now faces an easy run to the title – thanks, in large part, to John McDonnell. The Shadow Chancellor […]
Seal the tent! Somebody has just gobbled up the Great British Bake Off and all eyes are on that commissioning editor dabbing the corners of his mouth with the end of his novelty Countdown tie. It’s criminal, I tell you! Sue Perkins had barely turned her back on the show, sitting as it was in […]
If the polls this far out seem to favour Hillary Clinton, there’s still enough volatility in the numbers to make one pause and wonder. If something unusual does happen in the months leading up to November, then where might we be in the New Year? The answer, I suspect, is at the start of a […]
The sound of the piano is everywhere. From the ethereal simplicity of Satie’s Gymnopédie drifting across a shopping arcade to the occasional Chas and Dave classic clunking amid the clamour of a busy market square, street pianos are becoming an established feature of our cities. These free-to-use pianos apparently started accidentally with a discarded piano […]
‘Nobody has said that you’re married to your sister,’ said the man from Concentrix on the phone. He had that sanctimonious tone that normally only comes with being a member of a church. Perhaps that’s what he was. Concentrix are the New Clergy for these secular days when fewer people than ever sit in a […]
Please take care when reading the following. Remain seated at all times and keep your nose pointed between the margins. Eyes should be open and facing forward. Remember to blink. There is not, it seems, a limit on how obvious something has to be before a computerised voice will eventually remind you to do it. […]
Patriotism is a strange beast, sometimes stirred by the oddest of circumstance. When the British public recently voted to name our new polar research ship ‘Boaty McBoatface’, I felt a strange but significant pride that I belonged to a nation that could understand something so fundamental about freedom. Britain, it seemed to say, privileges humour […]
If you’re anything like me, you’re probably a bit worried by a sinkhole appearing under your house or, perhaps, a mobile phone exploding and removing a vital buttock. That, of course, assumes that you’re not instead obsessing over venom spitting ear-nesting spiders leaping from your salad bag, the credit card scammers using drones to read […]
Perhaps that was it: the moment when Donald Trump triggered the fatal flaw in his bid to become President. We always knew that Trump could (and perhaps would) implode. Trump has always had the capacity to destroy his own candidacy. Any man capable of shooting so free and easily from the lip has the chance […]
When it comes to Labour Party politics, there’s a temptation to stay quiet about the whole ugly business and to step slowly away like you’ve just turned a corner and found two pit bulls tearing lumps from each other. Would anybody really want to comment on a situation in which you immediately become the common […]
Theresa May understands the value of an eye-catching flourish. As she emerged from the BMW in the Buckingham Palace courtyard last Wednesday afternoon, she rose slowly from the back seat, her shoulders draped in a dark and stately blue. For a moment you might have been excused for breathing a sigh of sartorial relief that there […]
This past week we saw the first death caused by a self-driving car; the kind of avoidable tragedy we can expect to be repeated many more times in the coming months and years as we increasingly put our faith in our so-called ‘intelligent’ machines. From drones to public transport, the future of transportation will be […]
An odd and slightly discouraging story emerged this weekend from the world of video games. To those of us excited by these things, news about the forthcoming PS4 game No Man’s Sky is usually greeted with a nervous sucking of the teeth given that the game has already been delayed once. The news on the 17th June, […]
Muhammad Ali was the greatest. We can say that with a high degree of certainty because he repeatedly told us he was ‘the greatest’ and, as we so regularly do with our celebrities, we believed him. Once he started to tell us about his greatness, we could no longer detach his greatness from his character. […]
How many relationships has the EU Referendum already cost you? One? Two? Are you now sleeping downstairs next to the dog’s basket or is the dog also refusing to sleep with you since you whispered your allegiance to the ‘wrong’ side? Blackballed by local newsagents since you muttered your admiration for Dave/Boris [delete where appropriate]? […]
Calling an American election this far out is always sure to involve some degree of knuckle burn. This is the business of making wild swings in the dark and predicting events that are as yet only shadows of the lumpish mass that will later emerge. However, the political game does have a few rules that […]
Where the town of Warrington foots one of the few bridges that crosses the Mersey, there stands perhaps the finest statue of Oliver Cromwell; better even than that which stands outside the House of Commons. Nothing about it is too proud. No arm extends in triumph and no sword is raised to denote challenge or […]
It was unexpected when it came. On Tuesday evening Ted Cruz dropped out of the Republican race and marked the occasion by elbowing his wife Heidi in the face. It was a clumsy end to what had been a clumsy campaign. The chief architect of Ted’s fall had always been Ted himself. Despite being trained […]
