I haven’t yet been invited to give a commencement address this spring and I’m okay with that. I am 81, an age that’s gotten a bad rap recently, and I’m not famous anymore, but nonetheless I do have things to say to the Class of ’24 and I come cheap and have my own gown […]
The real estate industry, traditionally characterised by its cautious adoption of new technologies, is now at a pivotal juncture. The emergence of generative artificial intelligence or gen AI (which I will refer to simply as ‘AI’ from here on), with its open-ended and self-evolving nature, promises to fundamentally change the way we live, work and […]
After a row over the closure of his bank account earlier this year, former politician Nigel Farage has hit out at the UK financial regulator for saying it has found no recent evidence of customers being “de-banked” over their personal views. Farage believes private bank Coutts closed his account because his political views didn’t align with the company’s values. […]
This article was originally published in July 2022. Review: Paper City, directed by Adrian Francis In his first feature-length documentary, Adelaide-born director Adrian Francis offers a rigorous understanding of the American firebombing of Tokyo via survivors’ perspectives. In a brutal attack nearing the end of the Second World War, on March 9 and 10, 1945, […]
This article was originally published August 2022. There has been a significant decline in union-led strike action in the 21st-century UK. But with average public sector pay increasing by 1.5% between March and May 2022 (versus 7.2% in the private sector) and households facing a cost of living crisis, industrial disputes are on the rise […]
Originally published July 2023. The professional classes are currently, and rightly, obsessing about the impact that AI will have on the service sector as ChatGPT gets exponentially smarter. The current iteration of ChatGPT – the most popular AI – is said to have an IQ equivalent of around 155, meaning that the next one will, quite […]
Originally published May 2021. In the early 2000s, before the financial crisis, a debate dominated central banking: whether central bankers should try to reign in financial bubbles in what was called ‘lean against the wind’. That is, over and above their macroeconomic targets – keeping inflation at or around 2% and ensuring full employment – […]
Originally published March 2021. David Baddiel’s polemic Jews Don’t Count has proved surprisingly controversial. He seems to have gone out of his way to rile political opponents – mostly antisemites, and their enablers and apologists. Rightly so. There will never be a surplus of books lambasting antisemitic hatred or hypocrisy among the darker corners of the […]
Originally published March 2023. This August marks 75 years since the partition of the Indian subcontinent. British withdrawal from the region prompted the creation of two new states, India and Pakistan. The process of transferring power grossly simplified diverse societies to make it seem like dividing social groups and drawing new borders was logical and […]
Originally published in March 2023. A crisis that did more good than harm. The further it recedes into history, the more the abdication of Edward VIII seems like a fairly minor blip in the history of the modern British monarchy. Yet it was perhaps the decisive moment for the monarchy in the 20th century. For […]
