Opportunity knocks
There is a kind of conversation which sounds intelligent, and which makes sense at first hearing, but which deeper thought…
Powers of persuasion
The art of the public information ad
City limits
The phrase ‘rich people’s problems’ has its uses. I once overheard a group in a Knightsbridge restaurant sympathising with a…
Hotel rooms
A few Spectator readers may soon find themselves confined to quarantine hotels, so the magazine thought it timely to find…
Urban legends
In March last year, the world made an interesting discovery. We found that a high proportion of knowledge-work could be…
Flights of fancy
Soon after the pandemic hit, the world’s airlines turned off their pricing algorithms and resumed pricing flights manually. Everything the…
A brief history of luck
One of the staples of crime drama is the ‘cold-case squad’. This allows programme-makers to add period detail to the…
Bureaucracy is everywhere
Having grown up in a family business, my earliest exposure to corporate life was often baffling. I remember the first…
Meal kits have changed my life
Ford’s Kumar Galhotra once remarked that carmaking is 100,000 rational decisions in search of one emotional decision. You spend five…
The power of networks
In 1989 I answered my first mobile phone call on Oxford Street using a brick-sized Motorola borrowed from work. Several…
Calculated risks
Classes of people at moderate risk from Covid-19. Addenda to current NHS guidelines. Those at risk from coronavirus now include…
The Covid challenge
The Covid problem lies as much in the delayed action of the virus as in the virus itself. Since symptoms…
The road to new realities
Here’s the quandary. How in future can we make the kind of rapid advances we have made during the Covid…
Have big cities had their day?
About 15 years ago I noticed a few surviving chattel houses in Barbados and wondered what they were. As it…
Remote workers of the world, unite!
A few nights ago on Twitter, I quipped that I was planning to launch a trade union for remote workers.…
Certainty is overrated
I have decided to divorce my wife after 31 years on scientific grounds. Though perfectly happy, on reassessing my original…
Believing the hype
People often tell me I have a strange way of looking at the world. Obviously, it doesn’t seem strange to…
Patently wrong
In the past 30 years, I have driven about 8,000 miles in France in right-hand-drive cars. And I would be…
Progress is painful
One of my long-held beliefs is that evolutionary biology should be taught extensively in schools. There may be some objections…
Now you’re talking
This week’s Wiki Man may read a bit oddly. You see, I haven’t ‘written’ it at all; I’ve dictated it…
Network failures
You can’t discuss racial inequality without using the N-word. And you can’t debate social justice without adding the C-word and…
Speed talking
When I first heard Abba’s magnificent 1982 swansong ‘The Day Before You Came’, I’d never come across the Americanised use…
Full stream ahead
From time to time, every industry must adapt to some inconvenient technological advance. Suddenly, some part of what you offer…
Garden tools
Hours of googling have left me unable to find the essay on domestic horticulture, written by a Victorian aristocrat, which…
Small wonders
The Tesla Model 3 is an astounding achievement, but one thing baffles me: why do electric cars lack even the…
