Inside the raging war between abortion rights and Down’s syndrome discrimination September 24, 2021 Heidi Crowter and Maire-Lea Wilson walk out from the Royal Courts of Justice, defeated but with their heads held high. After months of campaigning, September has brought a closed on the second act of their battle to reshape abortion law. The two women are part of a network that champions the rights of people with [...]
The long shadow of Merkel: Germany has a future of delay and gridlock September 24, 2021 The German public have a deep-seated, if misplaced, love for Angela Merkel. It centers around the notion that mutti (or “mommy”, as the Germans somewhat creepily call her) managed, through the skillful use of tactics, to keep many of the perils of her age away from placid Germany. Merkellism’s reliance on managing crises rather than [...]
Virtues of City life hide high-functioning eating disorders in our boardrooms September 24, 2021 Imagine being sat in a conference room with 100 people, picture their faces, their jobs, the conversations that you might have had with some of them, the ones that maybe you had your eye on to network with. Statistically out of that one hundred people in that room, sixteen people will at some point have [...]
Priti Patel’s encryption war is a master key for surveillance September 24, 2021 Priti Patel has put encryption in her sights. The Home Secretary has backed a campaign to prevent Facebook rolling out end-to-end encryption across its many platforms, accusing secure messaging sites of harbouring pedofiles. Patel wants a back door to privacy. This month, the Home Office launched a new fund to combat child sexual abuse material [...]
Editorial: How can Labour cut through against the tax and spend Tories? September 23, 2021 BARACK Obama’s two books, Dreams from my Father and The Audacity of Hope, are amongst the high-water mark of recent political writing. With his usual fluency, they crafted a back-story onto his political vision, and introduced a junior Senator from Illinois to the world. They were translated into at least 30 languages, and bestsellers everywhere [...]
Opinion-in-brief: Tik Tokking time bomb of misinformation September 23, 2021 Facebook has been under fire for a number of dramatic failings. But as lawmakers were focused on Zuckerberg’s empire, another social media time-bomb has been quietly ticking away in the background away from scrutiny: TikTok. Kids as young as nine were fed Covid-19 and vaccine misinformation within 35 minutes of signing up to TikTok, despite [...]
Opinion-in-brief: Britain’s businesses need tech to succeed September 23, 2021 For Britain’s 6 million small businesses, simply surviving these last two years has felt like winning. The challenges have been ceaseless: retaining staff, serving customers digitally, managing cash flow across multiple lockdowns. These have been heavy burdens to bear. But they have fought to keep their businesses afloat. Nearly two thirds watched their revenues fall [...]
The tale of Big Tech’s reckoning was spelled out by Rockefeller’s downfall September 23, 2021 The Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter described an effective free market as a “gale of creative destruction”. Old companies and outdated ideas would be cast aside by the market’s pursuit of the new, and the consumer would be the winner. It is little surprise then that incumbents tend to do all they can to arrest the [...]
Housing take two: Is Michael Gove ready for the test? September 23, 2021 Earlier this month, Boris Johnson’s took a sledgehammer to his cabinet. In the reshuffle Michael Gove took up the gauntlet as Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, after Robert Jenrick was sacked following a series of blunders. It’s a tough remit. Where we live is not just about square footage: it shapes who [...]
Editorial: The Special Relationship needs shared goals more than a trade deal September 23, 2021 So the prospect of an all-singing, all-dancing Broadway show of a trade deal with the United States has been . After three prime ministers, as many presidents and a whole lot of grandstanding, Boris Johnson has been forced to admit it was more an ambition than a geopolitical reality. During the Prime Minister’s time with [...]