Big Tech’s fast-and-dirty employment honeymoon is over as Amazon unionises April 8, 2022 COULD you imagine a better name for someone making their mark out of being the Little Guy than Chris Smalls? It’s a story ready-made for a Netflix series. So it’s curious its success has taken Amazon – the company borne out of peddling cheap books – by surprise. Smalls is the leader of the tech [...]
Life must imitate art as pop culture learns the magic of diversity at the top April 8, 2022 Pop culture is usually the first to pick up on zeitgeists. Take Disney, and its front-of-house overhaul. Once upon a time, a Disney heroine would be found longing wistfully for a knight in shining armour to come to her rescue. But Disney princesses are now nuanced individuals with ideas and ambitions of their own. This [...]
As housing targets wither away, it’s time for councils to join us in the digital age April 8, 2022 At the end of last year, over 1.1 million people were on local councils waiting lists for affordable housing in England alone, according to ONS figures. At the same time there were 52,100 additional affordable homes provided across England, according to figures from the Department of Levelling Up, Homes and Communities. This was a decrease [...]
As we loosen Russia’s grip on energy, we mustn’t hand the reins to Beijing April 7, 2022 As the much delayed energy strategy is set to come out today, one thing is clear: the rhetoric has been centered around the need to phase out Russian oil and gas, and increase British self-reliance. Reaching both of these aims won’t be possible in the short-run, as an energy revolution of such Herculean proportions takes [...]
As travellers are plunged into airport chaos, we must finally lighten the load of their baggage April 7, 2022 Finally, travel bosses thought they were in the clear. The pandemic restrictions had receded, customers were returning to the skies, and airports were full again. Only now they are too full and sickness among airport staff has created chaos at airports as families, desperate to go away for the school holidays, try to make their [...]
Opinion-in-brief: Calorie-counting has never worked – why should it now? April 7, 2022 Boris Johnson wants to preside over a healthy nation, fair enough. But he’s buying into a diet culture that reached its zenith in the mid 2010s with the prevalence of MyFitnessPal and other calorie-tracker apps. Guilt-tripping people about the calories in their Sunday roast might work in the short-term by convincing people to resist extra [...]
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is a war against old and new and tanks versus TikToks April 7, 2022 Three decades ago, the white, blue and red Russian flag was raised in Moscow, signaling the end of the Soviet Union. Right around that time, the English computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web and introduced the first website. Today, we can see the impact of the end of the USSR on the [...]
Closing the autism employment gap means success for businesses up and down the country April 6, 2022 Tracy Clements is an English and Drama teacher. An avid traveller, she’s married with two kids and she’s on the autism spectrum. She’s in a safe job she likes, but she’s almost an exception. Only 22 per cent of autistic adults were employed in the UK in 2020 – but one in ten people across [...]
Explainer-in-brief: Fed up with the emoji offerings? Time to shine April 6, 2022 Ever felt like you needed a more specific emoji to caption your aperol spritz Instagram with? Frustrated at not being able to express every single emotion with a little yellow face? No, this isn’t an advert for an emoji self-help group or a Boomer’s guide on how to use the Other Keyboard. The Emoji Subcommittee [...]
Britain’s love of Channel 4 is blinded by nostalgia, it’s time to finally sell up April 6, 2022 From a quasi-outsider’s perspective – I lived in Australia for the first 26 years of my life – Channel 4’s current makeup seems bizarre. It is state-owned, but commercially funded. Editorially independent, but bound by a legislative public service remit. The notion of having a public broadcaster that provides news coverage free from all commercial [...]