Heed the lessons of Nuremberg: The signs of genocide cannot be ignored November 20, 2020 Seventy-five years ago today, British judge Sir Geoffrey Lawrence opened the most famous trial in the history of jurisprudence. Sat in front of him, packed into Courtroom 600 in the German city of Nuremberg, were the few surviving architects of Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich. Having been charged with the murder of millions of innocent men, [...]
Screenshot: How books became the new media battleground November 20, 2020 A weekly column from City A.M. bringing you all the biggest stories and trends in technology, media and telecoms This week **Media Moment of the Week: French radio kills the Queen **Publish and be damned: How books became the new media battleground **Could Pearson become the Netflix of education? Media Moment of the Week If [...]
Is going to university actually worth it — and who should decide? November 20, 2020 What are universities for? It’s the sort of navel-gazing question that academics love to pose, and the sort of deep philosophical terrain that pragmatic policy people fear getting sucked too far into. But with the government and regulators looking at new ways to measure and compare the quality of different degrees, it is a conversation [...]
Singing of arms and the man: Behind the big Boris defence announcement November 20, 2020 The announcement was preceded, of course, by a leak to the media, so that it could make a splash in the morning press. Standard practice these days, unfortunately — but the story was still an impressive one: the Prime Minister was giving the Ministry of Defence an extra £4bn a year for the next four [...]
Chemistry won the vaccine battle, but logistics will win the Covid war November 20, 2020 We are in a global war with Covid-19. And as military wisdom has it, wars aren’t won with the best tactics but the best logistics. Media coverage around the two initial vaccines — from Pfizer and Moderna — has concentrated on their relative levels of effectiveness and the number of jabs on order. But positive [...]
DEBATE: Are fears about remote working’s damage to Britain’s creative potential overblown? November 20, 2020 Are fears about remote working’s damage to Britain’s creative potential overblown? Kristine Dahl Steidel, vice president EUC EMEA at VMware, says YES. The future of work has arrived in the form of distributed workforces, and businesses should not be using this as an excuse for stagnant growth. The facts speak for themselves: new research shows [...]
From hero to zero: How supermarkets became the villains of the pandemic November 20, 2020 The recent news from Public Health England (PHE) that supermarkets are the most frequent common exposure setting for those catching Covid-19 in England is both shocking and devastating. But should we really be too surprised? PHE used data collated from the NHS test and trace app during the lockdown in November when supermarkets, as in [...]
Editorial: Saving the High Street requires some real creativity November 19, 2020 The collapse of Jaeger and Peacock’s into administration is, alas, little surprise. It’s a tragedy for the 4,000-odd people whose roles are now at risk – this is no time to lose a job, with the economy still in the doldrums. But it’s symptomatic of a wider trend, and a wider trend that at some [...]
Road pricing can level up the nation and take our outdated transport system into the twenty-first century November 19, 2020 If the leaks from the Treasury this week are to be believed, Rishi Sunak has been presented a study on road pricing by his civil servants. He’d be a fool not to take it seriously. Shifting towards a comprehensive system of road pricing would help the chancellor level up the regions, drive down pollution, and [...]
Cut Covid counterfeiters out of your supply chain November 19, 2020 From international travel restrictions to physical distancing measures in factories across the globe, the Covid-19 pandemic has placed enormous pressure on the supply chains on which we depend. But logistics are not the only challenge. Counterfeiters are taking advantage of this time of heightened vulnerabilities, and risk polluting a brand’s stock and reputation. Now more [...]