Opinion-in-brief: a big day for Google’s lawyers November 11, 2021 Yesterday, Google both won, and lost. The tech giant avoided a £3.2bn claim over alleged unlawful tracking and selling of users’ data. In another breath, the EU courts rejected an appeal to overturn a €2.8bn fine. In cash terms, let’s call it even. An important door was left open in the UK case. The Court [...]
Forget second jobs, ministers should do start with the grunt work of their first ones November 9, 2021 In a storm of sleaze allegations, it was an unfortunate day for Sir Geoffrey Cox to publish details of his £400,000 a year job at Withers LLP. For the pleasure of being paid almost half a million pounds, he offers “international legal services”. Sir Geoffrey, is, after all, a QC. To borrow a lawyer’s phrase, [...]
A fallen tree on a railway scuppered Cop26 travel plans – and that was the high point November 2, 2021 Cop26, billed as our last chance to save humanity, went very well. Within hours of wandering into the summit, borrowing a phrase from Greta Thunberg, comparing himself to James Bond, and reminding cows, once again, that they really shouldn’t burp, Boris Johnson saved the world, repaired tense relations with Europe, put the French and the [...]
Sally Rooney, Billie Eilish and George Eliot: Can we ever divorce the art from the artist? October 13, 2021 PUBLISHING a book is the ultimate act of surrender for a profession as dedicated to control as writers. Once a book is in a reader’s hands, you have relinquished your ability to shape what they think of it, how they connect with the characters, or how lost they become in a story. So too with [...]
Boris Johnson is gambling on the war-on-woke to keep rioting Tories at bay over taxes October 7, 2021 Boris Johnson is a man not used to picking up the tab. During his tenure at the Spectator, he infamously never repaid the interns who bought him coffees and in Downing Street he has tried to palm off the bill for everything from his curtains to Daylesford Organic ready meals. Before the pandemic, while crucial [...]
Exclusive: UK sets out quarantine restrictions for private jet Cop-26 arrivals October 6, 2021 It may be the least carbon-friendly way of travelling to the UK, but Cop-26 climate conference organisers are preparing for private jet visitors. A guide to ‘managed quarantine’ published this week for arrivals coming from so-called red list countries lists Biggin Hill and Farnborough Airport as potential arrival ports – both of which exclusively cater [...]
Michael Gove vows to enact ‘real change’ on a local level to fulfil levelling up agenda October 4, 2021 Michael Gove, the newly appointed Housing Secretary, attempted to finally add flesh to the bones of the levelling up agenda at Conservative Party Conference yesterday. In his keynote speech in Manchester, Gove, the head of the freshly renamed department for Levelling up, Housing and Communities vowed to provide “real change” for downtrodden regions of the [...]
Opinion-in-brief: Pandemic era etiquette for the common cold September 29, 2021 So London has been hit by the plague. No, not Covid – how desperately 2020. It’s the monster common cold, which most of us have managed to dodge for the last 18 months thanks to social distancing. Now it’s back with a vengeance. After aggressive messaging telling us to protect our loved ones by staying [...]
Afghanistan evacuation: Campaigns for Pen Farthing’s dogs expose a complete misalignment of priorities August 26, 2021 “Music is forbidden in Islam,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told the New York Times, “but we’re hoping that we can persuade people not to do such things, instead of pressuring them.” Under Taliban rule, women have been beaten for showing their ankles in public. A light punishment, in the context. Where the Taliban draws the [...]
City Pages Review: The legacy of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin’s bizarre bond August 25, 2021 Since the curtains came down on 2019, many of us have spent more time inside our homes than we had ever imagined. The pandemic has thrown up political and social change rarely seen in peacetime, but living through and talking about Covid has consumed incredible amounts of oxygen, often to the exclusion of other worthy [...]
