“David and Peter both have huge strengths,” Knight says. “You could make an argument that Peter’s someone you want close to home. My sense is he has been advising the leader’s office in the run-up to the election. And that went well. If David’s ready to move on from IRC he would be a brilliant...
Tag: Other features
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The vigilante drivers battling Britain’s traffic cameras
The cameras are everywhere. Our motorways, our car parks, our quiet suburban streets – automatic number plate recognition, or ANPR, observes Britain’s drivers through a vast network of unblinking eyes, keeping tabs on where and when we’ve travelled. Unbeknown to most of us, this is a cornerstone of our civic infrastructure. ANPR systems allow the...
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I spent a day in Britain’s employment tribunals… and found a barmy system that is about to get worse
The paperwork involved was jaw-dropping. Ringbinders, described in lawyer-speak as “bundles”, ran to hundreds of pages. It is referred to throughout: “Please look at the email which you sent to the applicant on July 12. You’ll find this on page 300. Have you got it?” Within moments I understood why, even for the most scrupulous...
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Is Britain the world’s most self-loathing nation?
Even Britain’s pensioners, a generation you might expect to be more pragmatic, seem to regard our treasures with short shrift – which might explain why two octogenarians launched an attack on a Magna Carta exhibition at the British Library in May. Food British food is so often disparaged by continental Europeans and Americans alike as...
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South Korea is running out of children – and Britain could be next
For South Korea’s kindergarten teachers, the national dearth of children due is already painfully evident and impacting their career prospects. The country’s record-low birth rates are projected to cause the closure of roughly one-third of daycare centres and kindergartens by 2028, a report by the Korea Institute of Child Care and Education warned in January....
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‘Spitfires belong in the skies’: The engineers keeping the Second World War fighters flying
In a far corner of the room, Dave Brock, 60, has two tasks on the go. He is making an engine bearer – the frame the Merlin rests on – for one of the planes they are restoring, alternating between working on that and restoring a Hurricane fuel tank which has been damaged. Like Hurst,...
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Broken Britain: How the wage squeeze left us being treated as a developing country
“It seems that the recent increase in wages is a cyclical phenomenon driven by labour shortages as a result of Brexit, people dropping out of the workforce following the pandemic and a rebound in growth,” says the economist Julian Jessop. “We will not get a structural, long-term increase in wages until there is sustained productivity...
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I had a happy family and a good job as a GP – but I decided to kill myself
Amandip Sidhu’s charity has helped more than 3,000 people since it was set up, offering, among other things, weekly drop-in Zoom support groups. ‘We hear time and time again that more and more GPs are working longer hours. They don’t just see patients, there is a huge amount of administration and bureaucracy,’ he says. ‘There...
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What Zendaya’s two Vogue covers reveal about the fashion bible’s transatlantic rivalry
Move over, Beyoncé. Step aside, Taylor Swift. The latest celebrity to have been granted the rare honour of two simultaneous Vogue covers is Zendaya, cementing her status as the most in-demand star right now. It is a privilege afforded to very few: there was Adele in 2021 – all smouldering bombshell on the then-editor Edward...