ft.com
So now they want to talk. My banking relationship manager has been in touch and would like to schedule a call. This could be a good thing. There are a couple of areas where we could definitely move to the next level. For a start, I have no idea who he or she is, which, when you think about it, suggests the relationship could use some work. The trouble is I’m beginning to suspect we want different things from each other. The text suggesting we hook up said the bank wanted to “discuss its service…
5 months ago
ft.com
And for Christmas I got whooping cough. The diagnosis was a shock, not only due to the violence of the paroxysms that visited me in the night, but because I’d blithely assumed the thing had pretty much been vaccinated out of existence in the UK. To be told I had whooping cough — an officially notifiable disease — felt akin to waking up in a Dickens novel where characters are succumbing to diphtheria or consumption (“Oh aye, master Robert is taken badly with the whooping cough”). It is 2024, god…
4 months ago
ft.com
It is a rare politician who takes on a complex problem that offers little electoral dividend just ahead of an election they expect to lose. This reality is troubling Labour strategists who fear that Conservatives are parking a number of issues in the file marked “another party’s problem”. One such toxic parcel is the brewing financial crisis in UK higher education. What makes this particularly sad is that the great universities are one of the UK’s success stories. World rankings show Britain bo…
4 months ago
ft.com
Build a better mousetrap and the world apparently will beat a path to your door. Alternatively, if you don’t actually have any new ideas, perhaps you can just rebrand the existing device as AI-powered. Proclaiming the benefits of the latest technology is a well-tried staple of the retail business. So it should not have required expensive visits to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to predict that every absurd gadget is finding ways to incorporate the promise of AI into its latest merch…
4 months ago
ft.com
How much of a mandate for change does a new government need? Is it enough simply to have won an election or does it require more detailed permission for the tougher parts of its political programme? Will a couple of headline policies suffice? This is a question vexing Labour insiders as they plan their campaign. There is less evidence that mandates trouble Keir Starmer himself. If there is one thing we have learnt about the Labour leader — aside from his being the son of a toolmaker — it is tha…
3 months ago
ft.com
For the past 20 years or so, I have spent almost every Super Bowl evening at a party organised by old friends. It features great company, cool beer and the kind of wonderful unhealthy food that for some reason is compulsory with major athletic events. But this year I will be on edge. For I have been integrally involved in a secret plot to use Taylor Swift and the Super Bowl to head off a second Trump presidency. As you may know, the plan centres on the burgeoning romance between Taylor and the…
3 months ago
ft.com
Britain’s Conservatives have always had a complex relationship with civil liberties. On the one hand they talk loudly about individual freedom and rail against the nanny state. On the other, they cheerfully wave through intrusive or illiberal policies. Thus the party of personal freedom has in recent years introduced sweeping restrictions on the right to protest and a progressive ban on adult smoking. In part this reflects a deeper divide between what was once described as traditional liberali…
3 months ago
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A funny thing happened on the way to the bank. Well, not literally, because no one actually goes to a bank any more since your branch is now a Gail’s. But metaphorically. A few weeks back, your columnist was lampooning calls and texts from people styling themselves as his personal premium account manager so they could upsell investment schemes. I must tell you now that the man who wrote that was a fool, a dunderhead, a dolt. Anyone who wants to be my personal banker can call any time. Literally…
3 months ago
ft.com
I am sitting in the departure lounge at Malta airport. Well, obviously, I am not actually sitting there. I am sitting at my desk at work with a Pret sandwich and a half-drunk Americano. Possibly, by the time you are reading this, I am walking the dog. But journalistic conventions must be obeyed. The present tense is mandatory (though the “To Malta” style of opening is widely accepted in all good publications). It is better if what you are doing in the present tense is more interesting than sitt…
2 months ago
ft.com
Anyone who has experienced their offspring moving back home after university — which these days is probably everyone — needs no lessons about domestic tensions, relationship landmines or comic possibilities. How much harder to manage if the returning semi-stranger has also disavowed all that you believe in. This is the entirely recognisable set-up for John O’Farrell’s new comic novel — but with one twist. In his dysfunctional Hughes family, it is the parents who are earnestly socialist, while t…
about 1 month ago
ft.com
If there is anything close to an iron law in politics it is that people will not vote for parties that do not seem to like them. Yet Britain’s Conservatives often seem to dislike much of the nation they rule. The Tories increasingly sound like mourners at their own funeral, angrily denouncing the state of the country they have governed for 14 years. Ministers, MPs and media outriders fume in language that suggests contempt for a large part of the population. Nowhere is this more obvious than i…
13 days ago
