Society

If only all my stories had as much impact. My interview with Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England, sent shockwaves around the world’s currency markets. The Canadian was just three months into his new role as Britain’s most powerful unelected official when he visited Leeds to explain the central bank’s then new policy of forward guidance to a group of business leaders at the offices of one of the city’s Big Six law firms. In person, Carney was smooth, confident and assured, just as you would expect from someone who spent his formative years at Goldman Sachs. I had 10 minutes with the Governor, who was accompanied

As a Conservative, when I look at where we’ve had the biggest impact in government, there’s one area that really stands out. And that’s education. Through a lot of hard work, not least from teachers… ….we have come a very, very long way. Thanks to the reforms carried out by Michael Gove and Nicky Morgan… … we’ve seen standards raised and 1.4m more children in good or outstanding schools. In higher education, the global rankings now show our universities right at the very top… ….with record numbers of our young people applying. Crucially, over the last six and a half years we’ve also seen a renaissance in apprenticeships…. … well

Poor customer service is endemic across swathes of British industry. It plagues some of our biggest companies and as customers we should not have to put up with it. After all, this is the UK, one of the richest countries in the world. Or am I wrong? It’s time, I say, to stand up, be counted and shout: ‘Poor service no more. Treat us as if you care, as if we are humans.’ Now that rant is off my chest, let me tell you about a recent personal experience. Early in August, I did the good fatherly thing by ordering a new Panasonic LED TV for my eldest son who had

Even Kellyanne Conway, Donald Trump’s normally ebullient campaign manager, must be thinking it’s been an awful week. There was his horrendous debate performance on Monday, then the ridiculous week-long row over beauty queen Alicia Machado, and now the New York Times has splashed the story that Trump may have avoided paying federal tax for 18 years. Of these three, the Times story is probably the least damaging. Nobody thinks Donald Trump a dedicated socialist; he certainly isn’t ashamed of ducking his fiscal responsibilities. As he put it in the debate when Clinton accused him of avoiding tax, ‘that makes me smart’. The Machado spat — and his extraordinary 3am outburst

Can Twitter be worth more than Deutsche? On Tuesday, as rumours swirled of possible bidders for the microblogging site, the market was valuing it at $20 billion, compared to $18 billion for the troubled German bank. That might be a reasonable assessment of their relative prospects, or it might be confirmation that social media valuations are always bonkers. You’ll gather from my tone that I’m no Twitter devotee, and am unconvinced by its attractions as a business: it has never made a profit in a decade of existence, has plateaued at around 300 million users (Facebook has 1.7 billion), done little to develop its original offering beyond attracting a global

I hate gentrification; my area was so much cooler when there were people openly selling drugs on the high street, my neighbours’ house had a mattress outside and the nice restaurants needed bouncers so the diners weren’t constantly harassed by crack addicts. Now it’s all just nice coffee shops, other broadsheet readers and arthouse cinemas. But don’t worry, for the Mayor of London is on the case, launching an inquiry into how much London land is being bought up by overseas investors and, as the Guardian reports, ‘the scale of gentrification and rising housing costs in the capital‘. Sadiq Khan says there are ‘real concerns’ about the surge in the number of homes

Mikhail Tal, the Wizard from Riga, was one of the most devastating tacticians in the history of chess. His rise to become world champion was meteoric and included an equally devastating first prize in the 1959 Candidates tournament as well as demolition of the incumbent champion Mikhail Botvinnik in their 1960 title contest.   Tal’s forte was the creation of inexhaustible attacking potential that was almost impossible to refute. Harry Golombek, then the Times chess correspondent, related an anecdote about this week’s game in his book Fourth Candidates Tournament (Hardinge Simpole): ‘Tal sacrificed a piece for an attack that certainly should not have been sufficient. All seemed over and I