How to make economists fight like ferrets in a sack
One of the funniest passages of writing I have read in the past few years appears within the pages of…
Design everything for the disabled and you can’t go wrong
About 30 years ago, BT introduced a telephone handset with enormous keys. It was intended for people with serious visual…
The inventions (and Welsh rarebit mix) that will change your life
At last. And just what you’ve been waiting for. The official Wiki Man guide to the best gadgets and gizmos…
What we need is a Freedom of Uninformation Act
One dietary fad that never made sense to me was the campaign against the consumption of eggs. Now call me…
How to stop the Grenfell Tower disaster from happening again? Ask the air industry
It took a spate of air disasters in the late 1970s, in particular the Portland crash of United Airlines Flight…
Perception vs objective reality
I hate to tell you this, but every time you watch television you are being duped. In fact there are…
Raising the threshold crappiness
I love anything open late at night. Never mind ‘the sigh of midnight trains in empty stations’; even mundane activities…
Make life easier and all else will follow
You can try to change people’s minds, but this is difficult. You can bribe people to change their behaviour, but…
iAddicts
For many years The Spectator employed a television reviewer who did not own a colour television. Now they have decided…
Migration is complicated. Don’t pretend it’s not
I expect you’ve already noticed it, but in case you’ve been living in a cave or an economics faculty for…
Want greater diversity? Try being less fair
In its hasty dismissal of James Damore, Google showed a worrying disregard for one of the most important freedoms within…
Sutherland’s Law of Bad Maths
Imagine for a moment a parallel universe in which shops had mostly not yet been invented, and that all commerce…
Cruel boy errors
Perhaps you are slightly concerned about your son. At present he is sitting in the crawlspace beneath your home wearing…
The monkey-brained case for Donald Trump
A few years ago I was asked to speak at a conference in New York. ‘Where would be the best…
Warning: rationality could be bad for your health
Almost every popular commercial product owes its success to two different qualities. First, it does the job it is ostensibly…
Why it makes sense to buy your banker lunch
We recently moved -offices from Canary Wharf to Blackfriars bridge. When you move after a long time in one place,…
The secret to doing better at darts – and life
I have always been intrigued by the scoring systems for different sports, and the degree to which they contribute to…
What makes Argos worth £1.4 billion? I reckon I know
When I was at school in the 1970s, some of the richer kids would come back from their summer holidays…
Always obey your satnav? Then you can vote rationally on the EU
In many ways a satnav is a miraculous device. A network of US military satellites more than 10,000 miles above…
Google's driverless car has finally crashed. Might humans be safer?
A first last week: a Google driverless car in autonomous mode was partly at fault in a collision, interestingly one…
The 5 per cent of people who decide everything (and how to be one of them)
What happens when 95 per cent of people like something, but 5 per cent of people prefer something else? You might think…
Maybe you should tax me more – just don’t touch my dishwasher
There was a big fuss a year or so ago about a book by a French chap called Piketty about…
How contactless cards will change the world (much more than you think)
I am one of those annoying, mildly claustrophobic people who sit at the end of a row in cinemas. There…
Q: What is a good school? A: One that everybody else likes
A few months ago I received a call from someone running a small private school near New York. They believed…
There are things we don’t mind paying for – and things we do
Here’s a challenge for film buffs: can anyone remember, from the entire canon of cinema and television, a single scene…
