- Blog
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Mouse superstar
Is JK Rowling the only kids’ book gazillionaire? I’d like to think there’s room for more than one kids’ book superstar – someone, maybe, who makes their money (more quietly than JK) from multiple national markets and formats and from a younger, less bankable audience? If there is, it’s probably Lucy Cousins, creator of the…
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Wolves and loss adjusters
Today, to our house, came a loss adjuster. You’ve met loss adjusters – they’re the lone wolves who tell the insurers to settle your claim or not (fingers crossed for that flood damage claim, people). Anyway, the wolf thing is not an excuse for a cheap loss adjuster gag. Our loss adjuster turns out to…
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Thinking Ethics: The Book
A couple of months ago I went to Geneva to spend a weekend talking about business ethics with a bunch of thinkers, theologians, business leaders and other brainy types. Beth Krasna, who organised the event, has now turned it into a book, edited by Tim Hindle and published by Profile (the people behind the Economist…
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Oh God…
At $280 Google is valued at $78 Billion. That’s 50% more than the combined value of all the publicly traded newspaper groups in the US combined. Analysts seem to be happy with this, though, with CSFB forecasting a share price of $350 which would be nearly 75 times projected earnings for this year. Any of…
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Hutton on the Euro-crisis
Clever and persuasive piece by Will Hutton from Sunday’s Observer about the crisis produced by the French and Dutch ‘no’ votes. He provides a very neat pair of scenarios (one rosy, one gloomy) for the post-referendum period, which I’ll reproduce here because they’re so good (and because I can’t link to them directly).
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A car
Because I am basically a small boy I find myself linking, almost automatically, to this preview of the 2007 Ford Shelby GT500. Like many men of my age, I retain an almost perfect photographic memory of every car made anywhere in the world in the years up to and including my fourteenth birthday. For some…
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More radio gems
You’ll cry. You will. This programme (MP3) about a scheme encouraging imprisoned parents to record bedtime stories for their kids at home is a gem. And before you get on your Daily Mail high horse about yet another indulgence for pampered convicts, take note that parents who retain an emotional connection with their kids through…
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Europe 2.0?
It’s an epic defeat for the European establishment but that doesn’t make it a victory for the isolationists and sceptics. Once the dust settles, once Giscard’s Napoleonic (and paralysingly boring) constitution has been abandoned, this moment might just look like a real opportunity for the radical European middle. For people, like me, who believe in…