|
![]() |
![]() Simon KelneriNews |
Back in the 1920s, a series of experiments to establish how changes in workplace conditions affected productivity took place at the factory of Western...
Cast your mind back to another time, when the world was a very different place. Specifically, Sunday teatime 12 days ago. It was less than a week...
America was still fighting for its independence from Britain the last time that the county of Oxfordshire had not a single Conservative MP in...
Politeness, we can all agree, is a virtue. And in any pastiche of British manners, it’s trotted out as a classic stereotype. More tea, vicar? After...
My brother-in-law, a charming and steadfast 82-year-old man, has had a rough time of it recently. He was in a car accident while on holiday in South...
The death last weekend of Sir Howard Bernstein – “one of the towering public servants of the last 50 years”, in the words of George Osborne –...
Early on in my journalistic career, when I was covering sport for a weekly newspaper in South Wales, I went to the annual general meeting of the...
In the Labour Party’s official feed on X, in between the messages of good luck to the England football team and the promises that working people...
I do not want to make light of the fact that, somewhere in the Surrey countryside, a young cow is nursing a leg injury sustained when she was rammed...
You may find yourself with 25 minutes or so to spare in your busy schedule today. So what do you do with that time? Some idle social media surfing?...
It’s not like Boris Johnson hasn’t got previous. The former prime minister of the United Kingdom has something of a penchant for peppering his...
Poor old Stephen Fry. One of the cleverest, most erudite, and most articulate men on the planet, he has said something so witless, ill-judged and...
The news that London, self-proclaimed capital city of the world, is no longer to have its own daily newspaper – when once it had three – might...
It’s all right for Eamonn Holmes and Ruth Langsford. They’re on the telly, so a degree of interest in their private lives is only to be expected....
As the final tributes to Irish rugby international and businessman Tony O’Reilly were paid at his funeral in Dublin yesterday, it was hard to make...
Congratulations to Fulham, who, barring an upset on the Premier League’s last day on Sunday, will finish on top of the table. And commiserations...
Last Saturday afternoon, in the blazing west London heat, I was walking down the Fulham Palace Road with my daughter. The traffic was at a standstill...
There was a time, really not that long ago, when smoking was considered cool, harmless, even good for you. Doctors advertised the beneficial...
Here’s a joke to start the week and brighten up your day. A young man is having an interview for his first job. Interviewer: “What would you say...
There is one particular aspect of Labour’s proposal to bring Britain’s passenger rail network under public ownership that caught my eye: the...
It is tempting to see Gideon Falter as a modern-day Rosa Parks, an ordinary citizen who has shone a light on injustice by asserting an inalienable...
As we go about our daily business today, we will all have a mixture of macro and micro matters on our minds. These might range from conflict in the...
“Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had...
Two months ago, I wrote about how I was part of a small syndicate attempting to buy our local pub, which has now been closed for more than six months....
Last night, eight students of diverse backgrounds and specialisms, ranging from a Kolkata-born postgraduate studying for a master’s in applied...
Can there be a better metaphor for the disconnected, self-absorbed nature of British politics than the picture posted by Liz Truss on Easter Sunday? ...
There are more than 90 regulatory bodies in the UK, and these cost the taxpayer around £4bn a year to run. The purpose of regulation, according to...
Are we destined to live in a post-idiom world? Will that bird in the hand get cancelled? Will any common saying that references birds, dogs, cats,...
Has there ever been a story that has made you more nauseous about the state of British public life than the saga of Frank Hester, Diane Abbott, the 10...
It pains me to say it, because I love dogs and I love Claire Balding even more, but I couldn’t help feeling on Sunday night that Crufts, the largest...
In the lexicon of public relations, there is a crude but evocative expression to describe the act of trying to make something appear what it most...
The official visitor website for Totnes offers plenty of options for those looking for diversions in this small town in the heart of South Devon....
The news that the BT Tower, one of the most adored, storied and globally recognisable features of the London skyline, has been bought by an American...
“Too many have been killed”. Prince William’s stark and unarguable observation about the ongoing conflict in the Middle East is not the most...
Is it possible that ageing is a thing that just happens to other people? We don’t always see ourselves as others do, and while we may exhibit the...
Just after 5pm on Tuesday evening, I found myself alone in my car, dissolved in tears. The news had just broken that the radio presenter Steve Wright...
Earlier this week, after a hard day shirking at home, my neighbour and I decided that we deserved some relief from the interminable darkness of...
In the 83rd minute of Manchester City’s game at Tottenham Hotspur last Friday night, Kyle Walker found himself in a foot race with Tottenham’s...
Just before last Christmas, Bill Gates posted a picture of himself on Instagram for his 8.9 followers to enjoy. There he was, dressed down in a...
And so Paula Vennells joins a list that reads like the dinner party from Hell: Rolf Harris, Stuart Hall, Naseem Hamed, Harvey Weinstein, Fred Goodwin,...
She is unlikely to be named Time magazine’s Person of the Year. And she’s been overlooked in this week’s New Year’s Honours List. But step...
Did you know that the Government has, for the past decade, had a “Happiness Unit”? No, me neither. But since 2014, a small detachment of public...
Lenny and I had one of those meaningful father-and-son moments in the run-up to Christmas. It was 4.30am, and Lenny, the dachshund named by readers of...
“The following programme contains very strong language and adult themes”. This sober warning is followed by the playful striking up of the tuba,...
“[I’m] 60 next birthday, going to reach an age where I can’t do it. Now is the right time to do it.” What could Nigel Farage have been...
So far this morning, I’ve managed to get my printer to work, I’ve changed a fuse, completed an online purchase and sorted out the timer on my...