The Wiki Man

My £30k alternative to HS2

Someone in New York told me this story. I admit that I didn’t believe it when I first heard it. But a little online research seems to confirm that it is true. It concerns a group of people who had bought early versions of the Tesla Model S, a $90,000 high-performance electric car much loved

The real reason for rotten online reviews on TripAdvisor

‘Sorry, I’d love to go the pub this evening, but I have to go out. It’s my wife’s wedding anniversary.’ This Freudian slip was uttered by one of my colleagues a few years ago. It sprang into mind when I was casually browsing reviews of restaurants and hotels on TripAdvisor. I always head for the

Rory Sutherland

Why smartphones work better in Soweto

A friend of mine insists that when Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho first opened in Britain, the emotional impact of the most famous murder in cinematic history was slightly diminished. As Norman Bates’s knife came into frame, British audiences of 1960 were still recovering from the shock of a scene they had witnessed a few minutes earlier

Why the NHS is like a kitten

Of all the strange behaviours of the rich, owning horses long struck me as the most bizarre. A horse, when you think about it, is a hopelessly unsuccessful attempt to combine a pet with a form of transportation. So whenever anyone mentioned that their daughter wanted a horse, I always recommended they bought a Range

Don’t abolish The Knowledge!

Now that most taxi drivers use satnavs, should ‘the Knowledge’ be abolished? Shouldn’t we ditch the requirement that all London black cab drivers spend several years acquiring an insanely detailed knowledge of London before obtaining a badge? In cabbie folklore, the model for the Knowledge was first suggested by Prince Albert. True or not, there

Why I’m hiring graduates with thirds this year

Whenever I return to my old university, I am always struck by how incredibly focused, purposeful and studious everyone seems to be. It fills me with despair. It’s hard to tell the difference between a university and a business school nowadays. Where are all the hippies, the potheads and the commies? And why is everyone

Why politics needs more Darwinists – and fewer economists

An ardently left-wing friend of mine is travelling over from Thailand next week to look for a private school for his daughter. My email to him was short. It read ‘Charles Darwin 1, Karl Marx 0’. Nobody among the sharp-elbowed middle class ever allows his political convictions to override the pursuit of a good education

Why does anyone drink wine?

You will be scandalised by the suggestion, of course, especially those of you who spend several hours every week drinking it, reading about it or discussing it. But most wine is actually rubbish. I’ll let you off the hook if you drink wine only with food. But wine drunk on its own is often a

The Hitler guide to rigging a referendum

In 1964 Harold Wilson was so afraid that a scheduled election-night broadcast of Steptoe & Son would cost him at least a dozen marginal seats that he successfully pressured the director-general of the BBC to postpone it. There are plenty of ways to manipulate an election, short of stuffing a ballot box. Another example is

Why Granada is the unfriendliest town on earth

The city of Granada is notable for several things. Most visitors go to see the Alhambra, or for a strange procession during Holy Week interesting chiefly for having provided fashion tips to the Ku Klux Klan. Judging by its Wikipedia entry, it is also home to Europe’s most eccentric twinning committee: its twin towns include

Yahoo and the big-city paradox

An interesting furore erupted this month following an order from the new chief executive of Yahoo, Marissa Mayer, that employees accustomed to working from home would henceforth have to turn up at the office. The edict, unexceptional in many industries, scandalised many tech workers, for whom the freedom to work anywhere is an article of

Hailo matters more than HS2 – but we just can’t see it

One of Britain’s exam boards was attacked last year for a question in a GCSE religious studies examination: ‘Explain briefly why some people are prejudiced against Jews.’ Is this really a theological question? Or does it belong in biology? Or psychology? Or economics? The Canadian evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker in The Blank Slate devotes a

Chris Huhne and the £500,000 speed camera

I don’t want to defend Chris Huhne, I really don’t. Apart from anything else, I have always thought the country would be better off if all Oxford PPE graduates were simply imprisoned immediately, instead of the present inefficient system where we wait for them to commit a crime first. This would save us from being