Since last June, thousands of workers in different sectors of the British economy have worked a four-day week, while retaining their full pay, in the biggest-ever trial of reduced working hours. The results of the trial – published this morning (21 February), and presented to MPs later today – are unequivocal: 92 per cent of companies have committed to continue the arrangement beyond the end of the pilot scheme, while almost a third (29.5 per cent) have already decided to make four-day working permanent. Researchers from Cambridge University and Boston College found that while productivity was maintained and revenue rose on average at participating companies, there were very significant changes in the number of sick days taken (which were reduced by ...

A deal may finally be in sight on the Northern Ireland Protocol. While this may be a great relief to many, unsurprisingly, we are already seeing stirrings from the European Research Group (ERG) of Conservative MPs. Boris Johnson is on manoeuvres, no doubt waiting to cry betrayal, apparently oblivious to his own failings in this area. And the Democratic Unionist Party appears resolutely unhappy. There is little doubt that there will be ructions before any agreement can be pushed over the finish line. However, if it can, there is much to be hopeful about. It would be naive to expect that any new deal on customs arrangements will finally end all tensions with the EU, but it would at least allow ...

“Every writer should be his own censor.” Readers might be surprised to learn that this statement came from the mouth of the author Roald Dahl, in an interview given in 1989 less than a year before he died. “I don’t hold with all this ‘I’m a member of the Society of Authors’ stuff,” he went on. “They seem to think that unlike other people they have a God-given right to publish exactly what they want. All of us should exercise a degree of censorship. In my children’s books, there’s a wild degree of censorship.” This was a characteristically hypocritical declaration from Dahl – his biographer, Donald Sturrock, writes that “almost everyone who knew him agreed that he had precious little capacity” ...

Top-tier politicians are like football managers or CEOs of Waystar Royco: they rarely leave on their own terms. It’s what makes Nicola Sturgeon and Jacinda Ardern’s recent decisions to step down from the highest offices in their respective countries so brilliant and so utterly rare. People don't walk away from powerful jobs lightly. Usually they cling on until their position becomes untenable and their fingernails rake across the door of their office as they’re dragged out, biting and wailing. Powerful jobs, by their nature, attract ambitious people. And ambitious people don’t go quietly. Not Sturgeon. Not Ardern. Both decided that their gigs were A Lot and that they wanted to focus on themselves for a bit. Both are stepping out at ...

Ben Wallace likes to talk tough on public sector pay. “We’re not going back to the 1970s where the trade union barons thought that they ran the government,” the Defence Secretary declared last year. Paul Nowak, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, had called for ministers to negotiate. “There’s no magic wand here to come up with money that the country doesn’t have,” was Wallace’s response. Except that he does have a magic wand – if it is for defence spending. Wallace is currently publicly negotiating with the Chancellor through the pages of national newspapers in a bid to secure an extra £8bn-£10bn for his department in next month’s Budget. He is also reported to have pushed for a real-terms increase ...

High drama at the New York Times. On Wednesday (15 February) hundreds of NYT contributors signed an open letter attacking the newspaper’s coverage of trans issues. The letter, addressed to the NYT’s associate managing editor for standards, Philip Corbett, accused the title of having “treated gender diversity with an eerily familiar mix of pseudoscience and euphemistic, charged language, while publishing reporting on trans children that omits relevant information about its sources”.     On the same day the Times received another letter, also addressing its trans coverage, from campaign groups led by GLAAD, an LGBTQ media advocacy organisation. The signatories called on the Times to “stop printing inaccurate and harmful misinformation about transgender people and issues”. On Thursday Joseph Kahn, the NYT's executive ...

On 15 February, BBC Breakfast’s Nina Warhurst asked the Defence Secretary Ben Wallace to respond to reports querying the strength of Britain’s armed forces, including one suggesting that Germany would retain command of Nato’s rapid reaction force because UK forces are “not capable of taking control”. To which he replied: “The first one, the story in Germany, is just bollocks, right?… Nato leadership did not approach anybody. We are taking over [the force] as scheduled.” His irritation was doubtless genuine, and Wallace has form for strong language. In 2021, during the Allied withdrawal from Afghanistan, he used the same word on LBC while discussing the saga of Pen Farthing and his animals. But it was also both a clever use of ...

“I will always be a voice for inclusion,” Nicola Sturgeon told reporters on Wednesday morning when she announced her resignation after eight years as First Minister of Scotland – the first woman in the role. “I will always be a feminist.” What she will no longer be is one of the world’s few female voices of power. With Sturgeon’s resignation coming just weeks after that of Jacinda Ardern, the prime minister of New Zealand, and following sexist attacks on Sanna Marin, the Finnish prime minister, for a night of harmless fun (not to mention the mortifying downfall of our own Liz Truss), it has been a dismal few months for women in politics. In fact, since Angela Merkel stepped down as ...