My blog

Category: Features

  • The Astronomer-Royal Sir Martin Rees on Elon Musk, space adventure and saving the planet

    Sir Martin Rees

    On the Future was written a few years ago and it was an attempt to summarise all the things I’ve been thinking and talking about regarding the future. Astronomers tend to have a longer term perspective on the future as they also do in relation to the past.

    The book is now translated into 20 languages, and for the paperback version I wrote a new preface about Covid-19; previously I had spoken about pandemics in the abstract. Another book is out in the spring called The End of Astronauts, expanding on some other points which concerns the future of humans in space. I argue that as robots get better and more sophisticated, the practical case for sending people into space– at least lower than Low Earth Orbit – gets weaker all the time. That’s because it’s very expensive to support humans on a journey to Mars; you have to provide a year of food, and protect them from all sorts of hazards – whereas robots can be sent more easily and with one-way tickets.

    For that reason, if I was an American taxpayer or European taxpayer I wouldn’t support NASA’s or ESA’s programmes for manned space flight. On the other hand, I’m prepared to cheer on the endeavours of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk in the private sector. Firstly, they’re not using taxpayers’ money, and secondly they can take higher risks than NASA or ESA can when sending civilians into space.

    Of course, it’s also important to think of space as being a dangerous environment We should talk about Space Adventure and not Space Tourism, for instance. I’d argue that Branson makes a mistake in talking of tourism as if it would ever be normal; if you take that view the first accident is going to be traumatic. If these private sponsors are prepared to send risk-takers up into space – the Sir Ranulph Fiennes of this world and so forth – I’m prepared to cheer them on.

    My prediction is that by the end of the century there will be a few pioneers living in Mars, but they’ll be that kind of person. Elon Musk has said he wants to die in Mars but not on impact. And he’s fifty years old; it’s just about achievable. These pioneers will have a long-term importance, and they’ll be in a very hostile environment. They’ll want to take advantage of all the techniques of genetic engineering and cyborgs and so on. Here on earth we’re going want to regulate and constrain things like genetic modification on both prudential and ethical grounds. These guys will be away from all the regulators anywhere and have a far greater incentive. I imagine a few centuries form now they will have become a new species – secondary intelligent design will be much faster than Darwinian natural selection.

    Of course, the money might be better spent on the environment – but if it’s spent by individuals who otherwise would buy a football team or a huge yacht, I’m prepared to support it. Musk, like my late colleague Stephen Hawking, thinks that there should be mass emigration to Mars to escape the problems of the earth. That’s a dangerous delusion. Dealing with climate change is a big challenge, but it’s a doddle compared to terra forming Mars. There isn’t a Planet B for ordinary risk-averse people.

    I don’t think we’ve missed the boat on climate change. If we’d acted sooner there’d be less risk. But given where we are now, we’ll need drastic and difficult action to limit further emission of CO2 to a level of minimising really serious tipping points. It’s harder than it would have been if we’d had more forethought.

    The problem politically is it’s very hard to get public support to devote resources to something which benefits people in the future by removing a serious threat from them. It’s also more important for people in distant parts of the world than it is for people here. Climate change isn’t going to be catastrophic in England but it will be in Sub-Saharan AFRICA: it’s a global and long-term threats.

    Politicians are happy to allocate immediate resources to an immediate crisis like a pandemic, but it’s hard for them to spend money on a long-term insurance policy like an effective climate change policy. I quote in my book, I quote Jean-Claude Juncker: “Politicians know the right thing to do – they just don’t how to get re-elected when they’ve done it.” There’s something in that.

  • Stuart Thomson: New Teams, New Opportunities

    Stuart Thomson: New Teams, New Opportunities

    Stuart Thomson

    When a team around you changes, it can feel threatening.  New people coming in can change established dynamics and ways of working.  But instead of worrying, the emphasis should be on grasping the opportunity.

    Worries can often be heightened when the change takes place in more senior leadership positions, especially those directly managing you.  But instead of worrying about yourself and what the change may mean for you, a more constructive approach is to shift from the inward to the outward.  An outward approach considers why the change has happened and what you might, to be frank, be able to gain from it.

    The recent Government reshuffle provided a very practical example of the need to understand why teams may need to change; it can have a number of drivers.

    Change or adaptation? – the core drivers of an organisation could be changed but often it facilitates a refocusing on them, a coming back to basic principles.  For Government, a reshuffle can help refocus on those policies that help get it elected in the first place. Boris Johnson’s government has had to deal with COVID-19 so this latest reshuffle meant it could ‘get back’ to what it really wants to deliver, such as ‘levelling up’.

    Unpopular positions can be conveniently jettisoned – new team members, especially leaders, can look again at the way an issue is dealt with and make their own mind up. In brutal terms, a new person could have the ability to make wholesale changes.  So for Government, a reshuffle means it could dump reforms least liked by their voters. A reshuffle enables the unpopular aspects of policy to be removed just as unpopular ministers can be removed.

    Space for new thinking? – on a much more positive note, a change can open up the space for new ideas. Any new team member wants to make a positive impact and preferably sooner rather than later.

    So, a new appointment should be seen as an opportunity for engagement which should be grasped.  Rather than waiting to be told what the new arrangements mean, look to proactively engage. 

    Adopting a positive attitude recognises that a different learning experience has opened up, that new ways of working could be available and the opportunity now exists for learning from different experiences.

    In the recent reshuffle, Nadhim Zahawi MP was appointed as the new Secretary of State for Education.  There is no doubt that he has many immediate issues to deal with, not least those caused by Covid-19.

    But if we found ourselves working with him, or any other new leader, what should our approach be?

    • Do your homework – find out what you can about them so you make your approach to them relevant.  In the case of the new Minister, he was recently featured in Finito World.  This type of background is extremely useful.
    • Immediate engagement – try to get in first, before others.  Lots of people should want to engage.  The more tailored the engagement, based on your homework, the more likely it is to stand out and be effective.
    • Have something well considered to say – based on your research, knowledge of your role and experience, be constructive rather than taking just problems to them.  Solutions are always going to be received more warmly than just another moan.
    • Be prepared to ask them questions – the engagement should be about listening to them but that does not mean you can’t shape the discussion.  Ask about what their priorities are, what they expect from those around them and it can also be fascinating to find out what their bugbears are so you can avoid them!

    Adopting a positive outlook with proactive engagement will put you in the best position to make the most of what might otherwise be a daunting prospect.

    The writer is the Head of Public Affairs at BDB Pitmans

  • Sophia Thakur: “TS Eliot would’ve loved Instagram poetry”

    Interview by Emily Prescott

    Sophia Thakur spoke alongside the sound of a harp on stage at The Ned hotel. In melodious tones she recited memories of dead friends who sleep with soil in their mouths now. She rhymed about the injustice of how black history is taught on the curriculum.  She talked about self-love too. 

    As the 25-year-old poet performed, she made expressive hand gestures and looked graceful in a Cinderella-style blue tulle dress. Her look was almost ethereal, until you clocked her shoes: Bright pink crocs. 

    Thakur’s outfit that evening captures her poetic style well. She is elegant and polished but undeniably practical and unpretentious. 

    “I’m on the right side of history with these,” she joked to me backstage, pointing at her shoes. “Already on stage you’ve got the nerves and if you’re wearing heels, you can fall. It’s just not worth it for vanity’s sake. About six people can see my feet so I’m completely fine to wear Crocs,” she said. 

    Indeed, her poetry is unpretentious. She relies on YouTube as a medium for self-expression and doesn’t think much of those who think being a poet means being a middle class man stuck in a rigid form – or the 18th century for that matter. 

    “You have your purists who believe poetry is this one thing and has to look like this which is fine and fair – and look, I’m not angry with them for it,” she says. “I think there’s a spectrum and for me it’s so important to identify poetry as just the simple act of communicating.” 


    In Thakur’s case, this act of communicating has been startlingly successful. Thakur has not only graced the stage at Glastonbury but delivered Ted Talks and appeared regularly on mainstream television. Her debut book Somebody Give This Heart a Pen became a global bestseller before it was even released and on the back of her success she has also worked with creative teams at numerous corporates including Nike, Samsung and MTV.

    ​So did she enjoy her education? Thakur says she did enjoy studying poetry in school but felt the “academic” approach wasn’t necessarily the best way to explore poetry. 

    “I fell in love with poetry via spoken word. I think in school we took quite an academic approach to something that’s meant to be so emotive and like feeling charged. I didn’t get an avenue to love it, I just got an avenue to learn it in school,” she tells me. 

    After school Thakur pursued an academic path and did a degree in politics. She’s still very much engaged in political discussions now, particularly when it comes to the national curriculum. 

    Indeed, her new comic-strip style children’s book Superheroes: Inspiring Stories of Secret Strength, was recently published by Stormzy’s imprint Merky Books. It is a response to the fact she only saw black people in history textbooks “in chains”. 

    In her poetry she tries to change the narrative that is taught in schools about black lives and Britain’s past. “If the only time we hear about blackness in school and anything black at all is when we’re thinking about slavery or when we’re thinking about liberation, then the only stories we have are Nelson Mandela’s or Rosa Parks’s or whoever else,” she explains, seeming to tail off.

    Then she continues: ”We then grow up in a world that perpetuates that narrative where the headlines related to black people are quite negative… It’s just really, really upsetting and I think a lot of these ideologies and ideas do stem from the first seed that is planted in us which is black is weak and lesser and white was dominant and is dominant.”

    On people who criticise using modern mediums such as Instagram and YouTube as a way of sharing her poetry and having these kinds of conversations, she says: “It’s really embarrassing because I think art if anything is the truth of the time and the truth of the time is this. This is how we communicate now, this is what poetry is now… oh and TS Elliot would’ve loved Instagram poetry.” And with that, Thakur heads off, Crocs and all, into what I’m sure will be a successful future.

  • Highest-paying areas near tube stations revealed

    New data from Reboot SEO Agency has revealed the tube stations across London with the highest and lowest average salaries. By analysing job listings on Indeed, we can see which stations are situated in high and low pay areas.

    Unsurprisingly, the highest-ranking station is also the busiest. The area surrounding Waterloo Station, with around 651,000 passengers passing through per day, boasts an annual salary of £32,247 on average. The job sectors around the station include operations administration, retail support and software development.

    Reboot’s methodology involved starting with a list of 270 tube stations and then cross-referencing job adverts on Indeed.com within a mile radius of each station. Only Bond Street was emitted from the research due to lack of data. The survey was compiled in August-September 2021.

    The close runners up to Waterloo were Mansion House and London Bridge, with average salaries around £32,000 as well. Both these stations are well connected with other lines, experience high footfall and are situated in the City.

    The lowest average salary was found at Hainault at £18,568 a year on average. High property prices in the area also mean that it may be difficult to make rent near Hainault, assuming average price to rent a one bed flat and average salary. Other lower-paying stations found included Fairlop and Edgware, with average salaries of £18,929 and £28,000 respectively.

    The highest paid sectors from all of the tube stations researched were technology, finance, and legal occupations. Near Hainault, the highest average salaries were found in construction and extraction.

    Top 10 Highest Average Salaries Around London’s Tube Stations

    RankingStationAnnual Salary
    1Waterloo Tube Station£32,247
    2Mansion House Tube Station£32,092
    3London Bridge Tube Station£32,076
    4Borough Tube Station£32,018
    5Liverpool Street Tube Station£31,922
    6Barbican Tube Station£31,582
    7Bank Tube Station£31,471
    8Aldgate Tube Station£31,468
    9Cannon Street Tube Station£30,000
    10Farringdon Tube Station£30,000
    https://www.rebootonline.com/seo-company/
  • How A-levels lost their meaning

    How A-levels lost their meaning

    Over the summer, as pupils across the UK received their A-level results, many breathed sighs of relief. The algorithm which incorrectly marked down many students in 2020 was abandoned, switching to a teacher-assessed approach. They did not sit exams this year or the last year, with grades instead being determined by in-class tests, essays, and other work throughout the year.

    The pandemic has meant that educational institutions at all levels have taken more lenient approaches to marking. For students this year, it has meant that 44.8% of them have achieved either an A or A*. While this may seem good to students in the short-term, in the future those marks will lose their meaning as nearly half of their peers will be at the same high level.

    This grade dilution means that students will have to do more in order to stand out in the crowd. When grades skyrocket, rapidly-filling universities will need to rely on other metrics to decide who to admit. This could also affect their job prospects as the high number of qualified applicants will make it difficult to be noticed by potential employers.

    Medical schools are among the worst affected, with many more students than usual achieving the required results. Professor Malcolm Reed, Co-Chair of the Medical Schools Council (MSC), describes the issue.

    “This year, we have seen applications to medicine courses rise by 20 per cent, and many more applicants have met the terms of their offers than forecast,” Reed says.

    To combat this issue, the Medical Schools Council is offering £10,000 to any student who must change medical school due to oversubscription. Professor Reed also emphasises the need to continue training large numbers of medical professionals in the UK.

    “Medical schools recognise the need to bolster the future NHS workforce,” Reed said, “and by supporting this brokerage programme have committed to ensuring that expansion considers the need to maintain high quality medical education and training for all future doctors.”

    There is already talk of scrapping A-levels completely, instead switching to a numerical grading system. While he agrees that something must be done to preserve the meaning of A-level marks, Education Secretary Gavin Williamson has said that he is looking at other less drastic options.

    Whatever change is made to the marking system in the future, one thing is clear – the graduating class of 2021 is going to have to get creative to stand out in a sea of excellent marks.

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  • Technology focus: Nicolas Croix on why companies must consolidate business applications

    Technology focus: Nicolas Croix on why companies must consolidate business applications

    Nicolas Croix

    With the massive proliferation of business productivity tools and applications designed to streamline processes and boost productivity, many businesses have a tough time deciding which apps to use. Ironically, in an attempt to make life easier for employees, companies are adding layers of complexity by signing up to several platforms, many of which aren’t integrated and ultimately have the opposite effect.

    The consumerisation of business technology has made access to applications accessible and has taken ownership away from IT departments. For example, Chiefmartec.com’s 2019 Martech 5000 report found that, in marketing technology alone, business applications grew from just 150 to more than 7,000 since 2011.

    In another recent study, Deloitte found that 33% of companies use more than ten individual pieces of HR software. Inevitably, this leads to inefficiencies. Despite how clever each app is in isolation, by adopting different platforms, you create siloes, replacing one long process with many shorter ones and adding zero benefits to the business. 

    According to IDC, over 80% of executives who responded to a recent survey said most of their problems come from a lack of systems integration – meaning their disparate solutions don’t “talk” to each other. In the same study, 43% of workers said they often have to double enter or rekey information, adding time and effort to the process rather than streamlining it.

    We frequently see companies spending time and money moving information from one software to another, investing in the latest, most excellent recruitment, HR and payroll software – but failing to consider integration. In the HR industry, controlling the flow of operations across every platform and channel is critical, and there is no easy way to achieve seamless interaction between tools and applications without a consolidated solution.

    Yet, the same IDC study revealed that executives across 1,500 different sectors and lines of business, including sales, HR, and procurement, estimated that resolving their inefficiency issues would generate 36% increased revenue, 30% lower costs, and 23% reduction in compliance risks.

    The ability to automate core recruitment, HR and payroll have enormous benefits. The earlier companies consolidate, the better equipped they can compete in a fast-moving business environment and become better companies to work for. In very few circumstances, it makes sense to have several applications doing the job of one consolidated solution.

    First, by consolidating HR business tools into a single platform, you can effectively streamline your operation without shifting from one application to the next, inputting the same data repeatedly, or having to check system after system to find the correct information. 

    Second, you can increase productivity by reducing the time and resources required to complete routine processes. At the most basic level, you will save a significant number of hours by using one or two platforms instead of many. 

    Third, it helps eliminate stress from slow, unresponsive systems due to needing too many apps running at once. This is worsened by the requirement to share data sets between platforms, which is not only tiresome and a waste of valuable time but could have serious security repercussions.

    Fourth, there is also the cost of running several applications when one will do. Consolidating platforms can increase your return on labour costs and increase employee satisfaction, with employees spending less time performing mundane tasks and being freed to focus on making a better contribution to the business.

    Finally, business applications should be easy to use and scalable to achieve a high adoption rate by end-users, namely your employees. The more business apps you use and the bigger your business grows, the longer and more complex it becomes to onboard new people and trains them on each of the tools they will need to do their job. There is no doubt that a modern and seamless application stack can drive a better employee experience and increase retention, but a more complicated one can have the opposite effect. 

    Simply put, more apps create more work; less is more; consolidation is key.

    The writer is the CEO of Moonworkers

  • Education interview: University of Buckingham Vice-Chancellor James Tooley

    Education interview: University of Buckingham Vice-Chancellor James Tooley

    by Patrick Crowder

    Professor James Tooley worked in the world of academia for years before becoming Vice Chancellor of Buckingham University. He has strived to raise the standard of education in developing nations through low-cost private schools since 2000. We asked him to share his story and give some insight into the future of education, in the UK and abroad.

    “I’ve been an academic for 25 years in Russell Group Universities. I came to Buckingham two years ago as a great believer in the proudly independent university, and became Vice-Chancellor 10 months ago,” Tooley recalls.

    He did not originally come to Buckingham for the role of Vice Chancellor. Instead, he wished to continue his long-term educational work in developing nations.

    “My work has been about low-cost private education in developing countries. I’ve worked in some of the poorest, most difficult countries in the world – South Sudan, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Northern Nigeria, as well as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and South Asia,” Tooley continues. “Most of my life has been researching and developing from the higher education platform, but working in low-cost primary and secondary schools.”

    Prof. Tooley has been described as the “Indiana Jones of education policy” for his travels. We asked how he decided to make low-cost private education his life’s work.

    “I found that these schools existed – that’s the first thing – so I was in a sense an explorer. And then I found this low-cost private school phenomenon.”

    Once he found that these schools existed, a large part of Tooley’s job involved documenting and researching the education systems in place across many countries and comparing the achievements of low-cost private schools to those of government schools.

    “During my years in academia, I took five years of unpaid leave from the university so that I could actually go and live in these countries and take part in a much bigger way,” Tooley remembers.

    There are 450,000 private schools in India alone, and Tooley has spent years running teacher training programmes to raise the standard of learning in schools like those around the world. He has taken what he’s learned through years of research and experience and allowed that knowledge to inform his approach to university.

    “One of the lessons I’ve learned from my work overseas is the importance of affordability and accessibility. I want education -and education at the University of Buckingham – to be affordable and accessible to as wide a range of people as possible.”

    Tooley adds that he is looking at two ways to facilitate affordability in university education. “We’re looking at the possibility of decreasing fees in certain areas to make it more affordable both domestically and internationally,” he explains. “The second possibility is to look at income share agreements. The university takes some of the risk – perhaps it doesn’t charge a fee to a student arriving – then the fee equivalent is paid by the student once they’re in a job.”

    With more people getting degrees and as additional emphasis is placed on internships and apprenticeships, the role of the university is changing. We asked Tooley about the difference between pure academia and employment-focused learning.

    “Of course employability is important, but some students come to university to develop their minds and understanding for the sake of that, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s very clear that in some ways we are only wanting to transmit the best that has been thought and known over the generations, and we do that irrespective of changing fashions and the desires of employers. That said, a lot of what we do is very employment focused. We have vocational courses in medicine, law, business, psychology, computing, AI, and many of our courses are tailored based on what employers want.”

    Professor Tooley’s main objective is to allow people from any background to access quality education. He believes in learning for learning’s sake, while recognising the need for employability programmes in university as well. We asked him for a piece of advice directed at a student who is entering university now.

    “Students should be aware of what they love doing and try to pursue that as much as possible, both in extracurriculars and in terms of their curriculum. They should recognise the dual purpose of university – both for employability and to immerse themselves in the best that has been thought and said across the generations.”

  • Philip Mould on his early education in art

    Philip Mould

    Mine was a strange upbringing in some respects. We ended up in Wirral because my parents are southerners, but they moved north. My mother contracted polio, and my father had come out of the Marines; it was very difficult to have a disabled wife and travel the world. He inherited from my step-grandfather the running of a printing works in Liverpool – and so rather like the beginnings of a sitcom this southern family relocated.

    As a result, I was brought up in the school system as it was presented to us on the Wirral, which was a number of prep schools – one of which was called Kingsmead, and that was the one I went to. I left when I was 13 and went 250 miles away to Sussex to a Christian monastery called Worth, which is not a school I was particularly happy with.

    But during that period from when I was ten to around 14, I would buy things from antique shops. This was my start. If you’re interested in historical objects as I am, the most glorious opportunity for a young enthusiast – and that’s especially so if there’s someone who can initially guide them – is the understanding of hallmarks. These are like hieroglyphs. One time, I went into an antique shop at the behest of my mother, and there was this woman called Xena Roberts, a retired schoolteacher.

    It changed me. I remember the atmosphere in there, particularly the smell of silver dip and sulphur – the smell of hell in fact. There was also the sweet smell of furniture polish and fags. Xena smoked endless No. 6’s. In a sort of hectoring way, she got me to pick up a spoon, making me forget why I had come in there. I turned it over, as one does, and she asked me what I saw there. With hallmarks, the first thing you sometimes notice is the head of the King or Queen who is on the throne. And then you see the so-called lion passant – that magnificent thing which goes back to Richard the Lionheart.

    That’s not all. Then you’ve got the initials of the person who made it, whose name you can look up – as well as the city where it was smelted. Then there’s usually a letter of the alphabet relating to the year in which it was made. There would be different alphabets as the years went on and combining that with the head of whoever’s on the throne, you could know a lot about that object. It was a glorious set of insights – an education in itself. It was a portal into transforming objects with knowledge, and it was the starting point of me getting interested in art.

    I was terrible at school. I was precocious in as much as I could speak well, and my parents taught me some very nice words, but my exams sort of collapsed on top of me. I went on kids’ TV when I was 15. It was an equivalent of Blue Peter called Magpie, and by that time I had a collection of silver shoe buckles. That day they became my performing seal. After that, I started writing about them and doing a bit of freelance journalism. It was great to be able to wow people with knowledge as a kid and transform things. I felt like a magician.

    East Anglia University gave me time to grow up a bit, meeting people and trying new things. I probably didn’t need to go to university, but what it does give you is an environment where the company you’re in tests you a bit more. It’s a bit like a Grand Tour, going off somewhere. I had a clear idea of what I wanted to do after. I was completely confident holding works of art, looking at them, smelling them – the connoisseur side of things. So university, though it wasn’t essential for me, gave me an opportunity to enrich what I wanted to do. It also gave me confidence and life skills.

    But it was at local auction houses where I got my teeth into things. I’m sad to say I also had my first taste of the dark side of the art world when I was in university. His name was Cyril Paston. He ran a shop which specialised in the works of Sir Alfred Munnings, the horse painter. I befriended him, and he had several Munnings paintings which he said were good quality. I hired a car and took them to London to show a friend of my brother, who knew about these things.

    Once I’d pulled up, he looked through the car window, and I didn’t even have to take them off the back seat before he said “fakes”. As it turns out, Paston was painting the things himself. I then realised that there’s this whole other dark underbelly of the art world that one has to be aware of. The opposite of beauty is deception, I suppose, so when you know you are being deceived the beauty disappears.

    So if I look at my early education I find that I was always learning when I least expected it – in a chance visit to an antiques shop, and even thanks to that scam. That’s how the world is: always teaching you – at educational institutions, yes, but perhaps more importantly, when you’re nowhere near them at all.

  • Sir David Amess showed why politics can be a meaningful career

    By Finito World

    Everyone at Finito has been saddened by the senseless murder of Sir David Amess MP.

    All accounts agree that he was a kind and gentle soul, who used his position in Parliament to promote animal welfare, his campaign for his beloved Southend to be recognised as a city, and to argue for a permanent public memorial to Dame Vera Lynn. In the dog-eat-dog world of Westminster, there was something innocent about him – he seemed perhaps of another time, and to hark back to older traditions.

    Amess represented the antithesis of the here-today-gone-tomorrow nature of British politics. He eschewed the drama of resignation and appointment, and all the talk of who’s-up-and-who’s down which so delights the mainstream media. He quietly got on with it.

    A typical Cabinet reshuffle, like the one Boris Johnson conducted in the autumn, showed us what Amess was not. It would have been unseemly to Amess to be caught up in the speculation, and even the indignity, of the careerist side of politics.

    Sir David Amess preferred staying power to power itself, and carried himself throughout his remarkable life with a quiet diligence. He aimed to make a difference by dedication and hard work, preferring that unsung progress to the pomp and circumstance of power. It’s true he had his high-profile moments, especially winning his seat in the close 1992 General Election, when he became an emblem of the Conservative Party’s surprise win.

    But more generally, he worked tirelessly – not for a Cabinet position – but for the privilege of serving his constituents. It was this noble task which he died doing.

    Young people are therefore shown two versions of what being in politics entails. It can be carried out at the highest level, amid the Shakespearean drama of the acquisition and loss of power. Writing for the BBC of the reshuffle, political editor Laura Kuenssberg remarked: “With no one strong ideology other than a desire to win, it begs the question of what it’s all really for.”

    In Amess’ death we had the answer. Politics is about helping others, on the back of having been elected to do so; it is about minding whether your community is improving or not; and then, if you have time leftover, it is about advancing the issues which you believe in. At its core, politics should be about making people happier – or at least, trying to do so.

    At Finito, we have many students who ask for help in their political careers. We would always hope that this route is embarked on with a commitment to principle. “Those are my principles and if you don’t like them – I have others,” as Groucho Marx once joked. In fact, a firm commitment to bettering the lives of others is the only thing which makes the uncertainty – and now the danger – of top level politics bearable. 

    It is this which we mourn when it comes to the loss of Sir David Amess. After his death, it might be said that only the most dedicated public servants will now put themselves forward for the job. Its dangers are all too plain.

    There is a world of difference between success which is meaningfully tethered to some good, and success which opens up only onto itself. If you pursue the former you can’t fail; if you pursue the latter, failure is inevitable, because it will all have been for nothing in the end anyway.

    Sir David Amess’ life, though it ended brutally, could never have its meaning taken from it. In fact, its value was increased, held in sharp relief by the appalling circumstances of his murder. Rest in peace, David.

  • How to get hired in a flooded job market

    Kim Streich from Debut talks with Patrick Crowder about applicant numbers, and how to stand out from the crowd

    There are over 1,000,000 job vacancies in the UK, according to the Office for National Statistics, but graduates are still struggling to find employment in a flooded market. Debut is a networking application which focuses on connecting qualified graduates with employers across the UK. Marketing Director Kim Connor Streich spoke to us about the app, the graduate job market, and how to stand out from other candidates as a graduate.

    So what problems to graduates face now? “Recent university graduates are facing strong competition from those among the previous year’s cohort who are still actively looking for jobs,” Streich explains. “Applicants for graduate jobs still outnumber the available graduate positions despite the massive growth in vacancies.”

    The pandemic has led to a two-year pileup of fresh graduates as opportunities dwindled, and many were left directionless. It has also led to hesitancy to work in the industries hit hardest by the pandemic, including hospitality, despite a significant number of vacancies.

    According to Streich, searches for entry-level graduate jobs have increased by 350 per cent since March 2020. So what can applicants do to stand out from the crowd? Streich says that it could simply come down to how and when you apply.

    “When sending out your application, you should aim to be the first in their inbox when the job goes live. Anyone who works on a computer will know the struggle of email overload. You need to avoid the competition by sending your application early in the day – you want it to be the first thing the hiring manager sees.”

    Putting aside time of day, even the time of year can affect the success of a job search. Internal data from Debut suggests that the best month to apply for a job is November, when an average of 14 per cent of a year’s jobs are posted. October and December are the second and third best months, making the end of the year a better time to apply than others. According to Streich, this is because hiring is often not a priority for companies during the Summer.

    “From experience, many companies spend their human resources budgets well before the Summer hits,” Kim said, “Not only does this mean hiring managers and recruiters stop searching during these warmer months, but resources could be lacking and many will spend summer months preparing reports and trends.”

    Debut currently hosts 10,504 graduate roles and saw over 20,000 jobs go live between July and September of this year. For graduates today, the job search is not easy. However, the good news is that there are roles available, and more will continue to become available as we recover from the pandemic.