Eighty million chocolate eggs are estimated to be sold at Easter in the UK. According to Cadbury, the market is worth roughly £700 million. Not bad for something that’s hollow and won’t survive the Easter Weekend. But if you’ve been out hunting for the perfect egg in the supermarket this year, you’ve probably noticed two things. First, chocolate prices have increased, largely due to poor cocoa harvests in West Africa. These poor harvests resulted from extreme weather and the spread

With armed conflicts under way in Ukraine, Iran and Sudan, to name just three, it’s hard not to find one’s thoughts turning dark. I regularly try to remind myself of the fact that right now is the best time to be alive as a human being, in the history of the species; and this is your regular reminder too. And, even dwelling on the conflict risk, one good thing could come out of the proximity of war. It’s time Europe

A few sunny days in March are enough to do strange things to people. Coats come off, garden chairs reappear, convertible roofs go down, and someone, somewhere, confidently declares that winter is over. In Britain this is normally followed, within days, by a sharp reminder that it is not. The temperature drops, the heating goes back on, and everyone goes back to behaving as if they had never trusted the weather in the first place. Markets have much the same

Cricket has embraced data, especially since the advent of modern T20 cricket, both to analyse performances and in many cases to gain a tactical edge over opposition teams. However, one statistic that I have seen missing from mainstream cricket is ‘expected runs’ – that is to say, a measure of how many runs a batter should score off any given ball, on average. The idea is that if a batter has scored more runs than expected, they have played particularly

I recently went thrift shopping with a few friends and couldn’t help but notice how many articles of clothing from fast-fashion chains were popping up in the racks. Charity shops used to be stocked with branded sweaters and jeans from several decades ago – pieces of clothing that had stood the test of time. But behaviours are shifting; truthfully, they have been for a few years now. We are cycling through clothing faster than ever. Chain stores are capitalising on any

My journey to work a few weeks ago began with a distinct sense of January gloom. After glancing out of my flat window at the grey skies and misty drizzle, I made a beeline for the nearest Lime bike bay to claim the bike I’d reserved – it was the last one left. As I got closer to my green iron horse, a teenager in a parka jacket made some type of kick to the back wheel, jumped on the

I spend far too long writing emails. Before eventually hitting send, I have re-read and edited the message countless times. I double-check any information, of course, but most of my time is spent trimming it down. Repetitions are removed and waffle cut, within the constraint of not sounding rude or robotic. The objective is to maximise brevity and clarity whilst minimising the probability of miscommunications. The other constraint here is my time, which I am currently overspending. It takes effort

It’s a well-established fact that most road users consider themselves to be better-than-average drivers. I am not like most people. I consider myself to be a distinctly average driver. I’m probably better than average at some things and definitely worse than average at others. (Seriously, never ask me to parallel park in a hurry.) In short, I’m very glad that I don’t have a driving test anytime soon. But it turns out that skill might not be the biggest barrier

Last year, I wrote a TFiF that was published on Valentine’s Day. I didn’t take the bait and instead wrote a deep dive on the pros and cons of being a lefty. Romantic for some, perhaps. By chance, my turn to write the company blog has come round near Valentine’s Day again, so this year I decided to write about something that almost everyone in the UK has developed an affection for at one point or another... biscuits! Whether you’re

Donald Trump has announced Kevin Warsh as his nominee to be the next Chair of the Federal Reserve. Mr Warsh is a former Fed official and came close to securing the nomination in President Trump’s first term before ultimately losing to Jerome Powell. I wrote a piece at the time that covered his views, noting that he was a firm critic of unconventional monetary policies, such as quantitative easing (QE), that were implemented in the aftermath of the Global Financial