Slow Horses is a corrective to streaming spectacle: a lean, literate spy drama that prizes craft over hype. Mick Herron’s stingy, acidic writing translates to television that trusts viewers, lingers on moral consequence, and makes character the engine of suspense.

When calls for advertising to mirror a nation’s ethnic makeup are framed as demands for fairness, they can also conceal a darker logic: the impulse to claim public visibility as a birthright. Representation matters, but insisting that public spaces always reflect a majority group’s image frequently masks entitlement, fear, and a desire to preserve cultural dominance. That insistence reduces complex social life to a zero sum contest over visibility, where one group’s presence is framed as another’s loss. The consequence is predictable: anxiety hardens into resentment, and resentment morphs into political pressure to restrict who is seen and who belongs. This is not a debate about marketing mechanics or campaign efficiency; it is a conversation about how visibility is weaponised to enforce belonging and exclusion. If we are serious about inclusion, we must recognise the difference between promoting diverse visibility and validating claims rooted in prejudice. A healthier civic imagination accepts that public representation will be partial, contested, and evolving and resists the temptation to equate symbolic presence with moral priority.

..or I have launched an online shop. After years of procrastinating I (or rather we) have bitten the bullet and created Praesentia Limited. There is a plethora of companies now, that allow you to have an online retail presence in less than 24 hours. Obviously, it doesn’t mean your products will sell but even they can be ‘improved’ with AI.

I’ve spent two years collaborating with artificial intelligences that lie, flatter, hallucinate, and occasionally gaslight me—yet I still consider them indispensable. This is how I have found how to get the best out of my AI companions and work around their concrete thinking minds.

When the shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick made his remarks about Handsworth they were ignorant rather than malignant and demonstrated a failure to understand basic human behaviour; they were disrespectful and intimidating, revealing a blinkered view that obscures the many similarities Handsworth shares with neighbouring white‑majority areas.