The completed ceramic murual in Glasgow's Central Station based on an Art Nouveau style advert for Drooko Umbrellas. Inspired by an original by Margaret and Frances Macdonald, it was created by MakeIt Glasgow.
If you wish to check it out for yourself, it's on the stairs leading down to the low level platforms from the south side of Argyle Street
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Het Nederland-ticket dat de politiek graag wilde is van harte omarmd door NS. De treinvervoerder gebruikt het voordelige zomerabonnement om reizigers nog bozer te maken dan anders.
"Woede is een van de kernwaarden van NS", zegt een trotse topman Wouter Koolmees. "Toen Jesse Klaver met dit plan kwam, dachten wij dus meteen: hier liggen kansen. We hebben er keihard aan gewerkt om veel te weinig servers beschikbaar te hebben op de eerste dag van het abonnement. Prachtig om te zien dat het dan inderdaad niemand lukt om het te bestellen."
Koolmees benadrukt dat zelfs zijn eigen klantenservicemedewerkers er niet in slagen om het te regelen. "Je staat een uur in de wacht, daarna hoor je dat het geregeld is, en vervolgens is alleen je oude abonnement verwijderd zodat je ineens juist het volle tarief betaalt. Dat is die extra stap die wij heel graag zetten voor de gillende wanhoop van onze klanten."
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VAR official Shaun Evans made ‘OK’ sign with right hand
Resembles white power symbol used in far-right circles
Fifa’s discrimination monitor at the World Cup called for a video assistant referee (VAR) to be removed for appearing to make a hand gesture resembling a white supremacist sign.
When the official broadcast of Germany’s opening game against Curaçao on Sunday cut pre-game to show the team of VAR officials, Shaun Evans from Australia made an “OK” symbol with his right hand in front of his right leg. Though the game was played in Houston, VAR officials work in Dallas at the World Cup broadcast centre. In 2019, the gesture – with thumb and forefinger touched in a circle and other fingers outstretched – was designated a hate symbol by the New York-based Anti-Defamation League.
Continue reading...Parents are being encouraged to give kids their own ‘self-invested personal pension’. But where’s the money coming from? Fifteen million of us aren’t saving enough for our own retirement
Parents are rarely short of sources of crushing guilt and night-time waking, but here’s an unlikely new reason to feel you’ve let your offspring down. Have you got your kid a pension? If not, why not, you feckless loser? Rather than screen-free childhoods, Stem camp subscriptions or gourmet bento lunchboxes, the latest middle-class must-have, according to the Times, is a Junior Sipp, or “self-invested personal pension”. Get started early, and the voodoo of compound interest over time could mean you’re well on the way to making the apple of your eye an “alpha pension millionaire”.
Even more inherited wealth disparity – exactly what this country needs! People wondering whether their own pension (if they have one) will be enough for a thimbleful of gruel 30 years from now may find this suggestion somewhat fanciful; last month the Pensions Commission warned that at least 15 million of us aren’t saving enough for our own retirement, let alone anyone else’s. Plus kids already cost an arm, a leg and a kidney. In 2024, the Child Poverty Action Group calculated raising a child in the UK to 18 cost £260,000 (£290,000 for lone parents); it’s probably even more now. Are parents really doing this? It seems like a big and unwarranted vote of confidence in the global economy and geopolitics, given the dire state of both.
Continue reading...Director Sarah Friedland brings impressive attention to detail to an audacious debut feature about a woman moved into a retirement community
Profoundly tender and yet untainted by the slightest trace of sentiment, this intimate and frankly sensual drama follows elderly Ruth (American stage icon Kathleen Chalfant) as she adjusts to a major change in circumstances. Told with an audacious economy that unveils key details only when absolutely necessary, the film hints at what’s going on when Ruth treats the washing up rack like a toast caddy.
Minutes later, a middle-aged man named Steve (H Jon Benjamin), with whom Ruth slyly flirts at first until he reveals he’s already married, arrives at her home to take her to her new home in a retirement community. When the staff there refer to Steve as Ruth’s son, the reveal is as shocking to her as it is to us.
Continue reading...Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi blockbuster is a non-stop thrill ride, but did it convince you that we are not alone?
• This article contains spoilers for Disclosure Day
Six months after a cryptic billboard reading “All Will Be Disclosed” popped up unannounced in Times Square, Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day was finally released at global cinemas last week. The film sees the director returning to the sci-fi themes that have fascinated him throughout his career, braiding together multiple character storylines in an adrenaline-fueled – and occasionally dizzying – adventure. Read on for a spoiler-packed breakdown of the film’s themes, layers and Easter eggs, and let us know what you think in the comments.
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