Here’s a short film about some new research which suggests they’re right. It has implications not only for the creative industries – in my case, publishing – but for business in general, for politics, for environmentalism and more.

Bigger bonuses (please note: banks and the City of London) don’t make people work better or harder unless they’re doing production line-equivalent tasks.

Once people have reached a basic standard of living they’re not interested in more cash (please note: hard right think tanks).

More than anything, they just want purpose in their life. That might sound dangerously spiritual, but according to this research funded by the Federal Reserve – not a haven of radical thinking – it’s true.

Finally.

The entire ritual site around Stonehenge is pretty much an atrocity, and a mockery of its World Heritage Site status. Moving the visitor centre a mile and a half away is one small step to redressing the shockingly poor stewardship of such an important site, but the site is still criss-crossed with noisy roads and ruined at night by light pollution.

I don’t blame English Heritage – they do a good job under difficult circumstances. I do blame successive British governments. The next step should be to get rid of the roads, if necessary through long tunnels, which would then give the entire site some of the gravity and majesty it deserves.

The usual Government argument is that the cost would be prohibitive. Perhaps they should have used some of the billions spent sending Iraq back into the Stone Age for no discernible reason.

Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over worldbuilding.

Above all, worldbuilding is not technically neccessary. It is the great clomping foot of nerdism. It is the attempt to exhaustively survey a place that isn’t there. A good writer would never try to do that, even with a place that is there. It isn’t possible, & if it was the results wouldn’t be readable: they would constitute not a book but the biggest library ever built, a hallowed place of dedication & lifelong study. This gives us a clue to the psychological type of the worldbuilder & the worldbuilder’s victim, & makes us very afraid.

’4 movies from Orson Welles, star of The Muppet Movie.’

He really did waste his time making Citizen Kane – film critics’ choice of greatest movie EVER – didn’t he?

Idiots…