Rachael McKelvey

• Happy 25^th Birthday Google
• Why are so many councils going bust?
• Can B&M save enough of Wilkos
• New words coming this autumn
• How much a day?

Happy 25^th Birthday Google
Born in 1998 this year Google turns 25 years old this week which is quite a significant milestone and what a ride it has been! Starting life as the brainchild of Larry Page and Seregey Brin while students at Stanford University just hoping to better organise web pages online.

It went on to hit the big time in the early 2000s with rapid growth and significant investment, along came Gmail in 2004 which is still the best of all the mails, in 2005 they launched Maps & bought Android, the following year they acquired YouTube and become an actual verb in the actual Oxford English Dictionary! 2007 saw them launch Street View, 2008 was Chrome, they launched their own phones in 2010, launched the Play Store and Google Glass – remember Google Glass? In 2012. They underwent their current facelift in 2015 and massive fines aside have been pretty steady since working hard in areas like driverless cars and AI in the intervening years.

Sudar Pirchai, current CEO of Google and Alphabet has reflected on the last 25 years in an open letter to all those who’ve made Google great which includes you and I.

Why are Councils going bust?
Birmingham City Council is the latest local council to issue a Section 114 notice effectively declaring bankruptcy, in the case of Europe’s largest local authority, serving over a million people across 69 wards, Birmingham City Councils bills from a Supreme Court ruling from 2012 relating to (un)equal pay seem to have been the real driver of their financial downfall. The second received by the council, requiring it to back pay bonuses to largely female employees who had missed out unfairly, but what about the broader crisis going on across Britian’s Local Authorities?

There are a number of local authorities also facing similar fines and fees relating to equal pay disputes, but the finances across the board have stopped adding up. Many local authorities have issued Section 114 notices this year, with slashes to budgets as a result of continued cuts in Government funding and the impact of reduced spending power of that money. Most councils are experiencing a significant increase in demand for high cost council services in social care, coupled with a reduction in business revenues and crippling interest rates on borrowed funds to survive. Many local councils took on significant debt to furnish their commitments but every time interest rates go up, so does the money required to service those debts.

Can B&M save enough of Wilkos
B&M an odd favourite (we all have that colleague who is obsessed) in the British discount retail sector on Tuesday announced its intention to buy up to 51 Wilko stores from the collapsed chain for around £13m, a nifty little fit with their current expansion plans with “The consideration is fully funded from existing cash reserves and the acquisition is not expected to be conditional on any regulatory clearances.”

Nearly a month after Wilco went into administration, the clock is running down for the homeware and household goods discount retailer on finding ways to secure 1000’s of jobs with the Administrators at PwC also in talks to with the other big discount retailers, Poundland, Home Bargains and The Range about saving some of the other stores.

It’s a tough time for Wilko, a significant deal ran into problems as a result of their big suppliers wanting their debts settled ahead of further deliveries, with many shipments cancelled on announcement of their intention to file for Administration & the significant delays across the sector to get product on the shelf.

New words coming this Autumn
Dictionary.com have given a sneak peak into the new words they will be adding to their dictionary this autumn and you don’t need to be a lexicographer to be intrigued by the way language is evolving and how we make words, borrow words and change or update existing words.

Dictionary.com are revising 2,256 existing definitions, adding 346 new definitions and adding 566 entirely new entries. The art of language is never solely new words, but the capture of that evolution through the generations of how we play with language.

I think my favourite pop culture addition has to be Blursday, an informal noun to describe a day not easily distinguished from other days, or the phenomenon of days running together – this week was entirely made up of Blursdays, happy year end to one and all!

For any language fans out there, I highly recommend The Allusionist podcast by podcasting royalty Helen Zaltzman, it’s a podcast all about language and there isn’t a bad episode, the one about all the swears is obviously my favourite.

How much a day?
Technically not this week’s news but I cannot stop thinking about it. We might have all at some point made a joke about wishing setting up an OnlyFans account was a credible alternative to the task at hand, but we definitely need to be aiming higher. Leonid Radvinsky, the owner of OnlyFans took a $338 million in dividends for the financial year 2022 according to the parent companies (Fenex Internation Ltd if you’re wondering) financial statements. There are only 260 working days in a year, that’s over $1m a day. A DAY. On top of his actual salary. ON TOP OF HIS ACTUAL SALARY.

Apart from that being an obscene amount of money that no one actually needs, it just goes to show how good a year OnlyFans had in 2022, with revenue soaring to $1.09 BILLION for a platform whose original intention was never built around not safe for work content.  So next time you’ve a high functioning low dopamine task at work and think there has to be an easier way to earn a living, this is your sign.

Current watch: The Lovers – Forgive me, it was year end this week and I just wanted something easy to watch I didn’t have to care about. Well, picking The Lovers was a mistake. Johnny Flynn and Roisin Gallagher are so wonderfully suited to the dynamics of the characters they play in this show. Political TV broadcaster Seamus instantly clashes when he meets supermarket worker Janet but they are inexplicably drawn to each other despite having very little in common. The series moves through their false starts, their arguments and their biggest fears.

Current read: Dirty Laundry: Why adults with ADHD are so ashamed and what we can do to help by Richard Pink & Roxanne Emery – Written by the couple behind the brilliant ADHD_Love on Tiktok this book is a duel perspective on living with and loving someone with ADHD. Rox is very honest in sharing her experience of the most common traits of a neurodivergent brain and Rich shares his insights from a neurotypical perspective on how they can meet in the middle. There is no science here, this is a real life first person account really written as a conversation you’d have if you were lucky enough to be their friends and asked them both the same question, it was heartwarming, illuminating and really positive.

If there is anyone in your life, or you think you might have some neurodivergent tendencies, then this book is a wonderful book to help you understand the what’s and the whys and how you can support your neurodivergent friend or yourself in a world very much not set up to accommodate anything less than neurotypical.

Most Impactful Listen: Today in Focus: How safe are the priceless treasures in our museums? – This was fascinating, you can’t have missed that a significant amount of historical items are thought to have gone missing from the British Museum care and it turns out when it comes to historical artifacts it’s not as uncommon as you’d like to think. They speak with Art Crime investigator Arthur Brand on how it happens, why it happens and more important how restoring items to their last known address isn’t even half as easy as you think it should be.