I see a lot about Brexit from friends on social media, of whom the great majority are pro-EU. But much of what's written (on both sides) simply reflects the rhetoric of the debate, rather than proper reasoning. I thought it might be useful to put two, grown-up opposing viewpoints together. I think that Brexit could be beneficial for the UK in the long run, and I’m going to present two arguments for that. I’ve also asked an old friend, Paul Birch, to present the opposite view. In both cases, I want to focus primarily on business and politics. From a business viewpoint, I would suggest that the UK has a better chance to succeed than the EU because the UK is medium-sized. (Don’t believe the ‘Little England’ propaganda – we are still the fifth largest economy in the world.) From my experience in business, I’d say that mid-sized is the best place to be. Too small and you aren’t taken seriously. Too large and you become slow, bureaucratic and unwieldy. Doing deals where 27 dif...

Every mail program has its pros and cons, but I find one function particularly valuable - the ability to snooze. I try to keep an empty email inbox - this is it at the moment: ... so when I process my mail I typically bin it, respond to it immediately or file it. But quite often I want to put something aside and deal with it at a future time. And that's where the snooze option comes in so handy. In the software I use ( Airmail 3 ). Given this kind of email: with a quick swipe or a right click + select I can choose to snooze, with a whole range of options on what to do with it: ... it disappears, the comes back into the inbox after the selected delay. It really has transformed the way I manage email.

We seem to be in Philip K. Dick heaven at the moment, with the Electric Dreams short-story derived series currently on Channel 4, a third season of the excellent The Man in the High Castle on the way on Amazon and, of course, Blade Runner 2049 , the sequel to what's generally considered one of the most impressive SF movies ever, (incredibly loosely) based on Dick's  Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep . I went to see  Blade Runner 2049  at the weekend, in all the glory of IMAX - and, as everyone says, it is visually stunning. But, sad to say, there's also no doubt that it is sexist - women are almost always portrayed in relation to men, and though there are some interesting female characters, it's notable that we only see, for example, advertising for female virtual companions. Despite this, it's a film that has interesting things to say about AIs and androids. And most of all, I think there is one significant defence of the sexism. The original movie was ...

Not an electric airliner (Image from Wikipedia ) The budget airline Easyjet got a lot of publicity recently by announcing that it had formed a partnership with Wright Electric, a firm hoping to make electric airliners. But was this impressive forward thinking and environmental planning on behalf of Easyjet, or a lavish splash of greenwash? There is a huge problem with making an electric airliner (as opposed to a very lightweight, short range, small electric plane). Kerosene - aviation fuel - is brilliant at packing in energy. Against a conventional lithium ion battery, kerosene stores away around 100 times as much energy per unit weight. So to replace, say, 50 tonnes of fuel would require 5,000 tonnes of batteries. Don't get me wrong. Battery technology is improving all the time - and that ratio will get significantly better. But the 10 year timescale that Easyjet was talking about seems impossibly short to achieve that kind of improvement in energy density. It may be...