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Letter of the week: Fantasy economics newstatesman.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from newstatesman.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Letter of the week: The foundations of racism newstatesman.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from newstatesman.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Elon Musk may be, as Will Dunn suggests, “a more interesting person to occupy capitalism’s top spot” – but watch out for his downfall (Observations, 15 January). His promises about producing a fully driverless car have been broken so many times he will eventually lose credibility. The name of the autopilot software installed in Teslas is misleading, since drivers must pay attention at all times even when the system is engaged. Several Tesla drivers who failed to realise this have paid with their lives. Musk has promised numerous times since 2015 that cars would soon be able to drive themselves and even go off on their own to be used as “robotaxis”. In April 2019, he said that by 2020 Tesla would have a million on the road; last July he was confident that “the basic functionality” would be complete this year. Independent assumptions suggest this will not be feasible until 2030. So far stock markets have swallowed all these predictions – but won’t fore ....
At 79, I calculate I was the 7,600,001st person in the vaccine queue after NHS staff, care workers and the more than 3 million over-eighties. However, having shared Peter Wilby’s view (First Thoughts, 8 January) that it would be astonishing, given its record of failure, were the government to get its act together on administering the vaccine, I have to warn him: he could be shocked. I nearly had a heart attack on Saturday 2 January on being told over an actual phone by a real person to report at 1.40pm on Thursday for the inoculation at a surgery within walking distance of my home! Now I just have to wait for the follow-up. ....