Simon Lincoln Reader
Simon Lincoln Reader was born in Johannesburg. He spent a decade living in London, where he worked in financial services, eventually co-founding investment marketplace Lofotr Investors. He writes a Friday column for The Daily Friend, podcasts twice week and is a trustee of the Kay Mason Foundation, a charity awarding bursaries to young people in Cape Town.
Articles By This Author
A white UCT sociology graduate stands by Naledi Pandor’s remarks on AfriForum
“today I, who is female (she/her) white and privilege, am aim attack on Afriforum and university institution ‘akademia’. As former sociological student of esteemed university of cape town with degree,as former private school learning pupil in same city, as present working in HR I make solidarity with naledi pandor, high rated socially aware former education secretary for state. I am also admire mrs. Pandor’s activism for palestine, number 2 issue for all of our lives. Number 1 issue remain fatal threat of far right podcasting.
The greatest political writer
‘We thought we liked this new way we were, these new deregulated humans, fearful of nothing. But I think we have deluded ourselves. We have filled our boots, and deluded ourselves’.
A new Yookay race-based concession: plagiarism is fine
The reason why it’s so exhausting debating with academics – those on the extreme left – is not because they’re clever, but because they get so angry.
In loving memory of Bill Johnson
The extent of Bill’s wisdom was a wonder, switching with ease between profound and prescient. Only he could describe Julius Malema as a contemporary equivalent of the young Zulu impi performatively fronting up to British forces in view of his elders. Only he could describe the ANC’s patronage schemes involving the Shaiks and Guptas as South Africa’s ‘Tammany Hall’
Going the full Nigerian
Not sure you’re familiar with the phrase ‘going full Nigerian’, but that’s probably because I made it up a decade and a half ago.
England really needs this World Cup
I am admittedly not a football buff, but when Bafana were (admirably) vanquished and Donald Trump goosed FIFA right in the CEO’s balloon knot, I was torn between supporting Norway and supporting England. Now they’re playing each other on Sunday.
Better to have a fictional vigilante than a real one
If lively or amusing instant karma is ever to have a case study, then its authors may wish to revisit the events in the Johannesburg
Luncheon-meat face is all we ever knew of Keir Starmer
The scene is a prison in the Caribbean in the early 1990s. A young, overeducated Marxisty-looking English guy wearing an ill-fitting olive suit is ushered by wardens to the maximum-security section where his newest client is lounging on a concrete slab in a string vest.
The Battle for Language
Admittedly I can’t remember the last time a woman was angry with me, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t smack her on the bottom and tell her to shut up and make me a martini. Doesn’t work, that kind of thing. I know a man whose wife was cross with him for a reason he felt unwarranted: “Just take those thoughts out that pretty little head and zip it,” he said: a move that cost him the next month on the sofa. During that time his wife started extracting liberties to the point where her next move could — could — have been acquiring a boyfriend of Caribbean extraction. He told me he apologized over 500 times.
Gutting firms of HR may save the future of work
Ordinarily not predisposed to heaping upon praise on tech bros, I can’t help but think one of them has just revealed how to save the future of work. At a recent Fortune event, Bolt CEO Ryan Breslow remarked that he’d just axed his entire human resources (HR) division.