DINNER PARTY INTEL...
The topics you have to be able to discuss this week
1. Strong-arm tactics
Emmanuel Macron signalled his intention to stand up to US President
Donald Trump with a bone crunching handshake, but the power play won’t end there. Macron needs a majority in parliament to run France effectively, and with parliamentary elections next week, he has used Europeans’ dislike of Trump to score points. “Macron wants to send a message that he’s playing on the same playing field as Trump,” Philippe Moreau Defarges of the French Institute of International Relations told Bloomberg.
That strategy appears to include trolling. Macron cheekily invited US climate scientists to work in France when Trump said the US would withdraw from the Paris climate accord. He also hijacked Trump’s signature slogan with a call to “make our planet great again”.
2. Voters are weary
Lesotho held its third election since 2012 last week. In that year Thomas Thabane defeated Pakalitha Mosisili. Two years later Thabane fled to SA and by 2015, Mosisili was back at the helm. But he lost a no-confidence vote earlier this year, prompting fresh elections.
This time Thabane is the kingmaker. But with the constant back and forth between the two ageing leaders, what will really change? Voters are decidedly weary.
3. Uberising couriers
To close the gap with online retailer Amazon, Walmart is testing an app that sends its own employees to deliver online orders at the end of their shifts. Workers can earn extra cash by making deliveries. Like Uber, which has used existing workers to drive their own cars to create a network with little upfront cost, Walmart expects the app to bring its delivery costs down.