The Monocle Minute

The day after a terrorist attack on the home of British democracy there was a minute’s silence at the House of Commons. Then MPs got back to business, including a debate on whether there should be a waste incinerator in the Hertfordshire town of Hoddesdon. It was emblematic of a mood across the UK that while those killed would be mourned, the attack would not necessarily change anything about the country. Let’s not forget that the country has experience of dealing with terrorism long before Isis and al Qaeda. In the 1990s Irish Republican Army bombed shops, buses, Heathrow Airport, the financial district and even random blocks of flats. People got on with their lives then and they’ll get on with their lives now.

With purse strings tightening throughout the watch industry, buyers from markets outside Europe are increasingly making just one trip to Switzerland a year. This means competition between SIHH (Geneva’s January show) and Baselworld (which opened on Thursday) has heated up. Some smaller independent brands have decided not to come to Basel this week because they’ve already shown at SIHH. This has led Baselworld’s organisers to remove the much-admired Palace tent that once housed lesser-known brands and to relegate those remaining to the main hall’s second floor or – worse – hotel lobbies. Baselworld still commands clout among industry insiders; that will continue as long as the likes of Rolex, Omega and Patek Philippe present their wares here. Yet more should be done to celebrate the indie brands that have long kept the fair vibrant and fresh.

Iranians saw in the New Year this week. It’s a time when families prepare elaborate tables laden with seven symbolic items to herald the start of spring. For the surrounding countries, the Nowrooz period is equally auspicious as Georgian and Turkish entrepreneurs cash in on big groups of Iranians that come in search of a good time. Retailers are taking Farsi lessons, Iranian crooners are booked at nightclubs in Tbilisi and flashy new hotels are opening as the two countries compete to entice the party seekers across their borders. In the city of Van, in the far east of Turkey, shops have put out signs in Farsi and some hotels have had to turn their conference centres into bedrooms to accommodate the incoming Iranians.

In celebration of Magnum’s 70th anniversary, the photography collective has teamed up with online art platform Sedition to showcase 70 years’ worth of films and pictures from its archives. This evening Magnum’s global digital director Anne Bourgeois-Vignon and Sedition’s director Rory Blain will launch the venture, called Magnum at 70, at the Barbican in London. They will also be discussing the relationship between photography and the internet with the photographer David Alan Harvey. “Using digital devices as the support for the display of art is a new way of collecting photography,” says Bourgeois-Vignon, adding that it also “opens up new opportunities, especially in an art market where the interest in photography is growing”. After London, Magnum at 70 will tour New York in June and Paris in November.

Loneliness is a common feeling among city dwellers but how do you overcome it? Monocle’s contributor in Sydney, Zoe Ferguson, meets up with social psychologist Lisa Williams from the University of New South Wales to explore the question.