Mark Andrews: Computer says 'no', cultural powerhouse's farewell, and questionable advice

This week, it emerged that 5,000 people were wrongly recorded as having criminal convictions because a computer decided to record guilty pleas on their behalf.

How many more innocent people must pay the price for a mis-placed belief that the computer is never wrong?

Computers are fine when used as a tool to improve efficiency, the problem comes when people believe that they are always to be trusted. Still, a few years from now these infallible computers will be controlling driverless cars. Happy motoring.

Kate Dalrymple, a nurse from Newcastle, feels betrayed by Katie Price after losing £825 in a foreign-exchange scam the Artist Formerly Known as Jordan promoted on Instagram.

Let's go through that again. You lost money after taking advice on international currency trading from Katie Price?

Here's another tip. That Jim Davidson marriage guidance video is not much cop, either.

Meanwhile, a bloke in New York has reopened a disused power station which he will use to power the computers for his 'Bitcoin mine'. So while governments around the world look at ever more punitive measures to stop us driving our cars or going about our legitimate business in pursuit of zero emissions, people like this man are pumping thousands of tons of carbon into the atmosphere for no better reason than to create some imaginary money.

You don't need to be Greta Thunberg to find something wrong with this.

Tragic news from the world of television, where after 17 years the great Simon Cowell has decided that X Factor has run its course.

It doesn't bear thinking about. No more singing dustmen, no more sob stories from single mothers struggling with pushchairs in tower block lifts. No contestants telling us it was their grandparents' dying wish they took part in the show, no more tearful millennials telling us they 'really, really want this'. And most of all, no more enduring raw talent, like Jedward, Journey South and Same Difference.

To be honest, I assumed it had died a death years ago. Surely the only people who watch X Factor these days are those forced to sit through it in old people's homes, who will presumably have to watch Strictly Come Dancing instead.

X Factor, of course, is a victim of the times we live in. Fifteen years ago, it might have seemed funny to watch a deluded oddball murder a Billy Ocean song and then pick a fight with the judges. But in today's touchy-feely world, such things are frowned upon, so it has been sanitised to the point where it is just karaoke for sober people.

Sorry Simon, it's a big fat no from me.

My mobile phone service was down over three days this week, meaning I couldn't make or receive calls or use text messaging.

So I called Vodafone from the landline, where an 'artificial intelligence' voice-activated robot said it would send me a web-link – by text message.