Good riddance to the Tavistock
Most push notifications that pop up on my tablet concern impending catastrophe. But last week, one newsflash made my day.…
Why I won’t have a Covid booster
In the news recently, we’ve heard from multiple Britons who’ve lost family members or sacrificed their own health to Covid’s…
The age of the anti-natalists
As of 2023, the novel for which I may still be best known will have been out for 20 years.…
The case for hiking interest rates
Check out these hyperventilating headlines from last week: ‘What the Fed’s largest interest rate hike in decades means for you’…
Does advertising matter?
‘Stop! Don’t fast-forward. I love this advert!’ How often do you say that? Considering that some commercial breaks run to…
Why I was almost thrown out of South Africa
On my 2 p.m. arrival for a week-long work trip to South Africa a fortnight ago, an immigration agent flapped…
My list of Britain’s national character flaws
Before we start, let’s firmly establish my long-standing affection for the United Kingdom. Why, some of my best friends are…
America has betrayed its young
Two articles last weekend made me feel sorry for American young people. We in the anti-woke brigade can be awfully…
A question of bravery
Joe Biden announced in November: ‘Transgender people are some of the bravest Americans I know.’ When Conservative MP Jamie Wallis…
How to avoid heating your house
Spring commonly augers a quickening warmth, but for Britons this year the season coincides with a chilling marker: a 54…
Why are so few Americans willing to defend their country?
For many of us war voyeurs watching the news with a glass of sherry, admiration of the little-engine-that-could Ukrainian fighters…
The return of Actual Badness
In the spring of 2020, I advanced an abnormally hopeful proposition: that one blessing that might arise from a pandemic…
What’s to become of Africa’s teeming youth?
Demographers are attached to their theories. The field’s most enduring is the ‘demographic transition’, whereby modernisation inexorably lowers a society’s…
Our monetary bubble is about to burst
OK, I finally watched Netflix’s Don’t Look Up. Surprisingly, I enjoyed it — especially before its effective subtitle for us…
Kamala Harris and the problem of affirmative action
In lauding Joe Biden’s promise to fill the upcoming vacancy on the US Supreme Court with a black woman, last…
Joe Biden’s Civil War re-enactment
We can’t blame American progressives for yearning to relive the civil rights movement. Those were heady days. Opposition to segregation…
The end is always nigh
Typically for my generation, I woke repeatedly as a kid with my pyjamas soaked in sweat because I’d had yet…
The Covid dissidents who’ve made my Christmas merrier
A few years back, a hackneyed journalistic come-hither led me to a sober reckoning: would I write about someone alive…
Will we ever learn to ‘live with the virus’?
Comparing Saturday’s Downing Street press conference to Groundhog Day would insult one of my favourite films. The hilarious, multifarious strategies…
The absurd theatre of vaccine passports
When a column highlighting under-appreciated breaking news has had absolutely no impact on the course of events (per usual), the…
A re-gift to Donald Trump
For Democrats, like the ‘insurrection’ of January 6th, the Trump policy of separating illegal-immigrant parents from their children in 2018…
My advice to Dave Chappelle
I’m accustomed to a sense of urgency in relation to Netflix offerings because the streaming service often buys short-term rights…
E-everything is heading your way
Trends in New York City tend to foretell trends in London, whose fashions in turn set the pace for smaller…
The Covid pantomime at my father’s memorial
This last weekend I attended the memorial service for my father, who died in July. This isn’t a bid for…
Is it time to defund the world’s policeman?
It gets lost in the many creative purposes successive American administrations invented to justify remaining in Afghanistan, but the primary…
