How a lie becomes truth
Teachers were told to exclude children who made ‘inappropriate’ jokes about Covid when they returned to school this week. These…
Our Belarusian blind spot
I’d always rather liked the Finns, until I came across the conductor Dalia Stasevska. When I asked my mother what…
Brits aren’t idiotic – but our institutions are
Two headlines from the same news-paper, less than three weeks apart. So, the Guardian on 31 July: ‘The Guardian view…
Ill-received pronunciation
Radio 4 recently ran an adaptation of Albert Camus’s The Plague in which the protagonist, Dr Bernard Rieux, was transformed…
Deep Purple: Whoosh!
Grade: B+ Less deep purple than a pleasant mauve. Ageing headbangers will note a lack of the freneticism that distinguished…
Who cares about reality?
Activists wish to change the name of a school in north London because it is named after a road which…
Taylor Swift: Folklore
Grade: A- This is worrying — like listening to a speech by David Lammy and finding yourself, against your better…
Fat-shaming didn’t do me any harm
One of the genuine pleasures I always take in arriving back in the north-east after being in London is that…
Youthful mistakes
In January, the director-general of the BBC, Lord Hall of Birkenhead, announced that the corporation intended to shift away from…
The politics of mask-wearing
We are enjoined by certain experts to wear face masks while having sexual intercourse. No change there, then, for me.…
No one loves a despot
Displaying the pristine neutrality that has made her such a popular figure, Newsnight’s Emily Maitlis apparently tweeted the following last…
Neil Young: Homegrown
Grade: B+ Neil Young has been mining his own past very profitably for a long time now, disinterring a seemingly…
Rhyme and reason
‘It’s no go my honey love, it’s no go my poppet; Work your hands from day to day, the winds…
Defund the police
Forces have become too politicised to function
Bob Dylan: Rough and Rowdy Ways
Grade: A ‘Rough’ in terms of the mostly spoken vocals, but only ‘rowdy’ if you’re approaching your 80th birthday, which…
Flipping, flopping and failing
I don’t know what’s happened to our football hooligans. The modern malaise, I suppose. A gradual descent into ineffectuality. Back…
A rabbi stabbed, but no hate crime?
A mystery has occurred. In The Affluent People’s Republic of North London, a rabbi was stabbed on the street multiple…
Free speech matters
The Eastern Orthodox Church has decided that yoga is incompatible with Christianity. This is an enormous problem for me, as…
The 1975: Notes on a Conditional Form
Grade: B+ Just what you wanted. An opening track that matches banal piano noodling to an address by Greta Thunberg.…
The great Newsnight delusion
The Twitter feed of BBC Newsnight editor Esme Wren (remember, I read this stuff so you don’t have to) is…
We can’t see the wood for the trees
I was relieved to discover, earlier this week, that the Prime Minister’s special adviser, Dominic Cummings, was a symbol of…
Why schools should stay shut
Has the stock of any politician fallen more sharply, these past three or four years, than that of Shami Chakrabarti?…
In defence of the lockdown
I realised things were getting back to normal when I threw away a third of a tin of chopped tomatoes…
The politics of bookshelves
I pulled a Canadian girl in a nightclub, back when I was in my very early twenties. She seemed very…
Fiona Apple: Fetch the Bolt Cutters
Grade: C+ Where did they all come from, the quirky yet meaningful rock chicks who don’t have a decent song…
