Columns
Right-on Kew
We must all hurry down to the Temperate House at Kew Gardens next month to enjoy Queer Nature After Hours,…
Silicon Valley stuck in the mud
If any readers are having those September, back-to-work blues perhaps I might offer them a sure-fire palliative? Just go online…
Children need protection from adult madness
The Texas Supreme Court just upheld a state law banning so-called gender-affirming care for minors, to explosive consternation from predictable…
Britain has an entitlement problem
An Institute for Fiscal Studies paper, published at the end of last month, makes grim reading. Through the prism of…
It shouldn’t be a crime to sniff a goshawk
I notice that the naturalist Chris Packham has been reported to the police for the ‘crime’ of sniffing a goshawk.…
Risk management
When prime ministers sense the end is near, they tend to follow a similar pattern. They change senior civil servants…
George Osborne’s midlife crisis
There should be a term in anthropology for what happens to a certain type of Tory male in middle age.…
Why are the British so anti-doctor?
Having lived in the United Kingdom for almost my whole adult life, I like to think I’m well assimilated. I…
The joke’s on us
The award for the funniest joke at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe was won by Lorna Rose Treen, with this: ‘I…
Charge of the right brigade
You know the Conservative party is in trouble when it does not dare use its name on leaflets. Instead, it…
The hope of the no-hopers
Who is Perry Johnson? It is a question not many American voters can answer. He has a grand total of…
Then they came for therapy
Were I to overcome a lifelong scepticism about the healing powers of talk therapy, I imagine languishing on a psychiatrist’s…
Here come the Greens
So far, Keir Starmer has been unmoved by complaints from left-wingers that his policies differ little from those of Boris…
The great sociology con
My default mood at the moment is bleak despair, although it can sometimes be triggered into nihilistic loathing, which I…
Poor Prince Charming is on the scrap heap
The only strikes I really enjoy are actors’ strikes. Teachers’ strikes leave me cold. Train strikes get me into a…
Dog ice-cream: proof we’ve lost our minds
During the few hot days we had in June, I came across my first tub of dog ice-cream nestled among…
Divided they fall
Earlier this summer, a hundred or so Londoners gathered around a solar-powered stage truck at Highbury Fields to celebrate 40…
You can’t fight injustice with injustice
This week’s truism: all top-down attempts at leftie social engineering end up causing rather more misery and injustice than the…
Putin vs Pride
In an outstanding article in the New York Times, Roger Cohen recounted his experience of travelling across Russia for a…
Another beautiful layer of bureaucracy
‘Only boring people get bored’ is what we were all told as children. What we were not warned about was…
The hypocrisy of the Farage outcry
Much heartened by the barrage of criticism I’ve been receiving from both Spectator and Times readers, I’m returning to the…
The Tories’ tax burden
Last summer, all the Tory party could talk about was tax. It was at the heart of the leadership contest…
Across Europe by train
I found Jean-Pierre standing at a half-open window gulping down lungfuls of stale Dutch air as our night train chuntered,…
The dangerous cult of ‘toxic parents’
Complaining about ‘toxic parents’ has been a viral hit on TikTok with videos on the topic racking up several billion…
Cooking up a storm
I don’t always watch ‘Strongest Viking’ competitions on cable. But the other day I was channel-hopping and became mesmerised by…
