Features
How Birmingham became the epicentre of Britain’s opioid crisis
Rats grown fat on refuse prowl the streets of Birmingham. Mounds of rubbish pile up outside houses. Desperate to avoid…
Confessions of a middle-class jobseeker
Having been made redundant from a job in the City, I could have afforded not to sign on at all.…
Has the Kremlin talked Trump out of sanctions?
After a two-hour phone call last month, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin announced that an improved bilateral relationship between the…
Eco warriors are driving themselves to extinction
It wasn’t that long ago when the fashionable gathering place for young couples was a meeting of the National Childbirth…
Would you steal from a restaurant?
‘You wouldn’t steal a car…’ began the early noughties anti-piracy video. ‘You wouldn’t steal a television… You wouldn’t steal a…
Trump shock: is there method behind the madness?
A ‘black swan event’, as defined by the risk analyst Nassim Nicholas Taleb in 2007, is a surprise occurrence that…
Is Britain ready for a patriotic theme park?
It is the early 9th century. Peace reigns in a small French village as they prepare for a wedding. Garlands…
AI will never write good fiction
Sam Altman, Dark Lord of Chatbots (or the CEO of OpenAI as he is more conventionally known), has released another…
The day Bangkok crumbled
Last Friday I was on my 15th-floor balcony with an early afternoon coffee, watching dogs play among the banana trees…
The truth about ninjas
One of my favourite scenes in Kill Bill, Quentin Tarantino’s black comedy martial arts film, is the meeting of Beatrix…
AI slop is flooding the zone
There are two accounts of the negative effects for humanity of the explosion of generative AI: one minatory, one trivial.…
Labour needs a sense of social justice
Clement Attlee, in the words of Winston Churchill, was a modest man with much to be modest about. Labour’s postwar…
The C of E’s tragic misuse of its sacred spaces
I am a priest in the high church tradition of the Church of England. The technical term is Anglo-Catholicism, but…
How the French right can still win
Dixmont, Yonne It has been a terrible year for the Le Pen family. Jean-Marie died in the first week of…
Beware the £5 coffee
It wasn’t until I received a notification from the Monzo app that I realised I’d spent nearly £10 on two…
‘Trump is a coward’: meet the US soldiers who served in Ukraine
The Ukrainians of Alabama are not the kind of lobbyists whose visits strike fear into pro-Trump politicians in Washington. They…
How Dr Seuss took on American isolationism
A cartoon is doing the rounds online, critiquing American isolationism and the reluctance to engage with the war in Europe.…
Is Simon Heffer a security threat?
Airport security was much on my mind last Friday afternoon. I had been due to fly from Heathrow to Zurich…
I’m ready to defend my Tesla from the mob
Occitanie, France In France, burning cars is practically a national sport. Almost 1,000 were set on fire on New Year’s…
The Boden Belt: the Lib Dems are the new party of the posh
The English social season has begun, kicking off with Gold Cup day. But this year, there is a new common…
Erdogan’s latest power move could backfire
Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has never been so weak – nor so strong. At home, he is facing the…
The curious language of coins
Lewis Carroll used to travel with purses divided into separate compartments, each containing the exact number of coins he’d need…
Will Trump join the strongman club?
The world’s most exclusive club, of presidents-for-life, is growing. It already includes Putin of Russia, Xi of China, Lukashenko of…
The weapon that could end America’s global supremacy
Two weeks ago, a bright light streaked through the night sky above Inner Mongolia. It was not an asteroid. The…
Trump’s tariffs ‘perfectly rational’
The plan to defeat the communists
