Brendan O'Neill 
Can animals really be gay?
Last week, at the select committee on the same-sex marriage bill, a lawyer for the Christian Institute revealed that a teacher had been disciplined for refusing to read to her… Read more
Colonial rules
Having spent much of the 19th century shipping their snaggle-toothed criminals and deviants Down Under, the great and good of Great Britain have always looked upon Oz as a land… Read more
The making of a myth
When John Kelly was transported from Tipperary to Tasmania in 1841, for stealing pigs, he couldn’t have imagined that 170 years later there’d be an exhibition of paintings of one… Read more
Vegas Notebook
There are many weird things about Las Vegas, from the truck that drives around offering ‘Hot Babes Direct To You’ to the entrepreneurial hard-up young man on the Boulevard who… Read more
Stop this secular Inquisition in reverse
Not content with having poked its hooter into our pubs, fridges and bedrooms, now the insatiably interventionist state wants to colonise the Catholic confessional too. Yes, that’s right, some of… Read more
Creature comfort
At a time when much of the West is rocked by recession, and some of the East is ravaged by war, why are Australians taking to the streets over the… Read more
Malthus’s children
Two hundred years ago, the creepy Revd Thomas Malthus would take to his pulpit to rail against the copulating lower orders. Author of An Essay on the Principle of Population… Read more
Rating movies
If, like me, you thought the British Board of Film Classification was staffed by red pen-wielding fuddy-duddies, think again. At the entrance to its office in Soho Square, I’m greeted… Read more
Chavs and toffs together
We live in thoroughly PC times, when tweeting rotten things about a black footballer can land you in jail and opposing gay marriage can see you branded a bigot. But… Read more
Wedding night jitters
If you stop to think about it, you will notice that nothing in the gay marriage debate makes sense. The struggle for ‘marriage equality’ is presented to us as a… Read more
An acceptable hatred
The last politically correct form of prejudice is against football’s working-class supporters There is a brilliant irony to the campaign to ‘kick racism out of football’: its backers — the… Read more
Brendan O'Neill
Athens The manner in which George Papandreou was ousted has shocked Greeks. ‘It’s a foreign invasion, a takeover, only without tanks’, says Calchas, an angry young man whom I find… Read more
Metal head
CNN recently referred to Birmingham as ‘the unlikely birthplace of heavy metal’. The Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery is hosting an exhibition entitled Home of Metal (until 25 September). All… Read more
Amy was right
Something queer has happened to Amy Winehouse in the six weeks since her death: she has been turned from an anti-rehab rebel into the poster girl for rehab. The tragic… Read more
If only phone hacking were the real scandal
The state’s abuse of power makes News of the World hacks look tame For all the tankers of ink that have been spilt analysing Rupert Murdoch’s recent travails, nobody… Read more
Confessional culture
If you were sexually abused by a Catholic priest nearly 50 years ago, and that priest was now dying or dead, would it not be wise to keep it to… Read more
Damned either way
As someone who was born ‘the other side of the tracks’, I really wanted to like Owen Jones’s book, which sets out to expose how in recent years the working… Read more
The men who killed New York
If you had to think of one city on earth where the rulers should not try to impose a standard of ‘good behaviour’, it would surely be New York. Who… Read more
The missing Minke
It’s the hippyish family of three from Norfolk that I feel sorry for. There they were at the Old Harbour in Reykjavik, their multicoloured fleeces zipped up to the chin… Read more
Nannies v. nudgers
Colonel Gaddafi and his mad bald son are not the only has-been regime desperately clinging to power. In Britain, too, a gaggle of once-powerful but now isolated authoritarians is doing… Read more
Latest blogs
- Will Nigel Farage and UKIP help ditch Alex Salmond? Alex Massie
- Cameron’s tax tightrope Isabel Hardman
- Dangerous romance – Clever Girl by Tessa Hadley Aime Williams
- MPs defeat ‘wrecking amendment’ as Cameron tries to patch things up with grassroots Isabel Hardman
- David Cameron should be out there making the case for gay marriage James Forsyth
- A point of order, Your Royal Highness Steerpike
- William Hague: Case for changing arms embargo on Syria ‘compelling’ Isabel Hardman
