The end of net-zero is nigh
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Wednesday
Any programme ideas that don’t involve humiliating Matt Hancock?
‘Any programme ideas that don’t involve humiliating Matt Hancock?’
Dad says we should go out for a drive while it’s still legal
‘Come on, kids. Dad says we should go out for a drive while it’s still legal.’
Do you have a reservation?
Save our cigars!
There’s nothing new about Rishi Sunak’s reported proposals to phase out smoking in Britain. His plan has been borrowed from New Zealand’s former leader Jacinda Ardern, whose shamefully illiberal legacy includes the complete illegalisation of tobacco sales to those born after 1 January 2009. There’s nothing progressive about it, either. The Anglosphere’s elite war on tobacco is at least 400 years old. It can be traced back to James I in 1604, and his A Counterblaste to Tobacco, a sanctimonious treatise in which he denounced the new-world leaf ‘blacke stinking fume thereof, neerest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomelesse.’ A similar spirit informed New Labour’s 2006 Health act,
I’m handing in my weapon
Arsene Wenger is no philosopher
It’s now five years since he finally stepped down as the manager of Arsenal FC after two decades at the helm – an occasion marked by the recent unveiling of a statue outside the Emirates Stadium of a triumphant Arsene Wenger holding aloft the Premier League trophy. The occasion made me reflect on his tenure at the club and return to one particular aspect of the Frenchman who became such a high-profile character in England: was Wenger really an intellectual? There is scant evidence of great intellect in any of his post-match utterances He was certainly popularly portrayed as one. The sports writing fraternity was so invested in the idea that Wenger
Why Europe needs wolf hunting
In the German state of Hesse, the Christian Democrats have announced that, if they win next month’s state elections, they’ll back hunting licenses for wolves. The centre-right Free Democratic party has promised to do the same. Germany has around 1,000 wolves. Last year, the EU president Ursula von der Leyen’s pony was killed by one. Dolly was a 30-year-old pony and a beloved member of the family, who live in German state of Hannover. Von der Leyen is now proposing to relax regulations for wolves’ protection throughout the EU and animal rights activists are accusing her of seeking revenge on Europe’s wolf population for the death of her beloved pony.
The night I accidentally saved a baby
I was writing a thriller in northeast Laos about 15 years ago near a town called Phonsavan, researching a mysterious megalithic site known as the Plain of Jars. When my research was done, I realised I had to devise a route home to the quaint Laotian capital of Vientiane. As I was driving one of only three rentable four-wheel-drives in the country, I decided to make the most of my mobility and take a more exciting route than the singular main road down the middle of the country (whereby I had arrived). I was particularly tantalised by a sentence in the Lonely Planet guide to Laos which claimed ‘there is
Tuesday
So long, summer!
Summer is now officially over and who laments its passing? Some may rhapsodise about the period between June and September, but for many of us, it is a hiatus and trial, the period of the year we most dread. It’s the bill for autumn and winter, the season we’d live better without. The pavements of cities seem to fizz and reek, your feet balloon in work shoes, the underground turns into a cattle truck I cannot understand why so many people like summer. It unites some truly awful things: nocturnally whining mosquitoes, hot, sleepless nights, oozing sweat, high blood pressure, and above all, bright, unforgiving light, so you feel
My mistaken Balkan raid
It was September 2001 and I was in Zagreb, Croatia, at the end of two weeks in the Balkans. I was there to train law enforcers in counter-trafficking initiatives: the importation of women from that region into Western European sex markets was rife following the war in the 1990s. Police in the UK had disrupted several trafficking rings originating in the Balkans, and stories were emerging as to the horror their victims had endured. Well into our second bottle, I spotted a group of leather-jacketed men leading several women, each tottering on spike heels, through to the ballroom To put this trip in context, I had been sitting and talking
The quiet thrill of moss hunting
Did you know that an expert on mosses is called a bryologist? And did you know that there are 754 species of moss in The British Isles? No? Well then you can be forgiven for not knowing that my brother, Mark, I write with pride, recently discovered another moss – number 755 – new not only to The British Isles but also to science. Only about 40 naturalists actively study mosses in Britain Poking around along the banks of the River Camlad (the only river, I’m told, that flows from England into Wales) in Montgomeryshire, Mark came across an unfamiliar plant growing in dispersed patches on a riverbank at the edge of a pasture. Protocol requires
Monday
I’ve abandoned my useless British passport
‘Vous êtes anglais, je suppose?’ A question frequently posed to me in France. To which I reply: ‘C’est compliqué.’ To be honest, I’m not sure. If one passport is good, two are better. I have three. Crise d’identité. In France, I am Irish, thanks to my grandmother, born in County Antrim. In Canada, I am Canadian, having been born there. Albeit I left aged ten months. In Britain, where I spent much of my childhood, I am British, as my parents were. My British passport is essentially useless. It’s in a drawer somewhere. I don’t need it to fly to Britain It’s the nationality equivalent of a multi-phasic personality disorder.
Why do cyclists insist on making drivers angry?
Picture the scene. I’m in the New Forest, riding in a bicycle race. It looks like I’m on course for a personal best, perhaps even first place. I’m well-fuelled and feeling strong. Then I hit traffic. The road is too narrow to slip alongside the line of five or six cars in front of me. I stand on the pedals and crane my neck for a view of the holdup. There it is: a bunch of my fellow competitors, riding quite slowly, two abreast. Nobody honked, revved or attempted a dangerous overtake. But a fair few of them must have cursed into their windscreens Now this wasn’t exactly a race.
Welcome to the pub of 2030
In 2030 I will turn 30. I hope to be in the pub, but maybe a little less often than I am now. Judging by the way things are going, that might be easier than we’d like to admit. And not just because we lost 383 pubs between the start of the year and the end of June. I’ll set the scene: it’s seven years from now. Off I go, to one of the last four pubs in London, and park my e-bike next to three thousand others. I walk through the entrance, the etched Victorian glass door replaced by government-mandated energy-efficient double glazing, and there they are: eight 0 per cent beers
Friday
Who to have a flutter on at Longchamp
The Arc weekend at Longchamp – well worth a visit if you have never been racing in France – is just over a week away and now seems a good time to place a couple of bets at this most prestigious of meetings. Set on the outskirts of Paris in the Bois de Boulogne, Longchamp hosts two big races that British trainers love to target: the Grade 1 Qatar Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, Europe’s richest race over a mile and a half, and the Grade 1 Prix de l’Abbaye, for the continent’s best sprinters over five furlongs. Both races will take place on Sunday October 1. Five of the
The unspeakable truth about Russell Brand
Before the accusations of being a Bad Feminist start, can I say that I am inclined to believe the women who claim to have been sexually assaulted and raped by Russell Brand. Nevertheless, I found another of the complaints about him featured in the Dispatches documentary – that sexual partners would telephone Brand’s employees ‘in tears’ after being ‘treated poorly’ – somewhat trivialising of a serious situation. Insult is never the same as injury, especially in the arena of sex. The problem with shagging culture is that young women in particular find that casual sex is rarely casual and that catching feelings is common Look at Brand. He’s vile. You
Confessions of an English teacher abroad
The English teacher abroad is a generally peripatetic animal. He moves somewhere for a year or two and then gets bored, runs out of money or fathers an illegitimate child before moving along. Meet him and he has a thousand stories about Mexican border guards, Thai prostitutes and Russian oligarchs. Enjoy the conversation. He won’t be there for long. The good Japanese schools didn’t want a random English kid with no experience Not me, though. This weekend marks ten years since I moved to Tarnowskie Góry in Poland. Tarnowskie Góry is an hour from Katowice, in Upper Silesia. It’s a charming town of about 60,000 people, built round a historic
The previous lives of London hotels
Some of London’s best places to stay are buildings that used to be something else altogether. Join us as we examine the London hotels with fascinating previous lives … The NoMad Not enough hotels have their own museum. The NoMad does. It’s set in what used to be the Bow Street magistrate’s court, where the likes of Oscar Wilde and Dr Crippen were committed for trial. It has skilfully reinvented itself from being a working court as late as the early 1990s – complete with grim-looking holding cells and even a drunk tank – into one of the city’s most stylish and elegant luxury hotels. Designed by the New York
Thursday
The simplicity and joy of recorded conversations
Recently I stumbled across a file of conversations I’d recorded with my seven-year-old son Frank back when he was four. Topics include his travels through wormholes, why he finds planet Earth ‘boring’, the tragic story of how his ‘first family’ died and how he got his ‘laser eyes’. It was only by listening to these voice notes three years later that I understood just how precious audio recordings are, and also how under-used. The conversations I taped illustrate the nuances of Frank’s four-year-old self more vividly than any photo or video could. Anyone attempting to write fiction should take note of the power of audio – conversation and voice are
