Binbags
‘The streets are paved with binbags’
Uncategorized
Wednesday
Trump’s tariffs
We’ve been hit by a Trump tariff
‘We’ve been hit by a Trump tariff.’
You can’t be everywhere
‘You can’t be everywhere – that’s Lindsay Hoyle’s job.’
I was sent to Hell
‘I was sent to Hell, but it was affecting my mental health.’
Honeymoon suite
Scan code to find out how school was
Have we got any books
‘Have we got any books that aren’t about the Beatles?’
Survival kit
You had it easy with children, Mum – no ADHD, depression or anxiety
‘You had it easy with children, Mum – no ADHD, depression or anxiety.’
We’re living in the best of times
‘We’re living in the best of times.’
The truth about Macron’s smell
Like many teenage girls, I was a committed boy-sniffer. By which I mean a Lynx-sniffer, since this delightfully cheap but heady deodorant was synonymous with all the raging hormones – and the promise that went with them. Even the geekiest, ugliest, runtiest of the litter could be transformed into an object of mystique and allure by the waft of Lynx – perhaps Apollo or Voodoo, the two late nineties variants I remember best. Even today, I can’t entirely shake my soft spot for male cologne, and I’m embarrassed to say that when it’s plastered on some vulgarian on the Tube sporting a gallon of hair gel and one of those
University should be absurd
My daughter has asked for my advice about what to study at university. Yeah right. She’d rather eat her own hoodie. But I’m going to give it anyway. She is wavering between history and English. Do both, I say. But not many universities offer a joint honours degree, and her (otherwise excellent) teachers seem to think that it is better to focus on one subject, to demonstrate laser-like commitment to your chosen path. I see specialisation as the enemy of the humanities. Everyone should study at least two of these ‘disciplines’ – which of course overlap with each other. In a way, Classics gets it right, for it mixes literary
Tuesday
With Gok Wan
25 min listen
Gok Wan is a renowned stylist and television presenter. Over the years, Gok has transformed the way we think about style and body image with his much-loved series How to Look Good Naked and Gok’s Fashion Fix – his focus on body positivity was the antidote to the crash-dieting fads which dominated the 2000s. Later in his career, Gok drew upon his Chinese heritage to author books on Chinese cooking. On the podcast he tells Liv and Lara about growing up in a Chinese restaurant, why hosting is more like ‘theatre’ and why he always abides by the five-second rule.
The end of the pick ’n’ mix passport
The second passport used to be a backdoor: a legal hack for the well-advised, well-connected or well-heeled. You could acquire nationality in a country you’d hardly visited, without necessarily even speaking the language, and still find yourself welcomed with open arms – or at least waved through the fast-track lane at immigration. But that game is ending. More and more governments are closing the door on tenuous ancestral claims and pay-to-play citizenship. Whether through lineage or liquid assets, the old tricks to get a second passport no longer work. Nationality is being redefined – not as a loophole, but as a bond. The appeal of a second passport has always
The egg shortage is coming to Europe
President Trump swerved in his ‘Liberation Day’ event last week, speaking on an issue that has preoccupied America for months: the price of eggs. Trump said: ‘The first week I was blamed for eggs, I said, “I just got here”. The price on eggs now is down 55 per cent and will keep going down. They were saying that for Easter, “Please don’t use eggs. Could you use plastic eggs?” I say, we don’t want to do that.’ Like him or not, Trump has a way of understanding the zeitgeist. The egg crisis is threatening to become global. It has displaced even Marine Le Pen as a subject of discussion
Is today’s TV British enough?
There is a decent chance that most Spectator readers have seen at least one of the following: the much-ballyhooed Adolescence, the rather less controversial Black Doves, and the once-magnificent, latterly tawdry The Crown. From the travails of royalty to the horrors of a child killer, via the acrobatic derring-do of unusually witty spies, these shows include some of the greatest British actors working today. They are all quintessentially English in their settings. All three have been hugely successful and should, by rights, be programmes that the British television industry should be extremely proud of. Except, of course, they’re not British. Well, not wholly, anyway. Despite their Anglophile content, all three
Monday
The return of the Young Fogey
At a recent lunch where I was sitting next to A.N. Wilson I couldn’t help but take a good look at his suit. After all, this was the man often described as the original Young Fogey. He was dressed perfectly well in an austere two-piece, though while I (ever the try-hard) was sporting a pocket square, he was without one. On another occasion, chatting to Charles Moore in the colonial surrounds of the Foreign Office’s Durbar Court, the Lord was indistinguishable in dress from the other mandarins and journalistic bigwigs there. In bygone days, a Young Fogey such as he would have donned a seersucker suit and shantung silk tie
