The literary sensation of the season is apparently a book called The Constant Rabbit, by Jasper Fforde. In brief, a spontaneous and unexplained anthropomorphic event which occurred 55 years ago has left Britain with a population of more than one million human-sized rabbits who can speak, read, watch television etc. They live among us. The
Last month an epidemiologist called Professor Michael Baker described the UK government’s decision to free its people from Covid restrictions on 19 July as ‘barbaric’ and an ‘experiment’. Professor Baker lives in the little-known hermit kingdom of New Zealand — a country which, under the guidance of people like himself, has banned almost all foreign
Long before the official numbers began to rise, back in 2014, it was clear that knife crime was on the up. You could tell by the way small boys chased each other through the park with machetes, and by the zombie blades left in flower beds. Now, seven years later, I feel the same way
Most social occasions now seem to kick off with a wasted hour or two. The time is spent discussing Covid: who’s had it and who hasn’t, who’s had the most nightmarish encounter with a mask fanatic and who the worst lockdown. After that there can be a second course, discussing things like international travel. Remember
Since the Holyrood elections in May, the campaign for Scottish independence has been noticeably quiet. But that is about to change. This autumn Nicola Sturgeon will try to push the issue to the top of the agenda once again. The expectation in Edinburgh is that Sturgeon will soon unveil a governing agreement with the Greens,
Last week there was acute concern in government about the country’s re-opening. Would restrictions need to be reimposed when schools return in September? Ministers fretted. But those nerves have now been replaced by cautious optimism. Case numbers have been falling for a week straight and it increasingly looks as if this wave has peaked. No
As I begin, I’m tortured by the doo-do-doo-do of The Twilight Zone’s theme music. I’ve hurtled back in time. Suddenly I’m a wise-ass, liberty-loving journalist who’s had it up to my eyeballs with intrusive, ineffectual top-down nanny-ism, and I’m pooping on yet another pitiful feint at ‘doing something’ by the lumbering big state. OK, check.
I’m off. In the week when you may read this, my partner and I will be winging our way to the European mainland, exploring, visiting friends, and immersing ourselves in new places, among new people who speak languages other than our own. Even as I write this, I can anticipate a sour response from some
I think I would like to apologise for this article in case someone who reads it takes offence. I will not mean the apology, of course — it will simply be an attempt to get me out of the mess occasioned by own words. It will not get me out of the mess, however, but
‘Where’s the car?’ said my wife Alice, interrupting my Zoom meeting on Saturday morning. ‘It’s where you left it,’ I said perhaps more pointedly than was kind. ‘When you drove it home last night. On the drive.’ ‘No it isn’t,’ she said. I left my Zoom meeting, shambled to the front of the house and
I wonder if the moral guardians of our country — the England football team — intend to participate in the 2022 World Cup in Qatar? Most of the players are currently kicking their heels (and presumably missing) in such places as the Turks and Caicos Islands, so they have plenty of time for rumination. Having
Earlier this year, I noted the suggestion (made by an American academic and run with by a swathe of the British press) that we may be about to enter a party decade. The claim was that much as the Great War was followed by the Roaring Twenties, so the Covid era might be followed by
When you ask a government minister why something hasn’t happened, you get a one-word answer: ‘Covid’. It has become the catch-all excuse for manifesto promises not materialising. But in the case of social care, there is a particular truth to it. A meeting last week between the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and the Health Secretary
Having indulged an unhealthy interest in human migration for decades, I’ve been intrigued by how the number of illegal immigrants that journalists cite as living in the US never changes. For years on end, I’ve read that the population of America’s ‘undocumented’ — a euphemism that seems to upbraid the receiving country’s bureaucrats for failing
The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, is planning to install a statue of John Chilembwe in Trafalgar Square. Mr Chilembwe was a Malawian Baptist famous for, among other things, leading an uprising where the head of a Scottish farmer was chopped off and put on a pole. He is much revered in his home country
‘Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won,’ wrote the Duke of Wellington after the Battle of Waterloo. This sentiment, rather than any form of triumphalism, is what Tory whips should feel after winning the vote on the government’s decision to reduce spending on foreign aid from 0.7 per
Before plunging into a vexed question, it’s sometimes wise to point out that one is aware how vexed it is. I haven’t been living in a cave these past few years. Even as I speak, doctoral theses are doubtless being written on ‘identity politics’: whole books have been devoted to what has become very much
I thought that this week I would share with you a bunch of words and phrases which are currently overused and I find thoroughly annoying. The idea came to me after hearing a woman with the IQ of a soap dispenser speaking on Radio 4 about the godawful programme Love Island. During the course of
The long-awaited easing of restrictions will not be the triumphant moment that many expected back in May. The Delta variant has seen to that. Increasing infection numbers have made the government nervous about the reopening. From 19 July, ministers will be busy trying to look responsible — consciously putting on their masks in crowded spaces
Our society is bristling with social stigmas, we’re told, even in the progressive West, even in London. Life is so horribly stigmatised that celebrities are increasingly keen to raise awareness not of diseases or disabilities, but of the stigma that’s said to surround them. So: less campaigning for cancer research, more for breaking the stigma