Canadians, like the English, are known for our tendency to apologise. The difference is, we actually mean it. Our modesty is not false. Our inferiority complex is not a polite, self-deprecating joke. We really do feel inferior. And we really are sorry. Sorry for taking up so much space for so few people. Sorry for
In the whole panoply of human idiocy is there anything so ridiculous as the outrage that occurs whenever people are reminded that spies spy? There was just such an outburst recently when Edward Snowden left his job as a contractor to the CIA and NSA, repelled, he said, by the discovery that surveillance programmes carry
‘Well, what diets have you tried so far?’ asked the GP, flicking through the patient’s notes. I was an innocent trainee doctor on my general practice placement at the time and watched the interaction carefully, sensing a row was about to ensue. ‘Look, I don’t want to go on a diet, I want you to
First things first. Yes, Val d’Isère does have a reputation for being expensive — and it is, especially if you’re planning on eating out and embracing the après ski every night. But no matter what anyone says, you can’t argue with the fact that the skiing is fantastic. Combined with its neighbour, Tignes, there’s a
Malcolm Gladwell, the curly-haired, counter-intuitive guru of modern thought who wrote The Tipping Point and Blink, certainly has a readable style, and often a striking way of turning received notions on their head. His latest book, David and Goliath — about the inspiring advantages of perceived disadvantage — is accompanied by a much-hyped speaking tour,
Washington, DC On or around 17 October, the United States will stop paying its bills. The US Treasury will reach the limit of the debt it can legally issue — the ‘debt ceiling’ — and unless Barack Obama and Republicans in the House of Representatives come to an agreement, the US will stand on
Jeer if you will, but I was shocked by the latest Bridget Jones book, Mad About the Boy. I was shocked by the sex. No, honestly. Compared with its predecessors, including a one-off series about how Bridget got pregnant but wasn’t sure by whom, this latest book ratchets up the raunch quite markedly. Granted, Bridget
Amman — Beirut — Istanbul I recently bumped into a senior officer with the rebel Free Syrian Army who was waiting in the passport queue at the Turkish border. I didn’t recognise him at first, out of uniform and without his entourage, and I told him so. He was following the example of the
Imagine if correspondents in late 1944 had reported the Battle of the Bulge, but without explaining that it was a turning point in the second world war. Or what if finance reporters had told the story of the AIG meltdown in 2008 without adding that it raised questions about derivatives and sub-prime mortgages that could
Why didn’t I know about the Tarn Valley? I’d often been right next door. But here, north-east of Toulouse, between the baking fields of Gers and the rocky mountains around Carcassonne, is this best-kept secret. It’s a lush region of great rivers, rolling green hills and towns with magnificent red-brick gothic architecture and is sometimes
Two recent popes are to be canonised on 17 April next year: Angelo Roncalli, Pope John XXIII, and Karol Wojtyla, Pope John Paul II. Both are being declared saints in haste: conventionally the Church has waited for a few hundred years for the dust to settle, with slow promotion from ‘venerable’ to ‘blessed’, before declaring
Are you a man? Do you have legs wider than the average pipe cleaner? Then this article is for you. You’ll need something to read as you sit at home, unable to go out because you’ve got no trousers. British clothes shops, you see, no longer sell ones that fit you. At first I thought
Johannesburg I stumbled upon a grand story the other day, thanks largely to my girlfriend Shmerah, who is doing a masters in anthropology at the nearby University of the Witwatersrand. One afternoon some weeks ago, Shmerah informed me that she and her classmates were excited about the imminent arrival in Johannesburg of the Italian-American
Scarcely a month goes by, or so it seems, without one or other representative body of the medical profession complaining about how dangerously overworked and generally unappreciated its members are. The latest is the Royal College of Nursing — still smarting, perhaps, from the Francis report into the fatal negligence at Stafford Hospital — which
It’s hard to think of anything more badly run than a Chinese bank. Somalia perhaps, or the BBC’s remuneration committee. Certainly, Beijing’s embattled lenders make ours look like paragons of financial rectitude. We may dislike RBS et al for bringing our economy to its knees, but at least we’re not saddled with a cabal of
In popular myth, King Cnut the Great, more commonly known as Canute, set his throne on the sea shore and commanded the tide to retreat. One version has it that Cnut’s display was a sign of regal arrogance — though if the event ever did occur, it was more likely a rebuke to obsequious courtiers.
I know a lot of people who work in the financial industry. One on one, they are decent and kind. I’d trust them to look after my handbag in the pub while I went to the Ladies. But you know what? I wouldn’t trust many of them to look after my pension or my ISA.
What’s the most surprising thing that could come out of the current economic upturn? A rapid revival in northern manufacturing? The City really getting behind small British businesses? Ed Balls admitting higher public spending wasn’t always the best way to promote growth? Any of these eventualities would be fairly amazing. But the biggest surprise would
If Al-Shabaab was behind the terrorist attack in Nairobi, then the group has come a long way since its foundation in a derelict shampoo factory called Ifka Halane — ‘Clean and Shiny’ — in Mogadishu in 2006. I know a little about the group because I am the only westerner to have met its founder,
Nairobi Kenya is one of those places where everybody knows everybody — and each one of us seems to have friends or relatives caught up in the Westgate shopping mall terrorist attack. My friends Simon and Amanda Belcher were on their way to lunch at the mall before catching a film at the cinema. They