I moved to Bangkok ten years ago in order to be in a place where nothing happens, where no one knew me and where nothing cost very much. A decade on, after a military coup, running street battles between protestors and soldiers, a ceaseless social life and costs reaching about the same levels as Brooklyn,
When I was in my twenties, exactly 50 Edinburgh Festivals ago, Frank Dunlop directed the first professional production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat which Andrew Lloyd Webber and I had written for a primary school concert in 1968. In the first four years of the work’s existence, it began to burrow its way
This time it was surely all over. As inflation started to rise towards a 40-year high, as central banks started raising interest rates for the first time in more than a decade, and as the monetary printing presses finally stopped running, the crypto-currencies crashed. What a crash it was. Bitcoin, the best-known crypto, fell all
Rome Giorgia Meloni’s spacious office, on the top floor of Palazzo Montecitorio – Italy’s House of Commons – has large French windows that adjoin its own huge rooftop terrace with spectacular views of the Eternal City. You could hold the party of the century up there if you were so minded. Perhaps she will, if
Doctors make mistakes. We mess up, have lapses in judgment, do stupid or downright wrong things. Some break the law, some violate trust. Patients place their wellbeing, and sometimes their lives, in our hands. So it’s only right that we are held to account. All good doctors want scrutiny. Our regulator, the General Medical Council
Weighing in at 218 pages, with 197 sections and 15 schedules, the Online Safety Bill is a clunking attempt to regulate content on the internet. Its internal contradictions and exceptions, its complex paper chase of definitions, its weasel language suggesting more than it says, all positively invite misunderstanding. Parts of it are so obscure that
We are all supposed to remember where we were when we heard that Mrs Thatcher had resigned (my mother rang me while I was having a late breakfast). But I will always have a much more vivid memory of where I was when I heard Boris Johnson had called it a day. I was at
Letters to a daily newspaper have a curious power to gain an impetus of their own. ‘I owned a Triumph Herald many decades ago,’ wrote Robert Brown of Crosby to the Telegraph in January. ‘She was my first love. On cold winter nights I would keep her warm with an old mackintosh thrown over her
We know many water companies are themselves guilty of profligate waste through unrepaired leaks. So to snitch on a neighbour, who is making a comparatively tiny personal contribution to the drought, seems petty. But we are only human and it is hard to watch your flowers and vegetables wither and die while your neighbour is
For residents of the London borough of Islington whose homes were flooded this week by a burst water main, Thames Water’s decision to announce a hosepipe ban the following day must have come across as a sick joke. Just a few days before the flood, the company sent out an email asking its customers to
The impact had shattered the churchyard path. Chunks of asphalt and mortar lay in the surrounding grass. Just next to the path, like a broken chess piece, lay the remnants of the church’s 150-year-old spire. A few hours earlier, it had stood at the very top of the church, towering over the churchyard. Mercifully, the
The nice young man in the library had told us he was worried about protests when I booked tickets for Drag Queen Story Hour. We only began to hear the chants halfway through the show; they drifted up from the courtyard in front of St John’s Hall, the council building that houses Penzance library, through
The Conservative leadership contest has descended into a low-tax auction, which is not a good thing. The implication is that the Conservatives think government should be minuscule at the very moment when private enterprise is letting us down – the energy companies are raking in cash and spending it on stock buybacks – and the
Montpellier France is going through a sexual civil war. After the great carnal outburst of the free-loving soixante-huitards, some have reverted to abstinence and prudishness, while others are pushing sexuality to new extremes. The crisis in French sexuality has exposed itself this summer as the clothes have come off. It’s not always a pretty sight,
It’s hardly surprising that China feels emboldened. Xi Jinping must look at America and see not just a superpower in decline but a gerontocracy that has lost its marbles. Last week, Nancy Pelosi, the 82-year-old Speaker of the House of Representatives, visited Taiwan as a gesture of solidarity, in spite of China’s fierce warnings that
This week, the world is gripped by the risk of conflict between the US and China. The People’s Liberation Army has fired live missiles into the Taiwan Strait in retaliation for US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei and those who fear that China vs America is the next world war see Taiwan as
You’ve just become prime minister. The public finances are in a mess, the Bank of England has stoked inflation, cutting taxes may make it worse, energy prices are through the roof, people are hurting so you can’t cut social spending, the Health Service is lengthening its waiting lists despite record budgets. What can you do?
When Tom Tugendhat announced he was backing Liz Truss for prime minister, his former supporters were dismayed. He was the candidate for the ‘One Nation’ caucus of moderate MPs, who defined themselves against the Tory right. ‘Anyone but Truss’ was their mantra – and they lined up behind Rishi Sunak. Yet here was their former
Don’t believe Vladimir Putin’s hype. The Russian economy is not OK. With western sanctions jeopardising up to 40 per cent of the country’s GDP, Putin’s assurances of an economic pivot to the East are a sham. And his weaponising of gas supplies to Europe is the financial equivalent of strapping on a suicide vest. That,
‘I’ve cancelled my exercise class for this! I hope he’s worth it,’ said Selina in the hotel lobby. Rishi Sunak was coming to West Suffolk to meet members of our Conservative Association. Would he be worth a listen? Clearly our members thought so. More than 90 of us rocked up at one day’s notice to