The other day, my husband took my middle son, who is almost five, to a Whole Foods near our home in New York. When he came back, he told me he’d felt uneasy there. Usually, strangers smile at my son …
The resurrection of Cornish mining
“Are you here for the attempted murder?” asks a punter when I step into the Red Lion. My answer — I’m here for the return of lithium mining — stirs little interest among the pub’s patrons. The last time the …
Suellaism is here to stay
Rishi Sunak doesn’t know what he’s trying to sell. Suella Braverman does. Herein lies a problem for the Conservative Party.
Just over a year ago, Sunak claimed his mandate to govern came from Boris Johnson’s victory in 2019, a victory …
Israel’s true border crisis
Of all the lessons to be learned following Hamas’s brutal incursion into Israel, one is so glaringly obvious that it runs the risk of going unnoticed: the attack was a failure not just of Israel’s border security systems, but of …
Stop blaming parents for everything
By the time my husband and I had our second child five years ago, I had long been researching “parent-bashing”. I knew that while parenting matters, it doesn’t matter nearly as much as the hoards of “parenting experts” would have …
Are the Dutch farmers heading for power?
“Sweet Caroline…” bellows the crowd. “Good times never seemed so good!”
Times are indeed pretty good for Caroline van der Plas. Surrounded by the thousands of blooms that adorn the Royal FloraHolland Trade Fair, the leader of the BoerBurgerBeweging (BBB), …
Don’t be fooled by the march for peace
He was a fat bloke with a swastika tattooed on his beer belly and a teardrop inked beneath his eye. Let’s call him the cartoon fascist. The Guardian describes another: “a Port Vale fan supping a can of Stella Artois.” …
Is the Marvel Universe about to implode?
Even for this recovering comic-book fan who left the community two decades ago, it’s impossible to escape the Marvel Comic Universe. Reinforced by quippy banter, diversity-by-quota casting and passable CGI, its money-making “formula” has conquered the world. The strategy is …
Why the Irish side with Palestine
When Micheál Martin visited Mount Scopus on the outskirts of Jerusalem two months ago, he struck a pessimistic tone. The Irish government’s deputy head had been taken there for a briefing by UN officials, who told him the number of …
Nick Bostrom: Will AI lead to tyranny?
In the last year, artificial intelligence has progressed from a science-fiction fantasy to an impending reality. We can see its power in everything from online gadgets to whispers of a new, “post-singularity” tech frontier — as well as in renewed …
Why I am now a Christian
In 2002, I discovered a 1927 lecture by Bertrand Russell entitled “Why I am Not a Christian”. It did not cross my mind, as I read it, that one day, nearly a century after he delivered it to the South …
How not to have sex
The Zoomer Generation is notoriously uninterested in the risk-taking behaviours that were once a rite of passage to adulthood. They don’t drink, they don’t smoke, and they’re indifferent to sex — not just to having it, but even, according to …
The post-America war has begun
Less than a month ago, President Biden was asked on camera if the United States could simultaneously bring conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East to a palatable conclusion. “We’re the United States of America, for God’s sake,” he responded, …
The climax of the Vagina Monologues
Let me take you back to 1996, and an important year for life-changing discoveries. In Scotland, scientists at the Roslin Institute were cloning Dolly the Sheep. In the US, human DNA sequencing was just getting going. Meanwhile, all over the …
Nadine Dorries has sacrificed herself
Nadine Dorries is a romance novelist, and The Plot is a romantic novel though it pretends it isn’t. Her novels specialise in the miseries of working-class Liverpudlians, among whom she grew up, and she is more wracked than any of …
