As I arrive at the Silja Europa cruise ship, men are queueing outside a coach with suitcases, bin liners, and bags. Some are taking selfies, saying goodbye. I ask where they are going: one man knows the name of the …
The empty cult of The Big Lebowski
The incipient cult of The Big Lebowski was forming before I even saw the movie, and I saw it fairly early on, two or three weeks after its release. I didn’t recognise the signs at the time, but they were …
America’s empire is bankrupt
Let’s start with the basics. Roughly 5% of the human race currently live in the United States of America. That very small fraction of humanity, until quite recently, enjoyed about a third of the world’s energy resources and manufactured products …
Do Just Stop Oil deserve to be in prison?
“Can you hear the future weeping? Our love must save the world.” So ended Morgan Trowland’s closing address to the jury, in the trial for Public Nuisance that followed his and Marcus Decker’s “Just Stop Oil” protest last year on …
The political power of Deano
“Imagine a village consisting of a few shops, a public-house, and a cluster of dirty little houses, all at the base of what looked at first like an active volcano,” wrote JB Priestley after visiting Shotton Colliery in 1933. The …
Women don’t need another girlboss
Heavy lies the girlboss crown on Rain Newton-Smith, freshly appointed director-general of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI). Brought in last week to rebuild the CBI’s reputation after a scandal involving her predecessor, commentators are already predicting her failure. Some …
The GOP is fighting the wrong culture war
The Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade’s guarantee of a right to abortion, marked the triumph of a decades-long conservative legal crusade. Close to a year later, however, and Dobbs has …
The truth about Japan’s sex culture
“Sex is where the weirdness of the Japanese peaks,” wrote A.A. Gill in his notorious “Mad in Japan” essay. Gill went on to catalogue largely anecdotal evidence of what he saw, on his brief visit, as a warped obsession with …
Pothole politics is paralysing Britain
Political discourse is stupid. There’s a Twitter account, for example, whose sole remit is to reply to anyone who provides a government spending number, by confirming how many days of NHS spending it represents.
Recently, though, we’ve gained a new …
GPT-4 couldn’t resurrect my dad
Over the decade before he died, in 2014, my father sent me thousands of emails. Carefully-crafted little gems, their subjects ranged from general advice, drawn from his own hardscrabble existence, to musings about the matriarchal nature of orca society, the …
Did City Uni censor my gender research?
“Are you not terrified? Everybody is going to hate you.” As she began the interviews for the research project she was leading, participants and colleagues asked Dr Laura Favaro if she was afraid. Now, three years later, she is haunted …
How to destroy a reputation
I am at the home of a psychopath. Here on the easternmost point of the island of Capri, the ancient ruins of the Villa Jovis still cling to the summit of the mountain. This was the former residence of the …
The football hooligans fighting for Ukraine
“Tottenham were hard. They fought well.” Vitalii Ovcharenko pauses and sips his tea, having earlier refused my offer of a beer. “I remember it clearly. There weren’t many of them and they were heavily watched by the police. But, still, …
Why are liberals pretending to be racist?
The online dissident Right has long presented itself as a dangerous, outside force that threatens the foundations of liberal society. Yet ever since Donald Trump supposedly ascended to the presidency in 2016 through “meme magic” — rather than simply winning …
Skegness is drowning
In the bright spring sunshine, Skegness is preparing for the season. The smell of fresh paint churns into the stench of the fish and chip fat as it sizzles. The metal shutters protecting the seafront booths from the bitter North …