Lily Moo is used to death threats: in the past 14 months, 19 against her have been reported to the police. An Iranian in London, she has been leading Woman, Life, Freedom marches in her adopted home — calling for …
Has John Lewis killed the Christmas ad?
Melting snowmen. Sad ballads. Lonely children. These are the staples of the inescapable “sadvertising” that has become as much a part of Christmas as the Radio Times double issue used to be. But something feels different this year. If you …
The Battle for San Francisco
San Francisco, for decades known around the world for its jazz, free love and beat poetry, has in recent years become notorious for a different reason. Tent encampments on its streets and open-air drug markets have become a reference point …
Nicola Sturgeon’s latest humiliation
Nobody could say Nicola Sturgeon hadn’t been warned. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls told the then Scottish First Minister that amending the Gender Recognition Reform (GRR) Bill to include self-identification would pose a danger …
The tomb of Palestinian liberation
Ramallah is a dusty city built, you soon realise, around a fort. This is the Mukataa, or the “headquarters”, separated from the streets by walls and watchtowers. Mandate officials, Jordanian officers and the IDF have all been based here …
George Santos is no Gatsby
Who is the real George Santos? Even assuming you’ve already read a lot about the Brazilian-American Republican politician, you’re unlikely to know the answer — for it seems he barely knows, either. This is a man who has claimed to …
Human rights died in Gaza
Religions die hard. They promise something better, something truer, more powerful and lasting than our familiar cruelties, corruptions and deaths. Their traditions take shape over time; they develop rituals, build communities, give life order and meaning, and at their best …
China’s economic plan is bankrupt
Over recent months, the mainstream media has been overtaken by fears of a debt crisis in the developing world. The rapid interest-rate rises implemented by Western central banks have refreshed memories of the Eighties, when a similar tightening cycle precipitated …
The NYT is wrong about Israeli intelligence
The bad-faith reporting of Israeli news in The New York Times can overcome even the simplest arithmetic. Last month, there was a day-long rally for Israel in Washington that filled its Mall, with police attendance estimates ranging between 250,000 and …
The self-delusion of secular Jews
What can we Jews not accomplish? There were three years between the ovens of Auschwitz and the foundation of the Jewish State. And then the Israelis transformed the wasteland between the River and the Sea into an agricultural phenomenon, supplying …
Hamas aren’t Hollywood villains
On Christmas Eve, a kidnapped girl lies asleep in a bed that’s not her own. Her captors, two men, stand over her and discuss their plans to detonate a bomb at a holiday parade. The older, balder man glances at …
Why sneer at Wetherspoons?
Until I walked across England, from Liverpool to Hull, I’d never heard of Wetherspoon. I certainly had no idea that, as a well-educated person, I was supposed to be scornful of the chain of pubs. When I discovered it, I …
In defence of Weebs
When I moved to Japan in the mid-2000s, a friend of mine generously suggested that I was a romantic underachiever doing the equivalent of what thwarted job-seekers in the finance industry referred to as FILTH: Failed In London, Try Hong …
Why all this Trump hysteria?
A giant landfill of words has been dumped out on the subject of Donald Trump. I hate to add to the pile, but I feel I must. Unlike most participants in this industrial disaster, though, I have no wish either …
How the Krampus stole Christmas
The Christmas lights switch-on in my town last weekend was epic. Streets were blocked off, the market square was filled with funfair rides, and stalls selling hog roast and hot-dogs, glowsticks, candyfloss and wreaths.
The countdown was MC’d by a …
