For every major metropolis that painted BLACK LIVES MATTER on its streets two years ago, there were huge swathes of America where the whole movement felt like a distant diversion, similar to the current war in Ukraine. You knew it …
The cruel world of yoga
The bar for doing a yoga practice couldn’t be any lower: all you need is a mat and a body, although even the mat is optional. You don’t have to be flexible. You don’t have to be strong. You don’t …
Will Leeds atone for David Oluwale?
It was a moment that had been 15 years in the making. As Leeds unveiled its latest blue plaque, the mood at the ceremony was festive. The 200-strong crowd heard music and poetry in memory of David Oluwale. “A British …
Is Ukraine just a white man’s war?
Fourteen years ago, when Boris Johnson was a mere twinkle in the British electorate’s eye, I wound up shadowing the then MP for Henley-on-Thames as he campaigned to become Mayor of London. He won, of course, then bagged a second …
When libel laws are needed
“Andrew Doyle is an ultra-conservative anti-feminist homosexual who uses a drag persona on Twitter to attack trans and queer people… He wishes with all his heart that he was Julia Hartley-Brewer. Pathologically so.”
Only one assertion in this tweet is …
The myth of the black role model
It’s not easy being good. Living in a $42 million home, being worth $350 million, and stepping up to accept the greatest award of your career is no mean feat. Maybe, just maybe, we caught Will Smith at a bad …
Anti-racism betrays Asian students
After the tragic killing of George Floyd in 2020, much of the virtue-signalling that followed focused on an unexpected target: admissions processes. Activists claimed children “of colour” weren’t getting their fair share of places at good schools — or, to …
The problem with anti-woke liberals
In the summer of 2005, hundreds of recent college graduates gathered in a giant auditorium in Houston for a lesson in “diversity, community and leadership”. At 20 years old, I was the youngest of the bunch. The organisation Teach for …
Our age of incivility must end
In the summer of 2020, protestors — and criminals — installed a reign of disorder in many American cities. On the news and on social media, one could see videos of arson in Minneapolis, mass looting in Manhattan and Los …
Why anti-racism should be resisted
“Young boys and girls must grow up with world perspectives”. On 22nd April 1965, Martin Luther King Jr, speaking at a meeting of the Massachusetts legislature, lamented the “tragedy” of school segregation. With the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights …
Why comedians stopped being funny
The most exciting stand-up comedy show I’ve ever seen was Bill Hicks in a student union in the autumn of 1992. Being a comedy naïf probably helped. I had seen Hicks’ sensational Channel 4 special Relentless earlier that year but …
Cressida Dick has failed women
It is quite some time since the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Dame Cressida Dick, attracted positive headlines. Exactly five years since her appointment was announced in February 2017, she presides over a force mired in scandal.
Dick promised to make tackling …
How our universities became sheep factories
A joke about education in Soviet Russia:
– My wife has been going to cooking school for three years.
– She must really cook well by now!
– No, they’ve only reached the part about the Twentieth Communist Party Congress …
Kamala Harris was set up to fail
When I was a young girl in Somalia, I would listen to the grown-ups around me ask my brother: “What would you like to be when you grow up?” No one ever asked me this.
But I always interrupted. I …