Why aren’t all executions public?
There is a boring, snooty, self-righteous school of thought that the judicial killing of a human being is a grave and dignified sacrament of the state. It says that where the law provides for the...
View ArticleTrump will regret it if he attacks the Houthis
Donald Trump has opened up the prospect of America being drawn into a wider Middle East conflict, effectively a second front in the ongoing war with Iran. The US president said he is “going to look at”...
View ArticleSydney Sweeney and the joy of being Jewish
It doesn’t overstate the case to say that the past week has been particularly distressing for Britain’s Jewish community. From the Greens becoming the first mainstream UK party to adopt a racist –...
View ArticleBurnham needs to realise the EU isn’t the club we left
Andy Burnham doesn’t only want a ‘reset’ of relations with the EU. The Prime Minister has hinted that he is open to calls to rejoin it. Burnham has also told The Rest is Politics podcast that Russia...
View ArticleTrump has found his midterms scapegoat
Donald Trump has called for President Zelensky to be removed from office. The US President is furious following a series of drone strikes by Ukraine on Russian oil refineries, which came hours after...
View ArticlePilates is pseudoscience
Pilates has long been mocked as the regimen of middle-aged Manhattan neurotics. Samantha from Sex and the City was an adherent and today social media is awash with so-called ‘Pilates princesses.’...
View ArticleLabour is destroying the trust of Britain’s military veterans
The British government is navigating rough waters with its current approach to the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill 2024. It is putting itself in a position which will lead to conflict with veterans’...
View ArticleWhy are a woman’s eggs worth $220,000?
Jade, 27, shows me the email she’s just received, offering to buy her eggs ‘to help an Asian couple build their dream family’. As a Harvard student who helps me with research, Jade fits the criteria:...
View ArticleWhen did British architecture become so boring?
Nowadays, no one takes much interest in the Stirling Prize. But there was a time when the award, the winner of which will be announced this week, was front page news. That time was October 2004. One...
View ArticleDriving into London is a form of psychological torture
Whether or not you are a Kemi Badenoch supporter, her comment that people get into more trouble for driving slightly above the limit in a 20mph zone than shoplifting will have resonated with millions....
View ArticleWhy is livestreaming an execution so gross?
Livestreaming the execution of mass murderer Nidal Malik Hasan is a moral outrage but no one can explain quite why. Hasan’s crime was heinous. The US Army psychiatrist opened fire on unarmed soldiers...
View ArticleOn mental health treatment, the middle ground is right
British healthcare moves in pendulum swings between one extreme and another, often without much material improvement for patients. Just look at how maternity care swung from mostly at home and assisted...
View ArticleHow Islamo-leftism came to Berlin
Berlin is a wonderful city, even if its hipster vibe is a bit much for a square like me. The decadence is part of the charm, and the Germans, or at least the Prussians, are good at it, having enough...
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Mulholland Drive makes perfect sense
When David Lynch’s film Mulholland Drive was released in American cinemas 25 years ago this Monday, the critic Roger Ebert rejoiced that one of Lynch’s experiments at last “doesn’t shatter the test...
View ArticleIs the EU in an ‘autumn of enlargement’?
As the UK once again contemplates its future in Europe, the European Union is looking to inject momentum into its enlargement process. Croatia was the last to join in 2013; with Brexit, the bloc has...
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The dubious claims about a spate of racist lynchings in the US
‘Cases of Black people found hanged in the US South are a reminder of nation’s lynching history,’ read an ABC News headline last month. That phrase – ‘lynching’ – has been used again and again in...
View ArticleWhy Germany’s AfD keeps winning
Germany’s radical right AfD party is threatening to end the career of hapless conservative Chancellor Friedrich Merz by winning two state elections in former communist east Germany. A hungry fox has...
View ArticleBring back the radio licence
Were you devastated to hear that the consumer programme You and Yours is to be axed in the latest round of BBC cuts? Me neither. Nor The Artificial Human nor Thinking Allowed. In fact, there’s a whole...
View ArticleLive-streaming an execution is grotesque
The public will be able to watch via livestream the execution of Nidal Hasan, the US-born Muslim terrorist who shot dead 12 unarmed US soldiers. Officials in the Pentagon said that more details would...
View ArticleThe execution will be televised
“Deus Vult.” That, famously, is what the large tattoo on Pete Hegseth’s right bicep says. The phrase, which means “God Wills It,” is a Crusader reference. Critics suggest the words have white...
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