Putin vs Pride
In an outstanding article in the New York Times, Roger Cohen recounted his experience of travelling across Russia for a…
Why would you ever leave?
For British taxpayers perturbed by their £6 million daily bill for housing asylum seekers in hotels, New York City mayor…
Heritable guilt is in vogue
I made a poor excuse for a Presbyterian even as a kid. I resented religious indoctrination every precious school-free Sunday.…
The unspeakable truth about housing
Earlier this year I was a panellist for Any Questions, and a young man in the audience asked what could…
The truth about ‘affirmative action’
I’ve never cared for the expression ‘affirmative action’, which puts a positive spin on a negative practice: naked, institutionalised racial…
Bring back weather
I was in New York while the smoke from Canadian wildfires filtered over the city for three days last week,…
Let’s rise up in our road rage
Whether you’re more afraid of the forces of order or the forces of chaos is generally a matter of disposition.…
The myths around immigration
After the media bigged up the expiration of America’s Covid-era Title 42, which enabled the US to block entries into…
I’m a sucker for Tucker
I was asked on Tucker Carlson Tonight only once, while in New York about two years ago, and I turned…
How to offend your customers
In some quarters, American enterprise is alive and well. Established in 1929 to promote consumer protection, the conservative non-profit Consumers’…
Democrats for Trump
Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg’s indictment of an even more prominent fat man seems a big win for Donald Trump,…
The high price of low interest rates
You’ll recall that I’ve railed for years against zero interest rates, which transplanted a cancerous marrow into the very bones…
Despotic social controls cost lives
Look, I realise you don’t want to read this column. I’m unenthusiastic about writing it. For most of us, any…
My list of banned words
North America’s Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Language Project has released yet another list of Bad Say. Scientists are to swap…
The pervasive timorousness of publishing
After publishing 17 books, I’m no stranger to the publicity campaign. In my no-name days, my publicist would purr that…
You can’t say that!
The University of Washington technology department has banned the word ‘housekeeping’. Not because the ‘problematic’ noun is overtly ist (ableist,…
Are we kidding ourselves over Ukraine?
Optimism can be surprisingly hilarious. In my last novel, two spouses agree to quit the planet once they’ve both turned…
Seasonal schadenfreude
’Tis indeed the season to be jolly. Over the holidays, we can all put our feet up to view a…
What Trump really wants
Over the years, I’ve received my share of green-ink author’s mail. You know, from folks who’ve discovered an exciting variety…
What price fairness?
Once the energy price cap expires in April, the Chancellor is apparently considering the levy of ‘social tariffs’ on the…
Kamala’s blagging it
We throw around pejoratives such as ‘Idiot!’ a bit too carelessly, because then when we need to flag up genuinely…
When money rots
Punters and pundits alike reacted to rising mortgage rates in the wake of Truss’s mini-Budget with indignant horror. Leaving aside…
University is supposed to be hard
If I seem to be bashing universities lately, they’ve asked for it. The prestigious New York University in lower Manhattan…
Shame should not be heritable
Vice-chancellor Stephen Toope claims it was ‘inevitable’ that a university ‘as long-established as Cambridge’ would have links to slavery. Now…
Not all Americans are so crass
In the face of American snark about the Queen’s death, many a British newspaper reader was disgusted. With bad tidings…
