Open Season
The perils of two-wheeled oiks in lycra
‘The cyclist’s pent-up hostility and cavalier attitude to rules finds its apotheosis in confrontations with pedestrians’
Living in Cancerland
Cancer is no joke. But staying cheerful helps
In the bleak midwinter
Christmas can be a bleak time of year. While some feel isolated, others are overwhelmed by the need for a perfect family Yuletide when their reality is different
Personality journalism started with Paxman. It’s pernicious
‘When I was at the BBC, the cliché was that we left our politics at the door. It appeared not to need saying that other aspects of your personal identity should also be left at the door’
Three cheers for “white saviours”
‘You have to prove you have the knowledge/expertise/ experience to be allowed to step outside your own culture. To whom, I wonder, do you have to prove this?’
Trans trailblazers leave women bruised
‘Female and male bodies differ in many ways that make the best women uncompetitive with even mediocre men’
Who is Pride for?
‘A message of liberation has lost out to the more commercially viable demands for inclusion and recognition of ever-more niche identities’
Baked-in bias
‘Once social media entities become publishers, any political bias already present will be baked in’
The lost Eden of academia
‘It wasn’t difficult to persuade my son that academic life had lost its attractions’
The end of growth
‘The great classical economists all thought that economic growth would eventually cease. The prediction seems to be coming true’
Clouds of war and strategic delusions
Britain’s strategic outlook requires realism about the kind of conflicts we are prepared and willing to fight
Search engine: why Germany's foreign policy flounders
Europe’s economic colossus is crippled by identity politics and self-obsession. It exports instability
Alliances and dalliances
“The lethal combination of the Trump administration’s “America First” approach and many European members’ complacent, cowardly and stingy approach risks making Nato irrelevant”