Counterpoints
Brought to book
Mathematics publishing is a soft touch. The publisher usually hasn’t a clue, so they send the manuscript to someone like me to comment on. I used to be a soft touch too
A squarer mile
For better or worse, that City has undergone a revolution. Its old guard has been seen off, or paid off
Foie Gove
Michael Gove’s plan to ban foie gras is an essentially frivolous self-advertisement
Jam tomorrow
“We do so love a literary rejection, provided it isn’t our own, of course.”
The new normal
“Now nobody, it seems, wants to be seen as normal: not even normal people. But I do. All my life I’ve craved normality and never quite managed it”
Closed Minds
“In Britain’s universities, there is no incendiary debate on Brexit, merely a stunned lack of comprehension and the blithe assumption that all we “nice” people voted to remain”
Mañana, mañana
“Beyoncé got involved in youth voter registration — you could sign up at her concerts — because apparently, without the world’s most famous pop star yelling at us, millennials cannot fill out a life-defining form”
BOGOF, Nanny
“The proposed sugar tax and a prospective ban on BOGOFs — supermarket buy-one, get-one-free offers — are perfect examples of how muddled thinking leads to the busybody interference of the Nanny State”
The art of faking it
On Instagram, there’s nothing cooler than corporate sponsorship — so aspiring influencers are now creating fake sponsored content
Smack down
Has anti-smacking advocacy gone too far?
Carrying water for freedom
Hong Kong’s protestors are brave and, so far, successful. The Chinese Communist Party leadership must be kicking itself
Discussions with a stone wall
Britain’s main gay rights organisation is risking its own future by adopting gender self-ID as its new cause
In the heartlands of white-flag academia
When I tried to find out why my pro-Brexit article was turned down I was rebuffed — showing the intellectual conformism of universities