Piddington’s very English revolution
At a packed village hall meeting in picturesque Piddington, parish council leader Tim McNally railed against the British state. “The Government has stacked all of…
Stop binning your heirlooms
Middle-aged heirs are rejecting their parents’ prized possessions. “The children have no room for the oak furniture, they don’t want the silver card cases and we have to explain it…
Stop binning your heirlooms
Middle-aged heirs are rejecting their parents’ prized possessions. “The children have no room for the oak furniture, they don’t want the silver card cases and we have to explain it…
Mark Zuckerberg got what he deserved
I dreamed about Mark Zuckerberg again. We were on a family holiday and he was just sitting there in the middle of our hotel room as I tried to get…
The great Covid reckoning
For six years, there was no accountability for Covid. How did the pandemic happen? Why was the response so economically, socially, and medically destructive? No one, it seemed, would be…
Why corpses shouldn’t be sacred
Earlier this summer, a funeral director was sent to prison for 20 years for his grossly negligent way with corpses. Not only did Robert Bush fail to cremate and bury…
Dolly Parton: head of the country class
The mountains spoke to Dolly Parton. Growing up in the deep green forests and dark hollers of East Tennessee, she listened to the rhythmic song of the whippoorwill, the steady…
Harry and Meghan cannot escape their fate
Two weeks after Diana died, I was riding the U-Bahn in Frankfurt. Across the crowded carriage, a young woman took a single photocopied sheet from her bag with great deliberateness…
How HMOs took over Britain
Something strange is happening to the St James Estate. At first glance, it’s an ordinary-looking Bermondsey housing development — 182 unshowy, yellow and red-brick street houses. Read more Local councils…
Local councils are worse than you think
In the local government office, pinned on the cafeteria wall, was a poster. “Do you struggle to focus in meetings?” it asked. “You might find that something like knitting could…
The reckless psychology of boy racers
“D22 robbery crew no better,” read a comment on a now-deleted TikTok showing reckless driving in County Kildare, complete with a smiling devil face and a heart. “You know it,”…