Terry Southern’s 1959 novel, “The Magic Christian,” is about a billionaire who has a hypothesis: Everyone and everything has a price. His attempts to prove it lead him to offer inordinate amounts of money to people in exchange for irregular behavior. He bribes a parking warden to eat a...
Writing in 1986, the historian James Walvin mournfully chronicled the demise of association football in England: “The game in recent years has plunged deeper and deeper into a crisis, partly of its own making, partly thrust upon it by external forces over which football has little or no...
The United Kingdom wants to transition to electric vehicles by 2030. To achieve that goal, a lot needs to be done.
With everything that has been going on as the world seeks to weigh the chances of a nuclear war and a realignment of nations across the globe, fans of the media may have failed to tune into the real news that broke in recent weeks. Forget Ukraine, there is another drama whose suspense is building....
In the prelude to World War I, Western nation-states, from North America to the Urals, found themselves involved in a strange game nobody really understood. It turned around their perception of each nation’s individual image on the world stage. Each nation imagined itself as wielding a form of...
Since Brexit in 2016, the United Kingdom’s growth rate has been poor. Inflation is at its highest rate in 30 years. In December 2021, it had risen to 5.4%. Wages have failed to keep up and, when we factor in housing or childcare costs, the cost of living has been rising relentlessly. COVID-19...
In the 1980s, I was born having freedom of movement across Europe, when Britain was part of the European Economic Community. The concept of EU citizenship was formally established in 1993, as part of the creation of the European Union itself, under the Maastricht Treaty. Polexit: Is...
Last week witnessed the 80th anniversary of a moment in history qualified by Franklin D. Roosevelt as “a date which will live in infamy.” On December 8, 1941, the president announced that the United States was declaring war after Japan’s unprovoked attack on Pearl Harbor a day earlier. A...
British media revealed this week that Sir Geoffrey Cox, a Conservative Party MP, had been accused of a conflict of interest. The Guardian reports that “he had lobbied against imposing tougher financial regulation on the Cayman Islands just months after he gained more than £40,000 ...
The rich have always flaunted their wealth. It was rarely good enough to enjoy financial success, you had to be conspicuous about it. They build enormous homes for everyone to gawk at. They throw lavish parties. They commission paintings, statues, biographies. They endow institutions so that their...
The economization of every aspect of life in today’s consumer society has had a particularly pernicious influence on public education. At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, society saddled education with the task of infusing respectable knowledge in young people’s heads. Politicians...
The global health crisis has led to an increase in going out cashless due to fears of transmission of the coronavirus. Yet this has had an adverse impact on social and economic inclusion. It has also exacerbated the so-called “digital divide” over who has access to the internet and can buy...
Even as a 13-year-old, I had strong views on education. I had the opportunity to study in two countries with entirely different education systems. I began my education in India and studied for five years in Ahmedabad. My father then moved to the United Kingdom and I studied in a London-based...
The European Union received a serious shock last week that confirmed the seismic shock it received a month ago when US President Joe Biden made good on his decision to unilaterally abandon the 20-year NATO military campaign in Afghanistan. France had a more specific reason to complain. As AP...
