‘Virtual referees’ are turning the World Cup into a farce
Flies, millions of them, vast swarms of them, spawned in the filthy Volga river: mutant flies, probably. Gathering in clouds…
The best album of the year so far, by some margin
Grade: A+ While the young bands plunder the 1980s for every last gobbet of tinny synth and hi-hat, the singer-songwriters…
What kills migrants on boats? The left’s good intentions
I have been scouring the internet trying to find a right-wing festival to take the family to this summer. I…
There are too many women on Radio 4 and they’re always moaning
We had a long drive back from the north-east last weekend. Six hours or so, including a stop halfway, just…
When will the Tories learn: murdering animals isn’t a vote-winner
Buoyed by its huge popularity in the opinion polls and the fact that it is managing Brexit so well, the…
More immediate and even more vacuous than before: Chvrches’ Love Is Dead reviewed
Grade: B Another load of SJW moppets keening over 1980s synths. ‘It only takes two seconds to say: I don’t…
Is Meghan’s wedding our ‘Obama moment’? Let’s hope not
Here’s something to bear in mind over the next few years. Be wary of taking advice on social justice from…
Why this deluded affection for the Palestinians?
The worst entry for this year’s Euro-vision song contest was that vast cater-wauling aboriginal. I can’t remember her name, only…
A Bowie tribute album: Arctic Monkey’s Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino reviewed
Grade: B+ Oh, terrific — a concept album about a 1970s hotel somewhere in space, plus an attack on our…
It’s time to get real about gang violence in London
Hey, Londoners — been stabbed or shot yet this week? Just thought I’d check as the place seems to resemble,…
Belly, the band responsible for one of my favourite 90s songs, is back
Grade: B+ One of my favourite songs from the 1990s was about a Chinese adulteress forced to walk around town…
The UN’s sent an envoy to examine Brexit racism. And a warm welcome to her
Another new word, this time from the deranged far-right: incel. This means a chap who is involuntarily celibate because women…
The origins of Labour’s racism
Another word which has gained a new meaning in the present decade, along with ‘vulnerable’ and ‘diverse’: survivor. Once it…
Kylie’s latest album is truly appalling: Golden reviewed
Grade: D– Kylie has a place in my heart for having made the second-best single to feature the chorus ‘na…
A joke about Welsh vowels is a hate crime, say the tuppenny panjandrums
It took four days to actually see the pine marten in the flesh. We caught it on a trail cam…
The DPP’s Alison Saunders was never much cop
An interesting development for our police force, then. In future they do not have to believe everything someone tells them,…
Labour, lizards and the problem of anti-Semitism
There’s a very funny moment in Jon Ronson’s book Them: Adventures with Extremists, part of which follows the New Age…
Thank you, West Midlands, for the blind alley of heavy metal – blues without rhythm, wit or soul
They’re still alive, then. Chuggedy-chug, grawk, screech screech, chuggedy-chug. First mention of demons — line one, song two. Song one…
Our response to the nerve gas attack has been an act of self-harm
There was a growling Russian maniac on the BBC’s Today programme last week, an MP from the United Russia party…
Vince Staples is Christian, yet it’s hard to imagine Jesus singing along to GTFOMD
Grade: B+ Another ex-Long Beach crip replanted in pleasant Orange County via the conduit of very large amounts of record…
Genocide in South Africa: now that’s a black-and-white issue
Last time I was in South Africa I spent two weeks deep in the Karoo, that desiccated wasteland in the…
Italy’s election result shouldn’t be a shock. The populist revolution has just begun
Why aren’t children called Roger any more? I wondered this when reading about the sad death of Sir Roger Bannister.…
Nils Frahm is clever with textures – but it’s the melodies which drag you in
Grade: A Here we are in that twilit zone where post-techno and post-ambient meets modern classical, a terrain that has…
The word ‘extremist’ has lost all meaning
A few years ago, in these pages, Matthew Parris defined Ukip as a party of extremists. Perhaps one of his…
Why are businesses like Center Parcs so terrified of a small minority?
I am boycotting Center Parcs. Admittedly, this is not going to have an enormous impact upon my life. It’s a…
