I have a degree in Modern History, a subject weakly valued by American employers (don’t get me started!). One of my university tutors, Theodore Zeldin, was a simultaneous translator at the Nuremberg trials and a world expert on the great slump and the rise of Hitler. He spoke thirteen European languages, and personally knew and …
Continue reading ‘Is this the end of the democracy experiment?’ »
I don’t understand why prescription medicine advertisements are allowed on TV or why anyone would think of trying one of the medicines after listening to the laundry list of warnings of possible side effects. But this is definitely an exception! Do you have feelings of inadequacy? Do you suffer from shyness? Do you wish you …
The Democrat governor of New York has a plan for a “Trump-proof” reopening of the Big Apple. Andrew Cuomo has apparently hired “high-powered consultants” who will scientifically analyse the “key data points” to work out how to free up the region’s economy. And who are these brilliant consultants? McKinsey & Company, of course – a …
Continue reading ‘You should know better than this, Governor’ »
To The Sunday Times In 1960s Oxford I would see Cecil Rhodes’s statue, think how wrong he was and walk on. That is life in an open, tolerant country: bits of our history are sticking up everywhere, and we are free to admire, condemn or laugh at them. I prefer that to a country in …
Modern politics is impossible to understand unless one understands the so-called pollution paradox – the greater the risk to public health and wellbeing a company is the more it has to spend on politics, to ensure it isn’t regulated out of existence. The result is that politics is dominated by the most anti-social companies and …
Continue reading ‘Epicurus loathed politics then, and would do so today’ »
