”If you thought “the thought police” existed only in Orwellian fiction, then you haven’t been following a case in the U.K High Court. Douglas Murray Miller, a former constable, had posted a few ribald tweets on the subject of transgender self-identification. (Sample: “I was assigned mammal at birth, but my orientation is fish. Don’t mis-species me”.) …
Paul Theroux has announced that he is moving to Mexico. He feels the elderly in the US are “in superfluity”. They are slighted, ignored, and treated as deck cargo, not worth a thought, and occupying nice houses that could be occupied by the deserving young. “I think of myself in the Mexican way”, commentedTheroux, “not …
Europe has acquired a noxious American habit : the Sports Utility Vehicle. A third of new cars sold in Europe are now SUVs. The parents of school kids in my street in east London all seem to have a Nissan Qashqai or BMW X5 parked outside their house. Once, when small cars filled our roads, …
We may think we’ll be here forever – but Robert Harris reckons our civilisation is probably doomed. “The Roman Republic, Cicero, those people were just as clever,” says the novelist, 62. “The things that their society produced – its oratory, its philosophy, its painting – were as sophisticated as anything we do. But still …
John Richards, who is 96 and founded the Apostrophe Protection Society in 2001, is now terminating the Society. He is quoted as saying, “Fewer organisations and individuals are now caring about the correct use of the apostrophe in the English language”. So I thought a brief run- down on the rules would be a good …
