Greta Thunberg: no hero, no villain
Last August, a Swedish schoolgirl decided to skip her classes and to protest in front of the Swedish parliament for the climate, or more precisely against inaction for climate. The…
AUMF is America’s blank cheque for war
Since 2001, the United States has been engaged in the nebulous War on Terror, a war with no clarity nor end in sight. The legal justification for this forever-war is…
Restaurants like Sonder put our politicians to shame
‘Why can’t our politicians be more like chefs?’ came up at dinner the other evening, and it needs a short reply. For a start, politicians at the moment seem especially…
Down the Persian Path: The Path of History
Part one of the Persian Path series, on Iran, its history, and dissidents. The regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran would not have approved of the medieval Persian poet…
What Brexit should have learned from Czechoslovakia
Back in 2016, I’m not sure anyone could have predicted just how messy British politics would get after the Leave vote won. Sure, even then the polarising effects of the…
Boeing is going under and it’s taking Washington too
Boeing has been dealt a blow it will be recoiling from for some time. In just six months, its new 737 Max 8 model, the latest instalment to Boeing’s narrow-body…
Secret Hitler: An almost too-perfect allegory for politics
Politics is exhausting. For pretty much my entire university career, I’ve been involved in the area in some way. Be it through organising events, writing articles, or interning at think…
The endless reassurance of British tea time
The morose and boiled-cabbage bleakness of the National Library of Scotland conceals a kind of perverse beauty. Strip lights and sticky green chairs. Smelly books and smellier bookish types. Retirees…
Our obsession with cotton has gotten out of control
C The problem with cotton is that it is everywhere; barely an hour goes by when you won’t be in contact with cotton. As you read this you are probably…
Looking at India’s textile history could improve our relationship with fashion
You walk into any Marchmont flat, in fact, any student flat in any city across the UK and chances are, hanging on the wall is one of those tapestry-style wall-hangings…
You can’t sample the finest in the capital ‘under one roof’
Cais do Sodre is one of those scabby-chic areas on the brink of gentrification. It is not best viewed first thing in the morning, with sprawling homelessness and graffiti-stricken lanes….
Stoicism is the solution, not cause, of toxic masculinity
The relationship between men and their emotions is an often discussed yet broadly defined subject. ‘Toxic masculinity’, a concept becoming ever more present in political, social, and artistic culture, often…
The Cotton Road: Hemp’s image problem
This article is co-authored by Emily Roberts and Alice Wright. Hemp has an image problem. It’s a cousin of cannabis, the narcotic drug that is still entrenched in its own…
Leaving Neverland should act as a cautionary tale
I was ten when Michael Jackson died. I remember coming into my primary school and people talking about it. I knew the name of Michael Jackson, but did not really…
What links Robin Williams and a Ukrainian presidential campaign?
Just over a decade ago, the late Robin Williams starred in a comedy called ‘Man of the Year’. In the movie, Wiliams plays a satirical talk show host who claims…
You say tomato, I say ‘Not in February’
A century ago a tomato in England, in February, might have been unthinkable. But then this February just been felt unthinkable: two sunny weeks with twenty-degree afternoons. It was with…
North Korea needs to reform, but how?
Regime changes, from communism to capitalism, can take many shapes. In the best cases, we might see a peaceful transition into democracy in a way akin to the Velvet Revolution…
Let’s petition to make supermarkets a basket case
There’s nothing quite like a modern British supermarket. Aisle upon aisle of soothingly uniform stacked goods accompanied by the monotonous, distant beep of the tills, it’s a somewhat sedative experience….
For tonight’s special we have communist nostalgia
Simple food is in. Nothing makes the well-to-do of London drool at the moment like authenticity, seasonality and a bit of fashionable grubbiness. Olia Hercules, a recent champion of said…
What can football hooliganism tell us about tribalism vs individualism?
Mid-February saw both an unseasonably sunny Prague and half a thousand students and scholars gathered for the first Ayn Rand conference ever held in Europe. While I’ve never been particularly…
How the Evolution of Art mirrors the Evolution of Society
A couple of weeks ago I wrote a piece about two drill musicians who had been arrested for performing one of their songs, and argued that free speech and expression…
Calorie caps or consumer choice?
Now that we’re well-into February, many of us are giving up on our January goals of cutting down on booze, saving money, learning Sanskrit, or whatever else we planned to…
The issue with ‘Sleep In The Park’
‘4 cities. One night. 12,000 people under the stars.’ You would think this was an advert for a fun stargazing trip. In fact, this is the tag line for social…
Don’t buy into Silicon Valley’s huel-fuelled hell
I almost failed to write this article. I was exiting Huel’s website in exasperation at its fruitlessness (pun intended), when one of their founder’s names caught my eye. The name…
Of course we’re outraged about censorship
In the interest of my productivity and blood pressure, I tend to avoid certain sides of twitter. It’s a dreadful site that can suck you into a firestorm very quickly…
It’s time we started paying for social media
Is it time to end free-to-use social media? Social and political discourse has taken a significant turn over the last 10 years. People are forced into extreme, one-sided positions to…
Microhousing: A Return to the Victorian Slum?
As many of us learned in our history classes or, as I did, through yearly viewings of The Muppet’s Christmas Carol (objectively the best rendition of the Dickensian classic), accommodation…
Are small kingdoms more successful?
Once upon a time there was a pocket-sized fairy tale kingdom overlooked by student backpackers and glamorous globetrotters alike. Nestled between France and Germany, Luxembourg’s green pastures beckoned as my…
Brexit has brought democracy under question
It is widely agreed by the Western world that democracy is the best form of government available. However, with the legislations and actions of several countries’ governments coming under intense…
Goat milk: the unsung hero
Nobody has ever kept a goat simply for the sake of it. Goats are singularly hideous, make a startling array of screaming noises and smell like the office bathroom after…
Chick lit can’t win Man Booker Prizes
We all have spaces that make us feel like the universe is wrapped around us, squeezing us in one of those favourite aunt hugs that leave you a little out…
Egypt is a place of despair, fear and tension
E I am a firm believer that you have to visit and experience a country in order to be able to write about it with at least a degree of…
Thank God it’s not a Cromwellian Christmas
When people ask me where I’m from, I usually just say Cambridge, a city know the world over for its university, long history, and beautiful English charm. Sadly, however, the…
Travelling the Arab World: Lebanon
Sitting on the Mediterranean Sea and bordering Israel and Syria, Lebanon has an incredibly rich, but volatile history. The town of Byblos, just north of Beirut is one of the…
Charity is for life not just for Christmas
Around a year ago I was sorting a chicken. It was spatchcocked, spine-out and spread-eagled, rubbed down with garlic and sage butter, then sprinkled with salt and pepper. The potatoes…
Eighty-Five years since prohibition, but have we learnt anything?
This Wednesday was a special day. In the Netherlands, Dutch children celebrated the coming of Sinterklaas (along with his controversial helper Zwarte Piet). Walt Disney would have celebrated his 117th…
#Time4Change: Reimagining the state: Brave, Bold & Entrepreneurial
A modern government could pave the path to a more prosperous Britain. But this requires a big re-imagination of the state’s role in today’s world. The role of state has…
Stop applying for an extension you don’t need
We’ve all been there before. You didn’t leave yourself enough time, there aren’t enough hours in the day, you procrastinated with the flourish of a professional or perhaps you accidentally…
Travels around the Arab World: Oman
If I said that Oman was full of sloping mountains, a never-ending coastline as well as an expanse of desert, it might be difficult to believe. Couple this with a…
Dance floor bangers have a long history with extremism
Everyone has had the same experience at a party. You’re in the kitchen or the garden at 2am, feeling like a worn-out shoe, trying your hardest to listen to your…
#Time4Change: A climate for change
Climate change poses a political, economic and moral challenge like history has never seen before. We have a decade to redesign our economic system to avoid catastrophic and irreversible environmental…
Egg tarts are available worldwide because they hit the spot
It can be easy to feel out of place when you travel, nothing does for it like being the solo white man and nothing tickles my not-so-dormant narcissism as when…
Debate forces us to examine ourselves
We’ve all been at a dinner party or pre where political discussion rears its ugly head and hijacks a corner of the room or end of the table. People usually…
The US can’t ignore the caravan, they helped cause it
On October 13th, in the city of San Pedro Sula in Honduras – the crime capital of the world for two years running – a caravan full of people desperate…
Who taught our government geography?
Perhaps like me you are wondering what our nation’s geography teachers were doing when they had our members of government in their classrooms? Many former and current cabinet members have…
Stop fannying around about pubic hair
In a time of immense social and political upheaval, it always amazes me that people have time to be worried about things like pubic hair. Truth is disintegrating and democracy…
You can be racist towards white people
In the twenty first century, with racial tensions and diversity being at the forefront of sociopolitics, most people have come to an agreement that despite feelings of resentment or even…
Ireland: A place of ruin, prosperity and hope
In 1948, the Oireachtas (the legislature of Ireland) declared that Ireland, previously a part of the United Kingdom and under British occupation, would become its own Republic after ‘800 years’…
The Brexit parachute comes to Raab’s aid
Just imagine it. You’ve handed in the dissertation that you’ve been working on for months and your supervisor informs you that it’s shit. You then realise that it’s shit. What’s…
Britain’s warped view of its past may ruin its future
Last week, I went to the British museum for the first time, which is kind of embarrassing because I love history and have lived in London for a few months…
The magic in(sanity) of children
I have spent three years elbow deep in a generous overdraft, and so in my final, most taxing and important university year, I have myself a job. Fourth year is,…
Red meat tax will affect society’s poorest
Back in 1958, as part of the infamous Great Leap Forward, Chinese dictator Mao Zedong introduced the ‘four pests campaign’. This campaign sought to greatly improve public hygiene through the…
Armistice Day: How brazen has right-wing politics become?
Even on a weekend like this, they just couldn’t help themselves. It’s a weekend that remembers some of the most important moments in modern European history. Of course, on Sunday…
#Time4Change: How do we change inequality of reward?
The inequality seen today is politically potent and economically inefficient. It is time for change. Here are a few ideas to turn the tide. Up and down the country,…
Travels around the Arab world: Jordan
Jordan is one of the lesser known Arab nations, and as such often flies under the radar of Western attention. As a country bordered by Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and…