China continues to use Xinjiang and Tibet as pawns in its global growth
Illustration by Hannah Robinson The author of this piece has asked to remain anonymous so to protect their freedom travelling to and from China. A BBC exposé in October 2018 reported…
Populism around the world
Illustration by Hannah Robinson Populism is on the rise globally, so we need to understand it. Populists seldom have economic plans or concrete programmes to offer – they win and remain…
Can’t we concentrate on climate change?
Illustration by Hannah Robinson Collins Dictionary recently announced that ‘Climate Strike’ was their word of the year for 2019. Ignoring Piers Morgan’s helpful interjection that this is in fact two words,…
Why don’t you care about Jeremy Corbyn’s anti-semitism?
Illustration by Hannah Robinson Being a Jew on a British campus is not a universal experience. Ask ten different Jews what it is like and they will give you ten…
The reality of recycling in the UK
Illustration by Hannah Robinson At the end of September, Biffa, the UK’s second largest waste management company, was fined a record-breaking £350,000 when a shipment of “mixed paper”, on its way…
Alarmism will not save the Amazon rainforest
Illustration by Hannah Robinson One could not help but feel harangued by the media craze that ensued during days of forest fires spreading through the southern swath of the Amazon. Facebook…
An honest account of working at an American Summer Camp
Illustration by Hannah Robinson Working at a summer camp takes patience, resilience and an unflinching ‘Disney smile’ to hide the exhaustion of working for twenty-four hours a day. Add to…
On war crimes denialism and wayward academics: an interview with Joey Ayoub
Illustration by Hannah Robinson Opposing fascism should be simple. Despite the complexity of the situation in Syria, there are clear villains and one of them is Bashar al-Assad, the country’s…
Cutting out plastic straws won’t cut it
Illustration by Hannah Robinson Over the past year or so, I have noticed a huge rise in individual interest in the climate crisis. This surge in public interest has indubitably…
Is Boris Johnson renewing or destroying the union?
The relationship between Scotland and England has always been a fragile one. From wars through the Middle Ages, to a close independence referendum in 2014, and now the will of…
Art can teach us a lot about the climate crisis
Since the publication of Goya’s The Disasters of War series in 1863, art and activism have had an intimate relationship. From Picasso’s spectacular Guernica to the Guerrilla Girls and their…
What can the reception of Jofra Archer tell us about national identity?
After a series of unforgettable performances, winning England the World Cup before helping rescue the Ashes a mere six weeks later, Jofra Archer has burst memorably into English cricketing consciousness….
Sex and the Surveillance State
In July, the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport Karen Bradley announced that the British Board of Film Classification would delay the implementation of section 14(1) of…
Impatient determination will see us leave with no-deal
So, this is it. After formerly arguing that the chances of a no-deal Brexit were “a million to one”, the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, has now asserted that the outlook…
Fallen for the Fringe
Our writer has fallen head over heels for the Edinburgh Festival. She invites you to see just how the Fringe stole her heart. It’s my first ever Fringe. I can’t…
The impact of income inequality is staggering; it is time for a Universal Basic Income
In the UK inequality continues to rise. Income inequality in the United Kingdom is already worse than the EU average; recent data highlights that the UK’s GINI coefficient sits at…
In Defence of the Anglo-Scottish Union
Margaret Thatcher once told a Scottish Tory: ‘Michael, I am an English nationalist and never you forget it.’ This explains a great deal of recent Scottish history. Our distaste for…
Dreaming of Eudaimonia
Recently, on this publication, there has been a fascinating dispute over the usefulness and legitimacy of the Constitutional Monarchy of the United Kingdom. Both the pro-monarchist advocate Michael Zwiauer and…
Art should not be exclusive to urban areas
Covent Garden, the Southbank, the National Theatre, the Tate Modern. The British capital is a microcosm of artistic talent and cultural immersion, full to the brim with creative juices. London…
How has democracy found itself at crisis point?
Democracy protects the rights and freedoms of the individual; it aims to ensure political institutions are representative of the views of society through public votes; it enshrines checks and balances…
Psychosis still exists in a heavily stigmatised dialogue
Social media has contributed massively to improving our awareness of mental health. The government are on board with anti-stigma campaigns and mental health awareness week, which draw our attention to…
The Trouble with Islamophobia
Recently the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims proposed a new definition of ‘Islamophobia’: ‘ISLAMOPHOBIA IS ROOTED IN RACISM AND IS A TYPE OF RACISM THAT TARGETS EXPRESSIONS OF MUSLIMNESS…
Europe by Europeans: ‘and, yes, Brexit is mentioned’
Baby D’Hondt fear the reaper, the ‘Euros’ are back in town. Having lived in Spain, and now Portugal, since early September, I felt that we should know what young Europeans…
The poverty of Constitutional Monarchy
A fellow contributor of mine at The Broad, Michael Zwiauer, recently responded to my piece decrying the cult of the Windsors. I proffer some points in respectful reply. Though the…
‘It’s a boy!’ – A rebuke to royalty
Here we go again. I find myself bombarded by the world’s media proclaiming the birth of a royal child. Once more the Windsor cult dominates the small minds of those…
Is a US-Russian alliance on the cards?
And no, I am not talking about the clientelist relationship between Donald J. Trump and Vladimir Putin. I am talking about an overt geostrategic alliance between the two largest countries…
Down the Persian Path: imperialism and hypocrisy
Part three of the Persian Path series, on Iran, its history, and dissidents. See here for the second part. Gazing upon the West’s actions and inactions concerning Iran makes for…
Genocide must never become a political plaything
24 April is marked with black in the calendars of Armenians all around the world. On this day, Armenians living inside and outside their homeland remember those who died in…
The Columbine shootings marked a new kind of terror
20 April 1999. A pair of students, armed with semi-automatic rifles and homemade pipe bombs, walked into their high school in Littleton, Colorado and introduced the world to a new…
Down The Persian Path: The Path of Resistance
Part two of the Persian Path series, on Iran, its history, and dissidents. See here for the first part. ‘Why the fuck would you want to go to that bastard’s…
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…