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…
Please, don’t make airports even worse
I’ve something of a love-hate relationship with airports. Having spent the past three years of my life living abroad, I’ve become used to the whole process of waking up unreasonably…
The concept of a ‘green city’ is too rigid
Palermo crept into conversation on three separate occasions this week. First, a conversation with a Sicilian over the delights of arancini, second to recommend Palermo for a romantic escape, then…
We must act now to help refugees
When Europe began to back out of its open-door policy in 2015, the world was forced to watch the refugee crisis develop into the biggest humanitarian catastrophe of the 21stcentury….
Travels around the Arab world: debunking myths
I often get asked why I decided to study Arabic at university and to this day I give the same ridiculous but truthful answer: I had been obsessed with the…
City of Stars: Skid Row is the dark, Dickensian underbelly of Los Angeles
Coming back down to earth from Hollywood’s glittering Hills, we land in Skid Row, one of the largest stable populations of homeless people in America. These days it is only…
China’s concentration camp you’ve never heard of
Everyone knows about the Holocaust, we all consider it part of the somewhat distant past that we’ve learnt from and will never repeat. Thankfully, for the most part, that’s true….
Since when did Angry Birds get you hired?
I’m taking a break from International Relations and realpolitik this week to address something that’s on all our minds – not being unemployed. As we chase those spring weeks, internships…
City of Stars: the religious icons of Hollywood
Los Angeles, in our mind’s eye, is a montage of the city’s most iconic sights. But this flickering reel has been stitched together by Hollywood itself. Scattered across the sprawling…
Conservative no more: Texas and Bavaria?
In the twenty-two years that I have lived on this planet, change has not been difficult to come across, bar a few notable exceptions. Yet in 2018, two everlasting political…
City of Stars: the road from Skid Row to Bel Air… and back again
I was lucky enough to spend last year living in the sunny and sophisticated city of Santa Barbara. California’s very own American Riviera. Just two hours north of Los Angeles’…
Capitalism: A better society of coffee and cooperation
‘Nice guy? I don’t give a s***. Good father? F*** you! Go home and play with your kids. You wanna work here – close!’ This is what Alec Baldwin’s character…
#Time4Change: A case for systemic economic reform
We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to redefine our economy and our generation must not let this slip. None of us needs reminding that we live in politically turbulent times. But…
Our response to mental health can, and must, improve
Among the latest news, one topic that has particularly stood out recently is that of mental illness and drug addiction. In the last few years, there have been outcries on…
Debt threatens to derail the ‘Belt and Road Initiative’
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is often cited as being the brainchild of the current Chinese premier Xi Jinping, who first announced the project in Kazakhstan during 2013, where…
Sex work in the ‘Nordic Model’ isn’t all it’s cracked up to be
Supposedly, it’s the oldest profession in the world. Since we first moved out of the caves and into tiny little villages made of mud and stone, there have been people…
Rethinking Privilege: A Stoic Approach
‘Privilege’ is a word that gets thrown around a fair bit these days, though seldom correctly. Social structures are increasingly being put under the lens of privilege, which has become…
In defence of the ‘individual’
Back in the early 1960’s, when psychologists could get away with a whole load of weird stuff, a now-infamous experiment took place at Yale University. Subjects were sat down by…
3D guns aren’t bulletproof yet and nor is gun law
After I first read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, I first played Deus Ex, and the first time I watched Robocop (the original one, obviously), I wondered just how…
AI and tech advancements are exciting, but are they ethical?
Imagine swiping open your phone to receive a new message. It’s from Yeshi, a young Ethiopian girl who is going to take you on a journey to collect water. It…
When it comes to sex education, it’s high time for a recoupling
There’s a lot uniting English people at the moment. The World Cup, Danny Dyer speaking the mind of the nation and standing up to Piers Morgan, our collective lobster sunburns….
The Modern BRICS: Is Russia geographically predisposed to aggression?
I tried, I tried and I tried. Believe me, my best efforts were exerted in attempting to write an article on Russian geopolitics without mentioning the World Cup yet it…
When it comes to immigration, low skilled labour is high value
At an event focusing on Brexit and immigration this week, I was sat across from a woman from the Scottish Government’s immigration office. Arms crossed and smirking, she flicked her…
Human rights: have our prisons become pointless?
When we take an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ approach to the U.K’s prison system, we all lose. 46% of all prisoners reoffend within a year of their release,…
The Modern BRICS: How Latin America is learning from Brazil’s mistakes
In 2001, the British economist Jim O’Neill coined the term BRIC nations to describe the rapidly developing global economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China, with South Africa being added…
Should we be investigating the Tory Party for Islamophobia?
Following complaints from the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has recently called for closer investigation of potential Islamophobia within the Conservative party. This has come following…