You may not have heard, but the internet is an unacceptably dangerous place. A place full of terrorists, financial frauds, pedophiles and rudeness.
Or at least it is according to the British government.
Continue readingYou may not have heard, but the internet is an unacceptably dangerous place. A place full of terrorists, financial frauds, pedophiles and rudeness.
Or at least it is according to the British government.
Continue readingGina Lollobrigida, who died this week at the age of 95, was known in the 1950s and thereafter for the kind of beauty which drove Italian men to self-destruction; and for performances in films which seemed to define a scrappy, energetic, self-possessed Italian womanhood.
Continue readingAll of Europe is haunted by a specter — or, more accurately, a Blob.
The Blob gets its title from its namesake horror films, and was coined by perennial British cabinet minister Michael Gove, who used it to describe the vested interests in the field of education when he was the sector’s secretary of state.
Continue reading‘If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — for ever.’
That’s from George Orwell’s dystopian future Britain in Nineteen Eighty-Four. The words are spoken by the novel’s inner party inquisitor O’Brien, and they could be wryly altered to fit our times: ‘If you want a picture of Britain’s future, imagine waiting, unsuccessfully, for a doctor’s appointment— forever.’
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Liz Truss has just become Britain’s prime minister after she was elected leader of the Conservative Party yesterday. In the end, it was not close.
There’s a macabre joke in Britain these days that my friends and family also play. We compete to see who has had to wait the longest for medical treatment. It starts relatively innocuously. People talk of the ordinary things: like having to wait days to get an appointment with a doctor. They call up in the morning at 8 a.m., only to be told that all of the slots are gone. Best of luck tomorrow.
Continue readingYou may be a little surprised to hear that in Britain, being ‘grossly offensive’ is a crime. Joseph Kelly might feel similarly. On Monday he was convicted for sending a tweet – admittedly a fairly nasty one – about the late charity fundraiser Sir Tom Moore. When he shook his head – in disagreement or disbelief – during proceedings, Sheriff Adrian Cottam threatened to place Kelly in cells.
Continue readingHere’s a conversation to which, in one form or another, I have been party more than once in the past week or so. Perhaps you have done the same.
In discussing the latest twists of the Covid-19 pandemic, person one says something to the tune of ‘I can’t remember. Is the Delta variant the Indian one, then?’, and person two, if they do not reproach the other for their lack of politesse, says something resembling, ‘er, I don’t know. I’ll just check’.
Continue readingFor the owners and operators of the Colonial Pipeline, the resumption of normal operations following an attack of ransomware probably brought little pleasure. Not least because, according to an official, they had paid up to $5 million to the attackers in ransom in the process. But to have one’s business entirely paralysed in this way is not so much a wake up call, as it has been fashionable to call it, as a time to get serious.
Continue readingAs the mechanics of China’s genocidal repression of its Uighur minority has become more and more evident, the hunt has been on to find the link between the systematic suppression of a cultural minority and global commerce.
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