Society

Finally, thankfully, the global warming craze is dying out. To paraphrase Monty Python, the climate parrot may still be nailed to its perch at the recent Cop summit in Belem, Brazil – or at Harvard and on CNN – but elsewhere it’s dead. It’s gone to meet its maker, kicked the bucket, shuffled off this mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. By failing to secure new pledges for a cut in fossil fuels, Cop achieved less than nothing. The venue caught fire, the air conditioning malfunctioned – and delegates were told on arrival not to flush toilet paper. Bill Gates’s recent apologia, in which he

You’ve probably seen the videos. Kemi Badenoch delivering her Budget response in the form of a rap to a sobbing Rachel Reeves. Keir Starmer as a McDonald’s drive-thru worker. David Lammy as a Spice Girl in a tight dress. Reeves (again) as the Grand High Witch from The Witches. Behind the videos is one man. He runs the Crewkerne Gazette, an online publisher of viral political videos made with artificial intelligence. The ‘Crewkerne Man’ would not give me his name when we met for lunch in Somerset last week. What I can say is that the most important political satirist of the moment is a large guy in his mid-thirties

I’ve decided I need a party trick. This thought occurred to me at a recent dinner party as I watched my mother effortlessly tie a cherry stem into a knot with her tongue. So ensued 20 minutes of entertainment as everyone thought that they too would give it a go. No one succeeded, and my mother remained the undisputed champion. But when the floor was opened to any other demonstrations, I had nothing.  My failure to inherit any sort of skill is a bit of mystery since my father also has an arsenal of party tricks. While most of his peers spent their early twenties in clubs and at parties,