Hugo Rifkind is a writer for the Times.
I know this will surprise you, given the shy and retiring violets who largely write in these pages, but one of the main problems with being a columnist is the rampaging ego. In my own case, this manifests not in drunken debauchery or unabashed priapism (which is a shame as both sound fun) but in
The most significant bit of Ed Miliband’s speech last week (which I bet you watched in the office, from beginning to end, like I did, because that’s not weird in most jobs at all) was the bit where he called David Cameron an idiot. Did you catch it? Very stirring. ‘Have you ever seen a
Writing on the Guardian’s website, and perhaps in the paper too, although I’m not wholly sure they still print one (subs, please check), their investigations editor David Leigh has made a bold suggestion for the future of the press. He’s been around, Leigh, and is as dogged a hack as you could hope to find
What’s wrong with editing your own Wikipedia entry, anyway? I’ve never touched mine, but only because I’m scared people would find out, which would be bad, although for reasons which elude me. I don’t even know why I’ve got a Wikipedia entry, actually. It was built in 2005, at 1.12a.m., by somebody who appears to
Let us talk about politicians dancing. Specifically, let us talk about Boris Johnson and David Cameron dancing to the Spice Girls at the Olympic closing ceremony. Graceful, elegant, debonair, all of these things it was not. Cameron clapped, strangled by his tie, like a man whose sober country church has been taken over for a
Back in 2006, I broke a great story in the Times about Tony Blair’s tie. Yep, that’s me, always the heavyweight. But it was good stuff. What we’d noticed — me and Simon from the picture desk — was that whenever Blair felt particularly under pressure, he’d pop out the next day in his special Olympic
Why would you be a Lib Dem? That’s a rhetorical question, obviously, because I think we all know that the bulk of well-meaning, ineffectual perverts actually read the New Statesman. But still, imagine you were one. What’s it all for? And, more to the point, why are you still in government? I keep asking this
How weird are Scientologists? Other than the bright-eyed young men in sharp suits on Tottenham Court Road — who have somehow spotted my glaring personality problems at a distance and are adamant that I ought to step inside and identify them in more detail — I’ve never knowingly met one, so I don’t really know.
I write this freshly back from a reactionary weekend in the Scottish Borders, where I was made a godfather in a christening and did not have to renounce Satan. Which was a relief. It’s not that I have any objection to renouncing Satan per se. It’s not like we’re on speaking terms. It’s just that
Jetlagged in the small-hour darkness of Santa Monica last week, and perusing various write-ups of the previous evening’s Eurovision Song Contest in Azerbaijan, I had a sudden epiphany as to why America holds all these sporting contests with ‘world’ in the title which don’t involve anybody else. It’s because everybody else is dreadful. Eurovision has
Newsnight called the other day to ask if I fancied coming on to talk about David Cameron’s new idea of parenting classes. They stood me down in favour of Kirstie Allsopp in the end, which was understandable, particularly as I couldn’t figure out whether Cameron’s idea is a good one or not. I just kept
Find me a person who stopped voting Conservative last week because of David Cameron’s vague, half-arsed, lacklustre stance on gay marriage. Go on. I dare you. Or because of the even vaguer, totally-not-going-to-happen proposals to reform the House of Lords. I’ll settle for one of them instead. Just one, and then I’ll shut up and
‘Sir,’ read a letter in the Daily Telegraph last week. ‘Is this the wettest drought since records began?’ High five, David Stevens of Poole, Dorset. I couldn’t have put it better myself. Drought? A lack of water? The sodding stuff is falling from the sky. All day, every day. Drought? Are you sodding kidding me?
There’s a big hole in the coalition’s controversial internet surveillance plans, and it comes in the shape of the point. Right now, you see, everybody is making a fuss about civil liberties. This is because making a fuss about civil liberties is a blast. Once you work up a decent head of steam, any fool
I once had an idea that it might be fun to write a technology column. What Jeremy Clarkson did with cars, I thought, and Giles Coren and A.A. Gill do with restaurants, I could do with… phones and stuff. It could be one of those launchpad-type columns, I thought, where you don’t really write about
Oh dear. It turns out I’m in favour of the marginalisation of religion in public life. People talk about this as though it’s a bad thing. But I’ve had a decent think about what I’m in favour of and — hmm, bit of a surprise —it’s definitely that. Take gay marriage. Support it, don’t support
I do love hearing that old anecdote about Andrew Marr rushing through the Kremlin en route to some assignment, and noticing various guards, soldiers and literal apparatchiks leaping up and clicking their heels, under the impression he was Vladimir Putin. Always, though, I find myself wondering whether anybody has ever had the guts to tell
The difference between the debt and the deficit, I quite often find myself telling people, is like the difference between your overdraft and the gulf between what you earn and what you need. Even if you could reset the former to zero, somehow, the latter still be there, forever dragging you down. ‘But aren’t you
It’s not strange that bankers have so much more money than anybody else. It’s like the way that women who work in sweet shops are always fat. Not a profound point, I’ll grant you, but it’s striking how rarely you see it made. In other industries, this sort of thing is pretty much a given.
The problem with Nick Cohen’s very readable You Can’t Read This Book is the way that you can, glaringly, read this book. This isn’t quite as glib an observation as it sounds. Cohen’s central point is that the censors’ pens did not fall down with the Berlin Wall. And yet here he is, very obviously