Jake Wallis Simons is a columnist, broadcaster and foreign correspondent. His latest book, Israelophobia, is out now
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but rental electric bicycles are becoming a bit of a scourge in London. Unlike the old Boris bikes (can we still call them that?), they do not need to be docked, meaning that they are frequently abandoned on the pavement, to the annoyance of pedestrians. Neither do they need
In more innocent times, I’d have responded to the news that police wished to fit tracking devices to electric bicycles with a grunt of approval. Finally, I’d have thought. Plod has come up with a practical, apparently technologically literate yet relatively inexpensive method to fight low-level crime. Makes a change from the rainbow helmets. Why
Is the Wagner Group a terror threat to Britain? Until this morning, the thought had probably never occurred to most people as they went about their lives. The mercenary group has indeed done terrible things in Ukraine and Africa. But a threat to British subjects on our own soil? Today, however, the government will add
The service was stylish, the menu superb, the vibe effortlessly chic. This was the Coal Office, one of London’s best Israeli restaurants, situated in the old Victorian goods yard at King’s Cross. My fiancée and I dined there last week. It was a blast. But something didn’t feel right. Fish and chips was invented by an
One is an oppressive regime that guns down its own people, promotes a radical Islamist theology and hangs gay people from cranes. The other is a liberal democracy that protects the rights of minorities, upholds the freedoms of speech and assembly, and grants equality to women and gay people. Yet when weightlifters from the two
I can’t believe we need to say this, but here goes: Motorists should not pull over to allow cyclists to overtake. I know it’s obvious, but the cycling elites have been agitating for this ridiculous rule-change, led by Jeremy Vine. In an interview yesterday, he upped the ante in his general campaign to turn the
My first encounter with the cargo bicycle came more than ten years ago. I was a features writer at the Sunday Telegraph and had three very small children; my assignment was to spend a few weeks trying out three different designs for ferrying kids and shopping and then reach a verdict on which was best. What is
Bradley Cooper is not anti-Semitic. If he was, he’d surely have let it slip by now; as Mel Gibson proved (‘The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world!’), it can be hard to hold such things in. And Cooper certainly wouldn’t be portraying a Jewish composer sensitively and affectionately on screen if
It emerged this week that the head of the Mossad, David Barnea, slipped quietly over to Washington in July to hold secret talks about the prospect of an Israel-Saudi peace deal. This was part of a drip-drip of stories suggesting that an agreement may be back on the cards after an Iran-Saudi deal brokered by
My fiancée wants to put a sign up outside our house demanding that the speed limit be reduced to 20mph. I’d rather she didn’t. Drivers have enough to cope with already. Such is the peer pressure emanating from the neighbours, however, in collaboration with my fiancée, that the decision is likely to be taken out
Watching Israel tear itself apart this week has been like seeing your best friend embarrass himself at a party. The world has looked on while the Netanyahu government, in hock to a small cabal of religious chauvinists, pushed through the first stage of its judicial reform agenda, sparking the biggest street protests the country has
The outrage over the cancelling of Nigel Farage’s bank account has uncovered the lengths to which elements of the British establishment will go to mould society in their ideological image. Those who speak out publicly in support of unfashionable causes – whether Brexit, gender self-identification, Israel or abortion – now face being cancelled not just
There’s something troubling happening in our schools. In art class, my children have been instructed to make Black Lives Matter posters. Their assemblies in recent years have been a dreary parade of presentations on sexuality, identity and race politics. They have been subjected to workshops involving LGBTQI+ flash cards and printouts of tweets about transgenderism,
Last week, Jeremy Vine shared a video of a motorist being abusive to a cyclist. Nothing new there, I hear you say. After all, the light-footed BBC presenter is famous for cruising around London with a sophisticated camera rig on his head. But on this occasion, it was very much the cyclist who was at
Car-rammings, shootings, stabbings and bombings targeting innocent men, women and children are a constant fear for Israelis. This morning, seven people were wounded in a ramming attack in Tel Aviv. Only a fortnight ago, four Israelis were gunned down by Hamas murderers. Last year, there were 5,000 such attacks. In 2023, more than 28 Israelis
What are the politics of your bicycle? An interesting question. I’d like to say that mine is an expression of a basically conservative temperament, with its ability to endow individual liberty, its lack of imposition on established cities and countryside, and its preservation of fine and noble sporting traditions. On the other hand, the bicycle
Tilting a statue. That’s the solution now. At least, that’s what a jury appointed by Vienna city council has recommended as the best way to deal with a controversial likeness of Karl Lueger, the early 20th-century mayor who shaped the modern city, but also happened to be an antisemite. Dr Lueger was a social reformer,
My kids have a new friend. If you have teenagers, chances are yours do, too. And it is a friend that, by its own admission, may offer ‘biased, incorrect, harmful, or misleading content’. In other words, not a friend at all. The first I heard of this being was when I logged onto Snapchat, a
Social distancing. Test and trace. Face-masks (what was wrong with just ‘masks’? Nobody could ever tell me). Clapping. Substantial meals. Scotch eggs. I think I speak for the majority when I say that those terms evoke both profound relief that it’s all behind us and a sense of unreality. I confess I’m flirting with the
In modern society, we live with a conundrum: there’s no need to endure physical discomfort of any kind, but unless you embrace it via exercise, it comes for you in the form of chronic illness. Good exercise can be very painful, however. In the case of the sport of cycling, agonisingly and unnecessarily so. Put
