Originally published November 2021. Back in the mists of my own pre-history, I was given the The Big Book of Egypt on an early birthday. It was full of drawings, diagrams and maps of excavations. Egypt fascinated me then and still does today. I learned of pharaohs, dynasties, the angles to build a perfect pyramid […]
Central banks will do far more harm trying to tackle it. It remains to be seen whether the Omicron variant will shift Sars-CoV-2 towards becoming manageably endemic. But as and when this happens, there will still be long Covid to contend with. The latest headlines about inflation – a 7% annual rise in the US and more tough […]
Power posturing or trouble on the home front for Putin? There is a pressing need to understand what’s behind Moscow’s growing threat to use military force against Ukraine. The real motivation for Russia’s aggression will largely determine the West’s room for manoeuvre. Despite amassing 100,000 troops on its western border with Ukraine, Russia has repeatedly denied that it plans to […]
Originally published March 2021. I’m sure you have your mind on higher things than the soapier side of the royal family, but I love it. I have a collection of commemorative china, my mum’s knitting me a copy of one of Princess Diana’s jumpers, I cried at Meghan and Harry’s wedding, and of course I […]
I was in Clearwater Beach, Florida, the morning of the 31st, listening to coffee drip, looking out the picture window at a parking lot, and saw a squirrel sitting on top of a telephone pole at eye level 15 feet away, looking at me. On the beach, men with metal detectors searched for lost diamond […]
Originally published October 2021. Knowing what to ask is the trick to getting the right answer. In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a supercomputer called Deep Thought is asked to answer the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe and Everything. After 7.5 million years, Deep Thought reports back that the answer is 42. When questioned, Deep […]
When I was on honeymoon in Venice, I spotted a pair of Chinese dragons, one chewing a toenail and the other picking its nose. Smart shop, Grand Canal – my wife, Jane, and I set an upper limit on what we’d pay. We later walked out with the dragons having written a cheque for slightly […]
2022: the year of the sportswash. A city without snow and a state in the desert. Obvious places, really, to hold the Winter Olympics and football World Cup if you’re the IOC and FIFA. Welcome to 2022, the year of the sportswash. The principal outdoor venues for Beijing 2022 are – on a good day – 90 […]
Originally published November 2021. Investment opportunity and political conundrum. The past 30 years saw the rise of coastal cities in the United States. New York, Boston, Miami, San Diego, Los Angeles, Seattle and perhaps most spectacularly, San Francisco. Immigration, the financialisation of the economy and more recently the tech boom were the economic motors. The […]
Freedom is a beautiful thing when you’re young, allowing kids who know they should be focused on the perils of global warming to instead be fascinated by the troubles of Britney Spears, but for an old guy it means a loss of direction as the people whose approval you worked for die off and you’re […]
