Some sensible words of caution on Iran, from Jawad Iqbal in the Spectator: So, how will Iranians respond? The most obvious thing to point out is that it would be hard for people with no weapons to topple rulers who are armed to the teeth. Some Iranians with long memories might also cast their minds…

This latest MHRA puberty blocker scandal isn’t going away. From the Telegraph: Maya Forstater, the chief executive of campaign group Sex Matters, wrote to the chief executive and the chairman of the MHRA on Sunday to warn: “This is a scandal that undermines trust in medical regulation in the UK. “It is also unlawful, contrary to…

An excellent Sonia Sodha piece on the news that Professor Jacob George has been recused by the MHRA from the puberty blocker trial on account of his gender-critical beliefs: Regardless of whether their action is lawful, this incident is very troubling for anyone who cares about the way science and medicine parse ethics in a…

Howard Jacobson interviewed by Josh Glancy in the Sunday Times: Howard Jacobson can still remember watching the Sydney Opera House being built. He was living in Australia at the time, lecturing at Sydney University as a young academic. Perhaps this is why what happened there on October 9, 2023, sent him mad. Just two days…

Times headline – Man City hold firm without Haaland as Leeds fans disgrace themselves. There was the disgrace, 11 minutes into the game, of a sizeable section of their supporters booing when play stopped for City’s Muslim players to break their Ramadan fasting. It ­suggested, for all the campaigning around such subjects by clubs and the…

What are they condemning in the strongest terms? Not the US/Israel attack…

The “reasons of their own” usually involve Jews/Israel. In Syria? The Iranian ayatollahs supported Assad….

Camilla Long in today’s Sunday Times, on the Greens: I wasn’t going to write about the by-election — the Greens, “F*** your bins”, campaign videos in Urdu. But there was one question that was bothering me. It was: what does the Green Party stand for? If, for example, you look through their hundreds of laughing…