Across the road from the ancient scaffold on Tower Hill that witnessed the execution of more than 125 traitors, heretics and those who simply displeased the monarch is a pub named the Traitors Gate. Continue reading →

Having little interest in the monarchy, I never paid much attention to the long-running Netflix series The Crown until I learned that one of my favourite television characters from my childhood, Bagpuss, appeared briefly in two episodes of Season Four.

In Season Four, Episode Four, Favourites, a heavily pregnant Princess Diana lies in bed at Highgrove House, locking herself away from her abusive husband who is banging at the door, demanding that she come downstairs to meet his mother. She turns to the television, increases the volume on her remote, and settles back to watch Bagpuss and The Frog Princess. Continue reading →

In the final episode of the second season of America’s Sweethearts, it was revealed that the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders (DCC) will receive a pay raise of roughly 400 percent for the upcoming 2025 season.

While that sounds like a lot, the increase comes from a ridiculously low base where these elite athletes earned about the same as a fast-food worker. Even the most senior squad members made just US$15 an hour, with US$500 for each game day appearance in 2024, while the Dallas Cowboys’ quarterback, Dak Prescott, made US$60 million in what was a bad losing season. Continue reading →

Donald Trump’s decision to rename the Gulf of Mexico attracted a lot of media attention and widespread derision. But since the United States does not own that body of water, the executive order is kind of meaningless.

What is more significant is the decision made at the same time to restore the name of America’s tallest mountain to Mount McKinley. Continue reading →

In his latest outburst, threatening to regain control over the Panama Canal unless the Panamanian government reduces transit fees for US shipping, President Trump reminded us of just how much his rhetoric echoes that the 26^th president of the United States, the man who secured the canal for America in the first place, Theodore Roosevelt.
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Hong Kong has seen a remarkable growth in the use of electric vehicles (EVs) over the last five years, to the point where EVs now account for 11.5 percent of all vehicles in the city, according to official figures from the Department of Transport.

The government deserves a lot of credit for introducing a wide range of subsidies and incentives in its 2021 Roadmap on Popularisation of Electric Vehicles but this rapid growth would not have been possible if Hong Kong was not already a relatively small and compact city, ideally suited to EVs. Continue reading →

Fifty years before it got its grubby hands on Hong Kong, Britain was already eyeing up another piece of Pearl River Delta real estate.

Following his ill-fated mission to China in 1793, Lord Macartney, ordered one of his entourage, a young artillery officer and amateur draughtsman named Henry William Parish, to survey the small island of Ma Wan as a possible base of operations. Continue reading →

The sequel to Todd Phillips’ 2019 movie Joker was one of the most anticipated films of the year. Not only would Joaquin Phoenix reprise his role as Arthur Fleck, he would be joined by Lady Gaga as the Lee Quinzel, the earlier incarnation of the Joker’s hell-raising girlfriend Harley Quinn. Continue reading →

One a recent trip to the village shop, I was greeted by the sound of a middle-aged man – not unlike Nigel Farage in appearance – loudly proclaiming his personal strategy for stopping asylum seekers crossing the English Channel: Continue reading →

Just off the A2 Highway, about five miles outside Canterbury, there is an area of ancient woodland where, it is claimed, the last battle on English soil was fought on 31 May 1838. In reality, the “Battle of Bossenden Wood” was not a battle at all but a massacre of protesting agricultural workers by soldiers armed with rifles and bayonets. Nevertheless, the designation persists. Continue reading →