Occasionally during my love affair with marijuana I would experience perceptual disruptions profound enough to freak me out. One time I was driving along a crowded road when my car seemed a little wobbly and then listed towards the centre, an alarming thud-thud emanating from the back end. In the middle of a densely [...]

As Africa climate week unfurls in Ghana, the countries of Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe count the costs of Cyclone Idai, which ripped through villages and towns, taking hundreds of lives and leaving a trail of [...]

This month marks a year since the last general election in Italy. Three months afterwards Matteo Salvini’s League and Luigi di Maio’s Five Star Movement (M5S) took power. It’s time to take stock – even though, to tell the truth, we can’t stop stock-taking – such is the desperate situation the country finds [...]

On Friday morning, as the news from Christchurch was still rolling across radio bulletins, Sir Mark Rowley, the former head of counter-terrorism at the Met, was commenting on the horror on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. Fifty Muslims had been brutally murdered, and 48 seriously injured. For 17 horrifying minutes, a [...]

There will be another large-scale school climate strike tomorrow, following a controversial walkout by pupils last month. I say controversial; the reaction in much of the grownup media was perhaps better described as a reluctant obligation to be adult about the whole thing, while secretly cheering them [...]

Parliament is failing to respect the wishes of the majority in the referendum. Labour and Conservative MPs promised to implement the leave vote to get elected in 2017. The Conservative manifesto said no deal was better than a bad deal, and confirmed we would be leaving the customs union and the single market at the [...]

An alternative to what Europe could and should be exists to the one Emmanuel Macron described last week. If there is a need for a rebirth, then let it be of the sovereignty of the people, of enlightenment against the obscurantism of money and [...]

Ten years ago today, the Guardian broke the story of an illegal blacklist orchestrated by the country’s largest building contractor. The Consulting Association spied on construction workers who had the temerity to stand up for their rights or raise concerns about safety. It directly carried on the work of the [...]

What does it take to get sacked by Theresa May these days? That’s a question being asked on the other side of the Atlantic after the bumbling transport secretary, Chris Grayling, went global and became the subject of an editorial in the New York Times. Under the headline “How does he survive? The curious case of [...]

Last week, supposedly unprecedented spring wildfires raged across dry, bushy and exposed areas. On Monday, having dealt with serious incidents at Saddleworth Moor and Hundred Acre Wood, teams of specialised firefighters also attended the small piece of Shredded Wheat that lives on top of Andrew Neil’s [...]