We need to treat them better The Louvre jewellery heist was some sensational stuff. You might have thought that France was heartbroken, grieving the loss of some of the most precious artefacts of its great history. Perhaps that should have been the case.   The fact is, people in France have never really cared all that much about the jewels. It’s not really like the Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom, or of other European countries. In 1887, France organised a huge sale of all the jewels —...

Our dear leaders may just need a pay raise Politicians have a bad reputation these days. Most of the politicians of today can be categorised as either bland, incompetent, heartless, power-hungry, or corrupt. Gone are the days of inspirational or even good leadership. I believe that part of the solution to this morose political class lies in one simple change: paying politicians more. In the UK, the Prime Minister is paid around £190,000 per annum, which, granted, places him in the 99th...

A fife-biking elegy We live in a strange little world, we St Andreans. Nearly all of us come from disparate parts of the British Isles or the globe, and somehow ended up somewhere between Edinburgh, Dundee, the Old Course, and the North Sea. In our chosen exile, we have stumbled upon a wonderful little Fifan town, slightly overrun by golf paraphernalia shops but altogether quite charmingly preserved. The lucky ones get to live in turn-of-the-century whinstone houses ( the local stone, a very...