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Philip Patrick

Philip Patrick

The Spectator

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Why did South Korea’s President Yoon declare martial law?

12.12.2024 10

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

South Korea’s President Yoon will be lucky to escape jail

Six hours. That was the duration of the profoundly disturbing and simultaneously farcical version of martial law invoked by South Korea’s president...

04.12.2024 10

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

Cut above / Is London the most stylish city on earth?

Let’s face it, there are many reasons not to visit London these days: the crime, the intimidatory protests, the woeful public transport, the...

04.12.2024 20

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

Why has South Korea’s president declared martial law?

In a dramatic and unnanounced move, South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law on Tuesday in a live broadcast on YTN television....

03.12.2024 8

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

Jeremy Clarkson’s time has come

It’s a reasonable bet that if Jeremy Clarkson stood for prime minister tomorrow, he’d win by a country mile. Some might even crown him the next...

20.11.2024 40

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

It was time for Gary Lineker to go

Having thought it was all over, several times, it is now – for Gary Linker as presenter of Match of the Day. Lineker who has occupied the hot seat...

12.11.2024 10

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

Kamala Harris and the death of the celebrity endorsement

Poor old Bruce Springsteen. The legendary rocker bet the farm on an endorsement of Kamala Harris and may well have alienated about half his audience...

08.11.2024 9

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

Japan could soon lose one of its best assets

What now? This is the question on everyone’s lips here in Tokyo after a dramatic general election which looks to have inflicted a potentially...

28.10.2024 5

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

Newcastle, Saudi Arabia and desperate decline of English football

Is a major scandal over the sale of Newcastle United to a consortium led by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund about to engulf the club? And...

22.10.2024 20

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

A day of violence in Tokyo

It has been an alarming day in Tokyo as political terror returned to the streets of the capital. A man was arrested for throwing Molotov cocktails...

19.10.2024 10

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

England manager / Does it matter that Thomas Tuchel isn’t English?

Thomas Tuchel has been confirmed as the next manager of the England national football team, to take over from the hapless and seemingly confused Lee...

16.10.2024 10

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

Rising Sun / I think we’re turning Japanese

Japanese culture is rapidly colonising the West, from our theatres to our cinemas, to our streaming services and our bookshops, to the food we eat and...

16.10.2024 20

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

Wimbledon won’t be the same without line judges

It will soon be the end of an era at Wimbledon. From 2025, the All England Club has announced that the services of line judges, who ringed the court...

10.10.2024 6

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

Japan’s next prime minister is a bit of a maverick 

The 67-year-old Shigeru Ishiba will become Japan’s new prime minister on 1 October after winning a surprisingly exciting play-off vote against his...

27.09.2024 10

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

The tragic cost of Japan’s floods

Yet another natural disaster has struck in Japan as floods and landslides in the Noto peninsula, precipitated by ‘unprecedented’ rainfall, have...

23.09.2024 9

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

The trouble with the Champions League

The revamped Champions League kicks off this week with all the gushing hyperbole we have come to expect from this glossy, money-saturated event. Five...

17.09.2024 10

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

Hot springs have doomed Japan’s net zero ambitions

Most people know that Japan is a country cursed with considerable seismic activity; frequent, and very occasionally devastating, earthquakes and...

10.09.2024 10

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

Why won’t the England manager sing the national anthem?

England’s interim manager Lee Carsley has intimated that he will not be singing the national anthem as his team takes on Ireland in the Nations...

07.09.2024 9

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

Why are Britain’s diplomats virtue-signalling to South Korea?

An important international conference will take place this week in South Korea, focused on the peninsula’s security concerns. The UK will not be...

02.09.2024 6

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

Scottish Nats still haven’t worked out why they lost

Unlike a slightly more high-profile reunion event, the ticketing website for the Scottish referendum tenth anniversary show is not expected to...

02.09.2024 9

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

Shanshan may be the strongest typhoon in Japanese history

The Japanese are battening down the hatches – again – as typhoon Shanshan wreaks devastation to the south-west of the country, with worse,...

30.08.2024 9

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

The allure and terror of Mount Fuji

Six men have died on Japan’s iconic Mount Fuji since the start of the climbing season in July. This figure, two more than last year, is especially...

25.08.2024 10

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

Japan just can’t find the staff

‘Kanko kankai’ (tourism pollution) is the latest buzz phrase here in Japan as the double-edged samurai sword of the visitor boom continues to...

20.08.2024 7

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

Language games / The decline of football speak

The new Premiership season kicked off this weekend and, with all the usual hype, will come novelties. There are the gamely optimistic new arrivals and...

19.08.2024 10

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

How scandal brought down yet another Japanese leader

Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida has announced he will be stepping down as leader of the Liberal Democratic party next month. This means yet...

14.08.2024 4

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

Nagasaki shouldn’t have snubbed Israel from its A-bomb ceremony

Nagasaki’s Peace Park held a ceremony today to mark the 79th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on the city (which killed 74,000...

09.08.2024 5

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

Economy / Japan’s volatile stock market is causing panic

Japan’s Nikkei 225 index registered its biggest ever daily fall on Monday, plummeting by over 12 per cent and continuing the extraordinary collapse...

06.08.2024 8

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

Japan is running out of rice

Japan is running out of rice. Stocks have fallen to their lowest levels in decades, prompting fears that emergency reserves may need to be accessed....

04.08.2024 10

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

What’s the problem with playing Premier League football in the US?

Sadiq Khan has suggested that the long rumoured prospect of Premier League fixtures being played in the United States is now inevitable. Khan, a...

29.07.2024 10

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

Olympics / Why the punishment fits the ‘crime’ for Japan’s smoking gymnast

Japan’s Olympics have got off to the worst possible start. The captain of their women’s gymnastics team Shoko Miyata has withdrawn, or more...

22.07.2024 6

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

K pop / Japan’s weird celebrity culture is coming to Britain

The Japanese singer, actor and heartthrob Matsumoto Jun, who I’ve always thought of as an Oriental David Cassidy (thus showing my age), will make...

16.07.2024 30

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

Should the BBC be mocking Ronaldo’s tears?

Portugal squeezed through to the Euros quarter finals last night after a penalty shoot-out victory against plucky Slovenia. Or perhaps I should say...

02.07.2024 10

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

Why does Japan want to build a 300-mile conveyor belt?

In a move that sounds like something out of the new Francis Ford Coppola film Megalopolis, the Japanese government has announced that it will build a...

02.07.2024 10

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

Why Japanese women are hitting the bottle

Older Japanese women are boozing more than ever, according to a new survey conducted by Tokyo Metropolitan Government. The study found that while...

28.06.2024 60

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

King Charles has much in common with Japan’s Anglophile Emperor

The Japanese Emperor is in London today for a state visit, the first by the occupant of the chrysanthemum throne to the UK for 26 years. Along with a...

25.06.2024 8

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

Why Japan is unlikely to legalise same-sex marriage

Thailand has just passed a ‘landmark’ marriage equality bill, which will pave the way for the recognition of same-sex unions in the Land of...

23.06.2024 10

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

Football / Will Gary Lineker be able to keep his election thoughts quiet during the Euros?

It is hard to imagine the European football championship, which kicked off last night, was a big factor in Rishi Sunak’s decision to call a snap...

15.06.2024 10

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

Population crisis / Can a government dating app solve Japan’s birth crisis?

The Tokyo metropolitan government has announced that it will soon be in the online matchmaking business. It is launching a dating app, which will...

08.06.2024 10

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

What’s behind the boom in Japanese fiction?

‘There are two things that I can simply not tolerate: feminists and margarine’.  This is a quote from the novel Butter by Japanese writer Asako...

02.06.2024 30

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

Will this stop players mobbing the referee?

The European football governing body Uefa has informed competing nations at this summer’s Euros that only team captains will be allowed to...

16.05.2024 30

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

Why are the yakuza stealing Pokemon cards?

A high-ranking member of the yakuza (Japanese mafia) has been arrested in Tokyo for selling stolen Pokemon cards. Keita Saito was taken into...

12.05.2024 50

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

Why are the Japanese so bad at English?

Tokyo, Japan ‘Shhh! Now on face to respectable great eels life’. How’s that for the first line of an article? I spotted this gem written on a...

06.05.2024 20

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

Japan won’t forgive Joe Biden for his xenophobia gaffe

Joe Biden just threw a particularly nasty insult the way of Japan, a close ally of the United States, at a campaign event. The president accused the...

02.05.2024 30

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

Scrapping replays could be the beginning of the end for the FA Cup

Is time running out for the oldest knock-out tournament of them all? The FA cup‘s obituary has been written a few times in recent years but the...

20.04.2024 7

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

It’s time for Ronaldo to retire

All good things must come to an end, and that surely now ought to include the footballing career of Cristiano Ronaldo, who disgraced himself again on...

10.04.2024 10

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

The curiously quiet reaction to Oppenheimer in Japan

Finally, eight months after its US premiere and a month after it triumphed at the Oscars, Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer has opened here in Japan....

06.04.2024 20

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

Japan is no country for young men

Another week, another fun fact about Japan’s declining birthrate and ageing population to startle and amuse us. Japan has now recorded a full decade...

30.03.2024 20

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

Football is in enough trouble without a ‘regulator’

Unlike David Cameron – who famously got in a muddle about which team he supported – Rishi Sunak is a genuine football fan. But this makes the...

20.03.2024 9

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

Flushed out / Japanese toilets aren’t all they’re cracked up to be

What is the world’s best city in which to be caught short? You can imagine a lively discussion on this question on a TripAdvisor forum. A strong...

13.03.2024 10

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

Liverpool fans should stop booing the national anthem

Liverpool fans, a significant number at least, booed the national anthem at the Carabao Cup final at Wembley yesterday. It wasn’t the first time...

26.02.2024 9

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

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