My life and internet bandwidth are too limited to fight with Assange’s online army of defenders about his politics, but surely we can all agree that … - Hadley Freeman

The relationship between Britain and America, from Britain's perspective, has always reminded me of the one between Frasier Crane and his brother Niles: there's the big, brassy, embarrassing, famous and attention-seeking brother who hogs the spotlight, and then there's the smaller, sharper, more self-aware and overly self-conscious brother who is both scornful of his sibling's shallow fame but also faintly jealous of it and hides the latter beneath snarky jibes. Of course I get it: having lived in America and Britain I can see all too well how America's cheerful, unabashed tendencies towards arrogance, superficiality and shameless ambition grate against Britain's preference for self-effacement, awkwardness and grim failure. What I don't get is why folk in Britain bother getting wound up about it. Any hint of an American tradition coming to Britain – high-school proms, Daily Show-a-like nightly talkshow, will.i.am – and Radio 4 programmes and newspaper articles sprout up most self-righteously debating whether America is "taking over British culture". Come on, Britain, you're better than this. Make like Niles and take out your handkerchief, wipe away the germs and walk on past. It'll probably go away soon.

Before Israel was founded, Jews were "rootless cosmopolitans"; now they're "settler colonialists". Antisemites sneer that Jews went "like sheep to the slaughter" in the Holocaust. But when they fight back against terrorists, they are too elite, domineering and sure of themselves. The prospect of a ground invasion in Gaza fills every Jew I know with dread. More deaths there, more antisemitism here. Even when we "win", we lose.

I certainly feel no anger or animosity towards trans people [...] The only feeling I have towards them is compassion. Not to the point where I’m willing to give up all of women’s sex-based rights, no. But I do know I can only imagine the trauma and pain they have endured in their lives.