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4 NEWS What happened

Freedom delayed

Boris Johnson confirmed on Monday that the final lifting of lockdown measures in England will be delayed because of concerns about the spread of the Delta variant of the coronavirus, first identified in India. The last social-distancing restrictions had been due to be lifted on 21 June, but that date has now been pushed back four weeks. The Prime Minister said the extra weeks would enable many more people to be vaccinated, and save thousands of lives. He added that he was “pretty confident” that 19 July would be the “terminus date”.

What the editorials said So much for “Freedom Day”, said The Daily Telegraph. Once again, officials have shifted the goalposts. “The point of the vaccination campaign was not to eliminate the risk, but to lower it to manageable levels, which has arguably been done.” So why are we being subjected to similar restrictions to those we were under this time last year, when there was no vaccine? The PM insists the delay will save “thousands of lives”, said the Daily Mail, but that makes no sense, given the current “minuscule levels” of Covid deaths and the successful vaccine drive.

Having promised to be guided by data rather than dates, Johnson had to “press the pause button”, said The Guardian. The more The delay means that limits will remain on dangerous Delta variant now accounts for indoor socialising in England and that people should carry on working from home if possible.

Another month of restrictions 96% of Covid cases in the UK. “Hospital admission rates are increasing by 50% a week However, weddings will be allowed to go ahead and 61% in the northwest.” We’re in the early stages of a with more than 30 guests from 21 June – albeit with social “significant third wave” and scientists still aren’t sure how distancing in place, and no dance floor. Over the next month, lethal it will be. The PM has done the right thing, agreed The the NHS is aiming to ensure that all adults in England have Times, but it was his delay in shutting down travel from India been offered at least one vaccination jab, and that two-thirds that seeded this third wave. We’re now in the “invidious of them, including all over-40s, have had the chance to get position” of suffering more restrictions and a higher infection both doses. Scotland is due to review its lockdown measures rate than European nations who have vaccinated less than us. next week; Wales will do so on 21 June.

What happened

A successful summit?

What the editorials said

It wasn’t all bad Cases of dengue fever in a city in Indonesia have fallen markedly since the start of a groundbreaking trial to reduce the incidence of the virus in local mosquitoes. For the threeyear experiment, mozzies were infected with a bacteria which is harmless to them, but which suppresses the virus, before being released in parts of Yogyakarta. The researchers found that in those areas, cases of the potentially fatal disease fell 77% – a result they described as “quite fantastic”.

A retired farmer from Derbyshire has become an unlikely YouTube star thanks to his gentle videos on mindfulness and spirituality. John Butler, 84, has been interested in meditation almost all his adult life. Then four years ago, he started making videos (with the help of a friend) in which he talks about his beliefs and his life. Now, his YouTube channel has 141,000 subscribers, many of them attracted by his soothing voice. “I think if I was a younger man I would have been more excited about it,” he told the BBC. “I’d never heard of YouTube [when we started]. Hardly knew what internet was.”

Owners of small, independent shops on a parade in Poole will not have to pay any rent or business rates in their first two years, as part of a new scheme aimed at rejuvenating the British high street. The project, operated by the landlord Legal & General, applies to retailers on Kingland Crescent, in the centre of the Dorset town. They include a zero-waste grocery store, a surfboard maker, a fishmongers, a coffee shop, and an art gallery. If it proves successful, it could act as a blueprint for similar initiatives in other towns and cities.

COVER CARTOON: HOWARD MCWILLIAM

THE WEEK 19 June 2021

© SPIRITUAL UNFOLDMENT

Rarely have a US president and British PM set so much store by what a G7 summit could deliver, said The Times. Joe Biden arrived in Cornwall determined to show that, World leaders put on a grand display of after the upheaval of the Trump years, “the bonhomie and unity at the Cornish resort United States is back”. Boris Johnson, the of Carbis Bay last week, as Britain hosted summit’s host, was desperate to seize his the G7 summit of major democratic chance to showcase “Global Britain”. The powers. The three-day meeting of leaders pair began by signing a fresh version of the from the UK, US, France, Germany, Italy, 1941 Atlantic Charter agreed by Churchill Canada and Japan – plus guests from and Roosevelt, said the Daily Mail. The India (who attended virtually), Australia, charter vows to “jointly tackle” challenges South Korea and South Africa – generated posed by China, Russia, climate change and a raft of promises. The summit’s terrorism. More significantly, the PM and communiqué included pledges to donate Biden appeared to “hit it off”. Let’s hope it’s 870 million Covid vaccines to developing The start of a glorious new chapter? the start of a “glorious new chapter” in what countries; to cooperate closely to fight Johnson likes to call the “indestructible relationship”. future pandemics; to phase out investment in coal; and to get 40 million more girls into education, globally, by 2026.

There’s much to like in the new, 604-word Charter, said The Guardian. In a “welcome snub” to the Trump era, it calls for But the summit was partially overshadowed by tensions both countries to adhere to the “rules-based international over Brexit (see page 6). And though there was consensus on the need for a tougher stance on China, European leaders order”; and it places justified emphasis on the climate. But it’s still a “pale imitation” of its original, and is unlikely to slow resisted the hard line pushed by the US, preferring to focus the “shift in the balance of power away from democracies”. on less divisive issues such as climate change.

…and how they were covered

NEWS 5

What the commentators said

What next?

Are we overreacting to the Delta variant? Some think so, said Paul Goodman on Conservative Home. Why the need for panic, they ask, when we’ve developed improved treatments for Covid and highly effective vaccines? The problem is, the jabs aren’t quite as effective as the health experts thought. They were operating on the basis that a single dose of the AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccine was 65-80% effective against the Delta strain, but it now seems it’s only 33% effective. Hence the hurry to deliver more second jabs that do offer strong protection. Even if fewer people die of Covid today, a wave of younger hospital patients could paralyse a health system that is struggling to deal with the backlog of operations.

Ministers will review the data after two weeks and could decide to ease restrictions early on 5 July if infections and hospital admissions have fallen sufficiently. A decision on whether to go ahead on 19 July will need to be taken about a week in advance.

Delaying the full reopening of England won’t stop the wave of infections that is now building, said Ben van der Merwe in the New Statesman, but it will at least “slow the pace” and buy some time to protect more unvaccinated people. There are still a lot of these individuals around, particularly in London, where just a third of the population has been double jabbed – compared to over half in every other region. “One in five over-90s in the capital has yet to be fully vaccinated, rising to as high as one in three in Lambeth.”

Some of the recent Covid statistics – 7,000 infections on consecutive days for the first time since late February; one of the highest R rates in Europe – are “unnerving”, said Annabel Denham in The Spectator. But these have to be set against the damage done by the continuing restrictions.

In other areas of public health, we make trade-offs all the time. Every week of delay is costing the economy as much as £1bn – enough to fund 26,000 nurses and 12,000 doctors for a year.

Some 25,000 licensed venues can’t afford to open; a quarter of workers in arts and entertainment are stuck on furlough. How long before we all become resigned to this “abhorrent ‘new normal’” or – God forbid – start listening to the official adviser Professor Susan Michie, who has suggested that some social distancing measures should be adopted on a permanent basis.

“Has anyone considered the knock-on effects, if liberty isn’t the default any more?”

Ministers are set to announce that Covid jabs will become mandatory for care home staff. Experts on the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, meanwhile, are expected to recommend against the vaccination of under-18s in the immediate future. They are likely to suggest that scientists study the roll-outs in other countries that do vaccinate children – such as the US and Israel – before taking that step.

What the commentators said

What next?

Has the West got its act together? The optics were certainly good, said Jeremy Cliffe in the New Statesman. The sun shone over Carbis Bay as the leaders, serenaded by a sea shanty group, tucked into barbecued lobster on the beach; even the Queen put in a brief appearance. But where substance is concerned, there was less to savour. The pledge of 870 million vaccine doses for developing countries, though “better than nothing”, was nowhere near the 11 billion doses the World Health Organisation says are needed to end the pandemic. And on climate, the leaders failed to agree a date to phase out coal power, and only reaffirmed past commitments to contribute $100bn a year in climate finance to poorer nations. Time and again, the headlines lacked policy detail to back them up, said Heather Stewart in The Guardian. But what the summit did at least offer was a sense that “global cooperation is suddenly achievable again” – witness the agreement for a global minimum corporation tax, announced beforehand.

Biden held a summit with Russia’s Vladimir Putin in Switzerland on Wednesday – the first time the pair have met since Biden took office.

The US president had vowed to confront Putin on issues such as cyberattacks and election interference.

The “elephant in the room” was China, said David Owen in The Times. The leaders used their communiqué to highlight issues such as human rights abuses in Xinjiang and the crackdown on Hong Kong; and they scolded Beijing for its expansionist ambitions in Taiwan. But they were uncertain over what action to take. It makes one wonder how united the West really is about confronting Beijing, said Gideon Rachman in the FT. It was noticeable that the US and Japan deployed much stronger rhetoric than the Europeans. One initiative the G7 did approve was backing for a Western version of China’s Belt and Road Initiative to build infrastructure in the developing world. The big flaw with that, however, is that the G7 is likely to offer far less money than China, which is already “hard at work” on projects around the world, not least building a new capital for Egypt. So, yes, this summit was a welcome contrast to the antagonistic Trump years. But will President Xi be “intimidated or chastened” by this new spirit of unity? Unlikely.

THE WEEK

During the US presidential campaign, Joe Biden came across as a relatively folksy, unthreatening kind of man. We knew he’d been a Washington player for decades, but he was a trifle unsteady on his feet, prone to the odd memory lapse. Then he became US president – or POTUS – and began to project some of the awesome power conferred on the leader of the country with the biggest defence budget in the world ($778bn to China’s $252bn). Having flown to Britain on Air Force One last week, Biden was taken by Marine One, a helicopter, to the G7 summit, where he was guarded by 400 secret service personnel as well as a heavily armed commando counter-assault team – to add to the thousands of British security personnel and multiple warships and fighter jets that had formed a “ring of steel” around Carbis Bay. A separate Boeing plane had brought over his official Cadillac, a huge armoured limo known as The Beast, the cabin of which can withstand nuclear, biological or chemical attack. It carries a supply of the president’s blood type, and is followed by numerous vehicles in convoy, in the first of which sits an agent with an assault rifle trained out of the window.

Given all this, you could hardly blame Boris Johnson if he felt a bit flustered during their meeting.

Of course, the president is also head of state. Our head of state, the Queen, projects a power of her own, rooted in tradition and symbolism. But really, there is nothing quite like a Caroline Law vast display of military might to make leaders of other nations feel small.

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As part of G7 plans to work together to prevent future pandemics, the UK will set up an Animal Vaccine Manufacturing and Innovation Centre at The Pirbright Institute in Surrey.

It will be tasked with curbing the spread of diseases from animals to humans, and will be partfunded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

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19 June 2021 THE WEEK

Politics

6 NEWS Controversy of the week

The sausage war If the G7 meeting of Western leaders in sunny Cornwall was meant to project “unity and harmony”, it was “not an unmitigated success”, said Dominic Lawson in the Daily Mail.

The “sausage war” with the EU cast a long shadow. President Biden arrived in the UK issuing stern warnings that Boris Johnson should not inflame tensions over the Northern Ireland Protocol – which, from 1 July, will no longer allow chilled meats from Great Britain into Northern Ireland, because the latter will be in the EU’s customs territory. In Cornwall, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, lined up to tell Johnson there could be no renegotiating his Brexit deal. A “sulphurous exchange” between Johnson and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, followed. When Johnson asked Macron Johnson: can he save the Protocol? how he would “like it if the French courts stopped you moving Toulouse sausages to Paris”, his French counterpart allegedly said it was different, since those cities are “part of the same country”. An outraged Johnson responded that the UK is a single country.

True, but the problem for Johnson is that he “signed an agreement that requires border checks at Irish seaports”, said The Guardian. This was very clearly pointed out at the time. “He then denied that there would be disruptive consequences and tried to evade responsibility for implementation.”

It now looks as if he is “cynically reneging on a treaty that he may never have intended to honour”.

Even though it may lead to a trade war, he has threatened to suspend the Protocol unilaterally. So he should, said Daniel Hannan in The Sunday Telegraph. The Protocol obliges Brussels to use its “best endeavours to facilitate trade” between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. The EU has done nothing of the sort. It “positively relishes Britain’s discomfort”: 20% of all checks on goods coming into the EU are being carried out on British goods going into Northern Ireland. This has hurt local businesses and upset the delicate political balance, toppling the First Minister. Whatever the consequences, we should abrogate the treaty, ship our sausages – and “let Brussels do its wurst”.

Is that necessary? A few refinements would solve the problems, said James Forsyth in The Spectator.

A “trusted trader” scheme for food would allow Sainsbury’s, for instance, to move goods between Great Britain and Northern Ireland without checks: it is hardly going to smuggle its sausages into the EU. And Brussels must state that it will not impede the flow of NHS medicines. A “workable fudge” should be possible, agreed Matthew Parris in The Times. But one crucial ingredient is missing: trust.

EU leaders have heard Johnson make and break promises – that there would be no checks on goods going into Northern Ireland, for instance. In Britain, “voters don’t seem to care”. But the Prime Minister may find out that, when it comes to international diplomacy, trust makes a difference.

Spirit of the age Collections of empty shopping bags and boxes from high-end brands are being sold for hundreds of pounds on eBay. Boxes for Rolex watches are typically listed at £160 each, while a single Louis Vuitton paper bag recently sold for £32.

Speculation is that they are bought by Instagram users who want to create the impression that they have been on a shopping spree.

In an effort to please customers who are tired of Zoom meetings, but still reluctant to travel to a physical office, WeWork is rolling out hologram functions in 100 of its work spaces worldwide. It won’t be cheap, though: it will cost $2,500 for a single hologram to be displayed on a standard pod, and $25,000 for several to appear together on a virtual stage.

THE WEEK 19 June 2021

Good week for:

Dog owners, who can now take their pooches shopping.

According to dogfriendly.co.uk, the number of retailers who welcome (or tolerate) non-assistance dogs has grown 10% in a year, and includes large chains such as John Lewis and H&M. Jeff Bezos, after a ticket to join the Amazon founder on an 11-minute journey into space sold for $28m at auction. The money will go to a charity promoting the study of STEM subjects.

Gap years, with reports that the Government’s new trade deal with Australia (see page 46) will make it easier for young Britons to travel there. The deal makes it possible for under-35s to live and work in Australia for up to three years – and removes the current requirement that they do some farm work.

Bad week for:

Matt Hancock, after Dominic Cummings published a series of text messages from Boris Johnson, in which the PM referred to the Health Secretary as “totally f***ing hopeless”, and suggested replacing him with Michael Gove. The messages date from March and April last year, when the Government was struggling to acquire enough PPE and ventilators for the NHS. GB News, the new TV news channel, after several firms pulled their advertising in response to concerns about its content. The channel, which had more viewers than BBC News on its opening night (see page 24), says it is politically impartial, but it has also made much of its desire to fight “cancel culture”. Grolsch, Nivea and Ikea were among the brands that withdrew their ads this week, saying that GB News did not reflect their “values”.

Trans views case

A judge-led tribunal has ruled that the view that people cannot change their biological sex is a “protected belief” under the Equality Act. The Employment Appeal Tribunal case was brought

by Maya Forstater, who lost her job at a think tank after tweeting thoughts on gender identity. In 2019, she lost her first case at an employment tribunal when the judge ruled that such views ignore the rights of transgender people and are “not worthy of respect in a democratic society”. But last week, a High Court judge upheld her appeal, ruling that “gendercritical” views are “beliefs that are and must be tolerated in a pluralist society”, and are protected by the Act, as they don’t seek “to destroy the rights of trans persons”.

Lobbying restrictions

Ministers should be banned from lobbying their former departments for up to five years after leaving office, the anti-corruption watchdog has concluded. The committee on standards in public life made its recommendation in an emergency review launched in the wake of the Greensill lobbying scandal.

Ministers and senior civil servants are, at present, effectively barred from lobbying for two years after leaving office, but the rules have no statutory footing.

Poll watch 45% of UK voters, including 28% of Tory supporters, think Matt Hancock should resign because of his handling of the pandemic.

Savanta ComRes/The Independent 62% of French people believe the EU’s political system is broken, along with 55% of Germans, 57% of Italians and 52% of Spaniards. 36% of Germans believe it is working, down from more than 50% seven months ago.

European Council on Foreign Relations/The Times 65% of over-55s say they would never swear in public; among 18- to 24-year-olds, the figure is 25%. A third of people say they swear more than they did five years ago, and 60% say swearing is part of their daily lives.

BBFC/The Guardian

The UK at a glance Loch Lomond Sea eagles return: The UK’s largest birds of prey – whitetailed eagles – have appeared on Loch Lomond for the first time in more than 100 years. A pair of the birds, commonly known as sea eagles, were first spotted in the Loch Lomond National Nature Reserve in March and have been searching for nest sites since, suggesting they intend to stay. The eagles, which have a wingspan of 200cm-240cm, were made extinct in the UK in the early 20th century due to persecution and habitat changes, but have been reintroduced since the 1970s. There are now estimated to be over 150 breeding pairs.

NEWS 7

London “Pandemic of violence”: At least seven people were shot in two separate incidents in London at the weekend. A 26-year-old man suffered “life-changing” gunshot wounds in Queen’s Park on Sunday, and six people were injured in a shotgun attack in Brixton the same day. Detective chief superintendent Lee Hill of Scotland Yard warned that the easing of lockdown could lead to a release of “pent-up aggression”. “We do anticipate there will be an increase in violence,” he said. Last week, a 15-year-old boy, Jalan Woods-Bell, was stabbed to death on his way to school at 8:30am in Hayes, west London. Another boy, also aged 15, has been charged with his murder. John Jackson, a pastor and a relative of the victim, said: “We have a pandemic of violence that is not being treated like a pandemic.”

Hay-on-Wye, Powys Festivals suffer: The Government has been criticised for piling pressure on Britain’s struggling literary festivals, by refusing to make digital recordings of their events exempt from VAT. Leading literature festivals such as Hay, Cheltenham and Stratford, which have moved online during the pandemic, have invested large sums in “players”, on which their events can be viewed for a limited time after the festival. Live-streamed events will either be exempt from VAT, like other cultural events, or be charged a reduced 5% rate. However, the Treasury has insisted that the same recorded events will be subject to the full 20% rate if viewed later online. Cheltenham’s director of finance said the decision “makes no sense and further harms the sector”.

Belfast Foster steps down: The future of Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government was put in jeopardy this week, following the departure of Arlene Foster as First Minister. Foster stepped down on Monday, giving the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Féin seven days to agree on a new leader. However, as its condition for endorsing the DUP’s candidate for first minister, Paul Givan, Sinn Féin demanded a firm commitment to deliver a long-promised Irish language act. The DUP’s new leader Edwin Poots has so far refused.

Oxford Academic boycott: Around 150 academics at Oxford University have launched a boycott of Oriel College, over its refusal to remove a statue of the imperialist Cecil Rhodes. Oriel’s governing body had rejected an inquiry’s recommendation to remove the statue, citing the high cost and complex planning processes. In response, the group accused the college of a “stubborn attachment to a statue that glorifies colonialism”, and said that, as a result, they would no longer give tutorials to its undergraduate students (see page 24). The boycott will only cover “discretionary” work, not core teaching such as delivering lectures or marking exams.

Some signatories said they would accept a compromise, such as turning the statue around or putting up a sign to contextualise it.

West Sussex Kelp forest: Two West Sussex councils are asking to lease the local seabed off their shoreline from the Queen, in order to restore a historic undersea kelp forest. The kelp forest, which once stretched 100 miles from Selsey Bill to Shoreham, provided a habitat for marine life including seahorses, lobster, sea bream and bass. It also improved water quality and stored vast quantities of carbon. Since the 1980s, 95% of it has been lost, primarily due to trawling. Adur and Worthing councils are in negotiations with the Crown Estate for a “natural capital seabed lease”. They say restoring the forest could capture emissions equivalent to those of 7,235 UK homes. While the lease would likely cover the coast of just two councils, they eventually hope to create a Sussex Bay marine park across the entire coast of East and West Sussex.

London “Institutional corruption”: An independent panel has accused the Metropolitan Police of “a form of institutional corruption”, in its handling of the unsolved murder of the private investigator Daniel Morgan. Morgan was killed with an axe in the car park of a pub in southeast London in 1987. Despite five police inquiries and an inquest, no one has been brought to justice. The Met had already accepted that corruption hampered the original murder investigation. The panel, chaired by Baroness O’Loan, outlined the many “irretrievable” errors made in the first probe, and found that the Met had later concealed its failings, for the sake of its “public image”. It also criticised Cressida Dick, the Met’s current commissioner, for failing to give prompt access to its records.

19 June 2021 THE WEEK

Europe at a glance Berlin Restrictions lifted: Countries across Europe are relaxing coronavirus restrictions as Covid cases continue to fall to a small fraction of their peaks.

Exceptions are Russia (at 45%), Belarus (43%) and Greece (22%). In Germany, restrictions have been loosened over several weeks with no increase in transmission. The government’s scientific advisers say the Delta (“Indian”) variant makes up only 2.5% of new cases. There has been a surge in holiday bookings after Berlin lifted its warning against travel to most countries, and took some popular destinations off the high-risk list, notably Mallorca (pictured) – Germans’ favourite holiday spot – Italy and Croatia. In France, the nationwide curfew has been pushed back from 9pm to 11pm. Denmark has begun to phase out the requirement to wear face masks in supermarkets and libraries. Public transport will follow at the start of September.

But despite the optimism, and steep falls in hospitalisations and deaths, the WHO warned of a high risk of a deadly resurgence in autumn as societies open up. It said community transmission is still widespread, with a particular threat from the Delta variant, which has already displaced the Alpha (“Kent”) variant in some countries.

NEWS 9

Moscow Moscovites told to stay put: Declaring this week to be a “non-working week”, the mayor of Moscow has ordered nonessential workers to stay at home with pay, in an effort to control a new spike in coronavirus cases. The Russian capital has seen cases double in a week, and recorded its worst single-day figure for new cases (6,701) since December. Several temporary coronavirus hospitals have been reopened.

Officially, Russia’s death toll from Covid is around 126,000, but excess death figures suggest the true toll is many times higher. The level of vaccine hesitancy in the country appears to be high: despite plentiful supplies of the Sputnik V vaccine, only 13% have been jabbed. Polls suggest two-thirds of Russians don’t want it.

Brussels Biden’s busy week: Leaders of Nato have agreed for the first time that their countries will defend each other in the event of war breaking out in space. At a one-day Nato summit in Brussels, at which President Biden warmly reaffirmed the US’s commitment to the Western alliance, leaders agreed that an attack on satellites or other space assets would fall under Article 5 of the Nato treaty and invoke a joint military response. They also agreed that China’s conduct presented a “systemic challenge” to the rules-based international order. The Nato summit, on Monday, was part of an intense schedule for Biden following the G7 summit in Cornwall. On Tuesday, he attended a US-EU summit in Brussels; on Wednesday he travelled to Geneva for his first meeting as president with Vladimir Putin. Biden recently depicted the Russian leader as “a killer”, but ahead of their meeting Putin dismissed his remarks as “Hollywood – macho behaviour” and lavished praise on his predecessor, the “extraordinary” Donald Trump.

Madrid Anti-pardons rally: Tens of thousands of people – including the leaders of all Spain’s centre-right and right-wing parties – rallied in central Madrid on Sunday to protest against plans by the Socialist PM, Pedro Sánchez, to pardon Catalan separatist politicians. In 2019, Spain’s supreme court sentenced nine pro-independence Catalan leaders to between nine and 13 years in prison for sedition over Catalonia’s abortive breakaway attempt; and last month, the court declared that it would be “unacceptable” to pardon them.

Undaunted, Sánchez argues that pardoning them will help Spain heal and move on.

But his opponents, as well as some within his own party, regard his plan as cynical and dangerous. Sánchez needs the separatist parties’ votes to get legislation through the national parliament, and is accused by opponents of being willing to sell Spain’s sovereignty and security for short-term party-political gain.

Catch up with daily news at theweek.co.uk

Amsterdam No “penis outfits”: The city of Amsterdam has issued a blunt warning to potential visitors, saying that before the pandemic struck residents had grown fed up with unruly tourists, and wanted a higher standard of behaviour. Launching a publicity campaign, the municipal authorities announced new measures to check the worst excesses, including on-the-spot fines to deter visitors from sleeping in their cars. “If it is your intention to see the most beautiful city in the world, come to Amsterdam,” said a city councillor, Rob Hofland. “If your intention is to booze and misbehave, dressed like a penis, look elsewhere!”

Lampedusa, Italy Migrant surge: Almost 1,200 unauthorised migrants landed on the Italian island of Lampedusa last weekend, with a further 410 rescued from seven boats by Médecins Sans Frontières, and another 1,000 turned back by Libya’s coast guard. The new arrivals are being tested for Covid-19 at the island’s overcrowded migrant centre, before being quarantined on ferries and sent to migrant centres on the Italian mainland. More than 16,000 undocumented migrants have arrived in Italy so far this year, up from 5,500 for the same period last year. The rise is due to several factors: Tunisians trying to escape their Covidravaged economy, migrants fleeing conflicts in the Sahel, and the easing of fighting in Libya, which has made people-trafficking easier. The Mediterranean is the “biggest cemetery in Europe”, said Pope Francis this week. At least 800 people have died attempting the sea crossing so far this year.

19 June 2021 THE WEEK

10 NEWS

The world at a glance

London, Canada Terror charges: A Canadian man accused of killing four members of a Muslim family by ramming them with his car has been charged with terrorism offences. Nathaniel Veltman, 20, is accused of driving at the group while they were out for an evening walk in London, Ontario, on 6 June. The victims, who’d moved to Canada from Pakistan in 2007, were Salman Afzaal, 46, Madiha Salman, 44, Yumna Salman, 15, and Talat Afzaal, 74.

A nine-year-old child remains in hospital. Veltman, who has no previous criminal record, was initially charged with four counts of murder and one of attempted murder. This week he was also charged with terrorism offences; prosecutors say the attack was premeditated and aimed at intimidating the wider Muslim community. Reacting to the news, Canada’s deputy PM Chrystia Freeland said it was “important” to call it “an act of terror”.

Washington DC Juneteenth vote: Republican and Democrat senators have voted unanimously for a bill to make 19 June a federal holiday commemorating the ending of slavery in the US. Abraham Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation in 1862, but it wasn’t until 19 June 1865 that the Union Army’s General Granger proclaimed freedom from slavery in Texas. The day, known as Juneteenth, is observed in most states. Calls to make it a federal holiday had been growing since the murder of George Floyd last May. The bill is expected to pass in the House, and will then be signed into law by the president.

Washington DC Germany first: Chancellor Angela Merkel has become the first European leader to be invited to visit Joe Biden’s White House – a sign of the new administration’s determination to mend its relationship with Germany following the Sturm und Drang of the Trump years. Trump attacked Berlin for its relatively low defence spending, and its support for Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, while Merkel often failed to disguise her distaste for his policies and style. The chancellor, who is due to step down this autumn, will visit Washington next month. Theresa May was the first European leader to visit the Trump White House, but as yet there has been no invitation for Boris Johnson or Emmanuel Macron.

Washington DC Guilty plea: The wife of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the jailed Mexican drug lord, has admitted that she helped run his multibillion-dollar empire. Emma Coronel Aispuro, 31, a dual US-Mexican citizen, was arrested at Dulles airport in Virginia in February. In court last week, she pleaded guilty to charges of conspiring to distribute illegal drugs and to launder money, and to assisting the Sinaloa cartel. Coronel is a former beauty queen who married Guzmán on her 18th birthday. The couple have two young daughters.

Managua More arrests: Five more opposition politicians in Nicaragua have been arrested, including several former allies of President Ortega, as part of what is being widely seen as a clampdown on dissent ahead of November’s elections. It takes to 12 the number of potential presidential candidates and other leading opposition figures arrested this month. “It’s crystal clear he’s clearing the field to run without any meaningful opposition,” said José Miguel Vivanco of Human Rights Watch. The leftist president fought to overthrow Nicaragua’s dictatorship in 1979, but his own rule (he has been in office since 2007) has become increasingly dictatorial.

Most of his arrested rivals have been accused of plotting against Nicaragua’s sovereignty and independence.

Lima Election fair: Observers from the Organisation of American States (OAS) have found no evidence of serious irregularities in Peru’s bitterly polarised presidential election, which ended in a razor-thin victory for the leftist Pedro Castillo, and triggered claims of fraud from the hard-right candidate Keiko Fujimori. However, the OAS also called for “candidates not to be proclaimed winners until all the challenges have been resolved”. With 99.99% of votes counted, Castillo has 50.13% of the vote, to Fujimori’s 49.87%.

Fujimori spent more than a year in jail in 2018-19 on charges relating to illegal campaign contributions, and is now facing the prospect of a return to prison: prosecutors say she has broken the terms of her release by speaking to a key witness. Were she to be declared president, however, she would have immunity.

THE WEEK 19 June 2021

Santiago Back to lockdown: Chile has put the capital Santiago back into lockdown, and extended the national state of emergency until September, as it battles against a renewed wave of Covid-19. The numbers of new infections, which had been falling, are now close to their whole-pandemic peak, and hospitals say they are struggling with the number of new admissions. The daily death toll has also risen, but so far, only slightly. The rise in cases is particularly worrying because Chile’s vaccine roll-out has been one of the world’s fastest. About 58% of the country has been fully vaccinated, and as many as 75% have had at least one jab. The vast majority of new cases are among those not fully vaccinated.

The world at a glance Jerusalem A new era begins: Israel’s new prime minister Naftali Bennett (pictured) was sworn in on Sunday evening as the head of a “unity” coalition, which includes centrist and left-wing parties as well as Bennett’s own small ultra-nationalist right-wing party, and – for the first time – an Arab party.

The coalition, which the Knesset approved by just one vote, ends more than two years of political paralysis, in which four elections ended in stalemate. It may also have ended the Benjamin Netanyahu era: the combative, rightwing PM served from 1996 to 1999, and then continuously since 2009. Although he is currently on trial for corruption, he has sworn to “fight every day to bring down this dangerous left-wing government”.

Bennett, 49, is a millionaire technology entrepreneur who entered politics in 2006 as Netanyahu’s protégé. Born in Haifa to parents who’d migrated from the US, he is the first Orthodox-observant Jew to lead the country. Before going into business, he served for six years in Israel’s special forces – and has claimed to have “killed a lot of Arabs”. If the coalition holds, Bennett will serve for two years as PM before Yair Lapid – the leader of the centrist Yesh Atid party – takes over.

NEWS 11

Baghlan, Afghanistan Charity targeted: Suspected Islamic State jihadists burst into a camp where workers for The Halo Trust charity were resting after a day spent clearing landmines, and killed at least ten people. According to survivors, the jihadists went from bed to bed shooting the men lying on them. The Afghan government initially blamed the Taliban for the assault, but the Trust said that local Taliban fighters had, in fact, chased the attackers away. The British charity – which attracted international attention in 1997, when Princess Diana walked through one of its cleared minefields in Angola – has been working in Afghanistan since 1988, removing mines and munitions, and has around 3,000 staff in the country. The level of violence in Afghanistan has increased this year, as the US prepares to withdraw its last troops.

New Delhi Death toll: India’s death toll from Covid-19 is likely to be many times the official tally, according to epidemiologists tracking the outbreak. The University of Michigan team estimates that 491 million Indians were infected up to mid-May, compared with the official figure of 25 million, and that 1.21 million had died by then, compared with an official figure of 270,000. The official toll is now around 379,000, and India is recording an average of 70,000 new cases a day, down from 400,000 in mid-May. Bamako French withdrawal: France is to scale back its military operations in Mali and the wider Sahel region, where thousands of its troops have been helping in the fight against armed Islamist groups since 2013. Operation Barkhane, one of France’s longest and costliest military engagements since WWII, is becoming increasingly unpopular at home, and President Macron has expressed frustration at the failure of governments to hold territory reclaimed from insurgents. The other countries supported by the operation, in the arid region along the southern edge of the Sahara, are Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad. Macron said Barkhane would be replaced by a new mission, but provided few details.

Kampala New lockdown: Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni announced a six-week lockdown last week, in response to a dramatic surge in Covid-19 cases.

In the past month, average confirmed cases have risen from about 50 a day to more than 1,300. Hospitals in the capital Kampala and other cities have run out of ICU beds. There are shortages of oxygen, and vaccine programmes have been suspended for lack of supply. The WHO warned last week of an impending third wave across Africa, with 90% of countries likely to miss a target of vaccinating 10% of their populations by September.

Naypyidaw Trial begins: Aung San Suu Kyi, the elected leader of Myanmar who was deposed in February, has gone on trial on the first of several charges that each carry jail time of up to 15 years. Suu Kyi, 75, whose party won a landslide victory in elections last November, has not been seen in public since being ousted, and her lawyers say they don’t know where she is currently being held. She has been allowed to meet them twice. She is charged with offences including inciting public disorder, flouting coronavirus restrictions, and illegally importing walkie-talkies.

19 June 2021 THE WEEK

People

12 NEWS

of them. On top of all this, he was a woman-beating c***.”

O’Connor is convinced that Prince had been similarly abusive to other women, and that he “got me up there to see: could this bitch be one of mine? I guess he didn’t bank on the Irish in me telling him to go f*** himself.”

Bond Street’s only resident Oli Claridge is an ordinary man with an extraordinary address: he is the only resident of Bond Street, London’s most opulent shopping street. So when the crowds go home, he is alone among the high-end shops – Dior, Cartier, Asprey – that line it. He is part of the street, and yet not. “I’m a bit of an anomaly,” he told Harriet Sherwood in The Observer.

“Lowering the tone.” A garden designer – “seasonal work, very much hand to mouth” – he moved into the flat 20 years ago, on a protected lease. “We used to have neighbours, but not anymore,” he says. High rents have driven them all out; property is so expensive, he adds, even the luxury brands make no money from their Bond Street outlets. As for the super rich who frequent the stores, he is mainly puzzled by them and their aspirations. “At the end of the lockdown, there were queues of people outside Tiffany. I mean, they’ve got all this money but they still had to queue on the street.” He misses the sense of a community; and the “rough edge” the area used to have. But he will be sad when his lease expires. “I can’t afford to live anywhere else.”

Castaway of the week This week’s edition of Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs featured the world-famous cellist and classical musician Yo-Yo Ma 1 Hallelujah, written and performed by Leonard Cohen 2 Erbarme Dich by Bach, performed by Kai Wessel with the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra 3 Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor, Op. 15: Maestoso by Brahms, performed by The Cleveland Orchestra 4 First movement Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85 by Elgar, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra 5 Tin Tin Deo by Gil Fuller and Chano Pozo, performed by The Oscar Peterson Trio 6 No. 4 Lieder, Op. 27: Morgen! by Richard Strauss, performed by Janet Baker and Gerald Moore 7 Podmoskovnye Vechera (Moscow Nights) by Vasily SolovyovSedoi, performed by Dmitri Hvorostovsky and the Moscow Chamber Orchestra 8* Piano Trio No. 2 in E-flat, Op. 100: Allegro Moderato by Schubert, performed by Alexander Schneider and Mieczysław Horszowski Book: Encyclopedia Britannica Luxury: Swiss Army knife

THE WEEK 19 June 2021

* Choice if allowed only one record

Malala Yousafzai was only 11 when she began campaigning for girls’ rights in her native Pakistan; and she was only 15 when she was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman – an atrocity that propelled her to global fame. Her memoir, I Am Malala, became a worldwide bestseller. Presidents and prime ministers queued up to meet her; and at 17, she became the youngest ever winner of a Nobel Peace Prize. Yet when she applied to Oxford University, and had to fill in a personal statement, she didn’t mention the prize.

“I felt a bit embarrassed,” she told Sirin Kale in Vogue. She was offered a place even so, and once there, found a kind of freedom she’d never experienced before. “I was excited about literally anything,” she recalls. “Going to McDonald’s or playing poker with my friends or going to a talk. I was enjoying each and every moment.” On the other hand, it did take her a while to get used to the academic side of things. “I remember the first few tutorials, I was really sad,” she says. She’d gone from being a high-flyer at school to “an average student in Oxford”. Eventually, she decided that rather than try to compete with “some of the brightest minds in the world”, she’d have fun. “I decided that if I got a good 2:1, I’d be very happy,” she says. “There’s a saying: there are three things at Oxford – sleep, socialising and study – and you can’t have them all.”

Viewpoint:

The enemies of English “It is a life-enhancing thing that languages mutate. But I wonder if English has ever been as restlessly protean as it now. I know native anglophones of no great age who are failing to keep up. I have no clear idea what ‘gaslighting’ means. Nor ‘benching’, ‘mirroring’, ‘sealioning’, or ‘allyship’. Kingsley Amis identified two enemies of the language. ‘Berks’ speak it coarsely and idiomatically. ‘Wankers’ are inflexibly precious. What we are up against now, fellow anglophones, is a sort of hybrid. Imagine a berk’s disregard for tradition, with a wanker’s unsmiling zeal. An ugly change I can live with. The trouble starts when language loses its meaning.”

Janan Ganesh in the FT

Farewell Ned Beatty, character actor who was Oscar-nominated for his role in Network, died 13 June, aged 83.

Richard Ernst, chemist who won the Nobel Prize for contributions to nuclear magnetic resonance imaging, died 4 June, aged 87.

Alastair Hanton, inventor of the direct debit, died 26 May, aged 94.

Flight Lieutenant John “Freddie” Nicoll DFC, Hurricane pilot, died 14 May, aged 100.

© ANTONIO OLMOS/EYEVINE

When O’Connor met Prince It was Sinéad O’Connor’s peerless cover of Nothing Compares 2 U that made her name; yet her memories of the song’s composer are far from fond. Nine months after her record was released, O’Connor was in Los Angeles when her phone rang. It was Prince.

He was sending a car to bring her to his mansion in the Hollywood Hills. The limo driver dropped her off in silence; she was then led through a dark house to the kitchen, where Prince himself appeared – “wearing all the make-up that was ever in history applied to the face of Boy George”. He offered her a drink; then, inexplicably, flew off the handle, and slammed a glass down onto the table.

From that point on, O’Connor says, things grew increasingly sinister. Prince told her he didn’t like the kind of language she used in interviews; she told him to f*** off. He lost his temper again, then suggested a pillow fight to patch things up.

She agreed, only to find that he had stuffed a hard object into his pillowcase. Eventually, she managed to get out of the house, and ran down the road with Prince chasing her in his car; he only vanished when she ran up to a house and rang on the doorbell. She never saw him again. Looking back, what does she think was behind it all? “Firstly, Prince didn’t like people covering his songs,” she told Will Hodgkinson in The Times. “Secondly, he had all these female protégées and he was annoyed that I wasn’t one

Briefing

NEWS 15

Ethiopia’s civil war

In Tigray in northern Ethiopia, millions have been displaced and thousands killed by government troops, and famine is looming Why is Tigray a flashpoint?

Ethiopia was, until last year, seen as one of Africa’s great recent success stories.

From the mid-1990s, it started moving towards democracy, and from a state of dire poverty – in 2000, it was the world’s second poorest nation – became a model for rapid, effective development. In 2019, its prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, won the Nobel Peace Prize for ending Ethiopia’s 20-year war with neighbouring Eritrea.

But the nation’s underlying ethnic tensions and its violent history have proved hard to escape. Tigray, Ethiopia’s northernmost region, has often been a focal point for disputes. It is home to seven million people out of Ethiopia’s 112 million: Tigrayans are the nation’s third largest ethnic group (the two largest, the Oromo and the Amhara, make up more than 60%). They have a strong local Orthodox Christian identity, and a strong sense of grievance against central government.

How have these tensions influenced events?

In 1974, Ethiopia’s last emperor, Haile Selassie, was deposed by a socialist junta. During the long period of military rule and civil war that followed, Tigray suffered terribly: it was the epicentre of the great famine of 1984. However, the separatist Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) became the most powerful rebel group in the country; it formed an alliance that in 1991 eventually toppled the communist dictatorship. In the years after, Ethiopian politics were dominated by TPLF politicians such as Meles Zenawi, its prime minister from 1995 to 2012. Meles’s rule saw Ethiopia advance towards prosperity and stability, but it was also repressive and felt to benefit Tigrayans unfairly. This caused great resentment from Ethiopia’s 80 other ethnic groups. The TPLF’s coalition was eventually forced out in 2018 by a wave of mass protests led by the current PM, Abiy, whose power base is in his own Oromo ethnic group. He formed the “pan-Ethiopian” Prosperity Party, and removed Tigrayans from key positions.

strength; and that has resulted in a gruesome and protracted conflict. The Ethiopian army swept into Mekelle, the capital of the Tigray region, and declared the war “over”. But the TPLF is well armed after decades of regional conflict, and it dispersed, as Abiy lamented, “like flour in the winds” into Tigray’s rugged highlands – leaving the federal army fighting a guerilla war. To bolster its forces, the Ethiopian army has joined up with militias from Amhara, south of Tigray, and with Eritrean troops, whose dictatorship blames the TPLF for the long war that the two nations fought.

How bad is the situation?

Truly awful. In seven months of fighting, around two million people have been displaced from their homes in Tigray and more than 60,000 have fled to neighbouring Sudan. Information about fatalities is scarce, but it’s clear that thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people have been killed. There are many well-attested cases of civilians being massacred. Thousands more have been imprisoned without trial.

Some 80% of the region’s hospitals have been looted and destroyed in a campaign aimed at crippling medical services, largely by Eritrean forces. There is clear evidence of atrocities by both sides; Ethiopian and Eritrean troops have been accused of using rape as a weapon of war. “Rape is starting at the age of eight and to the age of 72,” an Ethiopian nun told The Guardian.

“It is so widespread, I go on seeing it everywhere... This rape is in public, in front of family, husbands, in front of everyone.” Finally, fields, food stores and irrigation systems have also been destroyed.

Has this caused a famine?

Over 350,000 people in the region are suffering catastrophic famine conditions, according to UN agencies. A further two million people are classed as on the brink of “severe crisis”.

More than 5.5 million people in Tigray need food aid. For famine to be declared, at least 20% of the population must be suffering extreme food shortages, so the region is not technically enduring a famine; but a humanitarian disaster is already under way.

Why did this lead to the current conflict?

The TPLF, which remained in power in Tigray, saw Abiy’s centralising “pan-Ethiopian” politics as undermining the country’s federal Abiy: from peacemaker to warlord system and its delicate ethnic balance. Not long ago, Ethiopia was in the grip of “Abiymania”.

Abiy, in turn, accused the Tigrayans Having been elected in 2018, Ethiopia’s prime minister of brazenly defying the authority of initiated a raft of ambitious reforms aimed at unifying a historically fractured nation. Thousands of political central government – notably by prisoners were freed; street sellers in Addis Ababa holding elections in September despite hawked stickers, posters and T-shirts featuring his face; a national postponement initiated on radio stations aired gushing songs about him. In 2019, account of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Abiy was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for ending his Things came to a head in early country’s 20-year war with Eritrea. “War is the epitome November 2020, when the TPLF’s of hell,” he said in his speech, in which he thanked the militia launched an assault on an Eritrean dictator Isaias Afwerki.

Ethiopian army base in Tigray, with Two years on, forces under his control are waging a the goal of seizing weapons. The brutal war on his own people. The US has accused TPLF claimed it was a pre-emptive Abiy’s government of ethnic cleansing in Tigray; the strike; at any rate, hours later Abiy patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church has said the government is carrying out a genocide. Ethiopia launched a major military offensive has again delayed elections, which were due to be held into Tigray, and declared a six-month on 5 June, citing logistical problems; they are now due state of emergency in the region.

How has the conflict played out?

It’s hard to be sure, because the government has imposed a media blackout on Tigray. But it seems that both sides overestimated their own

to be held on 21 June (the EU has cancelled plans to observe the elections, saying it hasn’t received the necessary assurances from the government). And, with no sign of him easing his military campaign in Tigray, Abiy is looking more like the strongmen of Ethiopia’s past by the day.

How has the world reacted?

Slowly. The African Union, in which Ethiopia is a major player, has failed to act. Calls by the US for the withdrawal of Eritrean and Amhara forces from Tigray fell on deaf ears.

In May, Washington belatedly imposed sanctions on Ethiopia – an important US ally in the unstable Horn of Africa – and on Eritrea. The EU, meanwhile, has postponed nearly s90m of budget support payments to Ethiopia, which it said would not resume without unfettered humanitarian access and an independent investigation into rights abuses committed during the conflict.

But Ethiopian officials have rejected calls for a ceasefire. And, amid outrage at atrocities committed by government-aligned forces, tens of thousands of young men have volunteered to fight with Tigrayan forces – rendering an imminent resolution to the conflict unlikely.

19 June 2021 THE WEEK

16 NEWS Our transport policy is going off the rails Ross Clark The Daily Telegraph

Labour will lose out on the seats of power Philip Cowley Financial Times

The world’s poor are paying for our health Patrick Cockburn The Independent

It’s simple, it’s appealing, and it won’t work Anya Martin CapX

THE WEEK 19 June 2021

Best articles: Britain This Government’s transport policy can only be described as a car crash, says Ross Clark. One strand of it is colliding into the other.

On the one hand, ministers proclaim that “Covid-19 has hastened the end of the private car”, and have accordingly rolled out a host of green schemes to banish motorists from residential neighbourhoods and to encourage more journeys by train, foot and bike.

They’ve also brought forward the ban on sales of new petrol and diesel cars to 2030. Yet on the other, their response to the pandemic has been to force more of us behind the wheel. People have been scared off public transport; city dwellers, dispersed to suburbs and rural areas, rely more on cars to get around; the growth of online retail at the expense of high-street shops has led to ever more trips by delivery vans. Result? Roads are busier than ever: on 6 June, “private car journeys in the UK were 8% higher than pre-pandemic levels”, rail journeys 46% lower. Never has the UK’s transport policy looked quite as incoherent as it does today.

The principle behind the looming changes to Britain’s constituency boundaries is hard to quarrel with, says Philip Cowley: every seat should contain roughly the same number of voters. The long overdue review, launched last week, will ensure the next election is fought on the basis of where people live now, rather than 20 years ago. This numerical principle does of course conflict with the “organic” principle that constituencies should reflect coherent geographical localities: stand by for seats with ever more unwieldy, unfamiliar names – Kirkintilloch East, Kilsyth, that sort of thing.

But people can accept that: the real concern isn’t what the new seat will be called, it’s where its boundaries will be drawn. The nightmare for MPs is that they’ll “lose areas of party strength or get lumbered with wards full of their opponents”. Some may find their constituencies disappear altogether. They’ll just have to wait and see. But one thing’s already clear: the changes will benefit the Tories, who should pick up between five and ten extra seats.

Labour’s “path back to power just became that little bit steeper”.

We look on overseas aid as something the UK dispenses to poor nations, says Patrick Cockburn. Yet the “nasty secret” is that due to Britain’s shameless “poaching” of medical staff from poor nations, aid often flows in the opposite direction. We deliberately train fewer medics than we need, because training them is costly (in 2005 it was already £220,000 for a doctor and £37,500 for a nurse). Far cheaper to enlist qualified staff from other nations. But our gain is their loss. Kenya, where extreme poverty is rife, “loses $518,000 for every doctor and $339,000 for every nurse who emigrates to the UK”. The aid we give to Ghana to fight malaria and reduce infant mortality is exceeded by the £65m Britain saves by employing 293 Ghana-trained doctors and the £38m saved on the 1,021 Ghanaian nurses who work here. The Philippines has lost so many nurses it’s having to close hospital wards. Britain long ago pledged under the WHO code of practice to become self-sufficient in medical staff, yet the number of our doctors trained abroad continues to rise. Of the 289,000 licensed doctors in the UK in 2018, one-third trained elsewhere. We have to stop raiding the healthcare systems of nations that can least afford it.

Why do bad ideas in politics refuse to die? I blame it on “policy intern brain” (PIB), says Anya Martin. Fresh-faced policy interns, eager to impress, invariably hunt for solutions to social problems that meet two criteria: they must have “a simple, appealing narrative” and be ones that haven’t been tried before. Yet as they comb through articles and think-tank reports, the interns fail to spot the reason such solutions haven’t been tried. They don’t work. Take housing. Again and again, we’ve been told the UK can boost housing supply through a “use-it-or-lose-it” tax to stop developers hoarding land granted planning permission. And again and again, analysis has shown that the risk of unviable projects being forced through as a result would actually reduce supply. Same goes for the idea that we can solve our housing shortage by filling empty homes: studies show most are in areas of low demand. Yet such flashy solutions aren’t the sole preserve of the intern. A fair few, like the disastrous Starter Homes policy for first-time buyers, have been the brainchild of ministers. So on second thoughts, it would be better to rename “PIB” as “ministerial brain”.

IT MUST BE TRUE…

I read it in the tabloids Michael Packard, a US lobster fisherman, claims to have been briefly swallowed by a whale. He was diving in the waters off Cape Cod last week when he felt a “huge bump” from behind him. “Everything went dark,” he said. He thought it was a shark attack, before he realised: “Oh my God, I’m in a whale’s mouth and he’s trying to swallow me.” The whale, a humpback, then went up to the surface “and started shaking his head. I got thrown in the air and landed in the water.”

Packard was rescued by his crewmate and hospitalised with minor injuries. Experts said that such incidents are practically unheard-of.

An Indian man believed to be the head of the world’s largest family has died at 76 – leaving 38 wives, 89 children and 33 grandchildren. Ziona Chana, who was the head of a sect which allowed polygamy for men, once married ten women in one year; his four-storey home in Mizoram, where most of his family lived, was a popular tourist attraction.

He slept in a double bed, which his wives took turns to share – but his first bride ran the show, as “head wife”.

A Texan congressman posed an unusual question at a recent committee hearing: could changing the Moon’s orbit help combat climate change? Louie Gohmert asked Jennifer Eberlien of the US Forest Service if there was anything she could do “to change the course of the Moon’s orbit, or the Earth’s orbit around the Sun”, adding: “Obviously that would have profound effects on our climate.” In response, Eberlien said she would have to “follow up with you on that one, Mr Gohmert”.

Best articles: Europe

NEWS 17

Assault on a president: a slap in the face for French democracy Emmanuel Macron has never been Macron”. He hadn’t planned his averse to facing the public, said Jacques attack, he told a court, but unleashed it Paugam in Le Point (Paris). The highly in the name of gilets jaunes protesters divisive French president has debated and other right-wing “patriots”. Tarel has since been jailed for four months with striking workers outside factories, – but his actions were a “distressing and faced down gilets jaunes protesters as they hurled abuse at him. So he symptom” of the state of French looked “visibly relaxed” as he society, said Isabelle Bollène in L’Alsace greeted a crowd in the town of Tain(Mulhouse). A surge in assaults on l’Hermitage on the Rhône in southeast mayors and other elected officials has France last week. Until, that is, one of been reported in the run-up to regional those present grabbed him by the arm elections being held from 20 June; even with one hand, and slapped him in the teachers and firefighters face threats. face with the other. At first, Macron looked furious; but he later “shrugged This lamentable episode shows just Macron bumping fists on the trail in Valence how divided France has become, said off” this shocking act of violence, said France 24 (Paris), calling it an “isolated event”. Within minutes, Maxime Tandonnet in Le Figaro (Paris). On the one side is a he was “defiantly” fist-bumping voters in a nearby town. But “bourgeoisie at ease with globalisation”, and with Macron; on the assault united his opponents in condemnation, and set off a the other is “peripheral France”, where support for Le Pen is high. “This slap expresses genuine moral chaos.” But Macron debate about France’s “fraught” political climate ahead of next year’s presidential elections; the polls currently give Macron only may yet benefit from the run-in on his “tour de France”, billed a narrow lead over his far-right challenger, Marine Le Pen. as an attempt to gauge the national mood as lockdown lifts, said Richard Werly in Le Temps (Geneva). He knows he’s The perpetrator of the attack was identified as Damien Tarel, a unpopular among large swathes of the country, but refuses to give in to the “temptation of isolation”. He is gambling on his Holocaust denier with a curious array of interests ranging from “inexhaustible talent” as a debater to win voters over, and to the Middle Ages to Japanese pop culture, said Samuel Laurent convince them to put their faith in him next year. Is that “risky? in Le Monde (Paris). Delivering the slap, he shouted “Montjoie Yes. Bold? Without a doubt. Calculated? Of course.”

Saint Denis!”, a medieval battle cry, followed by “Down with

GERMANY

Questions the Greens’ leader must not shirk Der Tagesspiegel (Berlin)

HUNGARY

A rare defeat for an allpowerful PM Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Zurich)

RUSSIA

Putin’s disdain for dialogue with Europe The Moscow Times

Being “young, female, attractive” and a mother, Annalena Baerbock stands out at the top of German politics, says Inga Barthels. It was grimly predictable that she would face some sexism after being confirmed as the Greens’ candidate for chancellor in September’s elections. Faked nude photos of her have, for instance, been posted online. A less overt example of misogyny is that, like other powerful women, she has found her intellectual capabilities being unfairly questioned by pundits, and on social media. As a Green, she has had to deal with stories claiming that she plans to defund the police and ban pets and barbecues – all of which are demonstrably untrue. Yet as ludicrous as some of these attacks are, the Greens mustn’t use them to deflect legitimate criticism. Baerbock has rightly been criticised for failing to declare her full income to the parliamentary authorities, and for appearing to massage her CV. But her party has sought to reject all these attacks as “below the belt”.

That does the Greens no favours. “If every justified criticism is rejected on the grounds that Baerbock is the ‘only woman in the race’, it may start to look as if she was chosen for that very reason.”

In southeast Budapest, a number of streets have recently been renamed, says Meret Baumann. One is now called “Dalai Lama Street”; another “Free Hong Kong Road”; another still “Street of the Uighur Martyrs”. It was a clear message to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán from the oppositioncontrolled capital, and its liberal mayor Gergely Karácsony. Orbán has spent months trying to woo Beijing by promising to build a 520,000-square-metre campus for China’s elite university, Fudan, in Budapest. The plan was to cater for 8,000 students, at a cost of s1.5bn – more than Hungary’s entire 2019 higher education budget – with most of the money due to be loaned by Beijing. But Budapest’s authorities were dead against it – hence the street name stunt. Thousands of residents have also turned out to protest against the proposals. And last week, the “seemingly all-powerful” Orbán executed a very rare climbdown: he now says the plans are on hold and will be put to a referendum. Maybe he’s worried about Karácsony – seen as a credible threat to Orbán’s leadership – using the issue to bolster his standing. But whatever his reasons, Orbán is not a man who gives in easily: it is almost seven years since he last performed a U-turn on a major policy. This was a “remarkable” victory.

European leaders often talk about the need for dialogue with Russia, says Anton Shekhovtsov. But they’re kidding themselves if they think Vladimir Putin’s meeting with President Biden this week signals a willingness to talk to them too. “The Kremlin believes that the EU does not deserve dialogue with Russia.” Discussions with the US affirm Russia’s view of itself as a global superpower – but Putin views Europe with “disdain”, considering it “weak, indecisive and on the verge of collapse”. In the eyes of Russia’s president, Europe is essentially a “shopping centre” – led by people who claim to have values when in office, yet are happy to betray them for the right price as soon as their political careers are over. And he has a point. The former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder earns $350,000 a year as chair of Russia’s biggest oil producer, Rosneft. A litany of Austrian politicians have close ties to Moscow: former chancellors and finance ministers have taken on lucrative roles with Russia’s railways, and the controversial Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. These examples go some way to explaining why Moscow sees “political dialogue” with European leaders as a waste of time.

Putin thinks a more appropriate approach is simply to begin a “negotiation over the price”.

19 June 2021 THE WEEK

18 NEWS

Best American columnists

The vice-president: has Biden set her up to fail?

Even before she became America’s southern border. When politicians first black female vice-president, focus on “root causes”, said Hugo Kamala Harris was a soft target for Gurdon in the Washington Examiner, Republicans, said Lisa Lerer in The you can be sure they’re trying to deflect attention from the “real New York Times. It was all too easy causes”. And the real cause of the to define the outspoken senator from California as an “untrustworthy radisurge in immigrants is perfectly cal with an unpronounceable name clear: Biden’s relaxation of Trump’s and an anti-American agenda”. But tough immigration policy and his she has become an even easier target commitment not to expel migrants now that her boss has assigned her without first giving them a chance to tasks widely regarded as “the shortest claim asylum. On her recent trip to straws in the White House”. Back in Guatemala, Harris did try to row back on this by saying: “I want to be March, President Biden asked her to clear to folks in this region who are take charge of stemming migration at America’s southern border – one of thinking about making that dangerous the most “intractable” and polarising trek to the US-Mexico border: do not Harris: burdened with “radioactive” assignments come. Do not come.” But it’s all too issues in US politics. And this month, little, too late. All this did was invite a storm of criticism from he appointed her to lead the administration’s efforts to counter progressive Democrats like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. moves by various “red” (i.e. Republican) states to tighten the rules on voter registration – or “voter suppression”, as Democrats prefer to call it. But given the implacable resistance to voting-rights Harris is already unusually “unpopular” for a veep, said David legislation by Republican senators – who form 50% of the Senate Harsanyi in the National Review. A recent YouGov poll showed her approval rating at 41%, and she’s “25 points underwater – that too is a nigh on impossible task. Actually, Harris requested among independents”. She has now become a political liability the assignment, said Cleve R. Wootson Jr. in The Washington for her boss. No doubt Republicans are “already designing attack Post. But if she flops in both, it would be a serious setback for her ads” in anticipation of her becoming the Democrats’ presidential undisguised ambition to run for president at the next election. nominee in 2024, said Peter Funt in USA Today. Biden will be 81 that year, and if he doesn’t seek re-election, Harris will be the It has to be said that Harris is off to an “unimpressive” start, said party’s presumptive front runner. Over the past 150 or so years, Noah Rothman in Commentary Magazine. Three months after however, the only vice-president to be elected to succeed his boss she was put in charge of the border crisis, attempted border crossings are at a 21-year high. That’s why her aides are desperate has been George H.W. Bush. And now Biden has dumped “two of the most radioactive issues facing the nation” on Harris’s plate. to stress that her job is to tackle “the root causes” of migration Intentionally or not, he appears to be “setting up Harris to fail”.

– climate change, for example – not to manage the surge on the

Ransomware: navigating the world of cyber-extortion Last month, an attack on a major oil industry of “ransomware negotiators” pipeline led to the shutting off of oil to has sprouted: half a dozen specialist companies, often staffed by former FBI much of the southeastern United States. agents, who partner with insurance Two weeks ago the target was the ferry companies to “help people navigate the to Martha’s Vineyard, favoured holiday destination of the Obamas and many world of cyber-extortion”. They’ve no other celebrities. And last week, the lack of clients. But the sheer number of world’s biggest meat processor, JBS, payments – and many go unreported – had to pay an $11m ransom to enable have led to accusations that the negoit to reopen its abattoirs in America, tiators are themselves “abetting crime” Canada and Australia. US infrastructure by incentivising digital hostage-taking. is facing an unprecedented onslaught of cyberattacks, said Rishi Iyengar and Although the recent surge may lead one Clare Duffy on CNN. Hackers used to to think the problem is new, ransomfocus mainly on stealing data. But the ware has actually “been a huge business When the oil runs out: filling up in North Carolina new and more lucrative trend, spurred for years”, said Patrick Howell O’Neill by increasingly brazen hackers in Russia, is to target physical in the MIT Technology Review. But years of official inaction has systems, using “ransomware” to lock up the victim’s critical let the problem metastasise. Cybercrime gangs are now far more computer systems, and demand payment to unlock them. These sophisticated. They used to “indiscriminately infect vulnerable attacks can “spark mayhem in people’s lives”: FBI director machines” without much care for the pay-off. Now they go Christopher Wray has compared the urgency of the threat to “big-game hunting”. And despite endless warnings, many the scramble against international terrorism after 9/11. businesses are woefully unprepared, said Nicole Perlroth in The New York Times. Their systems run on “buggy and out-of-date In the case of Colonial Pipeline, said Rachel Monroe in The software nobody bothers to patch”, and in some cases New Yorker, the FBI was able to trace the route of the $4.4m employees aren’t even trained to “use different passwords”. in bitcoin – the ransom required to get gasoline and jet fuel The real culprits are the fossil fuel companies, said Donald flowing once again to major cities along the eastern seaboard – Shaw on Sludge. Many rely on old operational technology to Eastern European hackers linked to a group called DarkSide. systems installed before the internet. But reconfiguring these to So in this case, the money was partially recovered. However, the cope with cyberthreats is hugely costly, so for years the industry FBI’s strong advice to victims is never to pay up. Which is all has lobbied against stricter cybersecurity rules. Having seen very well, but most feel they’ve no choice. As a result, a small what happened to Colonial Pipeline, that will have to change.

THE WEEK 19 June 2021

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Health & Science

NEWS 21

What the scientists are saying…

Humans can learn echolocation

Bats used echolocation to navigate their environments. Now a study has found that most people can learn the technique too, in just ten weeks. The research involved 12 volunteers who had been diagnosed as legally blind in childhood, and 14 sighted people. All were given 20 training sessions in echolocation, which involves producing sounds – typically mouth clicks – and listening to their echoes, to get a sense of the location and shape of nearby objects.

The participants, who were aged 21 to 79, practised navigating a maze using echolocation during their training, and were then tested again at the end. The results showed that they had significantly fewer collisions than when they started the course, indicating that they had picked up the skill. A few of them were as good as expert echolocators, who had been learning for years. A follow-up study of the blind participants revealed that three months later, all of them felt their mobility had improved, and 83% said that using the technique had boosted their independence and overall well-being.

Right whales are shrinking

There are only around 360 right whales left in the North Atlantic. Most of them bear the scars of entanglement with fishing equipment, and of collisions with vessels – and according to the latest research, they’re much smaller than they ought to be. Owing to their scarcity, the surviving North Atlantic right whales have been closely monitored over the past 40 years.

Now, analysis of the accumulated data on their age-to-size ratio reveals a significant shrinkage. The team at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration calculate that the animals’ length has declined by 7% on average since 1981 –

Why birds don’t fall for magic

Eurasian jays: sharper than humans

meaning they are three foot shorter than previous generations. However, the stunting of some individuals was far more marked: one ten-year-old whale was found to be the same length as a two-year-old.

The team assume human-linked stressors are to blame for the creatures’ poor development. Some whales that get entangled in buoys and heavy fishing lines drown immediately; others, though, can end up dragging these around for years.

This not only creates deep lacerations in their flesh; it also makes it harder for them to dive for food, and saps them of the energy they need to grow, and reproduce.

According to legend, right whales are so called because being both large and docile, they are regarded by whalers as the “right” whales to hunt. By the end of the 19th century, they had been hunted to the brink of extinction, and though they have been protected since 1935, their populations have never recovered.

Evidence of slavery in Roman Britain

A shackled skeleton uncovered in a garden in Rutland could be the first physical evidence of the practice of slavery in Roman Britain, archaeologists have said. Carbon dating suggests that the individual, whose remains were discovered during building works at a house in the village of Great Casterton, died sometime between AD 226 and AD 427.

Lockable iron fetters had been used to bind his feet, and his body seems to have been thrown into a ditch. The fact that it was just outside a Roman cemetery may suggest that a conscious decision had been made to deny him a proper burial. Analysis of the skeleton shows that the man had led a “physically demanding life”, A mosaic depicting slavery in Tunisia but the cause of his death could not be established. Michael Marshall, a finds specialist at the Museum of London Archaeology, said he might have been buried in his shackles to show that “some of the symbolic consequences of imprisonment and slavery could extend even beyond death”. There is no doubt that slavery existed during the Roman occupation of Britain, but this is the first time the body of an enslaved individual has been found.

Now you see it, now you don’t... Humans are often fooled by sleight-of-hand tricks; but birds see through them, a study has found. Magic tricks tend to play on viewers’ expectations of human behaviour, said Elias Garcia-Pelegrin, of the University of Cambridge. Birds, it seems, do not have those expectations. In the study, Eurasian jays – who use deceptions of their own to keep their food stores safe – and humans were shown three tricks involving having to guess which hand a worm was in. The humans were routinely deceived, but the birds were not taken in by two of them: the French drop and the palm switch. One involves a surreptitious transfer, the other a false transfer; and both rely on viewers’ assumptions about how objects are transferred. The trick that did deceive the birds was the fast pass, which involves passing an object so rapidly from hand to hand that the viewer loses track of it.

Should we screen for coeliac?

Millions of children with a serious autoimmune disease may be going undiagnosed, a study has found. Researchers gave 7,760 children in Italy fingerprick tests to look for genetic mutations that would predispose them to coeliac disease, an intolerance to gluten which causes abdominal pain and bloating, and which can lead to type 1 diabetes and osteoporosis. They then gave diagnostic tests to those who tested positive. Overall, they found that 1.6% of the children had coeliac disease – far more than the 1% of the population previously believed to be affected. They conclude that children should be screened for the disease. There is no cure for coeliac disease, but if sufferers follow a strict gluten-free diet, they will not experience most of its symptoms.

New Alzheimer’s drug A new treatment for Alzheimer’s – the first for 20 years – has been approved by regulators in the US, raising hopes that it will become widely available, although there is some doubt as to its efficacy.

The drug, aducanumab, prevents the build up in the brain of the amyloid plaques that are believed to cause Alzheimer’s. However, trial results are not clear. In March 2019, late-stage trials were halted when analysis showed that the drug was no better at slowing the deterioration of memory and cognitive ability than a placebo. But soon afterwards, the drug’s manufacturer analysed more data and concluded the drug did work, provided it was given in high enough doses. In Britain, even those experts who welcomed the news of the drug’s approval in the US – which is only for patients in a phase 4 trial – cautioned that it was likely to bring only very marginal benefits to patients.

19 June 2021 THE WEEK

Building a gin legacy Whitley Neill gin founder, Johnny Neill, on the secret to his gin’s success and making the move to the City of London Distillery

G

in runs in the family for Whitley Neill founder Johnny Neill. A descendent of Thomas Greenall, who began distilling gin in 1762, Neill’s interest in the spirit was sparked at a young age when he started making martinis for his father, a former director at G&J Distillers.

However, his career in gin with Whitley Neill wasn’t immediate. Neill's professional life began in accountancy but he soon found the family business calling. “I worked in the City for a management company and it was there, while I was staring at mindnumbing spreadsheets, that I

started thinking about gin and developing a new recipe,” he explains.

Whitley Neill gin launched in late 2005 with its signature Original handcrafted London Dry, blending classic gin ingredients with botanicals sourced from South Africa, including cape gooseberry and baobab, as a tribute to Neill's wife’s homeland.

“It’s not like the traditional London Drys, it’s a little bit softer and a little bit sweeter,” Neill says. “There’s a little bit more sweet orange peel in there, a little more coriander which helps push the citrus through. It’s very versatile and nicely balanced.”

Finding a new home

Since then, Whitley Neill has built on the foundation of its Original London Dry gin by embracing flavoured variants and being swept along by gin’s rising popularity in the UK. “I

think it was time for gin to come around again. I’m not sure people thought it would grow as large as it has or last for as long as it has,” Neill says. “Everyone was telling m the boom was over in 20122013, then again three years later, and yet we’re still growing.”

Today, Whitley Neill claims to be the UK’s number one premium gin brand thanks to rocketing off-trade grocery sales. The business kicked off 2021 by moving its gin production from the West Midlands to the City of London Distillery, which became the first gin distillery to open in the centre of London for 200 years when it launched in December 2012. It has since become one of the world’s most decorated distilleries, taking home awards for its range of quality artisanal gins, and for the distillery itself.

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Now there’s a lot more botanicals going into gin, a lot more experimentation – Johnny Neill, founder of Whitley Neill

place where people can and make their own Neill gin. Also, it’s nd that’s hingly associated with e last gin craze we had ears ago was based nd the City of London. ere’s no better place to ing it back to, especially with our heritage.”

What does the future hold?

The City of London Distillery’s goal is to maintain the heritage and history of London gin production, while pushing forward with a more contemporary approach to the spirit. Whitley Neill, with its success in the modern gin era and wide offering, is the perfect fit.

Neill himself views this move as “a massive step” for the business. It now has a permanent home and a partner eager to experiment and develop new recipes.

“This is really important,” Neill explains. “Up to now we haven’t had full control [of the process] and this also gives us

Though the last 12 months have proved challenging for most businesses, the roadmap out of national lockdown is welcome news for Neill as he launches new gin flavours ready for summer. The limited edition Watermelon & Kiwi gin has “gone down like a storm”, he says, bringing sizable engagement across the brand’s social media platforms. Another addition is Mango & Lime, further building on the tropicalflavoured theme for 2021.

“Now there’s a lot more botanicals going into gin, a lot more experimentation and a lot of different flavour profiles,” Neill says. “A person can find something that they really like and if they’re not ready for a traditional London Dry yet, we’ve got the flavours to take them there on a journey through the whole gin spectrum.”

Once lockdown restrictions are lifted, Neill is eager to get gin lovers to visit Whitley Neill’s new home at the City of

London Distillery, where gin schools will see them blend botanicals and take home their own distilled bottles of gin. “It’s a great experience and it just means people touch and feel and really understand how we make our gin. We’re using a 500-litre still, so the batch size is a lot smaller than previous. That allows us to focus a lot more on the quality of what’s being distilled.”

As gin’s popularity shows no signs of abating, what are the ambitions for Whitley Neill going forward? After 15 years in which the brand has become firmly established in the UK, Neill is keen to continue expanding in export markets and getting stronger abroad.

“We're growing really quickly in Australia, Russia, and Germany,” he says. “I just want us to build a solid platform overseas as well as in the UK – and make sure that people can come and visit us in the City of London Distillery. We are rebranding inside the distillery at the moment and we've actually got another 450-litre still going in. It’s had a bit of a makeover so it’s going to look really good.”

Find out more about the UK’s number one premium gin brand at whitleyneill.com.

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24 NEWS

Talking points

Culture wars: powerful symbols and empty gestures Does it matter that students at Magdalen “frivolous populism. If you contextualise College, Oxford have voted to take down everything to the point of abandoning a portrait of the Queen from the walls of value judgements, you end up with moral their middle common room? I’d argue relativism.” Oriel College had indicated that it would remove the statue, but then that with everything else going on in the world, it wasn’t the biggest story of last changed its mind, citing the cost and week, said Rachel Cunliffe in the New planning laws. Dons are entitled to keep Statesman. Magdalen is one of 39 up the pressure – but not with a boycott.

Oxford colleges. And it has three To refuse to teach is a betrayal of their common rooms. The middle one, for calling. What troubles me, said Joanna postgraduate students, has 175 members.

Rossiter in The Spectator, is that their That some of them think that an image action punishes students (who have suffered months of Covid disruption, of the Queen (a print that a previous cohort had voted to put up in 2013) and most of whom are anti-Rhodes in is an uncomfortable representation any case), and it costs the dons nothing. of “recent colonial history” is not of Toppling Rhodes strikes me as a pointless The Rhodes statue: dividing academia Earth-shattering import. Leftie students gesture, but if they really think it would have been staging silly protests for decades. The students’ views change lives for the better, why don’t they offer to help pay for it? may be contentious, even fatuous, but they have every right to express them. Yet the story prompted headlines in the national Gestures can be powerful, said Matthew Syed in The Sunday press about Oxford “cancelling the Queen”, and Gavin Times: one thinks of the Black Power protest at the 1968 Williamson, the Education Secretary, felt compelled to take time Olympics. But too often, they are not accompanied by actions. out of his schedule to condemn the vote as “absurd”. He is also Consider the way the England and Wales Cricket Board suspended entitled to his views; but has he really nothing better to do than Ollie Robinson for bigoted tweets he’d sent as a teenager. Its chief harangue students about how they decorate their common rooms? executive spoke “piously” about the need to send a signal, but said nothing about the Board accepting cash to send teams to “As far as outrageous student protests play in countries where homosexuality is punishable by death. It’s the same in go”, this one was “pretty lame”, said “Dons are entitled to keep up the football, said Stephen Bush in the New Jenny Hjul on Reaction.life. From all the fuss, you’d think the students (led pressure – but not boycott. To refuse Statesman. Arsenal players have “taken the knee” before every game for a year; by the son of a multimillionaire US to teach is a betrayal of their calling” in the same period, the club has publicly lawyer) had confronted the Queen distanced itself from criticism of the herself during a tour. How different things were in my day, when visiting dignitaries could expect to treatment of Uighur Muslims, to protect its commercial interests in China. It is for that reason that I find the taking of the knee be pelted with tomatoes if their views did not align with all the very “depressing”. Yet as the England manager Gareth Southgate things we knew we were right about. Alas, no one paid attention to our antics, and there are still those who think ignoring student eloquently explained in a letter this week, the ritual is meaningful to his players, and others, who see it as a symbol of hope. And provocations is the correct response. But there is a reason campus politics are taken more seriously now. We may have been that is why I would never boo it, as some fans have been doing. “infantile”, but we would grow up; and our tutors, though very left-wing, were sane. But in today’s culture war, the adolescent Some Tories have seized on the issue as a weapon in their “war on mindset is the same as the mature one – and the dons are “dafter” woke”, said Sean O’Grady in The Independent. Party strategists reckon that wading into rows about trans rights, and cricketers’ than the students. While the Magdalen crew were deliberating the future of the Queen, 150 of their elders were plotting an academic tweets, is an easy way to pick up working class votes. Last week, boycott over the statue of Cecil Rhodes, at Oriel College. however, Boris Johnson urged England fans not to boo, having realised that this was one fight he’d do better to sit out. Let’s hope it heralds the start of a more thoughtful strategy, said Fraser Rhodes was “unarguably racist”, said Oliver Kamm in The Nelson in The Daily Telegraph. Divisive identity politics do Times, and I endorse the campaign to have his statue removed. threaten important values; but attacking students for exercising Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden has demanded that institutions their right to free speech is not the way to defend them. “contextualise or reinterpret” contested objects; but that is

Pick of the week’s

Gossip

In a year when the Royal Family has endured plenty of family drama, Her Majesty has turned to a police drama for solace. “The Queen was very into Line of Duty,” a royal source told The Sunday Times: she enjoyed discussing it with her aide Vice-Admiral Sir Tony Johnstone-Burt. It seems she also enjoys watching Downton Abbey (and pointing out the mistakes) and perhaps The X Factor, too. In 2011, she told

THE WEEK 19 June 2021

contestant Mary Byrne: “You are the lady off The X Factor.

Your song was fabulous.”

This week’s launch of Andrew Neil’s “anti-woke” GB News channel was marred by technical glitches from the off.

An early segment featuring Neil Oliver went unheard as the presenter of the BBC’s Coast suffered problems with his microphone – prompting him to joke that he “thought I’d been cancelled”. Later, Nigel Farage was interrupted by an advert for Co-op pizzas, after claiming the Black Lives Matter movement was trying to bring down Western civilisation.

Another guest, Lord Sugar, was also cut off – prompting him to tell host Dan Wootton: “You are having a technical

problem there – you could use one of my old computers.”

Brits and Americans have long harboured different attitudes towards drinking. Today, while churches outnumber bars in the US by six to one, there are thousands more pubs than churches in Britain. These differences go back a long way.

Winston Churchill was once ticked off about his drinking by a US preacher who quoted from the Bible that red wine “biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder” – to which the PM replied: “I’ve been seeking a drink like that all my life.”

Talking points The e-scooter invasion: can we cope?

“Travelling by scooter was once traps”. The people who whizz the preserve of children making along on these silent devices their way to primary school,” seem to regard pedestrians as said Kaya Burgess in The Times. just “so many skittles to be bowled over”. The rise of No longer. Countless people e-scooters has posed a particular have been buying electric scooters and flouting the law threat to blind and partiallyby riding them on public roads. sighted people, said Chris Meanwhile, those who wanted Theobald on Transportto ride these devices legally have Network.co.uk. Legalising the been able to do so under trial public use of these devices rental schemes in more than 40 “would have a dramatic and irreversible effect on our streets”.

UK towns and cities, including Birmingham and Manchester.

Last week, London followed Let’s not write off e-scooters suit, allowing five boroughs on the basis of their misuse by to experiment with hiring out some rogue riders, said Annabel e-scooters. For an initial £1, plus Denham in The Spectator.

A rental scooter in London 15p a minute, users can zip They’re no more dangerous than along roads and cycle paths at a maximum other forms of transport such as cars and bikes, speed of 12.5mph. Altogether, there are now which can likewise be abused. Legalising them more than 11,000 rental e-scooters in the UK, would improve standards by allowing more which have already been used for some three regulation and providing safety in numbers. million trips, said Ellen Peirson-Hagger in the Users would join other e-scooter riders on the New Statesman. Scooters are a convenient, roads and be less tempted to veer onto environmentally-friendly transport option that pavements. This is one of the fastest-growing allows for social distancing. They are also a technologies of all time: “e-scooters are expected “fun” way to travel. Are they “set to become to surpass half a billion rides globally by the end a mainstay of metropolitan life”? of this year”. Given that a third of these rides replace car journeys, that represents a lot of As someone who occasionally likes to venture saved CO2 emissions and congestion. We can out on foot, I really hope not, said Jane Shilling hardly afford to pass those benefits up. True, in The Daily Telegraph. I’m with chief e-scooters carry some perils, but we cannot live superintendent Simon Ovens of the entirely risk-free lives. “What we can do is live Metropolitan Police, who has condemned ones with added convenience, lower transport unregulated e-scooters as “absolute death costs, and a little less pollution.”

Fastly: bringing down the internet For 45 minutes last week, “a that “took down 85% of the company that most people company’s network” and have never heard of” showed affected millions of users. us just how vulnerable our Even in the short time it was global internet infrastructure out of action, one e-commerce is, said Chris Stokel-Walker in expert estimated that retailers Wired magazine. When Fastly across the UK, Europe and – a content distribution the US lost around £1bn. The network, or CDN – suffered debacle shows that large parts an “outage”, it knocked out of the internet may be just the websites of every “one domino away from “One domino away from collapse” organisation that used its collapse”. But because it services, including Amazon, PayPal, eBay, works smoothly most of the time, little Reddit, the White House, the British “resilience” is built into the system. Arguably, Government, The New York Times and The governments should have “multiple CDN Guardian. Fastly runs “a piece of the internet contracts” as back-up, in case one goes down. most people don’t think about”. It provides a global network of “edge servers”, which deliver Let’s not get over-anxious, said Richard “content hosted in one place closer to internet Waters in the FT. This was “an isolated service users in another place”, moving data quickly disruption”. Fastly bounced back within an around the web, and protecting clients’ websites hour, and its shares were up 11% by the end of from becoming overloaded by spikes in visitor the day, proving there’s “no such thing as bad numbers. But CDN services are heavily publicity”. We shouldn’t be complacent, said concentrated: there are only a handful of The Guardian. With the internet now so central providers like Fastly. If just one goes down, it to everyday life, we need to be careful about can take a shocking number of websites with it. putting so much power in the hands of a few big service providers. This outage should remind The Fastly collapse was caused by a single governments and companies that they need to customer updating their settings, said Io Dodds plan “with not just the slickest outcomes, but in The Daily Telegraph. That introduced a bug also the worst-case scenarios in mind”.

NEWS 25

Wit & Wisdom “Don’t ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.”

Robert Frost, quoted on The Browser “Everyone ought to reflect how much more unhappy he might be than he really is.”

Joseph Addison, quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle “The imagined community of millions seems more real as a team of 11 named people.”

Eric Hobsbawm, quoted in The Guardian “Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it.”

Joan Didion, quoted in The Wall Street Journal “At 50, everyone has the face he deserves.”

George Orwell, quoted in The Frederick News-Post “Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.”

Carl Jung, quoted on ArtsJournal.com “The truth isn’t always beauty, but the hunger for it is.”

Nadine Gordimer, quoted in The Guardian “Good afternoon, shouldn’t you be at work?”

Des Lynam, quoted in the Financial Times “Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.”

Samuel Johnson, quoted in The Guardian “Our moods do not believe in each other.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson, quoted in The New York Times

Statistics of the week

UK road traffic has reached 104% of pre-pandemic levels on weekdays, and 113% at the weekends.

The Times Half the UK’s adult population – 26 million people – watched online pornography in September 2020.

Ofcom/The Guardian

19 June 2021 THE WEEK

26 NEWS

Sport

Football: drama and surprises on the opening weekend of Euros

The opening weekend of the European ChampionPhil Foden striking the post after five minutes. Yet as the hour mark approached, Croatia had gained ship was dominated by an incident that “left the control of the match’s tempo, and the contest football world paralysed with shock”, said The Daily Telegraph. In the 42nd minute of his team’s looked to be heading in a dangerous direction. Just group match against Finland, Danish midfielder in time, the “fabulous” Kalvin Phillips produced a sweetly timed through ball, which Raheem and former Tottenham star Christian Eriksen collapsed to the ground while attempting to Sterling tucked away. England were far from perfect (they conceded possession too easily in the receive a throw-in. As his distraught teammates middle), but this win will be a huge confidence formed a human shield around him, medics massaged his heart and performed defibrillation. booster. At full time, the squad looked as if a The match resumed nearly two hours later (once “huge pressure valve had just been released”. it was clear that Eriksen was out of danger), and with the Danish players still in shock, they It was a victory that vindicated Southgate’s slumped to an understandable 1-0 defeat. Eriksen, selections, said Henry Winter in The Times. After it was later confirmed, had gone into cardiac Sterling’s disappointing season at Manchester arrest, said Ian Sample in The Guardian: this City, some questioned his inclusion in England’s condition, unlike the majority of heart attacks, squad, let alone in the starting XI for their Sterling tucks it away poses an instant risk to life, since it stops the heart opening match. Yet the forward, who grew up in pumping blood round the body. Had medics not been on hand to the shadow of Wembley’s arch (and regards the stadium almost as treat him, it’s unlikely Eriksen would have survived. a home ground), “rose to the occasion”. Wales also made a good start, recovering from a one-goal deficit against Switzerland to The next day there was another shock, though thankfully this earn an invaluable 1-1 draw, said Ben Fisher in The Observer. time of a purely footballing nature, said Ian Ladyman in the Daily Kieffer Moore, the “fans’ favourite”, gave them their 74th-minute Mail. England achieved what they’ve never done before at the equaliser, “steering a delightful header into the corner”. Scotland, Euros: they won their opening match. In a tricky game against meanwhile, went down 2-0 to the Czech Republic in their opener.

Croatia (their conquerors in the semi-finals of the World Cup They face England on Friday, in a match likely to determine their three years ago), Gareth Southgate’s men started superbly, with chances of progressing to the knock-out stage.

Tennis: Djokovic stakes his claim to be the GOAT Two hours into the French Open final, a victory for Novak Djokovic looked a “challenge too far”, said Tumaini Carayol in The Guardian. He’d had to summon all his “willpower” to topple “king of clay” Rafael Nadal in a truly epic semi-final; now he was two sets down against the young Greek Stefanos Tsitsipas, looking tired and short of ideas. Yet the 34-year-old Serb has always been supremely good at lulling “opponents into a false sense of security”, said Stuart Fraser in The Times. Looking spent at the end of the second set, he took a bathroom break and returned a different player. The “defensive wall” he erected on the baseline took Tsitsipas by surprise.

The Serb won the next two sets comfortably.

ventured that Djokovic would end his career with the most grand slam titles of any male player. This latest victory just reaffirms that conviction. He now has 19 major titles, one behind both Nadal and Roger Federer (who are 35 and 39 respectively). But unlike those players, he still has the game to win on any surface – and it seems almost a foregone conclusion that he will eventually be “hailed as the finest of all”.

No doubt “Federerphiles and Nadal-o-maniacs” will continue to insist that “statistics aren’t everything”, and that their idols are superior, said Simon Briggs in The Daily Telegraph. Well, perhaps Djokovic isn’t as “painterly” as Federer, or as “muscular” as Nadal.

“Jaw dropping moments” Yet his game contains plenty of wonders: his matches abound with jaw-dropping moments. Once he Tsitsipas is “the real deal, a ball-striker of sumptuous talent”, said applies a “rubber stamp” to the “greatest of all time” page by winning another couple of majors – as he surely will – we’ll finally Matthew Syed in the same paper. But, ultimately, there was little he could do. Djokovic won 6-7 (6-8), 2-6, 6-3, 6-2, 6-4. I’ve often be able to say: “Stick a fork in it – the GOAT debate is done.”

Cricket: what’s wrong with England’s batsmen?

Sporting headlines

With a “decent-sized crowd” seems mired in unnecessary permitted at a cricket match for complexity quite at odds with the first time in over a year, New Zealand’s “refreshingly England’s second Test against straightforward” approach, said New Zealand should have had Andy Bull in The Guardian. Their a celebratory feel, said Mike players are subjected to an Atherton in The Times. Instead, it “incomprehensible rest-and“turned into a funeral”. England rotation strategy” (which results were skittled out for 122 in their in top players frequently being second innings, handing New left out of the Test team); and Zealand victory inside four days they endure a domestic schedule and a 1-0 win in the two-match Boycott: a lesson in technique that prioritises a gimmicky new series. NZ will head to their next competition like The Hundred engagement – the World Test Championship over the needs of the national side. And many final against India, which starts in Southampton of England’s batsmen seem to lack basic good on Friday – in a buoyant mood. England, by technique, said Geoffrey Boycott in The Daily contrast, urgently need to rediscover form and Telegraph: they’d have been “thrown out of the confidence ahead of their five-match Test series Yorkshire nets when I was a lad”. Maybe they against India later this summer. should employ me to “make some suggestions about how they could improve”.

The trouble with English cricket is that it

Tennis Barbora Krejciková of the Czech Republic won the French Open to claim her maiden grand slam title. The Czech player beat Russian Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova 6-1, 2-6, 6-4 in the final.

Football France banked a 1-0 win over Germany in the group stage of the Euros, and defending champions Portugal won 3-0 against Hungary, with Cristiano Ronaldo scoring twice.

Rugby union Saracens beat Ealing Trailfinders 60-0 in the first leg of the Championship final. The result all but guarantees their return to the Premiership next season.

THE WEEK 19 June 2021

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LETTERS Pick of the week’s correspondence A Victorian solution To The Guardian

Dalya Alberge’s article (“Nor any drop to drink: why Victorian fountains are filled up with cement”) is a reminder that from 1859, drinking fountains offering free water were installed throughout London, including public parks and gardens. Of those that remain, the majority are broken and dry. Rome, Paris and Zurich keep their old drinking fountains in working order, recognising the value they add to life in a city.

The Victorian drinking fountain movement installed fountains from Lerwick, in Shetland, to Penzance. Using less plastic bottled water is one of the easiest ways to reduce our carbon footprint. How much easier would it be if our fountains worked?

Sebastian Bulmer, London

Inescapable alliances To the Financial Times

Robert Shrimsley’s article, “Starmer should swerve calls for electoral pacts”, is a counsel of despair. He offers plenty of reasons why forming an effective three-party alliance in time for the next general election will be fiendishly difficult, but offers no alternative other than making Labour “look electable”. Yet an alliance is an essential, though not sufficient, condition for doing that. Labour on its own has not won a general election since the mass defection of its Scottish voters in 2011, which can’t now be reversed, and meanwhile things in England have got worse.

Here in Oxfordshire we have just thrown out a Conservative county council and replaced it with a strong Lib Dem-Labour-Green coalition. This was done with only minimal direct cooperation before the election and no doubt some tactical voting – which, as Shrimsley says, many voters do understand. Many more will too, once they see parties coming together and explicitly urging it.

Edward Mortimer, Burford, Oxfordshire

When a child is a child To The Times

Sajid Javid (“These children [of forced marriages] are rarely

Exchange of the week

How pernicious is the Protocol?

To The Times

The Northern Ireland Protocol raises a fundamental constitutional issue: the cohesion of the United Kingdom. By keeping Northern Ireland (NI) within the EU’s internal market it disrupts Britain’s internal market, unless we align with EU rules – which was rejected in the 2016 referendum and by the electoral mandate given to Boris Johnson in 2019. By presuming that goods exported from Britain to the province are at risk of subsequently being moved into the EU, the protocol treats NI as effectively outside UK customs territory. In consequence, NI has become a condominium, jointly ruled by Britain and the EU. NI will be subject to EU regulations without being represented in the EU, the very issue that inflamed Americans in the 18th century. NI has a right not to be subjected to so significant a constitutional change without its consent.

We recently commemorated the centenary of the partition of Ireland. The protocol provides for the partition of the UK. Vernon Bogdanor, professor of government, KCL To The Guardian

The EU has suggested a temporary food standards agreement that would do away with 80% of the checks required under the Northern Ireland Protocol. However, the UK has ruled out following EU rules even for a few years because “it fears this would hinder its trade negotiations elsewhere”.

The UK’s stance is illogical and disingenuous. Ministers have repeatedly promised that the UK’s food standards would not be relaxed after Brexit, and, if anything, would be higher than in the EU. If this is truly the Government’s intention, why not make temporary alignment with EU food standards the minimum requirement for foodstuffs going to NI? Such an approach would be relatively straightforward to implement, given that the UK’s food standards have not changed since Brexit. And it should not impact adversely on trade deals with other countries unless the UK, contrary to its stated policy, wishes to import food from countries with less rigorous standards than in the UK. Mike Pender, Cardiff lovestruck teens... they are coerced young girls”) is right to point out that “the law recognises that 18 is the age of adulthood and protects those under that age from making decisions they cannot understand the gravity of” – but why did he not apply this principle to Shamima Begum?

She was under the age of consent when she went to Syria to be a jihadist bride, possibly having first been coerced or groomed. Javid did not protect her from the decision she made when she was only 15, instead he stripped her of her British citizenship.

Hazel Mackenzie, Preston, Lancashire

The arrogance of Cop26 To The Independent

Alok Sharma may be in charge of Cop26, the UN’s green jolly in Glasgow, but his pompous demand that aspirational Asia

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Madagascar, Pakistan, the Philippines, Malaysia and Vietnam are not in a position to trifle with the Heath Robinson devices promoted by our bien pensant. Criticism of Western arrogance is on the rise, and may be the enduring memory of the climate summit.

Dr John Cameron, St Andrews

Wrong kind of privilege To The Guardian

I am disappointed that Oxford students wanted to remove the Queen’s portrait because it represents colonial history, rather than because it represents inherited privilege.

Too close to home for some students?

Bob Browning, London

Name inflation...

To The Times

There was a time when those selling train tickets were known as “clerks”. Later they were raised to the status of “operatives”. This was then replaced with “advisers”.

However, the ticket sellers on the Great Western Railway have recently been given badges saying “customer ambassador”. Perhaps this means that we should now address them as “your excellency”.

Charles Boston, London

...and elevation To The Times

bins its coal plans makes For a short while after my Cop26 look out of touch. children had grown up, I had a Energy demand indicates his part-time job restocking shelves call to abandon coal is simply for a supermarket. During that fantasy. China funds the time, any form demanding to majority of all new coal plants know my job was completed being built globally, while the with “ambient retail 60 new coal plants planned replenishment executive”. across Eurasia, South America It was never queried. and Africa are reportedly Christine Briggs, Royston, financed exclusively by Chinese Hertfordshire banks. With its “belt and road initiative”, China works with numerous countries with fossil fuel technology. Many are developing nations relying on its help, just as the UK and so many other advanced countries start to cut their aid budgets.

The Scientific American reports that most of Africa is without any form of renewable energy, so coal, “And if it’s a girl we’re going to oil and natural gas are vital. call it Her Majesty the Queen” Nations such as Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, © MATT/THE TELEGRAPH

● Letters have been edited

19 June 2021 THE WEEK

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ARTS Review of reviews: Books Book of the week The Case of the Married Woman: Caroline Norton

by Antonia Fraser Weidenfeld 304pp £25

The Week Bookshop £19.99

Caroline Norton, the subject of Antonia Fraser’s “compulsively readable” biography, had a life which “reads like a Victorian sensation novel”, said Katie Rosseinsky in the London Evening Standard. Born in 1808, she was the granddaughter of the Irish playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and was one of a trio of widely admired sisters dubbed the “Three Graces”. Following a “financially expedient” marriage to Tory MP George Norton in 1827, Caroline moved to London, started a fashionable salon, and forged a lucrative career as a poet and novelist. George, angered at “having his star eclipsed by a woman”, and jealous of her close friendship with Lord Melbourne (a salon regular), began subjecting his wife to “vicious” attacks, once kicking her so hard he caused a miscarriage. Caroline, however, had no legal redress: wives – and their earnings – were their husband’s “property”.

In 1835, Caroline fled the marital home, taking her three sons with her, said Roger Lewis in The Daily Telegraph. However, George reclaimed the boys – they were “bundled into a hackney

31

carriage” – and treated them appallingly. “One son, Willie, died of medical neglect after a riding accident, aged nine; another, Brin, went clinically mad.” Norton also launched a legal action against Lord Melbourne (by now prime minister), accusing him of “criminal conversation” – adultery – with Caroline. “Fraser has great fun with the case, which titillated London in June 1836” with its details of Melbourne’s regular visits, and “use of the back entrance”. Though Melbourne was acquitted, the case left a permanent stain on Caroline’s character. This impressively researched and “rousing” book is “classic Antonia Fraser”.

Prevented from ever seeing her children, Caroline poured her energies into reforming the law, said Lara Feigel in The Guardian.

She helped initiate the 1839 Custody of Infants Act, granting married women the right to petition for custody of their children.

Not that it helped her: George moved their sons to Scotland, out of the Act’s jurisdiction. Caroline also played a part in shaping the Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857 (making divorce through the civil courts possible for the first time) and other reforms giving married women some rights over their own property. She wasn’t a likeable character, and nor was she a feminist, said Daisy Goodwin in The Sunday Times: she thought women should be protected by men. But her actions greatly improved the lot of women. “Fraser is surely right to call her a 19th century heroine.”

How to Love Animals

Novel of the week

by Henry Mance Jonathan Cape 400pp £20

Should We Stay or Should We Go

The Week Bookshop £15.99

This is a book you might not enjoy very much, but it’s one you should almost certainly read, said Emma Beddington in The Spectator. Henry Mance, a journalist at the Financial Times, sets out to unpick a glaring “paradox”: how a world in thrall to animal cuteness – in which videos of kittens are watched by millions – “can remain indifferent to the suffering of almost all other animals, whether farmed, in captivity, or in the wild”. Most of us prefer not to think about the horrors of livestock farming, but Mance doesn’t flinch from detailing them, said Sophie McBain in the New Statesman. During a spell working at an abattoir, he describes pigs panicking and squealing before they are stunned because they “can smell blood”, and can communicate with one another. At a pig farm known for its welfare standards, he describes picking up “overlays”: piglets accidentally crushed by their mothers, which have been bred to be three times their natural size. Yet the book also has its lighter moments: in San Francisco, Mance visits “Corgi Con”, where Corgi owners dress up as their pets (and vice versa).

Although Mance is himself a vegan (partly because of what his research led him to find out about the dairy industry), he isn’t doctrinaire or sanctimonious, said Ben Cooke in The Times. “For instance, he’s not that perturbed by hunting”: he even thinks big-game hunting is a good idea, because the money earned from selling licences can “provide hefty funding for national parks”.

Ultimately, what he wants is for people to stop dividing animals into “would-be humans” and “milk machines”, and see them for what they are – as “creatures valuable in their difference”. We may be a long way from achieving that now – but this thoughtful book ought to move us in the right direction.

by Lionel Shriver Borough Press 266pp £18.99 The Week Bookshop £14.99

“Anyone looking for a comfort read” should avoid Lionel Shriver’s books, said James Walton in The Times. Her new novel is certainly deeply “discomforting”. Kay and Cyril are a married couple (a nurse and a doctor) whom we first meet in their 50s. Convinced society is wrongly extending old people’s lives, Cyril persuades Kay to join him in a pact to commit suicide on her 80th birthday. The novel then skips to the appointed day, at which point it reveals itself as a speculative work, serving up “12 alternative scenarios” for what might happen next.

In one of these scenarios, the couple decide against killing themselves, and their “callous, awful children commit them to a ghastly old-age facility”, said Walter Kirn in The New York Times. In another, they freeze their bodies, and awake far in the future, “when people have grown feathers for some reason”. As alternate universe follows alternate universe, “it all goes on a bit”. Yes, it’s quite mad, said Alex Preston in the FT. But this “riotous”, “wonderful” satire is certainly “unlike anything else you’ll read”.

To order these titles or any other book in print, visit theweekbookshop.co.uk or speak to a bookseller on 020-3176 3835 Opening times: Monday to Saturday 9am-5.30pm and Sunday 10am-4pm

19 June 2021 THE WEEK

32 ARTS

Drama & Podcasts

Theatre and summer opera: the reopening continues “Hallelujah!”said Dominic Marmion in the Daily Mail.

His clever and playful script is Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph. Their full reopening about a 60-year-old TV actor may have had to be delayed, but named Rob whose lockdown many of the nation’s theatres boredom is eased when he spies are now emerging from the a woman dressed in 1940s clothing, hanging out washing pandemic – and among them is the National Theatre itself, in his neighbours’ garden. What which lost a third of its unfolds is a “delightful mix of workforce to the financial past and present”: a “brilliantly storms of Covid. It’s constructed” exploration of wonderful just to be back in wartime sacrifice in which the NT building; to also be “inconsequential details” “transported” by its first postbecome “later revelations”, pandemic offering, After Life and featuring a twist that “transforms the tale into (at the Dorfman until 7 August), is a “boundless joy”. Adapted an uncanny ghost story”.

Garsington’s Der Rosenkavalier: “sumptuous”

by Jack Thorne from the Japanese film of the same name, the piece is set in an “ethereal Thank heavens, too, for the return of that delicious summer processing centre” where the newly deceased must select a single treat, country house opera, said Hugh Canning in The Sunday memory to take with them to the afterlife. It’s an “odd” play, said Times. The season has got off to a flying start with Garsington Opera’s outstanding new production of Richard Strauss’s Der Sarah Crompton on What’s On Stage – and yet “overwhelmingly Rosenkavalier (until 3 July). Director Bruno Ravella finds the moving”, and “profoundly satisfying in the subtle ways it deals with grief, doubt and death”. It is the “perfect way to deal with perfect balance between novelty and tradition with an updating some of the emotions” aroused by the pandemic. that “never undermines the emotional landscape of Strauss’s nostalgic score”. The Swedish soprano Miah Persson is The Girl Next Door (at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, sensational as the Marschallin. And Gary McCann’s lavish design until 3 July) is the latest play from the “staggeringly prolific” Alan is masterly. Indeed, “I’ll stick my neck out: no UK production of Ayckbourn – and it is “inventive, empathetic, timely and fun”, the past 50 years, even Visconti’s at Covent Garden, has a said Dominic Maxwell in The Times. Set during the pandemic, comparable wow factor”. If I were in charge of the Royal Opera it is Ayckbourn’s 85th play – and it provides rousing evidence House, I would “snap up” this production and bring it to London that the 82-year-old’s powers are “undimmed”, said Patrick “prontissimo”. This “sumptuous” staging simply must be revived.

The global trauma we’ve all lived podcast Just One Thing, said through is “going to take years James Marriott in The Times. to process”, said Emma Dibdin In it, doctor and broadcaster in The New York Times. And as Michael Mosley presents simple things slowly return to normal, techniques for improving wellmany of us are anxious to pick being. None of his suggestions up “where we left off”. Of the are “especially recherché” – do hundreds of meditation and sit-ups, take a cold shower, go mindfulness apps offering for an early morning walk, take “peace in the palm of your a warm bath before bed: it’s the hand”, Radio Headspace is science behind them, “surprising and engagingly explained”, that arguably the best. The soothing voice of Andy Puddicombe, the makes them shine. His No. 1 former monk who started tip: deep breathing exercises Headspace, will be “familiar that can boost concentration, to millions as the app’s default improve sleep, cut stress and deliverer of Zen”; it contains even help with chronic pain.

Nora McInerny’s Terrible, Thanks for Asking: “darkly hilarious” many episodes specifically geared to navigating post-pandemic life. Then there’s Terrible, The Blindboy Podcast “has long been the choice of the Thanks for Asking, a “compassionate, darkly hilarious” clever and anxious listener”, said Miranda Sawyer in The podcast from author (and self-described “notable widow”) Nora Observer. Blindboy is an Irish artist, musician and comedian McInerny, in which people “share the unvarnished truth about who frequently discusses depression, agoraphobia and his their darkest moments”. Tempered by an undercurrent of hope, successful experience of cognitive behavioural therapy. A it’s an “ideal companion as we all try to move on from the recent episode featuring a discussion of the human brain with manifold losses of the past year”. neuroscientist Dr Sabina Brennan is a “lovely, encouraging listen”. Finally, there’s How Do You Cope? ...with Elis and But for those of you who roll your eyes at the very idea of “life John, a brilliant, award-winning interview show that covers all coaching”, said Dibdin, let me recommend Kara Loewentheil. manner of mental health difficulties, and is “ideal for all ages”.

A Harvard-educated ex-lawyer, she steers clear of “self-empowerMy main audio recommendation, though, for anyone suffering ment clichés or woo-woo truisms”. Instead, her Unf*ck Your mentally, is to pick whatever you like listening to – be it “music, Brain podcast offers “no-nonsense insights” about how your documentaries, funny shows, BUT NOT NEWS” – and go for a anxious brain “might be sabotaging you” and what to do about walk in the park with your earphones in. “Honestly, that will it. No-nonsense clarity is also the hallmark of the terrific Radio 4 always help.”

THE WEEK 19 June 2021

© JOHAN PERSSON

Podcasts... for people with post-pandemic blues

Film & TV Films to stream Unlike TV sitcoms, films rarely focus on the ordinary routines of working life. But the workplace is at the heart of our collective existence, and seethes with dramatic potential. Here are five comedies that exploit it: Modern Times Chaplin’s first sound film contains some of his most flawless acts of physical comedy. The Little Tramp, in his final screen outing, struggles to keep up with the pace of an ultramodern factory production line. Released in 1936, it is a brilliant satire of the dehumanising effects of industrialisation.

THE FILMS ARE AVAILABLE ON APPLE TV (EXCEPT CARAMEL), GOOGLE PLAY (EXCEPT I’M ALL RIGHT JACK AND CARAMEL) AND AMAZON PRIME

I’m All Right Jack An upper-class twit gets a job at a missile factory, and accidentally triggers an industrial dispute, in this British state-of-the-nation satire from 1959. Skewering both corrupt capitalists and devious unionists, it features a host of star names, including Peter Sellers, Richard Attenborough, Dennis Price and Terry-Thomas.

Office Space A hypnotherapist accidentally leaves an IT worker in a trance that renders him oblivious to the norms of corporate behaviour in this rambling but amusing film. Written and directed by Beavis and Butt-Head creator Mike Judge, it became a cult hit on DVD after flopping at the box office in 1999.

Caramel Nadine Labaki’s Lebanese comedy from 2007 is set in a Beirut beauty salon where the paths of a diverse group of women converge.

Social and religious issues complicate their romantic lives in interesting ways, but the film’s tone is gentle and wonderfully bittersweet.

Up in the Air This witty comedy from 2009 has George Clooney as a smoothtalking “career transition counsellor” – a consultant who fires people on behalf of cowardly bosses. He loves his footloose lifestyle, but is forced to question his values when romance beckons.

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New releases The Father

Dir: Florian Zeller (1hr 37mins) (12A)

★★★★★

Adapted from a play written by its director, Florian Zeller, and anchored by an Oscarwinning performance from Anthony Hopkins, The Father is a film about dementia that is both deeply frightening and unbearably moving, said Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian. Without using “obvious first-person camera tricks”, it puts us inside the head of Hopkins’s character, a “roguishly handsome” widower now suffering from Alzheimer’s. His “affectionate and exasperated” daughter (Olivia Colman) regularly visits him at his elegant west London flat. He suspects she is about to abandon him by moving abroad, but he can’t work out what is going on. His disorientation is evoked by the use of time slips and loops in the film, by subtle changes in the set, and by different actors playing the same characters. It’s as if reality itself is “gaslighting” him.

To enhance this effect, Zeller employs every weapon in the film-maker’s arsenal, from horror lighting to asynchronous sound, said Kevin Maher in The Times. The result is “one of the great cinematic experiences of the decade” – thrilling but also deeply disquieting.

Hopkins delivers a “gargantuan” central performance, encompassing paranoia, selfpity, defiance and a “naked fragility” that is “seismically painful” to witness. The mise-enscène is perhaps a little too clever, said Tim Robey in The Daily Telegraph: it worked better on stage. But the screenplay (by Zeller and Christopher Hampton) and the acting redeem the film. You may not be prepared for how deep Hopkins goes, and Colman is brilliant too, her “bright, make-do-and-mend” manner becoming ever more strained in the face of this “emotional devastation”. In cinemas.

In the Heights

Dir: Jon M. Chu (2hrs 23mins) (PG)

★★★★

It’s a “looser, simpler” musical than Hamilton, but In the Heights – Lin-Manuel Miranda’s

In the Heights: like a “shot of summer holiday”

Broadway hit from 2005 – brims with the same energy, and this film version is like “a shot of summer holiday” to the arm, said Helen O’Hara in Empire. Set in the largely Hispanic neighbourhood of Washington Heights in Manhattan, it features intertwining plot lines about people’s efforts to get on in the world.

Our hero (Anthony Ramos) is a young bodega owner who hopes to return to the Dominican Republic to open a beach bar, but we’re also privy to the dreams of his girlfriend (Melissa Barrera), a straight-A student named Nina (Leslie Grace), and a supporting cast of “salon girls, small cousins and caring grandmothers”.

A “joyous, expansive” account of the immigrant experience, In the Heights looks set to be “the film of the summer”, said Robbie Collin in The Daily Telegraph. Ramos has a “Gene Kelly twinkle”, and the “variety, inventiveness and scale” of the musical numbers is dazzling, with “high-kicking Jacques Demy ensemble routines”, “Astaire-like gravitydefying waltzes”, and “an enormous aquatic number” set in a lido. The film also has a “righteous anger” that can “catch you off guard”, said Phil de Semlyen in Time Out. Its characters struggle for money and opportunity, and hanging over them are the twin shadows of prejudice and gentrification. Still, nothing can suppress the spirit of hope bursting through every frame, nor the music Miranda conjures from the streets. In cinemas.

Time: a gripping, superbly acted prison drama Jimmy McGovern’s new system that “perpetuates three-part BBC prison drama inhumanity anew”?

Time is “just about perfect”, McGovern and director said Hugo Rifkind in The Lewis Arnold “pile on the Times. It stars Sean Bean as claustrophobic menace” until a middle-class teacher, Mark, it feels “as if the violence jailed for causing a death could spill out of the screen”, through drink driving, and said Suzi Feay in the FT. One Stephen Graham as a prison suspected “grass” has a kettle guard, Eric. Mark is an older full of boiling water and sugar man guilt-stricken about his (a mix known as “napalm”) crime, and is “immediately thrown in his face. Another Bean and Graham: perfect clocked as a victim by vicious cuts himself to shreds with young inmate bullies”; Eric is a decent person a razor. As Eric bursts out: “They should all be coerced into bringing in drugs by a gang. A in mental hospitals, not in this nick.” The acting common theme unites their stories and a is superb, said Lucy Mangan in The Guardian, handful of equally “deft” subplots: how is it and the drama becomes more moving and possible “to atone for past inhumanity” in a “enraging” at every turn. “Time well spent.”

19 June 2021 THE WEEK

Art

34 ARTS

Exhibition of the week Tracey Emin/Edvard Munch Royal Academy, London W1 (020-7300 8090, royalacademy.org.uk). Until 1 August The old critical maxim that The “no-holds-barred canvases” here are you should “look at the work, not the life” never characterised by “crimson made much sense with rivulets and dark ominous Tracey Emin, said Tim clots”, “writhing, coupling, pain-stricken bodies” and Adams in The Observer. “a frenzy of thrashing drips Her uncompromisingly confessional work has and lines”. They are the always explored her life “in artistic equivalents of messy close-up”, exposing “an anguished howl “body and soul” for all the reverberating across a world to see. And her work wasteland”. Her selection is as “visceral” as ever in of Munch’s art, meanwhile, this long-delayed exhibition, is “immaculate”: a wall of which pairs her art with ten “intimate, incandescent” that of her hero, Edvard watercolours of female models Munch painted Munch. When Emin was assembling the show – towards the end of his life called The Loneliness of is “tinged with a wistful, the Soul – she had genuine detached eroticism”. An oil reason to believe it might painting of a nude depicts be her last. In June 2020, its subject “with bright red hands, as though freshly she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of dipped in gore”; and bladder cancer that Women in Hospital (1897) It – didn’t stop – I didn’t stop (2019): “a frenzy of thrashing drips and lines” required “radical surgery”. “dwells on the ageing female As she listed with “typical courageous candour”, she had “her body” – a daring subject for its time. There are disappointments, bladder, her uterus, her fallopian tubes, her ovaries, her lymph however: Emin’s sculptures here represent “a misstep”, while a nodes, part of her colon, her urethra and part of her vagina 1998 neon spelling out the words “My c*** is wet with fear” is removed”. Emin, thankfully, has now made a full recovery, an unnecessary evocation of her “YBA glory days”. yet the spectre of impending death haunts every corner of this triumphant exhibition. Bringing together more than 25 of her Emin describes Munch as a “kindred spirit”, said Nancy Durrant works, including paintings, neons and sculptures alongside 18 in the London Evening Standard. Small wonder: seeing their oils and watercolours by Munch, the display demonstrates how work side by side, it is clear that the artists share “a rawness, the Norwegian artist’s anxiety-ridden imagery has informed an honesty and a depth of turmoil that can leave you breathless”.

Emin’s practice since her student days: both have placed a sense Munch’s “painterly influence”, too, is often explicit: Emin’s 2018 of loneliness and anguish at the heart of their art. Beyond this, canvas I came here For you, for instance, feels like a deliberate however, the exhibition brings “everything that Emin has made “echo” of her forebear’s Model by the Wicker Chair (1919-21). and felt and suffered in the past” to “full expression”.

It is all deeply moving – and in Emin’s case, “often distressingly intimate”. Indeed, if there’s one complaint, it’s that “the sheer Although Emin’s contributions to the show actually predate heart-stopping clamour of her paintings is almost too much for her diagnosis, it’s hard not to view them “through the prism Munch’s quieter anguish”. There is “something magnificent of her illness”, said Alastair Sooke in the Daily Telegraph. about that, but my God, it’s a lot”.

It’s likely you’ve never heard of Jan Polish history. Working at a time when Matejko (1838-93), said Melanie McDonagh Poland had been swallowed up by Russia, in the London Evening Standard. In Prussia and Austria, Matejko made it his Poland, however, he is a household name, artistic mission to preserve its national often seen as the country’s greatest artist. identity through art, even as the country’s Now, one of his most famous works is on occupiers attempted to suppress its loan to the National Gallery, where it forms language and consign its collective the centrepiece of a tiny but fascinating cultural memory to history. In this free exhibition – amazingly, the first one painting, though, he paints Copernicus as the institution has ever dedicated to a “a Romantic hero” of a particularly Polish Polish artist. The painting is Matejko’s – and distinctly Catholic – kind. In the vision of the 16th century astronomer background, we see the cathedral of the Nicolaus Copernicus, “one of the greatest Polish city of Frombork, “to pinpoint the Poles” of them all. Copernicus changed the location, but also to bring God into the world’s understanding of science by articuequation” (the fact that the scientist’s lating “the principle that the Earth moves discoveries were condemned as heretical around the Sun”, not vice versa, and – like has been forgotten). The light illuminating Astronomer Copernicus: a “Romantic hero” Matejko – is venerated as a national hero.

Copernicus’s face, meanwhile, is not the Painted in 1873, the work depicts its subject by night, as he glow of the Moon, it is “divine illumination” – a gesture that “gazes upwards, awestruck, his right hand raised as if in wonder, explicitly casts “God on the side of Poland”. No wonder his his left holding an instrument for measuring the heavens”. homeland loves him so “heartily”: this is truly “stimulating” stuff. National Gallery, London WC2 (nationalgallery.org.uk).

Matejko’s main subject was war, said Waldemar Januszczak Until 22 August. in The Sunday Times: the endless battles that characterised

THE WEEK 19 June 2021

© THE JAGIELLONIAN UNIVERSITY MUSEUM, KRAKÓW; TRACEY EMIN. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, DACS 2020

Matejko: Conversations with God

The List

35

Best books… Stephen Mangan

The actor, screenwriter and author chooses his five favourite books. His debut, Escape the Rooms (Scholastic £6.99), for children aged 9+ and with drawings by his sister, the illustrator and designer Anita Mangan, is out now

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, 1861 (Penguin £6.99). A wonderful, gripping story of crime and

guilt, crushed ambition and ruined fortunes, snobbery and anxiety, with a spectacular cast of characters and a beautiful ending. Near perfection.

Don’t Point That Thing At Me by Kyril Bonfiglioli, 1972 (Penguin £8.99). A riot of gags, one-liners and great characters. There’s half a plot in there too, I think. A book that’s fantastic company because, like the best people, it’s exciting, clever, witty, disreputable and occasionally unpleasant.

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾ by Sue Townsend, 1982 (Penguin £6.99). This made me realise that books could speak directly

to me and to my world (obsessing over my forlorn love life, writing bad poetry, harbouring over-earnest convictions). As an adult, you realise Sue brilliantly reflects what’s happening in wider politics and society through the prism of this ordinary household in middle England.

As a kid, you laugh at Adrian’s obsession with the length of his “thing”.

If This Is A Man by Primo Levi, 1947 (Abacus £9.99).

An astonishing account of the author’s time in Auschwitz, written, he said, “with love and rage”. He finds humanity in arguably the bleakest episode in human history.

Almost unbearable.

Titles in print are available from The Week Bookshop on 020-3176 3835. For out-of-print books visit biblio.co.uk

The Week’s guide to what’s worth seeing and reading Showing now

Adapted from the 2001 film, Amélie: The Musical “brings some much-needed silly delight” to post-lockdown audiences (London Evening Standard). Until 25 September, Criterion Theatre, Piccadilly, London W1 (ameliethemusical.com).

The Summer at Snape season continues with two concerts by the Britten Sinfonia, including works by Tavener, Purcell and Elgar (25 and 26 June), and two solo performances by Mercury Award-winner Talvin Singh (19 June). Snape Maltings, Snape, Suffolk (snapemaltings.co.uk).

Designed by South African architect Sumayya Vally, the 20th Serpentine Pavilion “brims with ideas” and references places where London’s migrant communities traditionally gather – from markets to salons to mosques (Daily Telegraph). Until 17 October, Kensington Gardens, London W2 (serpentinegalleries.org).

Book now

Emma Corrin (Princess Diana in The Crown) makes her West End debut alongside Nabhaan

Programmes

Piers Morgan’s Life Stories: Joan Collins The

88-year-old star opens up to Morgan about her sevendecade film and TV career, her ex-husbands and her sister Jackie’s final illness. Sun 20 Jun, ITV1 21:00 (60mins).

The Handmaid’s Tale The

dystopian drama based on Margaret Atwood’s novel returns for a fourth season. On the run, June and her fellow handmaids seek refuge. Sun 20 Jun, C4 21:00 (70mins).

Philly DA: Breaking the Law Documentary series

about Philadelphia’s radical district attorney Larry Krasner, elected in a shock landslide in 2017 on a promise to reform the criminal justice system and end mass incarceration.

Parts one and two: Tue 22 Jun, BBC4 22:00 and 23:00 (60mins each).

Films

An Impossible Love (2018)

Critically acclaimed French drama, set in the 1950s. An unassuming young woman falls pregnant, but her arrogant lover refuses to acknowledge their child. Sat 19 Jun, BBC4 22:00 (125mins).

My Beautiful Laundrette

The Serpentine Pavilion: until 17 October

Rizwan in Anna X, about two striving socialites in New York. 10 July-4 August, Harold Pinter Theatre, Panton Street, London SW1 (haroldpintertheatre.co.uk).

Lucian Freud: Real Lives brings together a selection of the painter’s portraits – alongside sketches and photographs – to explore his relationships with their subjects. 24 July-16 January 2022, Tate Liverpool, Royal Albert Dock (tate.org.uk).

The Archers: what happened last week

Jennifer asks Ed about addiction and he opens up to her. Emma wants to organise a night out for Chris with his mates; Harrison agrees but Fallon has her doubts and doesn’t like how Emma badmouths Alice. Later, Fallon sympathises with a distraught Jennifer – Alice is sick and needs help.

Brian berates Fallon for taking Alice to the pub; Fallon tells him she’s going to keep an eye on Alice and, chastened, he apologises. Later, Fallon talks to Chris about her own childhood and says that if they leave Alice out in the cold, it will be bad for Martha’s future. Peggy admits to Jennifer that she knew about Alice’s alcoholism months ago, and advised Chris to put Martha first. Jennifer is furious and blames Peggy for the current mess. The night out is a flop – Chris is preoccupied and admits how much he misses Alice. He, Harrison and Fallon leave the restaurant and instead go home for chips and TV. Brian and Jennifer suggest rehab to Alice, who refuses. But when Jennifer shocks her into sense, she eventually relents – they’ll beat this together.

(1985) Screened to mark Pride month, Stephen Frears’ comedy-drama about two lovers who open a launderette in south London in the 1980s stars a young Daniel DayLewis, with script by Hanif Kureishi. Sun 20 Jun, Film4 23:15 (115mins).

Viceroy’s House (2017)

Director Gurinder Chadha’s period drama about events leading up to Partition, starring Hugh Bonneville as Lord Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India. Mon 21 Jun, BBC4 20:00 (100mins).

New to subscription TV Feel Good Second season of the critically acclaimed and semi-autobiographical comedy-drama about love and addiction, co-written and starring comedian Mae Martin, with Lisa Kudrow as her mother. On Netflix.

Genius: Aretha An eightpart biopic about the late Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin. On Disney+.

19 June 2021 THE WEEK

© IWAN BAAN

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, 1865 (Penguin £5.99).

Aged ten, I was cast as the Mock Turtle in our school play and, like the old pro I already was, I did my research and read the book. It blew my mind. The odd, funny, upsidedown world of Alice was so eccentric, strange and slightly frightening that I was hooked.

Plus, I had a crush on the Queen of Hearts (the girl in our play, not the one in the book). A hormonal and literary explosion that left me altered forever.

Television

Best properties

36 Properties with remarkable views ▲

Devon: Tuckers, Victoria Quay, Salcombe. One of only a handful of early 19th century fisherman’s cottages located along the sea wall in the popular resort town of Salcombe, this property has wonderful views from the front bedroom over the lifeboat station and across the estuary. Main bed with en-suite shower, guest suite with shower, open plan kitchen/dining/sitting room with sliding doors onto the terrace overlooking the water, southfacing courtyard garden. £900,000; Luscombe May (01548-843593).

▲ Somerset: Highwoods House, Norton-sub-Hamdon. A substantial property with landscaped gardens of almost an acre, in a lovely spot on the edge of this desirable Somerset village. 4 beds, 2 baths, 2 WCs, kitchen, 2 receps, snooker club/bar, boiler room, pantry, study, hall, double garage, timber summerhouse, covered eating area. £895,000; Humberts (01935-477277).

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Dorset: Green i , Weymouth. A first floor flat with impressive panoramic sea views across Weymouth Bay and Ringstead. Main suite, 1 further bed, family bath, open plan kitchen/ double recep, lift access.

Share of freehold. £345,000; Symonds & Sampson (01305-251154).

THE WEEK 19 June 2021

on the market

37

▲ G ynedd: Pen y Coed Hall, Dolgellau. A period

property with a 2-bed cottage, an annexe and an apartment, with views over Dolgellau towards Cader Idris. Master suite, 3 further beds, family bath, kitchen/ breakfast room, 3 receps, pantry, summer house, garden. £685,000; Jackson-Stops (01244-328361).

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Somerset: Combe Florey House, Combe Florey, Taunton. A Grade II 18th century manor with open views across undulating countryside. Main suite, 11 further beds, 7 baths, kitchen/breakfast room, 5 receps, study, office, snug, utility, cellars, 3-bed cottage, summer house, swimming pool, pool house, garaging, outbuildings, gardens, pasture, parkland, 34.56 acres. £5.5m; Strutt & Parker (01392-229405).

County Durham: Coves House, Wolsingham. A compact private estate with a diverse income stream and great views across Weardale. The estate comprises a substantial Grade II* farmhouse, a 2-bed cottage, a bunkhouse and campsite, agricultural buildings including a farm office and stabling, woodland and a pheasant shoot.

Main house: main suite, 5 further beds, 2 baths, kitchen, hall, 2 receps, boot room, laundry, library, playroom, WCs, cellar, stores, 66.5 acres. £1.5m; Finest Properties (01434-622234).

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Devon: Gable End, Weir Quay, Bere Peninsula. On the market for the first time in 30 years, this house is in a fine waterside position overlooking the River Tamar, on a quiet lane on the edge of the Bere Peninsula. Main suite, 2 further beds, family bath, kitchen/breakfast room, 2 receps, garden room, utility, store, garage, courtyard overlooking the river, terraced gardens, orchard and vegetable plot, garage, off-street parking. OIEO £600,000; Stags (01822-612458).

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Devon: Sortridge Manor, Dartmoor, Horrabridge. A Grade II* Elizabethan manor with superb gardens, on the edge of Dartmoor. Main suite with dressing room, 2 further suites, 3 further beds, family bath, kitchen, recep hall, 4 receps, orangery, home office, second kitchen, larder, craft room, yoga studio, workshop, greenhouse, attic rooms, cellar, partly walled gardens, pond and stream, swimming pool and pavilion, landscaped garden, walled vegetable garden, parkland, orchard, copse, 7.5 acres.

OIEO £1.6m; JacksonStops (01392-214222).

▲ London: Star & Garter Mansions, Putney SW15. This first-floor flat, in a prestigious private development moments from the River Thames and Putney Bridge, is bright and spacious, with three-metre-high ceilings throughout. 2 double beds, family bath, kitchen, large recep. £630,000; Chestertons (020-3040 8444).

19 June 2021 THE WEEK

LEISURE Food & Drink

39

What the experts recommend 111 by Modou 111 Cleveden Road, Glasgow (0141-334 0111) “You’d need a heart of stone” not to be moved by the story of how this restaurant came into being, said Marina O’Loughlin in The Sunday Times. Previously called 111 by Nico, it was part of the empire of Nico Simeone, the Glasgow-born chef behind the hugely successful Six by Nico chain, which offers diners “accessible, affordable six-course tasting menus”. Last year, Simeone decided to hand over his “baby” to 26-year-old Modou Diagne – an immigrant from Senegal and former rough sleeper who had joined the restaurant as kitchen porter in 2013, before rising up its ranks to become head chef. In its new guise, the restaurant serves a five-course tasting menu, which costs a “gentle £35”. It still bears the imprint of its founder, but no doubt Diagne will “find his own, more unique voice” in time, and for now it’s an excellent place to eat – offering “exhilarating”, technically accomplished cooking which won’t break the bank. £35 per person for five courses; each course has three options and dishes change regularly.

Casa Madeira 46b Albert Embankment, London SE1 (020-7735 0592) I have driven past this Portuguese restaurant in Waterloo hundreds of times, as it’s on my route home from central London, said Jay Rayner in The Observer.

concludes – inevitably – with “burnished” pastéis de nata, accompanied by a glass of a caramel-coloured Madeira. You do need to “cultivate patience” here – some dishes take a while to arrive – but it’s definitely well worth it. Starters: £4-£9.50; mains £7.50-£20.50.

Pompette: a “masterclass in hospitality”

I clocked the “tables beneath the umbrellas”, and the “clusters of people leaning over their plates”, but for some reason I never visited. Now that I have, I feel foolish: this place is so good (and its prices so reasonable), I should have started coming years ago. Its kitchen doesn’t go in for “flummery”; instead, “solid ingredients” are “treated with due care and attention”. Thumbnail-sized white clams come in a garlicky broth, which demands to have bread dipped into it. Lamb chops are “expertly trimmed”, while grilled sardines come with their skins “blistered and curled, so that the flesh comes away from the bone”. Our meal

Pompette 7 South Parade, Summertown, Oxford (01865-311166) Given that bread is the “simplest thing”, it’s amazing how many restaurants do it poorly, said Tim Hayward in the FT. Not at Pompette, a French restaurant in Oxford: its baguette is a “proper chew, encapsulating a creamy, aerated crumb”.

It raises expectations for the meal ahead – and I’m pleased to say they’re not disappointed. To start with, there’s a “joyous” steak tartare, “shot through with copious soft green herbs”. Turbot is grilled “rare-at-the-bone”, and comes with a beurre blanc so “rich, emollient and abundant that I had to order chips with which to wipe it up”. A cheese course is “thoughtfully curated”, and there’s a lovely pistachio tart to round things off.

Chef Pascal Wiedemann (formerly of Terroirs in London) runs the place with his wife, Laura, who oversees the excellent front-of-house. Between them, these two deliver a “masterclass in hospitality”: this is the sort of “neighbourhood brasserie you dream of”. Starters: £9.50-£14.50; Mains: £16.50-£32.00.

Recipe of the week: lemon tart We like to use Amalfi lemons for this tart when they are in season, but any lemons are fine, say the Boglione family.

Whichever type you choose, it’s a good idea, if you can, to heat them above the stove before squeezing them: this will soften the fruit and help release their juices.

Serves 4 For the sweet pastry: 150g unsalted butter, softened 75g caster sugar 235g strong white flour 15g ground almonds ¼ tsp salt 2 large egg yolks 2 large eggs ½ a vanilla pod, seeds removed and whisked into the egg zest of ½ a lemon for the lemon curd: 2 large eggs 3 large egg yolks 125g caster sugar ¼ tsp cornflour 3 tbsp finely grated lemon zest, from about 4 lemons 115ml lemon juice, from about 3 lemons 85g unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

• Butter and flour a 23cm tart tin. Begin by

making the pastry. Cream the butter and sugar together in a large bowl, then sift in the dry ingredients and add the eggs, vanilla and lemon zest. Mix gently until you have a light, soft pastry. Add a spoonful more flour if it is very sticky. Wrap the dough and rest in the fridge for at least 20 minutes.

• Once rested, roll out the pastry until it is around 5mm thick and about 5cm larger than the tart tin all the way around, then press gently into the case. Rest again in the fridge for 20 minutes while you preheat the oven to 180°C. • Once chilled, line the case with baking paper and baking beans, making sure they’re pushed

into every indent of the case, which helps ensure crisp edges. Blind bake for around 25 minutes, until golden brown. Leave to cool.

• For the lemon curd, whisk together the eggs, egg yolks, sugar and cornflour in a medium saucepan. Whisk in the lemon zest and juice.

Cook over a medium-low heat, stirring constantly, until thick enough to coat the back of a wooden spoon – it should take about 7 minutes.

• Remove from the heat and whisk in the butter, a piece at a time. Pour the filling into the cooled tart shell. Bake for about 30 minutes, or until the filling is browned, slightly puffed and set. Cool completely before serving.

Taken from Petersham Nurseries by the Boglione Family, out now at £65. Visit petershamnurseries.com.

To buy from The Week Bookshop for £52, call 020-3176 3835 or visit theweekbookshop.co.uk.

19 June 2021 THE WEEK

40

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Consumer New cars: what the critics say

Toyota Mirai

from £53,995

The Daily Telegraph Toyota is hoping this second-generation Mirai will be the car that persuades us to “make hydrogen a very real part of our automotive future”.

It has a range of up to 400 miles, and the “swooping” four-door coupé lines that are favoured in premium saloons. Crucially, it can also compete with battery electric rivals on price. It would be an “instant hit”, if only there were more hydrogen filling sites.

LEISURE 41

What Car? This version of the Mirai is certainly “sleeker” than its “frumpy” predecessor.

The inside has a mix of buttons and digital tech, some of which is not as easy to use as rival setups. A reversing camera comes as standard, and a self-parking system is on offer in top-trim cars. It is spacious in the front, but the three hydrogen tanks raise the floor in the rear, and the boot is a disappointing 325 litres.

The best… turntables

Top Gear This is not a car for those who like a wild ride. On the road, it is “gentle, smooth and comfy like a Sunday afternoon”. The 180bhp motor gets it from 0-62mph in 9.2 seconds, and the steering is “mute but accurate”. So it is not a sports saloon, but it has a supple ride and tackles corners well for such a “big, luxurious” car. There is plenty that is “ordinary” about it – and that is “precisely the point”.

▲

Clearaudio Concept MM If you’re looking for the ultimate in sound quality, this multiple award-winner is the one to splash out on. It’s much simpler than many of its topend rivals, as most variables are set for you at the factory (£1,390; analogueseduction.net).

Tips of the week… how to plan an extension

▲ Audio Technica AT-LP5X With a particularly good sound for the price, the new AT-LP5X is precise and well-built, despite its plastic base.

It has a USB connection so you can transfer your vinyl onto a computer (£329; johnlewis.com).

And for those who have everything…

Rega Planar 3 Turntable incl.

Elys 2 Cartridge The reliable Planar 3 has been a top record player since the 1970s, but owing to a new tonearm and cartridge, its sound quality has been raised to a new level (£685; hifix.co.uk). ▲

▲

House of Marley Stir It Up This upgraded model looks great and is sustainably made from solid bamboo, recycled plastic and aluminium. It connects wirelessly to speakers or headphones via Bluetooth (£230; argos.co.uk).

Where to find… crafting short breaks

● Meet up with at least three architects.

Check The Royal Institute of British Architects for contacts, or find accounts you like the look of on social media. ● Ask yourself the practical questions: who is the space for? What will they be doing in it and when? Will your household’s needs change over time? ● If your main aim is to increase your home’s value, the best extensions are: loft conversions that add a bedroom; basement utility rooms; garages turned into living space; side returns to expand kitchens. ● Ones to think more carefully about: wine cellars, swimming pools, media rooms/ home cinemas, conservatories. ● Look at ways of bringing more light into the house. You cannot have too much. ● Bear in mind that in every area, there is a ceiling price for property. In other words, if you spend beyond a certain amount, you won’t make the money back when you sell, however amazing the work.

Perfect for adventurers, Hytensil’s reusable travel cutlery set has antimicrobial properties, designed to kill 99.9% of MRSA and E.coli organisms. The extendable and detachable spork and knife come with a hard carry case, and have been fieldtested by the British Army and the SAS. £15; hytensil.co.uk

Learn to make pen and ink art on this drawing retreat in the North York Moors.

Your base is Larpool Hall, a Georgian mansion with views over the Esk valley (from £405; 25-28 Sept; hfholidays.co.uk).

Stay at Bluebell Lane Glamping in County Armagh and learn the art of Celtic woodturning (from £238; notintheguidebooks.com).

Brownsea Island in Poole Harbour is home to a thriving population of red squirrels – and so is a perfect place to learn wildlife photography (£595; next course 14 Sept; wildlifeworldwide.com).

You can learn pottery on the Eastnor Castle estate, near the Malvern Hills. Stay at the Deer Park Campsite (£12 per tent) overlooking the castle (£280 for two days; eastnorpottery.co.uk).

Make wire-wrapped jewellery from glass naturally weathered by the sea on the Isle of Wight, and stay in a “tiny home” (£340 for two nights; tinyhomesholidays.com).

SOURCE: THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

SOURCE: FINANCIAL TIMES

SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN

19 June 2020 THE WEEK

SOURCES: WHAT HIFI?/THE INDEPENDENT/T3 3

▲

Pro-Ject Debut Carbon Evo With a “warm and detail-rich sound”, this is a great all-round model that lets you switch between 33 and 45rpm records at the touch of a button.

It’s easy to set up, but it requires a separate preamp (£449; premiumsound.co.uk).

Obituaries

42

The polymath behind the “six thinking hats” Edward de Bono, who has died aged 88, was a doctor, a management guru, and the self-described inventor of “lateral thinking” – devising creative and unorthodox solutions to problems large and small. Although his critics argued that to claim to have invented creative problem-solving was like claiming to have invented poetry, or grief, his books – which he promoted with a “salesman’s flair” – sold in their millions; and he himself fizzed with ideas, said The Daily Telegraph. Towns, he declared, could solve their traffic problems by obliging motorists to leave their lights on when they park. As for the Arab-Israeli conflict, the solution was Marmite.

The theory went something like this: owing to the bread in the region being unleavened, local populations are deficient in zinc (which is found in yeast) – and being deficient in zinc makes people belligerent. Therefore, shipping over the yeast spread would be a cheap and easy way of paving the way to peace.

Edward de Bono 1933-2021

De Bono: a “salesman’s flair”

De Bono believed that there was never one right answer, which led him down some quirky paths, said The Times. “Should cars have square wheels,” he once mused, as he sped in a taxi around Hyde Park Corner. More seriously, he proposed that a “mood” code could replace standard communication. For instance, rather than saying “Mum, I need your help, but please don’t lecture me,” a teenager might just say “Code 8/1”. And rather than telling his wife not to blow a row out of proportion, a husband might just say “Code 13/8”. Edward de Bono “is one of the very few people in history who can be said to have had a major impact on the way we think”, he observed, on his own website.

Not everyone agreed with his own estimation of his work. There were those who accused him of peddling inanities and “pseudoscience”, and who “dismissed as psycho babble his coining of

terms such as ‘operacy’ (the skill of thinking leading to action)”. But in business, he had many devotees: he established an international network of courses, and countless big businesses adopted his most famous technique – the “six thinking hats”. This proposed that during meetings, each member of a team adopt a fictional coloured hat to represent a different approach – yellow for sunny optimism, black for negativity or realism, green for creativity, etc. In a meeting, he said, a manager might say, I’ve heard from the black hats, now I want to hear what the yellow hats have to say. If ideas weren’t sparking, the greens would be asked to contribute. Executives said it made meetings calmer, quicker and more productive. De Bono also argued forcefully and convincingly that schools, with their narrow curriculums and emphasis on testing, were stifling children’s creative instincts – and leaving many who were intelligent and capable feeling like failures.

Edward de Bono was born in Malta in 1933. His father was a physician, his mother a former Tatler journalist. He was educated at a local boarding school where his nickname, he said, was “Genius”. At the age of 15 he went to the Royal University of Malta to study medicine. Qualifying six years later, he then won a Rhodes scholarship to Christ Church, Oxford, where he studied psychology and physiology and rowed for the university. He published his first book, The Use of Lateral Thinking, in 1967; more than 60 others would follow. Many of them were bestsellers, and he became very rich. Yet he also found time to practise medicine for several years, and to teach it. He was consulted by everyone from Nasa to the Foreign Office; and even had an exoplanet, formerly known as Planet DE73, named after him: Edebono. He predicted that his epitaph would be: “Here lies Edward de Bono, lateral to the last.” His 1971 marriage to Josephine Hall-White ended in divorce. He is survived by their two sons.

American socialite who gave it all up for God died, and she began to see a different future for herself. On her 61st birthday, she threw a party for 800 friends at the Hilton, where she walked around with a helium balloon tied to herself reading “Here I am”, so that people could find her to say their goodbyes. She told her guests: I have dedicated the first 30 years of my life to myself; the second I dedicated to my children; the last I shall dedicate to God. One of them reported that it was like “a funeral, a tragedy, only there is the victim, looking serene and happy”.

Ann Russell was born in San Francisco in 1928.

Having given away all her possessions, she flew Her father was chairman of Southern Pacific, to Chicago the next day, and knocked on the which ran the railways in much of the West. She door of the convent. There, she swapped her Miller: slept on planks was interested in the Church as a young woman – comfortable home for a cell, and her fine clothes but put any thoughts she may have had of a life dedicated to God for a coarse habit and sandals. The order is secluded, so she never to one side when she fell in love with Richard Miller. She was 20 again went out into the world. She was a regular correspondent, when they married. He was also a Catholic, and by the time she but was only allowed one visitor a month – and they had to sit was 27, they had had five children. She went on to have five behind two sets of iron bars. One of her sons, Mark, had seen more. Their home was a nine-bedroom mansion overlooking San his mother only twice in 30 years. “Our relationship [was] Francisco Bay, where they entertained the likes of Nancy Reagan complicated...” he said in a tweet. However, her eldest daughter, and Loretta Young; her calendar was a whirl of charity work, Donna, said she felt that her mother’s decision had made sense. A galas, opera visits, Mediterranean cruises and skiing trips, strict Catholic, Ann saw everything in black and white, she said; interspersed by regular trips to the Elizabeth Arden beauty salon but her children and grandchildren lived in grey areas. Instead of – and daily attendance at Mass. Then, in 1984, her husband having to try to control them, she could simply pray for them.

THE WEEK 19 June 2021

© MARK MILLER

Sister Mary Joseph of the Trinity, who has died aged 92, was a nun of the cloistered Order of Discalced Carmelites.

Or rather, that is who she was for the last 30 years of her life, said The Daily Telegraph. Before she renounced all worldly things, she was Ann Russell Miller – a hard-partying, fast-driving American socialite, with hundreds of friends, a shoe collection that was said to make Imelda Marcos’s look “pitiful by comparison”, and ten children with her businessman husband.

Ann Russell Miller 1928-2021

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CITY Companies in the news ...and how they were assessed

CITY 45

Boeing/Airbus: truce at last

President Joe Biden’s diplomatic mission to Brussels this week has yielded at least one “tangible” result, said The Wall Street Journal. The US and EU have finally called a truce ending – or at least suspending for five years – a 17-year-old trade fight over government subsidies to plane-makers Boeing and Airbus. The deal comes “at a crucial time” for the companies as they “wrestle with the pandemic-driven downturn in air travel”. It also ends “the longest and most costly” dispute in the World Trade Organisation’s history, which had escalated way beyond aviation to encompass goods including tractors, wine, cheese and whisky. Under the deal, both sides will remove tariffs on some $11.5bn worth of goods, though separate tariffs imposed on imported EU steel and aluminium under the former president Donald Trump remain in place “and will likely take longer to unwind”.

The accord “turns the page on a key conflict” in Trump’s trade war, setting the stage “for a new era of transatlantic cooperation over state aid, at a time when China is vying to displace the Boeing-Airbus civil aircraft duopoly”, said Bloomberg. China’s statesponsored aviation giant Comac “is on track to become a legitimate rival in global planemaking by the end of the decade”. As the US Trade Representative, Katherine Tai, observed: “We are finally coming together against a common threat.”

BrewDog: bully beef

BrewDog has carefully cultivated its image as the “post-punk, apocalyptic, mother****** of a craft brewery”, said Hannah Boland in The Daily Telegraph. But last week, the Scottish brewer “lost its bark” when an open letter accused the company, and founders James Watt and Martin Dickie, of creating a “rotten” culture that left employees feeling “burnt out, afraid and miserable”. The duo, who founded the company in 2007 and grew it, via crowdfunding, into the largest craft brewer in the UK, have both apologised.

But the allegations come at a sensitive time, as the brewer “eyes expansion into the US and a potential stock market float”. All the more so, given the whiff of hypocrisy, said Louisa Clarence-Smith in The Times. BrewDog trumpets its elite “B Corp” ethical business certification, which it is now in danger of losing. We’re beginning to see a pattern here, said Alex Brummer in the Daily Mail. Uber had to be “dragged through the courts” over workers’ rights, which were also a factor behind Deliveroo’s stock market flop. “Instead of resetting the dial for workers, some millennial and GenZ firms seem to have a feeble grasp of what a company built for all stakeholders looks like.”

NewsUK: setting Sun

Many insults have been flung at The Sun over the years, but few can have stung Rupert Murdoch more than the discovery that “the tabloid brand that helped build his global media empire” is now “worthless”, said Alex Barker in the FT. After “a bleak year” which left News Group Newspapers nursing a pre-tax loss of £201m as the pandemic hit print advertising and circulation, the group has written down the value of its Sun titles to zero. The estimate is based on the assumption that the titles “would not return to positive growth”. The Sun was the UK’s bestselling paper for 42 years before losing its title to the Daily Mail last year. NewsUK has experimented with various digital models and has tried to expand into audio, betting and gaming. Even so, The Sun seems to be setting.

Seven days in the Square Mile The UK Consumer Prices Index rose to its highest level for almost two years in May, jumping to 2.1% as the easing of lockdown sparked a rise in consumer spending. But the biggest single cause was fuel prices, affected by the rise of crude oil. The price of Brent crude has shot to above $74/barrel as demand recovers. The UK inflation rise echoes more dramatic moves in the US and China. The 9% rise in Chinese factory gate prices and America’s 5% hike in consumer prices are the highest since the 2008 financial crisis.

UK business leaders warned that the night-time economy and the hospitality industry were facing a “cliff edge” as a result of the longer pandemic restrictions. But economists argued that the damage to the economy would be “relatively slight”. The ONS reported that the number of UK payrolled employees increased for the sixth consecutive month to 28.5 million.

The Government extended its ban on landlords evicting firms for unpaid commercial rent by nine months.

Goldman Sachs delayed plans to bring all UK staff back into the office, but James Gorman, boss of rival Morgan Stanley, argued that anyone “happy going to restaurants” should return to work. Ikea was fined s1.1m for spying on workers in France. The price of bitcoin rallied above $40,000 after Elon Musk changed tack and endorsed the cryptocurrency. Stobart Air collapsed, leaving some passengers stranded.

BT/Altice: French fox in the hen house?

BT boss Philip Jansen has been looking for an outside investor to speed up and finance the roll-out of superfast fibre in Britain. “But no one expected the cavalry to arrive quite so precipitously,” said Alex Brummer in the Daily Mail. The City was stunned by news that the Franco-Israeli telecoms tycoon Patrick Drahi has stealthily amassed a 12.1% stake, worth £2.2bn, putting him in the driving seat as BT’s biggest shareholder.

around for toilet paper and printer refills”.

It’s reasonable to believe Drahi’s claim that he’s “supportive”, said The Sunday Times.

Nonetheless, his swoop has “ignited a debate about the future of the former state monopoly” and the possible spin-off of Openreach. He might seem “cuddly” now, but “he is a fox, and BT should be on guard”.

If Drahi ever entertained thoughts of a takeover, it would probably be thwarted by The billionaire – who owns a swathe of the new National Security and Investment telecoms networks globally via his company Act, said The Observer. More likely, he has Altice, as well as auctioneer Sotheby’s – spotted a money-making opportunity. Having insists this isn’t a prelude to an all-out hit an 11-year low last summer, BT’s stock Drahi: a history of ruthless cost-cutting takeover. His stated aim is to help BT’s has been steadily rising. But the company is infrastructure arm, Openreach, wire up 25 million UK households still valued at a relatively lowly £19bn, when some analysts by 2026. Still, Drahi has a history of “financial engineering”, believe that Openreach alone could be worth as much as £30bn. asset-stripping and ruthless cost-cutting. When he bought the If BT can deliver on that promise, “Drahi will add considerably” French telco SFR, “staff reportedly found themselves scrambling to his own fortune of nearly £9bn.

19 June 2021 THE WEEK

46 CITY

Talking points Issue of the week: a new dawn?

The landmark trade deal with Australia has revived old divides over Brexit

“You give us Tim Tams, we give you from those fearing a flood of cheaper Australian beef (although a cap on tariffPenguins; you give us Vegemite, we give you Marmite,” Boris Johnson told the free imports for 15 years offers some Australian PM, Scott Morrison, as he protection). And the perception of accepted a hamper of Australian food “selling out our farmers” will be a gift in the Downing Street garden to seal to Scottish nationalists. The real reason the new trade accord, said The Sydney Brexiters are so excited about this deal is Morning Herald. Johnson hailed the that it “locks in” Brexit. “By signing up deal, which is still to be fleshed out in to new trade deals” the hope is “we will move further, faster and irrevocably detail, as a “new dawn” in the UK’s relationship with Australia. Projected to away from the EU”. Yet Brexiters are lift UK GDP by just 0.02%, it isn’t of only free traders when it suits them.

“Those cheering on” this Australian great economic significance to Britain, free trade deal are the same people who but it has huge significance symbolically as the first trade deal that Britain has “ripped up a more advanced deal with negotiated from scratch since it left the a far more advanced market”: the EU. EU. As well as scrapping tariffs on a Morrison and Johnson: Vegemite and Tim Tams “There are admittedly grounds to cavil,” range of goods including whisky, pharmaceuticals, cars, machinery and tractors, Britain will “gain said The Times. “A deal with an economy of 25 million people on greater access to Australian markets for services”. It’s also a boost the other side of the globe cannot compensate for trade frictions arising from Britain’s exit from the European single market.” for freedom of movement – increasing the working holiday visa age limit from 30 to 35, and giving “Australians and Britons a And it’s troubling that “there are no apparent plans to open it to total of three years to live and work in each other’s countries”. parliamentary or business scrutiny”; the Treasury will not publish an impact assessment. But even if the deal is incomplete and its The real importance of this deal is that it “sets the template effects limited, there should be no objections to it. “Liberalising of future agreements”, whether for “the wider Trans-Pacific trade even on a bilateral basis is economically beneficial.” This Partnership, or the supposed big prize, the US”, said David deal is “likely to be a template” for how the Johnson government, Gauke in the New Statesman. But there are clear “political risks”. and its successors, “create a new place for Britain in the Conservative MPs in rural constituencies may face a backlash international order”. As such, we should welcome it.

Making money: what the experts think

International Investment Trust and Stone the crows, said the Artemis Global Patrick Hosking in The Select Fund, in the FT. Times. “For the second Indeed, the benchmark month running, global Nikkei index “is second investors say they only to the US in actually like the UK growth terms over the share market.” past decade” – it has According to Bank generated “returns of of America’s latest close to 10% a year”, snapshot of sentiment, “A China proxy with better governance” even as “deflation and 4% more institutions demographics” have are “overweight” in dragged down economy. the One reason is UK equities than “underweight” in them. that, ten years ago, “deeply out of favour” “This is very rare. Before last month, Japanese shares were trading “on very low international investors had been net multiples”, or even below their “book negative about the UK every month since value”. Another is that reforms initiated by March 2014” – and “you have to go back former PM Shinzo Abe have made shares to 2003 to find another month when the more attractive. Japan houses a long list of UK was in vogue”. The recent bullishness companies “that most of us know well”, is likely to be because UK stocks are and its automation sector is particularly “comparatively cheap”. Moreover, the attractive. It also taps into the China and successful vaccine roll-out bodes well for Asia growth story – you might consider it a decent economic bounce, and “banks and miners” – a speciality of the FTSE 100 “a China proxy with better governance”.

– are “in fashion”. The “embarrassing ● Getting a slice truth”, though, is that the FTSE 100 has There’s an abundance of managed climbed by just 25% in the past 20 years, Japanese funds based in the UK, said while the US S&P 500 is up by 250%. It’s Trustnet. Among those worth checking high time that gap narrowed. out are the Fidelity Japan Trust, which is strong on technology, a Man GLG Japan ● Japanese joy Core Alpha (good for a value-seeking Another island nation with a reputation approach), and Baillie Gifford Shin for rooking investors is Japan. But it’s Nippon, which majors on smaller and actually undeserved, said Simon Edelsten, earlier-stage companies. co-manager of the Mid Wynd ● Footsie fetish

THE WEEK 19 June 2021

Lordstown: a cautionary tale The Wall Street boom in special purpose acquisition vehicles (Spacs) may have subsided, but there could be plenty of car crashes ahead, said Robert Cyran on Reuters Breakingviews. Since January 2020, there have been 587 US Spac listings worth $190bn in total, “and it’s a good rule of thumb that such rapid financial innovation on Wall Street usually stores up problems”.

This week, Donald Trump’s favourite electric pick-up truck maker, Lordstown – once valued at $5bn after using a Spac to go public – hit the skids. After admitting that the firm had “overstated the quality of its book of pre-orders” and “might not remain as a going concern”, the CEO and CFO have quit.

Lordstown’s Steve Burns “fancied himself as the next Elon Musk”, said The New York Times, and bought the shuttered General Motors factory in Lordstown, Ohio. But the “early hoopla” faded when it transpired the company did not “have enough money to start making its truck”. Its shares only started trading in October, after it merged with blank-cheque company DiamondPeak Holdings. “Since then, it’s been one disaster after another,” said Robert Cyran – raising doubts about the “due diligence” accompanying Spac listings. Having a clear case of what can go wrong, like Lordstown, “will strengthen the case for regulators to take more hands-on action”.

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panies of interest y and well-being: Victrex

Investors who care about sustainabiility should look to the UK

By Ketan Patel, fund manager, EdenTree Responsible & Sustainable UK Equity Fund

T

he UK has been rather neglected by global investors in recent years. As a result, the equity market has been a relative laggard. However, several factors are now converging to make the UK a more attractive destination for investors.

Despite ongoing administrative issues, large-scale Brexit uncertainty has largely been put behind us. Meanwhile, a successful vaccine development programme and rollout means that the UK has gone from being one of the economies hardest hit by Covid to one of those recovering most rapidly. The latest GDP figures reveal that growth is accelerating fast now that lockdowns are easing, and pent-up consumer demand is straining to be unleashed.

Central banks seem likely to err on the side of looser monetary policy to prop up the recovery. Public spending also looks set to remain supportive: the government drive to cut carbon emissions by investing in alternative energy infrastructure and reducing our reliance on fossil fuels, alongside a wider global appetite for ESG (environmental, social and governance)

investing, implies ongoing support for “green stimulus” spending. In all, the UK is once again emerging as an “investable” destination, and its status as a relatively cheap market in a world full of expensive assets should make it all the more appealing.

EdenTree Investment Management is a pioneer in sustainable investment. The EdenTree Responsible & Sustainable UK Equity Fund launched in 1988, making it one of the first ethical equity funds accessible to private investors in the UK. The fund seeks to invest in a portfolio of companies that make a positive contribution to society and the environment through sustainable and socially responsible practices. It focuses particularly on industries where the UK boasts strong leadership.

Many market-leading companies in areas such as healthcare, engineering and infrastructure are listed in London.

Here are just three examples of British companies who are market leaders in sectors that are key to creating a more sustainable future for us all. All three boast high profit margins, strong balance sheets (a key factor in ensuring resilience in an uncertain world), and wide moats (a dominance of their sector or high barriers to entry that mean they have a durable competitive advantage).

market leader in highce materials, specifically PEEK polymers, with a huge range of ns in industries ranging from to medical devices. The use of r materials in vehicles can rease fuel efficiency, while trex also works on solutions to prove battery performance and ability for electric vehicles. In health sector, more than 13 ion devices using PEEKMA polymers have been nted across a wide range of al applications from joint tion to dentistry.

ble use of water: Porvair Filtration

As climate change climbs ever higher up the political agenda, the efficient use of our most vital resource – fresh water – is only going to become an ever-bigger issue.

Porvair Filtration is a global leader in the development and supply of high performance, innovative materials and solutions for filtration and separation. Its products are used in everything from sewage treatment plants to desalination (critical in areas where water scarcity is becoming more of a problem) to irrigation (vital if we are to maintain and improve crop yields to feed the global population).

Porvair products are also used in developing technologies that could lead to cleaner energy solutions, such as clean coal, gasification and other alternative energies.

Consumer safety: Strix

When it comes to energy and water efficiency – not to mention consumer safety – Strix is a world leader. If you’re having a cup of tea while you read this, chances are that it’s a Strix device that switched your kettle off when it came to the boil. The group also has a growing business in water filtration and steam management.

For more information on the EdenTree Responsible & Sustainable UK Equity Fund, go to edentreeim.com/uk-equities

Brought to you by

This document has been produced for information purposes only and as such the views contained herein are not to be taken as advice or recommendation to buy or sell any investment or interest thereto. Please note that the value of an investment and the income from it can fall as well as rise as a result of market and currency fluctuations, you may not get back the amount originally invested. Past performance is not necessarily a guide to future returns. EdenTree Investment Management Limited (EdenTree) Reg. No. 2519319. Registered in England at Benefact House, 2000, Pioneer Avenue, Gloucester Business Park, Brockworth, Gloucester, GL3 4AW, United Kingdom.

EdenTree is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and is a member of the Investment Association. Firm Reference Number 527473.

Commentators The premature ending of the furlough James Moore The Independent

Markets and the inflation conundrum Philip Aldrick The Times

Big Tech must start thinking bigger James Titcomb The Daily Telegraph

Mourning the slow death of the trading pit Robin Wigglesworth and Philip Stafford Financial Times

The furlough scheme is “high on the short list of things that the Government has done well during the pandemic”, says James Moore. “It has largely kept a public health crisis from morphing into a full-scale jobs crisis.” So it beggars belief that ministers are willing to sully this achievement by allowing the scheme to “taper” off next month, in the teeth of continued pandemic restrictions. As well as paying national insurance contributions and pension payments for furloughed employees, as they do now, hard-hit companies will also have to start contributing 10% of their wages, at a time when revenues may be severely reduced.

The Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, is understandably concerned about the scheme’s impact on public borrowing. “But pushing large parts of UK plc onto the hard shoulder” is the worst way to address debt. What is needed is “recovery and growth”. The failure to control the Delta variant is down to the Government’s own mismanagement of UK borders. It is “shameful” to make British businesses and workers “pay for its errors of judgement”.

“What on earth is going on in bond markets,” asks Philip Aldrick.

When US inflation hit 5% last week (more than double the target and well above forecasts), you might have expected bond markets to go ballistic. But instead of jumping in line with higher inflation expectations, the yield on benchmark 10-Year Treasury bonds “defied convention and fell”. That “phlegmatic” reaction is a marked contrast to the first quarter when, “amid mounting fears of a price spiral”, bond yields soared from 0.95% in early January to 1.75% in March – the equivalent of three base rate rises. So what changed? “Markets are guided by narratives, with the most compelling story determining behaviour” – and the narrative has simply shifted. The big fear in January, articulated by the “prophet of inflation”, economist Larry Summers, was that President Biden’s $1.9trn recovery plan was “excessive”. Lately, though, traders have warmed to the view of central banks that a “temporary” spike will abate as the economy returns to normality. Markets, in short, “aren’t panicking” about inflation – until, of course, a new story succeeds in shaking their belief.

When I moved to San Francisco in 2018, the combined value of tech’s “big five” (Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Amazon) was $4trn, says James Titcomb. Three years on, that has doubled to $8.5trn. Shouldn’t some of that cash do more to benefit society? For all the contribution these “great businesses” have made to communication, access to knowledge and the facilitation of commerce, something is missing. “Silicon Valley has precious little to say about the great challenges of our time”, like climate change, or the rising cost of healthcare, education and housing. Arguably, rather than creating “an age of abundance”, they have merely created “an abundance of distractions”. Wages, labour productivity and life expectancy have all flatlined on their watch. These businesses – “the richest, most influential entities on Earth” – are not obliged to embrace “a positive vision of change”.

But without one, they are viewed as “subjugators of democracy, or rent-seeking monopolists”, ripe for break-up. “If Silicon Valley wants to save itself, it can start by changing the world.”

To the joy of many traders, the London Metal Exchange has reversed an earlier decision to close “The Ring” – the last major trading pit in Europe, say Robin Wigglesworth and Philip Stafford. The hope is that by adopting “a hybrid approach”, the exchange will “placate both traditional members, who preferred the open outcry pit”, and the LME’s “larger merchant trader and financial participants, who backed the move towards electronic trading”. Trading pits – immortalised in pop culture by the movie Trading Places – have long been the stuff of legend, the arenas where “many titans of finance learned their trade”. But they’ve been dying out around the world as trading has shifted “into the world of algorithms”. Covid “has killed off some of the last bastions”. Veteran traders may mourn the end of “the maelstrom of people in coloured jackets shouting and jostling, marking deals on enormous blackboards and recording the end-of-day results with Polaroid cameras”, but most temper nostalgia with realism.

As one New York trader observes: “It was a great experience, but things change. It was also exciting to drive a horse and carriage.”

CITY 49 City profiles Andrew Lloyd Webber “Possibly the most garlanded composer alive,” Andrew Lloyd Webber is also one of the most determined, said Jan Dalley in the FT. The theatre impresario, who made his fortune with musicals such as Cats and Evita, has said he is “prepared to face a jail sentence” rather than accept any further delay to the opening of his latest show, Cinderella, which is due to start previewing on 25 June.

The Conservative peer argues that large-scale productions are only sustainable with full-capacity houses, and claims to have “the mother of all legal cases” against the Government. The PM may be listening, said The Guardian. Ministers have stated that Cinderella “could be exempt” if chosen as one of the “pilot events” that will go ahead in the next month.

Kanye West

In a year when “almost everyone was wearing jogging bottoms and a hoodie”, Gap should have cleaned up, said Zoe Wood in The Guardian. But like other “heritage brands”, it has struggled of late. Step forward Kanye West. The ailing retailer has enlisted the US rap megastar to collaborate on a range of clothing under the Yeezy Gap label in a ten-year deal.

The clamour for the venture’s first piece of kit – a $200 bright blue unisex puffer jacket – was so intense that it crashed the retailer’s website. There have already been “skirmishes”: West has demanded a seat on the board and he has also threatened to quit. But even if it is “a bumpy ride”, the prize is huge. When the Yeezy deal was announced it boosted Gap’s depleted market value by $700m.

19 June 2021 THE WEEK

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THE WEEK 19 June 2021

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Shares

CITY 51

Who’s tipping what The week’s best shares

MJ Hudson Group The Mail on Sunday MJ Hudson operates in a growing niche market, advising small start-ups, pension funds and giants, such as Goldman Sachs, on alternative investment services. Revenues set to grow 35% with soaring profits. Buy. 50p.

PZ Cussons The Daily Telegraph The Carex and Imperial Leather owner’s turnaround is gathering pace. Shares are up 36% as it focuses on hygiene, baby and beauty brands in the UK, Australia, Indonesia and Nigeria. Buy. 245p.

Safestore Investors Chronicle Strong UK demand, boosted by a booming housing market and e-commerce, has driven a sharp rise in occupancy at the UK’s largest self-storage provider.

Investing digitally and expanding in the UK, Spain and France; has outperformed the wider market. Buy. 945p.

Serco Group The Times Serco’s reform plans were derailed by the pandemic. But revenues, margins and profits are rising, and the divi has been reinstated. Should benefit as governments globally turn to outsourcing to repair public finances. Buy. 134.5p.

Tirupati Graphite The Daily Telegraph The graphite miner is making groundbreaking graphene wire, which is light, strong, stretchy and conducts electricity and heat efficiently. Could revolutionise the aircraft and motor industries. Worth a punt. Buy. 90.5p.

Luceco 400

Chair sells 4.5m

350

300

250

200

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

Shares in the lighting products specialist have risen sixfold since their “Corona crunch”.

Revenues are set to surge 50%.

Epic Private Equity, founded

by Luceco’s chair Giles Brand, has sold shares worth £15.1m, retaining a 22.1% stake.

…and some to hold, avoid or sell

Form guide

Avacta Group The Daily Telegraph Lateral flow tests for professional use have been approved in the UK, and this biotech company, which majors on cancer immunotherapies, expects product registration in the EU to follow shortly. Hold. 238p.

Capital Ltd The Mail on Sunday Capital provides services, including earthmoving and geological analysis, to gold miners such as Barrick Gold and Centamin. The business is cyclical, but demand is at record levels and contracts are long-term. Hold. 82p.

Paragon Banking Group Investors Chronicle The buy-to-let mortgage specialist’s lending levels have leapt 45% as landlords add to their portfolios. Recovery remains unpredictable, but new savings tie-ups with Monzo and Hargreaves Lansdown are promising. Hold. 539p.

Capita The Sunday Times The beleaguered outsourcer, one of the Government’s big suppliers, is “still in the doldrums”. New plans to simplify have been derided as “in the red zone on the bolloxometer” and profits are down 67%. Avoid. 40.72p.

GlaxoSmithKline The Daily Telegraph Given the involvement of activist hedge fund Elliott Management, more change is likely as GSK splits into consumer health and pharma.

But long-term prospects look sound thanks to a strong drugs pipeline. Hold. £13.52.

Workspace Group Investors Chronicle The flexible office-space provider has slipped into loss as rent per square foot fell 13% last year (since stabilised).

Enquiries and viewings are at pre-pandemic levels, but return to growth depends on restrictions lifting. Hold. 889p.

Shares tipped 12 weeks ago Best tip Quadient The Daily Telegraph up 15.04% to s24.78 Worst tip ITM Power The Times down 20.95% to 367.6p

Market view “You need to have your eyes wide open about what is coming next.”

Gergely Majoros of Carmignac warns that calm markets have fostered complacency.

Quoted in the FT

Market summary Key numbers for investors FTSE 100 FTSE All-share UK Dow Jones NASDAQ Nikkei 225 Hang Seng Gold Brent Crude Oil DIVIDEND YIELD (FTSE 100) UK 10-year gilts yield US 10-year Treasuries UK ECONOMIC DATA Latest CPI (yoy) Latest RPI (yoy) Halifax house price (yoy) £1 STERLING

15 Jun 2021 7172.48 4083.20 34218.80 14080.15 29441.30 28638.53 1865.60 73.72 2.92% 0.76 1.50

Best and worst performing shares Week before 7095.09 4056.56 34616.06 13877.85 28963.56 28781.38 1888.40 71.76 2.94% 0.77 1.53

2.1% (May) 3.3% (May) 9.5% (May)

$1.411 E1.164 ¥155.190

1.5% (Apr) 2.9% (Apr) 8.2% (Apr)

Change (%) 1.09% 0.66% –1.15% 1.46% 1.65% –0.50% –1.21% 2.73%

WEEK’S CHANGE, FTSE 100 STOCKS RISES Price % change 628.00 +9.07 Auto Trader Group 1426.20 +8.28 Royal Dutch Shell B 1484.60 +7.28 Royal Dutch Shell A 197.35 +6.24 BT Group 2834.00 +5.86 Halma FALLS Anglo American Antofagasta Land Securities Group Persimmon British Land

Following the Footsie 7,200

7,000

6,800

2999.00 1468.50 703.20 3091.00 505.40

–5.78 –5.62 –4.33 –4.13 –3.88

FTSE 250 RISER & FALLER 1310.00 Oxford Biomedica Aston Martin Lagonda 1958.50

+14.10 –9.40

Source: Datastream & FT (not adjusted for dividends). Prices on 15 Jun (pm)

6,600

6,400

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

6-month movement in the FTSE 100 index

19 June 2021 THE WEEK

SOURCE: INVESTORS CHRONICLE

Go-Ahead Group The Times Shares in the transport group have fallen since the Government announced rail reforms. But as well as Southeastern and GTR, the group runs some 6,000 buses, and passenger numbers are recovering. Buy. £11.91.

Directors’ dealings

The last word

52

Inside the mad world of NFTs All of a sudden, in the world of art and collectibles, non-fungible tokens are everywhere. But what are they? And what does it mean for a digital image to sell for tens of millions of dollars? Waldemar Januszczak investigates They came from outer space, at least that’s how it felt. One moment there were no NFTs in the universe. The next moment they were popping up everywhere and multiplying crazily. It was like an episode of Doctor Who or, less fortunately, like the arrival of a virus. Art was imitating life.

I first became aware of NFTs, or Nifties, as the friendlier writers had renamed them, in the art press. It was late February this year. At an internet auction in America, a graphic artist who called himself Beeple had reportedly sold an NFT of a naked Donald Trump, covered in graffiti, for $6.6m (£4.7m). Slumped by a pavement, looking dead, the naked Donald had the word LOSER scrawled on his back. “Wow”, we gaped collectively.

it home, hang it on a wall, keep the receipt and it’s ours. But inside the digital world, different circumstances prevail. If you, like Beeple, create snippy digital cartoons – he does a new one every day, and posts them on a website called beeple-crap.com – anyone can access those images and download them. And being digital, the downloads have the same value as the original artwork. Anyone can save them to their computer, open them, stare at them, like them. What they cannot do is own them.

That’s where Nifties come in.

Using a digital security system called blockchain, developed for the trade in cryptocurrencies, Nifties are a way of recording your possession with an unbreakable and unhackable digital padlock.

If you’ve bought the NFT for a Beeple artwork for a zillion bitcoins or a gazillion ethereum, the blockchain guarantees that you own it. It doesn’t matter how many other bored screen-gazers around the globe continue to look at it – it’s yours, not theirs. You have the digital token to prove it.

Beeple’s real name is Mike Winkelmann. It turned out that giggly digital surrealism was his forté – characters from Toy Story chainsawing caterpillars; President Lincoln spanking a baby Trump; Trump and Hillary Clinton sharing Trevor Jones’s Bitcoin Angel: sold 4,157 copies in seven minutes a spacesuit. Dumb and jokey, it was art for airheads, easy to make if you knew how to instruct a NFTs were first put to collecting use by basketball fans. This computer. So why in Buzz Lightyear’s name did it cost so much? was all the way back in 2019 when the National Basketball Art prices had been rocketing since the first lockdown. A Association (NBA) in America issued a set of video clips, called bored generation of nouveau riche collectors, with holes where Top Shot, in which stars of the game could be seen scoring knowledge and taste should be, had discovered a fresh video spectacular points. Fans could buy and collect these Top Shots as NFTs. They were like digital versions of the old football cards game: bidding for art. Staring at their screens all day and all night, drifting ever freer of reality, they had transformed that used to be found inside cigarette packets, where members of England’s 1966 World Cup-winning team could be collected overspending into the new normal. Still, $6.6m was a standout and stuck in a scrapbook. The playgrounds of Britain shuddered quantity of wonga. once to the sobs of tiny Bobby Charlton lovers desperate to NFT stands for non-fungible “A generation that had grown up glued to a swap a Nobby Stiles. token. Back then – just before the third lockdown – we screen had discovered a new enthusiasm that issuing Top Shots as NFTs, innocents in the British art world didn’t involve moving an inch: bidding online” By the NBA made the digital clips didn’t even know what fungible extra desirable. Everyone could meant, let alone NFT. So a mad look at LeBron James scoring a super-dunk for the Lakers, but scramble through online dictionaries ensued, and after a few you alone owned the Top Shot. Within days it had sold as a Nifty minutes’ furious tapping, we were up to speed on the crypto fad. for $200,000. A Zion Williamson block for the New Orleans “Fungible” is a legal adjective used in deals and transactions to Pelicans quickly matched it. It was like persuading football fans describe something that can be exchanged for something else of to bid for an action replay of Goal of the Month on Match of the the same value. “Non-fungible” is the opposite. Non-fungibles Day. If it was your team, you were tempted. If you were a gambler, cannot be exchanged or swapped. And if this inability to be you were tempted too, because you could sell your NFT on the exchanged is formalised, with a token recording your possession, Top Shot website’s marketplace. The combination of sports you have something that can belong only to you – your very own ardour and crypto hyperbole quickly led to a collecting frenzy. non-fungible token.

So it’s all about ownership. Outside the digital world, the palaver would be meaningless. If we buy a painting in a sale, we take THE WEEK 19 June 2021

As soon as it saw the noughts, the art world wanted in. Beeple, who had been issuing his carcinogenic cartoons for 13 years

The last word without too many people noticing, was persuaded to jump into bed with a new internet franchise called Nifty Gateway. Taking the success of the NBA basketball cards as its model, Nifty Gateway began mounting regular auctions of digital art for a new audience of techno-savvy rich kids, weighed down by bitcoin and ethereum.

53 went live, it spurted to $24m.

I was in shock. By the time the clock ran out on the auction, Everydays had soared to $69m, which made it the third highest price ever paid for a living artist, beaten only by David Hockney and Jeff Koons.

As fate would have it, the following week we had Hockney Few of these cyber-millionaires on the podcast, so I asked him could tell the back of a Rembrandt what he thought of NFTs. “I call them ICSs,” he guffawed, from the front. What they wanted, instead, was poppy internet “international crooks and swindlers.” Hockney makes digital imagery that reminded them of art, too, but the images are then their skateboarding days and that Beeple’s art on display in Beijing time they earned a record number printed to make them tangible.

His quip about ICS made its way into the international press, of hearts in the videogame The Legend of Zelda. A generation that had grown up glued to a screen had discovered a new and eventually to Beeple himself. Taking to Twitter, the newly enthusiasm that didn’t involve moving an inch: bidding online. enmoneyed digital art tycoon responded with excellent sarcasm.

And arriving on cue to assist them in their inactivity was a virus He wanted, he said, to “go legit” and buy himself a printer. His that glued the entire world to its seat. budget, he whooped, was $69m.

All this happened at LeBron James speed. Nifty Gateway was launched in March 2020 by identical twins with techy backgrounds, the unfeasibly named Duncan and Griffin Cock Foster. Inspired by the success of Top Shot, the Cock Fosters decided to expand the reach of NFTs into digital art. “Nifty Gateway was founded with a very simple mission – to make Nifties accessible to everyone,” shouts their auction website.

They forgot to add “… as long as you’re loaded”.

By this time, the name of the Christie’s super-buyer had also emerged. He turned out to be an ethernet tycoon from Singapore who calls himself MetaKovan. MetaKovan’s plan was to build a virtual museum and fill it with the 5,000 Beeples. He’d already rehearsed the plan with 20 Beeple images he’d bought earlier and put in a virtual museum called the B20. Visitors to the virtual museum could buy shares in it. The shares started out at under $2 a pop. By the week of the Christie’s sale, they had risen to $28.

In October 2020, Beeple put up Thus invigorated, a ragbag of “By the beginning of the week Everydays had an image on Nifty Gateway of crypto explorers began circling a snorting bull wrapped in the reached $2m. Days later it was up to $6m. On the NFT money tree. The American flag, engulfed by a of Twitter, Jack the morning of the sale it spurted to $24m” co-founder storm of dollar bills. It was called Dorsey, sold his first tweet for Politics Is Bullshit. A hundred $2.9m. Mick Jagger announced copies were available, at a dollar each. As a further enticement to that his new song, Eazy Sleazy, was going to be available as a would-be purchasers, the artist had added his own explanation: charity Nifty. In February, Trevor Jones set a new record for “ok first off it’s a f***ing dollar, if you need extra convincing the most expensive NFT edition by selling 4,157 copies of his from some BS artist’s notes wether you want to spend a dollar on painting Bitcoin Angel – Bernini’s Ecstasy of Saint Teresa with this i will punch you in the god damn face. smash the buy button a giant bitcoin in the background – for $777 each. It took seven ya jabroni.” We’re not talking Shakespeare here. minutes. You do the maths.

The army of jabronis did exactly as they were instructed. Beeple’s endollared bull began selling and reselling at an extraordinary lick. In December 2020, another of his offerings screamed its way to $500,000 – in five minutes! Today, if you want one of the 100 numbered NFTs of Politics Is Bullshit, and you’re lucky enough to locate an example, you’ll need to fork out a million dollars for it.

In the crypto jargon of NFTs, putting something up for sale on Nifty Gateway is called making “a drop”. But the true drop here is in human values and tangible common sense. Sitting at home in the twilight, punching mad noughts into a keyboard is archetypal Covid behaviour. In the dysfunctional conditions created by the virus, unreality has boomed.

In March this year, Beeple’s magnum opus, called Everydays: The First 5000 Days, came up for auction at Christie’s in New York.

It was a digital collage of everything he’d made since he began his daily output in May 2007. By chance, I was recording my podcast at the time, Waldy and Bendy’s Adventures in Art, and we decided to cover the sale, live.

Bendy is the art historian Bendor Grosvenor, who used to be a dealer. In the build-up, the two of us had squabbled gently about the price Everydays might fetch. Bendy suggested $3m. I laughed.

By the beginning of the week it had reached $2m. A couple of days later it was up to $6m. On the morning of the sale, as we

It couldn’t last. All over the art press, puzzled writers began worrying about scams and bubbles. A careful trawl through Beeple’s 5,000 Everydays revealed a smattering of images that were deemed racist and homophobic. Serious concerns were growing as well about the environmental impact of the Nifty craze. Crypto technology leaves huge carbon footprints. NFTs gorge on electricity. A French artist called Joanie Lemercier, who had built a reputation as an enemy of carbon emissions, “dropped” six new examples on Nifty Gateway and watched them soar to tens of thousands of dollars. Only later did he work out that the instant sale had consumed the same amount of energy as working in his studio for two years.

A Dutch economist called Alex de Vries, founder of the Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index, estimated that by late 2017, the bitcoin network was using up 30 terawatt hours of power a year – the same as the Republic of Ireland. Right now, he estimates, it’s three times more: about the same as Norway. The cryptocurrency ethereum, with which MetaKovan paid for his record-breaking Beeple, needs as much energy to run as the whole of Libya.

These are terrible figures. They add hefty baggage to a declining situation. Bad art, bad politics, bad environmental impact – things are not looking good for the NFT. It’s clear as crystal the bubble will pop. The question is when.

This article first appeared in The Sunday Times. © 2021 News UK 19 June 2021 THE WEEK

Crossword

55

THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1265

This week’s winner will receive an T Ettinger (ettinger.co.uk) travel pass E case (assorted colours), which retails c a at £105, and two Connell Guides (connellguides.com).

An Ettinger travel pass case and two Connell Guides will be given to the sender of the first correct solution to the crossword and the clue of the week opened on Monday 28 June.

Email the answers as a scan of a completed grid or a list, with the subject line The Week crossword 1265, to crossword@theweek.co.uk. Tim Moorey (timmoorey.com) ACROSS 6 Who might have aroused valid ovation around outskirts of Napoli? (7,7) 9 Times casual worker in short (5) 10 Eleanor catches loud boring chap back home from Tours (2,7) 11 Mediocre while in old stronghold (2,1,4) 14 Controls the market where streets meet 15 Own about 50? Make that 25! (5) 17 Black bird seen in Afghanistan (3) 18 Part of flight that could end in landing (5) 19 Theatrical gimmicks hard to get in rural areas (7) 20 Figures for anaesthetists?

22 Macho sort misused Zoom facilities (4,5) 24 Extreme elements rejected, Muslims leave the county (5) 26 Who could have orchestrated Brahms nocturne? (6,8)

DOWN 1 Minute fragment in first half of dictionary (4) 2 I like nothing about new colour (6) 3 Rake path and bin tons (4) 4 Listener with old money in reserves (8) 5 Corrupt and X-rated European standard (10) 6 Subject developed in cosy starship? (12) 7 Disease? Do confine it! (9) 8 Stirring espresso don’t put out this! (7,5) 12 Key for a depressed Army officer? (1-4,5) 13 After one disembarked, coaches left in entrance (9) 16 Organise secret do with partner (8) 21 Notes with gardens said to get potting wrong (6) 23 Congress reported but for only a little time (4) 25 Russian and Gilbert’s partner?

Not half (4)

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Name Address

Clue of the week: Too much port gets daughter going! (4, first letter O) Hoskins, The Independent Solution to Crossword 1263 ACROSS: 8 Staple 9 Diagonal 10 Teas 11 Mascarpone 12 Tiered 13 Spotless 15 Snap 16 Trike 17 So-so 19 Offering 21 Admire 22 Cincinnati 25 Neat 26 Whistler 27 Nutter DOWN: 1 Athenian 2 Apostrophe 3 Bermuda Triangle 4 Ados 5 Naval operations 6 Coop 7 Cannes 13 Sting 14 Last-minute 18 Surfaced 20 Flight 23 Cast 24 Airy Clue of the week: It often gets thrown on entrance to church (8) Solution: CONFETTI (C + anag of “it often”) The winners of 1263 are Liz and Lee Potter from Edinburgh The Week is available from RNIB Newsagent for the benefit of blind and partially sighted readers. 0303-123 9999, rnib.org.uk/newsagent

8 7 4 5 2 8

6 7 3 5

2 5 4

9 6 9

7 1 7 9

Sudoku 807 (easy)

2 1 9

6 5 9 2

7 3 5 8

5 2 3

8 3 7

Fill in all the squares so that each row, column and each of the 3x3 squares contains all the digits from 1 to 9

Solution to Sudoku 806

3 1 5 7 2 6 4 9

2 9 7 3 4 8 6 5

1 4 8

6 4 8 1 9 5 3 2 7

7 2 9 6 8 3 5 1

4 5 6 9 1 7 2 8

8 3 1 2 5 4 9 7 6

5 8 2 4 3 1 7 6

9 7 4 8 6 2 1 3

1 6 3 5 7 9 8 4 2

Charity of the week Stop Hate UK is a leading national organisation working to challenge all forms of hate crime and discrimination – based on any aspect of an individual’s identity – providing independent, confidential and accessible reporting and support

for victims and witnesses.

It deals with a diverse range of reports including disability, gender identity, race, nationality, religion, belief and sexual orientation, and its helpline (0800138 1625) offers 24hr/365 days a year service, across its reporting range.

Chief executive Rose Simkins says: “The Stop Hate Line gives victims and witnesses of hate crime a safe and independent place to talk about their experiences and explore their options for taking things further.” You can find out more by visiting stophateuk.org.

Tel no Clue of the week answer:

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19 June 2021 THE WEEK