Forgery and cover-ups at the BBC
Jackie Weaver’s moment in the spotlight
How pigs can n ugh breathe throu their bottoms
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PEOPLE P 10
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29 MAY 2021 | ISSUE 1333 | £3.99
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What happened
What the editorials said
The Bashir scandal
The BBC apologised and ordered a review of its editorial policies following the publication last week of a damning report into Martin Bashir’s famous 1995 interview with Diana, Princess of Wales. The inquiry, led by the former Master of the Rolls Lord Dyson, found that Bashir faked documents to gain access to Diana through her brother, Earl Spencer, and obtain the Panorama interview. These deceitful methods, the inquiry found, were later covered up by a “woefully ineffective” 1996 internal investigation led by Tony Hall, the then-director of news, who later became the BBC’s director-general. Hall left that post last year, and this week he resigned as chairman of the National Gallery.
“What is the BBC for,” asked The Daily Telegraph. Now that its commercial rivals more than match it for drama, sport and light entertainment, the broadcaster justifies the licence fee on the basis of its unique ability to provide honest, balanced news. The Bashir story shows how groundless that “sense of moral superiority” is. The BBC insists it will learn lessons from the scandal, but it said much the same after “the Jimmy Savile episode and Newsnight’s disgraceful traducing of Lord McAlpine”. Its smug, self-reinforcing culture never changes. The BBC’s promises of reform will certainly “ring hollow”, said The Times, until it gives a full account of the cover-up, and its bizarre decision to re-hire Bashir in 2016.
Prince William said his mother had been betrayed “not just by a rogue reporter”, but by BBC bosses; he said Bashir had fuelled Diana’s paranoia, and that the interview had worsened his parents’ relationship. Bashir, who resigned as the BBC’s religious editor earlier this month, said he was “deeply sorry” to Princes William and Harry for any upset he’d caused, but insisted he remained “immensely proud” of the interview, and did not believe he had harmed Diana (see page 22).
What happened
What the editorials said
A fragile ceasefire Hamas and Israel have each claimed victory following an 11-day conflict in which more than 240 Palestinians, including 66 children, and 12 Israelis, two of them children, were killed. The fighting – the most intense in years – was brought to an end on Friday by an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire. But both sides have warned that it could resume, and tensions remained high: Palestinian protesters clashed with Israeli police at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque compound after the ceasefire came into force; and this week, police shot dead an attacker who’d stabbed an Israeli soldier and civilian.
The bloodshed may have been halted, said The Economist – but it would be naive to expect the calm to last. “Fighting between Israel and Hamas has become almost routine” since the Islamist group took control of Gaza in 2007, and it’s sure to flare up again. For Hamas, after all, “fighting ‘the Zionist invaders’ is its raison d’être”: it has fired over 4,000 rockets at Israel in the latest conflict, most of which were repelled by Israeli defences. Israel, in turn, feels it must respond to Palestinian aggression: this time, it did so with hundreds of air strikes on Gaza, an enclave both sides are content to leave as a “festering pit of misery that periodically erupts”.
Dogs can be trained to sniff out Covid-19 – and they can do it far quicker than any test – and with more accuracy than some tests – new research suggests. The six dogs in the study (which has yet to be peer reviewed) were able to correctly detect Covid on people’s clothes 94 out of 100 times. This compares with a 58%-77% accuracy rate for lateral flow tests, and 97.2% for PCR tests. And they made their diagnosis in less than a second, even in people with a low viral load.
Netanyahu thought he’d broken the cycle with last year’s Abraham Accords, said The Times. That deal, which normalised ties with Bahrain and the UAE, seemed to bolster his view that Israel could “prosper best by sidelining” the Palestinians. But his plan has been “shattered” by a conflict that was supposed to remain walled off in the West Bank, and held back in Gaza by the Iron Dome, spilling over into fighting between Jews and Arabs in Israel.
Bombed-out buildings in Gaza
The US responded to the ceasefire by promising to restore relations with Palestinians which had been “neglected” by the Trump administration. On a trip to the area, Secretary of State Antony Blinken pledged to help rebuild Gaza. He also met Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, who thanked the US for “firmly supporting Israel’s right of self-defence”.
It wasn’t all bad
The BBC emerges badly from this scandal, said The Independent, but its journalism is “still widely respected and trusted” – and rightly so. The failings exposed by this affair can be addressed without axing the licence fee, much as the BBC’s rivals might like that. Stronger editorial procedures, and better protection for whistle-blowers, would help. Matt Wiessler, the graphic designer who drew up the fake documents for Bashir, later alerted BBC bosses, and was blacklisted for his pains. Had he been heeded, “much of the trouble that followed would have been avoided”.
Bashir: “rogue reporter”
An unknown artist whom locals have dubbed the “Borrowdale Banksy” has been using local stones to create striking artworks at locations around the Lake District. Pictures of the structures, three of which have been found so far, were shared online by the Borrowdale Institute – a local community centre – after walkers sent them in. Carl Halliday, who operates a mountaineering business in the area, said that although he’s normally unsure about manmade structures in nature, “this was different. It seemed sensitive to the existing environment and complemented the already stunning views.“
It has been estimated that every year, 16,000 cheap, polystyrene bodyboards are abandoned on UK beaches – often after a single use, as they break easily. Rangers in Newquay reckon they pick up 20 of them a day in the high season. Now, in an effort to tackle the problem, bellyboard manufacturers are sending wooden boards to surf shops in Devon, Cornwall and Sussex, to lend to holidaymakers for free. They hope beachgoers will see how much fun the wooden boards are – and be dissuaded from buying plastic ones in future.
COVER CARTOON: HOWARD MCWILLIAM THE WEEK 29 May 2021
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2 NEWS
…and how they were covered
NEWS 3
What the commentators said
What next?
This scandal has been “a very long time coming”, said Andy Webb in the Daily Mail. Shortly after Bashir’s interview aired, The Mail on Sunday reported that it had been obtained in a dodgy way. But after the BBC’s internal probe dismissed any suggestion of malpractice – Hall claimed that Bashir was an “honest” and “honourable man” – the story was quietly forgotten. In 2007, I wrote to the BBC making a request under the Freedom of Information Act to see all the documents relating to that internal inquiry. It replied, implausibly, that none existed. When I asked again last year, it sent 67 documents, which I shared with Diana’s brother. He then publicly criticised the BBC, prompting it to commission Lord Dyson’s report.
Director-general Tim Davie has admitted that it was “a big mistake” for the BBC to re-hire Bashir in 2016, and says a “quick” investigation is under way into why it happened; he pledged to publish the findings next week. Davie also said there would be a “legal discussion” about compensation for Wiessler and other BBC whistle-blowers.
It’s a shameful story, said Alan Rusbridger in The Guardian. “The question is, what should happen now?” Scandals generally require heads to roll, but nearly all of the executives involved in this saga have either moved on or died since Bashir’s interview was aired more than 25 years ago. And in that same period, the BBC’s governance system has had several major overhauls. The latest handed editorial supervision of the BBC to the independent regulator Ofcom, which, incidentally, has identified very few cases of journalistic malpractice by the BBC in recent years. That hasn’t stopped people calling for further reforms. The Tory peer Lord Grade has suggested an independent editorial board of trusted experts to oversee BBC journalism. Another idea is to create a new BBC post of editor-in-chief, said Anita Singh in The Daily Telegraph. In the days of Lord Reith, director-generals were able to perform that role at the same time as running operations, but combining those jobs has become unmanageable. More governance is not the answer, said Tom Bower in The Spectator. Most of the BBC’s recent problems can be traced back to the fact that it is run by “ambitious bureaucratic deskjournalists” who don’t have the experience and judgement to know when stories don’t stack up. The last thing the BBC needs is yet another layer of managers. “The BBC is suffocated by bureaucrats. Programme-makers, not in-house politicians, should rule to save the BBC.”
The crisis comes at an awkward time for the BBC, says Jane Merrick in the I newspaper. A midterm review of its charter is due next year, and the broadcaster will shortly face stiff competition from the new GB News channel, chaired by former BBC presenter Andrew Neil, which is set to launch on Sunday 13 June.
What the commentators said
What next?
As “exhausted” Gazans ventured outside after Friday’s ceasefire, they contemplated a “city in ruins”, said Louise Callaghan in The Sunday Times. Piles of rubble from flattened buildings lined the roads; crowds stared in disbelief at a 40ft crater in a once busy street; broken pipes spewed sewage into gutters. Yet while many were “visibly shocked”, others waved Palestinian flags and honked their horns in jubilation, convinced their side had triumphed. It was tempting for both sides to think that, said Mark Stone on Sky News. By presenting itself as sole defender of their rights, Hamas feels it has galvanised support among Palestinians, and put the quest for Palestinian statehood in the international spotlight. Israel feels it has “depleted Hamas’s ability to strike”. And Netanyahu feels that by casting himself as “defender of the nation”, he has strengthened his hand against the opposition parties which are seeking to oust him following March’s inconclusive elections.
Talks between Israeli opposition parties aimed at ousting Benjamin Netanyahu continued this week. His failure to form a coalition government after March’s election opened the door for opposition leader Yair Lapid to try to strike a deal with smaller parties ahead of a 2 June deadline.
Yet in reality, the causes of this conflict are no closer to being resolved, said Mehul Srivastava in the FT. The latest flare-up was triggered in part by the attempts of Israeli settlers to use property laws that “favour Jews over Arabs” to evict 13 Palestinian families in East Jerusalem. That fight over the homes in the Sheikh Jarrah area is the wider conflict writ small, “a symbol of the vast tracts of Palestinian land confiscated by the Jewish state over decades of occupation”. It’s a dispute with only one solution, said Jonathan Tepperman in Foreign Policy: “the creation of an actual, viable country called Palestine alongside a physically secure Israel”. Yet at present, neither side looks willing to work towards that end: Israel prefers to ignore the issue; the Palestinians show scant interest in any compromise. And while history shows that calls for “national self-determination can’t be ignored forever”, it also tells us that “combatants rarely make peace before they’re ready – no matter how much outsiders push and cajole them”.
The US vowed to reopen its Jerusalem consulate, to help restore ties with Palestine. On a visit to Ramallah, Antony Blinken said the Biden administration would ask Congress for $75m (£53m) in aid for Palestine as part of a package that includes 1.5 million doses of Covid vaccines.
THE WEEK
To mark its 200th anniversary, The Guardian recently ran an article listing the worst errors of judgement in its history. During the American Civil War, its editorial column supported the Confederacy, and regarded Abraham Lincoln as a dangerous fraud. In 1857, it cheered on the suppression of the Indian Mutiny, citing Britain’s “inherent superiority”. It disapproved of the suffragettes; it expressed doubts about the young NHS, suggesting it might swell the ranks of the “less gifted”. My favourite was the great editor C.P. Scott declaring in June 1914: “It is not to be supposed that the death of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand will have any immediate or salient effect on the politics of Europe.” It’s a salutary warning against chronological snobbery; every age has its blind spots. What are ours? Consider this week’s Last Word, a harrowing account of the Chinese government’s internment camps in the Xinjiang region. China is a state that interns its own citizens in their hundreds of thousands, torturing and “re-educating” them. It’s also a state that we buy... well, practically everything from: it has recently overtaken Germany as the UK’s largest importer. I’m not saying there’s a simple equation between Chinese businesses and the Chinese government, much less a clear policy we should adopt in response. But, with the benefit of hindsight, I suspect our morally superior grandchildren may be surprised at how much energy we spent agonising over Theo Tait the crimes of the past, and how little over the crimes of the present. Subscriptions: 0330-333 9494; subscriptions@theweek.co.uk © Dennis Publishing Limited 2021. All rights reserved. The Week is a registered trademark. Neither the whole of this publication nor any part of it may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publishers
Editor-in-chief: Caroline Law Editor: Theo Tait Deputy editor: Harry Nicolle Consultant editor: Jenny McCartney City editor: Jane Lewis Assistant editor: Robin de Peyer Contributing editors: Simon Wilson, Rob McLuhan, Catherine Heaney, Digby Warde-Aldam, Tom Yarwood, William Skidelsky Editorial staff: Anoushka Petit, Tigger Ridgwell, Aine O’Connor, Georgia Heneage Editorial assistant: Asya Likhtman Picture editor: Xandie Nutting Art director: Nathalie Fowler Sub-editor: Monisha Rajesh Production editor: Alanna O’Connell Editorial chairman and co-founder: Jeremy O’Grady Production Manager: Maaya Mistry Production Executive: Sophie Griffin Newstrade Director: David Barker Marketing Director (Current Affairs): Lucy Davis Account Manager/Inserts: Jack Reader Account Director/ Inserts: Abdul Ahad Classified: Henry Haselock Account Directors: Jonathan Claxton, Joe Teal, Hattie White Advertising Manager: Carly Activille Group Advertising Director: Caroline Fenner Founder: Jolyon Connell Chief Executive, The Week: Kerin O’Connor Chief Executive: James Tye Dennis Publishing founder: Felix Dennis THE WEEK Ltd, a subsidiary of Dennis, 31-32 Alfred Place, London WC1E 7DP. Tel: 020-3890 3890 Editorial: 020-3890 3787 Email: editorialadmin@theweek.co.uk
29 May 2021 THE WEEK
Politics
4 NEWS Controversy of the week
The Australian deal What should “global Britain” look like? That question lies at the heart of Cabinet tensions over the planned trade deal with Australia, said Sean O’Grady in The Independent. In one corner is Liz Truss, secretary of state for international trade, who backs tariff-free access to the UK for Australian goods, including beef, lamb and wheat. In the other is the agriculture secretary George Eustice and his predecessor, Michael Gove, who fear its effects on British farms. Would a flood of cheap Australian meat drive down prices? Would we have to accept its lower animal-welfare standards, such as battery chickens and hormone-fed beef? In theory, ministers are committed to maintaining food standards, but Australia will fight hard on the issue. For now, the “free-traders” have won, said George Are British hill farms doomed? Parker in the FT. Boris Johnson has backed a zero-tariff, quota-free trade offer. The deal – which Truss hopes to seal at next month’s G7 summit – proposes a 15-year transition period to allow British farmers to adapt. Minette Batters of the National Farmers’ Union warned it would cause “the demise of many, many beef and sheep farms across the UK”. That’s unlikely, said Dominic Lawson in The Sunday Times. Even if current Australian beef exports to the UK increased tenfold, it would only amount to about 2% of our beef and veal consumption. But the Australia deal still really matters, because it’s the first genuinely new post-Brexit free trade agreement, and the first step to joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership – the $9trn free trade area in which Australia is a big player. Getting into fast-growing markets in Asia and the Pacific was a key objective of the Leave campaign. So was “cheaper food”. Our hill farmers already receive up to 70% of their income in grants, to produce the meat equivalent of “domestic hand-built automobiles”. But cheap, mass-produced food is what the public seems to want. I’m a free-trade Brexiteer, said Isabel Oakeshott in the Daily Mail. But the idea of meat from Australia’s mega-farms in British shops appals me. I have visited Grassdale Feedlot, the largest beef farm Down Under. It is 25 times the size of Britain’s largest cattle farm. The animals “rarely see a blade of grass”, and are “pumped with hormones and antibiotics”. Ministers must make it “crystal clear” that we expect higher standards. Johnson has promised to look after British farmers, said Rafael Behr in The Guardian, and to protect them from cut-price competition. Maybe he will honour those pledges, “but it would be out of character”. The Australian deal is likely to go ahead. It may not, in itself, change much: its real significance will be in the precedent it sets for when the UK attempts to strike a bigger trade deal, with the US. Other countries are now watching closely to see if we “roll over” on questions such as animal welfare and environmental standards, said David Henig in Prospect. To do so in the rush for a deal would be a mistake. Our “post-Brexit path” starts with Australia. We’ve got to get it right.
Spirit of the age One of the first videos to go viral – Charlie Bit My Finger – has been sold to an anonymous bidder for $760,999, and will now be taken off YouTube. The 2007 clip of a baby, Charlie, gnawing on his brother Harry’s finger was put up for sale by the boys’ parents as an NFT (non-fungible token) – a certificate to say you own something digital. The video has been watched more than 880 million times. The Beano has decided that Bash Street Kid Fatty Brown – motto “everything’s delicious!” – will, from now on, be referred to by his real name, Freddy. The comic’s editors said they’d received several letters querying the nickname, though it is always used affectionately, and that they wanted to celebrate kids of “all shapes and sizes”.
THE WEEK 29 May 2021
Good week for:
Cinemas, which reported better than expected sales, of both tickets and popcorn, over their reopening weekend. The Vue chain said that 40% of its screenings had been sold out. The wet weather, and the release of Peter Rabbit 2, are said to have helped drive the much-needed box office boost. Les Dennis, the comedian, actor and erstwhile TV game show host, who revealed that he is about to make his operatic debut. Dennis, 67, will appear as Sir Joseph Porter in an English National Opera production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore, which opens at the London Coliseum in October. British billionaires, with news that they have proliferated during the past year, despite the economic turmoil. According to The Sunday Times Rich List, there are now 171 billionaires in the UK, 24 more than there were 12 months ago.
Bad week for:
James Newman, Britain’s Eurovision contender, after he was awarded “nul points” at this year’s contest. The Italian glamrock band Måneskin won, with 524 points. Some blamed Brexit resentment for the UK’s humiliation; others suggested its entry just wasn’t good enough. As one of the founders of the contest, the UK is automatically awarded a place in the final. DIY enthusiasts, who may find their projects thwarted by shortages of building materials, and a consequent rise in prices. It has been rumoured that the HS2 project is gobbling up resources, but experts say the shortages are down to a range of factors, from post-Brexit trade frictions to pressure on shipping containers.
Cummings testifies
Dominic Cummings accused the Government of failing the public when it “needed us most” during his highly anticipated appearance before two MPs’ committees this week. Boris Johnson’s former aide pointed to numerous shortcomings – from a rule that prohibited scientists from bringing their laptops into Cobra meetings, to the PM’s alleged view, at the start of the pandemic, that Covid was “just a scare story”. Cummings said that by October 2020, he regarded Johnson as “unfit” for the job of PM. He also stated that Health Secretary Matt Hancock should have been sacked for “15 to 20 things”, including “lying” to people “on multiple occasions”.
Covid cases stable
Covid-19 infection rates were stable in the UK this week, with 2,493 Covid cases recorded on Tuesday, and a seven-day average of seven deaths per day. However, it is still unclear if the next stage of England’s reopening, due on 21 June, will go ahead as planned, owing to uncertainty about the Indian variant. Several areas are seeing spikes in Covid cases (see page 5), including Bolton, where they were at 452 per 100,000 this week. In England, 30-year-olds are now being offered vaccines.
Poll watch 59% of Britons say they do not know what the term “woke” means; half of them say they’ve never heard the term used. 29% of those who do know what it means consider themselves woke, while 56% do not. 78% of Britons think it is important to teach schoolchildren about the country’s colonial history and its role in the slave trade. YouGov/Financial Times One in four consumers in the UK plan to buy an electric vehicle or a plug-inhybrid in the next five years. 38% say they won’t due to price, availability of charging points and battery range. Ofgem/The Daily Telegraph 60% of parents oppose plans to extend school hours after the pandemic. 30% support them. YouGov/The Times
The UK at a glance Bolton Guidance confusion: The Government hastily changed its contentious new guidance for Bolton and seven other areas with relatively high rates of the Indian variant of the coronavirus, after being accused of imposing local lockdowns by stealth. Earlier this month, the Government had quietly published advice urging the residents of Bolton, Blackburn with Darwen, Bedford, Burnley, Kirklees, Leicester, North Tyneside and the London Borough of Hounslow to avoid meeting indoors, as well as non-essential travel in or out of their local areas. Local officials and MPs said they’d not even been informed about the guidance, which many residents assumed was legally enforceable. This week, ministers confirmed that it was merely advisory, and adjusted the wording so that the recommendation was to “minimise” travel, and avoid meeting indoors “where possible”.
NEWS 5
London Activist shot: A prominent activist in the Black Lives Matter movement was in a critical condition in hospital this week, after being shot in the head. Sasha Johnson, 27, was at a party at a house in Peckham early on Sunday morning when – according to police – four people entered the garden, one of whom opened fire. Police said there was no evidence that Johnson was the target of the shooting. However, fellow members of her Taking the Initiative Party said she had received “numerous death threats” in the past related to her activism. Five men have since been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder.
Belfast Loyalist warning: The chairman of an umbrella group representing loyalist paramilitaries has warned that anger over the Northern Ireland Protocol could “definitely creep over into violence”. Speaking to MPs, David Campbell of the Loyalist Communities Council described the situation in the province as “probably the most dangerous... for many years”. This week, at a meeting of EU leaders, the EC president, Ursula von der Leyen, said that there was no alternative to the “full and correct implementation” of the Protocol, which loyalists and unionists feel separates Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK. However, she said that “we are exploring practical solutions to help to minimise the disruptions to everyday life in Northern Ireland”. Oxford Rhodes will not fall: Oriel College, Oxford has decided not to take down its controversial statue of Cecil Rhodes after all. Campaigners had been demanding the removal of the monument to the Victorian imperialist for years; and in June, following the report of an independent commission, Oriel’s governing body indicated that it was ready to begin that process. But this week it announced a U-turn, citing the “regulatory and financial challenges” involved, and the Government’s new “retain and explain” policy, which decrees that statues may only be removed in exceptional circumstances. Gavin Williamson, the Education Secretary, welcomed the news, but anti-racism activists criticised what they described as a decision to “glorify imperialism”. Arundel, West Sussex Treasures stolen: A set of “irreplaceable” gold rosary beads carried by Mary Queen of Scots to her execution in 1587 was among £1m-worth of historic artefacts stolen in a raid on Arundel Castle last week. A burglar alarm was set off at the Sussex castle, home to the Duke of Norfolk, on Friday night, just three days after it had reopened to the public. Local police said the thieves had got in through a window and smashed a glass cabinet in which the items were stored, and that a burnt-out car found nearby was probably linked to the raid. Rame Head, Cornwall Council rebuked: In a decision that could have implications for the country’s Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONBs), the High Court has blocked a farmer from building a four-bedroom home on protected land in Cornwall. Chris Wilton, who was until this month the chair of the local parish council, was granted permission to build on Rame Head, overlooking Whitsand Bay – though this went against the advice of both the AONB officer and the council’s principal planning officer. The Rame Protection Group (RPG) launched a judicial review of the local authority’s decision, and last week Mrs Justice Tipples quashed it. She ruled that Cornwall Council had offered “no explanation” to justify building in a protected area, and that it had not established the “essential need” specified by its own planning rules.
London Protests “hijacked”: Campaigners have lamented the fact that pro-Palestinian rallies and demonstrations held in cities across Britain last weekend were marred by anti-Semitic protesters. In London, a man was seen standing on one of the lions in Trafalgar Square bearing a placard saying: “Stop doing what Hitler did to you”. Other posters reportedly read: “Israel, the new Nazi state” and “Holocaust Part 2”. The Government’s anti-Semitism tsar, Lord Mann, condemned “the disgusting racist abuse against Jewish people” and said it required a “strong response”. Police said the protest in London had passed mainly “without incident”, but confirmed that there had been seven arrests, some for violent disorder, one for racist abuse, and one for homophobic abuse. 29 May 2021 THE WEEK
Europe at a glance Reykjavík Warmer tone: Relations between the US and Russia grew a little warmer last week, after the new secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and the Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov held the first high-level discussions between the two nations since Joe Biden took office in January. The US now says it will not, after all, impose significant sanctions on the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline delivering gas direct to Germany (see page 16). Blinken said there were “many areas where our interests intersect and overlap”, and that he wanted a “predictable and stable” relationship. The Kremlin welcomed “positive steps” in relations. The meeting, in Iceland’s capital, came on the back of a series of tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats, and simmering tensions over a range of issues, including Ukraine, the Arctic, and accusations of cyberattacks. Paris Compensation win: Thousands of victims of the long-running PIP breast implant scandal, including 540 British women, are to receive compensation after a landmark legal win in a Paris appeals court. The scandal involved substandard implants – manufactured by the French firm Poly Implant Prothèse (PIP) between 2001 and 2010 – which caused a range of severe long-term health problems. At one point, the company was the third-biggest global producer of implants, but it collapsed after it was found to have used cheap, industrial grade silicone not cleared for medical use in humans. The founder, Jean-Claude Mas, was jailed for four years in 2013. The Paris court ruled that a German firm that had certified the implants, TÜV Rheinland, was negligent and must compensate the victims. The level of compensation will be determined later this year. It’s estimated that the implants were given to 400,000 women, including 47,000 in the UK. The ruling opens the way to further legal claims. Nice, France Night train: France has restarted its nightly sleeper train service from Paris to the Riviera, a route established in 1886 but mothballed four years ago on cost grounds. Since 2015, all but two of France’s 15 overnight lines have been closed; the only ones left are between Paris and Briançon in the Alps, and Paris and Latour-de-Carol in the Pyrénées. But in a remarkable volteface, President Macron’s government has pledged to reopen ten sleeper routes over the next decade at a cost of s100m, part of a s5.3bn pro-environment plan to boost rail travel. Last week, Prime Minister Jean Castex was among those on the opening 12-hour trip from Paris to Nice. The train takes twice as long as the TGV, but the cost is a modest s29 for a berth in a six-bed compartment. A Paris-MunichVienna sleeper is due to open in December. Catch up with daily news at theweek.co.uk
NEWS 7
Frankfurt Terror trial: A German army officer has gone on trial, accused of posing as a Syrian refugee and plotting a series of “false flag” political assassinations in an attempt to stir anti-immigrant hatred. In 2016 and 2017, Franco Albrecht, now 32, assumed the identity of a Christian Syrian refugee, and claimed asylum in Bavaria. But he went on working as a first lieutenant in the Franco-German Brigade, and commuted hundreds of miles to keep up his double life. Prosecutors say he had a stash of arms, some stolen from army supplies. Albrecht denies the charges, saying he posed as a refugee to expose flaws in the system. It’s the first postwar case of a serving German soldier being charged with terrorism offences.
Warsaw Patriotic history: Poland’s right-wing government has announced a new, more patriotic history syllabus for schools that will cast the EU (which Poland joined in 2004) as unlawful. Education Minister Przemysław Czarnek said the syllabus would reject the “pedagogy of shame” that had blighted history teaching, and cover “the evolution of the EU from a lawful to an unlawful entity, because today it... does not adhere to its own legal framework”. Poland has been involved in frequent legal clashes with the EU. In the most recent, Warsaw said it would defy last Friday’s ruling by the EU’s top court that it must shut down a large coal mine close to the Czech border, insisting it was working on a deal with Prague to resolve the dispute.
Stresa, Italy Cable car tragedy: Fourteen people were killed in a cable car disaster in the Italian Alps on Sunday, the worst such accident for more than 20 years. It occurred on a cable line connecting the town of Stresa, on the shore of Lake Maggiore, to a high point on Mount Mottarone. Eyewitnesses say the gondola slid rapidly backwards down the line, got detached when it hit a pylon, and plummeted to the ground, rolling over several times before crashing into a pine tree. The cable line, built 50 years ago, was refurbished in 2016 at a cost of s4m and only recently reopened after a long pandemic shutdown. Reports suggest the accident was caused by faulty repairs that prevented the brake from engaging after the cable snapped. The cable car’s engineer and two service directors have been arrested. The sole survivor is a five-yearold Israeli boy: his brother, parents and grandparents died in the accident.
Minsk Dissident seized: The journalist pulled off a plane on the orders of President Lukashenko, Belarus’s autocratic leader (see page 22), has been paraded on TV “confessing” to crimes against the state. Roman Protasevich (above), 26, who fled Belarus in 2019, was on a flight from Greece to Lithuania when it was intercepted by a Mig-29 fighter jet and forced to land in the Belarus capital, Minsk. Protasevich was immediately arrested, along with his girlfriend. In the video clip, in which he shows signs of facial injury, he says he incited mass riots, a charge carrying up to 15 years in jail. 29 May 2021 THE WEEK
8 NEWS
The world at a glance
Washington DC Floyd anniversary: As people in cities across America, and elsewhere, marked the first anniversary of the death of George Floyd, President Biden met members of Floyd’s family in the Oval Office, including his seven-year-old daughter, Gianna. In a statement, the president praised their courage, and said that Floyd had “changed the world” – while stressing the need for more “real change”. He was referring in particular to the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which introduces sweeping reforms, including a ban on chokeholds, the establishment of a national database of police misconduct, and measures to make it easier for officers to be charged with crimes. The bill has been passed by the House, but is now held up in the senate. Floyd’s sister, Bridgett, had boycotted the meeting in Washington, saying Biden had “broken a promise” to sign the bill by Tuesday’s anniversary.
Washington DC Covid hope: The daily number of new coronavirus cases in the US has fallen to around 25,000 (on a seven-day average) – a tenth of the figure at the pandemic’s peak in mid-January. The daily death toll on a seven-day average is around 550, down from a January peak of almost 3,500. “As each week passes, and as we continue to see progress, these data give me hope,” said Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control. Earlier this month, Walensky announced that people who had been fully vaccinated were no longer required to wear a mask in most indoor spaces.
Austin, Texas Abortion law: The state of Texas has passed the US’s most extreme anti-abortion law to date, outlawing terminations after the sixth week of gestation, a point when many, if not most, women do not yet know they are pregnant. The act, which makes no exception for cases of rape or incest, was signed into law last week by the Republican governor, Greg Abbott. “Our creator endowed us with the right to life, and yet millions of children lose their right to life every year because of abortion. In Texas, we work to save those lives,” he said. The law is unique in that it allows any individual (not just the state) to sue those who “aid or abet” abortions. It is due to come into force on 1 September, but is expected to face multiple legal challenges before then. Tallahassee, Florida Political platforms: The Republican governor of Florida has signed a new law that is designed to stop social media companies barring political candidates from their platforms. The first of its kind in the US, the law was introduced in response to Facebook and Twitter “deplatforming” Donald Trump in January, after the storming of the Capitol by his supporters. Under the new rules, tech firms can suspend politicians’ accounts for up to 14 days. If they bar them for any longer, they can be fined up to $250,000 a day. Governor Ron DeSantis said the law, which is likely to face a constitutional challenge, offered Floridians “guaranteed protection against the Silicon Valley elites”. Chalchuapa, El Salvador Murder ring: Police in El Salvador have found multiple mass graves in the garden of a former policeman whom they now believe may have been a member of a murder ring, made up of former police and soldiers. Hugo Ernesto Osorio Chávez, 51, who had been sacked from the police in 2005 after being charged with rape, was arrested earlier this month, and confessed to killing a woman and her adult daughter. When forensic teams searched his property, in Chalchuapa, they uncovered seven pits containing the remains of up to 40 people, most of them women and girls. Ten further arrests have been made since. The national police chief said the victims had been lured to their deaths via social media, with offers of work or the promise of “the American Dream”. João Pessoa, Brazil Mafia boss captured: The suspected head of Italy’s most powerful Mafia group, the ’Ndrangheta, has been arrested in the Brazilian city of João Pessoa. Rocco Morabito, aka the “cocaine king of Milan”, has been a fugitive from Italian justice since 1994, and is listed as the country’s second most-wanted criminal. In 2017, he was arrested in Uruguay, where he had been living in luxury in a seaside resort; however, he then broke out of prison while awaiting extradition. His arrest in Brazil followed a joint operation involving law enforcement agencies from Brazil, Italy and the US. THE WEEK 29 May 2021
Buenos Aires Covid hotspot: Argentina has introduced a nine-day “circuitbreaker” lockdown in an attempt to quell a surge in coronavirus cases that has overwhelmed its hospitals. President Alberto Fernández urged people to remain close to their homes, and announced the closure of non-essential shops and schools, and a 6pm curfew. As in many countries in the region, Covid-related restrictions have become bitterly politicised in Argentina. Despite the current surge, fuelled by the Brazilian variant, the new restrictions are widely resented, and have been fiercely attacked by the centre-right opposition. Daily deaths have surged around five-fold over the past two months, to around 500 a day. Overall, the country now has the fourth-highest per capita death toll in South America.
The world at a glance Bamako President arrested: Mali’s President Bah Ndaw (pictured) and prime minister, Moctar Ouane, were detained by soldiers this week, in what France’s President Macron called “a coup within a coup”. The two men – who’d been leading an interim government since the military ousted the former president last August – were this week being held at a military camp outside the capital, Bamako. Power has since been assumed by Col Assimi Goïta, who led last year’s coup. He has promised that elections will still go ahead next year as planned.
Baiyin, China Ultramarathon disaster: Twenty-one long-distance runners died this week while taking part in an “ultramarathon” in a mountainous region of northern China. More than 170 athletes were running on a 100km route through the Yellow River Stone Forest national park, when the area was suddenly struck by an ice storm that brought hail, freezing rain and high winds. Many of them had set off from Baiyin, in Gansu province, wearing nothing more than vests and shorts; and though the rules required them to each carry a thermal blanket, these provided insufficient protection from the appalling conditions on an arid plateau where there was little shelter. Some of China’s top endurance athletes were among those killed during the race, which had been designed to promote tourism in the area.
NEWS 9
Moebyel, Myanmar Boycotts: More than 125,000 teachers in Myanmar – around 30% of the total – have been suspended for joining in the civil disobedience movement against February’s military coup, according to the country’s main teaching federation. Around 19,500 university staff have also been suspended. A limited number of college students who were invited to resume their studies this month, with the easing of lockdown restrictions, have been boycotting classes, and it has been predicted that hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren across the country will boycott their classes when the new academic year starts on 1 June. Meanwhile, anti-junta groups are stepping up their campaign against the military: the rebels claim that 20 police officers were killed in a street battle in the town of Moebyel, in Shan state, last Sunday.
Canberra “Sitting ducks”: Doctors have warned that Australia is at risk of being overwhelmed by further waves of coronavirus, owing to the slow pace of its vaccine roll-out and widespread vaccine hesitancy. Only 1.7% of Australians have been fully vaccinated, and demand for doses is lagging well behind supply. “Seeing what is happening overseas, and also the development of variants, we’re sitting ducks,” said Chris Moy of the Australian Medical Association.
Goma, DR Congo Volcano disaster: Around 30,000 people were forced to flee their homes in and around Goma on Saturday night, after a nearby volcano erupted, sending torrents of lava into areas on the outskirts of the city. Around 500 homes were totally destroyed by the lava, and at least 15 people were killed, with many more missing. On Tuesday, Unicef said that more than 100 children were among those unaccounted for: most had become separated from their parents in the chaos. Mount Nyiragongo is one of the world’s most active volcanoes, and among its most dangerous. The last time it erupted, in 2002, around 250 people were killed in Goma – DR Congo’s regional hub, with a population of about one million – and 120,000 were left homeless.
Dubai, UAE Latifa photos: Three apparently recent photos of Sheikha Latifa Al Maktoum – one of the daughters of the billionaire ruler of Dubai – were posted on Instagram this week. In a video released in February, Latifa said that she was being held under house arrest, and that she feared for her life. She has not been seen in public since. Last month, the UN human rights office asked the UAE for proof that Latifa, 35, is still alive. This week, it said it was still awaiting that proof. The photos show Latifa (pictured, right) in a restaurant and in a shopping mall in the city state, against a poster of a recently released film.
Apia Two PMs: The first woman to be elected prime minister of Samoa, Fiame Naomi Mata’afa, was sworn in by her own party officials in a marquee outside the parliament building on Monday, after police barred her from entering the legislative chamber. Although a court has decreed her the victor in April’s close election, the incumbent, Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, who has governed the Pacific state for 22 years, has refused to cede power, triggering a political crisis.
29 May 2021 THE WEEK
People
10 NEWS Jackie Weaver’s moment Since footage of Jackie Weaver calmly presiding over a chaotic meeting of Handforth Parish Council went viral in February, she has become a household name. And it has led to some unexpected opportunities: she appeared in a skit with the cast of Line of Duty to open the 2021 Brit Awards; she has launched a podcast, Jackie Weaver has the Authority; and has landed a “secret” part in The Archers. On the downside, she has been a target for online abuse, and it’s possible that people will still be shouting “Read the standing orders!” at her in the street when she is 90, says Etan Smallman in The Sunday Telegraph. But Weaver isn’t too concerned. She has enjoyed her moment in the limelight, and she says she will be sad when it is over – but local democracy remains her real passion. “The way I look at it is, I get a lot of publicity and off the back of it, it kind of takes me full circle, I can then bang on about town and parish councils.” Making mRNA accessible Today, the biochemist Katalin Karikó is held up as a pioneer of the mRNA technology used by Pfizer and others in groundbreaking Covid-19 vaccines. Her work is thought to have the potential to revolutionise medicine. Yet she didn’t always find it so easy to persuade people of its worth. In 2004, after 15 years investigating mRNA, she wanted to file a patent, and met an official at the University
of Pennsylvania, where she worked, to discuss it. “He was not very enthusiastic,” she recalls. “He kept asking, ‘What’s it good for?’” She was about to give up, says David Crow in the FT, when she realised that there was something that might help alert him to its potential. The officer was going bald, so “I said, ‘You know what? mRNA would be good for growing hair.’ All of a sudden, he perked up. ‘Really?’ he asked. And I said, ‘Yes, it could be,’ and he was very enthusiastic.” Wilson’s weird childhood Jacqueline Wilson has made a speciality of writing about children with difficult home lives; and her own certainly wasn’t normal, she told Susannah Constantine on the podcast My Wardrobe Malfunction. Her mother had affairs into her 70s; her father was also unfaithful, and prone to dark moods that could last days. Their infidelities led to some awkward situations. When her father was ill in hospital, for instance, her mother acted as next-of-kin to both him and her “gentleman lover”, who was on a different ward. And when her father died, not one but two of his “lady friends” came to his funeral. It was all a bit “bizarre”, says Wilson – but “perhaps if I hadn’t had such strange parents, I wouldn’t be writing books about kids who don’t have a conventional mum and dad who are always there for them. So you could say it was advantageous.”
Castaway of the week This week’s edition of Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs featured the comedian and writer Alexei Sayle 1 Volver by Carlos Gardel and Alfredo Le Pera, performed by Carlos Gardel 2 Joe Hill by Alfred Hayes and Earl Robinson, performed by Joan Baez 3 The Aviator’s March by Yuli Khayt and Pavel Herman, performed by Yevgeny Kibkalo and conducted by Alexei Kovalev 4 Pirate Jenny (Seeräuber Jenny) from The Threepenny Opera by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, performed by Lotte Lenya 5* Me and Bobby McGee by Kris Kristofferson and Fred Foster, performed by Janis Joplin 6 Shipbuilding by Elvis Costello and Clive Langer, performed by Robert Wyatt 7 It Was a Good Day, written and performed by Ice Cube 8 Bonkers by Armand van Helden and Dizzee Rascal, performed by Dizzee Rascal Book: The Sword of Honour Trilogy by Evelyn Waugh * Choice if allowed only one record Luxury: a Chinese broadsword
THE WEEK 29 May 2021
Nish Kumar doesn’t see himself as a particularly controversial figure, said Tom Lamont in The Observer. Yet the comedian’s jokes about Brexit and the Government have turned him into a lightning rod for right-wing rage. His satirical BBC show, The Mash Report, was cancelled last year amid a furore about impartiality at the Corporation; he’s routinely labelled “anti-British” by online trolls; he’s even had death threats. He admits that “the leftist or liberal viewpoint is over-represented” in British comedy; but that doesn’t explain why he’s so often singled out for criticism and online abuse. So why does Kumar, the son of Indian parents who settled in Britain 40 years ago, think he’s become a target? “If you are a person of colour and you don’t just tell everybody how wonderful Britain is... there is a sense of your ingratitude,” he says. “There is a sense that we should just be quiet and be grateful.” But having been born in Britain, “I thought I was supposed to consider myself to be a British person. That I was supposed to have the same rights as any other British person to criticise, to interrogate, to make jokes out of what’s happening here. What I have realised over time is that there’s a voluble minority of people who simply do not feel that way. It means we’re not having honest conversations about the state of race in this country. And it sucks.”
Viewpoint:
Neo-pronouns “I had a fantasy that my children would never give me the ‘ridiculous fuddyduddy’ sigh, as I had sighed at my parents. Then came pronouns. To be a teenager today may involve discovering ‘your pronouns’, as I once experimented with my signature. Any class seems to have one or two whose gender sways from ‘pan’ to ‘demi-girl’. So we come to ‘neo-pronouns’: ‘bun’, for instance, rather than ‘he’ or ‘she’. Instead of ‘she got herself a snack’, you can say ‘bun got bunself a snack’. If we’re going to do neo-pronouns, can I put in a plea for ‘ze’, as in ‘ze is going to get ridiculed by zir children’? It’s much easier than the others: you just talk like a French resistance fighter in a war movie.” Helen Rumbelow in The Times
Farewell Lee Evans, double gold medallist and 1968 Olympic activist, died 19 May, aged 74. Charles Grodin, actor best known for Midnight Run, died 18 May, aged 86. Ron Hill, long-distance runner and clothing entrepreneur, died 23 May, aged 82. Max Mosley, FIA president and privacy campaigner, died 23 May, aged 81. Barbara Stone, model agent for Twiggy, died 26 April, aged 87.
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NEWS 13
The decline and fall of Europe’s centre-left It’s not just Labour that’s in trouble: across the continent, once-mighty social democratic parties are in crisis
How dominant was the centre-left? How was this weakness exposed? In 2008, Pasok, like other left-wing From 1945 to 2000, social democratic ruling parties, was forced to implement and labour parties on the centre-left played a vital role in nearly every the policies being adopted across the democracy in Europe, either as the West: bailing out the banks and imposing government or, more often, the main austerity measures that largely affected the poor. As a result, Pasok lost voters opposition. They advocated moderate socialist policies: a strong welfare state, to the populist far-left – the anti-austerity high taxes, income redistribution, and a Syriza party – and, to a lesser extent, to mixed economy (largely capitalist, but the far-right, represented by the ultrawith state-controlled elements). Balanced nationalist Golden Dawn. This process out by those of the centre-right, these varied from nation to nation, but it’s policies created a remarkable period of remarkable how often the pattern was economic growth and social stability, repeated across Europe. In Germany, there was Alternative für Deutschland to harnessing the market but protecting workers from its destabilising effects. the right, and the Greens and Die Linke After the fall of communism, centre-left to the left; in France, the Front National parties shifted to the right somewhat, but to the right, and groups like La France the late 1990s were still a high point for insoumise on the left; in Spain, Podemos Blair and Schröder: a high point for the Left social democracy: Tony Blair in the UK, on the left, and Vox on the right. Lionel Jospin in France and Gerhard Schröder in Germany were Europe’s pre-eminent politicians. But why did the centre-left suffer more than the Right? These tensions – and immigration in particular – pulled apart What has happened since? the voter coalitions that had sustained the social democrats for Since the turn of the century, many of these parties have collapsed. decades: between the socially liberal, educated middle classes – Of the EU’s 27 states, only six – Portugal, Spain, Denmark, dubbed the “Brahmin Left” by the French economist Thomas Sweden, Finland and Malta – now have centre-left governments. Piketty – and the working classes, who tend to be more socially In France, the Socialist Party went from 38% of the vote in the conservative, and more threatened by immigration and globalisation. It’s a tension that the British journalist David 1997 National Assembly elections to a mere 6% in 2017. In Germany, the Social Democratic Party gained 41% of the federal Goodhart has described between the mobile “anywheres” and the vote in 1998, but only 21% in 2017. In the Netherlands, the left-behind “somewheres”. The centre-right certainly lost voters to Labour Party took nearly a quarter of the vote in 2012, but lost the populist Right, but it wasn’t being simultaneously attacked on three-quarters of its seats in 2017. In Italy, the Democratic Party both fronts. And after a brief far-left surge subsided, conservative is now a junior partner in a government dominated by new parties have tended to be the last man standing: in Greece, Syriza was swept aside by the centre-right New Democracy in 2019. populist groups. Austria’s Social Democrats have collapsed. But the most dramatic example is Greece’s Pasok, the main centre-left party, which went from 44% of the vote in 2000 to 5% in 2015. How have the remaining social democrats survived? Hence, the phenomenon is sometimes known as “Pasokification”. Successful leaders have either tacked clearly to the left, or the right. The Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party has formed a “progressive coalition” with Podemos and other far-left groups. In Portugal, Why has Pasokification occurred? All mainstream parties have seen a hollowing out of their support the Socialist Party has ruled in a minority government since 2015, with the support of Greens and Communists in parliament. By over the past 50 years: voters are much less likely to maintain a lifelong, class-based political affiliation today. However, centrecontrast, the Danish Social Democrats have held onto power by left parties have been more affected combining a really tough approach to immigration with strongly left-wing by this than centre-right ones. The Labour: the way forward Britain’s first-past-the-post electoral system is industrial working class and the welfare and climate policies. famously inhospitable to new political entrants, so unions from which social democrats there have been fewer waves made by insurgent drew their support have substantially Is the centre-left doomed? parties here. However, Labour has, like many of its eroded; while, as Europe’s population Some have suggested that social sister parties, faced an attack on two fronts: first UKIP ages, the electoral influence of older, democratic parties might go the same and then the Tories under Boris Johnson took a chunk more conservative demographics has out of its vote in England and Wales; while in Scotland, way as the liberals in the mid-20th grown. There’s also the question of century, surviving only as a rump. the SNP has supplanted it as the social democratic ideology. In the 1990s, many centreThat seems unlikely. They still have a option. And under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, left parties moved away from their strong base among public sector and Labour faced a brief, but internal, far-left insurgency. As in much of Europe, that also proved short-lived. roots, adopting the “Third Way” poorly paid service sector workers; positions popularised by New unions still exert considerable Today, there are three main groupings in Labour: the Labour, and making their peace with influence. Social democratic values – Corbynites, a still-strong Blairite wing, and the socially conservative “Blue Labour” tendency. Each wing has neoliberal economics: deregulation, bridging the gap between market a different prescription for solving Labour’s problems. privatisation, globalisation. While capitalism and workers’ desire for The tricky question of whether to ally with the Lib successful in the short term, in the stability – are as relevant as ever. Dems and the Greens is often mooted. However, there long run this made them less distinct Arguably more so, given the growth are clear opportunities ahead for the party: it’s still from conservative and liberal parties. of insecure, zero-hours contract strong in the big cities, and young liberal voters, This weakness was exposed by two labour, and income inequality having chased out by high house prices, are spreading into phenomena: the surge of immigration risen substantially. But the message of the suburbs and smaller cities, changing the political from both inside and outside Europe, the past 20 years is that, if they have balance in previously true blue areas. The question, as particularly during Syria’s civil war; neither a solid voter base nor a clear ever, is how Labour can engage this younger base while building a movement with a broader appeal. and the banking crisis of 2008 and ideological identity, social democrats the long ensuing recession. face a difficult future. 29 May 2021 THE WEEK
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Best articles: Britain The secret woman in the PM’s life Peter Franklin UnHerd
The North is bluer, but the South is greener Sebastian Payne Financial Times
A cynical kick in the teeth of the poor Andrew Rawnsley The Observer
Lethal violence unleashed by algorithms James Ball The Spectator
Don’t tell anyone, says Peter Franklin, but there’s a special woman in Boris Johnson’s life who he keeps very quiet about. “Step forward... Theresa May.” Many credit Johnson with rescuing the Tories from her hapless premiership: but in reality, he owes his success to her. Had she not stepped in to lead the party in the wake of the referendum and collapse of his leadership campaign, the Tories might now be toast. Her “dutiful, dependable and reassuringly dull” style steadied the ship at a perilous time. Without it, there’d have been a run on the pound, Brexit might have been lost – and Johnson’s name would now be mud. It was May, not her successor, who realised the key to a Tory victory was to woo culturally conservative voters in the North, which she did with spectacular success in the 2017 local elections, only to throw it all away in a woefully fought general election. Even then, she staggered on, allowing time for “the Remain establishment to overplay their hand”, and Johnson to re-establish himself as Tory saviour. No question about it: “Boris owes it all to Theresa.” A new worry is haunting traditional Conservatives, says Sebastian Payne: what if their party successfully destroys the “red wall”, only to see the blue wall turn green? The Tory victories in ex-Labour strongholds in the recent local elections received a lot of attention. But the other big story of those polls was the transformation of the Greens from a fringe single-issue party to a serious contender in the Tory shires. The party made gains across the South, beating the Lib Dems to third position in the London mayoral vote and capturing two wards from the Tories in the Kentish market town of Tonbridge. The Greens’ focus on localism appears to chime with many “small-c” conservatives – and they’re likely to garner even more support as a result of the Government’s controversial plan to relax planning laws to help build 300,000 homes a year. As one Tory MP puts it: “I don’t think Boris has any idea what is about to hit him. An unholy alliance of right-wing Nimbys and left-wing environmentalists are coming to destroy these planning reforms… We could soon be in real trouble.” It’s a good job Boris Johnson is “impervious to embarrassment”, says Andrew Rawnsley. He’d otherwise squirm at the discrepancy between his grand claims about the UK being a global leader and the fact he’s slashing foreign aid. Aid is one area where Britain really was a pioneer. In 2005, Tony Blair successfully lobbied other Western leaders into boosting their aid budgets; Gordon Brown stuck to the pledge even after the 2008 crash; and David Cameron enshrined into law the UN target of devoting 0.7% of GNI to aid. But now along comes Team Boris and axes about a third of aid spending in just two years. Ministers boast that our aid budget is still among the largest, but that’s only if you count things like contributions for UN peacekeeping missions as aid. The brunt of the cuts, meanwhile, has fallen on humanitarian aid. Programmes to combat malaria, polio and HIV are being slashed; support for Yemen, the site of the world’s worst humanitarian emergency, is being cut by 56%. Such cuts will have a huge effect on the world’s poor, yet amount to less than 1% of what we’ve spent on tackling the virus and supporting the economy. Shame on this government. “The TikTok intifada” is what they’ve been calling it, says James Ball. TikTok is the Chinese-owned social media platform with some 730 million users globally. And a clip posted on the site, urging viewers to film themselves assaulting Orthodox Jews, contributed to the recent conflict between Israelis and Palestinians – yet another example of the growing, often malign, influence of social media on global politics. Troubled regions are prone to violent incidents, of course, but now these are “filmed, uploaded and shared to millions in a matter of minutes”. All through this conflict, clips of people on both sides being beaten up have circulated on TikTok; and that has had a powerfully radicalising effect, not least as the clips are often accompanied by commentary using words like “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing”. And once users look at this stuff, the website’s algorithms ensure they’re fed more of the same. Just a few years ago, many of us innocently hoped social media’s ability to connect and mobilise people would help bring about peace and democracy. Alas, we never counted on the technology’s still greater ability to fuel anger and division.
NEWS 15 IT MUST BE TRUE…
I read it in the tabloids A drug dealer with a penchant for cheese has been jailed – after his favourite stilton gave him away. Carl Stewart, from Liverpool, had used the EncroChat messaging service to sell drugs. But he’d also posted a photo of himself holding his preferred cheese – M&S mature blue stilton – and, when police infiltrated the platform, they used the photo to analyse his palm and fingerprints. Merseyside Police said Stewart – who was jailed for 13 years and six months after admitting to conspiracy to supply heroin, cocaine, ketamine and MDMA – “was caught out by his love of stilton cheese”.
An Indian couple chartered a plane and held a mid-air wedding complete with 160 guests in an audacious effort to dodge Covid restrictions. They married at a modest ceremony in Madurai in Tamil Nadu, where weddings are currently limited to 50 guests; they then boarded a SpiceJet Boeing 737 with 160 others to Bangalore. Footage showed maskless guests bedecked with flowers as a second ceremony was held while the plane passed over Madurai’s Meenakshi Amman temple. An official investigation is under way. Angela Holloway, who moved to Charente, France from Sheffield with her mum and stepfather, was left confused when the elderly couple recently thanked her for the “gorgeous pâté and baked bread” she’d bought at the supermarket. It seems the couple, who don’t speak French, mistook Carrefour’s Mousse Gourmande – an upmarket cat food – for pâté. “What are you doing?” asked her 95-year old stepfather. “Trying to poison me?”
29 May 2021 THE WEEK
16 NEWS
Best articles: Europe
Crisis in Ceuta: the migrants gathering on Spain’s doorstep Ceuta is a sliver of Africa that still claimed by Rabat, but not recognised belongs to Spain, said María Martín in as Moroccan by Spain, a former El País (Madrid). It lies at the northern colonial power. Rabat is furious that tip of Morocco, on the southern side of Madrid recently admitted Brahim the Strait of Gibraltar. And last week, Ghali – the leader of the Polisario there was an influx of migrants into this Front, which has long fought for Spanish enclave that was unprecedented Western Sahara’s independence – to even by Mediterranean standards: over hospital for treatment for Covid-19. 36 chaotic hours, some 9,000 migrants, But that’s no excuse for its decision to “unleash a massive flow of migrants” including 2,000 children and teenagers, got past Ceuta’s border with Morocco. by neglecting its duties on the border. Some swam around fences that jut into On the contrary, said L’Economiste the sea; others scrambled across the (Casablanca): Rabat’s anger is entirely beach at low tide under the eyes of Moroccan guards who would normally Some 2,000 young people came ashore in the enclave justified. Aside from the provocative have stopped them. Spain’s PM, Pedro decision to help Ghali, Spain has also refused to follow the example of the US which, at the end of the Sánchez, vowing to defend its “territorial integrity”, promptly deployed 3,000 troops. More than half of the illegal arrivals Trump administration, recognised Morocco’s sovereignty over have now been returned to Morocco. But the influx, coinciding Western Sahara in return for Rabat’s normalisation of ties with with tensions between Madrid and Rabat, raises tricky questions Israel. The truth is that Morocco has been doing Europe’s “dirty work” on migration for years, said Alfred Hackensberger in Die about Morocco’s apparent willingness to trigger a crisis as a Welt (Berlin). Most migrants passing through the country are form of “diplomatic punishment” against Spain. detained before ever setting foot on European soil, allowing Morocco’s behaviour is tantamount to “blackmail”, said Daniel Europe’s leaders to wash their hands of the problem. Yet Bernabé on infoLibre.es (Madrid). The North African country is Morocco gets little recognition for its endeavours. If EU states paid vast sums by the EU to maintain a military presence on its want Morocco to continue cooperating with them, they should start treating Morocco as an “equal partner”. If they don’t, then coast, preventing migrants flooding into Europe. But tensions have flared with Madrid over Western Sahara, a territory the crisis at Ceuta could be a taste of worse to come.
SWITZERLAND
Is lockdown a rocky road to dictatorship? Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Zürich)
CZECH REPUBLIC
Our president needs to keep his mouth shut Seznam Zprávy (Prague)
GERMANY
Biden has gifted Putin a big win: rightly so Süddeutsche Zeitung (Munich)
THE WEEK 29 May 2021
On 13 June, Switzerland will become the first country in the world to hold a referendum on the government’s right to impose pandemic restrictions. And the pitch of the debate is “shrill”, says Fabian Schäfer. Critics say laws passed by parliament last September, which put Switzerland’s Covid response onto a firm legal footing, “disenfranchise” citizens and risk a slide towards “dictatorship”. Some have even taken to calling them “enabling laws”, a not-so-subtle reference to the 1933 measure which allowed Hitler to rule Germany by decree. This is a pretty extreme position. Granted, lockdown measures are a “massive” restriction of rights. But these laws are the wrong target for anger over that. Powers to ban gatherings, shut restaurants and the like were actually enshrined in the Epidemics Act, passed in 2013 in anticipation of a crisis like Covid. The new laws, in contrast, mostly relate to “harmless” measures such as employee protections and have provided “billions in aid” to those affected. No one doubts the need to ensure the government’s more extreme pandemic powers don’t become permanent – but claims that they amount to a form of national “bondage” are absurd. The Czech president Miloš Zeman’s public statements are becoming increasingly wild and unpredictable, says Jirí Hošek. In the past, Zeman has queried Western sanctions against Russia, and advocated moving the Czech embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem; both positions which contradict his government’s official stance. Now, he’s trying to rewrite history. Zeman was prime minister in 1999 when Nato bombed Belgrade in a successful bid to end Serbia’s aggression in Kosovo. And I don’t recall him being especially “traumatised” when, having just joined Nato, we Czechs agreed to the bombing. Yet when Serbian president Aleksandar Vucic visited Prague last week, Zeman issued a heartfelt apology, claiming he’d been the last to agree to the bombing, and did so only from a lack of “courage”. Vucic was delighted, rightly stating that such words had never before been uttered. But Zeman is in no position to apologise on behalf of Nato. And even if he were, such an apology by a head of state is a serious step – and one you’d expect him to consult his government colleagues over. Officials, though, were as surprised as the rest of us. If our president keeps contradicting our official positions, why should our foreign partners believe us about anything? Joe Biden has admitted defeat in America’s quest to block Russia’s controversial Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Germany – handing Vladimir Putin a “remarkable victory”. But it’s still the right call, say Stefan Kornelius and Hubert Wetzel. Washington fears the pipeline will make western Europe overly dependent on Russia, and weaken Ukraine by allowing Russia to bypass existing gas routes through the country, depriving it of vital revenues. The Trump administration delayed the pipeline by slapping sanctions on the companies building it, but Biden has now waived them – meaning work should be completed this year. The move has infuriated hawks in the Republican Party. Biden, however, knows that digging in over the issue would have risked an almighty row with Germany, which, having phased out coal and nuclear, relies heavily on Russian gas. Berlin considered US opposition to the pipeline hypocritical anyway, given that America imports large amounts of Russian oil. Biden regards China, not Russia, as the greatest strategic challenge for the US, and concluded that Nord Stream 2 simply wasn’t worth jeopardising relations with its trusted ally Germany over. That doesn’t mean he likes it, though. “The bottom line is that Russia’s influence in Europe is growing.”
Best of the American columnists
NEWS 19
UFOs and UAPs: is there anybody out there? “The most curious subplot in the news some based on Freedom of right now,” said Ezra Klein in The Information Act requests, suggest that UAPs are interacting with US navy New York Times, is the admission by ships “with alarming frequency”. In top US officials that they’re taking UFOs seriously. The Pentagon and one 2015 incident, confirmed by the intelligence agencies have been Pentagon, fighter pilots scrambled investigating what they prefer to from the USS Theodore Roosevelt strike group expressed bafflement as call Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs), and are due to report their a fleet of mysterious objects appeared to surround them. “Such incidents are findings early next month. “When we talk about sightings,” John Ratcliffe, potential national security threats, yet the former director of national pilots seem reluctant to discuss them for fear of being stigmatised.” intelligence, told an interviewer, “we are talking about objects that have Thankfully, the Pentagon is now been seen by navy and air force pilots, An alleged UFO sighting over Melbourne in 1966 or have been picked up by satellite addressing that stigma, and actively imagery, that frankly engage in actions that are difficult to encouraging pilots and others to report anomalies, said the Las explain, movements that are hard to replicate, that we don’t Vegas Sun. It’s about time. The issue has for too long been have the technology for.” In a separate interview, the former mocked as the exclusive province of kooks who believe in “little CIA director John Brennan talked of unexplained phenomena green men” – a dismissive approach that has just fuelled more speculation and misinformation. Better to bring the issue out that, in his words, “could involve some type of activity that some might say constitutes a different form of life”. into the open. If rival nations are using technology we don’t understand, we need to know about it. Whether or not the new studies discover anything, it’s “appropriate that the subject Quite what these UAPs are is anybody’s guess, said Bloomberg. Suggestions include drones, optical illusions, software glitches, is no longer being treated as a joke or a science-fiction fantasy. freak weather effects – and, of course, aliens. But whatever they It’s long overdue to turn an unbiased eye to the skies and try to learn what’s truly going on up there.” are, they certainly merit investigation. A number of reports,
A cynical effort to gloss over the Capitol riot Matt Ford The New Republic
Bribing people to get the jab is a terrible idea James Hohmann The Washington Post
The plague that threatens US restaurants Saahil Desai The Atlantic
Pearl Harbour; the assassination of JFK; the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster; 9/11 – the US government has assembled commissions to look into these and a host of lesser crises over the years, says Matt Ford. But it seems there won’t be a commission into the 6 January riot on Capitol Hill. Never mind that the event led to five deaths, endangered the lives of congressional leaders, and has been described as “the worst attack on American democracy since the Civil War”. The Republican Party has decided that it was no big deal (one conservative lawmaker likened it to a “normal tourist visit”) and that it’s time to move on. Having initially agreed to a commission and entered talks, GOP leaders are now blocking its formation, denouncing it as a Democratic witch-hunt. There’s no truth to that charge. Under the current proposal, the parties would get to appoint five members each to the commission. Any subpoenas it issued would need the agreement of the Democratic chair and the Republican vice-chair. No, the only reason GOP leaders are blocking this commission is because they know Donald Trump will emerge badly out of it, and they don’t want to harm his re-election chances. Once again, they’ve put “the pursuit of raw political power” above all else. More than 60% of US adults have now received at least one coronavirus jab, says James Hohmann, but the supply of willing subjects is starting to dry up. In response, politicians are resorting to shameless bribery. Ohio’s governor, for instance, says he’ll use federal Covid relief money to give five $1m jackpots to adults who get vaccinated, and five full university scholarships to teenagers who do the same. Kentucky will hand out 225,000 coupons for free lottery tickets across vaccination sites. Maine is giving away 10,000 hunting and fishing licences. New York is offering free subway tickets. Memphis is raffling new cars. How “entitled and spoiled” this must look to people in developing countries who are desperate for access to vaccines. It’s one thing for restaurant chains to offer free drinks, or for Uber and Lyft to offer free taxi rides to vaccination sites – that’s civic-minded, and good PR. But taxpayer-funded handouts set a troubling precedent. Will people now expect these goodies every time they have a booster shot? Covid has killed more than 590,000 Americans, and infected 33 million of them. The vaccine is our ticket back to normal life, something everyone needs to take for the common good. We shouldn’t have to pay people to do the right thing. Spare a thought for America’s beleaguered hospitality industry, says Saahil Desai. The past 14 months have been an unprecedented disaster for restaurants. By the end of 2020, more than 110,000 of them – representing one in six of the nation’s eateries – had closed either for good or on a long-term basis. Those that survived are now welcoming diners back in and trying to make up for lost time. But just as the party is getting under way, establishments across the eastern United States are facing a new peril from some unwelcome gatecrashers: “trillions of red-eyed, horny critters”. A vast army of periodical cicadas – part of a cohort that regularly appears in the US, known as Brood X – has begun emerging from the ground, where they’ve spent the past 17 years as wingless nymphs. For the next month or so, they’re going to be flying around and making an unholy din in treetops as they sing for mates, before laying their eggs and disappearing again for another 17 years. Needless to say, this cacophonous blizzard of bugs rather takes the fun out of al fresco dining. As if US restaurants haven’t suffered enough this year, many now face the final indignity of seeing that perfect outdoor area they’ve invested in transformed into a “Hitchcockian hellscape”. 29 May 2021 THE WEEK
WATCH ME ALL-ELECTRIC FORD MUSTANG MACH-E WITH UP TO 379 MILE RANGE
Model shown is a Mustang Mach-E Extended Range AWD. Fuel economy mpg (l/100km): Not applicable. CO2 emissions while driving: 0g/km. Electric Range for Extended Range AWD model: 335 miles*. Electric Range for Extended Range RWD model: 379 miles*. These figures were obtained after the battery had been fully charged. The Mustang Mach-E is a battery electric vehicle requiring mains electricity for charging. There is a new test for fuel consumption, CO 2 and electric range figures. The electric range shown was achieved using the new test procedure. Figures shown are for comparability purposes. Only compare fuel consumption, CO2 and electric range figures with other cars tested to the same technical procedures. *These figures may not reflect real life driving results, which will depend upon a number of factors including the starting charge of the battery, accessories fitted, variations in weather, driving styles and vehicle load.
ford.co.uk
Health & Science
NEWS 21
What the scientists are saying…
We need maggots on the menu
protein (CRP), which is a marker for inflammation. The team also looked at lifestyle factors such as smoking and BMI rates, and found that these only partially explained the inflammation – suggesting that there may be a “core biological process” behind the association. They say that with more research, the finding could “pave the way for trialling new treatments”. However, other experts noted that the study does not establish that the association (which was already known) is causal. “Certainly there is nothing to suggest that people should try to treat their depression with anti-inflammatory [drugs],” said Professor David Curtis of University College London.
If the world is to feed itself in an uncertain future, farmers need to focus on foods such as maggots, seaweed and protein-rich algae, says a Cambridge University team. The researchers point to recent emergencies such as the swarms of locusts that descended on East Africa, and the swine fever that has swept parts of Asia, Africa and Europe, to highlight the fragility of conventional agriculture; and they suggest that with climate change only likely to bring more crises – wrought by everything from wildfires to new pathogens – we need to create more “risk resilient” systems. Having analysed 500 existing papers on the subject, they have produced a list of foods that are nutritious and efficient, and which can be grown in closed, controlled environments. For instance, insect larvae – such as juvenile house flies and mealworm – can be bred in stackable units that recycle organic waste as animal feed. With these modules, nutritious foods can be grown more or less anywhere – from cities to small islands – which reduces reliance on food chains that can easily be disrupted by natural disasters, pandemics and so on. “To future-proof our food supply we must pioneer completely new ways of farming,” said study leader Dr Asaf Tzachor.
on Antarctica, this calving was part of a natural cycle, said Alex Brisbourne at the British Antarctic Survey. “The ice shelf is constantly being fed ice from the Antarctic continent, and eventually chunks break off, forming these big flat icebergs and maintaining a balance,” he explained. Antarctica holds 70% of Earth’s fresh water, enough – were all the ice to melt – to raise global sea levels by around 200ft.
The world’s biggest iceberg
Depression and inflammation
An iceberg larger than Mallorca has calved from the Antarctic ice shelf. Designated A-76, it is 106 miles long and 15 miles wide, making it the biggest iceberg currently floating (but not even in the top ten of the biggest icebergs ever recorded). A-76 was identified from satellite images supplied by the European Space Agency’s Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission, days after it broke off the Ronne ice shelf. Although warming seas are melting the ice elsewhere
“Breathing” through your bottom
Pigs can absorb oxygen through the intestine
People who suffer from depression have higher levels of inflammation than other people, a study has found. A team at King’s College London used health data from the UK Biobank to compare 26,894 people who had been diagnosed with a major depressive disorder at some point, with 59,001 people with no history of the condition. Analysis of blood samples showed that the depressives were more likely to have high levels of C-reactive
The source of most single-use plastic
The UK is the world’s third-biggest generator of single-use plastic, getting through 44kg of the material per person, per year, a new study has found. Australia and the US top the list, on 59kg and 53kg respectively; Italy comes tenth, on 23kg, Researchers behind the report, produced by Australia’s Minderoo Foundation, have also found that 98% of the 130 million metric tons of single-use plastic thrown away in 2019 was made from virgin (fossil fuel based) polymer – and that 55% of this polymer was produced by just 20 petrochemical companies. They include the US-based corporations ExxonMobil and Dow, and China’s Sinopec. The researchers note that the focus of government attention has been the vast number of companies that make or sell plastic-wrapped products, and that relatively little attention has been paid to the small number of corporations who produce the polymer, or to the banks and investors that fund them. They urge fund managers and shareholders to put pressure on these firms to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels, and to shift to “circular” recycled polymers.
Japanese scientists have discovered that pigs can “breathe” through their rectums, and they suspect that humans can too. If so, it could mean that patients with lung failure could in future have oxygen-rich liquid piped into their anuses, instead of having to go on a ventilator (which usually requires sedation and can damage lung tissue). Professor Takanori Takebe, of the Tokyo Medical and Dental University, was looking for alternatives to ventilation when he read about freshwater fish that sometimes pop their heads above the surface, and gulp down air. In the absence of lungs, these fish absorb the oxygen via their intestines. Since human colons are thin enough to filter substances into the body (hence the effectiveness of suppositories) he wondered if their intestines could also absorb oxygen. In animal trials, he delivered the oxygen in a liquid compound that has the capacity to absorb gases, and found that it had a remarkable restorative effect on both mice and pigs with severe hypoxia.
Obesity admissions rising The number of obesity-related hospital admissions in England passed one million for the first time last year. According to NHS figures, there were around 1.02 million admissions in 20192020 in which obesity was listed as a factor – 17% more than the year before, and 600% more than a decade earlier. Naveed Sattar, professor of metabolic medicine at the University of Glasgow, told the BBC that obesity was the strongest risk factor for type 2 diabetes, and a strong risk factor for heart disease, lung disease, kidney disease and “multiple other conditions” – including Covid-19. Part of the rise is likely to be down to better recording practices, but doctors and campaigners say the figures highlight the strain that high levels of obesity are putting on the NHS. Women accounted for 64% of admissions, and admissions were more common in poorer areas than wealthier ones.
29 May 2021 THE WEEK
Pick of the week’s
Gossip
Jared Harris recalls that his stepfather, the actor Rex Harrison, would always put on a three-piece suit just to go down the road to post a letter. “Then he would come back and take it all off again.” His real father, Richard Harris, was rather different: once, he popped out for a drink; four days later, Jared’s mother, Elizabeth, got a telephone call from a pub landlady in Leeds. “I’ve got your husband,” she said. “Keep him,” Elizabeth replied.
Bob Dylan, who turned 80 on Monday, has long been known for his casual relationship with the truth. In 1964, he said he’d been “travelling with a carnival” across the US when he was 13. Some 41 years later, he clarified the statement: he meant he’d “seen” carnivals. He’s notoriously acid-tongued too. When Peter Grant introduced himself in 1973, saying: “Hi Bob, I manage Led Zeppelin.” Dylan replied: “Hey man, I don’t come to you with my problems”. Ed Miliband only mastered riding a bike aged 50. The ex-Labour leader tried as a child, but for the next 40 years failed to progress beyond “a few minutes of uncomfortable wobbling”, he writes in his new book, Go Big. “We went through six prime ministers, Duran Duran, the invention of the internet, the bacon sandwich incident – and still I resisted two wheels.” He finally cracked it on holiday in France, after “a brief flirtation with an adult tricycle”, which he abandoned, as he was “worried about the stigma (and the photos)”.
THE WEEK 29 May 2021
Talking points Diana: the impact of an explosive interview Of all the charges levelled to talk to her for several days against the disgraced BBC because he was so upset by her admission that she’d “adored” journalist Martin Bashir, the most serious is that he was her former lover James Hewitt. partly responsible for Princess Regardless of its impact, there Diana’s untimely death. Diana’s brother Charles is no doubt that Diana wanted Spencer has claimed as much, to speak her mind, said Yasmin said Andrew Neil in the Daily Alibhai-Brown in the I Mail – “and he’s right”. Much newspaper. Prince Charles had has been made of the fake bank given a self-serving interview statements that Bashir used to to Jonathan Dimbleby the year trick Spencer into arranging before, and she was determined to tell her side of the story. an introductory meeting with Diana was her own woman – Diana. But far more important than any forged documents Diana: determined to tell her story “not the pathetic, quivering creature she is, once again, was the string of outlandish lies Bashir told her at that meeting – that her phone being painted as”. It’s true, said Andrew Morton was being tapped, that senior palace officials in The Sun. If Bashir hadn’t manipulated her were intent on doing her down, that even her into talking to him, she’d have made the same points – about there being “three of us in this bodyguards were plotting against her. Spencer dismissed Bashir as a fantasist and had no more marriage”, and wanting to be “queen of people’s to do with him, but “Diana was taken in”. It hearts” – to someone else. For the previous two fuelled her “paranoia” and led her to entrust years, she’d been saying very similar things to him with the Panorama interview that set the me for my biography of her. Nor can you really draw a convincing line between the interview tragic course for the final two years of her life. and her death with Dodi Fayed in a car crash In the aftermath of that interview, Diana two years later. Diana had been separated from claimed to have found it a cathartic experience, Charles for three years when she talked to Bashir. said Gordon Rayner in The Daily Telegraph. She She gave up her official Scotland Yard protection “before Panorama, not afterwards” – and told a journalist that Bashir had “given me my wings”. But it didn’t have a positive impact on though the security arrangements on that fateful her life. It further alienated her from the royal night in Paris were certainly shoddy, she’d have family, and led to her losing the wise counsel of survived the crash had she been wearing a loyal staff such as her private secretary Patrick seatbelt. “Let’s not totally rewrite history in Jephson. Prince William, then aged 13, refused the rush to beat up Bashir and the BBC.”
Belarus: an “act of aviation piracy” When Roman Protasevich checked in to his Ryanair flight to Lithuania at Athens airport on Sunday, he found himself being shadowed by a Russian-speaking man, said Andrew Roth in The Guardian. Protasevich, a Belarusian activist who lived in exile in Lithuania, was disturbed: he assumed the man was from Belarus’s security services. As a former editor of the Nexta channel – which had played a vital role in reporting and orchestrating mass protests against the dictatorial rule of Alexander Lukashenko last summer – he was a wanted man in his home country. Even so, Protasevich had no inkling of the extraordinary events that would follow. While the plane was crossing Belarus’s airspace, it was forced to land in the capital Minsk, after Belarusian air traffic control cited a spurious bomb threat and sent a jet to escort it down. As the flight began its descent, Protasevich frantically pleaded with flight attendants: “Don’t do this, they will kill me,” he said, in vain. He and his Russian girlfriend Sofia Sapega were led away as the plane stood on the tarmac. Lukashenko has often been called Europe’s last dictator, said The Daily Telegraph, but few of his predecessors would have dared intercept a passenger aircraft flying between two Nato and EU nations to drag a dissident away to prison. The “rules-based international order” is “a dull
phrase beloved by diplomats that can sound like a meaningless cliché”, said Gideon Rachman in the FT. But if anyone doubts the need for it, they should consider what happened to Ryanair flight FR4978. This dangerous precedent will be watched closely by much larger nations that also ruthlessly pursue domestic enemies, such as Russia, China and Iran. Will passengers flying from Europe to Asia now have to worry about flying over Russian or Iranian airspace? “If even tiny Belarus can demand that a plane divert to Minsk, what is to stop the Iranians from compelling a plane to land in Tehran, or the Russians from forcing a jet down over Siberia?” Lukashenko has crossed a line with this “act of aviation piracy”, agreed The Guardian. “This time, the response must be swift, robust and, for his regime, painful.” Brussels had already imposed sanctions on Belarus over the brutal suppression of last August’s protests, said Tim Ogden in The Spectator. Further measures were announced on Monday. But Western sanctions are having no effect on Lukashenko, just as they have not deterred his only ally, Vladimir Putin. The West “must find its fire” and escalate its response. “As things stand, Brussels and Washington have mastered Teddy Roosevelt’s maxim of speaking softly – but they have forgotten the part about carrying a big stick.”
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Talking points Great British Railways: a “third way” “For a country that prides shoulder most of the risk, itself on bringing railways to which in practice it did the world, Britain has made anyway: whenever a a fine mess of its own franchise collapsed, the state network,” said Louise had to step in. On the face of Lucas in the Financial Times. it, not much will change Back when the trains were except the train liveries, said nationalised, they seldom ran Ross Clark in the Daily Mail. on time. But privatisation But the new plan will mean that private companies can has proved “expensive and messy”. The rail service has no longer “jack up fares” by cost taxpayers £150bn in exploiting monopolies; and the 25 years since it was tickets will be interchangeprivatised, but it has been able between services. beset with problems: failing There’s a danger, though, Shapps: taking back control that the gains of privatisation franchises on many lines, will be lost. For all their failures, private chaotic timetable changes. Last year, one in operators did vastly increase the number of rail three trains “trundled in late”. Now a review travellers. I remember British Rail all too well, by Keith Williams, a former boss of British and I worry a state-run body won’t have the Airways, and the Transport Secretary Grant Shapps proposes a “third way”. A new public “entrepreneurial spirit” to seek new customers. body, Great British Railways, will own the network, collect fare revenues, and set most There is nothing wrong in principle with fares and timetables. The “benighted franchise privatised railways, said Simon Jenkins in The model” will end. Instead, GBR will hand out Guardian. But the bungled privatisation of the 1990s split responsibility between track owners contractual agreements to private operators, who will run individual lines for a fixed fee. and train services, which is the root cause of the present “chaos”. The new system sounds The new name is embarrassingly vainglorious, “ominously” similar, in that it also divides said Jonn Elledge in the New Statesman – and responsibility. Besides, Great British Railways will face two serious headaches. First, it is likely inappropriate, because it’s largely an English rail network. But it’s a sensible plan. The contract to see a long-term slump in passenger numbers, system is already used on London’s Overground, because of Covid. Secondly, the exorbitant costs and works well. The state will oversee the of the HS2 line are likely to limit any investment network, avoiding the fragmentation and in other train services. The fear is that one great complexity of the current system. It will also British failure will be replaced by another.
Holidays: should I stay or should I go? The Spanish PM extended a signalled it will soon reopen to gracious invitation last week: fully vaccinated UK visitors only adds to the confusion. It seems “From 24 May,” said Pedro ministers are unable to agree the Sánchez, “Spain will be more than limits of UK policy, and so they’re delighted to receive British tourists putting the onus on the public to without health controls.” His message was “timely”, said Simon decide; but it is neither fair nor Calder in The Independent: the UK sensible to “outsource border policy during a pandemic to had just lifted its 19-week-long ban on leisure travel, while in Spain, individual holidaymakers”. Both new Covid cases had fallen to their travellers and Britain’s beleaguered lowest levels since last August. tourism and aviation industries Travellers will have reasonably deserve clarity. inferred that they could now venture to Spain or any other We thought we’d be going on a country that would have them Portugal: open, but not easy holiday, said Judith Woods in The – as long as they abided by the Daily Telegraph; instead, we’re testing and quarantine rules in the UK’s “traffic being sent on a guilt trip. Countless families light” system. But, “unbelievably”, the message booked trips abroad in good faith. What are then changed. The PM said that tourists should they to do now? Go, and be made to feel selfish not visit the countries on the amber list – while and reckless, even if it’s to one of the Greek Lord Bethell, a health minister, said that we islands that have vaccinated 100% of their shouldn’t be going abroad on holiday full stop, residents? Or stay, and hope to book the last not even to the few green-listed destinations. B&B in packed-out Britain? I’d opt for the latter, said James Moore in The Independent. The Government’s “hapless messaging” would Even visiting green-listed Portugal is complicated be comical, were it not so serious, said The (and costly), with all the required tests. And Times. The public might reasonably wonder while there, you’ll be subject to local restrictions. why the amber list exists, if they’re not supposed With all the rules, stress and form-filling, it may to visit the places on it. The fact that the EU has hardly feel like a holiday at all.
NEWS 23
Wit & Wisdom “Treachery is largely a matter of dates.” Talleyrand, quoted in The Guardian “Worldly faces never look so worldly as at a funeral.” George Eliot, quoted in Forbes “If you believe that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have got you labelled a radical 50 years ago, a liberal 25 years ago, and a racist today.” Thomas Sowell, quoted in The Critic “You have to bite the hand that reads you.” Tina Brown, quoted in the New Statesman “The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it.” George Orwell, quoted in The Washington Post “The dust of exploded beliefs may make a fine sunset.” Geoffrey Madan, quoted on The Browser “There was never any lockdown – there were just middle-class people hiding while working-class people brought them things.” J.J. Charlesworth, quoted in The Sunday Telegraph “History is a sluggish tide on which we float without ever being aware that it’s moving.” Kai Strittmatter, quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle “The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quoted in The Economist
Statistic of the week
Just 851.2 people per 100,000 died in England last month – the lowest April proportion since the ONS started recording the mortality rate. At the height of the first wave of the pandemic last April, the rate was 1,859 per 100,000. The Daily Telegraph
29 May 2021 THE WEEK
24 NEWS
Sport
Golf: Mickelson proves age is “just a number”
In recent years, the career of American golfer Phil Mickelson had “looked to be dwindling towards obscurity”, said Ewan Murray in The Guardian. The 50-year-old, who suffers from psoriatic arthritis, went into the US PGA Championship ranked 115 in the world: he had last won a major (his fifth) eight years ago at the Open, and few believed he could increase his tally. But on a “brutally tough” course at Kiawah Island, South Carolina, Mickelson “strode into the record books” this week by becoming the oldest winner of a major in the sport’s history – eclipsing the previous record holder, Julius Boros, who won the PGA in 1968 at the age of 48. A final day of “epic drama” culminated with Mickelson two shots clear of the competition, despite having hit a oneover 73. The large crowd celebrated in “euphoric” fashion, mobbing the champion on the final hole.
inevitable that the younger man would prevail. Koepka, however, was battling a knee injury, and was far from his ruthless best. He double bogeyed on hole two, handing Mickelson back the initiative. That set the pattern for the rest of the afternoon, over which the two leaders veered between inspired and terrible. Only when a “superb approach” landed Mickelson comfortably on the 18th green was it clear that victory was his.
By proving that “age genuinely is a number”, Mickelson’s win will have inspired “veterans in all walks of life”, said James Corrigan in The Daily Telegraph. Overall, it was a good tournament for older players – Pádraig Harrington, 49, finished joint fourth; 42-year-old Kevin Streelman came Inspiring veterans of all sports eighth – while younger, more celebrated names faltered: Dustin Johnson and Justin Thomas, the world’s No. 1 and No. 2, respectively, failed even to make the cut. Mickelson is a golfer who has “always done things the hard And there was more misery for Rory McIlroy, said Tom Cary in way”, said Rick Broadbent in The Times. And his victory here the same paper. The Northern Irishman, who last won a major in 2014, struggled badly with his driving, and ended five over. He is was no exception. He began the final day one shot ahead of 31-year-old Brooks Koepka, widely “regarded as the grittiest stuck in a “maddening pattern” of playing well in the build-up to player in golf” (and the winner of two of the last three PGA big tournaments, only for his best golf to desert him. He did championships). When Mickelson squandered that lead on the admit, however, to finding Mickelson’s age-defying feat inspiring. very first hole – hitting a bogey to Koepka’s birdie – it seemed “Fast forward 20 years,” he said, and that could be me.
Football: a day of farewells in the Premier League The final day of the Premier League confirmed what finish – a scenario that looked scarcely plausible four has been clear for most of the season, said The weeks ago when they were languishing in seventh. Times: Manchester City are easily the best team in the land. In front of 10,000 spectators on Sunday, Crystal Palace were also bidding farewell on Sunday, Pep Guardiola’s team put on a thrilling display to said Jim White in The Daily Telegraph – to retiring thrash Everton 5-0 and finish 12 points clear of manager Roy Hodgson. Over a 45-year career, the 73-year-old has managed 16 clubs and four national Manchester United. It marked a final Premier League appearance for Sergio Agüero, who came on as a sides (including England between 2012 and 2016). On the continent, he won titles (notably five consecusecond-half substitute and scored two goals – the first of which, a delicious slot-in with the outside of tive league championships with Swedish club Malmö his right foot, saw him overtake Wayne Rooney as FF in the 1980s), but in Britain he has been best the scorer of the most Premier League goals for a known for steering smaller clubs to mid-table safety. single club. But next season he moves to Barcelona. Hodgson is unusual for a football coach in having an Possibly joining him there will be Gini Wijnaldum, “extraordinary hinterland”: he speaks five languages, Hodgson: irreplaceable and loves literature, architecture and opera. Just who made an emotional final appearance in hearing him speak about the world was a joy, said Dean Kiely, Liverpool’s match against Crystal Palace, said Charlie Malam in the Daily Express. Before the game at Selhurst Park, Liverpool’s Palace’s goalkeeping coach. “I got into the habit of listening to players formed a guard of honour for the Dutch midfielder. The Radio 4 on my way in every morning, so I’d have something to Reds went on to beat Crystal Palace 2-0, giving them a third-place chat to him about.” We are unlikely to see his like again.
F1: Verstappen blows the season wide open
Sporting headlines
For several seasons, motor Rebecca Clancy in The Times. racing has been a rather predictThis win – together with his able affair due to Mercedes’ and rival’s low placing – means he Lewis Hamilton’s “impregnable now leads by four. The whole grip” on Formula 1, said Giles afternoon was a “horror show” Richards in The Guardian. That’s for Mercedes, whose other why Max Verstappen’s victory in driver, Valtteri Bottas, had to the Monaco GP on Sunday was retire because of a mechanical the “tonic the title fight failure. With Verstappen’s required”. The 23-year-old Red teammate Sergio Pérez Bull driver started in pole Threading Monte Carlo’s needle finishing fourth, Red Bull position, and drove flawlessly now lead the constructors’ throughout, “threading the needle on the streets championship for the first time since 2013. But of Monte Carlo for 78 laps with no hint of error”. though the turnaround has blown the season Hamilton, by contrast, endured one of his worstwide open, Hamilton remains confident of ever afternoons: he started in seventh, after bouncing back. Mercedes rarely do well at suffering from a “lack of grip” in qualifying, and Monaco, he points out, largely because their ended in the same position. car, the longest in F1, struggles with the “tight and twisty streets” of Monte Carlo. “It’s like Verstappen began the race trailing Hamilton driving a bus,” the seven-time champion said. by 14 points in the driver’s championship, said
Rugby union Toulouse beat La Rochelle 22-17 to win the European Champions Cup. Tennis American Coco Gauff won the Emilia-Romagna Open in Parma, defeating Wang Qiang of China 6-1, 6-3. It was the 17-year-old’s second WTA title. Roger Federer lost in three sets to Pablo Andújar in his first match at the Geneva Open. Athletics British sprinter Dina Asher-Smith – a hopeful for gold at the Tokyo Olympics – won the 100m at the Diamond League event in Gateshead, beating America’s Sha’Carri Richardson and Jamaica’s Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce.
THE WEEK 29 May 2021
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LETTERS Pick of the week’s correspondence Pecked at by the SNP To The Independent
Nicola Sturgeon has said that she has promised not to “bludgeon” Scotland into supporting independence. However, every election since 2014 has been about independence, until a week before voting day when the First Minister will say it isn’t – until she does her acceptance speech, where she will say it is again. Her MPs in Westminster behave as if they are in the citadel of a despised foreign capital, while tweeting, posting and blogging about Scottish secession and how bad the Union is for Scotland, but yet not providing tangible ideas to replace it. Her MSPs are much the same, except they are on home territory. All this while repeatedly getting less than half the popular vote in Scotland. I might not be bludgeoned, but I’m tired of the campaign that the SNP has been running for eight years – it feels like being pecked to death by ducks. David Bone, South Ayrshire
Bureaucratic brutality To The Guardian
I am among the recipients of the Home Office letter urging people to apply for the EU settlement scheme, which, in a Kafkaesque manner, changed my identity, stating “you are a European Economic Area or Swiss National”. I am neither, but a proud British citizen with no other passport. My naturalisation in 1998 was a milestone that finally gave me a sense of belonging after years of being a citizen of nowhere. I’ve lived in the UK all my professional life, worked hard, proudly paid my taxes, contributed to charity, and never used any state benefits. The letter appears to be a post-Windrush blunder. Such systemic failures reflect the disdain for immigrants and ex-immigrants in the presentday UK, which is at the root of a hostile environment. Dr Jolanta Opacka, Croydon
Rey casa, su casa? To The Times
Your front-page story, “King Charles to open palaces for the people”, went to some lengths to praise the future king’s initiative in opening more royal doors to the public, without mentioning how much he’d be
Exchange of the week
How the Left can still win To the Financial Times
Your leader, “The strange malaise of Europe’s centre-left”, omitted one of the most intriguing events in the recent history of the social democratic parties: the unusually strong swing to the UK Labour Party in the 2017 general election. This is, surely, the exception which undermines the rule of the decline. It included two important features. One, that the gains occurred in almost every part of England (if not of the UK), and among almost every part of the electorate. That suggests that the “culture war” explanation for this decline was not in operation. Two, this was an election in which Labour’s manifesto excited great interest. A large number of people voted Labour in 2017, not having done so in 2010 or 2015, because of the party’s declared policies. I can only think of two occasions on which a manifesto has so influenced a general election: Labour’s in 1945, and the Conservatives’ in 1979. Is it perhaps possible that people are still perfectly willing to vote for social democratic parties on the rare occasions when those parties offer them social democratic policies? Mat Coward, Frome, Somerset To the New Statesman
Peter Mandelson believes that “over half the country is leftleaning in their values”, and he speaks of the Labour Party’s “terrible defeat in 2019”. Both statements are correct. In the 2019 election, the vote tallies in England and Wales were 13.9 million for the Right (Tories plus Brexit Party) and 14.1 million for the Left (Labour, Lib Dems and Greens). Yet the Tories secured a landslide majority. The Right runs on a single manifesto, whereas we on the Left spread our votes across three parties. If we had run under a merged party, the Labour Liberal Green Party (LLG), in that election we would have won 59 seats that went to the Tories. The election would have been, at worst, a dead heat. We three parties of the Left should merge as fast as possible, well before the next general election, and prepare an LLG manifesto, which, given the common thrust of all three of our political objectives, is hardly a difficult task. The next general election will then be ours to win. And we will win it. Sir Tim Waterstone, founder of Waterstones, London charging British taxpayers to enter buildings they already own. The cost of visiting the state rooms and garden of Buckingham Palace is now £60 per adult. This for a building that the people own and pay millions of pounds a year to maintain – and are at present paying hundreds of extra millions to renovate. A truly enlightened state-financed monarch would surely be paying us to inspect his palatial homes, and maybe inviting the homeless to stay. Anthony Holden, London
Double standards To The Guardian
US and European leaders have rightly condemned Belarus for forcing a Ryanair flight carrying an opposition activist to land in Minsk. Would these be the same European govern-
ments that, in 2013, forced a plane carrying the Bolivian president to divert and land in Austria because of suspicions that the whistleblower Edward Snowden was on board? The US didn’t condemn that, claiming it was “a matter for European authorities”. Roshan Pedder, West Molesey, Surrey
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accusations”, Patel said simply: “Absolutely not.” Patel has a poor memory. On 12 March 2020, Robert Peston wrote: “British Government wants UK to acquire coronavirus ‘herd immunity’”. On 13 March, the FT ran an article with the headline: “UK’s chief scientific adviser defends ‘herd immunity’ strategy for coronavirus”, while on 20 July the BBC pondered: “Coronavirus: did ‘herd immunity’ change the course of the outbreak?” Before her next interview, perhaps Patel should consult a search engine. Felicity Arbuthnot, London
Hang on to your banger To The Times
It’s no surprise that the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders is concerned about the rising age of cars on British roads. After all, everyone who holds onto an old car does not buy a new one. While its claim about the resulting increased pollution is fair, it seems to disregard the fact that manufacturing cars is an incredibly polluting process. I have a 21-year-old petrol car, and fear I will not be able to take it anywhere soon. But imagine how much worse my carbon footprint would be if I had replaced it every three years with the latest clean technology. Peter White, Guildford, Surrey
Superlative institutions To The Guardian
Noting that the Government’s parry to criticism of publicly run organisations is to add a superlative, could Great British Railways be joined by Terrific National Health Service and Absolutely Splendid BBC? Bill Bradbury, Bolton
The truth will be heard To The Independent
The Home Secretary Priti Patel has apparently “denied claims made by Dominic Cummings that the Government’s original plan to deal with coronavirus was to let the virus rip through the population to spread herd immunity”. Asked by Andrew Marr “if the Government would now admit to these
“It would have been wiser not to travel” © THE SPECTATOR
● Letters have been edited
29 May 2021 THE WEEK
ARTS Review of reviews: Books
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Book of the week
to Lawrence, and her writing about him is gloriously vivid. Yet it does have a striking “peculiarity”: Wilson’s claim Burning Man that Lawrence self-consciously by Frances Wilson “structured his life” according to the three phases – Hell, Purgatory and Bloomsbury Circus 512pp £25 Paradise – of Dante’s The Divine The Week bookshop £19.99 Comedy. Hell, she suggests, was England, where Lawrence was “born Frances Wilson produced one of the in a miner’s cottage in 1885” and unhappily grew up. Purgatory was Italy finest biographies of recent years with her 2016 study of Thomas De Quincey, – a period of flux and self-discovery – Guilty Thing, said David Wheatley in while Paradise was the artists’ colony Literary Review. Her new work, an in Taos, New Mexico, founded by the wealthy American Mabel Dodge, to equally unconventional biography of which Lawrence and his wife Frieda D.H. Lawrence, belongs “in the same Lawrence: in “reputational deep-freeze” moved in 1922. Wilson even goes so league”. Lawrence has been in far as to suggest that from birth to burial, every house he lived in “reputational deep-freeze” since the early 1970s, when feminists accused his work of being patriarchal and misogynistic. Wilson is “was positioned at a higher spot than the last” – so as to imitate undaunted: she bravely attempts to “bring him in from the cold”. the “upward movement” of Dante’s poem. Her book focuses on a single decade – 1915 to 1925 – during As well as being inherently unconvincing, this theory feels like an inappropriately “orderly structure” to impose upon a life as which Lawrence broke decisively with England, moving first to Italy and then New Mexico. She suggests that the non-fiction chaotic as Lawrence’s, said Philip Hensher in The Spectator. It Lawrence produced in this period – notably his travel writing rather spoils what is in other ways an engaging and accomplished about Italy and his essays on American literature – is his finest biography. “I cannot recall when last I felt so uncertain of a work. “Articulate and persuasive”, Wilson sifts through book’s essential merit, so confused by its intensity, its digressions, Lawrence’s legacy for “what remains urgent and alive”. the way it disappears down wormholes,” said Rachel Cooke in This is in many ways a superb biography, agreed John Carey in The Observer. “But equally, I cannot remember the last time one The Sunday Times. Wilson seems to have read everything related left me feeling so exhilarated, so challenged and absorbed.”
Beeswing
by Richard Thompson Faber 272pp £20 The Week bookshop £15.99
For a brief moment in the late 1960s and early 1970s, “British folk collided with rock and audiences did not run screaming in the opposite direction”, said Will Hodgkinson in The Times. As the lead guitarist of Fairport Convention, Richard Thompson was pivotal to Britain’s “folk-rock boom”. And in Beeswing, his lively memoir, he revisits this “exciting time”. Fairport Convention started out “doing Dylan covers”, but “everything changed” one night in 1969, when the band’s minibus crashed on the way back from a gig, killing two members. After that, the remaining bandmates decided they couldn’t go back to their former style. The result was their “masterpiece”, Liege & Lief, an album “reconfiguring Britain’s folk traditions”. Beeswing is “tastefully slim”, witty, and structurally adventurous, said Wesley Stace in The Wall Street Journal – in short, it is “everything you’d hope a Richard Thompson autobiography would be”. The book’s strength lies in its modesty and restraint – not qualities normally associated with rock memoirs, said Richard Williams in The Guardian. Marked by the same “gift for description” that made its author such a fine songwriter, this is a “quiet joy of a memoir”.
Novel of the week The Passenger
by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz Pushkin Press 256pp £14.99 The Week bookshop £11.99
The “origin tale” of this novel is “quite something”, said Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian. Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz, a 23-yearold German Jew who had fled Nazi Germany for Sweden, wrote it in 1938, immediately after Kristallnacht. An English version was published the next year (as The Man Who Took Trains), but “few noticed”. More than 70 years later, an editor in Germany rediscovered the original manuscript, along with revisions Boschwitz had suggested before his death in 1942 (on a ship torpedoed by a German submarine en route to England). The revised version has now been translated into English by Philip Boehm – and “lovingly published” by Pushkin Press. “Compelling though this real-life tale is, it’s surpassed by the story between the covers.” The Passenger is a “brilliant novel”, said David Mills in The Sunday Times. Few works have described so precisely or movingly the “existential crisis that overtook Jews in Nazi Germany”. Otto Silbermann is a successful businessman whose Aryan looks (and status as a First World War hero) have made him assume the Nazis won’t come for him. When they knock on his door in November 1938, he realises he has “left it too late” to escape. Over the next few days, he undertakes a series of “fruitless” rail journeys across Germany, less to evade capture than to find a sort of freedom in “perpetual motion”. His journeys take on a “Kafkaesque quality”, said Bryan Karetnyk in The Spectator. Claustrophobic and prescient, The Passenger captures, with remarkable clarity, the “diabolical horror of a regime that entraps and brutalises its own citizens”. 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
29 May 2021 THE WEEK
ARTS
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Podcasts... exploring books, the deep sea and Tom Waits Although I love both books and Dr Alan Jamieson, a world leader podcasts, I am somewhat allergic in the biological exploration of the to “book club” podcasts, said ocean below 6,000m. Jamieson and James Marriott in The Times. “If I his co-host Dr Thomas Linley have wanted to listen to people bore on attracted an impressive roster of about novels I haven’t read – well, interviewees, including authors that’s basically my entire social and artists as well as scientists. In life.” Fortunately, The Graham one episode, they talk to Titanic director James Cameron about the Norton Book Club contains very little boring on, and lots of secrets of underwater lighting, deepinteresting features and amusing sea mining, and the prospects for chat. The second episode has an underwater tourism. “Vast amounts of the deep ocean haven’t even been interview with the novelist Zadie looked at,” says Cameron. “It Smith, some banter with the author Sara Collins, a rundown of would be nice if we understood the best Gothic novels and a “sort it before we destroy it.” of focus group with the ordinary folk who constitute the titular So many music podcasts seem to book club”. With Norton himself Zadie Smith on The Graham Norton Book Club: ridiculously smart be aimed at lovers of “SoundCloud “on purringly witty comic form”, rappers and bubblegum pop”, said the show is “probably as good as it’s possible for a podcast of The Daily Telegraph. These three definitely aren’t. Rolling Stone this kind to be”. My main quibble is that he’s packing in so much, Music Now is a weekly deep dive into some of rock and country’s some bits feel rushed. I could listen to Zadie Smith – “funny, most cherished musicians and their back catalogues. For a start, ridiculously smart, unpretentious” – for hours. “In fact, why try Woodstock at 50: The Untold Stories. Folk on Foot is doesn’t she have a podcast?” a “beautiful” show in which Matthew Bannister meets folk musicians (including The Young’uns, The Unthanks and Peggy It’s often said that we know more about the Moon’s surface Seeger) and “explores the landscapes that matter to them. The than we do about the deep sea – which starts at a depth of 1,800 musicians play acoustic songs on location against a backdrop metres and reaches down to almost 11,000m within the Mariana of babbling rivers and rustling leaves.” Finally, Song by Song Trench. That belief is completely wrong, apparently, said Sandrine is “unashamedly pitched” at Tom Waits superfans. Musicians Ceurstemont in the New Scientist – and is elegantly dismantled in Martin Zaltz Austwick and Sam Pay analyse every song in Waits’s episode one of the riveting The Deep-Sea Podcast, by host vast discography, with help from “less-obsessed guests”.
Albums of the week: three new releases Paul Weller: Fat Pop (Volume 1) Polydor £10.99
Sons of Kemet: Black to the Future Impulse! £10.99
Hindemith: Wind Sonatas Les Vents Français Warner Classics £14.99
“Has there been a more remarkable latecareer run than Paul Weller’s?” I can’t think of one, said Dan Cairns in The Sunday Times. Fat Pop, Weller’s 16th solo album, is “another beauty” in a glorious sequence that started with 22 Dreams in 2008, “stylistically and lyrically, the album roams far and wide, encompassing pop, reggae, blues, soul, balladry, polemic, whimsy and regret”. The title track is a “sinuous, clarinet-flecked, Ian Dury-like ode to music”. The “arch, self-mocking” Cosmic Fringes recalls early Roxy Music and Ziggyera Bowie. And In Better Times is the “sonic equivalent of a sun-dappled walk along a meandering riverbank”. This is Weller’s second album in less than a year, after On Sunset, said Ludovic Hunter-Tilney in the FT. And it ranges so widely across genres, it feels slightly “scattergun” – from the Spanish guitar in Cobweb/Connections to the mix of reggae and orchestral soul in That Pleasure. Even so, there are some definite “keepers” among this “eager, zesty” and “frisky” collection.
“Jazz is most often a collegial endeavour, but it has a star system too,” said Kitty Empire in The Observer. On the young British jazz scene, the “urbane, bold and deep-thinking” saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings shines as brightly as anyone. Known for his “relentless energy and pioneering spirit”, Hutchings has three bands on the go. This one, Sons of Kemet, has musical roots in brass-laden carnivals, with undercurrents of hip-hop – and its fourth album, which includes more vocals than before, is its best yet. The music is urgent and political, much of it recorded following the murder of George Floyd a year ago. Yet it is “party” music, too, which “lifts the spirit and feeds the soul”. Hutchings and his band have attracted an “all-star” cast of guests, said Dhruva Balram on NME. Collaborators include rapper Kojey Radical, the Chicago bandleader/vocalist Angel Bat Dawid, singer Lianne La Havas and poet Joshua Idehen. Together, they’ve made a “careerdefining work that makes the case for Sons of Kemet as jazz greats in their own right”.
The German composer and multiinstrumentalist Paul Hindemith was in the 1920s an “avant-gardist” in the Schoenberg mould, who was denounced by the Nazis. But he had “abandoned serialism by the late 1930s”, said Hugh Canning in The Sunday Times, and it’s hard to hear, in Emmanuel Pahud’s “witty account” of his 1936 Flute Sonata, what would have made Goebbels ban its Berlin premiere. Other “starry names” who give pleasing accounts of Hindemith’s “delightful” wind sonatas on this splendid disc include François Leleux, Paul Meyer and Radovan Vlatkovic. The members of the quintet Les Vents Français are all front-rank soloists in their own right, and give “fabulously fluent performances”, agreed Andrew Clements in The Guardian. Leleux’s account of the oboe work is “smooth and suave, the epitome of French woodwind playing”, and the agility of clarinettist Meyer and bassoonist Gilbert Audin is impressive. But it’s the fourmovement Tenor Horn Sonata that’s “the real treasure here”, revealed by Vlatkovic as “a work of unexpected beauty and depth”.
The Week’s own podcast, The Week Unwrapped, covers the biggest unreported stories of the week (available on Apple and Google) THE WEEK 29 May 2021
Film & TV Films to stream
New releases
The 1950s saw the birth of the Hollywood teen movie, with films such as The Wild One (1953) and Rebel Without a Cause (1955), but it wasn’t until the 1980s that the high school movie came into its own. Here are five of the best examples:
Army of the Dead
The Breakfast Club John Hughes decisively shaped the genre with Sixteen Candles, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and this, the quintessential 1980s teen movie. Thrown together in detention, five students (played by “Brat pack” actors such as Emilio Estevez) from different cliques learn to overcome their differences. Heathers This pitch-dark cult hit from 1989 was written as a riposte to the decade’s optimistic teen films (notably those of John Hughes). Winona Ryder and Christian Slater star as outsiders who turn to violent means to expose their school’s culture of prejudice, bullying, homophobia, rape and more.
THE FILMS ARE AVAILABLE ON GOOGLE, APPLE TV AND AMAZON
Clueless Amy Heckerling’s 1995 adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma is a sharp satire of the Beverly Hills teen elite, full of fabulously sassy and idiomatic dialogue. Alicia Silverstone plays the wildly spoiled but loveable Cher Horowitz, whose penchant for matchmaking backfires. Superbad Writers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg portrayed their own teenage friendship in this uproarious 2007 film about two high school leavers, and their attempts to secure alcohol for a house party where they hope to kickstart their sex lives. Jonah Hill and Michael Cera star. Booksmart Echoing the premise of Superbad, this 2019 comedy, directed by Olivia Wilde, stars Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever as dorky best friends who regret having focused too obsessively on their studies, and decide to use the final night of high school to prove that they can have fun too.
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Dir: Zack Snyder (2hrs 28mins) (18)
★★★
He made his debut in 2004 with a high-octane remake of George A. Romero’s zombie classic Dawn of the Dead, and his recent, four-hour cut of Justice League was spectacular, but Army of the Dead is director Zack Snyder’s most “cinematic” blockbuster yet, said Kevin Maher in The Times. In this gory and “giddily entertaining” mash-up of the zombie and heist genres, an outbreak of the zombie plague in Las Vegas has been contained, and the city walled off. But a shadowy tycoon (Hiroyuki Sanada) has $200m locked in a vault there, and hires a “fractious” band of mercenaries, led by man-mountain Scott Ward (Dave Bautista), to retrieve it. Mayhem ensues, all “cleverly orchestrated”, with an impending nuclear strike to add to the “countdown pressure”. This is “operatic pulp” in true Snyder style, said Robbie Collin in The Daily Telegraph. Some zombies have evolved into muscular “alphas”, ruled by a royal couple in a hotel called Olympus, and the vault itself is named Götterdämmerung. But there are touches of wit to leaven the mythic pretensions, including a zombie tiger from Siegfried and Roy’s menagerie, and “bad-taste jokes”, such as a YouTuber who mows down monsters on camera before “chirpily reminding his fans to like and subscribe”. The film has “a gonzo excess and a certain kind of end-of-the-world spectacle”, said Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian, but I found it far too long, and I could have done with more humour. With its “uninspired” CGI visuals, it’s basically a very violent, “video-game-type” splurge of “generic zombie content” that feels “a bit zombie-ish” itself. Available on Netflix.
Rare Beasts
Dir: Billie Piper (1hr 31mins) (15)
★★★
Billie Piper’s first film as a writer-director is a “peculiar anti-romcom”, an “ambitious, nervy work that occasionally trips over its own
Army of the Dead: “giddily entertaining”
stylistic heels”, said Mark Kermode in The Observer. Piper stars as Mandy, an “angry, seething” single mother who is professionally driven but still living with her own mother, (Kerry Fox). Her son (Toby Woolf) is “beset by anxious tics”, and her father (David Thewlis) is consumed by “bitterness and regret”. On a “toe-curling” date with a buttoned up workmate (Leo Bill), Mandy spots that he’s a misogynist, but starts a “laceratingly awkward” relationship with him nonetheless. In their verbal sparring matches, “deadpan sparks fly” – the script is “gleefully overwrought” – but ultimately, the focus of the film is Mandy’s personal battle “to define who she is”. Like Phoebe Waller-Bridge in Fleabag, Piper revels in “all that is messy and intimate” in her protagonist’s experience, said Clarisse Loughrey in The Independent. Mandy is a woman “at the end of her tether”, the opposite of the stereotype of the feminist as an “overachieving girl boss”. But it’s impossible to make much sense of the “barrage” of her thoughts and emotions, and the other characters are “underexplored”. Piper takes aim at timely topics from gender inequality to selfimprovement fads, said Tim Grierson in Screen Daily, but the film reveals little more than that “the modern world makes us crazy”. All the “screaming and commotion” makes it difficult for us to relate to the characters – as does Piper’s frenetic directorial style. In cinemas.
Halston: “trashy fun” biopic starring Ewan McGregor “The shallowness, the bitching, every twist and turn of whose the profligacy and the cheap “ridiculous” life the series treats and sentimental small town with crazy seriousness. backstory” wreck most fashion Halston’s star rose and fell designer biopics, said Camilla repeatedly, and by the time of his Long in The Sunday Times – but death from an Aids-related illness Ryan Murphy’s new Netflix miniin 1990, he had lost the rights series Halston is “a scream”. even to his name, said Rebecca Ewan McGregor “never sails Nicholson in The Guardian. But it’s below storm force 10” as the hard to care much about his battles coke-addicted designer who rose with the money men, and the show to fame when Jackie Kennedy skims too lightly over his personal wore one of his pillbox hats. problems. Set largely around the Whispering lines such as “but I Studio 54 circle, the show features am an artist” and “orchids are my McGregor: “a scream” a lot of “sex, drugs and snobbery”, process” from behind a mask of said Anita Singh in The Daily sunglasses and thick fake tan, McGregor’s Telegraph. And there is much to enjoy, Halston is a “shrieking, camp martyr”, provided you have a taste for “trashy fun”.
29 May 2021 THE WEEK
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Art Thomas Becket: murder and the making of a saint
British Museum, London WC1 (020-7323 8299, britishmuseum.org). Until 22 August “If you thought medieval religious sanctified body parts; we even see a probable fragment of Becket’s skull art was all clasped hands and that was preserved as a relic. As the uplifted eyes”, this gory, “brilliant” show will put you right, said show explains, such gruesome Jonathan Jones in The Guardian. artefacts made their way around On 29 December 1170, four knights Europe, their geographical reach entered Canterbury Cathedral and suggesting that the Middle Ages slaughtered its archbishop, Thomas was a more cosmopolitan era than Becket – “a flamboyant, charismatic generally assumed. Indeed, far from politician” who had once been King being an insular society, Norman Henry II’s closest ally, but had England belonged to “an empire become a “thorn in his side” as that stretched from the Scottish archbishop because he consistently border to the Pyrénées”, while London, Becket’s birthplace, championed the authority of the Church over that of the English thronged with trade from as far Crown. When Becket afield as China. Nor was it as excommunicated several bishops technologically backward as loyal to the king, it enraged Henry. generally believed: a psalter “Who will rid me of this turbulent displayed here is adorned with priest?”, he supposedly thundered. illustrations of the “state-of-the-art” Whether or not the king had meant 12th century water pumping system to order it, the murder shocked the employed at Canterbury Cathedral. rest of Catholic Europe. Henry’s name went down in infamy, while The exhibits are spectacular, said Becket was canonised just three Rachel Campbell-Johnston in The years later, his stand against state Times. We see “elaborate gold authority becoming a byword for croziers and episcopal rings”; righteous defiance. Becket’s life and “gilded caskets” that once legacy are now the subject of a contained “grisly relics”; and major exhibition at the British “gorily dramatic” depictions of Museum, which brings together Becket’s murder. Most spellbinding more than 100 extraordinary of all are a number of huge stainedAn alabaster panel featuring a “startling death scene” objects, from jewellery and prayer glass windows on loan from books to relics and even stained glass windows – many featuring Canterbury Cathedral itself, their “kaleidoscopic panes” “startling death scenes”. This show “makes the art of the Middle depicting the “bizarre assortment” of miracles Becket supposedly Ages come alive”. performed: a “dramatic crimson nosebleed” cures a monk of his illnesses, while a man who has been “blinded and castrated” has This “fascinating” exhibition shows how Becket became his eyes and testicles restored to him. Yet the humbler exhibits a “religious phenomenon”, said Tim Stanley in The Daily are the most evocative. We see “pieces of old bone”; a “blob Telegraph. Soon after his murder, we learn, people flocked to the of red wax” that survives as one of the only objects we know he cathedral to collect his blood; one man “rushed some home” and touched; and a “tiny illumination” believed to be the only portrait gave it to his wife, who was instantly cured of an illness. It was of Becket made in his lifetime. It adds up to a “marvellous, the first of many miracles attributed to the slain archbishop, multifaceted” exhibition which imaginatively “resurrects not whose reputation would spread far and wide, along with his just a solitary figure, but an entire age of faith”.
© THE TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM; DAVID HOCKNEY
David Hockney: The Arrival of Spring, Normandy, 2020 “This time last year, our nation was in with raindrops”; a tree house in a the first grip of lockdown,” said Rachel “gnarly” old pear tree; and a row of Campbell-Johnston in The Times. Yet poplars that recalls Monet. But in time, spring, David Hockney proclaimed, could “all the springtime cheer becomes a bit not be cancelled. To bolster our spirits, relentless”. These iPad “paintings” he began posting online a series of new have “an airless, artificial quality” that digital paintings of the “bright spring couldn’t be further from the spirit of world” of his Normandy garden; they masterpieces from Hockney’s heyday. brought “a splash of pure joy” to the They’re too uniform: it’s “landscape “gloom” of the pandemic. Now, we by algorithm”. have the chance to see them up close. There’s “a painful mundanity” This new exhibition brings together to these works, agreed Mark Hudson 116 paintings that the 83-year-old artist in The Independent. Hockney’s created on his iPad over the course of “unremarkable” landscapes and 2020. This may not be groundbreaking clumps of “damp daffodils” are stuff, but the paintings are “fresh” and No. 133, 23rd March 2020: an “airless” quality tastefully nondescript, while his usually “joyous”. They’re “all about light”: “the vivid palette is dulled by the digital strange twilit glow of tussocks and bushes” or “the silvery medium. Hockney did much to make contemporary art gleam of a rising Moon”. accessible to millions, but I fear that he has now become “a There is “little sign of human life” in these images, said deeply conservative – and pretty dull – artist”. Royal Academy, Alastair Sooke in The Daily Telegraph. The subject is “nature’s London W1 (020-7300 8000, royalacademy.org.uk). Until irrepressible, frothing abundance”: Hockney’s pond, “dimpled 26 September.
THE WEEK 29 May 2021
Auctions
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Only Banksy
Banksy Auctions Sell with the leading online marketplace Contact: banksy@forumauctions.co.uk
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Rude Copper, screenprint, 2002, numbered from the edition of 250 in pencil. Estimate: £20,000-30,000
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THE WEEK 29 May 2021
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Best books… Frances Wilson
The award-winning biographer and literary critic chooses her five favourite books. Her latest book, Burning Man, a re-evaluation of the life and legacy of D.H. Lawrence (Bloomsbury Circus £25), is out this week (see page 29) Seven Men by Max Beerbohm, 1919 (BiblioLife POD £15.99). When Walter Benjamin said that “all great works of literature either dissolve a genre or invent one”, he might have been referring to this, the most unclassifiable book ever written. Five biographical stories about six fame-hungry men from the literary world of the fin-desiècle; the seventh is Beerbohm himself, who wanders among his fantastical creations. The Ballad of Peckham Rye by Muriel Spark, 1960 (Penguin £8.99). The devil, in the form of a Scottish charmer called Dougal Douglas, comes to Peckham Rye, where he wreaks havoc on the love lives
of the locals. All of Muriel Spark’s novels operate like small bombs, but this is her wittiest, most off-beat, and utterly startling. Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence, 1913 (OUP £8.99). Paul Morel, the sensitive son of a coal miner, is torn between love for his unhappy and controlling mother and desire for his girlfriend. The first modern novel of the 20th century, Sons and Lovers, or “Oedipus in the Collieries”, is as elemental as Greek tragedy. Madame de Pompadour by Nancy Mitford, 1954 (Vintage £9.99). Novelists make the best biographers because they combine the granite
of facts with the rainbow of imagination. Madame de Pompadour begins like this: “After the death of the great king, beautiful Versailles, fatal for France, lay empty for seven years while fresh air blew through its golden rooms…” Enough said. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, 1965 (Penguin £9.99). Capote described his truecrime masterpiece as a “nonfiction novel”, but it is more complex than this. While exploring the impact on a small Kansas town of the murder of a prominent family, Capote became close to the killers as well as the mourners, which turns the narrative into a high-wire act.
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
Curated by artist and writer Edmund de Waal, This Living Hand explores the tactile qualities of Henry Moore’s sculpture; viewers are invited to touch works in bronze and stone. Until 31 October, Henry Moore Studios & Gardens, Perry Green, Hertfordshire (henry-moore.org). Shakespeare’s Globe reopens with a revival of its ebullient 2019 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Owing to social distancing rules, groundlings are seated. Until 30 October (in rep), Shakespeare’s Globe, Bankside, London SE1 (shakespearesglobe.com). James Barnor: Accra/London – A Retrospective looks at the career of the British-Ghanaian photographer, who captured social and political change in both cities. Until 22 October, Serpentine North Gallery, London W2 (serpentinegalleries.org).
Book now
Charleston: Festival of the Garden brings together gardeners, writers and activists for four days of events. Highlights include a talk by head
Programmes
The Anti-Vax Conspiracy
Documentary investigating key figures in the international anti-vax movement, which claims that Covid is a myth and vaccines are part of a government plot. Tue 1 Jun, C4 21:00 (90mins).
Anne Boleyn Three-part
psychological drama exploring the final months of Anne Boleyn’s life as she falls from favour in the Court. With Jodie Turner-Smith (star of Queen & Slim) in the title role. Tue 1, Wed 2 and Thur 3 Jun, C5 21:00 (60mins each).
Piers Morgan’s Life Stories: Sir Keir Starmer
Morgan meets the Labour leader, who opens up about his childhood and family life, his career in law and move into politics. Tue 1 Jun, 21:30 ITV1 (55mins).
Once We Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band Documentary about the
Canadian musician and the creation of The Band. Includes archive footage and interviews with friends and collaborators. Fri 4 Jun, BBC4 21:00 (95mins).
Films
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)
Frances McDormand won an Oscar for her role as the mother of a murdered teenage girl, who challenges the local police for failing to solve the crime. Sat 29 May, C4 21:30 (110mins).
Moonstruck (1987) A Barnor’s Sick Hagemeyer shop assistant (c.1971)
gardeners at Derek Jarman’s Prospect Cottage and Beth Chatto’s Garden. 1-4 July, Charleston, Lewes, East Sussex (charleston.org.uk). Birmingham Royal Ballet returns to the stage with Curated by Carlos, a triple bill including the premiere of City of a Thousand Trades, Miguel Altunaga’s “love letter to BRB’s home town” (Times). 10-12 June, Birmingham Repertory Theatre, Broad Street, Birmingham (brb.org.uk).
The Archers: what happened last week © JONATHAN RING; COURTESY AUTOGRAPH
Television
Exhausted from helping with Martha, Susan makes an error at the shop and worries what people will think. At Berrow, Neil and Brian have an awkward conversation, but agree that Martha comes first. Later, Neil tells Emma to stop attacking Alice. Seeing how stressed she is, Helen instructs Susan to take compassionate leave from the dairy. Alice visits Martha and talks to Chris, but when he says nothing has changed, Alice accuses him of wanting to be rid of her. As Kirsty and Helen chat about the move to Beechwood, Kirsty offers to help out at the dairy to cover for Susan. Drunk Alice tries to buy a bottle of vodka at the shop and threatens to drive elsewhere if Jim won’t serve her. Susan arrives and, as things escalate, tells Alice to leave. She does, throwing a brick through the window. Alice apologises the next day, and Brian offers to pay for the damage, while Jim and Susan say they won’t press charges. When the phone rings later, Alice is afraid it’s Chris to say something’s wrong with Martha – but it’s social services.
Brooklyn widow (Cher) falls for her fiancé’s moody younger brother (Nicolas Cage) in this touching, low-key romcom. Cher and the late Olympia Dukakis, who played her mother, both won Oscars for their performances. Sat 29 May, BBC2 22:00 (100mins).
Coming up online
Over the past year, the Royal Opera House has maintained an impressive online programme. Even as it reopens to audiences, it will continue to stream events, including Balanchine and Robbins, the Royal Ballet’s performance of three classic works, available to stream from 11 June-11 July. Tickets for in-person performances, 4-13 June; roh.org.uk.
29 May 2021 THE WEEK
Best properties
36 Modest houses with generous grounds
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Cornwall: The Beach Hut, Millook Haven. This unique coastal bolthole has direct beach frontage and ownership of the beach (down to the mean high water) and surrounding clifftop, totalling approximately 40 acres and including over 1.4 miles of linear coastline. The entire coast is both an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and a Site of Special Scientific Interest. Built in 1929 as a tearoom, this 1-bed cottage is currently a very successful holiday let. OIEO £1.75m; John Bray & Partners (01208862601).
▲ Northumberland: Harlow Keep, Old Town, Catton, Hexham. A stone-built house dating from the 1700s, on the outskirts of the village, in around 11.5 acres of land. Main suite, 3 further beds, family bath, kitchen/breakfast room, recep hall, 1 further recep, garden room, snug/office, utility/laundry, cloakroom, double garage, gardens, grazing land. £595,000; Finest Properties (01434-622234). ▲
Newport: Llansôr Mill, Caerleon, Newport. A Grade II rural property, comprising three cottages, set in an idyllic location at the end of a long driveway. Bordered by a babbling brook, the property is surrounded by 25 acres of hillside and woodland. The Miller’s Cottage: 3 beds, 2 receps; The Watermill: 1 bed, mezzanine sleeping area, open-plan living space; The Studio: open-plan living space, mezzanine; straw-bale ecoroundhouse. OIEO £1,1m; Powells (01600714140).
THE WEEK 29 May 2021
on the market
37
▲ Suffolk: York’s Tenement, Yoxford. A timberframed farmhouse, dating from 1592, set in extensive landscaped gardens of about one acre. 2 suites, 4 further beds, family bath, shower, kitchen/dining room, 3 further receps, utility, former dairy, terrace, cart lodge, gardens. £1.1m; Inigo (020-3687 3071). ▲
Devon: Chainbridge Lodge, Bampton, Tiverton. A Grade II house with direct river frontage to the River Exe and over 13 acres of gardens and grounds, which slope down to the riverbank. Main bed, 2 further beds, family bath, 2 WCs, kitchen/dining room with larder, 1 further recep, boot room, utility, single bank salmon fishing rights, level pasture. £750,000; Strutt & Parker (01392-229405). Cumbria: Fisherflatt, Natland, Kendal. A private house with farreaching views to the Lakeland fells beyond. Built in the 1920s, the house is set at the end of a sweeping driveway in gardens of over ¾ of an acre. Main bed, 4 further beds, 2 baths, shower, kitchen/breakfast room with Aga, recep hall, 3 further receps, utility, halls, orchard, vegetable gardens, terrace. £925,000; H&H Land & Estates (01539 721375).
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Gloucestershire: Little Close, Redmarley. A charming period cottage with a detached coach house and a large garden, in a pretty and desirable rural village. Main house: main bed with walk-in wardrobe, 2 further beds, family bath, kitchen, double recep, snug, sun room, WC, hall; Coach House: 1 bed, home office/study, utility, WC; double garage, workshop, further timber garage and carport, beautifully maintained mature garden of 0.82 acres. OIEO £650,000; Grant & Co (01531-637341). ▲
Oxfordshire: Jasmine Cottage, South Newington. Thought to date from the 1700s, this traditional stone village house with a spacious garden has been in the same family for decades. 3 beds, family bath, shower, kitchen/breakfast room, 2 receps, utility, garage with hayloft storage above (could be converted to a home office with the necessary consents), garden shed, wooden summer house, paved terrace, front and rear garden with extensive lawns and wellstocked beds, parking. £795,000; Butler Sherborn (01451830731).
▲ Caithness: Tulloch Lea and the Crofts of Bruan and Craigulloch, Ulbster, Lybster. A rare opportunity to purchase 54.5 acres of owneroccupied, coastal croft land together with a small livestock farm, 5-bed house and useful outbuildings with spectacular views over the North Sea. OIEO £350,000; Strutt & Parker (01463-723593).
29 May 2021 THE WEEK
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LEISURE Food & Drink
39
Three granitas for summer Elderflower, c cucumber and giin granita This is a very English graniita, if such a thing is not contradictory, says Jacob Kenedy. t di You could serve it with finger sandwiches. Makes about 1 litre, serves 5-8 4 large cucumbers 100ml gin 75ml elderflower cordial 180g caster sugar possibly a little water • Juice the cucumbers (with their skins): if you have a juicer, so much the better. If not, grate them finely or puree them in a food processor, then strain through a sieve or muslin into a measuring jug, twisting and squeezing hard to extract all the juice. • Stir together the cucumber juice with the gin, elderflower cordial and sugar until the sugar has dissolved. Check the volume is a litre – if short, make it up with water. • Transfer the mixture to a wide dish and put it in the freezer. Once it starts to freeze at the edges, every 10-15mins stir it with a fork or whisk it, until the mixture is almost completely frozen and icy (this will take a long time – perhaps 4 hours). It is ready to serve in this slightly wet, sludgy state. • To keep it longer, let it freeze solid, then before serving take it out to thaw for 20mins or so, breaking it up with a fork.
• In a bowl, stir all the ingredients
together until the sugar has dissolved. • Then follow the same method as for the previous recipe. Variations: You could use white port, red ruby port or medium sherry instead of Aperol and then also replace the prosecco with tonic water. Or replace both the Aperol and prosecco with sparkling moscato d’Asti.
Strawberry granita
(Chill your serving glasses for at least 20mins in the freezer before you serve.)
Aperol granita This granita is a homage to the omnipresent spritz – the Veneto’s gift to the world. You can substitute the Aperol with Campari or Aperitivo Select. Makes about 1 litre, serves 5-8 500ml prosecco (or dry white wine) 300ml Aperol 200ml water 100g caster sugar
Freezing strawberries first, as here, gives you a path to a five-minute cheat’s granita. Makes about 800ml, serves 4-6 500g frozen strawberries 250ml chilled water 100g caster sugar to serve: 150ml whipping cream, whipped to soft peaks with 1 tbsp caster sugar • Chill your serving glasses for at least 20mins in the freezer before you begin. • Put the frozen strawberries, water and sugar in a blender and blend to a slushy consistency. • Serve straight away in the frozen glasses, topped with the sweetened whipped cream, if you like.
Taken from Gelupo Gelato by Jacob Kenedy, published by Bloomsbury at £14.9 99. To buy from The Week Bookshop for £11.99, call 020-3176 3835 or visit theweekbooksh hop.co.uk.
© STEVEN JOYCE
What the experts recommend The Bridge Arms 53 High Street, Bridge, Kent (01227-286534) This “beauty” of a restaurant in a village outside Canterbury is run by Daniel and Natasha Smith, “who wowed everyone – critics, diners, Michelin – with their Fordwich Arms a few miles away”, says Marina O’Loughlin in The Sunday Times. Its atmosphere is that of a traditional country inn: “vast inglenooks and leather chesterfields” dominate the interior; outside, there’s a sprawling, flower-filled garden. But make no mistake, this is a serious place to eat, with “properly grown-up” food. Our meal begins with surprisingly intricate “snacks”: buttermilk-fried chicken with “wild garlic emulsion for dunking”; whipped cod’s roe that is “baby’s fingernail pink”. A main course of guinea fowl breast, accompanied by a “kind of pressed cake of its legs”, exemplifies the same “elevated” technique, as does a sumptuous brown butter and Kentish honey custard tart. An afternoon here, in a place that is both serene and bustling, “hammers home why so many people are now
fleeing the cities”. Lunch for two, with drinks and service charge: £148. Brat at Climpson’s Arch 374 Helmsley Place, Hackney, London E8 (bratrestaurant.com) Housed in a courtyard covered with a “marquee structure”, this restaurant was opened last summer by Tomos Parry, of the Michelin-starred Brat in Shoreditch, says Jay Rayner in The Observer. He envisaged it as a “temporary residency” while Covid restrictions remained in place, but it has proved so popular that he’s keeping it going until at least the end of the year. And no wonder: the food here is “swoon-worthy”. At the heart of the menu – a “scribbled blackboard” – are showy, wood-grilled sharing items: beef rib for four for £120; a “vast” Cornish crab for £55. We opt for the smaller plates: crisp fritto misto of hake, squid and courgette; an “enthusiastically firegrilled” mutton chop. All around is the sound of “happy chatter”. Although the night is cold, I’m “warm in so many ways”. Small plates £6.50-£16; big plates £22-£30.
Cava ups its game Good news for sparkling wine fans who “hate sticky prosecco, but don’t always want to splash out on champagne”, says Jane MacQuitty in The Times. After decades of being stuck in a “cheap wine rut”, cava – Spain’s méthode champenoise fizz – has finally upped its game. This is the result of a “handful of producers” improving their wines ahead of new zoning and quality tiers coming into force and affecting cava’s northeastern heartland of Penedès. The “most majestic” of these producers is Gramona: their outstanding 2016 La Cuvee (£27.50; greatwine.co.uk) has notes of “elegant apple blossom and lemon twist”. Almost as good, but a lot less pricey, is 2017’s L’Atzar Brut Reserva (£11.99; Waitrose), with its zingy green apple and lemon sherbet. Also at Waitrose is Pere Ventura Reserva Cava (£12.99): this is a “brilliant bubbly, with the intense, rich, complex apple-crumble fruit that will woo one and all”. If you still fancy an easy-swigging high street cava, easily my favourite is Cava Brut (£10; Marks & Spencer): it has “lots of crowdpleasing, bright, light citrus pep”.
29 May 2021 THE WEEK
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LEISURE 41
The best… electric bicycles ▲
Ribble Hybrid AL e Ribble’s sleek and stylish hybrid model is great for a city commute or longer weekend rides. It has a 60-mile range and weighs just 13kg (from £2,199; ribblecycles. co.uk). ▲
VanMoof S3 With its minimalist design and sturdy build, this well-priced Dutch bike is a top all-round choice. It has a 90-mile range and picks up speed quickly. It comes with an integral magnetic lock, alarm and GPS tracker (£1,798; vanmoof.com).
▲ Raleigh Motus Crossbar The Ralei h’ clever Raleigh’s Bosch motor slowly introduces itself as you pedal faster, creating a particularly smooth ride. This is a practical and well-equiped bike for everyday commuting with a range of up to 80 miles (£1,900; raleigh.co.uk).
▲
SOURCES: THE INDEPENDENT/WIRED/ T3/CYCLING WEEKLY/TECHRADAR
▲
Brompton M2L 2 Speed Electric Folding Bike Brompton has cleverly integrated smooth electric assistance into a little folding bike by putting a battery in a bag above the front wheel (£2,885; pureelectric.com).
▲ Specialized Turbo Vado SL 4.0 Weighing in at just 15kg thanks to its aluminium alloy frame, this is an impressive advanced bike with an 80-mile maximum range. It feels very natural to ride and the only display is well hidden on the crossbar (£2,900; rutlandcycling.com).
Tips of the week... hay fever-friendly gardens
And for those who have everything…
Gtech eBike City For those hoping not to bre eak the bank, Gt tech’s Gtech s City and Sport models are both impressive. The City is less powerful than most electric bikes, but is easy to use and has a 30-mile range (£995; gtech.co.uk).
Where to find... cultural events in the UK
● Shield your garden from neighbouring ones by making borders from allergenfriendly plants. The right kinds act as a “green sink” and soak up problem pollen. ● Pergolas and arbours can also protect you from pollen in the air. ● Opt for gravel or decking over paving, as they have more gaps for trapping pollen. ● Plants that are pollinated by wind rather than insects cause the most problems, and lawns and trees are the biggest culprits, particularly sycamores, birches and planes. ● Pollen designed to stick to an insect is much heavier. Insect-pollinated trees (e.g. fruit trees) can act as a barrier against nearby problem trees, as can taller shrubs such as dogwood and hydrangeas. ● For hedges, pick those with small, insectpollinated flowers, or that are self-fertilising. ● There are lots of low-pollinating and insect-friendly flowers to choose from, as well as double and sterile flowers that have no pollen, such as peonies and roses.
You don’t need to be able to play the piano to enjoy a Steinway Grand. The company’s latest self-playing model, fitted with Spirio | r technology, can even recreate specific performances by concert pianists including Lang Lang and Vladimir Horowitz. from £127,000; steinway.co.uk
Get to know Bristol with a self-guided audio walk. The three-mile walk, A Piece of Banksy, focuses on the artist in his home town (£10; wherethewall.com) or try the Bristol Open Doors app for a history tour. The Royal Horticultural Society opened its first new site in 17 years this week at RHS Garden Bridgewater in Salford, with one of the UK’s biggest walled gardens. This year’s Film & Food Fest is coming to 15 cities starting with Cardiff (17-20 June). Enjoy films such as Grease and Joker in Bute Park, while trucks sell treats from crêpes to cocktails (filmandfoodfest.com). The Liverpool Biennial 2021 got under way this week with nine free indoor displays of contemporary art; from 24 July the city’s Tate Gallery will have a show of Lucian Freud’s portraits. Edinburgh’s famous festivals are returning with outdoor pavilions, sound trails and free pop-up shows in the Royal Botanic Garden (edinburghfestivalcity.com).
SOURCE: THE DAILY TELEGRAPH
SOURCE: FINANCIAL TIMES
SOURCE: THE SUNDAY TIMES
29 May 2021 THE WEEK
Obituaries
42
Revered educationalist who won the World Children’s Prize Asfaw Yemiru, who has Asfaw Yemiru died aged around 79, was 1942-2021 a former street urchin who founded one of Ethiopia’s best and most famous schools, the Asra Hawariat School for the poor. Its name means “Footsteps of the Apostle”, said The Economist, and by 2020, some 120,000 children had passed through it. They learnt core academic subjects, but also how to make pots, farm and weave. In short, they learnt how to make a living. In 2001, Asfaw was awarded the World Children’s Prize. “People talk about basic needs, food and shelter,” he said. “But for me, education is the key.”
Asfaw Yemiru. I am here to learn.” He was admitted on the spot. At the school, he had plenty to eat; in fact, he was amazed to see that leftovers were often thrown away. So he persuaded his headmaster to let him distribute the scraps to the hungry children outside the school gates. Soon, he recalled, “these ragged boys and girls began to ask for education as well as food”, at which point he began teaching them himself, in the shelter of a tree in a nearby churchyard, at the end of his own school day.
Many of his orphaned and abandoned pupils slept on the site, and when more and more turned up, and church officials started to complain, Asfaw petitioned Emperor Haile Asfaw Yemiru was born in the remote Bulga Selassie for some land on which to build a region of Ethiopia in the early 1940s, the son school. He did so in the time-honoured fashion of a Coptic Orthodox priest. As a child, he of throwing himself in front of the emperor’s spent most of his time tending to livestock, but car, and was eventually given a plot next to when he was eight, he and his brothers were the Wingate school. With the help of its Asfaw: “education is key” taken on a trip to the capital, to be made headmaster, he built ten makeshift classrooms deacons in the Church. Impressed by the opportunities he saw – enough to accommodate 280 pupils. As word spread, he there, he determined to return; and, aged nine, he set out alone to expanded his school with whatever funding he could get, walk the 75 miles to the city. Things didn’t go according to plan. eventually building 64 classrooms and an assembly hall. Later, For 14 months, he slept in a churchyard, often going hungry. His he said the hall had been a mistake – a prestige project that had taken funding from his core mission. “Fine permanent buildings,” luck changed when he rushed to help a wealthy Turkish woman he said, could come later, when Ethiopia was more developed. who had dropped her shopping. She employed him as a household dogsbody, said The Daily Telegraph, and allowed him to attend the local primary school between doing his chores. He His school often achieved the highest grades in the country. But finished all eight years of the curriculum in just two. Asfaw was not interested in certificates, or in churning out administrators and office workers: he wanted his pupils to be socially useful – to go back to their communities, and spread the He won a scholarship to the General Wingate boarding school, seeds of the education they had had. This, he believed, was the run by the British Council, having turned up at the school, dusty and barefoot, and told its headmaster in English: “My name is way to alleviate poverty in the long term.
Entrepreneur who built a billion-dollar shoe brand Some designs also had an unusual waffle pattern, which made the soles less prone to cracking. As the shoes started to be worn in local skateparks, Van Doren realised he had a potentially lucrative new market – and he began to focus on it.
As the heel and toe dragging from a board often wore out just one trainer in a pair, Vans allowed its customers to buy individual shoes. It consulted skateboarders as to their needs, which led to innovations such as slip-ons; The son of an inventor and a seamstress, Paul it kept tabs on new trends in the sport; and Van Doren grew up in a town outside Boston, began sponsoring skateboarders and contests. and dropped out of school at 16. He made a “Everybody else was kicking these kids out of living working at the horse track – until his Van Doren: catered to skaters the park,” Van Doren observed. “And here was mother told him he had to get a proper job. a company listening to them, backing them and making shoes for She found him one at Randy’s (the Randolph Rubber them.” By the early 1980s, Vans were being sold all over the Manufacturing Company), a local firm that made shoes. He country, but were still a niche product. It was a film that turned worked his way up and, in 1964, was sent to California to open a factory. Two years later, he left to found the Van Doren Rubber them mainstream. In 1982’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Sean Company, with his brother and two friends. He’d realised that the Penn wore a pair of black and white chequerboard Vans for his role as a teenage stoner. The film was a hit, and sales in the US California climate meant trainers could be worn all year round, soared. Meanwhile, in Britain, the shoes’ popularity took off and his idea was simple: to sell good-quality shoes from an outlet when bands such as The Specials adopted the same black and next to his factory, in Anaheim, and allow buyers to customise white chequered pattern, to popularise the Two-Tone movement, their trainers in a range of colours and patterns. launched in the 1970s to promote racial unity. But it was the rising popularity of skateboarding – promoted in Van Doren retired in the 1980s, but returned to the business a few the early 1960s as an alternative to surfing, for when there were years later, after an ill-fated attempt to compete with the likes of no rideable waves – that gave the firm real culture and purpose, Nike by expanding into new sports had led the firm into insolVan Doren noted. California’s skateboarders spotted that Vans’ vency. He restored its fortunes and, in 1988, sold it to a venture rubber soles were unusually sticky, owing to a feature of the capital firm for $75m. In 2004, it was sold again for $400m. vulcanisation process, and, thus, ideal for gripping the board. THE WEEK 29 May 2021
© MARIA BREMBERG/PRESSENS BILD; COURTESY OF VANS
Paul Van Doren, who has died aged 90, co-founded a shoemaking firm that, almost by chance, became synonymous with the skateboarding craze that took off in southern California in the 1970s, said The New York Times. More than 50 years on, Vans is a global brand that brings in revenues of around $4bn a year. Paul Van Doren 1930-2021
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CITY Companies in the news ...and how they were assessed
45
Royal Mail: stamp of approval
The FTSE 100 is due for its quarterly reshuffle on 2 June, said Matt Oliver in the Daily Mail. Among the “prime contenders” for promotion is Royal Mail, which has had a good year. The former state monopoly, privatised in 2014 at 330p a share, was demoted to the FTSE 250 in 2018. Shares slumped further “as poor industrial relations led to strike threats and modernisation efforts stumbled”, and they crashed to “a record low” of 124p in April last year. But the combination of “a new broom”, executive chairman Keith Williams, and “a boom in demand for parcels during the pandemic” has worked wonders. The share price has now rallied by more than 320%; last week, Royal Mail reported record sales of £12.6bn and bumper profits of £730m. The revival is great news for ordinary investors who showed faith at flotation. A measure of the new harmony, said Oliver Gill in The Daily Telegraph, is that the deputy general secretary of the once belligerent CWU, Terry Pullinger, “has even answered questions from City analysts”. The positive mood looks set to continue post-pandemic. JPMorgan analysts reckon Royal Mail shares could rise to 801p, said Calum Muirhead on ProactiveInvestors.co.uk. Their message to prospective punters? “Just buy it.”
Trainline: de-railed
There was one immediate casualty of the Government’s “sweeping rail reforms”, said Edward Thicknesse on City AM. Shares in the ticketing app Trainline “fell nearly a third”, before recovering slightly on news that the new state-owned body, Great British Railways, will run a ticketing platform in competition with the private sector. The move represents a serious threat to the FTSE 250 company, “which has become the go-to destination for many passengers”: it currently sells around 70% of all digital tickets. Trainline commanded a £2bn valuation before last week’s white paper because investors believed in “its ability to continue extracting 5% commissions on ticket sales”, said Nils Pratley in The Guardian. But “the risk of derailment wasn’t a secret”: plans to overhaul ticketing were first aired in 2018. The winners of this affair are the private equity barons of KKR who floated Trainline in May 2019, and sold their residual stake six months later. For them at least, “the journey was splendid”. Still, Trainline’s whacked share price could be a great opportunity for Great British Railways if it has “a spare billion pounds or so sitting around”, said Alex Brummer in the Daily Mail. Think of the IT savings, and the service it could provide, if it just snapped up Trainline and its “brilliant” technology.
GFG Alliance/Liberty Steel: tricky fire sale
Sanjeev Gupta has put three of his UK steel plants up for sale “in a scramble to save” his GFG Alliance empire, said the FT. Gupta – whose group is being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office following the collapse of its main lender, Greensill Capital – is seeking buyers for a speciality steel plant at Stocksbridge in Yorkshire (majoring on the aerospace industry) and two smaller plants at Brinsworth and West Bromwich. The main focus of Liberty Steel, the brand name of GFG’s UK steel operation, which employs 5,000 here, will shift to its Rotherham plant, producing “green” recycled steel. The hope is a deal will save jobs and help settle GFG’s crippling $1.2bn debt to Credit Suisse. But as things stand, “this is just a rough plan on a piece of paper”, a source told The Daily Telegraph. Several hedge funds have reportedly shown interest – along with British Steel’s Chinese owner, Jingye, and the Indian group JSW. They’ll need “nerves of steel” to jump into this morass, said Alistair Osborne in The Times. It looks like “a tricky fire sale” for the erstwhile “saviour of steel” – even if “he throws in his £42m pad in Belgravia”.
Oatly: holy grain
Samuel Johnson had firm views about oats, defining them in his dictionary as: “A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.” An updated entry might add that 21st century investors are also rather partial to them, said Ian Cowie in The Sunday Times. Shares in Oatly, the still loss-making Swedish oak milk producer, “frothed up” 26% above its $10bn float price on Nasdaq last week – as demand for “plant-based alternatives” to animal products continues to grow. Not bad at all, said Jon Shazar on Dealbreaker – for a “purveyor of foetid water”. Under its CEO and “evangelist-in-chief” Toni Petersson, Oatly has become “a lifestyle statement for the young and fashionable”, said the FT. Petersson thinks that today environmentalism is “a belief system almost like a religion”. And Oatly is in the right place to capitalise on that.
Seven days in the Square Mile Headline consumer price inflation in the US hit 4.2% in April, the biggest jump in 12 years and more than double the Fed’s 2% target – prompting renewed debate about the trajectory of inflation. Iron ore futures fell by 9.5% on the Dalian Commodity Exchange in China, and copper and aluminium futures slipped, after Beijing vowed to crackdown on record metal prices – saying it would punish speculation, hoarders and peddlers of false price information. The price of bitcoin recovered to around $40,000/coin after last week’s plunge, as prominent supporters came out in force. Stock markets were largely unaffected by the drama. The Stoxx Europe 600 index of Europe’s biggest companies reached a new record high. Official figures showed that China has overtaken Germany to become the UK’s biggest single import market for the first time since records began. Goods imported from China rose 66% from the start of 2018 to hit £16.9bn in the first quarter of the year. Car giant Nissan was reported to be in talks to launch a huge electric vehicle battery plant in Britain; Tesla’s Elon Musk is reportedly scouting possible sites for a car plant. The UK competition watchdog launched an investigation into AstraZeneca’s planned takeover of US biotech Alexion Pharmaceuticals. Losses at WeWork, which is readying to list via a Spac deal, almost quadrupled to $2.06bn in Q1, after the co-working company lost 25% of its members and restructured its property portfolio. Shares in Cineworld soared on news that moviegoers are flocking back to cinemas.
Daydream believer Who can blame Zhang Yiming for needing a break, asked Lex in the FT. The Chinese entrepreneur has resigned from his “uniquely nerve-shredding” role as the boss of ByteDance – the Chinese company “stranded in a freefire zone in the US-China tech war, thanks to its popular live-streaming service, TikTok”. Zhang is credited with helping design the core algorithm that powers both TikTok and its Chinese equivalent Douyin. He can also now take credit for inventing “a new euphemism for a forced departure from the executive suite”, said Simon Duke in The Times, explaining, amid China’s crackdown on tech billionaires, that he needed more time for “daydreaming”.
29 May 2021 THE WEEK
Talking points
46 CITY
Issue of the week: the inflation scare The Bank of England insists rising prices are “transitory”. Is it right? Planning some DIY work this weekend? Prepare to down tools immediately, said Simon Read on BBC Business. The building industry has warned Britons to delay any home improvements until the autumn – because of acute shortages of cement, electrical components, timber, steel and paints. Supply problems stem from a number of factors: from soaring global demand for raw materials, to high shipping costs, to Brexit. But the upshot has been a leap in prices. Brian Berry of the Federation of Master Builders says “members are experiencing price rises of 10-15% across the board, rising to 50% on timber and 30% on cement”.
no result – until suddenly it all comes flooding out.” Central bankers certainly believe the current uptick in inflation is merely “transitory”, said Patrick Hosking in The Times. But financial markets are not entirely convinced. The concern is that “rising prices are already starting to feed through into higher wages, which could then push prices higher still”. As Britons return to restaurants with gusto, restaurateurs – hamstrung by staff shortages – are resorting to “special bonuses and incentives to lure staff back to work”.
The latest official figures show that UK rose by 1.5% in April – more than prices The bottleneck economy: like a ketchup bottle These latest shortages feed into growing double the rate in March, and the highest fears about inflation, said Martin Sandbu in the FT. As prices tick for more than a year, said James Moore in The Independent. That’s significant, particularly in the light of US inflation, which up, “the restlessness” among some investors and economists “is verging on mutiny”. Policymakers are being dubbed “mad” for has “skyrocketed to 4.2%”, but it’s probably nothing to be too keeping their foot on the monetary accelerator to keep the worried about. Let’s hope so, said Alex Brummer in the Daily Mail. No one wants a return to the days of galloping inflation recovery going. But, actually, they’re “right to be undaunted”, and the “double-digit interest rates” needed to tame it. Inflation because what we are witnessing is a classic “bottleneck economy” which, by definition, is likely to be short-lived. “Lockdowns in Britain is still well below the Treasury’s target of 2%. But we can’t afford to ignore the warnings. In the US, which often sends across the world have thrown supply chains out of whack”, prompting myriad bottlenecks and higher prices. But once the an early signal to the UK, “the trends are ominous”. The billions disruptions ease, prices will fall dramatically. A good analogy is spent on quantitative easing have put “an inflation timebomb at a ketchup bottle. “You can shake and tap it all you want, with the heart of our economy”. I fear it has “started to tick”.
The housing boom: what the experts think
Makortoff in The Guardian. But Joe At the start of May, a Garner of the local estate agent told mortgage-lender Sky News that the Nationwide detects housing market in “a structural shift” Cornwall had gone towards “larger homes “completely crazy” – with gardens outside and that even renting a city centres”. That property had become means the surge in increasingly difficult, buying – and house with diminishing prices – is likely to numbers of properties on the market and ever “Completely crazy”: prices in Cornwall continue when incentives end. “People more people looking. don’t say: ‘Oh look, there’s a discount on There’s no sign of any let up, said stamp duty, let’s move house.’ That’s not Cornwall Live. Official figures show that how it works,” he said. “People are house prices across the UK are rising at thinking of their house less as an their fastest pace since the lead up to the financial crisis in August 2007 – up 10.2% investment and more as a home.” in the year to March. But in Cornwall they’ve been rocketing. The average price ● Race for space increase in the county “is more than 50% Data from the property website Zoopla higher than the national upturn and nearly backs this up, said Damian Shepherd in five times that of parts of the UK”. City AM. It reports that London is still trailing “when it comes to house price ● Structural shift growth”, chalking up “the slowest The hard figures chime with anecdotal regional rate across the UK for the sixth reports that rural areas have seen “an consecutive month” (1.9%). The “hottest” influx of those fleeing cities”, as people housing markets – in terms both of price reassess their priorities amid hopes that the growth and time taken to secure a sale – freedom to work from home will become a are, according to Zoopla, Wales, permanent legacy of the pandemic. One of Yorkshire and the Humber, and northwest the original explanations for the boom England, said Kalyeena Makortoff. across the country was the drive to take Overall, the site expects “the total value of advantage of government incentives, such houses sold in the UK to reach £461bn this as the stamp duty holiday, said Kalyeena year” – a 46% jump on 2020. ● Cornish goldrush
THE WEEK 29 May 2021
Rich List “It is the most unsettling of booms,” said Robert Watts in The Sunday Times. In the year that “tens of thousands of us have buried loved ones” and millions have feared for their livelihoods, “more people became billionaires than at any point in British history”. Here are some highlights from this year’s Rich List: There are currently a record 171 UK billionaires – 24 more than in 2020, marking the biggest jump in the list’s 33-year history. Their combined fortunes of the billionaires grew by nearly 22% to £597.269bn. ●
Leading the pack this year is Sir Leonard Blavatnik, the Ukrainian-born “Midas”, whose £23bn fortune grew by more than £7bn on the back of his investment, music and media interests. In 2015 he was worth a mere £15bn. ●
Another big riser, at No. 5, is Lakshmi Mittal and family, of steelmaker ArcelorMittal, whose fortune rose by £7.9bn to £14.68bn – reflecting a massive bounce-back this year. ●
Retail fortunes have closely reflected events on the high street. The wealth of Boohoo founder, Mahmud Kamani, and his family, who snapped up much of the wreckage of Arcadia, is now put at £1.4bn – an average growth of £1m a day since last year’s list. ●
The list has finally produced a black billionaire – the London-based Zimbabwean telecoms tycoon and philanthropist, Strive Masiyiwa. ●
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Commentators “Coiners” are no match for central banks Katie Martin Financial Times
Levelling up requires a strong London Simon Nixon The Times
Why bother with Premium Bonds? Will Kirkman The Sunday Telegraph
The name’s Bezos, Jeff Bezos Schumpeter The Economist
Some people jumped into cryptocurrencies “just for fun”; others saw them as “a moonshot to make some money”. But for the true believers, says Katie Martin, “crypto is a way of life”. Internecine squabbling within the community is common. “But the real divide is Us vs. Them. Coiners vs. No-coiners.” Digital tokens such as bitcoin are revered by those seeking to isolate themselves “from big government, big banking and big monetary policy”. The 2008 financial crisis left many feeling that “the system does not work for them”, and that regulators exist mainly “to trap ordinary people inside the existing financial hierarchy”. Recent moves by central banks to tighten this largely unregulated market have only reinforced this suspicion. Several central banks are working on their own digital versions of their currencies. Many have also made it clear that they regard cryptocurrencies as deeply risky and fundamentally unsound. “The adage in markets is: don’t fight the central banks” and, in particular, the Fed. If and when central bankers do assume control, “anyone left out of pocket will not be able to complain that they were not warned”. “Levelling up” is an effective political slogan because “it appears to offer only upside”, says Simon Nixon. But “the implicit promise” that “the fortunes of the rest of the country can be raised without lowering those of London” is essentially “dishonest”. The resources needed for the transformation have to come from somewhere – and that means London, which contributed £38.8bn to the Treasury in 2019, when almost every other region “was a net recipient of government funding”. The truth is “there can be no levelling up without a prosperous and successful London” – and yet the city’s future “has never looked less certain”. Harder hit by the pandemic, on almost any measure, than any other region, much of the centre “remains a ghost town” even as lockdown eases. And Brexit has imposed “a second shock” on the capital’s crucial service sectors. Throughout its history, London has always bounced back. But there is “nothing inevitable about this recovery, nor any guarantee that it will be swift or smooth”. In the short term at least, “levelling up means spending more money in London, not less”. Britons don’t seem to have lost their affection for Premium Bonds, says Will Kirkman: some 21 million of us have a holding of the National Savings & Investments’ “hugely popular” bonds tucked away somewhere. But do they really justify this loyalty? Despite big headline wins – such as the 12 lucky sods who won the £1m jackpot on their first ever draw – almost three-quarters of all holders (some 16 million people) “have never won a single prize” since NS&I’s records began in 2007. And the chances of doing so are getting worse. The odds of winning were slashed from 24,5001, to 34,500-1 in December, and the prize fund also shrank. The upshot is that current bondholders are suffering “the longest odds and poorest returns in more than a decade”. It has always been the case that the more bonds you hold, the greater the chance of a win. But over the past 14 years, the majority of the 5.5 million savers who have won anything “are likely to have invested many tens of thousands of pounds”. Premium Bonds have a proud history, but most of those now invested should look elsewhere. In the early days of Amazon, founder Jeff Bezos decreed the e-commerce giant would never advertise guns, says Schumpeter. That ban extended to James Bond’s Walther PPK – as producers of the Bond film Skyfall discovered, when they sought to run an ad on the site in 2012. But now the e-commerce giant has acquired MGM, the movie studio that part-owns the Bond franchise, for $8.45bn – a move coinciding with founder Jeff Bezos’s plan to quit as CEO this summer. The commercial explanation could be an attempt to counter “the law of large numbers”. With revenues of $386bn last year and a market value of $1.6trn, it’s becoming “ever harder for Amazon to keep the flywheel going” without a “new source of rapid growth”. Perhaps the goal is “to crack mass entertainment before Facebook and Google crack shopping”. The more worrying alternative is that this trophy acquisition is “a sign of hubris” – a warning that Bezos will use his new role as executive chairman to drive Amazon from a leather-clad back seat. Perhaps while “stroking a white cat”.
CITY 49 City profile Elizabeth Holmes The sensational fraud trial of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes isn’t scheduled to begin until late August, but the legal arguments “over what evidence could be presented at trial” have already been ferocious, said Sara Randazzo in The Wall Street Journal. Holmes, 37, faces multiple counts of criminal fraud “for allegedly deceiving investors, patients and doctors about Theranos’s blood-testing technology, which purported to test for a range of health conditions from a few drops of blood extracted from a finger prick”. If convicted, she faces up to 20 years in prison. The trial, in San Jose, California, has been delayed repeatedly – in part due to the pandemic, but also because of news that Holmes “is due to give birth in July”.
Holmes, who founded Theranos in 2003 while a 19-year-old Stanford student, was feted as one of America’s most talented entrepreneurs, said Callum Jones in The Times. By 2015, she was its “richest selfmade woman” with a paper fortune of $4.5bn. Prominent investors poured cash into the $9bn company, whose board members included Henry Kissinger and George Shultz. Theranos’s tech seemed “revolutionary”, said Joel Rosenblatt on Bloomberg. But Holmes’s apparently charmed life began unravelling in 2015, when a Wall Street Journal exposé questioned the accuracy and viability of the test. Her lawyers had argued the evidence of her “lavish lifestyle” could be used to “inflame” jurors. But this week, the judge ruled it was “fair game” for the trial – because an appetite for fame and fortune could be a motive for the alleged fraud.
29 May 2021 THE WEEK
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Shares
CITY 51
Who’s tipping what The week’s best shares
Directors’ dealings
lllumina The Daily Telegraph Illumina’s gene-sequencers enabled Covid vaccines and are now hunting down mutations. But its true potential lies in diagnosing cancers early by spotting DNA mutations and methylation patterns in blood. Buy. $386.36.
National Grid The Times The energy firm is shifting from gas to electricity by acquiring Western Power Distribution and partnering with RWE to bid for US offshore wind farms. Banking on the transition to a fossil-free future. Yields 7%. Buy. 951p.
Cranswick Investors Chronicle This pork and poultry specialist aims to be the world’s most sustainable meat business by 2040, with leading animal welfare standards and net-zero emissions. Rising profits, boosted by exports to China. Buy. £39.12.
Marks & Spencer Group The Sunday Telegraph The pandemic has accelerated the transformation of M&S, which is focusing on quality, affordable underwear, sleep wear and office clothes. Digital ops have been overhauled. Promises to be “a fine business again”. Buy. 152.75p.
Spirax-Sarco Engineering The Times The pump and steam specialist’s products help industries to cut their CO2 emissions, energy, water use and waste. Resilient and expanding, thanks to fast growing biotech and pharma arms. Buy. £119.40.
BT 180
CEO buys 1.25m
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Profits have dived at the telecoms group, which has spent billions upgrading its fibre network. But CEO Philip Jansen has snapped up shares worth £2m, clearly believing the future is set for “consistent and predictable growth” .
…and some to hold, avoid or sell
Form guide
Benchmark Investors Chronicle Aquaculture health business Benchmark has developed a sea lice treatment for salmon and a fish genetics arm, and is now focusing on its ESG credentials. The easing of pandemic restrictions should boost restaurant demand. Hold. 62p.
Imperial Brands Investors Chronicle Imps’ numbers “aren’t bad” – despite “relentless” regulatory interest and “far from impressive” next-gen products. Debt is down and capex has been slashed, but the 8.66% yield is probably “too good to be true”. Avoid. £16.36.
Regional Reit The Daily Telegraph This well-run real estate investment trust is benefiting from improving market conditions. Lease renewals have achieved rent rises of 6.4%, and retention rates remain high. Set for a big dividend rise. Hold. 86.2p.
Experian The Times Experian sells consumer credit scores, software and data analytics to banks, credit card firms and retailers in 44 national markets. Economic recovery is driving growth, but the good news is already priced in. Hold. £25.80.
Premier Foods Investors Chronicle The Bisto and Bird’s custardmaker’s profits are up 23.5%, thanks to demand from locked-down homes, and the dividend has been reinstated. But it’s still too early to say if the demand surge is permanent. Hold. 107p.
Sage Group Investors Chronicle Growth remains slow at the software firm, which failed to capitalise on increased demand for digital accounting and cloud-based services during the pandemic. Competition is rising and margins are dipping. Hold. 654p.
Shares tipped 12 weeks ago Best tip Persimmon The Daily Telegraph up 19.27% to £30.89 Worst tip Hochschild Mining Investors Chronicle down 12.29% to 187.7p
Market view “The market has pushed expectations for Fed rate hikes further into the future.” Solita Marcelli of UBS Global Wealth Management on the US central bank’s still accommodative position
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
25 May 2021 7029.79 4009.85 34378.91 13664.46 28553.98 28910.86 1880.15 68.69 2.96% 0.79 1.58
Best and worst performing shares Week before 7034.24 4007.57 34249.96 13427.60 28406.84 28593.81 1853.70 68.52 2.95% 0.87 1.65
1.5% (Apr) 2.9% (Apr) 8.2% (Apr)
$1.414 E1.155 ¥153.923
0.7% (Mar) 1.5% (Mar) 6.5% (Mar)
Change (%) –0.06% 0.06% 0.38% 1.76% 0.52% 1.11% 1.43% 0.25%
WEEK’S CHANGE, FTSE 100 STOCKS RISES Price % change +7.09 Flutter Entertainment 13290.00 2784.00 +5.86 Experian 9722.00 +4.88 Ferguson 1603.05 +4.80 Compass Group 2597.00 +4.68 Halma FALLS BHP Group Antofagasta Anglo American Glencore Rio Tinto
2069.00 1494.00 3083.00 305.30 5905.00
–7.65 –7.43 –6.86 –5.95 –5.52
FTSE 250 RISER & FALLER 2930.00 4imprint 272.40 Trainline
+15.10 –37.60
Source: Datastream & FT (not adjusted for dividends). Prices on 25 May (pm)
Following the Footsie 7,200
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6-month movement in the FTSE 100 index
29 May 2021 THE WEEK
SOURCE: THE MAIL ON SUNDAY
Card Factory The Sunday Times The well-run greetings card retailer mass-produces cards at a fraction of the cost of its peers. Hit hard by store closures, but margins are strong. Refinanced and expanding into Aldi and Matalan stores. Buy. 73p.
The last word
52
The “concrete coffin”: life in a Chinese internment camp Sayragul Sauytbay spent five months in a “re-education” centre in Xinjiang province, where China has sent thousands of Uighurs and other ethnic minorities. She tells Damian Whitworth what she witnessed inside, and how she escaped to Kazakhstan After two or three days at the internment camp, Sayragul Sauytbay heard the screams for the first time. She had been sent to work as a teacher in one of the centres where China “re-educates” Uighurs and other minority ethnic groups in the northwestern province of Xinjiang. Already she had seen that the “living dead” inmates, shaven-headed with black eyes and mutilated fingers, were chained together in packed, stinking cells.
it is “the largest open-air prison in the world”.
One of nine children, Sauytbay, 44, was born to semi-nomadic herders close to the border with Kazakhstan. The family practised a moderate form of Islam. She trained as a doctor, learning to speak Chinese, then as a teacher. She taught Chinese to Kazakh children and ran five preschools. After marrying Uali, they had a daughter and son and set up a farm and clothes The sounds of distress shops too. From the resonated through the 1980s, China had begun Paramilitary police on patrol in Xinjiang: “the largest open-air prison in the world” halls of the “concrete settling the region, coffin” in which they were housed. “I’d never heard anything like exploiting its natural resources, pushing the migration of Han it in all my life. Screams like that aren’t something you forget. The Chinese and suppressing the culture of the indigenous peoples. Sauytbay’s son had his mouth taped at school for speaking in his second you hear them, you know what kind of agony that person is experiencing,” she wrote later. “They sounded like the raw native language. Today, she is in Sweden and has published a book, The Chief Witness, about her ordeal. We are talking with cries of a dying animal.” She learnt that the screams came from the “black room”, a chamber with chains on the wall and no a translator via video call. Some episodes are shocking, but she cameras, where prisoners were dragged by guards for supposed answers unemotionally and factually. Only occasionally, such as when she describes what her children have been through, does transgressions. Some inmates emerged covered in blood; others did not reappear. her face harden. The family considered emigrating to Kazakhstan, but as a public sector worker Sauytbay had been made to turn in Sauytbay knew if she showed dismay at what she heard, or put her passport. In July 2016, her husband and children went ahead a foot out of line, she might end up there herself. Then one to Kazakhstan while she tried to get it back. day, a new group of prisoners arrived, including an 84-yearChinese authorities began “She learnt that the screams came from old grandmother from a turning Xinjiang into a surveillance state with the shepherding family in the the ‘black room’, a chamber with chains arrival that summer of a new mountains. Spotting Sauytbay on the wall and no cameras” – a fellow ethnic Kazakh – Party chief, Chen Quanguo. among a sea of Chinese faces, He reportedly told the security the trembling old woman threw her arms around her and services to “round up everyone who should be rounded up”. appealed for help. Sauytbay thinks she may briefly have returned Communication with Kazakhstan was banned. Sauytbay could the embrace. The old woman was led off and Sauytbay, suspected not speak to her family. She believes she was suspected of being of conspiracy, was whisked into the black room. married to a spy and was abducted and interrogated on several occasions; she realised she was being kept in China as a hostage. Now she is telling the full story of her incarceration, the torture Under a new policy, indigenous people had to live with Chinese she says she experienced, the horrors she witnessed, and her families for days or accept home visits. This meant doing chores escape from China. The UN estimates that more than one million for their hosts and many women had to sleep with Chinese men. Uighurs, Kazakhs (the second-largest ethnic group in the region) She bribed the man she was supposed to live with to avoid staying and other mostly Muslim minorities have been incarcerated in the night. “The thing that is happening in East Turkestan with the China. There are credible reports of slave labour and of the native people is their bodies, their brains, their lives, their fates, do enforced sterilisation of women. China says the camps were not belong to themselves, but to the Chinese Communist Party.” set up to combat religious extremism and has denied any mistreatment. In 2019, an official claimed that all those detained In November 2017 she was taken, with a hood over her head, had “graduated” and found stable employment, and attendance to a camp and told she was to teach Chinese. Her contract said at the centres would in future be voluntary. British MPs voted last breaking rules would be punished with the death penalty. She month to declare that China is committing genocide in Xinjiang. was forbidden from talking to prisoners, to laugh, cry or answer Sauytbay, for her part, describes the internment programme as the questions. Her six square metre cell had cameras covering every biggest since the Third Reich, and the indigenous peoples as “a angle. Later she learnt that prisoners – she estimates 2,500 – were colony of slaves”. She calls the region East Turkestan and suggests allotted a single square metre and slept shackled to each other. THE WEEK 29 May 2021
The last word Her students were identified by numbers and forced to sit ramrod straight while reciting, “I’m proud to be Chinese,” and “I love Xi Jinping.” Prisoners were told if they learnt well they would be released sooner, but in her five months at the camp she was not aware of any being freed. Muslim inmates were forced to eat pork and sing Party songs. If they insisted on their innocence, their families would be picked up, so people learned to “confess” in Chinese to visiting a relative in Kazakhstan or going to a mosque. Healthy young people vanished and she wondered if they were used for organ harvesting or forced labour. A nurse warned her not to swallow the prescribed medication, whispering that she would be unable to have any more children.
53 There she was reunited with her husband and children after more than two years. But she knew China would bring pressure to bear on the Kazakh authorities. Within days, she was picked up by men she thinks were Kazakh secret police who beat her and said she would be deported to China. But while she was in a cell, a video about her plight went viral, putting pressure on officials. After more than a month in prison, she used her trial on charges of entering the country illegally to describe what was happening in the camps. Her account was reported around the world. Crowds celebrated her release. “I was saved by the international community, international organisations, journalists and the people of Kazakhstan,” she says.
Sauytbay: “They were begging for help” Her jubilation was cut short by news that her The day she was taken to the black room, she saw a table covered with tools and torture mother and sister had been arrested in China devices, including stun guns and iron rods to fix hands and feet after the verdict. Strangers broke into her home in Kazakhstan, in painful positions. The walls were hung with medieval-looking the family was harassed and she was told by secret police to stop weaponry: an implement for removing finger nails; a spear; chairs talking to journalists. Eventually, in June 2019, she secured asylum in Sweden. She has testified about her time in the camp with straps and ominous holes. She was placed in an electric chair and interrogated by two men about the shepherd woman. When at the Swedish foreign ministry and the European Parliament. she refused to admit her guilt they sent a current through her In March last year, she was given an International Women of Courage award by the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, who body and hit her head, laughing. She kept losing consciousness and, realising she had to tell them what they wanted to hear, praised her for speaking out. A Chinese official said the award confessed that she knew the woman from before. Her torturers was “a travesty of human rights” and that she had misled the eventually lost interest and she was taken to her cell. The international media with her “lies”. shepherd lady, accused of being a spy, Sauytbay says, was taken State media reported that one of Sauytbay’s sisters said she to the black room where her fingernails were removed. never worked in a camp. “They are under full surveillance. The Chinese government uses family One day Sauytbay joined 100 members, one against another. If prisoners who were summoned “A nurse warned her not to swallow the they want to shut the mouths of to a room where a woman of 20 or 21 was made to confess to people who live abroad, they use prescribed medication, whispering that she texting good wishes to a friend relatives who still live in would be unable to have any more children” their on a religious holiday. She was China.” Now she is unable to thrown to the ground and speak to her family, but has gang-raped by three men. Guards watched inmates as the woman “indirect information” about them through others. “The Chinese begged for help, and if prisoners stood up to protest, they were Communist Party is the biggest danger to the democracy and taken away. It was a test, Sauytbay says, to see who had been future freedom of the world,” she says, but she is encouraged that brought into line. She managed to stop herself from reacting to some countries are recognising that a genocide is taking place. “It’s clearly showing that the world has a little bit slowly started the horrific scene, but says she will never forget it and cannot waking up and speaking about the atrocities.” She hopes people come to terms with it. “It hurt me to see that other innocent people were tortured and the things they did to these innocent will consider not buying Chinese goods and that countries will people have very much affected me negatively.” boycott the Winter Olympics in Beijing in 2022.
© THE TIMES/NEWS LICENSING
Former prisoners have also claimed women have been subjected to systematic mass rape. Sauytbay is convinced what she saw was not just the behaviour of a few bad people. “I believe that was part of the policy to wipe out the native people of East Turkestan, and the guards of that camp were given unlimited power to do whatever they want... It’s more than 70 years since the Second World War. History is repeating itself.” Two things kept her going: a hope that one day she would go for a walk with her children in Kazakhstan and a determination to tell the world about what was happening to prisoners. “Their eyes were begging for help. And they had a big hope in me. Their eyes taught me that somehow I need to help them.” A month later she was set free. “They wanted to make me accountable and punish me as a criminal. So that is the reason they released me,” she says. Further interrogations followed and she was told she would be going back to a camp, this time as an inmate. Convinced she would not come out alive, she fled at midnight through her garden, evaded detection and hitched a lift to Khorgos, the free-trade zone on the border of China and Kazakhstan. She entered with a black-market permit but without a passport or plan for crossing the border. When a guard was distracted she ducked down below the window of a passport checkpoint and slipped into Kazakhstan.
In Sweden, she and her husband are studying Swedish and English and hope to start working soon. Their daughter, Ukilay, 16, and Ulagat, their 11-year-old son, are settling in. “We miss our homeland, but after all this hardship finally our family is united again. And we value every moment of our world right now together.” Nevertheless, she remains haunted by what she experienced and the thought of what is happening to family and friends. “I cannot properly sleep; I cannot properly eat. And when I go to bed I have nightmares that I am back in the camp again. I take a lot of medications and I’m working with a psychologist.” Sometimes she finds herself literally looking over her shoulder, wondering if a Chinese agent is watching. But does she feel safe now in Sweden? “I cannot say that it is 100% safe. They have a lot of spies inside Europe.” After interviews she receives calls telling her, “Just stop talking. Think of your children.” “I still get these kinds of threats, but somehow I get used to them. And actually, it shows that my work is very meaningful and it’s having the right results,” she says. “Because if it wasn’t, I wouldn’t get such attention from them. So this kind of thing is inspiring me, giving me even more energy to keep fighting.” A longer version of this article appeared in The Times. © 2021 News UK 29 May 2021 THE WEEK
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Crossword
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THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1262
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 7 June. Email the answers as a scan of a completed grid or a list, with the subject line The Week crossword 1262, to crossword@theweek.co.uk. Tim Moorey (timmoorey.com) ACROSS 1 Back letter from Greece on gun control (8) 5 Wrinkled retainers caught cutting working rotas (6) 9 Start and stop on strike (5,3) 10 Wise words from restaurant in Paris (6) 12 Some assassination in Japan reveals one? (5) 13 Fraud police noticed record taken inside (9) 14 Sweeping passage in a way (12) 18 Night arrests aroused deep emotions (12) 21 Represent OUP prior to literary medley (9) 23 Test of a German city (5) 24 Said to be attractive carriage (6) 25 Part of speech given by one setter literally (8) 26 Club in centre of Ripon, say (6) 27 One who fixes tax with some classes so regularly? (8)
DOWN 1 Birds not on Heath (6) 2 Vegetables for the party (6) 3 Unhesitatingly large superstore’s currently fashionable (4,1,4) 4 Loud flashy display turns mother and daughter off (12) 6 Fellow boxing Mike could be the winner (5) 7 One trap in test of derivation (8) 8 One agreeing a focus for the audience (8) 11 They’d check unusual Isis currents (12) 15 At which food going off is served? (4,5) 16 A couple of hacks look smart (4-4) 17 Train Met to be organised? I’d do that strictly (8) 19 Utah is planned for short break (6) 20 First book for each around border (6) 22 Australia has a certain bracing air (5)
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Clue of the week: In contact with the whole camp, or virtually (2,3,7) The Observer, Azed Solution to Crossword 1260 ACROSS: 1 Scarab 4 Stitcher 9 Crude 10 Boot sales 11 Rote 12 Flea 13 Prone 15 Tortoni 16 Colt 19 Itch 20 Autocue 23 Nates 24 Limb 25 Torc 27 Remainder 28 Binge 29 Eye to eye 30 Extras DOWN: 1 Security 2 Adultery 3 Acer 5 Thomas Cranmer 6 Test pilots 7 Helios 8 Rosier 10 Billie Holiday 14 Fortissimo 17 Schooner 18 Teachers 21 Untrue 22 Stymie 26 Ibex Clue of the week: One goes with hose that’s found in gutter (7, first letter D, last letter T) Solution: DOUBLET (double T in gutter) The winner of 1260 is Rachael Monks from Oxford The Week is available from RNIB Newsagent for the benefit of blind and partially sighted readers. 0303-123 9999, rnib.org.uk/newsagent
7 5 1 3
Sudoku 804 (medium)
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Fill in all the squares so that each row, column and each of the 3x3 squares contains all the digits from 1 to 9
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