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15 MAY 2021 | ISSUE 1331 | £3.99

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Labour’s fall

Can Starmer halt the decline?

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Labour’s election shock: an era-defining defeat? unionism. We may actually be Over the course of my half a century in witnessing the death of the Labour public life, said David Blunkett in the Party, said Matthew Goodwin in The Daily Mail, I’ve learned that things are Sunday Times. It has been reduced to a “never as bad as they seem at the time”. rump in Scotland by the SNP. It’s losing But I’m struggling to see any upside blue-collar votes to the Tories, and for Labour in the wake of last week’s seeing middle-class votes leak away election results. The party racked up to the Greens and Lib Dems. To revive dismal results in many areas of England, its fortunes, the party needs to find a including in the so-called Red Wall message that can cut through with constituencies in the Midlands and the traditionalists while not alienating the North that used to be its strongholds. progressive, metropolitan voters on Most devastatingly, it lost the whom it now depends. But you only by-election in Hartlepool, ceding the have to spend five minutes among the Labour bastion to the Tories. Although intolerant “woke” brigade on Twitter the party fared better in mayoral to see how hard that will be. contests, and in elections in Wales, the results were “highly embarrassing”, “It is possible to overdo the gloom said Hugo Gye in the I newspaper. And about Labour’s prospects,” said John a botched reshuffle only made things Rentoul in The Independent. It is, after worse. Having accepted responsibility all, hardly the first time that people for the poor results, Keir Starmer sacked Starmer, with Rayner: botched reshuffle have predicted the party’s demise. his deputy, Angela Rayner, as party “Must Labour Lose?” asked a headline in 1960; “Labour’s chair and campaign chief, before bowing to pressure and Last Chance?” read another in 1994. Lest we forget, Labour giving her a beefed-up role. was neck-and-neck with the Tories in national polls as recently as December. “There is no iron law that says it cannot be To be fair to Starmer, said Tom Harris in The Daily Telegraph, he has been Labour leader for just over a year, and again in the next two or three years, after the vaccine euphoria has worn off, as it will.” It’s too soon to panic, agreed Stephen inherited a mess from his predecessor. The effects of “long Bush in the New Statesman.

Corbyn” on voters is still The incumbent governments in evident. But while Starmer has “It’s clear that the quiet, methodical Islington England, Scotland and Wales a good job ridding done of his lawyer is simply not cutting through” all did well in these elections. party of anti-Semitism, it’s clear This suggests the results may that “the quiet, methodical, be down largely to Covid-related factors such as the forensic, Islington lawyer is simply not cutting through”. He vaccination programme, rather than to some “deep-rooted lacks the necessary political instincts – witness the mishandled and enduring” political realignment. reshuffle and his decision to put up a vocal Remain supporter as Labour’s by-election candidate in Hartlepool, which voted Starmer would be crazy to assume as much, said Aditya 70-30 for Brexit. The problem is bigger than Starmer, said Chakrabortty in The Guardian, given that Hartlepool used to Janice Turner in The Times. Labour as a whole has lost its be one of the party’s safest seats and his team threw everything connection with voters. Up against an opportunistic, pragmatic government that is eager to meet voters’ aspirations, at the campaign. No, a major change of approach is needed.

Starmer must ditch the focus groups and learn from the rare the party has become judgemental and rigidly ideological. It victories Labour chalked up in England last week, such as sticks to its “public sector good, private bad” beliefs even as Andy Burnham’s mayoral re-election in Greater Manchester. the vaccine programme shows what can be achieved from What’s needed is a bottom-up, localised politics that genuinely “an alchemy between venture capital and the NHS”. promises to improve people’s daily lives. The party spends too much time talking to its supporters, said Nathan Yeowell and The fact that Labour is just one of many social-democratic Luke Akehurst in The Times. It must raise its gaze. “If you are parties across Europe in crisis shows how deep-rooted these one of the massive slice of the public who is older, or a car problems are, said John Harris in The Guardian. We’re driver, or a homeowner, or voted for Brexit, you would think “talking about something genuinely era-defining”. The Left the Tories care about you and Labour doesn’t.” Until that is still struggling to define its role, following the crumbling changes, the party will keep losing support. of its old power bases – factories, shipyards, mass trade

It wasn’t all bad Flat-pack furniture is already commonplace. Now, US scientists have created a type of flat-pack pasta that could reduce transport costs and emissions, as well as packaging waste. The team, from Syracuse University and Carnegie Mellon University, found that if you stamp grooves into sheets of pasta, they can morph into shaped varieties, such as penne, and farfalle.

They say the efficiency savings could be huge, as a box of macaroni, for instance, is around 60% air.

A young Nigerian refugee who made headlines aged eight, when he won the 2019 New York State chess championship while living in a homeless shelter in Manhattan, has now qualified as a national master. At ten, Tanitoluwa Adewumi – known as Tani – is the 28th-youngest person to become a chess master in the US. He had only been playing chess for a year when he won the New York contest. His story prompted $250,000 in donations to his family, who have now settled in Long Island, and started a foundation to help other homeless people and refugees.

A stretch of Welsh coastline that was flooded when storms breached a sea wall seven years ago is now a pristine salt marsh, rich in flora and fauna. Cwm Ivy, on the Gower Peninsula, had been used as pasture for sheep for centuries until salt water poured in. Rather than try to rebuild flood defences, however, the National Trust, which owns the land, decided to let nature take its course.

Now, more than 150 species of plants can be found in the marsh, as well as otters, osprey, and several birds on the RSPB’s conservation red list.

COVER CARTOON: HOWARD MCWILLIAM THE WEEK 15 May 2021

…and how they were covered Tories on top

NEWS 3

in recent years. But making good on those promises will be a formidable task. Every government since the 1990s has used incentives such as tax breaks and grants to try to lift the prospects of former industrial towns. “Yet Britain’s economy has remained persistently regionally unbalanced”, with mean annual earnings in London 1.3 times higher than the UK average.

“Teflon Boris” has done it again, said Dominic Sandbrook in the Daily Mail. For years, the PM’s critics have simply refused to take him seriously. And for weeks, he has been “battered by dreadful headlines” focusing on allegations of sleaze and the redecoration of his flat – all on the eve of the largest round of local elections since 1973.

There are signs that things this time may just Yet “the results could hardly have been be different, said Leo McKinstry in the Daily clearer”. Johnson – the Tory who twice defied Express. In a “common sense” Queen’s the odds to become mayor of “supposedly Speech on Tuesday, the Government unveiled left-wing London”; who fronted the Leave a raft of bills aimed at spreading prosperity campaign’s win in 2016’s Brexit referendum; across the country. Planned new laws will and who secured a stonking majority in mark out the next stage of the HS2 rail link 2019’s general election – has notched up yet from Manchester to Crewe; extend high-speed another “thumping victory”. Not only did he Johnson: can he fulfil his promises? broadband and 5G mobile coverage; and pave lead his party to a resounding by-election win the way for the creation of eight new free in Hartlepool; but, buoyed by his record of delivering Brexit, ports to help revitalise former industrial areas. But the bald he also saw his party score a series of stunning wins in truth is that progress behind the scenes is yet to match the councils in the so-called Red Wall of former Labour campaign-trail rhetoric, said Andrew Grice in The heartlands (see below). It was an extraordinary set of results, Independent. Shortly after the 2019 election, Johnson’s aides and one which cements Johnson’s status as “the most admitted to me that their levelling-up plans amounted to a consequential political figure of the age”. “blank page”. Eighteen months on, that page is “still pretty bare”. Only last week did the Government finally get round Let’s not get carried away, said Henry Hill on CapX. If there’s to starting work on a white paper, which will set out exactly one lesson from these results, it’s that “pandemics benefit how it intends to fulfil its many promises to voters in formerly incumbents”. Governing parties in each of England, Scotland staunch Labour areas. The problem for the PM is that “great and Wales have all held office for over a decade; yet all expectations have been aroused” among his new voters, many benefited from a vaccine bounce to retain their grip on power. of whom view their support for the Tories as a “transactional” And the Tories also suffered some surprise defeats in the south arrangement aimed squarely at securing more investment for of England. All of which means that the PM “cannot afford to their towns. If Johnson’s winning streak is to continue at the bask in his success”, said The Times. Sure, his promises to next general election, he’ll have to work out how to deliver “level up” Britain have propelled him to some notable wins “tangible progress” on the ground – and fast.

A silver lining for Labour?

with a less-comfortable-than-expected 55% of the vote. Labour also fared well in Wales, said Sir These results may look like a massacre for John Curtice on BBC News: Mark Drakeford was Labour, said Eleanor Langford on Politics Home returned as First Minister, and the party’s haul of – but its high-profile losses disguised some 30 out of 60 Senedd seats matches its previous “notable successes” in last week’s elections. best performance.

Starmer’s party won 11 out of 13 mayoral races In Scotland, the SNP fell just one seat short of contested, with standout results including a huge an overall Holyrood majority (see page 4), owing victory for Andy Burnham, who was re-elected as in part to tactical voting by pro-Union Tory and mayor of Manchester with 67% of the vote; and a Labour supporters. Yet it was undoubtedly the win for Labour MP Tracy Brabin, whose position Tories who had most to celebrate, said Tim as West Yorkshire’s first elected mayor paves the Shipman in The Sunday Times. The result in way for a tricky by-election in her seat of Batley Hartlepool, Ben Houchen’s re-election as mayor and Spen. Labour even managed to take two of Tees Valley, and Andy Street’s re-election as mayoralties from the Tories, securing shock West Midlands mayor, formed a “hat-trick of wins in the West of England as well as in Brabin: mayor of West Yorkshire emblematic wins”. That the Tories also added Cambridgeshire and Peterborough. And it held 235 councillors to their tally, seizing control of 13 on to mayoralties in Bristol, Doncaster, Liverpool, North Tyneside, councils including former Labour strongholds like Harlow, only Salford and London, where Sadiq Khan was re-elected, albeit served to make the results even sweeter for Johnson.

THE WEEK

As a member of Gen X, I am ill-placed to comment on the war between the younger Gens, but inevitably, it turns out it’s all the fault of those awful boomers. Oldies have long had a habit of using “millennial” as a catch all – and often disparaging – term for the young generally; but millennials (properly Gen Y) are not young any more. The oldest are in their 40s. Gen Z are the new kids in town, and as one of the zoomers put it on TikTok last year: we “don’t want to be associated with people who still think that Harry Potter movies are a personality trait”. That was brutal enough. Since then, the youngsters have stepped up the offensive, by deploying a new word that describes the kinds of things that millennials supposedly do and say. Cheugy (pronounced chewgee) is hard to define, but according to the American woman who coined it, it means “trying too hard”, and slightly “out of date”, and the things that are cheugy include: the TV show Friends, the crying-laughing emoji, cargo shorts, pumpkin spice lattes, inspirational mottos, and T-shirts bearing amusing slogans such as “Yes way, Rosé”. Some kinder zoomers say they’re cheugy sometimes, but millennials know this is mainly about them, and it hurts. The first generation to grow up online, they didn’t realise their dominance was only temporary. Now they know how their parents felt, when they dismissed their views with the fell words “Okay, boomer!”. As for our new young overlords, they should enjoy their moment while it lasts, because the Alphas are just around the corner.

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15 May 2021 THE WEEK

Politics

4 NEWS Controversy of the week

Sturgeon’s victory Scottish elections “have become as routine as the short walk to the polling station”, said Adam Ramsay on openDemocracy.

Each one brings another victory for the SNP. “Support for independence continues to rise. The Union is still in crisis.”

So last week’s result was “the most boring in the history of the Scottish parliament, and yet, at the same time, the most important”. The SNP’s fourth straight term in office is an amazing feat: “in two years, there will be people old enough to vote in Scotland who have only ever known SNP governments in Holyrood”. But the real point is that Nicola Sturgeon now has a clear mandate for a second independence referendum.

The fuse has been lit, agreed Robert Shrimsley in the FT. The SNP has 64 out of 129 MSPs, one short of a majority. But with eight pro-independence Scottish Greens, they have the numbers Does she have a mandate for Indyref2? to pass a referendum bill. The final say lies with Westminster, where the PM has promised to refuse any such request. For now, Sturgeon has pledged to focus on fighting the pandemic. But when she makes her move, there will be a mighty “constitutional clash”.

“Pulling up the drawbridge and ‘just saying no’ to Indyref2” is not good enough, said The Scotsman.

It would only strengthen the resolve of the pro-independence camp. The SNP would hammer home the message that this is an “undemocratic outrage”. And they’d be right, said Mark Eadie in The Herald. Personally, I’d rather not have a second referendum. And I’m not sure I’d vote “yes” again, as I did in 2014. After 14 years of SNP rule, its chequered record – with “declining standards in schools, care home deaths and wasteful ferry contracts” – doesn’t bode well for Sturgeon’s “brave new world”. But this election was dominated by the independence question. The SNP and the Greens won a majority “on an explicitly Indyref2 campaign”. A new vote “has to be their reward”.

Not so, said Andrew Neil in the Daily Mail. Indyref2 was in the SNP manifesto, but party activists found little public appetite for it: despite Brexit, only 45% of Scottish voters support independence – the same as in 2014 – and only one in three agree with Sturgeon’s timetable for a vote before the end of 2023. So Sturgeon adjusted her position, arguing that a vote for the SNP was all about pandemic recovery: she actually told ITV that supporting her party was “not voting for independence”. Even so, Scotland’s right to choose is hard to dispute, said William Hague in The Times.

Instead, unionists should move the debate on, “to the right to make an informed choice”. They should demand, as a condition for a referendum, answers on the big questions relating to an independent Scotland. What currency will it use? How will it fund public spending now subsidised by the UK? How will it avoid a hard border? If we’ve learnt anything from Brexit, it’s that “momentous and permanent” change should not be contemplated “without a plan for all to see”.

Spirit of the age Bosses at the Football Association last week revealed they had updated England’s Three Lions crest to promote diversity in football. The logo, based on a medieval symbol, will now feature a lion cub, lion and lioness. The reaction of fans has been mixed. “Why can’t it be two lions with a cub, or two lionesses? This is not inclusive of alternative wildlife lifestyles. Do better,” was one response.

Residents of Rome can now make use of the first 24-hour pizza vending machine, which dishes out freshly baked pizza in three minutes. The Mr Go Pizza booth, which opened last month, serves up four varieties of pizza starting at s4.50. But not all locals are sold on the idea. “It’s a bit sad to see pizza coming out of a machine,” one noted.

THE WEEK 15 May 2021

The Queen’s Speech

The Government used the Queen’s Speech on Tuesday to unveil 30 proposed new laws, many of which seem designed to appeal to voters in formerly Labour-held seats in the Midlands and the north of England. They include controversial plans to make it harder for migrants who have crossed the Channel to claim asylum; and to give police new powers to limit public protests. There are plans to boost adult learning opportunities, and improve bus and rail services in England. The Fixed-term Parliaments Act will be repealed. In a blow to some Tory MPs, the Government is pushing ahead with its plan to relax planning controls, to encourage more house building. Countryside campaigners have warned that this will make it easier for developers to build on greenfield sites. But much of the criticism of the Speech focused on what was omitted from it: proposed reforms to the social care system will not be published until later this year, and an expected Employment Bill, enshrining workers’ rights, was not mentioned.

Good week for:

Jeff Bezos, who was reported to have bought himself a new boat, for $500m. Known as Y721, the three-masted superyacht is 417ft long – twice as long as Nelson’s flagship Victory – and comes with a smaller yacht, for landing helicopters on.

Magicians, with news that the world’s first state-approved degree course in the craft has proved so popular, it is being expanded. The degree is offered by Double Fond, a Parisian theatre, and includes a performance element, as well as papers on subjects such as self-promotion, and the history of magic.

Bad week for:

The Golden Globes, after Tom Cruise handed back the three Globes he has won, and NBC cancelled its plans to air the ceremony next year, in protest at a lack of diversity in its organising body. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which runs the awards, is made up of 87 Los Angeles-based journalists who work for foreign news media. None are black.

West Midlands Trains, which was criticised for sending its staff an email promising them a one-off gift, for all their hard work in the pandemic – which turned out to be a “phishing test”. Staff who clicked through from the email were warned that it was a “simulation” and that they could have been scammed.

Homeworking, after the billionaire founder of Zoom admitted that even he is suffering from Zoom fatigue. Eric Yuan, 51, said that one day last year, he had had 19 video meetings in a row, and that he was “so tired” of it all. He is planning to call his employees back into the office for at least two days a week.

Cracks cause rail chaos

The discovery of cracks in the chassis of several intercity trains led to the suspension of almost all services on the Great Western Railway and London North Eastern Railway over the weekend. The affected trains were from Hitachi’s Class 800 series, and more than 150 Hitachi trains were immediately withdrawn from service for safety checks.

Although most passed the tests, passengers travelling on trains running between London Paddington and the southwest, and London King’s Cross and Edinburgh, were warned that they could face days, or even weeks, of further disruption.

The UK at a glance Bolton Indian variant cases rise: Surge testing began in parts of Bolton last week, after the town was identified as a hotspot of the so-called Indian variant of coronavirus. With Bolton recording the second-highest infection rate in the country, public health officials also launched a new campaign to encourage people to be vaccinated against Covid-19. There were 89 recorded cases of Covid-19 for every 100,000 people in Bolton for the week ending 3 May, up 78% on the week before, and about four times the rate for the whole of England. Public Health England said that across the country, there were 520 cases of the Indian variant, B16172, which has now been labelled a “variant of concern” – up from 202 the week before. Most were in Bolton and London, and almost half were in people who had either recently returned from India, or been in contact with someone who had.

NEWS 5

Snowdown, Kent Murder suspect charged: A 21-year-old man has been charged with the murder of Julia James, the Police Community Support Officer who was killed while walking her dog near her home in Snowdown, Kent, on the afternoon of 27 April. James (pictured), 53, died from blunt force injuries to the head.

Police say they have not yet found a murder weapon. Callum Wheeler appeared in person at Medway magistrates’ court this week, as officers from four different forces continued to conduct detailed searches of the area.

Belfast Victims ruled innocent: In a long-awaited ruling, an inquest this week found that ten people shot dead during operations by the British Army in the Ballymurphy area of west Belfast in 1971 were “entirely innocent”. The killings took place over three days in August shortly after the introduction of internment – the detention of paramilitary suspects without trial. But the families of the victims, who included a priest trying to help the wounded, and a mother of eight, had for years campaigned to clear their names, maintaining they were unarmed civilians. The inquest, which began in 2018 led by Mrs Justice Keegan, heard from more than 150 witnesses including 60 former soldiers, the former head of the British Army, and former Sinn Féin leader, Gerry Adams.

Flintshire Heroin spray: A nasal spray that can be used to stop people dying of heroin overdoses is being rolled out by North Wales Police, following a six-month trial in which its use was credited with saving two lives. The antidote, naloxone, was developed in the US in the 1960s, and has been used there for decades: between 1996 and 2014 it is estimated to have “reversed” 26,000 overdoses. Police are also carrying it in parts of Scotland, as part of a pilot approved there in 2020, after drug deaths increased for the sixth year in a row; and as of earlier this year, antidote kits have, in some circumstances, been given to at-risk addicts to take home. There were 4,393 deaths related to drug poisonings in England and Wales in 2019, the most since records began in 1993.

Isles of Scilly Post by drone: Royal Mail is using drones to deliver PPE, Covid testing kits and post to the Scilly Isles, as part of a new trial. A large, twinengine drone will carry up to 100kg of mail the 70 miles from Newquay to the airport on St Mary. Smaller drones will then take the post on to points around the islands. The drones should be able to make the crossing even in poor weather, when deliveries by boat and plane are often disrupted; and if this trial is successful, they could be rolled out for use in remote areas across the UK.

London Towerblock fire: A fire tore through three storeys of a 19-storey high-rise block in Poplar, east London, last week, just days before works to remove combustible cladding – similar to that used on Grenfell Tower – were finally about to begin. The fire broke out on the eighth floor, and 125 firefighters were deployed to contain it. No one was killed, but two men were taken to hospital with smoke inhalation, and 38 adults and children were treated by ambulance crews at the scene. Residents said they had started petitioning Ballymore, the developer behind the block, and the Government to meet the £12m cost of removing the aluminium cladding shortly after the Grenfell Tower disaster, four years ago.

The Government insisted it had urged Ballymore to act faster.

15 May 2021 THE WEEK

© KENT POLICE

Fawley, Hampshire Chalk stream row: Conservationists have condemned plans to build a £600m desalination plant in the New Forest to provide drinking water for Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. Southern Water submitted the proposal after it was ordered by the Environment Agency to reduce the amount of water it takes from chalk streams such as the Test and Itchen. It says the plant, near Fawley, could produce 75 million litres of drinking water a day; but while some local anglers welcomed the plan, the Hampshire & Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust and the New Forest National Park Authority oppose it, saying it would consume high levels of energy, and put marine life at risk by releasing concentrated brine back into the Solent.

Europe at a glance The Hague, Netherlands Ex-child soldier jailed: The International Criminal Court has sentenced a Ugandan former militia leader to 25 years in jail for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Dominic Ongwen, once a commander in the Lord’s Resistance Army, was convicted in February of rape, murder, sexual slavery and other charges. At the age of ten, he had himself been abducted by the LRA. The court found him to be a “perpetrator who wilfully brought tremendous suffering upon his victims” and who chose, as an adult, not to leave the group. But owing to the “extreme suffering” he’d endured as a child, it gave him 25 years rather than life.

Geldern, Germany Same-sex blessings: More than 100 Roman Catholic parishes across Germany have carried out church blessing ceremonies for same-sex couples, in an organised show of defiance against the Vatican’s teachings.

A decree issued by the Vatican’s doctrinal authority, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, had confirmed the Church’s ban on such ceremonies in March, ruling that God “does not and can not bless sin”. But 2,600 German priests and deacons then signed a petition calling for the ruling to be ignored, and proposed a national day of defiance to be held on 10 May under the slogan “Love Wins”.

Priests in Germany have been privately blessing same-sex unions for years, but not in churches. “It’s time to be visible in the church,” said Holger Woltering, whose civil marriage to his partner, Lennart, in the town of Geldern in northwestern Germany, was recorded for streaming on the internet.

Paris “Civil war” warning: Thousands of serving personnel in France’s armed forces have anonymously backed an open letter warning that President Macron’s “surrender to Islamists” has brought the country to the brink of civil war. The letter, published on Sunday by the right-wing magazine Valeurs actuelles, follows an extraordinary warning from hundreds of mostly retired officers – published in the same magazine last month – that France could face a military coup. The magazine says 2,000 young servicemen and women had signed the second letter, with a further 150,000 people backing it online. The letter likens Macron’s government to war-time Nazi collaborators, praises the officers who signed the first letter as akin to Resistance fighters, and includes dire warnings of societal collapse and army intervention. Macron blasted it as a “crude manoeuvre” by the far-right. The National Rally leader Marine Le Pen welcomed it, warning that civil war “is brewing”.

Barcelona, Spain End of curfew celebrations: Tens of thousands of mostly young people took to the streets in Spain and Belgium last weekend, to mark the ending of nationwide curfews with street parties. In Spain (pictured), the national state of emergency introduced in October was lifted at midnight on Saturday in 13 of its 17 regions. Even though gatherings of more than six remain banned, the end of the 11pm curfew saw vast crowds of revellers gather in Madrid, Barcelona and several other cities, often involving confrontations with police. In the Belgian capital, Brussels, police used water cannon to break up crowds of several thousand people partying in a central square.

In Germany, Health Minister Jens Spahn declared the third wave of the pandemic finally broken, though he urged continued caution. Germany is one of only a handful of European countries where the level of new infections remains above 50% of the national peak, the others being Greece, the Netherlands, Sweden, Latvia and Belarus.

In Greece, public beaches were reopened on Monday – with deckchairs safely spaced – as were most schools. The EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said the 27-nation bloc was on track to vaccinate 70% of adults by the summer.

Catch up with daily news at theweek.co.uk

NEWS 7 Kazan, Russia School shooting: At least nine people – seven children and two staff members – were killed on Tuesday in a mass shooting at a school in the city of Kazan, 500 miles east of Moscow. A further 21 (including 18 children) are thought to have been hospitalised with injuries. A 19-year-old suspect was arrested. Police say he had used a licensed firearm, and have described him as a “terrorist”, but his motives remain unclear. School shootings are relatively rare in Russia, but there have been several violent attacks on schools in recent years, most carried out by pupils. Kazan, the capital of the Muslim-majority Republic of Tatarstan, is Russia’s fifth-largest city, with a population of around 1.6 million.

Lampedusa, Italy Numbers swell: Within 24 hours, more than 2,000 migrants landed on the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa on Sunday, an influx a local police official has described as “explosive”. It’s the biggest such influx this year – a reflection of the improving weather as well as a switch from small dinghies to larger fishing boats able to carry hundreds of people. As the island’s reception centre has a capacity of only 200, hundreds have been sleeping rough on the dockside. Italian officials believe the use of larger boats – launched from a harbour rather than a beach – means that Libyan officials are complicit in the upsurge. Separately, an analysis by The Guardian, based on UN reports and incidents recorded by NGOs, suggests that EU member states have illegally pushed back at least 40,000 asylum seekers from Europe’s borders since the start of the pandemic.

15 May 2021 THE WEEK

8 NEWS

The world at a glance

New York Vaccine roll-out slows: Several US states are offering incentives to younger adults to get vaccinated against Covid-19, as the pace of America’s roll-out slows. The number of daily vaccinations has been falling for a month, from a (seven-day average) peak of 3.38 million on 13 April, to 2.12 million earlier this week. In the face of falling demand, many states are not taking up their full allocation of vaccines from the federal government, or are scaling back their requests. Now, New York is offering baseball fans free tickets if they get vaccinated at the game; West Virginia is offering $100 savings bonds; and New Jersey, free drinks at breweries.

As of early this week, about 153.4 million Americans (58% of adults) had received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine; of these, 116.6 million have been fully vaccinated, with either two doses, or with Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose jab.

New York Musk’s revelation: Elon Musk has announced that he has Asperger’s, a neurodevelopmental disorder on the autism spectrum. During a guest appearance on the TV show Saturday Night Live, the billionaire said: “I’m making history tonight as the first person with Asperger’s to host SNL – or at least, the first to admit it.” He added: “I know I sometimes say or post strange things, but that’s just how my brain works. To anyone I’ve offended, I just want to say: I reinvented electric cars and I’m sending people to Mars in a rocket ship. Did you think I was also going to be a chill normal dude?”

Colorado Springs, Colorado Mass killing: Six people were shot at a family birthday party in a mobile home park in Colorado Springs on Sunday.

“The suspect, a boyfriend of one of the female victims, drove to the residence, walked inside and began shooting people at the party before taking his own life,” according to local police. The motive for the attack is not yet known. Several children were at the scene of the shooting, but none were injured. With a population of 465,000, Colorado Springs is the state’s second biggest city after Denver. The attack follows another mass shooting in Colorado just a few weeks ago: on 22 March, a gunman killed ten people at a supermarket in Boulder. He survived and faces ten counts of murder.

Houston, Texas Pipeline cyberattack: The US’s largest fuel pipeline was closed down last Friday following a “ransomware” cyberattack by Russian hackers. The 5,500-mile Colonial Pipeline links Texas to New Jersey, via Atlanta and several other big cities, and carries almost half of the east coast’s fuel supplies (100 million gallons per day of petrol, diesel and jet fuel). The largest such attack on critical US infrastructure to date, it led to an immediate spike in the price of petrol. US authorities said the hack was perpetrated by a group called DarkSide, which is known for its extortion attempts, and that they did not think there was a political motive. “Our goal is to make money, and not creating problems for society,” the group said in a statement on its website this week (see page 49).

Cali, Colombia Deadly violence: The number of people killed in the wave of violent antigovernment protests in Colombia has risen to at least 47. The majority of the deaths have been in the city of Cali; however, cities across the country have been affected, including the capital, Bogotá. The unrest began on 28 April, in opposition to proposed tax rises announced by President Duque’s centre-right government. He has since withdrawn the plans, but protests, against poverty, inequality, and the brutality of the initial security response, have continued.

Manaus, Brazil Clearances surge: Deforestation of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil was 43% higher in April than in the same month last year, with 224 square miles destroyed, according to the National Institute for Space Research. The figures have raised fears about the extent of destruction in the coming dry season, from May to October, when deforestation generally peaks. Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, is a climate change sceptic, who has encouraged commercial exploitation of the Amazon and fiercely criticised his own government’s environmental regulations and enforcement agencies. At US president Joe Biden’s climate summit last month, Bolsonaro promised to double the amount of money spent on environmental enforcement, and to end illegal deforestation by 2030, but he then promptly announced further budget cuts.

THE WEEK 15 May 2021

Montevideo First wave: Uruguay, which was barely touched by Latin America’s first wave of Covid-19 a year ago, is now struggling with one of the highest per capita infection rates in the world. A small nation of 3.5 million people, Uruguay won plaudits for the way it handled the pandemic last year: it closed its borders, mounted a successful test-and-trace operation, and adopted voluntary social distancing measures. By early December, it had recorded only 80 deaths, and had never had a forced lockdown. But since then, cases and deaths have rocketed. The death toll has now passed 3,200; and this week, it is recording some 50 deaths a day. Health experts have blamed complacency, new variants, and a slow vaccine roll-out for the surge.

The world at a glance Jerusalem Conflict flares: Weeks of escalating tension between Israelis and Palestinians in East Jerusalem exploded into deadly violence this week, after police stormed the compound of the al-Aqsa mosque, and used stun grenades and rubber bullets to clear crowds of Palestinians, injuring some 300 people. The site is holy to Muslims and Jews, who know it as Temple Mount, and Jewish activists had planned to visit as part of their celebration of “Jerusalem Day” – which marks Israel’s capture of East Jerusalem in 1967, and which Palestinians regard as an intense provocation. Hundreds of Palestinians had occupied the site to defend the mosque, and protest against the threatened eviction of Palestinian families in East Jerusalem to make way for Jewish settlers. Police said they had been hurling rocks.

Over the next three days, Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip, fired more than 1,000 missiles into Israel, towards Tel Aviv, forcing residents to run to bomb shelters, and killing seven people. Israel retaliated with repeated air strikes on Gaza. Fifty-three people were killed there, including several children, and a tower block was among the buildings destroyed.

NEWS 9

Kabul School bombing: Scores of girls aged 11 to 15 were killed last Saturday afternoon, when terrorists attacked a school in a mainly Shia district of western Kabul.

Witnesses said that a car bomb exploded in front of the Sayed Al-Shuhada school.

As the students rushed out in panic, two more bombs were detonated. At least 68 people were killed, and more than 150 people were wounded. The Taliban denied responsibility for the attack, which most analysts assumed was carried out by Islamic State: the Sunni jihadist group has carried out many such atrocities against Shia civilians in Afghanistan. In a separate incident, at least 11 people were killed, and 28 wounded, by a roadside bomb in the southern province of Zabul. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

Grand Sud region, Madagascar Starvation warning: At least 1.35 million people in southern Madagascar are in need of emergency food aid, with hundreds of thousands already on the brink of famine, the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) has warned. The region’s worst drought in 40 years – which is now in its fourth year – has been accompanied by violent sandstorms that have destroyed harvests and covered pasture with sand. In some areas, 80% of the population are eating locusts or wild leaves in efforts to survive, the WFP says.

“The scale of the catastrophe is beyond belief. If we don’t reverse this crisis, if we don’t get food to the people... families will starve and lives will be lost,” said the WFP’s senior director, Amer Daoudi.

Casablanca, Morocco Nonuplet birth: Nine babies born to a Malian woman at a private hospital in Morocco will need to spend up to three months in incubators, but they and their mother are doing well, according to the clinic. Halima Cissé, 25, was flown to Casablanca by the Malian government at 25 weeks after her case attracted national attention. She gave birth at 30 weeks to five girls and four boys, weighing between 500g and 1kg. There are two previous recorded instances of nonuplets – in Australia in 1971, and in Malaysia in 1999 – but in those cases, the babies all died within days.

Dubai, UAE Vaccine anxiety: The United Arab Emirates’ vaccination drive – one of the world’s fastest, along with Israel’s – has failed to quell its outbreak of Covid-19, raising doubts over the efficacy of the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine that it is mostly using. Cases in the UAE have fallen from their January peak, but have now plateaued at a stubbornly high per capita rate compared to other countries. There are similar concerns in the Seychelles, where Covid is surging, even though more than 60% of adults have had two doses of the vaccine (donated by the UAE).

15 May 2021 THE WEEK

© TWITTER

Buxar, India Covid crisis: Scores of bodies – believed to be those of Covid-19 victims – have washed up on the banks of the Ganges in Bihar state, as India continues to struggle with its deadly second wave.

It’s unclear how the bodies got there, but some residents say that, owing to the shortage of wood for cremations, families have resorted to putting the bodies of their dead straight into the river.

India is recording around 400,000 new cases a day, and 4,000 deaths.

The true figures are likely to be much higher.

People

10 NEWS

And I just thought, ‘Goodness, they should know better.’

Neither of them had read the thing and I was appalled by their bad judgement, allowing themselves to comment on something they know nothing about. If there’s one thing politicians should be able to do, it’s dodge a question.”

Tom Jones on Linda Tom Jones lived in LA for years, but after the death of his wife, Linda, in 2016, he moved to a flat in central London.

Linda had wanted to come back to the UK too. He feels guilty that they didn’t move in time for her, but she is with him, he told Kate Mossman in the New Statesman. “She said, ‘Don’t leave me in America, don’t put me in the ground anywhere.’ I said, ‘I won’t.’

She’s in my bedroom. In a lovely box, in a beautiful box.

Having her ashes with me has really helped, because she’s there every night, you see.”

They met when they were 12, and were married for 59 years.

How has he adjusted? “Well, I’ve got the remote control!

You know how couples are – it’s all about who’s got the control!” He’s also got his career – which he loves, and for which he is eternally grateful. “People say showbiz is hard work. I say, look, I haven’t worked since 1962, when I used to carry bricks up a ladder on a building site.

Work, to me, is doing something you don’t really want to do but you’ve got to in order to make money. That’s what most people have to do.”

Castaway of the week This week’s edition of Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs featured the actress and singer Billie Piper 1 Pure Imagination by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley, performed by Gene Wilder for the Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory soundtrack 2 This Must Be the Place, written and performed by Talking Heads 3 Sara by Stevie Nicks, performed by Fleetwood Mac 4 Out of Space by Liam Howlett, performed by The Prodigy 5* Champagne Supernova by Noel Gallagher, performed by Oasis 6 Turn the Page by Mike Skinner, performed by The Streets 7 Halo by Ryan Tedder, Evan Bogart and Beyoncé Knowles, performed by Beyoncé 8 Juicy by Christopher Wallace and James Mtume, performed by The Notorious B.I.G.

Book: The Cost of Living by Deborah Levy * Choice if allowed only one record Luxury: her children’s artwork

THE WEEK 15 May 2021

Rafe Spall is the son of a famous actor – Timothy Spall – and is now really quite famous in his own right. Which is both great, and awful.

“There’s an episode of Seinfeld,” he says, “where George goes to an interview and he takes a tape recorder in his briefcase, and he leaves the briefcase behind [afterwards] to see what they say. And my whole life is like that. All I’ve got to do is put my name into Google or Twitter and I can see what people really think of me.”

The bad comments, he told Eva Wiseman in The Guardian, “make you feel terrible” – and the good ones “make you feel nothing”.

Self worth, he has realised, does not derive from strangers thinking you’re good at acting. His epiphany came in 2019, when he was in a one-man play at the National. It got the kind of reviews he’d always dreamed of; every performance ended with a standing ovation.

“But it didn’t make me feel any better as a human. We spend our lives going, ‘If I just achieve that amount of success, status, financial security. If I just lose 10lbs, then I’ll feel okay.’ This was a big powerful reminder of the fact that this isn’t the case. You realise there is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow... But it was good.

It was good, because I realised no amount of adulation is going to be enough. No amount of success will ever make you feel good. It’s such a cliché, but you realise what matters. The kids, the quotidian drudgery, the nappies, the night times. That’s where the love is.”

Viewpoint:

A department store life “Shopping for a buggy on Oxford Street last year, I had the depressing thought that I have measured out my life in John Lewis departments. Standing among the other parents-to-be, waiting to spend £500 on what amounts to a nylon shopping trolley, I remembered being taken to have my feet measured for school shoes. Whenever I embarked on a new stage of life, John Lewis had been there. Its partners, with dark green badges on their lapels, had sold me my first suit, a toaster for university, entry-level bedlinen. There I was, in the baby zone, subconsciously passing on the baton to my unborn child. Soon, I realised, I would be shopping for comfort footwear.”

Ed Cumming in The Observer

Farewell Air Vice-Marshal Don Attlee, commander of the Queen’s Flight, died 28 April, aged 98.

Gladys Eva, controller during the Battle of Britain, died 23 April, aged 100.

Cate Haste, writer and TV producer, died 29 April, aged 75.

Lord Judd, Labour minister and former director of Oxfam, died 17 April, aged 86.

Lloyd Price, pioneer of rock in the early 1950s, died 3 May, aged 88.

© THE TIMES/NEWS LICENSING

Hilary Mantel’s health Hilary Mantel has remarkable drive, says Jessamy Calkin in The Daily Telegraph: as a young girl, she had such a thirst for learning, her parents (a clerk and an ex-mill worker) gave her the complete works of Shakespeare, just to keep her quiet. But she has also faced lifelong health problems. In her 20s, she started to suffer terrible pain and nausea.

Doctors thought it was stress-related, and prescribed anti-psychotic drugs – which triggered psychosis. Eventually, she diagnosed herself with endometriosis. She had her womb, ovaries and part of her bowel removed in 1979, but it didn’t cure her. So, she was given hormone treatments that caused a once slim woman to become – in her own words – “startlingly round”; then she was given steroids, which left her deaf, and “moonfaced”.

She is still far from well, so she lives very quietly with her husband in a flat by the sea in Budleigh Salterton, Devon. She focuses on her writing, and doesn’t engage with social media – which proved a blessing when, in 2013, some comments she had made about the Duchess of Cambridge during a lecture were dragged out of context, and overblown in the press. Reporters camped out in the town, but its residents refused to disclose her address, and she didn’t see the bile on Twitter. “Occasionally my husband would come and say, ‘Oh now David Cameron’s talking about it. Oh, Ed Miliband’s joined in now...’

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Briefing

NEWS 13

Napoleon’s contested legacy

Two hundred years after the death of Napoleon Bonaparte, a bitter debate is still raging in France over his place in its history Why is this anniversary significant?

And what’s on the charge sheet?

On 5 May 1821, Napoleon died in exile, It is long. Napoleon took power in the in a damp house on the bleak South coup of 18 Brumaire (9 November 1799) Atlantic island of St Helena. Even in which ended the democratic experiment of the Revolution. He then established a death, he was considered too dangerous to return to France: his desire to be dictatorship, complete with secret police buried in Paris was not granted by the and intolerance for dissent. Having British government until 1840, when his established French supremacy in Europe, body was disinterred, shipped back and he launched immensely costly wars of entombed in glory in the Dôme des aggression that ultimately he could not Invalides church. Last week saw the last win, by invading first Spain and then Russia. The Napoleonic Wars cost in a series of Napoleonic bicentenaries, between three and 6.5 million lives, which France has marked somewhat gingerly. In 2005, the then-president including those of around a million Jacques Chirac thought it best to sidestep French people – bringing more bloodshed the celebrations for the 200th anniversary to modern Europe than anyone before of Austerlitz, regarded as Napoleon’s Hitler. “A man like me does not give a greatest victory. Many museums have shit about the lives of a million men,” designated 2021 the “Year of Napoleon memorably declared after the “The soul of the world and the devil of Europe” Napoleon”; but the emperor’s reputation disastrous Russian campaign of 1812. has become, as so often in French history, a cultural battlefield.

How is he seen today in modern France?

So this isn’t a new argument?

In the current climate, his attitudes towards race and women have come into the spotlight. He was an enthusiastic imperialist Ever since Napoleon’s reign, there have been two perceptions of his quest for supremacy. On the one hand, he has been seen as a who conquered Egypt, and after the siege of Ottoman Jaffa had national hero, a founder of modern France, the greatest soldier of 3,000 enemy soldiers taken to the beach and shot. In 1794, his age; on the other, as a tyrant, a betrayer of the Revolution, a Revolutionary France had declared the abolition of slavery in all warmonger. “Born largely to destroy, Bonaparte carries evil in his of its territories, but Napoleon reinstated it in the French West Indies in 1802. Faced with rebellions in the colonies, he later breast just as naturally as a mother bears her offspring, with joy and a sort of pride,” wrote Chateaubriand in 1814. Yet even despatched an army of 60,000 to Haiti, to crush the rebels. He after Waterloo and the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy, also made laws forbidding “people of colour” to enter France, and forcing the break-up of interracial marriages. The Napoleonic Napoleon remained very popular. An alternative cult emerged: of an egalitarian who saved the Revolution, a glorious military Code, meanwhile, was a setback for nascent female equality. It leader, a great statesman, a romantic hero. This ambivalence confirmed the legal right of men to control women, who were forbidden from selling and buying property. is visible in the very fabric of France. Modern Paris, which Napoleon did so much to create, is littered with streets, landmarks and railway stations commemorating his generals, How did President Macron mark the anniversary? armies and victories; but only the narrow Rue Bonaparte bears Last Wednesday, President Macron – widely regarded as a rather Napoleonic figure – laid a wreath at his tomb in Les Invalides. his name. There are just two public statues of him in the city.

It was a delicate balancing act for Macron, who insisted he What were Napoleon’s greatest achievements? was “commemorating not celebrating” the emperor’s legacy.

His victories ensured that Revolutionary France, besieged by the “Napoleon could be both the soul of the world and the devil of Europe,” he said. Macron described the reintroduction of slavery monarchies of Europe, not only survived – ending a decade of chaos and civil strife – but conquered as “a fault, a betrayal of the spirit of the Enlightenment”, but listed many much of the continent. Yet in France The emperor’s last battle: St Helena today his reputation is perhaps After Waterloo, Napoleon optimistically contemplated of his achievements such as his greatest as an administrative reformer, exile in the US or England. The British had other ideas support for meritocracy, and the arts during the period he served as first and sciences. “We love Napoleon and packed him off to St Helena, a rocky, windswept island six miles by ten miles, 1,200 miles from the consul, from 1799 to 1804. Napoleon because his life gives us a taste of African coast. Upon sighting it from HMS established the Conseil d’État, which what is possible if we accept the Northumberland, he remarked: “It seems no charming invitation to take risks,” he declared. still advises the French government place to live in.” He was accompanied by a small today, along with the Bank of France, coterie of loyal aides and servants, and was given the regional prefectures, the lycées How do the French people feel? lodgings appropriate to a captive general, but the (high schools) and the baccalauréat The feting of Napoleon is anathema deposed emperor chafed against the restrictions exam system. Towering above all to many activists. Generally, though, imposed: he had to be guarded by a British soldier these, though, is the Napoleonic Code he has remained popular as an icon if he left his garden, and had a 9pm curfew. of 1804, created to sweep away the of French glory, particularly on the On St Helena, Napoleon reminisced in detail over his confusing, contradictory feudal laws Right. “Will France be the only victories and defeats, railing against the subordinates and entrench modern legal rights. country in the world in 2021 not that he held responsible. He read profusely, ate and drank a great deal, and developed a brief passion for “My real glory isn’t that I won 40 to admire Napoleon?” asked the gardening.

But from 1817, he became withdrawn and battles; Waterloo will erase most of conservative MP Julien Aubert them – but nothing will erase my Civil depressed, and was often bed-bound. There are many recently. Frédéric Dabi, of the pollster theories about the causes of his death on 5 May 1821: Code,” he said. The code is credited Ifop, said most French people would doctors diagnosed stomach cancer and ulcers postwith hastening the end of feudalism support marking the anniversary mortem, but some claim he was poisoned with across Europe: it was first imposed because “they have a passion for arsenic or even by his own cologne. His last words through Napoleon’s conquests, then French history”. The critics, he said, were: “La France, l’armée, tête d’armée, Joséphine” voluntarily adopted not just in Europe, “are in reality very much a minority. (“France, the army, head of the army, Joséphine”). but in nations around the world.

Social networks aren’t France.”

15 May 2021 THE WEEK

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Best articles: Britain Mind your own business, not my morals James Marriott The Times

This election was a matter of degrees James Kirkup The Spectator

Green talk is easy: now walk the green walk Damian Carrington The Guardian

How London coddles corrupt oligarchs Nick Cohen The Observer

The moral posturing of today’s corporations never fails to amuse me, says James Marriott. There is, after all, something absurd about Coca-Cola declaring that it “stands with those seeking justice and equality”, as if it were some moral arbiter and not just a business selling fizzy drinks. Yet not only do we regard this sort of thing as normal these days; we expect, even welcome, it. Where once we relied on the Church for moral guidance, we now look to companies to fulfil that role. Employers used to be just people paying your salary: the idea that they’d concern themselves with your inner life and offer behavioural tips would, until recently, have been unthinkable. Yet now we troop along to workshops on racism, sexism or mental health, hoping they’ll “make us better people and, perhaps without quite knowing it, enjoying the reinforced sense of group identity”. It’s part of the wider intrusion of work into our home life – a development we should be wary of. At root, companies are just legal entities created to produce a profit. That is “not a natural fit with the role of moral instructor”.

“Education, education, education.” That was Tony Blair’s self-declared priority, says James Kirkup, and it also sums up the new dividing line in British politics. What tends to determine how people vote today isn’t your social class or how old you are. No, the key factor is whether or not you have a university degree.

Labour is essentially becoming the party of graduates, the Tories the party of non-graduates. We saw this in the Brexit vote. The outcome was often portrayed as a generational split, but analysis shows that younger people with lower educational qualifications were just as likely to vote Leave as older voters with lower levels of education. We saw further evidence of it in last week’s election: Labour’s few gains in England came in mostly urban, graduateheavy areas; and the Tories did well in Hartlepool, where less than a third of school leavers go to university. It’s an unhealthy situation. Too many left-leaning people with degrees disdain the policy preferences of those who don’t have one: they confuse education with intelligence. And Labour has suffered as a result.

All but the “truly deluded” now accept we have to do something about climate change, says Damian Carrington. Trouble is, no one backs their words with meaningful action. The UK leads the world in setting CO2 targets, but look what it’s actually doing: building more roads, cutting taxes on domestic flights, scrapping a home-energy efficiency scheme. Other nations are no better. Justin Trudeau calls climate change an “existential threat”, yet owing to Canada’s tar sands exploitation, its emissions have risen since 2015. Japan is a big financier of overseas coal plants; China builds a coal-fired power station every week; Norway is developing giant new oil and gas fields. Meanwhile, companies hide behind pledges about carbon-capture technology or carbon offsets. Oil giant Chevron touts capturing and storing CO2 emissions underground as a solution, but its advertised plans look to cover less than 1% of its 2019 carbon emissions. As a result, by 2030 we’re on track to cut 2010 levels of CO2 emissions by a measly 0.5%, whereas a 45% cut is needed to avoid climate catastrophe. To achieve that we first need to cut the “bullshit”.

Dominic Raab has vowed to fight, “with the staunchest resolve”, Russia’s malign attempts “to undermine other countries’ democratic systems”. If the Foreign Secretary means it, says Nick Cohen, he should keep a close eye on our courts. Recent years have seen a rise in what the Americans call Slapps (strategic lawsuits against public participation): actions aimed not so much at reparation as at intimidating critics and leaving them with skyhigh legal costs. The financier Bill Browder, who led a campaign to freeze the Western holdings of corrupt oligarchs, knows all about this. In 2013, he was sued for libel in London by Pavel Karpov, a Russian official. Browder won, but Karpov sat tight in Moscow and refused to pay Browder’s £660,000 legal bill. Today journalist Catherine Belton may suffer a similar fate. She faces an unprecedented “pile-on from Russian billionaires” in London’s libel courts – very possibly orchestrated by the Kremlin – over her book on Putin. The EU is thinking of introducing reforms to tackle Slapps. As a country much favoured by the world’s rich for this sort of legal bullying, Britain surely needs to follow suit.

NEWS 15 IT MUST BE TRUE…

I read it in the tabloids A Belgian farmer redrew his country’s border with France, by moving a stone marker that was blocking his tractor’s path. A local history buff noticed that the stone, dating from 1819, had been moved 7.5ft into France. “He made Belgium bigger and France smaller, it’s not a good idea,” said the mayor of Erquelinnes in Belgium, David Lavaux. But Aurélie Welonek, the mayor of the neighbouring French village, was forgiving. “We should be able to avoid a new border war,” she said.

An Ohio state senator has been caught driving on an official Zoom call. During a meeting of the Ohio state board, Andrew Brenner set a background appearing to show him sitting in an office at home. But his cover was blown by the fact that he was wearing a seatbelt, and often checked his mirrors to change lanes. The incident happened as Ohio’s legislature prepared a bill to crack down on distracted drivers. Brenner insisted his driving wasn’t affected.

The Iraqi reality TV show Tannab Raslan has a novel premise. Celebrities are invited to a “charity event”, but are then pranked into believing that they are being ambushed by Isis militants.

Actors play jihadists armed with fake guns and suicide vests, while hidden cameras record the celebrities’ reactions. In one episode, the actress Nessma Tanneb faints in terror as she is “rescued” by Iraqi forces.

The show provoked outrage and was cancelled by Iraq’s media regulator. Host Raslan Haddad was unrepentant. “Participants have no objection, they agreed to it,” he claimed.

15 May 2021 THE WEEK

16 NEWS

Best of the American columnists

Facebook vs. Trump: “an exhausting game of hot potato”

“The Facebook oversight board has Facebook was the main way he raised money. With 32 million followers on spoken,” said Rebecca MacKinnon the site, he had “the third-largest on Slate: Donald Trump will remain suspended from the social networking political following on Facebook platform – at least for another six behind former president Barack months, until Facebook clarifies what Obama and Indian Prime Minister its rules are. The tech giant booted the Narendra Modi”. In the final months former president off its platform back of last year’s presidential campaign, in January, in the wake of the riots at traffic on his page dwarfed that of the US Capitol. It then asked its many media outlets. Without the platform, it will be very hard for oversight board – a London-based Trump to stage a comeback. group of 20 academics, human-rights advocates and other luminaries – to The ruling is a blow to Facebook too, review the decision. But if the company thought the move would allow it to Will suspension torpedo Trump’s re-election chances? said the National Review. Its bosses hide behind the judgment of others, “should have known better than to the statement last week from the body known as Facebook’s believe that it could limit speech on its platform without setting “supreme court” soon disabused it of that notion. “In applying a terrible and thorny precedent”. The real problem here is not a vague, standardless penalty and then referring this case to the Trump but Facebook, said Will Oremus in The New York Times: its vast power and the way its algorithms fuel bitter board to resolve, Facebook seeks to avoid its responsibilities,” political partisanship and lies. “It is those underlying dynamics it read. “The board declines Facebook’s request and insists that and not solely Trump’s right to use the platform”, that need to Facebook apply and justify a defined penalty.” be tackled. Facebook has simply become too powerful, agreed That Trump will remain suspended from Facebook for at least Kara Swisher in the same paper. Legislators need to find a way another six months is a major blow to his efforts to remain to expose it to more competition and take some impossible relevant, said Meridith McGraw on Politico. Although the decisions out of its hands. “Until then, it’ll be an endless and Trump camp has one of the biggest email lists in politics, exhausting game of hot potato, in which no one wins.”

A ban that targets African Americans Eugene Robinson The Washington Post

The battle cry that Biden stole from Trump David Frum The Atlantic

Giuliani could dish the dirt on Donald Renato Mariotti Politico

THE WEEK 15 May 2021

Any measure that helps reduce smoking is, in principle, a good thing, says Eugene Robinson. I’m worried, though, about the federal government’s proposed ban on menthol cigarettes. That these products are particularly harmful is no doubt true: by masking the harshness of smoke with a minty flavour, they make it easier for people to take up the habit, and encourage users to inhale more deeply. But the problem is that making it illegal to sell Newports, Kools and other such brands will have “a massively disparate impact on African American smokers”, nearly 85% of whom favour menthols (as against 30% of white smokers and 35% of Hispanic smokers). This anomaly has its roots in the successful niche marketing of menthols to black, urban, segregated communities in the 1960s, sustained since by targeted advertising and cultural preference. Banning menthols would be a well-deserved blow to Big Tobacco, but it would also surely lead to a boom in the sale of smuggled menthols from Mexico to African American communities – an illegal trade that the authorities would then presumably feel compelled to stamp out with searches, fines and arrests. The last thing America needs right now is a new reason for the police “to target the average black person”.

President Biden isn’t abandoning all of his predecessor’s policies, says David Frum. There’s one Trumpian battle cry that he has enthusiastically adopted as his own: “Buy American”. He apparently wants this to be the guiding principle behind his massive infrastructure investment plans. It’s a terrible idea. The US has long struggled to live up to its pro-free-trade principles when it comes to government procurement – to the detriment of US taxpayers. The 2009 Recovery Act, for example, requires federal purchasers to favour US suppliers unless doing so inflates the cost of projects by 25% or more. “That’s a lot of scope for price gouging, and suppliers have made the most of it.”

Analysts have estimated that existing “Buy American” rules add some $100bn a year to federal spending. That’s why trade advocates have laboured for decades gradually to open up procurement markets to international competition, in order to level the playing field for US exporters abroad, and secure better value for US taxpayers at home. By expanding Trump’s “Buy American” drive, Biden will further undermine that worthy goal. “It’s a waste, it’s a shame, it’s wrong – and at the moment, there seems to be no elected figure in either party willing to stand against it.”

You don’t need to be a lawyer, says former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti, to know you’re in trouble when federal agents knock on your door and seize your electronic devices. That’s what happened to Donald Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani the other day – and it should make him and his old boss very nervous. To secure such a search warrant, prosecutors need to convince a federal judge there’s good reason to believe a crime has been committed. Investigators are looking into Giuliani’s Ukraine dealings, which were at the heart of Trump’s first impeachment; and their raid suggests they already have a lot of the evidence they need to show that Giuliani was acting on behalf of Kremlin-backed Ukrainian oligarchs and officials when he persuaded Trump to fire the US ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch. If he was, Giuliani should, by law, have registered as a foreign lobbyist. Giuliani’s defence will no doubt be that he was acting completely at Trump’s direction – but will Trump testify on his behalf? Not likely, considering Trump “is not known for sticking his neck out for disgraced former aides”. So to save himself, the 76-year-old Giuliani may have to turn witness: he would “have every incentive” to “spill damning secrets” about Trump.

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Best articles: International

NEWS 19

South China Sea: “the most dangerous place on Earth” Roughly one-third of the world’s last week responded to the presence of CHINA Chinese craft in the area by tweeting that international shipping, worth some $5trn they should “get the f*** out”. In the per year, passes through the crowded South China Sea, said David Von Drehle East China Sea, meanwhile, Japan last week accused Chinese ships of entering in The Washington Post. The waterway, and its fertile fisheries, are crucial to its territorial waters around the disputed South China Sea Senkaku islands. Most worryingly, China many major economies, including Japan, has greatly increased its “grey” warfare South Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines, Spratly Islands Malaysia – and China. And China now against Taiwan, including cyberattacks, claims sovereignty over nearly the entire and repeated incursions into its airspace South China Sea: its famous “nine-dash and territorial waters. line” reaches 800 miles south from the Chinese mainland, deep into the waters Last week, the G7 nations castigated of the Philippines, Malaysia and Vietnam.

China for its aggression in the region, Yet while China has built a series of said Alex Lo in The South China bases on reefs in disputed islets, the US The “nine-dash line”: the scope of China’s claims Morning Post (Hong Kong). But before navy has been engaged in a “freedom of the West criticises, it should think hard navigation” operation – asserting the right of ships of all nations about who is being “threatening and provocative” here. From to free passage. China is desperate to drive the US out, to assert China’s point of view, the US is interfering with its vital regional its power over the region and its authority over Taiwan – which interests, and its ever-delicate relations with Taiwan. Either it sees as a breakaway province. With China ever more aggresway, the region is “the most dangerous place on Earth”, said sive, the prospect of “a potentially disastrous conflict” looms.

The Economist (London). The US fears China could attack Taiwan within six years. America’s policy of “strategic There are several “flashpoints for a possible conflict” in the ambiguity” means it isn’t bound by treaty to defend it. But if region, said John Blaxland on The Conversation (Melbourne). the US did not act, China would “become the dominant power In the South China Sea, hundreds of Chinese trawlers, armed in Asia”; America’s allies around the world would no longer and believed to be under military control, have appeared in trust it. Yet if the US did react, it would mean war between the Philippine maritime waters; the Philippines’ foreign minister world’s two superpowers.

GERMANY

Africa’s plundered art must go home Bayerischer Rundfunk (Munich)

SOUTH AFRICA

The battle for the Zulu succession Daily Maverick (Cape Town)

BRAZIL

A police force enjoying “a licence to kill” Revista Fórum (Porto Alegre)

At last, a meaningful restitution is to be made for the colonial plunder of African artworks, says Martin Zeyn. Hundreds of beautiful centuries-old metal plaques and sculptures, known as the Benin Bronzes, were looted by British forces from Benin City, in what is now Nigeria, in 1897, and sold off to museums in Europe and North America. Three years ago, President Macron declared that France would return some of its bronzes to Nigeria. But nothing happened, and now Germany is taking the lead: the culture minister Monika Grütters says a binding schedule will be made for a substantial portion of the hundreds of Benin Bronzes held in German museums to be sent back next year. This is a historic breakthrough. We Germans weren’t responsible for the theft – they were bought at auction in London – but stolen goods must be returned. Museum authorities have long maintained that African cultural artefacts are better cared for here, and can be shown to a wider public. But the idea that Africans can’t host their own artworks is “patronising” and effectively “racist”. Large parts of Africa’s greatest art is scattered around the world; the time for its return is long overdue.

South Africa’s Zulu nation is being torn apart by “gossip-mongers and plotters”, says Cyril Madlala.

Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini died in March leaving six wives and 28 children, but no official heir.

He had nominated his third wife, Queen Shiyiwe Mantfombi Dlamini Zulu, to rule as regent, but last month she too died, and now the royal family, deaf to pleas by ministers to observe “appropriate decorum”, has fallen into a public orgy of “acrimony and backstabbing”. The stakes are high: the monarchy has no executive power but has great influence among 11 million Zulus, a fifth of South Africa’s population; it is also hugely wealthy, receiving an annual government stipend of $4.9m in addition to revenues from farms on its millions of acres of land. The stage is set for a long, costly legal battle: the king’s first wife is suing for half his estate. “Cupboard-loads of family skeletons” are tumbling out on social media, with claims by some senior royals that rival family members are illegitimate, and rumours that Mantfombi was poisoned. The king served as a unifying symbol for Zulus, but there were also rumblings about his extravagance, and his retinue of wives. Not for the first time, South Africans are wondering whether the monarchy is worth the trouble and expense.

Rio de Janeiro is used to violent police raids, but never on the scale witnessed last week, say Bernardo Cotrim and Noemi Andrade. A police invasion of the Jacarezinho favela, aimed at breaking up a criminal drug gang, left 27 residents dead – the most lethal such operation in the city’s history. The videos circulating on social media are shocking to watch. The streets were literally “running with blood”: some victims were shot in the back, and at least one was pumped with bullets while lying wounded on the ground. Businesses were left wrecked; families cowered in their homes, gasping from the tear gas dropped by helicopters. It was sheer “barbarism”. At a press conference afterwards, police gave no details about the victims, but praised themselves for having “removed several criminals from circulation”. Unfortunately, these raids underline the “bankruptcy” of the war on drugs – they’ve been going on for decades and haven’t weakened the traffickers one jot.

Meanwhile, there’s an “ongoing massacre” of young black people by the security forces: in 2019, 1,814 people were killed by the Rio police; of whom 86% were black. Today, things are worse than ever: in President Bolsonaro’s Brazil, the police are effectively being given “a licence to kill”.

15 May 2021 THE WEEK

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Health & Science

NEWS 21

What the scientists are saying…

Cancer in medieval Britain

In the medieval period, when no one smoked and there were no factories producing tumour-inducing chemicals, cancer was very rare: only around 100 people in Britain suffered from it. That, at least, has been the received wisdom.

But according to a new study, the disease was ten times more prevalent than that.

Prior research has been based on signs of lesions on the exterior of bones; the team led by the University of Cambridge used radiological imaging to analyse the interior of bones from 143 skeletons.

They included monks, farm labourers and wealthy townspeople, who had lived between the sixth and 16th centuries. The researchers found evidence of malignancy in the bones of five of them – a prevalence of 3.5%. But as CT scans do not detect all bone metastases, and many cancers do not spread to the bones, they estimate that between nine and 14% of medieval Britons suffered from cancer somewhere in their body. Possible risk factors from the period might have included industrial processes such as tanning, and exposure to wood smoke. Now, the rate in Britain is 40%50%. The increase is down to a range of factors – including the ubiquity of pollutants, and the fact that we live longer, giving tumours more time to develop.

Social media use is “not harmful”

For parents worried about their children’s online habits, here is the good news: a new study has found that social media is no more harmful to teenagers’ mental health than television was for young people in the 1990s. A team from the Oxford Internet Institute looked at information on more than 430,000 adolescents in the UK and the US, collected between 1991 and 2017, including their viewing habits and social

The oldest grave in Africa

At least 9% of medieval Britons had cancer

media engagement, and their levels of depression, suicidal tendencies and behavioural problems. Other studies have found a rise in levels of depression and selfharm, linked to social media usage. But to their surprise, the Oxford team found no change in the link between the use of technology and suicidal thoughts over the period of the study – and that depression had become less strongly associated with both social media use and TV viewing.

The only negative they found was a small increase in emotional problems associated with social media use. The study had limitations: for instance, the time the teenagers spent on their devices was selfreported, and so may have been wrong; and the data did not specify what they had been doing on their phones. However, its authors said their findings should act as a warning to policymakers, not to assume that time spent online, or on social media, is harmful to children’s mental health.

Wasps are under-appreciated

We love, cherish and protect bees, yet wasps are considered a pest, and squished on sight, says Tom Whipple in The Times.

They both sting, so why are we so waspish about wasps? The answer, according to a wasp expert, is simple: we don’t know what wasps do. Now, she is seeking to rectify that. For a new paper, Dr Seirian Sumner, of University College London, and her colleagues drew on the existing research in order to make the case for wasps. They found evidence that wasps pollinate at least 960 plant species, including 164 that are dependent on them. The insect world’s “top predators”, wasps play a vital role in regulating insect populations, and so protect a wide variety of crops. Their nests and larvae are a source of human food; their venom has antimicrobial properties; and what’s more, they’re beautiful, says Sumner, whereas bees are just “fat and furry”.

They don’t make honey, however – and they’re not exactly benign: whereas bees “buzz around harmlessly”, wasps like to capture insects, take them to their nests, lay eggs on them, and then watch as their young feast on their prey’s still-living bodies.

“You don’t have to love them,” concedes Sumner. “But they are useful.”

The grave of a child who died 78,000 years ago has been identified as Africa’s oldest known burial site, reports National Geographic. The remains of the infant, probably a boy aged between two and three, had been tightly wrapped, while his head was lying at an angle suggesting it had been resting on some kind of pillow – possibly made from a pile of leaves. The bones were found in a large cave complex on an escarpment near the southeastern coast of Kenya, where a community lived.

“We think the child was wrapped in a shroud made of leaves or animal skins – like he was placed in his last sleep,” said Prof María Martinón-Torres, one of the leaders of the study. “There is such a delicacy and intention that really expresses feelings from the group towards this child.” The site is a few thousand years older than the previous oldest-known grave in Africa, which also belonged to a child. “Perhaps we can see the shadowy emergence of the sense that death coming too early is unnatural and needs to be marked in some way that is different from the norm,” said Prof Paul Pettitt, a British expert in palaeolithic burial sites, who was not involved in the research.

Medical file

As part of a new trial, around 2,000 men are being sent home-testing kits that have the potential to detect prostate cancer five years sooner than standard screening, reports The Daily Telegraph. The kits, which work by detecting gene expressions of prostate cancer in urine, could also be used to monitor the progress of the cancer in men who have already been diagnosed, but whose tumours are only developing very slowly – reducing the need for stressful and expensive hospital visits.

China is the biggest polluter China is emitting more greenhouse gases than all the developed nations combined, according to a new report by the US-based Rhodium Group. It found that China emitted 27% of the world’s greenhouse gases in 2019. The US was the second-largest emitter at 11%, while India was third with 6.6%. China’s per capita emissions are still lower than the US’s, however, and on a historical basis, the developed nations are still by far the world’s biggest emitters, because they industrialised earlier. Moreover, many Western nations “outsource” emissions: in 2013, it was estimated that 13% of the carbon emitted by China was the result of it making goods to export. President Xi has vowed that China’s emissions will peak by 2030, and that it will reach zero net emissions by 2060. However, it remains heavily reliant on coal, with more than 1,000 coal-fired power plants currently in operation.

15 May 2021 THE WEEK

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24 NEWS Pick of the week’s

Gossip

Seth Rogen has had plenty of odd encounters with A-listers. In 2012, George Lucas told him the world would end by the new year.

“It’s science,” Lucas said confidently. Then there was the time the comic actor and his wife were accosted by Kanye West in a hotel lobby.

The rapper summoned them into a van parked outside, before half-rapping, half-describing his new album at them for over two hours. They found it bizarre, but Rogen thinks celebrities view such moments differently. “I don’t think they’re, like, ‘That was a weird night for me’,”he says. “I think they’re just, like, ‘That was a normal Thursday for me’.”

Gwyneth Paltrow has a reputation for clean living, thanks to her Goop “wellness” brand; but she went “totally off the rails” during the pandemic, she has revealed. For starters, she was “making pasta and eating bread”. Worse, she developed a taste for quinoa whiskey cocktails – drinking as many as two a night. For Paltrow, such excess was unthinkable. “I mean, who drinks multiple drinks seven nights a week?”

A local politician whose bizarre campaign video went viral before last week’s elections had the last laugh – when he won. In somewhat wobbly footage, Tory candidate Tiger Patel was seen walking in silence around a playground in Blackburn, gesturing at its derelict equipment. At one point, he raised his arms in triumph on a climbing frame, unaware that it had a large penis scrawled on it.

“I did get a lot of abuse,” he said, “but I got elected.”

THE WEEK 15 May 2021

Talking points The Jersey fish fight: gunboat diplomacy How did it come to this, British business. “How did asked James Crisp in The our government respond?

Daily Telegraph. How It worked patiently to did a row over scallops, overcome the new lobsters and sea snails bureaucracy.” It did not lead to the blockade of indulge in this sort of “hysterical escalation”.

St Helier harbour in Jersey Really, asked The

by French fishing boats – and to the Royal Navy Observer. Does sending in and French naval patrol the Royal Navy not count as a hysterical reaction? ships “eyeing each other across the waves”? Under Brexit “is the root cause the Brexit deal, French of all these woes”: French French fishermen in St Helier harbour fishermen must now apply fishermen are threatened for licences in order to fish in Jersey’s waters. with losing their fishing grounds; Jersey’s boats Not all French skippers have been able to prove have been prevented from landing their catches in France. How typical of Johnson, when faced that they have fished in these waters for years: as a result, many smaller French boats have had with the results of his policies, to resort to their licences refused by Jersey’s authorities, or flag-waving and jingoism. faced restrictions designed to conserve fish stocks. Paris branded this “unacceptable”, and It wasn’t the best way to “de-escalate” the crisis, said Fraser Nelson in The Daily Telegraph. But even threatened to cut off Jersey’s electricity.

When fishing boats from Normandy protested such theatrics go down well on both sides of the Channel, particularly during elections. “Nothing by blocking Jersey’s main port, Boris Johnson says ‘vote Tory’ like sending gunships to see off sent in two Royal Navy patrol vessels. the French.” President Macron is no better: fighting with the British over fish goes down well There is a comic opera flavour to this dispute, with conservative voters in northern France. In said Daniel Hannan in the Daily Mail. But fact, a compromise was soon reached: French actually we should see it as a serious warning.

“Stable democracies don’t threaten to cut off fishing boats have been given more time to meet new rules, and the ban on Jersey’s fishermen their neighbours’ energy supplies. That is the landing their catches in France has been lifted. sort of behaviour we associate with rogue states.” British fishermen and exporters who sell But the worry is that both Paris and London are to Europe have also had difficulties since Brexit: enjoying such conflicts “a bit too much”. If they don’t manage the inevitable frictions better, it the French have been particularly zealous in the enforcement of new rules, which has cost the will poison post-Brexit relations.

Covid vaccines: should patents be waived?

That within a year of the declaration of a global pandemic, we had not one, but several, vaccines against Covid-19 is remarkable testament to scientific progress, said The Guardian. But this success has proved “bittersweet”. For while in rich nations, such as the US and the UK, around half the population has had their first dose, across Asia and Africa, billions of people have no access to vaccines at all. This is a “glaring inequity” that badly needs addressing – and there are now hopeful signs that the world is taking action. Last week, in an “unexpected and welcome reversal”, President Biden delivered a shock blow to the pharmaceutical giants that Washington has long protected, by endorsing a proposal to waive patent protections for Covid vaccines. The plan needs to be backed by all 164 of the WTO’s members to go ahead. But if it does, it would pave the way for manufacturers in emerging economies to produce their own, generic versions of the vaccines.

The pharmaceutical giants “squealed like stuck pigs” when they heard the news, said Michael Hiltzik in the LA Times, and their share prices fell. They have warned that if they’re deprived of intellectual property protection, they’ll have little incentive to invest in further vaccine research and development. Their arguments seem compelling, said The Economist. Developing

new drugs is risky, and expensive. Pharma firms invest huge sums with no guarantee of success.

If other firms could freely copy their new drugs, the price would fall, and they might not even cover their development costs. But there again, they didn’t stump up all the cost of developing the vaccines: they received billions in public funds. And a waiver would not “endanger their viability”. Even without its $4bn in vaccinerelated profits, Pfizer will do very nicely this year. The pressing question, though, is whether the waiver would unlock the vaccine bottleneck.

And the answer to that is no, said Tom Chivers on UnHerd – not any time soon, at least.

Moderna said in October that it would not enforce any patents, but no factories are making its vaccine because they lack the expertise, the technology and the materials. Making vaccines is highly complex and requires an array of products that are now in short supply – from the pipette tips used to suck out chemicals, to the nucleic acids used to construct mRNA. Saying you’ll waive patents generates likes on social media; but it won’t change much. What is needed is investment in factories, training and materials. It will cost hundreds of billions of dollars, but this pandemic is costing trillions.

Western governments need to start spending.

Plans for patent waivers are a “sideshow”.

Talking points Northern Ireland: time for an amnesty?

Can you really draw a line former paratroopers charged under the past in Northern with the murder of an IRA man in 1972 – collapsed in Ireland? The Government is Belfast. But about 200 other trying to do just that, said Larisa Brown in The Times. veterans now live in “dread” of prosecution. We sent these It announced last week that it plans to introduce a statute men into the “mindless of limitations, making both violence” of the Troubles to British veterans and terrorists keep the peace. Now they are exempt from prosecution for old, we cannot allow their their actions during the “persecution”. It was certainly Troubles. This would apply “unwise” to charge Soldiers A to incidents that took place and C, said Richard Dannatt before the 1998 Good Friday in The Daily Telegraph. But the amnesty plans will inflame Agreement, with exceptions only for cases of “war crimes, both communities in Northern Ireland. Instead, veterans genocide or torture”. Instead, a South African-style “truth should be interviewed with a On patrol in Belfast in 1986 and reconciliation” process presumption not to prosecute, unless new, compelling evidence comes to light. would allow all those involved to talk without fear of prosecution. The move would mean scrapping the £150m unit set up under the 2014 What about the victims of Troubles violence, Stormont House Agreement to investigate all asked The Irish Times. Many of them have Troubles deaths. The policy – and the way it waited decades “to learn the truth of how their loved ones died”. Now this “unilateral” step was announced, hastily, at “a late-night – made without consultation with those victims briefing” – has stoked outrage across the political spectrum in Northern Ireland. or with Dublin – aims to place British soldiers and republican and loyalist paramilitaries alike beyond the reach of justice. An amnesty would Boris Johnson must honour the promises he only be justified if “positive change” were under made to protect Troubles veterans, said Stephen way in Northern Ireland, said Alex Kane in The Glover in the Daily Mail. There is already a “de News Letter. Sadly there is little evidence of a facto amnesty for former terrorists”, including genuine “desire for reconciliation” from either scores of IRA members who were given “letters of comfort” by Tony Blair stating that they were community. The “widespread hostility” which met this announcement speaks volumes “about no longer wanted for alleged crimes. Last week how slowly our peace process is still moving”. the trial of “Soldier A” and “Soldier C” –

Easing lockdown: the path to normality “The landing gear’s down, the expectations in check. The green flaps are fully extended and the list of 12 countries to which runway safely in view,” said Britons will be allowed to travel without having to quarantine on Henry Deedes in the Daily Mail.

“Our long flight through the their return includes “such tourist hotspots as the Falkland lockdown wilderness” is at Islands, the Faroe Islands and last nearly over. At a news conference this week, Boris Tristan da Cunha”. The only Johnson confirmed that a further popular European destination on the list is Portugal. But the easing of Covid restrictions list will be updated every three would go ahead in England as weeks, said Simon Calder in The planned on 17 May (Scotland Independent, and the likes of and Wales are bringing in similar changes at the same We’ll soon be able to hug again Spain, France and Italy will no doubt get the green light by the time; Northern Ireland is due to start of July. “The race to the sun is about to follow suit a week later). As of Monday, begin. And not a moment too soon.” customers will be allowed back inside pubs, restaurants and hotels. Families and friends will On the contrary, said Ian Dunt in the I be able to hug again. Theatres and cinemas can newspaper, it is too soon. Of course we’re all reopen, albeit with audience limits. desperate for “a mojito on the beach”, but the Schoolchildren will no longer have to wear time to relax travel rules is September, when masks. On the strength of the encouraging data we’re fully vaccinated, not now, when that job (on Monday, England registered no Covid is only half completed. Just look what happened deaths at all), the PM has decided that we’re to Chile, which, confident in the early success of ready to take what he called “a considerable its vaccination roll-out, opened up during the step on the road back to normality”.

January holiday season, triggering a new outbreak. With the finish line in sight, we’d be Foreign travel is also back on the menu on crazy to jeopardise all our progress now. “As Monday, said The Times, but those dreaming of painful as it is, that mojito must wait.” a hassle-free summer holiday should keep their

NEWS 25

Wit & Wisdom “To refuse awards is another way of accepting them with more noise than is normal.”

Peter Ustinov, quoted on iNews.co.uk “Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.”

Voltaire, quoted in The Nashville Tennessean “We live our lives in two distinct halves. The first half lasts until we are 18 and the second is all the years that follow.”

Judith Kerr, quoted in The Observer “War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography.”

Ambrose Bierce, quoted in The Washington Post “The art of statesmanship is to foresee the inevitable and expedite its occurrence.”

Talleyrand, quoted in Forbes “One inheritance of living under the male gaze for centuries is that heterosexual women often look at other women the way a man would.”

Lisa Taddeo, quoted on the Daily Maverick “A tradition is kept alive only by something being added to it.”

Henry James, quoted on ArtsJournal.com “I’ve come to view Jesus much the way I view Elvis.

I love the guy but the fan clubs really freak me out.”

Comedian John Fugelsang, quoted on The Blaze “Music was invented to confirm human loneliness.”

Lawrence Durrell, quoted on The Browser

Statistic of the week The UK’s largest family law firm received 8,801 enquiries from people seeking a divorce between January and March this year, up from 4,505 in the same threemonth period last year.

Stowe Family Law/ The Independent

15 May 2021 THE WEEK

Sport

26 NEWS

Football: a cringeworthy moment for a City legend

The Panenka, or chipped penalty, is a curious beast, said Oliver Brown in The Sunday Telegraph. When it works, it’s a “delicious piece of devilment”, but the sight of a fluffed one is utterly cringeworthy – as Sergio Agüero discovered on Saturday. At the Etihad, Manchester City’s all-time leading goalscorer “conjured a Panenka so dismal that it deserved its own place in the Premier League’s hall of infamy”. The howler occurred with City up 1-0 against Chelsea – and within grasp of a victory that would have secured them the Premier title. Instead of lashing the ball past Edouard Mendy, Agüero opted for subtlety – but his resulting chip was so feeble and obvious that “Mendy had time not just to check his dive with his right hand, but to make a routine save with his left”. From then on, Chelsea played superbly, and snatched a 2-1 victory. For Agüero, who leaves City at the end of the season, it was a “parting flourish to forget”.

hard to avoid the feeling that the player who employs it must be showboating. In fact, Panenkas aren’t quite as foolish as people assume, said Sean Ingle in The Guardian. Ignacio Palacios-Huerta, an LSE professor who has analysed the success rates of different kinds of penalties, says that the “scoring rate of a true Panenka” is only marginally lower than for other types of penalty kicks. The tactic, he says, is certainly risky (because it makes players who miss it look so foolish), but not altogether a “terrible idea”.

Nonetheless, Agüero’s attempt struck almost everyone as a “poor decision”, said Barney Ronay in the same paper – not least because it seemed so out of character for a player who has a reputation for “balls-of-steel arrogance”. City have since won Agüero: opting for subtlety the title, but the squandered opportunity clearly rankled with Pep Guardiola, who afterwards could be seen “striding towards the tunnel, limbs stiff with rage”. And that’s The Panenka is named after Antonín Panenka, who used this type because he knew his team had handed Chelsea an advantage ahead of the Champions League final later this month, said of penalty to seal victory for Czechoslovakia over West Germany in the final of the 1976 Euros, said Chris Wright on ESPN. Many Martin Samuel in the Daily Mail. Make no mistake, Guardiola’s of the game’s greats have subsequently deployed the tactic: from starting line-up for that match will be far stronger than the side he fielded on Saturday (with Agüero, for one thing, unlikely to Zinedine Zidane and Lionel Messi (both successfully), to Gary Lineker (who fluffed his attempt against Brazil in 1992). But feature). Still, having now beaten City twice in a row, Chelsea despite its frequent use, the move is viewed with suspicion – it’s head into the final with a crucial “psychological edge”.

Golf: McIlroy’s long awaited return to form Rory McIlroy entered last week’s Wells Fargo Championship with his future looking dicey, said James Corrigan in The Daily Telegraph. He hadn’t won a title for 18 months, had failed to make the cut in the last two events he’d played, and his world ranking had slid to 15 – its lowest since 2009. Yet on a testing course in North Carolina, the Northern Irish golfer showed why you should never write him off. After an unimpressive opening 72, he struck rounds of 66, 68 and 68 to finish one shot ahead of Abraham Ancer of Mexico. “Crisis? What crisis,” asked Derek Lawrenson in the Daily Mail. This was McIlroy back to near his best. His third win at the tournament, it will give him a huge confidence boost ahead of next week’s PGA Championship.

Times. Starting the final hole with a two-shot advantage, he hooked his drive onto the bank of a creek that runs alongside the fairway. On the advice of his caddie, Harry Diamond, he opted for a penalty drop rather than trying to gouge the ball out from the bank. It proved a wise decision: a “fabulous iron” to the green, followed by a putt in two from 44 feet, gave him the bogey that secured the title. Afterwards, McIlroy paid tribute to Diamond, and to his wife and baby daughter – giving the lie to the myth that “winning no longer matters much to a multimillionaire with a contented family life”. It’s no coincidence that McIlroy’s return “Feeds off the energy” to form coincided with the return of spectators to the tour, said Ewan Murray in The Guardian. Throughout his career, he has been accustomed to a big following, and he clearly missed this during the pandemic. “I need this,” he said, gesturing In keeping with his patchy recent form, McIlroy came close to letting victory slide from his fingers, said Rick Broadbent in The to the crowd afterwards. “I feed off the energy so much.”

Women’s football: Chelsea’s “winning machine”

Sporting headlines

The final day of the Women’s in a row. It’s no surprise that Super League began with the three of Chelsea’s goals came title still undecided, said courtesy of combinations from Suzanne Wrack in The Guardian. their “devastating” front pairing, Leaders Chelsea had only to said Tom Garry in The Daily beat mid-table Reading to Telegraph. Sam Kerr and Fran guarantee their fourth title in Kirby – together dubbed five years – but had they lost, a “Kerrby” – are the most “prolific victory for Manchester City over partnership in English football West Ham would have given right now”: across the 22-game them the title instead. That the Kerrby: “a prolific partnership” WSL season, they have scored Blues would prevail was never 37 goals. really in doubt, said Molly Hudson in The Times: under the guidance of manager Emma Hayes, Hayes will hope their form continues in the final this team has become a “winning machine”. of the Women’s Champions League on Sunday They duly “cantered to victory” over Reading, in Gothenburg, when Chelsea face mighty scoring their first goal after just 68 seconds – Barcelona. Should they prevail, they’ll have the and then adding four more. City’s 1-0 win over chance to claim an unprecedented “quadruple” West Ham was likely little consolation for a side – by also clinching the FA Cup, whose final that has now finished as runner-up five seasons rounds have been delayed until the autumn.

Formula 1 Lewis Hamilton won the Spanish Grand Prix to claim his third victory of the season. He now has a 14-point lead over Max Verstappen, who finished in second place.

Tennis Aryna Sabalenka beat Ash Barty 6-0, 3-6, 6-4 in the final of the Madrid Open. It was the first time Barty, the World No. 1, had lost a set 6-0 in four years.

Boxing Saúl “Canelo” Álvarez of Mexico beat Billy Joe Saunders of Britain to unify the WBA, WBC and WBO super middleweight titles.

Saunders suffered multiple eye socket fractures.

THE WEEK 15 May 2021

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LETTERS Pick of the week’s correspondence A union in perpetual flux To The Guardian

The establishment of a parliament for Northern Ireland through the 1920 Government of Ireland Act was indeed a remarkable event, giving powers to a devolved administration in Belfast for six northern counties, and separately to a parliament for 26 counties in Dublin. What was more significant in the history of the Union, however, was that, in 1921, the AngloIrish Treaty was signed. Under its provisions, the union of Ireland with Great Britain was dissolved and the Irish Free State was recognised the following year, 1922.

The occasion of the centenary might prompt us to recall that James VI united the Scottish and English crowns in 1603; a political union for all of Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales) was enacted in 1707; this lasted until 1800, at which point it grew to include all of Ireland until 1922. At this point it contracted to its current dimensions of Great Britain and Northern Ireland only. As we talk about the possibility of Scottish secession from the Union, we seem to forget that radical changes to the UK’s borders are not unprecedented.

The major changes seem to happen roughly every 100 years. Just a thought.

Alan Wallace, Leeds

Walls of dissent To the FT

John Ure writes in his letter that the solution to Northern Ireland’s problems is a unified Ireland with protection of minority rights.

The border is of less significance than the existence of 20 miles of so-called peace walls separating rival neighbourhoods. The walls are up to three miles long and 25ft high, highlighting the division between the communities.

More than half the peace walls that exist today were built after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement. As per G.K. Chesterton: “Don’t ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up.”

Community reconciliation must come before political change.

John Doherty, Australia

Exchange of the week

Does the PM deserve a pay hike?

To The Times

Questions about who paid what to whom in the refurbishment of the Downing Street flat are legitimate, yet they miss the real point: namely, that we treat our prime ministers appallingly compared with other senior figures in the public sector. We pay the PM about £160,000 a year: the chief executive of Surrey County Council earns £220,000; heads of academy chains are paid £300,000; and the highest-paid managers in the NHS earn £300,000 plus bonuses. That is before one considers the private sector, where CEOs are paid millions.

There is an allowance of £30,000 to refurbish an apartment in Downing Street, which sounds like a lot of money, but pales into insignificance when one considers that it is a listed building and that to redecorate a normal suite in one of my hotels costs a minimum of £150,000.

Sir Rocco Forte, chairman, Rocco Forte Hotels To The Times

Sir Rocco Forte is appalled by the poor level of the PM’s salary compared with other figures in the public sector.

Unfortunately, the private sector is to blame. Not long ago, boardroom pay was just a few multiples of workforce pay.

However, with the support of fee-hungry remuneration consultants, the salary of some chief executives is now more than 200 times that of workforce pay. No wonder many public sector chiefs demand ever higher remuneration.

Bill Parish, Bromley, Kent To The Times

Sir Rocco Forte complains that we treat our PM appallingly by paying him far less than other senior public sector figures. But who does he think is responsible for this? The PM’s salary (which at one stage was £190,000) was reduced by Gordon Brown and further reduced by David Cameron. The prime minister’s salary was used for political purposes and we live with the consequences of political interference.

Ian Jones, director, Office of Manpower Economics 2007-10

A Scot by blood...

To The Times

Professor Tim Luckhurst makes a very good point about granting the vote on any referendum to the Scots living outwith Scotland. My Jacobite ancestors, the Appin Stewarts, were slaughtered at Culloden in 1746 by Cumberland and his not entirely English soldiers.

However, the followers of Bonnie Prince Charlie were not for separation from England, they merely felt that the Union had the wrong king. I don’t believe in separation any more than they did. Having served in the British Army for 35 years, I also believe we have the right monarch. I claim my vote by descent.

Michael Scott, London W11

...but not by citizenship To The Times

Professor Tim Luckhurst suggests that as the Scottish people includes Scottish expats

too, the latter should be enfranchised in any referendum on Scotland’s future. But such enfranchisement would amount to admitting that Scottish identity is rooted in blood, not in citizenship.

Either Scottish identity is blood-based or citizenshipbased. As the SNP has so far committed to the latter as the country’s defining principle, the party is right to oppose granting Scottish expats the right to vote in a referendum.

This stand may be politically undesirable, but it is logical.

Randhir Singh Bains, Gants Hill, Essex

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its ideology-driven austerity programme, is the author of their grievances. If, as we must assume in a democracy, voters are never wrong, what message are they trying to send?

Alison Doig, Etchingham, East Sussex

Don’t build it up; fix it up To The Times

My heart sinks at yet another proposed relaxation in the rules for building new homes.

Although there is undoubtedly a need for more affordable housing, it seems that there is still little political appetite for the abolition of VAT on repairing existing housing stock, encouraging the continued downward spiral of older areas in many former industrial cities and towns.

If there is no tax incentive for builders to repair older houses, the only way that developers can achieve financial success is for them to build new properties, thus encroaching on the countryside. The decrease in tax revenue could be mitigated by allowing the VAT exemption only for properly constituted limited companies. Some small schemes for renovations have been encouraged but not enough. A huge change in mentality is needed.

Stephanie Jefferies, Swansea

None of the above To The Guardian

The Hartlepool electorate is 70,000. About 29,000 voted on Thursday, in such a highprofile by-election. It looks like a massive win for the silent majority.

Stephanie Bailey, Norton-subHamdon, Somerset

What are people saying?

To The Guardian

I am struggling to make sense of the election results. Voters have punished a party that has not been in charge nationally (nor in many cases locally) for over a decade. The same voters reward a party that, through

“It’s this damned Jersey fishing war, I’m afraid you’ve been called up” © MATT/THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

● Letters have been edited

15 May 2021 THE WEEK

ARTS Review of reviews: Books Book of the week Nuclear Folly

by Serhii Plokhy Allen Lane 464pp £25 The Week Bookshop £19.99

Over two weeks in October 1962, the world came as close as it ever has to nuclear catastrophe, said Victor Sebestyen in the FT. The Cuban missile crisis was triggered by the CIA discovering that the USSR had secretly installed nuclear warheads on Cuba, as part of a general build-up of munitions on the island. The weapons were just 90 miles from the US mainland, and John F. Kennedy “knew at once that his presidency would be over” if he didn’t remove the threat. Of the scores of books that have been written about the crisis, Nuclear Folly is “arguably the most authoritative and cleverly written”. Serhii Plokhy’s “gripping narrative” reveals the “series of bad judgement calls” that led to the stand-off – and the considerable luck that ultimately caused two superpowers to pull back from the brink.

The “main culprit” of the crisis was the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, said Jay Elwes in The Spectator. His “first error was to mistake the US president for a callow weakling”. “Don’t worry,” he assured the Cubans, “I’ll grab Kennedy by the balls.”

A second was to underestimate how unacceptable America would

find it to have Soviet warheads within striking distance of its territory. But the mistakes weren’t all on the Russian side. Wrongly believing the Soviet missiles weren’t battle-ready, Kennedy’s generals advised him to attack Cuba – a course which would almost certainly have prompted nuclear retaliation by the Russians. Instead, Kennedy decided to blockade the island: Khrushchev withdrew, and catastrophe was averted.

(The US, for its part, agreed to remove its own nuclear missiles from near the Soviet border in Turkey.)

Plokhy, a Harvard professor, uses Soviet archives to colourful effect, said Julie McDowall in The Times. As well as highlighting Khrushchev’s “coarse language”, he reveals the misery of Soviet servicemen in Cuba, who found not a “tropical paradise” but an “unbearably hot” country “carpeted in poisonous plants”. His narrative does, however, sometimes become “bogged down with memos and meetings – the endless admin of an averted Armageddon”. While some historians have downplayed the “appalling” danger posed by the crisis, Plokhy makes no such mistake, said Max Hastings in The Sunday Times.

There were many “terrifying moments” – such as the near-miss when a Russian submarine being stalked by American warships “almost unleashed a nuclear torpedo”. Accomplished and authoritative, Nuclear Folly suggests that Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove was “closer to reality than anybody likes to suppose”.

The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym

Novel of the week

The Week Bookshop £19.99

by Rachel Cusk Faber 224pp £14.99

Second Place

by Paula Byrne William Collins 704pp £25

© MARK GERSON PHOTOGRAPHY/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

31

It would be easy to assume from Barbara Pym’s Austenesque novels – with their “unmarried sisters, curates and Sunday lunches at the vicarage” – that the woman who wrote them led a “quiet, uneventful life”, said Ysenda Maxtone Graham in The Times.

Not so, as Paula Byrne shows in this “engrossing biography”: Pym’s life was actually rather strange. The “fun begins” in 1931, the year she went up to Oxford, said Lucy Atkins in The Sunday Times.

There, she adopted a “risqué alter ego” called Sandra, and “discovered sex” with a handsome fellow student. Upon graduating in 1934, Pym visited Germany and fell in love with an SS officer, with whom she became so “wildly smitten” that she bleached her hair and sported a swastika brooch. Byrne puts this down to “stubborn romanticism” – not real enthusiasm for the Nazi cause – and when war broke out, she “woke up to her appalling error of judgement”.

Throughout her life, Pym (pictured in 1979) had a “masochistic habit” of going after men who were either gay or committed elsewhere, said Kathryn Hughes in The Guardian. “This led to behaviour that today would count as stalking.” Her career also had its torments: having been published throughout the 1950s, she was dumped by Jonathan Cape in 1960, as her novels were deemed “old ladyish”. She spent 20 years in the wilderness, before her career revived after Philip Larkin nominated her in the TLS in 1977 as “one of the most under-appreciated writers of the past 75 years”. Her novel Quartet in Autumn was published that same year, and shortlisted for the Booker. There followed three years of “gratifying fuss” before she died, aged 66, of cancer. Byrne’s excellent, “deeply affectionate biography” does justice to this remarkable woman.

The Week Bookshop £11.99

Having started out writing “very funny” literary novels, Rachel Cusk has switched more recently to “austere” auto-fiction, said John Self in The Times. Second Place is “a synthesis of old and new” – an experimental, philosophically-minded novel that also has “big characters” and some “truly funny” jokes. M, the narrator, is a writer who lives with her husband in a house on the coast. She invites a painter she admires to stay in its annexe (the “second place” of the title), but he brings along an uninvited companion – an “authentically awful” younger woman. Though not flawless, Second Place is a fascinating work from “one of our most interesting writers”.

There are moments of “brave, sharp insight”, said Claire Lowdon in The Sunday Times. But the novel is an odd concoction. The symbolism is clunky. Cusk’s “oddly fustian” prose starts “to sound like a cut-price Victorian novelist” – and “for no apparent reason”, M narrates the novel to someone called Jeffers, whom we never meet.

A note at the end clears up some of this, but it can’t resolve the “central, baffling question. Why did Rachel Cusk write this book?”

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

15 May 2021 THE WEEK

ARTS

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Podcasts... on crime and punishment It’s hard to take a camera crew examination of the justice system into a jail without “making a from the perspective of those who nuisance of yourself”, said Fiona have experience of it. Contributors include Carl Cattermole, who Sturges in the FT, but audio is much more nimble, and can be wrote a book about his time in just as revealing – which is why Wormwood Scrubs and describes there are so many excellent prison prison as a “static pirate ship”, and podcasts. Ear Hustle, Uncuffed, Dave Merritt, whose son Jack was killed in the London Bridge terror Bird and The Secret Life of Prisons are all standouts of the attack while working with genre; and now there’s Life Jolt, ex-offenders. a brilliant Canadian documentary For a lighter listen, still in the field about Ontario’s Grand Valley Institution for Women. The focus of crime, try the “madly intriguing” The Lazarus Heist, said Miranda is not on the practicalities of prison life, rather “what led Sawyer in The Observer. This the women there, how they are terrific World Service documentary takes its title from the name of a adapting and how it has made them feel”. The presenter, hacking outfit, and recounts North The “terrific” Lazarus Heist: Kim Jong Un vs. Hollywood Rosemary Green, served a fiveKorea’s infiltration of Sony Pictures’ computer systems in 2014. Pyongyang had been irked by The year sentence for drug trafficking. I shed tears listening to her “agony” and shame. And her narration is “extraordinary, her Interview, a comic film caper about the (fictional) assassination of Kim Jong Un. Its retaliation included the hacking and leaking empathy and depth of understanding providing insight that of Hollywood secrets, including salary details and embarrassingly another presenter simply wouldn’t have”. bitchy emails about stars. More disturbingly, North Korea also threatened to launch terrorist attacks on US cinemas showing the Prison Bag was also superb, said Hannah J. Davies in The Guardian. In the podcast and radio series, Josie Bevan charted film. The story of “Seth Rogen accidentally crashing his latest the impact on her family of her husband Rob being convicted comedy vehicle into a high-stakes geopolitical stand-off” is perfect of fraud. Its follow-up, Prison Break (on Radio 4 and BBC podcasting fodder, said James Marriott in The Times. It’s not Sounds) continues Bevan’s “striking and honest” account of her going to “change the world, but you’ll have a lot of fun listening experience: the moment when she and Rob unpack his prison bag to it while you’re on a walk or cooking dinner. Which is exactly is particularly memorable. But this second series is also a broader what podcasts are for.”

Albums of the week: three new releases Marianne Faithfull with Warren Ellis: She Walks in Beauty BMG £22.99

The Coral: Coral Island Run On £11.99

Freddie De Tommaso: Passione Decca £10.99

This album features an ageing pop star reciting a selection of her favourite 19th century poems – Byron, Shelley, Keats – while her muso mates conjure an “ambient odyssey” in the background. That might sound like a “bum-clenchingly awful vanity project”, said Helen Brown in The Independent – but when the pop star is the “formidable” Marianne Faithfull and her pals are Warren Ellis, Nick Cave and Brian Eno, you know you’re in for something good. Faithfull makes these “200-year-old visions of beauty, love and death feel as urgent as the latest true-crime podcast”.

And the backing – a misty soundscape of waves, birdsong, electronica, street sounds, piano and cello – turns the album into an “unsentimental spine-tingler”.

Ellis’s “beautiful” settings and Faithfull’s “impeccable” readings make even the most familiar texts sound fresh, agreed Phil Mongredien in The Observer. Faithfull contracted the coronavirus during the making of the album, and spent three weeks in intensive care. We are lucky to have her, and this gorgeous, stirring record.

“Roll up, roll up, for candy-floss at the penny arcade; strange illusions glimpsed in halls of mirrors” and fantastical rides. This is the setting for Coral Island, a startlingly ambitious double concept-album from those “unrepentantly old-fashioned” Merseyside rockers, The Coral, said Neil McCormick in The Daily Telegraph. The idea is that they are the house band at a fairground in a decaying seaside town, and their music is a “carnivalesque cornucopia of strange delights” that pays homage to 1960s pop and psychedelia.

The Coral have been on this terrain since 1996, said Will Hodgkinson in The Times.

But this album, with an accompanying novel by keyboardist Nick Power, is their “masterwork”. Mist On The River and My Best Friend, for example, paint evocative lyrical pictures, but skip along with “Beatles-esque” melodic lightness. “Like a modern-day version of The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society or the Small Faces’ Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake, this is a thoroughly English, gently hallucinogenic delight.”

Freddie De Tommaso – a young BritishItalian tenor brought up in Kent by an Italian father and an English mother – “displays limitless promise” on this impressive debut disc of Italian songs, said Hugh Canning in The Sunday Times. The choices include familiar favourites such as Leoncavallo’s Mattinata and Di Capua’s I’ te vurria vasà, as well as pieces by Puccini, Respighi, Tosti and Innocenzi. The album is dedicated to his favourite tenor, Franco Corelli. However, his voice is closer in weight to that of the young Pavarotti – and it gets ideal support from conductor Renato Balsadonna, who “brings italianità to the London Phil”.

This album is like one of ”those sunny, feel-good movies that came out of Italy in the 1950s”, said Richard Fairman in the FT. It is “a guilty pleasure, tuneful, romantic, an indulgence in every way”. De Tommaso brings “well-schooled tenor artistry” and stylish colour, and the “glamorous” period 1950s orchestrations are delivered with élan. Listening to it, you “can almost spot Audrey Hepburn” careering around the streets of Rome on her Vespa.

The Week’s own podcast, The Week Unwrapped, covers the biggest unreported stories of the week (available on Apple and Google) THE WEEK 15 May 2021

Film & TV Films to stream Revenge is one of the great dramatic themes, and has of course often cropped up in movies. Here are five of the best films in which it is the protagonist’s primary motive: Winchester ’73 Released in 1950, this was the first of several great westerns directed by Anthony Mann and starring James Stewart.

Stewart’s tormented hero Lin McAdam is determined to avenge his father’s murder and recover a prized rifle that was stolen by his killer.

The Virgin Spring Ingmar Bergman’s austere but gripping drama from 1960 is set in a 14th century Sweden still torn between Christianity and pagan beliefs. Max von Sydow stars as a devoutly Christian peasant determined to wreak merciless vengeance for the rape and murder of his daughter.

THE FILMS ARE AVAILABLE ON GOOGLE PLAY (APART FROM THEATRE AND VIRGIN), APPLE (APART FROM VIRGIN) AND AMAZON

Theatre of Blood Vincent Price hams it up fabulously as Shakespearean actor Edward Lionheart in this 1973 British horror comedy. Aided by his daughter (a gleeful Diana Rigg), he takes revenge on his critics using methods inspired by killings in the Bard’s plays, even feeding one hack’s poodles to him in a pie, à la Titus Andronicus.

Oldboy Winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2004, South Korean director Park Chanwook’s ultra-violent film is part of a trilogy linked by the theme of revenge. Its hero is an alcoholic nobody who thirsts only for vengeance after he is kidnapped and imprisoned for 15 years without explanation, and then just as mysteriously released.

The Salesman Iranian writer-director Asghar Farhadi won his second Oscar in 2016 for this study of a husband and wife whose marriage is tested after a stranger attacks her in their new home. It’s more heavyhanded than his earlier films, About Elly and A Separation, but is powerful and meticulously observed nonetheless.

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New releases Apples

Dir: Christos Nikou (1hr 31mins) (12A)

★★★★

Set in an eerie version of contemporary Athens – strikingly depopulated and shorn of digital technology – Apples is an “unexpectedly moving” tragicomedy about an unexplained outbreak of amnesia, said Mark Kermode in The Observer. Gaunt-faced Aris Servetalis “cuts a mournful figure” – half Charlie Chaplin, half Daniel Day-Lewis – as a loner (also called Aris) who wakes up to find he’s forgotten everything about himself. To help him forge a new identity, doctors set him tasks – ride a bike, go to a fancy-dress party, and so on – and instruct him to take regular Polaroid selfies. A tentative romance develops between him and a fellow amnesiac Anna (Sofia Georgovassili), during which they crash a car (she can’t recall how to stop) and, in a moment of comedy gold, listen to another patient relate the plot of Titanic.

In its absurdism, the film seems part of the “Weird Wave” of Greek cinema that began with Yorgos Lanthimos’s Dogtooth in 2009, said Tim Robey in The Daily Telegraph. But though there are satirical elements (notably in the frequent selfie-taking), director Christos Nikou keeps the “quirk factor” in check, and invites our empathy as well as our amusement.

We learn little of Aris’s previous life until the end, but we sense that, in a world full of “fear and pain”, there’s an upside to forgetting how to feel. I found the film intriguing but a bit contrived, said Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian, and not quite “as memorable as it thinks it is”. There’s none of the “horror and panic” that an actual outbreak of amnesia would cause, and the end is “rather emollient”.

Available on Curzon Home Cinema.

Cowboys

Dir: Anna Kerrigan (1hr 26mins) (15)

★★★

From its opening images of a father and son camping together in the Montana wilderness, Cowboys taps into classic images of American masculinity, said Clarisse Loughrey in The

Sasha Knight in the “sweetly realised” Cowboys

Independent. But this “sweetly realised” road movie uses them to gently subversive ends. We soon learn that the boy, 11-year-old Joe (Sasha Knight), is trans, and has recently come out to his parents. His mother Sally (Jillian Bell), “fixated on the idea of having a mini-me daughter”, is hostile and uncomprehending.

But his father, Sally’s ex-husband Troy (Steve Zahn), is keen to protect his child’s happiness and decides, “in a moment of loving desperation”, to flee with Joe for Canada. It’s effectively a kidnapping. Sally calls the police, who are quick to assume that the bighearted Troy – an alcoholic, bipolar ex-convict – is a violent threat, and a manhunt ensues.

The film is often “breathtakingly lovely” as we follow Joe and Troy’s wilderness journey, said Peter Debruge in Variety. American small town life is acutely observed, and it’s painful to watch Joe struggle to conform in that environment.

There are also some fine performances, notably from Zahn, said Tom Shone in The Sunday Times. A mainstay of Hollywood-indie character acting, he brings his irresistible blend of “wild-eyed excitement and earnestness” to his role. But the film’s resolution is just a bit too neat. Tellingly, the one transformation that convinces is Joe’s – newcomer Knight makes it feel “as natural as breathing”. It’s the other character arcs that seem “a bit of a stretch”.

Available on Curzon Home Cinema, Google, Apple and Amazon Prime Video.

The Pursuit of Love: a glorious re-imagining Any translation of a classic book Some of the acting is superb, to screen is sure to be frowned said Anita Singh in The Daily upon by its “purist fans”, said Telegraph: Dominic West is a treat Lucy Mangan in The Guardian. as the family’s roaring patriarch; But for those of us who have not Andrew Scott mesmerises as Lord read Nancy Mitford’s 1945 novel Merlin; and Mortimer herself is The Pursuit of Love, this threeexcellent as The Bolter. So it’s a part adaptation (written and shame the camera lingers so long directed by Emily Mortimer) is on James. She “can’t do funny”, “glorious” television. Lily James and makes Linda annoying, stars as headstrong, passionate when she should be merely Linda Radlett, conspiring with her exasperating. Some may object cousin Fanny (Emily Beecham) James with Assaad Bouab to the drama’s contemporary to escape the confines of her touches (which include a glamchilly ancestral home, and start her real life. It rock soundtrack), said Carol Midgley in The moves at a terrific pace; and Mortimer’s script Times. Others may find the Wes Anderson-like captures both the madcap comedy of Linda’s directorial flourishes a bit mannered and arch. pursuit of love, and its melancholy.

But as Sunday evening TV, the series is a treat.

15 May 2021 THE WEEK

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Art

ARTS 35

Exhibition of the week Jean Dubuffet: Brutal Beauty Barbican Centre, London EC2 (barbican.org.uk). From 17 May to 22 August

In October 1944, an exhibition movement. Crucial to his work opened in Paris that scandalised was his interest in untrained – the newly liberated city’s art or “outsider” – artists, particularly world, said Jonathan Jones in the mentally ill. Their work, he The Guardian. The artist believed, revealed much more responsible was Jean Dubuffet, a about the human subconscious middle-aged provincial wine seller than anything that came out of the who had never before shown his tasteful dogmas of modernism. “I work in public – but whose art have a great interest in madness, made the ageing avant-garde and I am convinced art has much movements of the time look tame. to do with madness,” he Dubuffet (1901-1985) looked not explained. His early works to art galleries for inspiration, but replicated the untutored visions to the city’s graffiti-strewn walls, of the outsiders he admired: he faithfully reproducing them in painted childlike scenes depicting scrappy collages that made no passengers on the metro, Parisian concession to prettiness. His crowds and jazz concerts, palette – “a melange of snot sometimes incorporating unusual greens, piss yellows and shit materials – “cement, foil, tar, browns” – could hardly have gravel” – to blur “the boundary been uglier. His materials were between painting and sculpture”. not just oil, paint and clay, but In one “notorious” 1947 show, urban detritus: dirt, broken glass, discarded newspapers, even dead Dubuffet even presented a portrait insects. Most shocking of all that purported to be fashioned was that Dubuffet seemingly from chicken droppings, said “abandoned all pretence at skill”, Laura Cumming in The Observer. in effect rejecting every rule of Outraged Parisians “showed their good taste. Yet, against the odds, disgust in organised protests”. he would come to be regarded as Caught in the Act (La Main dans le sac) (1961): “impish” humour Yet paradoxically, he was not an artist without skill. His sculptures one of the most influential artists of his time: his ideas are “everywhere” in the art world today. are often wonderful: his portrait of Antonin Artaud sees the When it opens its doors on 17 May, the Barbican will host the playwright “perfectly defined as a labyrinth of live wires”. By the first major Dubuffet exhibition to be held in Britain for 50 1960s, Dubuffet had become feted in both France and America, where he made several “gargantuan” sculptures. Composed of years, bringing together a broad selection of his “anti-art”, “giant cut-out figures, like vast jigsaw pieces”, they lacked the and showing how he took ugliness and “fashioned it into immediacy of his earlier work, but proved an enormous something extraordinary”. influence on the likes of Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat.

The defining characteristic of his art was an “impish” sense of Dubuffet did not dedicate himself to art until his 40s, said Claire humour. And while his works might seem unserious by Selvin in Artnews. Although he had studied painting in Paris as a comparison to the angst-ridden efforts of contemporaries, young man, he had bridled at the rigidity of how art was taught, such as Alberto Giacometti or Francis Bacon, Dubuffet was and quit in disgust, spending 20 years working in the wine trade, while maintaining contact with the prime movers of the surrealist unquestionably “one of the great artists of postwar Europe”.

News from the art world

© 2021 ADAGP, PARIS/DACS, LONDON/PETER COX, EINDHOVEN, THE NETHERLANDS

The Turner goes collective

For the first time, no individual artist has been shortlisted for the Turner Prize, said Mark Brown in The Guardian. Instead, five art collectives have been nominated.

After a year of lockdowns during which few have been able to exhibit, the judges wanted to choose artists whose work has demonstrably continued. All the collectives are “socially engaged”. Black Obsidian Sound System (B.O.S.S), for instance, is a London-based collective for QTIBPOC (queer, trans and intersex black and people of colour). Project Art Works is a collection of neurodiverse artists Noto’s 43 foot flying based in Hastings. Cooking Sections is a pair of “food art activists” whose recent work highlights the condition of farmed salmon. “Here we go again,” said Waldemar Januszczak in The Sunday Times. Another “ludicrous” Turner Prize. This “severely dysfunctional” prize keeps finding new ways of failing to do what it was set up to do – choose the best new British art – preferring instead to “appal and exhaust us with increasingly cranky gimmicks”. Please, someone, close it down.

A controversial giant squid

“A seaside town in Japan has raised eyebrows after it used funding from an emergency Covid-19 relief grant to build a giant statue of a squid,” says BBC News. Noto, a fishing town on the west coast of central Japan, has reportedly used 25m yen (£165,000) of emergency Covid-19 relief money to erect a 43ft-long, five-and-a-half ton sculpture of a flying squid. The construction of the “giant cephalopod” was justified as a measure to revive tourism in the area – a sector that has all but collapsed since the onset of the global pandemic. Officials squid: for the tourists hope that the effigy of the flying squid, which is “a local delicacy”, will become a visitor attraction and act as part of a long-term strategy to help to promote the town’s emblematic dish; it sits outside a squid-themed restaurant and tourist centre. Some locals, however, have objected to the use of the funds, claiming they should have been reserved for more urgent pandemic-relief purposes, such as “medical staff and long-term care facilities”.

15 May 2021 THE WEEK

The List

Best books… Adam Buxton

The comedian and host of The Adam Buxton Podcast chooses five books he recommends to friends. His memoir, Ramble Book (HarperCollins £9.99), is out in paperback. For details of his book tour see adam-buxton.co.uk A Thousand Small Sanities

by Adam Gopnik, 2019 (riverrun £9.99). Now that political discourse is often a contest for who can shout the loudest, and express the most passionate condemnation for anyone who doesn’t subscribe to their world view, this book, celebrating the key figures and ideas of Liberalism, is a soothing dose of perspective.

A Wind in the Door by Madeleine L’Engle, 1973 (Square Fish £5). A young girl travels into her brother’s cells to battle disease with the help of aliens. I hated reading as an adolescent, but this microcosmic sci-fi fantasy was the first book I was completely absorbed by. It’s part of a

series that includes A Wrinkle In Time – recently turned into a crap film, but don’t let that put you off.

Clothes, Clothes, Clothes.

Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys. by Viv Albertine, 2014 (Faber £8.99). Viv Albertine was a key figure in defining the late 70s punk movement, and her life postpunk has been no less interesting. She writes about it all vividly in this memoir which is by turns funny, shocking, candid and thoughtful.

The Fran Lebowitz Reader

by Fran Lebowitz, 1994 (Vintage £14.99). I bought this after watching Pretend It’s a City, a Netflix series in which

veteran humorist Lebowitz complains about modern life in New York to her friend Martin Scorsese. It’s a collection of pieces from the 1970s and 80s which read like beautifully constructed comedy routines, some entertainingly outdated, some prescient.

The Future Starts Here by John Higgs, 2019 (Weidenfeld & Nicolson £9.99). Imagining anything but dystopian futures has come to be seen as deluded, but does this apocalyptic mindset hinder our chances of a brighter tomorrow? John Higgs considers humanity’s challenges in a way that reminds you it’s a little early to abandon ALL hope.

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

Television Programmes

Titanic: Into the Heart of the Wreck As the doomed

ship slowly disintegrates, this documentary recounts the various missions to explore it, from its 1985 discovery to James Cameron’s shoots for his film Titanic. Sun 16 May, C4 19:30 (90mins).

Delia Derbyshire: The Myths and the Legendary Tapes Atmospheric docu-

drama about the electronic sound pioneer behind the Doctor Who theme. Sun 16 May, BBC4 21:00 (90mins).

Innocent The crime drama

returns: a teacher is freed from prison after being found not guilty of murdering a 16-yearold student. But who did? Mon 17 May, ITV1 21:00; then Tue, Wed, Thur (60mins each).

Second Wave: Did the Government Get it Wrong?

Dispatches examines the Government’s handling of the lethal second wave. Mon 17 May, C4 22:00 (65mins).

Showing now

Extra Life: A Short History of Living Longer Science

Book Now

Films

“Think of this as Miró, the capsule collection,” said The Daily Telegraph of Joan Miró: La Gran Belleza, a small but perfectly formed exhibition of 40 of the Catalan artist’s works, displayed in an 18th century town house.

Newlands House, Petworth, West Sussex.

Until 4 July (newlandshouse.gallery).

Nicholas Hytner directs Nina Raine’s new play, Bach & Sons, a family drama about the composer’s relationship with his two sons, with Simon Russell Beale as the irascible genius.

23 June-11 September, Bridge Theatre, London SE1 (bridgetheatre.co.uk).

Essex Book Festival takes place online and live, and consists of 100 talks and workshops, including We need to talk about Essex Girls with novelist Sarah Perry, and satirist Craig Brown on The Beatles. 6 June-29 August, online and various venues; essexbookfestival.org.uk.

City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra is holding a series of socially distanced concerts,

writer Steven Johnson and historian David Olusoga present this four-part series about the development of vaccines over 300 years, from smallpox to Covid. Tue 18 May, BBC4 22:05 (55mins).

X+Y (2014) Asa Butterfield

A detail from Joan Miró’s Untitled (1949)

including the premiere of Thomas Adès’ The Exterminating Angel Symphony, and Visions of England with tenor Ian Bostridge singing Britten’s Nocturne. 19 May-7 July, Symphony Hall, Broad Street, Birmingham; cbso.co.uk.

Forced to close in the middle of its sell-out run last year, Tom Stoppard’s Olivier Awardwinning drama Leopoldstadt returns for 12 weeks. 7 August-30 October, Wyndham’s Theatre, London W1 (leopoldstadtplay.com).

The Archers: what happened last week

Adam’s annoyed with Brian over Jazzer’s departure for Berrow and the future of the aquaponics.

Lee is aghast to learn he must model nude for the life-drawing class and, after a showdown with Russ, pulls out. Joy agrees to step in if she can give a campaign speech for the parish council.

After an awkward start, Jennifer and Susan bond over making biscuits for the christening. Alice has a comforting chat with Alan, and later tells Chris she can envisage a future with Martha. Mia interviews Ruairi for her environmental project; Ben guesses that she has a crush on Ruairi. Brian berates Fallon for dropping out of godparenting. Harrison feels bad after Chris asks him for space to work things out with Alice; Fallon and Harrison agree they’re lucky to have each other. On the christening day, Chris discovers that Alice has been drinking – she begs him to say nothing. At the church, Alice nearly drops Martha and, disgusted, Chris gives the baby to Emma, who pieces together the truth. As Alice weeps, Chris walks away – Martha isn’t safe with her.

THE WEEK 15 May 2021

stars as an autistic maths prodigy in this tender drama, with Rafe Spall as the teacher who mentors him. Sun 16 May, BBC1 00:15 (105mins).

Testament of Youth (2014)

Adaptation of Vera Brittain’s memoir. A young woman abandons her studies at Oxford to become a nurse in the First World War. Fri 21 May, BBC4 23:20 (120mins).

New to subscription TV Halston Ewan McGregor stars as the fashion designer whose meteoric rise in the late 1970s and early 80s made him the darling of the Studio 54 set. On Netflix.

Domina Livia Drusilla, grandmother of Emperor Claudius, is the key character in this eight-part drama, full of “sex, violence and literal back-stabbing” (Sunday Times). On Sky Atlantic.

© BEN CATCHPOLE; SUCCESSIÓ MIRÓ ADAGP, PARIS AND DACS LONDON 2021. COURTESY GALERIE LELONG & CO. PARIS

36

Best properties

38 Houses with granny annexes ▲

Fife: Westfield House, Cupar. An exceptional Georgian house with a self-contained annexe, set in lovely private grounds, a short walk from the centre of a thriving market town. The house has been significantly upgraded and improved by the current owners.

Main suite, 4 further beds, 2 further baths, kitchen/ breakfast room, 2 WCs, 4 receps, 2-bed annexe with snug and shower, integral garage, garden store, dog run, private garden.

OIEO £795,000; Galbraith (01334659980).

▲ Perthshire: Easter Bendochy House, Blairgowrie. Built in 1996 on an old farm steading, this property has two independent apartments with views to the River Isla and the Sidlaw hills. 4 beds, 3 baths (2 en suite), kitchen/family room, 3 receps, roof terrace, utility, workshop, gym, office, games room, 2-bed flat, studio flat, landscaped garden, garaging, 2.18 acres. £825,000; Savills (01738-477525). ▲

London: Craven Hill Mews, Bayswater W2. A lovely, 5,645 sq ft. mews house with separate ground-floor maisonette in the heart of Bayswater Village, close to Hyde Park.

Main suite, 2 further suites, 1 further bed, family bath, kitchen, 3 receps, grand entrance hall with triple-height ceiling, cloakroom, wine cellar, library/study, 2 roof terraces, WC, double garage with electric doors, 1-bed annexe with recep, kitchenette and private access. £6.75m; Knight Frank (0203978 2463).

THE WEEK 15 May 2021

on the market

39

▲ Somerset: The Keep & Harptree Cottage, East

Harptree, Bristol. A 1970s family house with a barn that was converted into a self-contained cottage in the late 1990s. Main suite, 2 further beds, family bath, kitchen, 2 receps, snug, attic, utility, 2/3 bed cottage, garden. £850,000; Knight Frank (0117-317 1997).

▲

Buckinghamshire: Greenways, Whiteleaf, Princes Risborough. Originally three workers’ cottages, this house has a contemporary 1-bed studio in the 0.3 acres of grounds. Main suite with dressing room, 2 further beds, family bath, kitchen, 2 receps, orangery, cloakroom, cellar, hall, garage, parking, landscaped gardens, 1-bed studio with kitchen/recep and shower. £1.5m; Hamptons (01494-355341). ▲

South Devon: The Malt House, Frogmore, Kingsbridge. A unique and individually designed stone-built property, arranged over 3 floors, with a 1-bed annexe, situated in this popular village – a short stroll from the tidal creek. Main suite with dressing room, 2 further suites, family bath, kitchen/ dining room, 1 further recep, porch, hall, utility, gym, hobby room, workshop, garden store, 1-bed annexe, garden. £850,000; Marchand Petit (01548-857588).

▲

Cumbria: Wells House, Skelton Wood End, Penrith.

An 18th century farmhouse and lodge in around 12 acres.

Main suite, 3 further beds, family bath, shower, kitchen/ breakfast room, 2 receps, hall, snug, cloakroom, 2-bed lodge, garage, workshop, stores, stables. £1.25m; Finest Properties (01539-468400). ▲

Dorset: Old Parsonage Farmhouse, Dewlish, Dorchester. A pretty Grade II former farmhouse, dating from the late 17th century, together with a more recent extension which is currently a self-contained annexe. The house, which is in need of an update, is set in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Main suite, 6 further beds, family bath, attic, kitchen/breakfast room, recep hall, 3 further receps, rear hall, utility, cloakroom, 1-bed annexe, garden, parking, outbuilding, small paddock, 0.8 acres. £1m; Knight Frank (01935810064).

▲ Shropshire: Cherrington Grange, Cherrington, Newport. Located on the edge of a hamlet, this Grade II former farmstead is set in just under 6 acres with a large separate 1-bed annexe. Main suite with balcony, 3 further beds, family bath, kitchen/breakfast room, 3 receps, utility, hall, WC, annexe, garden, 2 fields. £910,000; Balfours (01743-353511).

15 May 2021 THE WEEK

Marketplace

40

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LEISURE Food & Drink

41

What the experts recommend Fact-checking Seaspiracy Seaspiracy has been the “surprise documentary hit of the year so far”, said Xanthe Clay in The Daily Telegraph.

Confrontational in style, and shocking in content, the Netflix film suggests that our oceans are heading for disaster – and to save them we must stop eating fish.

Experts have accused it of being sensationalist, and it does contain some inaccuracies, said Melanie McDonagh in The Spectator – notably its assertion that the “oceans will be empty of fish by 2048”, which has been shown to be based on an “unwarranted projection”. But much of its criticism of the fishing industry is fair, and “devastating”: it rightly draws attention to the horrors of intensive salmon farming, and points out that certification logos – such as those awarded by the Marine Stewardship Council – are not “infallible” guarantees of ethical practice. If it makes people think more carefully about where their fish comes from, then it is doing something useful.

Why purple asparagus is all the rage The appearance of the first asparagus spears of the season never fails to cause excitement in the food world, said Tony Turnbull in The Times. But this year, it’s not the green variety that is attracting attention: it’s the less well known purple.

That’s partly because it’s so photogenic, and so appeals to the Instagram

asparagus in and cook it for a few minutes in the bacon fat, then I put it all in a roll.”

Seaspiracy: making us think twice about fish

generation; but purple asparagus also has a “tender and sweet” flavour, which makes it more versatile than its green counterpart. For example, it’s delicious raw, says Chris Chinn, who grows asparagus in the Wye Valley. Simply snap off its woody stem, and then slice it thinly, either diagonally or lengthways, before adding it to a salad. If you are cooking it, remember that asparagus (of either colour) needs only a couple of minutes in “furiously boiling water” (or not much longer in the oven or on a barbecue). Or you can fry it, says Chinn, for use in an indulgent sandwich: “I fry some bacon in a pan. Once it’s cooked I pop the

Recipe of the week Carrots can be a rather unexciting vegetable, says Helen Graves. However, when marinated then grilled over a live fire, and served shiny and aromatic with a hot spiced butter, they really come into their own.

Barbecued marinated carrots 500g carrots, peeled and cut into quarters lengthways for the carrot marinade: 4 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed or grated 3 tbsp lime juice 2 tsp cumin seeds 2 tsp coriander seeds 2 cardamom pods, crushed and seeds removed 4 tbsp neutral oil e.g. groundnut for serving: strained yoghurt or other thick, cold yoghurt (around 250g should do it) a good knob of butter (about 25g), or ghee a good handful of fresh curry leaves 2 tsp brown mustard seeds

• Toast the cumin and

coriander seeds in a dry pan over a medium heat until fragrant, then grind or crush to a powder with the cardamom seeds.

• Mix the spices with all the other ingredients for the carrot marinade in a dish large enough to hold the veg in a shallow layer.

• Cook the carrots in boiling water for 3 mins, then drain. Add them to the marinade with some salt and mix well.

Leave overnight or for a few hours.

• Prepare your barbecue

for direct cooking, with a medium heat (let any flames die down). Place the carrots on it, until cooked through and lightly charred – around 15-20 mins.

• Spread the yoghurt onto

a serving plate and top with the carrots. Melt the butter/ ghee in a small pan and add the seeds and leaves – when the seeds start to pop, pour the mixture over the carrots, sprinkle with some more salt, and serve.

Helen Graves is the editor of live-fire cooking magazine Pit (pitmagazine.uk).

The top-end restaurant going vegan Veganism has been becoming mainstream for some time: supermarkets produce plant-based ranges, and Burger King sells non-meat burgers, said The Guardian.

Now, one of New York’s most renowned fine dining restaurants has announced that it too is abandoning meat. In a statement, Daniel Humm, the “driving force” behind the three Michelin-starred Eleven Madison Park, said that when it reopens in June, its menu will be “plant-based”, because it has become “ever clearer that the current food system is simply not sustainable”. The tasting menu will still cost $335, but the only animal products on it will be milk and honey to accompany tea and coffee.

The news caused shock among some diners, said The Times. Yet it’s not such a radical move. Jason Atherton launched an all-vegan tasting menu at Pollen Street Social four years ago – because his customers were asking for one. There is a growing appreciation that even if we don’t all need to give up meat, we need to eat less of it; chefs are responding to that, by finding ever more exciting things to do with vegetables, says David Moore, of Pied à Terre in London – which brings more people around to the idea. He reckons every restaurant, even kebab shops, will have vegan offerings within ten years.

Rosé beyond Provence Rosé season is upon us, says Susy Atkins in The Daily Telegraph – which will mean a lot of Provençal pink being poured. Provence’s rosé is everywhere, crowding out our shelves – but while many of us appreciate its distinctive bonedry style, it’s a wine that can get a bit uniform. So it’s worth looking further afield.

I’m a big fan, for example, of Spanish rosado, which tends to be highly fruity and lively with lots of red-berry flavour – though still dry on the finish. Cune Rioja Rosado 2020 (£8.50; Co-op) is a fine example, with delicious fresh strawberry and tangier red cherry, but a finish that is “mouth-watering, dry and balanced”.

Another one to check out is the red-cherryish but crisp Taste the Difference Vinedos Barrihuelo Rioja Rosado 2019 (£7.50; Sainsbury’s).

Portugal is another good option. From M&S’s new “Found” range of unusual wines, try Vinho Verde Rose 2020 (£7); I also like LB7 2019 (£8.99; Majestic), which has a “melon note along with strawberries”. Or back to France, but off the beaten track, there’s Cintu Île de Beauté Rose 2020 (£10; M&S), a gem from Corsica that’s pale and dry, with the scent of tangerine peel and super-fresh citrus.

15 May 2021 THE WEEK

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Consumer New cars: what the critics say

The Daily Telegraph This is a “Peugeot performance car unlike any you’ve seen before”.

A successor to the fairly obscure 505 Turbo, it’s a sporty, fast saloon/estate that is also a plug-in hybrid. PSE stands for Peugeot Sport Engineered, and fittingly, it is a car with the “effortless suavity of a well-dressed Parisian”.

It’s expensive, and can’t quite compete with German rivals, but it is still a “brilliant fast cruiser”.

Peugeot 508 PSE

from £55,795

LEISURE 43

Auto Express The PSE models should “represent the ultimate expression of performance through electrification”.

The 1.6-litre turbo petrol engine and two electric motors on the front and rear axles deliver 355bhp all in all. That makes this “the most powerful Peugeot production road car ever”. It feels “rapid”, and the electric motors do well at taking the load off the engine, making it “quiet and refined”.

What Car? It’s swanky from the outside, and has an “attractively styled” interior. The plastic is pleasingly “squishy” and there are nice “glossy trims”. Impressively, the 530-litre boot isn’t compromised by the need to fit a battery under the floor, as in some rivals. So there is plenty to like here but, ultimately, the likes of the Audi S4 Avant and the BMW M340i Touring are just more exciting.

The best… camping gear ▲

Overboard Classic Waterproof ck There’s nothing worse Backpac than wak king up in the morning to fiind your clothes have got all damp in the night. This a waterproof, 30-litre backpack has a secure roll-top and even floats if dropped in water (£55; overr-board.co.uk).

Tips of the week… how to be green in the bathroom ● To avoid plastic bottles, buy soap bars instead of shower gels and even shampoos.

Lush sells shampoo bars, or you can get eco hair products from WeDoAct.com. ● Toothpaste tubes are made of plastic and metal fused together, making them difficult to recycle. Try eco dental subscriptions from HappierBeauty.com or GetFloe.com. ● Buy a set of reusable lotion bottles, and fill them from large containers. ● Cutting your shower by a minute saves about ten litres of water. Consider a digital shower clock to keep track of the time. ● Don’t assume it has to be disposable. You can now get reusable cotton buds that can be washed (LastObject.com), and all kinds of washable wipes and pads (CheekyWipes. com). Alternatively, FreshX tissue spritz can be sprayed on toilet paper for use as a wipe. ● Look to NakedSprout.uk for the most sustainable loo roll according to Which?. ● For greener shaving products, try Estrid.com or KingofShaves.com.

SOURCE: THE TIMES

Eurohike Pop 200 2 Person Tent If you’re not a frequent camper and don’t need fancy gear, this g yg great-value, two-person p tent will serve you fine. It is waterproof, an nd has an easy pop-up p design that ta es seconds to s set up (£33; mille ets. co.uk).

And for those ose who have everything…

Worried about committing to outdoor socialising in the cold? Ikea have you covered. The Fältmal is a cushion that unzips into a wearable sleeping bag-style blanket, with sleeves, and a kangaroo-style front pocket. £25; ikea.com SOURCE: LONDON EVENING STANDARD

Where to find find… gluten-free beers Arbor Ales make great pale ales as well as lagers, all in full pint cans. The Moteuka single-hop pale ale has a particularly wellbalanced flavour with tropical notes (12 for £36.50; ArborAles.co.uk).

For a gluten-free porter ale with chocolate notes, try the Bad Kitty from Brass Castle – a gluten-free brewery with a large and varied selection (£3.30; BrassCastle.co.uk).

A Czech lager, batch-brewed in a castle cellar in the ancient town of Žatec, Empress Ale Celia organic is a classically European lager, slightly sweet, light and refreshing (24x330ml for £48; EmpressAle.com).

Based in Salford, First Chop Brewing Arm is an exclusively gluten-free brewery that is “coeliac owned and run”. Try the refreshing JAM pale ale, infused with mango (20x330ml for £42; Flavourly.com).

For rich, malty notes in a traditional British bitter, try Copper Top, Old Dairy‘s only gluten-free beer (12x500ml for £29; MeltedInside.com).

SOURCE: THE INDEPENDENT

15 May 2021 THE WEEK

SOURCES: T3/THE INDEPENDENT

▲

▲

Thermarest NeoAir XLite Regular Sleeping Mat This inflatable mat is extremely lightweight and fits into a tiny bag, but can still keep you well insulated from the cold. It makes for a supportive sleep surface, and comes in several sizes (£116; amazon.co.uk).

▲ Aeropress Go Already beloved by coffee drinkers as an easy way to make an espresso in a minute, the Aeropress is now more ever. portable than e The “Go” version comes with a lid wn and packs dow into its own plastic mug (£32; aero press.co.uk).

▲

Trekology Yizi GO Portable Camping Chair Thanks to its collapsible legs, this camping chair folds into a remarkably small storage bag, which is kept under the seat. It has a side pocket, but no cup holder (£40; amazon.co.uk).

Obituaries

44

The model who popularised Levi’s 501s A strikingly her wall; Kate Moss admitted handsome to having had a crush on him for years; and Madonna was young man so struck by him, she flew walks into a laundrette in 1950s America, him to Los Angeles to record to the pulsing beat of Marvin a song she had co-written.

Each Time You Break My Gaye’s I Heard It Through the Grapevine; he takes off Heart, on which she sang his dark glasses, and pours a backing vocals, reached No. bag of stones into one of the 5 in the UK charts in 1986.

Kamen released four albums machines. Then, as female customers look on, he over the next five years, and casually pulls off his T-shirt several more singles. He to reveal a bronzed torso, topped the charts in Italy, France and Germany, but his unbuttons the flies of his jeans records sold poorly in the UK. and strips to a pair of pristine white boxers, before settling “It’s difficult for people to fully accept me as a singer,” down on a bench to wait for his wash cycle to finish. The he reflected. tagline reads: “501: The One of eight children, Ivor original shrink-to-fit jeans, Kamen: had a hit with Madonna now available stonewashed.”

Neville Kamen was born into a Catholic family in Epping, Essex, in 1962. His On the back of this advert, which came out in 1985, sales of Levi’s jeans rocketed 800%; looks derived from his Javanese, Dutch and Gaye’s song went back into the top 10 in the UK French ancestry. He was educated at St Mark’s charts; countless men replaced their old Y-fronts RC comprehensive in Harlow, but left at 15, with boxer shorts; and Nick Kamen, the ad’s after his father died of cancer. He’d always had star, became a global sex symbol. musical ambitions, but was persuaded to have a go at modelling – and came to prominence when Produced by Bartle Bogle Hegarty, and often he appeared on the cover of The Face magazine in 1984, aged 22. After the Levi’s ad, he gave listed as one of the best ever made, the advert was designed to sell jeans to men, said The Daily up modelling to focus on music. Described as a sweet-natured and unpretentious man, he was Telegraph, but the sight of the coolly undressing Kamen, who has died aged 59, lodged in the diagnosed with bone cancer three years ago. He psyches of many women, too. Kate Middleton never married, but is survived by his partner of was among those who had a poster of him on 15 years, Lucinda Cary.

Nick Kamen 1962-2021

Irish peer who dated Marianne Faithfull Lord of the problem, he tried to help her, even paying for her to see Rossmore, who has died a Harley Street specialist: to aged 90, was no avail. She sank further into a diffident Irish peer and photoaddiction and within a year the relationship was over. Shocked grapher who became briefly famous in 1970 as the unlikely by the paucity of facilities for boyfriend of Marianne Faithfull. recovering addicts, and by the fact that instead of being A tall, sensitive, almost monkish man, 16 years her senior, he weaned off drugs altogether, could hardly have been more she had been prescribed different from her ex-lover, alternative drugs to combat her Mick Jagger. But within days of cravings, Rossmore decided to meeting at a house party at Glin do his own research into tackCastle, in Co Limerick, the pair ling addiction. In 1973, he set had become engaged. Jagger up the Coolmine Therapeutic Rossmore and Faithfull in 1970 was consumed with jealousy on Community near Dublin, learning of their affair, and wrote her long Ireland’s first volunteer drug treatment service. beseeching letters begging her to come back to him. She later admitted that she had used “Paddy” Rossmore was born in Co Monaghan Rossmore as her escape route from him. in 1931, and educated at Eton and Cambridge.

The family seat, Rossmore Castle, had been Faithfull was addicted to heroin when they met, uninhabitable since the 19th century, and was and she had trouble getting hold of the drug in pulled down in the 1970s; in 1981, his home, Ireland. “They did a lot of driving round Ireland a gamekeeper’s lodge on its estate, was burned banging on chemists’ doors,” recalled the late down by the IRA, who saw him as just another Henrietta Moraes. “Poor Paddy didn’t have a member of the hated Anglo-Irish nobility. As a clue what it was all about – he didn’t know photographer, he captured evocative images of anything about smack. He was mad about her, Ireland’s great houses, said The Times. But his so what could he do?” On realising the extent greatest achievement is the Coolmine centre.

Lord Rossmore 1931-2021

THE WEEK 15 May 2021

Star of stage and screen Olympia Dukakis was a respected stage actress who found wider fame at the age of 56, after she starred as Cher’s plain-speaking Italian mother in the hit film Moonstruck (1987). When she was nominated for a Golden Globe, she was so sure she wouldn’t win that she turned up in an old frock, having not even bothered to have her hair styled. At the podium, she had no speech prepared. So when she was up for a best supporting actress Oscar soon after, she took the precaution of buying a new dress. It proved a wise move, said The Times: she won (while Cher took best actress). However, not all her family were lucky that year: a few months later, her cousin Michael lost the US presidential election to George H.W. Bush.

Olympia Dukakis 1931-2021

Olympia Dukakis was born in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1931, the daughter of immigrants from Greece.

Her father worked in business, but also founded an amateur theatre company.

Olympia, who was a talented fencer, studied physical therapy at Boston University, and then performing arts. She started acting in 1961, and was soon cast in plays on and off Broadway. She would appear in 130 productions in all, of works by Chekhov, Tennessee Williams, Shakespeare and others.

With her husband Louis Zorich, she also co-founded a theatre company.

The success of Moonstruck led to parts in hit films such as Steel Magnolias, but she may be most fondly remembered as Anna Madrigal, the pot-growing landlady in the TV adaptation of Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City. Her husband died in 2018. She is survived by their three children.

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

CITY 47

The Hut Group/SoftBank: feeling hut hut hut

“In a stunning comeback” from last year’s “worst-ever loss”, the giant Japanese tech investor SoftBank is set to report a net profit of more than $40bn, said Chris Nuttall on FT.com. Some $2.3bn of that is now headed into one of Britain’s hottest e-commerce prospects, The Hut Group, founded by Mancunian Matt Moulding. THG has come a long way since it began trading in 2004 as an online DVD seller, said The Times. On flotation last September, it boasted more than 200 separate websites, many of them lifestyle brands such as Myprotein. Yet the most “highly rated” division is the group’s technology business and e-commerce platform, THG Ingenuity. That’s what has caught the eye of SoftBank’s chief executive – and Japan’s richest man – Masayoshi Son. Although SoftBank is channelling some of the cash ($730m) into a 9% stake in THG, the bulk of the investment ($1.6bn) is being spent on a 20% stake in Ingenuity – a key puzzle piece in Son’s “latest big idea” of creating a Japanese social media, online payments and e-commerce giant. This clever deal should also boost THG’s expansionary prospects. Son and Moulding have already “managed to engineer renewed investor enthusiasm”: THG shares jumped 19% on the news. “Now they’ll need to deliver on that hope.”

Barclays: Bramson’s pickle

The corporate raider Ed Bramson once “promised to deliver a bloody nose for Barclays boss Jes Staley”. He has ended up “punching himself in the face instead”, said Ben Marlow in The Daily Telegraph. Following a three-year battle to oust Staley and shake up the bank, Bramson’s investment vehicle, Sherborne, has dumped its entire 6% stake at what is thought to be a loss. It’s an “embarrassing defeat” for the New York-based Briton who “gambled everything on this battle, including his reputation”. Bramson’s plan was to scale back Barclays’ investment bank and return excess cash to shareholders, said Lex in the FT. But he failed to get backing from other big shareholders, who baulked at his efforts to gatecrash the Barclays board. Regulators weren’t too keen either.

“Expecting UK bank watchdogs to approve the ascension of a short-termist board member, who could probably only add to volatility post-Brexit, hints at naivety in Bramson’s approach.” His exit removes a thorn from Staley’s side. It might also put a spring in the step of GlaxoSmithKline boss Emma Walmsley – currently under siege from another New York “vulture” fund, Elliott Management. However aggressive the barbarians at the gate, they don’t always conquer the citadel.

Meituan: poetry as protest

Jack Ma – the billionaire behind Alibaba and Ant Group – “paid a hefty price” for speaking out against the Chinese authorities, said Jane Li on Quartz. It doesn’t appear to have deterred Wang Xing, the billionaire founder of food-delivery giant Meituan.

On learning that his company had been targeted by an antitrust investigation, Wang responded by posting a classical Chinese poem, viewed as “a merciless and sharp condemnation” of emperor Qin Shi Huang, creator of China’s Qin dynasty (221-206 BCE). Wang’s online post was hastily removed after speculation that it was “a veiled criticism of the government”. Supporters maintain it was a comment “on competition in the tech industry”. Either way, it was enough to make investors “tremble with fright”.

Seven days in the Square Mile Iron ore and copper prices shot to new record highs on expectation of a global industrial bounce-back. Three-month copper futures breached a decade-old record on the London Metal Exchange, surging to $10,747/tonne, as investors worried about missing out. The sharp increases prompted renewed speculation about a commodities “supercycle” and its possible inflationary impact, prompting stock markets – also riding high on recovery hopes – to wobble. US government bond yields jumped to their highest levels since 2011. US consumer prices, meanwhile, registered their biggest monthly increase in April since 2008.

CoinDesk, the cryptocurrency price tracker, reported that the market capitalisation of Dogecoin, whose price has increased by some 10,000% this year, is $65.8bn – bigger than Ford, Heinz and Twitter. A London-based Goldman Sachs director reportedly quit after making millions from the “joke” digi-currency’s meteoric growth.

The Financial Conduct Authority opened an investigation into Greensill Capital following what it called “potentially criminal” allegations about its failure.

The Government demanded that trainmaker Hitachi pick up the compensation bill for mass cancellations due to faulty trains. The bakery chain Greggs reported that profits this year could bounce back to pre-Covid levels. Farrow & Ball, the upmarket UK paint company, was sold to the Danish group Hempel for £500m.

Provident Financial: farewell, my unlovely After 141 years of “fleecing the poor”, Provident Financial has pulled the plug on its doorstep lending arm, said Alistair Osborne in The Times. It will seek to either close down or sell the business – though even the boss, Malcolm Le May, doesn’t seem too confident of a sale: he is talking of a “managed run-off”.

But since he also reckons that the demand is still there – noting that those who cannot live within their means will always “need access to credit” – it’s worth asking what went wrong.

knew their customers” for a computer-driven salesforce. The coup de grâce, said Lex in the FT, was “a regulatory purge”: Provident’s affordability checks were deemed too lax, opening “a floodgate” of mis-selling claims.

Provident, which is retaining its Vanquis credit card and Moneybarn car finance units, may feel it has been “regulated out of” doorstep lending, said Nils Pratley in The Guardian – “but one can equally regard it as a sign of progress that its business model no longer The Provvy’s “home credit” unit has never works”. The Financial Conduct Authority been a “nice” business, said Osborne. But its reckons that only “a very small proportion” terms (a “mere” 535% APR) were better than of non-creditworthy customers have turned to those demanded by “the baseball bat brigade”, illegal loan sharks in the past. But can we really Le May: “managed run-off” which conferred “a veneer of respectability”, bank on that, asked Alex Brummer in the Daily and “grabbed it a peak million customers and a FTSE 100 slot”.

Mail. This exit “leaves those at the very bottom of the socioBut its finances soured dramatically in 2017 when management economic ladder exposed” – opening the door to “more abusive “got greedy”, ditching the self-employed agents “who actually lenders, less regulated, less transparent and often violent”.

15 May 2021 THE WEEK

48 CITY

Talking points

Issue of the week: is AstraZeneca’s boss worth his millions?

Pascal Soriot’s bonus might be deserved, but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily wise There can’t be many company bosses in “three-year, not annual” events. MoreBritain, or elsewhere in the world, “more over, bumping up Soriot’s potential bonus to 900% of his £1.33m salary is deserving of a decent bonus this year unheard of at a big FTSE 100 group, and than AstraZeneca’s Pascal Soriot”, said Ben Marlow in The Daily Telegraph. No “comes perilously close to the symbolic other pharmaceutical giant pledged to no-no of 1,000%”. Still, “rules are there to be broken”. It’s hard to argue that produce a jab on a not-for-profit basis, and Astra’s AZD1222 has been “pivotal Soriot’s contribution isn’t worth £18m: in turning the tide” against a disease that his brave gamble on the Astra/Oxford has infected 160 million and killed 3.3 jab “is the key reason for Britain’s faster Covid recovery”. What’s more, Astra million worldwide. Yet, incredibly, the company’s plans to reward its French shareholders have had £30bn of capital boss have encountered “a storm of value since Soriot rejected Pfizer’s takeover bid in 2014. “Throwing big protest” from shareholders aghast at plans to hike his pay package from money at your top team might look £15.4m to a maximum of £17.8m. The insensitive” amid a painful pandemic, “faceless” but influential Investment said Lee Wild of Interactive Investor on Soriot: “the man who saved the world” Association waded in with a so-called ii.co.uk – but too many executives get “amber-top” warning – its second highest level of alert. rewarded for failure. Pascal Soriot isn’t one of them.

Institutional investors Aviva and Standard Life Aberdeen (soon to Funnily enough, said Helen Thomas in the FT, “it turns out the be rebranded as Abrdn) both voted against the proposals, along with 40% of other investors at this week’s AGM. So Soriot will system can’t really cope with paying for success either”. And there’s the rub, said Patrick Hosking in The Times. Executive get his bonus – but he gets an undeserved punch on the nose too. pay is “like an arms race”, and Soriot’s 900% will set “a new benchmark” for good and poor performers alike. Astra investors “Seconds out. In the blue corner, the man who saved the world. had an unattractive choice between “disloyalty to a world-beating In the red? A bunch of corporate governance box-tickers. Who would you want to win,” asked Alistair Osborne in The Times. In company”, and “opening the floodgates to more opportunistic, fairness, this row was “a bit more nuanced than that”. Astra has precedent-smashing, norm-flouting pay proposals”. A pity Soriot “naughtily flouted” a City rule that changes to pay policy must be couldn’t “settle for a knighthood instead”.

UK prospects: what the experts think

According to Richard ● V for vroom Hunter of Interactive Bank of England Investor, this forecasts of a “V” “indiscriminate” sell-off shaped recovery “were shouldn’t last. The met with predictable Footsie, after all, is scepticism” at the start hardly renowned for its of the year, said Alex tech companies. Its lack Brummer in the Daily of tech stocks has been Mail. But according to “a headwind” in recent the latest projections, years, but could now that’s “precisely what provide “insurance”, as is going to happen”. “any renewed rotation The Bank now expects Will the SNP victory hit the pound? into value stocks” output “to soar away would leave London “well placed”. by 7.25%” in 2021, “leaving jobs relatively unscathed”. The fizz has been ● Pound land building so strongly that “the debate has The SNP won 64 seats in the Scottish moved onto the timing of when Britain Parliament, one short of the 65 needed for will need to move interest rates up to a majority. But while party leader Nicola counter inflation”. The Bank believes that Sturgeon argued that that equated to a the inflation scare is overdone. But the fierce global recovery in demand for “steel, mandate for another referendum, currency markets begged to differ, said Gurpreet semi-conductors and oil” – together with Narwan in The Times. The pound rose “Brexit friction” at the borders – could above $1.41 – its highest level since well send prices higher.

February – as investors concluded the threat has receded. “The market is telling ● Inflation contagion us that the issue is now way off on the Britain’s open economy will always be vulnerable to what is happening elsewhere. back-burner,” said John Hardy of Saxo Bank. Sterling’s buoyancy has been helped We saw that this week in stock markets, by the falling dollar, which UBS analysts said Citywire. News of the UK’s projected predict will continue falling “as the rest recovery helped the FTSE 100 hit a postof the world recovers”, said The Daily pandemic high of above 7,100. But those Telegraph. They think sterling could hit gains were wiped out by Wall Street jitters $1.49 by year end – putting it “back up at about the potential impact of higher a level last seen before the Brexit vote”. inflation, particularly on tech stocks.

THE WEEK 15 May 2021

How to quit Ready to say adios to your job? You’re not alone, said Arianne Cohen in Bloomberg Businessweek. Uncertainty has caused many people to stay put over the past year, meaning a likely surge of “pent-up resignations” – multiplied by many “pandemic-related epiphanies” about the horrors of the “9-to-5 office grind”. Here, Anthony C. Klotz, professor of management at Texas A&M University, advises on the best way forward: Give a lot of thought to your reasons Are you just assuming that your company won’t let you work part-time or remotely or take a sabbatical? Make sure you fully understand the plans.

Test the waters If you’re thinking of quitting, consider going back to the office for at least a week or two “as a test of your hypothesis”.

Can I quit via email or Zoom? You’re advised not to – managers tend to respond poorly and “you want to resign in as positive a way as possible”. We’re going to be seeing lots of “boomerang” employees a year from now who miss their jobs. Try not to burn bridges.

Should I give reasons? Up to a point.

But not all the reasons. You might say “that you tried it, and it isn’t working for you”. But if the job doesn’t provide meaning, that doesn’t need to be said.

You could also mention specific factors, like graduate school or the commute.

Commentators Ransomware has gone corporate Chris Nuttall Financial Times

Is it possible to manage irrationality?

Hamish McRae The Independent

Time to speak out about mental health Jeffrey Goldfarb Reuters Breakingviews

Still piling it high and selling it cheap Editorial The Economist

“Hacking is one form of remote working that has thrived in the pandemic,” says Chris Nuttall – partly because it is so easy to exploit the many “non-hackers working from home”. Security experts speculate that DarkSide – the Russian group behind the cyberattack that shut down America’s oil and gas Colonial Pipeline – “would have found plenty of entry-point possibilities” via engineers working remotely. DarkSide seems “taken aback” at the impact of the hack; the US government had to enact emergency powers to keep fuel supply lines open. In a statement, the group said it regretted “creating problems for society”, blaming “partners” that had rented its technology. Its only interest, it said, was financial. The incident highlights how ransomware – which jams computer systems until a ransom is paid – has become a professionalised industry: DarkSide even has its own “press office”. They say “no publicity is bad publicity”. Maybe not in this case. Although Colonial is “a great advert” for its services, DarkSide has become “a big target” for the Biden administration.

The ascendancy of cryptocurrencies is a great illustration of the “irrationality” underpinning our notions of value, says Hamish McRae. As BoE governor Andrew Bailey points out, these “coins” have no “intrinsic” value because – unlike washing machines, houses or “regular money” – they have no “useful” function. But the same is largely true of other more familiar assets of “extrinsic” value, such as art and vintage motors. The only guide is “what someone will pay”. Elon Musk made much the same point when he joked on US TV that Dogecoin (the spoof version of bitcoin that has soared due to his endorsement) is a “hustle”, prompting a 30% plunge in its value. Unsurprisingly, there is consensus among central bankers that “some sort of asset bubble is developing”, in several parts of the market. The question is what they can do about it. Nudging up interest rates would be effective, but there’s huge temptation to delay such “a disagreeable policy move”. Their best hope is that “the growing irrationality of markets” will “peter out” on its own – enabling them to blame “speculators” for any bust, rather than their own “timidity”.

Even before Covid “rocked emotional stability globally”, the issue of mental health was moving up the corporate agenda, says Jeffrey Goldfarb. A 2019 report by a panel of CEOs entitled “Mental Health: A Workforce Crisis” noted, in “steely terms of costs and benefits, including productivity”, that boardrooms had every reason to act on the issue. But “the human side” is equally important: the “unwarranted shame and discrimination that causes people to avoid or delay seeking treatment” should be stamped out. One way to change this would be if “captains of industry” spoke out about their own problems. Some, such as former Lloyds Bank (now Credit Suisse) boss António HortaOsório, have been candid. But these examples “resonate because they’re so rare”. Many – exemplified by former Goldman Sachs boss Lloyd Blankfein, who worked through chemotherapy – project the message that “fragility” isn’t tolerated. “Given how many bosses quibble over whether to disclose physical maladies to shareholders, it may be a stretch to think they’ll be frank about their mental health.” But it would soon “destigmatise” the issue.

The big retail story of the pandemic is the rise of online selling, but one “retail titan” has bucked the trend, says The Economist.

Step forward B&M – the all-conquering discount chain, which turned over £3.1bn last year between April and December (24% up on a year earlier) and is tipped to overtake high-street stalwart John Lewis’s revenue in 2021. B&M has thrived partly because it was classified as an “essential retailer” during the pandemic. But that isn’t the only reason. It turns out that Britons of all classes love what CEO Simon Arora describes as the “jumble sale ambience” of its bargain shops, where paint, screwdrivers and toilet seats jostle with pistachio nuts, Coca-Cola and birthday cards. As one customer explains, “you don’t go there looking for anything particular” – but you may leave with a £100 metal gazebo. B&M’s website is used for marketing only, and it is just starting “to experiment with click-and-collect”. If the rise of e-commerce continues, it may have to do better. But for now, this jolly retail “omnivore” is doing just fine with bricks and mortar.

CITY 49 City profiles Dambisa Moyo As a black woman in a white man’s world, Dambisa Moyo brings “valuable perspective” to the role of non-executive director, said The Times. “At her first Barclays AGM in 2010, a private shareholder demanded of the chairman what credentials she had.”

The Zambian-born economist’s credentials are impeccable: a former Goldman exec, she has also held positions at SAB Miller, Chevron, and 3M. Now she has written a book, How Boards Work, to address “ignorance” on the subject.

A cheerleader for capitalism and big companies, Moyo thinks boards need to probe prospective CEOs more deeply. Her favourite killer question is: “What’s the worst thing you’ve done to another human being?” As she observes: “It’s not an easy one to skirt by.”

Rachel Reeves

Labour’s new shadow chancellor is a former Bank of England economist and child chess champion, considered “insanely smart” in policy circles, said The Daily Telegraph. But though she may seem destined to excel in the party’s top economics role, the big question is whether she can “cut through to voters lost across the Red Wall”. The daughter of teachers, Oxford and LSE-educated Reeves, 42, has also worked at the British Embassy in Washington – and has “more City experience than many of her predecessors”. She was working at a doomed HBOS during the financial crisis. On leaving to become MP for Leeds West in 2010, she quipped that she was “one of the few people entering politics to be going to a more popular profession”.

15 May 2021 THE WEEK

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Shares

CITY 51

Who’s tipping what The week’s best shares

Directors’ dealings

Reach The Times The Express and Star publisher is a “sleeping giant” poised to awaken following a digital transformation. Overheads have shrunk and the group has maintained its 3.04% yield.

Numis has raised the target to 350p. Buy. 234.5p.

Superdry The Sunday Telegraph Shares in the fashion brand have tripled thanks to wellreceived new lines. Online revenues are up 33.8% and store leases renegotiated.

A recovery built on solid foundations – this is just the start. Buy. 394p.

Publicis Groupe Investors Chronicle The advertising giant should thrive as the market rebounds.

It’s also set to benefit from a strong digital foothold and exposure to the US market – thanks to the 2019 acquisition of tech business Epsilon. Buy. s54.26.

Smith & Nephew The Daily Telegraph The end of lockdown should lead to a rise in elective surgeries, giving a good boost to this orthopaedics, sports medicine and wound management specialist.

A “quality stock” at a reasonable price. Buy. £15.71.

Wickes Group The Times So long as the home improvement mania continues, the DIY chain, demerged from Travis Perkins, should stand to profit. It’s set to expand its “Do It For Me” business, and also has a trade arm. Target 310p. Buy. 237.5p.

EKF Diagnostics 85

Director sells 3.96m

80 75 70 65 60

Jan

Dec

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

EKF provides tests for conditions including diabetes and Covid. Shares are up 220% amid rumours that it has secured a deal with Amazon, but chairman Christopher Mills spooked the City by selling shares worth £3.17m.

…and some to hold, avoid or sell

Form guide

Boohoo Group Investors Chronicle Profits have jumped 37%, but the fashion retailer’s sales momentum is expected to slow down amid economic uncertainty, and there are lingering ethical concerns. Still, set to remain an e-commerce winner. Hold. 317p.

essensys The Daily Telegraph Essensys’s software helps flexible workspaces operate efficiently. Changes in the office landscape should play to its strengths, and short-term worries about tenants’ inability to pay appear unfounded.

Hold. 280p.

UP Global Sourcing Investors Chronicle UPGS manages small domestic product brands – including Salter and Russell Hobbs.

Although global shipping pressures have squeezed margins, profits are up amid a surge in home working and cooking. Hold. 165p.

British American Tobacco The Daily Telegraph The company is unpopular due to ESG issues and regulatory pressure on tobacco. But debt is down, it generates strong cash flow and is attractively valued. The 8% yield is more likely to rise than fall.

Hold. £26.82.

MaxCyte The Daily Telegraph MaxCyte’s hi-tech machines help drug companies to make gene-editing treatments.

Shares have soared, but they should be further boosted by four signed partnership agreements and a Nasdaq listing. Hold. 886p.

WH Smith Investors Chronicle Hard hit by travel bans, Smith’s has swung to a loss.

But it has a stable balancesheet and a pipeline of more than 100 new travel stores.

Exposure to the US domestic travel market is a boon.

Hold. £18.27.

Shares tipped 12 weeks ago Best tip St Modwen Properties Investors Chronicle up 34.42% to 535p Worst tip Syncona The Times down 15.87% to 212p

Market view “Inflation is creating a lot of fear among investors because of the possibility that the central banks are not ready to deal with it.”

Aneeka Gupta of WisdomTree. Quoted in the FT

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

11 May 2021 6947.99 3962.98 34296.66 13355.24 28608.59 28013.81 1840.45 68.32 2.97% 0.83 1.61

Best and worst performing shares Week before 6923.17 3956.75 33853.65 13502.76 28812.63 28557.14 1767.65 68.85 3.01% 0.79 1.58

0.7% (Mar) 1.5% (Mar) 8.2% (Apr)

$1.414 E1.165 ¥153.848

0.4% (Feb) 1.4% (Feb) 6.5% (Mar)

Change (%) 0.36% 0.16% 1.31% –1.09% –0.71% –1.90% 4.12% –0.77%

WEEK’S CHANGE, FTSE 100 STOCKS RISES Price % change 327.90 +10.70 Glencore 3394.50 +10.30 Anglo American 6541.00 +6.90 Rio Tinto 682.60 +6.60 Evraz 253.90 +6.40 Sainsbury (J) 903.00 +6.10 Fresnillo FALLS Scottish Mortgage Renishaw Flutter Entertainment Admiral Just Eat Takeaway.com DCC

1085.00 5625.00 13355.00 2913.00 6814.00 5960.00

–10.40 –8.00 –6.80 –6.40 –6.30 –6.10

Source: FT (not adjusted for dividends). Prices on 11 May (pm)

Following the Footsie 7,200

7,000

6,800

6,600

6,400

6,200

Dec

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

6-month movement in the FTSE 100 index

15 May 2021 THE WEEK

SOURCE: THE SUNDAY TIMES

DS Smith The Times With Amazon as a key client, the sustainable packager has enjoyed a surge in demand.

The company has sold its plastics arm and embraced a circular approach of collecting and recycling cardboard.

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52

The last word

The clockwork universe: is free will an illusion?

A growing chorus of scientists and philosophers argue that free will does not exist. Could they be right, asks Oliver Burkeman Towards the end of a apparently did the late conversation about some Stephen Hawking.

According to the historian of the deepest puzzles of Yuval Noah Harari, free human existence, the will is an anachronistic philosopher Galen Strawson paused, then myth – useful in the past, asked me: “Have you perhaps, as a way of spoken to anyone else yet motivating people, but who’s received weird rendered obsolete by the emails?” He began reading power of modern science. from messages he and several other scholars had Arguments against free received in recent years. will go back millennia, but the latest wave of Some were plaintive, scepticism has been others abusive, but all were driven by advances in fiercely accusatory. “Last year you all played a part neuroscience. Now that in destroying my life,” one it’s possible to observe – thanks to neuroimaging person wrote. “I lost – the brain activity everything because of you associated with our – my son, my partner, my job, my home, my mental decisions, it’s easier to health. All because of you, think of those decisions Can there be free will in a universe where events crank forwards like clockwork? as just another part of you told me I had no control, how I was not responsible for anything I do, how my the mechanics of the material universe. From the 1980s, various beautiful six-year-old son was not responsible for what he did… specific neuroscientific findings have offered troubling clues that Goodbye, and good luck with the rest of your cancerous, evil, our so-called free choices might actually originate in our brains pathetic existence.” “Rot in your own shit Galen,” read another several milliseconds, or even much longer, before we’re first aware note, sent in early 2015. And then, days later: “I’m coming for of even thinking of them. you.” “This was one where we had to involve the police,” The stakes could hardly be “Peer over the precipice of the free will debate, Strawson said. higher. Were free will to be and you begin to appreciate how a vulnerable shown to be non-existent – and we truly to absorb the fact Strawson, like others receiving person might be nudged into a breakdown” were this abuse, had merely expressed – it would “precipitate a culture war far more belligerent than a position in an ancient debate the one that has been waged on the subject of evolution”, wrote that strikes many as the ultimate in “armchair philosophy”, wholly detached from the entanglements of real life. They all deny Sam Harris, author of the 2012 bestseller Free Will. Arguably, that human beings possess free will. They argue that our choices we would be forced to conclude that it was unreasonable ever to are determined by forces beyond our ultimate control – perhaps praise or blame anyone for their actions, since they weren’t truly even predetermined all the way back to the Big Bang – and so responsible for deciding to do them; or to feel guilt for one’s misdeeds, pride in one’s accomplishments, or gratitude for others’ nobody is ever wholly responsible for their actions. Reading over the emails, Strawson found himself empathising with his kindness. And we might come to feel that it was unjustifiable to harassers’ distress. “I think for these people it’s just an existential mete out punishment to criminals, since they had no ultimate catastrophe,” he said. “And I think I can see why.” choice about their wrongdoing. Some worry that it might fatally corrode all human relations, since romantic love, friendship and The feeling that we are the authors of our choices is so basic to neighbourly civility alike all depend on the assumption of choice: everyone’s existence that it can be hard to get any mental distance any loving or respectful gesture has to be voluntary to count. on it. Suppose you find yourself feeling moderately hungry one afternoon, so you walk to the fruit bowl in your kitchen, where Peer over the precipice of the free will debate for a while, and you see one apple and one banana. As it happens, you choose the you begin to appreciate how a psychologically vulnerable banana. But it seems obvious that you were free to choose the person might be nudged into a breakdown, like Strawson’s email apple – or neither, or both – instead. That’s free will: were you to correspondents. Saul Smilansky, a professor of philosophy at the rewind the tape of world history, to the instant just before you University of Haifa in Israel, who believes the popular notion of made your decision, with everything in the universe exactly the free will is a mistake, told me that if a graduate student who same, you’d have been able to make a different one. was prone to depression sought to study the subject with him, he would try to dissuade them. Smilansky is an advocate of what And yet according to a growing chorus of philosophers and he calls “illusionism”, the idea that free will as conventionally scientists, for a variety of different reasons, it also can’t possibly defined is unreal, but that it’s crucial people go on believing be the case. “This sort of free will is ruled out, simply and otherwise. “On the deepest level, if people really understood decisively, by the laws of physics,” says one of the most strident what’s going on – and I don’t think I’ve fully internalised the of the free will sceptics, the evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne. implications myself, even after all these years – it’s just too Psychologists such as Steven Pinker and Paul Bloom agree, as frightening and difficult,” Smilansky said.

THE WEEK 15 May 2021

The last word The logic of the argument that nobody ever truly chooses freely to do anything, once glimpsed, seems coldly inexorable. Start with what seems like an obvious truth: anything that happens in the world, ever, must have been completely caused by things that happened before it. And those things must have been caused by things that happened before them – and so on, backwards to the dawn of time: cause after cause after cause, all of them following the predictable laws of nature, even if we haven’t figured all of those laws out yet. It’s easy enough to grasp this in the context of the physical world of rocks and rivers and internal combustion engines. But surely “one thing leads to another” in the world of decisions and intentions, too. Our decisions involve neural activity – and why would a neuron be exempt from the laws of physics any more than a rock?

53 way exculpatory, though, you face a difficult question: what’s so special about a brain tumour, as opposed to all the other ways in which people’s brains cause them to do things? When you learn about what was unfolding inside Charles Whitman’s skull, it has the effect of seeming to make him less personally responsible for the terrible acts he committed. But by definition, anyone who commits any immoral act has a brain in which a chain of prior causes had unfolded, leading to the act.

It’s tempting to try to wriggle out by protesting that, while people might not choose their worst impulses – for murder, say – they do have the choice not to succumb to them. You can feel the urge to kill someone but resist it, or even seek psychiatric help. You can take responsibility for the state of your personality. But this is not the escape clause it might seem. After all, the free It was the French polymath Pierre-Simon Laplace: unleashed a demon will sceptics insist, if you manage to change Laplace, in 1814, who most succinctly expressed the puzzle: how can there be free will, in a universe your personality in some admirable way, you must already have possessed the kind of personality capable of implementing such a where events just crank forwards like clockwork? His thought experiment, known as Laplace’s demon, and his argument went change – and you didn’t choose that. In the end, as Strawson puts as follows: if some hypothetical ultra-intelligent being – or demon it, “luck swallows everything”.

– could know the position of every atom in the universe at a single Given how watertight the case against free will can appear, it may moment, along with all the laws that governed their interactions, it could predict the future in its entirety. There would be nothing be surprising to learn that most philosophers reject it: according it couldn’t know about the world 100 or 1,000 years hence, down to a 2009 survey by the website PhilPapers, only about 12% of to the slightest quiver of a sparrow’s wing. You might think you them are persuaded by it. What’s still harder to wrap one’s mind made a free choice to marry your partner, or choose a salad; but around is that most of those who defend free will don’t reject the in fact Laplace’s demon would have known it all along, by sceptics’ most dizzying assertion – that every choice you ever extrapolating out along the endless chain of causes. “For such make might have been determined in advance. Rather, they claim an intellect,” Laplace said, “nothing could be uncertain, and the that this doesn’t matter: that even though our choices may be future, just like the past, would determined, it makes sense to say we’re free to choose. They’re be present before its eyes.”

“Our decisions involve neural activity, and why known as “compatibilists”, By far the most unsettling would a neuron be exempt from the laws of because they think determinism implication of the case against and free will are compatible: physics any more than a rock?” free will is what it seems to say “being free” is not a kind of about morality. Consider the magic, it’s a mundane skill, a matter of having the capacity to think about what you want, case of Charles Whitman. After midnight on 1 August 1966, reflect on your desires, then act on them. When you choose the Whitman – an outgoing and apparently stable 25-year-old former US marine – drove to his mother’s apartment in Austin, Texas, banana in the normal way, you’re clearly in a different situation where he stabbed her to death. He returned home, where he killed from someone who picks the banana because a fruit-obsessed his wife in the same manner. Later that day, he went to the top of gunman is holding a pistol to their head; or someone afflicted a high building on the campus of the University of Texas, where by a banana addiction. (There are many other positions in the he began shooting randomly for about an hour and a half. By the debate, including some philosophers, many Christians among them, who think we really do have “ghostly” free will.) time Whitman was killed by police, 12 more people were dead.

Within hours, the authorities discovered a note that he had typed the night before. “I don’t quite understand what compels me to type this letter,” he wrote. “Perhaps it is to leave some vague reason for the actions I have recently performed. I don’t really understand myself these days. I am supposed to be an average reasonable and intelligent young man. However, lately I have been a victim of many unusual and irrational thoughts, and it requires a tremendous mental effort to concentrate on useful and progressive tasks… After my death I wish that an autopsy would be performed to see if there is any visible physical disorder.” After the first two murders, he added, “Maybe research can prevent further tragedies of this type.” An autopsy revealed the presence of a substantial brain tumour, pressing on Whitman’s amygdala, the part of the brain governing “fight or flight” responses to fear.

Almost everyone, on hearing about the tumour, undergoes some shift in their attitude towards him. It doesn’t make the killings any less horrific. But it does make his rampage start to seem less like the evil actions of an evil man, and more like the terrible symptom of a disorder. If you find the presence of a brain tumour in any

It’s tempting to dismiss the free will controversy as irrelevant to real life, on the grounds that we can’t help but feel as though we have free will, whatever the philosophical truth. I will keep responding to others as though they had free will. And I personally can’t claim to find the case against free will ultimately persuasive: it’s just at odds with too much that seems obviously true. Yet even if only entertained as a hypothetical possibility, free will scepticism is an antidote to that bleak individualism which holds that a person’s accomplishments truly belong to them alone – and that you’ve therefore only yourself to blame if you fail. It’s a reminder that accidents of birth might dictate our talents and our weaknesses, our capacity for joy, and our ability to overcome tendencies toward violence, laziness or despair, and the paths we end up travelling. There is a deep sense of human fellowship in this picture of reality – in the idea that, in our utter exposure to forces beyond our control, we might all be in the same boat, clinging on for our lives, adrift on the storm-tossed ocean of luck.

A longer version of this article first appeared in The Guardian © 2021 Guardian News and Media Limited 15 May 2021 THE WEEK

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Crossword

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THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1260

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 24 May. Email the answers as a scan of a completed grid or a list, with the subject line The Week crossword 1260, to crossword@theweek.co.uk. Tim Moorey (timmoorey.com) ACROSS 1 Beetle, small vehicle on a second-class road (6) 4 Sewer that could make you sit and retch (8) 9 Charlie’s rough and unrefined (5) 10 High-street shop beer buyers collect from the back here (4,5) 11 Repetition in gambling game disheartened (4) 12 Insect found primarily on open ground (4) 13 Lying stretched publicity unit (5) 15 Dessert is intro to nuts (7) 16 Teenager perhaps left in bed (4) 19 Long or short note switching halves (4) 20 A1 jam spoken of is what breakfast TV presenters need (7) 23 Put a name back and behind (5) 24 Branch scale not Celsius (4) 25 Metal ornament displayed on motorcycle (4) 27 Jogger outside one going for rest (9) 28 Heavy drinking no good for time with champ (5) 29 In agreement as one detective to another (3,2,3) 30 Minor actors from Texas playing outside first in rep (6)

DOWN 1 Second copper in Rye possibly sustains it (8) 2 This could be Trudy involved with Alec getting caught out (8) 3 Plant of highest quality, right? (4) 5 Reformatory man to charm head of State, ER (6,7) 6 They look for flying bugs early on (4,6) 7 The Sun is hostile about tons being wasted (6) 8 More ruddy runs, Boycott on top (6) 10 Leave to the end invoice that’s for American singer (6,7) 14 Pound notes as used in the kitchen (10) 17 Rather arresting church glass (8) 18 Staff working for class spirit (8) 21 U-turn Maggie finally contrived? Not so (6) 22 Terribly misty around back of office block (6) 26 One reportedly burns butter (4)

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Name Address

Clue of the week: One goes with hose that’s found in gutter (7, first letter D, last letter T) The Times

Tel no Clue of the week answer:

Solution to Crossword 1258 ACROSS: 1 The aristocracy 10 Apres 11 Last train 12 Mae West 13 Splodge 14 Nyala 16 Alpinists 19 Pillagers 20 Ahind 22 Tandoor 25 Halifax 27 Dumplings 28 Reeve 29 Manchester City DOWN: 2 Horsetail 3 Aisle 4 Ill-at-ease 5 Tosas 6 Catalonia 7 Award 8 Yankees 9 Bad man 15 Ayatollah 17 Post-haste 18 Stiff test 19 Potsdam 21 Dexter 23 No-man 24 Runes 26 Lyric Clue of the week: McEnroe, say, magnificent on grass (9, first letter S) Solution: SUPERBRAT (superb + rat = grass) The winner of 1258 is Irena De Benedictis from Beckenham The Week is available from RNIB Newsagent for the benefit of blind and partially sighted readers. 0303-123 9999, rnib.org.uk/newsagent

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Sudoku 802 (very difficult)

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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

Solution to Sudoku 801

8 4 5 3 6 7 9 1

3 7 2 1 4 9 8 5

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1 6 9 5 2 8 3 7 4

4 9 3 6 8 1 7 2

5 8 1 9 7 2 6 4

6 2 7 4 3 5 1 8 9

2 3 6 7 1 4 5 9

9 1 4 8 5 3 2 6

7 5 8 2 9 6 4 3 1

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15 May 2021 THE WEEK