T The secret life of John Maynard Keynes
The first irst soprano ano in space ace PEOPLE P10
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MILIBAND’S KITCHEN NIGHTMARE TALKING POINTS P23
THE WEEK The singer who fought for civil rights OBITS PXX
21 MARCH 2015 | ISSUE 1014 | £3.10
THE BEST OF THE BRITISH AND INTERNATIONAL MEDIA
Clarkson’s tantrum The “fracas” at the BBC Page 6
ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT EVERYTHING THAT MATTERS
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To support the wo Martin Corr needs
It might only be rock and roll, but it’s one of Britain’s most successful exports. And big business for Martin Corr, MD of Sound Moves. His company coordinates the movement of musical equipment for some of the world’s biggest music tours – including the highest grossing of all time. Tours today are getting more global. Rising incomes
in emerging markets mean demand for bands to play there is rising too. For Martin to get the equipment in the air and keep the show on the road, he needs more frequent and direct flights to these potential new venues. Which is why he wants an expanded Heathrow. As does his local Chamber of Commerce. And 29 other
Source: Airports Commission, “Heathrow Airport North West Runway: Business Case and Sustainability Assessment”, November 2014.
rld’s biggest bands, a bigger Heathrow.
Chambers of Commerce, from Kent to Inverness. They know it’ll create up to £211 billion for the UK economy and up to 180,000 new jobs across the country. Martin, and entrepreneurs like him all over the UK, don’t need convincing about the benefits. They just need an expanded Heathrow. See why other bright British businesses need an expanded Heathrow at heathrow.com/takingbritainfurther
#TakingBritainFurther
4 NEWS
The main stories…
What happened
What the editorials said
George Osborne sought to break the political stalemate this week with his sixth, and possibly final, Budget. The Chancellor insisted he was shunning “pre-election gimmicks or giveaways”, but a windfall resulting from lower-thanexpected inflation enabled him to temper his austerity plans and offer some modest tax cuts. He set out plans to raise the personal allowance to £11,000 and to allow pensioners to cash in their annuities, along with measures to speed up housebuilding, improve broadband links and boost business. Osborne also promised a Tory manifesto commitment to raise the inheritance tax threshold to £1m – a plan omitted from the Budget because of Lib Dem opposition.
“At last, the first five-year, fixed-term Parliament is almost over,” said The Guardian. The Budget will dominate the coalition’s final fortnight and is designed to set the tone of the subsequent election campaign. But it’s hard for either of the main parties to control the narrative when all people want to talk about is what will happen if the election delivers a hopelessly hung parliament. Since that is the likely outcome, said The Daily Telegraph, voters are “entitled to know precisely how far the parties will go in post-election dealings with possible coalition partners”. Labour has given a “misleading impression” on this front. By ruling out a coalition with the SNP, yet saying nothing about a possible informal deal, Miliband is trying to “keep his options open while pretending otherwise”.
The election Budget
Ed Miliband, meanwhile, ruled out a coalition As for Osborne, said The Times, he should resist Osborne: no “gimmicks”? with the Scottish National Party, saying there any temptation to feel smug. Yes, the UK is now would be “no SNP ministers” in any government he leads. But “the fastest growing of all the advanced economies of the G7” he left open the possibility of an informal arrangement under – a nice position to be in just weeks before an election. But the which the SNP would prop up a minority Labour government. Government is still spending about £90bn a year more than it At the Lib Dem spring conference, Nick Clegg also ruled out a is raising in taxes. And the country still has an unbalanced coalition with the SNP, and reassured activists that the party growth model – one based too much on debt-fuelled would do “so much better than anyone thinks” on 7 May. consumption and not enough on investment and exports.
What happened
A question of defence
What the editorials said
Britain may be no more than a “middling power” these days but it still has a “pivotal” role to play alongside the US in MPs stepped up pressure on Downing Street Nato, said The Independent. Both countries to protect the defence budget last week are nuclear powers, and readily share military when they voted to endorse Nato spending hardware and intelligence. Yet that vital targets. Members of both major parties relationship is now threatened by government backed a motion calling on the Government thrift. Already our defence spending is to pledge to keep spending 2% of GDP on “perilously close” to Nato’s 2% guideline, defence – the minimum recommended by and some forecasts suggest that it could slip to Nato – after this summer’s election. “The 1.7% by 2020. Small wonder that US military world is genuinely getting more dangerous,” commanders are pleading with Britain to said Rory Stewart, chairman of the think again. Alas, the Prime Minister hasn’t Troops march past St Paul’s Commons Defence Committee. “Britain grasped the full danger, said The Daily cannot be a freeloader.” Telegraph. When he took office five years ago, David Cameron promised that an initial round of cuts would The non-binding vote reflected widening alarm among be followed by real-terms increases from 2015. Now he won’t service chiefs and Britain’s allies over the refusal by both even guarantee to meet the Nato benchmark. Conservative and Labour leaders to rule out further defence cuts. A report in The Sunday Times said at least four The end of our 13-year war in Afghanistan, marked last week generals were considering resignation, and their concern was by a service of commemoration in St Paul’s, provides a good echoed by Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. In a moment to reflect on our security needs, said the Daily Mail. thinly veiled reference to the threat of cuts, he said the And the “greatest” lesson is simple: “A civilised country can alliance “counts on” Britain to show “leadership”. only remain civilised if it has the means to defend itself.”
It wasn’t all bad The UK is set to establish the world’s largest marine reserve in the South Pacific ocean. The zone is expected to cover 322,000 square miles around the Pitcairn Islands, a British overseas territory, using satellite surveillance to protect the area from illegal fishing. The waters around the islands – which are inhabited mainly by the descendants of the HMS Bounty mutineers – are among the world’s clearest, and home to 1,249 marine species, some of them unique to the area.
A statue of Mahatma Gandhi has been given an “eternal home” in Parliament Square. Created by Philip Jackson, and inspired by a photo of Gandhi visiting Downing Street in 1931, the bronze statue is placed near figures of Nelson Mandela and Winston Churchill – but on a lower pedestal to reflect Gandhi’s humility. At an unveiling this week led by David Cameron, the Indian leader’s grandson, Shri Gopalkrishna Gandhi, asked: “How many countries celebrate the work of a man who opposed it with vehemence for more than three decades? Not many. Britain does [because Britain now sees that his cause] was just.”
In what may be the most remarkable West End transfer in history, a fringe production of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd that opened in a pie shop in Tooting, south London, last year, is coming to Shaftesbury Avenue. The show won rave reviews in Tooting, piquing the interest of Sondheim himself. He went along – and was so impressed he told Cameron Mackintosh about it. And when the impresario discovered the show had had to close because the pie shop was being refurbished, he offered it a run in one of his own West End venues.
COVER CARTOON: HOWARD MCWILLIAM THE WEEK 21 March 2015
…and how they were covered
NEWS 5
What the commentators said
What next?
“I don’t understand it,” a man in one of my focus groups told me a few days ago, said Michael Ashcroft in The Independent. “People think David Cameron is pretty good, and they think Ed Miliband is a muppet. So why is it so close?” The short answer is that voters don’t respect Labour, yet also don’t trust the Tories, who have failed to shake off their toxic image as the outof-touch party of the rich. In effect, the country trusts neither of the two main parties to run the show on their own, said Philip Johnston in The Daily Telegraph. The Tories hope this week’s Budget might shift that settled view, but one speech isn’t going to change anything at this stage.
The Budget included plans to scrap end-of-year tax returns in favour of “real-time online” accounts by 2020. Instead of enduring the annual rush to file a paper tax return, individuals and businesses will be able to submit accounts throughout the year, via computer or smartphone, and to pay their tax at any point in the year.
Voters have all but given up listening in any case, said Ian Birrell in The Guardian. And no wonder: both main parties are “fighting flat, constricted campaigns”. This is particularly true of the Tories, who are “delivering a defensive, managerial message of economic security rather than any sense of mission”. If they want to detoxify their brand, they should follow the advice of Chief Whip Michael Gove: he called last week for the Tories to reclaim compassionate conservatism and become “warriors for the dispossessed”. That’s not going to happen, said Dan Hodges in The Daily Telegraph. Having seen how his “Big Society” vision flopped in the 2010 election, Cameron is playing it safe. “Tory hopes now rest in the calloused hands of Australian strategist Lynton Crosby, a firm believer in the dull, repetitive drumbeat of political fundamentals.” And that strategy is paying off: bookmakers – “traditionally the most accurate diviners of the public mood” – have reported “a major shift in money” towards the Tories. The entire election campaign feels bogus, said Suzanne Moore in The Guardian. The political leaders are all insisting that they’re not even thinking about coalitions, but only of winning, which is a “patent lie” leading to “all sorts of weirdness and pretence”. The “biggest denial”, however, is about the future of the UK itself. Labour’s collapse in Scotland, and the associated rise of the SNP, mean the Union is now in real peril. Yet to listen to politicians in London, you’d think the biggest issue at stake was whether or not Cameron takes part in a TV debate.
Don’t take Budget pledges too literally at this stage, said Adam Boulton in The Sunday Times. If the Tories hold on to power in May, Osborne (assuming he’s still Chancellor) “will outline his real plans rather more honestly in further statements” later in the year. If Labour wins the election, there will “be another Budget, probably in June”.
What the commentators said
What next?
Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond says Britain is facing the “greatest challenge” to national security in decades, said Stephen Glover in the Daily Mail. And he’s right: you only have to consider the threats from “Islamist fanatics” or a dangerously “resurgent” Russia. Yet for some reason the Government fails to take defence seriously. Over the past five years defence spending has fallen by 10%, and more manpower cuts may be on the way. A report last week from the Royal United Services Institute warned that a further 30,000 military personnel – some 20% of our already depleted Armed Forces – could be out of work by 2020. And who’s responsible? The Conservatives, once considered the party most sympathetic to the Forces. What troubles our allies is our inconsistency, said Luke Coffey in The Daily Telegraph. At last year’s Nato summit, it was Britain – now so cautious – that urged fellow members to adopt the 2% target. In his defence, Cameron likes to point out that we still have the world’s fifth-largest defence budget, but without an increase, Britain’s “security and standing in the world” are sure to suffer.
The two main parties are being urged to include a pledge to meet the Nato target in their election manifestos. Three former defence chiefs last week joined 16 other peers to sign a letter to The Times, suggesting the commitment. They said that national defence was a first duty of government, and the defence budget needed the same protection as had been given to overseas aid.
They are suffering already, said James Rubin in The Sunday Times. The reluctance to spend more on defence is just further proof of Britain’s new readiness to “sit on the sidelines”. Britain is “barely involved” in the 20-nation coalition that’s conducting air strikes on Isis militants in Iraq (Australia is arguably playing a larger part); it’s France and Germany which have been conducting the “crisis diplomacy” over Ukraine. But the Nato target of 2% has no immediate bearing on our security, said Richard Norton-Taylor on his Guardian blog. It’s a shibboleth, honoured by just four Nato members. Far more crucial is how the cash is spent, and much of ours is spent on hugely expensive items such as aircraft carriers. Yet in the age of terrorism and cyber-warfare, what we really need is more drones, special forces, intelligence gathering and “electronic spies”. That, not the obsession with 2%, is the issue that should really concern us.
THE WEEK
Seldom has a retirement letter attracted as much internet interest – and rapturous praise – as the one posted on Google+ by the company’s chief financial officer, Patrick Pichette, 52, who is kissing goodbye to his job and the $5.2m a year that goes with it to spend more time with his family. It was while he and his wife Tamar were at the top of Kilimanjaro, with “the vast plain of the Serengeti” at their feet, that Tamar “out of the blue said: ‘Hey, why don’t we just keep on going?’”. In fact, Pichette returned from Africa and thought about it for a while before making his decision. One reason he’s retiring, he says, is “the kids are gone”. This struck the FT’s Lucy Kellaway as a little eccentric – “spending time with the family at the very point that the family is no longer there”. Another reason is that he needs a break having worked flat-out for 1,500 weeks as a result of being a “member of FWIO, the noble Fraternity of Worldwide Insecure Over-achievers”. Only he can know if he belongs to this fraternity, though, as Kellaway says, if his message is any guide there is not much evidence of the “Insecure” part of the FWIO. He winds up his letter by thanking his bosses, Larry, Sergey and Eric, for “letting me be me”. In fact, says Kellaway, they weren’t paying Patrick his huge salary to be Patrick, but to keep the company’s “cost structure in order”. It’s nice to read about someone making a decision like Pichette’s, though his elevation to hero status Jolyon Connell on the internet seems faintly ridiculous. Subscriptions: 0844 844 0086; overseas +44(0)1795 592921 The Week is licensed to The Week Limited by Dennis Publishing Limited. The Week is a registered trade mark of Felix Dennis.
Republicans in the US this week unveiled plans to raise the defence budget to $910bn in the next decade. However, spending for next year would be pegged at $523bn. Editor-in-chief: Jeremy O’Grady Editor: Caroline Law Deputy editors: Harry Nicolle, Theo Tait Consultant editor: Jemima Lewis Assistant editor: Daniel Cohen City editor: Jane Lewis Contributing editors: Charity Crewe, Thomas Hodgkinson, Simon Wilson, Rob McLuhan, William Underhill Editorial staff: Alanna O’Connell, Louis Ashworth, Tigger Ridgwell Picture editor: Xandie Nutting Art director: Nathalie Fowler Sub editor: Monisha Rajesh Production editor: Michael Haydock Founder and editorial director: Jolyon Connell Production manager: Lawrence Brookes Snr production controller: Ebony Besagni Newstrade director: David Barker Head of Direct Marketing: Abi Spooner Inserts: Abdul Ahad Classified: Ryan Gisborne-Weare, Henry Haselock, Kate Oliver Account manager: Sara Clayton Display ad manager: Caroline Fenner Account dirs: Steven Brooks, Jocelyn SitalSingh UK Ad Director: Marc Young Int Account Director: Julian Staples Head of Advertising UK/Int: David Weeks Chief executive, The Week: Kerin O’Connor COO: Brett Reynolds Group CFO: Ian Leggett Chief executive: James Tye Dennis Publishing founder: Felix Dennis THE WEEK Ltd, a subsidiary of Dennis Publishing Ltd, 30 Cleveland St, London W1T 4JD. Tel: 020-7907 6000. Editorial: The Week Ltd, 2nd Floor, 32 Queensway, London W2 3RX. Tel: 020-7907 6180. email: editorialadmin@theweek.co.uk
21 March 2015 THE WEEK
Politics
6 NEWS Controversy of the week
A dust-up at the BBC Forget “right-wing” and “left-wing”, Labour and Tory, said Matthew Norman in The Independent. The only political distinction that really counts in Britain today is where you stand on “l’affaire Clarkson”. The facts about the Top Gear presenter’s famous “fracas” remain hazy. We know that Jeremy Clarkson arrived at 10pm at a Yorkshire hotel, after a long day’s filming, to find that the chef had gone home and no hot food was available. He was offered a cheese platter, a meat platter, or soup, but “he wasn’t having it”, said one member of staff. A tantrum followed: he allegedly called Oisin Tymon, the producer responsible for this culinary outrage, a “lazy Irish c**t”, and may have punched him in the face. Plenty of people have since come to Clarkson’s defence – including the Prime Minister and the one million or so who have signed a petition in his support. But to me, the whole thing seems pretty simple, said Norman. Either you think that “the physical and/or verbal bullying of employees is, by and large, poor form”. Or you don’t. There are many people “who despise Top Gear for being too white, too male and, frankly, too damned British”, said Richard Littlejohn in the Daily Mail. And the “Lilliputian Lefties” who run the BBC were obviously delighted; they have not just suspended Clarkson and announced the inevitable inquiry, but have also cancelled the rest of the series. This is a massive overreaction. Clearly there was an incident. Clarkson reported the episode himself, and profusely apologised for it. (He denies punching, but admits to “handbags and pushing”.) Tymon hasn’t made an official complaint, and is said to be mortified at how it has blown up. These dust-ups are common enough in TV, said an anonymous producer in The Times. Not having food ready in those situations is disastrous. “There is nothing worse than an exhausted presenter with low blood sugar coming to realise that no amount of fame, power or signed photographs will conjure up a hot meal in the provinces after 9.30pm.” Clarkson is a talented broadcaster, who “embodies the sense that limits are there to be broken and nannies exist to be cheeked”, said The Guardian. Top Gear is a stirring “revolt” against traffic laws, health and safety, and everything else that makes the life of the modern driver “one of harried misery”. But if he does turn out to have punched someone, that must be the end for him as a public service broadcaster. It wouldn’t be entirely out of character, said Boyd Tonkin in The Independent. “Clarkson, time and again, voices his low opinion of the poor, pedestrian humanity” that gets in the way of his “right-wing, middle-aged” version of fun. Top Gear is “insanely popular”, said Sathnam Sanghera in The Times: it is watched by 350 million people in 214 territories. But success seems to have “corrupted” Clarkson – hence the increasingly crass jokes at the expense of Mexicans, Burmese, Argentinians, and so on. It’s time he moved on. It’s not as if he’ll be short of offers.
Spirit of the age A backlash is growing against restaurateurs who consider their food too fancy, or too witty, for mere plates. The trend began with food served on boards and bits of slate, but now diners are reporting being served everything from sandwiches in a flat cap to vegetables in toy wheelbarrows – and they have had enough. A WeWantPlates Twitter account has attracted 20,000 followers. “Having to drink a smoothie out of a light bulb is an indignity,” reads one post. It seems the generation gap is closing fast in Britain. One in four British women go clubbing with their mothers, according to a Usurv survey; 36% invite their mothers to social events with their friends.
THE WEEK 21 March 2015
Good week for:
Scottish tea drinkers, after a home-grown variety was named the finest in the world. The Wee Tea Company’s smoked white tea, grown in Perthshire, fended off rivals from Sri Lanka, India and China to win the Salon du Thé Gold Award in Paris. North Koreans, who may get an alternative to Kim Jong-un’s propaganda. The BBC World Service has announced that it is exploring ways of broadcasting news in the repressive state. Crufts, after a toxicology report suggested that Jagger – a prizewinning Irish setter that died after leaving the contest last week – was poisoned not at the show, but after returning to Belgium.
Bad week for:
The judiciary, after three judges were dismissed for using their office computers to view pornography. A fourth judge resigned before the disciplinary inquiry was completed. The material was not illegal, but downloading it onto judicial IT equipment was deemed “wholly unacceptable”. One of the three said he’d been suffering from “undiagnosed depression” at the time. The “Mouth of Hell”, which was demolished. Greyfriars bus station in Northampton – an infamous example of Brutalist architecture – has been attracting criticism since it opened in 1976. A year later, stalactites began appearing inside it. Finns, with news that their favourite food – meatballs – is being downgraded, to plain “balls”. Finnish manufacturers say that owing to EU food-labelling regulations, they have been forced to drop the “meat”, as in many cases the balls don’t contain real meat, only mechanically recovered meat, which doesn’t count.
Cyril Smith abuse
An undercover investigation into child abuse allegations against Cyril Smith was scrapped shortly after the late Liberal MP was arrested, it has been claimed. A former police officer told Newsnight that Smith and other public figures – including a member of the security services – were caught on camera abusing children in the early 1980s. Smith was arrested, but – it is claimed – he was soon released again; officers were then ordered to hand over all their evidence and their inquiry was closed. Smith remained an MP until 1992 and died in 2010. An investigation into allegations that the Met police covered up child abuse is under way. However, there are concerns that former officers may not speak out, for fear of being found in breach of the Official Secrets Act.
Hillsborough inquests
The most senior police officer at Hillsborough Stadium on the day of the 1989 disaster has admitted that his failure to close a tunnel was the “direct cause” of the deaths of 96 Liverpool fans. Giving evidence at the new inquests into the deaths, David Duckenfield has also admitted to lying about fans forcing open an exit gate to enter the ground; in fact the police had been responsible. The inquests continue.
Poll watch The Conservatives are ahead of Labour for the first time since 2012, according to The Independent’s poll of polls. The party is on 34% (up two points on the previous month) and Labour is unchanged on 33%. UKIP dropped two points to 11%. Just 25% of people support the creation of free schools. 42% oppose them. 29% want the existing free schools to be placed under the control of local councils. YouGov 89% of mothers who work full-time take the main responsibility for parenting in their household. Among stay-at-home mothers, the proportion rises to 98%. 88% of mothers who work full-time would rather work less so they could see more of their children. Mumsnet/The Observer
Europe at a glance Castellón, Spain Ghost airport revived: A Spanish “ghost airport” that has been lying empty for four years since its completion will finally welcome its first commercial flights this September. Castellón-Costa Azahar airport, on the country’s east coast, has long been seen as a symbol of the reckless public spending in Spain during the decade-long boom that came to a juddering halt in 2008. Situated about 60 miles north of Valencia, which already had one international airport, it was one of a number of grand public building projects in the region in that era; others included a Sydney-style opera house and one of Europe’s largest aquariums. The politician who commissioned the £107m airport, Carlos Fabra, is now serving time in prison for tax fraud. The airport’s opening comes as Spain shows broader signs of economic revival: GDP grew 1.4% last year, and the government has predicted that it will expand a further 2.3% this year.
NEWS 7
Toulouse, France Child executioner recognised: The young boy seen “executing” a young Israeli-Arab man in the latest Islamic State propaganda video has been identified as a 12-year-old who used to live in Toulouse. Shocked pupils at Nicolas Vauquelin College recognised the boy – who is seen shooting his orange-clad victim in the head – as one of their classmates at primary school. The unnamed child (pictured) is believed to be the stepson of a key figure in Toulouse’s radical Islamist community; security sources say he also features in the video. The dead man had been accused by the extremists of being a Mossad agent – something his family deny.
Paris Model ban mooted: France looks set to become the latest country to ban the use of ultra-skinny fashion models. With a major health bill coming up for debate in parliament, social affairs minister Marisol Touraine said the government was likely to back an MP’s amendment that would require models to be regularly weighed, and impose prison terms of up to six months, and s75,000 fines, on agents who employ models with a body mass index of less than 18. A second amendment would make it an offence to “glorify excessive skinniness”, and censor websites that promote anorexia. Ultra-skinny models have already been banned from the catwalk in Italy, Spain and Israel.
Athens Fingergate: As acrimonious debt talks between Berlin and Athens continued this week, Greece’s finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, was forced to deny that he had “given the finger” to Germany while giving a speech on Greece’s debt crisis in 2013. A video of the supposed incident, showing Varoufakis raising his middle finger in a gesture of contempt, caused outrage in the German media and brought Greek-German relations to a new low. But Varoufakis claimed the video had been doctored. A self-professed Marxist, he has also been widely mocked for letting Paris Match stage a photoshoot featuring him and his wife in their so-called “love nest at the foot of the Acropolis”. He said he wished he’d never signed up for it, and that he didn’t “agree with the aesthetic” of the pictures, which show him playing the piano and toasting his wife over a lavish seafood supper on their roof terrace.
St Petersburg, Russia The disappearing president: President Vladimir Putin reappeared in St Petersburg this week, after an unprecedented 11-day absence from public view that had sparked frenzied speculation about what might explain it. Pictures posted on the Kremlin website of Putin meeting other public officials during that period turned out to have been taken days earlier; high-profile public meetings were cancelled. But when the president finally emerged again on Monday, he laughed off the various rumours about his disappearance – that he had been the victim of a military coup, that he had flown abroad to attend the birth of a secret love child, that he had come down with a nasty bout of the flu, or that he had been having cosmetic surgery. It was all “gossip”, said Putin, though some reporters noted he looked pale, and no official explanation was given other than that he had been working.
Madrid Cervantes found: Scientists say they have found the tomb of Spain’s greatest writer, Miguel de Cervantes (left). The author of Don Quixote, who died in 1616, had asked to be buried in the Convent of the Barefoot Trinitarians in Madrid because its nuns had helped pay his ransom after he was captured by Moorish pirates. But when the convent was rebuilt, his coffin was moved and lost. Now, after a year-long search, a coffin bearing the initials MC has been found, and scientists believe the bones within it belong to Cervantes, his wife and others known to have been buried with him. Rome Anti-English petition: An online petition calling on Italians to stop using English words for which there are equivalents in their own language gathered nearly 70,000 signatures before it was closed last week. The petition was called Dillo in Italiano or “Say it in Italian”, and was backed by the Accademia della Crusca, a language institute founded in Florence in 1583. Italians should not squander the “history, culture and beauty of our language”, said the campaigners, who highlighted the growing use of clumsy hybrid terms such as “footing” (jogging), “baby parking” (crèche) and “mister” (football coach). The issue seems to be one of mounting concern: the Italian navy recently caused outrage by using the English slogan “Be cool and join the navy” on a recruitment poster, while the government ran into trouble for referring to a piece of legislation as “the jobs act” rather than “la legge sul lavoro”. Catch up with daily news at www.theweek.co.uk
21 March 2015 THE WEEK
8 NEWS
The world at a glance
Ferguson, Missouri Police shootings: A 20-year-old man has been charged over the non-fatal shooting of two police officers in Ferguson – the St Louis suburb where the shooting of an unarmed black teenager by a white police officer last August sparked national outrage. There have been near-daily demonstrations in Ferguson since the killing of Michael Brown seven months ago, and tensions in the city worsened earlier this month, when a US Justice Department report concluded that there was pervasive racial bias in local policing and court practices. But although the suspect, Jeffrey L. Williams, has admitted to opening fire at the tail-end of a demonstration last week, he says he didn’t intend to shoot any police officers. Instead, he claims he was aiming at someone who’d robbed him earlier in the evening. Protest leaders have said they don’t recognise Williams as one of their own.
New York Gerry Adams exposé: An investigative article by the prominent US magazine The New Yorker, published last week, has named Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams as one of the senior figures involved in planning the IRA’s infamous 1973 London bombing campaign in which one person died and more than 200 were injured. Adams has long denied having involvement with the IRA, but the article’s author, Patrick Radden Keefe, draws on the historical testimony of two former IRA operatives – Dolours Price and Brendan Hughes, both now dead – to claim that Adams was responsible for a number of notorious crimes including the murder of Jean McConville, a mother of ten who was seized from her Belfast flat in 1972 after she was accused of being a British sympathiser. Adams was arrested in connection with the murder last year, but later released without charge.
New Orleans, Louisiana Millionaire arrest: A notorious American multi-millionaire has been arrested on suspicion of murder. Robert Durst (left) was detained after the screening of a documentary about his life, in which he was recorded whispering “What the hell did I do? Killed them all of course” in an unguarded moment. The heir to a real estate fortune, Durst, 71, has been trailed by police ever since his wife went missing in 1982. He is suspected of killing his friend and confidant Susan Berman, the daughter of a mobster, in 2000, and in 2003, he was tried for the murder of a neighbour – whose body he dismembered – but successfully pleaded self-defence. Havana Phone link restored: A direct telephone line was restored between Cuba and the US last week, as representatives of the two countries continued to thrash out a deal to resume diplomatic ties. For the past 15 years, calls have had to be routed via phone companies in third countries, a process that has been both cumbersome and expensive. Presidents Obama and Castro announced in December that they hoped to resume normal relations after more than 50 years of mutual hostility. There are plans to re-open embassies and ease travel restrictions. Currently, US citizens are banned from taking holidays in Cuba. Ahuacuotzingo, Mexico Politician beheaded: A woman who was standing as mayor in a town in Mexico was found decapitated last week, days after launching her campaign. The killers of Aide Nava (pictured), who are members of a drugs cartel, left a message warning that politicians who did not “fall in line” could expect the same fate. Ahuacuotzingo is in one of Mexico’s most dangerous provinces, and 100 miles from Iguala, where 43 students are presumed to have been killed by a cartel last year. Last year, Nava’s husband, a former mayor, was shot dead, and her son was kidnapped; he is still missing. Caracas Presidential power grab: An executive order from US President Barack Obama declaring Venezuela a threat to US security has prompted immediate retaliation from Venezuela’s parliament: it has granted President Nicolás Maduro the power to rule by decree for the rest of the year. The White House had also accused seven senior Venezuelan officials of human rights abuses and banned them from visiting the US, but Maduro claims all this is part of a US plot to unseat him. This week he ordered large-scale military exercises in preparation for a possible attack. Maduro’s opponents have dismissed all this as sabre-rattling and claim he is using tensions with Washington to amass powers, justify repression and distract public attention from the country’s economic crisis. THE WEEK 21 March 2015
Brasília Anti-government protests: Up to a million people in cities across Brazil took to the streets on Sunday to protest against corruption and demand the impeachment of left-wing president Dilma Rousseff. The demonstrations – on the 30th anniversary of the restoration of democracy after 20 years of military dictatorship – came amid growing anger over Brazil’s economic stagnation, and over the corrupt management of the state oil company Petrobras – a scandal which has now engulfed Rousseff’s own party treasurer. The protesters were largely composed of white, middle-class Brazilians who had voted for Rousseff’s centrist opponent, Senator Aécio Neves, in October’s elections. Some even called for a return to military dictatorship.
The world at a glance Jerusalem Netanyahu’s victory: Benjamin Netanyahu emerged as the surprise victor of Israel’s general election this week, two days after announcing that he wouldn’t allow the creation of a Palestinian state on his watch. He had also issued incendiary warnings about Israeli Arabs turning out “in droves” and being bussed to polling stations by “left-wing NGOs”. His last-minute statements caused anger and consternation from the West Bank to Washington, and were denounced by some as racist rabble-rousing – but are believed to have rallied right-wing voters to his side. Polls had suggested that the race would be very tight, but in the event his Likud party captured 30 seats in the Knesset, putting it well ahead of Isaac Herzog’s Leftist Zionist Union alliance, which won 24. Turnout was high, at 72%. Among Israeli Arabs, it was 68%, up from 56% in 2013. Although Likud had still to form a working coalition in order to secure a majority in the 120-seat parliament, analysts said Netanyahu’s return to power was highly likely. The Joint Arab List alliance of Israeli-Arab parties won 14 seats (up from 11), making it the third-biggest party, and raising suggestions that Arab parties might join forces with the Zionist Union in the hopes of unseating Netanyahu (pictured).
NEWS 9
Damascus Syria’s dark anniversary: Four years of civil war have plunged Syria into darkness: satellite imagery shows that light emissions from the country have shrunk by 83% in that time. The research – commissioned by 130 international NGOs hoping to call the world’s attention to the plight of Syrian civilians – was conducted by scientists at Wuhan University in China. The problem is most acute in towns partially controlled by rebel forces: Aleppo, for example, has been devastated by aerial bombardment, and has lost 91% of its light. By contrast, Damascus, still held by the troops of President Assad, has lost only 35%. Nearly half of Syria’s 22 million people have been displaced and more than 200,000 killed since security forces cracked down on pro-democracy protests in 2011, precipitating the descent into civil war.
Beijing Compulsory football: In an effort to make China a leading football nation, Beijing is introducing compulsory football classes. Involving theory and practice, they will be introduced to 20,000 football-themed schools by 2017. Seven new “football” textbooks will be issued. State-run training programmes have been highly successful in bringing China’s athletes Olympic glory, and President Xi Jinping hopes they can do the same to China’s national team which is currently 83rd in the Fifa world rankings.
Tikrit, Iraq Offensive on hold: The Iraqi government’s attempt to recapture the town of Tikrit from Isis forces has stalled in recent days as its troops struggle to fight their way through streets and buildings rigged with booby-trap bombs. The offensive, in which regular troops have been backed by Shia and even some Sunni militias, at first made dramatic progress, hemming the Islamist militants in an area bounded by the river. The operation has had significant backing from Iran, but dislodging the Isis fighters from their final stronghold has proved next to impossible without the backing of US air strikes, which have been conspicuous by their absence. Iraq says the offensive has now been halted to avoid casualties and to protect infrastructure.
Goma, DR Congo Oil leak: The prime minister of Democratic Republic of Congo, Augustin Matata Ponyo, is seeking to redraw the boundaries of Africa’s oldest and most biodiverse park, to allow for oil drilling to occur there. At his behest, the oil company Soco International has carried out tests in the Virunga National Park (pictured), home to at least 200 endangered mountain gorillas and a Unesco World Heritage site. Unesco insists that exploring for oil is incompatible with World Heritage status, but in a leaked reply, Ponyo contends that to make “minor boundary modifications” is just “following the example of other countries faced with similar problems”.
Port Vila Devastating cyclone: The 82 islands of the Pacific nation of Vanuatu, one of the world’s poorest countries, were hit last week by a ferocious tropical storm which has destroyed or damaged most buildings and left more than 100,000 of its 267,000 people homeless. Cyclone Pam struck with winds of up to 190mph, making it almost as powerful as Typhoon Haiyan, which hit the Philippines in 2013, killing more than 6,000 people. So far there have been only 11 recorded deaths in Vanuatu, though many of the outlying islands have yet to be contacted. President Baldwin Lonsdale wept as he requested help for his country, and declared that “we must start again”. Countries including Britain and France, which ruled Vanuatu jointly until 1960, have pledged millions of dollars in aid. 21 March 2015 THE WEEK
People
10 NEWS A soprano in space Sarah Brightman is fantastically rich. Although still best known to some as Andrew LloydWebber’s ex-wife, the English singer has sold 30 million records, making her the world’s top-selling soprano. She has homes all over the world – including a New York apartment that she bought on the internet sight unseen, and then completely forgot about. “I was staying in a hotel [in New York] with a friend,” she told Iain Dey in The Sunday Times. “We had been out to lunch and I said: ‘For goodness sake, what am I doing? We’re staying in a hotel and I’ve got an apartment here!’ I went and got the keys from the realtor. I came in and went: ‘This is absolutely fantastic’ – it has this view, this light. I don’t spend much time in it, but when I do it’s a godsend.” Brightman’s wildest extravagance, however, is the estimated £35m she has spent on a ticket into space. On 1 September this year, she will blast off from Kazakhstan in a Soyuz space rocket, owned by the private company Space Adventures. After a six-hour flight, she will spend ten days on the International Space Station, where she hopes to become the first professional musician to perform in space. Brightman has been undergoing intensive training at the Star City camp in Russia. There will be only three people on her rocket (the other two are both professional cosmonauts – a Russian and a
Dane), so she needs to know her way round the controls. “You have to understand the whole vehicle and how it works in case of an offnominal situation.” Brightman does 16 hours of training a day (including four hours of Russian language lessons), with verbal exams once a week. “It terrifies me,” she admits. “To be in front of a group of people explaining what happens on a Soyuz control panel or the life-support system alarms – it’s pretty scary.” Iced by Daniel Day-Lewis Richard E. Grant would never have become famous if it weren’t for a certain rival actor. Grant was offered the title role in Withnail and I after Daniel Day-Lewis turned it down. “I know that my entire career and life was changed by that part,” he told Jasper Rees in The Daily Telegraph. “That’s a lottery in life that you have no control over whatsoever.” A few years later, he got the opportunity to thank DayLewis when both men were cast in Martin Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence. “I prostrated myself in his Winnebago and said: ‘Oh Daniel, you know why I’m on the floor.’ And he said: ‘Arise, arise!’ And he was incredibly charming. We talked solidly for five hours, and then for the next four months of the filming he never spoke to me. I was literally iced. I asked Michelle Pfeiffer and Winona Ryder what I had done and they said: ‘Your character is hated by his character, so he is in the Method.’”
Castaway of the week This week’s edition of Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs featured music producer Robin Millar 1 Somewhere Down the Crazy River, written and performed by Robbie Robertson 2 Help Me Through the Day by Leon Russell, performed by Freddie King 3* Gimme Shelter by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, performed by The Rolling Stones 4 Inner City Blues by Marvin Gaye and James Nyx Jr, performed by Marvin Gaye 5 I’d Rather Go Blind by Ellington Jordan and Billy Foster, performed by Etta James 6 Paper Airplane by Robert Lee Castleman, performed by Alison Krauss & Union Station 7 Je t’aime... Moi Non Plus by Serge Gainsbourg, performed by Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot 8 I Wanna Go to Marz, written and performed by John Grant * Choice if allowed only one record
Book: West with the Night by Beryl Markham Luxury: Glastonbury’s pyramid stage, lights and guitar
THE WEEK 21 March 2015
Noel Gallagher still hasn’t made up with his brother Liam, says Corey Seymour in Vogue. In 2009, Noel walked out of their band, Oasis, after a backstage altercation, and they have barely spoken since. “We both believe wholly in Manchester City, our football team. That’s the only thing we have in common. Other than that it’s two sides of the same coin, really – it’s what made Oasis what it was: it was my industry and songs, and his chaos and pyrotechnics. And you couldn’t have one without the other.” Noel envies some of his brother’s qualities. “I admire people who just truly don’t give a f***. He has that freedom, and that’s a good thing, I think. There’s a little bit of that in me, but there’s another side that actually gives a f***, which kind of slows you down in a way. Liam’s a wrecking ball, and we all wish we were like that sometimes. Only for a day, though – you can’t live your life like that.” These days, Noel is quietly building his solo career, while Liam has launched his own clothing range. “I think he is working on developing the perfect desert boot. You know that thing they have in Switzerland, the Hadron Collider, where they’re just smashing atoms into each other to see what the f*** happens? I think he’s got one in his house which is just throwing desert boots at each other, in the hope that they will create some kind of fusion, and out will pop the perfect desert boot that will never be bettered by any other human being.”
Viewpoint:
Benevolent sexism
“A new academic study claims that men who smile at women, nod encouragingly when they’re talking or open doors for them may be guilty of ‘Benevolent Sexism’. Professor Judith Hall claims such behaviour is designed to ‘entice women to accept the status quo in society, because sexism literally looks welcoming, appealing and harmless’. She’s right, of course. And do you know what else looks welcoming, appealing and harmless? Friendship. Politeness. Good manners. Putting people at their ease. All those things your parents taught you about how to get on with people. It’s not the finest prescription for a happily integrated society if women are told to treat fluent conversationalists, good listeners and warm smilers as crypto-sexists.” John Walsh, The Independent
Farewell Daevid Allen, founder of rock bands Soft Machine and Gong, died 13 March, aged 77. Richard Glatzer, co-director of Still Alice, died 10 March, aged 63. Lord Molyneaux of Killead, Ulster Unionist leader, died 9 March, aged 94. Edward Nugee, barrister, died 30 December, aged 86. Terry Pratchett, author, died 12 March, aged 66.
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NEWS 13
The foreign backbone of the NHS Parts of the NHS are now “wholly reliant” on doctors and nurses trained outside the UK
What are the numbers? Royal College of Nursing forecasts a fall The vast majority (some 90%) of the of 100,000 nurses by 2022; the King’s 1.4 million NHS employees are British, Fund warns that Britain will need but foreign-trained doctors and nurses hundreds of thousands of new social care make up 15-25% of its clinical staff. In workers to care for its ageing population. fact, of the 267,150 doctors in the NHS and private sector combined, nearly Is the same true of British doctors? 100,000 (37%) were trained abroad. Yes. They, too, tend to shun the less For nurses, the proportion is lower: glamorous ranks of the profession, with 20% of those newly registered in the UK the result that geriatricians, psychiatrists, last year were foreign. Still, there’s no radiologists and, crucially, GPs, now face doubt where hospital and ambulance overwhelming workloads. A BBC survey trusts are now recruiting: a Guardian has found that 56% of GPs plan to retire investigation found 32 NHS trusts before they reach 60, leaving parts of the urgently seeking staff everywhere from UK, notably poor urban and isolated Poland to the Philippines, China to rural areas, dangerously short of local Nurses from Jamaica, London and Trinidad, in 1957 doctors. Others are leaving the country Sudan. “There’s a fairly major shortage of homegrown nurses,” says Dr Keith altogether. Since 2012, about 4,700 McNeil, chief executive of Cambridge’s Addenbrooke’s Hospital. doctors a year have applied to the General Medical Council “Every week we are right down to the wire in terms of finding (GMC) for a Certificate of Good Standing, allowing them to nurses to fill the rotas.” practise abroad – far more than the intake (about 2,957 last year) of foreign doctors being registered in the UK. Popular destinations Hasn’t there always been such a shortfall? are the US, Canada, Australia and the Gulf states. They go for the Yes. Since the founding of the NHS in 1948, Britain has had to same reason that East European and Indian doctors come here recruit from abroad to make up for the shortage of native doctors (see box): better pay and quality of life. Within a few months, a and nurses. In the NHS’s first decade, England’s healthcare workBritish GP in Australia can expect to earn around £150,000 a force increased by 30%, Scotland’s by 50%; as early as 1949 year compared to £82,000 in the UK. there were adverts in the Barbados Beacon for hospital auxiliary staff, nurses and trainees. In 1963, Tory health minister Enoch What is the Government doing about the shortfall? Powell, later a fierce opponent of immigration, led a recruitment In 2012, it created a new body, Health Education England (HEE), drive to hire 18,000 doctors from India and Pakistan alone. By to direct all the “workforce planning” for the NHS’s 300 types of 1971, 31% of NHS doctors in England were qualified overseas, a employees. But although HEE has set ambitious targets for GPs, proportion which – unlike that for nurses – has stayed more or midwives, health visitors and so on, they won’t be achieved any less stable. (In 2004, 44% of new nurses registered in the UK were time soon. For example, it takes 13 years and £560,000 to fully foreign, last year just 22%.) But for several reasons, the need to train a consultant in emergency medicine, so a student beginning recruit yet more foreign nurses and doctors is likely to grow. their training now would take charge of a ward only in 2028. This leaves foreign doctors and nurses, their training largely paid What are those reasons? for, as the obvious, short-term solution. But that solution has One is that, despite all the anxiety and political rows over NHS been put at risk by the way that the coalition has tightened the funding, the health service is actually in the middle of a vast visa rules, which makes it harder for junior doctors from outside recruitment drive. That’s partly because, in the aftermath of the the EU to complete their training in the UK, and easier for other Mid-Staffordshire hospital scandal, new minimum staffing levels rich countries, competing for their services, to attract them. have been introduced requiring 8,000 new nurses to be hired. But it’s mainly because of the need to cater for an ageing population Isn’t there anyway a risk of relying on foreign doctors? with increasingly complex health conditions: the clinically trained Academics have identified a “performance gap” between them NHS workforce has grown by 16% and doctors trained here and have The care drain since 2003. Yet with funding for urged the GMC to raise the pass rate The ageing populations of rich countries like Britain British trainee nurses drying up in the for the Plab test (which determines if and the US have turned their health services into a recession – student places dipped by foreign doctors are sufficiently skilled magnet for doctors and nurses educated and trained in to work in the UK). Foreign doctors about 13% between 2010 and 2012 poorer parts of the world. “Every day, for six years, – hospitals have had no choice but to are also over-represented in patient three doctors and two nurses have left Hungary,” look abroad. This year, NHS trusts in complaints, and medical malpractice János Belteczki, head of the Hungarian Doctors’ England are expected to spend around suits. But it’s a vexed area. Making Association told The Guardian recently. “The salaries £1bn on temporary and agency staff are ten times higher in Sweden, Norway, Germany, the the Plab test harder would have (up from £327m in 2012-13), much severe knock-on effects on NHS UK, wherever.” Hungarian doctors are paid around g500 a month. Two out of three of Hungary’s medical of this in areas that are increasingly recruitment, and also re-open debates students left to work in western Europe in 2011. hard to fill with British-trained staff. about discrimination in the medical profession. Medical staff from But it is not all bad news for the poorer nations. In India, which has supplied about 25,000 of Britain’s Why are they so hard to fill? minority backgrounds are still badly A 2014 survey of NHS staff shortages foreign doctors, many return, bringing new experience under-represented in the top echelons and training with new medical technologies. The found “desirability of area” a key of the NHS. In London, some 41% emigration of Filipino nurses – estimated at 150,000, or of NHS staff are from minority problem in finding nurses for the 85% of the country’s nursing workforce – sends back elderly. Caring for the old, the backgrounds, yet all chief executives, billions of dollars every year to the economy (they are mentally ill and those with chronic, and 97.5% of chairs, are white. NHS its single-largest source of remittances), while studies complex conditions has always been a patients have a quite different set of of Tongan and Samoan nurses in Australia show that low-paid, highly stressful job, but the preferences. A 2005 survey found the money they send home more than pays for the difference now is that the demand for that most prefer their doctor to be education and training they received before they left. such jobs is so much greater. The young, Asian and female. 21 March 2015 THE WEEK
Best articles: Britain We must be more critical of obesity Max Pemberton The Daily Telegraph
Self-censorship is tearing the Left apart Tim Lott The Guardian
Playing into the hands of extremists Janice Turner The Times
Our children aren’t innocent any more Tanith Carey The Independent on Sunday
Fat people are killing the NHS, says Max Pemberton. The soaring cost of treating obesity-related conditions is the single biggest threat to the health service. A study last year concluded that obesity is costing the UK £47bn a year – equivalent to almost half of the NHS budget. Part of the problem, as we all know, is that people don’t get enough exercise any more. But there is another culprit: our non-judgemental attitude towards obesity. Health researchers recently published a comparison of survey data from 1967 and 2010. Unsurprisingly, it shows that people were slimmer 40 years ago; but what really stood out was how much readier people were back then to tackle the problem. All but 7% of those who considered themselves overweight in the 1967 survey had tried to do something about it; only about half of those interviewed in 2010 had. One reason obesity is such a problem today, in other words, is people “just aren’t bothering to lose weight”: they don’t mind. That has to change. If the NHS is to survive, obesity, like smoking, needs to become “socially unacceptable”. “I am a ‘Lefty’,” says Tim Lott. My views on the NHS, public schools, Trident and many other issues are exactly those you’d expect of a lifelong Guardian reader. I don’t, however, subscribe to every last tenet of left-wing orthodoxy: I believe, for instance, that “political correctness” exists and I’m not convinced that jihadi views have “nothing to do” with Islam. But admit such things and you’ll be amazed how angry this makes some members of my “tribe”. For these true believers, any departure from the party line is interpreted not only as a shameful betrayal, but as a sign you must be harbouring other, more sinister views. If you criticise Islam, you must secretly hate immigrants; if you question any aspect of the gender pay gap, you must be a misogynist. In the modern era of “identity politics”, being left-wing has become less about debating ideas than enforcing solidarity. Like many liberals, I’ve started to self-censor to avoid the wrath of the purists. “That’s not only a bad feeling; it’s a tendency that’s bad for democracy, for politics, and the wider movement we call the Left.” A pernicious “us and them” mentality has begun to creep into the public debate about Muslims in Britain, says Janice Turner. Until recently, it was taken for granted that the “vast majority of Muslims are revolted by terrorism”. But since the Charlie Hebdo killings in Paris, the tone has grown shrill and divisive. Nigel Farage has talked of a Muslim “fifth column”; the parents of the three east London girls who ran off to Syria after being indoctrinated online have been treated with suspicion, rather than sympathy. By succumbing to such “tribal” impulses, we are “starting to do the extremists’ work for them”. What makes this all the more regrettable is that the idea that British Muslims “constitute a monolith has never been less true”. Liberal Muslims are increasingly speaking out against the edicts of fundamentalist preachers. Cultural practices such as forced marriage are being openly debated; Muslim feminists are “leading the war against FGM”; “an organisation for apostates is thriving, with young non-believers bravely ‘coming out’”. Now, more than ever, we should be concentrating on what unites rather than divides us. Should children as young as 11 be taught about pornography and the difference between rape and sexual consent? The very idea – recently put forward by the Government – appals some people, says Tanith Carey. Our children’s innocence is precious, they say; there’s no need for them to be exposed, at such a tender age, to life’s grim realities. If only that were so. Alas, the evidence suggests otherwise. Only last week a report revealed how thousands of girls, some of them as young as seven, are being talked into posting sexually explicit videos online. A previous study of boys aged 12 to 15 “found that 97% of those who had seen porn via a simple Google search were accessing scenes of staged rape, gagging and beating”. The fact is that many young children are being exposed to shockingly adult material, and this is something we have to address. We must talk to boys about the “unrealistic expectations porn creates and how it can alter the way males view females”. And we need to help girls recognise when they’re being manipulated. “No one wanted a world where we had to explain this stuff to children. But that’s what we’ve got.”
NEWS 15 IT MUST BE TRUE…
I read it in the tabloids An Indian woman who was about to embark on an arranged marriage ditched her fiancé on their wedding day after he failed a simple maths test. Lovely Singh apparently told Ram Baran, her would-be groom, that before they tied the knot, she’d like him to answer a simple question: what, she asked, is 15 + 6? When he answered 17, she was so appalled, she called the whole thing off, saying the man was a fool. Relatives couldn’t persuade her to change her mind, and the wedding gifts were returned.
Thousands of animal selfies have done the rounds online, but few species have embraced the trend with the enthusiasm of a rare marsupial named the quokka (below). Visitors to Australia’s Rottnest Island, where the creatures mainly live, have found that they love posing for the camera, and will smile for it, too.
A British Airways flight to Dubai was forced to turn back to Heathrow because of a vile stench coming from the lavatory. The plane had been in the air for 30 minutes when staff decided the smell had become unbearable. According to one passenger, the captain announced that it wasn’t the result of a technical fault, but of “a smelly poo”. An Irish man who claimed to have been attacked in a pub car park was arrested when CCTV footage emerged of him throwing a brick at a car window – and the brick bouncing back, knocking him unconscious. “You should have heard the Garda laughing when they saw the video,” said the pub landlord.
21 March 2015 THE WEEK
Best of the American columnists
NEWS 17
The reckless letter Republicans will come to regret
I thought I had lost the capacity to be agreements to cover a prospective shocked by the antics of Republican Iran deal – thus effectively bypassing lawmakers, said Michael Tomasky on Congress – the president “invited The Daily Beast. But last week they resistance”. It’s true, also, that pulled off a stunt that put every other Democrats have not been above trying “nutso” thing they’ve done in the to sabotage Republican foreign policy shade. They wrote an “open letter” – in the past, such as when they opened drafted by freshman Arkansas Senator rogue negotiations with Nicaraguan Tom Cotton and signed by 46 other dictator Daniel Ortega in the 1980s. Republican senators – to Iran’s Still, none of that justifies Cotton’s mullahs, warning them against letter. It was a reckless intervention, striking a proposed nuclear deal with conducted with “all the gravity and the US. The letter advised Tehran that deliberation of a blog posting”. it “may not fully understand” the US’s constitutional system, pointing It won’t even achieve its desired effect, Cotton: is he a “traitor”? out that any agreement made without said Brian Beutler in The New congressional approval could be reversed “with the stroke of a Republic. Quite the reverse. The letter presumes that Iranian pen” by the next president. There’s only one word to describe negotiators don’t understand how US politics works, yet “the Cotton and his cronies, said New York Daily News: “Traitors.” nature of the negotiations suggests the opposite. They are, after They’re right to oppose the nuclear deal as it stands, but all, premised on the shared belief that the next administration “cutting the legs out from under America’s commander-inwon’t be as favourably disposed to diplomatic engagement, and chief” at this delicate stage of negotiations is a disgrace. thus that there’s some urgency to reach an agreement.” Under the mooted deal, Iran would agree to years of close oversight of President Obama brought this on himself in some ways, said its nuclear plants in return for sanctions relief. It’d be hard for a Michael Gerson in The Washington Post. “Major arms-control future president – even a Republican one – to abandon that. treaties have traditionally involved advice and consent by the Obama wants Tehran “to believe it isn’t going to get a second Senate.” So by seeking to expand the practice of executive bite at the apple. Senate Republicans just proved his point.”
We welcomed this killer with open arms Charles Lane The Washington Post
Not all sexual assaults are the same Meghan Daum Los Angeles Times
Internet outrage is on the way out David Auerbach Slate.com
When is the US going to face up to the fact that it has a serious painkiller problem, asks Charles Lane. Back in the early 1990s, the authorities gave the go-ahead for the wider prescription of a new class of opioid pills, with trade names such as OxyContin and Vicodin, on the basis that pain was being vastly undertreated and that these slow-release drugs wouldn’t be addictive. It was a terrible mistake. Opioid prescriptions have since soared to a far higher level than any other country – as has the rate of addiction and the number of deaths from overdose. In 2013, opioids killed 16,235 people in the US – about half as many as died in traffic accidents, and 1,400 more than were murdered. The total toll from prescription opioid overdoses between 1999 and 2013 exceeds 175,000, “three times the US body count in the Vietnam War”. Yet the US is still in denial about the scale of this problem. Although a recent effort has been made to curb the over-prescription of opioids, some are now arguing that we should desist because it’s driving addicts to turn to heroin instead. But that reasoning is “exactly backwards”. The point, surely, is that we should never have distributed these powerfully addictive substances so widely in the first place. At the risk of being labelled a rape apologist, says Meghan Daum, “I’m going to say what many reasonable people have been thinking for a while”. Not all sexual assaults are equal. “Violent rape is not the same as psychologically coercive sex, which is not the same as regrettable sex, which is not the same as fielding an unwanted kiss at a party.” All of these experiences are bad, but they lie on a spectrum “ranging from truly horrific to merely annoying”. It almost amounts to heresy to make this point today. The official line now is that “sexual assault and victimhood exist as absolutes”. Thus, a drunk student who “has sex she neither exactly consented to nor exactly resisted” is said to be as much a victim as “the clearly brutalised woman”. And the student who continues to hang out with her alleged rapist long after the deed supposedly occurred is said to be suffering the same syndrome as a battered wife. It’s wrong, say campus activists, to “privilege” one kind of trauma over another. What claptrap. It’s both insulting and counterproductive to confuse the fight against rape culture – a phenomenon that is all too real – with the petty complaints of grievance culture. “By shaking so many individual trees, adherents create distractions from the perils of the big, terrifying forest.” Do you suffer from outrage fatigue? Are you fed up with endlessly being invited to feel confected indignation over something some public figure said or did? Then I have good news for you, says David Auerbach: “we have passed peak outrage”. Intemperate, shouty opinions will continue to be heard on Twitter and right-wing talk radio, but “viral outrage” is dying on the internet. Why? Because it’s no longer good business. Outrage once fuelled online journalism: it was all about getting people to click on stories – in the hope that they would then click on accompanying banner adverts. But that model has seen diminishing returns as people have grown increasingly oblivious to these ads. So advertisers have changed tack. It’s now all about seamlessly integrating ads with content, through such means as advertorials, customised promotions and sponsorship. In this new world of integrated advertising, outrage doesn’t sell. Advertisers are looking for content that will reinforce their brand. Intelligent, smart content can do that, as can lighter, fluffy stuff. But angry, sarcastic or self-righteous material can be “jarringly incompatible”. As digital advertising and digital journalism become ever harder to tell apart, the “merchants of outrage will struggle to keep their foothold”. 21 March 2015 THE WEEK
18 NEWS
Best articles: International
The priceless artefacts destroyed by “apocalyptic madmen” First they chopped people’s heads off; now the militants of Isis have found another way to shock the world, said Zahid Hussain in Dawn (Karachi). The “cultural cleansing” of Iraq’s ancient archaeological heritage, like the Taliban’s dynamiting of Afghanistan’s Buddha statues, is the product of a twisted ideology that rejects all aspects of preIslamic culture. Last month the fanatics burnt thousands of priceless manuscripts in Mosul’s city library, then filmed themselves taking sledge hammers to statues and other “false idols” at the nearby site of the ancient Assyrian capital, Nineveh. They also blew up ancient temples at the sites of Nimrud and Khorsabad.
(Tel Aviv) is that the ancient kings who commissioned these works treated the art of their enemies just as brutally as Isis does today. The Assyrian king Sennacherib, who made Nineveh his capital in the seventh century BC, left a trail of destroyed cities that archaeologists are excavating to this day. The famous wall reliefs around Mosul depict his conquests; the one in Khorsabad showing Assyrian soldiers smashing statues in a temple could just as well be depicting the Isis terrorists.
But the kings merely intended to intimidate opponents; Isis’s goals are far more “apocalyptic”, said William Donohue in Eurasia Review (Albany, Oregon). Like It’s unbearable to think of the destruction of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot, the Islamists are Nimrud treasures in the British Museum the ruined palaces at Nimrud, with their intent on “eradicating the collective magnificent friezes of winged lions and bulls with human heads, memory of the people” as a prelude to creating an entirely new said Martina Doering in Berliner Zeitung. Thankfully, many of future. We in the Arab world often complain that Westerners the artefacts unearthed there by archaeologists like Max have robbed us of our cultural treasures, said Abdulrahman Mallowan are safely housed in the British Museum. (Agatha al-Rashed in Al Arabiya (Dubai). But at least in foreign Christie, Mallowan’s wife, claimed the treasures made the museums they’re safe from “madmen”, not to mention the journey protectively covered by her face cream.) And Berlin’s thousands of rodents that overrun the abandoned storehouses Pergamon Museum contains many of Nimrud’s jewels, ivory of Arab museums. The sad lesson to draw from all this is that carvings and cuneiform tablets. But the friezes and reliefs will be we will only acquire the right to ask for our artefacts back lost for ever. The “tragic irony”, said Julia Fridman in Haaretz when we are “mature” enough to look after them.
FRANCE
Teachers are turning against headscarves Le Monde (Paris)
CHINA
Taking over the sea with concrete Foreign Policy (Washington DC)
GREECE
Being nasty to the Germans won’t help us To Vima (Athens)
THE WEEK 21 March 2015
The debate in France over Muslim headscarves has turned toxic, says Benoît Floc’h. Like yarmulkes, crucifixes and other religious emblems, they’re already banned in schools, but many professors insist they be banned at universities too, arguing that religious symbols are a bar to free thought and that the hijab and niqab represent separatism and gender oppression. One law professor recently asked a student to remove her headscarf; when classmates rallied to her defence, he snapped back: “Well, my religion is nudism!” and began unbuttoning his shirt, before thinking better of it and stomping out of class. Other professors are refusing to lecture if a fully veiled student is present. The reason they’re so passionate about this is that they see the university as the birthplace of secularism. In the Renaissance it was the university that, as philosophy professor Isabelle de Mecquenem puts it, “elevated the search for truth by vanquishing the power of the State and Church”. Now these (mostly) left-wing professors are appalled to find that their most vocal supporters on the issue are the far-right National Front. “I thought this fight against religion was long over,” one said sadly. “It’s just unbearable.” China has a devious plan to win control of the South China Sea, says Keith Johnson. It can’t build on islands in that sea without provoking conflict, as these are also claimed by Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei: last year when it tried to drill oil-exploration wells in waters claimed by Hanoi, the Vietnamese went berserk and Chinese nationals had to be rescued from baying mobs. So instead, Chinese engineers are building artificial islands, pouring sand on submerged coral reefs and encasing them in concrete. Experts are shocked by the scale and speed of this building frenzy. US surveillance photos show six new structures among the disputed Spratly Islands. A year ago the only man-made feature on the Johnson South Reef was a tiny concrete platform housing two small buildings; now it’s big enough to build an airstrip. Not that the new islands will soon bristle with military hardware. Too weak and distant to defend, they’d be sitting ducks for enemy attacks. Nor do they really help establish Beijing’s territorial claims – “turning a submerged obstacle into an artificial sandbox hardly blesses it with fresh legal attributes”. What they do is create a “prickly new reality on the ground” that over time would make any claims to it harder to dispute: “and that would suit Beijing just fine”. When engaged in tense negotiations with another government, it’s mad to resort to populist appeals to emotion, says Notis Papadopoulos. But that’s exactly what Greece’s ruling Syriza party has done by demanding wartime reparations from Germany. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras raised the idea in parliament recently, and now Minister of Justice Nikos Paraskevopoulos says he’ll give the order for German assets to be seized pending payment. Do these “geniuses” really think that confiscating the Goethe-Institute in Athens will result in Greece’s massive s340bn debt being written down? Of course it won’t. It will merely infuriate the Germans, who believe they discharged their obligations in 1960 with a “final” payment of DM115m. That payment was, of course, far too little: no Greek thinks that our just claims for compensation – not just for Nazi atrocities but for the “occupation loan” they forced us to pay – should be renounced. But this battle for historical justice will be long and legally complex, whereas this debt crisis needs resolving now. Besides, it has nothing to do with France and Italy, which together have given us more cash than Germany, and also suffered at the hands of the Nazis. Syriza should stop playing “tricks and games” and start negotiating in earnest.
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Health & Science What the scientists are saying… Gout’s silver lining
Autism mainly
For people who suffer from hereditary gout, there may be a silver In the majority of cases, lining: researchers have autism is the result of found that patients with a genetic factors, according history of the agonising to the findings of a new condition are 24% less twin study, reports BBC likely to suffer from News online. Researchers Alzheimer’s, reports The gathered data on more than BMJ. Gout is caused by a 6,000 sets of fraternal and build up in the body of a identical twins, in an waste product called uric attempt to tease out the acid, which leads to the genetic and environmental formation of sodium urate factor that might have led The 2m-long Aegirocassis benmoulae crystals in the joints. It is to a diagnosis, and conoften genetic in origin, but can also be caused ducted detailed home-based analysis on 207 of by rich foods, beer and spirits, and though the pairs. They found that the likelihood of both once known as the disease of kings, it is now – twins in a pair having disorders on the autism owing to changes in diet – just as likely to affect spectrum was higher in identical twins, who people on low incomes. Sufferers are at a higher share DNA, than among non-identical twins. risk of heart and kidney problems, but the new Their findings suggest that 56% to 95% of cases findings – based on analysis of hundreds of are attributed to genetics, the variance being thousands of GPs’ records – suggests the explained by the difference in methods used to build-up of uric acid that causes gout also has assess autism in children. Autism diagnoses have a neuroprotective effect. increased dramatically over the past 20 years, leading to fears that something in the Older people can ward off Alzheimer’s environment is causing it. However, the scientific It’s never too late to protect yourself against consensus is that the rise is mainly due to Alzheimer’s: according to new research, increased awareness leading to more diagnoses. people in retirement can slow their mental decline by adopting healthier habits. For the The giant lobster of the deep study, published in The Lancet, researchers Around 480 million years ago, primeval seas tracked more than 2,600 Finns aged 60 to 77, were dominated by a 2m-long creature all of whom were considered to be at risk of resembling a giant lobster, reports The the degenerative condition. Half were given Guardian. Named Aegirocassis benmoulae, the standard advice for maintaining brain function: monster propelled itself through the water using eating well, taking exercise, socialising and so fins on the side of its body, and was probably on. The others were put on a more intensive twice the size of any other animal at that time programme with detailed advice about diet, – but it didn’t hunt for prey. Instead, it was (like and regular exercise and brain-training many of today’s whales) a filter feeder that used sessions. After two years, all the participants spiny filaments on its head to strain the water were given tests of mental agility. The people for plankton. The beast is believed to have been who had been on the programme scored 25% among the last members of a family of early better overall, and 150% higher in tests of marine animals called anomalocaridids. Partial their ability to process information. The remains of the “lobster” have been found before, researchers will now track them for seven but were presumed to be the body parts of years, to see if this manifests in fewer diagnoses various other species until an unusually wellof Alzheimer’s. preserved fossil was found in Morocco.
Flying around the world in a solar-powered plane A historic round-the-world trip began in Abu Dhabi last week, when a fuel-less plane took off for a 21,000-mile journey to demonstrate the extraordinary power of the Sun. The carbon fibre Solar Impulse 2 (pictured) has just one seat, and weighs only 2.3 tonnes, but it has a wingspan of 236ft – bigger than that of a Boeing 747. Into its wings are embedded 17,248 ultra-efficient solar cells which transfer energy from the Sun to four electrical motors that power the plane’s propellers, and to four lithium batteries. During the day, it flies nearly as high as a commercial aircraft – 28,000ft – in order to catch the Sun’s rays, but at a fraction of the speed. At night, it flies lower, powered by its batteries. Its first leg, the 300 miles to Oman, took 12 hours. More challenging legs, over the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, will follow. Flying alone for days at a time, its two pilots – who are taking turns at the controls of the single-seater craft – will have to get by on 20-minute catnaps in a cockpit about the size of a telephone box. However, Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg are not strangers to adventure: the duo have already crossed the US in a solar-powered plane, and in 1999 Piccard broke records by making a non-stop circumnavigation of the globe in a balloon. “What we want to demonstrate with Solar Impulse is that you can achieve absolutely impossible things with renewable energies,” said Piccard – “like flying an aeroplane around the world with no fuel.”
NEWS 21 The ocean that once covered Mars It’s barren and dry now, but four billion years ago the surface of Mars was covered by a sea that was, by volume, bigger than the Arctic Ocean, reports National Geographic. Using powerful telescopes to measure signature chemicals in water in Mars’s atmosphere, astronomers have worked out that the planet once held enough water to cover it with a liquid layer about 137 metres (450ft) deep; however, they think it likely that the water pooled together in the low-lying parts of Mars’s northern hemisphere, where it would have reached depths of more than a mile. The finding adds to the growing evidence that Mars could once have supported life – and suggests it would have been habitable for longer than previously surmised. The findings were made by astronomers working at observatories in Hawaii and Chile. Using their powerful instruments, the team was able to analyse Mars’s atmosphere for levels of two forms of water – ordinary H2O and HDO, a naturally occurring variant in which one hydrogen atom is replaced by one of a heavier form called deuterium. By comparing the ratio of HDO to H2O in water in the planet’s atmosphere now, with the ratio in water trapped in a meteorite that was blasted away from Mars around 4.5 billion years ago, the scientists were able to determine how much water has escaped into space since then, and how much was there before the planet began to dry up some 3.7 billion years ago. They estimate that 87% of Mars’s water was lost; the remainder became locked in its polar caps, or as permafrost deposits deep beneath its surface.
21 March 2015 THE WEEK
Pick of the week’s
Gossip
What do you give the tycoon who has everything? An edible portrait of themselves, fashioned entirely from sugar paste. For Philip Green’s 63rd birthday, his wife Tina commissioned a birthday cake featuring the Topshop boss reclining on satin sheets with his pet dog, Louie. The sugar sculpture included minute details such as his greying chest hair, and an outdated Nokia phone on his bedside table.
The fashion moguls Dolce and Gabbana have caused a stir with their unfashionable opinions. The gay Italian designers told an Italian magazine that they opposed same-sex families and assisted reproduction. “You are born to a mother and a father – or at least that’s how it should be,” said Domenico Dolce. “I call children of chemistry ‘synthetic children’. Rented uterus, semen chosen from a catalogue.” Elton John – who has two sons born to a surrogate mother – took it personally. “How dare you refer to my beautiful children as synthetic,” he wrote on Instagram. “I shall never wear Dolce and Gabbana ever again.” Soon #BoycottDolceGabbana was trending on Twitter, with high-profile supporters including Courtney Love – who threatened to burn all her D&G clothes – and footballer Peter Crouch, who vowed to turn down their next ad campaign. The designers later put out a statement defending their right to “freedom of expression” but insisting that they never intended to “judge other people’s choices... We do believe in freedom and love.”
THE WEEK 21 March 2015
Talking points Tony Blair: a “liability” in the Middle East? When Tony Blair left The suspicion among many Downing Street in 2007, is that Blair has been more said the FT, he declared concerned with using his that one of his ambitions envoy role as a convenient was to help forge a lasting calling card to promote his peace between Israel and business interests. As James the Palestinians. To this Wolfensohn, Blair’s end, he became an envoy predecessor as Quartet for the Middle East Quartet representative, recently put of peace negotiators (the it: “ For Tony Blair to say UN, EU, US and Russia), ‘I would like to talk to you tasked with co-ordinating about the peace process’ is international efforts to a very different entry point develop the Palestinian from saying ‘I would like to economy. Blair seemed well get an oil concession in the Blair: “a pantomime villain” suited to the globetrotting east of the country for a role, but it hasn’t worked out. Although the client’ or ‘I would like to become an adviser to former PM can point to a few successes, such as your country’.” persuading Israel to set up a mobile phone network in the West Bank, the Palestinian Everyone wants to believe the worst of Blair economy has “largely stagnated”. There has these days, said Rachel Sylvester in The Times. been growing unease, meanwhile, about the With his “perma-tan, his country mansion, his potential conflict between Blair’s diplomatic and coterie of staff and his handmade shirts”, he has commercial interests. Even Blair now recognises gone from being “the hero of Middle England to that a frontline role is no longer viable: he is a pantomime villain”. He invited some of this apparently poised to step down as envoy. animosity through his mistakes in Iraq and what many see as the unseemly haste with which he About time, said Francis Beckett in The sought to “cash in on his political career”. But Guardian. It has been clear for years that “Blair the loathing is “wildly out of proportion”. Let’s in the Middle East is at best a passenger and at not forget that this is the man who helped bring worst a liability”. Nobody “expected him peace to Northern Ireland, who introduced the single-handedly to bring peace to the region”, minimum wage and civil partnerships, and who but he has proved utterly ineffective. Members launched vital public service reforms. He might of the Palestinian Authority, exasperated by his not have succeeded in the Middle East, but the lack of engagement and perceived pro-Israel fact remains that no British politician today has bias, have called him “useless, useless, useless”. the power he had “to appeal to so many voters”.
Child mental health: a looming crisis I have spent “18 hellish months” trying to get help for my mentally ill daughter, said an anonymous father in The Sunday Times. Jenny, 13, is severely anorexic and self-harming. Our GP referred her to the local child and adolescent mental health service (CAMHS), but this “turned out to be a ghost service”. Messages and letters went unanswered. Months passed and Jenny’s condition deteriorated. She sewed the word HATE into her hand, thought about death all the time, and started running into traffic. Only when she was admitted to a psychiatric ward did the CAMHS finally get in touch – to say that she’d have to leave because it was not prepared to fund her treatment. Five weeks ago she was hospitalised again after being found in a café covered in blood: she had slashed herself 200 times with a razor. A crisis is “engulfing children’s mental health” in Britain, said Rosemary Bennett in The Times. New NHS figures show that emergency admissions for children and young people with psychiatric conditions soared to 17,278 last year – double the number four years ago. The number of children being admitted with anorexia has doubled in a decade, to 2,965. And 26,580 youngsters were admitted to hospital because of self-harm, up from 16,417 a decade ago. To make matters worse, said Ami Sedghi in
The Guardian, this has coincided with cutbacks to what was already a Cinderella service. A survey of 96 NHS clinical commissioning groups found that 74 had either frozen or reduced their CAMHS budgets in the past year. Nick Clegg has announced an extra £1.25bn for mental health services in this week’s Budget. And about time too, said Libby Purves in The Times. Early intervention has been underfunded for years. But treating an epidemic is not enough: we must also find ways to prevent it. The multiple pressures bearing down on modern children are well documented: family breakdown, exam anxiety, drug use, social media, peer pressure, early sexualisation and “the ubiquitous screen”. Seven out of ten British children have a TV, and often a computer, in their bedrooms, despite numerous studies linking excessive screen time to poor mental health. It is not enough for parents to “shrug and pout: ‘Kids, what can you do?’”. We must take responsibility for our children’s mental health, setting boundaries even if it makes us unpopular. Likewise, schools must be tougher about confiscating mobile phones throughout the day, so that children get a break from “texts, sexts and needy networking”. It is up to us adults to “stem the tide of sadness and madness”, and “let childhood breathe”.
22 NEWS
Talking points Miliband: trouble in the kitchenette We were never invited inside helpfully explained on Winston Churchill’s kitchen Twitter. “Can’t even sit in – but these days it seems to it,” she added, revealing be agreed that voters need to more than she meant to see politicians relaxing at about the circles in which the home, said Marina Hyde in Milibands move. It is a The Guardian. David “kitchenette” used for “tea Cameron has been repeatedly and quick snacks”. The photographed in the kitchen Milibands’ proper kitchen – at Downing Street, which he a bigger room downstairs and his wife installed at a – “is lovely”. Thus Miliband cost to the public of £30,000. was dubbed TwoKitchens And presumably Ed Miliband (though there were rumours thought he could normalise that he also had a third, used A “sterile little box”? his geeky image by being by the nanny). filmed in his home. Big mistake. Last week, Miliband and his wife Justine Thornton were Did Miliband’s people stage this shot to make pictured sipping hot drinks in a kitchen in their him seem “prolier than thou”, wondered £2m house during a “soft-focus” BBC Eleanor Mills in The Sunday Times. Party interview. The kitchen is the kind of small, sources insist not: they say it was the camera functional affair found in homes all over the crew’s idea to film in the kitchenette. Whatever country – but over at the Daily Mail, Sarah the truth, Miliband then dug himself in deeper, Vine (wife of Tory Chief Whip Michael Gove) by claiming that the kitchenette is the one he smelt a rat. How odd, she wrote, that a big uses – although in the picture, there’s not a pan family house would have as its heart this or chopping board in sight, and one of the “mean, sterile little box”. If this really was the worktops is piled up with files. Fact is, this Milibands’ kitchen, what cold and joyless debacle has left Miliband looking more out of “aliens” they must be. touch than ever, said Rod Liddle in the same paper. That’s not because he has a big house, Ironically, Thornton had – in the course of that but because although he clearly cares about the interview – said she was braced for personal plight of the poor, he has shown himself, yet attacks. Yet the kitchen assault would have again, to be spectacularly bad at connecting attracted little attention had a close friend of the with them. Working-class voters couldn’t care Milibands’ not intervened, said Rupert Myers in less if he has a big kitchen: they’d have one The Daily Telegraph. Of course this wasn’t their themselves if they could. What grates is “the real kitchen, Times columnist Jenni Russell pretence and the sort-of deceit”.
Divorce: the claims that never die “Dale Vince is livid,” said Rosie – when his son was a year old. Kinchen in The Sunday Times. It is What he doesn’t seem to see is “abhorrent”, he fumes. It is “that his freedom to make “blackmail”. It is “like cashing in a fortuitous choices in life was very old lottery ticket”. He is dependent on Wyatt remaining his referring to the Supreme Court son’s primary carer”. I would have ruling last week which cleared the thought that, “if somebody else way for his ex-wife Kathleen Wyatt brings up your child for you, then to bring a £1.9m claim against him, you should show some gratitude 23 years after they divorced. Vince and generosity”. Besides, the has every right to be furious, said judges indicated that Wyatt would Jan Moir in the Daily Mail. He met get far less than £1.9m. Wyatt in 1981; they married and had a son. By 1984 it was over, Even so, to allow her to claim a though they didn’t divorce until share in a fortune amassed after 1992. Back then, the pair were Vince: now worth £100m her son had grown up makes a New Age travellers; he paid little “mockery of the law”, said The maintenance because he had no money. Years Times. Nowadays, people divorce and “start later, having lived in a trailer powered by a wind afresh” all the time; the law should reflect this. turbine, he set up a wind energy firm, Ecotricity, The ruling is based on the fact that the couple and made a fortune estimated at £100m. When did not make “final financial orders” when they he began to prosper, his son came to live with divorced. This is true of two-thirds of recent him. Wyatt, meanwhile has lived on benefits for divorcees. “The legal path is now clear for them much of her life; in 2011, she decided to sting to seek a share of their ex-spouses’ wealth her ex-husband for some cash. Most people, I regardless of when or how it was created, with suspect, “will be appalled by her actions”. no time limit and no cap.” The ruling establishes a precedent “that will revive thousands of old I’m not so sure, said Deborah Orr in The disputes and create thousands of new ones. And Guardian. Vince believes that “we all have the the only people who are sure to benefit are the right to move on”. And certainly he moved on lawyers hired to drag them through the courts.”
NEWS 23
Wit & Wisdom “Jeremy Clarkson is like Marmite. Disgusting.” Comedian Peter Serafinowicz, quoted in The Times “Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.” Terry Pratchett, from Hogfather, quoted in The Guardian “It’s not worth doing something unless someone, somewhere, would much rather you weren’t doing it.” Terry Pratchett, from the foreword of The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Fantasy, quoted in The Guardian “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” T.S. Eliot, quoted in The Daily Telegraph “Politics is the art of devising temporary remedies for recurring evils.” John Gray, quoted on The Browser “Pay attention to what they tell you to forget.” Poet Muriel Rukeyser, quoted in The Guardian “Don’t ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.” G.K. Chesterton, quoted in The Daily Progress Charlottesville, Virginia “Go out on a Tuesday? Who am I, Charlie Sheen?” Marge Simpson, quoted in The Daily Telegraph “He who does not enjoy his own company is usually right.” Coco Chanel, quoted in the Associated Press
Statistic of the week
Fly-tipping and fast-food litter have both increased by 20% in the past year. It now costs local authorities up to £850m a year to clear up litter. £56m of that goes on clearing up chewing gum. 35% of total litter consists of smokers’ materials. The Independent
21 March 2015 THE WEEK
Sport
24 NEWS
Football: are Manchester United back to their best?
It was the result Manchester United desperately needed, said Henry Winter in The Daily Telegraph. At Old Trafford on Sunday, the team gave a “collective response” to all the flak they have taken, thumping Tottenham 3-0. The side were in such a “good mood” that Wayne Rooney marked his impressive solo goal with a highspirited celebration, “throwing a flurry of punches” and then tumbling backwards to the ground. The United fans “roared” their approval – and they had reason to celebrate. “This was the best United have played under Louis van Gaal.”
League history is fast becoming a burden: his form has dipped steadily in the last six months, and he has moved between different positions, struggling in each one. In his absence, United have rediscovered their “pace”, said Jamie Jackson in The Guardian. In stark contrast to the “torpor” that has afflicted them this season, on Sunday they “bristled with intent and menace”.
Let’s not make too much of one match, said Ian Ladyman in the Daily Mail. Tottenham were uncharacteristically “pitiful”. And United managed a measly three shots – even if they did score For once, things “clicked” for the Red Devils, all of them. Di María is just one of the undersaid Oliver Kay in The Times. Rooney has spent firing signings: Radamel Falcao, a player once too much of the season in an “awkward” regarded as world class, has scored just four Rooney celebrates his goal midfield role – but he is back at the “apex” of the goals this season, and was even demoted to attack, and has now scored five goals in six games. The scorer of United’s under-21 squad earlier this month. Van Gaal isn’t the first goal was the much-maligned Marouane Fellaini, who has helping matters, said David Hytner in The Guardian. Eight often served as the team’s “battering-ram”. On Sunday, however, months into the job, he still “does not know his best team”, and United found a way to use his “belligerence” without “forfeiting he keeps tinkering with the formation. United are fourth in the creativity”. And Michael Carrick thrived in midfield, “setting the table – just two points behind Manchester City – and they have a tempo” and heading home the second goal. Whisper it, but Ángel good chance of qualifying for the Champions League. But in far Di María’s ban was a “blessing in disguise”, said Joe Bernstein in too many matches they have played “safe, sideways football”. The Mail on Sunday. The most expensive player in Premier That never used to be the Manchester United way.
Rugby union: England’s “sharp” new fly-half On Saturday, George Ford delivered a “masterclass”, said Owen Slot in The Times. Minutes before England’s penultimate Six Nations tie, Wales beat Ireland, the tournament favourites, in a thrilling match. If England could beat Scotland convincingly, boosting their points difference, they knew they’d have a good chance of lifting the trophy next weekend. Ford seized the opportunity: the Bath fly-half was a model of “sharpness and clear thinking”. Had his teammates matched his “coolness”, the match would have been settled within 20 minutes and England would have won by a greater margin than 25-13. The fly-half plays a pivotal role in any rugby side, orchestrating attack and defence – and on days like this, it’s clear that Ford is the man for the job.
“slight”, there can be no doubt about his “mental hardness”: nothing fazes him. Perhaps that’s because he has spent much of his life surrounded by rugby stars – when Ford was a child, his father Mike was the defensive coach for Ireland and England, and is currently head coach of Bath.
Until four months ago, when he made his first start, Ford was a bit-player in the England side, said Andy Bull in The Guardian. Stuart Lancaster had been building the team around Saracens fly-half Owen Farrell – but when Farrell’s form collapsed, Ford was promoted, and since then he has played “every minute of every match but one”. He’s quickly shown Ford: “different class” himself to be the “real deal”: no other English player can match his ability to “control a game with his kicking” or Ford doesn’t look like a typical modern rugby player, said Paul “switch between styles of play”. There’s room for improvement Rees in The Guardian. At 5ft 9in, the 22-year-old is often the yet, said Stuart Barnes in The Sunday Times. Like the rest of the shortest man on the pitch, and his upper body “does not bear the team, Ford has to work on his defending. But he’s still in “a telltale signs of hours spent pumping iron”. But if he appears different class to anyone else on the field”.
Lewis Hamilton: too fast for Formula One?
Sporting headlines
The F1 season is just one week 1,000 people, the W06 is the old. But has it already ceased to successor to the car that helped be exciting, asked Daniel Mercedes dominate F1 last Johnson in The Daily Telegraph. season – and what really sets it In Sunday’s Australian Grand apart is its “supremacy” on Prix, Lewis Hamilton “obliterated medium and high-speed cornthe opposition”. The 1.3-second ers. Since the introduction of margin of victory over Nico hybrid engine power last year, Rosberg, his Mercedes the other teams have struggled teammate, may have appeared to adjust to the “fiendish” new tight, but the race itself was technology, said Kevin Eason in Hamilton: won “at a canter” anything but: Hamilton “took it The Times. But Mercedes’s at a canter”. Last season, when he picked up his dominance is a terrifying prospect for the F1 second championship, the 30-year-old looked authorities and broadcasters, who worry that dangerous enough. This time, he is “well on the viewers will “turn off in droves”. Christian way to making himself indestructible”. Horner, the boss of Red Bull’s F1 team, has even called for the sport to reduce Mercedes’s engine Hamilton is a truly gifted driver, said Paul power. That’s an absurd suggestion: it would be Weaver in The Guardian. But he has an extra like telling Usain Bolt to hop to the 100m finish advantage: he is “driving the strongest car out line “because he is too fast”. there”. The product of more than £1bn and
Rugby union In the Six Nations, Wales beat Ireland 23-16, and France beat Italy 29-0. Exeter beat Leicester 30-22 in the semi-finals of the LV Cup, and Saracens beat Northampton 24-20. Football Sunderland sacked Gus Poyet and appointed Dick Advocaat as their manager until the end of the season. In the Premier League, Burnley beat Man City 1-0. Chelsea drew 1-1 with Southampton. Arsenal beat West Ham 3-0. Golf Jordan Spieth won the Valspar Championship, beating Patrick Reed and Sean O’Hair in a play-off.
THE WEEK 21 March 2015
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LETTERS Pick of the week’s correspondence To The Daily Telegraph
During Tony Blair’s tenure as Middle East “peace” envoy, Egypt had a military coup, Libya collapsed into anarchy, Syria fell into terrible civil war, Iraq fared little better, Islamic State created itself, Iran more or less developed a nuclear weapon, and Israel made it clear with its settlements that it does not contemplate a two-state solution. Whoever appointed him must have had a sense of humour. Charles D.B. Pugh, London
Plagiarism in pop
To The Daily Telegraph
You report that a court has ruled that Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams plagiarised Marvin Gaye’s Got to Give It Up in their 2013 hit Blurred Lines. A few years ago, Bob Dylan included the song Beyond the Horizon on his album Modern Times. When it was shown to be very similar to a famous song, Red Sails in the Sunset – written by my father, Jimmy Kennedy, and Will Grosz – this was acknowledged and a royalty paid. There are many examples of unintentional as well as intentional plagiarism in the writing of pop songs, making it a challenge to be original. During the 1930s, the so-called golden age of songwriting, the leading publisher David Day used to joke that when an aspiring songwriter asked him if he liked their new song, he would reply: “Like it? I’ve always liked it!” The lines have been blurred for a long time. Jimmy Kennedy Jr, Vivès, Pyrénées-Orientales, France
The elderly struggle, too To The Guardian
At a maximum of £7,500 per year (2016 figures), the UK state pension is one of the worst in Europe. In France it is £15,000, Spain £26,000. If the winter fuel payment were rolled into the pension we would still be one of the worst off. The free bus pass doesn’t cost the state anything unless it is used. And it is used mainly by poorer pensioners for local travel: shopping, doctor, hospital, etc. It should really
Exchange of the week
Gunning for Clarkson To The Guardian
Simon Jenkins may be right in asking “What presenter has not wanted to punch a producer from time to time?” Speaking from the perspective of a long-serving producer, I can say that it is frequently a mutual feeling. Working with the inflated egos of many presenters requires endless patience and the tact of a diplomat. They are frequently drunk on the adulation of constantly being the centre of attention, and the huge difference in salaries can make the star feel that their producer is actually an assistant. Good reporters and presenters understand that the producer has the benefit of looking at their work with an objective approach. I look forward to some long-suffering producer pouring very cold water over the head of some prima-donna-ish presenter – no matter how much money his show makes. Jack Saltman, former producer, Panorama, and editor of This Week To The Guardian
Before your columnists paste in splenetic denunciations of their bête noire they should remember that Top Gear is broadcast in more than 50 countries; syndicated to 200 territories; and has an audience of 350 million. We can assume that not all of them are Nigel Farage switching a warehouse-full of TVs on and off. For all the pious disdain for Jeremy Clarkson as sexist, racist, “boorish” etc, it seems that Clarkson and Top Gear are more internationalist and multicultural, and do far more for global colour-blind outreach, than any other creative effort you could name. Robert Frazer, Salford be limited to local buses, not be nationwide. We hear a lot about the good effect of low interest rates: a typical mortgage now costs £1,000 per year. However, for every borrower there are three savers, many of them pensioners. Each savings account is about £40,000£50,000, now producing £10 per week. A few years ago, borrowers would be paying £2,000-plus per year and savers would get about £40 per week. Moreover, when the 70-plus generation were bringing up families, they lived frugally. Few of us could afford foreign holidays or the latest electronic gizmo. And mortgage costs were crippling. So please stop the continual sniping at the older generation. Mike McMorran, Bournemouth
Dealing with pests
To The Daily Telegraph
British gardeners have always been plagued by slugs and snails, but there are many ways to avoid these pests. At Arundel Castle, where I
Opera is not elitist To The Guardian
Opera remains the preserve of the rich? A ticket to see Opera North at Leeds Grand Theatre costs £15; a ticket to watch Leeds United at Elland Road costs £36. Simple maths will tell you that £15 for three hours of sublime music is better value than £36 for 90 minutes of mediocre football. Mary Barber, Huddersfield
Nimbys aren’t all selfish
To The Times
Sir Stuart Lipton (letter, 12 Mar) uses the term “Nimby” to mean anyone opposing development in their immediate area. Yet by no means all objectors are motivated by selfishness. People generally know their area as well or better than architects and planners, and are quite capable of distinguishing between good and bad schemes. Their ability to prevent development is, I suggest, exaggerated. What is particularly depressing is that individuals and parish councils often make constructive suggestions, but their views are disregarded. Small wonder, then, that the planning process is viewed by many with cynicism, and the so-called Nimbys resort to blanket opposition. Michael Lockett, Palgrave, Norfolk
am chief gardener, we have found the use of organic slug pellets effective, but if you can get hold of some kelp, do scatter this around the plants, as the salt in the seaweed is a very good deterrent – just make sure you do not put this Punchy Prescott directly onto the plants. To The Times Keep your garden tidy to After John Prescott punched reduce the number of hiding a stranger in 2001, the Prime places, and scatter eggshells Minister (Tony Blair) jocularly or gravel around your plants commented: “John’s being to deter slugs and snails. John.” Prescott was not You could also put copper reprimanded and remained bracelets around your his deputy for another six favourite plants, though this years. Why is there one rule can be rather expensive. for politicians and another for Other things to try are TV presenters? compressed sheep’s wool, Tom Bower, London which you can scatter around your plants, or nematodes, which you water onto the soil around your plants. Martin Duncan, Arundel, West “Mom usually chews it up for us” Sussex
● Letters have been edited
21 March 2015 THE WEEK
© SPAULDING/THE NEW YORKER COLLECTION/ WWW.CARTOONBANK.COM
Blair the “peace” envoy
27
ARTS Review of reviews: Books Book of the week Universal Man: The Seven Lives of John Maynard Keynes
by Richard Davenport-Hines William Collins 432pp £18.99 The Week bookshop £14.99 (incl. p&p)
A biography of John Maynard Keynes which “largely ignores the economics might seem like a biography of Mozart which skips over the music”, said Tim Bouverie in The Daily Telegraph. “But, as Richard Davenport-Hines argues in his sprightly Life, or Lives, Keynes was a man so interesting, diverse and important” that there is more than enough left over to fill a book. As his fellow Bloomsbury group member Leonard Woolf wrote, Keynes was “a don, a civil servant, a speculator, a businessman, a journalist, a writer, a farmer, a picture dealer, a statesman, a theatrical manager, a book collector and half a dozen other things”. Today Keynes is best known as the author of The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, which revolutionised economics in the 1930s, and as an architect of the postwar economic order. But Davenport-Hines describes the “wider life” in which his genius was rooted, with seven thematic chapters – on “Keynes the Altruist, the Boy Prodigy, the Official, the Public Man, the Lover, the Connoisseur and the Envoy”.
“What do the Stable Boy of Park Lane, the Soldier of the Baths, the Bootmaker of Bordeaux and the Lift Boy of Vauxhall have in common?” asked Dominic Sandbrook in The Sunday Times. They were all seduced by Keynes, who, for somebody born into Victorian Britain in 1883, had an exciting sex life, documented with great thoroughness. He “developed a taste for homosexuality at Eton and Cambridge”, where at one stage he was sleeping with both Strachey brothers, Lytton and James. In 1925, Keynes married the Russian ballerina Lydia Lopokova, with whom he also had a passionate physical relationship. (“I want to be foxed and gobbled abundantly,” he wrote to her while away in Italy.) Davenport-Hines, an “amusing, elegant” writer, argues that all this is more than mere “salacious gossip” – because Keynes’s sex life was “a central element of his Liberalism, rooted in a rationalistic, tolerant and optimistic view of the world”. Davenport-Hines is “good” on Keynes at the Versailles peace conference, said Philip Collins in The Times – and on his role in the formation of the Arts Council. His best chapter, though, is the last, in which Keynes works himself into an early grave setting up the postwar Lend-Lease deal between the US and Britain, as well as the World Bank and the IMF. “Keynes possessed a largeness of mind that one can only call noble,” said Paul Johnson in Literary Review. “This admirable book does him justice.”
Landmarks
Novel of the week
by Robert Macfarlane Hamish Hamilton 400pp £20
Dancing in the Dark
The Week bookshop £16 (incl. p&p)
© BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY
29
Robert Macfarlane is a Cambridge don, a naturalist, and a writer “whose books blend a deep scholarship of the countryside with an adventurous approach, all rendered in immaculate, delicious prose”, said Horatio Clare in The Daily Telegraph. His new book, following on from his “smash hit” The Old Ways, “takes his fascination with the language of the natural world to a new level”. Landmarks is partly a series of essays on the nature writers he most admires – including Roger Deakin, the Suffolk ecologist and wild swimmer, and J.A. Baker, author of The Peregrine. But the book is also made up of a series of glossaries of old country terms, from Gaelic, Irish, Manx, Welsh and British county dialects. “Suppose you jump into a lake or pond and muck about. If you are in Shetland you are ‘bumbelling’. In other parts of Scotland you are ‘dooking’, in Galloway you are ‘jabblin’ or ‘puddling’, in Northern Ireland you ‘skite’, and in Kent you ‘squashle’.” The tone of Landmarks is “generous, sensitive, yielding always to the words of others even while Macfarlane’s own exquisite feel for language and its inferences carries us along”, said Kirsty Gunn in The Observer. It was inspired by Macfarlane’s fear that we are losing access to the language of the countryside: the latest edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary, he tells us, deleted the words acorn, adder, pasture and willow, replacing them with terms such as bullet point and chat room. I very much enjoyed reading his glossaries, but there “are just too many words here”, said James McConnachie in The Sunday Times. The essays are “over-ornamented”. Macfarlane’s style “gets lusher and more selfconscious with each successive book”. Landmarks is “a faltering in form from a fine – sometimes too fine – writer”.
by Karl Ove Knausgård Harvill Secker 560pp £17.99 The Week bookshop £14.99 (incl. p&p)
The Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgård “has achieved something you would think was impossible”, said John Carey in The Sunday Times. He has written “a six-volume, 3,600page account of his not very eventful life” – published as fiction, but cleaving very close to the truth – and made it “totally compelling”. Not everyone agrees: some see his books as “the literary equivalent of junk food”. But “if the function of literature is to take you out of your own life and involve you in someone else’s”, then his sequence, titled My Struggle, “is literature”. At the start of the fourth book, Dancing in the Dark, “Knausgård is on the cusp of manhood”, said Jon Day in the FT. His parents have split up, and he decides to take a job at an isolated rural school. “He is a hopeless and irresponsible teacher: he fantasises about his students, gets drunk and spends most of his time going to parties.” Knausgård’s prose is “clunky” and clichéd. Yet that doesn’t seem to matter: as fans of My Struggle know, this “encyclopaedic catalogue of inconsequential moments” feels “far greater than the sum of its parts”.
To order these titles at the above discounts, or any other book in print, visit the online bookshop at www.theweek.co.uk/bookshop, or tel 0843-060 0020. Free p&p for UK customers. For p&p in Europe, add 20% of the cost of the order, and 35% in the rest of the world.
21 March 2015 THE WEEK
Drama
ARTS 31
Theatre: Radiant Vermin
Soho Theatre, London W1 (020-7478 0100, www.sohotheatre.com)
Running time: 1hr 30mins
★★★
How far would you go to get a realise that their “room-by-room roof over your head? That is the creation of a domestic palace question posed by a clutch of lively depends on their willingness to new plays in London, said Sarah murder homeless people”. Hemming in the FT. At the Soon enough the acquisitive duo Almeida, Mike Bartlett’s “seriously are “herding the homeless” home disturbing” Game sees a young each night, said Matt Trueman on couple accept a swish house in WhatsOnStage.com. “Zing. New return for becoming live targets for bathroom. Zing. New car.” It’s thrill-seeking wealthy people “piquant” satire, heaving with armed with tranquilliser guns. literary allusions from J.G. Ballard Matt Hartley’s more conventional to Cinderella (“You shall go to Deposit, at the Hampstead Farrow and Ball”). David Theatre, involves two couples Mercatali’s perky production sharing a one-bed flat as they save boasts clever, effective for separate homes. But in Philip performances from Gemma Whelan and Verey: homicidal homeowners Ridley’s Radiant Vermin – another Whelan and Sean Michael Verey “dystopian fantasy” on the housing crisis – the young couple at as the homicidal homeowners. But because this “freaky fable” the centre of the play, far from being victims, are “perpetrators of never worries too much about plausibility, it is “hard to feel as unspeakable acts”. It is a “deeply macabre, stingingly funny” and complicit as Ridley wants us to”, said Dominic Maxwell in The “deliberately outrageous” fairy tale. Times. The piece has “verve”, and is played with gusto, but it is Ridley’s “darkly funny morality play” begins with an engaging entertaining rather than profound. young couple, Jill and Ollie, bouncing on stage to re-enact the tale of how they managed to get their “dream home”, said Michael The week’s other opening Billington in The Guardian. First they are approached by a Miss Dracula Dee, a woman of almost diabolical mysteriousness, who appears New Vic Theatre, Newcastle-under-Lyme (01782-717962) to be part of some kind of secret government scheme, and who Bram Stoker’s novel becomes an “all-round sensory experience” offers them a property perfectly suited to their needs, yet requiring in this fine stage adaptation by Theresa Heskins. The staging is total refurbishment. And refurbishment is what they start to get marked by its “spareness and boldness”. It also has “electrifying when Ollie accidentally kills a local vagrant: the house, just like sound design” and “exciting” acrobatics (Observer). that, miraculously gets a posh new kitchen. Gradually, the pair
CDs of the week: three new releases Van Morrison: Duets: Re-working the Catalogue RCA £10.99
★★★
Courtney Barnett: Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit House Anxiety/ Marathon £8.99
Elgar: Symphony No 1; Cockaigne Overture, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, cond Vasily Petrenko Onyx £12.99
Courtney Barnett’s lyrical mix of “selfdeprecation, bravado and introspection” – and musical influences ranging from garage-punk to mid-1960s pop – have won her a loyal following since the Australian began touring internationally in 2013, said Jon Pareles in The New York Times. The songs on this, her debut album, are “living proof that the old indie-rock format – smart, scrappy guitar-based songs played in real time – can still say something”. Barnett’s music is often dubbed “slackerrock”, said Dan Cairns in The Sunday Times – and there is certainly a “winning slouch” to tracks such as Elevator Operator and Aqua Profunda!. But listen to Depreston, where “textures of heart-tugging warmth gather around a beautiful narrative vocal about first-time buyers in a dead-end suburb”, and you will never again use “slacker” to describe “a musician of such subtlety and depth”. “If you can’t see me, I can’t see you,” runs the chorus on another track, Dead Fox. “Well, I can see you, Courtney Barnett, and you’re phenomenal.”
On disc, Vasily Petrenko is best known for his recordings of Russian works, notably the fine series of Shostakovich symphonies he has completed for Naxos with his Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, said Geoffrey Norris in The Daily Telegraph. But this version of Elgar’s First Symphony confirms Petrenko’s affinity for the great Englishman. The young Russian “exerts a natural pliability on the phrasing, which lends the symphony the suppleness that is quintessential to its fabric”. And the RLPO plays with “clarity of texture, a fullness and glow of tone and well-honed emotion”. Petrenko is “expansive in the opening andante, which sounds both ‘nobile’ and ‘semplice’ without pomposity”, said Hugh Canning in The Sunday Times. The allegro molto scherzo “dances, with notably agile playing from the woodwinds; and the great adagio unfolds with a broad rapture that is as freshly conceived as it is moving”. And as a welcome bonus, this “outstanding disc opens with a rollicking account of Cockaigne, one of the wittiest I know”.
★★★★
With “typical perversity”, Van Morrison has marked his move to a new label, RCA, by looking backwards, said Ludovic HunterTilney in the FT: he has turned 16 of his old songs into “lushly arranged” jazz and R&B duets featuring a diverse crew of guest vocalists. Carrying a Torch sounds “even mushier” with jazz singer Clare Teal; Mavis Staples “proves an ideal foil” on the gospel-influenced If I Ever Needed Someone and P.J. Proby is “the wittily inevitable choice” for Whatever Happened to P.J. Proby. Yet among all these voices, “Van Morrison’s stands out: at 69 he remains a marvellously animated singer”. He’s also a notorious grouch, said Adrian Thrills in the Daily Mail – but a grouch with “a rare ability to convey a sense of unbridled joy in his music”. Other highlights include duets with George Benson, Bobby Womack, Mick Hucknall, and in particular Michael Bublé; the Canadian is “a revelation” on Real Real Gone, “a driving R&B rave-up now given a vibrant northern soul makeover”.
★★★★
Stars reflect the overall quality of reviews and our own independent assessment (4 stars=don’t miss; 1 star=don’t bother)
21 March 2015 THE WEEK
Film
32 ARTS Suite Française Dir: Saul Dibb 1hr 47mins (15) Forbidden love in occupied France ★★
Run All Night Dir: Jaume Collet-Serra 1hr 54mins (15) Liam Neeson on the rampage again ★★
X+Y Dir: Morgan Matthews 1hr 51mins (12A) Portrait of the autist as a young man ★★★★
When acclaimed novels are made into films they often turn out to be “stinkers”, said Nigel Andrews in the FT. Alas, this version of Irène Némirovsky’s Suite Française is no exception. The movie centres on the second half of that book – the love affair between an unhappily married Frenchwoman (Michelle Williams) and the dashing but sensitive Nazi officer (Matthias Schoenaerts) who’s billeted in her home in the occupied rural town of Bussy. With “farm workers in caps stealing chickens, ramrod-straight disapproving ladies and glowering French people in the dusty town square”, this is basically a very long Stella Artois advert, said Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian. There’s zero chemistry between the two leads; only Kristin Scott Thomas, as the heroine’s terrifying mother-in-law, comes out of it well. Worst of all is Williams’s ponderous voiceover explaining what’s going on, said Tim Robey in The Daily Telegraph. (“I was meant to resent him,” she confides. “Yet there was relief in his presence...”) The movie isn’t as bad as all that, said Deborah Ross in The Spectator. It’s “handsome” and “well played”. The problem is that anyone who has read the book will be hoping for something a little more profound. Liam Neeson’s unexpected reinvention continues. The actor, once known for his serious dramatic roles in the likes of Lamb and Schindler’s List, now specialises in grizzled action heroes, said Henry Fitzherbert in the Daily Express. In Taken, he played a former CIA man tracking down his kidnapped daughter. Now, in Run All Night, he is Jimmy Conlon, a washed-up Mob hitman who must protect his son from his former boss (a “chilling” Ed Harris). Cue lots of racing around punching and shooting bad guys. Is Neeson just playing the same role over and over? Not quite, said Chris Hewitt in Empire. For one thing, he’s wearing a different coat in this film; for another, Conlon is “a more interesting and flawed character” than Taken’s hero. What we have here is a “virtually beat for beat remake” of Road to Perdition, and it starts well, with a “decent down and dirty tone”. It’s just a shame it ends in action movie nonsense. The plot doesn’t hold together, said Geoffrey Macnab in The Independent. But, stunningly shot in New York, this noirish film is a cut above some of Neeson’s recent vehicles. A movie about an autistic kid who’s a maths genius: that’s the rather stale way this debut feature from British documentary-maker Morgan Matthews is being billed, said Tim Robey in The Daily Telegraph. It’s actually more interesting than that. It poses a question other films like it have shirked: what if you are on the autism spectrum, but aren’t quite a genius? X+Y tells the story of Nathan (Asa Butterfield), an autistic Yorkshire teenager who, though very good at algebra, may not be good enough to triumph at the International Mathematical Olympiad. In this likeable film, which Matthews developed from his own 2007 documentary Beautiful Young Minds, Sally Hawkins shines as Nathan’s patient mother, as does Rafe Spall in a cameo as Nathan’s crotchety but kindly mentor, said Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian. This “imaginative, supple” movie manages to sidestep every expected cliché, said Nigel Andrews in the FT. By the end, the story is tied up a little too neatly, but overall, it is “a British film to savour”.
Why the next Bond villain won’t be Mexican – but one of the Bond girls will be Here’s one thing we know for certain about the next James Bond film, said Nick Allen in The Daily Telegraph: the villain will on no account be Mexican. We know that because quite a few of the Sony company emails that were maliciously leaked by computer hackers at the end of last year related to Spectre, the 24th film in the Bond franchise. And from them we also learn that a joint production team from Sony and MGM struck a deal with the Mexican government: they would shoot the opening scene in Mexico City and in return they would receive tax breaks worth a whopping $20m.
was just the beginning, however. The suits behind Spectre also had to pledge that the film’s villainess, Sciarra, would not be Mexican... but that one of the glamorous “Bond girls” would be. (Since then, the Mexican actress Stephanie Sigman has been cast in the role.) They also had to alter the plot, so that the mayor of Mexico City would no longer be a target.
Such deals are nothing new in Hollywood: during the making of the last Bond film, Skyfall, one Indian minister made so many demands on the film-makers that a scene that was going to be shot in India was relocated to Turkey. And in Mexico, as elsewhere, the Mexico is badly in need of some good PR: over the explanation for such deals is simply the money, said Sigman: Bond girl past decade its reputation has been devastated by a Jack Crone in the Daily Mail. The leaked emails reveal bloody drugs war. So one condition set by the government was that the producers were panicking at the prospect of Spectre that the footage should include shots of the capital’s “modern” becoming one of the most expensive films ever made. No wonder skyline, and be designed to show the city in a positive light. That the Mexican deal proved irresistible.
THE WEEK 21 March 2015
Art
ARTS 33
Exhibition of the week Leonora Carrington Tate Liverpool, Liverpool (0151-702 7400, www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-liverpool). Until 31 May Although little known in this country, the surrealist Leonora Carrington “added an improbably colourful chapter to the history of modern culture”, said Boyd Tonkin in The Independent. Now a retrospective at Tate Liverpool aims to shed new light on her art – which drew on “legend, lore and ritual”, weaving these sources into “an ecstatic, enigmatic bestiary”. Carrington’s life, meanwhile, “can sound quite as surreal as her art”. After a comfortable childhood in rural Lancashire, she studied art in London, where she met the German surrealist painter Max Ernst. The two shared a similar style, and it wasn’t long before they fell in love and eloped to Paris. Any hopes of a lasting relationship were dashed when war broke out. Ernst was arrested first by the French as an enemy alien, then by the Nazis for his supposedly “deviant” art. Carrington suffered a breakdown, but after a “cloak and dagger escape”, managed to flee to Mexico City, where she mixed with other exiled surrealists. After the War, she remained in Mexico, where she wrote and painted prolifically until her death in 2011.
overactive, febrile imagination”. At her best, as in her painting And Then We Saw the Daughters of the Minotaur, she was a “brilliant fabricator of memorable, poetic, dream-like images”. Her most impressive works, such as The Temptation of St Anthony and The Pomps of the Subsoil, are “suffused with a palpable sense of magic, mythology and nocturnal, shapeshifting possibility”. However, there is a “meaninglessness” to much of the work. She often borrows tropes from other surrealists such as Ernst, Dalí or de Chirico, “without making them her own”.
Technically, Carrington’s paintings can look “awkward, fragmented and bitty”, said Rachel CampbellJohnston in The Times. But her strengths lay in the “idiosyncrasy of her vision and the variety of materials she applied it to”. In this “somewhat random” survey of her career, we see puppets on strings; her “extraordinary” designs for papiermâché hats; tapestries; and even a film. A highlight is The Magical World of the Mayas, an enormous mural commissioned by Mexico’s National Museum of Anthropology The Giantess (The Guardian of the Egg), c.1947 Carrington’s biography is certainly a in 1963. At the very least, this show “compelling story”, said Alastair is proof of Carrington’s Sooke in The Daily Telegraph. But I’m not so sure about her art. “exhilarating imagination”: it is a “firm step” towards On this evidence, it seems she was just “a minor artist with an establishing her in our “modern pantheon” of artists.
Where to buy…
Jack Milroy at Art First Destroying books has long been synonymous with anti-intellectual repression, the preserve of religious and political extremists. Septuagenarian artist Jack Milroy turns these associations on their head to create intriguing and distinctive art. With a typical work, he will take something like a picture book of flora and fauna and chop around the illustrations until he is left with an intricate collage resembling a garden. This style might sail dangerously close to kitsch, were it not for the political and social subtexts at play: in this show, we see Second World War fighter planes zooming off the pages of an aircraft-spotting manual, and rows of illustrated sardines leaping from their tins. These works might seem innocent at first, but the impression of naivety masks subtle
One Hundred Days of Lunch (2014): cut and constructed sardine cans, £14,000
ruminations on the arms trade and climate change. Best on show here are five sets of postcards by Matisse hacked to pieces in iconoclastic homage to the master of the cut-out collage. Prices range from £2,000 to £19,000. 21 Eastcastle Street, London W1 (020-7734 0386). Until 1 May.
He died more than 25 years ago, but Salvador Dalí “may be about to become a father for the first time”, says Alistair Dawber in The Independent. The surrealist artist was devoted to his wife and muse Gala (right), but reportedly suffered from a pronounced fear of female genitalia; at any rate, he is “understood to have consented to her numerous affairs”. However, if a suit brought before a judge in Madrid last week is to be believed, Dalí also had at least one affair of his own. María Pilar Abel Martínez, 59, claims that her mother had a relationship with Dalí in 1955, resulting in her own birth in 1956. The pair allegedly became lovers in Port Lligat, the Catalan village where Dalí built a house. Martínez’s lawyer has asked the court for tests to compare her DNA with a sample of Dalí’s hair. She has sued the Dalí Foundation, which manages the artist’s estate. If she is confirmed as his daughter, Martínez could be entitled to part of the fortune that Dalí left on his death in 1989.
21 March 2015 THE WEEK
© ESTATE OF LEOORA CARRINGTON / ARS, NY AND DACS, LONDON 2015.
Dalí’s “daughter”
The Week reviews an exhibition in a private gallery
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The List
35
The Scottish author Andrew O’Hagan, whose first novel Our Fathers was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, picks five books he loves. His latest novel, The Illuminations, is published by Faber at £17.99
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, 1886 (Penguin Classics £4.99). It’s not like a story so much as a myth, and I love the way it creeps inside your head and stays there. Stevenson is just such a brilliant writer, sentence by sentence giving a shape to something unthinkable. Collected Poems by Wallace Stevens, 1954 (Faber £20). This American genius wrote poems full of the excesses of the imagination, but with a delicacy and a beauty that transforms reality. From a young age, I wanted to live in a world like
Stevens’s poems, a place of turquoise seas, peppermint umbrellas, and an Emperor of Ice-Cream. The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope, 1875 (Vintage Classics £8.99). I’m suddenly in the mood for novels that go to the upper reaches of society. Trollope knew his way around a parliamentary chamber, a gentlemen’s club, a country supper party, and a business meeting, and I feel we could do with a few big novels like that now. Libra by Don DeLillo, 1988 (Penguin £8.99). Here’s a novelist who turns style into a
performance and makes ideas entertaining. This one is a fictional take on the Kennedy assassination and it gets closer to some essential truth about the matter – much closer than any non-fiction study or report. The Railway Children by E. Nesbit, 1906 (Oxford University Press £6.99). This book brings me to tears without even trying. It’s something about the decency in it, the sense that justice will come round for good people in the end. Bit of a fantasy, of course, but a gift to imaginative children and sentimental fathers everywhere.
Titles in print are available from The Week bookshop on 0843-060 0020. For out-of-print books visit www.bibliofind.com
The Week’s guide to what’s worth seeing and reading Last chance
imagines the weekly meetings between Elizabeth II and her prime ministers. From 21 April, Apollo, London W1 (0844-482 9671).
A Victorian Obsession: The Pérez Simón Collection at Leighton House, London W14 (020-7602 3316). One of the largest private collections of 19th century British art outside the UK is on display at Lord Leighton’s home. “If you love Victoriana, this show is unmissable” (Evening Standard). Ends 6 April.
Portishead, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds and alt-J are headlining at Latitude, which celebrates its tenth anniversary this year. There will be the usual mix of music, comedy, theatre and poetry, plus – new for 2015 – wild swimming and hot tubs. 16-19 July, Latitude, Henham Park, Suffolk (0871-220 0260, www.latitudefestival.com).
Book now
Antony Sher plays Willy Loman in Gregory Doran’s revival of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. Harriet Walter is his hardpressed, loyal wife. 26 Mar-2 May, Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon (0844-800 1110).
Just out in paperback
The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan (Vintage £8.99). Flanagan’s “devastatingly beautiful” novel follows an army surgeon captured as a Japanese prisoner of war on the Burma death railway (Sunday Times).
Scott Thomas stars in The Audience
Kristin Scott Thomas will star as the Queen in Peter Morgan’s hit play The Audience, which
The Archers: what happened last week
David tells Ruth to stay up North, the flood has made Ambridge look like a war zone. Bert’s bungalow is like a cess pit and he’s lost everything. He doesn’t have the heart to tell Freda, who has pneumonia in hospital. David assures Bert that the insurance will cover some items. Pip’s stressed because there is nowhere to put the milk. David’s delighted when Ruth shows up. Tom brings bales of silage to Brookfield. Ruth’s grateful, but exhausted Pip says it’s not enough. Pip breaks down, overcome by stress. To everyone’s relief, the milk tanker arrives. Adam surveys the damage at Woodbine Cottage, which includes slurry in the hot tub. Clarrie’s annoyed with Eddie for failing to renew the insurance. They won’t be able to replace the ruined furniture. Fallon’s determined to keep The Bull open, despite the cellar being full of water. Lynda puts up missing posters for Scruff. Ruth tells David they belong at Brookfield; it’s their home. Bert moves into Ben’s room at Brookfield, but misses Freda. David and Ruth promise to give his bungalow a makeover. Shula brings terrible news. Freda’s died of a heart attack. Bert sobs. Jill tells him they’re not leaving Brookfield and promises Bert he won’t be alone.
Television Programmes
Selling Off Britain Will
Hutton warns that the sale of British assets for easy profits is creating a dumbed-down, low-wage society. Sat 21 Mar, C4 7.05pm (55mins).
Richard III: The Princes In the Tower In the week of
Richard III’s reinterment, this documentary looks at whether Richard really did kill his nephews. With David Starkey and others. Sat 21 Mar, C4 9pm (60mins). C4 is broadcasting Richard’s reburial service live on Sun and Thur.
Portillo’s State Secrets
In this ten-part series former MP Michael Portillo digs out stories from once-classified documents. Daily from Mon 23 Mar, BBC2 6.30pm (30mins).
Storyville: Masterspy of Moscow Film about the Cold
War spy George Blake, who betrayed his colleagues to the KGB. Sentenced to 42 years in jail, Blake escaped and fled to Russia. Mon 23 Mar, BBC4 9pm (90mins).
Unreported World: The City that Beat Isis The
foreign-affairs series returns with a film about the battle between Kurdish fighters and Isis for the Syrian town of Kobane. Fri 27 Mar, C4 7.35pm (25mins).
Films
The Producers (1968) Mel
Brooks’s satire stars Gene Wilder as a producer hoping to make money from a surefire flop: a musical about the Nazis. Sun 22 Mar, Film4 11am (120mins).
The Way Back (2010) Peter
Weir’s film is based on the true story of a group of prisoners who escaped a Siberian gulag and walked to India. With Colin Farrell. Tue 24 Mar, Film4 6.35pm (155mins).
Coming up for auction
Sotheby’s Made in Britain auction returns for a second year to sell British art, design, photography and ceramics. Estimates range from £200 to £100,000. Among the highlights is a group of Grosvenor School linocuts, including The Tube Station by Cyril Edward Power (est. £35,000), and an important collection of Henry Moore prints. 25 March, Sotheby’s, London W1 (020-7293 5000).
21 March 2015 THE WEEK
O’HAGAN: © TRICIA MALLEY ROSS GILLESPIE; THE AUDIENCE: © JASON BELL
Best books… Andrew O’Hagan
Best properties
36 London properties under £1 million
▲ Islington: New North Road, N1. A fabulous splitlevel maisonette, set over the lower and raised ground floors with sole access to a large garden. The flat is close to the shops and bars of Upper Street, and Angel and Highbury & Islington stations. 2 double beds, family bath, kitchen, large recep, garden. £725,000 share of freehold; Cluttons (020-7354 6666).
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Holland Park: Russell Road, W14. An immaculate, light flat on this tree-lined road within easy walking distance of Holland Park, opposite Kensington Olympia station and not far from Kensington High Street. Master bed, 1 further double bed, family bath, kitchen, large recep, mezzanine study, communal garden. £895,000 share of freehold; Knight Frank (020-7938 4311). ▲
Wood Green: Palace Gates Road, Alexandra Park, N22. A contemporary newbuild house, finished to an excellent standard, less than 100m from Alexandra Palace overground station and close to Alexandra Park and the palace itself. 2 double beds, large bathroom, kitchen, double recep, garden, parking. £850,000 freehold; Hamptons International (0208883 5997).
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Clapham/Battersea: Robertson Street, SW8. A stunning, spacious family house in the Diamond Conservation Area, just a short walk from Clapham Old Town and Battersea Park. Master bed, 2 further double beds, family bath, large dining/kitchen, double recep, WC, lovely garden. £929,950 freehold; Hamptons International (020-7498 8686).
THE WEEK 21 March 2015
on the market
37
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Chelsea: Eaton Square, SW1. An elegant apartment on the raised ground floor of a handsome, stucco-fronted, Grade II* building overlooking Eaton Square gardens to the front and private gardens to the rear. The flat benefits from high ceilings, period features and plenty of light throughout, and is close to the shops, restaurants and transport hub of Sloane Square. The lease is unenfranchisable and expires in 2029. Master bed, bathroom, kitchen, large recep, communal garden, porter. £599,950 leasehold; Hamptons International (020-7591 7333).
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Fulham: St Olaf’s Road, SW6. A light ground-floor flat with a private southwestfacing garden in this popular mansion block in the Munster Village, in easy reach of Fulham Broadway and Parsons Green. Master bed, 1 further double bed, family bath, large open-plan kitchen/recep with doors leading to the garden. £695,000 share of freehold; Douglas & Gordon (020-7731 4391).
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Spitalfields: Wesley Court, Hanbury Street, E1. This Grade II building in the heart of Spitalfields has been carefully converted into 7 flats and a community hall, and is due to be completed this summer. Each flat has original features with contemporary finishes, and some have terraces. From £575,000 leasehold for a 1-bed flat, up to £965,000 leasehold for a 2-bed flat; Fyfe McDade (020-7613 4044).
▲ Putney: Carlton Drive, SW15. This smart 2-bed apartment is part of a beautifully converted Victorian villa, ideally placed just off Putney Hill, close to Putney High Street as well as Putney and East Putney stations. It is also within walking distance of Putney Heath and Wandsworth Park. Master bed suite with balcony, 1 further bed, shower room, kitchen/ recep, dining room. £875,000 leasehold; Douglas & Gordon (020-8788 3000). 21 March 2015 THE WEEK
LEISURE Food & Drink
39
What the experts recommend: London openings Lure Fish Kitchen 56 Chetwynd Road, London NW5 (020-7267 0163) We Corens “come from fish”, says Giles Coren in The Times. Not just in the evolutionary sense, but culturally: my great-grandfather worked in fish shops after arriving from Poland, and later set up a couple of his own. In fact, it was only when the fish trade began to falter in the 1960s that the Corens were “forced into journalism to try to make ends meet”. Having recently reclaimed some of that heritage by investing in a small chain of fish and chip restaurants (outside London), I was loath to review Lure at all, let alone positively. It is, after all, a rival. But the fact is that every time I eat there (which is often), I love it. The haddock is crisp and golden; the “stunning” chips are dry and crunchy. Elsewhere on the menu there’s delightful chilli salt Cornish squid, tandoori salmon, salmon in miso, and a great value linguine alle vongole; while for kids, they serve the “best fish fingers ever”. Lure, in short, is “the best new local little fish and chip shop I have ever seen. In London.” Two courses around £15. Portland 113 Great Portland Street, London W1 (020-7436 3261) I know it’s only a few weeks since I said Kitty Fisher’s Galician beef was a shoo-in for dish of the year, says Lisa Markwell in The Independent. Well “hold the hyperbole”, because there’s a new
to be the son of the FT’s wine and food critics, Jancis Robinson and Nicholas Lander. The wine list is, of course, “fab”. But then so is almost everything, from “mouth-puckering snacks of pickled shiitake mushrooms to thick-sliced scallops in an earthy Jerusalem artichoke velouté”. £110 for two, with wine.
Portland: home of a “stunning” pithivier
contender: the “stunning” wild-game pithivier at Portland. “This neat little pastry parcel could start its own Instagram account, so often has it been photographed and shared” online by excited foodies. There’s “crisp, melting pastry, a thick wodge of venison” (the meat varies according to what’s good and available), and a “rich, mulchy layer of livery, mushroomy pâté”. It’s irresistible – and other dishes (“pearlescent” pollock; lamb tartare) are almost as good, as you would expect from a place with Portland’s “pedigree”. The patron, Will Lander, is the chap behind the “charming and delicious” Quality Chop House – and also happens
Recipe of the week My husband acted as tester-in-chief when I was writing my vegetarian cookbook, says Georgina Fuggle – and this curry was his favourite. Swap the green chillies for red ones if you like your curries hot
Cauliflower and chickpea curry Serves 4 75g cashew nuts 1 tbsp vegetable oil 1 large onion, roughly chopped 2 green chillies, halved lengthways and finely sliced 4 garlic cloves, finely chopped 5-6cm piece of ginger, peeled and grated 1 tsp curry powder 1 tsp turmeric 1 large head of cauliflower, divided into florets 400g can chickpeas, rinsed and drained 400ml coconut milk 1 tsp nigella seeds 100g young leaf spinach 30g bunch coriander, chopped salt and freshly ground black pepper
• Heat a deep frying pan
over a medium heat. Add the cashews and dry-fry for 3-4 mins, shaking the pan occasionally, until they are a little charred. Set aside. • Return the pan to the heat and add oil. Cook the onion for 2-3 mins until it just begins to caramelise. Add the chilli, garlic, ginger, curry powder and turmeric; add olive oil if needed. Fry until the chillies lose vibrancy.
• Add the cauliflower,
chickpeas and coconut milk and stir. Tip in the cashew nuts and nigella seeds. Cover and simmer for 20 mins until the sauce has begun to thicken. • Stir through the spinach and 2-3 tbsp of water if needed. Season well. Replace the lid until the spinach has just wilted. Stir through half the chopped coriander, stalks too. Garnish with chopped coriander.
Taken from Take One Veg by Georgina Fuggle, published by Kyle Books at £15.99. To buy from The Week bookshop for £13.99, call 0843-060 0020 or visit www.theweek.co.uk/bookshop.
Jago 68-80 Hanbury Street, London E1 (020-3818 3241) As we perused the menu at Jago, says Zoe Williams in The Daily Telegraph, my dining companion speculated that there must be “menu consultants on every street corner in east London, making sure that nothing hits the table without at least two ingredients on it that nobody will have heard of”. In the case of Jago, a boldly modernist – and very orange – new Middle Eastern and Ashkenazi restaurant in Shoreditch, it was a dish of calçots and romesco that had us stumped. Turns out a calçot is spring onion, and that when it is served chargrilled, with a dollop of deep-red-pepper dip and a chunk of toasty almond, it is “smoky, wholesome” and utterly delicious. Other highlights included an “incredible pressed pork belly with hispi cabbage”, grilled manouri (“the less salty, more elegant sibling of halloumi”) with cherry tomatoes, and salt fish with smoked aubergine. This is impressive cooking; great value, too. Three courses: £24.
Wine choice There is nothing quite like gewürztraminer, the “decadent fop of the grape world”, says David Williams in The Observer. The wines produced from it can be “extravagantly musky, with scents of roses and lychees spiced with ginger, while in the mouth they err on the expansive”. For a “Turkish delightful bargain” of an introduction to the grape, try Morrisons
Signature Gewurztraminer, Alsace, France 2013 (£7.99). This off-dry wine
goes well with spicy Asian or hearty Alsatian food (in France the wine is styled without the umlaut). My favourite examples come from the Austrian-influenced area of northern Italy. Hofstatter Joseph Gewürztraminer (£26.99; Selfridges) adds a “wash of Alpine-stream freshness to the spice, fat and floral fragance”. But for sheer value, head to the Elgin region of South Africa. Paul Cluver Gewürztraminer, 2014 (£11.99; Waitrose or Tanners Wines) has “zip and lift to go with the ginger and rose perfume”. The Week’s own selection of excellent wines is available at www.theweekwines.com.
21 March 2015 THE WEEK
This week’s designs Fall in love with hand-crafted furniture
the Watson
The Watson media unit’s low-lying design, tapered legs and lacquered white panel give it statement-worthy status. Crafted from solid mango wood, its Grey Wash finish has smooth tones and texture. Just £179, usually £340 in high-end retailers.
the Lille
Entirely made by hand, the Lille armchair is crafted from solid mango wood with a rustic, lime-washed effect finish. Upholstery in Dark Grape velvet is decadent and adds drama to any living area. Just £299, usually £425 in high-end retailers.
SAVE £25
With voucher code theweek55. Visit swooneditions.com/theweek55 or call 020 3137 2464
the Ginsberg
Balancing mid-century influences with Scandinavian simplicity, the Ginsberg desk was made to spruce up home offices. Tapered legs and a characterful wood grain only add to its character. Just £229.
New designs released daily. Sign up at swooneditions.com/week55
Save £25 on a £250 minimum spend. Does not include delivery and cannot be used alongside any other offers or promotions – ends at midnight on 27.03.15.
Consumer New cars: what the critics say
Mercedes-AMG C63
£59,795
Autocar The C63 is an unusual hybrid – a family-size vehicle, based on the Mercedes C-Class, with sports car capabilities. Available as a saloon or estate, it comes in either a standard or extra-high performance S guise. For the latest model, the main addition is a new, twinturbo 4.0-litre V8 engine. It’s smaller than the old engine, but even more powerful: the basic C63 has 469bhp.
LEISURE 41
Auto Express Performance is “blistering”, whichever model you’re driving. The C63 is “faster than ever”, doing 0-62mph in just 4.1 seconds while making an “exciting” racket – and the “scorching” mid-range acceleration is particularly impressive. Yet it also works well as an everyday car. “Firm” at low speeds, it benefits from “excellent” body control and grip, and “smooth” automatic gears.
The Daily Telegraph The C63’s looks also set it apart from a standard C-Class. There’s a new, deeper front bumper, wider front wings and bigger air vents. Inside, there are sports seats – although they’re “a bit cramped” in the back – and a “modernist, classy” instrument layout. The new C63 is still an “oldschool V8 road smoker” – and even if the BMW M3 has a slight edge on it, there’s lots to like.
The best… computer acce accessories
SOURCE: THE SUNDAY TIMES
If you’re fed up of waking to piercing electronic beeps, the Alarming Clock provides a gentle alternative. Mimicking a woodpecker, it taps its wooden beak against whatever you’ve put next to it – a glass of water, say, or a hardback book. £175; www.alarmingindustries.co.uk SOURCE: FINANCIAL TIMES
Microsoft Arc Touch Bluetooth Mouse The Arc Touch is an ingenious travel mouse that works up to nine metres from the computer and even on carpet. It lies flat when not in use; to turn it on, you arch its back (£70; www. microsoft. com).
Apps... driving INRIX Traffic helps you avoid traffic jams. jam It gives you the fastest routes, based on data from an enormous number of locations, locations and is quick to update its advice after accidents (free, £7.99 for extra premium features; Android, iOS). Cyclops lets you know how fast you can drive on unfamiliar or remote roads. It shows the speed limit for your current y location – and also warns you when you’re approaching a speed camera (free for 14 days, then £2.99 a year; iOS). imple but highly hi Theory Test UK 2015 is a simple effective way to prepare for a theory test. Handy features include a progress graph and an “explain” button, which helps you understand the correct answers (£1.99; Android, iOS). Gas Manager keeps track of your petrol consumption. It calculates your car’s fuel economy by monitoring your journeys, and suggests how you can improve it (free for up to ten fill-ups, then £2.99; Android, iOS). SOURCES: AUTO EXPRESS/CAR BUYER/THE DAILY TELEGRAPH
21 March 2015 THE WEEK
SOURCES: THE INDEPENDENT/FINANCIAL AL TIMES/T3/PC ADVISOR
▲
● March is an ideal time to buy a new car. New registration plates are released, so manufacturers give franchised dealerships higher targets – and if they haven’t reached them by late in the month, you may be able to secure a good deal. ● You’ll not be offered a discount, though, so do ask for one. When you’ve finished haggling, ask the dealer to throw in car mats for free – if they refuse, you’ll know that you’ve pushed them to their limit. ● If you’re considering a diesel car, bear in mind that some London boroughs already add a diesel tariff to residents’ parking permits. There’s also a plan to double the congestion charge for diesels by 2020. ● Avoid choosing so many extras that you end up spending more money than if you’d bought the next trim level in the range. ● But do consider the extras that a future buyer is likely to want. Leather seats and a built-in satnav tend to have more appeal these days than a good stereo.
And for f those who o have everything… …
▲
Tips... how to buy a car
Penclic B3 Bluetooth Mouse People who find manipulating a traditional mouse uncomfortable could try this device which works like a joystick, swivelling on its base (£80; www. posturite.co.uk).
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BenQ BL2411 This 24-inch monitor is design designed to make time at the computer more comfortable. There are a range of ergonomic adjustments to the stand, and so o it i can be tilted in a number of ways, while a flickerfree backlight should help reduce eye strain (£209; www. laptopsdirect.co.uk). k).
WD My Passport Ultra Metal Edition This sleek external hard drive can store a whopping terabyte (1,000GB) of data. Weighing just 163g and measuring 11x8cm, it has sophisticated encryption to prevent anyone else from accessing your files (£70; www.johnlewis.com).
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Cherry G80-3000 MX Excellent value, this is a classic mechanical keyboard – which means it makes a satisfying click when you type. It’s durable, well made and comfortable to use (£58; www.dabs.com).
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Travel
LEISURE 43
The Caribbean’s most luckless country: a magnet for tourists
Haiti has long been considered “the the Caribbean: the mountaintop basket case of the Caribbean”, says Citadelle Laferrière. A massive stone Caroline Eden in The Independent. It’s structure built over 15 years from 1805 obvious why. The country – which by “slave turned self-proclaimed king” makes up one-third of the island of Henri Christophe, it’s an astonishing Hispaniola – has, over the centuries, and eerie place. And owing to the lack endured a “hard-boiled mix of slavery, of tourists here, chances are you’ll dictatorships”, deforestation and wander its “ghostly” galleries alone. natural disasters. The capital Port-auBack in Port-au-Prince, the “smartPrince remains, in part, a “horror ish” area of Pétionville is buzzing: by show”: vast camps still skirt the day, “rap kreyòl music blares from “parched city limits, a grim reminder of cafés”, food stalls and barber shops. the 2010 earthquake”. Even before that At night, you’ll find jazz bands and tragedy, up to 70% of its citizens lived “sweaty” dance floors where “men in in slums. Yet there is more to the city sharp suits” strutt their stuff while than its troubles. Some areas are women sway to the beat. Out of town, Citadelle Laferrière: a “staggering landmark” thriving, and there’s an “infectious beachfront hotels serve fresh lobster charm” to the place that is hard to resist. beside gently lapping waves. And off the coast there is another Tourism is “cautiously returning” to Haiti as stability increases draw: the wreck of the Mary Celeste, which was sunk off Haiti in and infrastructure is rebuilt. A number of travel operators are 1872. It may soon “become a magnet for divers”, just as Haiti reintroducing trips; a few hotels have opened; and there’s a new “hopes to become a magnet for tourists once again”. Exodus international airport in the northern city of Cap Haïtien, which is (0845-287 3752, www.exodus.co.uk/haiti-holidays) has a 12-day just a few miles from possibly the “most staggering landmark” in group tour from £2,499pp incl. flights.
Hotel of the week
Getting the flavour of… Getting stuffed in Bologna
The Seaside Boarding House, Dorset
The “social alchemist” behind London’s Groucho Club has a new venture, says Katie Glass in The Sunday Times. The Seaside Boarding House is set on the cliffs of Dorset’s Jurassic Coast. The interior is “simple, elegant and detailed”, and the bar offers fine views of both the sea and the “good-looking cocktail barmen”. There are “a few jarringly naff slips of taste” – such as white “pleather” dining chairs – but the food is “exquisite”, and there’s even a dance floor with a disco ball. Now that their 1980s heyday is long gone, the “old Groucho set” may welcome this comfortable retreat. Doubles from £200 b&b. 01308-897205, www.theseaside boardinghouse.com.
Bologna is the foodie capital of Italy, says Sarah Gilbert in Wanderlust. Home of ragu sauce, and with prosciutto di Parma and Parmigiano-Reggiano produced nearby, the city is locally known as La Grassa (The Fat). It’s also one of Italy’s most beautiful cities, but is often “overlooked by tourists in their rush to get to Florence and Venice”. Bologna’s centre is “made for walking”, with Renaissance architecture and “quirky museums” everywhere you look. On a gastronomic tour you’ll find salumerias (delis) galore, selling the most prized cut of pork, culatello (little backside), local salami and freshly made pasta. There’s even a City of Food theme park due to open in November, which will make sampling the local produce even easier. British Airways (www.ba.com) has flights for around £160 rtn. Visit www.bolognawelcome.com/en.
Seeing Angkor Wat at dawn
The Amansara Resort in Cambodia offers its guests something a bit special, says Rhiannon Edwards in The Daily Telegraph: sunrise tours of the 12th century Angkor Wat temple that include parts of the complex that is offlimits to the daily crowds. From this vantage point within the ancient structure, you watch the dawn break. As the skies lighten and the birds begin to sing, a rosy glow “picks up the details on the lotus flower-shaped towers”.
There are “beautiful inscriptions in ancient Khmer and Sanskrit” at every turn, alongside carvings of goddesses. As you climb up the stairs to the temple’s innermost sanctum, the columns cast flower-shaped shadows on the courtyards and royal baths. Angkor Wat could hardly fail to impress, but the dawn light adds “an extra element of awe”. Amansara (+855 63 760 333, www. amanresorts.com) has doubles from £705 per suite per night.
A disappearing river island
In the 19th century Majuli was – at 1,200km², a contender for the title of “world’s biggest river island”, says Richard Eilers in The Guardian. Now, this island in India’s northeastern state of Assam is just one-third that size. And with great chunks of it disappearing every monsoon season, it may be gone in 20 years. For now, though, it remains a peaceful, welcoming place, “flat as a pancake” and perfect for cycling. This is “neo-Vaishnavite” country. The island is dotted with monasteries, or satras, venerating the god Vishnu; some date back to the 15th century. Many are centres for art. Others are places of prayer where believers use cymbals, drums and chanting as they offer their “plea to Vishnu to save Majuli before it is too late”. The nearest international airport to Majuli is Calcutta. For more details see www.visitindia.com.
Lake Geneva short break A 2-day stay at the 5-star Swissôtel Métropole, on the shores of Lake Geneva, costs from £395pp b&b incl. Gatwick flights. 0843-104 1000, www.easyjet.com/ holidays. Depart 29 April.
4-star twin-centre holiday Spend 3 nights at the Hotel Istana in Kuala Lumpur, followed by 7 nights at Meliá Bali, Indonesia. From £899pp mixed board, incl. flights. 01293-735831, www.hayes andjarvis.com. Dep 20 April.
Tread the Lycian Way The famous trail on Turkey’s Turquoise Coast is rated moderate, and an 8-day trip costs from £599pp, incl. most meals and transfers. 01962737565, www.walksworld wide.com. Until end of June.
Coastal Pembrokeshire Grove Cottage is a spacious cottage above the seaside town of Llansteffan which sleeps 7, has a heated pool, and costs from £774 per week from 28 Mar or 4 Apr. 01437-772760, www.coastalcottages.co.uk. 21 March 2015 THE WEEK
© EXODUS TRAVELS
Last-minute offers from top travel companies
Obituaries
45
The creator of Discworld who sold 85 million books Sir Terry Pratchett, who has died aged 66, was the author of more than 70 books, 40 of which were set on Discworld – a flat circular planet supported by four elephants standing on the back of a turtle. This bizarre alternative universe was populated by wizards, witches, dwarves and trolls, as well as the solemn but lovable figure of Death himself, yet the situations they found themselves in were curiously familiar. Thus Pratchett was able to use the books to satirise a range of issues, from the banking crisis to inequality. A good fantasy novel, he observed, is one that “isn’t fantastical – it is just a mirror of our own world, but one whose reflection is subtly distorted”. By making comic fantasy appealing to a mainstream readership, he sold 85 million books, said The Daily Telegraph – and, ironically, paved the way for J.K. Rowling to usurp his place as Britain’s most widely read living writer. Sir Terry Pratchett 1948-2015
1971. In 1979 – shortly after the meltdown at Three Mile Island – Pratchett became a public relations officer at the Central Electricity Generating Board, tasked with reassuring the public that nuclear power was safe. He published his first novel of the Discworld series – The Colour of Magic – in 1983, and four years later, began writing full time.
Thereafter, he produced two books a year: it was rumoured that he’d finish one in the morning, and start on the next that afternoon. Clad in his black fedora, he was also a familiar sight at conventions and book signings, where the queues would stretch around the block. His fans loved his books for their wit, silliness, puns, playfulness and soaring invention, said The Atlantic – but what really set Pratchett’s work apart was its “sense of joy”. Although satirical, his books “run over with affection for all the wacky, messed-up things in life. Even Pratchett: soaring invention death.” On Discworld, Death is a skeletal An only child, Pratchett was born in 1948 and brought up in the figure, shrouded in black. He wields a scythe and talks in Buckinghamshire town of Beaconsfield. The family was not well booming capitals “like the slamming of coffin lids”. But he rides a off – they had no hot running water in their cottage – but his horse named Binky, loves cats, eats curry and has, over the ages, parents encouraged him to follow his passions. His father, a developed a sneaking affection for humanity, which both baffles mechanic, instilled in him a love of “all the Just William things... and fascinates him. “Death isn’t cruel,” Pratchett wrote – “merely he was never so pleased as when I electrocuted him by setting up a terribly, terribly good at his job.” little device in his shed to give him a shock when he opened the door”, while his mother nurtured his love of stories. At first, he In 1997, Pratchett – who was married to his wife Lyn for 47 years was reluctant to read for himself; then he discovered The Wind in – was diagnosed with a form of early onset Alzheimer’s. He bore the Willows, and never looked back. “There were rats and moles the condition, which he referred to as the “embuggerance”, with and badgers and they were all acting like humans, and I thought fortitude. He carried on writing, latterly by dictating his words: to myself, this is a lie, but what a fabulous lie! After that I scoured his final book came out last summer. And rather than retreating the local library and read everything.” from public view, he used his public profile to campaign for a better understanding of, and more research into, Alzheimer’s. He At school, he had a science-fiction story published in a magazine gave the Alzheimer’s Society £500,000. He also campaigned for a before leaving, aged 17, to become a cub reporter for the Bucks change in the law on assisted dying. “If I knew that I could die at Free Press. He subsequently worked for the Western Daily Press any time I wanted, then suddenly every day would be as precious and the Bath Chronicle, while continuing to write fiction in his as a million pounds,” he wrote in The Guardian in 2011. “If I spare time. He published his first book, The Carpet People, in knew that I could die, I would live.”
The sitcom writer who helped launch The Simpsons Sam Simon, who has died aged on to the phenomenally successful Cheers. 59, was one of the creators of Although he was always overshadowed by The Simpsons – the US’s Groening, Simon’s contribution to The Simpsons longest-running TV sitcom. The characters of was immeasurable, said the Los Angeles Times. Homer and Marge Simpson were originally He recruited its writers, introduced its devised by Matt Groening (who named them sophisticated storytelling techniques, came up after his own parents) for 60-second segments on with the characters to populate Springfield – and The Tracey Ullman Show, but in 1989, Simon – gave them their fully rounded personalities. who had cut his teeth on Cheers and Taxi – was brought in to help flesh these out into a The early days of the show were fraught, 30-minute show, said The Washington Post. however. He and Groening clashed so violently, Mixing sophisticated cultural references with they stopped speaking. Groening acknowledged vulgar slapstick, and biting social satire with Simon’s huge talent, but said he was “unpleasant poignant family drama, The Simpsons spawned a and mentally unbalanced” – and eventually even new era of adult animation, and made Simon so Simon agreed that he had become a “monster”. rich, he was able to retire from show business So in 1993, he negotiated a lucrative exit four years later, aged 38. He spent much of the package, and shortly after that, retired from the Simon: became a “monster” rest of his life giving his Simpsons royalties away. industry. He went on to pursue a number of These amounted to tens of millions of dollars a year. alternative careers, ranging from boxing promoter to professional poker player, but philanthropy proved to be his “true calling”. Born in California, Simon was educated at Beverly Hills High and Simon – who was married twice but had no children – was Stanford University, where he majored in psychology. One of his primarily interested in animal rights (he loved dogs), but he also first jobs was with an animation studio, but he got his big break gave money to pay for vegan meals for poor families. “The truth when he submitted an unsolicited script for the hit show Taxi – is, I have more money than I’m interested in spending,” he said. and had it accepted. When Taxi was cancelled in 1982, he moved “Everyone in my family is taken care of. And I enjoy this.” Sam Simon 1955-2015
21 March 2015 THE WEEK
CITY Companies in the news ...and how they were assessed
47
BHS: yours for a quid
Sir Philip Green has finally got shot of BHS, said the London Evening Standard. A consortium of little-known businessmen, known collectively as Retail Acquisitions, has bought the struggling chain for a princely £1 – illustrating the challenge they face in revitalising it. Green was initially unwilling to reveal the exact figure. Was it a nominal sum? “Depends what you call nominal.” Enough to buy a nice meal? “I’m on a diet.” He has, however, pocketed “a nice £40m” by quietly selling BHS’s Marylebone Road HQ to property investor Alexander Dellal. Actually, Green has done pretty well out of BHS over the years, said Sarah Butler in The Guardian. Shareholders, led by his Monaco-based wife, Tina, “have enjoyed dividends of £400m”. But having fallen prey to “middle market malaise”, the group lost £70m in 2013. The question for the chain’s 11,000 staff is what next? Retail Acquisitions – led by a former broker, Keith Smith – wants to run it as a going concern. But in a high street “adorned with discounters”, the turnaround challenge is immense, said Alex Brummer in the Daily Mail. Indeed, the best hope for the old British Home Stores may be an appeal to nostalgia – a “return to its roots of ladies’ hats, fine lighting and great luncheon eateries”.
TSB/Sabadell: the bank that likes to say “si”
First Santander, now Sabadell, said James Titcomb in The Daily Telegraph – get set for a second Spanish invasion into British retail banking. Less than a year after it was floated out of Lloyds, TSB has received a surprise £1.7bn bid from Spain’s fifth-largest banking group, “which hails from the city of the same name in Catalonia”. The move prompted a 24% leap in shares. TSB, which has 4.5 million customers, is already the big hope among UK challenger banks. Beefed up by Spanish cash, it could now “make an aggressive push for growth” in small-business lending and mortgage provision. A quick exit at the 340pa-share offer “will be almost impossible to resist for Lloyds”, which still holds 50% of TSB, and which will be “salivating at such a premium on the 260p flotation price”, said Andrew Clark in The Times. No wonder City wags have dubbed TSB “the bank that likes to say si”. The benefits for Sabadell investors, who face a possible s1.1bn rights issue, are less obvious, said Lex in the FT. The promise is “exposure to the recovering UK economy”. But is that why they bought Sabadell shares? The exodus of investors shouting “no” last week was so great that shares had to be suspended.
Elliott Advisors/Alliance Trust: an empress at bay
“It’s a long way from Buenos Aires to Dundee,” said Nils Pratley in The Guardian. But the New York hedge fund Elliott Advisors – fresh from chasing up Argentina over its debt – has decided that Alliance Trust, a stalwart of the UK investment trust sector, “deserves a dose of activist medicine”. Elliott, which has accumulated a 12% stake in the “grand old” institution, complains that Alliance’s investment portfolio is performing “sluggishly”, and that costs are too high; it is now pushing to place a trio of City heavyweights on the board to bring “fresh thinking”. This could become one of the biggest battles for years in the usually “sleepy world of investment trusts”, said The Independent. Elliott has pitched itself against an experienced opponent. Alliance Trust boss Katherine Garrett-Cox, nicknamed “Katherine the Great”, famously saw off another activist attack from Laxey Partners four years ago. But, given that Alliance shares currently trade at a 12.4% discount to value (almost three times the sector average), Garrett-Cox’s soubriquet looks like “a misnomer”, said Alistair Osborne in The Times. She has a battle on her hands to defend her record to Alliance’s army of small investors.
Apple: TV times
News of plans to launch a dedicated online TV service in the autumn has revealed the extent of Apple’s “lofty” television ambitions, said The Wall Street Journal. The tech giant is working on a “slimmed-down bundle” of around 25 channels, including ABC, CBS and Fox, priced at around $30-$40 a month. Like Netflix and Amazon, Apple is bent on “nipping at the heels” of legacy media companies by wooing customers away from “expensive traditional cable subscriptions”, said Bryan Logan on BusinessInsider. com. It will also act as a digital partner when HBO launches a streaming service, HBO Now, in April. Apple TV is currently viewed by most punters “as a supplement, not a replacement” to, existing TV services, said Darrell Etherington on TechCrunch.com. If it takes off, this project – available on the iPhone and iPad as well as Apple TV – will transform our concept of TV hardware.
Seven days in the Square Mile The Chancellor, George Osborne, delivered the last Budget before the election, promising “no giveaways, no gimmicks”. Expected measures included a further relaxation in pension rules to allow five million annuity-holders to swap their fixed annual payments for a cash sum; a fresh crackdown on tax avoidance; and measures to take more people out of inheritance tax. According to City estimates, the improving economy gave Osborne scope for up to £10bn of giveaways while still meeting his fiscal targets. Investors continued to pour money into European stock markets following the ECB’s launch of QE, despite concerns that stocks could be entering the final “surge stage” of the rally. The ECB’s new HQ was targeted by campaigners. The Japanese stock market came close to a 15-year high. IMF head Christine Lagarde warned that US interest-rate increases could trigger instability in emerging markets, leading to a re-run of the Fed-induced “taper tantrum” of 2013. The world’s two largest cement-makers, Holcim and Lafarge, sought to save their proposed g40bn merger after negotiations came unstuck. Blackstone, the private equity group, said it was considering selling Center Parcs; CVC Capital, and Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC have launched a joint £2.5bn bid for the leisure group. The John Lewis Partnership cut its staff bonus to 11% of salary following a fall in profits at Waitrose. Sotheby’s appointed art outsider Tad Smith, as its new CEO. Renault revealed a proposal to name Cherie Blair as a director.
Taking Manhattan? “London to New York for a tenner, anyone?” asked Jane Wild in the FT. That prospect – a boon to long-weekenders – has loomed into view, now that Ryanair is planning its first transatlantic service. Don’t start packing yet, though. It will be four or five years before take-off – and the success record for airlines offering rock-bottom transatlantic fares is lamentable. Freddie Laker went bust in the 1980s; the current contender, Norwegian Air, has plunged into the red. Ryanair would need to attract premium business travellers to cover the cheap seats, said Panmure Gordon analyst, Gert Zonneveld. But the venture “would generate new demand. I think it can probably happen.”
21 March 2015 THE WEEK
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Alliance Trust PLC is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is registered in Scotland No SC1731. Registered office, 8 West Marketgait, Dundee DD1 1QN; is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Alliance Trust PLC gives no financial or investment advice. THE WEEK 21 March 2015
Talking points
CITY 49
Issue of the week: in bed with China Was the Chancellor right to antagonise the US by joining China’s new development bank? In recent years, the phrase “special that China’s lending practices in Africa relationship” has sounded “a touch have fostered corruption. These desperate when spoken in a British concerns are real enough, but the best accent, and a tad condescending if way to tackle them would be to impose uttered by an American”, said Ben influence from within. The White Wright in The Daily Telegraph. But the House’s chief objection to AIIB is worm may have turned – over China. actually the threat it poses to the Britain has become a founding member Washington-based IMF and World of the Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Bank. This row encapsulates the Investment Bank (AIIB) – a decision growing contest between China and the which last week prompted a senior US US over who will define the economic official to give Britain “a short, sharp and trade rules in coming decades. diplomatic spanking” for its alleged “constant accommodation of China”. Chancellor George Osborne, who has Undeterred, Germany, France and Italy made no bones of his desire to establish Osborne: has the worm turned? have followed Britain’s lead in defying Britain as a hub for Chinese investment, the US boycott of the Chinese bank. With key US Asia-Pacific has gained “first-mover advantage” with Beijing over AIIB. And allies, like Australia and South Korea, tipped to follow suit, the he was right to defy the Americans, said Jim Armitage in the White House is looking increasingly isolated. London Evening Standard. “It’s easy for the US, with its vast domestic and global economic hinterland, to tell little Britain not The AIIB row is a diplomatic “disaster” for the Obama to court China”, but we need bodies like the AIIB to build vital administration, which has effectively accused Britain of links with Asian markets. This episode demonstrates that, in the “appeasing China” for the sake of a quick buck, said Shannon struggle for influence in the region, “China’s strongest suit is its Tiezzi in The Diplomat. Yet it only has itself to blame. By urging economic power”, said Gideon Rachman in the FT. The US’s, by allies to shun the new institution – proposed last year by President contrast, is its “military might and network of security treaties”. Xi Jinping and seen as an Asian rival to the World Bank and the The big question is which will ultimately matter more. There was IMF – the US has turned a regional development bank into “a test a time when the world bowed down before the mighty dollar. case for its global influence”. The White House maintains that its “The story of AIIB suggests that these days even many of the US’s opposition to AIIB stems from governance issues: there are claims closest allies have renminbi signs in their eyes.”
Making money: what the experts think ● Kicking the
further regulation should be put into perspective, he argues. “It does not appear to make a lot of difference to the number of people smoking.”
habit In the latest blow to a sector under “mounting pressure”, MPs have voted to ban cigarette branding, said Selin Bucak on ● Top cash Isas Citywire. After Many savers will years of being want to park at favourites among least some of their investors owing to Tobacco: too risky to touch? annual £15,000 their steady income, tax-free allowance in the “safety-first” are tobacco companies now too risky to option of a cash Isa, said Jessie Hewitson touch? Fund managers are split. Jeremy in The Times. But don’t expect any Thomas of Brunner Investment Trust improvement in rates. In 2007, the average argues that tobacco is in “structural rate paid out by cash Isas was 5.5%, decline” – because tax rises and price according to Bank of England figures. increases mean “it is becoming ever more Today it is a “lamentable” 1.02%. So who difficult for consumers to afford the are the best payers? The Post Office has product”. Yet some of the largest UK the best rate for “easy-access” accounts – equity income funds retain tobacco stocks paying 1.5% on its online Issue 1 account; among their top holdings. the NS&I Direct Isa offers the same rate. For mid-range “notice” accounts, ● More puff yet Hinckley and Rugby Building Society is Growing health concerns, increased paying 1.6% on its 120-day cash Isa – regulation and the rise of e-cigarettes do though the downside is that “transfers in not seem to faze Neil Woodford, who from previous Isas aren’t allowed”. If your has sizeable holdings in Imperial Tobacco savings horizon is more long-term, United and BAT – yielding 3.9% and 4.1% Bank has the best one-year fix (1.65%) respectively – in his £5.1bn Woodford and Santander has a two-year, fixed-rate Equity Income fund. Jeremy Lang of Ardevora Income also believes the sector is deal paying 2.3%. The catch is that you have to be a Santander current account or in good condition. “It is easy to argue the credit card holder to qualify. glory days are over”, but the noise about
Mortgage misfits Tough restrictions on borrower affordability mean growing numbers of people are finding it hard to get a mortgage, says Patrick Collinson in The Guardian. Here are some ways to bag a deal if you’re a misfit: You are over 40. Most lenders will only grant a mortgage to your planned retirement date – meaning a steep repayment curve for the average 37-year-old first-time buyer. It’s worth shopping around. Bath Building Society, for instance, doesn’t have a maximum age, “but will be looking for proof of continued income”. National Counties will consider applicants up to the age of 89. You are newly self-employed. Unless you have two or three years of properly audited accounts, “you’ll be turned down by nearly everyone”. A handful of borrowers, including Halifax, Precise and Kensington, are willing to consider borrowers with just one year’s accounts. But you’ll need a deposit of at least 20% and you’ll pay higher rates. You rely on bonuses. Lenders have made life much tougher if commission or bonuses make up a large part of your pay. Much depends on how often you receive payments. If bonuses are paid weekly, monthly or quarterly, lenders may be sympathetic. But just 50% of a bonus paid annually will count for mortgage purposes.
21 March 2015 THE WEEK
50 CITY A legacy that outlasts any Budget? Janan Ganesh Financial Times
We need a plan for productivity Editorial The Economist
The egregious “30,000-feet defence” Jonathan Freedland The Guardian
Getting a woman on the $20 bill Vauhini Vara The New Yorker
THE WEEK 21 March 2015
Commentators He may have flunked his fiscal targets, but George Osborne “oversees an economy that vies with the US as the best in the West”, says Janan Ganesh. What, though, will be his legacy? Has the Chancellor tilted politics in a conservative direction in a lasting way, or is he “one half of a pendulum swing, doomed to be cancelled out by a successor”? If a future Labour chancellor once again increases public spending faster than growth, Osborne “will have fallen short of historic status”. If, on the other hand, excessive borrowing becomes “one of those taboos that governments bequeath in perpetuity, he will have counted for something”. But perhaps the best clue to any lasting change on Osborne’s watch lies in the lives of Britons. We’re less likely to work for the Government (public-sector headcount is down by about one million since 2010) and more likely to be in privatesector employment, or among the self-employed, who now comprise a record 15% of the workforce. Both fiscal policy and economic trends have created a “more individualised economy” – one less receptive, you would suspect, to “collectivist ideas”. The coalition’s “great boast” is that it forged a plan for the economy and stood its ground, says The Economist. The “shabby truth”, though, is that Britain’s recovery owes more to the goals the Chancellor abandoned “than the guns he has stuck to”. The quiet ditching of “Plan A” two years into austerity is one example: had Osborne stuck with his deficit-elimination goal, it would have “pitched the economy back into recession and wrecked public services”. Another welcome change of heart was his decision to temper infrastructure spending cuts. And though the Government’s failure to slash net migration has infuriated UKIP, young immigrants have “boosted growth and swelled the public purse”. Now, once again, Osborne is backing the wrong long-term plan. Government departments are preparing for more cuts, yet Britain’s biggest problem is stagnant productivity growth: our economic future “depends far more on boosting how much Britons produce at work than how quickly the deficit is cut”. Osborne should “make a plan for productivity – and stick to it”. When Millwall FC sacked their manager last week, they followed a “brutal, basic logic”, says Jonathan Freedland: “the boss gets the credit when the team do well, so he gets the blame when they do badly. That’s why he gets the money.” Had the manager, Ian Holloway, blamed the team for Millwall’s loss of form, “he’d have been run out of town”. The same does not apply in much of the financial and corporate world, where the “30,000-feet defence” – that those operating at a high altitude cannot be held to account for the antics of the people below – is now regularly deployed, as we saw when MPs questioned HSBC directors. Admittedly, in an organisation with 300,000 employees, it is “a Herculean task” for one individual to know what they’re all up to. “But that’s why these top jobs get Herculean rewards.” The financial uber-class currently expects the best of both worlds – all the rewards of being in charge, without the price of responsibility. “It’s an individual version of the great injustice laid bare during the great crash: gains are privatised, losses are socialised.” The campaign to get a woman on an American banknote by 2020 – the centenary of female suffrage in the US – faces strong headwinds, says Vauhini Vara. There are no “particularly stringent” rules on who can appear on the 11 denominations in circulation: “according to US law, they just have to be dead”. Yet there has been no change to the line-up – which includes eight presidents, two Treasury secretaries and the “unclassifiable” Benjamin Franklin – since 1929. Historians reckon this urge to maintain the status quo (which recently survived a Republican attempt to put Ronald Reagan on the $50 note) is partly an attempt “to keep the bills recognisable”, and partly down to “the American public’s resistance to change”. Campaigners for a female face have settled on the $20 bill currently occupied by Andrew Jackson (president 1829-1837, responsible for the now notorious Indian Removal Act), and have invited the public to vote on likely candidates. But controversy has dogged the process. It turns out that settling on 15 finalists from a longlist of 100, “let alone choosing a winner”, is easier said than done.
City profiles Martin Sorrell It’s spring, so time for the annual ritual in which “the hero of adland” collects a large payment in shares, said Nils Pratley in The Guardian. This year’s sum is £36m. Martin Sorrell is “a unique individual and the rise of WPP is an extraordinary achievement. But, on pay, WPP is in a world of its own.” Rivals think Sorrell’s ego “may be his downfall”, said Andrew Hill in the FT. But it is the size and diversity of his £20bn empire that is more likely to presage its eventual decline. Corporate history is littered with conglomerates strongly identified with “larger-thanlife” architects. Once they disappear, their companies tend to disintegrate, “leaving little to mark” onceacclaimed leaders. Food for thought for Sorrell at 70. Ellen Pao
The case of Ellen Pao has become a lightning rod for the long-simmering row over sexism in Silicon Valley, says Davey Alba on Wired.com. Pao has brought a $16m gender discrimination case against the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins – an early backer of Google, Amazon and Uber. The picture painted is certainly “far from flattering”. Women were allegedly left out of allmale ski trips and dinners at Al Gore’s apartment because they “killed the buzz”; and were subjected to discussions of porn stars and “hot” female executives. Pao, now interim CEO of Reddit, claims that a senior colleague gave her a book of erotic poetry (Leonard Cohen’s Book of Longing) as “a bizarre Valentine’s gift”. Kleiner insists Pao is a victim of her own “missteps”. But the jury is unlikely to forget “these visceral anecdotes”.
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Past performance
Fidelity MoneyBuilder Dividend Fund
The MoneyBuilder Dividend Fund and Global Dividend Fund invest in well-researched, cash-generating companies – ones we believe can provide you with sustainable and growing dividends.
Feb 10 Feb 11 Feb 12 Feb 13 Feb 14 Feb 11 Feb 12 Feb 13 Feb 14 Feb 15
Fund yield
12.2%
9.1%
17.5%
15.4%
10.2%
3.8%
–
–
19.2%
10.7%
15.6%
2.8%
Source: Fidelity as at 28 February 2015 on a bid-to-bid basis with income reinvested net of basic rate tax. These figures do not include an initial charge. Historic yield shows fund distributions over 12 months to 28 February 2015 divided by the fund’s net asset value.
Please remember that past performance is not a guide to the future. The value of investments and the income from them can go down as well as up, and you may not get back the amount you invested. Fund yields are not guaranteed. The ongoing charges are taken from the funds’ capital, which will affect future performance. Changes in currency exchange rates may affect the value of your investment. Fidelity does not give advice. If you require a recommendation, please contact an authorised adviser.
web: fidelity.co.uk/dividends call: 0800 368 1721 or speak to your adviser The Key Investor Information Documents can be obtained from our website at www.fidelity.co.uk/importantinformation or by calling 0800 41 41 61. The full prospectus may also be obtained from Fidelity. Issued by FIL Investments International, authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Fidelity, Fidelity Worldwide Investment, the Fidelity Worldwide Investment logo and F symbol are trademarks of FIL Limited. UKM0315/5665/SSO/0615
Shares
CITY 53
Who’s tipping what The week’s best buys
Directors’ dealings
Apple The Times Apple shares sell on a surprisingly low multiple because of a residual mistrust of fallow periods. Even if the new watch doesn’t prove a game-changer, legacy products provide an “almost annuitylike income”. Buy. $127.14.
Hill & Smith The Daily Telegraph Driven by continued economic recovery in the US, and the UK Government’s spend on water infrastructure projects and road networks, the galvanised steel-maker has reported record profits. The outlook is good. Buy. 603p.
Inchcape The Times The car dealer has built a global footprint of highmarque dealerships in growth markets, and the incoming CEO is an expert at marketing luxury brands. So “flush with cash” it operates two £100m share buybacks. Buy. 788p.
AO World
Dignity Shares Election uncertainty should highlight the funeral operator’s defensive qualities and copious cash generation. Not cheap, but Dignity has a solid track record and acquisition opportunities in a fragmented market. Buy. £19.09.
Horizon Discovery The Mail on Sunday Horizon has pioneered a way of editing genes to produce mutated cells for researchers and drug groups to find cures for cancers. Loss-making, but ambitiously led with blue-chip customers: sales growth should be robust. Buy. 206p.
Witan Investment Trust The Times With 40% exposure to the UK, and the rest split between Europe, Asia Pacific and the US, Witan should continue to comfortably beat the market. It only yields 2%, but remains “among the most reliable performers”. Buy. 761.5p.
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Chairman sells 5.58m Oct
Aggreko Investors Chronicle The share price reflects neither the risks ahead nor the slowdown in the power provider’s profits. Exposure to the troubled oil and gas sector, weak commodity prices and adverse currency movements don’t help. Sell. £15.29.
Borders & Southern Petroleum The Sunday Times The Falklands oil and gas explorer failed to find a partner to buy into its acreage, and is now missing a rig opportunity. The only hope is that rivals’ drilling is successful, rekindling “the romance the City once felt for the Falklands”. Sell. 5.9p. Close Brothers Group The Times The financial services provider is well positioned and doesn’t have to chase low-margin business. But there are signs that growth is tapering off and shares may not have much further to go. Sell. £16.10.
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Chairman Richard Rose took advantage of the end of the post-IPO lock-up period to sell most of his stake in the online electrical appliances retailer – a month after it issued a profit warning – netting £10m. Rose, who also chairs wholesaler Booker Group, still holds stock worth £1.5m.
…and some to sell 4imprint Group Shares 4imprint, which majors on promotional products, has generated excellent organic growth: profits are up 42%. But despite long-term potential, shares look fully valued and the group faces a less certain US outlook. Sell. £10.10.
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Form guide N Brown The Daily Telegraph The homewares to plus-size clothing catalogue retailer is trying to reduce the risk from extending credit to customers. Shares look expensive, with no sign of a concrete return to sales and profit growth. Sell. 338.9p. Tyman The Mail on Sunday Tyman makes locks, seals and handles for doors and windows. Profits are up 30% on the back of strong US and UK housing markets, and some sensible “self-help” measures. Cash in on 25% but hold the rest. Sell. 313p.
Shares tipped 12 weeks ago Best tip Workspace Group The Mail on Sunday up 26.6% to 870.98p Worst tip Telecom Plus Shares down 17.93% to £10.39
Market view
“We don’t know – nor does the Fed know – exactly how much tightening will knock over the apple cart.” Ray Dalio, of hedge fund Bridgewater, warns of a stock market slump when the Fed raises rates. Quoted in the FT
Market summary Key numbers numbers for investors Key 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
17 Mar 2015 6837.61 3694.39 17849.08 4937.43 19437.00 23901.49 1150.75 53.25 3.49% 1.79 2.06 0.3% (Jan) 1.1% (Jan) +8.3% (Feb)
$1.475 s1.392 ¥178.807
Best shares Best and and worst performing shares Week before 6702.84 3624.77 17662.94 4859.79 18665.11 23896.98 1162.00 56.41 3.55% 1.83 2.13 0.5% (Dec) 1.6% (Dec) +8.5% (Jan)
Change (%) 2.01% 1.92% 1.05% 1.60% 4.14% 0.02% –0.97% –5.60%
WEEK’S CHANGE, FTSE 100 STOCKS RISES Price % change 4640.00 +8.61 AstraZeneca 586.50 +7.22 Meggitt 251.20 +6.67 Centrica 1698.00 +5.33 Prudential 574.50 +5.32 Intl.Cons.Airl.Gp.(Cdi) FALLS Tullow Oil Standard Chartered Sports Direct Intl. Antofagasta Direct Line In.Group
298.40 965.00 640.00 687.00 321.50
–7.27 –5.25 –4.48 –3.38 –3.25
BEST AND WORST UK STOCKS OVERALL 53.00 +253.33 Gate Ventures 3.21 –48.71 Afren
Source: Datastream (not adjusted for dividends). Prices on 17 Mar (pm)
Following the Footsie 7,000
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6-month movement in the FTSE 100 index
21 March 2015 THE WEEK
SOURCE: DAILY MAIL
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The last word
The people who hear voices – and talk back to them Around 40% of people will experience an “auditory hallucination” at some point in their lives, says William Lee Adams. Some psychiatrists now believe that hearing voices is not necessarily a sign of mental illness, but an “extra capacity” to be harnessed One night, during her first year at the University of Sheffield, Rachel Waddingham struggled to fall asleep. She could hear three middle-aged men she didn’t know talking about her downstairs. “They were saying: ‘She’s stupid, she’s ugly, I wish she would kill herself,’” she remembers. “I was angry and went down to challenge them, but no one was there. They kept laughing and saying: ‘She’ll never find us.’” The voices became a recurring presence, providing an aggressive, unsettling commentary on her life. Waddingham came to believe that they were filming her around the clock, and became paranoid. When she had a neck ache, she assumed a tracking device had been planted under her skin. At the supermarket, the voices would ask each other questions like: “Does she know what she’s buying?” – leading her to reach sinister conclusions. “I worried they might have poisoned the food,” she says. “I’d come back with orange juice, milk, bread and cheese, because it’s all I could work out was safe.”
them. “If people believe their voices are omnipotent and can harm and control them, then they are less likely to cope and more likely to end up as psychiatric patients,” says Eugenie Georgaca, a senior lecturer at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and the organiser of this year’s conference. “If they have explanations of voices that allow them to deal with them better, that is a first step towards learning to live with them.”
The road to this form of recovery often begins in support groups run by the worldwide Hearing Voices Network (HVN). Founded in the Netherlands in 1987, it allows members to share their stories and coping mechanisms – for example, setting appointments to talk with the voices, so that the voice-hearer can function without distraction the rest of the day – and gives voice-hearers a sense of community, as people rather than patients. A central premise of Joan of Arc listening to celestial voices HVN is that these voices frequently emerge following extreme stress or trauma. Research bears that out: at least 70% of voice-hearers are thought to have experienced Waddingham turned to alcohol to cope, and avoided friends some form of trauma. Voices vary widely from person to person, because she feared that “The Three” would secretly film them as but they often mimic the sound and language of abusers or their well. Months later, she dropped out of the university and moved victims: demonic and frightening, or angelic and friendly. into a bedsit, too afraid to eat or bathe. A doctor eventually admitted her into a psychiatric hospital, where she was diagnosed Waddingham, for instance, now hears 13 voices. Among them with schizophrenia and put on a cocktail of drugs. During her are Blue, a frightened but cheeky three-year-old; Elfie, an angry eight months in the hospital, the adolescent; the Scream, a female voices faded, but the side effects voice filled with pain and “Waddingham now hears 13 different voices. suffering (“When I first heard of the medication made life intolerable. Waddingham gained When the younger voices can’t sleep, she reads her, I felt so overwhelmed I was more than 29kg and developed unable to leave the house”); and them bedtime stories” diabetes. Her eyes would roll the Not Yets, a group of voices involuntarily, and she struggled Waddingham is not yet ready with akathisia, an overwhelming sense of restlessness that to engage with fully. “They say very nasty things about me – caused her to shuffle from foot to foot. Suicide attempts abusive, sexual, violent things, which echo what I heard when I followed, and she felt “like a walking zombie”. But because she was little,” she says. “I try to think of them as frightened children was no longer hearing the voices, she was released from the that don’t yet know that it’s not OK to say those things.” When hospital. Five years ago Waddingham came off her medication the younger voices can’t fall asleep, Waddingham reads them and has not been on it since. bedtime stories. When voices suggest that she’s going to be harmed by a stranger, she thanks them for their concern but lets Research suggests that up to one in 25 people hears voices them know she is being vigilant. regularly, and that up to 40% of the population will hear voices at some point in their lives. But many live healthy and fulfilling Eleanor Longden tells a similar story. After leaving a psychiatric lives despite those aural spectres. Recently, Waddingham and hospital with a diagnosis of schizophrenia at 18, she was assigned more than 200 other voice-hearers from around the world to work with a psychiatrist familiar with the hearing-voices gathered in Thessaloniki, Greece, for the sixth annual World movement. He encouraged her to overcome her fear of her voices. Hearing Voices Congress, organised by Intervoice, an Traditional psychiatry discourages patients from engaging with international network of people who hear voices, and their voices, and prefers to silence them through medication. But HVN supporters. They reject the traditional idea that the voices are a members, like Longden, say that listening to voices is vital to symptom of mental illness. They recast voices as meaningful, calming them down. And by communicating back, Longden was albeit unusual, experiences, and believe that potential problems lie able to test the boundaries of what these voices could actually do. not in the voices themselves but in a person’s relationship with One time, a voice threatened to kill her family if Longden didn’t THE WEEK 21 March 2015
The last word
57 he wrote, “as voices are heard by epileptic and schizophrenic patients.”
cut off her toe, and she could hear a “phantom choir” laughing along with him. She refused to obey. Her family didn’t die, but the choir did go silent.
Attributing meaning to the voices gave Hage comfort, and Romme encouraged her to speak to other voice-hearers. With the help of Escher, a science journalist he had met years earlier, he placed a national advertisement asking voicehearers to send in postcards with their stories. Around 700 arrived, including more than 500 from people who experienced auditory hallucinations – and got on with life just fine. “We thought that all people who heard voices would become psychiatric patients,” Escher says. “That simply wasn’t true.”
As she grew less afraid, Longden sought to unpack the messages they carried. “I started to see my experiences as a sane reaction to insane circumstances,” she says. Longden had suffered years of sexual and physical abuse as a child. Her memory is hazy, but she knows her abusers were men outside her family. When she heard a voice calling her weak for accepting the abuse, she began to read it as encouraging her to be strong and assertive. “I would say: ‘You can help me practise’, and the voice was like: ‘All right.’” Romme and Escher’s belief that voices are not Some voice-hearers speak to their voices, while a symptom of disease but rather a response to others use internal dialogue. Since the voices can Waddingham: “I feel so privileged” troubling experiences – and their treatment manifest at any time of day, voice-hearers must method of listening and responding to the voices – remains far think of practical solutions to deal with them without alarming outside the mainstream. Russell Margolis, a professor of colleagues and passers-by. Some choose to wear Bluetooth neurology at Johns Hopkins University in the US, accepts that headsets so they can speak aloud in public without causing alarm. voices can result from trauma, but he points out that they can also be part of broader syndromes, such as bipolar disorder or Standing by the pool at the Hotel Philippion in Thessaloniki, the schizophrenia, which demand specific treatment. “I’m sure venue for this symposium, are Marius Romme and his wife, [Romme and Escher’s] approach can be helpful for some, but I Sandra Escher. The two have spent half a lifetime listening to the can see some instances where it could be destructive,” he says. trauma suffered by so many voice-hearers. Yet Romme, now 80, “One of my great concerns... is that people can get so wrapped up and Escher, 69, remain warm, optimistic and almost evangelical in their symptom that they don’t move forward.” in their beliefs, which gave rise to the hearing-voices movement three decades ago. “Voices have significance in the lives of Yet for many, the hearing-voices approach remains an important voice-hearers and can be used to their benefit,” Romme says. “It’s alternative to the dominant psychiatric model. Waddingham’s not a handicap, it’s an extra capacity.” voices forced her to confront her past and have helped her push past her pain. She now takes care of the voices that once Romme hasn’t always thought that. Starting in 1974, he ran the tormented her. “I can feel a lot of what that voice is feeling,” she social psychiatry department at Maastricht University in the says. “If I can chill them out and they can feel safe, then I feel Netherlands. “All my career, I worked with people who hear safe. Years ago, I would have interpreted these feelings as voices, and I regularly prescribed medicine,” he says. He evidence of me being watched. Now I have a way of making sense dismissed the voices as symptoms of mental illness. But a patient of them that gives me some autonomy and control.” named Patsy Hage changed that. Hage started hearing voices as an eight-year-old, after being severely burned. By the time she Waddingham is now helping others do the same. She runs the came to see Romme, she was 30 and her voices had forbidden her Voice Collective, a London-wide project that provides services to from socialising, leaving her isolated and severely depressed. young voice-hearers and their parents. In 2010, she began Although tranquillisers relieved some of her anxiety, they didn’t establishing therapy groups inside English prisons, where, silence the voices – and she questioned why Romme considered according to the Ministry of Justice, 15% of women and 10% of her mentally ill but saw nothing strange about religious faith. men demonstrate psychotic symptoms but are left to cope on their “You believe in a God we never see or hear,” she said, “so why own. The challenges they face – alone in prison cells – make won’t you believe in the voices I really do hear?” Waddingham even more thankful for how far she has come. “I feel so privileged,” she says. “I’ve travelled. I’m married. I’ve got Eventually, she gave Romme a copy of The Origin of cats. And I’ve started my own business. People always say I work Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by the too much, and I say: ‘I spent a good decade drugged up with no psychologist Julian Jaynes. In it, Jaynes argued that hearing voices life. I’m recapturing some of what I lost.’” was common until the development of written language. He believed the voices heard by the heroes of Homer’s Iliad were not A longer version of this article appeared in The Independent. metaphors but real experiences. “They were voices whose speech © William Lee Adams/The Independent. and direction could be as distinctly heard by the Iliadic heroes,”
WEATHER Driest: No rain fell over much of northeast and eastern Scotland, and northeast England, as well as parts of south Wales in the week to Tue 17th
Wettest: 37mm (1.46in) at South Newington (Oxon), Thur 12th
Sunniest: 10.9h at Kinloss (Morayshire) on Sat 14th
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Coldest: -7°C (19°F) at Aboyne (Aberdeenshire), Sat 14th
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Warmest: 15°C (59°F) at St James’s Park (Greater London), Thur 12th
For the week that was:
The last week has been distinctly warm, with highs of 12-16°C over many parts of the UK, including St Helier (Jersey) with 15.7°C on Thur. The lowest maximum temperature was 3.7°C at Lake Vyrnwy (Powys) on Sat, while the highest minimum temperature occurred overnight Wed/Thur, with a lowest value of 9.8°C at Bude (Cornwall). Highest sustained winds of 40-45mph were on Thur, with gusts (also on Thur) to 76mph at West Guerinish (South Uist). The temperature reached 36°C at Fullerton Airport in California (US) on Sat, and fell to -39°C at Saint-Benoît-du-Lac, Quebec (Canada) last Sat. Boston in the US has had the snowiest winter on record, with 276cm. Tropical Cyclone Pam hit Vanuatu, leaving 25 people dead and many more injured, and the death-toll is set to rise substantially; the pressure dropped to 896 millibars at Port Vila (the capital of Vanuatu) on Sat. The rainfall topped 450mm between Fri and Sun.
21 March 2015 THE WEEK
Crossword
58 THE WEEK CROSSWORD 945
This week’s crossword winner will receive an Ettinger (www. ettinger.co.uk) visiting card case for business cards or to use as a mini wallet, and two Connell Guides (www.connellguides.com).
An Ettinger card 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 30 March. Send it to: The Week Crossword 945, 2nd floor, 32 Queensway, London W2 3RX, or email the answers to crossword@theweek.co.uk. Set by Tim Moorey (www.timmoorey.info) ACROSS 1 Replace certain head of Government somehow? It may help us get better (7,8) 9 Unable to think properly when technology not available? (3,2,2) 10 Band touring with soprano matures (5,2) 11 Fellows on university list (4) 12 Do need men out for end of play (10) 14 Yard interrupting calls for frauds (7) 15 Poles come endlessly for green vegetable (4,3) 17 Short of sewing, long forgotten (7) 19 Rush around place for a binge (7) 20 Deeply religious, dear fellow upset in departure (3-7) 22 To some extent, democracy struggles for growth (4) 25 Two French articles in the end about a pub drink (4,3) 26 Is it about Liberal returning in Asian capital? (7) 27 Poles, eclectic or otherwise get a rare item (10,5)
DOWN 1 Good space for spruce (5) 2 Angler’s bottom line? (3,6) 3 Tendency to forget first break (4) 4 Literature for landlords? (7) 5 Reginald lives around working areas (7) 6 Narrow escapes ending with everyone in class evacuated (5,5) 7 Unopened paper coming out (5) 8 Right away, one living abroad to speak at length (9) 13 Considered food store must have reprimand (10) 14 Gay prince upset by praise voiced (9) 16 Labour row? Spin doctors work on it (5,4) 18 Man arrests member in costume (7) 19 Politician is senior – one on the Hill (7) 21 Doctor everyone heard speak slowly (5) 23 Dropping off son, hit small vehicle (5) 24 Primarily weak devil! (4)
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Name Address Clue of the week: It could be adorning a platform at the front (5,5 first letter, first word G) Independent, Radian
Tel no Clue of the week answer:
Solution to Crossword 943 ACROSS: 1 Conference pears 9 Toreros 10 Crumble 11 As of right 12 Strop 13 Easier 14 Ring main 17 Opposing 19 Binned 22 Pined 24 Kama Sutra 25 Toronto 26 Dunking 27 Liberal Democrat DOWN: 1 Cottage hospital 2 Nervous 3 Errorless 4 Ensign 5 Cocktail 6 Pours 7 Alberta 8 Sleeping draught 15 Glissando 16 Snake oil 18 Pan-Arab 20 Nuttier 21 Smidge 23 Donor Clue of the week: What’s got out of bed? (4, last letter E) Solution: ROSE (A DOUBLE DEFINITION)
The winner of 943 is J. Owen Pryce from Cardiff The Week is available on CD and via the e-text service from National Talking Newspapers on 01435-866102; www.tnauk.org.uk
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Sudoku 489 (easy) 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 to Sudoku Sudoku 488 228 Solution 5
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Charity of the week The Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust aims to be a fitting legacy to Stephen’s memory and to make a real impact. We support young people to transform their lives, overcome disadvantage and discrimination, and take on ambitious careers as professionals. We ensure business can benefit from, and is more inclusive of, diverse talent throughout its management structures. We continue to campaign for fairness and justice, ensuring the lessons from Stephen’s murder are acted upon. Not enough has changed in the last 20 years. Social immobility and a widening poverty gap still present huge obstacles to young people. While 25% of 18 to 24-year-olds are unemployed, 56% of black men in the same age range are unemployed. We have to act now to avoid the damaging waste and disregard of human talent. To donate, please visit www.stephenlawrence.org.uk.
THE WEEK 21 March 2015
P1014B P1014P SOURCES: A complete list of publications cited in The Week can be found at www.theweek.co.uk/sources
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