Innholdsfortegnelse for V. 1121 i The Week

What happened May goes to the country Theresa May stunned even her own MPs this week by calling for a snap election on 8 June. Speaking at Downing Street after a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, she said: “We need a general election and we need one now.” The Prime Minister reversed her earlier decision not to hold a vote before 2020 because, she said, Labour and the Liberal Democrats had opposed her plans for Brexit. “The country is coming together, but Westminster is not,” she declared. “Division in Westminster will risk our ability to make a success of Brexit.” The decision was kept so secret that most Cabinet ministers were not told of the plan until Tuesday morning. The PM put a motion for an early election before the Commons…

Cleveland, Ohio Facebook killer: A man who became the subject of a massive manhunt after he filmed himself killing a stranger on a street in Cleveland, and then posted the footage on Facebook, was found dead in his car on Tuesday. Steve Stephens, 37, is believed to have shot himself after being chased by police responding to a tip-off in neighbouring Pennsylvania. Stevens (right) – who worked as a case worker in a children’s mental health facility – had approached 74-year-old Robert Godwin as he walked home from lunch on Easter Sunday. In the footage, he mentions a woman’s name, and says: “She’s the reason this is about to happen to you.” He then shoots the man dead. The video was on Facebook for more than two hours before being…

Are you proud of the NHS? I’m not Kristian Niemietz The Independent Roast beef. The Lake District. Proper pubs. I can see why, in a recent survey, these were among the 50 things that made Brits proud to be British. But the NHS at No. 1? That I do not understand, says Kristian Niemietz. One takes pride in the exceptional, yet there’s nothing exceptional in a health system free at the point of use: every system in the developed world bar America’s has that. Those other systems, though, can take pride in exceptional outcomes: the Swiss one “has the lowest rate of (healthcare-related) avoidable deaths” in Europe; the Dutch, exceptionally fast access to treatment; the Japanese, excellent survival rates for cancer. France’s system is consistently good across the board. By…

Radical treatment for depression Ketamine could be used to alleviate the symptoms of depression in patients for whom “nothing has helped”, reports The Independent. For the past six years, an Oxford University team has been using ketamine – a licensed anaesthetic that is also used as a recreational drug – to treat 101 patients whose severe depression has proved resistant to drugs and therapies. They found that when the ketamine was given in small doses intravenously, followed by oral top-ups, 42 of the patients experienced a sustained improvement. One patient explained that the drug had slowed down the “constant, overwhelming bombardment of negative intrusive thoughts” and given her a chance to “fight back”. According to Dr Rupert McShane, who runs the programme, only electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) has better results –…

Donald Trump’s plans for his state visit to London are creating problems for his security team. In particular, they – and the Met – are concerned about his reported insistence that he is conveyed to Buckingham Palace in one of the Queen’s golden carriages. Normally, the US president travels as part of an armoured motorcade in a fast, bombproof car “designed to withstand a massive attack”, said a security source. “If [Trump] is in a golden coach being dragged up The Mall by a couple of horses, the risk factor is dramatically increased. There may well be protections in that coach… but it would not be able to put up much resistance in the face of a rocket-propelled grenade… Armour-piercing rounds would make a very bad show of things.” The…

Ever since Theresa May appointed the Three Brexiteers – David Davis, Boris Johnson, and Liam Fox – to her Cabinet, a group of Tory MPs has been running a sweepstake on who will be sacked first, said Simon Walters in The Mail on Sunday. Until last week, Fox was the favourite. But in the wake of Johnson’s bungled intervention at the G7 summit, the odds have shifted dramatically. The Foreign Secretary had already been accused of being America’s “poodle” for cancelling his trip to Moscow, hours before his flight was due to leave, so that US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson could deliver a “clear message” to the Kremlin about its support for the Assad regime. Then, two days later, he went to a G7 summit in Italy hoping to…

Football: Chelsea’s stumble opens up the title race “Suddenly, there is that seed of doubt,” said Jason Burt in The Daily Telegraph. For months, Chelsea’s title challenge had looked like a cakewalk: as recently as 18 March, they were 13 points clear. But following Sunday’s 2-0 away defeat to Manchester United, there are just four points separating them from Tottenham. It was a “performance of champions”, all right – but by a United side that put in their best display yet under José Mourinho. Chelsea, by contrast, looked like “a front runner desperately straining for the finish line”. It was the first time in almost a decade that they failed to hit a shot on target in a Premier League match; they haven’t kept a clean sheet in any of…

Befriending Russia To The Guardian For three years in the late 1990s, Sergey Lavrov was my Russian counterpart when we represented our countries on the UN Security Council in New York. Despite some obvious policy differences, Lavrov never played the UK false; he was a serious and creative negotiator, with a good sense of humour and a passion for the English language and its literature. To decline Lavrov’s invitation for our new foreign secretary to visit Moscow, just when new tensions show such contacts are most needed, seems ill-advised. Hard, too, to square with the windy rhetoric, since the Brexit referendum, that Britain will re-emerge as a world power rejuvenated. John Weston, Richmond, Surrey Two-step peace plan To The Daily Telegraph The problems in Syria will not be resolved without…

Musical Carousel Composers: Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II Director: Lonny Price English National Opera, London Coliseum, St Martin’s Lane, London WC2 (020-7845 9300) Until 13 May Running time: 2hrs 50mins (including interval) ★★★ What a great pleasure it is, said Michael Billington in The Guardian, to hear artists of the calibre of Katherine Jenkins and Alfie Boe sing the lead roles in a musical, and to “luxuriate” in a 42-piece orchestra bringing out the “rich colours” of a Richard Rodgers score. Carousel is the third “semi-staged” musical (one with limited staging, sets and costumes) that the ENO has put on in three years (the others being Sweeney Todd in 2015, and Sunset Boulevard – with Glenn Close – last year). And it’s “an almost total joy”. My main quibble…

Best books… Nicholas Crane Author Nicholas Crane picks six of his favourite books. On 29 April, he’ll talk about his own book, The Making of the British Landscape (W&N £20) at the Stratford Literary Festival (www.stratfordliteraryfestival.co.uk ). Over the Moon by Imtiaz Dharker, 2014 (Bloodaxe Books £12). Set mainly in London, these poems can be as exuberant and as dark as the capital itself, and one of them includes the best line ever written about this uneasy, riparian foundation on the Thames. The Hidden Landscape: A Journey into the Geological Past by Richard Fortey, 1993 (Bodley Head £20). My battered paperback has travelled to countless film shoots on Britain’s coasts. No other modern writer has managed so deftly to span the aeons between geology and our living…

Crêpes Suzette Serves 2 For the crêpes: 250g plain flour 2 eggs 2 tsps melted butter, plus extra for cooking 600ml milk For the sauce: 50g butter 3 oranges, 1 zested and all juiced 1 lemon, zested and juiced 3 tbsps caster sugar 2 tbsps Grand Marnier 2 tbsps cognac • To make the crêpes, whisk all the ingredients together in a bowl to form a smooth batter. Set aside for at least an hour in a cool place. • Place a small frying pan over a medium heat. Add a little butter and a ladleful of batter and then swirl to coat the bottom of the pan. • Cook for 1-2 minutes until just set, then flip and cook for a further minute, until the underside is lightly browned.…

Who’s tipping what The week’s best buys De La Rue The Times The market hasn’t fully appreciated the banknote printer’s purchase of anti-counterfeit hologram provider DuPont Authentication. Operating profits are “some way ahead” of expectations. Buy. 663p. Empiric Student Property The Times This student accommodation specialist’s attractive 5.6% yield should soon be covered by earnings. Net asset value is set to move ahead as the group reaches its target of 10,000 beds, and shares should rise. Buy. 110.5p. JD Sports Fashion The Daily Telegraph JD’s stores are “modern and full of technology”, which keeps key suppliers, such as Nike and Adidas, keen. Lines such as women’s “athleisure” are fuelling expansion. Cash-generative, with rising sales and profits. Buy. 440.1p. Middlefield Canadian Income The Daily Telegraph This investment trust taps into a…

Controversy of the week Turkey’s new sultan Democracy, as Turkey’s President Erdogan once famously remarked, “is like a train; once you reach your destination, you get off”. And this Sunday, Erdogan got off the train, said Douglas Murray in The Spectator. His slender victory in the referendum means that the secular republic founded by Kemal Atatürk in 1923 “has been snuffed out”. Turkey as we know it “is history”, said Yavuz Baydar in The Guardian. Erdogan now has a mandate to amend the constitution. By 2019, the office of the prime minister will be abolished; the president (Erdogan) will have sole prerogative to appoint senior bureaucrats and 12 of the top court’s 15 judges, to issue decrees with the force of law, and to exercise even more control of the…

Chris Packham’s sadness Being autistic, Chris Packham struggles to form relationships with people. He has no friends and lives alone in the New Forest. He does have a girlfriend – a very understanding one: he didn’t look her in the eye during their first six months together. But for companionship, he has relied on his dogs, and his bond with them is astonishing, says Michael Odell in The Times. Until recently, the Springwatch presenter had two: Itchy and Scratchy. When they turned 12, he realised he needed “a plan for dealing with the deaths of my loved ones”. Last December, Itchy died, aged 14, and he started putting the plan into effect. Itchy is now in a freezer in Packham’s barn, awaiting cremation. At some point, Scratchy will go the…

A three-month-old baby was summoned to the US Embassy in London, after his grandfather inadvertently identified him as a terrorist. Paul Kenyon, 62, was filling in an online visa waiver form for his daughter and her baby, Harvey, to travel to Orlando, when he accidentally ticked Yes to the question: “Do you seek to engage in or have you ever engaged in terrorist activities, espionage, sabotage or genocide?” As a result, Harvey’s application was denied, and he was asked to present himself to US officials. He was eventually authorised to travel, but the permit arrived too late. Some people get into hot water for erecting “home offices” in their back garden without planning consent. A millionaire accountant went a step further, and built a 10,000 sq ft leisure complex behind…

FRANCE Le Pen falters with Holocaust gaffe La Croix (Paris) One reason the National Front’s Marine Le Pen is now a front runner in the presidential campaign is that she turned her back on the crude anti-Semitism of the party’s founder, her father Jean-Marie Le Pen. Notoriously, he referred to the Holocaust as a “detail of history”. So why on Earth has she gone back on this, asks Guillaume Goubert. In a recent interview she let slip that she’s sick of France being blamed for wartime atrocities, notably the 1942 “Vel’ d’Hiv” roundup of some 13,000 Jews for deportation to concentration camps. This, she insisted, had nothing to do with the “real France”, whose leaders were in exile in London. What’s she trying to prove? National pride is all very…

Asian elephants are even more intelligent than we realised, reports The Independent. Self-awareness is regarded as a key indicator of intelligence, and it is usually gauged using the mirror test: do the subjects realise that what they are looking at is themselves? A handful of animals, including elephants, have passed this test; but it is increasingly thought to be imperfect. So researchers devised a further test, to see whether animals are sufficiently self-aware to realise when their bodies are getting in the way of a task – and work out how to solve the problem. For the Cambridge University study, elephants had to walk onto a mat, pick up a stick and pass it to a human; the catch was, the stick was attached to the mat. The elephants had…

As PR blunders go, this was a humdinger. United Airlines brands itself as the “friendly skies” carrier, but after last week’s shocking events, when an elderly doctor was dragged screaming off one of its planes, it may need a rebranding, said Arwa Mahdawi in The Guardian. The disaster began to unfold on the tarmac at Chicago’s O’Hare airport after crew belatedly realised they needed four more seats for staff on a flight to Louisville. They offered passengers $800 each to leave the plane – and when none volunteered, four were selected to be bumped off. Three meekly left their seats, but Dr David Dao, 69, refused. So cabin crew called the airport police, who forced him up, and pulled him along the aisle on his back – breaking his nose…

“What does someone who needs help with their mental health look like,” asked Felicity Morse in the i newspaper. They could look like a soldier returning from war. Or a mother struggling with a new baby. Or someone who has just lost their job. In truth, they could look like anyone: at least one in four people in the UK will have mental health problems during their lifetime. And, we learnt this week, they also look “like Prince Harry”. The Prince revealed to The Daily Telegraph that he had “come close to a complete breakdown on numerous occasions”, because he had bottled up his feelings about his mother’s death for so long. The result “was 20 years of not thinking about it, and two years of total chaos”. Only after…

Between the “inquiries, allegations, leaks and Jiffy bags”, British Cycling has been going through “crisis after crisis”, said William Fotheringham in The Guardian. And at the Track Cycling World Championships, which ended on Sunday, it was clear that there are issues on the track, too. A haul of five medals in Hong Kong was enough for Team GB to finish in a “far from disastrous” fourth place, but all of those came in endurance events; there were no sprint medals, and just a single bronze for Britain’s male cyclists. It was a far cry from last year’s tournament, when the team topped the table, but a great deal has changed since then: Bradley Wiggins has retired; Jason Kenny is on an extended break, while his wife, Laura Kenny (née Trott)…

To The Times The speed of response by the US president to the chemical weapons attack by Syrian forces throws the events of August 2013, when MPs voted against British involvement in military intervention in the Syrian conflict, into sharp relief. The Prime Minister now needs to know if she could take similar action, or if she is hidebound by the Commons vote against David Cameron, which he took as limiting him in future decisions. Swift response may not be an entire foreign policy strategy, but it is time we recognised it has a role to play. As would have been the case in 2013, it could persuade the Syrian regime that military subjugation of its own people is not possible, so a swiftly negotiated end to conflict is wise.…

If I had to take a punt on what white wine we’re going to be talking about this year, I’d put my money on furmint from Hungary, says Fiona Beckett in The Guardian. Unoaked furmints are generally less spicy than Austrian grüner veltliner, and are akin to a good Soave or Chablis, while oaked ones are reminiscent of a more southerly white Burgundy. Both kinds go extremely well with food. An ideal introduction to the variety is Royal Tokaji’s Dry Furmint 2015 (£9.99, or £8.99 on the Mix Six deal, Majestic), a lush wine that should appeal if you’re a sauvignon fan. Oremus’s richly textured Mandolás Dry Furmint 2014 (£15.59, www.thedrinkshop.com) is a terrific match for beetroot-cured salmon with horseradish, while Disznóko’s elegant Tokaji Dry Furmint 2015 (£12.95, www.leaandsandeman.co.uk) has…

Jovial writer whose books evoked a vanished literary world Jeremy Lewis 1942-2017 Jeremy Lewis, who has died aged 75, was a writer, editor, publisher and memoirist – and “one of the best-loved figures in the London literary world”, said The Daily Telegraph. A “Grub Street irregular”, was how he described himself. Bear-like, bespectacled and amiable, he was almost pathologically self-effacing. But his “silly ass act” – in the words of his cousin Roger Lewis – was a carapace that concealed his gifts as a writer: a perceptive observer, he wrote several acclaimed biographies, and “three splendidly funny volumes of autobiography”. In the preface to the first, Playing for Time, Lewis acknowledged that it was absurd that a “nonentity” such as himself, who had lived a life “short on incident”, should…

A bad City deal is worse than none Jonathan Ford Financial Times Since the referendum, City firms have been “lobbying tirelessly” to preserve some version of the EU’s “passporting regime”, which permits them to operate across the bloc, says Jonathan Ford. The “Brussels nanny” might be “tiresome”, but “bankers instinctively like keeping systems that are familiar, and from which they know how to make money”. Rather than accept the unwelcome results of a botched deal, however, the City should simply cut loose. Not doing so would raise the risk of being saddled with the EU’s rule book, without having any say in its contents, and of conceding valuable markets as the “political price” of a deal. In any case, “there’s no ravening lion round the corner should they give up…

Paris Too close to call: The first round of voting in France’s rollercoaster election takes place on Sunday, with four candidates almost neck and neck in the polls, and one in three voters saying they’re still undecided. The final fortnight of the campaign has seen several twists: a surge in popularity for the hard-left firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon, following his dynamic performance in a TV debate; and support for the scandal-hit Republican François Fillon recovering slightly. Any two of the four now seem to have a realistic chance of making it into the second and decisive round of voting, on 7 May. In the first round, polls show the independent centrist Emmanuel Macron and the National Front’s Marine Le Pen vying for first place, each on around 22%-23%, with Fillon and…

Mike Pence is a Christian, not a weirdo Jonah Goldberg National Review Liberals can be guilty of the worst sort of “double standards”, says Jonah Goldberg. Look, for instance, at the way they responded to a recent newspaper profile of Mike Pence, which revealed that the vice-president never likes to dine alone with women, or to attend events where alcohol is served, if his wife doesn’t accompany him. This nugget of gossip prompted much hilarity and righteous indignation in liberal circles. “It’s an affront to working women! He’s a Christian weirdo! He thinks a meal with any woman will lead to sex!” Such mockery was most unfair. If Pence were a Democrat who’d been caught cheating on his wife, you can bet the liberal elites would now be claiming that…

A “game-changing” stroke treatment is to become available to thousands more people, NHS England announced this week. Mechanical thrombectomies are used to remove blood clots in the brains of patients who have had acute ischaemic strokes. The procedure involves feeding a wire up through the body, usually from the groin area, where a wire mesh tube then catches the clot so that it can be dragged out, and blood flow is restored – limiting the damage to the brain. If used quickly enough, the procedure is more effective at unblocking arteries than blood-thinning drugs – and greatly improves patients’ chances of making a full recovery. At the moment, thrombectomies are offered in only a handful of hospitals, but there are plans to expand their availability to 24 specialist centres, starting…

When the blast came, at 7.32pm last Thursday, “a giant white flash” lit up the evening sky over Afghanistan’s Spin Ghar mountains, said Sune Engel Rasmussen in The Guardian. It felt, said witnesses, “like an earthquake”. Miles away, walls were cracked and windows were shattered. US forces had just dropped the largest nonnuclear bomb ever used in combat on a network of caves and tunnels used by Isis fighters in Nangarhar Province, near the Pakistan border. The GBU-43/B Moab – Massive Ordnance Air Blast, known as the “mother of all bombs” – has an explosive yield of 11 tonnes, and is so big that it has to be dropped from a cargo plane. It obliterated the tunnel network and left a crater nearly 1,000ft wide; Afghan forces, sent to mop…

“There’s many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.” Flannery O’Connor, quoted on The Browser “By the time you swear you’re his, / Shivering and sighing, / And he vows his passion is / Infinite, undying / Lady, make a note of this: / One of you is lying.” Dorothy Parker, quoted in The Times “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” Chinese proverb, quoted in The Irish Times “Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.” Sir Francis Bacon, quoted on Forbes.com “I always thought Roger Moore was a New Year’s resolution.” Former home secretary Alan Johnson, quoted in The Times “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave…

Rugby union In the Premiership, Saracens beat Northampton 27-25. Bristol were relegated following their 21-36 defeat to Wasps. Worcester beat Bath 25-19. Cricket Alastair Cook made 110 in his first competitive match since standing down as England captain, leading Essex to an eight-wicket victory over Somerset. Football Brighton were promoted to the Premier League. John Terry announced that he will leave Chelsea at the end of the season. Harry Redknapp was named Birmingham City manager.…

The Con Club 48 Greenwood Street, Altrincham, Cheshire (0161-696 6870) Altrincham is rapidly becoming something of a “foodie enclave”, says Marina O’Loughlin in The Guardian. And this latest addition to its crop of fine restaurants is a “bobby-dazzler”. The former Conservative Working Men’s Club, dating from 1887, has been reinvented as a light, airy, “bustling canteen hung with dramatic lampshades in copper or a kind of beetle-wing iridescent ceramic”. The food is not going to set the blogosphere alight with shows of “tortured, tweezered” refinement. But every dish that comes across the pass is impressive: arancini made with fine, al dente Arborio rice, and packed with woodsy, aromatic mushrooms; plump and perky mussels in cream, herbs and wine; a fine chunk of sirloin with just-right hand-cut chips and peppercorn…

New cars: what the critics say Car magazine Start totting up the Picanto’s competitors and “you’d be forgiven for feeling overwhelmed”. There’s the Renault Twingo, Volkswagen up! and Škoda Citigo, to name just a few. So this third-generation model “has a fight on its hands” if it’s to make a splash in the super-mini market. To help the new Picanto stand out, Kia has given it a redesign: the car is lighter and roomier than its predecessors. Auto Express “First impressions are good.” The Picanto is still Kia’s dinkiest car, but it’s now more eye-catching, with a bold grille and sharp detailing. The interior boasts “relatively plush” materials – and on high-end models, an attractive 7in touchscreen. Space inside is “impressive”, allowing adults to sit comfortably in the back and,…

Netflix: crowning glory? When the Netflix royal drama The Crown came out in November, “my husband and I abandoned our usual weekend plans”, said Janice Turner in The Times. Watching endless TV “was once the mark of the saddo”, but since launching its on-demand streaming service, “Netflix has achieved something quite strange: it has made couch potatoes cool”. That much is evident from the $63bn company’s latest quarterly figures, which show that it is close to notching up 100 million members globally, said Jennifer Saba on Reuters Breakingviews. Still, the slowing pace of subscriber growth worries some investors, given the company’s lavish spending on new productions: “Netflix will blow through at least $6bn this year on creating TV series and films.” Meanwhile, the competition from deep-pocketed rivals such as AT&T,…

Fearless Girl “The statue of the girl with her hands defiantly on her hips has become a tourist sensation” since it was planted opposite Wall Street’s “Charging Bull” sculpture on International Women’s Day last month, say Aaron Smith on CNN Money. But now a fierce controversy is raging over whether she should be removed. The veteran Italian sculptor Arturo Di Modica, who installed the snorting bull in front of the New York Stock Exchange in 1989, reckons she changes the positive message of his sculpture, which is “a better America and a better world”. The girl’s presence, according to his lawyer, makes the bull “representational of male dominance and Wall Street” instead. The Di Modica camp is now threatening to sue her sponsor, State Street Global Advisors, for copyright infringement,…