Innholdsfortegnelse for V. 1192 i The Week

What happened Labour backs down In the hope of drawing a line under a row that has dogged the party all summer, Labour’s ruling body finally agreed this week to adopt, in full, the definition of anti-Semitism espoused by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). The National Executive Committee (NEC) had previously opted to exclude from its code of conduct some of the definition’s associated examples, because of concerns that they’d curtail criticism of Israel. The NEC added a short statement emphasising freedom of expression on Israel, but rejected a stronger caveat proposed by Jeremy Corbyn. Corbyn’s proposal angered his critics, as did the earlier re-election to the NEC of Peter Willsman; he had suggested in July that Jewish “Trump fanatics” had made up anti-Semitism allegations. Last week, one of…

Chris Evans, who announced that he is leaving BBC Radio 2 for a new, more lucrative job at Virgin Radio. Evans took over Radio 2’s flagship morning show in 2010, replacing Terry Wogan, and is the second highest-paid star at the BBC, on £1.6m a year. Although the Murdoch-owned Virgin Radio is a digital-only station with just 413,000 weekly listeners (compared to Radio 2’s 15 million), it was able to offer Evans a £2m-a-year deal. Amazon, which briefly became the second US-listed firm, after Apple, to be valued at more than $1trn (see page 45).…

The opening of Crossrail, the new £15bn rail line across London, has been delayed, to allow more time for testing. A section of the line (to be known as the Elizabeth Line) from Paddington to Abbey Wood, in east London, had been due to open in December. That has now been pushed back at least nine months. Designed to ease London’s chronic congestion, the line will eventually run west-east across the capital, from Reading and Heathrow, to Abbey Wood and Shenfield. The project is already almost £600m over budget.…

A security guard has been fired from his job at a Florida hospital after his bosses discovered that he’d been posting recordings of his thunderous flatulence on Instagram for five months. The man, who uses the nom de guerre Paul Flart, began recording his farts after noticing that the lobby where he worked had “really great acoustics”. In August, Flart went viral, accumulating more than 90,000 followers, and was then sacked. He now hopes to turn himself into an internet brand. “There’s a whole new opportunity out there for me now,” he said. A fishmonger in Kuwait has been closed down for sticking googly eyes on its fish in order to make them appear fresher. Rival shops reacted by advertising fish “without cosmetics”, along with a picture of a fish…

Breathing dirty air is more than just a physical hazard – it also seems to make people less intelligent, says The Guardian. This is the conclusion reached by an international team of researchers after examining the test scores of 20,000 people in China. The subjects were of different ages, but they all took a set of language and arithmetic tests – first in 2010, then tests of equivalent difficulty in 2014. The team compared the two sets of scores taken by each examinee and then matched them with air quality data for the regions in which he or she lived. And the results suggest the impact of dirty air on intelligence is “huge”: across all participants, increases in pollution were associated with significant falls in test scores – a 1mg…

Few tears were shed last week when Wonga, the poster boy for Britain’s payday lending industry, collapsed under a mountain of compensation claims, said The Observer. The company was “too greedy and at times crossed the ethical line”, charging some desperate cash-seekers annual interest rates of more than 5,000%. But the demise of Wonga doesn’t spell the end of the high-cost, short-term credit industry. The conditions that gave rise to the emergence of Wonga and many other such lenders over the past decade or so are still very much with us. There are more than two million people in this country earning the minimum wage today. Another 4.8 million people are self-employed, while millions of others get by on part-time wages. That adds up to a lot of people “living…

The adolescent years – that “liminal, destabilising time” when children become adults – have never been easy, said The Guardian. We know this from Hamlet and Wuthering Heights. Yet young people today are facing “unparalleled” challenges, and it seems that this is leading to a rising tide of teenage mental ill health. It affects both genders, but in one “distressing area”, girls are suffering disproportionately: self-harm. Last year, a report in he British Medical Journal found that self-harm among girls in the UK aged 13 to 16 had risen by 68% in just over three years. Now, a Children’s Society survey of 11,000 14-year-olds has indicated that more than one in five girls in Britain are self-harming, along with one in ten boys. Girls aren’t just self-harming more than boys,…

When the Premier League season began last month, Watford were tipped for the drop, said Sam Dean in The Daily Telegraph. They were on their ninth manager in six years; they had just lost their star player, Richarlison. But in the first four games of the season, Javi Gracia’s side have silenced the doubters. On Sunday, they defeated Tottenham 2-1, joining Chelsea and Liverpool as one of the three teams that have won all their matches so far. This is the first time since 2013 that the Hornets have started September with the same manager who finished the previous season, said James Gheerbrant in The Times. If they have any sense, they’ll hold on to Gracia. It’s not that the Spaniard has brought in much new talent: all ten of…

“You either hate it or loathe it” was Orson Welles’ wry remark about the experimental style of his final film, The Other Side of the Wind. A nightmarish Hollywood satire, it was a tale of a legendary film-maker (played by a fellow director, John Huston) struggling to finish his last movie – a theme that carried a deep irony, given that Welles abandoned the project having edited only 40 minutes of footage. Yet last week, fully 48 years after shooting began, that irony was redeemed when a finished version was shown at the Venice Film Festival, to an enthusiastic response from critics. The story of its tortuous journey to the screen is itself worthy of a film, said Geoffrey Macnab in Screen Daily. What first put the kibosh on it…

Next month, an art project – and a social experiment – on an astounding scale, long shrouded in mystery, will finally be unveiled, says Mark Brown in The Guardian. From 2008 to 2011, the Russian artist Ilya Khrzhanovsky convinced more than 400 people to live in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv in a specially constructed set, which was designed to replicate life in a Stalin-era research institute. Participants had to eat the same food as Soviet citizens of the time would have eaten, wear the same clothes, read the same books and obey the same rules. They fell in and out of love, conceived 14 children, argued and turned on each other. More than 700 hours of footage were captured for a film that will be shown as part of…

Programmes Black Earth Rising Taut eight-part thriller about the prosecution of war crimes. Michaela Coel plays an adopted child of the Rwandan genocide who becomes a legal investigator, and is then drawn into a case involving an African militia leader. Mon 10 Sept, BBC2 21:00 (60mins). Strangers New drama series starring John Simm as a professor trying unravel the events leading up to his wife’s death in Hong Kong. With Emilia Fox. Mon 10 Sept, ITV1 21:00 (60mins). Princess Margaret: The Rebel Royal Two-part documentary about a princess who was both a modernising force and highly conventional. Contributors include Lady Anne Glenconner, a childhood friend, and Craig Brown, a recent biographer. Tue 11 Sept, BBC2 21:00 (60mins). Trust Starry ten-part drama based on the 1973 kidnapping of John Paul Getty…

• Total transaction levels for England and Wales look to be relatively equivalent to this time last year. • Despite transactions picking up over the course of 2017 in Prime Central London, they continue to be low by historic standards. • Strutt & Parker holds its residential house price forecast for both the UK (2.5% for 2018) and PCL, where prices are forecast to be flat in 2018 as a best case scenario, with a downside risk of -5.0%. • PCL lettings prices are also forecasted to remain flat at 0% in 2018.…

Here are four refreshing drinks to help keep the summer holiday spirit alive as we head into autumn, says Fiona Beckett in The Guardian. Xoriguer Gin (£23.95; masterofmalt.com). This herby Minorcan gin (pronounced “sho-ri-gair”) is made from grapes (rather than grain-based alcohol) in wood-fuelled copper stills, and is perfect for a Spanish-style gintonica. Kechris Tear of the Pine 2017 (s14.90; greeceandgrapes.com). A fine retsina wine with a slight smokiness and a lovely minerality that goes well with Greek meze. Cockburn’s Fine White Port (£9 for 75cl; Morrisons). White port and tonic over ice has been the surprise hit of the summer, according to Sainsbury’s. Try it with Merchant’s Heart hibiscus tonic water (£1.30 for 200ml; Sainsbury’s). Kayra Beyaz Kalecik Karasi 2017 (£12.42; strictlywine.co.uk). This “delicate, pale Turkish rosé with a…

Hiplok AIRLOK To keep your bike really secure outdoors or in a garage, consider this hanger. You’ll need a load-bearing wall to bolt it into: in stress tests, the wall gave way before the fixings did (£140; evanscycles.com). Bikeshelf A simple-as-can-be solution to bike storage, this shelf holds your bike, and its bits and bobs. The frame rests on the inside of the shelf, which comes in five colours (£66.50; cyclehoop.com). Bikehut Bike Storage Tent If you’re going camping with your bikes and want to keep them out of the elements, this narrow tent is just the job. It’s easy to put up and holds up to three bikes (£30; halfords.com). Cycloc Solo Ideal for indoor use, this simple, clever design has won several awards over the past few years.…

An Afro-Colombian port city Not long ago, it was Colombia’s most dangerous city, dominated by violent drug gangs. But in 2014, the president sent troops into Buenaventura – the country’s busiest port, on its Pacific coast – and now the murder rate is below the national average. It’s not a good-looking place, says Seth Kugel in The New York Times, but it is worth a visit to experience the region’s unique Afro-Colombian culture. Stay at Tequendama Inn Estación, a beautiful 1920s hotel, and eat at Café Pacifico, which elevates traditional dishes to fine dining. Go walking in the nearby jungles of the San Cipriano Natural Reserve (accessed on a motorbike-powered wooden cart, along disused railway tracks), and explore the beaches (“silty brown”, but idyllic nonetheless) of Juanchaco, “one of the…

New global link for Scottish islands Inhabitants of Scotland’s northern and western islands will benefit from cheaper and easier international travel after a deal was struck last week between Loganair and Turkish Airlines. The Scottish airline’s passengers will be able to buy a single ticket from their home airports – including Stornoway, Benbecula and Fair Isle – through to international destinations via Edinburgh. Travelling on a single ticket could save air passenger duty charges of as much as £78 per passenger, says Glasgow’s The Herald. A similar agreement already connects Loganair with KLM – but as Turkish Airlines flies to more destinations than any other carrier, the new partnership will broaden the islanders’ options. “This is a deal with one of the biggest names in international air travel, and we…

Renewed turmoil in Argentina and Turkey – both trying to contain currency crises – prompted fears of a wider sell-off across emerging markets. Argentina raised interest rates to 60%, the world’s highest rate, in an effort to prevent the peso falling further. Contagion worries sent stocks and currencies lower in Indonesia, South Africa, Poland and Mexico. The Indonesian rupiah sank close to its weakest level since the 1997 Asia crisis. Donald Trump, the US president, ratcheted up trade war anxieties by threatening to pull out of the WTO and spurning a deal with the EU that would end import tariffs on cars. Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, said he “strongly opposed” key parts of the Chequers trade proposal and urged Britain to adopt a Canada-style deal favoured by…

Booze to weed Investing in “sin” is “in the throes of a major structural shift”, said Garry White in The Daily Telegraph. Booze companies are currently rushing to get into cannabis: Constellation Brands, the US group behind Corona beer, is upping its investment in the Canadian medicinal cannabis producer Canopy to 38%, in a $4bn deal. And now others are following suit. Drinks giant Diageo is reportedly in talks with at least three Canadian cannabis producers ahead of full legalisation in the country in October. Anheuser-Busch InBev, Pernod Ricard and even Coca-Cola are all believed to be trying to find a way into the fledgling “drinkable cannabis” market. “These moves appear wise.” Even when cannabis use is permitted for medical purposes alone, it has been shown “to have a significant…

“For two decades the Conservatives have been panicking about haemorrhaging members,” said Matt Chorley in The Times: by this March, membership had fallen to 124,000, down from about 400,000 in the mid-1990s. But now, numbers are rising – and “some Tories are panicking all over again”. Why? Because the insurance tycoon Arron Banks, the former UKIP donor and the co-founder of Leave.EU, is urging thousands of Eurosceptics to flood the Tory party, so as to “unseat” Theresa May and push the party towards a “true” Brexit. There are fears that the party is falling victim to “entryism”, of the kind that swelled Labour’s membership to half a million and installed Jeremy Corbyn as leader. Some pro-Remain Tory MPs reported a sharp rise in applications to join their local associations. One…

Red Bull, after ministers announced plans to ban the sale of energy drinks to children in England. Around two-thirds of children aged ten to 17 regularly consume energy drinks, although these typically contain 65% more sugar than normal soft drinks. Red Bull also contains three times more caffeine than Coca-Cola. Daylight saving time, which could be scrapped across the EU, after a survey found that 84% of EU residents don’t like putting the clocks back and want to have summer time all year. The EU Commission has endorsed the survey’s findings; however, any change will have to be agreed by member states and MEPs. Kirsty Young, who announced that she is having to take a break from Desert Island Discs, because she is suffering from the chronic pain condition fibromyalgia.…

22% of secondary school pupils say they’ve changed schools because of bullying. 38% have missed school because of bullies; 46% have worried about returning to school after a holiday because of bullying. YouGov/The Daily Telegraph 47% of Scots say they will back Scottish independence once Britain leaves the EU, while 43% will oppose it. 52% of people in Northern Ireland say they will support Irish reunification after Brexit; 39% will oppose it. Deltapoll/The Scotsman 39% of voters would vote for the Tories in a general election. 37% back Labour. 35% think Theresa May would be a better PM than Jeremy Corbyn; 23% favour Corbyn. YouGov…

Letts on Notting Hill As a young man in London in the 1970s, Don Letts was often trailed by the police, says Emine Saner in The Guardian. Sometimes, he’d stop his car, jump onto the roof and stand with his arms outstretched. “I’d go: ‘Why are you guys crucifying me?’ And I’d start taking my clothes off, to get people looking. The minute you’ve got an audience, the cops don’t know what to do.” But mostly the DJ, musician and film-maker, now 62, just adjusted to the sus law (police stop and search powers): he’d leave the house half an hour early, “because I’d probably get stopped on the way. You know what’s really sad about it? You expected it – it was normal.” Even so, such incidents built up…

In some ways JIT is but the latest whizzy version of the eternal quest to boost productivity and profit margins by refining processes and tightening inventories – dating back at least a century to Henry Ford’s Model T assembly line, and probably beyond. In Britain, the concept was of vital importance during the production drive in the Second World War, when Vickers used “lean” methods to maximise Spitfire production. But corporate historians usually credit the invention of modern JIT to Taiichi Ohno, a Japanese industrial engineer, who pioneered what became known as the Toyota Production System in the 1940s. It was based around the idea of on-demand supply – regular, small deliveries of exactly the correct amount of components just as they are needed on the assembly line. Ohno was…

RUSSIA Why Putin is spooked by pension reform The Moscow Times Reforming Russia’s pension system is the most politically risky decision Vladmir Putin has ever made, says Vladislav Inozemtsev. The retirement age for men is set to rise from 60 to 65 (though as male Russian life expectancy is 66, many won’t make it that far) and for women from 55 to 63 – at least it was until last week, when Putin, spooked by his plummeting poll ratings, dropped it to 60. But to no avail. Russians are still seething: it’s hard to overstate the unpopularity of the reform. So why did Putin do it? Yes, the current situation is unsustainable in the long term: the pension fund deficit is huge (Russia has 36.3 million pensioners for 72.7 million…

It has been “a bruising few years” for global democracy, said Bo Seo in the South China Morning Post (Hong Kong). President Trump has sent America’s political system into convulsions; and Europe is wrestling with Brexit and waves of far-right insurgencies. So in this tumultuous climate, you might see Australia as “a reliable tick in democracy’s ‘win’ column”. It is enjoying a record 27th year of uninterrupted economic growth, and has a well-established, effective two-party system. Yet despite such promising conditions for stability, Australian politics is a madhouse. In the latest of a series of internal leadership coups, the ruling centre-right Liberal Party has just ousted premier Malcolm Turnbull and replaced him with his treasurer, Scott Morrison. That makes Morrison the nation’s fifth prime minister in just over five years.…

Children in England are to be banned from buying caffeinated energy drinks under government plans to tackle childhood obesity and bad behaviour, says The Times. The restrictions, announced by Theresa May, are expected to apply to brands – including Red Bull, Monster and Relentless – that contain more than 150mg of caffeine per litre. More than two-thirds of 10- to 17-year-olds, and a quarter of 5- to 9-year-olds, are thought to consume the drinks, which have been linked to various health problems, including obesity (due to their high sugar content), headaches and hyperactivity. Although many major retailers already refuse to sell them to under-16s, the drinks, which cost as little as 25p a can, can still be bought easily by children from corner shops. Under the proposals, shops that flout…

Last week, French and British fishermen clashed off the coast of Normandy, said Lee Rotherham on CapX. By “clashed”, I mean that some 40 French fishing boats “rammed and threw rocks, smoke grenades and lumps of iron” at five British vessels, and drove them off. The violence followed a long-simmering row over the right to harvest scallops, known in France as coquille Saint-Jacques, and specially prized there. In order to conserve stocks, French law dictates that its fishermen are only allowed to harvest the shellfish between 1 October and 15 May. But under the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy, British boats are allowed to dredge for scallops up to 12 nautical miles from the French coast – and they are not bound by French law. It’s a frustrating situation for the…

“Why is everyone always angry on the internet? Because it’s the simplest way to make a living. The perpetual outrage machine prints money.” Helen Lewis in the New Statesman “Left-wing people are always sad because they mind dreadfully about their causes, and the causes are always going so badly.” Nancy Mitford, quoted in The Guardian “[Cricket is] a game which the English, not being a spiritual people, invented in order to give themselves some conception of eternity.” The late Tory minister Lord Mancroft, quoted in The Times “A great idea is usually original to more than one discoverer. Great ideas come when the world needs them. They surround the world’s ignorance and press for admission.” US theologian Austin Phelps, quoted on Forbes “Work is where you go to escape your…

Stand your ground To The Daily Telegraph I read Allister Heath’s article as a cry of despair over our seeming inability to maintain the free speech, free inquiry and free debate that are our inheritance from the Enlightenment. As it is impossible to have a rational discussion with what he describes as the “new totalitarian thugs”, or to restrict their right to free speech, there is another way – ignore them. We have a classic example of the success of that tactic. It was recently demanded of Boris Johnson, often through use of defamatory language, that he apologise for his comments on the burqa. He ignored his critics, didn’t apologise and continues as usual, leaving them where? Nowhere. I have been in politics for 58 years, and learnt a long…

Theatre Tamburlaine Playwright: Christopher Marlowe Director: Michael Boyd Swan Theatre, Waterside, Stratford-upon-Avon (01789-403493). Until 1 December Running time: 3hrs 20mins (including interval) ★★★ Tamburlaine, written by Christopher Marlowe when he was only 23, was “the first big hit of the Elizabethan stage”, said Paul Taylor in The Independent. The “mass-murdering protagonist” is a Scythian shepherd who – in unremittingly bloody fashion – rises to form a huge empire stretching across Asia. Remorseless, egocentric and sociopathic, Tamburlaine is a compelling character: “the megalomaniac’s megalomaniac”. Today, Marlowe’s play is rarely staged – too bloody, perhaps, or too long, with two parts and ten acts in total. But for this version, former RSC artistic director Michael Boyd has trimmed the action down to a manageable three-and-a-half hours – and the result is as…

Best books… Wendy Cope The poet Wendy Cope picks the five books she’s most enjoyed this year. She is reading from her new collection of poetry, Anecdotal Evidence, at the Budleigh Salterton Literary Festival in Devon on 20 September (budlitfest.org.uk) Educated by Tara Westover, 2018 (Hutchinson £14.99). This is the author’s account of her childhood and upbringing in an eccentric Mormon family in Idaho. Her father didn’t believe in sending his children to school, and she spent her time helping out in his scrapyard. Eventually she managed to get into a local university, and then to Cambridge, England, where she gained a doctorate. A remarkable story of courage and determination. Property: A Collection by Lionel Shriver, 2018 (The Borough Press £14.99). I’m an enthusiastic fan of this courageous and outspoken…

Stem 5 Princes Street, London W1 (020-7629 9283) This friendly, fantastic-value new restaurant in a Georgian town house just off Regent Street is chef Mark Jarvis’s latest venture, says Jay Rayner in The Observer. I haven’t yet tried either of his recent-ish and widely acclaimed other London openings – Anglo and Neo Bistro – but as soon as I taste the amuse-bouche at Stem I know I’m in the safest of hands. It’s a “tiny, exceedingly crisp tart filled with a deep chive emulsion, all onion kick and adoration” and piled with the tiniest dice of lightly dressed, crunchy green beans. “It’s an extraordinary amount of attention to detail for a single mouthful.” Everything we eat here shows class, from an “intense and velvety” white onion soup (“more caramel…

Tips of the week… how to escape the tourist crunch ● If you’re going somewhere popular with day trippers – Venice, Oxford, Versailles – stay the night. You can explore the hotspots in the quiet morning and evening, and go to a less popular area in the middle of the day. ● But bear in mind that some places – e.g. Egypt’s Valley of the Kings – are quietest in the hottest part of the day, when tour groups are taken to lunch. Use the “popular times” widget on Google to check patterns. ● If you’re going to a city for museums and food, go in winter, when galleries are empty and restaurants full of locals. Vienna and St Petersburg are great in the snow, and Seville and Marrakech are…

Four nights in Dublin Set in 12 acres of beautiful landscaped gardens, the IMI Residence is the ideal retreat. Exeter flights and b&b from £262pp. 0800-083 4000, lastminute.com. Depart 11 October. 5-star Turkish resort Seven nights all-inclusive at Labranda Mares Marmaris, with views of the Aegean Sea, cost from £322pp, including Birmingham flights. 020-3474 0372, blueseaholidays.co.uk. Depart 2 November. European b&b break Spend 2 nights in Prague and 2 nights in Budapest, with luxurious accommodation and train transfer. From £219pp, including London flights. 020-3326 1516, viva-holidays.co.uk. Depart 18 October. Cultures of the Omo Valley Spend 9 nights in Ethiopia meeting the region’s tribes, and enjoy a boat excursion. From £1,939pp b&b, including Dublin flights. 020-8068 3176, exoticca.co.uk. Depart 20 October.…

Brexit challenge: logistics firms ‘must embrace change’ Uncertainty over what Brexit will mean for business is casting a cloud over many sectors of the economy – but leaving the EU could be a catalyst for change for the better in at least one field: logistics. Steve Twydell, chief executive of 3T Logistics, says it is “almost inevitable that Brexit will be a catalyst for a massive change over the next few years in the way that transport works, as well as in the way that our lives will look and feel in the future”. He said UK logistics firms should be quick to adopt emerging technologies, including AI, which can help mitigate driver shortages by planning more efficient delivery routes, for instance. How banks can help In the shorter term,…

“Say hello to Costa-Cola,” said James Moore in The Independent. Whitbread shareholders are certainly toasting the match. Shares in the former brewing group jumped 14% on news that Coca-Cola has snapped up its coffee shop chain, Costa, for a “fizzy” £3.9bn, “rating the business more highly than even rival Starbucks”. The deal is a coup for Whitbread boss Alison Brittain – “a wisecracking northerner” who has been “chivvied” by activist investor Elliott Advisors to sell or float the coffee chain, said Lex in the Financial Times. She reportedly struck the deal directly with Coke boss James Quincey after meeting him in May at a “CEO summit” in Seattle – ironically the home of Starbucks. “Wake up and smell the froth,” said Alistair Osborne in The Times. No question, Coke is…

When Aston Martin announced plans to float last week, CEO Andy Palmer shrugged off concerns about Brexit damaging the car industry. Here are some other captains of industry who are “sanguine about the future”, says Richard Partington in The Observer: Sir James Dyson The billionaire inventor of vacuum cleaners, fans and hairdryers has long argued that Britain would benefit from an independent trade policy. Dyson recently earmarked £200m to expand his research campus in Britain, to test electric cars. Sir Jim Ratcliffe The founder of chemicals firm Ineos (and currently Britain’s richest person, with a £21bn fortune) is reportedly moving to Monaco for tax reasons, but believes Britain would thrive outside the EU. “Never forget that we have a decent set of cards,” he has declared. Dame Helena Morrissey The…

Mark Read “Sir Martin Sorrell used to demand £70m a year for running WPP.” The new man in charge of the world’s largest advertising conglomerate, Mark Read, comes at “a tenth of the price”, said Alistair Osborne in The Times: the most he’ll get if he hits all his targets is a comparatively modest £7m. Truly, “a new era is under way”. Read, 51, is actually an old hand who first joined WPP as a graduate in 1989 when he wrote to Sorrell asking for a job. Latterly, he ran the group’s Wunderman digital agency before being “thrust into the hot seat”, as joint COO with Andrew Scott in April, when Sir Martin quit “amid all those prostitute allegations he denies”. The duo have since steadied the ship: “of the…

The Royal Academy has announced that, in light of the #MeToo movement, it will make sure there are as many naked men as women in its forthcoming show tracing the development of the nude in Renaissance art. This week, the Guardian art critic Jonathan Jones welcomed the initiative, but pointed out that it wouldn’t be hard to ensure parity: Renaissance artists celebrated the male form every bit as enthusiastically as the female. Britain is falling out of love with the cuppa. The amount of all types of tea bought last year was down 2.6 million kg – equivalent to 870 million cups – although sales of green and fruit tea rose. Last month, Tesco cut the shelf space for Tetley tea by nearly 40%, to make way for fruit and…

British prosecutors have named two Russian nationals as suspects in the attempted murder of the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, in Salisbury. European Arrest Warrants have been issued for Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov. According to the Government, the pair are officers in Russia’s military intelligence agency. Yet the Kremlin says their names and photos “mean nothing” to Moscow. The men arrived at Gatwick on 2 March, and were filmed by CCTV cameras in Salisbury on 4 March, the day the Skripals collapsed. Hours later, they flew back to Russia, police believe.…

Chemnitz, Germany Protest concert: About 65,000 people attended an anti-racism concert in the eastern German city of Chemnitz this week, in response to a wave of far-right protests over the fatal stabbing of a German man, allegedly by two immigrants. The free event, which featured some of the country’s biggest punk and hip-hop groups, had to be moved to a bigger venue than planned because of demand. It was held under the banner #wirsindmehr, meaning “There are more of us” – a riposte to the far-right slogan “We are the people”. Chemnitz has been racked by neo-Nazi protests and counter-protests since the stabbing, which renewed anger about the government’s immigration policy (see page 16). “We’re not naive – we’re not under the illusion that you hold a concert and then…

“We Europeans, it has been noted, have a habit of talking about the hideous reaction to a problem rather than the problem itself. Why? Because it’s easier. It’s easier, for instance, to discuss how awful Tommy Robinson – the anti-Islamist campaigner – is than to discuss the child-grooming gangs that sparked the backlash that made Robinson famous. Yes, Robinson is very easy to talk about. We’ve seen home-grown thugs like him come and go for decades, and we know why they’re wrong and what words to use about them. The problem with migrant criminals, however, is harder to articulate. How do we address that without sounding like… well, Tommy Robinson?” Tim Stanley in The Daily Telegraph Desert Island Discs returns on 16 September…

Foreign aid – a system based on fraud Kenan Malik The Observer On her tour of Africa last week, Theresa May declared, as if it were something dramatically new, that from now on Britain’s aid budget would be used to serve British trade and political interests. But since when did we use it for anything else, asks Kenan Malik. Our aid system has never been confined to relieving poverty: not one of the five poorest countries – DR Congo, Haiti, Mozambique, Uganda, Tajikistan – is among the top ten recipients of British aid. No, our top aid targets are either key markets, such as Nigeria, or strategically important countries, such as Pakistan or Afghanistan. “Indeed, half of all international development aid is tied, meaning that recipient countries must use it…

The “holy grail” of diet pills Advocates of slimming pills like to claim that they offer a halfway house between dieting and weight-loss surgery, but their use has been limited by concerns over their safety. Several products have been withdrawn from sale after being found to damage the heart. Now a large-scale randomised double-blind trial of the slimming pill lorcaserin has shown it to be both safe and effective, says The Times. Lorcaserin is an appetite suppressant that works by stimulating brain chemicals to induce a feeling of fullness. It has been available in the US (as Belviq) since 2012, but is currently unlicensed in Europe. “There’s a history of these drugs having serious complications,” says Dr Erin Bohula of Brigham and Women’s Hospital at Harvard University, who led the…

Patrick Leigh Fermor was held in high esteem, but his party piece, reciting Jabberwocky in Hindustani, didn’t impress Lucian Freud. “I felt I could not stand it,” the artist told his friend and model Martin Gayford. “So I slowly tipped my chair back until I fell out of the window. I must have fallen 15ft and landed on my head. I might easily have been killed; as it was I landed in a bramble bush. I was covered in twigs when I came back in.” He was equally scathing, after a visit to the West Indies, about The Traveller’s Tree, Leigh Fermor’s book on the islands: “It was hopeless. He’d describe a house and everything about it would be different.” Kanye West has declared that he will run for president…

It’s hard to overstate how much harm the allegations of sexual misconduct against Alex Salmond have done to the Scottish National Party, said Chris Deerin in the New Statesman. The SNP’s former leader is accused of assaulting two female members of his staff while he was first minister (he allegedly told one of the women to lie down in his bed, then groped her) – complaints that surfaced almost as soon as his successor, Nicola Sturgeon, in a spirit of openness brought in a procedure for calling ministers to account. Even if the charges prove groundless, they are bound to cause deep divisions within the SNP. Ever since Sturgeon replaced him, Salmond has been acting as a back-seat driver and promoting his “personal brand”; many members still see him as…

Cricket: England lose a legend... All opening batsmen face a fundamental question, said Jonathan Liew in The Independent. “When to play, and when to leave.” So it’s no surprise that “when the time came for Alastair Cook to apply that question to himself, he addressed it with the same equanimity, the same unflappable judgement” with which he has treated each of the 26,086 balls he has faced in his “long and fascinating” Test career. The 33-year-old batsman has announced that he will be retiring from international cricket after the fifth Test against India. He will bow out as “the leviathan of England’s batting”: he has scored 12,254 runs, the sixth highest tally in the history of Test cricket, more than 3,000 ahead of any other English batsman. Cook has never…

To The Times I am Jewish. Although I wrote Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister, Jeremy Corbyn says I don’t understand English irony. My co-writer Tony Jay was only half-Jewish, so perhaps he half-understood irony and was able to supply some. The Labour Party continues to deny that Corbyn is an anti-Semite, but as Sir Humphrey said: “Never believe anything until it’s been officially denied.” Philip Collins’s article shows that Corbyn’s speech, ironically, reveals what seems hidden to him. Jonathan Lynn, US To The Guardian To compare Jeremy Corbyn to Enoch Powell is outlandish, particularly for a respected public figure such as the former chief rabbi, Jonathan Sacks. It serves to obfuscate growing racism in this country. Powell’s speech was made in the highly charged context of the arrival of…

Cold War Dir: Paweł Pawlikowski 1hr 28mins (15) A dazzling art-house romance ★★★★ If you’ve ever been “stuck hundreds of miles from the love of your life, wondering if it’s really worth all the heartache and phone-checking”, Paweł Pawlikowski has made a film you’ll relate to, said Phil de Semlyen in Time Out. This “dazzling” new Polish-language film from the director of 2013’s Oscar-winning Ida is a sweeping period romance that kicks off in Poland in 1949. Tomasz Kot plays Wiktor, the middle-aged leader of a troupe of folk musicians who are forced to promote the communist cause. Joanna Kulig is his passionate, impulsive lead singer, Zula. The two fall in love – only to be separated when one defects, leaving the other behind. In some ways, Cold War is…

Californian painter Justin John Greene (b.1984) is not an artist much concerned with good taste. His canvases present a riot of gaudy tropical colour, pedantically faithful depictions of junk food and figures who seem to have drunk far too much, their bonhomie turning to aggression. Some may take issue with the deliberate ugliness and vulgarity in this show, Welcome To Our Mess, but there’s no doubting Greene’s skill. Certain details – painted toenails, glimpses of suburban foliage, beer cans – sing out, accentuated by multiple perspectives that recall the work of George Grosz. There are nods that stretch further back into art history too: in one particularly odd scene, a domestic barbecue pit is peopled by sinister imps straight out of a Hieronymus Bosch tableau, while another has a mannerist…

Alistair tells Shula he wants to petition her for divorce on the grounds of unreasonable behaviour, not the other way round. Lily’s grateful to her mum for being understanding about Russ. Elizabeth just wants to be sure that Lily isn’t being taken advantage of. Elizabeth admits to Shula she’s not happy about Lily’s affair, but is hoping it will fizzle out. As long as she doesn’t have to see them she can pretend it isn’t happening. Unfortunately, Lily invites Russ round for dinner. Helen thinks the problem with the Borsetshire Blue started when they sold the dairy herd. Tom’s shocked by Natasha’s feedback. She’s damning about most aspects of the farm. With Clarrie’s blessing, Susan tells Lynda it was Clarrie who stole the llama. Lynda agrees not to pursue the…

According to the Nationwide House Price Index, UK property prices grew 2.3% in the year to Q2 2018. Year on year (Y-o-Y) growth over the same period shows that on a regional basis, the best performers have been the East Midlands (4.5%), West Midlands (4.3%) and Wales (4.1%). Despite historically having one of the strongest growth rates in the UK, London as a whole continued to have the weakest growth in the country for the quarter (-1.9%). Despite this dip in growth, it is worth noting that London prices are still 53% above the 2007 peak, while national house prices are 15.7% above 2007. Guy Robinson, Head of Residential Agency at Strutt & Parker, said: “Since the chilly temperatures and snow that we saw in the early spring, the sun…

Sautéed partridge with cider, tarragon and apple Serves 2 50g unsalted butter, plus another 25g, ice-cold and diced 1 Bramley apple, peeled, cored and cut into 5mm pieces meat from 2 partridges, including legs and skin, chopped into 2cm pieces 175ml dry cider ¼ of a 10g good-quality chicken stock cube, crumbled 2 tbsps roughly chopped fresh tarragon a pinch of sugar salt and freshly ground black pepper 2 tsps finely chopped chives • Heat the 50g butter in a non-stick frying pan until slightly golden and bubbling. Add the apple and gently sauté for 2-3 minutes until slightly coloured. • Add the partridge and again cook for about 2-3 minutes until slightly coloured, but do not overcook – the meat should be rose pink when cut open. Remove the…

MG3 from £9,495 Auto Express The MG3 supermini has had an “extensive facelift” since its last UK launch in 2013, and it has paid off. Inside, it’s a “totally clean sheet of paper”, and the car is modern and very affordable. It’s just a shame MG has stuck with the same 1.5-litre, four-cylinder, naturally aspirated engine. It’s a unit that was outdated before, and now feels “Jurassic” next to the turbocharged norm in its class. The Daily Telegraph Overall, the revamp has been pretty successful. A new bonnet, wings, bumpers, lamps and tailgate give the car more presence, and the interior is better-looking. The seven-year warranty is also a nice perk. The boot is a modest 285 litres (slightly less if you want a spare tyre). But the new touchscreen…

1902 Townhouse, Majorca The town of Sóller, on Majorca’s wild west coast, is set among the “dramatic” Tramuntana mountains, but is also only ten minutes from the sea. In this recently converted town house, ex-Londoners Pete Holman and Martin Grant have struck a pleasing balance between “classic Spanish” and “clean, contemporary” style, says Condé Nast Traveller. There are minimalist four-posters in the six bedrooms, where graphic art hangs beside traditional local raffia figurines. There’s no restaurant, but breakfast is a daily-changing feast, served (on warm days) on a terrace beside an “elegant sliver” of a pool. Doubles from £130 b&b. 00 34 658 841 648, hotel1902soller.com .…

Hugely successful playwright who wrote The Odd Couple Neil Simon 1927-2018 Between 1965 and 1980, Neil Simon, who has died aged 91, wrote so many hit plays there was rarely a time when his name wasn’t up in lights on Broadway. In 1967, he had four plays running concurrently. His work was staged all over the world, and many of his plays – including Barefoot in the Park and The Odd Couple – were turned into major films, said The Daily Telegraph. Such was his commercial success he was afforded the rare honour, for a living playwright, of having a Broadway theatre named after him. Yet the critics never took to his plays in the way audiences did, dismissing them as unchallenging and middlebrow. “Neil Simon didn’t have…

Amazon: hitting a trillion – at what price? “There is something fundamentally wrong when thousands of Amazon workers are on food stamps while their boss, Jeff Bezos, is the richest man in the world,” tweeted the leftist former US presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders, last month. The timing was apposite, said Joe Williams in the Washington Examiner. Not only is Bezos worth $166bn, but his e-commerce giant has just become America’s second “trillion-dollar company” alongside Apple; shares have doubled in value in a year. Amazon, which made $2.5bn in the last quarter, counters that the Vermont senator is “spreading misleading information”: it claims that pay rates for over 90% of its “associates” now top $15 an hour. But the row will be further grist to the mill of President Trump and…

Have we learnt the lessons of 2008? Gillian Tett Financial Times A decade on from the fall of Lehman Brothers and the start of the global financial crisis, have we learnt anything to prevent a rerun, asks Gillian Tett. The figures don’t inspire confidence. Between 2007 and 2017, the ratio of global debt to GDP jumped from 179% to 217%, according to the Bank for International Settlements. And China’s debt numbers are especially “worrying”: gross public and private debt has doubled in the past decade to about 300% of GDP, surpassing “even Japan’s wild 1980s debt binge”. Yet China has “powerful strengths”, including “fat currency reserves” and a government able to fight any crisis “without being distracted by voters”. Its obsession with history also stands it in good stead: officials…

The week’s best shares Brooks Macdonald Group The Daily Telegraph The wealth manager has high margins, good growth prospects and a modest valuation. It’s expanding its network of branches and should reap the benefits of “operational gearing” as capex falls. Buy. £19.93. Circle Property The Mail on Sunday Circle develops undervalued office space in the regions. Its portfolio of 17 properties has risen 23% in value year-on-year, while income is up 21%. Demand is fuelling a pipeline of opportunities and strong growth is expected. Buy. 202p. Volex The Daily Telegraph This power cord and cable assembly specialist boasts a “skilled and global workforce, blue-chip customers” and a “reputation for quality”. A successful turnaround puts it on a “path to profitable growth”. Buy. 82.6p. Bunzl The Times This producer of healthcare,…

When I was writing the official biography of Philip Larkin 25 years ago, I gave no description of the friendship I had with him during the last nine years of his life. I told myself I was present everywhere in the book anyway – as the shaper-interpreter-selector of the material I had collected, and the supplier of occasional quotations and opinions that derived from my conversations with Larkin. I feel differently now. I feel that I can do as I expected my original interviewees to do, and deliver my memories of Larkin before I forget them or die. Before we met, I had no clear idea of what his own life might be like, of course. Neither, apparently, did anybody else; Larkin himself made sure of that. Although his poems,…