Innholdsfortegnelse for V. 1092 i The Week

What happened Europe without Britain EU leaders held a summit last week to chart a way forward for the bloc in the wake of the Brexit vote. At the one-day meeting in Slovakia – to which the UK was not invited – the leaders discussed measures to tighten border checks and boost economic growth, along with proposals for closer defence cooperation. But the show of unity was marred by disagreements over immigration and austerity. Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, condemned Germany’s open-door refugee policy as “self-destructive and naive”. The Italian premier, Matteo Renzi, meanwhile, refused to appear at a press conference with his German and French counterparts, in protest at their failure to offer more help to southern Europe’s ailing economies. The leaders agreed there should be no negotiations with…

Columbus, Ohio Boy killed by police: There were appeals for calm in the Ohio city of Columbus last week following the fatal police shooting of a 13-year-old boy armed only with a pellet gun. The officers were responding to reports that a man had been robbed of $10 at gunpoint. At around 7.45pm, they saw three males matching the suspects’ description, and confronted one of them – Tyre King – in an alley. At this point, King allegedly drew what looked like a handgun from his waistband, prompting an officer to open fire; he was hit “multiple” times. The police say that only later did they discover that the gun was not a real weapon but a BB gun (or airgun). Witnesses have challenged the police account, however, and King’s…

With friends like Colin Powell, who needs enemies? In private emails from 2014 – released by hackers last week – the former US secretary of state admitted he was reluctant to endorse Hillary Clinton for the White House. “I would rather not have to vote for her, although she is a friend I respect,” he told a financier. “A 70-year-old person with a long track record, unbridled ambition, greedy, not transformational, with a husband still dicking bimbos at home.” The latter is thought to be a reference to tabloid claims that Bill Clinton had a “buxom blonde mistress”, codenamed “Energiser” by the Secret Service. Boris Johnson has been accused of “manspreading” in the official photograph of Theresa May’s Cabinet. But his sister, Rachel, insists his pose – legs akimbo, hands…

“On the afternoon of 16 September, UKIP entered its post-Farage era,” said Sam Bright in the New Statesman. “After a total of nine years as party leader, and more resurrections than Sherlock Holmes”, UKIP’s “messiah” was replaced by Diane James, an MEP for South East England. James, who worked as a healthcare consultant for 30 years, is – like many Kippers – a refugee from the Conservative Party, where she grew disillusioned during the early Cameron years. As yet she has outlined few policies, though she has professed her admiration for Vladimir Putin, whom she sees as “a very strong leader”. James secured the backing of Farage after his favoured candidate, Steven Woolfe, was eliminated for submitting his leadership application 17 minutes late. James inherits a party in the grip…

A month ago, Bradley Wiggins “was basking in the glory of becoming the country’s most decorated Olympian”, said Owen Gibson in The Guardian. Now, Britain’s first Tour de France winner is facing “a fight for his reputation”. Last week a Russian hacking group called Fancy Bears released details they’d stolen from the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) database about therapeutic use exemptions (TUEs) – medical certificates that allow athletes to take banned substances for pre-existing illnesses. Wiggins, it turns out, obtained three TUEs, to have injections for his asthma and allergies, between 2011 and 2013 – “each before his major target race for that season”. For a cyclist who wrote in his autobiography that he had “never had an injection” apart from vaccinations, the revelations are deeply damaging. The substance Wiggins…

The curse of being clever To The Times Being a clever student in school is a handicap, not a blessing. As a former teacher, and mother of two bright girls whose experience of school was unhappy, this has always been evident to me. My daughters’ comprehensive tried hard to accommodate bright pupils: they had “enrichment days” in a range of subjects that enabled those with talent to be stretched and stimulated, and even (unusual for a state school) offered the chance to study Latin. But it was not enough to counterbalance the daily grinding down of self-esteem wrought by the anti-intellectual counter-culture of the classroom and the playground. I am not in favour of selection at 11 but I do think we should be doing more for the significant minority…

A hugely popular concept in Denmark, hygge (pronounced who-guh) refers to the “sublime state of cosiness you feel when you are with loved ones and nothing else matters”, says Brontë Aurell. And it is a feeling the Danes often achieve by tucking into lovely homemade Scandinavian cakes. This moreish chokoladekage, or brownie, will definitely make everything hygge. I call it Loki’s brownie, after the shape-shifting trickster Norse god. Do experiment by adding your own choice of treats to the mix Makes 9-12 200g good-quality 70% dark chocolate 250g unsalted butter 275g caster sugar 3 eggs 75g plain flour 50g good-quality cocoa powder (we use Fazer Cacao) a pinch of salt 1 tsp vanilla sugar or extract, or use the seeds from 1 vanilla pod 150g filling of your choice –…

Controversy of the week A bruising election Predictions are unwise in politics, said The Times. But in the case of the Labour Party, it’s possible to make a few confident forecasts. One is that Jeremy Corbyn this weekend will beat Owen Smith to the leadership by a clear margin. Another is that he will tell the party, after a bruising election, that he wishes to unite all its factions behind him, so they can fight the Tories. “A third is that he will be lying.” Corbyn may have a kind, “grandfatherly demeanour”, but his ascent has been propelled by “hard-left activists”, now consolidated into the group Momentum. They have become “the cuckoo in Labour’s nest”, hollowing out a “once-great party of the centre-left and depriving the country of a functioning…

Jersualem US aid deal: Despite the often poisonous relations between President Obama and Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, America has agreed to provide Israel with the largest package of military aid in US history. Netanyahu has fiercely criticised Obama’s 2015 deal with Iran, aimed at curtailing Iran’s nuclear ambitions. But while Israel is not itself officially a nuclear power, it has at least “200 nukes, all pointed at Iran” – according to an email written by former US secretary of state Colin Powell (who supported the US-Iran deal) that was leaked last week. The new deal underlines the bipartisan support in the US for ensuring Israel retains military supremacy in the region. Under the agreement, Israel will receive $3.8bn a year for ten years – it currently receives $3.1bn; Netanyahu had…

Why are we so obsessed with GDP? Gillian Tett Financial Times Western policymakers today are filled with anxiety at how slowly Gross Domestic Product is expanding; so much so that central bankers even resort to negative interest rates in a bid to boost it. But the question they all fail to ask, says Gillian Tett, is whether GDP is the measure they should be using in the first place. Is it really sensible to obsess about a figure for total output that does not take account of population trends? Japan, for example, is said to have suffered a “lost decade” following years of feeble GDP growth; but adjust the figures for its shrinking population, and Japan’s growth (or GDP per person) is comparable to America’s. Indeed, if you look at…

A 44-year-old man killed as he and his wife drove to the supermarket. An 80-year-old shot in the face outside his retirement home. A 17-year-old shot in the back as he stood outside a block of flats. These are just three of the 13 homicides that took place in Chicago over Labour Day weekend earlier this month, said The Washington Post. More than 50 other people were shot and wounded. Yet this, shockingly, represents a pretty normal weekend for Chicago. So far this year, more than 3,000 people have been shot in America’s third-largest city, and more than 510 killed – more than New York and Los Angeles combined. Most of Chicago’s shootings occur in a handful of gang-dominated districts; and while innocent bystanders are often caught in the crossfire,…

“A new prime minister typically enjoys a long honeymoon,” said Fraser Nelson in The Daily Telegraph, “but this is one of many traditions that Theresa May has dispensed with.” Having won the Tory leadership contest as “the continuity candidate”, May has wasted no time in executing “a pitiless purge of her predecessor’s friends and policies”. George Osborne’s deficit-cutting plans have been ditched, Michael Gove’s prison reforms put on hold, David Cameron’s bold plans for tackling obesity watered down. Most controversial of all is her plan to bring back grammar schools: a policy so discredited – and so unpopular with her own MPs – that it enabled Jeremy Corbyn to win a rare victory at Prime Minister’s Question Time last week. “The cheering for May in Parliament is becoming noticeably less…

A “pall of sadness” descended on the nation last week, said Debora Robertson in The Daily Telegraph, following the shocking news that the country’s favourite television show, The Great British Bake Off, has been snatched from “the cosy bosom of the BBC”. The programme’s maker, Love Productions, turned down an offer of £15m a year from the BBC to take the hit show to Channel 4 for £25m a year. To compound the “cake-a-clysm”, the show’s popular co-presenters, Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins, then announced that they would be stepping down rather than “going with the dough”. Will Mary Berry and her fellow judge Paul Hollywood follow suit? If they do, Channel 4’s money will have secured little beyond a massive tent and a few bags of flour. It’s the…

It was almost “the greatest comeback in the history of British tennis”, said Mark Hodgkinson on ESPN. When Andy Murray and Kyle Edmund both lost on day one of Great Britain’s Davis Cup semi-final against Argentina last Friday, the best-of-five tie seemed all but over. But Murray somehow hauled his team back into contention, winning the doubles tie with older brother Jamie on Saturday, and the next day overcoming Guido Pella in the singles. Alas, it wasn’t to be. In the final rubber, Leonardo Mayer came back from a set down to beat British No. 3 Dan Evans, giving Argentina a 3-2 victory. The time has surely come for Andy Murray to “start being selfish and stop playing Davis Cup”, said Charlie Eccleshare in The Daily Telegraph. By the end…

To The Guardian Simon Jenkins follows many Western commentators in viewing events in the Middle East through a typically colonialist lens that filters out the people of the countries concerned and only sees Western entities as meaningful actors. Thus the Libyan revolution becomes “David Cameron’s war on Libya”, with the people of Benghazi – the authors of the uprising – dismissed in a side comment. Similarly, the fall of the Gaddafi regime is attributed solely to the Nato operation, with no place for the people of Misrata, who pushed back the notorious 32nd Brigade led by Khamis Gaddafi for two months before any air support from Nato arrived; or the people of Zawiya, who rose up against Gaddafi, were put down by his forces, and then rose up again as…

Mount! by Jilly Cooper Bantam Press 640pp £20 The Week Bookshop £15 “Rupert Campbell-Black is back,” said Hilary Rose in The Times. The “serial shagger” of Riders, Rivals and Polo is now a “silver fox”, starring in a saga featuring, as ever, “love, lust, revenge and redemption, strung around the world of horse racing”. This is Cooper “doing what she does best”. In her fictitious county – Rutshire – lawns are always “emerald”, jasmine “perfumes” the air, and everyone – human and equine – is “gagging for it”. The puns are “dreadful”, but who cares? Cooper has reverted to her old “sex and saddlebags” formula, said Orlando Bird in The Daily Telegraph. But Mount! lacks the “shrewd” social observation that enlivened her best books. Now 79, she gamely tries to…

Exhibition of the week Wifredo Lam Tate Modern, London SE1 (020-7887 8888, www.tate.org.uk ). Until 8 January The Cuban artist Wifredo Lam (1902-82) was “one of the most fascinating figures in the history of modern painting”, said Alastair Sooke in The Daily Telegraph. Though his “fantastical” paintings of black magic, voodoo ceremonies, and “strange beasts and demons cavorting in swamps and forests” are well known in most of Europe, he remains “inexplicably neglected” in the UK. Now, at long last, Tate Modern has set the record straight with a major new exhibition. It takes us from his earliest compositions through to his final pictures, featuring more than 200 works and confirming his place in 20th century art history. It is a “heady hell-broth of a show” that…

Welcome to The Week’s Wine Club, where we will offer you a serious range of the most interesting drinking wines from a handful of Britain’s most reliable – and innovative – merchants. We all have different paths to understanding wine – in my case it started with gallon kegs in an obscure town in rural Australia, followed by extraordinary bottles of Bordeaux served with foie gras in Bangkok. Our pledge is to offer you an exciting variety of wines at prices cheaper than those available to the public. On top of that, there will always be six different wines on offer, which can be ordered individually or as a mixed case – and you don’t need to worry about delivery charges if you live in the UK, as that’s included.…

New cars: what the critics say Top Gear Since it first went on sale in 2012, the up! has been “the best teeny hatch by an almost embarrassing margin”. And now, in a further blow to its rival city cars, Volkswagen has “had a crack” at making it even better. This updated model comes with the option of a powerful turbocharged 1.0-litre engine – which boasts 89bhp and goes from 0-62mph in 9.9 seconds – as well as a “new look”. Auto Express The new up! is more “handsome” than ever: the revised front bumper gives it a sportier appearance, and it looks sharper from the back, too. The pleasant, “practical” interior – with quality materials and seats – gives it the feel of “a car from a class above”.…

Former office boy who became an expert in jungle warfare Lt-Col Edward Gopsill 1921-2016 Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Gopsill was one of the first volunteers to join the original Parachute Regiment. His was an unusual technique: rather than keep his hands to his sides on jumping out of an aircraft, he’d fling them apart, as though he were trying to fly. As a result, he became known as Fairy. The joke was that he was 6ft 2in, and barrel-chested; nor was there anything meagre about his courage, said The Times. On the contrary, “his bravery was conspicuous” – whether he was diving into the Mersey to rescue a drowning boy, while on leave in his home city of Liverpool in 1941, or fighting his way through the jungles of Malaya. Edward Gopsill…

How the City can dodge Brexit Reza Moghadam Financial Times As the dust settles on the Brexit vote, an existential question hangs over the City of London, says Reza Moghadam. “Might London’s financial firms end up drifting to a new home on the continent?” It would be disastrous for Britain to lose its world-leading finance hub; but Europe, too, can ill-afford the shock of moving the EU’s financial centre eastwards. “A London-am-Main or sur-Seine would take at least a decade to build”, time that a struggling EU “does not have”. Europe won’t allow Britain to “cherry-pick its freedoms”, so retaining UK single market access while restricting the free movement of people is out of the question. But to square this circle, the UK could join the EU’s banking union (which…

Berlin Far-right surge: Angela Merkel’s governing party suffered a further hammering in regional elections in Berlin on Sunday, while the far-right made its biggest gains in the city since 1945. Having secured just 17.6% of the vote – its worst ever result in the region – Merkel’s CDU party was knocked out of its ruling state coalition with the centre-left Social Democrats, who came first with 22%. The big winner, however, was the anti-immigrant Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which will enter the state parliament for the first time, with 14.1% of the vote; only founded three-and-a-half years ago, AfD is now represented in ten of Germany’s 16 state parliaments, and is on track to gain seats in 2017’s general election. Merkel described the result as a “bitter defeat”, and –…

The “kamikaze” pilot Lieutenant Heather “Lucky” Penney was a rookie fighter pilot when, on the morning of 9/11, she was asked to give her life for her country. Three hijacked planes had already crashed into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, and a fourth was hurtling towards Washington DC. There were no armed aircraft on standby, so Penney and her commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Marc Sasseville, were ordered to fly their jets straight into the Boeing 757. “We wouldn’t be shooting it down. We’d be ramming the aircraft,” she told Steve Hendrix in The Washington Post. “I would essentially be a kamikaze pilot.” The two pilots quickly made a pact – he would crash into the cockpit of the Boeing, and she would crash into the tail – then ran…

Two enterprising thieves donned wetsuits and flippers in order to dive into a golf club lake in the dead of night, and empty it of balls. The pair drove 200 miles from Yorkshire to Herefordshire to carry out the raid, only to be thwarted when the club’s owner woke up, saw their car, and called the police. The men were apprehended as they emerged from the water, but were released without charge after agreeing to hand over their haul – 800 balls, which would sell for about 60 pence each. The club is now planning to auction the balls for charity. A man has been arrested for spending three weeks living in a departures terminal. But Raejali Buntut, 32, wasn’t slumming it with the tourist crowds at Singapore’s Changi Airport.…

CHINA Don’t condemn us for this racist slur Campaign Asia (Hong Kong) As a regular traveller on Air China, a major airline of the People’s Republic, I often laugh at the “cheesy” English-language articles in its in-flight magazine, says Reno Yue. But a recent article in its Wings of China publication wasn’t so funny. It warned visitors to London to take precautions when entering areas “mainly populated by Indians, Pakistanis and black people”, advising them “not to go out alone at night”, and that women should “always be accompanied by another person”. As a Chinese person, I “wince” at the damage this sort of thing does to our reputation; and sure enough, in the ensuing “shitstorm”, British MPs denounced the “racist slur”. But let’s not rush to judgement. The Chinese…

Trees can “communicate” via an underground network, sharing nutrients and even information, says the author of a new book. Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees – a bestseller in his native Germany – argues that forests are not unlike families, with older trees supporting saplings, and healthy trees sharing nutrients with sick neighbours. Such exchanges take place via mycelium – thread-like filaments which make up the main bodies of fungi; these run under the ground like a “fibre-optic network”, linking the roots of different plants. Trees can transfer nutrients such as carbon and nitrogen via mycelium, and even share information about diseases, says Wohlleben. Although his theories are drawn partly from his experience as a forester managing 3,000 acres of woodland, they are backed up by a solid body…

Poor deluded David Cameron. Back in 2011, he was convinced he’d learned from Tony Blair’s mistakes in Iraq, said Jenni Russell in The Times. When deciding whether Britain should join the French and US-backed operation in Libya, our then PM concluded that he could do things differently. There would be no invasion, which would create anger and resentment. Instead, Britain and its allies would merely assist the rebels in their democratic struggle, “then stand politely back, offering nation-building help as wanted”. But this model of “intervention-lite” fared no better: Libya today is another “violent failed state” – a “shit show”, as Barack Obama put it. And when a parliamentary inquiry into the UK’s intervention delivered its findings last week, they were “dismally similar” to those of the Chilcot inquiry into…

“The most dangerous worldview is the worldview of those who have not viewed the world.” Alexander von Humboldt, quoted in The Guardian “My friends tell me I have an intimacy problem. But they don’t really know me.” Comedian Garry Shandling, quoted in The New York Times “If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool.” Carl Jung, quoted in The Guardian “Alcohol enables Parliament to do things at 11 at night that no sane person would do at 11 in the morning.” George Bernard Shaw, quoted in The Irish Times “When correctly viewed, / Everything is lewd.” Tom Lehrer, quoted in The New York Times “It’s my belief we developed language because of our deep inner need to complain.” Lily Tomlin, quoted on…

Brownlee’s brotherly love The image is already a “sporting classic”, says Sean Ingle in The Guardian. Jonny Brownlee was striding towards victory in the World Triathlon Series finale in Mexico, when he was overcome with heatstroke. As the British Olympian staggered across the course “like a drunk”, he was caught up by his elder brother and fellow triathlete Alistair. Knowing Jonny needed to finish well to have a chance of claiming the world championship, Alistair hooked Jonny’s arm round his shoulder, and all but carried him the final few hundred metres to the finishing line. Sadly, his efforts were in vain: Jonny’s rival for the world title finished high enough to secure overall victory. In typical older brother fashion, Alistair wasn’t brimming with sympathy. “I wish the flipping idiot had…

Politics by Nick Clegg Bodley Head 288pp £20 The Week Bookshop £15 The cover of Nick Clegg’s memoir of his time in government is adorned with a “rather melancholy mugshot”, said Andrew Rawnsley in The Observer. Yet the book itself is far from “doleful”. Rather, it’s a “spirited defence of the decision to go into government with the Tories, and the role the Lib Dems played there”. Though it was a decision that ultimately spelled electoral disaster for his party (which went from 57 MPs to eight in last year’s general election), Clegg still believes it was justified. The country, he says, needed stability in 2010. And had the Tories been “left to their own devices”, many beneficial policies – such as free lunches for primary school children – would…

Theatre A Streetcar Named Desire Playwright: Tennessee Williams Director: Sarah Frankcom Royal Exchange, Manchester (0161-833 9833) Until 15 October Running time: 3hrs 5mins (including interval) We’re used to seeing Maxine Peake as an actress with “an in-built bulls*** detector”, said Michael Billington in The Guardian. It was a quality much to the fore when she played Hamlet at the Royal Exchange. So she might seem an odd choice to play Blanche DuBois, the tragically deluded protagonist of Tennessee Williams’s classic play. But in the event, she offers a “breathtaking” portrayal of a mentally troubled woman descending into “panic and hysteria”. From the very start of this fine production, when down-on-her-luck Blanche arrives at her sister’s humble New Orleans home, Peake perfectly captures her character’s “reflex, desperate flirtatiousness”. She “buffs her…

Best books… Paddy Ashdown Former Liberal Democrat leader Sir Paddy Ashdown chooses his favourite reads. His latest book, Game of Spies: The Secret Agent, the Traitor and the Nazi, has just been published by William Collins at £20 An Officer and a Spy by Robert Harris, 2013 (Arrow £7.99). I wish (how I wish!) I could take a historical event and write a novel around it. Based on the Dreyfus Affair, the story is as exciting as any fictional thriller. Harris also tells a tale of human endurance and malignity that is as heartrending as it is shocking. The Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Peter Frankopan, 2015 (Bloomsbury £10.99). Ever since I studied Chinese, I have been fascinated by the mysterious ribbon of sand-blown camel track…

The Pig on the Beach Manor House, Manor Road, Studland, Dorset (01929-450288) There is now a “modest litter” of Pig hotels across the Southwest, says Tim Hayward in the FT. All located in renovated country houses, they are “hip” without being “egregiously Shoreditch” – and the Pig on the Beach at Studland in Dorset “might well be the best addition to the herd” yet. It’s in a stunning, and rather glamorous, setting. And when it comes to the food, the policy – as with the other Pigs – is to source as many ingredients as possible locally (or indeed from the hotel’s own kitchen garden): there’s smoking, pickling and preserving on site, too. A chicken and pork terrine is “breathtaking” – light, packed with fresh herbs and bedecked in…

BT/Virgin Media: unlikely allies BT and Virgin Media have joined forces in a “new escalation of the telecoms industry’s civil war” over broadband, said The Daily Telegraph. The two fierce rivals are to run their first ever joint advertising campaign, placing full-page ads for a month in the UK’s quality newspapers and some magazines. It will highlight their combined £15bn spend on internet infrastructure over the past five years, and claim that average download speeds beat those in Germany, France, Italy and Spain. The ad push is a “public retort” to the Fix Britain’s Internet campaign, spearheaded by TalkTalk and supported by Sky and Vodafone, bemoaning the slow rollout of ultra-fast fibre optic broadband – which led to more than 10,000 people writing to Ofcom calling for action. At stake…

Emma Walmsley GlaxoSmithKline has announced who will replace current boss Sir Andrew Witty when he retires in March next year, said The Guardian. Emma Walmsley will become the seventh woman at the helm of a FTSE 100 company – and the most powerful female executive in Britain, taking charge of a company valued at £80bn. She has been at the pharma giant for six years, and part of its top team since a three-way merger with Novartis in 2011 saw her put in charge of GSK’s consumer health business. She describes herself as “extremely competitive”. In choosing someone with a background in consumer products, said the FT, the company has “signalled its intention to sharpen its commercial focus at a time when its traditional drugs business has been hurt by…