Innholdsfortegnelse for V. 1095 i The Week

What happened Trump on the ropes Donald Trump’s presidential hopes were hanging by a thread following the leak last Friday of video footage in which he boasted about grabbing women “by the p***y”. “When you’re a star, they let you do it,” he told a TV host in 2005, during what he believed was a private conversation. Trump, who had just married his wife Melania, also described his failure to “f***” a married TV presenter, although he’d “moved on her like a bitch”. The release of the tape prompted a string of Republicans to call on Trump to abandon his White House bid. Two days later, he took part in a second TV debate with Hillary Clinton. Trump put in a robust performance: he apologised for his “locker-room talk”, then…

Chakrabarti can’t have it both ways Frances Ryan The Guardian Naturally Shami Chakrabarti wants the best for her child, says Frances Ryan. But let’s face it, you can’t really take the Labour peer seriously as a critic of selective education once you learn she sends her son to Dulwich College – an £18,000-a-year private school. The former head of Liberty insists she’s no hypocrite: her choice, she says, has no bearing on her principled objection to grammars, any more than the fact she lives in a big house and eats nice food means she doesn’t care about the homeless or people who use food banks. But the comparison is flawed. No one is harmed by her having a large townhouse and eating well. But when middle-class parents “siphon their kids…

“A clear and present danger to our country.” “Beneath our national dignity.” These fiery denunciations sound like they come from Hillary Clinton attack ads, said David Bauder in the Associated Press, but they’re actually from “long-time Republican newspapers disavowing Donald Trump”. In recent weeks, a string of stalwart conservative papers have bucked tradition by endorsing either Clinton or Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate, over the Republican nominee. It’s the first time The Cincinnati Enquirer has endorsed a Democrat in almost a century; for The Dallas Morning News, the first in more than 75 years. USA Today, which has never taken sides in a presidential race, has issued a Trump “anti-endorsement”, urging readers to shun a “dangerous demagogue”. The Atlantic magazine, which has made only two presidential endorsements in its 160-year…

Do cod have regional accents? Cod being driven north by global warming may find they can’t understand the accents of the fish they meet there – and this matters, scientists have warned, because if they can’t communicate, how will they attract mates? Like many fish, cod vibrate their swim bladders to produce a variety of sounds – thumps, drumming noises and long growls – which allow males to coax females into releasing their eggs. Previous studies have shown that the mating calls of American cod differ significantly from European cod. Now, scientists at Exeter University are recording cod sounds in waters around the UK, to find out if there are regional variations too. “This species is highly vocal, with traditional breeding grounds established over hundreds or thousands of years, so…

Football: why Southgate dropped Rooney “Time waits for no man,” said Henry Winter in The Times – not even Wayne Rooney. After 13 years of being one of the first names on every England team sheet, the England captain was dropped by caretaker manager Gareth Southgate ahead of the side’s disappointing 0-0 draw in the World Cup qualifier against Slovenia on Tuesday. It wasn’t a surprising move. “England’s midfield looks better balanced with Eric Dier holding [and] Jordan Henderson pressing and surging upfield, providing a platform for Dele Alli.” Rooney, who has already been demoted to the bench at Manchester United, has “become a minister without portfolio”. The writing was on the wall after England’s 2-0 home qualifier victory over Malta on Saturday, said John Brewin on ESPN. “Sat deep…

Born winners To The Guardian I note that among the predicted 20 future football stars at Premier League clubs, there are virtually no summer births. None was born from May through to 30 August (notwithstanding that some may have been born in the southern hemisphere). Perhaps summer births are only destined to become cricket stars? Martin Goodwin, Standish, Lancashire To The Guardian In noting that none of the “next generation” Premier League stars was born between May and 30 August, Martin Goodwin identifies the phenomenon often described as the relative age effect (RAE), and discussed most notably in Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers. Put simply, the school year in the northern hemisphere starts in autumn. When organised sport is introduced at about the age of eight, many children born earlier in…

Believed to be the most expensive TV drama ever made, Netflix’s new show The Crown opens with King George VI (Jared Harris) coughing up blood into a lavatory. That sets the sensationalist tone, which will dismay anyone hoping for a polite look at the life of Queen Elizabeth II, said Stephanie Linning in the Daily Mail. Instead we get passionate kisses, expletive-ridden dialogue, and shots of a stark-naked Prince Philip (Matt Smith). The reason Netflix splashed out a reported £100m on this series is that it’s hoping the drama will “blast through established viewing habits” and persuade older viewers to subscribe to its online streaming service, said Vanessa Thorpe in The Observer. Yet despite the high stakes, Netflix gave director Stephen Daldry and writer Peter Morgan total freedom. Offers of…

New cars: what the critics say The Daily Telegraph The S90 is Volvo’s best crack yet at taking on the Germans in the executive saloon sector, where the BMW 5 Series, Mercedes E-Class and Audi A6 “reign supreme”. And it certainly holds its own on space, with a “huge” amount of legroom in the back, and “plenty enough” head and elbow room all round. The seats can be adjusted to suit all tastes, so “backache simply isn’t an issue on a long trip”. Auto Express For now, the S90 range is relatively simple, with just two diesel engines to choose from: the D4 front-wheel drive, and the more powerful D5 four-wheel drive. Both come with an eight-speed automatic gearbox. The engines may not be the best in their class –…

RBS: mincing machine Royal Bank of Scotland has admitted it did not always meet its own “high standards” when dealing with small business customers after the financial crisis, said Nils Pratley in The Guardian. Two separate inquiries, commissioned by the bank, have cleared it of the “ugly charge” of “crashing viable businesses for its own gain”. Yet the evidence keeps coming. Another series of damning internal documents has been leaked, to Buzzfeed News and the BBC’s Newsnight. What the files make plain, said Ben Chapman in The Independent, is that RBS “systematically” targeted struggling firms by offering bank staff bonuses to identify them and force them “into the hands of its notorious Global Restructuring Group”. There, the great“squeeze” began. “GRG applied higher interest rates, pressured customers to sell assets to…

“Rat skeletons are so flexible that they can slip through any crack wider than half an inch. Very occasionally, they eat people alive” First, the myths. There are no “super rats”. Apart from a specific subtropical breed, they do not get much bigger than 20 inches long, including the tail. They are not blind, nor are they afraid of cats. They do not carry rabies. They do not, as was reported in 1969 regarding an island in Indonesia, fall from the sky. Their communities are not led by elusive, giant “king rats”. Rat skeletons cannot liquefy and reconstitute at will. (For some otherwise rational people, this is a genuine concern.) Consider this the good news. In most other respects, “the rat problem”, as it has come to be known, is…

Controversy of the week The hard way out? When Theresa May outlined “her vision of post-Brexit Britain” at the Conservative conference, the party faithful greeted it with “rapturous applause”, said the FT. The outside world was less impressed by her plan, which, by prioritising sovereignty and immigration controls, seemed to “imply a clean break with the single market” – and, by triggering Article 50 early next year, would see Britain out of the EU in 2019. The reaction in financial markets was “punishing”: the pound fell to its lowest level since 1985 (see page 55). Foreign leaders were “appalled” by the Tories’ xenophobic rhetoric (see page 22). And May’s own Cabinet is reportedly split between supporters of a “soft” or a “hard” Brexit (inside or outside the single market). Chancellor…

Theroux’s Savile regrets Back in 2000, Louis Theroux made a documentary about Jimmy Savile that revealed a mother-fixated creep with a penchant for revolting string vests. It caused quite a stir – yet it never really came close to unearthing the truth about Savile’s paedophilia. Theroux has long been haunted by this “failure”. “I was sort of relieved when I went and watched it again,” he told Carole Cadwalladr in The Observer. “It’s not the cuddly portrait of an eccentric. But then, as much as I’d like to think that I got Jimmy Savile right, I didn’t imagine him to be capable of those crimes. And what I’ve had to get my head around is the fact that I grew to like him. I kept friendly relations with him for…

Several cars were crushed in a bizarre flooding incident in Crayford, southeast London, last week. As a result of a water main bursting, water poured into an underground car park, causing polystyrene insulation under the car park to expand – pushing the floor up some 4ft. Some cars were crushed; others were only saved by a transit van that stopped them from hitting the concrete roof. The Pokémon Go craze may have peaked, but it’s not over: last week Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg was caught playing the game during a parliamentary debate. Fortunately for her, the MP holding forth at the time – Liberal Party leader Trine Skei Grande – was in no position to complain: she’d been spotted playing the game on her phone during a meeting of…

SOUTH AFRICA Wild guesses won’t help the elephants Daily Maverick (Johannesburg) Conservation of African wildlife is a laudable aim, says Ivo Vegter. But it isn’t helped by the alarmist “propaganda” being pumped out by environmentalists. As the conference of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) met in Johannesburg this month, we heard that African elephants have suffered a stunning 30% decline through poaching, and that trade in the African grey parrot must be banned as it is facing extinction. These claims are highly questionable. The elephant numbers come from an aerial census that has never been done before, so there are no reliable existing numbers for comparison. Elephant populations are actually growing in parts of Southern Africa; the total across the continent is more or less stable.…

Britain could be on the brink of another food scandal, says The Guardian: a strain of the MRSA superbug has, for the first time, been detected in meat from British pigs. In tests commissioned by the Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics, scientists analysed 97 supermarket products, and found that three – from Asda and Sainsbury’s – were infected. The superbug, though less harmful than the MRSA strain that every year kills about 300 people in British hospitals, can still seriously harm people with compromised immune systems. Being resistant even to strong antibiotics, it is hard to control once established in livestock populations. In Denmark, where it is rife, some two-thirds of pig farms are thought to be infected. Although killed by thorough cooking, the bug can still infect humans, particularly…

John Cleese managed to offend an entire nation last week. After reading a Daily Telegraph article on press freedom by the Scottish journalist Fraser Nelson, Cleese tweeted crossly: “Why do we let half-educated tenement Scots run our English press? Because their craving for social status makes them obedient retainers?” The Monty Python star (pictured) was then bombarded with tweets from angry and disappointed Scottish fans – but he remained unrepentant. “It’s not casual racism,” he insisted, “it’s considered culturalism.” Michael Gove has expressed his regret at falling out with Boris Johnson, saying he was “most to blame”. The former justice secretary said in an interview with The Times that he and Johnson – who have known each other since their days at Oxford University – have spoken “very occasionally” since…

“And just like that, the lights came on for English cricket,” said Andrew Miller on ESPN CricInfo. The ECB announced last week that England will play their first ever day-night Test next August, against West Indies at Edgbaston. Under the new format, play will start and end a couple of hours later in the day, with a pink ball that can be seen clearly even under floodlights. This isn’t just innovation for the sake of it – the aim is to help arrest the precipitous decline in Test cricket attendance, by enabling fans to come to the ground after work, or school. It has worked successfully down under: the first day-night Test, between Australia and New Zealand last year, was given “a resounding thumbs up” by both players and fans.…

Timekeepers by Simon Garfield Canongate 368pp £16.99 The Week Bookshop £12.99 “There was a time when we weren’t so particular about time,” said Damian Whitworth in The Times. Before the mid 19th century, differences in sunrise and sunset meant that “clocks in Oxford ran five minutes behind London time, and those in Exeter lagged by 14 minutes”. Then the railways arrived, and with them the need for time to be standardised. “The modern age of timekeeping was born.” As Simon Garfield suggests in this “very readable” book, time now “dominates our lives in ways the earliest clockmakers would surely have found unbearable”. “Time” is now the most used noun in the English language. We are obsessed with measuring it. Where we once looked up at the sky for “vague and…

Theatre Travesties Playwright: Tom Stoppard Director: Patrick Marber Menier Chocolate Factory, London SE1 (020-7378 1713) Until 19 November Running time: 2hrs 25mins (including interval) Even by Tom Stoppard’s standards, Travesties (1974) is a dazzlingly clever and complex piece which “defies brisk summary”, said Henry Hitchings in the London Evening Standard. The play is built around the unreliable memories of a minor British diplomat, Henry Carr, who once sued James Joyce for the cost of a pair of trousers. In addition to the great novelist, onstage characters include Lenin and the Dadaist Tristan Tzara, in a story involving courtship and conflicting egos in 1917 Zurich, a running pastiche of The Importance of Being Earnest, and “arcane nonsense and arguments about the function of art”. It is the sort of “clever, dense…

Exhibition of the week Picasso Portraits National Portrait Gallery, London WC2 (020-7321 6600, www.npg.org.uk ). Until 5 February Pablo Picasso is without doubt the “most controversial artist of all time”, said Mark Hudson in The Daily Telegraph. For much of his long career, he was seen as a man intent on “destroying the established categories of art”. In recent decades, however, it has become clear his objective was in fact to reinvent art, while paying homage to its existing traditions – notably portraiture. This new show at the National Portrait Gallery is the first “major” exploration of this “vital area” for two decades, and features some 80 paintings spanning his career, from “quirky juvenilia” to his final works. It skilfully demonstrates how Picasso developed “whole new approaches”…

Umezushi Unit 4, Mirabel Street, Manchester (0871-811 8877) The sushi at Umezushi “really is very good indeed, and, at the price, a bit of a miracle”, says Jay Rayner in The Observer. This tiny Manchester restaurant is not in the most attractive of locations: Mirabel Street, below Victoria station, is “a pretty name for a bit of industrial rough trade, all grimy blackened brick and knackered lock-up”. Once inside, however, it’s lovely – “all deeply varnished blond wood and calm”. And fantastic food. A “tight knot of slippery wakame” (seaweed) provides a “huge savoury-sour whack” of flavour. Sashimi of sweet scallop and tuna are laid prettily across shredded mooli. The best of the excellent nigiri is scorched sea bream, “the hastily applied heat encouraging the lubricious oils to run”.…

May must help, not hinder, business Sarah Gordon Financial Times The Conservative Party conference “crystallised” British business’s “growing frustration” with a new government that is “sending companies some very unsettling signals”, says Sarah Gordon. In a series of “sideswipes”, Theresa May placed employers firmly in the category of “the powerful and privileged”, and reiterated her plans to reform corporate governance. Most business leaders are “as keen to outlaw the egregious behaviour of some corporate bosses as BHS pensioners or Sports Direct staff. They are also as desperate – probably more – to improve skills as any Whitehall policy wonk.” But they question whether May’s “interventionist proposals” are the best way to achieve these aims – and they feel shut out of the debate: the PM has disbanded the advisory group…

Calais, France UK to take refugee children: Britain has agreed to take in many of the unaccompanied children currently living in the “Jungle” refugee camp in Calais. France announced last month that it would be closing and clearing the camp – currently home to some 9,000 migrants – by the end of the year, a process it plans to start next week. The camp’s adult residents are due to be dispersed to locations around France, while the UK has committed to take in all lone children with family links to Britain. The campaign group Citizens UK has previously identified 387 children who fulfil the criteria; and at a meeting this week, Home Secretary Amber Rudd asked the French to verify that list as a matter of urgency, so that the…

“If a lie is worth telling, it is worth telling well.” Saki, quoted on The Browser “Let your credo be this: let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, quoted on Slate.com “Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.” Mark Twain, quoted in the New York Post “Accessible is a perfectly good word if applied to supermarket aisles, art galleries, polling stations and public lavatories, but it has no place in the discussion of poetry.” Poet Geoffrey Hill, quoted in The Guardian “If a problem has no solution, it may not be a problem, but a fact – not to be solved, but to be coped with over time.” Shimon Peres, quoted…

Poverty and beauty To The Guardian Ian Jack is right to suggest that, as with most housing, it’s not the construction that’s at fault in our tenements but the management – and the lack of family planning. If the 19th century Scottish tenements hadn’t been overcrowded, they would have been good, solid homes; inconvenient by our standards – lugging coal upstairs, shared privies – but better than much of what people had had in the countryside before moving into the new industrial cities. John Cleese and anyone who doubts this should visit the Glasgow tenement house belonging to the National Trust, which shows the dignity that was possible on a low income. There is one thing the Scottish tenements could teach designers of housing now: the drying green. A close…

Transit by Rachel Cusk Jonathan Cape 272pp £16.99 The Week Bookshop £12.99 Rachel Cusk’s writing doesn’t try to be liked, said Tessa Hadley in The Guardian. In the past, her memoirs of motherhood and divorce have been “both hated and loved”. In Outline, her 2014 novel about a woman teaching creative writing in Greece, and now in its follow-up, Transit, she has developed a “radically new novel form”. Both works are essentially sequences of stories connected only by being told by their narrator, Faye. In Transit, Faye moves back to London and oversees the refurbishment of a flat, conversing along the way with an ex-lover, a builder and a student. It’s not conventional, but “as a way of representing the involuntary immersion of our individual selves in a teeming, crowded…

Best books… Theodore Zeldin Philosopher Theodore Zeldin, who searches for new answers to public and private dilemmas, chooses his five favourite reads. His latest book, The Hidden Pleasures of Life, is published by MacLehose Press at £9.99 Paper Promises by Philip Coggan, 2011 (Penguin £10.99). Coggan reveals how paper money is used to tax you without your noticing, to make you a conspirator in “felonious larcenies”, and to nourish your illusion that you live in a sovereign nation. So now what different questions would you ask in a future referendum? The Good Soldier Švejk by Jaroslav Hašek, 1923 (Penguin Classics £10.99). The still-relevant satire about governments, armies and institutions cooking up mad regulations, with a hero, classified as feeble-minded, misinterpreting orders and turning them into farce. How to make this…

“Kale has wilted. The avocado is over-cado. Cauliflower has become uncooliflower,” says Michael Hogan in The Daily Telegraph. Yes, all of these so-called superfoods have been replaced as the hottest ingredients in the kitchen by “an unlikely, hitherto unsung hero: the humble aubergine”. The resurgence in popularity of aubergine – which is rich in the antioxidant anthocyanin – is due largely to the fashion for Middle Eastern food, spearheaded by Yotam Ottolenghi. The Israeli-born chef says that while the “mighty aubergine” may be known as “poor man’s meat”, it’s actually a “vegetarian’s rich treat”. At his five, permanently packed, London restaurants, aubergines can be found variously roasted, miso-glazed, chargrilled, smoked, stuffed with cheese, or rolled into croquettes. “And if you haven’t smeared chermoula paste all over one recently, what on…

The most prolific conductor of his time Sir Neville Marriner 1924-2016 Sir Neville Marriner, who has died aged 92, was a rare example of a great conductor known for his likeability, said The Daily Telegraph. In an era when many of his peers had reputations as tyrants of the podium, musicians knew that Marriner was one of them: a talented violinist who had co-founded the Academy of St Martin in the Fields chamber orchestra precisely in order to escape the control of bullies and egotists. To begin with, the Academy had no conductor. It was only later, and with some reluctance, that Marriner was persuaded to “turn gamekeeper”, as he put it, and exchange his violin for a baton. Under his leadership, the Academy enjoyed phenomenal success. Indeed, there is…

Francis Egan Cuadrilla’s CEO is fracking’s “biggest fan”, and he’s on a roll, said The Sunday Telegraph. The Government has given the go-ahead for the company to explore for shale gas in Lancashire, overruling the objections of local councillors. No wonder Egan is “buzzing with his trademark enthusiasm”. Cuadrilla, whose name is Spanish for “friends having a drink together”, was founded by Birmingham University geologists 30 years ago. Egan, an oil industry veteran, had a baptism of fire after joining in 2012, said The Guardian: he never imagined the role would involve “death threats” and people turning up at his house “trying to frack his garden”. Clearly, he believes the pain was worth it: “This could be an absolute game changer,” he says – “one of the biggest gas resources…