Innholdsfortegnelse for V. 1031 i The Week

Osborne’s wage gamble What happened George Osborne wrong-footed Labour last week, by making a big hike in the minimum wage the centrepiece of his first wholly Tory Budget. In a move that went further than even the opposition was planning, the Chancellor announced that, from next April, employers would have to pay workers aged over 25 a “national living wage” of at least £7.20 an hour, rising to £9 an hour by 2020 (the current minimum wage for over-21s is £6.50 an hour). “Britain needs a pay rise,” he declared, echoing a former TUC campaign slogan. However, the Institute for Fiscal Studies later took issue with Osborne’s “Budget for working people”, pointing out that the future pay gains for many families would be more than offset by planned cuts to…

Washington DC Transgender reform: The Pentagon’s ban on transgender people serving in the US military is outdated, and should be lifted, US Defence Secretary Ash Carter announced on Monday. Carter will create a working group made up of senior military and civilian personnel, and give them six months to assess the likely impact of lifting the ban on the US’s fighting capability; however, he said, the opening assumption would be that transgender people serving openly would have no adverse effect on “military effectiveness”. The group will also consider practical questions surrounding issues such as uniforms and accommodation arrangements. It is estimated that 15,000 transgender people – defined as people who identify with a gender different to that they were born with – are already serving in the armed forces, mostly…

Syriza and the SNP are both deluded Kenny Farquharson The Times Some people “have trouble appreciating that you do not exist solely to make their life easier”, says Kenny Farquharson. It is a mental blind spot that afflicts nationalist movements as much as it does self-centred individuals. Look at Syriza in Greece, or the SNP in Scotland. Both espouse “a nationalist response to problems that are always going to require internationalist solutions”. Syriza thinks it has a God-given right to debt relief. The fact voters in creditor nations – including Latvia and Slovenia, both poorer than Greece – may be unhappy about coughing up, doesn’t enter its calculation. The Scots Nats, fervent admirers of Syriza, are the same. In last year’s referendum, they insisted Scots had the right both to…

A heavy misjudgment A significant minority of overweight teenagers do not regard themselves as too heavy – and think they are about the right weight. Several studies have suggested that obesity is being “normalised”; however, it has also been argued that the cultural obsession with being thin might lead others to overestimate their size. To test the effect of all this on teenagers, researchers analysed data from the Health Survey for England, from 2005 to 2012. One of the questions was: “Given your age and height, would you say that you are about the right weight, too heavy or too light?” The results showed that eight out of ten youngsters of normal weight thought their weight was about right – which was obviously good news. However, 39% of overweight children…

Even the most celebrated literary classics can lose something in translation, says The Times. While travelling in Japan, Elaine Steinbeck – widow of John Steinbeck, author of The Grapes of Wrath – asked an assistant in a Yokohama bookshop whether they had anything by her late husband. “Yes,” came the reply. “We have The Angry Raisins.” The rest of the world appears unable to stop the march of Isis – so thank goodness for pop stars. Just months after Ringo Starr described the jihadist group as “bull****” – adding: “What they are doing out there is against everything The Beatles stood for” – the reggae star Shaggy (above) has entered the fray. “Isis can go f*** themselves, that’s some crazy s*** what they’re doing,” he told the Miami New Times.…

After half a century of waiting, Harper Lee’s second novel was finally published this Tuesday, said Tim Walker in The Independent. Go Set a Watchman is a sort of sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird, her first and, until this week, only book. Set in the 1950s, it begins with Scout Finch, now 26, returning to her Alabama hometown to see her father, Atticus. It was, however, written before Lee’s masterpiece and only recently rediscovered: her editor had encouraged her to discard the book and start a new one, expanding on Scout’s reminiscences about her 1930s childhood. Regardless of its merits, Go Set a Watchman was bound to be a massive hit. It was published simultaneously in 70 countries and eight languages. In Britain, it was the most pre-ordered book…

England’s resounding victory in the first Ashes Test “has to be one of the most unexpected triumphs they have ever had over Australia”, said Jonathan Agnew on BBC Sport online. In the runup to the game, in Cardiff, pretty much no one felt Alastair Cook’s side stood a chance against the team that thrashed them 5-0 in the last series. But England’s 169-run victory – completed in just four thrilling days – has “buried the demons of that whitewash”, and put Australia firmly on the back foot. “Have we been conned by the Poms?” asked Mike Colman in The Sunday Telegraph (Sydney). This lot were supposed to be “a joke, a rabble, a laughing-stock stumbling from one Kevin Pietersen PR disaster to the next”. Yet it turns out they can…

Tennis Jamie Murray lost in the men’s doubles final, along with Australian John Peers, at Wimbledon. Martina Hingis won titles in both the ladies’ and mixed doubles – her first victories at SW19 for 17 years. Football Man Utd completed the signings of Morgan Schneiderlin (£25m), Bastian Schweinsteiger (£14.4m), and Matteo Darmian (£13m). Golf Jordan Spieth, the favourite for this week’s Open, carded a career-best 61 on his way to winning the John Deere Classic. Tour de France Chris Froome finished the first week wearing the yellow jersey.…

Theatre Volpone Playwright: Ben Jonson Director: Trevor Nunn Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon (0844-800 1110) Until 12 September Running time: 3hrs 10mins (including interval) Ben Jonson’s Volpone arrives in Stratford like “a warning from history that has been read too late”, said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph. Written in 1605 during the birth pangs of modern capitalism, and set in the “mercantile hotspot” of Venice, the play concerns a moneyed crook, Volpone – the “sly fox” – who convinces each of three avaricious acquaintances into thinking that he is mortally ill and that they might soon inherit his riches. “But his decrepitude is a sham and his cash pile is augmented by their favour-currying gifts.” Volpone is the “great vampire squid” of Jacobean times. The play’s modern resonances are amplified by…

African Industrial Revolution at Tiwani Contemporary The artists who make up Angolan collective e-studio Luanda are clearly not concerned with subtlety. As soon as you walk into their show at Tiwani Contemporary, you’re struck by explosively coloured textiles and largescale paintings that cover the gallery walls. There is a daunting amount to see: drawings, paintings and printed ephemera line every inch of the gallery’s limited wall space. Crammed in between the larger works are smaller, monochrome portraits of the artists’ heroes: Albert Camus and the anticolonialist freedom fighter Amílcar Cabral are placed improbably close to rapper Tupac Shakur and the actor Mr. T. This is not a show for fans of quiet, contemplative art. The work is scrappy, anarchic and unrefined – but it has an exuberant spontaneity that is…

Last chance Francis Bacon and the Masters, Sainsbury Centre, Norwich (www.scva.ac.uk). Twenty-five works by Bacon sit beside some of the old and modern masters that influenced him, including Van Gogh and Rembrandt. “Should not be missed” (The Mail on Sunday). Ends 26 July. Showing now Carsten Höller: Decision at Hayward Gallery, London SE1 (020-7960 4200). The Hayward has been turned into a “high cultural fairground ride” for an exhibition by Belgian artist Carsten Höller. You can whizz down vast spiralling slides, lie on creeping robot beds and crawl through a giant dice (The Times). Ends 6 Sept. Book now Julia Pascal directs the revival of her own engrossing play, Crossing Jerusalem, about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. An Israeli estate-agent attends her daughter-in-law’s 30th birthday in a restaurant run by an Arab.…

Chablis may be one of the world’s great wines, but all too often it fails to deliver, says David Williams in The Observer. Here are three that demonstrate what all the fuss is about: Jules Billaud Chablis, France 2013 (£16.75; Oddbins). With a quality chablis, “the flavour (green apple, lemon, crème fraîche, minerals) is carried by (and seems to reflect off) the swish of glinting, steely acidity” – which is exactly the case with this delightful pure, unoaked example. Tesco Finest Premier Cru Chablis, France 2011 (£13.99). Two producers are behind most of the best supermarket chablis. The premier cru wines of Jean-Marc Brocard are worth seeking out at Asda and M&S; while a local co-operative does an excellent job for Morrisons, M&S and Tesco – with the pick of…

Isle of Eriska Hotel, Benderloch, Argyll Set on a 350-acre private island north of Oban, the Eriska hotel is reached via a rattly bridge from the mainland, says Rosamund Urwin in the London Evening Standard. Its grounds are a “mix of exquisite and wild”: manicured lawns and flower beds are surrounded by lichen-covered hills and seaweedstrewn beaches. You can stay in the main house – a family home until 1973, it still has the feel of a private mansion – or in one of two cottage lodges. The hotel also has a golf course and spa. Its only flaw is the dining room décor, which manages to be both “fusty” and “gaudy” – but the restaurant’s Michelin star is well deserved. 01631-720371, www.eriska-hotel.co.uk. From £185pp, b&b, dinner.…

Omar Sharif 1932-2015 Omar Sharif, who has died aged 83, made one of the most famous entrances in film history – appearing first as a dot on the horizon, then slowly riding a quarter of a mile or so into close-up across a shimmering desert in David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia, said The Independent. The film turned Sharif into an international star, and led to him being offered the lead role in Doctor Zhivago. But having blown his Hollywood pay cheques on gambling and high living, Sharif was then forced to accept a succession of roles in second-rate movies, to pay his debts. He once admitted that he hadn’t make a good film in 25 years, and that he’d given up when his grandchildren began making fun of him. “Grandpa,…

Alent: quids in Have you heard of the UK chemicals group Alent? It’s quite likely you haven’t, said Alex Brummer in the Daily Mail. But the high-tech, high-growth markets that this company serves in the electronics, automotive and industrial sectors “are just where the British economy needs to be if we are to have a productivity revolution” – something everyone agrees is desperately needed. How galling then, that it’s being taken over by the US corporate raider Platform Speciality Products, run by UK-born dealmaker Martin Franklin. “The transaction will leave the new owner heavily borrowed and less able to invest”; we can expect Alent’s expertise and R&D to be “sucked across the Atlantic” in short order. The unusual structure of the deal means that investors in Alent have a choice…

At the May election, many business leaders lobbied hard for the Conservatives “out of horror at the clumsy interventionism” of Ed Miliband, said the FT. No doubt they will be pleased that corporation tax is to be cut, from 20% to 18% by 2020. Much harder to swallow, though, is the news that Osborne has taken it upon himself to set the pay levels for five million private sector workers, with a giant leap in the minimum wage for over-25s (to a new “living wage” of £9 an hour by 2020). This is “as deep a raid behind corporate lines as any that Mr Miliband threatened, and with chillingly clear intent”: business must stump up for the Tories’ political priorities. From a Tory chancellor, this was radical politics, said The…

The Chancellor can only tinker Ian King The Times They take up “hours of broadcast time, pages of newsprint and pixels of online coverage”, yet few Budgets have a lasting impact, says Ian King. From the past half-century, only a handful stick out: Roy Jenkins’s 1970 Budget, credited with losing Labour that summer’s general election; Anthony Barber’s inflationary “dash for growth” of 1972; Geoffrey Howe’s “inflation-crushing” effort of 1981; and Nigel Lawson’s tax-cutting showstopper of 1988. Gordon Brown’s many Budgets had a significant cumulative impact, but looking back they all blur into one. “All of which is to say that, for all the plaudits garnered by George Osborne’s Budget last week as daring/radical/visionary/imaginative”, history is unlikely to judge it genuinely “transformative”. In fact, “the most striking thing about last week’s…

Controversy of the week A deal with Iran When 20 months of arduous talks over Iran’s nuclear programme came to an end this week, “you only had to look at the beaming smiles on the faces of the Iranian negotiating team to see who had emerged as the undisputed winners”, said Con Coughlin in The Daily Telegraph. The Iranians, led by Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, have long been seen as “wily negotiators”. But the outcome, reached after a final 18-day “marathon” in Vienna, will “have surpassed even their wildest expectations”. Tehran entered these talks, with the US, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany, in “desperation” over the “crippling” effects of Western sanctions – imposed because it was building a covert nuclear weapons programme. As a result of the deal,…

7/7 bus driver recalls horror Ten years after a suicide bomber blew up the London bus he was driving, George Psaradakis is still struggling to come to terms with the atrocity. On the morning of 7/7, as he navigated the number 30 bus through central London, Psaradakis received a message from central control telling him to expect extra passengers because of a problem on the Underground. “You could hear sirens, traffic building up, people running up and down the pavements,” he told Kathryn Knight in the Daily Mail. “I knew something was wrong but in my worst nightmare I could not have imagined what had happened.” As people poured out of the Underground, traffic ground to a halt and the bus became dangerously overfull. Psaradakis pulled over and radioed his…

A boy-band star collapsed with heat exhaustion on an easyJet flight last week after donning 12 layers of clothing to beat a baggage fee. James McElvar, from the Scottish band Rewind, was told he’d have to pay £45 for his bag on the London to Glasgow flight. So he decided to wear its contents – six T-shirts, four sweaters, three pairs of jeans, two pairs of sweatpants, two jackets and two hats. Once the flight took off, he began to disrobe – but it was too late: already soaked with sweat, he was then sick and had to be given oxygen. Residents of the leafy suburb of Orpington in Kent have been invited to tea in their local S&M dungeon. Dominatrix Mistress Evilyne opened Dungeon Manor in 2014. Ever since,…

CHINA Beijing and Moscow won’t stay friends Die Welt (Hamburg) The sight of Vladimir Putin hobnobbing yet again with China’s Xi Jinping has stoked fears of a new superpower axis threatening the West. In reality, theirs will always be an uneasy partnership, says Michael Stürmer. Take the recent $440m deal that leases a thousand square kilometres of the Russian side of their common border to a Chinese company which will employ Chinese workers to farm crops for China’s domestic consumption – the sort of thing it has been doing for years in Africa. It makes economic sense. The land is virtually unpopulated: there are 5.4 million people in the remote Russian region, compared to 63 million in the two Chinese provinces on the other side. But critics in Moscow are…

In the future, fleets of driverless taxis could roam city streets, ready to pick up passengers at a moment’s notice and deliver them cheaply and efficiently to their chosen destinations, thereby enabling millions of people to dispense with their cars altogether. This would, of course, be devastating to taxi drivers; and it would send Uber cab drivers to the same scrapheap to which they currently risk sending conventional ones. But it’s likely to come about in the next 20 years or so, and if it does, it will bring with it significant environmental benefits. According to a study at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the US, the per-mile greenhouse emissions of a future self-driving electric taxi would be 63% to 82% lower than those predicted for an owner-driven hybrid…

What is the BBC for? Does it still deserve the licence fee? Would we miss it if it no longer existed? These are just some of the questions raised by a “root and branch” review of the broadcaster’s charter due to be unveiled in a green paper this week, said Charlotte Higgins in The Guardian. It comes at a “perilous” time for Auntie. Last week Chancellor George Osborne “erased £630m from the BBC’s income at the stroke of a pen” by requiring it to take on the cost of providing free licences for the over-75s (although the licence fee will now rise in line with inflation and be payable, for the first time, by users of the iPlayer catch-up service). That’s just the start. The BBC will have to fight…

Last week I was called a “white racist bitch” and told to swallow broken glass, said Janice Turner in The Times. What caused this Twitter hatred? I had expressed “revulsion at the sexualised torture of a woman in the new Rihanna video”. Bitch Better Have My Money (BBHMM) is a revenge fantasy inspired by the singer’s experience of being swindled by her accountant. In the video, Rihanna kidnaps the accountant’s wife (played by a lingerie model) and drags her, bound and topless, to a warehouse. There she is hung upside down and tortured, breasts swinging. Later she is drugged, humiliated, has a bottle smashed over her head and is held underwater until unconscious. Only at the end does Rihanna turn her attention to the accountant – tying him up and…

“The superlatives are running out,” said Bryan Armen Graham in The Guardian. Serena Williams’s 6-4, 6-4 victory over Garbiñe Muguruza in the Wimbledon final on Saturday brings her Grand Slam tally to 21, just three behind Margaret Court’s alltime record. The 33-year-old, the oldest player to win a Grand Slam singles title in the Open era, now holds all four major trophies – the so-called “Serena Slam” – for a second time in her career. Surely “the greatest ever women’s tennis player”, she will go into this year’s US Open in six weeks’ time as “the runaway favourite to tick the lone unchecked box” on her glittering CV: a “calendar-year Grand Slam”. Four years ago, Williams’s “career seemed as good as over”, said Nick Pitt in The Sunday Times. She…

Picking an airport To the Financial Times Lord Adonis writes: “Far from being unplanned and in the ‘wrong place’ as a major airport, Heathrow was the result of an intensive options analysis of the best location… at the end of the Second World War… It was this exercise which led to the choice of Heathrow.” A rather different perspective is offered by my father’s witness account of the meeting in 1943 which chose Heathrow: “I was asked to attend a meeting at the Air Ministry to decide on a site for a postwar civil airport… six of us assembled at assistant secretary level. The meeting lasted 40 minutes and we decided on Heathrow. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Government and Parliament discussed for 15 years the location of a…

Love & Mercy Dir: Bill Pohlad 2hrs 1min (12A) Fascinating study of Brian Wilson Just when you were thinking you couldn’t face yet another biopic about a tormented musician, along comes a cracker, said Nigel Andrews in the FT. Love & Mercy tells the story of Brian Wilson, the genius behind The Beach Boys, who lost his mind to drugs in the 1960s and fell into the clutches of a controlling psychiatrist, Dr Eugene Landy (Paul Giamatti). Wilson was only rescued when he found true love, in the shape of his second wife, Melinda, a Cadillac car dealer (“played with charm and smarts” by Elizabeth Banks). The film was co-written by Oren Moverman, who made 2007’s I’m Not There, in which a range of actors played Bob Dylan. Love &…

The full story of Winston Churchill’s “lost” portrait has finally been told, reports The Daily Telegraph. In 1954, Graham Sutherland produced a full-size oil painting of the former PM to celebrate his 80th birthday – but Churchill and his wife, Clementine, both took a violent dislike to it. The painting (pictured) was taken to their home, Chartwell, but never displayed; loan requests were always turned down. Then, in 1978, Clementine revealed the portrait had been destroyed. Now, her biographer, Sonia Purnell, has stumbled on a taped interview with the Churchills’ secretary at Chartwell – Grace Hamblin – in which she admitted her own part in the conspiracy. It seems that soon after the portrait was delivered, Clementine told Hamblin it had to be “got rid of”. So late one night,…

Pip’s keen for the Fairbrothers to come along to the NEC livestock show and is disappointed when Toby claims he has circuit training. Kate wants to talk, but Phoebe won’t let her into her room. She accuses Kate of sleeping with anything in trousers – including Toby Fairbrother. Adam shocks Charlie with the news that he’s stopping growing maize for him. Charlie tells him it’s unprofessional to renege on his contract. Rex is keen to stick by Pip during the NEC Livestock event. Pip asks about Toby, and his oddly timed rugby training. Rex reveals that Toby doesn’t like to be pinned down. Ruth’s back from Prudhoe and is annoyed not to have been consulted about the Fairbrothers moving to Hollowtree. Toby and Pip flirt as she checks on how…

Social Wine & Tapas 39 James Street, London W1 (020-7993 3257) This is quite simply the “best tapas joint I’ve ever encountered outside Spain”, says John Walsh in The Independent. It gets the concept just right: it’s not an overpriced restaurant, it’s “a very fancy wine bar” serving a long menu of small dishes alongside “umpteen wines” in 125ml servings. And the food is Elysian. “We tried to be polite, but soon abandoned all restraint and tried everything in sight” – beginning with an “orgy” of piggy delights including Basque-region ham croquettes and a jamon-manchego toastie with quail’s eggs. From the vegetable selection, we picked a dish of chargrilled carrots and burnt aubergine that sounded “ho-hum” but turned out to be “divine” – a misoflavoured, walnut-crunchy “delight”. Our raptures continued…

New cars: what the critics say The Daily Telegraph Increasing numbers of upmarket manufacturers are bringing out hybrid cars – and now BMW is joining them, with the new X5, its first “mainstream” plug-in hybrid. From the outside, it’s nearly identical to the diesel X5, the BMW’s popular SUV. But thanks to its lithium-ion battery pack, it can drive for up to 19 miles at up to 75mph, powered solely by electricity, and producing zero emissions. The Sunday Times When you take to the road, you notice how “amazingly” quiet the X5 is. You can either choose between modes (allelectric, hybrid operation, or battery save) yourself, or plug in your destination and allow a clever automatic system to decide for you. The car does 0 to 60 in 6.5 seconds,…

Unspoiled Greek mountains When a country is as “blessed with ancient ruins, islands and beaches” as Greece, it’s easy to forget about its mountains, says Alexandra Topping in The Guardian. But the unspoilt Vikos-Aoös National Park, in the Zagori region, is top-class hiking country. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the villages here were wealthy trading post for Ottoman merchants, and “the paths they travelled make ideal hiking routes”. As elsewhere in Greece, “times are hard” and “prices have been slashed”, so a decent room can be found relatively cheaply. Hiking through the local limestone gorges, you come across elegantly curved stone bridges built by the Ottomans, and the ancient Saint Paraskevi monastery, where “saints stare down at you from carefully restored frescoes”. Aristi Mountain Resort (+30 26530 41330, www.aristi.eu)…

Lady Rozelle Raynes 1925-2015 Lady Rozelle Raynes, who has died aged 89, was the daughter of an earl who eschewed the aristocratic life for one spent on the ocean waves. Even as a child, “whenever some plaintiff little foghorn called out in the night, I would rush to my window in my nightdress and make desperate pleas for running away to sea”. As a teenager, faced with the prospect of being sent to a finishing school, she prayed the War would last long enough for her to join the Wrens (Women’s Royal Naval Service), said The Daily Telegraph. Her prayers were answered, and in one of her memoirs, Maid Matelot, she recalled that at the age of 18, she’d found the “ultimate peak of happiness” working as a stoker on…

The numbers are “mind-boggling”, said Larry Elliott in The Guardian. Ten days of falls on China’s stockmarkets wiped out $3.5trn of value. After surging 150% in a year, shares fell 50% in a few weeks. Next, “fearful that China in 2015 could find itself in the history books along with Dutch tulips, the South Sea Bubble and the Wall Street Crash”, the government in Beijing stepped in to stop the rout. It stopped big shareholders from selling, pumped in public money, and allowed trading in more than half of listed companies to be halted. Result: shares are going up again. “Panic over?” Hardly, said Lex in the FT. With drastic measures like these, you could prop up an exchange “consisting only of wind-up toys, strobe lights and hand puppets”. The…

● Buy-to-let reform Mortgage interest relief for buy-to-let landlords will be restricted to the basic rate of income tax (20%), with this reform to be phased in over four years, from 2017. The annual “wear and tear” relief of 10% will be scrapped; landlords will only be able to claim for what they spend. “Bravo” for a brave move that will help first-time buyers compete with investors, said Ian Cowie in The Times. Buy-to-let cheerleaders reckon landlords will simply put their rents up to offset the drop in profits. Unlikely, in my view, said Merryn Somerset Webb in the FT. “Most landlords, being capitalists, will be charging what their market can bear already.” These sensible changes are likely to cool the market as landlords start to sell. And at the…

Who’s tipping what The week’s best buys Bovis Homes Group Investors Chronicle The housebuilder has delivered record completions, reservations are growing and there’s a strong pipeline of new site acquisitions. Rising build costs are offset by an increase in private sales: momentum should continue. Buy. £11.64. Conviviality Retail Shares The franchised discount convenience store operator (owner of Bargain Booze) is expanding south. Led by former Waitrose retailer Diana Hunter, profits are up, cash flow is strong and it yields 5.5% rising. Buy. 151.5p. Fever-Tree Drinks The Times The premium tonic and mixers group has seen shares soar since floating in November. Driven by consumer demand for “a posh G&T”, sales are up 61%. A “quality company with huge untapped potential”. Buy. 318p. Hays The Times The recruitment group is exposed…

Mattie Faint has been a professional clown since he was 17 when, as a theatre student up from Plymouth, he got a gig as a grease-painted human signpost for a puppet show in London. That was 44 years ago. For the past two decades he has been a “giggle doctor”, mostly at Great Ormond Street Hospital, four-hour shifts on the cancer wards, never out of character. He is the secretary of Clowns International, the accreditation body of clowning, and the co-curator of the Clown Museum, a cramped one-room trove of all things red-nose that was once the vestry of a church in Hackney. He also organises the annual clown memorial service for the original Joey, Joseph Grimaldi, the legendary British Victorian entertainer, on the first Sunday in February, and he…

An Ettinger card case and two Connell Guides will be given to the sender of the first correct solution to the crossword and the clue of the week opened on Monday 27 July. Send it to: The Week Crossword 962, 2nd floor, 32 Queensway, London W2 3RX, or email the answers to crossword@theweek.co.uk. Set by Tim Moorey (www.timmoorey.info) ACROSS 7 Widen route in Scottish mountain (7) 8 Veggie champion reaching the highest point (7) 10 Beats LONDON and NEW YORK, for example (4) 11 Call mum back without name for one running the show (10) 12 Given recurrent idea in a sea people are desperate to cross (6) 14 Mathematical function relating to change (8) 16 Flounder here perhaps (2,4,5) 20 Unsafe region where people lack energy? (2-2,4) 22 Fish…

Paris Anti-harassment plan: France launched a national action plan this week to combat sexual harassment on public transport. It was devised in response to a Paris Métro passenger survey, in April, in which all 600 female respondents said they had suffered some form of harassment – ranging from insults to rape. The government’s new 12-point strategy includes a text-message system that will enable victims or witnesses to report such incidents, and a network-wide ban on any advertising deemed sexist. Female passenger groups will be invited to visit stations to identify areas where they feel unsafe, and where better lighting and security provisions may be needed. Night buses will stop on demand for female passengers, to help them get closer to their final destinations; and a campaign in schools and elsewhere…

Where did Beavis park? On 15 April 2013, “between the hours of half past two and half past five”, according to court documents, fish and chip shop owner Beavis parked his car at Chelmsford’s Riverside Retail Park. The private car park offered two hours of free parking, but Beavis stayed an extra 56 minutes on top of that. A few weeks later, he got a letter from ParkingEye Ltd, which operates the car park, demanding an £85 fine. Beavis refused to pay. “Each communication from the parking company made me ever more furious,” he said. “It has to stop.” When his case was heard at Cambridge County Court, last May, Beavis lost. This April, his case was heard again, at the Court of Appeal, but was thrown out. Next week,…

We should stop laughing at Jimmy Carter Nicholas Kristof The New York Times “Quiz time: which US president was attacked ‘by a killer rabbit’? Jimmy Carter, who has just published his memoir, A Full Life, has lived as an ex-president for longer than anyone else in history, says Nicolas Kristof. But “the killer rabbit” still dogs him. Indeed, no president has ever been so maligned by the press, who portrayed the peanut farmer from Georgia as a hapless, “sanctimonious hick”. The rabbit story came about after they learned that during a fishing trip, he’d used an oar to fend off a bunny swimming towards his boat. It’s true that Carter did sometimes “flounder” as president; but he was no “empty suit”. The son of a southern segregationist, he stood up…

A gene therapy for cystic fibrosis has, for the first time, been found to lead to a modest but significant improvement in lung function, raising cautious hopes that a treatment to stabilise the inherited disease could be developed in the next few years. Cystic fibrosis, which affects around 10,000 people in the UK, occurs when the body produces excess amounts of thick, sticky mucus as a result of mutations in a single gene. The mucus affects the digestive system but does most damage by blocking the lungs, causing repeated chest infections and gradually destroying them. The rogue gene in question – CFTR – was identified a quarter of a century ago, and ever since researchers have been trying to find a way of replacing the faulty gene with a healthy…

If you wonder why the Church of England is in decline, consider its response to last week’s Budget, said Bryony Gordon in The Daily Telegraph: owing to changes to the tax credits system, three million hard-pressed families will be £1,000-a-year poorer – but that wasn’t the measure that upset the Church. Instead, it picked up on an “obscure” announcement that, subject to local authority approval, larger shops – which are currently only allowed to trade for six hours on a Sunday – will be permitted to stay open a bit longer. Sure, this could prove tough for some shop workers, but others will be delighted to make some extra cash on a Sunday; while for families, being able to do their weekly grocery shop in the evening could leave them…

“What do book-keepers use for birth control? Their personalities.” Joke, quoted in the FT “To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.” Edmund Burke, quoted in The Spectator “An ineffectual attempt to put an elusive ball into an obscure hole with implements ill-adapted to the purpose.” Woodrow Wilson on golf, quoted in The Economist “I’ve learnt so much from my mistakes, I’m thinking about making a few more.” Goldie, quoted in The Observer “It takes a sharp tongue to speak bluntly.” Actor Robert Eddison, quoted in The Times “Most of American life is driving somewhere and then driving back wondering why the hell you went.” John Updike, quoted in The Daily Telegraph “What we know is a drop; what we don’t know is an ocean.” Isaac…

Djokovic the deserving Novak Djokovic has secured his place in “the annals of greatness”, said Matthew Syed in The Times. The Serb’s four-set victory over Roger Federer – Andy Murray’s vanquisher – in the Wimbledon final on Sunday was his third win at SW19, and his ninth Grand Slam singles title overall – more than Jimmy Connors, Andre Agassi and Ivan Lendl ever won. What’s more, he has won them in the era of two of the best players of all time: Federer, who has 17 slams, and Rafael Nadal, who has 14. Djokovic “may not have captured as many hearts and minds” as his rivals, but he plays with an unrivalled “relentlessness”, and has “the greatest return in the game’s history”. It’s time that people began to appreciate just…

“What a curious artist was Joseph Cornell,” said Ben Luke in the London Evening Standard. Born in 1903, he spent most of his life living in the New York suburb of Flushing, where he worked in the textile industry to support his mother and his brother, who suffered from cerebral palsy. Cornell was devoutly religious, and though he became infatuated with some of the women he met on his wanderings around the city, he never married. As an artist, he had no formal training; he couldn’t draw, paint or sculpt. Yet from the 1930s until his death, in 1972, he collected ephemera from New York’s flea markets and dime shops, and – first on his kitchen table, and later in his cluttered cellar – used them to create “extraordinary” collages…

The Twits by Roald Dahl, 1980 (Puffin £5.99). Quentin Blake’s illustrations alone would make this one of my favourites. A perfect combination of great characters and a fantastic story, The Twits is funny and brilliant to read aloud. The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith, 1992 (Puffin £7.99). This ingenious and funny book uses every bit of the page to tell its crazy fairy-stories-with-a-twist. The beautiful illustrations, by Lane Smith, are slightly dark, but everything works together perfectly. This book inspired me to have a go at writing my own stories to illustrate. I still laugh at the very ugly duckling who just turns out to be… a really ugly duck (with cross eyes and everything). The Fox books by James Marshall,…

Programmes Secret History: London’s Lost Graveyard – The Crossrail Discovery While digging Crossrail, engineers found a graveyard that had been lost for 300 years. Now, bone analysis and research into parish records are giving insights into the lives of the people buried there. Sun 19 July, C4 8pm (60mins). Panorama: The Train that Divides Jerusalem Adam Wishart visits Jerusalem and rides the city’s controversial new train. Some hoped it would help heal divisions between Israelis and Palestinians, but it has only deepened resentment. Mon 20 July, BBC1 8.30pm (30mins). Cake Bakers and Trouble Makers: Lucy Worsley The Women’s Institute began in a garden shed on Anglesey 100 years ago. Lucy Worsley delves into its radical past. Mon 20 July, BBC2 9pm (60mins). Lookalikes This structured reality show follows the goings…

This Moorish-inspired dish requires almost no skill to pull off, says Chris Honor. All you have to do is roast the cauliflower, plonk it on a plate and throw everything else on top. A masterpiece of kitchen cheating, the beauty is in the haphazardness. Cauliflower, harissa, buckwheat, mint, pistachio Serves 10-12 3 red peppers, deseeded and sliced 1 large cauliflower, cut into 2cm-thick slices 2-3 whole garlic bulbs, halved horizontally, and 6 garlic cloves, bashed 1½ tbsp extra virgin olive oil salt and freshly ground black pepper 125g buckwheat 100g natural yoghurt seeds from ½ pomegranate a few sprigs of fresh mint, leaves stripped 75g pistachios, roasted and roughly chopped zest and juice of 1 lemon 2 tbsp harissa • Preheat the oven to 180°C/gas mark 4. Line a baking…

Trails of Cappadocia From underground cities to the “Fairy Chimneys” rocks, enjoy Turkey’s rich history with an 8-day tour, from £1,049pp, incl. flights and most meals. www.walksworldwide.com, 01962-737565. Dep 15 Sept. Gardens in Gardone Explore the Heller Botanical Garden in Gardone, Italy, during a 7-night stay at Chalet Hotel Galeazzi. Prices from £568pp incl. flights. 01483-345680, www.inghams.co.uk. Until the end of July. The Algarve for couples A 5-night stay at the 5-star clifftop Cascade Wellness & Lifestyle Resort costs from £969pp b&b, incl. Gatwick flights and transfers. 01293-731566, www.sovereign.com. Depart 29 August. Beer in the Cotswolds The traditional Wild Duck Inn at Ewen, near Cirencester, has its own micro-brewery and restaurant. A night’s stay costs from £110pn b&b. www.thewildduckinn.co.uk, 01285-770310.…

The nuclear deal agreed by Iran and world powers prompted speculation over a flood of potential trade deals, opening up investment to foreigners in crucial sectors such as oil and gas, car production and civil aviation. The oil price edged lower on the news; the Iranian rial strengthened. China announced growth of 7%, higher than expectations, but the news failed to rally its stockmarkets. The UK Government published draft legislation which would impose tougher than expected curbs on unions’ right to strike. Sebastian James, boss of Dixons Carphone, and friend of David Cameron, attacked the Government’s proposed £2bn levy on apprenticeships. UK unemployment rose 15,000 between March and May, the first rise for two years. Wages grew by 3.2% in the three months to May compared with a year earlier,…