Innholdsfortegnelse for V. 1108 i The Week

What happened May’s plan for Brexit Theresa May promised this week to pursue a clean break from the European Union, ruling out any deal that “leaves us half-in, half-out”. In a long-awaited speech setting out her priorities for the Brexit negotiations, the Prime Minister said the UK cannot remain within the single market, as staying in “would, to all intents and purposes, mean not leaving the EU at all”. She pledged instead to seek a “bold and ambitious” trade agreement with the bloc – one that would keep trade with Europe as “frictionless as possible” while still allowing the UK to control its borders, set its own laws and strike solo trade deals with other countries. May said Britain would remain a friendly partner to the EU, but made clear…

The myth of rising inequality Ed Conway The Times Funny how wide of the mark our intuition can be, says Ed Conway. Take the issue of inequality. The conventional wisdom is that the gap between the rich and the poor is greater than ever. And that has certainly been the basis on which our leaders have been operating: witness Jeremy Corbyn’s talk of capping pay, and Theresa May’s “crusade for the left behind”. Yet examine the statistics and they “tell a quite different story”. They show that income equality, measured by the Gini coefficient, is actually falling faster today than at any point in the last 40 years. Since the credit crunch of 2007-08, the only income group to have seen a fall in real disposable incomes is the wealthiest…

It’s OK to be a “weekend warrior” If you don’t have time to go the gym during the working week, don’t worry: just exercise over the weekend instead. Researchers have found evidence that exercising only twice a week (provided you work out for long enough) has almost the same apparent health benefits as doing it four or five times. Teams from the universities of Loughborough and Sydney analysed data on almost 64,000 Britons aged 40 or over, who were tracked for an average of nine years, and found that the correlation between prolonged life and doing 150 minutes of moderate exercise a week remained broadly the same, whether the participants spread their exercise out over a number of days, or crammed it into a single session. The “weekend warriors”, who…

“Occasionally one wonders what level of stupidity is required to become an Oxford professor,” said Simon Heffer in The Sunday Telegraph. It must be quite high, judging by the behaviour of the physicist Joshua Silver, who last year reported the Home Secretary’s Tory conference speech to the police as a hate crime. Silver didn’t watch the speech, but he concluded – from the text and reports – that Amber Rudd’s suggestion that firms be made to list how many foreign workers they employ must constitute “hate speech”. In a sane world, Silver would have been charged with wasting police time. As it is, West Midlands Police investigated his complaint. They concluded that Rudd had not committed a hate crime, but logged the case under the lesser category of a “non-crime…

The golf year opened with a “heart-warmer” for the ages, said Rick Broadbent in The Times. A man long regarded as a failure triumphed in one of the oldest tournaments in the world. Graeme Storm’s South African Open win on Sunday shocked everyone – not least Storm himself. The 38-year-old, from Hartlepool, isn’t used to things going his way. Early in his career, when he won the 1999 Amateur Championship, his future looked “bright”. But by 2002 he was working in a cream-cake factory, as a tray cleaner, to make ends meet. Further glory finally came in 2007, with his first European Tour title, but it was only last weekend, 274 tournaments later, that he added a second to his haul. Storm almost didn’t make it to South Africa, said…

To The Times Two miles of tunnel, nine years of construction and £2bn of taxpayers’ money to “improve journey times and remove the sight and sound of traffic” could all be avoided by installing or growing sight screens. Like “rubber-necking” on the unaffected carriageway at motorway accidents, congestion on the A303 is caused by travellers looking at Stonehenge, and ceases when drivers cannot see both it and the road ahead. There are seldom queues when mist or night render the stones invisible from the road. For a tiny fraction of the price, time and environmental damage of a tunnel, we could install roadside screens while growing suitable hedges. Peter Kelley, New Malden, Kingston upon Thames To The Guardian On Friday, as usual, I drove westwards along the A303 on my…

Serves: 2, takes 45 minutes 3 parsnips, peeled and cut into small chunks 1 red onion, peeled and quartered 2 garlic cloves, peeled 2.5cm/1-inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled 2 tsp vegetable stock powder made up with 720ml boiling water 2 tbsp peanut butter 2 tbsp coconut cream pinch of chilli powder 2 tsp ground cumin 30g/1oz coriander leaves For the topping: 1 tbsp coconut chips 1 tbsp pumpkin seeds finely grated zest of 1 orange 15g/½ oz coriander, chopped sea salt and freshly ground black pepper • Preheat the oven to 200°C/400°F/gas mark 6. Line an ovenproof dish with baking parchment, add the parsnips, onion, garlic and ginger to the dish and roast for about 20 minutes. • Meanwhile, make the topping for the soup by stirring all the…

● It's a good time to lightly mow your lawn, just to make it even. Pick a dry, frost-free day, and take care to cut no lower than 6cm. ● Otherwise, keep off the lawn as much as possible. If you drag a wheelbarrow across it, you could end up with bare patches – particularly if the ground is wet. ● Pruning isn’t urgent at this time of year, but it’s still worth trimming the shoots of shrubs and climbers that have outgrown their neighbours. That should prevent them being blown off in a strong wind. ● If your paving is slippery, it probably isn’t just the frost – green algae that have built up over the year may also be responsible. Clean it off with hot soapy water and…

Château St Pierre de Serjac Languedoc, France A half-hour’s drive from the Mediterranean coast, this 19th century chalet and wine estate is wonderful for families, says Tatler. It has fine views of “undulating” vineyards, and the decor is lovely – “chalky pale” stone walls, original frescos, polished-steel baths and “whopping” beds. Some of the self-catering apartments are in wood-beamed outhouses and have their own pools. There’s an excellent restaurant (try the Pyrenean lamb), with a top-notch wine list, and activities include tennis, boules, bike rides, a spa offering Cinq Mondes treatments, a 100ft pool and a great kids’ club. Doubles from £200. 0345-686 6505, www.serjac.com .…

Fiat Chrysler: Dieselgate II “As one scandal draws to a close, another arises to take its place,” said Kyle Campbell in the New York Daily News. A day after Volkswagen was handed a $4.3bn fine for cheating emissions tests on its diesel cars, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) went after Fiat Chrysler. The carmaker, run by Sergio Marchionne, could face up to $4.6bn in fines for allegedly fitting 104,000 US diesel vehicles with auxiliary emissions control software. There are important differences between the cases, said Andrew Saunders in Management Today. Fiat isn’t charged with “outright cheating”, VW-style. Rather, the EPA claims that software was used to switch off emissions controls temporarily under certain driving conditions. “It may be a lesser charge” but, judging by the size of the touted…

Controversy of the week The NHS in crisis We should have reached the tipping point by now, said Polly Toynbee in The Guardian. Usually, during a major NHS crisis, “prime ministers crumple when people die – as they have in the Royal Worcester Hospital’s corridors”. When doctors describe conditions as the worst they’ve ever seen, when patients on trollies pile up in A&E departments, when the Royal College of Surgeons protests at the cancellation of cancer operations, you would expect the Government to take swift action. But no, Theresa May is “not for turning”. Instead, we’ve had a “flamethrower of blame from Westminster”. The system, says the PM, needs “reform”, not more money. Patients have been criticised for clogging up hospitals with minor complaints, GPs for not pulling their weight,…

DJ on the right wavelength James O’Brien is an oddity in talk radio: a left-leaning liberal with right-wing listeners. Footage of him in the LBC studio – clutching his head in despair, and waxing furious over Brexit, Trump, racism or the immigration crisis – regularly goes viral on social media, making him famous far beyond his usual audience. But for O’Brien, it’s just business as usual. “I don’t think there is any face-palming for the cameras from me,” he told Tim Adams in The Observer. “I was face-palming long before the cameras came in.” Having spent ten years arguing with right-wing cab drivers, O’Brien was one of the few pundits to anticipate the current populist uprising. “I could certainly hear it coming,” he says. “You know, for a long time,…

Many people love McDonald’s meals – but few would go so far as to risk their lives for them. Yet according to police in Harlem, New York, an unnamed 13-year-old did just that when a classmate demanded she give him a McNugget. The girl refused, so the boy followed her out of the restaurant, pulled out a gun, and held it to her head. Yet even then, the girl refused to hand over a single lump of the breaded chicken paste. Instead, she knocked his gun aside, and told him to leave her alone – which he did. A shoe company has withdrawn a new military-style combat boot – the Polar Fox – after customers complained that the pattern on its sole leaves swastika imprints in the snow or muddy…

ITALY How nice to see this joker squashed Il Sole 24 Ore (Milan) To see opportunist politicians getting egg on their faces is one of life’s small pleasures, says Adriana Cerretelli. And it happened last week to Beppe Grillo. His Five Star Movement would be a contender for power in Italy if it could only shed its status as an anarchic protest party. And with that aim in view, Grillo took it off the Eurosceptic bloc in the European Parliament to which UKIP’s Nigel Farage belongs, and applied to join the larger, more influential, Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (Alde). He was encouraged to do so by the Alde’s leader, former Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt, who saw it as a way to make the group stronger and…

Some 4.5 million years ago, a hypothetical protoplanet called Theia collided with Earth – and from the debris, our Moon was formed. The giant-impact hypothesis (also known as the Big Splash) is quite widely accepted, but it has some holes. If the Moon was created by this giant impact, there should still be some traces of Theia on it. But studies of lunar samples from the Apollo missions suggest that the Moon’s chemical composition is remarkably similar to that of Earth; and also that the Moon is older than Earth. Now, a team at the Weizmann Institute of Science, in Israel, has re-examined the issue, and found evidence to support an alternative theory. This holds that rather than being the result of one cataclysmic event, the Moon was formed over…

The casting of a white actor as Michael Jackson was always going to be controversial – and last week, Sky Arts bowed to public pressure and pulled a new comedy featuring a heavily made-up Joseph Fiennes as the King of Pop. Some 20,000 people had signed a petition calling on Sky viewers to boycott the show – an episode of a series called Urban Myths – while on social media, users complained both about the “whitewashing” and about Fiennes’s grotesque appearance. But the final straw came when Jackson’s daughter, Paris, intervened, tweeting that she was “incredibly offended”, and that it “makes me want to vomit”. Troubled star Lindsay Lohan this week fuelled speculation that she’s converted to Islam, by removing all the posts and photos from her Instagram account, and…

“Youth and beauty are not accomplishments.” Carrie Fisher, quoted in New York magazine “I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.” Richard Feynman, quoted on The Browser “In art there is only one thing that counts: the bit that cannot be explained.” Georges Braque, quoted on Forbes.com “Never despise what it says in the women’s magazines – it may not be subtle but neither are men.” Zsa Zsa Gabor, quoted on BBC News online “Hopes can be disappointed. Nostalgia is irrefutable.” Historian Mark Lilla, quoted in The Guardian “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.” Bertrand Russell, quoted in The Jerusalem Post “If you want peace,…

The Kite Runner Based on Khaled Hosseini’s international best-selling novel, this powerful story has now been adapted into a stunning new stage production. A haunting tale of friendship which spans cultures and continents, it follows one man’s journey to confront his past and find redemption. Tickets from £16.00, runs until 11th March 2017 The Comedy About A Bank Robbery Written by and starring the Mischief Theatre Company who brought you the 2015 Olivier award-winning Best New Comedy “The Play That Goes Wrong” and “Peter Pan Goes Wrong”, book now, to be entertained by their unique brand of humour in this hilarious new show. Tickets from £13.00, runs until 29th October 2017 Love’s Labour’s Lost RSC Shakespeare’s sparkling comedy delights in championing and then unravelling an unrealistic vow. The King and…

Exhibition of the week Painters’ Painters Saatchi Gallery, London SW3 (020-7811 3070, www.saatchigallery.com ). Until 28 February It wasn’t so long ago that painting was considered “dead” as an art form, said Jonathan Jones in The Guardian. “Po-faced” curators insisted that paint and canvas were a thing of the past, and that the future lay in video art and installations. But after years of being out of favour, painting is suddenly everywhere. Fashionable galleries in East London “are full of the stuff”. Painters’ Painters, the current exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery, brings together the work of nine contemporary artists – and it is “brimming with visitors”. The paintings on the walls “really are a lot of fun” – big, colourful and playful, like street art. The “good…

Try something different, from less than £8 per bottle Our wine editor Bruce Palling’s selection from Swig, specialists in artisan wine from around the world. “Wine lovers tend to be set in their ways: once they discover what they prefer in terms of grapes or regions, they stick within those parameters. I’m as guilty of this as the next person. That’s why we should all be grateful for wine merchants like Swig that hunt down obscure wines that are exciting on the palate and are properly priced. I love all of these wines from South Africa, Bulgaria, Spain, Portugal and France, but especially the Soli pinot noir and the Papegaai white. It is stimulating to explore the new frontiers of wine making – and all of these delightful wines are…

New cars: what the critics say Auto Express The words John Cooper Works have “long been synonymous with Mini’s most extreme models”. Over the past decade, the manufacturer has made faster, “pumped-up” JCW versions of many of its cars. Now it’s done the same for the “VW Golf-rivalling” Clubman, giving it more power. Think of this car as a hot hatch with four-wheel drive – even if it mostly just uses its front wheels. The Daily Telegraph The Clubman JCW is one of those strange vehicles that “looks better in the pictures than it does in the metal”. Still, the cabin is charmingly “quaint” and boasts a high-quality dashboard (though it feels a bit cramped). There’s a fair bit of space for a Mini – two can sit comfortably in…

The Crickhowell Walking Festival in the eastern Brecon Beacons offers 89 guided walks over nine days, ranging from gentle half-day hikes to 20-mile treks. Other events include Nordic walking taster sessions (25 February to 5 March, walks from £6.50; www.crickhowellfestival.com). Curlydog, a Lincolnshire-based firm, runs guided winter walks in East Anglia. Some are designed to help walkers practise skills such as map reading and compass navigation (£5; www.curlydogltd.com). Winter Wanders organised by Walk London, is a weekend of free led walks across the capital. There are scenic strolls, including one along the Thames, as well as city centre ones (28-29 January, booking required; www.walklondon.org.uk). RSPB reserves across the country run walks led by guides who help you spot birds. Forthcoming locations include the Lea Valley in Essex and Brighton’s Stanmer…

Cae Du in Snowdonia Enjoy beautiful mountain panoramas and tumbling waterfalls with a week’s stay at Cae Du (sleeps up to 12 people), for £1,150. 020-8542 3480, www.premiercottages.co.uk. Arrive 10 February. NY, Toronto and Niagara This North American adventure includes car hire in Niagara Falls, and return flights from Heathrow, from £799pp room only. 01293-762456, www.hayesandjarvis.co.uk. Depart 6 March. Explore the Mediterranean Experience a 15-day no-fly ocean cruise like no other, with stops in Nice, Rome, Florence and Lisbon. From £1,699pp. 0800-988 5873, www.titantravel.co.uk. Depart 2 September, from Southampton. Venice to Rio in 24 nights Enjoy gondolas in Venice and whale watching in Salvador on this 24-day cruise. From £1,399pp mixed board. 0800-408 0757, www.cruisenation.com. Book by 27 February. Depart 11 November.…

It’s been a long time coming, but Rolls-Royce has finally reached a £671m deal with global regulators to settle corruption investigations across five continents, said Matthew Vincent in the Financial Times. The company has admitted paying bribes, including a luxury car and millions of pounds in cash, to middlemen in order to secure orders in six countries including Russia, China and Indonesia. The UK share of the settlement is the largest fine “ever imposed on a company for criminal conduct” in this country. The engine-maker will pay the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) almost £500m, with the rest going to authorities in the US and elsewhere. The total fine is just short of the profit that Rolls was expected to make this year, said Patrick Hosking in The Times. But at…

Tackling Britain’s Brexit labour pains Editorial The Economist For some industries – hospitality, construction, social care – the free movement of labour “is the most prized advantage of being in the EU”, says The Economist. If the flow of new migrants reduces to a trickle, they’ll have to “adapt quickly to survive”. Britain’s relatively fast-growing economy has created a tight labour market, and “it is idle to presume that there is an army of frustrated, unemployed British workers ready to pick up the spanners of departing Polish plumbers”. The Resolution Foundation thinks a further 2.6 million people, including the elderly and the disabled, could join the workforce by 2020. Yet businesses, already grappling with a new apprenticeship levy and pension enrolment, may struggle to foot the costs of tempting them…

Who’s tipping what The week’s best buys Booker Group The Times The cash and carry retailer has easily beaten expectations. Shares are dear, but Booker has an “extraordinary record of reliability” and is raising dividends while continuing to make acquisitions. Yields 4.4%. Buy. 185.5p. Devro The Daily Telegraph The sausage-skin maker’s hefty investment in new plants in China and the US is taking time to pay off, and it has suffered two profit warnings. But new products should boost competitiveness. Yields 4.8%. Buy. 187.5p. Marks and Spencer Group The Times M&S has revealed positive figures over the Christmas period: non-food was up by 2.3%, and international sales by 2.9%. Focusing on the food division, and a “more sensible clothing strategy”, seems to be working. Buy. 340p. Centamin The Times With…

Lille, France Macron surge: A surge in the poll ratings of France’s youngest presidential candidate, Emmanuel Macron, has led many to speculate that he may reach the final round of elections, in May. The current top contenders are right-wing conservative François Fillon and the far-right Marine Le Pen: but a new poll shows Macron (pictured) as France’s most popular politician, and huge numbers of voters are attending his rallies. The 39-year-old former Socialist and investment banker, previously chief advisor and economy minister to François Hollande, set up the independent progressive movement En Marche! last April. Unlike his rivals, he is staunchly pro-EU. “We are Europe, we are Brussels, we wanted it and we need it,” he told supporters at a rally in Lille last week. Paris Peace conference: Britain’s refusal…

Congress and the fossil fuel bullies Sheldon Whitehouse The Washington Post Congress has a dirty secret, says Democratic senator Sheldon Whitehouse: contrary to appearances, politicians from both parties share much the same worries about climate change. “Republicans are not idiots.” They hear warnings from military leaders about climate change acting as a catalyst for conflict, and threatening low-lying military bases such as Virginia, Norfolk and Diego Garcia. Republicans representing coastal states see “fisheries going awry; those with forests see pine beetles spreading and wildfires raging; those with farms see unprecedented drought”. So why, you may ask, have Republicans been so resistant to taking action against global warming in recent years? Simple: it’s due to the US Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling, which removed limits on corporate spending on political…

Last year, for the first time, Britain generated more electricity from wind turbines than from coal, reports the Financial Times. According to Carbon Brief, a website that tracks developments in energy policy, coal accounted for 9.2% of the UK’s output in 2016, down from 22.6% the previous year; while wind accounted for 11.5%. As recently as 2013, coal accounted for more than 35% of the electricity supply in the UK, but the industry has been in rapid decline in the last few years, and the Government intends to close the country’s last coal-fired power plants by 2025. Last year’s drop in coal output was largely made up for by an increase in gas-generated power, which was up by around 50% from its 2015 level. Gas produces fewer carbon emissions than…

“The Labour Party is in a death spiral,” said Jane Merrick in The Daily Telegraph. “The terminal decline that started with electoral near-oblivion in Scotland is spreading into England.” Last month, Jamie Reed resigned as Labour MP for Copeland in Cumbria, in order to take up a job in the nuclear industry, at Sellafield. Last week, another centrist, Tristram Hunt, vacated his own seat, Stoke-on-Trent Central, to become the director of the Victoria and Albert Museum. There was a time when both these MPs considered running for the leadership. “Now they cannot even contemplate a future in which they sit on the same benches as Jeremy Corbyn.” The seats will be hard for Labour to regain. In Copeland, the Conservatives came a close second in 2015; in Stoke-on-Trent, UKIP and…

Football: stars on strike It was the moment West Ham fans had long feared, said Peter Thorne on ESPN. Last week, manager Slaven Bilic announced that Dimitri Payet – the Hammers’ “talismanic” midfielder – no longer wanted to play for the club. His departure had been on the cards since last summer’s European Championship, where he was France’s best player; his “alarming lack of application” and “worrying” body language this season only seemed to confirm his desire to leave. Now, with the transfer window open, he has been linked with a move to his old club Marseille. That’s terrible news for West Ham: despite his underwhelming performances this season, Payet remains their best player by some distance. At 29, he is a “relatively late developer”, and it’s understandable that he…

Dealing with doctors To The Guardian I am pleased that Theresa May and Jeremy Hunt are challenging the entitled approach of the medical profession. Our GPs earn double what their French counterparts do. If the BMA had not ruthlessly exploited the public esteem for doctors to access salaries and pensions beyond the dreams of other citizens, there could be many more GPs with the same personnel budget. The NHS cannot just consume our entire public expenditure – we do need to do other things with these resources. Medical professionals need to understand that in the 21st century they are not the only people with education and skills, and that they must adjust their expectations to allow the NHS to live within its means. The public need to take the stars…

Theatre BU21 Playwright: Stuart Slade Director: Dan Pick Trafalgar Studios, London SW1 (0844-871 7632) Until 18 February Running time: 1hr 40mins ★★★ It sounds like the “glummest” of set-ups for a play, said Fiona Mountford in the London Evening Standard – especially one opening in cold, dark January. In BU21, London has suffered a horrendous terrorist atrocity: a passenger aircraft has been shot down over Fulham. Hundreds are dead. Thousands are injured. But what its relatively unknown author, Stuart Slade, gives us isn’t what we might expect – a hunt for the perpetrators, say, or a complex study of the geopolitics of terror. Instead, he gives us six individual stories – “close up, compelling and often blackly comic”– of members of a group of people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.…

Best books… Christopher de Hamel Christopher de Hamel, fellow librarian of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, picks his favourite books about medieval manuscripts. His own book Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts, released last year, is published by Allen Lane at £30 The Oldest Manuscripts in New Zealand by David M. Taylor, 1955 (out of print). As a child in Dunedin, New Zealand (my parents had moved there), I discovered this conversational field guide to looking at the medieval manuscripts then in that country. I was probably the only person to read the book ever, and it changed my life. I still know it by heart. Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books by N.R. Ker, 1961 (out of print). This is the most compulsive catalogue imaginable. It is simply…

Carrot yoghurt and meal kits Move over, chia seeds, seaweed and steamed buns: this year’s biggest trends are set to be poke (a Hawaiian raw fish salad), vegetable yoghurts and watermelon juice, said Rebecca Smithers in The Guardian. Poke (“pohkay”) has admittedly been popping up on cool-lists for a while, but it’s set to enter the mainstream as a “must-have snack”. Yoghurts flavoured with carrot, beetroot, sweet potato and tomato – already popular in America – are predicted to be a hit with British consumers this year, as are “gourmet meal kits”, containing preprepared ingredients for time-poor foodies. As for the on-trend “superfoods”, brace yourselves for health gurus banging on about maqui berries (Chilean berries rich in vitamin C), said Anna Magee in The Daily Telegraph. We’re also likely to…

Samsung Gear Fit 2 The Gear Fit 2 is a solid (if pricey) all-rounder. It has a superb display and works on a wide range of activities – including Pilates and running on a treadmill – but battery life is disappointing (£169; www.very.co.uk). Garmin Vivosmart HR+ This tracker is expensive, but it’s packed with good features: there’s a built-in heart monitor and GPS, and it can be paired with a smartphone to receive texts. The app takes a little while to get used to, though (£170; www.argos.co.uk). FitBit Charge 2 This updated version of the popular Charge HR is well-suited to casual users and fitness freaks. Comfortable and lightweight, it has a great app – but it’s easily scratched and somewhat inaccurate when it tries counting calories (£130; www.fitbit.com). Myzone…

“In the early years of their marriage, the couple relished a jet-set lifestyle and made the stuffy Royals look cool” The Earl of Snowdon 1930-2017 Lord Snowdon was an accomplished photographer, a talented designer, and a champion of the disabled, said The Guardian, but he was chiefly known as the commoner who married into the Royal Family: he was the first to wed a king’s daughter for some 450 years. Antony Armstrong-Jones was 28 when, in 1958, he met Princess Margaret. She was said to be on the rebound from Peter Townsend, a divorcee whom she’d been forbidden from marrying. Armstrong-Jones was said to be temperamentally unsuited to royal life. He wouldn’t, his own father warned, relish spending the rest of his life walking two steps behind his wife. (Margaret…

Natarajan Chandrasekaran The new Tata Sons chairman is reputedly a “remarkably affable” chap. He’ll need to be, to smooth over the cracks at India’s largest conglomerate, says the FT. His sacked predecessor, Cyrus Mistry, is still waging war over alleged governance failings: he claims Tata is run like a “personal fiefdom”. A keen marathon runner, Chandrasekaran, 53, is the first person outside the affluent Parsi community to be appointed to the job. But he’s no outsider. For the last seven years, he has run Tata Consultancy Services – by far the biggest earner in the sprawling group. “Chandra” appears to tick all the boxes: a digital native, who understands Tata’s historical ethos, and “a safe pair of hands” – a particularly useful commodity, everyone agrees, following last year’s “kerfuffle”. Fred…