Innholdsfortegnelse for V. 1123 i The Week

What happened The “disastrous” dinner Theresa May was forced on the defensive over her approach to Brexit this week, following the leak of a damaging account of her recent dinner with Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission. According to reports in German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, last week’s meal at Downing Street – which brought the UK and EU negotiating teams together for the first time – was a fractious affair. The two sides apparently clashed over many issues, including the pace of trade talks and Britain’s exit bill. Juncker reportedly warned the PM that “Brexit cannot be a success”, and told her he was leaving Downing Street “ten times more sceptical” that a deal would be reached. In a phone call to Angela Merkel, he told the…

Lincoln County, Arkansas Executions completed: The state of Arkansas put to death its fourth death row prisoner in eight days last Thursday – an intensive schedule that has fuelled opposition to the death penalty in the US. With one of its lethal injections drugs due to expire at the end of April, Arkansas had hoped to execute eight men in 11 days, until the courts intervened on behalf of four of the prisoners. Witnesses at two of the executions, at Cummins jail, said that the men had shown signs of physical distress as they died. Convicted rapist and murderer Marcel Williams (pictured) arched his back off the gurney several times, and gulped for air. Lawyers have called for an inquiry. Canton, Texas Killer storms: Lethal storms swept across the south…

Peace, love and the myth of social media Nicholas Carr The Boston Globe People in the West have long harboured the fond belief, says Nicholas Carr, that advances in communication technology will promote social harmony. The more we learn about others, the more aware we become of our common humanity – or so the theory goes. Guglielmo Marconi declared in 1912 that the invention of radio would, in his words, “make war impossible, because it will make war ridiculous”. AT&T’s top engineer, J.J. Carty, predicted in 1923 that the telephone would “join all the peoples of the Earth in one brotherhood”. Mark Zuckerberg has talked in similarly utopian terms of Facebook, the social network now used by nearly two billion of the world’s seven billion people. It’s a “pleasant thought”,…

The Cameron government’s £1.27bn Cancer Drugs Fund (CDF) was poor value for money and may have put patients at risk, a study has found. The Tories established the fund in 2010, in response to the regular media outcry when the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) refused to approve expensive cancer drugs for use in the NHS, because they are not cost-effective. The idea was that patients would get life-prolonging treatments that they would otherwise be denied. But when a team from King’s College London examined the drugs paid for by the CDF, they found most had shown “minimal to no benefit in survival” in clinical trials. And in the trials of the 38% shown to be effective, patients had only lived, on average, for an extra three…

“A surge in popularity, gay sex and a dog.” The Liberal Democrats, said Matt Chorley in The Times, “seem to be running their election campaign as a Jeremy Thorpe tribute act, reviving their traditional role as Britain’s daftest, but essentially harmless, political party”. There was much merriment on the internet last week after party leader Tim Farron was caught on camera apparently inviting a voter in Cambridge to “smell my spaniel” (it turns out he was actually telling a man in the crowd that the dog he was holding could probably detect the scent of his dog, Jasper, on his clothes). The week also saw Farron, a born-again evangelical Christian, face repeated questions about whether or not he regards gay sex as a sin. He was initially evasive, saying he…

Boxing: Joshua on top of the world From the moment the final blows “rippled down” Anthony Joshua’s arms onto the bleeding head of Wladimir Klitschko, there could be “no more arguments about who is the best heavyweight in the world”, said Kevin Mitchell in The Observer. It was not just that the 27-year-old Joshua added the WBA world heavyweight title to his IBF belt, or even that he had “stopped one of boxing’s finest old champions”. It was the way he got up in the sixth round last Saturday after being hit by a right cross that “would have felled an elephant”. In front of 90,000 spectators at Wembley Stadium, Joshua fought on, and it was only in the 11th round that the fight reached its “most dramatic conclusion”: Klitschko…

Amazon’s job creation To The Independent I find it incomprehensible that you refer to Amazon “creating 1,200 new UK jobs”. Amazon will certainly be offering jobs in new establishments in Warrington, but by no stretch of the imagination will it be creating jobs, as every job at Amazon, or its like, results in many more jobs being lost in more traditional forms of employment. In addition, the companies who currently provide the type of job that will be lost will be companies that pay their fair share of tax – something that it is acknowledged Amazon does not do. By all means report such news, but I feel the use of the world “creation” in this context is inappropriate. Grant Serpell, Maidenhead, Berkshire My honeymoon vote To The Times I…

Theatre Obsession Adaptation: Jan Peter Gerrits, translated by Simon Stephens Director: Ivo van Hove Barbican, Silk Street, London EC2 (020-7638 8891) Until 20 May 1hr 50mins (no interval) ★★ “Jude Law has always taken pains not to be a straight-down-the-line leading man,” said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph. And true to form, the actor’s latest project is “a spot of avant-garde theatre” with the acclaimed Belgian director Ivo van Hove. Obsession is van Hove’s “gripping, gritty” take on the 1943 Italian film Ossessione, which was itself inspired by James M. Cain’s crime novel The Postman Always Rings Twice. Law plays Gino, a “handsome drifter” who winds up at a dilapidated tavern owned by an unhappily married couple. After seducing the wife (Halina Reijn), Gino agrees to help bump off…

Best books… Sebastian Barry Irish author Sebastian Barry picks his five favourite books. His latest novel, Days Without End (Faber & Faber £8.99), has been shortlisted for the British Book Awards 2017. The winner will be announced on 8 May The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, 1997 (HarperCollins £8.99). One of those rare books you always remember reading. The river, the oppressive trees, the village in the Indian state of Kerala where it largely takes place, the conflicted twins, and the ghastly aunt, Baby Kochamma. Mr Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood, 1935 (Vintage Classics £8.99). A supreme example of a radiant prose rhythm married to the most delicious dialogue – a portrait of the subtly ruinous Mr Norris. Like Goodbye to Berlin, its dress and atmosphere is…

Carrot and celeriac salad with brown shrimp Serves 4 For the dressing: 2½ tbsps natural yoghurt 2½ tbsps Greek-style yoghurt ¾ tsp grated horseradish (fresh or from a jar) small bunch of dill, fronds roughly torn 3 heaped tsps capers, roughly chopped zest and juice of ½ lemon salt and freshly ground black pepper For the salad: 1 large carrot (approximately 150g) 1 small celeriac (approximately 450g) 100g cooked brown shrimp small bunch of dill, to garnish Tabasco sauce (optional) • To make the dressing, mix all the ingredients together, leave for about 10 minutes, to allow the flavours to develop, and then season to taste. • Peel the carrot and celeriac then use a potato peeler to slice them into long, thin ribbons. Alternatively, the grater attachment of your…

Controversy of the week The long campaign “The Tories are not used to being popular,” said Iain Martin in The Times. “It is incredible,” remarked one MP after he’d been out canvassing. “People come up to you and couldn’t be nicer about the Prime Minister. I’ve never seen such enthusiasm for a Tory leader at an election.” Even in Thatcher’s heyday, it wasn’t like this. She had “her people”, but she divided the country. “Mrs May is popular across the classes, and popular off the scale with older voters.” The Conservatives have “a ten-point lead in Wales – Wales! – and every chance of epic swings to them across the North and Midlands”. They even look good in Scotland. “Combine Brexit, Mrs May’s popularity, a collapsing UKIP, Labour disintegration, the…

Cairo Papal visit: In a show of solidarity with Egypt’s beleaguered Coptic Christian minority, and with Muslim opponents of Islamist terrorism, Pope Francis made a two-day visit to Egypt last week, the first by a Catholic pope for 20 years. “Let us say once more a firm and clear ‘No!’ to every form of violence, vengeance and hatred carried out in the name of religion,” he told a peace conference at Al-Azhar University, a 1,000-year-old seat of Sunni learning, in Cairo. He also joined Egypt’s Pope Tawadros II (pictured) at a service at St Peter and St Paul’s Church. Doha A “softer” image: Hamas, the militant group that runs Gaza, has published a new policy document – the first since its 1988 founding charter – that presents it in a…

How my London parish turned Chinese Giles Fraser The Guardian It’s no wonder people have a problem with globalisation, says Giles Fraser, when you see the effect it has on the life of so many communities. Take my own parish in south London, where a huge property development – the 24-acre Elephant Park – is under construction. Keen to harness the word “community” for its own ends, Lendlease, the Australian firm behind the project, claims it’s seeking to create a place “with the community at its heart”. Yet land registry records show that in South Gardens, the first phase of the development, overseas investors have snapped up every flat sold. That’s right: every single one. The flats are essentially being used as “piggy banks for East Asian capital looking for…

The caterpillars that eat plastic They’re already used by fishermen, to catch carp. Now, scientists have come up with a bigger task for the tiny waxworm: solving the world’s plastic waste problem. Spanish researchers have discovered that the moth larvae, which are notorious among beekeepers on account of their taste for beeswax, also consume plastic. The discovery was made by chance when biologist Federica Bertocchini, of the University of Cantabria, was picking the larvae out of her own beehive. She put them into a polyethylene bag for disposal, but when she returned, she found that the bag was full of holes and the larvae had escaped. Further tests established that the larvae were eating the plastic (not just chewing it into pieces) and that 100 of them can get through…

Tom Hardy – an actor often tipped as the next James Bond – was hailed as a real-life action hero last week, for chasing down a thief who’d ran a red light on a stolen moped, and crashed into a car. The actor was said to have pursued the suspect on foot across gardens and down a busy street in Richmond, west London, before apprehending him and handing him over to the police. But now a woman has come forward claiming that actually she was the one who gave chase – and that as far as she is aware, Hardy wasn’t even there. Engineer Carly Holder, 35, insists that she caught the boy and frogmarched him back to the scene. “Tom Hardy should come clean and admit it was me,…

Macron: could he transform France? “Three years ago, he was largely unknown to the public,” said The Economist. “Today he is a step away from becoming France’s president.” Emmanuel Macron’s rise “from obscurity to favourite” in this Sunday’s second-round vote has been “remarkable”. Having never held elected office before, Macron, who is only 39, conjured his political movement En Marche! out of thin air, and took 24% – the largest share – of the vote in the first round. If he defeats Marine Le Pen, as all the polls suggest he will, France will have shown “not only that it can favour youth over seniority, and optimism over fear, but that pro-European liberalism can still triumph over populism and nationalism”. Macron is slick, confident and determined, said Jonathan Fenby in…

Selby makes it two in a row With his final pot on Monday, Mark Selby entered the “pantheon of snooker greats”, says Barry Glendenning in The Guardian. His “ridiculously tense” 18-15 victory over John Higgins gave Selby a third world championship in four years; he is now one of a “select band of four players” who have won the title two years in a row. That didn’t look likely on Sunday, when the 33-year-old was “looking humiliation in the face”: at one point, he was 10-4 down. But in a classic final, he “drew on his fabled mental reserves” to overcome his formidable opponent. Snooker’s No. 1 player for the past two years, Selby has now “cemented” his position at the top of the rankings for another year. Understudy no…

To The Guardian As a distant descendant of Edward Colston, I have followed with interest the debate about how or whether he should be commemorated. Slavery was an abomination and a stain on many nations’ histories. In Britain’s case, the profits from slavery created a commercial and financial system that supported the start of the Industrial Revolution – from which all of us have benefited, not just the citizens of Bristol. If we are to make peace with the past then we should recognise the fact that the sins of the past helped forge the present. I think statues and plaques are not enough to do this. Why not a Colston development fund – to recognise our moral obligation to provide development aid, in particular to those nations most affected…

Lady Macbeth Dir: William Oldroyd 1hr 29mins (15) Is that a dagger she sees before her? ★★★★ “Sometimes a glorious film appears like a cold dart out of an open sky,” said Camilla Long in The Sunday Times. And this “exciting” debut movie from William Oldroyd is a case in point. It’s an adaptation of a “second-rate” Russian novella, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, transplanted to Victorian England. Trapped in a loveless marriage to a middle-aged colliery heir (Paul Hilton), a sullen 17-year-old (Florence Pugh) falls for her sexy stable boy (Cosmo Jarvis), “and runs with it”, said Deborah Ross in The Spectator. But if you think you’ve seen this kind of thing before in tragedies such as Anna Karenina, “think again”. Pugh is “compelling”, said Brian Viner in the Daily…

Prices for first-growth Bordeaux and grand crus Burgundys are now far beyond the reach of most mere mortals, says David Williams in The Observer. Here are three super alternatives for under £20. Château Thivin, Les Sept Vignes, Côte de Brouilly, France 2015 (£17.95, www.bbr.  com) The best Beaujolais producers are capable of Burgundian pinot refinement at prices that offer stunning value; this example is a “keeper with gorgeous summer berries in a sappy, silky, mineral package”. Descendientes de J Palacios Pétalos, Bierzo, Spain 2015 (£17.99, www.majestic.co.uk) The fragrant, succulent mencía grape variety is the key ingredient in the new classic Spanish reds of northwestern Bierzo and Galicia; this one is a standout for both value and joyous, vivid intensity. Tabalí Talinay Chardonnay, Limarí, Chile 2014 (£12.50, www.thewinesociety.com) The cool-climate Limarí…

The reclusive author of a counterculture bible Robert M. Pirsig 1928-2017 A philosophical treatise written in the last days of the American counterculture, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values was turned down by 121 publishers, and the 122nd warned the author that he’d never make money from it. Yet Robert M. Pirsig’s debut, based on a 17-day father-son motorbike trip across the US, sold a million copies in its first year, said The New York Times, and has sold millions more since. In the early 1970s, people were growing weary of the hippy resistance to a high-tech world dominated by big corporations; Pirsig’s book, with its musings about the relationship between man and machine, madness and the roots of culture, helped reconcile them to a…

Jes Staley The Barclays chief’s misguided “efforts to unmask a whistle-blower” continue to overshadow everything else at the bank, says Alistair Osborne in The Times. Jes Staley has apologised for trying to hunt down the anonymous author of what he called a “malicious attack” on a senior colleague, and his bonus has been cut. But he clearly broke the bank’s rules on whistle-blowers, and he may not keep his job once the regulators have “finished poking around”. Staley, a former JP Morgan stalwart, can take credit for his “ballsy repositioning” of the bank since taking over in 2015. He doubled down on Barclays Investment Bank, and got out of Africa, “both of which still look like good calls”. He has made real progress. “It would be a shame if a…

Berlin Partial burka ban: The German parliament has approved a draft law that prohibits women working in the civil service, the judiciary and the military from wearing full-face Islamic veils while carrying out their duties. The law, which must now be approved by the Bundestag, also gives officials the power to require women to uncover their faces for the purposes of identification. However, it is largely symbolic given that full-face veils are increasingly rare in Germany (and even more so among Muslim women who go out to work). The interior minister, Thomas de Maizière, said that given the scale of immigration, Germany needed to be clear about “where the boundaries of our tolerance lie”. MPs also approved a new law to allow the electronic tagging of anyone considered a terror…

Hytner’s Freudian slip Nicholas Hytner stepped down as director of the National Theatre in 2015, to start a brand new theatre, the Bridge. But it took him a while to cut the psychological ties, says Rachel Cooke in The Observer. Hytner remembers all too well the first NT production he saw that had nothing to do with him. “Yes, Dr Freud might have had something to say about it,” he notes. Soon after the noisy opening scenes of Lyndsey Turner’s production of Caryl Churchill’s Light Shining in Buckinghamshire, the faint sound of Angela Hewitt playing Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring tinkled through the theatre. “‘What an odd choice for Lyndsey to have made,’ I thought. But then people started looking round and I realised I must have pocket-dialled my iTunes…

Mark Zuckerberg seems to be making good on his promise to visit ordinary Americans in every US state. Last week, the Facebook billionaire dined with the Moore family, in Ohio. He had apparently asked his people to find him some Democrats who had voted for Donald Trump in November. The Moores say they were told to expect a guest at their home – but only heard who it was 20 minutes before he arrived. An exclusive music festival in the Bahamas was cancelled last week, after guests – who had paid up to $12,000 to attend the “luxury” two-day event – arrived to find that the headlining band had cancelled, their “overnight villas” were disaster relief tents, and the “gourmet” food consisted of processed cheese, sliced bread and a bit…

FRANCE Putin’s attack on Macron was pure folly The Moscow Times As everyone predicted, the Kremlin propaganda machine got stuck into the French presidential election, says Vladimir Frolov. It mounted a blatant “character assassination” of centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron in the weeks before the first round, presenting him as an American agent in the pay of US financiers and claiming he had a secret offshore account. It even had fake polls predicting victory for many of the other candidates. It was no surprise they did it: the big question is, “Why?” The only effect was to infuriate Macron, whose initial policy positions with respect to Russia were actually quite conciliatory: he had urged peace talks over Ukraine, followed by a gradual lifting of sanctions. So what was Vladimir Putin thinking?…

They don’t get cancer, are resistant to many forms of pain and show few signs of ageing. Now naked mole rats have been found to have another superpower: the creatures can survive without oxygen for 18 minutes. Most mammals need oxygen to turn glucose into the energy that powers their major organs. Without it, energy stores are rapidly depleted and cells die. Without oxygen, humans suffer irreversible brain damage within about five minutes. Examination of mole rats suggests that they, however, have a back-up system: if they have no oxygen, they simply use the fructose in their bodies to power their cells, which unlike glucose can be metabolised without oxygen – for a short time, at least. Mole rats live in large colonies in crowded burrows, so it was likely…

“First, do no harm.” That is the fundamental principle of medicine, said The Times, but it was “turned on its head” by Ian Paterson: he set out to cause harm. Last week, the 59-year-old surgeon, who practised in the West Midlands, was found guilty of 20 counts of “wounding with intent” and unlawful wounding; and those are just the cases he was charged over. He is believed to have carried out unnecessary procedures on hundreds of people, most of them women who were wrongly told they had breast cancer, or were at risk of getting it. One patient was persuaded to have a full mastectomy, for no medical reason: the lumps in her breast were benign warts. Another had several operations on her nipple that left her in constant pain,…

“France is a very fertile country. You plant bureaucrats and taxes grow.” Georges Clemenceau, quoted in The New York Times “Nobody’s heart is really good for much until it has been smashed to little bits.” Elizabeth Bishop, quoted in The Atlantic “People waste years of their lives not being willing to waste hours of their lives.” Michael Lewis, quoted in The Independent “Art is what you can get away with.” Andy Warhol, quoted in The Guardian “At 20, we worry about what others think of us. At 40, we don’t care what they think of us. At 60, we discover they haven’t been thinking of us at all.” US columnist Ann Landers, quoted in The Times “It is a great thing to do what is necessary before it becomes unavoidable.”…

Rugby union In the Premiership, Exeter beat Northampton 36-12. Saracens defeated Bristol 27-9. Bath beat Gloucester 44-20. Football Chelsea beat Everton 3-0 to maintain their four-point lead at the top of the Premier League table. Tottenham beat Arsenal 2-0. Tennis Rafael Nadal beat Dominic Thiem in straight sets to win the Barcelona Open for the tenth time. In Maria Sharapova’s first tournament since returning from a doping ban, Kristina Mladenovic knocked her out of the Stuttgart Open in the semi-finals.…

Bar Douro Arch 35b, Flat Iron Square, Union Street, London SE1 (020-7378 0524) Portuguese cuisine is often dismissed as consisting of little more than “piri-piri chicken and salty, swampy stews”, says Marina O’Loughlin in The Guardian. Yet the Portuguese gave the Japanese tempura, the Goans vindaloo; they introduced chillies to India, custard tarts to China, marmalade to England, and coffee to Brazil. Anyone who disdains their cooking is, frankly, “a bit of a numpty”. Take Bar Douro, a “star” addition to Bankside’s food scene, where Tiago Santos is working wonders in the kitchen. Everything we ate here was thrilling. A muscular octopus tentacle, its “suckers charred, its interior snowy, lolled on a bed of suave sweet potato purée”. Crisp croquettes of alheira, a pungent, fatty and garlicky smoked sausage,…

Technology: “the best-looking phone ever made” The S8 “needs desperately to impress”, said James Titcomb in The Daily Telegraph. Not only does it have to justify its “jaw-dropping” price, it’s got to be good enough to help Samsung bounce back from the “debacle” that was the exploding Note 7. Fortunately, the omens are good: whether you opt for the regular S8 or the larger S8+, this is “the best-looking phone ever made”. Thanks to Samsung’s “infinity screen”, which curves around the edges, it’s the closest any manufacturer has come to an “all-screen phone”. The screen stretches to 5.8in on the S8, and 6.2in on the S8+, said Elissa Loi in Stuff. It’s unusually tall, with an aspect ratio of 18.5:9 – which makes some videos look awkward. But the display…

Persimmon: rip-offs and bonuses Jeff Fairburn, CEO of housebuilding giant Persimmon, is expecting a bumper payday this year, said the Daily Mail. He’s due to be handed a package of shares currently worth around £112m as part of a long-term incentive plan. The award – “one of the biggest in UK corporate history” – is all the more controversial because Persimmon’s “recent success” has been built on the sale of “rip-off” leasehold contracts, and the Government’s Help to Buy scheme. Buyers signing up for leasehold deals (Persimmon’s run for 999 years) must continue paying ground rent and maintenance fees, which rise sharply as the decades go by. The Government’s planned clampdown on the sale of leasehold homes under Help to Buy could have a “significant impact” on Persimmon, whose profits…

Is Macron the man to reform Europe? Simon Nixon The Wall Street Journal If Emmanuel Macron wins the French presidency on Sunday, Europe will have “earned a reprieve”, says Simon Nixon. The risk of the euro unravelling, or of “the EU being hit by further Brexitstyle breakups”, will have receded in the current electoral cycle – buying Brussels time “to win back the trust of voters”. Whether it succeeds depends in large part on Macron himself. “To reform Europe, he first needs to show he can reform France”, by delivering a full economic overhaul – a “tough test of his political skills” even with a growing economy and “a sense of national urgency” behind him. Tackling the EU looks even more difficult. Macron’s plan to create a European budget overseen…

Who’s tipping what The week’s best buys Berendsen The Daily Telegraph The laundry services firm has “taken a battering” and needs substantial investment to achieve growth potential. Yet shares are undervalued. This is a “boring, resilient” business that “could clean up nicely”. Yields 4.1%. Buy. 797p. Lok’nStore Group Investors Chronicle Demand remains strong for this self-storage firm, which has experienced rising profits and falling debt. Four new stores have come on stream, and a further four are in the pipeline. Buy. 448.5p. Meggitt The Times The aerospace engineer is on a “well-established” recovery track. There should be a strong upsurge in performance as orders feed through – particularly as cost-savings and efficiencies have improved margins. Buy. 458.5p. Pendragon The Times The car retailer aims to double used car sales by…