Innholdsfortegnelse for V. 1127 i The Week

What happened Closing the gap A number of opinion polls showed a marked narrowing of the Conservatives’ lead over Labour, while YouGov’s first constituency-by-constituency projection had the Tories actually losing 20 seats in next week’s election and Labour gaining 30, leading to a hung parliament. These surveys followed the troubled launch of the Tory manifesto, which saw Theresa May ditch a key pledge on social care funding within days. Other polls, however, suggested that the Conservatives maintained a comfortable lead (see page 6). Jeremy Corbyn continued to exceed expectations: he appeared calm and assured when he appeared with the Prime Minister on Monday night’s live TV broadcast. However, on Woman’s Hour on Tuesday, Corbyn was unable to remember the cost of Labour’s promise to provide universal childcare for two- to…

Our planet’s oceans are slowly failing Editorial The Economist “Earth is poorly named,” says The Economist. Most of our planet – almost three-quarters, in fact – consists of ocean. Were all that water placed over the US, “it would form a column of liquid 82 miles tall”. In short, “if anything ought to be too big to fail, it is the ocean”. Yet it is failing. The effects of years of pollution and overfishing – along with the warming and associated chemical changes caused by climate change – are becoming ever harder to ignore. Scientists expect almost all of the world’s coral to be gone by 2050, by which time the ocean may contain (by weight) more plastic than fish. It’s technology – satellite imaging, drones, more powerful computers –…

Did humans evolve in Europe? Some 12 million years ago, Europe was an apes’ paradise, says New Scientist. But the climatic conditions then deteriorated, and the apes began to die out – leaving the creatures largely confined to Africa. So it was in Africa that they then split into gorillas, chimps and humans. That’s the conventional wisdom, at any rate. But now Africa’s reputation as the birthplace of mankind is being challenged by researchers who claim to have found fossil evidence that one species of ape clung on in southeastern Europe; moreover, they claim that Graecopithecus was no ordinary ape, but a hominin that had developed human-like features 200,000 years before the earliest known hominins in Africa. The fossils – a lower jaw found in Greece in 1944, and a…

 In the CCTV footage, Salman Abedi looks almost nonchalant, with his hands thrust into his Hollister bodywarmer, said the Daily Mail. Yet moments after these images were captured, the 22-year-old detonated the nail bomb he was carrying in his rucksack, killing 22 people, and maiming scores more, in the foyer of the Manchester Arena. We now know that the attack was long in the planning: back in March, Abedi rented a flat which he is believed to have used as a bomb factory. He is thought to have made the bomb alone, but the police have not ruled out the possibility that he had help, and have detained several people, including his older brother. His younger brother and his father have also been arrested, by officials in Libya. “Abedi was…

Donald Trump isn’t good with words, said Frank Bruni in The New York Times. But that’s OK, because his body language – and that of the people around him – speaks volumes. The story of his first big foreign trip, for example, can be told through its moments of excruciating physical chemistry. In Israel, there was “the swat heard around the world” – when, striding up a red carpet, Trump reached for his wife Melania’s hand but was brusquely batted away. At the Vatican, he grinned cheesily for a picture with the Pope, who stared ahead with “a mien as joyless as a gulag”, while Melania – dressed in black, and wearing a black lace veil – adopted an expression of deep mourning. The image went viral on social media,…

“Kílian Jornet is a freak of nature,” said Jonah Ogles in Outside magazine. Last week, the 29-year-old Spanish climber claimed to have raced up Mount Everest in a mere 26 hours, setting the fastest known time up the 29,029ft-high mountain from base camp – and he did it without fixed ropes or supplemental oxygen. Then, five days later, Jornet scaled Everest all over again: setting off from the much higher advanced base camp, he reached the summit in 17 hours – just 15 minutes short of the record. That involved running 8,000 vertical feet up a mountain “on which it’s hard to breathe, period, for the last third of it”, in less than a day. To get a sense of his achievement, compare him with Adrian Ballinger, an “extraordinarily strong”…

Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge Dirs: Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg 2hrs 9mins (12A) Yo ho hum ★★ “Oh, Pirates of the Caribbean, I’ve given you every chance down the years,” said Deborah Ross in The Spectator. With each new instalment in the big-budget Disney franchise, starring Johnny Depp as the rum-sozzled buccaneer Jack Sparrow, I think: this could be the one with “a proper story I can follow”. Alas, the fifth film in the series is just as baffling as the others. The “turgid” plot sees a winsome “Keira Knightley stand-in” (Kaya Scodelario) and a fresh-faced “Orlando Bloom clone” (Brenton Thwaites) team up with Jack to battle the zombie-ghost captain Salazar, played by a scene-stealing Javier Bardem, said Kevin Maher in The Times. They must also locate a…

Summer is just around the corner, says Fiona Beckett in The Guardian. Surely it’s time to uncork a rosé? One of my current favourites is Domaine de Triennes Rosé, which “you may well find on tap in hipper watering holes”. Or you can buy the 2016 by the bottle for £11.95 from The Whisky Exchange. I’m also a fan of the well-structured Le Galantin Bandol 2015 (£14.50, Tanners), which is powerful enough to take on a garlicky bourride (fish stew), or grilled lamb chops. If you have a slightly sweeter palate or want a wine to stand up to spicy food, the raspberry-scented The Ned 2016 Pinot Rosé (£10.99, or £7.99 in the Mix Six deal, Majestic) is “to my mind a far more appealing off-dry option than Rosé d’Anjou”.…

“He rated himself as the fourth-best Bond, and when asked what he’d brought to the role, he replied: ‘White teeth’” Roger Moore 1927-2017 Roger Moore, who died last week aged 89, was not everyone’s favourite James Bond, and was by his own estimation only the fourth-best 007 – but he was, more than perhaps anyone, responsible for survival of the franchise. Sean Connery had defined the role, and the first attempt to replace him, with George Lazenby, had turned out badly. By the time Moore took over, for Live and Let Die in 1973, there were doubts as to whether the films would be kept going. But Moore – tall, debonair and handsome, with a smug smile, a twinkle in his eye and an arched eyebrow – created a more…

“Rich Parisians still need people to serve tables, trim shrubbery, watch babies and change bedpans. Immigrants do most of these jobs” The property market in any sophisticated city reflects deep aspirations and fears. Christophe Guilluy calls himself a geographer. But he has spent decades as a housing consultant in rapidly changing Paris neighbourhoods studying gentrification, among other things. And he has crafted a convincing narrative tying together France’s various social problems – immigration tensions, deindustrialisation, economic decline, ethnic conflict, and the rise of populist parties. Guilluy has published three books since 2010, with the newest, Le Crépuscule de la France d’en haut (roughly: “Twilight of the French Elite”), arriving in bookshops last autumn. They give the best ground-level look available at the consequences of globalisation in France, and an explanation…

Controversy of the week A transatlantic rift? Donald Trump isn’t the first president to make Europe’s leaders nervous, said Chris Cillizza on CNN.com. Recall how spooked they were by George W. Bush’s “cowboy” approach to foreign affairs. But at least Bush “never sought to undo the basic tenets of Nato or the G7”. Whereas Trump did just that on his first official trip to Europe last week, said Tom Peck in The Independent. He hectored his Nato allies for “chronically underfunding” Nato; looked set to pull out of the Paris climate change agreement; and called Germany “bad, very bad” for flooding the US market with its cars. Who can blame Angela Merkel for suggesting an era of transatlantic co-operation is coming to an end? “The era in which we could…

Surviving James Bond Anthony Horowitz has emerged from his first Twitter storm shaken but intact, says Cole Moreton in The Mail on Sunday. It began in 2015, when the bestselling novelist – who’d just been commissioned to write a new James Bond story – was asked whether he thought the black British actor Idris Elba would make a good 007. He replied: “For me, Idris Elba is a bit too rough to play the part. It’s not a colour issue. I think he is probably a bit too ‘street’ for Bond.” Although Horowitz went on to name other black actors he felt would be a good fit, the quote was taken as evidence of coded racism, and Twitter erupted in self-righteous fury. “A Twitter storm is like an oil slick,”…

Having made its way across the US, goat yoga has arrived in Britain. The craze was started by a farmer in Oregon, who found that stretching and balancing with a goat perched on her back was so therapeutic, it got her through her divorce. Goat yoga schools have since been opened in various US states – and now there’s one in Devon. Anyone struggling to imagine how a goat might help them unwind will be surprised by how light and gentle their hooves feel, says Donna McCheyne, an instructor at Pennywell Farm near Buckfastleigh. Photographs of a smiling hunter clutching a vast dead frog in one hand, and a gun in the other, have gone viral. Nicknamed Frogzilla, the bullfrog is said to have been hunted down in a pond…

POLAND Openly defying Europe’s migrant policy Gazeta Wyborcza (Warsaw) Is Poland heading for a “Polexit”, asks Maciej Stasinski. “By trampling on the constitution, the rule of law, the separation of powers and civil liberties,” its ruling right-wing Law and Justice party (PiS) has already set it apart from the democratic and liberal European Union. But now the PiS is on course for an outright showdown. The issue is simple: at the height of the migrant crisis, in 2015, the EU agreed to spread some 160,000 asylum seekers among the bloc’s member states, a decision Poland voted against. The EU has warned Poland that it will face legal sanctions if it doesn’t participate. Yet the PiS still refuses, saying it’s “impossible” for our country of 38 million to resettle the 6,200…

In 2011, excavators working in the tar sands mines of northern Alberta struck some oddly patterned brown rock. They had a feeling it was something special; so the rock was cut out and transported away, and palaeontologists began painstakingly chipping away at it – to reveal the most spectacularly well-preserved armoured dinosaur ever found (pictured). The fossilised nodosaur, a vast herbivore some 18ft long, lived around 110 million years ago, yet it is so eerily intact, it looks like a sculpture. Its skeleton is encased by body armour dotted with 20-inch spikes, and ridged, fossilised skin; the toes on its right foot are splayed; its neck curves gracefully to the left. It’s believed that the nodosaur was killed in a flood, and swept out to sea; bloated by gas, its…

Since marrying Prince Charles , the Duchess of Cornwall has grown accustomed to following protocol. But Camilla Parker Bowles used to be quite the rule-breaker, according to her daughter, Laura. “We’d gone to Sainsbury’s in Chippenham,” Laura told The Mail on Sunday. “Most of the parking spaces were filled, but Mummy saw one right outside the front door and nipped in there. The parking space was ‘reserved for the Mayor of Chippenham’. When we came out, a man stopped her and asked what she was doing in the mayor’s space. Mummy smiled and said, ‘I’m so sorry, I’m the mayor’s wife…’ and hurried me into the car. The man followed us and said, ‘What a joy to meet you for the first time – I’m the mayor!’” The portrait of…

“We don’t have a plan, and when we discover people who do have plans, we take vehemently against them.” Roger Scruton on the British character, on CapX “The first man gets the oyster, the second man gets the shell.” Andrew Carnegie, quoted on Forbes “A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always rely on the support of Paul.” George Bernard Shaw, quoted in The Irish Times “Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work.” Artist Chuck Close, quoted in The New York Times “You know, it’s a terrible thing to appear on television, because people think you actually know what you’re talking about.” David Attenborough, quoted in The Independent “The art of the creative process is not seeking and finding; it’s…

Patrolling in vain To The Independent The odd soldier or two swanning around a shopping centre is not going to stop suicide bombers. Community policing, which was decimated by previous governments, was the best preventative solution to the problem, as it meant locals could easily give information to the local bobbies on the beat regarding any concerns with people in their locality. This was much more effective than ringing a distant helpline number which relies on switchboard operators to attempt to prioritise information, and, as we have seen with the Manchester suicide bomber, these warnings can go unheeded. Armed policeman and soldiers walking the streets is a vanity exercise. It’s a bit like having firefighters walking the streets to deter arsonists. Toby T. Brewster, Cardiff Signalling support To The Times…

Theatre Twelfth Night Playwright: William Shakespeare Director: Emma Rice Shakespeare’s Globe, 21 New Globe Walk, Bankside, London SE1 (020-7401 9919) Until 5 August Running time: 2hrs 45mins (including interval) ★★ “Emma Rice was never going to go quietly,” said Fiona Mountford in the London Evening Standard. After just two seasons, the innovative artistic director has been asked to leave the Globe by the theatre’s board, who were unimpressed by her “distinctly nontraditional practices”: an excess of flashy lighting, ramped-up sound effects, disco music, and so on. For her swansong show in the Globe’s main outdoor space, she has given us a Twelfth Night that’s “exuberant, anarchic, accessible and quite, quite maddening”. It’s Twelfth Night as knockabout musical, with Feste, Olivia’s licensed fool, as master of ceremonies. Yet as played by…

Swan at Shakespeare’s Globe 21 New Globe Walk, London SE1 (020-7928 9444) Restaurants mainly aimed at the tourist trade are not usually “beacons of gastronomic pilgrimage”, says Marina O’Loughlin in The Guardian. It tends to be that they think it’s “job done if they can send folk out without actively poisoning them”. But the recently revamped Swan, on Bankside – which has mullion-windowed views of St Paul’s on one side; marble-topped tables and grey velvet sofas on the other – has persuaded the acclaimed chef Allan Pickett to run the show. The result is food that is “way too good for just tourists”. Pea and shallot tortellini was a “hefty, satisfying bruiser”. A butch terrine of pork and chicken oozed classy French technique, with its rhubarb compote speaking “fluent…

New cars: what the critics say Autocar The first Toyota Prius Plug-in Hybrid (a PHEV) did not sell well in the UK. The public had taken to the standard hybrid, but “the plug-in variant seemed a step too far”. The battery was heavier and less efficient, and its electric vehicle range very limited. This second-generation Prius Plug-in “is looking to improve on the offering”, with an increased range of 39 miles, and “quirky styling”. The Daily Telegraph The Prius Plug-in looks much the same as the Prius Hybrid, “but with sundry blue piping”. The seats “aren’t desperately comfy”, and the increased battery size has meant the boot had to shrink, to 360 litres. On the plus side, the Business Edition Plus model has nice features such as touchscreen-based satnav, Bluetooth,…

FOR UK BUSINESSES INVESTING IN THE COUNTRY, IT REPRESENTS A LARGE DOMESTIC MARKET OF OVER 80 MILLION PEOPLE, 42 PER CENT OF WHOM ARE UNDER THE AGE OF 24. During her January vi sit to the country, Prime Minister May highlighted the continuing importance of co-operation between Britain and Turkey in regional security and bi-lateral trade. Two months later, Turkey’s Minister of Economy Nihat Zeybekci wasted no time in stressing the opportunity for a trade deal between the two countries as soon as possible after Brexit. These were the latest moves in close, deep and longstanding Anglo-Turkish commercial relations. There are around 3,000 UK companies with operations in Turkey, according to Dr. Henry Loewendahl, Turkey-based CEO of specialist foreign direct investment (FDI) consultancy WAVTEQ Limited. This amounts to a UK…

Simon Arora Who are the role models for Britain’s next generation of home-grown tycoons, asks Iain Dey in The Sunday Times. “One contender should be Simon Arora” – boss of one of Britain’s most successful, but little known, shop chains – B&M Retail. Since buying a Blackpool-based chain of 21 stores with his brother Bobby in 2004, Arora has expanded the outfit to 500 sites, employing nearly 22,500. B&M, which listed three years ago, is “now bigger than Woolworths ever was”. About half of the company’s shareholders are US funds who are tracking its progress against that of Dollar General, the Tennessee discount chain which has rapidly expanded into 43 US states. If Arora can maintain the same pace of expansion in Europe, “his name will soon enter the pantheon…

Paris Going underground: The mayor of Paris has unveiled Reinvent Paris 2 – an international competition to develop 34 abandoned underground spaces, including three “ghost” Metro stations that have been unused for over 70 years. Champ de Mars, by the Eiffel Tower, Croix-Rouge, on the Left Bank, and Saint-Martin, near Place de la République, were among 16 stops closed in 1939 as part of a restructuring of the Metro. The other sites include five disused road tunnels, three car parks, a huge former Renault garage, and some vaulted cellars below the Esplanade des Invalides that were built for the 1900 Universal Exhibition. Architects are now invited to imagine new uses for them – perhaps as art galleries, concert venues, or even swimming pools. “These untypical spaces are an incredible wealth…

THE ROAD TO BREXIT On few issues are the three main parties so clearly divided as on our departure from the EU. The Conservatives are effectively committed to a hard Brexit: they pledge to leave the EU single market and its customs union. They want a “deep and special” future partnership with the EU, but insist “no deal is better than a bad deal”. Labour, by contrast, wants to start the negotiations anew, with “a strong emphasis on retaining the benefits of the single market and the customs union” (though, perhaps implausibly, also wishing to end the free movement of people), and rejects outright the option of a “no deal”. The Liberal Democrats want to give voters another referendum on any Brexit deal (with the option of remaining in), and…

A nation divided by its teeth Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan The Washington Post Americans are famous for their perfect, pearly white teeth, say Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan, but this stereotype conceals a huge disparity in dental health. Better-off Americans collectively spend well over $1bn a year just to make their teeth a few shades whiter; individuals splash out some $2,000 per tooth on porcelain veneers to hide imperfections. The Washington area is home to “one of the greatest concentrations of dentists in the world, with many offering high-end services in offices that resemble luxury spas”. At the other end of the income scale, though, the situation is dire. More than a third of American adults have no dental coverage, and many of them can’t afford to pay for…

A balloon that inflates in the stomach could be a cheap and effective alternative to gastric bypass surgery for obese patients, scientists say. The device is the first of its kind that requires no surgery or anaesthetic. The balloon is simply swallowed – deflated – in capsule form, while connected to a plastic tube. Once in the stomach, the tube is used to fill it with water, before the tube is detached from the balloon by tugging it. The balloon remains in the stomach for four months, making the patient feel full, and then bursts, and is naturally excreted. In a study of 42 patients – presented to the European Congress on Obesity – severely obese patients lost an average of 2st 6lbs (15.2kg) using the Elipse Balloon. More than…

“In the past, this country had just reason to be proud of British Airways,” once known as the “world’s favourite airline”, said the Daily Mail. “After this weekend’s computer meltdown, that good name lies in tatters, bringing shame on the flag emblazoned on BA tail fins.” On Saturday, the company suffered a “catastrophic” worldwide IT failure. More than 1,000 flights were cancelled or delayed, affecting 75,000 people, many at Heathrow, on one of the busiest weekends of the year. It was bad enough that such a failure could happen in the first place. But unforgivably, tens of thousands of distraught customers were left for hours without information, “while staff clocked off as usual at the end of their shifts”. Telephone lines, jammed all day, closed at 8pm, leaving travellers in…

The FA Cup: “one of Wenger’s finest achievements” All season long, Arsène Wenger was written off, said Jason Burt in The Daily Telegraph. “Yesterday’s man. Too old. Time to move on.” Yet last Saturday, his Arsenal side confounded expectations to defeat Chelsea 2-1 and win the FA Cup for a record 13th time – their seventh triumph in the competition under the French manager. It was “an extraordinary performance of intelligence, organisation and resilience”: the Gunners dominated and outplayed the Premier League champions. Watching Arsenal, it was hard to believe they only finished the season fifth in the league. “Why can’t the team play like this every week? Or even just slightly more often?” Arsenal pulled off one of the FA Cup’s most memorable victories, said Oliver Holt in The…

To The Guardian Jeremy Corbyn’s attempt to draw a link between Britain’s foreign policy and terror is disingenuous. Islamist terrorism preceded, not followed, the West’s “war on terror”. Sayyid Qutb and Sayyid Abu al-Ala Mawdudi produced Islamism long before the Iranian Revolution. But, despite all its influence on the young Muslims, Islamism remained a marginal heterodoxy. Qutb and Mawdudi were theological dabblers, whom Sunni scholars had already refuted and dismissed. It was Ayatollah Khomeini who revived the concept and gave modern Islamists religious respectability they had previously lacked. Khomeini promised a constant struggle against the satanic West in 1979. The first instalment of that struggle was delivered in the form of an attack on US marines in Beirut in 1983, killing 241 of them. Under these circumstances, it is difficult…

Men Without Women: Stories by Haruki Murakami In seven tales, Murakami brings his powers of observation to bear on the lives of men who find themselves alone. Marked by the same wry humour that has defined his work, in this collection Murakami has crafted another contemporary classic. Our price: £14.99, usually £16.99 Utopia for Realists by Rutger Bregman We live in a time of unprecedented upheaval, with questions about the future and no political party is providing us with answers. The bestselling Dutch historian, explains that it needn’t be this way and shows that we can have visionary ideas that are wholly implementable. Our price: £14.99, usually £16.99 Phone by Will Self Will Self’s most important and compelling novel to date which unites our most urgent concerns: from the ubiquitous…

Best books… Victor Sebestyen Historian and journalist Victor Sebestyen picks his five favourite books. His new biography Lenin the Dictator: An Intimate Portrait has been published by Weidenfeld to coincide with the centenary of the Russian Revolution The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig, 1942 (Pushkin Press £12.99). An elegiac memoir of the “golden age” before the First World War – and how European civilisation, which seemed so safe and secure for decades, was then all but destroyed by populists, Nazis and a rogues’ gallery of cynical demagogues. Unnervingly topical. The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope, 1875 (Penguin £8.99). All Trollope lovers will have their favourites among his books (so many to choose from). Mine is this occasionally angry, always wry, often hilarious anatomy of snobbery, corruption and…

Vegetable and chicken ramen Serves 2 2 skinless, boneless chicken breasts, sliced into thin strips 100g soba noodles 2 tbsps brown rice miso paste 1 tbsp soy sauce 2cm piece of fresh ginger, cut into thin strips 1 carrot, julienned 3 spring onions/scallions, sliced diagonally ½ red pepper, deseeded and cut into thin strips 2 pak choi, halved lengthways ½ tsp toasted sesame oil a pinch of toasted nori (seaweed) flakes 2 tbsps fresh coriander leaves sunflower oil, for brushing • Preheat the grill to high and line the grill pan with foil. • Arrange the chicken in the grill pan and brush with sunflower oil. Grill for 5-6 minutes on each side, until cooked through. • Meanwhile, cook the soba noodles in plenty of boiling water (see instructions on…

Fever-Tree: Cheers! Since floating in November 2014, the “posh mixer maker” Fever-Tree has enjoyed a “remarkable shares run”, said Joanna Bourke in the London Evening Standard. But is the fizz starting to go flat? The soft drinks company suffered “a rare hiccup” last week after co-founder Charles Rolls cashed in some £73m worth of shares, said Rob Davies in The Guardian. The “hefty sale” left the company’s stock down 2% at £17.12 – but that’s still nearly 13 times its float price. Fever-Tree, founded in 2005, is now worth more than its “170-year-old drinks rival Britvic, and some three times as much as the Debenhams store chain”. The company embraced “luxury status” and made much of the “exotic origin” of its ingredients, but it was a “serendipitous resurgence in gin”…

This is no time to castrate the Treasury Editorial Financial Times Theresa May’s pointed refusal to confirm whether the Chancellor, Philip Hammond, “would keep his job if she wins” has fuelled rumours that the PM is plotting either to “replace him with a more pliant Chancellor, to trim his powers – or even to break up his department”, says the FT. That would be “a serious mistake”. True, the Treasury’s “broad remit and political clout” are unusual: many other countries split financial and economic policy into separate ministries; and there are “good grounds to question its record of economic management”. But this would be the “worst possible time to attempt such a reform”. Given the strain Brexit will put on the machinery of government, the last thing Britain needs is…

Who’s tipping what The week’s best buys Babcock International The Times Shares have fallen, but the engineer and outsourcer has an annual growth record of around 5%, an encouraging pipeline and a healthy renewal rate. Margins in its defence business are “solid enough” too. Buy. 959.5p. CVS Group The Daily Telegraph This resilient veterinary services group generates good earnings and a copious cash flow. A total 33 new surgeries this year will consolidate a leading position at home. CVS is also building a Netherlands presence. Buy. £13.34. Grainger Investors Chronicle Grainger focuses on the private rental sector – a hot market segment due to the chronic property shortage – working with local authorities to provide social housing. Costs and overheads are falling; income is rising. Buy. 261.9p. Greencore Group The…