Innholdsfortegnelse for V. 1215 i The Week

What happened The breakaway group Britain witnessed the most significant party split in a generation on Monday when seven MPs resigned en bloc from Labour. The seven politicians, who include Chuka Umunna and Luciana Berger, quit over the culture of “bullying and bigotry” within Labour, and over the leadership’s reluctance to back another EU referendum. The party, they said, had been “hijacked by the machine politics of the hard-left” and become “institutionally anti-Semitic”. The breakaway group – who were subsequently joined by an eighth Labour MP and three Tory MPs – will sit in the Commons as independents. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said he was “disappointed” by the departures, but his deputy Tom Watson went further, describing it as a “wake-up call” for a party that had succumbed to a…

Chicago, Illinois Doubts over assault: Police in Chicago want to re-interview a well-known TV actor, Jussie Smollett (pictured), following claims that he staged a hate-crime assault on himself. Smollett, 36, a gay actor from the TV drama Empire, reported that he had been assaulted on 29 January by two masked men who screamed homophobic and racist abuse. Police arrested two Nigerian brothers they identified from surveillance footage; one was Smollett’s personal trainer and the other a TV extra who had appeared on Empire. Sources told CBS in Chicago that Smollett allegedly paid the pair $3,500 to stage the attack – a claim he strongly denies. Washington DC Treason claim: President Trump has accused Andrew McCabe, the former acting chief of the FBI, and Rod Rosenstein, his own deputy attorney general,…

1 Life on Mars?, written and performed by David Bowie 2 Cwm Rhondda by John Hughes, performed by The Treorchy Male Choir and The Cory Band 3* Suzanne, written and performed by Leonard Cohen 4 Da Day Dawn/Greenland Man’s Tune, traditional, arranged by Catriona McKay and Chris Stout, performed by Chris Stout 5 Love and Affection, written and performed by Joan Armatrading 6 What Have We Got?, written by Sting, Jimmy Nail, Kathryn Tickell, Peter Tickell, Julian Sutton and Jo Lawry, performed by Sting and Jimmy Nail 7 Lay Lady Lay, written and performed by Bob Dylan 8 Tilted by Héloïse Letissier, performed by Christine and the Queens Book: The Balkan Trilogy by Olivia Manning Luxury: pad and Bic biros *…

Universities are heading for trouble Jeremy Warner The Daily Telegraph The bailed-out banks aren’t the only ones who’ve dodged the past decade of austerity, says Jeremy Warner. So have our universities. While everyone else has been tightening their belts, this sector has been splashing the cash, thanks to the cap on tuition fees being hiked to £9,250. The money has been ploughed into rapid expansion, and generous salaries for vice-chancellors: five English university heads paid themselves more than £500,000 last year. If this spending guaranteed lots more graduates securing well-paid jobs, there’d be nothing to worry about, but that’s far from the case. The earnings premium attached to a degree is in decline, and officials have been forced repeatedly to raise their estimate of how many students will never fully…

Beer before wine “not fine” Beer before wine, you’ll feel fine; wine before beer, you’ll feel queer, is how the old saying goes. But if you think that by following this maxim you can avoid a stinking hangover, think again. Scientists have gone to the trouble of testing it – and found that it holds no truth. The scientists recruited 90 students and divided them into three groups. Those in the first group drank two-and-a-half pints of lager followed by four large glasses of wine. Those in the second had the same drinks in reverse order; the third group consumed only beer, or only wine, until they had the same breath alcohol concentration as the others. Before going to bed, the students recorded how drunk they felt, and the next…

Five years after losing the sight of one eye in a car crash, the late Gordon Banks was signed to play for Fort Lauderdale Strikers in the North American Soccer League. Needing proof that he still had good enough vision, the former England goalkeeper went for an eye test and was asked to read a line of random letters. “I know him,” said Banks. “He used to play for Czechoslovakia.” Jenna Coleman (pictured) experienced her most embarrassing moment when buying a sandwich at Leeds train station. “The man said to me: ‘Do you want to go for a drink?’” the actress remembers. “I said, ‘I am so sorry, I’ve got a boyfriend.’ And he replied, ‘No, it’s a meal deal: if you take a sandwich, you can get a drink…

Sometimes a single person can initiate a process of “great change”, said Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian. Last August, Greta Thunberg, a Stockholm teenager, skipped school to protest outside Sweden’s parliament at her country’s lack of action on climate change. Every Friday since, she has staged a “climate strike”, inspiring children across the world to launch similar actions. Last Friday, about 15,000 British students followed her lead and walked out of school, wielding placards as they marched in Parliament Square, and in dozens of towns and cities across the country. The Youth Strike 4 Climate was a sight to inspire “unfettered joy”: “a young generation so easily caricatured as disconnected and self-absorbed, heads tilted permanently towards their phones, are instead taking a moral lead”. These often-derided “snowflakes” are actually “impressive,…

It’s the most “complex and controversial issue” in sport, said Martyn Ziegler in The Times. Should women with high levels of testosterone be able to compete alongside other female athletes? Under rules proposed by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), athletes with “differences of sexual development” (DSD) will only be permitted to take part in races at distances from 400 metres up to a mile if they take testosterone blockers. But this week, Caster Semenya – a 28-year-old South African who is the current 800-metre Olympic champion – challenged those rules at the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland. A decision is expected next month, potentially affecting not only DSD runners but transgender athletes too. The case goes to “the heart of issues of sex, gender and identity”.…

Athletics Laura Muir beat the 31-year-old British women’s indoor mile record by more than five seconds. Samuel Tefera, a 19-year-old from Ethiopia, broke the 1,500m indoor world record. Football In the fifth round of the FA Cup, Manchester United beat Chelsea 2-0. Rugby union Exeter were knocked off the top of the Premiership table following their 24-17 loss to Gloucester – only their third league defeat of the season. Rugby league In the World Club Challenge, Sydney beat Wigan 20-8.…

A Private War Dir: Matthew Heineman 1hr 50mins (15) Clunky biopic of war correspondent Marie Colvin ★★ Eyepatch-wearing, hard-drinking and fearless in the heat of battle, the Sunday Times war correspondent Marie Colvin is a gift of a role for a talented actress, said Brian Viner in the Daily Mail. Step forward, Rosamund Pike, who is “truly brilliant” in this somewhat “earnest” exploration of the last years of Colvin’s life, as she drifts between assignments, unable to forget the horrors she has seen, moving ever closer to the fateful day in the Syrian city of Homs when she will die in a rocket blast. A friend asks her at a party, “What do you hear when the music stops?” – and I’m afraid that clunkiness is characteristic of the script,…

Jill takes Leonard to meet Elizabeth at Lower Loxley. Leonard is interested in the house because he was a chartered surveyor, but Elizabeth gives unenthusiastic responses to his questions. Kirsty tells Tom that she and Philip are moving into one of the Beechwood houses. Jolene accompanies Elizabeth to the doctor, who puts her on antidepressants. Brian and Jennifer pick up Kate from the airport and take her back to Willow Cottage. She’s shocked that her belongings are in storage and that she can only stay until Ruairi returns on Friday. Brian loses his temper when she asks when they’re going to find a bigger house. Jennifer tells Kate that she’ll have to find her own place to live. Elizabeth has an emotional first therapy session. After a defensive start, she…

What the experts recommend Jolene 22 Newington Green, London N16 (020-3887 2309) If you’re not used to London design trends, Jolene might leave you wanting to “headbutt a wall”, says Grace Dent in The Guardian. The finishes are of “uneven hydrolime”; the shelves are adorned with old Hungarian meat troughs; and the vintage home-made curtains are embroidered with lyrics from the Dolly Parton song from which the place takes its name. So yes: Jolene might be “ever so slightly pretentious in places”. But it is “neighbourhoody and completely welcoming” – and everything I eat is “wonderful”. Nutty brown Jerusalem artichokes roasted in rosemary have “just the right level of crispness and mushy give”. A “risotto” made from spelt with sage-roasted pumpkin and crunchy walnuts is terrific – as is…

Gordon Banks 1937-2019 For all their talent, few of the footballers who won England the World Cup in 1966 could have claimed to be the best players, in their particular positions, in the world, said The Guardian. Gordon Banks, who has died aged 81, was the exception. He was the best goalkeeper in the world at that time, and among the best the game has ever seen. It’s perhaps a measure of his greatness that he is not, in fact, best known for what he did in that World Cup – but for a save he made in the World Cup in Mexico four years later, said The Daily Telegraph. Ten minutes into the group match, played against Brazil in 37°C heat, Pelé picked up an arcing cross from Jairzinho,…

The stock markets globally continued their 2019 bounceback, buoyed by recent “dovish” remarks by the US Fed and stimulus measures unveiled by the People’s Bank of China. Europe’s Stoxx 600 index hit a three-month high as Germany was shown to have narrowly avoided a recession in the final two quarters of last year. There was also renewed optimism about the prospect of a US-China trade deal – despite reported hiccups in talks. In Britain, the strength of the jobs market was under scrutiny. The pain of 3,500 future redundancies at Honda, which announced plans to scrap its Swindon plant in 2021, was offset by strong figures showing that a record number of Britons are now in work and average wages are at their highest level in ten years, having jumped…

Good riddance to an unwise merger? Alex Brummer Daily Mail Sainsbury’s planned takeover of Asda is reportedly on the brink of collapse after the Competition and Markets Authority expressed extensive “concerns” that it could undermine supermarket competition in Britain, says Alex Brummer. It was a victory for common sense. Had the CMA given the deal even “a tentative green light”, customers, suppliers and investors would have suffered. “Big mergers use buckets of management time, create huge cultural and systems dissonance, and cast a shadow over the workforce.” It took years for the last big supermarket merger, between Morrisons and Safeway in 2003, to pay its way. And the Co-op’s purchase of Somerfield “was among the factors that almost destroyed the historic Co-operative movement in Britain”. Given the changing shape of…

Controversy of the week The Isis bride Seen from one angle, the short life of Shamima Begum is “the saddest story”, said Philip Collins in The Times. Aged only 19, she has “suffered the unspeakable tragedy” of seeing two young children die of illness and malnutrition. She has fled “a brutal battlefield”; her husband has been captured by enemy soldiers; last week, she gave birth to a third child in a refugee camp. “Yet it is all but impossible to feel sorry for her.” Begum is one of three girls who left Bethnal Green in east London in 2015 to join Islamic State in Syria. And when discovered by a Times journalist in the Al-Hol refugee camp in eastern Syria last week, she had clearly “not yet reached a state…

Attenborough’s first break David Attenborough didn’t even get an interview when, in 1950, he applied for a job with BBC Radio, says Gideon Rachman in the FT. But soon after, he received a letter from a different BBC department. “It said something like, ‘We’ve got this new thing called television. Would you be interested?’” Within months, he was producing programmes on everything from politics to knitting. “Then I discovered that someone from the zoo was going on an expedition to collect animals, and I thought, ‘Great – let’s try that!’” The result was his first wildlife documentary, Zoo Quest. “The quality of those films we made in the 1950s now looks terrible. But nobody in Britain then had seen an armadillo. Nobody!... All you had to be was marginally competent.”…

A company in Japan is offering a new service to help those too shy to confess their romantic feelings. For a basic fee of ¥29,000 (£200), Kokunavi will approach your “crush” to register your interest, asking for a date on your behalf. More advanced packages include personal advice and “data analysis” to improve your chances of success. As the company says, “as long as you know who you want to confess your love to, we can help you plan everything else”. Police in east London smashed through the glass door of the Factory art gallery in Dalston when they received reports that a man’s body was lying on the floor, next to a noose suspended from the ceiling. Upon further inspection, however, the “man” turned out to be a mannequin…

MEXICO Haunted by El Chapo’s brutal legacy The New York Times The conviction last week of the drug kingpin Joaquín Guzmán, aka El Chapo, is obviously welcome news, says Ioan Grillo, but it’s a “bittersweet victory” for Mexicans. The fact that the former leader of the Sinaloa cartel had to be convicted in New York, rather than in his own country, where he had escaped from two top-security prisons, was painful in itself. It meant that the charges were mostly related to his trafficking of drugs to the US rather than his brutal deeds at home, where he has “sown corruption and terror”. Witnesses at the trial spoke of the wholesale bribery of Mexican officials, from soldiers and police officers right up to the former president, Enrique Peña Nieto, who…

All over the world, insects are declining so rapidly that we could be facing a “sixth mass extinction”, scientists have warned. The joint Australian and Chinese analysis, based on 73 earlier studies, is the first to track insect decline globally. Its authors say a third of insect species are now endangered, and that they are declining eight times more rapidly than mammals, birds and reptiles. The researchers blame intensive agriculture in general, and pesticide use in particular, for the decline, though urbanisation and climate change are also thought to play a part. “Unless we change our ways of producing food,” they say, in the journal Biological Conservation, “insects as a whole will go down the path of extinction in a few decades.” However, other scientists have challenged the findings, which…

“It is hard to single out any single event in Donald Trump’s presidency as the most untethered from truth and reality,” said The Washington Post. But his decision last week to declare a national emergency in order to bypass Congress and secure $8bn funding for his longed-for Mexico border wall must be a strong contender. The plain fact is that there is no crisis at the southern border that requires such a structure. Illegal crossings are “near a 20-year low”, as measured by Border Patrol detentions: there were just under 400,000 in the most recent fiscal year, down from more than 1.67 million in 2000. Besides, most illegal drugs are discovered at legal crossing points rather than in remote border areas. Trump himself admitted that his emergency declaration wasn’t strictly…

“Very few politicians have ever been saints,” said Chris Bryant on Politico – and though it pains the hero-worshippers to accept this, Winston Churchill was no exception. This “hoary” debate resurfaced last week when John McDonnell was asked his opinion of the wartime PM. The shadow chancellor responded with just two words: “Tonypandy. Villain.” He was referring to Churchill’s decision as home secretary to allow British troops to be sent in to Tonypandy in Wales to quell the violence of the 1910-11 miners’ strike (during which 500 citizens were injured and one miner was killed). In truth, Churchill got lots of things wrong, and this was one of them. Sending in soldiers “inflamed the situation, and contributed to the gross and excessive use of force by the police”. The Tonypandy…

At half-time, it looked as if Newport County might just “add to the roster of FA Cup giant-killings”, said Jim White in The Sunday Telegraph. Against all odds, the Welsh side, who sit in the middle of the League Two table, were holding Manchester City 0-0. But in the end, the “cavernous gap between the two clubs” could not be overcome: City won the fifth-round tie 4-1. Still, Newport can be “monstrously proud” of their performance, said Stephen Jones in The Sunday Times. Having hammered their way past Leicester and Middlesbrough en route to Saturday’s match, they were “never humiliated” by a mighty City side that ranks among the greatest English football has ever seen. It was, at times, hard to tell that one of these teams had been assembled…

Don’t help Isis bride To The Daily Telegraph Shamima Begum seeks “to come home” to Britain, after four years of living in an environment of virulent anti-Western and poisonous Islamist ideology. As she has made a choice, however ill-advised, of her own free will, and shows no sense of remorse – not fazed at seeing the severed head of an opponent in a bin – there is no good reason to rescue her from her chosen fate. Having rejected our values, why should she be assisted in returning, no doubt to become a permanent drain on the public purse? John W. Smith, Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire The case for mercy To The Daily Telegraph In order to defeat terrorists, we have to show ourselves to be better than them, militarily, but also…

Exhibition of the week Tracey Emin: A Fortnight of Tears White Cube Bermondsey, London SE1 (020-7930 5373, whitecube.com ). Until 7 April Twenty years ago, Tracey Emin was the bad girl of British art, said Waldemar Januszczak in The Sunday Times. Back then, she was a hell-raising conceptual artist, her “unmade beds” and provocative films routinely prompting tabloid outrage. But a lot has changed since then: now 55, she is single, childless and “unable to sleep”. Her mother, Pam, died in 2016 – an event that seems to have brought on “a floor-to-ceiling reassessment of her artistic purpose”. This new exhibition is her first in London in five years, and though it features a few pieces created in familiar styles – there’s one of her trademark “poetic”…

Programmes Warren Six-part sitcom starring Martin Clunes as a pedantic driving instructor forced to relocate to Preston. Mon 25 Feb, BBC1 21:00 (30mins). A Very British History: The Jews of Leeds Filmmaker Simon Glass tells the story of the Yorkshire Jews – and his own family – in the early 20th century. Mon 25 Feb, BBC4 21:00 (60mins). This Time with Alan Partridge Steve Coogan’s comic creation returns from years in the wilderness when the host of a live BBC chat show falls ill, and Alan is asked to stand in. Mon 25 Feb, BBC1 21:30 (30mins). The Satanic Verses: 30 Years On Journalist Mobeen Azhar visits his native West Yorkshire to track down the people who organised the protests against Salman Rushdie’s book that would divide their community and…

There’s nothing better than a warming bowl of curry, say Zoë Lind van’t Hof and Tom Smale, and this recipe is so easy to make. Jackfruit is the perfect vegetarian substitute for tender, slow-cooked meat. Our advice would be to cook more than you need as you may find the curry tastes even better the next day, when the spices have had time to meld with the jackfruit and chickpeas Jackfruit curry Serves 2 2tbsps coconut oil 1 tsp yellow mustard seeds 1 tsp cumin seeds 1 onion, finely diced 1 tsp minced fresh turmeric root 3 garlic cloves, minced 1 tsp minced fresh root ginger ½ tsp minced fresh galangal root 1 tbsp tomato puree (paste) 2 tsps ground cumin 1 tsp ground coriander ½ tsp chilli powder 400g…

Five years ago, you would have needed “a spare fortnight, a local guide and maybe some camels” to make this journey, says Stephen Bleach in The Sunday Times. Now, the trip from Oman’s capital Muscat to the “semitropical” city of Salalah can be achieved in 15 hours in a Renault Clio, thanks to the opening of a 900-mile road running between the sea and the desert. Muscat and Salalah both have some “very nice” hotels, but on the road between them, there’s nothing of the kind, so take a tent (“the right to camp anywhere is a given in a country that’s always been home to nomads”). Yes, you will be in the wild, but don’t worry – you’ll be safer here than in Sussex. Three hours out of Muscat,…

Andrea Levy 1956-2019 Andrea Levy, who has died aged 62, started writing in her mid-30s and gained international recognition with her fourth novel, Small Island, said The Guardian. Published in 2004, it described the contrasting experiences of two couples, one British, one Jamaican, making their way in postwar London. Awarded the Whitbread prize, the Orange prize and the Commonwealth Writers prize, it was turned into a TV drama, and this year will be staged at the National Theatre. Andrea Levy was born in London in 1956. Her father, Winston, had sailed to England on the Empire Windrush in 1948, and worked at the Post Office; her mother, Amy (née Ridguard), then joined him. Andrea grew up on a council estate in north London, where hers was the only black family.…

Greggs’ new vegan sausage roll was “eagerly awaited”, said Josh Barrie in the I newspaper. But who would have guessed that a £1 snack made from “fungal mycoprotein” would have such an impact on the baker’s bottom line? Strong demand for the infamous pastry – which caused Piers Morgan to vomit after tasting it – helped boost Greggs’ overall sales by some 14% in the first seven weeks of 2019. The Newcastle-based company duly raised its profit expectations. Reportedly, “sales have started to calm somewhat”; but the vegan delicacy has been a triumph, confirming Greggs’ “magnificent rise from cult, sometimes ironic northern bakery to northern powerhouse”.…

Octopussy Good news for Britain’s “fledgling companies”, said Jonathan Jones in The Daily Telegraph. One of their biggest financial champions, Octopus Investments, is in such rude health that it has now attracted a “record-breaking” £1bn from investors keen “to find ways of keeping their earnings away from the taxman”. Octopus is Britain’s largest provider of venture capitalist trusts (VCTs) – listed vehicles, introduced in 1995 to help kick-start seed investment in start-ups by offering investors generous tax reliefs. Clearly, backing small companies is risky. The carrot is 30% income tax relief on up to £200,000 annually, with any dividends or capital gains also tax-free – providing the investment is held for five years. Keeping the tiddlers afloat Octopus is the first big mover in the space, currently commanding nearly 25%…

Jim Ratcliffe “The grammar school billionaire” Jim Ratcliffe, who built his “deal-hungry industrials group” Ineos into a colossus, was named as Britain’s richest man last year, with a £21bn fortune, said The Sunday Times. Yet months after being knighted last year “for services to business”, it was reported that Ratcliffe, 66, “a vocal Brexiteer”, was moving to Monaco for tax purposes. This week, sources revealed to The Sunday Times that Ratcliffe and two top executives, Andy Currie and John Reece, had been working with accountants PwC “to funnel up to £10bn” offshore, saving from £400m to £4bn in tax. The leaked plan is said “to have caused alarm” at PwC. And Labour MP Meg Hillier took Ratcliffe to task for “sticking two fingers up” to the country that had honoured…

Munich, Germany Cracks showing: The fracturing alliance between the US and Europe – and in particular between the US and Germany – was laid bare at last weekend’s Munich security conference. Held annually since 1963, the gathering of world leaders and security officials has traditionally worked to strengthen the alliance. However, Chancellor Angela Merkel won an ovation for a speech in which she decried US unilateralism, attacked its policies on Iran, Syria and Afghanistan, and mocked its trade protectionism. The same audience then listened in silence to US vice-president Mike Pence as he lauded President Trump and implied that if Europeans do not follow the US in withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal, they are de facto anti-Semites who may be complicit in “another Holocaust”. Analysts say the event marked…

“‘No one voted to be poorer.’ It has become a Europhile mantra, a slogan rattled off almost unthinkingly by Remainer MPs. As a general proposition, though, the idea is utter tosh. We vote to be poorer all the time, knowingly or unknowingly. We vote to be poorer whenever we vote for stricter rules on where houses can be built; when we turn away able-bodied economic migrants; when we back schemes to preserve the habitats of rare species; when we subsidise orchestras or galleries. My point is not that these choices are right or wrong, simply that GDP is not our sole concern as voters, any more than money is our sole concern as individuals.” Daniel Hannan, The Sunday Telegraph…

As a long-term producer of heroin and cannabis, Mexico has a smuggling infrastructure that dates back to at least the 1960s. And its location, between South America’s coca fields and the drugs market of the United States, means that it has been increasingly crucial as a staging post. Initially, Mexican gangs served as middlemen for Colombian groups such as Pablo Escobar’s Medellín cartel, but since the 1980s they – particularly the Sinaloa and Gulf cartels – have come to dominate the international market. Mexico is a weak state, and over the decades a network of corruption was established between the drug lords and the dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party. Worse was to follow, though, when this unravelled. When Felipe Calderón of the National Action Party took power in late 2006, he…

When people don’t stick to their side of the bed, even the biggest of doubles doesn’t feel big enough. But Ford, the carmaker, thinks it can help, reports The Times: inspired by the technology it uses to prevent its cars straying into the wrong lane, it has come up with a bed designed to stop couples rolling into each other at night. Ford’s “lane-keeping bed” is fitted with pressure sensors to detect when one person is straying, and a conveyor belt function to gently slide them back to the right side. The bed could have a major impact on people’s well-being: studies suggest that a quarter of those in relationships get a more restful night if they sleep without their partner. But sadly, Ford’s innovation isn’t destined for the mass…

Facebook is out of control, and it’s endangering democracy: that’s the conclusion of an 18-month investigation by MPs into online disinformation and political campaigning, said Carole Cadwalladr in The Guardian. The report by the all-party Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee describes the tech giant as a “digital gangster” that has sold its users’ data without permission, flouted competition laws and deliberately misled Parliament – above all on the question of electoral interference by Russia. With evidence from an extraordinary cast of characters, this is the first truly comprehensive assessment of the “dark heart” of the tech economy, and its recommendations pull no punches: Facebook should be investigated by data and competition watchdogs, and – along with other tech companies – made subject to an independent regulator, with a compulsory…

“Sweatpants are a sign of defeat. You lost control of your life so you bought some sweatpants.” Designer Karl Lagerfeld, quoted in The Daily Telegraph “There is a gulf fixed between those who can sleep and those who cannot. It is one of the greatest divisions of the human race.” Iris Murdoch, quoted in The San Francisco Chronicle “The only exercise I take is walking behind the coffins of friends who took exercise.” Peter O’Toole, quoted in The Times “Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited; imagination encircles the world.” Albert Einstein, quoted in The Times “One has to resign oneself to being a nuisance if one wants to get anything done.” Freya Stark, quoted in the LA Times “I find penguins at present the only comfort in…

If sledging is “a virus” that has infected modern cricket, matches between England and West Indies have rarely been “laid low by it”, said Mike Atherton in The Times. But last week, in the final Test between the two sides, West Indies bowler Shannon Gabriel confronted Joe Root, the England captain. According to the bowler, after Root gave him a long stare, Gabriel turned on him, asking, “Do you like boys?” The comment wasn’t picked up by the mics at the stumps, but Root’s response was: “Don’t use it as an insult. There’s nothing wrong with being gay.” By sledging standards, Gabriel’s words were actually quite mild, said Simon Briggs in The Daily Telegraph. They pale beside the “verbal acid flung in England’s face” by Australia during the last Ashes.…

To The Times John McDonnell is espousing a long-exploded myth in regarding Churchill as a “villain” for deploying troops against striking miners at Tonypandy in 1910. The facts are set out in Martin Gilbert’s biography (Churchill: A Life). The chief constable of Glamorgan initially requested 400 troops after window-smashing by striking miners. As soon as Churchill learnt of this, he ordered the troops to halt mid-journey and sent police reinforcements instead. Subsequently, in response to attacks on shops in Tonypandy, the chief constable renewed his plea. Churchill then allowed a squadron of cavalry to be moved to the junction between the two valleys affected, but no further, and they were never deployed. As the Manchester Guardian reported, “he never wavered in his determination not to employ the troops unless the…

Best books… Alison Jackson The artist, known for her lookalike photographs of celebrities, picks her favourite books. She reveals the tricks of her trade in her show Double Fake, at Leicester Square Theatre from 5-7 March (leicestersquaretheatre.com) Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence, 1928 (Penguin £7.99). Pitching desire and lust against the constraints of class and gender in a different age, this novel was truly groundbreaking. As someone who has often courted controversy and railed against censorship, I am particularly drawn to it. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925 (Penguin £5.99). The allure of money and fame is something that has long fascinated me and inspired my art. This classic is a mesmerising study of human behaviour and aspiration, which remain ever relevant in the Instagram age. Written…

New cars: what the critics say Auto Express Although it’s not a big seller here, the Toyota RAV4 is of huge “global significance”. In 2017, it was the fourth best-selling car in the world, and the bestselling SUV. But while on its debut 25 years ago it was an original, a “plethora” of similar SUVs have since emerged. “Functional more than luxurious”, this fifth-generation model is a fine car, but doesn’t have much to lift it above the pack. Autocar With diesel falling out of favour, Toyota is only offering the RAV4 in the UK as a “self-charging” hybrid. It matches a 2.5-litre, four-cylinder petrol engine with an electric motor, and can be front-or all-wheel drive. The body has been made stiffer and the centre of gravity lowered, so handling…

Mermaid Inn, Rye, East Sussex The ancient town of Rye is a “delight”, says Fiona Duncan in The Daily Telegraph. And the Mermaid Inn is perhaps its most “charming” place to stay. Built in 1156 (and again in 1420 after a fire), it is a “time warp” of a place, almost unchanged from medieval times. Once the haunt of notorious smugglers who “sat around with their cutlasses on the table frightening people”, it has 31 bedrooms and 11 staircases, as well as a “labyrinth of secret passages and cellars”, wattle-and-daub walls and a reputation for ghostly apparitions. The bathrooms are less than “contemporary”, and the antique four-poster beds “tiny by modern standards”, with mattresses that are “somewhat unyielding”. But “you don’t go to the Mermaid to be in the…

HSBC: global trade fears HSBC is more “insulated” from Brexit than many of its British competitors, partly because so much of its business is based in Asia, said AFP. But that can have its downside, too. The London-based banking giant suffered “a bruising final quarter” in 2018 as fears of “the US-China trade war began to bite” – sending markets in Hong Kong and China into “meltdown”. Analysts warned that it remains “vulnerable to any fallout from either issue” in the year ahead. HSBC’s “disappointing” £15.4bn annual profit was actually a 16% improvement on the previous year, said Caitlin Morrison in The Independent. What made traders jittery was the precipitous collapse of revenues in Q4. The bank may now have “to scale back investment plans” to ensure that it is…

At a sold-out venue in central London last week, readers of The Week and MoneyWeek gathered to listen to our experts discuss some of the biggest investment opportunities and threats in markets right now – and how to invest for them. In a wide-ranging conversation, MoneyWeek’s executive editor John Stepek, Tim Price of asset manager Price Value Partners, and Iain Barnes, head of portfolio management at challenger wealth manager Netwealth, looked at how investors can best cope with Brexit and political risk; the current indecision gripping the world’s central banks; and the trade tensions between China and the US. Is Brexit a buying opportunity? Brexit has unquestionably dominated the UK’s headlines ever since the vote to leave the European Union in 2016. Yet, none of our panellists saw Brexit as…

“Time is running out to use whatever is left of this year’s £20,000 Isa allowance” by the 5 April deadline, says ThisIsMoney.co.uk . If you’re weighing the benefits of a move into stocks and shares, a factor requiring “careful consideration” is the platform you choose to invest through. Here’s the lowdown on three of the best. Hargreaves Lansdown “The big gun of DIY investing” has compiled a useful list of its favourite funds, dubbed “Wealth 150”, and negotiated some reduced annual management charges from fund managers. Expect to pay a 0.45% fee on total fund investments up to £250,000, falling to 0.25% on investments over £1m. Interactive Investor Interactive has a great selection of “model portfolios for easy investing” that are cheap to set up, as well…

The week’s best shares A&J Mucklow Group Investors Chronicle Brexit worries have weighed on shares, but demand for industrial warehouse space in the Midlands remains strong for this real estate investment trust, which is experiencing growing rental income and rising occupancy. Buy. 504p. Boku The Times Boku’s payment processing system enables customers to buy digital products, from the likes of Apple and Spotify, and charge the cost to their mobile phone bill. “Highly speculative”, yet oversold and “intriguing”. Buy. 82p. discoverIE Group Shares This electronics engineer designs specialist kit for regulated industries – medical, aerospace, transport and renewables. Cash-generative, with rising revenues and improving margins. Buy. 406p. Hunting The Mail on Sunday Hunting makes essential, high-tech tools and components for drilling oil and gas efficiently. A cyclical business, run by…