Innholdsfortegnelse for V. 1274 i The Week

“The extraordinary has started to become commonplace” during the coronavirus crisis, said The Independent. But inured as we have become to dramatic news, it was shocking to hear on Monday evening that Boris Johnson had been moved into intensive care as a result of his Covid-19 infection. News of the Prime Minister’s deteriorating condition came as UK health authorities announced their highest daily number of coronavirus deaths, at 938 – a higher daily figure than any other country in Europe, apart from Spain, a nation that has lately borne the brunt of the pandemic. Sir Patrick Vallance, the Chief Scientific Adviser, nevertheless said there were signs that the number of new cases of the virus in the UK was perhaps starting to level off in response to the national lockdown.…

British manufacturing this month faces “perhaps the greatest test in its history”, said Rob Davies in The Observer. “Specialist firms have joined forces with industrial powerhouses such as Airbus and Rolls-Royce in an unprecedented collaborative effort to make medical ventilators to treat Covid-19 patients.” Ventilators are critical to the treatment of the most severe cases; they take over the breathing when the lungs fail. The NHS currently has access to around 9,000 of them; but the Department for Health has set a target of 18,000 devices in the coming weeks, mostly from Ventilator Challenge UK, a consortium of engineering firms. It has also ordered 10,000 of a new design invented from scratch by Dyson, and 10,000 from the defence contractor Babcock. As a critical care physician, “I’m flattered by all…

Potters Corner, which won the Grand National – in the virtual world. With the real race cancelled, the Welsh-trained steeplechaser was awarded victory by an algorithm. Bookmakers accepted small bets on the computer-simulated race, broadcast on ITV, and donated their profits to NHS Charities Together. Renters in Brooklyn, after a local landlord who owns at least 80 apartments in the New York borough told his tenants he wouldn’t be charging them any rent this month – and to look out for their neighbours who might be struggling in the crisis. The show going on, after English National Opera announced that if it can’t use actors and musicians in its productions, it will use Lego figures instead. Scenes from past productions including The Marriage of Figaro have been recreated by opera…

Up to 4,000 prisoners will be considered for early release in England and Wales to help control the spread of the coronavirus. Inmates with two months or less still to serve – excluding those convicted of terror offences, or violent or sex crimes – will be released on licence. Robert Buckland, the Justice Secretary, said that while the Government was committed to seeing justice served, it also needed to reduce the risk of outbreaks in jails, which could overwhelm the NHS. So far, 88 inmates and 15 staff have tested positive for Covid-19; three inmates have died.…

Washington DC “Pearl Harbor moment”: The US surgeon general warned the country to prepare for its “hardest and saddest week” on Sunday, as a predicted spike in Covid-19 deaths approached. “This is going to be our Pearl Harbor moment, our 9/11 moment, only it’s not going to be localised – it’s going to be happening all over the country,” said Jerome Adams. However, he also said that there was “light at the end of the tunnel”, as the rate of new infections in some areas appeared to level off. There were 400,000 cases in the US by midweek, more than in Italy, Spain and France combined, and there had been almost 13,000 deaths. On Tuesday, New York state recorded its highest daily death toll yet, 731, bringing the total fatalities…

For more than a decade, zookeepers at the Ocean Park zoo in Hong Kong have encouraged two pandas to mate. Now, enjoying a period of privacy thanks to the coronavirus lockdown, they’ve finally done it. Following years of “trial and learning”, Ying Ying and Le Le mated earlier this week, with officials expecting to find out if Ying Ying is pregnant in June. Although images of the pair fornicating were largely met with delight, one Twitter user remarked: “[I] feel like they’re taunting us.” The Czech Republic has made face masks compulsory in public – with no exceptions permitted. Police were called to enforce the ban at Lázne Bohdanec spa resort last week after reports that nudists without masks were enjoying the spring weather. “Citizens can be without clothes in…

UNITED STATES The national shrink soothing all our fears The New York Times “My mother is not expendable. Your mother is not expendable. We will not put a dollar figure on human life.” Thus spake New York Governor Andrew Cuomo last week, says Maureen Dowd, in one of the regular televised briefings he now makes to the citizens of his state, coolly explaining the facts of the Covid-19 crisis and talking through the reasons for the decisions he’s making. On this occasion, he was rejecting a suggestion made by Texas’s lieutenant governor Dan Patrick that older Americans might want to sacrifice themselves for the good of their grandchildren’s economy. Across America, people have been tuning in: Cuomo has become “a sort of national shrink, talking us through our fear, our…

Analysis of the ice in an Alpine glacier has shed unexpected light on the murder of Thomas Becket, Henry II’s “turbulent priest”, 900 years ago. Scientists from the University of Nottingham have been tracking historical levels of airborne pollution by analysing the chemicals that were trapped in layers of ice as the Colle Gnifetti glacier, near Zermatt, formed. Atmospheric modelling suggests that during the 12th century, many of the chemicals deposited in the ice drifted over from northern England – a centre of mining and smelting at that time. They found that in the period running up to Becket’s murder in 1170, levels of lead in the air dipped significantly – the result, they suggest, of England’s bureaucracy (which was largely run by the clergy) being paralysed during Henry’s dispute…

Bernie Ecclestone, the 89-year-old former Formula One boss, has revealed that he and his wife Fabiana, 44, are expecting a child together, a boy. Although Ecclestone already has three children, the oldest of whom is 65, the baby will be his wife’s first. “I’ve got grandchildren and I’m looking forward to another baby,” he told the Daily Mail. “I’m happy really for my wife. She’s been looking forward to this happening for quite a few years, so I’m happy that she’ll have someone after I’m gone.” Honor Blackman, who has died aged 94, was one of the best known of all James Bond’s love interests. And, after playing Pussy Galore in Goldfinger, she revealed she’d fallen for her co-star Sean Connery for real. “He was the sexiest man I’ve ever…

“Politicians love to have plans in fives. Four sounds too few and six sounds as if you aren’t thinking clearly.” John Crace in The Guardian “When stupidity is considered patriotism, it is unsafe to be intelligent.” Isaac Asimov, quoted on TheBulwark.com “It is very strange that the years teach us patience – that the shorter our time, the greater our capacity for waiting.” Novelist Elizabeth Taylor, quoted in Newsweek “That’s what children are for – that their parents may not be bored.” Ivan Turgenev, quoted on The Browser “Sometimes the absolute most positive thing you can be in a boring society is completely negative.” John Lydon, quoted in Rolling Stone “No man can think clearly when his fists are clenched.” George Jean Nathan, quoted in Forbes “The arts are not…

Five years ago, virtual reality (VR) technology was advancing so fast, pundits wondered how long it might be “before virtual tourism would replace the need for physical travel altogether”, said Tim Bradshaw in the Financial Times. Despite the best efforts of the world’s tech companies, we haven’t reached that point yet; but now that millions of would-be travellers are confined to their homes, VR does offer at least a sense of escape to anyone with a reasonably good internet connection. On Google Earth, you can wander the streets of all the world’s great cities (and most of its lesser ones too); and virtual tours have been made available to a huge range of places. The Swiss and Austrian tourist boards, for instance, have “overhauled their websites to offer interactive Alpine…

No “boom” for restaurant apps No one doubts that the coronavirus pandemic is a disaster for Britain’s hospitality industry, says the FT. But one sector, at least, was expected to do well out of the crisis. With a nationwide lockdown, and online grocery services overwhelmed with customers, conditions seemed ripe for a “boom” in delivery apps such as Uber Eats, Just Eat and Deliveroo. Yet the early signs are that this is not happening. In the first weeks of the lockdown, industry insiders reported a significant fall-off in total orders – in some places, by as much as two-thirds. The slowdown may be partly related to anxieties over infection: “people are super-scared”, one executive reported. The virtual disappearance of lunchtime office orders has also hit the sector hard. But the…

“Grandfather of allergy” who survived a Japanese PoW camp Dr William Frankland 1912-2020 Dr William Frankland, who has died aged 108, was a pioneering immunologist known as the “grandfather of allergy”. He worked with Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin; came up with the idea of a daily pollen count to help hay fever sufferers; and persuaded Saddam Hussein to quit smoking. He’d agreed to fly to Baghdad in 1979, to treat the Iraqi leader for an undisclosed allergy. But when he got there, he found that his patient wasn’t allergic at all. “His problem was that he was smoking 40 cigarettes a day,” Franklin recalled. “I told him to stop and if he wouldn’t, I would refuse to come and see him again.” William Frankland – known as Bill…

Sir Richard Branson can call on some well-placed friends when it counts, said The Observer. Virgin Atlantic’s controversial £500m application for a state bailout “has been backed” by a trio of aviation big guns – Airbus, Rolls-Royce and Heathrow Airport – who have lobbied the Government, claiming that Virgin’s survival is “vital for the success of a key industry”. Ministers should ignore the special pleading. “When overseas-based billionaires beg for help beyond the generous furlough scheme”, the response should be: “it’s your turn to put your hand in your pocket”. Having already pledged to inject £215m into the overall Virgin Group, Branson argues that he’s done his bit and the airline has “ticked all the boxes” to qualify for state support, said Oliver Gill in The Daily Telegraph. Still, agreeing…

Call it “the dawn of guarded optimism”, said Michael Mackenzie in the FT. World stock markets rallied for two consecutive days at the start of the week amid further signs that the spread of Covid-19 may be slowing. On Monday, the US S&P index jumped by 7% as optimism continued to build, and the gains were matched elsewhere. Indeed, “close to 100 stocks on London’s main market” have registered “double-digit gains”, said Daniel Grote on Citywire, with stocks that fell furthest in the carnage “leading the rebound”. The embattled cruise-ship operator Carnival “led the way”, jumping 23.5%. “It seems odd to be discussing how the global virus trend numbers continue to get better” while the Prime Minister is in intensive care trying to battle it, said Deutsche Bank strategist Jim…

“It’s finally over,” said Ayesha Hazarika in the I newspaper. As Frankie Boyle remarked: “I’m not saying the Labour leadership election has gone on too long, but human civilisation ended in the middle of it.” On Saturday, the votes were, at last, counted – and Keir Starmer swept the board. He won more than 56% of the vote; his nearest rival, Rebecca Long-Bailey, took 28%, and Lisa Nandy 16%. He was the top choice of members, affiliates and registered supporters alike. The political landscape has been “recast beyond recognition”, said Polly Toynbee in The Guardian. During the Corbyn era, “there was no effective opposition, a void, a limbo”. Now, in Starmer, Labour has “a grand prosecutor well qualified to hold the Government’s feet to the fire”. A former Director of…

Airbnb, which was criticised for letting hosts advertise properties as “Covid-19 retreats”. Government guidelines make it clear that holiday homes should only be used by self-isolating key workers; however, there have been rumours of city-dwellers driving into the countryside in the dead of night, to stay in rural properties. Animal lovers, who were advised to be wary of cats and dogs. So far, there is no evidence that humans can catch Covid-19 from their pets, but animals may carry the virus on their fur. Cancer Research UK, which became the latest charity to warn that it is losing vital revenue, as a result of charity shops being closed and fundraising events being cancelled.…

Glasgow Care home deaths: Sixteen residents of a care home in Glasgow have died during a suspected outbreak of coronavirus. The deaths took place over seven days at the 90-bed Burlington Court Care Home. The patients, who all had underlying health conditions, had not been tested for Covid-19, as they had not been admitted to hospital; however, their symptoms suggested the presence of the virus. A number of deaths at other care homes have also been linked to the pandemic, including nine at Liverpool’s Oak Springs Care Home and two at the Newfield Nursing Home in Sheffield. The fatalities have exacerbated concerns that care workers, in residential homes and in the community, still do not have the protective equipment they need and that, in the absence of testing, they risk…

How Hearn got his drive You have to be fiercely competitive to make it as a sports promoter. Eddie Hearn was trained to succeed by his father Barry – one of boxing’s most successful promoters. Barry started by putting his son in the ring. “We sparred at 15,” says Eddie. “We beat the life out of each other.” Barry, now 71, had to be tough: he was brought up on a council estate in east London. But thanks to the money his father made, Eddie was brought up in a stately home, and went to private school. Barry called him “silver spoon”. “He was petrified that I’d become all the things he’d hated,” Eddie told Alex Moshakis in The Observer. “The kid at school who’s a bit flash and brash.”…

By late 1939, the Ministry of Agriculture had established its “Dig for Victory” campaign. The slogan was first coined by Michael Foot, then a leader writer for the London Evening Standard, and it captured the imaginations of millions who saw a way of contributing to the war effort. It also proved crucial, as food shortages were felt very quickly: official records show that annual food imports had halved to 14.65 million tonnes by 1941. Home Intelligence reports described food queues as a “bigger menace to public morale” than air raids. Across the country, men and women were encouraged to grow their own food, with leaflets giving people tips. A propaganda campaign featured the cartoon characters Captain Carrot and Potato Pete, with their own songs and recipes. By 1942, half the…

RUSSIA Is Vladimir Putin actually a scaredy cat? MBK Media (Moscow) Where is Vladimir Putin? Where’s he gone? As Covid-19 sweeps the world, most leaders can be seen addressing citizens on a near daily basis, says Vladimir Pastukhov. But Russia’s president seems to have disappeared. His only public address since the pandemic took hold was “uninformative” and awkward: he framed the need for social distancing as a chance for a week-long holiday. Many took that literally, flocking to parks as the virus spread (the official case count of about 7,400 is thought to be a drastic underestimate in a country of 146 million). Aside from the 2008 war with Georgia, it’s the first national crisis in 20 years that Putin hasn’t personally managed. And with responsibility delegated to mayors and…

Aerial surveys have revealed that a new mass bleaching has taken place on the Great Barrier Reef – the third such event in the past five years. Bleaching occurs when changes to the environment – typically a rise in sea temperatures – cause coral to expel the algae living in their tissue, from which they derive most of their energy. After the algae is expelled, the coral turns white; and though it may recover from some such incidents, repeated bleachings tend to result in widespread coral death. Initial surveys suggest the latest event – believed to be the result of unusually high sea temperatures in February – is as severe as the one in 2017, which killed an estimated 22% of the shallow water coral along the 1,430-mile-long reef. Last…

After three weeks of national lockdown, said The Economist, “families are settling into a timewarp that lies somewhere between the mid-21st century and the 1950s”. People are working virtually and “binge-watching Netflix”, yet also returning to old-school hobbies such as bread baking, knitting and gardening. Board games and musical instruments are flying off the shelves. Poultry breeders have been bombarded with requests for laying hens. For those with gardens and decent-sized houses, this period of self-isolation with their families is no great trial, said Christina Lamb in The Sunday Times. It’s a very different story for people living in tower blocks. Take Reakha Begum, 40, who is cooped up in a two-bed flat in London’s Tower Hamlets with her four children aged 7 to 20. For them, she says, the…

Silver linings To The Times Among the very real and unfolding tragedies of the coronavirus pandemic there is a silver lining. Due to social distancing, many of the other viruses that abound at this time of year are almost nowhere to be seen. Children’s hospitals, like the one I work in in Leicester, have seen a dramatic fall in admissions due to other respiratory viruses. Paediatric emergency departments around the country are also much quieter. Traditionally the wards quieten down considerably during summer, but at present we are seeing the fewest patients we can remember. It also suggests that given the omnipresent threat of encountering the coronavirus by coming into contact with others, parents and families have become more self-sufficient in managing symptoms at home. Of course the NHS is…

Since it launched on Netflix, it feels as though the whole world has been talking about Tiger King, a “deranged” documentary about big-cat owners in the “strangest corner of crazy America”, said Hugo Rifkind in The Times. Our hero, Joe Exotic, is a polyamorous gay zoo proprietor with a bleached mullet and extreme tattoos who promises “Waco”-style resistance at his property in Oklahoma, should anyone try to expropriate his 200 lions and tigers. His nemesis is Carole Baskin, an animal-rights activist who wears only leopard-print clothes and who is accused by Joe and others of having fed her first husband to the cats in her profitable Florida sanctuary. The story of their feud involves another murder plot and plenty of other “piggy-eyed”, fame-hungry tiger-owning “freaks” too, said Camilla Long in…

Helping out at Brookfield, Josh spots a lambing ewe in distress. Brian appears and is impressed to see Josh successfully deliver twin lambs – and as Ian has had to go away unexpectedly, there’s lambing work available at Home Farm. At the hospital, Robert is trying to lift a despondent Lynda’s spirits when Freddie arrives. He tells her about Robert’s gift of the medal and apologises for their argument before the explosion. She can’t remember, but tells Freddie she’s in pain and feels hideous, and wishes he’d left her to die. Later, she asks Roy to tell Blake she forgives him, in spite of his part in the accident. Ben and Josh come to visit, but Robert turns them away; Lynda says she doesn’t want visitors. Josh is relieved to…

This hybrid loaf – part cake, part bread – is the perfect thing to bake during these testing times, say Greg and Lucy Malouf. Made mostly with simple store-cupboard ingredients (the saffron being the exception), it is equally delicious at breakfast or teatime. It also keeps fairly well: we reckon it is even better a day after being made, toasted and slathered with butter and jam 20 saffron threads 300ml hot milk 500g strong (bread) flour 1 tsp salt 150g unsalted butter, diced, plus extra to grease 50g soft brown sugar 2 tsp dried active yeast (7.5g sachet) 60g currants 40g mixed dried fruit or mixed citrus peel 1 tbsp plain flour, for dusting 1 egg, lightly beaten • Stir the saffron strands into the hot milk and leave to…

Debenhams: I will survive Filing for administration has become quite the norm at Debenhams, said Jonathan Eley in the Financial Times. In a bid “to avoid legal action by creditors to liquidate the business”, the ailing department-store chain – founded as a single London drapery store in 1778 – has embarked on “its third insolvency process in a year”. Debenhams went through a “pre-pack” administration last April, which resulted in its shares being delisted and lenders taking control. It then used another form of insolvency – a company voluntary arrangement – to obtain rent cuts and allow it to close the worst-performing shops. “They’re an optimistic bunch at Debenhams,” said Nils Pratley in The Guardian. Management described this latest “lockdown administration” as being of the “light touch” variety –…

Can banks redeem themselves? Philip Augar Financial Times Banks run the risk of “appearing tone-deaf in their response to Covid-19” – just as they did during the 2008 global financial crisis, says Philip Augar. “Having initially appeared slow-footed”, they “must now deliver”. There has been tension with the UK and US governments over the administration of state-backed loan schemes. And their failure to take action on the vexed issues of dividends and bonuses has been a further source of irritation. In Britain, it took “Bank of England pressure” to halt payouts to bank shareholders. And, in contrast to companies in other sectors, “scarcely a peep has been heard” about cutting bonuses – an emotive subject with the “potential to blow up again into a hugely divisive issue”. This is a…

The week’s best shares Anglo American The Sunday Telegraph The diversified miner’s balance sheet is in order and its acquisition of Yorkshire potash miner Sirius Minerals is promising, with the potential to bounce back strongly. The CEO has bought 100,000 shares. Buy. £12.18. Berkeley Group The Daily Telegraph Berkeley’s £1bn cash pile should prove useful for buying land at distressed prices. When the economy normalises, demand for housing will return, triggering a rebound in prices and a transactions “boom”. Buy. £36.15. Cranswick Shares This high-quality, vertically integrated pork and chicken producer has a sustainable agenda. Short-term, the firm’s strong export market and high returns should help it thrive through the crisis. Buy. £36.30. LondonMetric Property Investors Chronicle This real estate investment trust (Reit) has increased exposure to the high-growth urban…

The race to test Finally, Britain has a clear strategy on testing, said The Daily Telegraph. After a barrage of criticism, Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced last week that the Government would call on university and private-sector laboratories to help deliver 100,000 Covid-19 tests a day by the end of the month. Coming as it does after weeks of excuses, the promise will have been “music to people’s ears”. But it wasn’t so long ago, said The Economist, that Boris Johnson said he was aiming for 250,000 tests a day. And by mid-week, the Government was still only delivering 14,000 daily tests, with just 266,000 carried out in total. As of last week, only 2,000 out of a total 500,000 front-line NHS staff had been tested. So why wasn’t this…

Anxious Britons looking for reassurance and calm in troubled times may be behind a surge in ratings for The Repair Shop – a TV show in which a team of craftspeople carefully repair a range of well-loved objects (old dolls, broken musical instruments) brought in by members of the public. Since it moved to BBC One last month, some 6.7 million people have been tuning in to watch the show, giving it a larger audience than EastEnders. A couple in India have named their newborn twins Corona and Covid, in order to make the day they were born “memorable” and to assuage the fear associated with the words. The babies, a girl and a boy, were born on 27 March, two days after the country’s national lockdown came into force.…

Experts warned this week against reading too much into the UK’s daily tolls of deaths linked to Covid-19, as they represent the day on which the death was reported, not the date on which it occurred, which may have been days or even weeks earlier. New figures released by NHS England at the weekend showed there were 300 more deaths than previously thought between 11 March and 1 April. The ONS has also pointed out that the figures relate to deaths in hospital, and do not include the minority of Covid-19 patients who die at home, or in care homes.…

Dublin New doctor: Ireland’s caretaker PM, Leo Varadkar, has re-registered as a doctor and will work one shift a week during the coronavirus crisis. Varadkar, who quit medicine seven years ago to go into politics, is the son of a doctor and a nurse, and his partner – as well as his two sisters and their husbands – all work in healthcare. Last month, Ireland’s Health Service Executive launched an appeal for ex-clinicians to “Be On Call for Ireland”; Varadkar is one of tens of thousands who have responded. As of Wednesday, Ireland had recorded 210 deaths related to Covid-19; that gives it a rate of 43 deaths per million head of population, a little less than half that in the UK. Vienna Phased reopening: Austria, Denmark and Norway have…

“It is a question a thousand publicists are asking themselves: how to achieve optimum client exposure in the time of corona? If you are Lady Gaga, you put in a call to the director of the WHO. If you are Kate Winslet, you release a strange public health video. The star of Titanic took it upon herself to release a handwashing guide, as she had played ‘an epidemiologist trying to stop the spread of a hypothetical virus’ in the movie Contagion. This felt equivalent to the former hunk of ER, George Clooney, rushing to the front of the plane screaming, ‘Hey, I’m a doctor’, or Meryl Streep booting Boris Johnson out of No. 10 because she had once played the Iron Lady.” Camilla Long in The Sunday Times Desert Island…

Don’t just put British eggs in your basket Daniel Hannan The Sunday Telegraph In times of crisis, the natural instinct is to turn inwards, says Daniel Hannan. And this pandemic has led to calls for us to stop importing 50% of what we eat and be nationally self-sufficient in food. Some Tory MPs are also using it as a pretext to introduce more protectionism into our food sector. Henceforth, they want imported produce to meet domestic rules not just on food safety, but on animal welfare – a requirement no other major nation imposes. But all of this is back to front. Relying on home-grown food makes you less, not more, secure, as it exposes you to locally specific shocks. The only shortages in this crisis, at least near me,…

Our tiny jellybean ancestor A new human ancestor has been identified: a jellybean-shaped creature, about half the size of a grain of rice, which lived around 555 million years ago. The animals, whose fossilised remains were discovered in the Australian outback, are the earliest known examples of a bilateral organism – a creature with two symmetrical sides. The emergence of bilateralism was one of the defining moments in evolution: most animals today are bilaterians, not radially symmetrical, like jellyfish. The newly identified species, named Ikaria wariootia, was evidently bilateral because one of its ends was bigger than the other. “This may seem trivial, but that means it had a distinct front and back end, which is the kind of organisation that leads to the variety of things with heads and…

Donald Trump has been widely castigated for referring to the “Chinese virus”; but as Covid-19 sweeps the globe, “one fact is clear”, said Marion Smith in USA Today: “the Chinese Communist Party caused this crisis”. From the moment the virus emerged, “Beijing has acted in a way that made a pandemic possible, and then inevitable.” The only way to stop a sickness spreading is to spread the news about it even faster, giving health officials the information they need to tackle it. Instead, communist authorities cracked down on anyone talking about the brewing epidemic in Wuhan. Li Wenliang, a “brave doctor” who warned his peers about it online, was summoned by the police and forced to write a “self-criticism”, before he died of Covid-19. News was censored; social media users,…

“One of the great rules of British life is that sooner or later, everything ends up being blamed on footballers,” said Marina Hyde in The Guardian. So it was no great surprise that, while he was being grilled on the failure of the Government’s Covid-19 testing regime, Health Secretary Matt Hancock sought to deflect some blame onto “UK humankind’s oldest enemy: young men who play in the Premier League”. He called on top-flight footballers to accept the 30% pay cut proposed by the League while play is suspended – given, he said, “the sacrifices that many people are making, including some of my colleagues in the NHS who have made the ultimate sacrifice”. His comments caused a backlash among players: Wayne Rooney complained that footballers were “easy targets”; Gary Neville…

To The Spectator I loved Nick Newman’s article about the universal cartoon (“Beyond a joke”). When we were compiling The Best of The Oldie Cartoons recently, my friend David Abberton spent many hours squirrelled away in the archives, mining for comic gold. As part of his studies, he conducted a scholarly investigation into the established themes of cartoons. “The most obvious trope is the desert island, but there are others,” David says. “In no particular order, these are wife-hating; the grim reaper; aliens; cats; the guru on the mountain top; Mexicans; heaven; mobiles and ‘How’s my [insert theme]’. There are honourable mentions for Munch’s The Scream, giraffes, igloos and Excalibur (usually emerging from a lavatory).” Why are these themes so universal? Part of the reason is their familiarity: we’re so…

Waxahatchee: Saint Cloud Merge Records £11 Containing songs that “nestle in heartache and bask in hard-won wisdom”, this stunning record is in my view the best album of the year so far, said Ben Beaumont-Thomas in The Guardian. The Alabama singer-songwriter Waxahatchee (real name Katie Crutchfield) has dropped the indie-rock of her previous collection, Out in the Storm, and embraced the “Americana and country-rock” of her native region. The resulting songs, which measure up to those of Bob Dylan, are beautiful and gripping – none more so than Ruby Falls, a “frank, poetic valediction” to a former lover. I mean it as a compliment when I say that “there’s always something tempering the beauty” of this music, said Alexandra Pollard in The Independent. Crutchfield offers “luscious melodies”, but they are…

As the third week of the coronavirus lockdown begins, it’s high time for anyone who has not yet binged on a TV boxset or ten to relent and indulge themselves. Here are five more recent examples available to stream online. Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events This is a great one for parents to watch with children. Daniel Handler wrote this adaptation of his own Gothic novels about three orphans terrorised by the dastardly Count Olaf – so it perfectly captures their dark humour, their observations about grief and their joy in language. And every scene is a steampunk work of art. Rated PG. On Netflix. Happy Valley Sally Wainwright’s double-Baftawinning, Yorkshire-set police drama stars Sarah Lancashire as a police sergeant in a cat-and-mouse game with a rapist (James…

The Guardian journalist and broadcaster chooses her favourite books. Her latest, The Lost Decade, 2010-2020 and What Lies Ahead for Britain, written with David Walker (Guardian Faber £10.99), is out now Postwar by Tony Judt, 2005 (Vintage £14.99). This magisterial sweep across European history since 1945 is a gripping read, reaching for the meaning of life in our times. More than facts, Judt shapes events. A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf, 1929 (Vintage £5.99). Woolf’s extended essay is the bedrock book for women’s liberation, arguing for both a literal and metaphorical space for women writers within a male-dominated literary tradition. Towards the End of the Morning by Michael Frayn, 1967 (Faber £8.99). The funniest, sharpest book about journalists on a paper not unlike The Observer, where Frayn worked.…

New cars: what the critics say Auto Express The new Defender – “one of the most eagerly anticipated new cars in a generation” – is finally here. And it doesn’t disappoint. Harking back in both design and concept to the original 1947 Series I, the new model is going to be “one of the coolest” cars on the road. It’s as rugged as a Defender should be, but also “cheekier” than its stablemate Discovery, and smarter than it used to be. Autocar With almost 30cm ground clearance, the Defender is ready to take on whatever terrain you put in front of it (though whether most buyers will actually take it off the road is another question). You can get it with a 197bhp or 236bhp 2.0-litre diesel, a 296bhp 2.0-litre…

Markets, led by the US, seized upon news that the human health crisis might be levelling off and continued their rally. Capital Economics forecast that the UK could suffer a 15% drop in GDP this quarter: the largest contraction on record. IHS Markit’s March survey of Britain’s crucial services sector recorded the fastest decline since the survey began. The decline was even worse in mainland Europe. Morgan Stanley predicted the fall-out in the US would be “more drawn out than previously anticipated, marked by a deeper drop into recession and slower climb out”. The oil price made record gains, jumping more than 35% to above $30/ barrel, after President Trump tweeted that he had brokered a deal that could see Russia and Saudi Arabia cut back on production and end…

Asif Aziz The stand-off over commercial rents between property owners and bars and shops forced to close has led to angry scenes, says The Sunday Times. But few landlords have taken quite such a “hardball approach” as Asif Aziz – the “charming” Malawian-born tycoon behind Criterion Capital, which owns chunks of London’s West End, including the Trocadero in Piccadilly. Aziz – who “hit the property scene in 1983, at the age of 16, when he bought a £1.9m property in Knightsbridge” – is renowned for squeezing every last penny. Nicknamed “Mr West End”, he has been threatening to serve non-payers with winding-up petitions. Some call him “Britain’s meanest landlord”. Aziz denies the charge, claiming to be tough but fair. “Landlords”, he insists, “are not the nation’s bankers.” Cristian Fracassi A…