Innholdsfortegnelse for V. 1281 i The Week

What happened The Cummings storm Boris Johnson was this week fending off furious demands that he dismiss his senior adviser Dominic Cummings, in response to allegations that he had breached lockdown rules. Over the weekend, it emerged that in late March, Cummings had driven 260 miles from London to his parents’ farm in County Durham with his wife – who had coronavirus symptoms – and their four-year-old son. The couple apparently made the trip because they felt it would be better to self-isolate in a place where they had options for childcare, should they both become incapacitated. The PM defended his aide, saying he had followed “the instincts of every father”, and Cummings, in a lengthy press conference in No. 10’s rose garden, insisted he had acted responsibly and legally.…

J.K. Rowling fans, after the novelist announced that she is about to release online, for free, a new book for children to enjoy in lockdown. The Ickabog is a story “about truth and the abuse of power” that she wrote some years ago, between Harry Potter books, but had never released. Fast food addicts, with the re-opening of 33 McDonalds drive-throughs in London and the southeast. In Bushey, in Hertfordshire, people queued in their cars for up to an hour to get their first Big Macs and Happy Meals for eight weeks. Around 1,000 branches are due to open next week. Fruit-lovers, who are expected to enjoy unusually sweet strawberries, raspberries and other British-grown berries this year, owing to the warm spring. Online streaming, after researchers in Australia invented a…

71% of Britons believe Dominic Cummings broke lockdown rules on his trip to Durham, and 59% say he should resign. In a similar poll carried out before he gave a press conference, 52% said he ought to resign. YouGov/BBC 45% of adults in England believe to some extent that China created Covid-19 as a bioweapon to control the West. 59% believe to some extent that the Government is misleading the public about the cause of the virus. University of Oxford/The Daily Telegraph 44% of Britons say they would like to have the option of working from home after the lockdown ends. One in 12 plan to ask their employer if they can work from home full-time. Direct Line/The Telegraph…

“One of the small pleasures of lock-down has been Zooming through the keyhole. All those colleagues, made uniform by hot desks, are now revealed in conference-call glory seated in front of bookshelves, airing racks, Venus Fly Traps and fluorescent tubes of light art spelling out a hopeful, hollow ‘Home Sweet Home’. On Instagram, I am obsessed by the Welsh dresser in the kitchen of a modern art curator. ‘Oh,’ I note, enlarging the screen for a better ferret, ‘the Ravilious mug is missing this morning.’ Meanwhile, I am troubled by national PE teacher Joe Wicks’ spotless, soulless sitting room. Most of all: his empty mantelshelf. Get that man a pair of china King Charles spaniels!” Laura Freeman in The Daily Telegraph…

You can’t run a country from No. 10 John Harris The Guardian If there’s one thing this crisis has underlined, says John Harris, it’s the calamitous way in which power in Britain is concentrated at the top. Time and again, Downing Street has grandly issued edicts that just don’t match the reality on the ground. Take the PM’s sudden switch from a “stay at home” to a “stay alert” policy. It had huge implications for transport and health systems; yet the leaders of Scotland and Wales were given no part in the decision (and so have stuck to their lockdowns), and mayors and council leaders in England were taken by surprise. “The first I knew of it,” Newcastle City Council leader Nick Forbes told me, “was when I saw it…

The Cold War made it rainier Nuclear testing in the Cold War era created rainy weather in countries thousands of miles away, including in Scotland, researchers have discovered. During the 1950s and 1960s, atomic tests were carried out in remote locations across the world – from the Nevada desert to the Arctic – causing radioactive pollution to spread through the atmosphere. Scientists have long suspected that charged particles emitted during radioactive decay may cause water droplets to coalesce, increasing the volume of rainfall. To test the hypothesis, scientists from the University of Reading compared rainfall records from the Shetland islands between 1962 and 1964 with data on radioactivity levels over Britain. On days when radioactivity was high, the clouds above the Shetlands were thicker than normal and, on average, each…

The Queen has had to glad-hand numerous despots, but according to a new documentary, she found Nicolae Ceaușescu particularly trying. The Romanian dictator and his wife paid a controversial state visit to Britain in 1978. The Queen hosted a banquet in their honour and put them up at the Palace – and found them extremely hard work. One morning, spotting the pair walking towards her in the grounds, she was desperate to avoid having to make any more small talk. “So for the first and only time in her life, she actually hid in a bush to avoid her own guests,” said journalist Robert Hardman. After reading the script for the second Terminator film, Arnold Schwarzenegger returned it with a “worried expression”, said director James Cameron. “But I don’t kill…

The prolonged closure of our schools “is an educational, social and economic calamity”. said Allister Heath in The Daily Telegraph. As lockdown drags on, children remain stuck at home. “Millions are not being educated at all; others barely so.” They are having to do without sport, clubs, friendships; many are depressed. Needy children are going hungry; abuse cases have shot up; the educational gap between rich and poor children is growing. If countries such as France and Sweden can open their schools without seeing a surge in infections, why can’t we. Answer? Because, hard-left teaching unions seem set on sabotaging the “careful, limited reopening of English schools planned by the Government”, starting with a limited number of primary school children returning on 1 June. Of course, we all want to…

A 260-mile deviation To The Times I am one of many retired doctors who have offered to help with the track-and-trace strategy that involves asking those in contact with a person who has been infected to self-isolate, often at significant personal inconvenience. If government aides can now put their own interpretation on the degree to which self-interest can override the public interest, what hope is there in asking the public not to do the same? There are alternative solutions for childcare that do not involve making a 260-mile journey in the face of advice not to do so. Dr Clive Richards, Bristol Cummings isn’t special To The Guardian My daughter and son-in-law are both doctors. They contracted coronavirus in March and both were ill for several weeks, their symptoms bad…

Breathing on The Scream Edvard Munch’s The Scream is an icon of modern alienation and isolation, said Daniel Boffey in The Guardian. But the painting may need to isolate itself in a more contemporary sense: it “needs to practise some physical distancing”. Munch painted four versions of the masterpiece, and the most famous one – in the Munch Museum in Oslo, created in 1910 – has faded slightly, with the artist’s “initially bright yellow brushstrokes” turning to “an off-white colour”. Normally, deterioration like this can be attributed to a gallery’s atmospheric conditions – lighting or heat, for example. But according to a study by an international team of scientists, this is not the issue. Damage to this painting can be blamed on excess humidity: a condition apparently caused by art…

The live music industry is on its knees, with 80% of UK venues at “serious risk of permanent closure”, according to The Observer. While concert promoters look for ways to keep themselves in business – from drive-in shows to socially distanced performances – musicians have been streaming gigs from their homes. Neil Young has been posting Fireside Sessions, acoustic sets (filmed by his wife, Daryl Hannah) in which he sings from his own songbook, occasionally accompanied by farmyard animals (neilyoungarchives.com). Laura Marling is marking the launch of her new album Song for our Daughter with a ticketed, live-streamed, online-only performance from London’s Union Chapel on 6 June (lauramarling.com). Radiohead posts footage of live shows from its archives every Thursday evening at 10pm on the band’s YouTube channel, while Instagram has…

Courgettes with mint, chilli and almonds Serves 4-6 5 tbsp olive oil 3 garlic cloves, finely sliced 700g of courgettes, halved and thinly sliced widthways 1 dried chilli, crumbled, or a pinch of chilli flakes sea salt a handful of mint leaves, chopped pinch of lemon zest 2 tbsp of almonds, toasted and chopped roughly • In a heavy-lidded frying pan over a medium heat, warm the oil and then add the garlic and the courgettes. Add the chilli and cook over a medium-low heat, stirring occasionally, so that the courgettes begin to take some colour and caramelise. • After 5-10 minutes, when a fair few of the courgettes have caramelised, place the lid of the pan on and turn the heat down. Cook for another 10 minutes, stirring occasionally;…

Super-Birki As well as their famous open-toed sandals, Birkenstock make these colourful clogs from water-resistant and dirt-repellent polyurethane. The insole is lined with a moisture-wicking fabric and is easily removed for cleaning (£50; birkenstock.com). Kent & Stowe transplanting trowel  Unusually, this sharp-bladed trowel has measurements on its head, for those who need precision when planting bulbs and seeds. The head is made of stainless steel and the handle is ash (£11.20; ffx.co.uk). Traditional  twine & stand cutter 250g Twine often comes in use around the garden, and this ball (available in green, black or its natural colour) comes on a solid oak stand made in Shropshire. It has a built-in blade so you don’t need to keep stopping to look for the scissors (£15; yesterhome.com). HexArmor  ThornArmor 3092 gloves These…

Facebook: leading the WFH revolution? Could the pandemic lead to a permanent shift in the way we work? Very possibly, said Jack Kelly in Forbes. As the US begins to reopen its economy, several CEOs in the tech sector “have elected to continue allowing employees to work from home”. Leading the field is Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, who reckons that within a decade, around half his workforce will be home-based. Ominously, he also issued a “dark underlying warning”. Employees moving out of Menlo Park (the expensive San Francisco Bay area where Facebook is HQed) to “lower-cost” locations “may have to take a pay cut commensurate with the salary rate appropriate to their new home”. You can see Zuckerberg’s logic, said Josh Barro in New York Magazine. It’s harder to justify…

The changing face of the billionaire John Thornhill Financial Times Billionaires tend to divide into two classes, says John Thornhill: “innovators and inheritors”. At present, the ten richest US billionaires – including Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates – fall mainly into the first camp. In Europe, by contrast, the richest still tend to “hail from old money”, having been “born into established industrial, property and retail empires”. That may be changing, however. In a new book, The Great Reversal, economist Thomas Philippon argues that “laggardly rent-seeking Europe” is becoming “more American in terms of wealth creation”, just as the US becomes more European. Why? Because of the growing concentration of corporate power stateside and the increasing competitiveness of the EU single market. “The US has given up on free markets,”…

There’s going to be the mother of all investigations into the inept handling of this pandemic, said Fraser Nelson in The Daily Telegraph; and everyone in government, from the PM down, is preparing their excuses. Yet they may find the focus of inquiry turns out to be not “Why weren’t we prepared?” – most countries weren’t – but “Why did we let lockdown drag on so long?” The Italians “are back in their piazzas, Germans in their car-making factories, Danes in their schools”. None have seen a resurgence of the virus. Meanwhile here, lockdown is taking a heavy toll – on our livelihoods and our mental health. Yet there’s no outcry because stress and poverty, unlike Covid, “kill quietly”. How bizarre that our PM, once seen as a crazy risk-taker,…

Universities, with reports that as many as one in five students due to start their degrees in September are considering deferring their course if coronavirus restrictions remain in place. Cambridge University has already confirmed that all of its lectures will be delivered online in the 2020-21 academic year. Hertz, which filed for bankruptcy protection in the US. The 102-year-old car rental giant, which had 38,000 employees worldwide last year, said its revenues had plummeted to zero in mid-March, and that it started missing debt repayments in April.…

Edinburgh Curtains fall: The Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh has announced that it will not be staging any productions this year, and has put all its staff on notice of redundancy. According to artistic director David Greig, the lockdown has cost it more than £700,000 – forcing it to choose between “hibernation” and permanent closure. At least one British theatre operator – Nuffield Southampton Theatres – has already gone into administration, and many others, including Shakespeare’s Globe in London, have warned that they will not be able to survive without more financial support. Greater Manchester Pollution hotspot: Manchester has become the latest city to delay the launch of its clean air zone (CAZ), as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. Under the scheme, commercial vehicles that fail strict NO2 -emissions…

Lane Fox’s lasting pain It’s 16 years since Martha Lane Fox was involved in a near-fatal car crash while on holiday in Morocco. The co-founder of lastminute.com broke 28 bones; she suffered a stroke; and was in hospital for two years. Now 47, she still lives in constant pain, yet she is on the board of Chanel, the Donmar Warehouse and Twitter. She sits as a crossbencher in the House of Lords and is a patron of various charities. How does she do it? “My strategy is not very sophisticated,” she told Janice Turner in The Times. “Exercise is a fundamental part of survival.” She goes for walks and takes online boxing classes – but “I had a very bad fall at the end of last year... and it was…

An English woman visiting a beach grew furious when she was challenged by police for breaking lockdown rules – because she hadn’t realised she was in Wales. In a video of the encounter, the woman can be heard demanding: “You’re telling me it’s illegal for me to be at this beach when Boris Johnson has said that you can?” When the officer explains that there are different rules in Wales, the woman, who is believed to have driven 100 miles to Barmouth from the West Midlands, asks “What beach can I visit today?” Later she admitted: “I was ignorant. I didn’t realise Wales wasn’t in England.” A trio of penguins were given a private tour of an art gallery in Kansas City last week. Randy Wisthoff, CEO of the zoo,…

ITALY How we failed the elderly Corriere della Sera (Milan) Italy prides itself on the care it takes of the elderly, says Gian Antonio Stella, yet the coronavirus has revealed an ugly truth. “Not a day goes by” without the discovery of yet another illegal nursing home, where old people are subjected to shocking conditions. Our greying country – in which 23% of the population is over 65 – has a “structural shortage of homecare services”, forcing families to put up relatives in unlicensed private homes. Some facilities are nothing but “hovels” with barred windows; nearly all lack adequate sanitation. In Palermo, in Sicily, appalled residents found an old man wandering the streets in pyjamas, chased by two women who “tried to catch him to bring him back to his…

Having trudged onto the beach, dug a nest and laid their eggs in it, mother sea turtles do something that has long puzzled scientists: they scatter sand around the site. The assumption has been that they are trying to disguise their nests, but it turns out the turtles may be craftier than that: researchers now think they are actually creating “decoy nests” that they hope will prevent predators, such as mongooses and wild dogs, from sniffing out their eggs. Studying leatherback and hawksbill turtles in Trinidad and Tobago between 2013 and 2019, a team from the University of Glasgow observed that rather than lingering near their freshly dug nests – as they would if their intention was merely to disguise it – the turtles moved some distance away before starting…

“The one thing, for good or ill, about having a populist for a Prime Minister,” said Sean O’Grady in The Independent, “is that policy U-turns can be executed with remarkable speed.” Last week, just 24 hours after Boris Johnson had told the Commons that NHS and care workers would not be exempted from the visa health surcharge imposed on all immigrants to Britain, his government reversed course. It had become clear that Tory and Labour MPs alike objected to the idea of charging foreign-born workers an extra fee for the right to use a health service that couldn’t function without them. Many hailed the move as an early win for Labour leader Keir Starmer, but it would probably have been better for him if the PM had “dug his heels…

Spain is preparing to welcome back foreign tourists, said Ashifa Kassam in The Observer. The outdoor terraces of bars and restaurants in Madrid and Barcelona have opened, and the country’s resorts are putting social distancing protocols in place for the arrival of guests in July. But few are expecting a busy holiday season in Spain, or in Italy and Greece, which are likewise poised to reopen to international tourists. Fears of contagion, and money worries, will prevent many people venturing abroad. And another key factor will deter British tourists: the prospect of having to endure 14 days of mandatory self-isolation when they return to the UK, under the threat of a £1,000 fine. Britain’s quarantine scheme, which is due to come into force on 8 June, is a joke, said…

To the Financial Times At last, our opinion leaders have begun to quote death rates (per 100,000) as opposed to simple death totals. This is a much-needed improvement – but is it enough? What other factors are likely to affect the number of people dying in a given country, apart from the size of their population? This is a disease that is directly transmitted from human to human; how physically close people live to each other – and how crowded their public transport systems are – must also have an effect on the rate of transmission, and hence on deaths. Take a basket of seven European countries and the US. In basic “per 100,000” terms, Belgium fares worst (1) and Germany best (8), with the UK firmly holding the centre…

Perfume Genius: Set My Heart on Fire Immediately Matador £9.50 Mike Hadreas (aka Perfume Genius) is “a pop savant whose vision keeps getting more all-encompassing as he keeps making records”, said Jon Dolan in Rolling Stone. On this album, his most ambitious to date, he hops between genres with glorious, “Prince-like” ease – “casually traversing” goth, glam, synth-pop, soul and indie-rock. The “heartbreaking opener”, Whole Life,“sinks into a golden river of glimmering guitar, lullaby piano and luminous strings”. By contrast, in On the Floor, Hadreas “plays gracefully with 1980s R&B, evoking Tina Turner via Erasure”. Whatever style he is exploring, the results are “fantastic: rich, fascinating and moving” – “packed with gorgeous melodies” and unexpected arrangements, said Alexis Petridis in The Guardian. For an artist who was once as well-known…

“Quick-witted and handsome”, Tony Slattery shot to TV stardom in the late 1980s on the improv show Whose Line Is It Anyway?. Then, some time in the 1990s, he disappeared from public view, said Anita Singh in The Daily Telegraph, his life blighted by drink, drugs and mental illness. In What’s the Matter with Tony Slattery? – a documentary in BBC2’s Horizon strand – the actor and comedian, now 60 years old, attempts to “unravel” these problems with the help of various experts. With his troubles etched onto his face, Slattery is so sweet you “absolutely will him to get through this”. Slattery gave up his shocking 10g-a-day cocaine habit 20 years ago, but is still addicted to alcohol, most likely suffers from bipolar disorder, and – we eventually learn…

The author of numerous bestselling novels for adults and the Polly and the Puffin series for children chooses her favourite books. Her latest book, Five Hundred Miles from You, is out now, published by Sphere at £12.99 A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving, 1989 (Black Swan £8.99). I love all of John Irving’s books, but this and The Cider House Rules are the most heartbreaking, as well as funny, charming and original. Irving writes children very well, which is rarer than you’d think. Whenever I write kids, I try to remember that they think in capital letters: most things to children are very black and white, which is the fun of them. Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer, 1997 (Pan £9.99). The true story of an Everest expedition…

“Forget oak or fruit – there’s a new buzzword in the wine world,” says Jane MacQuitty in The Times: minerality. Although hard to define, it speaks of assertive texture and a tangy grip that lingers after the wine has been swallowed. Many mineral wines have a salty tang, a bit like the hit you get from mineral waters such as Vichy Célestins. It is more common in whites than reds, and more evident in old-world wines than new (where it is often masked by oak, sweetness or fruit). A good mineral wine to start with is Sicily’s bracing yet appealing organic 2019 Terra Madre Catarratto (£6.50; Co-op) made from the island’s indigenous catarratto grape. Tip-top muscadet is another mineral-laced winner: Fief Guérin’s racy, tongue-tingling 2018 Muscadet Sur Lie, Côtes de…

Astrid Kirchherr 1938-2020 The German artist Astrid Kirchherr, who has died aged 81, befriended The Beatles in Hamburg in the early 1960s, and took the defining photographs of the band as they stood on the threshold of stardom. Having fallen in love with Stuart Sutcliffe – the bass player sometimes referred to as the Fifth Beatle – she also did much to shape The Beatles’ image: she encouraged them to dress in black leather on stage, and – more lastingly – to abandon their greased, upswept Teddy Boy hairstyles, and brush their hair forwards into what became known as the mop top. Astrid Kirchherr was born in Hamburg in 1938, to a German father and a Swedish mother. She was evacuated to the Baltic during the War, and after it…

The New York Stock Exchange reopened its Wall Street trading floor after closing for two months for the first time in its 228-year history. Around 100 traders were assigned desks behind Plexiglas screens. The reopening coincided with further gains on global stock markets – heartened by the easing of lockdowns and the prospect of further government stimulus plans. The EU proposed a major recovery fund worth s750bn. The IMF forecasts that world economic production will plunge by 7.5% this year, reflecting the devastating consequences of lockdown. British public sector borrowing in April smashed all previous monthly records at £62.1bn: total UK debt now stands at 97.7% of GDP. Amid rumours the BoE could resort to negative base rates, £3.8bn worth of three-year gilts were shifted at -0.003%. Shares in Aston…

● Carry on disrupting Many thought the hype surrounding so-called “disruptors” was over. But in the post-Covid world it could well turn out to be justified, said Michael Mackenzie in the FT. One indicator is the “stark divergence” in the stock market. So far, big economic shutdowns have rewarded technology, e-commerce and healthcare groups, “leaving others trailing”. These stocks are no longer cheap, but may make “better long-term holdings” – particularly if their “robust growth prospects” are “enhanced by ultra-low interest rates”. That being the case, there are “broader implications for regional choices across global equity markets”. Citi Private Bank notes that China and the US have “the highest shares of the longer-term growth industries”, which suggests “focusing on a G2 world of China and the US may be one…

Stanley Ho The death of the “King of Gambling”, aged 98, threatens to reignite “long-simmering family rivalries”, said Bloomberg. A former kerosene trader, Ho transformed the Chinese territory of Macau “from a commercial backwater” into the “Las Vegas of Asia” – taking advantage of the fact that casinos, banned on the mainland, were legal in the former Portuguese colony. He never gambled himself, claiming it was a mug’s game. Property investments in Hong Kong helped Ho build his group, SJM Holdings, into an empire worth some $14.9bn. He was equally productive in his private life – fathering 17 children with four women. In 2018, his daughter Daisy became CEO. But other siblings and former wives are now jostling for control of “the jewel in the crown”. Possibly a recipe for…

Two friends who film themselves solving tricky sudoku puzzles have become an online sensation during lockdown. Simon Anthony and Mark Goodliffe launched Cracking the Cryptic in 2017, when Anthony quit his job at a London investment bank to try to earn a living solving puzzles online. Thanks to a new wave of lockdown fans, one of his videos now has nearly four million views. One of Hollywood’s biggest talent agencies has, for the first time, signed a virtual star onto its books. Miquela, a 19-year-old virtual influencer created by a California tech start-up, already has 2.3 million followers on Instagram, and the Creative Artists Agency reckons she has a bright commercial future ahead of her, in TV and film.…

Nicola Sturgeon announced this week that Scotland’s lockdown would be eased on Friday. In phase one of the return to normal life, people will be allowed to meet friends and relatives from one other household, outdoors and “in small numbers”. Non-contact activities, such as golf and fishing, will be permitted, and garden centres, recycling centres and drive-through restaurants will open. In all cases, however, people will have to remain two metres apart, and they are advised to stay as close to home as possible, with a five-mile limit suggested as a guide. Schools in Scotland are due to start reopening with the start of the new term on 11 August, but pupils are likely only to be in class part-time.…

Amsterdam PM’s loss: The Dutch PM, Mark Rutte, did not see his mother in the last weeks of her life because he was complying with his country’s lockdown rules, he revealed this week. Mieke Rutte-Dilling, 96, died in a care home in The Hague on 13 May, from causes unrelated to the pandemic. Her family had not seen her since 20 March, when visits to care homes were banned. Some reopened to visitors this week, however, and all of the country’s homes will be allowed to reopen in mid-June. As of Tuesday, the Dutch death toll from Covid stood at 5,890, giving it an official rate of 341 per million – far higher than in Germany, but lower than in Sweden, Italy, France and the UK. Karlsruhe, Germany VW ruling:…

This week’s edition of Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs featured Charles Hazlewood, conductor and founder of the Paraorchestra 1 Somebody’s Gonna Off The Man by Barry White, performed by Barry White and The Love Unlimited Orchestra 2 A Rainbow in Curved Air, written and performed by Terry Riley 3* Ach, ich fühls from The Magic Flute by Mozart, performed by Gundula Janowitz and the Philharmonia Orchestra 4 Op. 27 – No. 4. Morgen! by Richard Strauss, performed by Jessye Norman and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig 5 Improvisation, written and performed by Olivier Latry 6 Kraftwerk-Re:werk by Charlotte Harding, Lloyd Coleman, Ralf Hütter, Florian Schneider and Emil Schult, performed by the Paraorchestra 7 Finale/Ndisakuthanda Mna from U-Carmen eKhayelitsha, by Georges Bizet, performed by Pauline Malefane, Andile Tshoni, Dimpho Di Kopane and the…

Historians and scientists argued for decades about the true cause of the Black Death, but genetic analysis of graves has established beyond doubt that it was caused by Yersinia pestis. Not only that, but DNA evidence indicates that the same pathogen caused the Plague of Justinian 800 years earlier, which is estimated to have killed at least 25 million people – up to half of the population – as it spread slowly through Asia, North Africa, Arabia and Europe. Yersinia also caused other great epidemics: the Italian Plague, which ravaged northern and central Italy, killing at least 280,000 people in 1629-31; and the Great Plague of London 1665-1666, which killed around 100,000. The last major plague pandemic began in Yunnan, China, in 1855, before spreading around the world in waves…

New York: the city that keeps coming back Molly Jong-Fast The Atlantic I can’t seem to pick up a newspaper these days, says Molly Jong-Fast, without reading yet another article about how my city, New York, is dying. The Covid-19 crisis has not only claimed the lives of 29,000 people in New York state, but has caused many other people, particularly the wealthy, to flee the metropolis – and the consensus is that many of them won’t be coming back. Pandemics, claims The New York Times, “are anti-urban”. Foreign Policy warns that cities could be in for “a bland and antiseptic future, perhaps even a dystopian one”. It’s not the first time that the end of New York has been predicted. Indeed, the subject is “practically a literary genre”. The…

There are fears that across England people are struggling to access emergency dental care, reports Molly Blackall in The Guardian. Since the start of the lockdown, patients requiring urgent treatment have been referred to newly created regional “hubs”. But according to staff and patients, “a combination of high demand and a lack of personal protective equipment” has caused many of these hubs to be overwhelmed; as a result, many people with broken teeth, abscesses and other conditions are being left in “unbearable pain”. A man in West Sussex reported having to make 26 phone calls before he was seen – and then he was told he couldn’t have the root canal work he needed, only a tooth extraction. “Toothache and earache are two of the worst kinds of pain, and…

The NHS’s contact tracing app was going to be at the centre of the Government’s “world class” trace and test policy – the strategy for taking England out of lockdown without triggering a second wave of infections. Yet now, it turns out we don’t need it after all, said John Rentoul in The Independent. Last week, the Government announced that the app, which is being tested on the Isle of Wight, won’t be ready for some time – but that the strategy can still go ahead, with humans doing the tracking. The NHS app has always looked flawed, said Wired. For one thing, unlike the contact tracing apps used in almost every other country, it is based on people self-reporting their symptoms. Not waiting for test results does offer some…

“Tell the audience what you’re going to say, say it; then tell them what you’ve said.” Dale Carnegie, quoted in Cato Unbound “In the end, politics is just a word we use to describe how we make trade-offs, and how we try to balance interests.” George Osborne in The Times “It is curious – curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare.” Mark Twain, quoted on The Bulwark “The Tory party never panics, except in a crisis.” Sir John Hoskyns, quoted in a letter to the FT “Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws.” Barbara Kingsolver, quoted on CountryLiving.com “I can tell you, the same way basketball players say ‘Game recognises game’, sloth recognises sloth.” Fran Lebowitz, quoted in…

For those hankering after light relief as lockdown drags on, here are five comedy series from the past two decades, each spanning multiple seasons: Review In this American show from 2014, Andrew Daly plays a critic who gives up reviewing films, food and art, to comment instead on life experiences chosen for him by the public. First comes stealing, then cocaine addiction, and then divorce – a mounting list of horrors and indignities that soon threaten his grasp on reality. Available to purchase on Amazon Prime. Black Books Dylan Moran stars as Bernard Black, a misanthropic bookshop owner prone to ridiculous rants, in this Channel 4 sitcom from the early noughties. It stars Tamsin Greig as his manic friend Fran, and Bill Bailey as the bullied, wonderfully excitable shop assistant,…

How to make the best of a freezer… With reducing shopping trips a priority, many of us have been “looking anew at our freezers”, says Tony Naylor in The Guardian. But how best to “manage those icy depths”? Dan McGeorge, head chef at Rothay Manor in Cumbria, recommends freezing ingredients in reusable silicone pouches or plastic food bags. Push out as much air as you can, to prevent corrosion from frozen air and minimise ice crystals. Once labelled, these packs can be stored upright in a freezer drawer, says Lulu Grimes, of BBC Good Food: “You just rifle through to find the right pack and pull it out.” Few foods are an absolute no-no to freeze, apart from boiled eggs and raw potatoes, says food writer Shivi Ramoutar. But some…

Tips of the week... how to create a family tree ● Make a note of everything you already know, and quiz older relatives. Search for old photographs, letters and documents. ● Build the tree. Online there are trees that do a lot of the hard work for you, by matching records to details you input. ● Birth, marriage and death records are a good place to start. See gov.uk/general-register-office (England and Wales). ● Censuses, which provide names, ages, addresses and places of birth, have also been taken in Britain every decade since 1841 (barring 1941). See familysearch.org. ● Parish records can show details of baptisms, marriages and burials dating back to the reign of Henry VIII, and many have now been digitised. See freereg.org.uk. ● As well as birth, marriage…

Millie Small 1946-2020 At the age of 17, Millie Small became the first Jamaican artist to have an international pop hit. Her exuberant cover of My Boy Lollipop reached No. 2 in the UK and US charts in 1964, and sold more than six million copies. One of the first major hits for Chris Blackwell’s Island Records (though it was released on the Fontana label), it helped introduced ska music to a global audience, said The New York Times, and in so doing, paved the way for the likes of Bob Marley, “who would popularise ska’s rhythmic successor, reggae”. Millicent Dolly May Small was born in Clarendon, Jamaica, in 1946, the youngest of 13 children. Her father worked on a sugar plantation. Aged 12 she came second in a talent…

France and Germany have earmarked m14bn in funds to take equity stakes in some of their biggest companies, said Tim Wallace in The Daily Telegraph. This week, Chancellor Rishi Sunak indicated the UK might follow suit. The Treasury has authorised a state bailout plan – dubbed “Project Birch” – as a last-resort measure to save “strategically important” companies. First up? Very possibly, Jaguar Land Rover, “the jewel in the crown” of Britain’s automotive sector, which employs some 40,000 people and reportedly needs funds totalling more than £1bn. Ultimately, the loan could be converted into an equity stake in JLR, which is owned by India’s Tata conglomerate – setting a precedent for a series of state bailouts of struggling firms. Sunak’s allies have, for now, played down “the idea that a…

The property portal Zoopla reports that enquiries from house-hunters jumped 88% across England after the market reopened earlier this month – taking them surging past “pre-lockdown levels”, said Melissa Lawford in The Daily Telegraph. But there has been a clear change in what property buyers are finding desirable. Coronavirus has delivered a “serious hit to London’s appeal”, with regional cities – particularly on the south coast and in the North – recording the biggest jumps. “The scale of the rebound... is welcome” – but also “surprising, given projections for a rise in unemployment and a major decline in economic growth”, noted Zoopla’s Richard Donnell. Indeed, Zoopla expects the resurgence to be “short-lived”. “Britain’s love affair with rising house prices borders on the pathological, so a mini-boom can’t entirely be ruled…

The week’s best shares 888 The Sunday Telegraph The online gambling firm is seeing strong trading, thanks to its casino and poker games, and the balance sheet looks sound. Regulation remains a worry, but 888 promotes “responsible gambling”. Yields over 3%. Buy. 135.2p. Braemar Shipping Services The Mail on Sunday Shipping is the “lifeblood” of the global economy, transporting such essential goods as wheat, oil and steel. Broker Braemar has a stellar reputation, decades of experience and “robust” management. Buy. 99p. Edinburgh Worldwide Investment Trust The Times This investment trust specialises in entrepreneurial businesses, especially in biotech, software and healthcare. A strong performance record is backed by a 21% return since January. Buy. 242.5p. Intertek Group The Times With 46,000 staff in 100 countries, Intertek provides testing services for many…