Innholdsfortegnelse for V. 1347 i The Week

Over and out: America goes home “The Biden administration will pay a huge price for this humiliating defeat” America’s longest war came to an end on Monday, said Julian Borger in The Guardian, when the last evacuation flight flew out of Kabul airport. An image released by the Pentagon taken through a night-vision lens showed the final US soldier – Major General Christopher Donahue, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division – stepping aboard a C-17 transport plane just before midnight local time. There was no fanfare or ceremony to mark the conclusion of the US’s 20-year presence in the country; just a statement from Secretary of State Antony Blinken that “a new chapter has begun”. Gunfire rang out over Kabul as Taliban militants celebrated the withdrawal and swept into the…

Dame Sarah Storey, who won a 16th gold medal, making the 43-year-old cyclist Britain’s most successful Paralympian of all time, a record she shares with the now retired swimmer Mike Kenny. She won the medal in the C5 time trial, which she completed so fast that she almost caught the tail of the men’s race at the Fuji International Speedway circuit. Loafers, blazers and rugby shirts, as preppy styles come back into fashion. Online retailers report that searches for top streetwear brands are falling – while young customers are flocking to classic preppy designer Ralph Lauren. On TikTok the style is known as “old money aesthetic”. Piers Morgan, after Ofcom cleared him of breaching the broadcasting code. A record 57,000 people complained to Ofcom after Morgan questioned a claim by…

Two-thirds of voters in Northern Ireland believe there should be a vote about its place in the UK, but only 37% want that vote to take place within the next five years. Around 31% of voters think there should be a vote some time after 2026. A further 29% don’t think there should be a vote at all. Asked to state how they would vote, 49% said they’d vote to stay in the UK, 42% would opt for a united Ireland, 9% don’t know. LucidTalk/The Observer In a survey conducted in the second week of August, nearly a third of British adults (32%) identified climate change, the environment and pollution as among the most important issues facing Britain, up from 16% in July. Ipsos Mori/The Daily Telegraph…

Wax’s strange meetings Ruby Wax has interviewed some extraordinary people in her time – leading her into some peculiar situations. In 1994, for instance, she met Madonna, who spent the entire interview lying on a bed in a Paris hotel room complaining that men are intimidated by her fame and saying she wished she could date a plumber. On another occasion, Wax suggested to O.J. Simpson that he was a murderer. He denied it emphatically, but he later turned up at her hotel and mimed stabbing her with a banana. One of the strangest of all was her meeting with Donald Trump, says Michael Odell in The Times. It was 2000, and the property mogul was already weighing up a presidential run. After five minutes of the interview, he walked…

Inflation is an economic phenomenon that dates back millennia. Ancient Egypt saw a classic inflationary cycle when Ptolemy IV (who ruled 221-204 BC) devalued the currency to recoup some of the costs of fighting a war in Syria. Similarly, in the late Roman Empire, to offset the effects of the Antonine Plague, the authorities began adding impurities to their silver coins so that more could be put in circulation. By AD 250, inflation upwards of 10,000% had crippled the Roman economy. The most famous European example is the German hyperinflation of 1923, caused by the Reichsbank’s decision to print money to pay war debts. It saw Germans papering their walls with their worthless marks – and was so traumatic that it still influences German monetary policy today. Similar policies in…

A US judge ordered a couple to pay $30,441 to their adult son – because they threw away his vast porn collection, which included 1,600 films as well as other items. David Werking, 43, had lived with his parents in Michigan for ten months after a divorce, and realised his collection was missing after he left. His father said he had done his son “a big favour getting rid of all this stuff”. But Judge Paul Maloney said his parents had no right to “destroy property that they dislike”. The man who was photographed as a baby on the cover of Nirvana’s classic album Nevermind is suing the band. Spencer Elden, now 30, argues that the nude image of him at four months old amounts to child pornography and has…

GERMANY The irrational wrath of the petrolheads Die Zeit (Hamburg) Pity those with the courage to challenge Germany’s car obsession, says Zacharias Zacharakis. The latest to incur the wrath of drivers is the Green Party’s candidate for Chancellor, Annalena Baerbock, who has proposed a “harmless”-sounding scheme for the state to subsidise anyone who buys a cargo bike to the tune of s1,000. These electric-powered cycles come with front-mounted boxes big enough to hold shopping, or even a couple of children, and could help cut car journeys and carbon emissions. But the plan has infuriated petrolheads, many of whom nurse a passionate “hatred” of cargo bikes – moaning that they’re “too heavy, too wide, too fast”. Why, they ask, should public cash be thrown at high earners in cities, so they…

Rain has fallen on the highest peak of Greenland’s vast ice cap for the first time since records began in the 1980s. The downpour took place on 14 August during a three-day heatwave. It was so unexpected that there were no gauges to measure the rainfall at the summit research station, two miles above sea level. Across Greenland, an estimated seven billion tonnes of water fell from the clouds. Before this century, above-zero temperatures at the summit were practically unheard of; in the past ten years they have occurred three times. The Greenland ice sheet “comprises almost 1.7 million square kilometres of glacial land ice”, said Willow Hallgren on The Conversation. It “contains enough ice to raise sea levels by more than seven metres if melted”. Last year, scientists warned…

“Follow the science” was once the Government’s “mantra” on Covid, said Peter Walker and Nicola Davis in The Guardian. It is heard less often these days, because – on the sensitive question of vaccinating 12- to 15-year-old children – science and politics are leading in “very different directions”. The Health Secretary Sajid Javid is now readying NHS England to roll out the jab for children over 12, amid fears that Covid-19 infections will rocket as children start returning to school this week. But the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) is still deliberating on the policy. It’s true that the issue raises difficult questions. Children are mainly at very low risk of serious illness from Covid-19. And some JCVI members want further research on the potential side effects of…

Nigella Lawson was the first television cook to make food sexy, said Constance Watson in the Daily Mail. She’s almost as well known for her glamorous image, innuendos and double entendres – “I’m smearing Nigella seeds all over my cheek but I feel I’m entitled”; “I love having an implement in each hand” – as she is for her recipes. But the author of How To Be A Domestic Goddess has come over “all coy” lately. Last week, she announced she was axing the word “slut” from her recipe for Slut Red Raspberries in Chardonnay Jelly, replacing it with “ruby”. The word, she explained, had “taken on a coarser, more cruel connotation” she wasn’t happy with. It follows her decision earlier this year to rename her Slut’s Spaghetti (a version…

Last Sunday’s 2021 Belgian Grand Prix lasted three laps, making it the shortest race in Formula 1 history, said Phillip Horton in Autoweek. In truth, it can’t really be called a “race” at all – it was more a “box-ticking exercise”. The heavy rain drenching the Ardennes Forest had made visibility terrible on the Spa-Francorchamps track, said Rebecca Clancy in The Times. Various attempts were made to get the race started, but safety concerns meant it had to be abandoned. Yet so determined was the FIA, the sport’s governing body, to “conjure up something it could call a ‘race’”, that it engineered a “farcical” solution. With the light fading at 6.44pm – nearly four hours after the official start time – the drivers took their place on the track behind…

To The Guardian One can perhaps forgive Americans for botching the Afghanistan campaign, but the British, who fought the Afghans three times (1839, 1878 and 1919) should have known better. When, before the first Anglo-Afghan war of 1839, Lord Auckland, the head of the British invading force, asked the Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the Sikh ruler of Punjab, to undertake the responsibility of invading Kabul, the maharaja refused; he knew only too well that they were easy to conquer but difficult to rule; that they were a mosaic of competing tribes, which ensured that no strong central authority maintained its power over them for too long. It is a pity that Western leaders could not foresee in 2001 what Ranjit Singh could in 1839. Randhir Singh Bains, London To the Financial…

“Young veterans are nothing new in the music biz, but it still feels odd that Jade Bird is just 23,” said Jem Aswad in Variety. A British-born singer-songwriter now based in the US, Bird released her first EP in 2017 and a strong debut album followed in 2019. But her new collection, Different Kinds of Light, is “the proverbial big step forward” – the sound of a “great singer” growing into her “stop-you-in-your-tracks” voice. Bird’s delivery remains smooth and powerful, but “there’s a subtlety and emotional depth that wasn’t there before”. Dave Cobb, her new producer, seems to have steered her in an “alt-country, Nashville” direction, which works well. Bird’s debut album was an arresting piece of “Americana-tinged pop rock”, driven by “remarkable songcraft”, said Emily Mackay in The Observer.…

Genuinely “delicate, witty” TV is in short supply these days, so three cheers for Netflix’s delightful new campus drama The Chair, said Barbara Ellen in The Observer. Sandra Oh stars as Professor Ji-Yoon Kim, incoming chair of the English department at a fictional Ivy League university. It’s a wildly dysfunctional place, with plummeting student enrolments and a staff made up of bickering dinosaurs. Ji-Yoon’s efforts to drag it into the 21st century are blocked by the dean, and her life is complicated by her crush on a junior colleague, Bill (Jay Duplass), and by the challenging behaviour of her daughter Ju Ju (“Do you have fur on your vagina?” she asks her nanny. “Can I see it?”) The show packs “a plethora of issues” into each of its six half-hour…

The Complete Poems by Emily Dickinson, 2016 (Faber £20). So much more than a recluse who wafted about dressed in white, Dickinson was a radical whose poems are as explosive today as when they were written. She was a modern poet and a scientific one. “That Love is all there is,/ Is all we know of Love;/ It is enough, the freight should be/ Proportioned to the groove.” That’s it, the whole poem, a perfect formula. The Silvering by Maura Dooley, 2016 (Bloodaxe £9.95). A collection of elegiac poems that make us think in new ways about absence. Dooley looks at what happens when we encounter the memory of something or someone lost, and records how those memories are fixed, like photographs, in the “silvering”. The emotions revisited are as…

Programmes Bin Laden: The Road to 9/11 Three-part documentary tracing Bin Laden’s journey from privileged Saudi schoolboy to the architect of the 9/11 attacks. Mon 6 Sep, C4 21:00 (60mins). A House Through Time Return of the popular history show: David Olusoga looks back at the early residents of a Victorian house in Leeds. Tue 7 Sep, BBC2 21:00 (60mins). Garage People Documentary offering a glimpse into a curious and unseen side of Russian life. In the Russian Arctic, men retreat to their garages to carve wood, distil vodka, breed quail and dream. Wed 8 Sep, BBC4 21:55 (95mins). imagine… Tom Stoppard tells Alan Yentob his life story with reference to his recent play Leopoldstadt, which is based loosely on his own family’s painful history. Thur 9 Sep, BBC1 22:35…

A beloved Taiwanese comfort food, lu rou fan is a slow-braised-until-melting meat sauce, served over rice, says Pippa Middlehurst. The texture of the meat varies depending on the region, with chunkier hand-cut pieces of pork belly being more common in the south, and mince (ground pork) in the north. Sometimes it is served with hard-boiled eggs. I first tried this dish in Taipei, served in a paper bowl with a small plastic spoon, with additional condiments on the table. This is my version of that much-loved dish. Serves 4 1 tbsp neutral oil 600g skin-on pork belly, diced into 1cm chunks 2-3 garlic cloves, crushed 2 tbsp light (soft) brown sugar 4 tbsp Shaoxing rice wine 1 tbsp runny honey 120ml light soy sauce 1 tsp Chinese five spice 1…

PD Ports/South Tees: Brexit super-port In August, the Prime Minister and Chancellor penned a letter to UK investors urging them to launch an “investment big bang” and back British infrastructure projects. It appears to have fallen on fertile ground, said Russell Lynch in The Sunday Telegraph. A hefty posse of investors – including Legal & General, Credit Suisse and the Duke of Northumberland – is closing in on a £2bn bid for one of Britain’s oldest and largest port operators, Teeside’s PD Ports, which was put up for sale by Brookfield, the Canadian asset management giant, in July. The driving force behind the move is the South Tees Development Corporation (STDC), led by the local “blue wall” mayor Ben Houchen – a “key” ally of Boris Johnson. A successful…

● Bitcoin gamble El Zonte, a small surf town in El Salvador, is “an unlikely place for a global financial revolution”, said Mat Youkee in The Guardian. But since 2018, it has been the “petri dish” of a pioneering gamble now set to be rolled out across the country. On 7 September, El Salvador will become the world’s first nation to adopt bitcoin as legal tender – the culmination of President Nayib Bukele’s ambitious aim of jump-starting the economy “on the back of a cryptocurrency wave”. The plan, involving a national digital wallet called “Chivo”, is to hand every citizen an initial bitcoin balance worth $30. But, after initial enthusiasm, the mood has “turned decidedly pessimistic”: people are anxious about being exposed to volatile cryptocurrencies. “I don’t think the president…

Stephen Jones A year after quitting his job in disgrace, Stephen Jones claims he has been effectively “expelled” from “the top tier” of banking, said The Mail on Sunday. Until last June, Jones, 57, headed the influential lobby group UK Finance. But the 2008 deal that made his name – helping negotiate a life-saving £7bn capital injection for Barclays from the United Arab Emirates – would also bring him down. When the financier Amanda Staveley, who orchestrated the deal, sued Barclays for £1.6bn last year, phone conversations were unearthed in which Jones described her as “thick as sh*t” and commented on the size of her breasts. He regrets his words, and says he and Staveley “are now on good terms”. Employers, it seems, are less forgiving. Ian Page His mother…

The long summer holidays are over and the new academic year is just beginning. After the stresses and strains of the last 18 months we’re keeping our fingers crossed that everything will go smoothly this term. In our latest issue we report on performing arts schools, investigate the pros and cons of tutoring and look at the importance of pupil voice. Did you know that today’s pupils are encouraged to air their views on everything from school food to the appointment of new teaching staff? Getting outside in the fresh air has been more crucial than ever in recent times. Our lead feature explores the exciting outdoor activities on offer in schools, whether it’s wild swimming, kayaking, mountain biking or fell running. As Dan Harrison, headmaster of Sedbergh School in…

What is the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award? The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, or DofE as it is more commonly known, is a unique opportunity for young people to challenge themselves by learning a new skill, taking on a physical activity, volunteering and completing an expedition. It comprises a series of programmes at three progressive levels – Bronze, Silver and Gold. The Bronze and Silver awards have four sections, the Gold five. The Bronze award is generally taken by pupils aged 14 and up, the Silver by those aged 15 and up and the Gold by students aged 17 and 18. How did it start? The award was set up in 1956 by the Duke of Edinburgh, who died in April at the age of 99. He had a lifelong commitment…

For pupils whose skills, abilities and in some cases physical attributes are under the spotlight, mental health and wellbeing are a constant concern. Schools work hard at managing expectations and monitoring welfare. St Mary’s Music School has a strong focus on pastoral care, spearheaded by a team comprising the head of guidance, the head of primary, the boarding house manager and a learning support teacher. Initiatives include pupil-led drop-in sessions and buddy support. Managing expectations is also about helping children to think realistically and strategically about future careers. Not all will be stars; many will have portfolio careers and some may forge their own creative pathways. Tring Park encourages pupils to think about second careers, particularly dancers, who rarely dance professionally beyond their mid 30s. Tring Park principal Stefan Anderson…

The days of tacit agreement to school policies and practices are being swept away by a revolution in so-called pupil voice, giving young people a real say in the running of the institutions they attend. Pupils have been speaking out on everything from uniforms, school meals and homework to the appointment of new staff and building projects. Some are even having a say in the future direction of schools. Traditional forums such as school councils have been updated to include new steering committees, joint staff-pupil forums and more opportunities for younger pupils to speak up. Rebecca Baxter, assistant head and head of sixth form at University College School (UCS) in Hampstead, says pupil voice is a “philosophy that has evolved” and is more prominent than ever before. “I can’t recall…

Today’s teenagers have strong views on everything from diversity and equality to the environment and waste. They are keen to air their opinions and schools are increasingly keen to listen to them and facilitate pupil-led change. University College School’s pioneering diversity and equality steering group was established in 2020 to evaluate equality in the areas of race, gender and LGBTQIA+. More than 70 staff and pupil volunteers answered the call to serve and were split into three committees. They met regularly and carried out extensive research and consultation before reporting back. “It was a 360-degree approach, looking at every single aspect of school life from the ground up,” says Rebecca Baxter. “Every child in the school completed a survey whose questions were designed by staff and trained pupils. This was…

Ben Isaacs Features editor The Week Junior The 13-Storey Treehouse by Andy Griffiths, illustrated by Terry Denton (7+) What should an author and illustrator do when they’re struggling to create a book? Why, create a book about not being able to create a book of course. So meta. The premise is that characters Andy and Terry (based on the real people behind this book) are a perennially distracted author and illustrator duo who live in the world’s most incredible treehouse. It’s packed with wildly imaginative comic-book-style illustrations that bring to life the absurd experiences of Andy and Terry. The first in a series devoted to pure unadulterated fun, young readers will come for the pictures but stay for the jokes.…

Clare Balding is one of the nation’s leading TV and radio broadcasters. She joined the BBC in 1994 and has covered many of the biggest live events in sport, including the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. She has hosted her own interview show, presented factual documentaries and walked the length and breadth of the UK for BBC Radio 4’s Ramblings. She attended Downe House, a girls’ boarding school in Berkshire, and read English at the University of Cambridge. She has written two books for grown-ups and four children’s novels. Her new book, Fall Off, Get Back On, Keep Going: 10 Ways to be at the Top of Your Game (Wren & Rook, £9.99), is a guide to help children embrace their mistakes, learn from them and move on. I…

Controversy of the week The supply chain crisis “Gaps on supermarket shelves. Fast food outlets pulling milkshakes and bottled drinks from their menus. Restaurants running out of chicken and closing.” These are only the most visible signs of “Britain’s deepening supply chain crisis”, said Tom Wall and Phillip Inman in The Observer. Stocks in shops and warehouses have slumped to their lowest levels since 1983. Some 70,000 pigs are stranded on farms because there isn’t the capacity to transport and process them. The primary reason for all this is an estimated 100,000 shortfall in the number of UK lorry drivers needed to get goods and materials moving. That’s partly because 14,000 EU drivers have left the country since Brexit, and only 600 have returned. Meanwhile, the pandemic has prevented new…

A woman’s four-year legal battle to save the life of her alpaca came to its end this week, when the animal was destroyed. Defra officials accompanied by police arrived at Helen Macdonald’s farm near Bristol and led Geronimo into a trailer as protesters looked on. The animal had twice tested positive for bovine TB. Chief Veterinary Officer Christine Middlemiss said it was a “sad situation”, but that animals with the disease had to be culled to avoid its spread. More than 28,000 cattle were slaughtered in the year to March 2021 after testing positive for TB.…

Berlin Wurst is over: Four universities in Berlin have announced that their 34 canteens will in future serve mainly vegetarian and vegan meals, to help make campuses more “climate friendly”. From October, no meat will be served on Mondays, and the vast majority of dishes on other days will also be meat-free. According to the UN, farming animals is responsible for 14.5% of greenhouse gas emissions, and though German cuisine is meat-based, the universities say students had called for more plant-based meals. In one survey, almost half of students in Berlin described themselves as vegan or vegetarian. Paris Barnier wants top job: Michel Barnier – the EU’s former Brexit negotiator – has entered the race to be the conservative candidate in next year’s French presidential election. Barnier, 70, is positioning…

“Some people seem to think that we were all much more profound when we didn’t have the internet. They will acknowledge that we didn’t know anything, because you had to go to a library to look things up; but feel that, without trivial distraction, we were on a constant journey of discovery through complex thought or the natural world. That’s not how I remember it at all. Early childhood was all baking crisp packets to see if they would shrink so you could turn them into a badge; adolescence was all inhaling everyday household sprays to see if they would make you high. It was, in many ways, like a live-action version of the internet – plough a large amount of time into an activity that, even if it works,…

Edinburgh Covid surge: Scotland recorded 7,113 new Covid infections on Sunday – its highest daily tally since the pandemic began. Humza Yousaf, the Health Secretary, warned that the NHS was facing a “perfect storm” of pressure, and urged under-40s to get their second jabs. Two-thirds of new cases are in under-40s, and 30% of hospital admissions in the past month have involved patients in that age group. Health experts have suggested that the surge in cases is the result of Covid restrictions being lifted on 9 August, a week before Scottish children started to return to school after the holidays. Citing figures showing that 479 people were in hospital in Scotland with Covid last Friday, up from 312 the week before, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon described the situation as “fragile”.…

Trump is still fighting the last election Michelle Cottle The New York Times Believe it or not, people are still contesting ballots from the Trump-Biden election, says Michelle Cottle. Last week, the result of a third – and hopefully final – review of the ballot in Maricopa County, Arizona, was due to be delivered. Alas, the much-delayed report was postponed again owing to a Covid outbreak among the audit team. “And so the spectacle grinds on.” Two previous recounts confirmed Donald Trump’s “loser status”. But to appease Trump, Republican state senators arranged for this third review, which has been overseen by a private contractor of their own choosing named Cyber Ninjas. The Florida-based firm has no experience of auditing votes, and the way it has gone about it has been…

A device that can stem bleeding from a stab wound in under a minute is the British contender for a prestigious design award. Joseph Bentley, a 22-year-old product design graduate from Essex, came up with the idea after two of his friends were stabbed, one near-fatally. The invention is a drill-sized device that inflates a silicon balloon inside a wound, stopping bleeding and allowing a clot to form. It is designed for first responders such as the police to use while they wait for medical assistance. Current alternatives such as tight gauze dressings are often unable to prevent blood loss and haemorrhaging. The React (Rapid Emergency Actuating Tamponade) device, which is undergoing medical testing, could save hundreds of lives a year. It is the UK entry in the international James…

Back in April 2002, George W. Bush explained to a group of US army cadets that the history of imperial military involvement in Afghanistan was “one of initial success, followed by long years of floundering and ultimate failure. We are not going to repeat that mistake,” he assured them. But we did, said Rod Dreher in Newsweek. In that same speech, Bush vowed that the US would rebuild war-torn Afghanistan as it had postwar Europe. Yet 20 years and $2trn later, “our nation-building folly” has ended in “catastrophe”, with the Taliban back in charge, and the US humiliated. But while the speed of the takeover may have been a shock, it was always clear that America’s Afghan mission would end badly, because the premise on which it was based –…

“To betray, you must first belong.” Kim Philby, quoted on The Browser “There is something about a bureaucrat that does not like a poem.” Gore Vidal, quoted in Forbes “The past is never dead, it’s not even past.” William Faulkner, quoted in The Times “You have the watches. We have the time.” Taliban saying, quoted in The Guardian “I prefer dead writers because you don’t run into them at parties.” Fran Lebowitz, quoted in The New York Times “Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.” Will Durant, quoted in The i Paper “Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial ‘we’.” Mark Twain, quoted in The Print “War is a series of catastrophes that result in a victory.” Georges Clemenceau, quoted…

England’s crushing innings victory over India in the third Test – achieved in just over three days – was a wonderful turnaround for a team whose form has been mediocre in recent months, said Elizabeth Ammon in The Times. Yet it was also a personal landmark for their captain. The win at Headingley was Joe Root’s 27th victory as England captain – taking him past Michael Vaughan, the previous record holder. “I’m living my boyhood dream,” Root, 30, said afterwards. “I couldn’t be more proud to have gone past Michael.” But there’s another record Root is chasing, said Geoff Lemon in The Guardian. Ever since his two huge innings in Sri Lanka in January, “cricket badgers” have been eyeing the possibility Root could score the most Test runs ever in…

From silent cinema onwards, bicycles have played a significant role in the movies. Here are five great films in which they loom large: Bicycle Thieves The most beloved of the socially-conscious “neorealist” films made in Italy after the War, Vittorio De Sica’s stark yet tender 1948 drama follows an impoverished man and his young son as they search Rome for the stolen bicycle that he badly needs for his new job. Breaking Away British director Peter Yates is best known for Bullitt, but this 1979 coming-of-age comedy-drama about four working-class boys in Bloomington, Indiana, is his masterpiece. Social tensions between our heroes and the town’s snobbish student population come to a head in a climactic cycle race. E.T. From The Wizard of Oz to The Sound of Music and beyond,…

The abstract painter Ben Nicholson (1894-1982) was one of this country’s most important modern artists, said Simon O’Hagan on The Arts Desk. He “played a key role in introducing cubism to British art”, and was closely linked with contemporaries such as Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth, to whom he was married for nearly 13 years. This idiosyncratic exhibition at Pallant House in Chichester focuses on the inspiration he drew from an unlikely source: “mundane” household objects. Nicholson would return to certain items of kitchenware and tools and paint them repeatedly over the years as he developed his artistic style. The show comprises more than 40 paintings, carved reliefs and works on paper, alongside some of the still-life objects that inspired them. The result is “a positive riot of mugs, jugs…

New cars: what the critics say The Daily Telegraph With this electric plug-in version of the Bentayga, Bentley seems to be offering a “perfect blend of opulence, power and frugality”, but it doesn’t quite deliver on that. It’s still a 2.6-tonne SUV, after all. And while it offers “palatial splendour” and comfort, there are other, more powerful, plug-in hybrids out there, such as the Porsche Cayenne and Audi Q8, which cost “considerably less cash”. Car Magazine The Bentayga offers three modes; EV-only, Hybrid and (battery preserving) Hold – all selected via dial. The throttle has a tangible barrier between electric and petrol power. Push the pedal so far and you engage only the former; push through and you get the combined power of both. “Like kickdown of yore, it’s simple,…

When Tim Cook took over from Steve Jobs as CEO of Apple in August 2011, “even the most boosterish of Apple fanboys worried that the company was destined to decline” without its “original Willy Wonka”, said The Economist. How wrong they were. Under Cook’s tenure, the iPhone-maker’s shares have risen 1,200%, establishing Apple as the world’s most valuable company, worth around $2.5trn. Last week, Cook scooped a $750m payout for his efforts after selling most of his five million shares – the final tranche of a stock award grant based on performance, said Emily Hawkins in City AM. It was the maximum possible payout. Towards the end of his life, Jobs worried that Apple “had failed to tame the emerging world of cloud services”, said Richard Waters in the FT.…

House prices The UK’s boom this year has been matched by many countries globally, indicating that it’s being driven by factors other than Britain’s stamp duty holiday. “The end of the tax break is unlikely to burst the bubble – but a rise in interest rates could.” Bonds Governments and businesses have borrowed heavily during the pandemic, taking advantage of ultra-low interest rates. The risk for those that need to roll over debts soon is a very sudden change in rates. Stocks The same is true of equities. While Mark Haefele of UBS expects a “smooth landing” as the central banks tighten spigots, any “overzealous” attempt “to tame inflation risk” puts markets at risk of a nasty shock. Commodities Metals have been booming, but copper “offers a salutary lesson”. Having…

The week’s best shares British American Tobacco Investors Chronicle BAT has a broad geographical spread and is expanding into the non-tobacco vaping market. Never going to win ESG prizes, but margins top 38%, and it yields a well-covered 8.1%. Buy. £27.06. Fulham Shore The Sunday Times The group behind pizza chain Franco Manca was hit hard by Covid, despite a shift to deliveries. Sales are now soaring, and cheaper rents are a boon. It is eyeing up younger brands as it expands in the UK and overseas. Buy. 17.1p. Inchcape The Times Inchcape distributes new and used vehicles worldwide. Cash-generative and benefiting from pent-up demand – it has raised profits guidance twice this year. Targeting Asia and pushing into after-sales. Buy. 890p. Marks & Spencer Group The Times The high…

This is the time of year when sixth formers up and down the country are working out their university choices, writing their personal statements and submitting their UCAS application forms. The official UCAS closing date is in late January (deadlines for Oxford, Cambridge and most medicine, dentistry and veterinary science courses are in mid-October). However, many schools prefer to send pupils’ UCAS applications by late October. They reckon that completing them early enables youngsters to concentrate on their academic studies. From UCAS to university websites, there’s a plethora of information on offer these days, but students often find it hard to decide the courses they want to study and the universities they want to attend. There’s also the option of applying for an apprenticeship if they’d rather get on the…

The Gold, Silver and Bronze programmes take different amounts of time to complete because they vary in the levels of challenge and the minimum age required. Participants can do the levels in any order, but most begin at Bronze and work their way upwards. The Bronze level usually takes at least six months, the Silver 12 months (or six if the candidate already has the Bronze) and the Gold 12 to 18 months. In some UK schools, the DofE programme is voluntary but in others students do the Bronze award as part of the wider PSHE (personal, social, health and economic) curriculum. By the time students work towards their Silver and Gold awards the activities take place outside the normal school timetable.…

External guests and speakers who come into school to impart their wisdom are always a hit with students – but when that person is the singer Rita Ora, it can create quite a buzz. “We have good connections with our alumni and Rita has come back to visit at times,” says Sylvia Young. “There’s a lot of excitement but pupils know to keep it down and not to make a fuss.” Celebrated alumni undoubtedly provide role models to pupils, as well as hope to parents who are footing the bill. Nicholas Hoult, who progressed from About A Boy to Mad Max: Fury Road, and former Spice Girl Emma Bunton also found fame beyond Sylvia Young. Phenomenally successful actresses like Lily James, Star Wars star Daisy Ridley and Jessica Brown Findlay…

Being part of a decision-making process was extremely worthwhile, says Rosie, deputy head of school at Canford. “What decisions should be made and how they should be discussed has been really valuable in encouraging a bottom-up decision-making process in the school community – rather than top-down,”she says.“Learning to be part of a team and to manage a team of peers my own age has inspired me to look to future life, with the incentive to hear from everyone and much more of a buy-in from everyone involved in a business situation.” At Kilgraston, new head girl Maria says she has benefitted from having easy access to decision makers. “Our school empowers you to have a voice to take into the wider world – to know that your opinion really matters,”…

Amanda Lockwood Learning resource centre librarian, Taunton School The Arrival by Shaun Tan (7+) This beautiful, hopeful and empathy-building graphic novel demands a high level of engagement and skilled decoding of images, though it contains no legible text whatsoever. Any writing that the characters come across is in an entirely fictitious alphabet, which serves to heighten the reader’s awareness of what it must be like to find yourself trying to make a new start in a strange country. Readers may not even recognise that they are reading, because every piece of information is conveyed through powerful images, but this book could be the gateway they need to engagement with the printed word. Erin Caine Head of English The Moat School Dragons at Crumbling Castle by Terry…

London City Junior School 4 Gray’s Inn Place, London WC1R 5EY 020 3680 6361 cityjuniorschool.org.uk Open day dates: Check website for details Devonshire House Preparatory School 2 Arkwright Road, Hampstead, London NW3 6AE 020 7435 1916 devonshirehouseschool.co.uk Open day dates: 16 September and 30 September Godolphin and Latymer School Iffley Road, Hammersmith London W6 0PG 020 8741 1936 godolphinandlatymer.com Open day dates: Check website for details Hampton School Hanworth Road, Hampton, Middlesex TW12 3HD 020 8979 5526 hamptonschool.org.uk Open day dates: Visitor events throughout the year (by appointment). Check website for details Hawkesdown House 27 Edge Street, London W8 7PN 020 7727 9090 hawkesdown.co.uk Open day dates: Contact school office for a private tour with the headmistress Highgate School North Road, London N6 4AY 020 8340 1524 highgateschool.co.uk Open day…

The sound of mobile phones ringing could become obsolete as young people increasingly turn their phones to silent. Downloads for ringtones in the UK have slumped by almost a quarter since 2016. Analysts say this may be because younger users spend so much time on their phones that they don’t need to be alerted to incoming calls – and they prefer to communicate via instant messaging anyway. To stop phones pinging at school, or at work, they keep them on silent. More than half of M&S’s clothing stores now stock men’s suits, suggesting the move away from formal-wear could outlast the pandemic. Rails of matching jackets and trousers have been replaced by “broken suits” – chinos and shirts.…

A new, greener type of petrol was introduced to service stations across Britain this week. The new national standard grade is now E10 petrol, which is blended with 10% bioethanol, distilled from plant material; the previous standard grade was E5, which is 5% bioethanol. About 95% of petrol-powered vehicles on the road today can use E10 safely, and all cars built since 2011 are compatible. However, at least 600,000 older cars should not use it for long periods, because of bioethanol’s corrosive properties. MPs say E10 petrol will cut CO2 emissions by some 750,000 tonnes a year.…

Western charity can’t save the world Devi Sridhar The Guardian It feels as if life is at last returning to normal in Britain, says Devi Sridhar. Clubbers are out in force in London; festivals are going ahead. It’s a different story in places like Indonesia, Brazil and India. There, the Delta variant is causing devastation. Hospitals are buckling under the strain, beds become available only if someone dies. In Uganda, 30 patients in an intensive care unit were reported to have died on a single night after oxygen supplies ran out. Wealthier countries can help by sending skilled staff and essential equipment, but what these places really need is lots of doses of Covid vaccines. Rich nations have pledged to send them, both individually and collectively through the Covax scheme…

Why didn’t Joe Biden “get more Afghan allies and refugees out before the US troops withdrew”? Disorganisation and false confidence in the Afghan government may have played a part, said Catherine Rampell in The Washington Post, but there’s also “a more stomach-churning possibility”: Biden delayed refugee evacuations because “he was afraid of what Fox News might say”. Officials told Reuters that he feared “the optics” of flying in thousands of Muslim refugees, at a time when the nativist Right is attacking him for the influx of migrants at the Mexican border. If true, this reflects appallingly on him. Some bigots may be “conspiracy-theorising about the dangers of resettling Afghan allies”, and suggesting the US can’t afford to take in lots of these refugees; but the reality is that – morally…

A landmark in nuclear fusion “Scientists have come tantalisingly close to reproducing the power of the Sun,” said Kenneth Chang in The New York Times – “albeit only in a speck of hydrogen for a fraction of a second.” Nuclear fusion, the power that fuels the Sun, could in theory be harnessed to produce near-limitless clean energy. Unlike nuclear fission – the process used in power plants – which involves splitting atoms, fusion means joining hydrogen atoms together so they form helium, and release a vast amount of energy. While the process has been understood for many decades, human engineering is only beginning to meet the challenge. Last month, scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California reached the threshold of “fusion ignition”: the point at which fusion becomes…

Morecambe and Wise were “bored stiff” by Monty Python, a newly unearthed interview reveals. Speaking to a university TV station in 1973, Eric Morecambe said the Python stars served up “university comedy”, adding: “I’m afraid a lot of it is very unprofessional.” Asked which parts of Flying Circus he liked best, he replied: “The opening and the finish. It’s the bit in the middle I don’t like.” A “merry” Michael Gove was seen dancing to jungle music at a nightclub in his home town of Aberdeen last weekend. Witnesses claim the minister – who recently separated from his wife, Sarah Vine – turned up at 1.15am and tried to dodge the £5 entry fee to the Bohemia club by saying, “I’m the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.” He then…

“Do you ever feel like you’re going slightly insane,” asked Charlotte Ivers in The Sunday Times – as if you suddenly don’t understand the world? That’s how I felt as Operation Ark unfolded, the bizarre sideshow featuring Paul “Pen” Farthing, a former Royal Marine who runs a Kabul animal charity, and who wanted to evacuate his 200 rescue cats and dogs to the UK. When he was denied access to an RAF flight, a vociferous lobbying campaign ensued. Farthing himself left an expletive-laden voicemail threatening to “destroy” a government adviser who he felt had been unhelpful. The Defence Secretary Ben Wallace complained that it was a distraction from the evacuation effort, and said his priority was “people not pets”. Amazingly, many took issue with this. Caller after caller on LBC…

It must count as one of the most dramatic days in Manchester United’s history – and all without a single ball being kicked, said Jim White in The Daily Telegraph. Last Thursday, United fans took to social media to mourn the fact that their former hero, the Portuguese superstar Cristiano Ronaldo, was “in talks” with bitter rival Manchester City about a transfer from Juventus, the team he has played for in the past three seasons. A move to the Etihad seemed assured. Man Utd fans fumed over Ronaldo’s “treachery”, cursed his super-sized ego, and hopefully predicted that, at 36 years old, he’d “prove a liability” for Pep Guardiola’s side. Just 24 hours later, they were eating their words, said Paul Hirst and Pol Ballús in The Times. While City vacillated,…

How to get better MPs To the Daily Mail Why do most of us think our MPs are useless? An election is essentially a job application where the electorate are the employers and the prospective MP is applying for the position to serve us. Yet we are asked to vote for someone chosen by a party, and they will be expected to follow an ideology. It’s time to change our approach and support the person who will best represent our aspirations for the place we live and the country as a whole, regardless of party. Prospective MPs should provide a CV, so we can judge their competence to represent us. I’d want to know about their work history and sources of remuneration. Add to that their accomplishments, qualifications and skills,…

The artist Elizabeth Blackadder, one of Scotland’s most renowned painters, has died just a month short of her 90th birthday, said Ilona Amos in The Scotsman. Celebrated for her “exquisite” depictions of flowers and cats, Blackadder became the first woman to be elected to both the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh and the Royal Academy in London. Born in Falkirk in 1931, she was encouraged to take up drawing by her engineer father, said Charles Darwent in The Guardian. While studying at the Edinburgh College of Art in the 1950s, where she would later teach, she began to forge a style that looked to both the intricate decorative flourishes of Byzantine art, and to the Scottish colourists whose spirit “hovered about” the college. Blackadder admired the likes of Matisse and…

A great day is had by all at Steph Casey’s wedding, and Vince patches things up with his other daughter, Beth, thanks to Elizabeth. Ben’s in a state – he met Beth at the wedding and fancies her, but he’s still going out with Evie. Brian is disgruntled after he’s outvoted by the family as they interview candidates for farm manager. Shula and Neil catch up; she thinks he’s about to admit his feelings but is disappointed when he only wants to discuss Martha’s memory box. Susan confides in Pat that she’s worried Neil and she are drifting apart. Later, Chris surprises them with a gift of dinner at Grey Gables, and Neil agrees they need to spend more time together. Brian and Jennifer meet Stella, the new farm manager;…

Burnt Orange 59 Middle Street, Brighton, East Sussex (01273-929923) This determinedly fashionable new restaurant in Brighton could easily have been insufferable, says Jay Rayner in The Observer. The menu is sprinkled with words like “searing and blistering”. The music is “curated” by local celebrity Norman Cook – aka Fatboy Slim – and there’s no danger of forgetting this fact: “Cook’s choice of top tunes ricochets vigorously off all the hard surfaces”. What saves the restaurant is the cooking. “Skilled restaurateur Razak Helalat” and his team – also responsible for nearby Salt Room and Coal Shed – really “know what they are doing”. A “thick slab of aubergine” is cooked slowly in the wood-fired oven to the point where it has a “baba ganoush softness”. A hunk of rib-eye, marinated in…

Modest jazz man who was the lynchpin of the Rolling Stones Charlie Watts 1941-2021 Although Charlie Watts, who has died aged 80, was a member of the Rolling Stones for nearly 60 years, he did not regard himself as a rock star, said The Daily Telegraph; nor did he come across as one. A dapper, unassuming man whose abiding love was jazz, he was happier in a well-cut suit than in a leather jacket or kaftan, and when Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were being chased by screaming fans, busted for drugs and pilloried by politicians, he was quietly getting on with his drumming, maintaining a zen-like focus during their concerts, while they postured and pouted in front of him. In the heady 1960s and 1970s, he eschewed the groupies…

Is Powell fit to continue at the Fed? Editorial The Economist Should the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, be reappointed when his term expires in February? His record is mixed, says The Economist. Before the pandemic, Powell’s loose monetary policy “helped unemployment reach historic lows without provoking inflation”. He also acted fast to prevent collapse when the economy locked down early last year. But since then, his “hand has looked less steady”. Failure to foresee recent surging inflation has made Powell’s “promises” that it will soon subside “less reassuring”. Indeed, the Fed may yet be forced into “an abrupt reversal of stimulus”. Even so, President Biden ought to stick with him – partly because any replacement chosen by this administration “would probably be even keener” on prolonging quantitative…

Christopher Wolsey Became headmaster of Ibstock Place School in January 2O21 Emma Goldsmith Joins the Dragon in Oxford this term Michael Gray Moves to Hereford Cathedral School as headmaster this month Elaine Purves Joins Queen Anne’s School, Caversham in January 2022…

Thorngrove School, near Newbury in Berkshire, is very much “a boiler suits and wellies” school. Staff run forest school sessions in the woods, where children make bridges over the stream, play tracking games and study wildlife, and the 65 youngest pupils (nursery to year 2) start every day by walking or running a mile. The Daily Mile initiative was launched in 2012 by St Ninians Primary School in Stirling and proved so successful that nearly 13,000 schools and nurseries round the world now take part. “Rain, shine, snow or wind, our pupils do it every day,” says Victoria McSorland, head of Thorngrove’s lower school, who runs with the pupils. “Some of the children run the whole time, some walk a bit and run a bit and some skip and dance.…