Innholdsfortegnelse for V. 1358 i The Week

What happened After a fortnight of gruelling negotiations in Glasgow, the Cop26 climate talks ended with a deal late on Saturday. Alok Sharma, the UK cabinet minister who chaired the talks, was reduced to tears by a last-minute concession demanded by India, with China’s backing: they insisted on replacing a pledge to “phase out” coal with one to “phase down” its use. Nevertheless, Sharma urged the conference to approve the entire package lest it all unravel. Nearly 200 nations agreed rules for implementing the 2015 Paris Accords, and pledged to accelerate their decarbonisation plans. However, these pledges fell well short of those required to meet the Paris goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Temperatures have already risen by 1.1°C. Several small island nations criticised the agreement,…

Boris Johnson is “commencing his descent”, said Matthew Parris in The Times. The end of his political journey may come in “years or only months; but it’s now only a matter of time”. Johnson’s difficulties didn’t start with Owen Paterson and the sorry saga in which he marshalled his Tory troops to get the MP off the hook – after he’d broken the lobbying rules – only to then perform a chaotic U-turn. “An appreciation of his lack of grip” had settled on the nation before then. But this “Tory sleaze” story has “gone crazy”, and for the first time, the “rascal” Johnson hasn’t “got away with it”. “By his folly, the Prime Minister has awoken a whole pack of sleeping dogs.” His attempt to rewrite the rules has drawn…

Former Yorkshire cricketer Azeem Rafiq has told MPs he was subject to years of racist abuse at the club. Testifying to a select committee, the 30-year-old said that he and other people of Asian backgrounds were routinely referred to as “p**i” and other derogatory terms, such as “elephant washers”, and that it was never challenged. He accused cricketer Gary Ballance of “constant racist banter”, and of referring to all people of colour as “Kevin”. Another player, he said, had then bought a black dog and named it Kevin.…

Los Angeles Britney “freed”: Britney Spears has been released from the controversial “conservatorship” that has denied her control of her estimated $60m fortune, and aspects of her career and personal life since 2008. At a hearing in September, the singer’s father, Jamie Spears, 69, whom she’d accused of abusive and controlling behaviour, was removed as conservator and a temporary replacement was appointed. Now the arrangement has been scrapped altogether by a court in Los Angeles. Spears, 39, hailed it as her “best day ever”, while her fans, whose determined #FreeBritney campaign has helped fuel intense public interest in the case over many years, celebrated outside the court. Los Angeles Vaccine protests: Thousands of people took part in protests in Los Angeles last week as the strictest vaccine mandate in the…

The fashion for using leaf blowers seems to have reached new heights in Poole, Dorset, where a council workman was spotted using a leaf blower to blast away fallen foliage – in the middle of a wood. A dog walker spotted the man on a muddy woodland path in Branksome Park Wood. “I was inclined to say to him, ‘Isn’t this really pointless?’” said the unnamed woman. A council worker suggested the leaves were probably being cleared away in case they became slippery and unsafe. A terminally ill man has been arrested for mooning a speed camera. Darrell Meekcom, 55, who has multiple system atrophy, bared his buttocks in front of a camera van near his home in Kidderminster, which he said had “always bugged me”; the gesture was one…

EUROPEAN UNION The EU’s dysfunctional power couple Il Foglio (Milan) Europe is being ruled by a “dysfunctional couple”, say Paola Peduzzi and Micol Flammini. Since Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, and Ursula von der Leyen, the Commission president, took up their roles in 2019, they have fought over who is the real “president of Europe”. Domestically, they have separate mandates, but the lines are less clear on the international scene, where neither had much previous experience (von der Leyen is a former German defence minister, while as Belgium’s prime minister, Michel had his hands full running his fractious coalition government). Their predecessors Donald Tusk and Jean-Claude Juncker had a “gentleman’s agreement” about who took precedence when. Not so these two. Each “loves the limelight” and finds it…

For centuries, a plant called matalafi has been used by traditional healers in Samoa to treat conditions ranging from fevers to aches and pains. Patients drink the juice of the leaf, or rub it on the skin. Now the plant’s medicinal properties have been confirmed by a scientific study, which found that it could be as effective as ibuprofen at reducing inflammation. Researchers at the Scientific Research Organisation of Samoa identified two compounds in matalafi – rutin and nicotiflorin – with anti-inflammatory properties. And when they tested their effect on lab-grown immune cells, they found they were “as potent” as ibuprofen. They also discovered that matalafi has the ability to reduce excess iron in cells, which raises the possibility that it could be used to treat diseases that produce iron…

“Recollections may vary,” was the Palace’s response to the explosive claims made by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex in their interview with Oprah Winfrey, said Jenny Hjul on Reaction. life. Alas for Meghan, she was not able to rely on that useful phrase last week, when her “truth” was challenged. During her recent privacy case against The Mail on Sunday, she’d denied cooperating with the authors of a flattering biography of her and Harry. Although Finding Freedom contained intimate details of their lives, her lawyers dismissed the idea as “a conspiracy theory”. But now, the couple’s ex-senior aide, Jason Knauf – who now works for the Cambridges – has handed the Mail’s lawyers a tranche of emails proving that Meghan not only authorised him to meet the writers, she…

It’s hard to imagine a more devoted husband than Richard Ratcliffe, said Clare Foges in The Times. Since his wife Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was detained in Iran on trumped-up charges in 2016, he has campaigned tirelessly for her release. Fearing that she might be given a further sentence, over the past three weeks he “starved himself on Whitehall, a desperate man playing his last card, muscles wasting, body creaking”. His hunger strike has now ended, and his family is still no closer to a solution; after five years of promising to “turn over every stone”, the Government has achieved nothing. Yet there is a simple solution: ministers could settle the UK’s debt of some £400m to Iran. In 1971, the UK agreed to sell 1,500 tanks to the Iranians. After the…

Ahead of this year’s T20 World Cup, few people gave Australia any chance of lifting the trophy, said Mike Atherton in The Times. The country has never really taken to sport’s shortest format. But on Sunday at the Dubai International Stadium, Aaron Finch’s team produced an “intimidating display” to crush New Zealand in the final and win their first ever T20 World Cup. Put into bat, New Zealand set a challenging total of 172-4 – largely thanks to their captain, Kane Williamson, who scored 85 in 48 balls. But in reply, Australia made light work of the target, romping to victory with seven balls to spare. This win was a sharp rejoinder to those who’d mocked Australia for rolling up to this tournament with “what looked suspiciously like a Test…

To The Guardian A salary of £82,000 a year, roughly three times the national average, plus generous expenses, should be more than enough to attract decent people into a career in politics. If it isn’t, the people being deterred probably are best doing other things. There is no need to “tighten restrictions” on MPs’ second jobs when the obvious solution is to ban them altogether. If an MP finds sufficient time to do additional work, he or she is clearly not devoting enough time to constituency work. The argument that a second job provides MPs with greater awareness of “real life” outside Westminster can be addressed by making it compulsory for MPs to spend two weeks of their summer break shadowing someone in their constituency doing full-time work, for less…

by Rose Tremain Chatto & Windus 281pp £18.99 The Week Bookshop £14.99 Rose Tremain is one of our “very best exponents” of historical fiction, said Ian Critchley in Literary Review – and her 15th novel is one of her most sparkling. Set in Victorian London, it tells the story of Lily Mortimer, a 16-year-old seamstress at Belle Prettywood’s Wig Emporium on Long Acre, who was raised at Coram’s Foundling Hospital. Lily nurses a dark secret, said Michael Arditti in the FT: after enduring years of horrendous abuse at Coram, she committed an act of violence which she now fears will come to light. An “ingenious blend” of historical novel, moral fable and fairy story, this is a work that “carries an intense emotional charge”. It certainly takes skill to “create…

Tick, Tick… Boom! 1hr 55mins (12A) Meta-musical set in 1980s New York Set in the late 1980s, Tick, Tick… Boom! is an “explosively entertaining” rock opera, adapted from an autobiographical stage show, said Robbie Collin in The Daily Telegraph. Its author, and central character, is Jonathan Larson, a struggling writer and composer living in a grotty New York bedsit as he works on a rock musical. He’s been at it for eight years, and with the clock ticking down to his 30th birthday, it’s starting to occur to him that he might never achieve his dreams. The piece is “painfully prescient”, for Larson would die aged 35, just before his show Rent became a global hit. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s directorial debutisa“bittersweet, fun-fuelled assault on the senses”, said Francesca Steele in The…

After the discussion of moving Summer Orchard’s operations to Bridge Farm, Natasha thinks Tony’s model railway barn could serve as her new workspace, until Helen puts her straight. Lynda fears The Mystery Plays are unravelling when Roy drops out so he can visit his family over New Year. Oliver intervenes, secretly offering Roy’s family a deal at Grey Gables so they can come to Ambridge instead. When the Grundys need a new venue for their vow renewal party, Oliver offers a conference room at Grey Gables. Somehow, Eddie switches the offer to the ballroom, and soon the small family gathering has grown into a big bash with half the village promising help. Oliver reminds Eddie of the hotel’s rules; Clarrie confides in Mia that she doesn’t want a big party.…

Serves 6-8 For the pastry: 100g plain flour, plus extra for dusting 50g dark rye flour 100g caster sugar 1 tsp baking powder 100g unsalted butter, at room temperature, cubed, plus extra for greasing 1 egg, lightly beaten for the filling: 160g sour cream 80g double cream 1 egg, lightly beaten 35g (3 tbsp) caster sugar 1 tsp almond extract (optional) 300g blueberries • To make the pastry, combine the flours, sugar and baking powder in a mixing bowl. Add the butter and rub it in with your fingertips until you have rough breadcrumbs. Gradually add the egg, beating it in until completely incorporated. Bring the dough together and press it into a small disc. Cover the dough with baking paper and chill in the refrigerator for at least 30mins (this will allow…

● If an appliance breaks down, don’t immediately assume you need to buy a new one. There are 200 repair cafés across the UK where volunteers fix broken electrical goods and other items (repaircafe.org). ● A lot of trees are cut down to make loo paper. Some supermarkets sell rolls made from recycled paper, as does Who Gives a Crap (uk.whogivesacrap.org). ● Wash your synthetics in a Guppyfriend (£25; ethicalsuperstore.com) – a mesh bag that collects a lot of the fibres that might otherwise make their way into the sea. ● Lower your dog’s carbon footprint by giving it food made from insect protein (see yorapetfoods.com). You can make your cat greener by looking for sustainable cat litter (some of the regular stuff is made from strip-mined clay). Fresh News…

A walk in Sicily Closer to Africa than Rome, and settled not by “studious Greeks” (like the island’s south and east) but by Arabs and Normans, southwest Sicily is regarded by Sicilians themselves as “rather on the wild side”. A self-guided walking tour with Inntravel is a great way to discover this region of “old secrets, epiphanies and eccentricities”, says James Stewart in The Times. In the lovely medieval hill town of Erice, you can sample the delectable marzipan pastries sold by Maria Grammatico, a former nun, at her pasticceria. From there, the route proceeds via Trapani to the Roman remains and Byzantine chapel on Marettimo, the wildest of the Egadi islands. Back on Sicily itself, walking into Scopello is like entering “a Renaissance painting of Utopia”, and the Zingaro…

By the time he was ten, Dean Stockwell, who has died aged 85, had acted alongside some of the biggest stars of the 1940s, said The New York Times. Later, he made a successful transition to adult roles: he starred in Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas, and David Lynch’s Blue Velvet; and was beloved by many TV viewers for his role as the cigar-smoking hologram guide in the time-travel show Quantum Leap. But Stockwell was ambivalent about his profession, and several times he escaped it, to work on the railways and in property and, in the 1960s, to immerse himself in the counterculture. Dean Stockwell was born in California, the son of Harry Stockwell and Elizabeth Veronica. Both his parents were actors, and he made his stage debut aged seven. His…

“Vaarwell Shell”, or should that be “welcome home to a dear old friend”? News that the oil giant is leaving The Hague – and axing the “Royal Dutch” part of its name – to become 100% British has “gone down like a plate of mouldy pannenkoeken in the Netherlands”, said Ben Marlow in The Daily Telegraph. The decision to unify the company’s domicile in London means severing ties dating back to the formation of Royal Dutch Petroleum in the late 1800s. The Dutch government declared itself “unpleasantly surprised”. In the City, by contrast, it was “trebles all round”. Shell’s move to follow fellow big Anglo-Dutchers RELX (formerly Reed Elsevier) and Unilever back to Blighty is a huge post-Brexit vote of confidence. The Dutch government, which is reportedly scrambling to reverse…

The week’s best shares Associated British Foods The Times The Primark owner has yet to recover to pre-pandemic levels, but it’s boosting stores, from 398 to 500, and improving its “digital shop window”. Cash-generative with rising profits. Set to increase returns. Buy. £20.07. Cake Box Investors’ Chronicle Shares in the egg-free cake retailer are up 125%, despite a worrying data breach. Revenues and profits are above pre-pandemic levels, and should rise further with 20 new franchise stores and buoyant online sales. Buy. 395p. Halfords Group Investors’ Chronicle After a lockdown boom in cycling products (now suffering supply-chain problems), Halfords is training electrical technicians for e-bike and e-scooter repairs. Also making hay from its car-servicing arm. Buy. 304p. Imperial Brands The Sunday Telegraph Thanks to ethical investors shunning tobacco firms, Imperial’s…

What happened Brussels imposed fresh sanctions on Belarus this week in response to the unfolding crisis on the country’s border with Poland, where around 2,000 people, seeking to cross into the EU, are camped in freezing conditions. Since August, Belarus has encouraged a huge influx of migrants from Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and elsewhere by relaxing its visa rules. The migrants have then been escorted to the border in what the EU claims is an orchestrated attempt, tacitly backed by Russia, to destabilise the bloc. This week Polish forces at the border used tear gas and water cannon to repel the migrants. The EU started imposing sanctions on President Lukashenko’s regime in October 2020, in response to the fraudulent nature of that year’s presidential election, and Lukashenko’s violent repression of any…

Young people without hearing problems are now the largest users of TV subtitles. Research by the charity Stagetext suggests that 80% of 18- to 25-year-olds like to read as well as hear what people are saying on TV, making them four times more likely to use subtitles than people aged 56-75 (who are more likely to have problems hearing). According to the charity, it is partly because members of Gen Z like to keep an eye on their phones as they watch TV. Having subtitles makes it easier to do this without losing track of the plot. More than half of people have lied about seeing a hit TV show. According to a Radio Times survey, 14% have falsely claimed to have watched Stranger Things, and 10% have lied about…

53% of British adults would now like to rejoin the EU, rising to 77% among 18- to 34-year-olds. 47% would rather stay out. 40% of adults would like there to be another referendum on EU membership within the next five years. Savanta ComRes/The Independent Two-thirds of voters (60%) agree with the statement “the Conservatives these days give the impression of being very sleazy and disreputable”, up from 51% in April, when questions were being asked about the refurbishment of the PM’s Downing Street flat. Only 18% disagree. 33% say the same about Labour; 36% disagree. 39% say Boris Johnson is more corrupt than his predecessors; 44% say he is no different. YouGov/The Times…

Rosen’s painful recovery Michael Rosen has published 200 books. His YouTube channel has 600,000 subscribers. And yet right now, people have only one question for him, says Bryony Gordon in The Daily Telegraph: what is it like to nearly die of Covid? Rosen was infected in March 2020, before the first lockdown, and became so dangerously ill with multiple organ failure he was put into a coma for nearly 50 days. He has no memory of that, but he thinks it has left him with something like PTSD. “When you are in a coma for that long, the doctors [have to] stuff you full of what they call ‘mind-changing’ drugs,” he says. “Whatever it is, it has to be pretty potent because they are knocking you out again and again…

Locusts have been feared throughout human history, and have often been the cause of major famines. They appear in carvings on Ancient Egyptian tombs dating back as far as 2470 to 2220 BC. In the Book of Exodus, they make an appearance as one of the Plagues of Egypt. “They covered the face of the whole land,” reads Exodus, “so that… not a green thing remained, neither tree nor plant of the field, through all the land of Egypt”. They are also mentioned in The Iliad, the Quran and the Mahabharata, and by Aristotle. In the 20th century, the numbers of swarms declined but major plagues still recurred at irregular intervals. In different parts of the world, different species of grasshopper swarm as locusts: the South American locust, for instance,…

Now for the world’s biggest repair job… Ranjay Gulati The Wall Street Journal At last, the US’s crumbling roads, bridges, railways, ports and power lines are set to get the upgrade they so desperately need, says Ranjay Gulati. The newly passed infrastructure act is “a rare feat of bipartisan cooperation that President Biden and Congress should celebrate”. But now comes the really hard bit: making sure the money is spent properly. At $1.2trn, the headline cost of the plan nearly equals the GDP of Spain. Organising such a vast repair project, which will involve nearly every corner of government, will be a formidable task. The danger with such schemes is that confusion, duplication and turf wars over funding lead to “monumental” waste. We saw that after Hurricane Katrina, when federal,…

We worry about the nitrogen oxide emitted by traffic, but in Britain, agriculture is the biggest contributor to the worst form of airborne pollution. According to a study in the journal Science, the ammonia leaking from farms – in manure, urine and fertilisers – is responsible for 60% of PM2.5 matter; these ultra-fine particles can enter the bloodstream, and have been linked to a range of conditions including dementia and heart disease. The researchers note that whereas levels of pollution produced by burning fossil fuels have declined in recent years in developed countries, little has been done to tackle ammonia emissions. Yet it would be relatively simple for farmers to reduce them, by injecting waste under fields, sealing manure pits and using fertilisers more efficiently. This, the paper says, would…

“So this is what taking back control of our borders looks like,” said the Daily Mail. Last Thursday, a record 1,185 migrants crossed the Channel to Kent in small boats. They’re among nearly 24,000 people who have made the journey so far this year–almost triple the total of 2020. These numbers make a nonsense of the Government’s boast, in last month’s Tory conference, that it is “smashing the people smugglers”. The Prime Minister needs to take charge of this “growing humanitarian and political crisis”. He can’t afford to leave the search for solutions to the “beleaguered” Home Secretary, Priti Patel, or to the French authorities, who it appears “can’t or won’t crack down on this trade in human traffic”. French officials insist that the UK’s inaction, not theirs, is the…

“If you can’t beat them, arrange to have them beaten.” George Carlin, quoted in Reader’s Digest “To think is easy. To act is difficult. To act as one thinks is the most difficult.” Goethe, quoted on The Browser “Regrets are as personal as fingerprints.” US author Margaret Culkin Banning, quoted in Forbes “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.” Mark Twain, quoted on The Wall Street Journal “Satirists mean sincere things by saying them insincerely, hypocrites say sincere things but actually mean them insincerely.” R. Jay Magill, quoted on UnHerd “Everything returns, but what returns is not what went away.” Poet Louise Glück, quoted in The Washington Post “By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be boss and work 12 hours…

Rugby union In the autumn internationals, England beat Australia 32-15, and Ireland beat New Zealand 29-20. Motorcycling Valentino Rossi, widely regarded as the greatest ever motorcyclist, retired from the sport after finishing tenth in the Valencia Grand Prix last Sunday. Football Dean Smith has been announced as Norwich City’s new manager, following the sacking of Daniel Farke. Tennis Roger Federer, 40, is recovering from a knee injury and is “very unlikely” to play in January’s Australian Open, says his coach, Ivan Ljubicic.…

If there’s one thing Americans are good at, said Camilla Long in The Sunday Times, it’s being critical of their very, very rich. And in Disney+’s “brilliant” eight-part miniseries about the US’s opioid epidemic, the lovelier the houses and art collections, the more unpleasant and greedy the owners of Purdue Pharma seem. We watch in horror as Richard Sackler (Michael Stuhlbarg) sends his sales force out like “manipulative stormtroopers” to persuade doctors that their OxyContin painkiller isn’t addictive, when in fact it is actually worse than heroin. “Slick to the point of mastery”, this is a beautifully made drama. It’s the individual human stories that make Dopesick so effective, said Benji Wilson in The Daily Telegraph. The first link in a chain of little people “ripe for crushing” is Samuel…

Giving up the Ghost by Hilary Mantel, 2003 (Fourth Estate £8.99). Hilary Mantel is one of those impossible, once in-a-life time visionaries. She feels like she’s descended from William Blake, or a medieval anchorite. Her horror writing is peerless, and there is nothing quite so harrowingly visceral as her memoir. The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous by Jilly Cooper, 1991 (Corgi £10.99). Jilly Cooper’s bucolic world of picturesque cottages, adorable dogs and hardcore bonking cannot be beaten. Kind hearted serial-shagger Lysander Hawkley is one of the best in her irresistible rogues’ gallery. Nothing That Meets the Eye by Patricia Highsmith, 2002 (Bloomsbury, out of print). Patricia Highsmith’s stories are every bit as monstrous as her novels, and this collection of unpublished stories is seething with her usual exquisite, gleeful sadism.…

Programmes Empire State of Mind Journalist and writer Sathnam Sanghera travels around Britain to explore the complicated legacy of empire, starting in his hometown of Wolverhampton. Sat 20 Nov, C4 21:00 (60mins). Branagh: This Cultural Life The actor and filmmaker discusses his formative influences, from an album of recordings of Olivier reading Shakespeare, to Alan Bleasdale’s 1980s TV drama Boys from the Blackstuff. Sun 21 Nov, BBC4 19:30 (30mins). The Princes and the Press Amol Rajan charts the very different relationships the younger royals – the Cambridges and the Sussexes – have formed with the media in the last few years. Mon 22 Nov, BBC2 21:00 (60mins). Lindisfarne’s Geordie Genius: The Alan Hull Story Singer-songwriter Sam Fender looks back at the career of his musical hero, Alan Hull of the 1970s band…

What Car? Is MG’s dinky SUV a credible, bargain alternative, or a case of “you get what you pay for”? On the plus side, it is “well equipped”, with an infotainment touchscreen, LED headlights, and cruise control with speed limiter, but the car is let down by a noisy, “tiring” driving experience. While the price is great, if your main criterion is affordability, a Dacia Duster might be a better bet. The Daily Telegraph The driving wasn’t the problem for us – we found it “fun to drive”. But this spacious, practical car does have one major flaw: its crash-test performance. In 2017, the ZS obtained scores of 71% for adult occupants and only 51% for children from Euro NCAP. In its new incarnation it has plenty to like, but…

Alton Towers, in Staffordshire, is hosting a new event this Christmas called Lightopia, an “immersive walk through four seasons” (from 27 November until 2 January, £20; altontowers.com). At Westonbirt Arboretum, Gloucestershire, there is a clue-laden trail for children through an illuminated woodland, as well as a Christmas village with stalls and fairground rides (from 26 November until 21 December, £18 per adult/£9 per child; boxoffice.forestryengland.uk). The Georgian garden at the National Trust run Gibside, Tyne and Wear, is being given a festive makeover, which includes a fire garden (from 26 November until 2 January, £18 per adult member/£26 non-members/£13 per child; christmasatgibside.co.uk). Over a million lights and lasers will illuminate Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire this year. There will also be a Christmas market (from 19 November to 2 January, £22.50 per…

Another Place Lake District This “stylishly informal” hotel in a “heart-stirringly beautiful setting” on the shore of Ullswater offers a “massive” range of activities – sailing, wild swimming, SUPing, kayaking, mountain biking, pony trekking and, of course, walking on the “glorious” fells. Most rooms in the Georgian house and the new extension have lake views, food is straightforward but “tasty” and “well judged”, and there’s a spa and a 20-metre indoor pool. Doubles from £190 b&b, another. place Beaverbrook Surrey Cushioned by parkland, fields and woods, the former home of the 20th century newspaper magnate Lord Beaverbrook opened as a hotel four years ago. It makes a fabulously luxurious retreat – “the home you wish you had” – with a “top-class” spa, excellent restaurants (Italian and Japanese) and a “brilliant”…

Rivian: over-revved? Tesla finally has a “pure-play” electric rival to contend with, said The Wall Street Journal – at least in the eyes of investors. After floating in New York last week, electric truck maker Rivian swiftly attained a whopping $100bn valuation – making even Tesla seem cheap. At that price, Rivian is valued at “around $110m for each vehicle it expects to deliver this year” – a multiple easily topping Tesla’s equivalent $1.1m figure. Quite a feat for a 12-year-old start-up with no revenues. The stock has continued revving, said CNN. By Tuesday, it had topped $140bn, making it “the third most valuable carmaker in the world” behind Toyota ($306bn) and Tesla ($1trn). The excitement is partly because its primary product is that US staple, the pick-up truck. It…

Property is sucking the life from us Rana Foroohar Financial Times Governments across the world are concerned about inflated property prices, says Rana Foroohar. China’s President Xi has made affordable housing “a huge part of his common prosperity theme”; across Europe, there are moves to clamp down on buy to-let. Even so, it’s a surprise to learn just how much “the oldest asset class of all” still dominates modern wealth. According to a new McKinsey study, tallying up the balance sheets of ten nations representing 60% of global income, “two-thirds of net worth” is stored in real estate. “For all the talk of digitalisation, it seems that bricks and mortar are the new bricks and mortar.” This is “troubling”. With asset values now nearly 50% higher than the long-run average…

● China Plus One When the pandemic hit, many “wrote an obituary for China-focused globalisation”, said Megan Greene of Harvard Kennedy School in the FT. But there’s actually little evidence of it slowing down. US imports hit “an all time high” of $288.5bn in September, and China’s trade surplus has exceeded pre-pandemic levels. True, we don’t know how the geopolitics will “play out”. But what seems more likely than deglobalisation is the developing “China Plus One” strategy: companies keeping factories in China, but hedging their bets elsewhere. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has thus been growing fast in Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia – spelling opportunities for investors. ● Viet opportunity The market that catches my eye, said Jeff Prestridge in The Mail on Sunday, is Vietnam – a comparatively new Asian…

A bar-tailed godwit has been tracked flying more than 8,100 miles non-stop from Alaska to Australia, a new record for a continuous flight by a land-bird. The bird, which was fitted with a tiny satellite device, left Alaska on 17 September for its summer breeding ground in New Zealand. However, it was driven off course by strong winds over the Pacific, and eventually made landfall 500 miles north of Sydney on 27 September. It has now joined other godwits in New Zealand. The veteran athlete Julia “Hurricane” Hawkins has set a new record by becoming the first woman to run the 100 metres in the 105+ category. The former teacher – who set a record over the distance in the 100- to 104-year-old category in 2017 – crossed the finish…

The Iraqi man who was killed by his own bomb in Liverpool on Remembrance Sunday may have converted to Christianity to bolster his case to stay in the UK, it was suggested this week. Enzo Almeni, also known as Emad al-Swealmeen, was baptised at Liverpool Cathedral in 2015, and confirmed in 2017, but had then lost contact with the Cathedral. The Home Office is thought to have rejected his most recent asylum claim in 2020. Police say he ordered a cab to take him to Liverpool Women’s Hospital on Sunday morning; as it drew up, his bomb went off. The driver escaped, but Almeni was killed. His motives remain unclear.…

Paris Triangle Tower: Central Paris is set to get its first new skyscraper since 1973: the Tour Triangle – a 180-metre-high building that critics say will resemble a giant slice of brie. Designed by Herzog & de Meuron, the shiny glass pyramid was finally approved last week after repeated planning battles. It will loom over surrounding buildings at the Porte de Versailles in the 15th arrondissement, and is bitterly opposed by the Greens and by the district’s conservative mayor, who still hopes to block construction. Owing to its shape, it will look like a thin oblong from the city centre, but its vast triangular form will dominate views from the east and west. Lisbon WFH laws: Portugal has introduced new laws that ban employers from contacting their staff outside working hours,…

“On Twitter an American academic called Isabella Rosner, now based in London, asked: ‘Is being anti-Big Light a British thing? I feel like I’ve never met so many people who hate the Big Light!’ By Big Light she means an overhead light in living rooms, rather than table lamps. Any Brit knows Big Light supplies all the atmosphere of a dentist’s surgery. During childhood, our dads arrived home to switch off Big Light with the words, ‘It’s lit up like a Christmas tree in here!’, and trained us that it only went on for traumatic emergencies, like splinter extraction or locating cat sick. We Brits are experts at living in gloom. When it gets dark at 4pm you need the ‘glow from below’”. Helen Rumbelow in The Times…

A duty of care entails a duty to get jabbed Frances Ryan The Guardian News that the 103,000 NHS staff who’ve yet to fully vaccinate will be obliged to get jabbed for Covid by April has got unions and some doctors’ groups up in arms, says Frances Ryan. Yet the ruling shouldn’t be controversial. Healthcare staff have a duty of care not to harm patients. Those working in surgery have long been obliged to get vaccinated against hepatitis B; and last week getting the Covid jab became obligatory for care workers. Yes, persuasion would be preferable, but given the threat that unvaccinated staff pose to clinically vulnerable people, many of whom have illnesses preventing them having the jab themselves, there’s only so much time NHS leaders can allow to win…

Honeybees scream in alarm Giant hornets are the Asian honeybee’s most fearsome predator: they have been known to wipe out entire colonies in a matter of hours. Now it seems that bees are so fearful of their nemesis, they emit a disturbing scream-like distress call at their approach. Researchers from Wellesley College in the US recorded bees in their hives when they were alone, and when they were being targeted by two types of hornet, the giant “murder” hornet, and a smaller, less dangerous species. By analysing the sound patterns, the team discovered that the bees produced a set of harsh and irregular noises when under attack by either type of hornet, but that this signal became much more frantic when the giant hornets were the predator. It was a…

The actor Brian Cox is often confused with Brian Cox the physicist. But early on in his career in theatre, he looked in the Equity directory, and found he wasn’t the only actor with that name either. He thought about changing his name; but then opted to beg for it instead. “Dear Mr Brian Cox,” he wrote in a letter sent to a PO Box number. “We are both actors with the same name but I was wondering, as you have not worked in some time, if I could use the name Brian Cox?” Later he received a letter. “Dear Brian Cox, it read. “We are both actors with the same name…” The other Cox, it turned out, was himself. “Apparently I had joined Equity at Dundee Rep only to…

The scandal of “MPs’ second jobs” is enveloping Parliament, said Owen Jones in The Guardian. But even that phrase is “indicative of the problem”. Being an MP is not a job, “it is a public service”, and those who doit are well rewarded, with a basic salary of £81,932, nearly three times the average UK wage. For many, though – including a quarter of Tory MPs – that is not enough; they take up second (and third) jobs in sectors from gambling to finance to private healthcare. This corrupts Parliament, not just because companies, like those that employed Owen Paterson, get “avital ‘in’” at the highest levels of power; it also means that the interests of MPs become subtly “aligned” to those of big business. Ultimately, MPs have to decide…

F1: Hamilton’s astonishing victory in Brazil Lewis Hamilton has done many extraordinary things in his long career, said Rebecca Clancy in The Times. But his thrilling victory at the Brazilian Grand Prix on Sunday is surely up there with the finest. For this was a race the seven-time F1 champion really had no right to win. As if beating Max Verstappen weren’t challenging enough, he faced the additional disadvantage of being handed two separate penalties over the weekend, said Nate Saunders on ESPN. On Friday, a fault with his car’s drag reduction system caused him to be “disqualified from qualifying” – which meant he started Saturday’s sprint qualifying race at the back of the field, in 20th position. And though he drove heroically in that 24-lap contest, passing 15 drivers,…

A throwaway society To The Daily Telegraph While the great and the good have jetted to Glasgow to lecture us on saving the planet, I’m on the roof fitting replacement covers and air vents to my 25-year-old solar panels. Of all the companies contacted to do this work, only one gave me a quote – £5,000 to replace the entire system, and send perfectly good copper pipes, tank, pump and controls to landfill. It is extraordinary that, in this day and age, support and maintenance for this and household appliances does not exist. What is the point of consumers going green in a throwaway society? David Ward, Gosport, Hampshire Our duty to buy green… To The Times Downing Street has no need to be disappointed that BMW, Volkswagen and Toyota…

by Susanne Wedlich Granta 336pp £20 The Week Bookshop £15.99 Most people have a natural aversion to slime, said Simon Ings in The Times. Yet according to the German biologist Susanne Wedlich, this wondrous substance deserves closer attention. Slime, she tells us, “holds the world together”. For not only is it present just about everywhere in nature, but it is the very “source of life”: had “stiffened water” not existed early in our planet’s history, then cell development and multiplication – the processes that led to our existence – would never have been possible. Slime is stuffed with facts of the “surely that can’t be real?” variety, said Mark Mason in the Daily Mail. Hagfish defend themselves by jellying the water around them, causing even sharks to gag. There’s a…

Damon Albarn: The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows Transgressive £10.99 Damon Albarn’s second solo album takes its title from a line by the 19th century poet of the English countryside John Clare, and was inspired by the landscape around Albarn’s home in Iceland. The “impossibly lovely” melodies are “among the most beautiful he has written”, said Dan Cairns in The Sunday Times – and the songs have the feel of chamber music: “exquisite miniatures that roam freely musically and lyrically” to locations including Devon, South America and Arabia. This “strange and extraordinary” record is “further proof that Albarn is Britain’s most creative shapeshifting music-maker since David Bowie”, said Neil McCormick in The Daily Telegraph. Part homage to Clare, part “interior rumination”, it features music and lyrics that…

Why Dubonnet’s on the up Dubonnet has long been a favourite at the Palace, says Tomé Morrissy-Swan in The Daily Telegraph. The Queen Mother was famously partial to the drink, and she passed that taste on to her daughter, who has just awarded it a royal warrant: from next year, every bottle will be stamped with an official crest, and the words “By appointment to HM The Queen”. But in recent decades, Dubonnet has fallen out of favour with the public. In the 1960s, annual sales of the aperitif – a blend of fortified wine, herbs, spices and quinine invented by a Parisian chemist in 1846 – topped 20 million bottles. By 2019, they’d dropped to 350,000, as Dubonnet came to be seen as “an older person’s drink”. Now, though,…

SOURCE: TECH RADAR…

On 2 February 1990, F.W. de Klerk had been in office for just five months when he delivered a speech that stunned the world. At the opening of South Africa’s white parliament, he declared that the African National Congress was being legalised; and that its leader would be released from prison “unconditionally”. Nine days later, in ablaze of global publicity, Nelson Mandela walked free from jail after 27 years behind bars, paving the way for the dismantling of the apartheid regime–a regime that de Klerk and his family had done much to develop and enforce. For their work to ensure the relatively peaceful transition to democracy, de Klerk, South Africa’s last white president, and Mandela, its first black president, were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993. But whereas…

UK inflation, measured on the CPI index, surged at its fastest pace in almost ten years in October, hitting 4.2% – more than double the BoE’s 2% target. Household energy bills were the biggest driver after Ofgem lifted the price cap on domestic fuel. The costs of electricity, gas and other fuels rose 23%. The steep jump – together with new data showing that the number of UK job vacancies has risen to a new record of 1.17 million – will increase pressure on the BoE to raise interest rates in December. The FT reported that former Barclays CEO Jes Staley exchanged 1,200 emails with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein while at JPMorgan, which included a reference to “snow white”. Staley’s lawyers denied any use of codewords. Three of Barclays’ top…

Adam Neumann WeWork’s charismatic founder – who was ousted following the botched IPO in 2019 – has broken cover for the first time in two years to discuss his “multiple regrets”, says DealBook in The New York Times. Chief among them was believing the hype when bullish bankers said WeWork was worth even more than its peak $47bn private valuation: “It went to my head,” Adam Neumann admitted. In response to reports about drinking and drug use by employees, he said: “We had a fun culture”, but perhaps “when it comes to finance, it’s better to be boring”. However, Neumann bristles at criticism that he received “a golden parachute” as the business plunged. These days, he’s “pretty excited about crypto”. Gary Vaynerchuk One weekend in August, the business author “racked…

A “fear of missing out” is gripping global markets “lifting everything from stocks to cryptocurrencies to record highs”, said the FT. The “Fomo” rush into stocks has helped Wall Street’s S&P 500 index seal “its longest streak of hitting record highs since 1964”, according to Bank of America. Meanwhile, digital assets like bitcoin, ethereum and “meme coins” such as Shiba Inu saw the total crypto market value shoot to around $3trn last week, from less than $500bn a year ago. “The market has become a video game,” said Peter van Dooijeweert of Man Group. “It feels like Candy Crush.” If so, this week has been more about crush than candy, said The Independent. After “a surge in bitcoin’s value” on Monday, following a major upgrade to its network, a “flash…

THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1287 An Ettinger travel pass case and two Connell Guides will be given to the sender of the first correct solution to the crossword and the clue of the week opened on Monday 29 November. Email the answers as a scan of a completed grid or a list, with the subject line The Week crossword 1287, to crossword@theweek.co.uk. Tim Moorey (timmoorey.com) ACROSS 1 Famous Russian composer in new edition of Grove (9) 6 Cheers foreign aid given by Brussels (5) 9 New article is telling (7) 10 Irishman into tea and bread (7) 11 Private Eye’s Conservative? That’s fiction (9,5) 13 Embarrassed by Guinness? I’d check that (8) 15 Lower part of ship on left to admit navy (5) 17 Applause received by 9 ceased on return (5)…