Innholdsfortegnelse for V. 1362 i The Week

As Britain reeled from an explosion in Covid cases this week, Boris Johnson’s plans to introduce Plan B measures triggered the biggest, and most significant, parliamentary revolt of his premiership, said Oliver Wright in The Times. It was always clear that some of his MPs would object to the introduction of Covid passes, in particular; but in the event, nearly 100 of them voted against the measure. On one level, it made no difference: the vote passed with Labour support. “But on another, it was a public demonstration of the very real fissure that exists between Johnson and his own MPs after a torrid few weeks for the PM.” Downing Street will argue that a minority of MPs is ideologically opposed to lockdown restrictions; and that is true. Yet the…

The list of “alleged Covid rule-breaking parties” across Westminster last Christmas is a long one, said Aubrey Allegretti in The Guardian. The Tories have admitted that one was thrown by staff of the then-London mayoral candidate Shaun Bailey in their HQ on 1 December (Bailey quit his London Assembly post after a photo of the bash emerged). Another gathering was allegedly held in Downing Street on 13 November. At least three other reports of parties are being investigated by Cabinet Secretary Simon Case: a No.10 leaving do on 27 November; drinks at the Department for Education on 10 December; and the notorious Downing Street party eight days later. Case is also said to be investigating whether the PM himself broke the law by joining a virtual quiz in Downing Street…

Elon Musk, who was named Time’s person of the year. Describing him as a “clown, genius, edgelord, visionary, industrialist, showman”, Time cited the breadth of his ambition – from his founding of SpaceX to his leadership of Tesla, the world’s most valuable car company. The magazine stressed that the title is not an award: it goes to the person who has had “the most influence on the events of the year, for good or for ill”. Terry Gilliam, with news that his new production of Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods – which was “cancelled” by the Old Vic in October – has been snapped up by Theatre Royal Bath. The Old Vic’s “development group” of writers and directors had objected to the show because of Gilliam’s perceived views on transgender…

The Labour Party has opened up a nine-point lead over the Conservatives, with 41% of the vote, its largest share since 2014. The Tories have dropped to 32%, and Boris Johnson’s personal net rating has fallen to a new low of -35; 59% of voters disapprove of how he’s running the country. The Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer is faring better: 29% of voters say that he’d be the best leader of the UK, versus 22% for Johnson. Opinium/The Observer Almost half of the British public say they’d be unlikely to follow rules restricting household mixing, should they be introduced. Of those, one in five say they wouldn’t obey the rules because the Government doesn’t stick to them. YouGov/The Daily Telegraph…

Brooks on Bancroft One of the greatest comics of his generation, Mel Brooks, 95, has won almost every award going. And he owes it all to Anne Bancroft, he told Hadley Freeman in The Guardian. The pair met in 1961, when Brooks tagged along with a friend to watch Bancroft rehearse for a play. Seeing her in the spotlight in a dark theatre, he was smitten, and shouted out: “Anne Bancroft, I love you!” “Who the hell are you?” came the reply. “I’m Mel Brooks! Nobody you’ve ever heard of!” “Wrong!” she said. “I’ve got your 2000 Year Old Man record with Carl Reiner and it’s great.” They married three years later, and were together until her death in 2005. She was, he recalls, fiercely intelligent and “flat-out beautiful”; and…

Who’s sounding the alarm? Ranjit Singh Boparan, who runs Britain’s biggest poultry company, recently called for a “reset” of the way we think about chicken. “Food is too cheap,” said Boparan, known as the “Chicken King”, who owns the 2 Sisters Food Group and the Bernard Matthews brand. “How can it be right that a whole chicken costs less than a pint of beer?” He pointed to a “perfect storm” bearing down on the industry, from rising costs of feed and energy to worker shortages. But there is also a growing awareness, when it comes to the UK’s most popular meat, that animal welfare and environmental concerns can’t be addressed without affecting prices. Either way, Boparan said, “the days when you could feed a family of four with a £3…

A British man living in Singapore said he thought he “was going to die” after being attacked by 20 angry otters. Graham George Spencer said the animals, a common sight on the island, “went crazy” and chased him down in a park. “I was bitten 26 times in ten seconds,” he said. They bit his ankles, legs and buttocks before his friend scared them away. “If it wasn’t for my friend, I don’t think I’d still be here,” said Spencer. “I’d be dead.” A Christmas tree in Bailiff Bridge, Yorkshire, has been branded the worst in the UK – after council bosses said it was too tall for its top half to be decorated. Calderdale council said it wasn’t “safe” to decorate the top of the spruce, as it had…

Birdsong is becoming quieter The once familiar sound of birdsong is fading in fields, parks and forests across Europe and North America as avian populations decline, a study has found. As there are not many recordings of birdsongs in different areas, researchers at the University of East Anglia drew on data from annual bird counts at 200,000 sites, and recordings of more than 1,000 species held on an online database, to recreate the sounds at each site, in each year. Their analysis of these virtual soundscapes revealed a continuous fall in the diversity and intensity of birdsong over the study period, which was “driven by changes in the composition of bird communities”, said Dr Simon Butler, who led the study. Given that people hear birds more than they see them,…

Prime ministers can be caught out by Christmas parties; and so can senior clergy. Fifteen years ago, the Bishop of Southwark, Dr Thomas Butler, went to a do at the Irish embassy – and came home missing his crucifix. He told police he’d suffered a blackout. But a witness was later able to fill in some of the blanks. He said that he had returned to his parked car in an alley behind London Bridge and found Butler “sprawled” across the back seat, tossing his child’s soft toys out of the window. “What are you doing in my car?” he asked Butler, who allegedly replied: “I’m the Bishop of Southwark. It’s what I do.” Forced into hotel quarantine on his return from South Africa earlier this month, Richard E. Grant…

The rapid withdrawal of Nato forces from Afghanistan in August is widely considered to have been a “disastrous decision, incompetently executed”, said The Times. But it took the testimony of a 25-year-old former desk officer, Raphael Marshall, to expose in “excruciating detail” just how badly the UK Foreign Office failed in its response. Marshall told the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee last week that between 75,000 and 150,000 Afghans applied to be evacuated on the grounds of a connection to the UK. Yet less than 5% received help, and some of those left behind have since been murdered. At times Marshall was the only member of his team working on the desk as desperate emails flooded in. Thousands went unprocessed and unanswered. The prioritising of applicants, he said, was “arbitrary and…

The 2021 Formula 1 championship has been the most tumultuous in the sport’s history, said Oliver Brown in The Daily Telegraph, and it reached its climax with another absurdly dramatic race. Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen headed to Abu Dhabi locked on 369.5 points apiece – meaning whoever finished the race first would be crowned world champion. The Englishman seized the early advantage, flying out from second on the grid to take the lead before the first corner. Verstappen nearly recovered it seconds later when he dived on the inside and briefly forced Hamilton off the track, but Hamilton clung on to his advantage. He was still ahead with five laps to go, now leading by 12 seconds. Verstappen’s plight appeared hopeless. “We are going to need a miracle,” declared…

Football Manchester City retained their place at the top of the Premier League, beating Wolves 1-0. Chess Magnus Carlsen retained his world title when his Russian challenger, Ian Nepomniachtchi, resigned from the 11th game of their best-of-14 games series, giving the Norwegian an unassailable lead. SPOTY Awards Tyson Fury has been shortlisted for the BBC Sports Personality of the Year, despite asking not to be put on the list. He is joined by Adam Peaty, Tom Daley, Raheem Sterling, Emma Raducanu and Sarah Story.…

The Promise by Damon Galgut Chatto&Windus 304pp £16.99 The Week bookshop £13.99 Damon Galgut’s novel, which won this year’s Booker Prize, is a multi-generational saga about a well-off Afrikaner family who live on a farm near Pretoria. Manie, the patriarch, once promised the family’s long-serving black maid, Salome, that he would give her the deeds to the modest property she lives in. But neither he, nor his children, honour this pledge – and as various family members meet untimely ends, the betrayal comes to seem like a curse. In their generally ecstatic response to the novel, critics singled out Galgut’s innovative narrative technique and his scathing deconstruction of white complacency. Praise: “Damon Galgut is the most worthy winner of the Booker Prize we’ve seen for many years. The book trembles…

Being the Ricardos 2hrs 5mins (15) Nicole Kidman stars as comedy legend Lucille Ball Sixty million Americans tuned into the sitcom I Love Lucy during its run from 1951 to 1957, said Brian Viner in the Daily Mail. If it passed you by, Being the Ricardos “may not tempt” – but it’s sure to “enthral” fans. A “compelling” study of the relationship between the show’s stars, the legendary Lucille Ball (Nicole Kidman) and her Cuban husband Desi Arnaz (Javier Bardem), the film unfolds over the course of one tumultuous week in the run-up to the broadcast of a live episode. The film is full of “rat-a-tat wit”, as you’d expect from writer-director Aaron Sorkin, the creator of The West Wing, said Robbie Collin in The Daily Telegraph; but sadly, Being…

Anthropologie stocks homeware as well as fashion. You can order using standard delivery by 17 December, or you’ve got up until 21 December with express delivery, which costs £6 (anthropologie.com). Net-a-Porter is the place for high-end fashion. Order by 3pm on 23 December for delivery on Christmas Eve (£8), or by 3pm on Tuesday 21 December if you opt for standard delivery (net-a-porter.com). Selfridges offers nominated-day delivery, plus same-day delivery to addresses within the M25, perfect for speedy deliveries of wine and other gifts. If you pay for next-day delivery, you can order up to 9pm on 22 December, and with same-day delivery, until 12pm on 23 December (selfridges.com). Beauty Bay sells make-up and skincare gift sets. Orders for UK Tracked Delivery with Beauty Bay must be placed by 21…

Recently reopened under new management after a three-year renovation, this “fabulously stylish country-house hideaway” near the pretty Derbyshire market town of Ashbourne is this newspaper’s hotel of the year, says Susan d’Arcy in The Sunday Times. It is set in an “imposing” Victorian building, but its interiors are now an “enviably chic riot of colour, pattern and texture”, creating a “relaxed vibe” that brings to mind a stay with close (but “privileged”) friends. The 15 rooms in the main house are “swanky”, with huge beds and “whimsical” contemporary art, and there are also several Woodland Hives – “the supermodel version of the humble shepherd’s hut” – in the wooded grounds. The restaurant is in a “glass-box” extension that “wouldn’t look out of place in LA”; there is a spa and…

BT/Altice: call waiting Patrick Drahi, “the secretive French billionaire stalking BT”, upped the ante this week, said Lucy Tobin in the London Evening Standard. Having rattled the company in June when he acquired a 12.1% stake, the founder of the French media giant Altice boosted it to 18% on Monday – just days after the expiry of “a six-month, no-bid clause” triggered by UK takeover rules. Cue commotion in Whitehall: the Government said it would “not hesitate to act if required to protect our critical telecoms structure”. In fact, Drahi’s manoeuvres pose no immediate threat, said Cat Rutter Pooley in the FT. No sooner had one six-month lock-up period expired than he started “another half-year standstill” – by reiterating he doesn’t intend making an offer. That’s a disappointment for BT…

The Fed must wind down the money printer Editorial The Economist The US Federal Reserve has spent much of 2021 saying that high inflation would be temporary, says The Economist. Yet price rises have “persistently overshot forecasts”. The headline rate, at 6.8%, is now at a 39-year high. It’s high time chairman Jerome Powell took action. He may be right to argue that prices have been driven by temporary factors: the one-off $1.9trn fiscal stimulus signed in March; the bunging up of global supply chains. But “predicting when these pandemic-related forces will ease is a fool’s errand”. As long as inflation remains high, there is “a growing danger that it will become entrenched”. Powell is bound by “past guidance” that commits the Fed to cease buying bonds before raising rates,…

The first wild bison to roam the UK for thousands of years will arrive in Kent in the spring of 2022. Four of Europe’s largest land animals will help rewild a former commercial pine forest, Wilder Blean, near Canterbury. The project is run by the Wildwood Trust and Kent Wildlife Trust, whose rangers describe bison as “jet fuel for biodiversity” because they strip bark and pull down trees, allowing other species to thrive. The herd will come from wildlife parks across Europe. A woman in southern India has fulfilled her dream of learning to read – at the age of 104. Kuttiyamma said she’d always been “curious about the world”, but when she was a child, the idea of her going to school was unthinkable. “Even boys discontinued their studies…

Is Russia preparing to launch the largest military offensive in Europe since the Second World War? The signs are ominous, said Alexander Vindman in The New York Times. This year, Vladimir Putin’s forces have massed an estimated 100,000 military personnel close to Russia’s border with Ukraine. It feels “like 2014 again”, when Putin annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, and started a separatist war in the largely Russian-speaking Donbas region. “Putin and his acolytes still view the world through a decidedly Soviet lens,” said Aliona Hlivco on CapX. They see Ukraine, which left the Soviet Union in 1991, as part of “Moscow’s sphere of influence”. One of their long-standing concerns is that it might join Nato: they claim to fear Western “encirclement”. But do the current manoeuvres “portend a full-blown war”, or…

Brain surgeons, after a new study found that they are not necessarily any brighter than the general population – and nor are rocket scientists. The research revealed that the neurosurgeons were unusually quick at problem-solving; but in other respects neither they nor the aerospace engineers performed better in cognitive tests than a control group. The West End, with reports that a growing number of theatres in London and elsewhere are having to cancel performances of plays and pantos, owing to cast and crew falling ill with Covid.…

Oslo Omicron “lockdown”: Norway has banned the sale of alcohol in all pubs, bars and restaurants as part of its efforts to head off the threat of a “contagion bomb” caused by the Omicron variant. The ban – which was announced on Monday, and came into force at midnight the following day – will remain in place for at least four weeks. Other new measures include advice to work from home where possible, the closure to some users of gyms and public swimming pools, further mask mandates, and the acceleration of the vaccine campaign. “There is no doubt that the new variant changes the rules,” said PM Jonas Gahr Støre. “For many, this will feel like a lockdown, if not of society, then of their lives and of their livelihoods.”…

1 Common People by Jarvis Cocker, Russell Senior, Steve Mackey, Nick Banks and Candida Doyle, performed live by Pulp at Glastonbury in 1995 2 Blah Blah Café, written and performed by Jean-Michel Jarre 3 The Red Flag by Jim Connell, performed by Billy Bragg 4 Spasticus Autisticus by Ian Dury and Chas Jankel, performed by John Kelly and the Graeae Theatre Company 5 Lippy Kids, written and performed by Elbow 6 54-46 (That’s My Number) by Toots Hibbert, performed by Toots and the Maytals 7* Skeleton Key by Meow Meow Revolution, performed by Audrey Nugent 8 End credit music from the film E.T., composed and conducted by John Williams Book: Miller Plays by Arthur Miller Luxury: TV with an archive of Channel 4 * Choice if allowed only one record…

In 1948, the US department of agriculture and the A&P supermarket chain held a “Chicken of Tomorrow” contest. In an effort to breed chickens with “more meat on the breast, thigh and drumsticks”, a series of regional contests culminated in 28,800 fertilised eggs being shipped to a facility in Delaware. After 12 weeks, the birds were slaughtered, weighed and judged for their large breasts, fast and efficient growth, consistent sizes, gentle disposition and cosmetically preferable white feathers. White Rock chickens from Arbor Acres in Connecticut won the “carcass characteristics” prize; and a Red Cornish cross from Vantress Hatchery in California won the “economy of production” prize. The winning bloodlines were bred with each other in what became a revolution. Nelson Rockefeller bought the Arbor Acres farm in 1964, and, as…

At least 14 million tonnes of plastic waste wash into the world’s seas each year – and it now seems that various plant and animal species are hitching a ride on this trash and creating a new ecosystem in the middle of the ocean. Scientists gathered 100 tonnes of plastic from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch – a spiralling accumulation of debris of all sizes that covers an area twice the size of Texas – and found that 90% of it was supporting life forms, from molluscs and crabs to tiny marine bugs. Moreover, these mainly coastal species weren’t just clinging onto the rubbish – they were thriving in their unlikely new habitat. The scientists named these self-sustaining communities “neopelagic”, “neo” meaning new and “pelagic” referring to the open ocean.…

And just like that, 17 years after the original TV show ended, they’re back. Or rather, some of the cast of Sex and the City (SATC) are back, said Deborah Ross in The Mail on Sunday. Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte are still meeting for brunch in New York, but we learn in the first episode of the reboot, And Just Like That…, that Samantha (Kim Cattrall) now lives in London; and that she has ghosted them all since Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) told her that she didn’t need her PR services any more. Such pettiness feels out of character, but they had to say something to explain Samantha’s absence, and it does hint at the likely real reason for it: Cattrall’s well publicised fallout with Parker. For me, libidinous Samantha…

The journalist Rod Liddle is “a practised controversialist”, said Simon Kelner in The i Paper. So no doubt he’s feeling pleased with himself for having stirred up “the latest skirmish in the culture wars”. At the beginning of the month, Liddle was invited to speak at a dinner at Durham University’s South College by the principal Tim Luckhurst, an old friend. Liddle opened his speech by joking that he was “disappointed” not to see any sex workers in the audience – a reference to the university’s recent offer of safety training for students who do sex work. He proceeded to crassly tackle trans issues (anyone with “a long, dangling penis is scientifically a man”, he declared) and colonialism, before suggesting that the underachievement of Caribbean Britons had nothing to do…

Covid-related scheduling restrictions meant England began their Ashes series in Australia with very little cricket under their belts, said Mike Atherton in The Sunday Times. And in the first Test at the Gabba last week, it showed. Australia trounced them by nine wickets. On day one, Joe Root won the toss and batted, but his decision soon looked foolish: England were bowled out for 147. The home side responded with 425, with Travis Head scoring a 148-ball 152 – one of the most destructive Ashes innings in recent memory. In their second innings, England were more resilient, and Root and Dawid Malan’s excellent partnership of 162 briefly raised hopes that the match wasn’t beyond rescue. Those hopes faded on the morning of day four, said Ali Martin in The Guardian:…

Boris Bunter To The Times Trevor Phillips sees the Prime Minister as William Brown from Just William. Surely this is an unfair comparison? William is a truthful boy. A better comparison is Billy Bunter, the Fat Owl of the Remove at Greyfriars School, whose exploits were chronicled between 1908 and 1961 by the world’s most prolific author, Charles Hamilton, under the pen name of Frank Richards. Bunter would deny, despite the crumbs on his extensive waistcoat, that he had been in the study, that there was any cake in it, and anyway it was only a small cake – and if there was a cake it must have been eaten by the cat. Nicholas Bennett, editor, Just William Society Magazine A choice of chocolates To The Guardian I suspect there…

“Here’s a perfect fit for the panto slot,” said Clive Davis in The Times. Twenty years after it took the West End by storm, Hamish McColl and Sean Foley’s celebration of Morecambe & Wise – “full of all the right words, but not necessarily in the right order” – is packing them in at the Birmingham Rep. The first-half set-up is that a rackety double act – played here by Dennis Herdman and Thom Tuck – land a gig as a Morecambe & Wise tribute show. The second half, in which a different famous guest star appears each night, is then a riotous pastiche of a Morecambe & Wise Christmas special, and includes material by Eddie Braben, the comedy writer who worked with the duo for 14 years. This revival…

Landscapers “shouldn’t work”, said Barbara Ellen in The Observer. Sky Atlantic’s four-part drama is pretentious, wayward, hyper-conceptual; it breaks all the rules of true crime, “including the good ones”. And yet it’s also extraordinary and disquieting; “television as art”. Olivia Colman and David Thewlis star as real-life couple Susan and Christopher Edwards, the “Mansfield murderers” who, in 1998, killed Susan’s parents and buried them in a garden. They then used their money to buy celebrity memorabilia, while spinning a web of lies explaining their disappearance. We meet the killers in France, where they’re on the run. Their cocoon seems on the verge of shattering, and it does. The show then becomes a “writhing screen-Hydra” of techniques and moods, from black-and-white court scenes to a Western sequence. Without the anchorage of…

Ghislaine Maxwell, courtroom artist A courtroom sketch of Ghislaine Maxwell has “gone viral”, said Valentina Di Liscia on the Hyperallergic blog. The drawing, which depicts Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged accomplice “apparently staring directly” into the eyes of its creator and sketching her back, is the work of Jane Rosenberg, a veteran courtroom artist renowned for her depictions of high-profile trials. Rosenberg trained in the 1970s, when figurative art was deeply unfashionable at art college, said Will Pavia in The Times. She turned to courtroom sketching when “things were really rough financially”. Since then, she has covered historic trials including those of Bernie Madoff, Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby. Rosenberg said that she has seen Maxwell sketching court artists twice, on the second occasion quite deliberately turning in her seat to see…

Natasha tells Pat that she won’t be moving Summer Orchard to Bridge Farm – she’s found a perfect location at Sawyer’s Farm. Susan is worried about riding a horse in The Mystery Plays and Kirsty is having trouble finding extras. Hazel – Tom and Natasha’s landlord – says she wants to see them at the flat. After some niceties, she tells them she’s taking back the flat – they must leave in two months. Hazel reveals her plan to Fallon, who urges her to take pity, explaining how Natasha works all hours. Her good intentions backfire, and Hazel uses Natasha’s working from home as an excuse to evict them early for violating the lease terms. Tom and Natasha are furious, but don’t know who told Hazel. Natasha confronts Susan –…

A Cook’s Book Nigel Slater Fourth Estate £30 (£23.99) No one is better than Nigel Slater at describing the “simple sensuous pleasures of food”, said Bee Wilson in The Times. His latest book – a summation of his life in recipes – is a “magnificent volume of comfort”. It would be a great gift for “a novice” or for an experienced, but becoming jaded, home cook, said Rose Prince in The Spectator. Its practical detail will be invaluable to the former, while for the latter it will provide a “booster jab of inspiration”. Sambal Shiok Mandy Yin Quadrille £25 (£19.99) Combining Indian spices with Chinese techniques, Malaysian food is perhaps underappreciated in Britain, said Bee Wilson. Mandy Yin – proprietor of the popular Sambal Shiok restaurant in Highbury – shows…

Lina Wertmüller 1928-2021 The first woman to be nominated for a best director Oscar, Lina Wertmüller, who has died aged 93, made a string of films in Italy in the 1970s that became hits on America’s arthouse circuit, said The Guardian. Shot in bold colours with “alienating camera angles”, and dealing with subjects such as gender dynamics and sexual violence, they chimed with the rebellious spirit of the time. Wertmüller was featured on magazine covers and parodied on Saturday Night Live, said Variety. In cities such as New York, “Wertmüllermania” took hold: people would queue around the block to see her audacious, “in-your-face” films; two hours later, they’d emerge, arguing “feverishly” about what they meant. “Was she a feminist? An impishly perverse anti-feminist? A Marxist? A flamboyant entertainer? A creator…

NatWest has been fined nearly £265m for failing to stop a money-laundering scheme that lasted five years, took in around 50 branches nationwide, and featured “black bin liners” stuffed so full of cash “that one branch’s two floor-to-ceiling safes proved ‘inadequate’ for storing it all”, said Rupert Jones in The Guardian. The case centres on the Bradford jeweller Fowler Oldfield – which deposited around £365m from 2012 to 2016, when it was shut down after a police raid. It is the first time a UK bank has faced criminal prosecution by the Financial Conduct Authority under anti-money-laundering laws. When the money laundering was at its height, up to £1.8m of cash was deposited daily – quite an achievement for a supposed “scrap gold” dealer, which had told the bank it…

• Lego beats gold Researchers at Russia’s Higher School of Economics have made a startling discovery, said Mark Sweney in The Guardian. “Investing in Lego is more lucrative than gold, art and wine.” The study looked at the second-hand prices of 2,322 “unopened” sets from 1987 to 2015, and concluded that the market has risen 11% annually – a better long-term return than almost every other asset, including stocks and bonds. The best-performing sets include the Millennium Falcon, other Star Wars models, and the Taj Mahal. But the key message, if you want to build a nest egg, is that “not all sets are equally successful”, said Professor Victoria Dobrynskaya in The Times. Top performers have gained 600%, while others have proved loss-makers. Prices tend to rise two or three…

Cathie Wood “No one comes close to embodying the US stock market boom quite like Cathie Wood,” said the FT. Her company, Ark Invest, was “made for those who fancy a version of the tech-driven bull market on steroids”. Thanks to rare social media skills, she has pulled in “legions of retail investors and billions of dollars” by pitching aggressive bets on companies and technologies she says will “reshape the world”, notably Tesla and bitcoin. “The results have been spectacular – until now.” After generating average annual returns of 40% over the past five years, Wood’s $17bn flagship fund, the Ark Disruptive ETF (often known by its ticker ARKK) is down 34% since its February peak. Were it not for Tesla’s big gains, “the picture would be much uglier”. Critics…

Remember our “world-beating” jab roll-out? Seems a distant memory now, said Clemmie Moodie in The Sun. Having rightly congratulated itself for being “first over the line” in approving a Covid vaccine a year ago, the UK let “complacency creep in” when it came to getting booster jabs into people’s arms. The result? We’re now facing what our beleaguered Prime Minister described this week as a “tidal wave of Omicron”, the highly transmissible new variant. The strain is doubling in prevalence every two to three days, and the case rate in the UK may by now have reached 200,000 a day, according to some estimates. It’s already thought to have led to one death and at least ten hospitalisations. This is “probably the most significant threat since the start of the…

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s plans for a “metaverse” have sparked renewed interest in virtual worlds – and with predictions that more and more people will spend their time, and their money, in these digital landscapes, the price of real estate in them is soaring. In a virtual city called Decentraland, for instance, plots in the Fashion District that sold for $20 in 2017 are now going for around $10,000. Some investors say it’s like buying up Fifth Avenue in 1800. The pandemic is doing wonders for the market in superyachts. According to Boat International, more than 1,200 superyachts are currently on order or under construction. That is 25% more than last year, and beats a record set in 2009 after the financial crisis.…

Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, can be extradited to the US, the High Court has ruled. The decision overturns a previous ruling that blocked his extradition on mental health grounds. Last week, senior judges said they’d been convinced by a “package of assurances” given by the US government about how Assange would be treated in the US. Amongst the commitments was a pledge not to send him to a maximum-security prison if he is convicted, and another to allow him to serve any sentence he receives in Australia, where he holds citizenship. Assange is wanted in the US on 18 charges, including conspiring to hack military databases; his lawyers have said they will seek to appeal the ruling in the Supreme Court.…

Chicago, Illinois Actor convicted: A former star of the hit TV series Empire has been found guilty of staging a fake attack on himself, in what the court judged to be a publicity stunt aimed at raising his profile. Jussie Smollett, 39, who is black and gay, claimed that in January 2019 he’d been beaten up by two masked assailants who had yelled racist and homophobic slurs at him. Smollett claimed the men had put a noose around his neck and shouted “this is Maga country” (alluding to Donald Trump’s slogan, “Make America Great Again”). However, the police doubted his account and eventually charged him with paying two Nigerian friends, Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo, to stage the attack, a ruse which the two fake assailants admitted to in court. Smollett,…

“Don’t socialise, warned Dr Jenny Harries, the chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency, if you ‘don’t particularly need to’. Well. Upon hearing this I began breaking the concept down into digestible parts. What is social? What is need? The absence of socialising has allowed us to consider it more carefully than ever before, what it’s for, what it does for us, what we become when it is taken away. Why we can dread it, too. I had been considering throwing a Christmas party, but did I need to? Did I particularly need to gather people around me, in laughter and candlelight, proof I was known and proof I existed? Well, Dr Harries, the jury’s out.” Eva Wiseman in The Observer…

The preening folly of righton academics Rod Liddle The Sunday Times If you think our universities are crazy, says Rod Liddle, take a look at what’s taking place in New Zealand’s. Garth Cooper, an eminent University of Auckland scientist, has just been denounced by fellow academics for causing “untold hurt”, and may be expelled from NZ’s most prestigious scientific body. His crime? Signing an open letter questioning the wisdom of a government working party proposal demanding that teachers trying to explain the origins of the world to children should give as much weight to Maori mythology as science. Leaving aside the assault on freedom of speech, what’s truly depressing about this is the sheer stupidity of his accusers. These people know full well that Maori myths of gods and demigods,…

In the next few weeks, thousands of vulnerable Covid patients in the UK will be treated with an innovative antiviral pill, as part of a new trial. The PANORAMIC trial, which is now under way, aims to recruit 10,600 patients in total. To take part, people must have recently had a positive PCR test and be aged 50 or over – or aged 18 to 49 and have an underlying condition that makes them clinically vulnerable. Half of the participants will receive the antiviral treatment molnupiravir, plus standard care, while the other half will receive standard care alone. In both cases, the participants will take part in the trial at home. Last month, the UK’s medicines regulatory agency became the first in the world to approve the use of molnupiravir.…

The richest man in the world wants us to have more babies, said Sam Shead on CNBC. Speaking at a corporate event last week, Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk lamented that too many “good, smart people” were worried about the global population growing out of control. The real problem, he insisted, was quite the opposite: “There are not enough people. I can’t emphasise this enough, there are not enough people.” “Please look at the numbers,” he told the business audience – “if people don’t have more children, civilisation is going to crumble, mark my words.” At first glance, the numbers don’t really support Musk’s argument, said Harry de Quetteville in The Daily Telegraph. In the past 200 years, the global population has multiplied from one billion to almost eight…

“A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small parcel.” John Ruskin, quoted on The Browser “Not being about Brexit is one of the main things I look for in a book.” Charlotte Ivers in The Sunday Times “At 50, everyone has the face he deserves.” George Orwell, quoted in the Salem Statesman Journal “There’s fewer more distressing sights than that of an Englishman in a baseball cap.” The Libertines, quoted in The Guardian “Not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die.” Novelist Anne Lamott, quoted in The New York Times “Man is a creature that can get accustomed to anything, and I think that is the best definition of him.” Dostoevsky, quoted on Radio Free Europe “The passion for setting people…

Champions League draw This week’s draw for the knockout stages of the Champions League was hit by an “extraordinary” technical glitch, forcing the process to be restarted after the match-ups had already been declared, says Andy Hunter in The Guardian. Manchester City had thought they were playing Villarreal; Liverpool were set to play Red Bull Salzburg; Manchester United were readying themselves to take on the formidable Paris Saint-Germain. But then Uefa declared the draw void, saying it had been set up the wrong way as a result of a “technical problem with the software”. A redraw eventually took place – and City will now play Sporting Lisbon, Liverpool will play Inter Milan, and Man Utd Atlético Madrid. Of the eight pairings in the last 16, only Chelsea’s match-up against Lille…

To The Daily Telegraph I doubt that I am alone in my frustration at so much of the BBC’s news coverage of whether or not there was a party held in Downing Street last year. If the participants at this party were colleagues who spent their days together, sharing office space, talking and using communal spaces, why was attendance at an evening social event any more dangerous? Jacqueline Walker, Woodley, Berkshire To The Guardian Like many, I feel absolutely sickened by the reports of last year’s Christmas party at No. 10 and the Government’s inability to own up to it. Last Christmas, my daughter, who is a mental health nurse in the NHS, made a 160-mile round trip to spend the day with us and in doing so, stuck to…

Elgar & Bridge: Cello Concertos, Gabriel Schwabe (cello) Naxos £10.99 On this disc, the young German virtuoso Gabriel Schwabe performs two great British cello concertos – “one extremely well known, the other inexplicably neglected” – that were both composed in response to the horrors of the First World War, said Andrew Clements in The Guardian. Yet while Edward Elgar’s looks back to the “late-Romantic” era the War had destroyed, Frank Bridge’s “concerto elegiaco” Oration is a heartfelt protest at its futility. Schwabe’s account of the Elgar, under conductor Christopher Ward, is a “refreshingly straightforward” joy. And the Bridge, too, is “hugely impressive: full of finely realised detail, and lacking in bombast”. Schwabe is not the first German player to champion Bridge’s work, said Hugh Canning in The Sunday Times: his…

Ulysses by James Joyce, 1920 (Penguin £9.99). Hard not to come across as a self-regarding tosspot when you claim Joyce’s masterwork as your favourite book of all time, but there you are. I first read it at 17 and it changed my understanding of the possibilities of writing and reading. Innocence by Penelope Fitzgerald, 1986 (HarperCollins £8.99). I’d happily choose any of this writer’s works. In almost every sentence, let alone novel, she confounds expectation, eschews cliché, upends convention – while the stories themselves occupy a world both familiar and disconcerting. At a push, I’d choose this, a hypnotically odd antiromantic comedy set in a grim Tuscany of the not-so-fabulous 1950s, as my favourite. The Snow Beast by Chris Judge, 2015 (Andersen Press £6.99). I miss reading to my kids.…

Programmes The Girl Before Gugu Mbatha-Raw and David Oyelowo star in this thriller shown over four nights. A woman moves into a lovely minimalist house, but fears the same fate as a previous tenant, who died there. Sun 19, Mon 20, Tue 21 and Wed 22 Dec, BBC1 21:00 (60mins each). Beauty and the Beast – A Pantomime for Comic Relief Lily James, Miranda Hart and others appear in a dose of good-humoured fundraising silliness. Sun 19 Dec, BBC2 21:00 (60mins). Daniel Barenboim: In His Own Words In this feature documentary, the conductor and pianist talks candidly about everything from his early years as a child prodigy in Buenos Aires to his relationship with the cellist Jacqueline du Pré. Sun 19 Dec, BBC4 21:00 (75mins). Carols from King’s The choir…

• Get a dashcam. If you have an accident, it may be your only eyewitness, and evidence from video footage can help with an insurance claim. • Since 2014, cars have been fitted with tyre pressure monitoring systems (TPMS). If your car was made before then, you might want to buy a TPMS. Under-inflated tyres will lower your miles per gallon, and could cause the tyres to wear out. • A parking app (try AppyParking) will show where there are parking spaces, with filters for charging points, and disabled and motorcycle bays. It can find the cheapest spaces with current availability and let you know when restrictions apply (iOS/Android). • With the cost of petrol at an all-time high, it’s worth checking a fuel-price comparison app, such as PetrolPrices (iOS/Android).…

With 90% of its population fully vaccinated, Cambodia reopened to foreign visitors a month ago. This is a wonderful time to go, says Michelle Jana Chan in The Sunday Telegraph: everything looks its “glorious” best at the end of the rainy season, and the country’s major tourist attraction, Angkor Wat (pictured), is still blessedly free of the “extreme overcrowding” that blighted it for years before the pandemic. This intricately carved 12th century Hindu temple is the world’s largest religious monument, and is set amid paddy fields and forests that harbour scores more beautiful temples, “flanked by reflecting pools and bound by moats”. Combine a visit to it with trips to some of the country’s lesser-known religious sites – such as the tenth century Koh Ker, with its “dramatic” 35 metre-high…

Michael Nesmith 1942-2021 Michael Nesmith, who has died aged 78, was the woolly-hatted member of The Monkees; the most serious and contemplative of the four; and the one who railed most against the constraints of being in the band. The Monkees were “specifically manufactured” for a TV sitcom about the zany antics of a pop group, inspired by the success of The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night, said The Daily Telegraph. And though Nesmith managed to get some of his songs onto their records – including Listen to the Band and Circle Sky – most of their tracks were written for them by the likes of Neil Diamond. It infuriated Nesmith that for their early releases, they were not even allowed to play their instruments; and that as a result,…

With UK cases of the Omicron variant rising rapidly, the prospect of tougher curbs than those imposed in the Government’s Plan B last week rattled business. Hospitality business leaders said that pubs and restaurants faced a 40% cut in Christmas takings under Plan B. The leaders of BA, easyJet and Virgin Atlantic called on the Treasury to extend pandemic loan schemes. Samuel Tombs, of Pantheon Macroeconomics, put the potential damage in a “plausible worst-case scenario” of retail and consumer services businesses being forced to close, at 6%. Rising transport and energy costs helped push UK inflation to 5.1% in the 12 months to November, the highest level since September 2011. Rising prices of clothes and second-hand cars were also big factors in pushing up inflation. The combination of rising prices…

Barça by Simon Kuper (Short Books £20). This look at how football megaclubs are run (and misrun), by a lifelong fan of Barcelona, “may be one of the most forensic books about the football industry ever written”, says The Economist. “Thoughtful and dramatic.” Anthro-vision by Gillian Tett (Random House Business £20). This “engaging” book argues that more businesses should study anthropology, says the FT, giving examples from the financial crisis to the sale of KitKats in Japan. Anthropology, says Tett, helps companies “see round corners”. Red Roulette by Desmond Shum (Scribner £20). This “extraordinary behind-the-scenes glimpse of the nexus of business and politics in China”, by a former adviser, combines “explosive revelations with grubby details of elite life”, says The Economist. Amazon Unbound by Brad Stone (Simon & Schuster £20).…

The week’s best shares DWF Group The Times The legal firm has restructured into three divisions: core legal advisory, claims handling and Mindcrest, which includes compliance and analytics. Margins are improving and it’s expanding. Potential 6.1% yield. Buy. 110p. Ferguson The Times The plumbing and heating products specialist has been growing market share in the US, with sales up 24.5%. It’s likely to switch to listing in the US, where shares look less toppy compared to its rivals. Buy. £115.70. Hollywood Bowl Group The Sunday Times Punters are flocking to Hollywood’s 64 bowling alleys, thanks to improved booking facilities and classier food and drink. Opening between 14 and 18 new Puttstars (indoor golf), with plenty of liquidity to withstand Covid jitters. Buy. 228.5p. Marlowe Investors’ Chronicle The health and safety…

THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1291 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 27 December. Email the answers as a scan of a completed grid or a list, with the subject line The Week crossword 1291, to crossword@theweek.co.uk. Tim Moorey (timmoorey.com) This week’s winner will receive an Ettinger (ettinger.co.uk) travel pass case (assorted colours), which retails at £105, and two Connell Guides (connellguides.com). ACROSS 1 One into cream crackers left sweet (7) 5 Like measures in court sittings (7) 9 Metal missing outside on the wagon (9) 10 Some glib minister not entirely up in the clouds (5) 11 English drawings and films perhaps? (5) 12 Part…