Innholdsfortegnelse for 1366 i The Week

What happened There was hope this week that the Omicron wave of Covid-19 had peaked in Britain, as cases fell steeply across the country and hospital admissions stabilised. On Tuesday, 121,000 daily cases were recorded, down from 219,000 the week before. In London, where Omicron first hit, hospital admissions were down 17% since the New Year. Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Levelling Up, said, in light of this, the UK could look forward to a “progressive lifting of restrictions” in the coming weeks. It was time we learnt to “live with Covid”, he added. However, owing to the time lag between infection and death, Britain recorded its highest daily number of Covid-related deaths (379) since last February. And despite the fall in case numbers, the pressure on hospitals remained…

Controversy of the week Ever since he was sacked by Boris Johnson in November 2020, Dominic Cummings has been engaged in a “methodical campaign” to destroy his former boss, said Andrew Pierce in the Daily Mail. His most devastating blow yet came last week when he suggested that Sue Gray, the civil servant examining allegations that parties were held in Downing Street during lockdown, “should investigate the ‘Socially Distanced Drinks’ email sent on Wednesday 20 May 2020”. That email, sent by the PM’s principal private secretary Martin Reynolds, was leaked this week. It invited around 100 Downing Street staff to “make the most of the lovely weather and have some socially distanced drinks in the No. 10 garden” at 6pm that evening. “Bring your own booze!” Reynolds added. After two…

Antwerp, Belgium Record cocaine busts: Customs officials in Rotterdam and Antwerp seized cocaine with a street value of s18bn last year, a record high. In Antwerp, in Belgium, a total of 89,450kg of the drug was intercepted, a third more than the previous year; a further 70,571kg was found across the border in the Dutch port of Rotterdam – up around 75%. And these drugs represent “just the tip of the iceberg”, according to Belgium’s finance minister Vincent Van Peteghem. Experts say the cartels’ growing reliance on shipping containers to move cocaine has made the high-volume ports of Antwerp, Rotterdam and Hamburg the main entry points for cocaine shipments from Ecuador, Panama and Paraguay. The drugs are then distributed by mainly Belgian, Dutch and Spanish gangs across Europe. On 30…

1 Eskègizéw Bèrtchi, written and performed by Alèmayèhu Eshèté 2 Vissi d’arte from Puccini’s Tosca, performed by Kiri Te Kanawa with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by John Pritchard 3 It Takes Two by James Brown and Robert Ginyard, performed by Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock 4 We Will Rock You by Brian May, performed by Queen 5 Mr Brightside by Brandon Flowers and Dave Keuning, performed by The Killers 6 Wiley Flow by Michael Omari, Eyobed Getachew and Richard Kylea Cowie Jr., performed by Stormzy 7 You’re Lovely to Me, written and performed by Lucky Jim 8* Rocket Man by Elton John and Bernie Taupin, performed by Elton John Book: Moonshine for Beginners and Experts by Damian C. Brown Luxury: bird seed * Choice if allowed only one record…

In November, Austria – which had one of western Europe’s lowest Covid vaccination rates – announced a “lockdown for the unvaccinated”: a stay-at-home order for those with no proof of immunisation, with fines of s500 for those who defied it. Even that was apparently not enough; it is set to become the first EU country to make the jabs obligatory, as of February. In Germany, the new chancellor, Olaf Scholz, is also pushing to make vaccination mandatory, despite resistance from coalition partners. Italy has opted to make it mandatory for anyone over 50. Greece is pondering a similar move. In France, President Macron has vowed to “piss off” the unvaccinated by making their lives as difficult as possible: by banning them from cafés, restaurants, entertainment venues and long-distance transport. Many…

A minimally-invasive tool for treating prostate cancer has been used on NHS patients for the first time. The technique, known as NanoKnife, works by firing electrical pulses at a tumour to “cut open” cell membranes, causing them to die. The pulses are short and have no heat, meaning healthy cells surrounding the tumour are left undamaged. The procedure has few side effects and can be completed within a day. Six men have so far gone under the NanoKnife in NHS hospitals in London, including Neil Gershon, a 70-year-old who said he felt “absolutely fine” afterwards. Separately, prostate cancer charities expressed disappointment that NICE had rejected the use of the drug olaparib by NHS England, although studies have suggested that patients treated with it live longer than with other treatments. Around…

At last, said The Sunday Times. Nearly five years after the Grenfell Tower disaster, the Government has finally come up with a plan to help tens of thousands of leaseholders who, through no fault of their own, have been trapped in unsafe and unsellable homes clad in combustible material. High-rise buildings were already covered by a government-backed £5bn fund to pay to fix defective cladding, but the previous housing minister, Robert Jenrick, took the line that leaseholders in mid-rise buildings (11 to 18 metres high) should pay to fix the problems themselves, albeit with the help of cheap government loans. Now Michael Gove, the new minister in charge of housing, is coming after the property developers: he wants them to cough up £4bn to fix mid-rise buildings, by March. If…

“Ideas are not always responsible for the people that have them.” Katharine Whitehorn, quoted in The Times “Subjectivity is just objectivity waiting for data.” Dave Eggers, quoted on The Browser “When your children are teenagers, it’s important to have a dog so that someone in the house is happy to see you.” Nora Ephron, quoted in Metro “The stock market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient.” Warren Buffett, quoted in Forbes “A cynic is what an idealist calls a realist.” Sir Humphrey Appleby, quoted in The Sunday Times “Sentimentality is the tribute indifference pays to compassion.” Theodore Dalrymple, quoted in The Spectator “Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the…

Nadal in form in Melbourne While Novak Djokovic was enduring his visa-detention ordeal following a controversial medical exemption (see page 21), his great rival Rafael Nadal was “taking care of business on court” at a warm-up event for the Australian Open, says Stuart Fraser in The Times. Returning from a five-month injury lay-off, the world No. 6 claimed his 89th career title at the Melbourne Summer Set, defeating American Maxime Cressy 7-6, 6-3 in the final. Nadal starts next week’s Australian Open tied on 20 Grand Slam victories with Djokovic and the injured Roger Federer. Meanwhile, women’s world No. 1 Ashleigh Barty “capped a perfect week of preparation”, winning both the singles and doubles at the Adelaide International. The reigning Wimbledon champion is hoping to become the “first home singles…

To The Daily Telegraph It is to be hoped that the Colston statue verdict will be another nail in the coffin of trial by jury. The antiquity of this institution should not blind us to its drawbacks. It was devised to provide a safeguard for defendants when neither prosecutors nor judges were independent of the political authorities. The continued performance by non-professionals of this key role in the administration of criminal justice is anachronistic as well as expensive, cumbersome and time-consuming. And it can lead, as the Bristol verdict shows, to capricious and irresponsible results. We abolished juries for nearly all civil trials some 90 years ago, and the great majority of criminal trials are held before magistrates sitting without juries. The time has come to complete this process of…

by Hanya Yanagihara Picador 720pp £20 The Week Bookshop £15.99 Hanya Yanagihara’s latest novel is the “keenly awaited” follow up to A Little Life, her “devastating story of irreparable human damage”, said David Sexton in The Sunday Times. It consists of three sections all set in the same New York building and taking place, respectively, in 1893, 1993 and 2093. Part one re-imagines 19th century New York as a “liberal breakaway nation in which gay marriage is normal”. Part two, set in the “time of Aids”, focuses on a wealthy white lawyer and his young Hawaiian lover. Part three envisages an America that has been ravaged by “successive waves of viruses, every few years from 2020”. While a “less bludgeoningly powerful” work than A Little Life, it’s still “highly affecting”.…

Boiling Point 1hr 32mins (15) Gripping film set in a restaurant kitchen I realise it’s early days, but “if a more stressful film” than Boiling Point comes along this year, “I would be most surprised”, said Deborah Ross in The Spectator. Filmed in a single continuous take, it stars that “powerhouse” of an actor Stephen Graham as Andy, the head chef and part-owner of a hot London restaurant. Andy’s staff “respect and like him”, but we can see something “broken” about him, “and are on it, asking ourselves: ‘Can he hold it together, or will he implode? That water bottle he is always clutching. Is it water?’” Jangling with nervous energy, Andy tries to get on with his work, but his customers don’t help: there’s a racist table, a trio…

The Night Watch, in 717 gigapixels Art conservators in Holland have completed work on the “largest and most detailed photograph ever taken of a work of art”, says David Crossland in The Times. The painting in question is Rembrandt’s The Night Watch (1642), a vast canvas depicting a 17th century Dutch militia, with a cast of no fewer than 34 characters. The new image was commissioned by Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, where the painting hangs. It is composed of a staggering 717 gigapixels – 717,000,000,000 pixels – spread across 8,439 individual photos, stitched together using artificial intelligence to create a kind of digital tapestry. It can be seen on the Rijksmuseum’s website, allowing viewers to zoom in and notice, for instance, how the 17th century master put the tiniest of white dots…

After a happy family day at Lower Loxley with Martha, Chris tries to kiss Alice. She pulls back, saying they can’t be together – she needs to focus on staying sober. Later, a distraught Chris tells her he wants to divorce quickly so they can move on. She’ll need to cite unreasonable behaviour on his part; otherwise, he’ll cite hers. Shaken by this, Alice buys two bottles of vodka. Having assisted on the Mysteries, Roy’s dad Mike is helping fix up the bungalow at Brookfield, where Josh is set on moving in. There are growing pains as Tony and Pat adjust to sharing the house with Tom and Natasha. After getting texts for help, Amy finds Alice sitting in a playground with the untouched vodka. Alice feels she’s failed by…

Spicy pork with peanuts 1 tbsp vegetable oil 250g-300g lean pork loin steak, cut into strips (or use stir-fry strips) 1 tsp garlic purée 1 tsp ginger purée 3 whole dried chillies, halved lengthways 80g unsalted peanuts drizzle of sesame oil For the sauce: 60ml chicken stock 1 tbsp Chinese rice wine (Shaoxing wine) ½ tbsp oyster sauce 1 tsp dark soy sauce 2 tsp sugar ½ tsp cornflour (cornstarch) pinch of white pepper • Combine all the ingredients for the sauce in a bowl, mix well and set to one side. • Place a wok over a high heat, add the vegetable oil and fry the pork strips for 1-2 minutes, stirring regularly to ensure even cooking and browning. • Next add the garlic and ginger purées, chillies and peanuts and…

• Lucy Wyndham-Read is hailed as the UK’s most popular personal trainer on YouTube, ahead of Joe Wicks, even. Her 10- and 7-minute workouts are suitable for all levels and most require no equipment. • Also on YouTube are The Lean Machines – personal trainers, nutrition coaches and authors who cover everything from recipes and motivation tips to a range of short workouts and helpful technique videos. • Yoga teacher Adriene Mishler was a lockdown saviour for many with her free Yoga with Adriene videos for every occasion and ailment, on YouTube. • Australian personal trainer Kayla Itsines founded the paid-for SWEAT app, but you can access some of her workouts on YouTube for free – most are suited to those at an intermediate level of fitness or above. •…

Perched above the village of Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, this opening from the Maybourne group (which owns Claridge’s and The Connaught) is the hippest of the top-class hotels on the Côte d’Azur, says Lanie Goodman in Condé Nast Traveller. A “dazzling block of white criss-crossed lines and floor-to-ceiling glass”, it has a “modernist” feel within, with “museum-quality” art including a huge Louise Bourgeois sculpture. There’s a holistic spa and two pools, as well as private pools in some of the 69 rooms. Restaurants include Ceto, created by three-Michelin-starred chef Mauro Colagreco. Doubles from £530; maybourneriviera.com.…

Sidney Poitier 1927-2022 Sidney Poitier, who has died aged 94, was the first black actor to become a matinee idol – and the first black winner of the best actor Oscar. Rising to prominence as the civil rights movement was beginning to make headway in the US, he tended to be cast in roles that “reflected the peaceful integrationist goals of the struggle”, said The New York Times; though some of his characters simmered with repressed anger, they usually met hatred “with reason and forgiveness, sending a reassuring message to white audiences”. As a consequence, he was accused, when the movement took a more militant turn, of being an “Uncle Tom”. Poitier’s response was that he could, and did, turn down parts – but that he had no control over…

Rolls-Royce Motor Cars has enjoyed a bumper year: sales, up by 49% to 5,586 deliveries, are “the best in its 117-year history”, said Sky News. One reason, according to boss Torsten Müller-Ötvös, is that the carmaker has been “protected from the global chip shortage” by its parent firm, BMW. Another is a striking “life-is-short” theory, said Alistair Osborne in The Times. Müller-Ötvös reckons that sales of Rolls’ fancy £240,000-plus motors have been boosted “quite massively” by, in his words, people witnessing others in their community “dying from Covid”. It makes for an interesting sales pitch. Worried you haven’t got long for this world? What about buying a Roller?…

Frontier/emerging markets Sadly, “my love of geographical frontiers”, particularly Africa, has gone “unrewarded”. All the funds tried (Africa Opportunity, Atlas Mara, Agriterra) have disappointed – it’s “fiendishly difficult” to find well-managed businesses with liquid stock quotes. Better to stick with an active fund like BlackRock Frontiers; and wait. By contrast, emerging market bets, while “a roller-coaster ride”, have often paid off. My favourite vehicle, Schroders Asian Total, which tends to invest after valuations crash, has nearly doubled in price since October 2016. Scientific innovation A fervent belief in backing biotech has largely paid off. Particularly an innovative investment trust called “Battle Against Cancer IT”, which became Syncona; shares have since doubled. I continue to favour funds spinning out intellectual property from universities and research labs, such as Mercia Asset Management.…

The week’s best shares Experian Investors’ Chronicle The rise of e-commerce services such as “buy now pay later” has boosted the credit-checking firm. Shares have slipped, but phenomenal growth is pushing profits up. Expanding. Buy. £35.13. Fidelity China Special Situations The Times The sell-off in China presents buying opportunities for this trust, which focuses on small and mid-cap healthcare and tech firms – spurred by a rising population and growing middle-class. One for the long term. Buy. 307.5p. Medtronic The Daily Telegraph This US-listed, Irish-based healthcare firm majors on non-discretionary products for chronic conditions: from heart disease to diabetes. Invigorated by a new CEO, and the divi is growing. Buy. $106.39. Next Fifteen Communications Group The Times The marketing and data specialist’s shares have more than doubled thanks to impressive…

THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1294 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 24 January. Email the answers as a scan of a completed grid or a list, with the subject line The Week crossword 1294, 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). Last year we lost a genius to be entered at unclued 15 Across. Your setter was proud to have been friendly with him for many years. Four of his works (one in partnership) are also unclued ACROSS 5 (7) 7 English composer’s partner in…

What happened Boris Johnson came under pressure from both Tory and Labour MPs this week to mitigate a looming cost-of-living crisis. In April, the Government is due to raise employer and employee national insurance contributions (NICs) by 1.25 percentage points. The rise will come just as a revised price cap is likely to push up annual household fuel bills by an average of £700, to £2,000. Voters’ pockets are set to be further squeezed by other inflation-fuelled price hikes, council tax rises and the five-year freeze on tax thresholds announced in October, which is expected to drag 1.2 million more workers into the 40% tax band. At last week’s Cabinet meeting, the Leader of the Commons, Jacob Rees-Mogg, called for the rise in NICs to be scrapped, but the Chancellor,…

The phrases “wait, what?”, “no worries” and “at the end of the day” have appeared on this year’s list of banished terms, issued by Lake Superior State University in Michigan. Also on the yearly compendium of trite or irritating expressions are “deep dive”, “that being said” and “circle back”. Past banished terms include “my bad”, “bromance” and “baddaboom, baddabing”. Lizards, tortoises and snakes should not be referred to as “exotic” because the term is “problematic”, according to the British Small Animal Veterinary Association. It would be better, it advises, to call them “non-traditional companion animals”, to capture the “range of relationships that exist between humans and animals”.…

New York Possibility of retrial: Lawyers for Ghislaine Maxwell are due to attend a preliminary hearing next week where they will seek to persuade a judge to grant her a retrial. Days after the British-born socialite was found guilty of sex trafficking on 29 December, one of the jurors revealed to the press that he had been sexually assaulted as a child, and that he’d used his experience to help assuage the doubts of other jurors about inconsistencies in some of the witness testimony. A second juror then came forward with a similar story, leading to questions about whether they’d lied during the screening process. This week, prosecutors said that if Maxwell is not granted a retrial, they’d be prepared to drop charges of perjury against her, in the interests…

“A lot of people spend a great deal of time worrying about what makes them look old. Is it the bags under the eyes or the invisible triceps? But the giveaway now is how you use your phone. You can carbon-date yourself in a single exchange. If you leave voicemail, that makes you a boomer. If you send a voice note, you are (spiritually, at least) a millennial, or even generation Z. Boomers answer their phone the minute it rings, like it is a smoke alarm. The generation above, sometimes called the ‘silent generation’, keep their phone in a drawer, forget it is there and might call you back a month later. This used to really bug me, but now I find it charming and nostalgic, like vinyl.” Zoe Williams…

The warped morality of our teaching unions Juliet Samuel The Daily Telegraph It’s appalling the way children’s interests have been subordinated in this pandemic, says Juliet Samuel. In 2020, pubs reopened only shortly after schools did; and today, while office workers and nightclub-goers go mask-free, secondary school pupils have to cover up. So three cheers for the pupils in the school in the north of England who’ve rebelled and refuse to wear masks in lessons. But are the teaching unions, who supposedly have pupils’ interests at heart, on board with this? Are they hell. The only problem they see with the burdens placed on schools is that there aren’t enough. The biggest union, the National Education Union, isn’t content with teachers and children taking two Covid tests a week; it…

If we can’t get babies, let’s get immigrants Bryan Walsh Vox Remember that 1973 dystopian thriller Soylent Green, starring Charlton Heston? It was set in the year 2022, and featured a world so hideously overpopulated that dead bodies are converted into food. Safe to say, the real 2022 is rather different, says Bryan Walsh. For much of the West, and certainly for the US, the real worry today is population decline. Fewer babies were born in New York City in 2020 than any year on record. The US total fertility rate – an estimate of the average number of children a woman will have over her lifetime – fell to 1.64 in 2020, way below the 2.1 replacement level. This is a regrettable development, not least because when US surveys…

Take exercise to treat anxiety Strenuous exercise could be a more effective treatment for anxiety than drugs, a new study has found. Researchers in Sweden recruited 286 patients with anxiety, most of whom were women, and split them randomly into groups. The people in one were prescribed a low-intensity course of exercise over 12 weeks; a second group did a more strenuous version of the same programme, which involved three sessions a week of cardio and strength training; a control group did no exercise. When researchers compared the participants’ own assessments of their mental state, before and after, they found that the recruits in the two active groups had experienced a “significant reduction” in symptoms, even when their anxiety was chronic, compared to the control group. And the more strenuously…

When Damien Hirst bought Toddington Manor for £3m in 2005, he vowed to restore it to its former glory. But 17 years on, the vast, Grade I-listed building near Tewkesbury is still shrouded in scaffolding and tarpaulin – and locals are getting impatient. The good news is Hirst can almost certainly afford the work. His fortune is estimated at £315m; and he has never been afraid of spending it. As he explained in 2020, “You start by thinking you’ll get one assistant and before you know it, you’ve got biographers, fire-eaters, f***ing minstrels and lyre players all wandering around.” The reality TV star Stephanie Matto claims to have made $200,000 by selling her farts. Fans, it seems, were willing to pay $1,000 apiece for jars of her trapped wind; but…

Last weekend, Novak Djokovic should have been warming up for yet another Grand Slam, said Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian. Instead, the world No. 1 was “cooling his heels” in a quarantine hotel in Australia – denied the use of his private chef, let alone a practice court – while an “international row” raged outside. The Serbian, a known vaccine sceptic, had boasted on social media that he had been granted a medical exemption to a rule that players in the Australian Open be double-jabbed (on grounds of prior infection, it emerged later). Yet on arrival, border officials said that he had not met entry requirements, and withdrew his visa. Clearly, someone “screwed up”, and this week a judge reinstated Djokovic’s visa, after his lawyers argued that he had been…

When Newcastle United were taken over by a Saudi consortium back in October, they overnight became the “richest club in the world”, said David Parsons in The Sunday Times. You’d hardly have thought so if you saw them play last Saturday, when they took on Cambridge United in the third round of the FA Cup. Before a “shell-shocked St James’ Park”, Newcastle lost 1-0 to a side in the “bottom half of Sky Bet League One”. The Magpies had a wretched game and were matched by their opponents “from start to finish”. No wonder the home fans booed when it was over. Particularly galling was the fact that manager Eddie Howe fielded an almost full-strength team – one that included debutant Kieran Trippier, who was “thrust straight into action just…

Rugby union Leicester Tigers suffered their first Premiership defeat of the season, losing 13-16 to Wasps. Second-placed Saracens lost 24-25 to Gloucester. Tennis Canada won the ATP Cup, defeating Spain in the final. In the first round of the Sydney Tennis Classic, Emma Raducanu lost 6-0, 6-1 to Elena Rybakina of Kazakhstan. Football Arsenal lost to Nottingham Forest in the third round of the FA Cup. Chelsea beat Chesterfield 5-1 and Liverpool beat Shrewsbury 4-1. Manchester City beat Swindon 4-1.…

A year ago last week, a mob of Donald Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol. You might think you know the story – “QAnon, social media, disaffected voters” – said Danielle Stephens in The Guardian. But even for those well-versed in the background, Gabriel Gatehouse’s new Radio 4 series The Coming Storm (all episodes available on BBC Sounds) is a “must listen”. In it, the Newsnight international editor journeys across the US in an attempt to understand why so many Americans were convinced that the election had been stolen – and why the rioters believed they had the moral right, or duty, to “take back their country”. Gatehouse comes across as “less patronising than fellow journalists who have gone down a similar path”, and gets “access to voices that shed…

ITV’s four-part drama Anne serves as a reminder that even if we “all know about Hillsborough” – the 1989 FA cup semi-final disaster in which 97 Liverpool fans were killed – “we didn’t live it, and then relive it, viscerally, relentlessly, as the bereaved did”, said Barbara Ellen in The Observer. Written by Kevin Sampson, who was at the game, the series follows Anne Williams (Maxine Peake), the mother of 15-year-old victim Kevin, as she fights, year after year, to “extract the truth from a swirling miasma of misinformation, police mistakes, cover-ups and lies”. Williams is living a “waking nightmare”, and Peake brilliantly captures her transformation from ordinary Liverpool mum to tenacious battler for truth. It would have been easy for the series to slide into “inspirational hagiography”, said Dan…

The Drowned and the Saved by Primo Levi, 1986 (Abacus £9.99). A great writer’s reckoning with a year in Auschwitz, and a life spent trying to survive it. It is the great book on what it means to be a truthful witness to horror, and a powerful, angry denunciation of those who seek to make us forget. Personal Impressions by Isaiah Berlin, 1980 (Pimlico £18.99). This collection includes wonderful character portraits of Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, but it is unforgettable because of the chapter on meeting the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova in Leningrad’s Sheremetev Palace, one night in autumn 1945, a night that changed Berlin’s life. Paddle-to-the-Sea by Holling C. Holling, 1941 (Sandpiper Books £5.99). A book I read as a child in Canada about a hand-carved canoe that…

Programmes Hidden Assets New Irish-Flemish crime drama. A detective tries to figure out the connection between a police raid in Limerick and a body in Antwerp. Sat 15 Jan, BBC4 21:00 and 21:50 (50mins each). RSC’s Henry IV, Part 1 The late Antony Sher plays Falstaff in this first TV broadcast of the RSC’s 2014 production. Sun 16 Jan, BBC4 20:00 (170mins). Sue Perkins’ Big American Road Trip Over two episodes, Perkins goes on the road in California and Colorado to explore the “van life” movement in the US. Sun 16 Jan, C4 21:00 (60mins). Why Ships Crash Documentary investigating the inside story of the Ever Given, the vast container ship that blocked the Suez Canal for six days last March. Tue 18 Jan, BBC2 21:00 (60mins). Toast of Tinseltown…

The lockdown craze for home cocktails “has stuck and looks set to continue”, says Victoria Moore in The Daily Telegraph. In fact, I predict that it will become “more elaborate” in 2022, as drinkers seek out ever more unusual ingredients – such as the French red grapefruit liqueur Pampelle Ruby l’Apéro, sales of which look set to do “very well” in the coming months. In the wine world, 2022 is likely to be another good year for South Africa. It offers unrivalled quality at the £20-plus level. The wines of Stellenbosch and Swartland are justly celebrated, but the chardonnays and pinot noirs from cooler regions such as Hemel-en-Aarde are also worth seeking out. But South Africa excels at producing more affordable bottles too: its crisp, dry sauvignons rival the best…

Martins Meats – a family-run farm and butcher in the Cotswolds – has its own herd of longhorn cattle; the meat is aged in a Himalayan rock salt chamber for extra flavour. Delivery £11.95; martinsmeats.com. Lake District Farmers source high-quality meat from 50 local farmers and supply top chefs, including Michel Roux. Delivery £12.50; lakedistrictfarmers.co.uk. Sound Seafood This family-run company in Plymouth delivers boxes of fresh fish (£50 each, 18 servings). You can also order Scottish salmon smoked by chef Mark Hix. Free delivery; soundseafood.co.uk. Lishman’s is a butcher and charcutier in Ilkley which selects pigs from local farms, and supplies restaurants including Tommy Banks’s Michelin-starred The Black Swan. Delivery £11; lishmansbutchers.co.uk. At 6pm Monday to Thursday the online “market” at Pesky opens, selling fish caught that day. Delivery £7.50…

Atmospheric Osh Despite its history as a centre of the Silk Road, there’s little notable architecture in Osh, Kyrgyzstan’s second city. But it’s more atmospheric than the Soviet-built capital, Bishkek, says Karolina Wiercigroch in DestinAsian magazine, and makes for a rewarding stop on a road trip through this vast and mountainous land. The drive there takes you past the immense lake of Issyk Kul, through plunging gorges and over the 3,500-metre Kara Koo pass, from which the views are breathtaking. And the city’s bazaar is one of the largest and oldest in Central Asia, with wonderful food stands and bakeries, and stalls selling everything from traditional hats to horseshoes forged on site. If you have time, take a different route back to Bishkek, and spend a night with a local…

Next/Aldi/M&S: top of the class “It’s exam results time for retailers” – that time of year when they present their festive trading statements to the City, said James Moore in The Independent. Next is the “school swot” that traditionally gets in early, and it has once again set “a very high bar” – achieving a 20% rise in festive sales compared with 2019, and adding £20m in profits to its revenue forecast. CEO Lord Wolfson (left) has consistently shown what “competent management” can do for so-so fashion merchandise. So, another “A” for the retailer? “Erm, not quite”: the market issued a “B minus”. Traders don’t like the look of Wolfson’s projections for the year ahead – particularly the impact of rising costs (CPI inflation, higher freight charges…). Which raises a…

It’s time we grabbed the Brexit wins Robert Shrimsley Financial Times “Like a diner sending back the house red for not being a vintage claret”, some leading Conservatives are complaining that their flagship policy has not met expectations, says Robert Shrimsley. “Excuse me, this isn’t the Brexit I ordered.” Whatever happened to the dream of “a lightly regulated, low-tax entrepreneurial economy at the cutting edge of modern science and economic change”, asked the former Brexit negotiator Lord Frost when he resigned in December. That buccaneering prospect seems more remote than ever. In almost every sector – from agriculture to the City – “valuable market access” has been “surrendered for a sovereignty that is being little used”. Even Remainers must see that the “different approach to regulation” that Brexit has made…

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Four police officers in Los Angeles have won praise for dragging a man out of his light aircraft, seconds before it was hit by a fast-moving train. The pilot had been forced to make an emergency landing, and had ended up trapped in his plane across a railway track. In footage of the incident, the police can be heard screaming “Go go go” as the train slams into the plane’s wreckage. “I’m grateful to be alive,” said one of the officers. “I’m grateful the pilot survived as well.” An Army physiotherapist from Derby has become the first woman of colour to ski alone to the South Pole. Preet Chandi, or “Polar Preet”, completed the 700-mile journey in 40 days, braving temperatures of-50°C and finishing five days ahead of schedule. When…

Two-thirds of voters believe Boris Johnson should resign over the latest Downing Street party revelations – including 42% of people who voted Conservative in the 2019 election. Savanta ComRes/The i Paper Nearly half of Tory members say Rishi Sunak would make a better leader than Boris Johnson. 47% say it’s likely Johnson will still be party leader by the next election; 45% think he’ll have gone. YouGov/Sky News 86% of voters have noticed a rise in the overall cost of living. A third expect their energy bills to become unaffordable this year. 59% say they’d like tax revenues to be used to limit the rise in gas and electricity bills (Opinium/The Observer/YouGov/The Times)…

A bittersweet coming-out Australian A-league footballer Josh Cavallo’s revelation in October that he is gay had global ramifications. It meant that aged 21, he became the only openly gay male top-flight professional player in the world – and prompted a deluge of supportive messages: everyone from Liverpool manager Jürgen Klopp to pop star Ricky Martin got in touch. Yet for its global significance, his story is a very personal one, says Adam Crafton in Attitude. As a teenager, he’d struggled to reconcile his sexuality with the lack of gay role models in the game, and kept it a secret – even from his family and friends. “It became really natural for me to lie without even thinking about it,” he says. That he was leading a “double life” preyed on…

A devoted Chinese dog owner spent 100,000 yuan (£11,500) hiring 520 drones to celebrate her beloved pooch’s birthday. The drones formed elaborate designs in the sky, before spelling out the words “Happy 10th birthday to Doudou” in the sky above the city of Changsha in Hunan Province. In a video of the display, the dog appears unimpressed. The spectacle also drew the ire of local police, who said people should apply for approval before flying drones in the area. An official added that if they’d known about the stunt, they would have shot down the drones. A handwoven wicker sculpture recently unveiled in Ashford, Kent, has upset local residents, who have complained that it “looks like a dog poo”. The Loop, created by artist Julia Clarke, was commissioned by Ashford…

The common goldfish is not universally cherished for its intellect, and yet it seems the creatures can learn to steer a car. Researchers at Ben-Gurion University in Israel created a fish-operated vehicle (FOV) by putting a small tank on a wheeled platform; the FOV was designed so that when a fish swam towards one of the tank’s walls, the vehicle moved in that direction. At first, the six fish involved in the study drove the FOV around a room at random. But with reward-based training, they gradually learnt to navigate the vehicle towards a target that was observable through the tank’s walls. And by the end of the study, the fish had become quite adept at driving the FOV, reaching the target from different starting points, while avoiding dead ends…

Many a row has raged over the statue of the 17th century slave trader and philanthropist Edward Colston in Bristol, but there’s no dispute about what happened on 7 June 2020, said The Times. During a Black Lives Matter (BLM) rally, protesters pulled it down with ropes and tipped it into the harbour, to cheers and high-fives. At the resulting trial for criminal damage, which ended last week, four defendants freely admitted their responsibility. Yet a majority of the jury found them not guilty, apparently accepting their argument that the statue itself constituted some kind of “hate crime” against the city. The jury system is an invaluable protector of our liberties, and “perverse verdicts”, which contradict the evidence given in court, have a long and important history. Even so, it’s…

The UK birth rate has been in steady decline since the 1970s, said Peter Stanford in The Daily Telegraph. Yet as the rate of human births has fallen, our enthusiasm for pets has soared. The country is now home to an estimated 12.5 million dogs, which is almost three times as many as in 1965 and just a whisker below the number of children under 16. “Are the two connected?” Pope Francis reckons so. During an audience at the Vatican last week, the pontiff castigated couples who “substitute cats and dogs for children”. It was, he said, proof of a “certain selfishness… it makes us laugh but it’s true. Renouncing parenthood diminishes us. It takes away our humanity.” The Pope’s remarks were “incredibly tone deaf”, said Harriet Williamson in The…

With an hour to go in the fourth Test at Sydney, “another defeat” for England looked inevitable, said Mike Atherton in The Times. Joe Root’s side had just three wickets left, chasing a notional target of 338. The match may have been a dead rubber – given Australia’s unassailable 3-0 lead in the series – but there was still plenty to play for: a potential Ashes whitewash hung in the balance. And how utterly enthralling that final hour proved, said Nick Hoult in The Daily Telegraph. Amid scenes of “unbearable tension”, England’s defences were breached twice more: first Jonny Bairstow departed for 41, then Jack Leach’s obstinate 26 came to an end with just 13 balls remaining. This meant that it was up to Stuart Broad and Jimmy Anderson to…

Our useless universities To The Daily Telegraph I am a student in my final year at Durham University. After being subjected to a testing regime comparable to vaccine passports last term (three months before the countrywide regime), this term we have the privilege of two weeks of mostly online teaching to look forward to, along with a cap of 25 people at university-organised social events. Yet again, many of my fellow students and I are asking why we are being punished with Covid restrictions beyond the Government’s regulations, especially given the minimal risk that the virus poses to people our age, and the fact that most of us have already caught the damn thing. What are we paying £9,250 a year for? When will universities be held to account over…

by Lea Ypi Allen Lane 336pp £20 The Week Bookshop £15.99 Enver Hoxha’s communist Albania was the “last Stalinist outpost of the 20th century”, said Laura Hackett in The Sunday Times. In Free, her often “astonishing” memoir, Lea Ypi (pictured) brings to life what it was like to grow up there in the 1980s. It was a world where “certain objects carried extraordinary weight”: old Coca-Cola cans, for instance, were eagerly bought and sold; stones were used as placeholders in queues that might remain static for days. Ypi also recalls being baffled by certain conversations she overheard at home, said Emma Duncan in The Times. Her parents were forever talking of the degree courses their friends were either completing or dropping out from – even though most were well past…

Lise Davidsen & Leif Ove Andsnes: Edvard Grieg (songs) Decca £14.99 On this album, two Norwegian “superstars” of classical music – soprano Lise Davidsen and pianist Leif Ove Andsnes – perform the songs of Norway’s most popular composer, said Hugo Shirley in Gramophone, and the result is “outstanding”. Davidsen’s voice has a “rich beauty and steely strength and grandeur”, yet she is able to pare it down to the most “intimate pianissimo” in a “stunning display of range and technical control”. Her interpretation of the texts is “beautifully unaffected and honest”. And Andsnes’s playing is “supremely refined and sensitive”; each note “placed and voiced with the utmost care”. Only one of the 28 songs may be well known in Britain, said Geoff Brown in The Times – the melancholic Last…

Poke and the bowl-food boom “Today’s consumers seem to take particular pleasure in eating out of bowls rather than plates,” said Ameer Kotecha in The Spectator. Harry and Meghan made headlines by serving “bowl food to standing guests” at their wedding party; the concept seems to signify a more modern, relaxed approach to dining. And few things better exemplify the trend than the rise of poke. A dish with Hawaiian origins that invariably comes in a bowl, and which “consists of pieces of raw, marinated fish – usually tuna – that is tossed over rice and topped with vegetables and various vaguely Asian sauces”. Having been entrenched in LA for years, poke is now set to take the UK by storm: Poke House, a chain with branches all over Europe,…

Auto Express Ford has ditched diesel on most of its cars including the Kuga, its popular midsized SUV. The full hybrid FHEV sits below the plugin hybrid, with a more limited range and a more affordable price. It delivers on its potential as an efficient family SUV, with low running costs for those not ready to make the leap to a plug-in just yet. It can be run on electric only, but for short distances only – and at low speed. The Daily Telegraph It’s roomy in the front and the back with seats which adjust every which way, allowing you to vary space in the boot at the expense of rear-seat legroom. But even with the rear seats slid forward the boot is small compared to rivals such as…

Four nights in Malta Enjoy cocktails at the rooftop bar while watching the sunset at the adult-only Seaview Hotel. From £268pp b&b (with Manchester flights). 020-4571 5254, olympicholidays.com. Depart 8 February. Designer hotel and spa A four-night stay at the Grandior Hotel Prague, in the heart of the city, costs from £221pp room only, including Bristol flights. 0330-551 5165, easyjet.com. Depart 11 February. Luxurious city break Stay 2 nights at the Pullman Berlin Schweizerhof, located near Kurfürstendamm and the zoo, from £186pp b&b, including London flights. 0871-2771070, lastminute.com. Depart 4 March. Copenhagen short stay Three nights at the unique and classic Absalon Hotel, just 5 minutes from the Meatpacking District, cost from £280pp b&b, including Edinburgh flights. 020-8016 3295, thomascook.com. Depart 1 May. Covid-19: please check government websites for testing…

US inflation hit an almost 40-year high, rising to 7% year-on-year in December, with strong demand and scarce supply of key items, such as cars, driving the increases. The cost of energy dropped 0.4% from November to December, but prices are up by nearly 30% over 12 months and have recently returned to their upward trend. In Britain, where pressure on the Government to ease the brewing cost-of-living crisis mounted, the boss of British Gas-owner Centrica, Chris O’Shea, warned gas prices were unlikely to fall “anytime soon” – the market is signalling they’ll be here “for the next 18 months to two years”. EU competition authorities announced plans to block a $2bn merger between two of the world’s biggest ship-builders, Daewoo Shipbuilding and Hyundai Heavy Industries. The South Korean companies…

• Sellers’ market Nearly a third of homes in England and Wales sold for more than their asking price in 2021 – “twice the average over the previous decade”, said James Pickford in the FT. It’s a measure of the strength of the “sellers’ market” during the pandemic, and the impact of stock shortages. “Lockdowns, low mortgage rates and the added incentive of a stamp-duty holiday” all contributed – as did the drive for properties better suited to home-working. Andrew Marshall, head of sales at Hamptons’ western region, reports that “competition among buyers” was “more intense than at any time in his 20-year-plus career”, with “homes of the right kind” selling “quicker than in any year on record”. By contrast, the speed of sales in London (where house-price growth was…

Joachim Nagel “Not all Germans believe in God, but they all believe in the Bundesbank,” the former eurocrat, Jacques Delors, once observed. And now the country’s central bank has “a new high priest”, said The Economist. Last week, Joachim Nagel was sworn in as its 11th president. Nagel, an economist who previously worked at the Bank for International Settlements, faces two linked challenges. “The first is to restore harmony within the European Central Bank”, where his predecessor, the “hawkish” Jens Weidmann, found himself increasingly at odds with other members of the governing body over when to withdraw the eurozone stimulus. The second is to manage “domestic jitters” about inflation in Germany – which is at a near three-decade high. “It will fall in part to Nagel to calm his flock.”…