Innholdsfortegnelse for 1400 i The Week

Congratulations – and commiserations – to Liz Truss, said The Times. She has made it to the top of the tree, but few political leaders have done so “in more turbulent times and under less propitious circumstances”. In the “ridiculously long” leadership campaign that finally wrapped up this week, she failed to win the support of either a majority of Conservative MPs or a majority of the 170,000-odd Tory Party members (18% of members abstained; among those who did vote, Truss’s margin of victory over Rishi Sunak was 57% to 43%, which was less than expected). With this “underwhelming mandate”, she must now take on a mountain of challenges, including the energy crisis, surging inflation, a looming recession, a wave of industrial action, and deteriorating public services. Truss promised in…

“Liz Truss has named the first Cabinet in history in which none of the great offices of state will be held by a white man,” said Chris Smyth and Henry Zeffman in The Times. Kwasi Kwarteng, a former investment banker who “shares Truss’s scepticism about state intervention”, is the new Chancellor, and will be tasked with overseeing her energy plan while preparing for “an emergency budget to implement her tax cuts”. James Cleverly, who was Truss’s No. 2 in the Foreign Office until this summer and whose mother came from Sierra Leone, becomes Foreign Secretary. And the former leadership contender Suella Braverman, a one-time Brexit “Spartan”, is promoted from attorney general to take on the tricky Home Office brief. Truss’s “right-hand woman” will be her Health Secretary and deputy PM,…

Battersea Power Station, which is finally set to open to the public, following a decade-long £9bn redevelopment by its Malaysian owners. The Grade II* plant, which once supplied a fifth of London’s electricity, was decommissioned in 1983. Its 42-acre site has now been turned into a mixed-use complex made up of high-end shops, restaurants, offices and flats. Sliced white bread, with news that sales are soaring. At Waitrose, they are up 17% over the past year. Analysts say it’s probably down to people who’d taken up baking bread during lockdown reverting to old habits, and hard times encouraging shoppers to turn to cheaper food, as well as comfort food. Alan Garner, 87, who became the oldest person to be shortlisted for the Booker Prize, for his book Treacle Walker. He…

54% of Conservative voters – and 67% of all voters – say they have either no confidence, or not very much confidence, that Liz Truss’s Government will have the right policies and plans to tackle the cost-of-living crisis. Only 2% of all voters and 5% of Tory ones have a lot of confidence. 50% of all voters are disappointed that Truss is the new PM; 22% are pleased. Among Conservatives, 34% are disappointed and 41% are pleased. 52% of all voters think Truss will be a poor or terrible PM; 12% expect her to be a good or a great one. Only 24% think she will be better than Boris Johnson. YouGov/The Independent 43% of Americans believe civil war is at least somewhat likely within ten years. YouGov/The Economist…

Kuenssberg looks back Laura Kuenssberg’s spell as BBC political editor spanned seven tumultuous years at Westminster. She fronted a slew of major stories, from the Brexit referendum to the onset of the pandemic – yet some of her fondest memories are of just “trogging about” with the other members of her team, she told Kerry McDermott in Vogue. “It looks amazing when you’re on the prime minister’s plane, but more often than not you’re on the 6.06am train from Euston to New Street, then working in a car park and running out of cheese and coleslaw sandwiches. But that’s lots of the fun of it.” And though she had to put up with a lot of online abuse, she found real camaraderie in the lobby. When she started out, there…

People have been building planned cities, as opposed to “organic” ones, since ancient times: there are the remains of cities laid out according to uniform plans dating back to the Mesopotamian, Ancient Egyptian and Indus Valley civilisations. Nations have built themselves grand capitals, from Washington DC (founded in 1790) to Canberra (1913) to Islamabad (1960). But since the early 20th century, when the British radical urban planner Ebenezer Howard founded Letchworth and Welwyn garden cities, planned cities have taken on a markedly utopian character, from Le Corbusier’s Chandigarh in India, to Oscar Niemeyer’s Brazilian capital Brasília, and even Milton Keynes. At present, there is an unprecedented boom in planned cities. Sarah Moser of McGill University has identified 150 greenfield city-building projects planned around the world. Saudi Arabia has unveiled plans…

How Jeff Bezos turned into Scrooge Ryan Cooper The American Prospect It seems all is not well at The Washington Post, says Ryan Cooper. The newspaper is reportedly set to lose money this year – for the first time since Amazon founder Jeff Bezos bought it almost a decade ago for $250m. Executives are now considering sacking a tenth of the paper’s 1,000 staff. You’d have thought Bezos would just chuck some money at the Post to cover any shortfall. It has, after all, returned him “a tidy profit” over the years, and, with his estimated fortune of $151bn, it’s not as if he’s short of a bob: his 417ft personal yacht reportedly set him back twice as much as buying the paper. But Bezos is far from the first…

The melting of ice from Greenland alone will cause global sea levels to rise by at least 27cm, regardless of what action is taken to curb climate change, a study has concluded. Rather than relying on modelling of ice-cap behaviour, as in previous studies, the researchers drew on satellite measurements of ice loss and the shifting shape of the ice cap between 2000 and 2019, reports The Guardian. This data was then used to calculate how much global warming has pushed the ice sheet from a state of equilibrium, where ice lost in the summer was matched by snowfall in the winter. “The minimum of 27cm is the sea-level rise deficit that we have accrued to date, and it’s going to get paid out, no matter what we do,” said…

“When the lights go off this winter, it will finally dawn on everybody that neglecting our energy requirements for the best part of three decades was probably a tad unwise,” said Rod Liddle in The Sunday Times. It makes me wonder what else are we ignoring now “that will cause us immense misery” a few decades on. There’s climate change, of course, but there are also the warnings in last week’s report by the children’s commissioner, Dame Rachel de Souza, to the effect that the traditional two-parent nuclear family is “rapidly becoming a thing of the past”. Nearly a quarter of children born since 2000 were raised in single-parent households – twice the European average – and 44% have not spent their entire childhoods with both biological parents. While liberal…

“As you get older, you don’t get wiser. You get irritable.”Doris Lessing, quoted on The Browser “Nobody ever forgets where he buried the hatchet.”Frank McKinney Hubbard, quoted on NPR “Boredom is the feeling that everything is a waste of time; serenity, that nothing is.”Thomas Szasz, quoted in The San Francisco Chronicle “I needed a password eight characters long, so I picked ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarves’.”Nick Helm, quoted in Time Out Edinburgh “The secret source of humour itself is not joy, but sorrow. There is no humour in heaven.”Mark Twain, quoted in Far Out Magazine “A problem well stated is a problem half-solved.”Charles F. Kettering, quoted in Forbes “People who say they sleep like a baby usually don’t have one.”Leo J. Burke, ibid. “When plunder becomes a way of…

To The Daily Telegraph Liz Truss has radical ideas, but I fear she will struggle to put them into practice without radical changes to rules and regulations, especially with regard to planning procedures. Nimbys have acquired too much power. If Truss can make those changes, fracking must go ahead, and new nuclear power stations must be built. I wish her every success. Jack Marriott, Churt, Surrey To The Daily Telegraph It is hard to believe that Government officials could be advising a new prime minister that shale gas is the solution to the price crisis. For or against it, the industry cannot gain the pace and scale to make a material difference to bills any time soon. Firstly, the industry requires between two and three years of drilling across a…

Robert Galbraith Sphere 1,024pp £25 The Week bookshop £19.99 This new crime novel by J.K. Rowling, using her Robert Galbraith pseudonym, has Cormoran Strike, her Afghan-War-veteran-turned-private detective, getting to grips with the world of online trolls, said Joan Smith in The Sunday Times. Strike and his partner Robin are called to investigate the stabbing to death of a woman named Edie. She was the co-creator of a YouTube cartoon featuring “ghoulish” characters cavorting in a cemetery, and the finger of suspicion falls on a gamer known as “Anomie”, who had subjected Edie to a “torrent of lurid accusation” after claiming that she’d ripped off his ideas. While the novel works as a “superlative piece of crime fiction”, its subject matter also feels highly pointed: Rowling (pictured) has herself faced accusations…

March Avery at Waddington Custot Although self-taught, March Avery (b.1932) has an innate understanding of painterly history and a wonderfully observing eye. On the former count, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised: her parents were the artists Sally Michel Avery and Milton Avery (his retrospective is currently showing next door at the Royal Academy), and she grew up in a bohemian milieu that included some of the greats of 20th century American art. A brief gallop through her career to date, In the Studio consists largely of portraits of friends and family and landscapes. These show that Avery’s particular genius is to take painterly clichés and transform them into complex compositions that blur the distinction between abstraction and representation. Evening Mist at Cooper Lake (2006) is a case in point: a…

● Poor sleep habits have been linked to a higher risk of heart problems. Aim to get at least seven hours a night, and if you find yourself often needing a nap, ask yourself why. It could signify an underlying problem, such as stress, or sleep apnoea. ● Try to do at least 150 minutes of moderate activity or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise a week ● Unless you’ve been advised to avoid caffeine, a few cups of coffee a day can be good for your heart: antioxidants help reduce inflammation, improve insulin sensitivity and block receptors linked to abnormal heart rhythms. ● Eat more game, including pheasant, partridge and venison. Game is high in selenium (also found in Brazil nuts, eggs, fish and cereals), which protects cells against harmful…

Mikhail Gorbachev 1931-2022 The last leader of the Soviet Union, and its first and only president, Mikhail Gorbachev transformed his country in the late 1980s, and changed the world. A relatively young 54 year old when he became general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1985, he was regarded as a much-needed breath of fresh air, said Serge Schmemann in The New York Times. The USSR was being suffocated by its command economy. Living standards were dire; factories churned out substandard goods; and shops were empty. The military machine was bleeding the country dry, as it pursued an arms race with the West, and armies of KGB agents and informers crushed any deviation from an ideology that no one believed in. Yet the population was not…

Germany’s biggest gas importer, Uniper, reported a loss of more than s12bn for the first half of the year, “ranking among the biggest in German corporate history”, said Vanessa Dezem on Bloomberg. It can expect no respite, now that Russia’s Gazprom has “indefinitely” halted flows to Europe via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline. The news prompted European benchmark gas futures to soar by 35% on Monday – piling further pressure on Uniper, which has been forced “to buy gas in the expensive spot market to fulfil contracts, pushing it to the edge of insolvency”. In July, the company received a €15bn state bailout, “to prevent its collapse and a possible domino effect in the energy sector”. This week, CEO Klaus-Dieter Maubach warned that billions more may be needed. EU policymakers…

The legendary investor Julian Robertson, of Tiger Management, who died last month aged 90, helped create the modern hedge fund industry and is celebrated for the legions of “Tiger cub” traders he inspired, said Harriet Agnew in the FT. Here are some of the lessons we can take from him: Recruit clever people Almost 200 hedge funds can trace their origins back to Tiger. Robertson’s great talent was picking the right people. He claimed that he was no genius, so needed the best people he could find. Motivations matter Robertson employed a psychologist, Dr Aaron Stern, to evaluate how people thought, took risks and worked in teams. He applied these techniques to investment – scrutinising the psychological makeup of a target’s top brass. Keep it simple The maestro’s approach was:…

The week’s best shares 3i Group The Times This “stellar”, but discounted, investment trust’s strong track record compensates for the uncertainty of private company valuations. Its star performer, Dutch discount retailer Action, is expanding amid doubled profits. Buy. £11.34. Hunting The Daily Telegraph The oil services engineer is back in the black, with a boosted cash pile, thanks to a surge in orders from producers aiming to increase output to beat the energy crisis. The divi has been upped. Buy. 277p. National Express Group The Sunday Times Shares in the transport giant remain well below pre-Covid levels as rising wage and fuel costs squeeze margins. Yet two-thirds of revenues are from inflation-linked contracts, and there’s a £2.1bn new business pipeline. Buy. 170.3p. PureTech Health Investors’ Chronicle The biotech, with a…

THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1328 An Ettinger shoe horn 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 19 September. Send it to The Week Crossword 1328, 121-141 Westbourne Terrace, London W2 6JR, or email the completed grid/listed solutions to crossword@theweek.co.uk. Tim Moorey (timmoorey.com) This week’s winner will receive an Ettinger (ettinger.co.uk) Bridle Hide travel shoehorn in black, which retails at £75, and two Connell Guides (connellguides.com). ACROSS 6 Standard quantity for chief (9) 8 Over-hasty complaint (4) 10 Prompts lines for an audience (4) 11 Doctor blames golf for joints (4,2,4) 12 Partly undemocratic protest (4) 13 Article on one in range of the theatre (8) 15 Regardless of what all-seating stadia…

“What do you do with the rest of your life if, aged 58, you have been prised out of the biggest job in Britain?” asked Ross Clark in The Spectator. That’s something that Boris Johnson must now consider. Delivering his “valedictory speech” outside No. 10 on Tuesday, he appeared to discount the possibility of a return to high office, describing himself as “one of those booster rockets that has fulfilled its function”, and that would soon be “splashing down invisibly into some remote and obscure corner of the Pacific”; Brexit, he reminded us, is “done”, the vaccine has been rolled out, and the Ukrainians have been helped in their hour of need. The outgoing PM compared himself to a Roman statesman who briefly took power to save the state before…

Footie fans, who were warned that if they want to fill this year’s World Cup Panini sticker album, it will cost them about £880. Only 670 stickers are being issued, but as they are sold in 90 pence packets of five, collectors are bound to end up with duplicates. To complete the set, fans will have to buy 4,832 stickers, on average, according to maths professor Paul Harper. Unboxed, the nationwide arts festival nicknamed The Festival of Brexit, which was dubbed a flop. The project has cost £120m, but so far its ten events have reportedly attracted only 238,000 visitors, against an initial “stretch target” of 66 million.…

Berlin Russian spies: Two senior officials in the economy ministry, who have been working on Germany’s transition away from Russian gas, are being investigated over allegations that they’ve been spying for Russia. Members of the Green party, to which the economy minister, Robert Habeck, also belongs, are thought to have reported the pair to the intelligence service for persistently contradicting government policy on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. The scheme, once keenly advocated by the ministry, would have brought gas directly from Russia to Germany, but in February the government did a U-turn and scrapped it. It’s now being suggested that they may have acted as they are said to have done because they could not accept the change in energy policy. To help address the inevitable shortfall in gas…

“People who were educated at Oxford will inform you, or remind you, at every possible opportunity, where they did their degree. There was a glorious recent example of this. A reporter had been sent to Oxford (where Liz Truss went to university) to ask people what they thought. One woman sniffed that the prospect of Truss becoming PM made her ‘ashamed to hold an Oxford degree’. Magnificent. What a line. I love the liberal-elite snootiness, the hyperbole of suggesting that the Truss link would devalue a degree from the oldest university in the Western world. Most of all, though, I love the fact that it isn’t really a put-down. It’s a boast.” Michael Deacon in The Daily Telegraph…

Don’t make a crisis out of a small drama Chris Snowdon The Times I blame the furlough scheme, says Chris Snowdon. It was an effective response to the Covid pandemic, but we’re “now in danger of treating every problem like a once-in-a-generation crisis” requiring overwhelming support. Take the current panic over energy bills. Since 1957, these bills have accounted for between 3% and 6% of the average household’s outgoings. Today, factoring in the support package announced in May, we’re facing the prospect of the share rising next month to 6.9%. Yes, that would be “the highest on record”, but a crisis? No: only for the poorest households. It’s roughly equivalent to average incomes falling by £1,500, which is more or less what happened in the last three recessions. Nobody suggested…

Statins side effects exaggerated Around eight million Britons take statins every day to cut their risk of heart attacks and stroke, but there have long been concerns about their side effects. For instance, when prescribing them, GPs will warn patients that they may lead to increased muscular pain. Yet according to a new study, only one in 100 patients experiences this side effect of the cholesterol-lowering drug. Having analysed data on 155,000 people, the University of Oxford team found that though muscle pain was fairly common in statins users, it was similarly common in people who were taking a placebo. They conclude that in the large majority of cases, it is not the cholesterol-lowering drugs that cause muscle pain or weakness, but simply older age. Separately, a report warned that…

Traditionally, new prime ministers are welcomed to No. 10 by a line-up of applauding staff. But it’s not always an entirely joyful moment. When Tony Blair arrived in 1997, he saw that one of the secretaries was in tears, and asked her if she was OK. “Well, Mr Blair, you are welcome,” she said, “but I did so like that nice Mr Major.” According to journalist Andrew Rawnsley, Blair said he was sorry – to which the secretary replied: “You’re not sorry at all, you meant this to happen.” In a memoir, Blair wrote that by the end of the meet and greet, he felt “a right heel, coming in and creating all this distress. Needless to say, I got over it.” There is a theory, known as Leo’s Law,…

Every now and again, the United Nations lives up to its founding ideals by telling “an uncomfortable truth”, said The Wall Street Journal. Such was the case last week when the UN high commissioner for human rights, Michelle Bachelet, released a long-awaited report about the repression of Uyghur Muslims in China’s Xinjiang province. The 46-page document, drawn up in response to allegations made to the UN back in late 2017, details a litany of what it calls “serious human rights violations” that may constitute “crimes against humanity”. These include the mass detention of Uyghurs in internment camps, family separations, coerced birth control and sterilisations, and the destruction of religious sites. Former detainees described being subjected to gang rapes, and being shackled to metal “tiger chairs”, in which they were held…

It’s strange to think that, just weeks ago, Manchester United were widely held to be a club in “crisis”, said Henry Winter in The Times. Their Premier League campaign began with two consecutive defeats – the second an abject 4-0 drubbing by Brentford – and the entire squad looked desperately short of confidence. Erik ten Hag, the club’s new manager, admitted that reviving their fortunes promised to be one “hell of a job”. It’s certainly not one he wasted any time getting stuck into, said Chris Wheeler in the Daily Mail. United’s fortunes have revived dramatically from the “carnage” of a month ago: they now stand fifth in the Premier League, having won four matches in a row. Last Sunday, they beat league leaders Arsenal 3-1 at home, shattering their…

Cricket Jonny Bairstow will miss England’s third Test against South Africa after slipping on a golf course and seriously injuring his leg. Tennis Serena Williams may have played her last match as a professional, after losing to Ajla Tomljanovi? in the third round of the US Open. Boxing Former heavyweight champion Andy Ruiz took a step towards being able to challenge for the title again with a points victory over Luis Ortiz in a WBC title eliminator. Football Chelsea sacked manager Thomas Tuchel after a 1-0 defeat to Dinamo Zagreb in the Champions League.…

Before it even opened, this new play by the nonbinary playwright Charlie Josephine had been condemned by some people (who had neither read nor seen it) as a trans appropriation of an iconic female figure, and her story. Yet in fact, I, Joan, which reimagines Joan of Arc as a nonbinary person, is an “expansive, unifying and overall joyful piece of work”, said Nick Curtis in the London Evening Standard – “baggy at times but too subtle for a hot culture-war take”. Josephine’s tone is archly anachronistic; the language “modern and poetically slangy, but with a 15th century vibe”. And the writer pulls off an “extraordinary balancing act”: this is a “funny” play which explores profound issues of identity and belief, without seeking to “invalidate any past or future versions…

After talking to Jazzer, Alistair says Chelsea and Brad can share his birthday party. At the Horrobins’, there’s no food and the kids are bickering; Brad doesn’t know what’s up with Chelsea. Oliver finds Tracy in the park in Borchester; she breaks down and confesses that she’s lost her job but can’t tell her family. Oliver brings her to a food bank. Shula asks Josh and Ben to house-sit when she moves. Ben wants Beth to move in too; Josh refuses, but later reconsiders after spending time with Beth. Shula pitches the Stables idea to Alice, who says she’ll think about it. Tracy sees that The Bull is hiring and Kenton gives her the job. At a city hotel, Justin bumps into Ruairi and Julianne, whom he knows through business,…

Soft, salty and buttery, these dumplings – a speciality of Poland’s Tatra Mountain region – are the ultimate comfort food, says Zuza Zak. The highlanders traditionally make it using the local sheep’s milk cheese, bryndza – but if you can’t get hold of any, just use feta instead. Serves 4 For the dough: 450g floury potatoes 100g bryndza or feta cheese 2 tbsp soured cream 1 egg yolk 3 tbsp plain flour, plus extra for dusting large pinch of salt To serve: 1 tbsp salted butter, melted 2 tbsp soured cream • Cook the potatoes in their skins in salted, boiling water for about 20 minutes until soft, then drain and cool. • In a bowl, mash the potatoes and discard any large bits of potato skin. Crumble in the cheese, add…

Sea Breeze and Samphire are two floating arks on Prinsted Bay, near Chichester. They sleep two, and have a balcony for watching wildlife as well as views across the mudflats. Breakfast is delivered to the pontoons each morning (from £157 b&b; thornhammarina.com/stay-at-thornham). A converted narrowboat on a private lake in north Devon, Blackbird Boathouse has a wood-burning stove and a separate bathhouse on shore. You can also fish for rainbow trout (from £500 for four nights; tregullandandco.co.uk/blackbird). Sleek and stylish, The Liverpool Boat on the historic Liverpool waterfront is a widebeam canal boat with two bedrooms – one king and one bunk room (two nights from £498; liverpoolboat.com). There are four Floatel Cabins bobbing on the waterfront at Milford Haven, berthed alongside the mothership, the Tŷ hotel. They are dog-friendly,…

The unsung charms of Vienne Vienne, 22 miles south of Lyon, is “the most beautiful French city that no one has heard of”, says Chris Leadbeater in The Sunday Telegraph. Its cathedral is the Gothic “behemoth” in which Pope Clement V abolished the Knights Templar in 1312, and its Roman remains include a fantastic theatre that hosts a world-class annual jazz festival, and a first-century temple matched on French soil only by the Maison-Carrée in Nîmes. Such glories are made yet more attractive by the relative dearth of tourists here, and it’s worth staying long enough to enjoy the earthier pleasures on offer nearby, including lovely cycling beside the Rhône; two hotel-restaurants, Le Cottage and Domaine de Clairefontaine, both run by the Michelin-starred chef Philippe Girardon; and the excellent wine…

VW/Porsche: defiant IPO The German economy might be staring down the barrel of a bleak recession, but it’s business as usual at Volkswagen, said Joe Miller in the Financial Times. The carmaker has confirmed that, “barring a significant shift in market conditions”, it will press ahead with “the long-awaited listing” of its Porsche marque either later this month or at the start of October. The IPO, which could value the luxury sports carmaker at around s80bn, would be one of the world’s largest floats. But there are concerns about both the timing of the move, and the “independence” of the newly-listed company, said Quartz. VW is planning to free float just 12.5% of Porsche’s shares, with the Porsche-Piëch founding family retaining a 25% minority stake. And, crucially, retail investors are…

US markets can’t shrug off Europe’s woes John Authers Bloomberg The rally in US stocks that “lightened spirits” over the summer has ended, says John Authers. Some might think that odd, given that the economic data continues “to be tantalisingly consistent” with “a soft landing”, or even the “Goldilocks” scenario (not too hot, not too cold) beloved by markets. Falling oil prices, meanwhile, have eased conditions in an economy “not dependent on Russian gas”. But America doesn’t operate in isolation, and traders have every reason to conclude that “nothing matters more than the price of wholesale gas in Europe”. Another EU recession, and an “ever-weaker euro”, would deliver “the kind of hit to global demand that will hurt everyone, including the US”. Since Vladimir Putin stands to lose a lot…

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“In desperate times governments have no choice but to be audacious in their actions,” said Alex Brummer in the Daily Mail. Liz Truss spent much of the leadership race claiming that she didn’t believe “handouts” were the way to help households through the cost-of-living crisis. Yet within hours of her becoming PM, details of a “momentous policy initiative” to help voters with their energy bills began to emerge. The centrepiece of Truss’s package appears to be a plan to cap typical household energy bills “at around £2,500 for the next two winters”, said the FT. That still means we’ll pay more than we’re used to; but with the cap currently set to hit £3,549 next month, and £6,600 in 2023, the package will “shield households” from the worst effects of…

Civil servants have been advised to keep carbon paper on standby, in case Britain is hit with power cuts this winter. The idea seems to be that if power were to be lost, they could use the paper to duplicate manually typed or handwritten documents. “You’d have people running up and down Whitehall handing out carbon copies of documents, to keep people [at other agencies] in touch,” an official told the FT. Marks & Spencer has announced that it will no longer be serving tea in cups and saucers in 60 of its cafés, to save water and energy, reports the Daily Mail. Mugs will be used instead. “This could cost them a lot of customers,” warned Ron Moore, an 86-year-old who regularly visits the Birmingham store.…

Around 40,000 rail workers from Network Rail and 14 train companies will stage 24-hour strikes on 15 and 17 September, the RMT announced this week. Aslef, the union that represents train drivers, is set to strike on 15 September too, meaning that on that day, virtually no trains will run across much of Britain. Members of the TSSA union at nine train companies and Network Rail will also strike on 26 September. The train operator TransPennine Express has said it is having to reduce some of its services because of staff sickness and “industrial relations issues”. And this week, the Fire Brigades Union announced that 32,500 of its members will vote on possible industrial action over the coming weeks.…

Juneau, Alaska Palin defeated: The Republican Party has lost its 49-year hold on Alaska’s only seat in the House of Representatives. Former state governor and Trump favourite Sarah Palin narrowly lost to Democrat Mary Peltola (left) in a special election, which was called following the death of the previous representative, and which involved a new ranked-choice voting system. Palin has criticised fellow Republican Nick Begich III for splitting the right-wing vote. Peltola becomes the first Alaskan native to be sent to Congress, but Republicans will have a chance to regain the seat in November’s midterm elections. San Francisco, California Vaping settlement: The electronic cigarette manufacturer Juul has agreed to pay $438.5m to settle an investigation into the marketing of its vaping products to teenagers. In 2020, 33 US states, plus…

A goalkeeper was sent off in an English FA Cup qualifying match – for relieving himself in a hedge in the 76th minute. Nature called for Connor Maseko during his side Blackfield & Langley’s goalless draw with Shepton Mallet. But when Maseko took advantage of a lull in play to make his way to the side of the pitch, opposing players alerted the referee – who showed the keeper a red card. The decision left Maseko’s manager, Conor McCarthy, “gobsmacked”. “He protected himself,” said McCarthy. “He was inside the hedge. Sometimes when you have to go, you have to go.” The World Gravy Wrestling Championships – billed as “one of the world’s craziest culinary competitions” – returned to Lancashire last week, after a Covid-enforced hiatus. The charity event, held in…

GERMANY A cheap ticket to a better way of life Der Spiegel (Hamburg) Germany has just completed perhaps the boldest and most successful public transport experiment in its history, says Sascha Lobo. Throughout June, July and August – in an effort to drive down inflation – the government introduced a monthly travel pass for local and regional trains and buses priced at just €9. The impact has been extraordinary. Around 52 million tickets were sold in the period and 15% of ticket-holders said they’d never have travelled were it not for the discount. It’s estimated that 10% of trips made with the discounted tickets replaced the use of a car, thereby stopping 1.8 million tons of CO2 going into the atmosphere. Granted, there was some overcrowding and delays. But by…

Let’s face it, these are difficult times, said Freddy Gray in The Spectator. Prices are soaring, public services are in disarray, and we might even be facing a nuclear war. Now, as if all that weren’t enough, we have the revival of the Harry and Meghan show to contend with, too. It kicked off last week, when Meghan gave a “long and excruciating” interview to The Cut magazine to publicise Archetypes, her new podcast about the “labels that try to hold women back”. And it carried on this week, when the Duke and Duchess wafted to the UK, on a cloud of “self-pity and self-help mumbo-jumbo”, to attend a series of charity events. So far, Harry has played only a bit-part in the media blitz: in the podcast, he just…

“Do you despise your job but need your salary?” asked Katie Edwards on The Independent. “Do you feel permanently stressed? Anxious? Burnt out?” Do you suffer from “the Sunday night dreads”? Fear not, because I have just the thing for you. “Quiet quitting” has become a phenomenon over the summer: there are more than half-a-million videos devoted to it on TikTok alone. It doesn’t mean actually quitting your job. It means doing the bare minimum needed to get by. “You’re still performing your duties, but you’re no longer subscribing to the ‘hustle-culture’ mentality that work has to be your life,” explains Zaid Khan, a TikTok user who has done much to popularise the term. “The reality is your worth is not defined by your labour.” It’s not surprising that many…

After Emma Raducanu’s victory at last year’s US Open, all the talk was of British women’s tennis being on the brink of a spectacular revival, said Mike Dickson in the Daily Mail. Yet we were looking in the wrong direction: the real success story has been on the men’s side. At the US Open, a “Fab Four” – Cameron Norrie, Dan Evans, Andy Murray and Jack Draper – took the nation to historic heights. Not since the start of the Open era, in 1968, had a British quartet made it through to the third round at Flushing Meadow. All four are about to move into the world’s top 50, another first for the Open era. Draper, at 20, is the youngest of the four, and a hugely exciting prospect, said…

Six of the best? To The Times As recently as 2005-07 there were only two former PMs living (Thatcher and Major). Now there will be six (Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May and Johnson). Opinions may differ as to how much this record owes to advances in medical science and how much to declining political stability. Charles Barton, London SW8 A true measure of wealth To The Guardian Although I agree with the main points of Aditya Chakrabortty’s article (“These are energy bills many Britons simply can’t afford. Some will pay with their lives”), it is not correct to say that the UK is the “sixth-richest country in the world”. We have the sixth-largest economy (GDP), but GDP should not be used to compare nations’ wealth, which depends on the size…

Robert Harris Hutchinson Heinemann 480pp £22 The Week bookshop £17.99 In the wake of the Restoration, Charles II issued a blanket pardon to those who’d “fought for parliament in the civil wars”, said Antonia Senior in The Times. But the Act of Oblivion, as it was known, came with one key exception: those responsible for killing the king’s father, Charles I, “were to be hunted down and executed”. The ensuing manhunt is the basis for Robert Harris’s “belter of a thriller”; it tells the story of two real-life killers, Edward Whalley and William Goffe, and their pursuit by an “invented regicide-catcher named Richard Nayler”. Although the novel “stretches over continents and years”, much of it is set in New England, where the killers went to evade capture, and it “feels…

Trans by Helen Joyce, 2021 (Oneworld £9.99). A methodical and courageous examination of inherent contradictions within trans activism. Joyce never attacks trans people, only perverse notions such as that sex is “assigned” rather than observable at birth. Irreversible Damage by Abigail Shrier, 2020 (Swift Press £9.99). Another transgressive book that defies the don’t-touch rule around this topic. Why are three-quarters of young “transitioners” suddenly female? Shrier shows how “social contagion” is propagating what was not long ago classed as an exceedingly rare disorder. The War on the West by Douglas Murray, 2022 (HarperCollins £20). Defending your own civilisation was once a big establishmentarian yawn. But with European achievements, that’s where we are. Preening woke self-disgust is a gift to our enemies, who really are racist. To disparage our forebears is…

Programmes Last Night of the Proms The Proms wraps up with a rousing concert led by Ukrainian-born conductor Dalia Stasevska, featuring soloist Sheku Kanneh-Mason, and choirmaster Gareth Malone. Sat 10 Sept, BBC1 21:00 (75mins). Frozen Planet II Eleven years after the original, this six-part follow-up visits the Earth’s coldest places and the creatures that live there. Sun 11 Sept, BBC1 20:00 (60mins). Storyville: Gorbachev. Heaven An intimate portrait of the late Russian leader, showing him as an old man living alone with burdens of the past. Tue 13 Sept, BBC4 21:00 (100mins). Our Friends in the North A chance to revisit the seminal 1996 drama following a group of four friends from Newcastle over 30 years. Wed 14 Sept, BBC4 22:10 (50mins). Films The Lady Vanishes (1938) Classic Hitchcock thriller.…

Seven nights in Hvar Stay at the Labranda Senses Resort, seconds from the beach and with views of the Adriatic Sea, from £538pp half-board, including Birmingham flights. 0800-408 0778, jet2holidays.com. Depart 16 October. Italy’s glistening lakes Visit Lakes Garda and Como after a few days in pretty Verona. 10 nights cost from £709pp b&b (with 9-day car hire), excluding flights. 020-7938 0210, trailfinders.com. Travel up to 31 December. The heart of Manila Seven nights at the New Coast Hotel, walking distance from shopping and entertainment hubs, cost from £1,138pp b&b, including Manchester flights. 020-7660 8892, opodo.co.uk. Depart 15 November. Self-catering bothies Stay in a stylish bothy by the sea on the rugged and picturesque coast of Aberdeenshire; three nights from £165pp (two sharing). 07815-596385, tahunabothies.co.uk. Arrive 10 October. Covid-19: please…

Laxman Narasimhan Reckitt Benckiser shareholders have every reason to feel cheesed off, said Matthew Lynn in The Sunday Telegraph. Just three years into his tenure, the firm’s “slick” boss, Laxman Narasimhan, has decided he’d rather serve up fancy coffee than peddle Scholl footcare and Durex: he has jumped ship to Starbucks, prompting Reckitt’s shares to tank. Narasimhan is “a popular guy” and Starbucks is a “bigger stage on which to display his talents”. But its structural problems are far harder to fix than anything in his old job. Starbucks might have created “the cappuccino economy”, but the market is “saturated”, growth has stalled, and its shares have been “collapsing faster than the froth on a double latte”. Before long, Narasimhan “may well wish he was still flogging Dettol”. Ravil Maganov…