Innholdsfortegnelse for 1403 i The Week

What happened The Bank of England launched an emergency bond-buying programme on Wednesday, after the Government’s tax-cutting plans sent sterling to a record low against the dollar and caused a sharp rise in borrowing costs. Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s “mini-Budget” last Friday, had unveiled the biggest raft of tax cuts in 50 years, worth some £45bn, funded by higher borrowing. The scale of the cuts, which were announced alongside an energy support package that is expected to cost £60bn over the next six months, spooked investors and prompted a rebuke from the International Monetary Fund. The ensuing volatility led mortgage lenders to suspend hundreds of deals, amid predictions that the Bank of England’s base rate could rise to more than 5.5% by next summer. Among the measures in Kwarteng’s mini-Budget was…

Leading the Opposition is the “toughest gig in Westminster”, said Rafael Behr in The Guardian. You struggle to get noticed until you make a mistake, then everyone jumps on you. “If you attack the Government without a better offer, you are carping from the sidelines. When you come up with a better plan, the Government nicks it.” But Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng have contrived to make Keir Starmer’s job easy. Their mini-Budget managed to “destroy what is left of Conservative claims to be serious stewards of the economy, while advertising the party as a factory of favours for the super-rich”. And in his speech at the Labour conference this week, Starmer revelled in it. The Tories have trashed the economy and “crashed the pound”, he told us. “And for…

Endurance, after a 41-year-old former casino croupier from Lithuania set a new record, by running nearly 199 miles in 24 hours. Aleksandr Sorokin said the last eight to ten hours were the hardest, as he ran around and around a stadium in Verona. He stopped just once, to use a Portaloo next to the track; at other times, he relieved himself on the go, into a wide-necked bottle. Tom Hanks, who revealed that he has written his first novel. The actor, 66, says his book, The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece, is based on his experiences in the industry. Art lovers, with the introduction of a Pay What You Wish scheme at the National Gallery in London. Visitors to its Lucian Freud exhibition will be able to book…

The Hague, Netherlands Plotters arrested: Four Dutch men have been arrested on suspicion of involvement in a plot to kidnap the Belgian justice minister. A car containing firearms was found outside Vincent Van Quickenborne’s home in Kortrijk last week, and police said that they’d also received a tip-off about a “possible threat” to his safety. The nature of the threat has not been made clear, but it has been widely reported that it was of a kidnapping, and there has been speculation that drugs gangs were involved: Belgium has recently stepped up its fight against organised crime. The four suspects were all arrested in the Netherlands. Paris Book delivery: The French government is planning to force booksellers to charge at least €3 per delivery, in an attempt to loosen the…

1* Help Me Make it Through the Night by Kris Kristofferson, performed by John Holt 2 The Night I Fell in Love by Luther Vandross and Marcus Miller, performed by Luther Vandross 3 Revolution, written and performed by Dennis Brown 4 Battle by Jason Chue and Lain Gray, performed by Wookie featuring Lain 5 Love You Anyway by Melvin Wells, performed by Cameo 6 Baby I’m a Fool, written and performed by Melody Gardot 7 Kisses Don’t Lie by Ron Kersey and Alex Brown, performed by Evelyn “Champagne” King 8 Take Me to the Alley, written and performed by Gregory Porter Book: The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X and Alex Haley Luxury: a massage chair * Choice if allowed only one record…

The unanswered question at the heart of the affair of the Mar-a-Lago documents is why Trump kept them in the first place. There has been much conjecture. It is said that he has a childlike obsession with collecting knick-knacks and, perhaps innocently, he wanted to keep his hands on some presidential memorabilia. Trump reportedly told associates that he regarded some of the documents, such as his “love letters” from the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, as his personal property. He reportedly wanted to keep an Air Force One model displaying a bespoke paint job he had commissioned for the presidential jet, and resented restrictions against hanging on to such stuff. It has also been suggested that he thought he could get some money for the material: he has reportedly…

Why the Space Force keeps crash landing Jack Shafer Politico There is nothing “inherently stupid” about the idea of a branch of the military designed to conduct operations in space, says Jack Shafer. But ever since Donald Trump established the US Space Force in 2019, the branch has been something of a laughing stock. That’s partly down to its association with the beleaguered former president. It didn’t help when Trump conceded that the first time he proposed the Space Force to his White House staff, he did so as a joke. But the main reason people struggle to take the branch seriously is that it has “blown every one” of its many efforts to introduce itself to the public. When its insignia was revealed, it was widely denounced as a…

A genetically modified herpes virus has been used to kill cancer cells. In an early trial, researchers found that RP2 – a modified version of the herpes simplex virus that was injected directly into the tumour – was effective in a quarter of the patients involved. They had a range of cancers, and had exhausted other treatments. The RP2 virus is designed to deliver a double punch to tumours. It multiplies inside cancer cells to destroy them from within, and it also delivers extra power to the immune system by blocking a protein called CTLA-4. Three out of nine patients who were treated with RP2 alone saw their tumours shrink. One patient with salivary gland cancer saw his tumour disappear and was still free of cancer 15 months after starting…

With great fanfare, the new Health Secretary, Thérèse Coffey, announced her NHS Plan for Patients last week, said Stephen Pollard in The Daily Telegraph. Don’t get too excited, though. “What was the centrepiece of this sparkling transformation of healthcare?” A promise that you can book a GP appointment within two weeks. Anywhere else in the developed world, there would be “mass anger” at waiting more than two days to see a doctor. But we’re now so hobbled by reverence for the NHS that we’ll accept whatever we’re handed by this failing system. To be fair, the plan offers more than that, said Connor Boyd in the Daily Mail. She has spelt out her priorities using the acronym ABCD, which stands for: ambulances, backlogs, care, doctors and dentists. She’s pledging to…

It may not have been the victory Gareth Southgate’s team so desperately needed, said Oliver Brown in The Daily Telegraph. But at least they finally showed some “pluck”. England went into Monday’s match against Germany – their final outing before the World Cup – on the back of a “three-month catalogue of ineptitude”. In their five previous Nations League appearances, they’d earned two draws, suffered three defeats, and had managed only a single goal – a Harry Kane penalty. At Wembley, when they fell 2-0 behind early in the second half, it seemed their problems were about to deepen. Instead, they responded with a rousing comeback, finding the net three times in 12 minutes before a handling error by keeper Nick Pope gifted Germany a 3-3 draw. Although Southgate’s torment…

Football In the second week of the Women’s Soccer League, Arsenal beat Tottenham 4-0, Manchester United beat West Ham 2-0, and Chelsea beat Manchester City 2-0. Cricket Pakistan won their fourth Twenty20 international against England to level the seven-match series at 2-2. Chasing 166-4, England were bowled out for 163, with four balls remaining. Rugby union Worcester Warriors were placed into administration after failing to meet the financial requirements set out by the RFU.…

Written in 2018, Jonathan Spector’s play is set in the familiar territory of the culture wars, said Arifa Akbar in The Guardian. In a primary school in California, a group of progressive parents have gathered to discuss an outbreak of mumps – driving the plot towards a clash over the MMR jab. The committee is led by Don (Mark McKinney), an “irritant” who is less a “virtue signaller than a human semaphore”, but the real power in the group resides with Suzanne (the US screen star Helen Hunt), who “talks fuzzily about community and consensus” while actually being deeply controlling – and who ends up at loggerheads with Carina (Susan Kelechi Watson), the first black woman on the committee. The evening starts with a volley of well-polished satirical potshots aimed…

This “appropriately classy” film explores the life and career of the late Sidney Poitier, said Alistair Harkness in The Scotsman. Directed by Reginald Hudlin, it features contributions from the likes of Denzel Washington and Spike Lee, as well as interviews with the great man himself (it was made just before his death earlier this year). The latter provide “fascinating” insights into how Poitier’s upbringing in the Bahamas gave him “the fortitude to become not just the first black leading man in Hollywood history, but one of the film industry’s top box-office draws”. Sidney is not only a reminder of Poitier’s immense charisma – palpable in films such as In the Heat of the Night and To Sir, with Love – but of his immense contribution to civil rights and the…

One of the UK’s biggest ever public artworks has opened in Weston-super-Mare, said Steven Morris in The Guardian. See Monster is a decommissioned former North Sea gas platform that was carried to the town on a vast barge, as part of the government-funded Unboxed festival. Artists, engineers and gardeners have turned it into a “mythical beast”: its scales are 6,000 pieces of aluminium; a crane is its head; a ten-metre-high waterfall represents the monster’s roar. Other features include a cloud machine, a garden of trees and grasses, sculptures, and “contraptions” that produce renewable energy. “The scale makes it hard to ignore – at 35 metres, it is 15 metres taller than the Angel of the North.” It is designed to provoke discussion of how the world will move on from…

As they prepare to move in together, Beth, Josh and Ben lay down a few rules. Shula’s sorting things out ahead of her move to Sunderland when Kenton and David surprise her with a guest – her son Dan! Discussing Shula’s replacement at the Stables, Lilian reiterates her concerns about Alice. Tracy coaxes Chelsea to consider her options, but Chelsea still needs space. Dan and Shula share a moving moment at his father’s grave. Chelsea rebuffs Jazzer’s attempts to talk to her, but ends up confiding in Alistair and lets slip that the baby’s father is from Ambridge. After Martha’s naming ceremony, Lilian relents and offers Alice the Stables job. She accepts. Brad tells Tracy and Jazzer that Chelsea was researching fathers’ rights on the laptop; Tracy confronts her and…

• Hang your curtain rail higher than the top of the window in low-ceilinged rooms to give the illusion of height. You could also try painting the ceiling a few shades paler than the walls, and bringing that colour down as far as picture-rail level, or at least a quarter of the way down the wall. Alternatively, paint the walls and ceilings the same colour to visually elongate the walls. • Make a sitting room feel more spacious by moving sofas and chairs away from the walls. Even in small rooms, allowing a gap between the furniture and walls lets light in. • Apply the rule of three to decorative items: vases, candles or ornaments look more symmetrical when clustered in threes. The other number to remember is the 70:30…

Hilary Mantel 1952-2022 Hilary Mantel, who has died aged 70, started her first book in her 20s, and over the next 30 years she produced about a dozen novels. Most, she said, focused on the lives of “odd and marginal people”, and although they were critically acclaimed, her readers remained a “small and select band”. She was, she said, a “minority interest”. Then, when she was in her mid-50s, she decided “to march onto the middle ground of English history and plant a flag”. The result was Wolf Hall (2009), the first volume in her Thomas Cromwell trilogy. It was the novel “she had been waiting all her career to write”, said The Guardian – and it catapulted her to worldwide fame. The book and its follow-ups sold five million…

Crispin Odey In one of those quirks of history, Kwasi Kwarteng used to work as a consultant at Odey Asset Management, said The New York Times. Now the embattled UK Chancellor is under siege from his former boss. Hedge fund titan Crispin Odey has emerged as one of the most “opportunistic” of those “piling on” wagers against the pound and government debt. With his trademark insouciance, Odey, who is also famous for breeding rare chickens, observed that his bets against gilts were “the gifts that keep on giving”. He is one of several top hedge fund managers who believe the pound could now fall to parity against the dollar or below. Odey’s long-term bearishness – based on the belief that the market had badly underestimated how long inflation could stay…

What happened Italy has elected its most right-wing government since the Second World War, headed by a party with roots in the country’s fascist past. The coalition led by the hard-line Brothers of Italy won a clear majority in both houses of parliament; and the party itself, which was founded only ten years ago, took 26% of the vote, more than five times its share at the last election in 2018. Its leader, Giorgia Meloni, 45, is set to become Italy’s first female prime minister. Her campaign had emphasised traditional family values, tax cuts, euroscepticism and hostility to immigration. The party’s main rival on the right, the League, led by Matteo Salvini, saw its vote almost halved. It will now be a junior member of Meloni’s coalition, with Forza Italia,…

The Government laid out plans last week to set the economy on a course of 2.5% yearly growth. It pledged, among other things, to reform childcare to make it more affordable; and to speed up the construction of new housing and infrastructure by cutting bureaucracy, and reforming or abolishing the protections for rare species known as habitat regulations. The Government plans to create “Investment Zones”, where planning rules would be liberalised yet further, and businesses would have tax benefits. This week it denied reports that it was thinking of scrapping the Environment Land Management Schemes, which were designed to incentivise farmers to conserve wildlife.…

Doncaster Sheffield Airport, after its owners, The Peel Group, confirmed that it will close later this year, with the potential loss of hundreds of jobs. Flight numbers have more than halved since 2019, and Peel said high running costs had made it unviable. Rupa Huq, the Labour MP, who was suspended from her party for describing Kwasi Kwarteng – the Eton-educated Tory Chancellor – as “superficially” black at a fringe event at the Labour conference. She later tweeted that she had “wholeheartedly” apologised to Kwarteng for her “ill-judged” comments. Gloucester City Council, with reports that 95% of the 12,800 new trees it planted this year had died over the summer, because they had not been watered properly during the heatwave.…

Ottawa Covid rules dropped: In a move designed to boost its tourism industry, which was devastated during the pandemic, Canada’s government has decided to drop all Covid border restrictions from 1 October. Proof of vaccination and the wearing of masks will no longer be required on flights and trains. Canada received just 3.1 million visitors in 2021, down from 22 million in 2019. In April, it attracted more than a million visitors for the first time since 2019, after dropping the requirement to provide a negative Covid test upon entry. But it kept in place a vaccine mandate, which deterred many would-be visitors. The new move was spurred by the country’s high vaccination rate; some 82% of the population has received two doses of the Covid vaccine, compared with just…

“Feminists rightly point to words that are implicitly misogynistic because they’re both pejorative and used only of women: diva, ditzy, bitch, catty etc. All true. But in the interests of sexual equality, shouldn’t we spare a thought for words that are always assumed to refer to men? There are rather a lot of them. Cad, bounder, beast, dickhead, buffoon, creep, bastard, scumbag, stinker, shit, rat, ne’er-do-well, sod, brute, blackguard, bum, old bore, gammon, oaf, drip, prick, lout… If we can’t make these terms gender-neutral, perhaps we can devise feminine counterparts for some. Or do we think that only the male sex answers to most if not all abusive terms?” Matthew Parris in The Times…

Muzzled by the overlords of Silicon valley Fraser Nelson The Daily Telegraph An insidious form of censorship is chipping away our right to free speech, says Fraser Nelson: censorship by Big Tech. We’ve seen the Socialist Workers Party have its Facebook page withdrawn for some unknown infraction; we’ve seen YouTube remove David Davis’s speech for questioning vaccine passports. And last week things “moved up a gear” when PayPal shut down the accounts of the anti-lockdown Daily Sceptic and of the Free Speech Union (FSU), a body set up to offer support to people hounded for their unpopular views. In an increasingly cashless economy, people rely on online payments (about a third of FSU’s membership fees go through PayPal), so this adds a “chilling” financial dimension to digital censorship. And things…

Drink tea to ward off diabetes Drinking tea every day can significantly reduce a person’s risk of developing type 2 diabetes (T2D), research has found. The review of 19 cohort studies involving more than a million adults from eight countries concluded that people who consumed four cups of black, green or oolong tea per day were 17% less likely to be diagnosed with the condition than those who did not drink tea at all. People who drank between one and three cups also had a lowered risk, but of only 4%. Other studies have found a link between tea drinking and reduced risk of premature death, but this is one of the first to suggest a clear relationship between tea drinking and type 2 diabetes. The researchers, from the Wuhan…

When the British government created Northern Ireland just over a century ago, it was designed to have a permanent Protestant majority, said Patrick Cockburn in The i Paper. For decades, unionist politicians spoke of “the majority” as a shorthand for Protestants, and for unionist domination. “The phrase can never be used in this sense again.” The latest census figures, published last week, show that for the first time there are more Catholics than Protestants among Northern Ireland’s population of 1.9 million. The proportion of people who say they are from a “Protestant background” fell from 48% in 2011 to 43% in 2021, while the proportion from a “Catholic background” rose from 45% to 46%. At the same time, the proportion of people who say they are British only fell from…

What a “miserable” way to end a brilliant match, said Mike Atherton in The Times. England’s third ODI against India last Saturday was “bubbling up to a fine conclusion”, the last-wicket pair of Charlie Dean and Freya Davies having “added 35 runs in unflustered fashion” to take England to within 16 runs of victory. But then, in the 44th over, as she started her run, bowler Deepti Sharma noticed that Dean had “wandered out of her ground” and swiftly removed the bails. Since Dean hadn’t returned to her crease, the umpire had no option but to give her out. Although a Mankad (named after the postwar Indian spinner, Vinoo Mankad) is a legal form of dismissal, it has long been considered – with justification – a shoddily underhand way of…

by Lucy Worsley Hodder & Stoughton 432pp £25 The Week Bookshop £19.99 This book by the TV historian Lucy Worsley is the “first significant biography” of Agatha Christie since Laura Thompson’s Agatha Christie: An English Mystery (2007), said Stephanie Merritt in The Observer. Whereas Thompson’s biography was “something of a hagiography”, Worsley’s steers a more balanced course. She is largely sympathetic to her subject, but doesn’t overlook her flaws. Christie, she suggests, had a “very dark heart”, to judge from the many “racist and anti-Semitic caricatures” in her work (which are invariably edited out of TV adaptations). Although this book contains few revelations, Worsley’s “enthusiasm is infectious”, and she excels at “bringing a broader historical perspective to Christie’s life and work”. One of Worsley’s aims is to debunk the assumption…

The Lindisfarne Gospels are “a masterpiece of early medieval European book painting”, said Laura Freeman in The Times. Created in the early 700s by Eadfrith, bishop of Lindisfarne island in Northumbria, they retell the gospels in Latin on 518 pages of calfskin vellum. As many as 130 calves “would have been sacrificed” to make the book; only the finest skins were used. Artistically, the gospels are “glorious”. Gorgeous motifs and illustrations accompany the text. Each gospel starts with a symbolic picture of the author: lion for Mark, ox for Luke, and so on. Its pages are “woven with knots, steps, plaits, fretwork, laces and labyrinths that lead you on a dizzying dance”. It is a miracle that they have survived: in 793, the Vikings sacked Lindisfarne, somehow sparing the Gospels;…

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, 1908 (Faber £6.99). I was a child in the only multi-ethnic family in a cul de sac in 1970s Haywards Heath. I was worried that my friends wouldn’t want to come to my house because we were “different”. Ratty’s empathy in the chapter “Dulce Domum” reassured me that true friends don’t worry about those things. The Diddakoi by Rumer Godden, 1972 (Macmillan £6.99). Kizzy is a girl of Gypsy heritage who has to leave her community to start mainstream school where she’s bullied because of who she is. As a child, I had no words to articulate racism. The Diddakoi, like The Wind in the Willows, taught me that books can be a safe place for children to explore their anxieties. Tales…

Programmes The Absolutely Fabulous June Whitfield Documentary exploring the long career of the much-loved comedy actor, from early roles in Carry On films to sitcom stardom in Terry and June and Absolutely Fabulous. Sat 1 Oct, C5 20:45 (90mins). Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy The Hollywood actor embarks on another culinary tour of Italy. In the first of four parts, he heads to Venice. Sun 2 Oct, BBC2 20:20 (40mins). The Walk-In Stephen Graham stars in this hard-hitting drama based on real events. In the wake of the killing of Jo Cox MP, an activist infiltrates an ultra-far-right group. Mon 3 Oct, ITV1 21:00 (65mins). Trawlermen: Hunting the Catch New six-part docuseries following the fortunes of the people working on trawlers around Britain. Tue 4 Oct, BBC1 20:00 (60mins). Paxman:…

What do the German discount shops Aldi and Lidl have that other supermarkets do not, asks Jane MacQuitty in The Times. “Good wine at rock-bottom prices, that’s what.” Aldi’s big strength is its “growing far-flung range, with Greece, California and even China on show”; Lidl’s range is less good, but you’ll sometimes find a real bargain here too. From Aldi, I recommend 2020 Specially Selected Greco di Tufo DOCG (Italy, £7.79): grown on volcanic soil, it offers the “crisp, lemon zest zing of the greco grape”, plus a “delicious lick of greengage”. Also excellent is its 2020 Specially Selected Grüner Veltliner (Austria, £6.49) – with its “sparky white pepper spice”, it “makes a good autumn-into-winter white”. For a red, try 2020 Chassaux et Fils Côtes du Rhône (France, £4.29): it’s…

Create Academy has a growing series of gardening courses in easy-to-follow modules. You can learn the fundamentals of floristry with Willow Crossley, naturalistic garden design with Dan Pearson, or discover how to grow a garden in pots or take an indoor gardening masterclass (from £79; createacademy.com). As well as offering a variety of courses at the garden itself, the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh runs short online ones. They include self-paced courses on getting started with botany, and a free plants and climate change course. You can also study for RHS qualifications (rbge.org.uk). Learning with Experts was the first online-only gardening school when it launched in 2016. It offers well-priced expert-led courses with an interactive online classroom and personalised feedback from tutors. Current courses include self-sufficient veg gardening, propagation and garden…

The best of glorious Andros Andros is best known for producing some of Greece’s most powerful shipping dynasties, but the island also has unspoilt beaches, beautiful villages, great hiking paths, and excellent restaurants. To zero in on the best of all that, stay at Mélisses, an elegant b&b run by Allegra Pomilio, an Italian designer, writer and “food stylist”, says Rachel Howard in the FT. She cooks great feasts for her guests, and provides them with a fivepage list of the island’s highlights (including great eating places, from glorified beach shacks upwards), as well as introductions to local notables including sustainable food producers, and monks who are also great chefs. Mélisses has a saltwater pool and a “secret” sea-swimming spot, and culinary retreats are held there during the spring and…

Unilever: uni-leaver The boss of Unilever, Alan Jope, has announced that he will step down next year, ahead of schedule. Arguably, his abrupt exit represents the “easiest step” towards revival for the British consumer goods giant, said Aimee Donnellan on Reuters Breakingviews. “Jope attracted the ire of some investors for a perceived focus on environmental, social and governance issues.” But his departure “is more likely driven by hard numbers”. Margins at key brands have been falling, and the activist investor Nelson Peltz “has muscled his way onto the board” – seeking to galvanise a share price that has trailed those of rivals Procter & Gamble and Nestlé. Call it the “long goodbye”, said Alex Brummer in the Daily Mail. Jope’s departure has “been on the cards” since the failure of…

Dead in the Water: Murder and Fraud in the World’s Most Secretive Industry by Matthew Campbell and Kit Chellel. Digs into courtroom revelations to shed light on the global shipping industry. Influence Empire: The Story of Tencent and China’s Tech Ambition by Lulu Chen. Tracks the rise of the developer of China’s “everything app” WeChat, and its founder Pony Ma. The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era by Gary Gerstle. A history of how free trade and free markets became embedded in the late 20th century – and the consequences unleashed by “the creed”. The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Art of Disruption by Sebastian Mallaby. Examines the roots and role of VCs in the success of Silicon Valley.…

THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1331 An Ettinger pass holder 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 10 October. Send it to The Week Crossword 1331, 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) travel pass holder in assorted colours, which retails at £115, and two Connell Guides (connellguides.com). ACROSS 1 Stupid amount needed for fare from China (3,3) 5 Reconditioned Porsche not right for ages (6) 10 Shop in Victoria close to the Queen? (9) 11 Well-known craze absorbing yours truly (5) 12 Upright in Conservatoire rectified (5) 13 Different sort of theories about…

The roofs of bus shelters across the UK are to be turned into miniature gardens to support bees and butterflies. Grass-topped bus stops were first erected in the Netherlands, and have since become a familiar sight in Nordic countries; in the UK, Leicester is leading the charge, with 30 installed since 2021. Clear Channel, the company that manages 30,000 shelters for local councils, says it plans to convert at least 1,000 of its bus stops into insect havens over the coming years. A British woman has set a world record by shearing 370 sheep in eight hours. Marie Prebble, 34, whose family has worked land in Kent for centuries, sheared one strong wool lamb every 90 seconds, equivalent to more than 46 an hour, to claim her title. No woman…

Leaders of a village in southwest India have imposed a nightly “digital detox” on local residents. At 7pm every night, a siren is set off from a nearby temple, to mark the moment when all phones and other screens should be turned off for 90 minutes. “All that ambient noise from Bollywood videos stops,” said one of the organisers of the detox. “It’s as though everyone just breathes and focuses.” Stressed-out workers are increasingly venting their anger in specially designed “rage rooms”. In Norwich, a firm that rents out rooms full of “smashables” – objects that can be clubbed to pieces – says it has never been busier. “People have a real reason to come in,” noted manager Gemma Whiddett. “It’s not just fun anymore.”…

One in five girls aged ten to 15 in the UK say they are unhappy with their appearance, up from one in seven ten years ago. The Children’s Society/The Times In an election tomorrow, 45% of people would vote Labour, and 28% Tory. 72% of all voters – and 69% of those who voted Tory in 2019 – oppose the Government’s decision to axe the 45% tax rate on earnings over £150,000. 71% of voters, and 67% of Tories, oppose lifting the cap on bankers’ bonuses. YouGov/The Times 61% of black Britons say they’ve been passed over for a promotion or failed to get work due to their ethnicity. Survation for the Black Equity Organisation/The Daily Telegraph…

An actor’s blessings Jeff Bridges has had a rough couple of years, says Tom Lamont in The Observer. First The Big Lebowski actor got lymphatic cancer. Then he became so ill with Covid, it made the cancer “look like a piece of cake”. Yet he has taken something positive from it. “Life is constantly giving us gifts,” he says. “They may be gifts that we don’t think we want. Who wants cancer? Who wants f**king Covid, man? Well it turns out, I did. Because dealing with your mortality, it makes things more precious.” In particular, it intensified his love for his wife, Sue. The pair met in 1975: he was filming in Montana, and she lived nearby. “Love at first sight. Boom.” Decades on, the couple, who have three grown-up…

Nearly 400 men called Nigel gathered at a pub in Worcestershire last week, to celebrate their increasingly out-of-style name. Entertainment was provided by two DJs, an MC, a comedian, a busker and a group of Morris dancers, all called Nigel; and attendees, who were asked to show ID, signed their names in “The Book of Nigel” before leaving. Nigel Smith, who organised the event at The Fleece Inn, said it was a “great feeling, all of us getting together and celebrating our Nigel-ness”. A bride who was jilted on her wedding day decided to go ahead with the event – without the man she’d been hoping to marry. Kayley Stead, 27, from Swansea, said she burst into tears when she was told that her partner of four years had got…

RUSSIA Why officials are taking to the bottle Meduza (Riga) As if he didn’t have enough on his mind, Vladimir Putin has suddenly become anxious about Russians’ excessive alcohol intake, says Andrey Pertsev. The president, who is famously abstemious, has recently raised the issue with regional governors – to their amazement, as it doesn’t figure high on their list of current concerns. “I urge you to devote some attention to this,” he told one, ordering him to focus on “healthy lifestyle propaganda” and exercise facilities. Russians are among the world’s heaviest drinkers, but Putin has tended to ignore this, claiming falsely that they drink no more than northern Europeans. Why is he obsessed with it now? Moscow insiders think it’s because many in his own circle, “shocked and confused” by…

Rob Brydon is a brilliant impressionist, but he’s often mistaken for other celebrities even when he isn’t trying. Last month he was stopped by a man and asked if he was Hugh Grant. “Yes, I am,” he admitted. The man then requested a selfie. Brydon complied, burbling Grantisms as he posed: “Ah, gosh, crikey, excellent”, and so on. “Won’t it be fun when he shows [the photo] to his friends and says ‘I met Hugh Grant,’” Brydon mused. “And they reply: ‘You idiot, that’s Anton Du Beke.’” Princess Margaret was good in a crisis. Susannah Constantine, who dated her son Viscount Linley in the 1980s, tells a story in her new memoir about a lunch at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, during which Constantine managed to block a…

“I have a joke about trickledown economics. 99% of you won’t ever get it.”David Lammy on Twitter “Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now, take what’s left and live it properly.”Marcus Aurelius, quoted in The Daily Telegraph “The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”Stephen King, quoted on The Browser “A good listener is usually thinking about something else.”Frank “Kin” Hubbard, quoted on NPR “History never looks like history when you’re living through it.”John Gardner, quoted in Money Marketing “The era of the Kardashians is not one that rewards self-effacement.”Emma Duncan in The Times “Sometimes hating yourself is a fair response to the data.”TV writer David Milch, quoted in The New York Times “More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones.”St Teresa of Ávila,…

To The Times Further to Clare Foges’s article “For many of us, the NHS is no longer sacred”, switching to a social insurance model is not a cure-all. Many of the countries that have better health outcomes than the UK (including Italy, to which Foges alludes) use tax funding. And even countries with social health insurance, such as Germany, are now having to put more tax funding into the system as the costs spiral. As for the view that the NHS is a “sacred cow”, the NHS has been reformed remarkably often compared with other health systems – I count more than 25 major reorganisations in the past 50 years. Perhaps the biggest advantage that social insurance systems have is healthcare being removed from politics and a compulsion to tinker…

by Maggie O’Farrell Tinder Press 438pp £25 The Week Bookshop £19.99 Maggie O’Farrell’s last novel, the brilliant Hamnet, “fleshed out” the lives of Shakespeare’s children, said Elizabeth Lowry in The Daily Telegraph. Her latest brings another neglected historical figure into the light – the noblewoman Lucrezia de’ Medici. In 1560, a 16-year-old Lucrezia left Florence to begin her married life with Alfonso d’Este, heir to the Duke of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio. “Within a year, she was dead”; it was rumoured Alfonso had killed her. Taking these “suggestive details” as inspiration (as Robert Browning did in his famous poem My Last Duchess), O’Farrell “constructs a convincing human drama”. O’Farrell is a master of visual description, said Claire All free in The Times. A tiger moves “like honey dripping from a…

A rooftop in Rome Spend 5 nights at the Marcella Royal Hotel, which has great views from the roof terrace. From £384pp full board (including Manchester flights). 0800-408 0778, jet2holidays.com. Depart 27 November. Icelandic excursions Make the Reykjavík Lights your base for 4 nights while you chase the Northern Lights on the Golden Circle tour. From £519pp b&b (including London flights). 020-451 2688, tui.co.uk. Depart 26 April 2023. Egyptian luxury Stay at the 4-star Solymar Naama Bay in the heart of Sharm El-Sheikh, home to rich coral reefs, from £308pp all incl. (including London flights). 020-8175 1145, loveholidays.com. Depart 5 December. Five-star Morocco Enjoy 7 nights in Marrakech’s Savoy Le Grand, overlooking the Great Atlas mountains, from £561pp b&b (including Edinburgh flights). 020-3617 5853, jetlineholidays.com. Depart 14 January 2023. Covid-19:…

The dangers of messing with King Dollar Martin Wolf Financial Times “In times of trouble, the dollar is the world’s refuge and strength” – even when the US is “the source of the trouble”, says Martin Wolf. It happened in the financial crisis of 2007-09 and “it is true again now”. A series of global shocks, including high US inflation, has made the dollar “king of the castle”. Languishing in its shadow, sterling has depreciated by 21%, the yen by 20% and the euro by 16%. The big problem with a strong US currency is that it imposes “a contractionary pressure on the world economy”, triggering “recessionary effects elsewhere”. Most at risk are nations with “heavy liabilities” in dollar-denominated debt. But it’s striking that many emerging market currencies within the…