Table of contents for V. 1323 in The Week

What happened Police under fire The Metropolitan Police’s decision to break up a vigil for the murdered 33-year-old Sarah Everard triggered days of protests, and calls for the resignation of Britain’s most senior police officer, Cressida Dick. Campaigners said they had lost confidence in Dick’s ability to protect women (see page 24). The PM was among those who expressed concern about footage of women being handcuffed and dragged away from Saturday evening’s vigil, on Clapham Common. But he later indicated that Dick still had his full support. On Monday, hundreds of protesters gathered in Parliament Square to call for tougher laws to protect women, and to voice their objections to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts (PCSC) Bill being debated by MPs. The bill would enable police officers to impose…

Gratitude, after former pupils of a teacher stranded in China raised £52,000 to pay for him to be flown home. Bob Allison, 68, who taught for years at The Chantry School in Worcestershire, suffered a severe stroke in January. His family are desperate to have him repatriated before he becomes too ill to travel. Prince Philip, who was finally discharged from hospital, having undergone a procedure for a pre-existing heart condition. The 99-year-old had been in hospital for a month. British acting talent, after eight British-born stars were nominated for Oscars – including Daniel Kaluuya, Olivia Colman, Riz Ahmed, Carey Mulligan, Sacha Baron Cohen and Sir Anthony Hopkins. The nominations are the most diverse ever: nine of the 20 actors nominated are from ethnic minority backgrounds, and for the first…

Some of Britain’s leading independent schools have been scrambling to respond to a slew of anonymous testimonies about sexual assault and harassment perpetrated by their pupils and alumni. Eton, St Paul’s and Latymer Upper are among the private schools named, though there are also reports about state schools. Around 4,100 people have contributed their experiences to the Everyone’s Invited website; they range from being groped and coerced into sexual acts, to being drugged at parties and raped. Some refer to a “rape culture” at certain schools.…

Paris Napoleonic wars: President Macron has confirmed he will take part in controversial commemorations in early May, marking the bicentenary of Napoleon Bonaparte’s death – but will do so with his “eyes wide open”. Napoleon is a bitterly divisive figure in modern France: revered by some as the visionary politician who bequeathed a centralised modern state; reviled by others as a tyrant who reintroduced slavery to the French West Indies. Public debate has been raging for months about whether and how to mark this year’s anniversary – if at all. Last week, Macron’s equality minister, Élisabeth Moreno, attacked Napoleon as “one of history’s greatest misogynists”. Milan Back to lockdown: About three-quarters of people in Italy, the first nation in Europe to be stricken by Covid-19 a year ago, were placed…

1 Hanging On the Telephone by Jack Lee, performed by Blondie 2 What a Wonderful World by Bob Thiele (as George Douglas) & George David Weiss, performed by Louis Armstrong 3 Che gelida manina, from La bohème by Giacomo Puccini, performed by Luciano Pavarotti with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (conductor: Herbert von Karajan) 4* Love Train by Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff, performed by The O’Jays 5 Abide with Me by Henry Francis Lyte and William Henry Monk, performed by Shirley Bassey & the Morriston Rugby Club Choir 6 Danny Boy by Frederic Weatherly and traditional, performed by The Grimethorpe Colliery RJB Band 7 Nocturne No. 2 in E-flat major, Op.9 No.1 by Frédéric Chopin, performed by Daniel Barenboim 8 Quanta Qualia by Patrick Hawes, performed by The Self-Isolation Choir…

Being one of the five planets visible to the naked eye, Mars has always fascinated humans – and since it is on occasion visibly red because of the iron oxide on its surface, it has long been associated with war and slaughter. The Babylonians called it Nergal for their god of death and pestilence, long before the Romans named it after their god of war. By the 17th century, astronomers were observing it by telescope and noting its polar caps. The first detailed maps of Mars were made in the late 19th century by the Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli. He named its “seas” and “continents”, and noted “channels”, or canali, on its surface – which were actually an optical illusion. Schiaparelli thought these were natural features, but as his assumptions…

IRELAND Why we’re so reluctant to speak Irish Irish Examiner (Cork) I went to the trouble of becoming fluent in Irish, says John G. O’Dwyer, and now I have almost no one to speak it to. Across the Irish Sea in Wales, the people “proudly embrace Welsh” as a symbol of their national identity. But here, “while there is much goodwill towards the language”, it is seldom used in everyday life. The “rash over-enthusiasm” of successive post-independence governments is to blame: generations have been put off by being forced to toil away at the intricacies of Irish grammar in school. Irish people have a long history of rejecting whatever others try to impose upon us: “Norman Conquest, Protestant Reformation, Act of Union, Guinness Light.” Making Irish compulsory has made it…

NHS patients are going to be asked to swallow miniature cameras to check for signs of colon cancer as part of a new trial. No bigger than a pill, the capsule camera – PillCam Colon 2 – takes two images per second as it passes through the body, which are transmitted to a recording device worn around the patient’s waist. Around 11,000 people across England will be given the camera-capsules, which could end up replacing traditional endoscopies. The latter involve inserting a tube, and have to be carried out in hospital. The PillCam technology is simple enough to use at home; and it can deliver results within hours. The hope is that it will take the pressure off the NHS and lead to cancers being detected at an earlier stage.…

The history of government blunders is long and inglorious, said Andrew Rawnsley in The Observer, but the Test and Trace scheme wins “the gold medal at the fiascolympics”. Boris Johnson promised a “world-beating” system to contain Covid, under the Tory peer Dido Harding. Instead, an eviscerating report by the all-party Public Accounts Committee last week found that it had failed to make “a measurable difference to the progress of the pandemic”. By next year, Test and Trace will have cost £37bn – around £1,000 for each working-age adult in the UK – on a tangled system involving some 400 deals with 200 separate suppliers, many directly awarded to government cronies through a questionable “VIP track”. It is still “spraying cash” at consultants, some of them billing £6,624 a day. Lord…

It was “one of the great British sporting success stories of modern times”, said Oliver Brown in The Daily Telegraph. Between 2010 and 2017, Britain’s cyclists enjoyed a truly astonishing run of success, winning five Tours de France out of six, eight gold medals at the 2012 Olympic Games, and six at the 2016 ones. Britain rejoiced in their achievements; Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome became household names. And the architects of this success were two closely linked bodies known for their enlightened approaches to management and training: the Murdoch-backed Team Sky, the professional team of Britain’s elite road cyclists; and British Cycling, responsible for the sport in general and for track cyclists. The two bodies had many riders in common (as the same cyclists often compete on both road…

Heavy handed policing... To The Independent My disabled daughter rarely leaves her home. But needing to express her solidarity with all female victims of male violence, she made every effort to get to Sarah Everard’s vigil. Peacefully holding up her light in memory of Sarah, she was roughly manhandled by a police officer twice her size and three times as heavy. She was utterly powerless, and is left traumatised by the experience. The Met’s brutal conduct in Clapham on Saturday was itself a demonstration of the very attitude and behaviour women were trying to take a stand against. Those responsible for the unjustifiable use of force against women must be called to account. Pam Radford, Wilmslow Cheshire ...is sometimes justified To The Guardian With regard to your coverage of the…

Clare Hammond: Variations BIS £13.50 The British concert pianist Clare Hammond has a gift for “mixing repertoire to revealing effect”, said Fiona Maddocks in The Guardian. Her previous album brought together a range of esoteric piano études, and on her new one she presents a bold selection of variations composed between 1904 and 2017, by the likes of Birtwistle, Adams, Copland, Szymanowski and Hindemith. The variations format (a theme repeated many times with modification) might be off-putting to some, but the “displays of invention” on this “virtuosic recital” are dazzling – nowhere more so than in the grand finale: Sofia Gubaidulina’s ambitious Chaconne (1962). Hammond is a pianist of “immense power”, said Geoff Brown in The Times; that power tightly harnessed to “the moment’s expressive needs”. I’m afraid she couldn’t…

Summer has come early to Sky One with the arrival of The Flight Attendant – a “lively” HBO thriller that’s “the TV equivalent of a beach read”, said Daniel Fienberg in The Hollywood Reporter. Kaley Cuoco stars as Cassie Bowden, the titular flight attendant and party girl, who flirts with a “scruffy-but rich” stranger (Michiel Huisman) on a red-eye to Bangkok, only to wake up the next morning, after an alcohol-induced blackout, in a hotel room, next to his bloody corpse. Panic-stricken, she cleans up as best she can and flees, but with the FBI, a mysterious flick-knife-toting villainess (Michelle Gomez) and sundry other dark forces on her tail, moving on from this does not prove easy. Cassie Bowden is a “powerhouse” of a role, and watching Cuoco ace it…

Best books… Jon McGregor The Costa Prize-winning writer and judge of Rathbones Folio Prize 2021 picks his favourite recent books. His new novel, Lean Fall Stand, will be published by 4th Estate in April. The winner of the prize will be announced on 24 March The Swallowed Man by Edward Carey, 2020 (Gallic Books £14.99). When I write these lists, I usually pick the same stalwarts that I’ve kept going back to for years; but while judging the Rathbones Folio Prize, I’ve been bowled over by the depth and range of great books that have been published just this past year. Edward Carey’s delirious retelling of Pinocchio, which is mostly told from a ship inside the belly of a whale, is a childlike (so, wise) and arresting fable, with moments…

Rambert describes its digital commission Rooms – with 17 dancers playing 100 characters over 36 scenes – as being akin to fleeting glimpses into strangers’ apartments. And given the amount of time we’ve spent in our homes this year, “it’s an inspired move for [choreographer] Jo Strømgren to explore domestic scenes” (Guardian). Real-time streaming performances take place 8-11 April; £10 tickets available through various venues (rambert.org.uk). Meanwhile, there’s a week left to view The Royal Ballet’s “fine recreation of the historic 1946 production” of The Sleeping Beauty, performed and recorded in 2020 (Times). Until 28 March; £3 to stream (stream.roh.org.uk).…

I recently opened a restaurant in Liverpool, and I wanted to serve a dish that celebrated the city, says Ellis Barrie. In a hand-written cookbook from 1897, I found “Liverpool tart”, a delicious treat made with ingredients that would have been produced locally or come through the city’s docks. Here, just a little updated, is a version that’s really easy to make at home. Serves 8 For the sweet pastry: 360g unsalted butter 225g icing sugar, sifted 6 egg yolks 75g ground almonds 610g plain flour, plus extra for dusting for the filling: 9 whole eggs 270ml double cream 150ml lemon juice finely grated zest of 3 lemons 200g black treacle 370g dark brown soft sugar • Prepare the pastry. Cream together the butter and 150g of the icing sugar.…

Nintendo Switch While this is not the most powerful console out there, Nintendo’s focus is on fun, with exclusive games like Super Mario and Animal Crossing. You can use it as both a hand-held tablet and a TV console (£280; argos.co.uk). Sony PlayStation 5 The new PlayStation has 8K graphics – 16 times higher quality than Full HD. Its DualSense controller gives such subtle vibrations that you can feel your character’s environment (£450; johnlewis.com). Xbox Series X While it’s not quite as nice to look at as the PS5, the new Xbox can match it for graphics and processing power. For a more budget-friendly Xbox, the Series S is a toned-down version (£450; smythstoys.com). Nintendo Switch Lite If you’re not bothered about connecting your console to a TV, this Switch…

Greensill/GFG: 2008 and all that? In 2017, the Indian tycoon Sanjeev Gupta (pictured) was widely considered the “saviour” of Sheffield’s steel industry, said John Collingridge in The Sunday Times. Gupta created a new UK steel champion called Liberty Speciality Steels, which is now in jeopardy. Production at its Stocksbridge plant was halted weeks ago by a cash squeeze. The situation is now “critical”. Liberty – and Gupta’s entire GFG Alliance metals conglomerate – was funded by Lex Greensill, the Australian financier whose operation imploded earlier this month. The livelihoods of thousands of steelworkers are now “entwined” with “a mesh of global financial relationships”. Gupta’s GFG group “is racing against time” to refinance £3.6bn owed to Greensill Capital, said Ben Butler in The Guardian (Australia). The money Greensill loaned out…

RBS’s murky past returns to haunt Alistair Osborne The Times The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has begun criminal proceedings against NatWest (formerly RBS) over alleged money laundering, says Alistair Osborne. “As high-stakes legal cases go”, it’s hard to beat. The FCA has launched money-laundering actions against ten banks since 2013, but all were civil cases. This case is different, though, since the rule-breaking was so flagrant. Last year, Bradford crown court heard that NatWest client Fowler Oldfield, a now-defunct local gold dealer, was processing up to £2m of criminal cash a day; in total, it deposited £365m between 2011 and 2016. The FCA is not thought to be pursuing the “nuclear option” of removing NatWest’s banking licence. But the case will be “uncomfortable” for CEO Alison Rose: it shows that…

Who’s tipping what The week’s best shares Apple The Times Apple is more conservatively valued and has proved more resilient than its peers in the US tech sell-off. A “profits machine”, with diversified income streams and rising recurrent subscription revenues. Buy. $121.08. Fevertree Drinks The Sunday Telegraph The drinks-maker’s asset-light model has helped withstand hospitality closures; revenues were down just 3% in 2020. With a £143m cash balance, it is capitalising on expansion, e-commerce growth and social media exposure. Buy. £24.41. Rentokil Initial The Times Hygiene revenues have soared 36.8% at the pest-control firm, which also provides soaps and sanitisers to retailers, offices, care homes and schools. Having expanded into 20 new markets, there’s still scope to grow. Buy. 468.75p. J. Sainsbury The Daily Telegraph Thanks to 32 new fulfilment…

Across the nation, there seem to be “two sharply divergent views” on the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s explosive interview with Oprah Winfrey, said Stephen Glover in the Daily Mail. One is held by Piers Morgan, and no doubt “millions of less voluble Britons”: Morgan stormed off ITV’s Good Morning Britain after saying that he didn’t “believe a word” Meghan said, that he “wouldn’t believe it if she read me a weather report”. The second, particularly popular among young people, is that Meghan is a “victim of racism”. Her allegations – specifically that a royal family member raised concerns about “how dark” her son Archie’s skin would be – are seen as entirely convincing. Those who question them are written off as old, reactionary and bigoted. Well, Meghan’s claims are…

Thorntons, the chocolate-seller, which looked set to become the latest victim of the high-street downturn. The firm said its sales had been badly affected by the pandemic, and that it will close all 61 of its shops, putting more than 600 jobs at risk (see page 49). Middle-class families, after au pairs were classed as “skilled workers” under the points-based immigration system, meaning they must earn at least £20,480 a year to work in the UK. Most au pairs come from the EU and currently receive around £100 a week “pocket money”, plus room and board. Au pair agencies have asked the Government to introduce a special au pair visa.…

45% of Britons now have a positive view of Prince Harry, while 48% have a negative view. It is the first time views of him have been negative overall. 31% now have a positive view of Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, and 58% a negative view, giving her a net rating of -27%, down from -14% two weeks ago. YouGov/Times 56% of black people in Britain believe race is still not talked about enough. Among white Britons, the figure is 31%. British Future/Observer Only 25% of Scots support calls for an independence referendum this year. 30% say one should be held in the next two to five years, while 45% say it should be held later than that. Panelbase/Sunday Times…

“Filling out the census this week I was confronted by the dispiriting realisation that my life, which from the inside has always struck me as fascinating, original and thrilling, makes for a decidedly boring series of data points. I doubt that Professor Sir Ian Diamond, the national statistician, will experience feelings of titillation or even curiosity as another white, heterosexual, gainfully employed man called James slides across his desk. But we are almost all boring, statistically speaking. To be average is to be human, and there’s much wisdom to be found in accepting this fact. This is how we live: as blindly and as inevitably as migrating birds.” James Marriott in The Times…

Only Joe Biden can resolve the Irish dilemma Paul Goodman The Times Maybe there is no solution to the Irish border conundrum, says Paul Goodman. After Brexit threw up the need for customs checks, Dublin and the EU insisted these couldn’t happen on the island of Ireland, as a hard border would threaten the Belfast Agreement that underpins peace. Hence the decision, under the Northern Ireland Protocol, to run the customs border down the Irish Sea instead. But that “looks increasingly unacceptable to unionists”, who say it breaches the Belfast Agreement’s commitment not to “change the status of Northern Ireland save with the consent of a majority of its people” and now threaten to withdraw that consent. If the border can’t go anywhere without endangering peace, there’s only one option…

A self-decapitating sea slug King Charles I didn’t actually walk and talk half an hour after his head was cut off; but had he been a sacoglossan sea slug, the notion would not have been so outlandish. Scientists in Japan have discovered that this species can decapitate itself, and then grow an entirely new body from its head, complete with heart and other vital organs, reports The Guardian. The process takes more than half an hour – but less than a month. The team were studying sea slugs in the laboratory when they noticed a living, severed head in the tank. Looking at complete specimens, they identified a groove in their necks, which they thought might be a “predetermined breakage plane”. So they tied bits of thread around the grooves…

Whenever I telephone my mother on my way home from anywhere, she always asks me the same question, said Claire Cohen in The Daily Telegraph. “Are there people around?” My answer is always, “Yes”. As a woman living in a big city, I choose my routes home carefully: I walk down busy streets, with lots of traffic and “pedestrians galore”. One of those streets is Poynders Road. It is a busy A-road near where I live in south London. It is also the road where Sarah Everard was last seen, before she was abducted and murdered. In response to the wave of fear and anger triggered by this crime, Scotland Yard emphasised that what happened to Everard is very rare. And in a way, that is true: statistically speaking, women…

“Call me a Remoaner, a sore loser or a sad obsessive stuck in the past,” said Martin Fletcher in the New Statesman, “but it seems to me that the calamitous consequences of Brexit are becoming plainer with every passing week.” New figures show that British exports to the EU plunged by 40.7% in January, the first month after the end of the Brexit transition period. Over that same period, exports to Germany, our second largest trading partner, fell 56%. Exports of food and live animals were down 63.6%; producers of fish and shellfish saw their exports collapse by 83% year on year. A fifth of British exporters have apparently ceased trading with the EU, defeated by all the extra red tape. The Government can dissemble all it likes, but there’s…

For a long time, no one was quite sure they could – but it seems that England haven’t forgotten how to play commanding rugby, said Stephen Jones in The Sunday Times. At Twickenham on Saturday, “out of the blue”, Eddie Jones’s team put in easily their best performance of the past 18 months to edge France in a 23-20 thriller. It’s not a win that will revive England’s “championship season”: having lost two of their first three matches, they can’t retain their Six Nations title. Yet it will be a huge morale-boost: this truly was a “wondrous performance” that will restore much-needed pride. The accolades shouldn’t all go to England, said Paul Rees in The Observer. Fabien Galthié’s young French side also deserve credit for their part in an enthralling…

To The Times Your leading article argues that UK judges who sit on the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal should resign. The contrary argument is given by Michael Thomas, QC, the distinguished former attorney general of Hong Kong, who has a deep knowledge and experience of the issue. I agree with the latter view. We should be doing our very best to support the Hong Kong judiciary, and the 1997 joint declaration, in the hope that Beijing will adopt a more reasonable stance and will continue to respect judicial independence. I take particular issue with your claim that “there can be no more quiet agreements for the judges to extend their lucrative visiting contracts”. The arrangements regulating non-permanent judicial appointments to the court are a matter of public record:…

Double Blind by Edward St Aubyn Harvill Secker 256pp £18.99 The Week Bookshop £14.99 Edward St Aubyn’s tenth novel, Double Blind, opens in a world of elegant privilege that readers of his “Patrick Melrose” novels will recognise, said Alex Preston in The Spectator. Thirty-something Francis works on a rewilded Sussex estate, where he surveys turtle doves and nightingales, and enjoys the magic mushrooms he harvests. His biologist girlfriend, Olivia, is having a tougher time: her best friend, Lucy, has just suffered a brain seizure. The plot is complex, and encompasses “epigenetics, rewilding, psychoanalysis and the placebo effect”, but St Aubyn manages to advance “clever ideas” without ever seeming “forced or showy”. That wasn’t my experience, said John Self in The Times. This novel is “a turkey”, over-stuffed with discussions of…

Most films about school focus on the students’ woes – but from Blackboard Jungle to Dead Poets Society and beyond, teachers have also made for fine protagonists: Goodbye Mr Chips Robert Donat won an Oscar for his performance as Latin teacher Mr Chipping in this touching 1939 evocation of life at an English public school. Based on the novella by James Hilton, it is the archetypal inspirational-teacher film, charting Chipping’s progress from insecure young disciplinarian to mellow and beloved old headmaster. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie This 1969 film version does not match the laconic brilliance of Muriel Spark’s novel, but it is very enjoyable all the same thanks to a superb cast, led by Maggie Smith as the 1930s Edinburgh school teacher with a fatally charismatic sway over…

Tips of the week… how to build a bug hotel ● As well as being part of the food chain, bugs such as spiders, ladybirds and woodlice eat decaying matter and so recycle nutrients back into soil. ● Build a little spot for them in the garden, and it could hold some of the 2,000 species. ● Start with an old tin can, a broken flower pot or an old plastic bottle cut in half. ● Find some dry sticks and break them up so they are about the right length to fit in your container without sticking out much. Get some garden canes and do the same. ● Look around for leaves, pine cones, tree bark, hollow stalks like bamboo, or feathers. ● Stuff your hotel with a mix…

Murray Walker, OBE 1923-2021 For seven decades, Murray Walker, who has died aged 97, was the voice of British motorsport, said The Guardian – his high-octane delivery as inextricably linked with the roar of engines as Dan Maskell’s “creamy courtside whisper” was with the genteel world of lawn tennis. His observations were nothing if not well-informed: he had a “deep love” of the sport, and was steeped in it. But his “pants on fire” delivery was so rapid, there were a number of on-air gaffes, said The Sunday Times. Among the oftest-quoted “Murrayisms” were: “Nigel Mansell is slowing down now, taking it easy. Oh no he isn’t – it’s a new lap record”; “There’s nothing wrong with the car except it’s on fire”; and “This leading car is absolutely unique…

The US president, Joe Biden, signed a $1.9trn Covid economic relief bill into law, which is expected to lift millions out of poverty. The package, one of the largest in US history, passed Congress without a single Republican supporter. Some economists fear it could stoke inflation – prompting increased market jitters ahead of the US Fed’s policy meeting on Wednesday. The yield on benchmark ten-year Treasury bonds – a closely watched measure of borrowing costs globally – rose sharply to 1.67%, triggering a sell-off across global bond markets. Tech stocks were the first to feel the pressure. In Britain, the economic news was mixed. Data showing that UK goods exports to the EU tumbled by 40.7% in January was offset by more encouraging growth figures. GDP shrank by 2.9% in…

● Blankety-blank “The latest market craze”, for special purpose acquisition companies (Spacs), shows no sign of abating, said Callum Jones in The Times. More of these “blank cheque companies” have already listed on world stock markets this year than during any other. In just over two months, 258 Spacs have been brought to market, beating 2020’s record 256 (nearly all in the US, though that is swifly changing). The total proceeds raised are already put at $76.7bn. Blank cheque funds are, by definition, a gamble. They raise cash from investors through IPOs and only then search for an acquisition. Critics, such as Berkshire Hathaway’s Charlie Munger, think it amounts to “crazy speculation” and that the recent flurry is indicative of a bubble. Others reckon it’s too late to stuff the…

Dog thefts have become so common during lockdown that Nottinghamshire Police is to appoint a specialist officer just to investigate them. The force will be the first in the country to have a chief inspector on the case, and as part of its three-point package to tackle dog crime, it will also form a “Canine Coalition” with charities. Restaurants frustrated by “no-shows” are planning to ask for payment upfront from people booking meals when they reopen. The Birmingham restaurant 670 Grams began taking prepayments for bookings for its £70 ten-course tasting menu last week. Others in London will do the same; they say that customers often book three or four restaurants for a business dinner, then ask their clients to pick one of them.…

Every child in England is to be asked how the pandemic has affected them, in the largest consultation ever undertaken with children in the UK, the Children’s Commissioner has announced. Dame Rachel de Souza said the information would go into her “Beveridge Report for children”, which will examine ways of “rebuilding childhood” after the Covid crisis, in much the same way as William Beveridge’s report set out ways to rebuild Britain after the War. The consultation will take place next month, when an online survey will be sent to all schools.…

Glasgow Civil service shift: Michael Gove (right) is to work part-time in Glasgow, in a new Cabinet Office HQ in the city. Some 500 civil service jobs will be moved to the secondary base, which is due to open next year as part of what Gove described as efforts to “co-locate the engine room of the UK Government in Scotland”. Some 500 more Foreign Office jobs will also be transferred to an existing base in East Kilbride, bringing that department’s total there to 1,500 by 2025. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said the relocated jobs will ensure the civil service “represents all parts of the UK”. Whitehaven, Cumbria Coal mine U-turn: Robert Jenrick, the Communities Secretary, has bowed to pressure and “called in” a controversial application to build a new deep…

A boxer born in a hurricane Dillian Whyte’s life has been stormy since day one – quite literally. The heavyweight boxer, 32, was born in Jamaica in the middle of a hurricane so fierce that while his mother was in labour, the roof had blown off the house. She “climbed under the table to get the deed done” – but things didn’t get any easier for her son. When he was two, she left him behind when she moved to England; he didn’t see her for another 11 years; they rarely even spoke. “Where we lived there ain’t no phone,” he told Donald McRae in The Guardian. “My mum would write letters, but I couldn’t read.” His father was often away working; and he was neglected by the people who…

The villagers of Hurstbourne Tarrant in Hampshire have been urged to stop putting erotic fiction in a phone box converted to a communal library – after a selection of “salacious adult literature” was donated. Hurstbourne Tarrant parish council issued the plea after removing a series of “inappropriate” books from the kiosk. “Please find another outlet for your collection,” said the council, adding that most of the customers were children. “They know who it is in the village,” said council chairman Ian Kitson, “and they aren’t very well thought of.” In the latest Zoom blunder of the pandemic, a vicar morphed into one of the Blues Brothers during an online sermon. Reverend Vaughan Roberts began a sermon at St Mary’s Church in Warwick as usual, but soon appeared in a black…

MEXICO Stop the deadly flow of US weapons The Washington Post “After years and years of bloodshed, Mexico’s drug war shows no signs of abating,” says León Krauze. The cartels are growing ever bolder and the violence keeps rising: more than 34,000 people were murdered last year. Throughout this “long nightmare”, two factors have remained constant: the drugs keep flowing north to the US; and the guns keep flowing south to Mexico. The Mexican government estimates that as many as 2.5 million weapons bought legally in the US have been smuggled across the border over the past decade. The US Congress is currently considering a bill that might help stem this flow by imposing tighter background checks on gun purchases. But if the US really wants to help Mexico it…

Scientists believe they are a step closer to developing a swab test for Parkinson’s disease. Simple, painless and cheap, it works by detecting compounds in sebum (the oily substance coating the skin) that people with Parkinson’s produce in high concentrations. Researchers discovered the link with sebum after a retired nurse named Joy Milne told doctors that she had noticed a “musky” smell on her husband some 14 years before his Parkinson’s was diagnosed. Since then, a team at The University of Manchester has pinpointed the compounds in question, and produced a test which can distinguish Parkinson’s with 85% accuracy. They hope the test could be used in a clinical setting within the next two years. Currently, doctors must base their diagnosis on a number of different factors. In a recent…

Hugh Grant has sought to explain his infamous encounter with the sex worker Divine Brown in 1995 – blaming his “atrocious” performance in Nine Months. The actor told the WTF podcast he’d been “disappointed in myself” after attending a screening of the film, and having embarked on a “Ken Russell kind of lunch, one thing led to another” in the hours before his arrest. “Everybody in it was brilliant,” he said of the film, “but I was so atrocious that I was not in a good frame of mind”. Alas, not everyone was convinced. “If that’s what he did after Nine Months, what did he do after the execrable Mickey Blue Eyes,” asks Kevin Maher in The Times. “Rob a bank?” The Rev Ian Paisley was a master of the…

“Throughout the world the more wrong a man does, the more indignant is he at wrong done to him.” Anthony Trollope, quoted in The Times “Selfhood has become capitalism’s last natural resource.” Journalist Jia Tolentino, quoted in Marie Claire “I hope that to be of two minds about some things is not to be neutral.” Novelist Flannery O’Connor, quoted on ArtsJournal.com “Men are never so good or bad as their opinions.” Scottish jurist Sir James Mackintosh, quoted in Forbes “Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy.” Albert Einstein, quoted on BBC Science “All the world is not, of course, a stage, but the crucial ways in which it isn’t are not easy to specify.” Psychologist Erving Goffman,…

After 405 days away from competitive tennis, Roger Federer returned last week, at the Qatar Total Open in Doha, said Tumaini Carayol in The Guardian. The last time the 39-year-old stepped onto a court had been in the pre-Covid sporting epoch – at the 2020 Australian Open – since when he has endured two knee operations. And in his first match, the 20-time Grand Slam champion quickly rediscovered “his old mastery” to beat British No. 1 Dan Evans 7-6 (10-8), 3-6, 7-5, said Stuart Fraser in The Times. His next, against the Georgian Nikoloz Basilashvili, was less successful, however: Federer had held a match point, but was a “tad sluggish in his movement”, and lost 3-6, 6-1, 7-5. Normally such a loss would have left him “deeply disgruntled” – but…

The World for Sale by Javier Blas and Jack Farchy Random House Business 416pp £20 The Week Bookshop £15.99 Many people think that the raw materials which make our lives so comfortable – from the plastic caps on our toothpaste tubes to the petrol in our cars – are “too boring to dwell on”, said John Arlidge in The Sunday Times. “Nothing could be further from the truth.” In this remarkable book, two journalists take us inside the world of commodity trading – the industry that controls “how oil, plastics and food get from where they are produced to us” – and reveal it to be the “wildest, dirtiest and riskiest business on the planet”. The dominant companies – Cargill, Vitol, Glencore – may not be household names, but they…

Women artists in the inner sanctum The Gallery of Honour has long been the standout attraction at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, says Sarah Cascone on Artnet. Ever since the building was completed in 1885, the room has served as a showcase for the institution’s “most prized Dutch masterpieces”, including Vermeer’s The Milkmaid and Rembrandt’s The Night Watch. Now, for the first time in the museum’s history, these will be joined by the work of female artists. Last week, a trio of canvases by the 17th century Dutch painters Judith Leyster, Rachel Ruysch and Gesina ter Borch joined the works of their “better-known male counterparts” in the gallery. All three artists were “well-known” in their time, but their names faded into obscurity following their deaths – a familiar pattern for Dutch women painters,…

Kirsty visits Brookfield looking for settings for The Mystery Plays – she has plans for Lakey Hill and the yard, but David isn’t so sure. Brian shares Ruairi’s plan to graze Brookfield’s sheep at Home Farm, and urges David to think about it. As she chats to Jim and Jazzer at the shop, Alice’s contractions start, six weeks early. Frantic Chris is in Borchester with Emma and can’t get to her. Unable to reach the hospital in time, Jazzer helps deliver a baby girl in Jim’s car, with help from a 999 operator. The next day, Brian thanks Jim and Jazzer and announces that the baby’s middle name will start with a J in their honour. At the hospital, a doctor pronounces the baby healthy but Alice frets that she’s…

What the experts recommend The return of muddy spuds Tesco has announced that it will be selling muddy potatoes in some of its stores – for the first time since the 1970s. The supermarket even intends to adjust how the potatoes are weighed, so that soil is not included in the price. When production methods first made it possible for mud to be rinsed off potatoes before they reached the shelves, consumers welcomed the development as a “godsend”, says Stephen Harris in The Daily Telegraph. In those days, the “general direction” of travel was away from the farm-fresh look (remember those Smash ads from the 1970s featuring aliens laughing heartily at “primitive” human methods of food preparation?). But latterly, attitudes have started to change and people feel a bit of…

The Daily Telegraph It was named European Car of the Year when it launched in 1999, and the Toyota Yaris has now won the prize again in 2021. The newest hybrid model of the hatchback beat the Fiat 500, Volkswagen ID.3 and Land Rover Defender to the top spot. Worldwide, it accounts for 20% of all new Toyotas sold – but in the UK it has struggled to rival the class-leading Ford Fiesta. Could this model change that? What Car? The only engine you can get (not counting the GR Yaris sporty hot hatch) is a 1.5-litre 3cyl petrol with a couple of electric motors to boost performance. It produces 114bhp and has a “respectable” 0-62mph time of 9.7secs. But the firm ride leaves you “jostling” in the seat a…

Charley Hill 1947-2021 In February 1994, thieves propped a ladder against the National Gallery of Oslo, smashed a window to get in – and made away with one of the most famous paintings in the world: Munch’s 1893 version of The Scream. “Thanks for the poor security,” they said, on a postcard left at the scene. When the Norwegian police heard that the thieves had links to London, they got in touch with Scotland Yard, and Charley Hill – a flamboyant, erudite detective known for his contacts in the both the art world and the underworld – was put on the case. Aided by his team in the “art squad”, Hill tracked down a dealer connected to the thieves. Then, posing as a representative of the Getty Museum in LA…

The chocolatier Thorntons has become “the latest victim of the pandemic’s pummelling of the high street”, said the London Evening Standard. The chocolatier – founded in 1911 and bought by Ferrero Rocher in 2015 – is to close all 61 of its remaining UK shops. It will maintain production in Derbyshire and will continue selling online and via supermarkets and other retailers. Lockdown “delivered the final blow”, said Nils Pratley in The Guardian, but Thorntons has long been a declining force. Reinventing the stores as cafés, which was the strategy to save the retail estate, always looked a long shot. “Even before Covid, the country was not short of cafés.”…

Policymakers are keeping a weather eye on inflation – a hard job over the past year, says Delphine Strauss in the FT. Lockdowns “have prevented people from spending on many of their usual activities, and store closures have made it hard for statisticians to collect a full range of prices”. Unsurprisingly, there have been big changes made to the virtual shopping basket of goods and services that the Office for National Statistics uses to measure inflation. But the ONS insists the updated basket, revealed this week, includes “items that would remain popular when Covid-19 had passed”. So lockdown staples like hand sanitiser, loungewear and home exercise kit all make the cut, but face masks do not. “Staff canteen sandwiches” were removed for “technical reasons”, the ONS said, “and did not…

Patrick and John Collison Elon Musk has changed his official title to “Technoking” of Tesla and renamed his CFO “Master of Coin”, said Chris Nuttall in the FT. But there are already two stronger candidates for the latter title – the Irish-born brothers behind the online payments processor Stripe, which has now become “the most valuable private company” Silicon Valley has ever produced. Based on its latest financing round, Stripe is worth $95bn, having almost tripled in value in less than a year. That beats the values achieved by both Facebook and Uber before they went public. Musk won’t be too unhappy – he was “an early investor”. The brothers, who grew up in the village of Dromineer in County Tipperary, were both childhood tech and coding whizzes, said Amy…