Table of contents for 1426 in The Week

What happened Matt Hancock, the former health secretary, found himself in the spotlight last week, when The Daily Telegraph began publishing a series of exposés based on more than 100,000 WhatsApp messages sent between him and his officials and colleagues at the height of the Covid pandemic. The private correspondence had been handed to the newspaper by the journalist Isabel Oakeshott, who helped Hancock write his recent account of the crisis, Pandemic Diaries. The text messages reveal the sometimes chaotic way in which Covid policy was devised, and expose a wealth of in-group banter and gossip. Lockdown critics seized on messages suggesting that the Government’s Covid policy had been influenced more by political considerations than by science. Some texts, for instance, show then-prime minister Boris Johnson wondering, in June 2020,…

It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of “a scrupulously impartial civil service”, said the Daily Mail. When the Cabinet Office mandarin Sue Gray issued a report into the gatherings held in Downing Street under Covid restrictions, her “supposed unimpeachable neutrality” meant that its damning conclusions were widely accepted – and played a major role in Boris Johnson’s downfall. But now we learn that Gray is not just a Labour supporter, but will soon be “a key player in Sir Keir Starmer’s inner circle”. Last Thursday she resigned from the civil service to take up a position as Starmer’s chief of staff. Until last week, she was entrusted with highly sensitive information by this Government; in her new job, she will try “to bring it down at the next election”.…

Toblerone, which is having to remove its Matterhorn logo, after the chocolate brand’s US-based owners decided to shift part of its production from Switzerland to Slovakia. Under the Swissness Act, the country’s national symbols can only be used on Swiss-made products. The image of the Matterhorn’s pyramidal peak will be replaced by one of a more generic Alpine summit. Gary Lineker, who was “spoken to” by his BBC bosses for criticising the Government’s asylum policy on Twitter. The football pundit described it as an “immeasurably cruel” plan that had been directed at “the most vulnerable people, in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 1930s”. British rivers, after the bushcraft expert Ray Mears said some of them are so dirty that he won’t paddle a…

One in seven people (15%) in the UK have skipped meals as the cost-of-living crisis bites, up from one in eight (12%) in November. 72% say they are turning their heating on less often; 39% are using less hot water, and 19% have had fewer cooked meals. Which? Consumer Insight 31% of SNP members back Humza Yousaf to take over as leader of the party. 25% support Kate Forbes, 11% back Ash Regan and 32% remain undecided. Savanta/The Daily Telegraph Most British voters (57%) think Brexit is to blame for shortages of fruit and vegetables in supermarkets. 36% say it is not to blame. 57% say they have been affected by shortages; 40% say they haven’t. Savanta/The Independent…

The knitter of Inisherin For some viewers of The Banshees of Inisherin, the most striking thing about the film wasn’t the acting or the scenery, says Jane Fryer in the Daily Mail – it was the cast’s jumpers. Esquire dubbed it “the next great knitwear film”; and on social media everyone wants to know how to get in touch with the creator. But Delia Barry, an 83-year-old widow and retired factory worker from County Wicklow, isn’t looking for more work. “I’m too busy,” she explains. “I’ve got community bingo on Wednesdays and ‘active retirement’ bingo on Thursdays, where I’m one of the callers.” This is not her first brush with stardom. In 1998, a chance encounter led her to being asked to knit a cardigan for Meryl Streep in Dancing…

A Chinese groom had an unwelcome surprise on his wedding day when a protest was staged outside the event by a group of vengeful ex-girlfriends. At least nine women turned up carrying a banner bearing the words, “We are Chen Song’s ex-girlfriends, and today we will destroy you.” Chen said the protest had embarrassed him “quite a lot” and upset his bride, but admitted his exes had legitimate grievances. “I was immature when I was younger, and I hurt many girls,” he said. Scantily clad cabaret dancers performed for an unusual parent and baby group at a recent event in Waterloo in London. The “Caba Baba Rave” show, advertised as a “little slice of afternoon delight”, featured drag performers and dancers in thongs and bondage gear doing acrobatic manoeuvres –…

FRANCE Bug paranoia hits the French far-right Slate (Paris) As pandemic anxieties fade, far-right conspiracy theorists have found a new “obsession”, says Vincent Bresson. Since 2021, Brussels has allowed food manufacturers to use insect ingredients. In January it expanded the list to include crickets and beetle larvae. Now fears are rife on social media that ruling elites are forcing people to eat insects – changing their traditions, perhaps even controlling their minds. Silvano Trotta, a leading French anti-vaxxer, recently vented his indignation at a baker supposedly making baguettes with bug flour. Another posted a video entitled: “How they are going to force us to eat insects.” In Germany, a doctor claims that “Satanists” are feeding us genetically modified insects to alter the human genome. Bug paranoia is not new. Both…

There’s no mystery about what drove Salman Abedi to detonate a shrapnel-filled bomb at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester in 2017, killing 22 people, said Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian. As the final report into the attack made clear last week, the 22-year-old had been steeped in poisonous Islamist ideology from birth. His mother, father and younger brother (now serving life for helping plan the attack) all held extremist beliefs. The question is why the security services failed to stop him. Sir John Saunders’s three-year inquiry concluded that MI5 had missed several opportunities to thwart Abedi’s plan. The head of the secret service, Ken McCallum, acknowledged the failures, saying he was “profoundly sorry”. Abedi had been on the security services’ radar from the age of 15, said Lizzie Dearden…

“This has to be the last one.” So said Lord Bew, the chair of the committee on standards in public life, of David Cameron’s resignation honours list in 2016. The list, which included several Tory donors and Samantha Cameron’s stylist, caused such an outcry, it seemed that this “seedy political tradition” would have to end, said The Times. Alas, Lord Bew was wrong. Theresa May produced a list of her own, and now Boris Johnson “is taking his turn”. His list is reported to run to 100 names, making it nearly twice as long as May and Cameron’s. And it is believed to include a knighthood for his own father, Stanley Johnson, a former MEP who has faced accusations (which he denies) of groping, and who is also alleged to…

It may be a brand new season, but already the title race looks as good as over, said Giles Richards in The Guardian. In Sunday’s curtain-raiser at the Bahrain International Circuit, Max Verstappen reasserted his dominance. Displaying “faultless precision from pole to flag”, he “put what looks a fearsomely competitive car through its paces” and won by 12 seconds, ahead of Red Bull teammate Sergio Pérez. No other car – or driver – seems capable of preventing him winning a third consecutive title. The prospect of another “Verstappen cakewalk” is not good news for F1, said Tom Cary in The Daily Telegraph. In the early 2000s, Michael Schumacher’s domination of F1 “almost destroyed the sport”. With the recent success of the Netflix series Drive to Survive, motor racing has a…

The positives of vaping To The Times Martin McKee is right that the recent increase in vaping by young people is a cause for concern, but I disagree that this represents a failure of public health policy. Between 2011, when vaping entered the mainstream, and 2021 (the most recent available data), UK smoking prevalence has fallen from 20.2% to 13.3% – a fall roughly 50% larger than in either of the preceding two decades, and equivalent to about three million smokers. While many of these former smokers are still vaping, the fact that vaping is far less harmful than smoking makes this a massive public health gain. We need to ensure that existing laws protecting children from e-cigarette promotion and sale are observed and enforced, but ought not to lose…

by Sebastian Barry Faber 272pp £18.99 The Week bookshop £14.99 “Some writers can tell a good story,” said Ian Sansom in The Daily Telegraph. “Some can turn a nice phrase. Some can provoke and some can soothe.” But Sebastian Barry “can seemingly do it all”. Tom Kettle, the protagonist of his latest novel, is a “washed-up” cop who lives on the east coast of Ireland, in a “run-down annexe of an old Victorian castle”. There, he dwells extensively on “memories of his beloved wife June”, until one day he receives a visit from two policemen, who invite him back onto the force for the “cold-case investigation of the murder of a priest many years before”. It sounds a somewhat pulpy set-up – “the grizzled cop back on the beat”. But…

The painter Alice Neel was neglected in her lifetime, but is today “celebrated for her unflinching yet compassionate gaze”, said Chloë Ashby in The Times. Born into a conservative family in Pennsylvania, Neel (1900-1984) rejected her roots, married a Cuban émigré and became a committed communist, living a bohemian existence in New York’s Spanish Harlem. She specialised in “candid and unconventional” portraits of “lovers and neighbours, heavily pregnant women, queer couples, artists and writers, black intellectuals” – looking beyond the conventions of portraiture to focus on figures marginalised on account of their sexuality, race or class. “Life itself, unvarnished and fresh – hot off the griddle, she called it.” Neel was painting while abstraction was in its heyday, and she was ignored for much of her career. In recent decades,…

This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff, 1989 (Bloomsbury £12.99). A brilliant childhood memoir in which the author and his mother move west across the US, “to get away from a man my mother was afraid of and to get rich”. They don’t get rich or escape from unsuitable men, but it’s a compelling story of grit, deception and self-realisation. North by Seamus Heaney, 1975 (Faber £10.99). Still my favourite of the poet’s collections. Its first half unravels a history of violence and colonialism; its second reports from the front line of the Troubles before recording a retreat from the “massacre” to the dripping alders of Wicklow. Vertigo & Ghost by Fiona Benson, 2019 (Cape £10). Benson is one of the finest English poets writing today, and what I love in…

Programmes Wild Isles Filmed over three years, David Attenborough’s new five-part series celebrates the variety of wildlife that exists in the British Isles. Sun 12 Mar, BBC1 19:00 (60mins). Walter Presents: Inspector Ricciardi Stylish, six-part Italian mystery set in 1930s Naples. Ricciardi is no ordinary detective: he can see the ghosts of people who have died violently. Mon 13 Mar, C4 00:15 (120mins); and see all episodes on All 4. The Holy Land and Us – Our Untold Stories In this two-part series, people of Jewish and Palestinian heritage explore how their histories were impacted by the founding of the state of Israel in 1948. Tue 14 Mar, BBC2 21:00 (75mins). Betty Boothroyd: Call Me Madam Showing again to mark her death, this profile of the former Commons speaker uses…

The Richard Gilder Centre, New York, US is a £350m extension to the American Museum of Natural History. Based around a soaring atrium, it has a three-storey vertical display, an insectarium and an immersive experience. Opens this month; amnh.org. Aboriginal art is the focus of the £193m Sydney Modern Project – an extension to the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Australia housed in pavilions that cascade down the harbour. An art garden links the new building to the neoclassical original. Open now; artgallery.nsw.gov.au. The $100m International African American Museum, Charleston, US, dedicated to African-American history, is built on the site of the wharf where 40% of all American enslaved people disembarked. Opens in June; iaamuseum.org. Istanbul Modern, Turkey’s first museum of modern and contemporary art, will have a sculpture…

Fabulous bathing in Iceland With countless natural springs and limitless geothermal energy, Iceland is a land of hot water, and bathing in it is “part of the culture”. Even the smallest villages have public hot tubs – but still more appealing are the “architect-designed” pools that have appeared across the country in recent years, says Toby Skinner in Condé Nast Traveller. Among the best is Geosea, in Húsavík: from its cliff-side infinity pools you might spot humpback whales in Skjálfandi Bay. Vök Baths has turf-roofed buildings, and six-sided pools that float in Lake Urridavatn, into the icy waters of which you can plunge between soakings. Forest Lagoon is like a “discreet glassy modernist home” set amid woods near the city of Akureyri. And most “splashy” is the “futuristic” Sky Lagoon,…

John Motson 1945-2023 John Motson, who has died aged 77, was for almost half-a-century the BBC’s “voice of football”, said The Daily Telegraph. A commentator for Match of the Day from 1971 until his retirement in 2018, he covered more than 2,000 matches, including ten World Cups and 29 FA Cup finals. His love of the game was tangible; but he was also known for his detailed knowledge of it. During each match, he would reel off facts and figures – which he’d researched beforehand. His meticulousness, he said, was born of the fear he had felt at the start of his career that he didn’t know enough. “I remember my first game, Liverpool against Chelsea,” he recalled. “They kicked off and my heart sank because I thought, ‘What do…

The main lesson I have learnt after many years of writing about personal finance is that money is “emotional”, says Claer Barrett in the FT. Having it doesn’t necessarily make you “good” with it. Indeed, the reverse is often true. Barrett has tackled the issue in a new book: What They Don’t Teach You About Money. Here are some highlights: Personality types Broadly speaking, people tend to divide into “Goblins” (risk-averse cash hoarders, for whom inflation has been a wake-up call); money-obsessed “Spreadsheet Slaves” (do you control your money, or does it control you?); and “Ostriches” (those who neglect money management due to fear, anxiety or lack of time). Childhood associations Academic studies have found that this emotional relationship with money is largely set by the age of seven. “Not…

THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1353 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 20 March. Send it to The Week Crossword 1353, 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 Looking back for cat, sheep and rodent (6) 5 University constructed by ruddy good chap? (8) 9 Risky to embrace late Queen in court (8) 10 Hour to go, horrible showers and warm again (6) 11 Rhubarb and jam in trifles (12) 13 Without…

What happened Home Secretary Suella Braverman unveiled new legislation on Tuesday that would enable the detention and removal of asylum seekers who arrive in Britain on small boats. The Illegal Migration Bill would give ministers the power to detain irregular migrants for at least 28 days, and place a legal duty on the Home Secretary to deport them to “safe” countries – overriding their right to claim asylum. It would also introduce a cap (to be set by Parliament) on the number of refugees the UK accepts via “safe and legal routes”. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak claimed that the measures would put the people smugglers out of business “once and for all”. However, the legislation – which Braverman acknowledged could fall foul of human rights laws – is expected to…

A secondary school in Worcester has come under fire for replacing the mirrors in the girls’ toilets with motivational posters. “Dear girls,” reads one. “Make-up is a harmful drug. Once you start using it, you’ll feel ugly without it.” Another says: “If all girls started wearing no make-up and comfortable clothes, guys would have no choice but to fall for girls because of natural beauty.” Parents were furious, and the head has admitted the campaign was misguided. So many university students are now opting to live at home, rather than on campus, that it is becoming the “new normal”, the head of Ucas has said. In 2021-22, 850,000 students lived at home, and 946,000 lived away. By contrast, in 2014-15, 586,000 lived at home, and 850,000 elsewhere.…

Jeffrey Donaldson, the leader of the DUP, has set up a “star chamber” of experts to help the party decide whether or not to back Rishi Sunak’s Brexit deal. Donaldson said the panel, which has the former first ministers Arlene Foster and Peter Robinson among its eight members, would “undertake a wide consultation process within Northern Ireland” on the Windsor Framework. He said that it would report to him by the end of March, with the DUP coming to a decision some time after that. He denied suggestions he was trying to delay the decision – perhaps until after May’s local elections – and stressed that Northern Ireland needed the “right outcome”, not a “rushed one”.…

Venice, Italy Winter drought: Italy has experienced an unusually dry winter, following this summer’s severe drought in Europe, raising fears of a hard year ahead for its agricultural sector. The Po river, which flows through the northern region regarded as Italy’s bread basket, is reported to have 61% less water than normal at this time of year; and in Venice, several weeks of dry weather is said to be partially to blame for some of the city’s canals drying up. In Spain, which has had a similarly dry winter, the authorities in Catalonia have introduced laws limiting the use of water, and restrictions have also been imposed in parts of France. Paris Mass protests: Union leaders largely succeeded in their ambition to “bring France to a standstill” this week, when…

1 Do I Move You?, written and performed by Nina Simone2* The Old Fashioned Way, written and performed by Charles Aznavour3 Fool If You Think It’s Over by Chris Rea, performed by Elkie Brooks4 Get a Life by Hayden “Aitch B” Browne and Beresford “Jazzie B” Romeo, performed by Soul II Soul5 Metal Mickey by Brett Anderson and Bernard Butler, performed by Suede6 Being Alive by Stephen Sondheim, performed by Adrian Lester and the cast of Company (1996 London Cast Recording)7 How to Disappear Completely, written and performed by Radiohead8 It’s Corn by Tariq, performed by Tariq, The Gregory Brothers and Recess Therapy Book: Cultural Amnesia by Clive James Luxury: a top hat and tails * Choice if allowed only one record…

“Direct air capture” (DAC) could be the ultimate solution to climate change. DAC facilities mostly use giant fans to suck air through a filter, where carbon dioxide is extracted and then sealed underground or in long-lasting products such as cement. In some cases it is also used to create carbon-neutral fuels. The sector is attracting heavy investment, with companies such as Canada’s Carbon Engineering and the Swiss Climeworks leading the way. The latter opened the world’s largest carbon removal plant in Iceland in 2021 – a facility known as Orca, which is capable of capturing 4,000 metric tonnes of carbon annually (equivalent to the emissions produced by 500 homes). But the atmosphere is just 0.04% carbon dioxide, making extracting it time-consuming and energy-intensive; obviously it has to be done using…

El Salvador can show us the way Micah Meadowcroft The American Conservative El Salvador isn’t messing around with its latest law and order campaign, says Micah Meadowcroft. The authorities arrested more than 60,000 alleged gang members last year in a country of some 6.3 million, and President Nayib Bukele has just unveiled a new “mega prison” that can house 40,000. Bukele’s methods are not what you’d call “liberal democratic”, but there’s no denying their efficacy: homicides in El Salvador dropped 56.8% last year and the country is “enjoying widely noted peace and safety”. It turns out that if you remove lots of murderers from the general population, you get fewer murders. There may be a lesson here for the US. Granted, America has an established system of civil rights that…

A nationwide trial in which obese people were sent to slimming classes and given free Fitbits has prevented thousands of cases of type 2 diabetes, a study has found. Since 2016, some 1.2 million people with pre-diabetes – when their blood sugar level is raised but they are not yet suffering from the condition – have taken part in an NHS diabetes prevention programme known as Healthier You. Now, researchers at Manchester University have examined data on more than 18,000 of those people, and found that three years on, they were 20% less likely to have been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes than people of a similar age and weight who had not been referred to the programme. On average, they had lost 2.3kg. Around five million people in the…

The idea that the Covid-19 virus originated in a leak from a laboratory in Wuhan “was always at the more plausible end of the ‘conspiracy theory’ scale”, said Gerard Baker in The Times. The Chinese city where the virus first appeared is home to two world-leading centres for virology research, one of which is the biggest repository of bat coronaviruses in Asia. Yet too often, those who questioned the official view – that by sheer coincidence, the Covid pandemic began not with an accident at one of these labs, but with an animal to human transmission at a “wet market” in the city – were treated like “swivel-eyed graduates of the ‘Bill Gates is controlling my brain’ school”. So it is gratifying that the consensus is shifting. Last week, it…

“Tact is the great ability to see other people as they think you see them.”Carl Zuckmayer, quoted in Forbes “The problem with history is that there are too many people in it.”Nick Hornby, quoted on The Browser “Irish is a language in which spelling and pronunciation give the impression of having been devised by separate committees meeting in separate rooms while implacably divided over some deep semantic issue.”Bill Bryson, quoted in The Guardian “We are what we remember.”George Steiner, quoted on The Knowledge “Look around you. Soak up the atmosphere of things. That’s the purpose of life.”Colette, quoted in The Guardian “Everything before the ‘but’ is bullshit.”Adage quoted in The Sunday Telegraph “You can’t wait until life isn’t hard anymore before you decide to be happy.”Musician Nightbirde, quoted on WKYC…

In her short career, Keely Hodgkinson has already proved to be Britain’s “most exciting” track star for a generation, said Rick Broadbent in The Times. So it wasn’t altogether surprising that at the European Indoor Championships in Istanbul last Sunday, she reduced the 800m final to little more than “four laps of honour”. The 21-year-old from Greater Manchester became only the second woman to defend an 800m European indoor title, beating Slovenia’s Anita Horvat by nearly two seconds. What gave an extra emotional charge to the victory was the death of Hodgkinson’s former coach a few days earlier. Hodgkinson celebrated with a Union flag bearing the message “RIP Joe Galvin”. “He had a lot of belief in ten-year-old me, so that medal is for him and everyone at home,” she…

To The Daily Telegraph I am saddened by our culture of blame. Yes, choices were made during the pandemic that transpired not to have been the right ones. But little was known about Covid-19 at the time, people were dying in large numbers and crisis conditions prevailed. I for one would not have relished being one of the people who had to make decisions. Anyone proved guilty of acting negligently or with malign intent should of course be punished, but otherwise we would do better to learn the lessons, try to forgive and forget, and move on. Elizabeth Evans, Ashbourne, Derbyshire To The Daily Telegraph We need to dispel the idea that the pandemic was “unprecedented”. The world has faced pandemics since the dawn of time. What was unprecedented was…

by Alice Farnham Faber 234pp £16.99 The Week bookshop £13.99 Alice Farnham is a British conductor of “great experience and acclaim”, said Caroline Crampton in The Guardian. In this enjoyable book, she demystifies her “secretive profession”. Although she claims the book isn’t “a handbook for conductors”, it often feels like one: one chapter is devoted to “Hands and Baton”, another to “Preparation to Performance”. But she also weaves in details from her own life – she movingly describes her father’s death in a sailing accident – and offers snippets from “behind the scenes of the eccentric world of classical music”. She tells us that J.P. Guivier and Co off Regent Street is the “best place in Britain to buy a conductor’s baton”, and that a male colleague once told her…

Kathryn Maple at Lyndsey Ingram In 2022, the London-based artist Kathryn Maple set herself the Stakhanovite challenge of completing a new drawing every single day of the year. The result – A Year of Drawings – is an impressive body of work, consisting of 365 oil pastels on paper with a handful of paintings thrown in for good measure. The works are representational, expressionistic depictions of Maple’s year, a kind of travelogue documenting the places around her area and the gradual changes they undergo as the seasons pass. January sees her gazing from an upstairs window at bare trees, the street illuminated by the eerie glow of old streetlamps; by May, she is exploiting the spring weather to sketch the skyscrapers over the river at Canary Wharf; in December, she…

SOURCE: THE DAILY TELEGRAPH…

Five-star retreat in Corfu The Ionian island’s La Grotta Verde Grand Resort perches on a cliff overlooking the Mediterranean. From £675pp, all incl. (incl. Bristol flights). 0161-509 3700, onthebeach.co.uk. Depart 8 May. Overnight train to Inverness Weave your way across the Scottish Highlands from London to Inverness aboard the Caledonian Sleeper train. Cabin from £250. 0330-060 0500, sleeper.scot. Depart London Euston 18 April. Ibizan escape Spend 7 nights at Hotel Tres Torres on the Balearic island, a short walk from Santa Eulalia, famed for its gastronomy. From £559pp, b&b (incl. Manchester flights). 020-3830 3111, tui.com. Depart 3 May. City break in Dubrovnik Stay at Hotel Lero in the Croatian city’s Old Town for 4 nights, and explore the sets of Game of Thrones. £855pp, b&b (incl. Edinburgh flights). 0800-408 0778,…

Revolut: smoking gun? High-profile fintech start-ups, such as Checkout.com and Klarna, have dramatically cut their valuations recently amid the downturn in tech shares. Not so Revolut, said James Titcomb in The Sunday Telegraph. The unlisted banking start-up, which made headlines in 2021 when its whopping $33bn valuation eclipsed that of NatWest, is still Britain’s highest-priced start-up. But at least one US investor has had second thoughts. Triplepoint Venture has cut its valuation of Revolut by 15% to $28bn – a sobering development for other big investors such as SoftBank and Tiger Global. The move follows a troublesome “audit snag”, said Karen Kwok on Reuters Breakingviews. Last week, accountants BDO issued a “qualified opinion” on Revolut’s long-delayed 2021 accounts – “one step short of a clean audit”. The good news for…

“Start-up fever” is still going strong Editorial Financial Times Economic turmoil normally deters entrepreneurs from starting companies. Yet the “start-up fever” witnessed at the height of the pandemic has not abated, says the FT. “Despite the global slowdown, rising interest rates and shaky supply chains, going it alone still seems to be in vogue.” In many advanced economies, new business formation continues to outpace pre-pandemic levels and is now hitting new highs. In Britain, more than 750,000 new companies were incorporated in the year to March 2022. This resilient growth contrasts with the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis, when business creation slumped. It seems that economic shifts – facilitated by digitalisation – have been a key factor. The booming gig economy of the 2010s, and the shift towards…

Max Woosey, aka “tent boy”, who is heading back inside, after sleeping under canvas for three years. Woosey, 13, started sleeping in his garden in Devon in March 2020, hoping to raise £100 for the hospice that cared for his neighbour. Since then, he has raised £700,000. He says he’ll still sleep in his tent, but not every night. Quarter-zippers, with reports that the jumpers – polo necks with a zip that runs from neck to chest – are the latest fashion must-have for men of a certain age and status. David Beckham, Rishi Sunak and Prince Harry have all been seen in quarter-zippers, and John Lewis reports that they are now outselling crew necks.…

Firefighters have called off their strike after voting to accept an improved pay offer. The offer is of a 7% pay rise backdated to last July, and a further 5% from this July. Walkouts by ambulance staff due to take place in England this week were also suspended, after the Unite union agreed to take part in talks with the Government over pay. Other strikes by ambulance staff were suspended last week, when the Unison and GMB unions agreed to participate in detailed talks about pay.…

“The Brownies are to drop references to God in their campfire songs in the name of inclusivity, and that’s a great shame. I still remember the frisson of guilt I felt as a Cub Scout in the late 1970s, making the traditional salute and chanting, ‘I promise that I will do my duty to God and to the Queen…’ and knowing that it was a lie, because I didn’t believe in God, but reckoning that it didn’t matter morally because, well, there was no God. These little things we make children do are not about inclusion or exclusion; they are about teaching them to navigate without too much fuss the harmless little daily hypocrisies that make the world go round.” Giles Coren in The Times…

We’re set to be a nation of rotting teeth George Monbiot The Guardian Free dental treatment: every child in Britain has a right to it. That’s what ministers tell us, says George Monbiot, but just try exercising that right. A survey last year found that a tenth of local authority areas are “dental deserts”, in which not a single practice is taking on children as new NHS patients. Overall, 80% of practices in the UK have stopped doing so – and 90% are no longer taking on new adult patients. There’s “no mystery” as to why this is happening. Dentists are ceasing to treat patients on the NHS because it loses them money. Under the perverse state funding formula, the remuneration they receive for delivering arbitrary “units of dental activity”…

The key to a healthy old age People with healthy hearts in middle age are likely to live significantly longer without conditions such as cancer and dementia than those whose heart health is poor, a study has indicated. Researchers from Tulane University in the US analysed more than 135,000 participants in the UK Biobank project, whose heart health had been scored according to various measures, including diet, body mass index, cholesterol levels, blood sugar and blood pressure. Their preliminary findings were that the women who’d had the highest scores aged 50 could expect to live another 33 disease-free years, on average – nine more than those with the lowest score. For men, the difference was about seven years. And even the majority of participants who only achieved intermediate scores for…

Among the revelations in Matt Hancock’s WhatsApp messages is evidence that even at the highest echelons of government, meetings are often regarded as a waste of time. In one exchange, Hancock asks Michael Gove: “What are we trying to achieve in this meeting?” “Letting people express concerns in a therapeutic environment before you and I decide the policy,” Gove replies. Chris Rock finally addressed The Slap at the 2022 Oscars last week – and he didn’t strike a conciliatory tone. In a stand-up routine livestreamed on Netflix, the comedian cast aspersions on the state of Will Smith’s marriage, accused the actor of “selective outrage”, and said he’d watched the slave drama Emancipation just to see him get “whupped”. The slap had hurt, Rock said, but he’d not fought back, “because…

The city of Bakhmut “has come to symbolise the grinding war of attrition in Ukraine”, said Claire Parker in The Washington Post. The industrial city in the eastern Donetsk region, once home to 70,000 people, has been pummelled by Russian forces since last August, and reduced “to a charred ghost town”. Moscow has sent “wave after wave of soldiers and Wagner Group mercenaries towards Ukrainian positions”. On many occasions Bakhmut had seemed to be on the edge of falling, but Ukrainian forces were able to hold on. In recent weeks, though, the Ukrainians have been steadily losing ground, and it seems that they may now be making their last stand. Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner Group, claimed last week that his forces had “practically surrounded” Bakhmut. “The pincers are…

Cricket England lost to Bangladesh by 50 runs in their third One Day International. Jos Buttler’s men won the series 2-1. Football Arsenal maintained their five-point lead over Man City at the top of the Premier League with a last-gasp win over Bournemouth. The Gunners recovered from 2-0 down, and scored their winner in the 97th minute. Tennis World No. 1 Novak Djokovic has withdrawn from the Indian Wells tournament in California after failing to secure a vaccine waiver that would have enabled him to enter the United States.…

Sheridan Smith and Shirley Valentine is “a match made in theatre heaven”, said Jessie Thompson in The Independent. Smith is a “national treasure”, while Willy Russell’s one-woman play – about a middle-aged Liverpudlian housewife yearning for a more fulfilling life – has been “beloved” since it was first staged in 1986. “It sounds like it should work, and it really, really does.” Smith’s comedic talents are brilliantly deployed here; but as an actress, she also has a “rare forte for insinuating some quiet sorrows beneath the social fizz”, said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph. The result is a performance that is “continuously enrapturing”. Smith is “dazzling” – but what struck me is what a nuanced and “eternally relevant” play this is, said Arifa Akbar in The Guardian. In the…

Over three decades, Ron Gittins created “an extraordinary palace of outsider art” in his ground-floor flat in Birkenhead, says Mark Brown in The Guardian. Gittins, a self-employed artist who suffered mental health problems and died in 2019, painted classical murals on his walls, and installed a fireplace shaped like a minotaur (pictured). The hallway looks like an Egyptian tomb; the front room appears to be inspired by Pompeii; and in the kitchen sits what seems to be a Roman altar. Gittins “rarely invited anyone in”, so the discovery of the flat’s interior after his death “was a surprise, to say the least”. Local campaigners had hoped to open Ron’s Place, as it’s known, to the public, but when the house was recently put up for auction, it was feared it…

Neil is assessed by Lily and Freddie for his suitability as a volunteer at Lower Loxley. Afterwards, Freddie worries that Neil isn’t young enough, and tries to recruit Brad. Brad’s not interested. Chelsea offers to fill the tour guide role instead, not realising it isn’t paid. Freddie’s reluctance to take her on makes her determined. Kate breaks down while rehearsing her tribute to Jennifer and realises she’s not up to it. Tony and Lilian agree to give the tribute instead. After a tough first day at his job at The Laurels, Ben gets into the swing of things. Neil and Chelsea’s trial on Lower Loxley history surprises Freddie. He thinks they would make a good double act. Chelsea quickly bows out. She wouldn’t work for free; she wanted to prove…

Lu rou fan is a national dish of Taiwan and the ultimate comfort food, says Erchen Chang. Ours is inspired by the Tainan version that can be served with a crispy egg and pork floss. You can’t get pork floss in the UK, so we substitute it with fish floss, which is available from most Asian supermarkets. Serves 5 For the poached pork: 1 x 250g pork belly (side) 10ml Michiu rice wine or cooking saké 2cm piece of fresh ginger, crushed ½ clove garlic, crushed For the braised pork: ¼ tbsp rapeseed (canola) oil ¼ shallot, diced 1 tbsp light soy sauce 1 dried red chilli 1 star anise 1½ tsp Shaoxing rice wine ¾ tsp mirin 1 clove garlic, crushed ¼ red apple, peeled, cored and diced 1cm piece of fresh ginger,…

A new book about the late “interiors guru” David Hicks includes some of his rules… • Dining tables must be covered – ideally with a cloth that goes to the ground. Flower arrangements must be low, there’s nothing more irritating than trying to peer through flowers on the table at the people opposite. • Candles are glamorous at night but should be natural white wax, which has such a pleasing colour and texture. Coloured (including black), oddly shaped and decorated candles are vulgar. • Photographs have NO place in a sitting room. As personal accessories they must be kept in the bedroom, where they should be massed on one table. • If you collect objects such as decorative eggs, beautifully shaped pebbles or snuff boxes, they too should be grouped…

Betty Boothroyd 1929-2023 Betty Boothroyd, who died last month aged 93, “overturned more than 700 years of parliamentary tradition in 1992 when she became the first woman to be elected Speaker of the House of Commons”, said The Guardian. Over the next eight years, she would gain “international fame for her brisk, good-humoured style and for the warmth and wit she exuded – along with a whiff of glamour”. She’d first made headlines for declining to wear the Speaker’s full-bottomed wig, said The Scotsman – a break with tradition that did nothing to dent her authority. One of the “outstanding” occupants of the Speaker’s green chair, and also one of the most popular, she was a formidable and imposing presence, who could quieten a bunch of rowdy MPs with a…

Khaled bin Sultan al-Saud Is the Saudi royal family feeling the pinch? In some quarters, said the FT. The latest to have lavish spending reined in by the kingdom’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS), is former deputy defence minister Prince Khaled, who has been obliged to put a trophy possession on the market after defaulting on the “lease payments” of his private jet. The property in question is The Holme – an 1818 stucco masterpiece overlooking London’s Regent’s Park. The 40-bedroom mansion will become Britain’s most valuable house if it attains its £250m asking price. “No property has embodied London’s lucrative, decades-long love affair with Saudi money quite like The Holme.” Khaled, now 73, is thought to have borrowed heavily against it. Tony Danker During his…