Table of contents for 1506 in The Week

What happened A damning report released last week accused the Tories of having left England’s NHS in a “critical condition”. The review, by the surgeon and former Labour peer Ara Darzi, blamed the dire state of the service on three major factors: the Covid pandemic; the “disastrous” 2012 shakeup by the Conservative health secretary Andrew Lansley; and a “decade of austerity” from 2010, which had starved the service of £37bn in investment, forcing it to raid infrastructure budgets to cover day-to-day spending. This had left the NHS with crumbling buildings, low productivity, long waiting lists and some of the worst cancer survival rates in the Western world. In response to the review, Keir Starmer pledged to carry out the “biggest reimagining of our NHS since its birth”, and insisted that…

London cabbies, after mayor Sadiq Khan unveiled new plans to pedestrianise Oxford Street. Khan said that the scheme would inject new life into the shopping street, which is overcrowded, congested and a hotspot for pickpockets. But some cab drivers warned that it would have a disastrous impact on their business, and push more traffic onto smaller surrounding streets. Flamingo Land, with the rejection of its plan to build a £40m mega-resort on the banks of Loch Lomond. Locals had been fighting the development, which would have included two hotels, more than 100 lodges, a water park and a monorail, since 2018. Some 150,000 people had lodged an objection against it. The policing minister, Dame Diana Johnson, who had her purse stolen while she was attending a conference of senior police…

Paris Abuse allegations: More women have come forward to accuse Abbé Pierre – the late founder of the Emmaus Foundation – of sexual assault. The Catholic priest (pictured), who died in 2007 at the age of 94, was venerated in his lifetime for his work with the homeless in France, but in July, the Emmaus charity revealed that seven women had accused him of sexual violence; since then, 17 more have come forward. One was nine years old at the time of the alleged assault. This week, a senior French bishop said that “at least some bishops” had been aware of Abbé Pierre’s “seriously bad behaviour” as early as 1955. Naples, Italy Hospital attacks: Doctors’ unions in Italy have called for the army to be deployed in hospitals in response…

“Baroness Royall, a Labour peer, is running to become the University of Oxford’s next chancellor. In her statement, she speaks of Oxford’s ‘dynamic future as a nexus for transformational research’ and the ‘precious futures our university creates’. None of it means much and yet the grey, managerial vision it expresses is very clear. Of all areas of national life, academia ought to be the place where language is treated with most respect. If Oxford – the home of such great deployers of English as C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, Samuel Johnson, Barbara Pym – has gone from being a seat of learning to a nexus of transformation, then we are in trouble.” Madeline Grant in The Daily Telegraph…

Kudos to the judge who has shut down X John Naughton The Observer What a nerve! How dare a judge in Brazil shut down X/Twitter for refusing to meet a deadline to pay fines and to appoint a new legal representative as requested? Does this man have no respect for Silicon Valley’s visionary mission? Clearly not, says John Naughton. To the fury of Elon Musk, Justice Alexandre de Moraes has just pulled the plug – leaving Brazil’s more than 20 million X users high and dry. We’ve seen autocratic countries such as Russia and China do this sort of thing, but never before has a democratic state shut down a Big Tech platform. Well, good for Brazil. Given the way these titans defy any government’s attempt to monitor their activities,…

Vaping damages the lungs Vaping appears to damage young people’s lung function just as much as smoking does, a study has found. The research, at Manchester Metropolitan University, involved 60 people in their 20s. Twenty of them had vaped for at least two years; 20 had smoked for at least two years; and the rest neither smoked nor vaped. A test in which they were asked to pedal strenuously on a static bike revealed that vapers had an average “peak exercise” lung capacity of 186 watts; the smokers’ was about the same at 182 watts. By contrast, in the group that neither smoked nor vaped, it was 226 watts. Blood tests and ultrasound scans showed that the vapers’ and smokers’ blood vessels were not working as well as those of…

Danny Chambers, the new Lib Dem MP for Winchester, used to be a vet. While canvassing, he says that one of the most common questions he was asked was whether vets can treat humans. He supposes that people thought they might have more chance of being treated at his MP surgery than at their local GP. “Yes we can,” he’d reply. “But once we’ve taken [their] temperature, people tend not to ask a second time.” Prue Leith ditched her normal colourful ensembles last week in order to strut the catwalk during London Fashion Week. The Bake Off judge was “sexed up” by the eco designers Vin + Omi, who dressed her in a tight latex dress and matching evening gloves, an outfit they described as a “manifesto”. Writing in the…

“In another age, a brisk official bulletin would have sufficed,” said James Marriott in The Times. “Or an impassive silence.” But people expect more these days, and the Princess of Wales duly obliged last week by releasing a glossy video to mark the end of her chemotherapy treatment and her tentative return to royal duties. Filmed in the woods and dunes of north Norfolk, it’s a video of “remarkable editorial slickness and personal candour”. It shows sepia-toned glimpses of family life – the young royals playing on a pile of logs; Kate leaning against a tree, her upturned face lit by sunshine; her and William cuddling. Meanwhile, the princess, in a voice-over, describes her healing process and hopes for the future. With its “filtered, Instagram-worthy look”, said Sophie Gallagher in…

This week, in an anonymous conference room at an undisclosed location, the “most significant legal case football has ever known” got under way, said Ian Herbert in the Daily Mail. At stake is the reputation of the “outstanding” English club side of the current era. Since being purchased by Abu Dhabi royal Sheikh Mansour in 2008, Manchester City have won 23 trophies, including eight Premier League titles. But the club now stands accused of breaching 115 of the Premier League’s financial rules over a 15-year period. The case, which will be considered by an independent commission, is expected to last ten weeks (though appeals could delay the final outcome). With the whole process shrouded in secrecy, the specifics of the charges haven’t been made public – though it is clear…

Tennis Great Britain failed to make the finals of the Davis Cup, after losing to Argentina and Canada. Football Arsenal beat Tottenham 1-0 in the Premier League. Mikel Arteta’s side are second in the table after four games. The table is led by Manchester City, who beat Brentford 2-1. Golf Despite leading by two shots with four holes to play, Rory McIlroy missed out on a first victory at the Irish Open. Rasmus Hǿjgaard of Denmark won. It was McIlroy’s second heartbreaking defeat of the year, following his near miss at the US Open.…

by Sue Prideaux Faber 416pp £30 The Week Bookshop £23.99 (incl. p&p) The biographer Sue Prideaux has a track record of rehabilitating “19th century enfants terribles”, said Nikhil Krishnan in The Daily Telegraph. I Am Dynamite!, her “highly entertaining” 2018 life of Nietzsche, took pains to prove that the philosopher was no antisemite. She has also penned sympathetic biographies of Strindberg and Munch. In her latest work, she offers an “equally stout defence” of the French painter Paul Gauguin – today widely regarded as an “adulterous imperialist” who “spread syphilis” to teenage girls on Tahiti. While admitting that Gauguin was not “exactly a saint”, Prideaux stresses that he was no “ideologue” of empire: he consistently decried French policies in Tahiti, and defended the indigenous culture of Polynesia. Nor is there…

Running time: 2hrs 30mins How do you follow a megahit like Six? That’s been the question facing Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss since their musical – a retelling of the fate of Henry VIII’s wives, presented in the style of a pop concert – “took the world by storm” six years ago. Their answer, said Sarah Crompton on What’s on Stage, is that you write about what you know. Why Am I So Single? is about two young writers – best friends and plainly based on Marlow and Moss – who are trying to write a musical while agonising about their unhappy love lives. A warm, generous “hymn” to the joys of friendship, the show overflows with ideas. Not all of them land, and it lacks the broad appeal of…

How baked beans came of age “For many discerning adults, baked beans have an image problem,” says Ajesh Patalay in the FT. Other than as part of a full English breakfast, they tend to be dismissed as “kiddie food” or “student fodder”. And even those who still eat them will often avoid admitting it. Perhaps this explains the growing popularity of more sophisticated takes on the Heinz classic. Last year, a recipe for “Broken Beans” – a variation on smoky Boston beans, made with beans from a can – became an “international hit” after featuring on Jamie Oliver’s Cookbook Club. It proved so popular that it gave rise to its own acronyms: “BBB” (Before Broken Beans) and “ABB” (After Broken Beans). Now, the Bold Bean Co – known for its…

SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN…

James Earl Jones 1931-2024 A towering figure in 20th century American theatre and the pre-eminent African-American actor of his generation, James Earl Jones was known for his interpretations of both modern and classical roles, said The Daily Telegraph. He played Othello seven times; he turned in a “titanic” performance as the raging Big Daddy in Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; he played the crusty retired academic Norman in a 2005 staging of On Golden Pond; and won a Tony for his performance as the frustrated garbage collector in August Wilson’s Fences. His looks – powerful, commanding, magisterial – were a large part of the equation, said Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian. “But it was how he sounded that made him a legend.” A great rumbling basso profundo,…

Dame Alison Rose The former NatWest chief, who quit the bank abruptly following a bruising row with Nigel Farage, has been hired as an “diversity, equality and inclusion”(or DEI) adviser by Mishcon de Reya, the City law firm, said Hannah Boland in The Daily Telegraph. It’s a “significant career shift” for Alison Rose, who rose from graduate trainee to become NatWest’s first female CEO in 2019. But it taps into her long-held interest in promoting DEI objectives. In the new role, she’ll advise on strategy and “mentor” partners at Mishcon, which “helped her navigate last year’s debanking scandal”. She had once been one of Britain’s most powerful businesswomen, said Ben Martin in The Times, but Rose’s career was “upended by the Farage fiasco”. It erupted when the Reform UK leader…

THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1432 Two Connell Guides and three Week-branded items will be given to the sender of the first correct solution to the crossword and the clue of the week opened on Monday 30 September. Send it to The Week Crossword 1432, 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 Week-branded items including a notebook, coffee mug and tote bag, as well as two Connell Guides (connellguides.com). ACROSS 9 Who might represent Pope itinerantly? (15) 10 Tame changed on single sailors with eastern sauce (7) 12 Name changed on single plant (7) 13 US conductors have nothing to go on after this (4,5) 14 Coarse grass from southern border (5) 15 With me, cod is…

What happened “Only consequential presidents get shot at,” declared Donald Trump on Tuesday, just days after surviving what seems to have been a second attempt on his life. On Sunday, he was playing golf at his course in West Palm Beach, Florida, when, at around 1:30pm, he heard gunfire. Some 400 metres away, an FBI agent had seen a gun barrel poking through a foliage-covered fence. The agent opened fire on the suspect, who fled by car, leaving behind a semiautomatic rifle, a scope and a GoPro camera. He was arrested soon after and identified as Ryan Routh, a 58-year-old construction worker from North Carolina. Data from his phone revealed he had taken up his position before 2am. It is not clear how he knew that Trump would be there:…

A Labour-run council has decided to serve only plant-based food at its internal meetings. In future, councillors in Nottingham will not be offered cow’s milk with their tea, and the biscuits will be butter-free. The council said it was part of its drive to cut its carbon footprint, but Andrew Rule, an independent councillor, argued that the decision should have been put to a full vote. “I think it goes against freedom of choice, if I’m honest,” he said. Advent calendars containing gifts for adults are expected to do good business this year, reports The Daily Telegraph. For £800 you can get one with a rare whisky miniature behind each door; and numerous retailers are selling calendars packed with beauty products. Liberty’s costs £260.…

The former BBC presenter Huw Edwards was given a six-month suspended prison sentence this week, after he pleaded guilty to three counts of making indecent images of children. The court heard that Edwards, 63, had been sent 41 illegal images between December 2020 and August 2021, seven of which were of the most serious type, including one of a child aged between seven and nine. He must also attend a sex offender treatment programme. In mitigation, his lawyer told the court that Edwards had suffered mental ill health and low self-esteem, stemming in part from his attending Cardiff University, after his application to Oxford was rejected. Alex Williams, the paedophile who sent him the images, was given a 12-month suspended term in March.…

New York Rapper arrested: The rap mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs has been arrested in Manhattan on charges of sex trafficking, racketeering and other crimes. His arrest comes ten months after a former girlfriend, the singer Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, filed a lawsuit saying he had beaten and raped her for years. Since then, eight other lawsuits alleging sexual assault or misconduct have been filed against him. The 14-page indictment, unsealed this week at the end of a long federal investigation, includes graphic descriptions of the days-long orgies involving male prostitutes that Combs called “freak offs”, during which he forced women to take drugs and participate in group sex acts so physically exhausting that participants typically needed intravenous fluids to recover. Combs is also accused of assaulting women, including punching and kicking…

A Berliner who has been in a relationship with an aeroplane for ten years has broken up with it. Michele Köbke first spotted the Boeing 737-800 at Berlin Tegel Airport in 2014, and was immediately attracted to its wings, winglets and thrusters. She called it “Schatz” (roughly “darling”) and declared: “My cheeks hurt from smiling, I’m the happiest woman in the world – when I’m with him I have everything I need.” But it hasn’t been easy: she had to sleep with a model, not the real thing. And now she has ended it, though says that she and the plane remain friends. The National Trust has come under fire for hosting an art installation that has been compared to “a big pile of poo”. The sculptures at Tyntesfield House…

JAPAN The sexist policy of an old boys’ club Unseen Japan (Tokyo) A “marriage relocation” grant: any single woman who chooses to move from the city to the country with a view to getting married will get a handout of 600,000 yen ($4,235). That was the proposal introduced by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) last month, says Jay Allen. And what a neat way, you might think, to address two of Japan’s major demographic problems in one stroke: rural depopulation and a plummeting birth rate (for 15 years in a row the population has been declining). But it didn’t go down well. Although the proposal came from one of the LDP’s few female MPs, it still got slammed. Why target just one gender and implicitly blame women for Japan’s…

Bottles of fizz opened in celebration; lots of thumbs up to the camera; and the odd pledge of support to Labour. These were the jubilant scenes outside prisons in England and Wales last week, said Julia Hartley-Brewer in The Sun, as 1,700 criminals were set free, having served just 40% of their terms. Defenders of Keir Starmer’s unconscionable early release scheme claim it won’t make much difference: these offenders were only ever going to serve half their terms, so they’d have been freed soon anyway. But by that logic, why bother with 40%? Why not 10%? When the scheme was unveiled, we were assured there would at least be exclusions to stop violent criminals and domestic abusers being let out early; yet among last week’s cohort was a man serving…

The Azerbaijan Grand Prix was billed as the “latest weekend” in which Lando Norris “could take a giant stride” towards securing his first Formula 1 title, said Jonathan McEvoy in the Daily Mail. But the British driver was instead provided with a “graphic reminder of what might have been”. After flunking qualifying, Norris began the race in 15th – a position from which he had no realistic hope of winning. Nonetheless, he “drove very finely”, and overtook much of the field to finish a highly creditable fourth. His achievement was also a tribute to the speediness of the McLaren car, as evidenced by the fact that the race was won by Norris’s teammate, Oscar Piastri, said Giles Richards in The Guardian. In only his second F1 season, the Australian won…

In praise of regulation To the Financial Times Isn’t it a bore having to comply with all those pesky EU regulations that are so burdensome for business (“Europe’s red tape problem”)? The problem is, the costs of business as usual are not even remotely comparable. Take one small element of these, resulting from PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), the so-called “forever chemicals”. The annual health-related costs from PFAS are estimated to be €52bn-€84bn in EEA countries. The cost of remediating the water and soil in contaminated areas is likely to run into trillions. Compare this with the figure of €2.3bn in extra administrative costs to businesses cited in your report – a fraction of a percentage of EU gross domestic product. PFAS is just one aspect of the backdrop against…

by Will Self Grove Press 304pp £18.99 The Week Bookshop £14.99 Will Self’s mother, Elaine Rosenbloom, “hailed from Queen’s, New York”, said Lucy Scholes in The Daily Telegraph. Before her death in 1988, Self discovered her “copious” diaries; and these have now inspired his 13th novel, in which he presents us with a “fictionalised version” of his mother from a time – the mid-1950s – before he was born. The action takes place over a 12-month period, and details Elaine’s (above) cooped-up existence as a housewife – and frustrated writer – in upstate New York. Her first husband, John, is a Milton scholar at Cornell University. “Money is tight, and always has been.” The book’s minimal plot charts “Elaine’s sexual obsession with one of John’s colleagues, with whom she has…

A dazed Alice tells Chris the charges against her have been dropped. They tell Neil and Susan, who inform them George was charged. There is bitter fallout as Chris confronts Emma about when she knew, and a furious Harrison attacks George. Fallon is appalled – Harrison could lose his job. Alice and Harrison are friends again. Fallon tells Alice she’s afraid Harrison will quit the police; Alice says she regrets losing Chris. Brian bangs on George’s door, his rage bringing on an angina attack; terrified George hides inside. Neil berates George for not handing himself in, but he and Will are shocked to hear about Harrison’s attack. Neil comforts an upset George and assures him he’ll rebuild his life. Brian tells Alice that Jennifer would be proud of her, and…

We all need to eat more beans, says Charlie Bigham: they are nutritious and delicious. For this fish recipe, I have used a jar of butter beans, but of course you can prepare dried beans ahead of time if you prefer. Serve with crusty bread and a lightly dressed salad if the weather is warm, or freshly cooked greens if it’s cold. Serves 4 1½ tbsp olive oil 4 x 150-200g hake fillets, or other white fish fillets juice of ½ a lemon finely chopped flat-leaf parsley leaves crusty bread, to serve For the beans: 4 tbsp olive oil 2 large onions, sliced 2 celery sticks, finely sliced 3 large garlic cloves, finely chopped 2 tsp sweet smoked paprika 400g can of chopped tomatoes 200g tomato passata 700g jar of large or…

Suede – the underside of skin – has a nap finish, which can be easier to clean than smooth leather, so don’t be scared to try. Prevention is key; any suede protector spray should do the job, but Hush Puppies’ Weather Protector (£13.50) works well. For a really special pair of shoes, try Liquiproof (from £15); you’ll need the whole bottle for one pair, so it doesn’t go far, but nothing sticks to it and it’s also non-toxic. Leave any dirt or marks to dry completely before cleaning. Brush dirt and stains out from the fibres using a suede brush (or a simple soft, clean polishing brush). Brushing also helps fluff suede back up after rain. Suede brushes normally have a rubber side for stubborn marks, but a clean white…

Alberto Fujimori 1938-2024 A deeply polarising figure in Peru, Alberto Fujimori was revered by many Peruvians as the president who, in the 1990s, rescued the country from economic chaos, and crushed a ten-year-long Maoist insurgency that had killed tens of thousands of people, said The Guardian. Many others saw him as a corrupt dictator with blood on his hands. He was eventually jailed for human rights abuses, yet following his death last week, aged 86, the government declared three days of national mourning and granted him a state funeral. The son of Japanese immigrants, Fujimori started his career as a lecturer in mathematics, and rose to become rector of the National Agrarian University. He was all but unknown when, in 1990, he launched a bid for the presidency. The front-runner…

PwC’s Chinese division has been fined a record $62m, and banned for six months from auditing clients, after admitting “major mistakes” when signing off the accounts of property giant Evergrande, which collapsed with $300bn of debts in 2021. But there’s no end in sight to the “mounting fallout” from this crisis, said the FT. In a new setback, PwC has been forced to abandon construction work on a “lavish” campus based on a tropical island in China’s Haitang Bay. Dubbed “Reimagine Park”, the facility was being trumpeted as a landmark training institute dedicated to “building trust in leadership”. Perhaps the less said about that, the better.…

What might happen? “Bills could double” if, as feared, Rachel Reeves brings CGT rates into line with income tax – landing even basic-rate taxpayers (now paying 10% tax on funds and shares and 18% on property) with big bills when they sell. Worse still, without any “indexation” – to reflect how “the real value… of money has shrunk since it was invested” – CGT effectively imposes a tax on inflation. “Put another way, your profits might be illusory but your CGT bill will be very real.” Gimme shelter Luckily, any changes are unlikely to be retrospective, so the new rates shouldn’t affect sales made before the Budget on 30 October. And there’s still time to “squirrel” away assets in tax-free wrappers. “Nearly all my shares, apart from a handful I…

Who’s tipping what The week’s best shares Adma Biologics The Daily Telegraph This US biopharma turns blood plasma into infectious-disease treatments for patients with immune deficiencies. Owns and operates almost all its supply chain. Sales have jumped. Profitable, with much more to come. Buy. $18.09. Genuit Group The Mail on Sunday Genuit, which supplies pipes and widgets for heating, plumbing and draining, has gone green – recycling used plastics into pipes in its own plant. Margins are growing. Should progress as house-building picks up. Buy. 481p. Informa The Times The global trade show organiser has emerged stronger from the pandemic. Revenues are up 11% and profits by 13%. Structural growth opportunities from AI-driven partnerships, including with Microsoft. Buy. 834p. InterContinental Hotels Group The Daily Telegraph IHG, which has 955,000 rooms…

Deloitte, which won plaudits for becoming the first of the Big Four accounting firms to offer equal parental leave. From next year, new fathers at the firm will get 26 weeks of fully paid leave, as new mothers already do. Deloitte is also offering an extra week’s paid leave for staff who care for a relative or friend. Rachel Reeves, who was awarded the use of Dorneywood, the 21-room grace and favour mansion in Buckinghamshire. Although Dorneywood is usually allocated to the chancellor, when Tony Blair was PM, he gave it to his deputy, John Prescott – raising speculation that Angela Rayner might be in the running.…

Four in ten Britons only eat fish if it is in batter or breadcrumbs. Over half of those surveyed had no idea that John Dory was a type of fish; 12% guessed that John Dory was a famous poet. Marine Stewardship Council/The Daily Telegraph 32% of people in Spain say their local area receives too many international visitors, compared with 18% in France, 16% in Italy, 13% in Germany and 7% in Britain. In Catalonia (which has Barcelona as its capital), 48% think that their area sees too many tourists. YouGov/The Guardian 46% of British voters have an unfavourable view of Keir Starmer, the joint-highest figure since he became party leader. 32% regard him favourably. Ipsos/The Daily Telegraph…

Resisting Botox When Smack the Pony co-creator Doon Mackichan started out in stand-up in the 1980s, it was still largely a man’s world. She was often the only woman on the bill, says Emine Saner in The Guardian. She recalls punters at a venue in Cambridge urging her to “Get your tits out”, and male comics at the Comedy Store routinely peeing in the sink. Things have got better, she says, but now, at 62, she finds herself contending with a new problem: a lack of work for older women. “It’s a tragedy,” she says. “You reach the top of your game, and if you’ve chosen to have children you’ve got them out the door… The culture’s really got to change.” Fiercely opposed to the idea that women should try…

Geert Wilders, who is notorious for his proposals to ban the Koran, and was convicted in 2020 for inciting a crowd to chant the phrase “Fewer Moroccans!”, won about a quarter of the seats in last year’s Dutch general election. Exit poll data suggests that there was no typical profile for a Party for Freedom voter: men and women, urban and rural, old and young, all voted for it. About a fifth of the party’s 2.4 million voters were aged 18-34. Similarly, in Portugal, exit polls from March’s elections suggested that under-30s accounted for 25% of those who voted for the Chega party. In this year’s EU elections, Le Pen’s RN was the most popular party among the under-34s, with at least 30% of the vote. Five years ago, this…

Charging parents won’t stop shootings Megan K. Stack The New York Times In its desperation to stop mass shootings, America is trying a new tactic, says Megan K. Stack: prosecuting the parents of the perpetrators. Earlier this year, Jennifer and James Crumbley were convicted of involuntary manslaughter in Michigan after their son, to whom they’d given a gun, carried out a school shooting. And Colin Gray is now facing similar charges in Georgia in connection with his 14-year-old son, Colt, who is accused of killing four people in his school with an assault-style rifle that he reportedly received as a Christmas gift. These prosecutions satisfy the public thirst for justice, but they set a troubling precedent. The reality is none of these parents broke any gun laws. In Georgia, which…

The Covid lockdown appears to have rapidly aged the brains of teenage girls, something researchers attribute to social isolation. A team at the University of Washington first studied scans of 160 children’s brains in 2018, and then again in 2021, after the lockdowns had eased, to gauge a process called cortical thinning. This typically starts in early adolescence, as the brain begins to shed redundant synapses, and is sometimes described as the maturing brain rewiring itself to become more efficient. However, unusually rapid thinning is associated with depression. The scans showed that while both girls and boys had experienced accelerated thinning, it was more pronounced in girls: their cortisol thinning was 4.2 years ahead of expected, on average, whereas the boys’ was 1.4 years ahead. The team put this down…

When it comes to the public finances, Britain is swirling in a “maelstrom of denial, obfuscation and avoidance”, said Paul Johnson in The Times. In the coming years, we will need to spend untold billions more on health, pensions, defence and battling climate change, while losing tens of billions in fuel duties. Neither main party has any realistic plan for how this will be done. To our national shame, Labour, like the Tories before it, looks set to shirk the biggest fiscal challenge facing Britain today: fixing social care, which has been in a mess for decades. And now, into this already turbulent picture, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has just chucked “an enormous brick”, with its report on the fiscal risks facing Britain over the next 50 years.…

“Effective action is always unjust.”Jean Anouilh, quoted in Forbes “At the end of the day we’re part of a long-running story. We just try to get our paragraph right.”Barack Obama, quoted in The New York Times “A man has to be Joe McCarthy to be called ruthless. All a woman has to do is put you on hold.”Marlo Thomas, quoted in the Pasadena Weekly “I know you think you understand what you thought I said, but I’m not sure you realise that what you heard is not what I meant.”Alan Greenspan, quoted in The Economist “You start at your most popular and least capable and end at your least popular and most capable.”Tony Blair on prime ministers, quoted in The Times “My whole family are psychics. I was born with…

To The Times Your leading article rightly draws attention to the need for Nato countries to support Ukraine by supplying Storm Shadow/Scalp missiles without the restriction that they be used only within Ukraine. However, in describing President Putin’s threats as hollow, you perhaps underestimate their significance. Putin has both the political and military power to carry out his threats. What is not known is how likely it is that he will do this. The question therefore is: “How do we reduce this risk so far as is possible?” One solution might be to specify that these missiles could be fired at military bases within Russia, but only if these bases had been used to mount attacks on civilian targets within Ukraine. In so doing, Nato would be operating within its…

by Richard Fortey William Collins 336pp £25 The Week Bookshop £19.99 In “fine days in early autumn”, few things beat going on a “fungus foray”, said Henry Gee in Literary Review. If you can’t, reading this book would be a good alternative: it provides many of the same pleasures, but “without you ever having to leave your armchair”. A retired palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum, Richard Fortey immerses us in the “world of fungi”, revealing “where they are, how they grow, what they look like, how they smell and taste”. He also writes about the flies and beetles that “depend on fungi for their livelihoods”. As an amateur mycologist, I have long felt the lack of a well-written book on this subject, said Helen Brown in The Spectator. Most…

The Spare Room by Helen Garner, 2008 (Canongate £9.99). What would you do if your beloved friend, dying from cancer, came to stay while undergoing treatment at the hands of an alternative therapist whose crazed “cures” you regard as dangerous bunkum? This novel, bottled rage, should come with a health warning of its own. Love is Blue: A Wartime Diary by Joan Wyndham, 1986 (available used). Vivid, delicious fun, as 19-year-old Joan and her pals Gussy, Pandora and Oscarine, all of them newly bedecked in the blue serge uniform of the WAAF, are billeted in Preston, Lancashire – a very long way indeed from Chelsea. Bed bugs, weak cocoa and doomed love affairs: together, they’ll survive them all. Between Friends: Letters of Vera Brittain and Winifred Holtby, edited by Elaine…

Programmes Paid in Full: The Battle for Black Music Three-part series examining how black artists, from Billie Holiday to Prince, have been exploited by the music industry. Sat 21 Sep, BBC2 21:25 (60mins). Ludwig New comedy-drama starring David Mitchell and Anna Maxwell Martin. A puzzle setter’s solitary life is upended when he assumes the identity of his identical twin, a missing police detective. Wed 25 Sep, BBC1 21:00 (60mins). Parole Docuseries looking inside Britain’s parole boards and the life-changing decisions they make for prisoners and their victims. Wed 25 Sep, BBC2 21:00 (60mins). Surviving October 7: We Will Dance Again Harrowing documentary using CCTV and mobile phone footage, and survivors’ testimonies, to give a detailed account of Hamas’s murderous assault on the Nova Music Festival. Thur 26 Sep, BBC2 21:00…

Explorer Ella Christie created the Japanese Garden at Cowden, in Clackmannanshire, after her 1908 trip to Asia. Since restored, it has red maples and Japanese bridges (must book, £9; cowdengarden.com). A “petite wonder”, The Japanese Garden in St Mawgan, Cornwall, has koi carp, acers, azaleas and bamboo, plus a Zen garden (£6, until 15 Nov; japanesegarden.co.uk). The opulent Japanese garden at Tatton Park, in Knutsford, Cheshire, has a Shinto shrine, Japanese artefacts, maples and an almond-eye bridge (£9; tattonpark.org.uk). Created by the designer Shoji Nakahara, the Kyoto Garden in Holland Park, London, has a waterfall centrepiece, koi carp ponds and cherry blossom in spring (free; rbkc.gov.uk). Byron’s ancestral home, Newstead Abbey, in Ravenshead, Nottinghamshire, has a “particularly special” Japanese Garden, with stone lanterns, bridges and waterfalls, bamboo groves, maples, azaleas…

The Kirkstyle Inn Slaggyford, Northumberland Set in the wild moorland of the North Pennines, this 18th century inn has recently been transformed into a “posh dining pub”, says Sean Newsom in The Times. Its new owner is Nick Parkinson (son of the late Sir Michael), an industry veteran with a sure touch, and in the kitchen is Connor Wilson, a chef who is “preternaturally talented”. The roasted venison I ate was “show-stopping”, and for dessert I had a rhubarb soufflé as “light as a summer evening”. The “snug, earth-toned” bedrooms are lovely, and there’s much to do nearby, including walking, fly-fishing and trips to Hadrian’s Wall. Doubles from £170, b&b; theksi.co.uk.…

Bashing banks is a drag on growth Jim Armitage The Sunday Times There’s a parlour game doing the rounds in the City called “What’s Your Number?” The conceit is simple, says Jim Armitage: “How much would your employer have to pay to get you to move to Riyadh?” Not long ago, the number might have been “ten or more times your current wedge. Nowadays double might do.” It’s a measure of how heavily the tax burden – and the prospect of more to come – is weighing on the “top-earning 10%” who already pay 60% of the Treasury’s total income tax take. The Government is coming under pressure from the Labour Left and the Lib Dems to bash the “Big Bad Banks” even harder – although, at 45.8%, banks are…