Table of contents for 1375 in The Week

Hopes of an end to the bloodshed in Ukraine grew this week after Volodymyr Zelensky said that the ongoing peace talks with Russia were beginning to “sound more realistic”. During a meeting in Kyiv with the prime ministers of Slovenia, Poland and the Czech Republic, the Ukrainian president noted that “all wars end in agreements” and conceded that his country had to accept that the “door of Nato” had closed. However, Western leaders remained downbeat about the chances of an imminent breakthrough, and Vladimir Putin accused Kyiv of “not showing a serious commitment to finding mutually acceptable solutions”. As diplomatic efforts continued, Russian troops continued to push towards in the western suburbs of Kyiv and maintained their siege of strategic cities such as Mariupol (see page 20), where they were…

“This is going to hurt,” said Jeremy Warner in The Daily Telegraph. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has ushered in “the most serious energy crisis since the oil embargo of the 1970s”. A whopping 40% of European gas comes from Russia, via scores of pipelines. The EU insists it can cut this by two-thirds over the next year, but “I’ll believe it when I see it”: there just aren’t enough liquid natural gas tankers in the world to make up the shortfall. In the meantime, “Putin has got Europe by the proverbial”. The conflict has already caused oil prices to rise by 30%. “Big sacrifices lie ahead”, along with a likely “energy-induced recession”. We in the UK receive just 4% of our gas from Russia, said Ben Spencer and Louise Eccles…

Warsaw Refugee crisis: Authorities in Poland’s biggest cities say they have reached the limit of being able to cope with the vast influx of refugees from Ukraine. More than three million people have now fled the country since Russia invaded, more than half of whom (1.8 million) have crossed Ukraine’s western border into Poland – the centre of global aid efforts. But the mayors of Warsaw, where 300,000 people have arrived, and Kraków, which has taken 100,000 people in the past fortnight, warned they are at the point where they can’t take in many more. “[The] situation is getting more and more difficult every day,” said Warsaw mayor Rafal Trzaskowski. Refugees arriving in Warsaw are mainly being put up in private homes and two sports arenas; signs in city centre…

This week’s edition of Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs featured Robert Plant, the Led Zeppelin lead singer and songwriter 1 Pink Peg Slacks by Eddie Cochran, Jerry Capehart and Hank Cochran, performed by Eddie Cochran 2* Serenade by Sigmund Romberg and Dorothy Donnelly, performed by Mario Lanza 3 I Ain't Superstitious by Willie Dixon, performed by Howlin’ Wolf 4 Teenage Ska by Baba Brooks, performed by the Baba Brooks Band 5 Ohio by Neil Young, performed by Crosby Stills Nash & Young 6 Raha Gardishon Main Hardam by Badayuni Shakeel, Shakeel Badayuni and Sudhakar Sharma, performed by Mohammed Rafi 7 Diaraby by Ali Touré, performed by Ali Farka Touré with Ry Cooder 8 Your Long Journey by Doc Watson and Rosa Watson, performed by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss Book: The Penguin Classics Earliest English Poems Luxury: a…

The female of the species is… what, exactly? Sarah Ditum The Times There’s one reliable way to make politicians “look silly” these days, says Sarah Ditum. Ask them how they’d define “a woman”. Anneliese Dodds, shadow minister for women and equalities, recently tied herself into knots trying to answer this, waffling on about how it all depends on “context”. Faced with the same question last week, her colleague, shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper, came up with what she clearly thought was a nifty way to avoid handling this hot potato: she refused to answer. She would not get into “rabbit holes” on this issue, she kept saying. That may have had the merit of skirting the whole trans debate, but voters could see it for what it was: a complete…

America broke a painful record last week, said Issues & Insights. The average price for a gallon of regular petrol crossed the $4.32 mark, surpassing the prior all-time high set in the summer of 2008. The White House is pretending that the soaring price is down to the Ukraine crisis, but don’t you believe it. It has just as much to do with its own war on America’s fossil-fuel industry. On his first day in the White House, Joe Biden killed off the Keystone XL pipeline that promised to bring in new oil supplies from Canada. Since then, he has blocked other drilling leases and permits. The truth is that the Democratic Party has long wanted petrol to be “priced as a luxury good”. Back in 2008, the man who…

The oldest octopus ancestor The fossilised remains of the oldest known octopus ancestor – a 328-million-year-old vampire squid – have been found in a Canadian museum, and named after Joe Biden. The discovery of the previously unknown Syllipsimopodi bideni means that vampyropods (the group to which octopuses belong) appeared in oceans about 82 million years earlier than previously believed. It is rare to find the remains of soft-bodied creatures, as their tissue normally breaks down. This fossil was dug up in an area of Montana that would have been covered in a shallow ocean hundreds of millions of years ago. It was then donated to the Royal Ontario Museum, where it sat in storage for 30 years until two US palaeontologists took a closer look, and found that it had…

Former gravedigger Rod Stewart was back at work with his shovel last week, this time to help fill in potholes on a country road near his Essex estate. “I’m repairing the street near where I live because no one can be bothered to do it,” explained the 77-year-old rocker on Instagram. “The other day, there was an ambulance with a burst tyre. My Ferrari can’t go through here at all.” With elections looming in France, Emmanuel Macron has been accused of channelling Ukraine’s embattled president, Volodymyr Zelensky, with a new “gritty siege” look. Images taken by the Élysée Palace photographer show the normally besuited president looking unusually unshaven, in a black hoodie bearing the logo of an elite parachute unit. “I can’t get over that Macron clearly did a Zelensky-style…

Britain’s economic prospects were dire enough before “Putin’s murderous war”, said Will Hutton in The Observer – with rising inflation, rocketing energy bills and new taxes to pay for Covid measures. “Now they are desperate.” Russia is the world’s largest exporter of gas and wheat, and one of the largest exporters of oil and sunflower oil. Ukraine is the world’s fifth largest exporter of wheat and the fourth largest of maize. Inevitably, the prices of all these commodities have “spiralled upwards”. Oil has already doubled over the year to $130 a barrel. Past oil hikes on this scale “have unfailingly triggered global recessions”. The cost of living will keep going up. Inflation is expected to top 9% by autumn. “Everything that might propel growth is being squeezed”: consumer spending, government…

Chelsea’s home fixture against Newcastle United last Sunday certainly wasn’t a contest “to warm the hearts of the romantics”, said David Hytner in The Guardian. It pitted a club owned by a Russian oligarch with close ties to Vladimir Putin – and now effectively being run by the UK Government – against another that, since October, has been owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. So perhaps unsurprisingly, it proved an “edgy and uncomfortable” affair, with Chelsea “labouring for much of the afternoon” before a stunning strike from Kai Havertz in the final minutes broke the deadlock. There were “shades of Dennis Bergkamp” in the way the German cushioned Jorginho’s over-the-top pass and slotted the ball past Martin Dubravka. It was a reminder of the quality that exists in Thomas…

Fallon is testy with Amy while they’re helping Alice arrange Martha’s party. When Amy leaves abruptly, Alice wants to know what’s going on. Fallon evades the question. Alistair tells Jazzer that he’s not getting much sleep thanks to Jazzer and Tracy’s night-time antics. Jazzer suggests to Tracy that they create a secret love nest at Grey Gables. Amy tells Fallon that she’s decided to leave Ambridge after the party; she needs to get over Chris. Tracy gives Jazzer a key to one of the hotel rooms, before discovering Oliver has moved a guest in there. As Tracy is telling a naked Jazzer that he needs to scarper, Oliver walks in – and suspends Tracy. Neil admits to Susan that Berrow’s future is on the line. Alice is surprised by Amy’s…

Cuadrilla: red herring? In its quest to boost domestic energy supplies, the Government is considering lifting the UK ban on fracking. Music to the ears of Cuadrilla Resources, the privately held company which owns the country’s two existing shale gas wells in Lancashire, said James Sillars on Sky News. Cuadrilla has urged ministers to overturn an order ruling they must be cemented up by June. The move dismays opponents, who claim that fracking – which involves pumping water and sand at high pressure into rocks to release trapped gas – despoils the environment and causes earthquakes. Some market experts aren’t convinced either. Investec’s head of oil and gas research, Nathan Piper, dismisses the idea that fracking might reduce energy costs as a “red herring”, arguing that a far more effective…

The Bank of England’s tough choices Richard Partington The Observer Vladimir Putin’s war “has complicated an already delicate balancing act” for the Bank of England, says Richard Partington. By lifting borrowing costs back to pre-Covid levels of 0.75% or higher, as it was expected to do this week, it will certainly compound an “already bitter cost-of-living crisis”. Policymakers judge this is a necessary price to prevent “high rates of inflation becoming more permanent”. Not everyone agrees. Raising UK rates will have little impact on the inflationary forces unleashed by global energy prices, they argue, and could derail already weakening growth prospects. GDP in the first quarter will come in at around 1.2%, according to Goldman Sachs. That’s probably “as good as it will get for some time”. The war’s impact…

For the first time since 1947, the men’s suit has been removed from the basket of goods used to calculate the annual rate of inflation. Coal and doughnuts will also no longer be tracked. New entries to the basket this year include sports bras, antibacterial wipes, meat-free sausages, and dog and cat collars. Luxury chocolate drinks are soaring in popularity in the UK, as consumers apparently tire of coffee. Knoops, the fastest-growing purveyor of posh hot chocolate, with seven outlets, sells more than 20 types, ranking its drinks from 28% white to 100% extra dark. It claims its 70% chocolate from Congo has notes of “cherries and black tea”, while its 80% drink from Uganda evokes “a subtle smokiness”.…

Chicago, Illinois Jailed for fake attack: The film and TV actor Jussie Smollett has been jailed for 150 days for staging a hate crime against himself and lying about it to the police. In 2019, Smollett claimed that he had been the victim of a racist, homophobic attack by masked MAGA supporters in Chicago. It later transpired, however, that his “attackers” were known to him and he was convicted of filing false police reports last December. Handing down sentencing, the judge described him as a “charlatan” and a “narcissist”, who’d staged the attack to boost his public profile. Following the sentence, Smollett protested his innocence, and shouted, “I am not suicidal.” This week, his family said he had been placed in the jail’s psychiatric ward. Tallahassee, Florida Disney row: The…

When a 21-year-old who led police on a 35-mile car chase from London to the Kent coast was finally pulled over, he produced a driving licence from Legoland. Police officers clarified online that the Legoland licence was “not the reason for the driver’s dangerous driving”, but that the “large amount of cannabis” in his car was. There was much excitement in August when a couple in New Zealand dug up what appeared to be the world’s largest potato. Colin Craig-Brown, who found the 7.8kg vegetable, named it Dug and submitted a claim to Guinness World Records. DNA sampling has, however, crushed their dreams, revealing that the potato is a gourd. Craig-Brown declared himself “disappointed”. “It’s been a real roller-coaster of potato-rama,” he said. A teacher in Florida is facing charges…

SPAIN “I’m a stewardess, not a Barbie!” El Mundo (Madrid) Ironically, it was meant to be a modernising step, says Marisa Del Bosque. Spain’s national airline Iberia has overhauled its dress code for cabin crew for the first time in 15 years, but has found itself facing furious accusations of sexism. Iberia said female crew members would now be allowed to wear trainers – but only during the flight: they’d still have to wear high heels while boarding or walking through the airport. The backlash was swift: an online petition against the “sexist” policy was signed by almost 60,000 people within the first week. “I’m not stewardess Barbie”, fumed María Fernández, the Iberia worker who started the petition. “Are male flight deck crews really going to be walking around in…

“From Guernica to Sarajevo,” European cities have become synonymous with the “slaughter wrought by aircraft and artillery in the wars of the 20th century”, said The Washington Post. Now, with its “wanton attacks on Ukrainian population centres”, Russia has started a list for the 21st century. Heading the “roll call of atrocity” is Mariupol, the besieged city where last week Russian bombs destroyed a maternity hospital during a supposed ceasefire. At least five people were killed, including a pregnant woman and her baby. “In response, Russian officials denied and dissembled”, but attacking hospitals is consistent with Moscow’s brutal tactics. In May 2019, Russian planes bombed four hospitals in Syria in 12 hours, according to a New York Times investigation. And if anything, the suffering in Mariupol is only going to…

When his ship the Endurance finally sank in 1915, after being “squeezed for weeks” by Antarctic ice, Sir Ernest Shackleton could hardly have imagined that it would ever be seen again, said The Times. Yet last week, 100 years after his death, the Endurance was located and filmed, 10,000ft under the Weddell Sea. The 144ft-long ship is remarkably intact: its name is still clearly legible across its stern. And thanks to the absence of wood-eating organisms in these freezing waters, it will remain so for years to come; the exploration team did not disturb the wreck, and “nothing will be salvaged from it, in keeping with its status as a protected monument”. Shackleton had left Europe in August 1914, against a backdrop of war, hoping to make the first land…

Rugby: England’s valiant defeat England’s Six Nations match against Ireland at Twickenham could not have got off to a more disastrous start, said Daniel Schofield in The Sunday Telegraph. A mere 82 seconds in, Charlie Ewels clattered dangerously into James Ryan, and was red-carded. Forced to play nearly the whole match with 14 men, Eddie Jones’s team might easily have capitulated; instead they bravely “took the fight to Ireland”. And for a while, indeed, the “raucous home crowd dared to believe a rugby miracle might just be possible”, said Robert Kitson in The Observer. A Marcus Smith penalty just after the hour mark drew England level at 15-15, and the match entered its final ten minutes with the two teams still tied on points. Yet ultimately, having an extra pair…

In this bold updating, Jane Austen’s Persuasion becomes a “frolicking, rollicking romcom” that nails the contemporary “dating and mating game as sharply” as the original did in 1818, said Georgina Brown in the Daily Mail. Instead of “bonnets and decorous jigs to polite piano accompaniments”, it has “bikinis, full-on snogging and robotic dancing” to the likes of Robyn, Nicki Minaj and Dua Lipa. And the story plays out not in staid Bath drawing rooms but on a raised rectangular platform that “functions as a disco, catwalk, foam-flooded bubble-party” – and as a rostrum from which the high-handed heroine, Anne, can shove off any character who becomes too tiresome. It’s a “hoot”, and it had me “totally persuaded”. Full of “mischievous fun”, Jeff James and James Yeatman’s adaptation demonstrates that Austen…

The challenge facing any TV version of The Ipcress File was always going to be to nod to the 1965 film, “without becoming so drenched in homage” it reeked of “cheap aftershave”, said Barbara Ellen in The Observer. For the most part, this six-part ITV series succeeds, retaining the film’s basic plot – a nuclear scientist is kidnapped from Cold War Britain – with a few tweaks. Joe Cole stars as Harry Palmer, the working-class, “culinary-minded intelligence agent” memorably played by Michael Caine. Cole has kept Caine’s “nerd-core spectacles and mac”, and while at first he seems “too choirboy-pretty”, he grows into the part. If this series didn’t have the 1965 film to live up to, “it would be a pretty good drama”, said Anita Singh in The Daily Telegraph.…

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾ by Sue Townsend, 1982 (Penguin £7.99). A book I reread every year. Funny, and a true representation of politically engaged working-class people in the 1980s. As a kid, I wanted to be Pandora Braithwaite (who in a later diary ends up a Labour MP), but as I get older, with teenage sons myself, I realise that Pauline Mole is the hero of the book. How to Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran, 2011 (Ebury £9.99). The last book my mom gave to me before she died. It is the manual for feminism without the academic need for lecturing. It makes me want to stand on a chair and shout. Wild Swans by Jung Chang, 1991 (Collins £9.99). Three generations of women fighting…

Programmes Hidden The Welsh crime drama is back for a third and final series. DCI Cadi John (Sian Reese-Williams) is called to investigate the body of a farmer found in a stream. Sat 19 Mar, BBC4 21:00 (60mins). Mysteries of the Bayeux Tapestry Documentary exploring the history of the tapestry and the scientific and archaeological stories hidden in its embroidery. Tue 22 Mar, BBC4 21:00 (60mins). Storyville: Tango with Putin A timely documentary (previously titled F@ck This Job) about the independent Russian TV station Dozhd and the socialite who founded it. Thur 24 March, BBC2 23:15 (95mins). Unreported World: The Anti-Vaxx Preachers The reportage series examines the Covid situation in South Sudan, a country where only 200,000 have been vaccinated, owing to poverty, conflict and disinformation. Fri 25 Mar, C4…

Emma Sinclair More than 100 British companies – including Tesco, AstraZeneca, M&S and Asos – have signed up to offer jobs to Ukrainian refugees, said Dan Sales on MailOnline. It’s testament to the organising skills of Emma Sinclair, who dreamed up the “informal consortium” in order “to do something to help”. Sinclair, who is CEO of software house Enterprise Alumni, is a serial entrepreneur: in 2005, aged 29, she became the youngest person to float a company on the London Stock Exchange. This project should benefit the UK economy, given that there are millions of job vacancies. But the main aim is to build successful lives. “It’s one thing to have accommodation,” says Sinclair, “but quite another… to be able to feed your family and work”. Bill Browder The American…

THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1303 An Ettinger travel pass case 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 28 March. Email the answers as a scan of a completed grid or a list, with the subject line The Week crossword 1303, to crossword@theweek.co.uk. Tim Moorey (timmoorey.com) This week’s winner will receive an Ettinger (ettinger.co.uk) travel pass case (assorted colours), which retails at £105, and two Connell Guides (connellguides.com). ACROSS 5 Cookers: one for nothing in town (2,4) 6 Sounds like matching piece cut off (6) 9 Negative noises from the shires? (6) 10 Her Majesty boards coaches – not in these! (8) 11 Drop off – it’s not quite twelve (4) 12…

Six in ten people in the UK believe the country isn’t doing enough to help Ukrainian refugees. 40% say they’re “embarrassed” by the Government’s approach to the crisis; 7% say they’re “proud” of its response. Only 7% believe that Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, wants to help Ukrainians find refuge in the UK; 55% think she’s trying to make it as hard as possible for people to come. YouGov/The Times More than three-quarters of people in the UK support investing in renewables and energy efficiency to cut reliance on fuel imports. 82% are worried that supplies to the UK could be interrupted, and less than half want the UK to restart or increase production of fossil fuels such as coal. Ipsos/The Independent…

Angela Davis’s prison days Angela Davis is now regarded as an elder stateswoman of the fight for civil rights, says Simon Hattenstone in The Guardian. But in 1970, the academic, left-wing activist and former Black Panther became one of the most wanted fugitives in America: guns registered in her name had been used to hold up a courtroom in California, and in the ensuing shootout four people were killed. Branded a terrorist and charged with three capital offences, she spent 16 months in jail before being acquitted. Inside, she was initially terrified that forces within the establishment would make sure she was executed – but on the outside, the clamour for her release was growing. “I received over a million letters from schoolchildren in East Germany alone,” she recalls. “A…

On 7 February 2018, a large group of Russian-speaking Wagner fighters, working with a pro-Assad militia, launched an attack on a US-backed, Kurdish-controlled military base in Deir ez-Zor in eastern Syria, where the Kurds had taken control of one of the country’s largest oil and natural gas fields. The Americans contacted the Russian military, who assured them that no Russian forces were in the area. After several hours of fighting, the Americans called in devastating air strikes. The Russian military then refused to provide helicopters to evacuate the Wagner casualties from the battlefield. They had to be picked up by another Prigozhin subsidiary before being flown back to Russia. The number of deaths is disputed: most suggest several hundred died. But the Russian military’s apparent lack of interest in saving…

Counting the legions of Covid dead Ed Yong The Atlantic On 24 May 2020, as the US passed 100,000 recorded Covid deaths, The New York Times filled its front page with the names of the dead, describing their loss as “incalculable”. Now the nation is hurtling towards one million deaths, says Ed Yong. “What is ten times incalculable?” The scale of the tragedy is hard to comprehend. America’s Covid death rate surpassed that of any other large, wealthy nation. US life expectancy fell by 1.8 years in 2020 – the largest such decline in almost a century – wiping out two decades of progress in health. And, unlike in much of Europe, it didn’t bounce back in 2021. More people in the US have died of Covid in two years…

More than a third of working-age people are now suffering from a long-term health condition, reports The Observer. Its analysis of official figures reveals that, last year, 14.2 million people in the UK aged 16 to 64 said they had been suffering from a health condition for at least 12 months – 1.2 million more than before the pandemic. The charity Scope said that a steep rise in the number of people experiencing mental illness accounted for a large part of the increase. About 800,000 more people suffered from mental-health problems in 2020-21 than did in 2018-19, according to Scope; the number of people with chest and breathing problems rose about 570,000 over the same period. Long Covid is another factor: the latest ONS report estimates that 685,000 people had…

At long last, London’s “squalid love affair with Vladimir Putin’s kleptocracy” is coming to an end, said Ben Marlow in The Daily Telegraph. Having been derided for “bringing a peashooter to a gunfight” with its first round of sanctions against the Russian oligarchs, the Government has “returned with the heavy artillery”. It has now frozen all the UK assets of seven of the most “wealthy and powerful” oligarchs, including Roman Abramovich, the owner of Chelsea football club; the aluminium magnate Oleg Deripaska; and Igor Sechin, chief executive of Russian oil company Rosneft. Liz Truss, the Foreign Secretary, said that their close links to the Kremlin meant “the blood of the Ukrainian people is on their hands”. Soon after, MPs passed a new Economic Crime Bill, which allows the UK to…

“Common sense is like deodorant. The people who need it most never use it.”Bill Murray, quoted in Parade “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”Voltaire, quoted in The Guardian “Quantity has a quality of its own.”Stalin, quoted in The Sunday Times “The Bible tells us to love our neighbours, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people.”G.K. Chesterton, quoted in Sports Illustrated “England is the one country where the people feel schadenfreude towards themselves.”David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, quoted in The Independent “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant stands on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse…

Asylum: a cruel disparity To The Guardian Last Tuesday, I discovered that playing Jenga in the open air with a wind coming in from the Channel is difficult because the wind keeps blowing the bricks over. My opponent was a young man fleeing war in Sudan, who for many months – along with many hundreds of others – has been sleeping rough and playing a game of cat and mouse with the French authorities as he awaits his dream of getting to the UK. I think he would be somewhat bemused to hear of Ukrainians being offered food and shelter in Calais and the opportunity to apply for a visa for the UK in France. I like to think that his best self would not begrudge the Ukrainians what he…

The “cataclysm” of the Second World War overshadowed life in Britain for decades, said Laura Cumming in The Observer. By its end, the country had been all but bankrupted and its big cities lay in ruins. Shortages were rife and “the rationing of clothes and food and human happiness” remained in place for years after 1945. “The sound of air-raid warnings” and “horrific memories of the past” were still fresh in the mind; the Nazis’ atrocities loomed large in the collective imagination. Against this grim backdrop, a new generation of British artists emerged, commemorating the bleakness of the era in a multitude of different styles and media. This “enthralling” exhibition at the Barbican – itself an icon of brutalist postwar architecture – brings together the work of around 50 artists,…

The rising cost of everyday foods As the war in Ukraine has intensified, its knock-on effects have become more apparent, says The Guardian. One of them is the disruption to the supply of wheat: Russia and Ukraine are responsible for around a quarter of the world’s wheat. This could spell catastrophe for countries in the Middle East and North Africa, where most of the grain from “Europe’s breadbasket” goes: Lebanon, for instance, imports half its wheat from Ukraine, and rationing is now being put in place there. The UK grows 88% of its wheat; but disruption to trade (Ukraine has banned the export of wheat, maize, oats and other foods), added to spiralling energy costs, are having a serious impact on food prices here too. Shoppers can expect to pay…

Mathematician who worked on the first business computers Mary Coombs 1929-2022 Before there was Microsoft, and before there was IBM, there was J. Lyons & Co, owners of the eponymous teahouses – and pioneers of the first business computers. A management trainee with a talent for maths, Mary Coombs, who has died aged 93, started working on the Lyons Electronic Office, or LEO, in the early 1950s, and became the first woman to be trained to write programs for a business computer. As well as running 250 or so teahouses, Lyons manufactured biscuits and owned hotels. It was known for embracing technical innovation, said The Daily Telegraph, and after the War, senior managers became aware that at Cambridge University a team was working on a project called the Electronic Delay…

Changes to the basket of goods used by the Office for National Statistics to measure prices are always an interesting gauge of trends. This year, doughnuts, men’s suits, coal and atlases are out, noted Lora Jones on BBC Business – replaced by sports bras, meat-free sausages, antibacterial wipes and pet collars. With inflation at its highest in 30 years, “the ONS’s methodology has come under extra scrutiny”. As analyst Myron Jobson of Interactive Investor points out, “climbing sessions”, another new addition, are “unlikely to rank highly on the list of spending priorities among those struggling to make ends meet”. “Forget number-crunching,” said Alistair Osborne in The Times. Fashion advice has long been “the key forte” of the ONS. “And once again, the wonks haven’t disappointed.” After 75 years, they’ve killed…