Table of contents for 1438 in The Week

The Tories have been in power for over 13 years, “longer than Tony Blair’s Labour party”: yet you’d never think so, said Craig Mackinlay in the Daily Express. Reduce immigration? Slash regulations? They’ve failed to fulfil pledge after pledge. Why? Because real power lies elsewhere: with the left-leaning officials who dominate Whitehall. Their clear aim is to block the will of the elected Tory Government, said Richard Littlejohn in the Daily Mail. First they came for Boris Johnson; then Liz Truss, who dared to challenge Treasury orthodoxy. Dominic Raab was hounded out “over flammed-up claims of bullying”; now they’re trying to do the same to Suella Braverman for the “crime” of asking civil servants if she could attend a speed awareness course online. “Enough is enough,” said Allister Heath in…

Learner drivers, with reports that touts are buying up a quarter of all driving test bookings, then selling them to learners for up to £300 more than they’d paid for them. Owing to a backlog caused by the pandemic and strikes, many test centres are fully booked for months. To secure a test earlier, some people are turning to touts who use bots to buy slots as soon as they become available. Travellers, who faced a series of disruptions that coincided with the half-term holiday in England and Wales. Last weekend, passport e-gates failed at airports across the country. BA cancelled 175 flights because of problems with its check-in system. And trains were cancelled on numerous lines owing to strike action. Ice cream vans, with reports that 99 Flakes have…

14% of adults in Great Britain say they approve of the job that Suella Braverman is doing as Home Secretary. 50% disapprove. At-36, her net approval rating is down 16 points since March. Opinium/The Guardian 21% of millennials (defined as people aged 25 to 40) would vote Conservative in an election held tomorrow. 62% believe the Tories “deserve to lose the next election”. But among millennials in their 30s, Rishi Sunak is more popular than his party by 25 points. Focaldata/The Times Eight out of ten adults support a ban on advertising unhealthy food to children on TV and online. 76% want advertising near schools and playgrounds to be restricted. YouGov/Sky…

Broadway’s outspoken star The Broadway star Patti LuPone has never been one to mince her words, says Helen Brown in The Daily Telegraph. A fierce defender of theatrical standards, the 74-year-old once referred to Madonna as a “movie killer” who is “dead behind the eyes”, and she is tough on audience members, too: she has been known to snatch phones from their hands mid-performance and, during the pandemic, she ordered a woman to put on a mask, or “get the f**k out” of the theatre. Her temperament has earned her a reputation for being a “diva” – but she rejects the term. “I don’t particularly care for it,” she says. “It’s a word that belongs in the opera world where people are doing something supernatural with a natural instrument. It…

An official in India has been suspended for draining two million litres of water out of a reservoir, so that he could retrieve his lost smartphone. Rajesh Vishwas, a food inspector, had been taking a selfie when he dropped his Samsung into Kherkatta Dam in the central state of Chhattisgarh. He first called on divers to search for the phone – which he claimed held sensitive government data; when they failed to locate it, he ordered the reservoir be drained into a nearby canal. The phone was found, but it would no longer turn on. A teenager from Whitby has been employed as a live seagull deterrent by a local fish and chip shop. Corey Grieveson, 18, spends part of his week working in the kitchen of the shop, and…

CHINA Invade Taiwan? We don’t think it’s a great idea South China Morning Post (Hong Kong) Beijing might regard Taiwan as a “breakaway province” that must be reunited with mainland China at all costs; but it’s by no means clear the Chinese people feel the same way, says Hayley Wong. A study by academics at the National University of Singapore and NYU Shanghai suggests only a little over half (55%) favour the idea of an armed attack, and then only if all other options have failed. A third of respondents opposed an attack altogether. A mere 1% backed an invasion “right now”: concerns about “the economic, human and reputational costs of a forceful takeover”, along with the prospect of US retaliation, seemingly making the idea unpalatable for almost everyone. Even…

A 40-year-old Dutch man who was left paralysed from the hips down by a cycling accident a decade ago can now walk with a mobility aid, thanks to groundbreaking implants that allow him to control his legs using his thoughts alone. The Swiss neuroscientists behind the technology call it a “digital bridge” that restores communication between the brain and the spinal cord by bypassing the injured area. The patient, Gert-Jan Oskam, was told he’d never walk again as a result of his incomplete spinal cord injury. But after more than a year using the system, he can walk 100 metres, have a drink with friends standing at a bar, and even climb stairs. The brain computer interface is made up of two electronic implants. The first lies above the area…

Brooklyn Beckham (right) has been much mocked for his efforts to establish himself as a culinary influencer. But undeterred, the 24-year-old is now preparing to launch a range of branded, agenda-setting cooking utensils and clothes. “Brooklyn has a team working with him on ideas,” a friend told the Daily Mail. “He’s hoping to start a revolution in what chefs wear. His aprons, for instance, won’t be made of [traditional] leather but will just have leather straps instead. In terms of the kitchenware, he likes polished wood and oversized items. He is also very attached to his tongs.” Fans of Adrian Chiles leapt to his defence last month when he was subjected to a bizarrely personal attack by the novelist Will Self, sparked by a column Chiles had written about his…

“Insulting people in print is a vice of youth. Insulting people in your middle age is undignified, and looks more and more demented as you head toward the twilight.”Martin Amis, quoted in The New York Times “Every life is a novel for those who are curious enough to look into it.”Anne Berest, quoted on Literary Hub “Fiction is where I go to tell the truth.”Pat Conroy, quoted in The Washington Post “A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”Herbert A. Simon, quoted in Time magazine “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”Buckminster Fuller, quoted on GreenBiz “Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.”Socrates, quoted in The Times “They…

Formula 1 Max Verstappen extended his championship lead with victory in the Monaco GP. Lewis Hamilton finished fourth, one place ahead of his Mercedes teammate George Russell. Rugby union Saracens clinched the Premiership title, with a 35-25 victory over Sale. Tennis A five-set victory over Benoît Paire put British No. 1 Cameron Norrie through to the second round of the French Open. Dan Evans and Jack Draper lost in the first. Ukraine’s Marta Kostyuk refused to shake the hand of Belarus’s Aryna Sabalenka following her first-round loss.…

“Many critics sigh at the prospect of yet another Dream, Shakespeare’s most accessible and most performed play,” said Fiona Mountford in The i Paper. Yet for me the play – a“joyful skip through the Athenian forest, packed as it is with errant lovers, mischievous fairies and some joyously bad amateur dramatics” – is usually a delight. And so it proves with Elle While’s “assured” new staging at the Globe, which is “easily the best Shakespeare offering I have seen at this venue in some years”. The largely female cast includes Globe artistic director Michelle Terry as an “exceedingly Puck-ish Puck”, and Mariah Gale as weaver Nicola Bottom (or “Bot-tome”, as this Bottom insists, with her “delusions of actorly grandeur”). Accessible, witty and meaningful, “this is exactly what the Globe should…

A statue of the peace campaigner Brian Haw, who “spent ten years camped outside the Palace of Westminster”, is to be installed in South London, says Nadia Khomami in The Guardian. The 72cm-tall bronze maquette, by Amanda Ward, will be installed at 52 Lambeth Road, a short walk from Parliament Square and opposite the big guns of the Imperial War Museum. “It shows Haw towards the end of his life, in his early 60s, when he moved around on crutches – propped up yet defiant.” Haw, a carpenter and father of seven, was a regular fixture outside Parliament from 2001, when he left his home in Redditch and began protesting about UK and US policy towards Iraq. In the decade until his death in 2011, he rarely left his camp…

Adam and Tom discuss the team for next week’s T20 cricket, but Tracy nabs Chris for her team before they can. At a crowded restaurant for Jack’s birthday, anxious Helen snaps at Lee; Ian steps in and invites them back for pizza, to Helen’s relief. Susan’s in a quandary about what to do for Tracy’s hen do. A letter arrives from Rob’s solicitor requesting access to Jack; Helen frets he’s found a way around the court order. Tony calls barrister Anna for reassurance, who offers to visit. Emma’s bragging about George at Berrow winds Tracy up. Tom and Tracy agree to a player swap – Chris for Adam. With Stella away, Adam’s enjoying working at Home Farm and ponders his future and Brian’s plans. Pat tells Kirsty she’s terrified about…

Google Photos is now on iOS too, with unlimited cloud storage (free up to 15GB) and cross-device syncing. There’s a smart assistant for albums, collages and animated photos, and a powerful visual search (Android, iOS). Prime members get unlimited cloud storage and 5GB of video and document storage with Amazon Photos; others get, for free, 5GB for photos and videos combined. The app syncs photos, has AI-assisted search and family-sharing features (Android, iOS). Apple Photos is free to use, but you only get 5GB of iCloud storage (more can be purchased). It has advanced photo organising options, and AI features so you can search for untagged photos using keywords and more complex phrases (iOS). Slidebox is a compact tool and a rapid sorting process that lets you swipe pictures into…

Sun-drenched Montenegro Sandwiched between Croatia, Albania and Serbia, Montenegro is “one of the best sun magnets in southern Europe” – and it takes less than three hours to fly there from Gatwick, says Nick Redman in the Daily Mail. In the north of the country, “mountains plummet to fjord-like jade inlets suggestive of New Zealand or Norway”, while the south’s “broad, blonde sands are reminiscent of Turkey”. It has some fine towns, too. Budva, with its “lichen-spattered old-stone ways, red roofs and stout churches”, is worth a visit, and evokes the medieval Venetian Republic that once held sway. Unesco-listed Kotor has a dramatic position, “wedged between soaring peaks and a deep bay”. To sample some of Montenegro’s finest wines, visit the family-run vineyard Savina, where you’ll sip glasses of “pink…

PwC: big trouble Down Under PwC Australia has suspended nine partners and appointed independent directors to the board as it tries to contain one of the most damaging scandals in the global firm’s history, said The Daily Telegraph (Australia). The embattled accounting giant is reeling from revelations that one of its former tax chiefs, Peter Collins, obtained secret information about a corporate tax crackdown while advising the Canberra government between 2016 and 2019 – and leaked it to colleagues, who used it to sell tax-planning advice to multinational clients. Collins was last week placed under investigation by federal police. Acting CEO Kristin Stubbins has pledged to “ringfence” government business to minimise future conflicts of interest. That may not be enough to quell the storm, said Lewis Jackson on Reuters. There…

Who benefits from the new price cap? Nils Pratley The Guardian Small wonder shares in Centrica “popped” last week, says Nils Pratley. “The big winner” from regulator Ofgem’s latest price cap announcement is Centrica’s subsidiary British Gas – because we’ll all be paying a bigger slice of our bills to suppliers. The average “extra tenner” involved sounds modest in the context of a £2,074 price cap, but when you’ve got 28 million customers, it adds up to “a very nice uplift”. Does that sound “outrageous? Well, there is regulatory logic of a sort here.” The extra cash is being raised to prevent fewer suppliers going bust: British Gas, after all, is “the outlier” in a retail supply market that hasn’t made annual profits since the price cap was introduced in…

What happened Turkey’s President Erdogan won another five years in power this week, beating his rival Kemal Kılıçdaroglu by 52% of the vote to 48% in a second-round election run-off. The poll had been viewed as the biggest test yet of Erdogan’s 20-year grip on power, the president having been weakened by public anger about Turkey’s ailing economy and his stuttering response to February’s massive earthquakes. Kılıçdaroglu, who had vowed to steer Turkey away from authoritarianism, had united six opposition parties behind him and had led in early polls. He called it the country’s “most unfair election” in years. Erdogan used his speech at a raucous victory rally in Istanbul to ridicule his rival and attack LGBTQ+ activists. He hailed his win as the beginning of “the century of Turkey”;…

A US lawyer has apologised for relying on ChatGPT to do his legal research for him. Steven Schwartz’s use of the AI tool came to light when, during a personal injury case, he submitted court documents citing six cases that had been dredged up for him by the bot. Alas, all of them turned out to have been fabricated. Schwartz said he’d asked ChatGPT if it was sure all the cases were real, and it had assured him that it was. Trade union membership rates among young people have reached a record low, according to the Department for Business and Trade. Its figures showed that just 4% of employees aged 16 to 24 were in a union last year, down from 7% in 1995. Rates for those aged 25 to…

The Metropolitan Police is to stop responding to 999 calls about mental health incidents, unless there is a threat to life, according to plans being drawn up by its commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley. In a letter seen by The Guardian, Rowley said that his officers do not have the training or resources to deal with what is “principally a health matter”. He says requests to intervene have rocketed, and that his officers are now spending 10,000 hours a month dealing with mental health issues. Mental health charities have warned that if the police withdraw, it will create a gap that other public services cannot fill.…

Mont-Saint-Michel, France Tourism warning: Officials at one of France’s most popular tourist attractions have appealed for visitors to stay away. Shortly after Mont-Saint-Michel, an island pilgrimage site in Normandy, received 60,000 visitors in a single weekend last month, the local authority posted online a photograph of a long queue, with the words: “Delay your visit”. France is the world’s most-visited country, with up to 90 million tourists a year, and there is growing concern about the impact of le surtourisme (overtourism). Some blame the problem on an “Instagram effect” – where people flock to specific sites to recreate iconic images. Mont-Saint-Michel is the most visited site in France outside Paris. In Paris, the Netflix series Emily in Paris has been accused of causing problems for places it features. The owner…

1 Lose Yourself by Marshall Mathers, Jeff Bass and Luis Resto, performed by Eminem2 Careless Whisper by George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley, performed by Wham!3 Step by Step by Annie Lennox, performed by Whitney Houston4 Real Gone Kid by Ricky Ross, performed by Deacon Blue5 You’re So Vain, written and performed by Carly Simon6 Maybe Tomorrow by Kelly Jones, performed by Stereophonics7 Drops of Jupiter (Tell Me) by Pat Monahan, Jimmy Stafford, Rob Hotchkiss, Charlie Colin and Scott Underwood, performed by Train8* That’s All by Phil Collins, Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks, performed by Genesis Book: Running with the Kenyans by Adharanand Finn Luxury: oil paints and canvasses * Choice if allowed only one record…

There has long been concern about the “revolving door” between government and well-paid jobs in the private sector. In 2019, Open Democracy found that one in five newly elected Conservative MPs had previously worked in lobbying or PR – representing banks, private healthcare and arms manufacturers, and working for some of the largest consultant lobbyists. There is also heavy traffic going the other way: according to Transparency International’s recent analysis of official data from January 2017 to June 2022, 29% of the 604 post-government roles taken up by former ministers and senior officials had a significant overlap with their previous brief; many were policy “advisory” roles and in lobbying. Once again, regulation is poor. The Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (ACOBA) considers whether new jobs taken up by former ministers…

San Francisco is caught in a “doom loop” Anastasia Edel Los Angeles Times What has become of San Francisco? When I moved to the city from Boston in 2003, says Anastasia Edel, it felt like “the ultimate stop on the Go West dream train”. Although it was a pricey place to live even then, there were lots of good jobs to be had in a culturally vibrant, diverse city awash with tech start-ups. I used to bless the good fortune that had brought me to such an ideal metropolis. Since the Covid pandemic, though, downtown San Francisco has felt like a very different place. Tech stocks initially benefitted from the growth of remote working, but when the lockdowns ended, “they tanked, dragging down everything else”. Lots of workers have decamped…

Pressure on the Government to crack down on the marketing and sale of e-cigarettes has been intensified by new figures showing that 11.6% of 11- to 17-year-olds in Britain have tried vaping, up from 7.7% last year. The devices are supposed to be used as an aid for people trying to quit smoking, and it is illegal to sell e-cigarettes to under-18s. Yet they come in a range of bright colours and child-friendly flavours, and are widely promoted on social media. In the YouGov poll, 53% of the respondents said they had seen vape promotions, up from 37%. Of those who had seen online promotions, 49% said it was on TikTok. A separate BBC investigation found that most of the vapes confiscated from pupils at a secondary school in Kidderminster…

There is a school of thought that if only politicians would explain policy problems honestly, voters would weigh it all up, and come to reasoned conclusions. It is, alas, nonsense, said Bagehot in The Economist. Anyone who has been to a focus group will know that presented with an either/or question, voters tend to answer “Yes”. And nowhere is this more true than with immigration. Polls show that most Britons think immigration levels are too high; but at the same time, we say we want more care workers, nurses and fruit-pickers. We’re happy to see fee-paying students, and IT specialists. And we also thought it was right to welcome refugees from Ukraine and Hong Kong. So voters are not keen on immigration, but want immigrants, and the Government is in…

Agony and ecstasy; despair and jubilation. No period in the sporting calendar brings with it such a dramatic clash of emotions as the end of the football season. And where despair is concerned, few clubs could have felt it as abjectly this weekend as Leicester City, said James Gheerbrant in The Times. Seven years ago, the “feisty Midlands club wrote the great fairy tale of the Premier League era”, when they won it after starting the season as 5,000/1 outsiders. And in their 2-1 victory over West Ham United on Sunday, they “showed the quality of a side who should have stayed up, comfortably”. But “this season has been a mess” of bad management and poor recruitment. And so it was that their victory over West Ham was not enough.…

by Paul Strathern Atlantic 400pp £25 The Week Bookshop £19.99 “When we think of the Renaissance, we tend to imagine Italian polymaths scratching their pens and flourishing their brushes in the warm sun of the Mediterranean,” said Jonathan Healey in The Times. Such a picture, argues Paul Strathern in this “lively book”, does a terrible injustice to northern Europe. For while Machiavelli, Michelangelo and Galileo were “reinventing humanity” on the Italian peninsular, a great deal of “scholarship and intellectual ferment” was taking place in the “timber-framed towns of the north”. That the Renaissance wasn’t confined to Italy is hardly news, said John Banville in The Wall Street Journal. But Strathern goes further than other historians in demonstrating the “weight and significance” of its northern dimension. Gutenberg’s invention of the printing…

“For the first time in a decade”, Tate Britain has rehung its free displays, said Eloise Hendy in The Independent. The museum boasts “the most comprehensive collection of British art in the world”, making the task of rearranging and in some cases replacing the 800 works on display – spanning five centuries, from the Tudor period to the present day – a massive undertaking. If the rehang has an argument, it is that British art has always been “intimately entwined” with the political and societal conditions under which it was created. So although the display remains largely chronological, each room is now curated in such a way as to address social themes and historical developments. Topics covered include the path to democracy and women’s rights, the history of empire, and…

My first choice is a wonderful, immersive book, huge in all senses – War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, 1867 (Penguin £12.99). More than a novel, it’s a history, a theory of history, a philosophical statement of spiritual, moral and social values without being preachy. The Europeans by Henry James, 1878 (Penguin £7.99). A poignant comedy about a brother and sister who go to the USA looking for a (rich) husband for her. The brother, a painter, felicitously named Felix, goes with no such aims, but while she fails in her quest, he finds a soulmate. James avoided entanglements in his emotional and social life; in later life, his prose became entangled to match the rich and complex contact he had with his own and others’ inner worlds. Beyond a…

Programmes Ancient Egypt by Train with Alice Roberts The historian starts her four-part journey in Alexandria, and imagines life for its people in ancient times. Sat 3 Jun, C4 21:10 (60mins). Spy in the Ocean Extraordinary “spy” creatures – replicas equipped with cameras – capture from close-up the behaviour of sea creatures, including the mighty sperm whale. Sun 4 Jun, BBC1 19:00 (60mins). Vicky McClure: My Grandad’s War To mark the anniversary of D-Day, the Line of Duty star travels to Normandy with her 97-year-old grandfather Ralph, who fought his way up Sword Beach on 6 June 1944. Mon 5 Jun, ITV1 21:00 (60mins). Dispatches: Britain’s Forgotten Pensioners A bleak and unsparing look at the lives of four OAPs living in poverty. Wed 7 Jun, C4 22:00 (65mins). Michael Tippett:…

Blissful Spanish retreat Two nights in Salamanca’s Hacienda Zorita Wine Hotel, a former monastery overlooking the Douro Valley, cost from £200pp b&b (excl. flights). 0800-048 2314, slh.com. Arrive 21 June. Buddhist temple lodging Take a 9-day escorted Japan trip with stops in Kyoto and Tokyo and dinner with monks in Osaka. From £1,999pp b&b (incl. Dublin flights). 020-3582 5173, exoticca.com. Depart 29 January 2024. Lavish French getaway Spend 3 nights at the 5-star Sowell Collection Hôtel du Roi & Spa, located in the medieval city of Carcassonne. From £353pp b&b (excl. flights). 020-3024 8211, expedia.co.uk. Arrive 6 July. Serengeti trail Follow the herds on an exciting 8-day overland safari adventure through Kenya and Tanzania. From £1,392pp full-board (excl. flights). 0808-274 5111, intrepidtravel.com. Arrive 8 July. Covid-19: please check government websites…

Anne Boden At 63, the founder of Starling Bank “could be forgiven for wanting to put her feet up a bit more”, says Patrick Hosking in The Times. But that is not why the Welsh wizard is stepping down as CEO. The stated reason is a “conflict of interest” between her dual role as the bank’s boss, and as one of its major shareholders, with 19% of its voting power. It may also be a tidying-up exercise “ahead of a flotation”. Boden, who founded Starling in 2014, “has been a breath of fresh air in retail banking”, helping “to prod” mainstream banks into improving their customer focus with her “pioneering app tools”. A worthy “challenger” in every sense, “she will be missed”. Reece Tomlinson When Saône Capital’s Canadian founder, Reece…

THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1365 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 12 June. Send it to The Week Crossword 1365, 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 8 Handbook one left with chap on account (7) 9 Showing tolerance, nine let off (7) 10 Having nuts on pastry is an advantage initially (4,5) 11 A plain-sounding Prince (5) 12 Birds seen around river with duck? (6) 13 This is concealed by O…

Golden hellos, after GPs were offered a £10,000 bonus to work in the Outer Hebrides. NHS Western Isles is advertising for doctors with a “sense of adventure” to relocate to the Isle of Barra. The package will include pay of up to £98,555, plus a distant islands allowance of £1,279pa and 41 days of annual leave. Latvians, who got up to go to work on Monday, only to find that they didn’t have to. At midnight, parliament had met to declare a national holiday to celebrate the Latvian ice hockey team winning a bronze medal at the world championship.…

Some of the 700 sub-postmasters who were falsely accused of fraud by the Post Office were racially classified by investigators looking into their cases, it has emerged. Internal guidelines published between 2008 and 2011 show that the Post Office asked its investigators to place suspects in categories that included “Negroid types”, “Arab/Egyptian types” and “dark-skinned European types”. The Post Office has not explained why this data was collected. It stressed that the document was “obsolete”, but accepted that the language was unacceptable.…

Washington DC Riot sentence: The founder of a far-right militia group has been jailed for 18 years for inciting his followers to take part in the US Capitol riot. Stewart Rhodes, who leads the Oath Keepers, did not actually enter the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, and his lawyers described him as a “political prisoner”. But in court, where he was facing charges of seditious conspiracy, prosecutors successfully argued that he had acted as a “battlefield general”, mobilising and directing a mob seeking to overturn the presidential election result. His sentence is the longest yet handed down in relation to the disorder that day. Jacksonville, Florida “Woke” army: Ron DeSantis used an interview on Memorial Day to claim that the US military had become too “woke”, and promised “very…

“I love the idea of eating alfresco, but I can’t recall ever enjoying the reality. It’s not for lack of aptitude. I’m perfectly capable of assembling a good-looking picnic, with white napery and champagne misting photogenically in a bucket. I am good at this because I write about food and have spent days on location, watching stylists organise food and props while people in baseball caps scurry about lighting them. So why does the reality always fall so short? I’ve begun to appreciate that there is an unbridgeable gap between the ideal we have of alfresco eating, the pictures we make and share, and the truth – the myriad tiny indignities and inconveniences that inevitably thwart us.” Tim Hayward in the Financial Times…

The Tories are doing Putin’s job for him Juliet Samuel The Times A few weeks ago, reports claimed that Russia had been deploying spy vessels in the North Sea with a view to sabotaging our oil and gas industry. “Moscow needn’t bother,” says Juliet Samuel: our own politicians are doing that already. Successive rounds of poorly designed windfall taxes and Labour’s threat to stop all new investment in fossil fuels are choking off production. “Nine in ten capital projects in the North Sea are on hold”, and “activity in new fields is at a 40-year low”. Energy firms say they’re shifting production to “other, more stable political environments, like West Africa”. There’d be a case for this assault on our own oil and gas industry if it helped the planet,…

Gut bacteria predicts obesity Levels of gut bacteria in infancy can be used to predict whether an individual is likely to become obese, a study has found. The researchers looked at data on hundreds of children who had taken part in a long-term study in France. They had had their BMI checked at various points, and had also given stool samples aged three-and-a-half. The analysis revealed a clear link between obesity aged five and the ratio of gut bacteria Firmicutes to Bacteroidetes: the more of the latter the children had, compared with the former, the leaner they tended to be. “The reason these gut bacteria affect weight is because they regulate how much fat we absorb,” said study leader Gaël Toubon. “Children with a higher ratio of Firmicutes to Bacteroidetes…

Daytime TV is supposed to be comfortingly bland, said Clare Morrison in The Independent – which is something the ITV show This Morning used to excel at. In recent months, though, its co-hosts Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby have been too interesting for their own good. First there was “Queuegate”, when they were criticised for bypassing the long line of people waiting to see the late Queen lying in state. Then Schofield revealed that his brother was facing child sex abuse charges (for which he was later jailed), which fuelled rumours that he had had a relationship with a young male runner on the show when he was still married. Last week, Schofield apologised for having lied to his family and his colleagues about this affair, and stepped down from…

Just over a week ago, the great British cyclist Mark Cavendish tearfully announced that he would retire at the end of the season, said Oliver Brown in The Daily Telegraph. And last Sunday, the 38-year-old “conjured one of his most staggering tricks yet”. In the shadow of the Colosseum in Rome, he produced a “gloriously unexpected flourish” to win the “final stage of his final Giro d’Italia”. Cavendish hadn’t won a single race this season, a run of relative failure that was making even his most devoted fans suspect “his ferocity as a sprinter was on the wane”. Yet the “granite-willed” competitor seized his opportunity in the Eternal City, and surged to his 17th stage win at the Giro – and his 54th at a Grand Tour. Fittingly enough, it…

To The Times I would vote for any party whose main or only priority was reducing immigration, because every other issue that negatively affects us all – a lack of housing, an overstretched NHS, high crime rates, high unemployment, a lack of school places, congested roads, a creaking sewage system – is directly and negatively affected by too-high and uncontrolled immigration. Stefan Badham, Portsmouth To The Guardian Three cheers for Aditya Chakrabortty’s timely article on the positive value of immigration. I like to list how immigrants or the children (and now possibly grandchildren) of immigrants enable and enhance my life and lifestyle. They deliver my morning paper; drill, fill and maintain what’s left of my teeth; dispense my prescriptions; clean my car; run my favourite restaurant; provide about half of…

by Georgi Gospodinov Orion 304pp £9.99 The Week Bookshop £7.99 The Bulgarian author Georgi Gospodinov’s third novel – which has just won the 2023 International Booker Prize – centres on a clinic in Switzerland for patients suffering from amnesia, said Sam Sacks in The Wall Street Journal. The brainchild of a mysterious therapist called Gaustine, the clinic works by immersing its patients in the past: “each floor represents a different decade and is filled with the minutiae of the era”. The clinic proves so successful that Gaustine soon opens its doors to those who don’t suffer from memory impairment – but who simply want to escape the present. A discursive, complex novel that recalls the works of Orhan Pamuk, Time Shelter is “difficult but rewarding”. “This novel could have been…

Picture This at Waddington Custot Since its inception in the 1960s, when it evolved out of Pop Art, photorealism has made some critics uneasy. By reproducing photographs in paint, photorealist artists appeared to be revelling simultaneously in artifice and verisimilitude: it was, some thought, too clever by half. Nevertheless, it became one of the defining artistic styles of its era, a period roughly chronicled by this exhibition, Picture this: Photorealism 1966-1985. The show constitutes a representative overview of photorealism’s heyday, taking most of its key practitioners and their predilection for selecting emblematic American imagery as subject matter: we see big luxury cars courtesy of Tom Blackwell’s Queens Boulevard (1974); vintage pinball machines in Charles Bell’s Gin (1977); and roadside diners, notably in John Baeder’s Max’s Grill (1974). Most of the…

Why desserts are disappearing A change is taking place in the world of restaurant dining, says Tony Naylor in The Observer: puddings are becoming less plentiful – and less ambitious. There are still places that “go big on dessert”, but in most modern, independent restaurants, you’ll find no more than four on the menu, and sometimes only one or two. Partly this is down to diners becoming more likely to forego dessert – giving restaurants less incentive to offer them. It’s also the case that pastry chefs are becoming scarcer – and more expensive to hire. Many have left restaurants to take up more lucrative, and less taxing, work in patisseries or bakery-cafés, or to work as consultants. With no dedicated pastry sections, restaurants have learnt to “box clever”. Puddings…

● The temperature varies most in the door, so use it for your least perishable items – juices, spreads, condiments and water. Milk is not really suited to the door shelves. ● Inside the fridge, the warmest spot is the top shelf (unless you have a freezer above), so use it for butter and cheese (wrapped in greaseproof paper, in a container). ● Cooked meats, fish and poultry should be kept on the middle shelves and used within two days. Mushrooms can also go here. ● Store raw meat, fish and poultry in sealed containers, to avoid cross-contamination, on the bottom shelf. Always defrost food in the fridge, on a tray to catch melting liquid, and cook within 24 hours. ● Keep vegetables away from fruit in the veg drawers.…

Tina Turner 1939-2023 Tina Turner, who has died aged 83, was an “earthshaking singer whose rasping vocals, sexual magnetism and explosive energy made her an unforgettable live performer and one of the most successful recording artists of all time”, said The New York Times. She was also one of the music world’s great survivors, with a life that divided into several remarkable acts. The neglected daughter of sharecroppers, raised in the Jim Crow-era South, she’d started her career in the 1950s, when she became part of Ike Turner’s musical ensemble. That led her to professional acclaim – they had a string of hits in the 1960s – but also domestic misery. Ike Turner was a violent, serially unfaithful cocaine addict, who had started beating her soon after their marriage, in…

Any sceptic who thought the excitement about artificial intelligence was overblown – and dared to take “a down bet” on the sector – “has just got carried out on a stretcher”, said Patrick Hosking in The Times. Shares in the California-based Nvidia, which makes chips that power AI systems, soared 25% in a single session last week on the news that it expects far higher than forecasted second-quarter sales. The “breathtaking” Wall Street surge was “one of the biggest increases in value of a single company in a single day ever”. Not even Amazon or Tesla could match the $200bn or so gained in the first few seconds of trading. It was already clear that Nvidia was “a smart way for investors to capture the mania for generative AI”, said…

AI-related stocks have surged to record highs, in the wake of chipmaker Nvidia’s $1trn value coup, said Charlie Conchie on City AM. There’s already plenty of talk about a bubble – both in Nvidia shares and the wider market. If so, it’s still inflating. The “wave of cash” that has poured into firms since the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT tool in November last year shows no signs of abating. AI has become the markets’ “new, new thang … as investors pile into the new, new narrative”, said Bill Blain of Shard Capital. Amid all the froth, they tend to forget that “the fundamental rules of investment are about generating dull, boring, predictable returns”. Tech’s new golden goose helped power Wall Street’s Nasdaq index to a 6.24% return in May. Some…

The week’s best shares Alfa Financial Software The Mail on Sunday This asset finance firm devises “top-notch” agile software for specialist lenders serving sectors such as automotive manufacturing. Fast-growing, with sticky customers in many countries, and a strong pipeline. Buy. 159p. Bango The Sunday Times This mobile payments platform enables users to charge app purchases from online stores (Google, Amazon etc.) to their phone accounts. Now licensing the technology and benefitting from a lucrative data vault. “Upwardly mobile.” Buy. 209p. EasyJet Investors’ Chronicle The airline’s bookings have returned to “normalised” levels, with revenue-per-seat set to rise 20%. Pushing its holiday business, in which customer numbers have tripled, into Europe. Shares could “fly higher”. Buy. 485p. Pets at Home Group The Times The cash-generative pet specialist is opening and overhauling stores,…

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