Table of contents for 1503 in The Week

What happened “Things will get worse before they get better,” warned Keir Starmer on Tuesday in a keynote speech that sought to set the tone for the coming parliamentary session. Speaking in the Downing Street garden, he said the Tories had left the country in an economic and societal “black hole”, but promised to do the hard work to “root out 14 years of rot” while “protecting taxpayers’ money and people’s living standards”. However, he said Britons would have to “accept short-term pain for long-term good”, indicating that tax rises and spending cuts would be included in October’s Budget. The PM and the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, have come under pressure from opponents and some Labour backbenchers over one cut that has already been announced: the means-testing of the winter fuel…

“Scarcely a month ago, Democrats were awaiting their convention in Chicago as one might a four-day root canal,” said The Economist. Their doddering presidential candidate, Joe Biden, 81, had just put on a “disastrous” performance in his TV debate with Donald Trump, 78, and was shuffling towards almost inevitable defeat. The mood was bleak. Fast-forward to last week’s Democratic National Convention, and “despair” has officially turned to “ecstasy”. Biden is confined to history, while the “astonishing metamorphosis” of the Democrats’ replacement candidate, Kamala Harris, is complete, said Edward Luce in the FT. The once-unremarkable VP was the shining centrepiece of an electrifying, star-studded event featuring the Clintons and the Obamas – and the crowd lapped up her pitch for freedom, optimism and a break from what she called “the divisive…

Morrisons and Asda are shifting away from self-service checkouts, at least in part because so many of their customers prefer dealing with a real person at the till; but younger consumers appear to relish such automation. So much so that Bill’s, the restaurant chain, has announced that it is rolling out self-service screens, like those found at McDonald’s, to appeal to Gen Z diners who are reluctant to talk to waiting staff. “We have to adapt,” said the company’s CEO. The animal rights group Peta has urged Farrow & Ball to change the names of some of its paint colours, because they “normalise exploiting animals”. It says that Dead Salmon could be renamed Magic Mushroom, and Potted Shrimp could become Potted Petunia.…

Just 25% of voters believe that Labour’s public sector pay deals are affordable. 40% think the Government handled the issue badly; 34% think it handled it well. YouGov/The Times 13% of adults admit to having cheated supermarkets by selecting a cheaper item on a self-service till than the one in their basket. 19% say they’ve used public transport without paying for a ticket. Ipsos/The Daily Telegraph Kemi Badenoch is the clear favourite among Tory party members to replace Rishi Sunak as leader, with 24% saying they’d vote for her. Tom Tugendhat is second, on 16%, followed by James Cleverly (14%), Robert Jenrick (12%), Priti Patel (11%), and Mel Stride (2%). YouGov/The Times…

The “Volvo” of cooking Delia Smith’s Complete Cookery Course is the third-biggest-selling UK book of the past 50 years, says India Knight in The Sunday Times, but its author’s path to success was far from straightforward. Born in Woking, Smith left school without any qualifications, and eventually got a job at a restaurant in Paddington that served French food every Saturday. She adored French food – but after a while, started wondering: “Hang on, what’s up? Why is everything French?” She had been brought up on “good British food”, so she found a book about it in a library – and went on to read every book in its bibliography. Armed with this research, she began writing recipes for newspapers; then, in the early 1970s, she was asked to appear…

A suspected burglar in Italy was caught after sitting down during a job to read a book about the Iliad. The man was allegedly robbing the flat in Rome when he saw the book lying on a table. Intrigued, and presuming the flat to be empty, he put his feet up and started to read it. At some point, the flat’s owner woke up, found him engrossed – and called the police. The book’s author Giovanni Nucci is now hoping to give the man a copy, so he can finish it. “It’s a surreal story, but also full of humanity,” he added. Audiences at the Edinburgh Fringe flocked to a show in which a man in a gorilla costume sits silently on stage for nearly an hour. A Young Man…

The 1980s pop sensation Alison Moyet has never relished being recognised, so when she enrolled on a course at Brighton University, she went incognito, using her husband’s surname. It worked a treat: none of her fellow students, who were mainly 40 years her junior, had any idea who she was. But when one of her new friends started dancing around to Don’t Go, the mega hit she had with Yazoo, she broke. “I said to her: ‘That’s my song.’ She carried on dancing and said: ‘Is it? My mum’s is Love Shack’.” The late Queen (left) took part in thousands of engagements, says The Times, and inevitably, some of the people she met slipped up on the protocol. A mayor of Wigan, for instance, was talking to Elizabeth II at…

“Golf is the most fun you can have without taking your clothes off.”Juan “Chi Chi” Rodriguez, quoted in The Times “It’s not the case that in the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes. Everyone will be famous all the time, but only in their own minds.”Martin Amis, ibid. “Joy is not made to be a crumb.”Mary Oliver, quoted on CNN “The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.”Orson Welles, quoted on Live Design “France is a paradise inhabited by people who think they are in hell.”Sylvain Tesson, quoted in The Daily Telegraph “The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative on the day after the revolution.”Hannah Arendt, quoted in The New York Times “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once…

To The Guardian It’s not clear why Kirstie Allsopp feels so affronted by having a child protection investigation into her 15-year-old son’s trip abroad. They’ve not said she is a bad mother, or that he shouldn’t have gone, or that the child protection concerns have been substantiated. They’ve just investigated, and that investigation will remain on file for future reference if needed. Isn’t that what we want child protection services to do, to check allegations to see if there is cause for concern or not? As to whether the original allegation was malicious, well, so are many of them. That’s why social workers go in with an open mind, as they seem to have done in this case. Sylvia Rose, Totnes, Devon To The Times You note (“On this day”,…

Natalia Mehlman Petrzela is the American professor of history who co-produced and presented the “brilliant” Welcome to Your Fantasy podcast, said Miranda Sawyer in The Observer. That series, which told the “unexpectedly gripping story of the Chippendales (Muscles! Money! Murder!), was one of my favourite shows of 2021”. Petrzela, who specialises in the history of personal fitness, has made a highly entertaining new series about the rise of bodybuilding culture in the US from the late 1970s. Extreme: Muscle Men is a “fun, campy listen that moves from a sweaty 1980s California gym to some darker areas” – in particular, the role played by steroids. Petrzela’s interviews are “wry without being mean-spirited – and there are some hilarious moments, including a clip from Arnold Schwarzenegger, who at the time said…

In Praise of Older Women by Stephen Vizinczey, 1965 (available used). This reads like an outrageously frank autobiography but is a novel about a man, like the author, who flees Soviet Hungary in 1956, eventually to Canada. Various aspects of sex and romance are encountered in a paean to the joys and complexities of relationships. The scene which explains how to seduce a stunning girl in an empty café with a battered ashtray is an all-time classic. A.A. Gill is Away by A.A. Gill, 2002 (W&N £9.99). The great A.A. Gill is at his extraordinary best throughout this masterclass in the art of travel essays. Colleagues on the Sunday Times thought it tasteless to send a restaurant and TV critic to cover a Sudanese famine until Gill filed a dispatch so…

Programmes In My Own Words: Billy Connolly A frank and intimate self-portrait of the beloved actor and comedian, as he looks back on his life on stage and off. Mon 2 Sep, BBC1 22:40 (45mins). Colin from Accounts Season two of the warmhearted Aussie rom-com about an on-again-off-again couple and their disabled dog, Colin. Tue 3 and Wed 4 Sep, BBC2 22:00 (30mins each). Amol Rajan Interviews: Tony Blair In the first of his new series of in-depth interviews, Rajan meets the former prime minister. Wed 4 Sep, BBC2 19:00 (45mins). The Zelensky Story Three-part docuseries charting the Ukrainian president’s journey from aspiring comedian to wartime leader, featuring interviews with Zelensky and his wife Olena. Wed 4 Sep, BBC2 21:00 (60mins). The Tower The popular police drama starring Gemma Whelan…

Mike Lynch 1965-2014 Mike Lynch, who has died aged 59 in a yachting accident off Sicily, was often described as Britain’s Bill Gates, said The Guardian. It was an exaggeration, but like Gates, Lynch did develop world-leading technology – in AI or machine learning – and “unlike so many UK scientists, he learnt how to turn it into a commercial success”. His company, Autonomy, was sold to Hewlett-Packard for $11bn in 2011. But just 13 months later, HP would write down its purchase by $8.8bn, claiming Lynch and his colleagues had inflated its financial value with “serious accounting improprieties” and “outright misrepresentations”. The fallout from the sale, and the legal cases launched again him, would dominate the last decade of Lynch’s life. Lynch was born in east London, to Irish…

Matilda Ashley At 59, retail billionaire Mike Ashley is looking to the future, said The Times. He has just made his youngest daughter Matilda, 27, a director of Mash Holdings – the entity that controls his stakes in the publicly-listed Frasers Group and other companies. Matilda, who started her beauty business Double Take (owner of the SportFX brand) as a teenager in 2015, shares her father’s entrepreneurialism, and maybe also his taste for discretion: Frasers bought her debt-ridden business for £1 last year, without telling shareholders. Her elevation could raise eyebrows in the City as Ashley “increasingly leans on family” in his empire. Both his daughters’ partners hold senior positions in Frasers. Matilda’s partner, COO David Al-Mudallal – is, at 31, “one of the youngest directors of a FTSE 100…

The GCSE pass rate across England, Wales and Northern Ireland has fallen for the third year running. Last year, 68.2% of grades were given a 4 or above; this year 67.6% were. The results also reveal worsening regional and social disparities in England. In London, the highest-performing region, 72.5% of entries were marked at 4 or above; in the West Midlands, the worst-performing region, only 63.1% of entries attained the pass mark or higher. The 9.4-percentage point gap is up from 8.7 last year. In England, 48.4% of private school entries were marked at 7 or above, up nearly one point on 2023; compared to 21% of entries at academies and 19% at comprehensives.…

Oasis fans, with news that Noel and Liam Gallagher are putting aside their differences and embarking on a 14-date reunion tour of the UK and Ireland next summer. The tour, which includes four dates at Wembley Stadium, is expected to sell out fast, and could make the brothers tens of millions each – more than they earned during the entirety of Oasis’s 1990s heyday. Messages from beyond the grave, after builders knocking down a pillar in the National Gallery’s Sainsbury Wing found a letter from the late Sir John Sainsbury – who had part-funded the wing – inside it. As the note explains, he’d come to regret the inclusion of false columns in the design. He goes on to inform the reader he is “delighted” that these are now being…

Paris Telegram arrest: Pavel Durov, the billionaire co-founder of the messaging service Telegram, has been arrested in Paris for failing to curb use of his app by criminals. Dubbed “Russia’s Zuckerberg” after launching the app in 2013, Durov, 39, is accused of failing to prevent its use in such criminal purposes as drug trafficking, child abuse and fraud. Unlike most social media apps, Telegram lets users join groups of up to 200,000 people, who can send messages only others in the group can open. Durov’s detention has been widely condemned as an attack on free speech, not least by Russia, despite Moscow banning the app in 2018, and only lifting that ban in 2020. Paris Crisis continues: France’s left-wing alliance is calling for a day of street protest to mark…

“Harrow School is planning a new ‘campus’ in China, on top of the eight it already has there. You can see why. There is plenty of money in China, where British public schools have a high reputation. There is also an argument that the attitudes of China’s regime can be mitigated by Western engagement, producing oases of liberal civilisation in the great wilderness of totalitarianism. Unfortunately, it is not true. The reason for this is contained in the word ‘totalitarian’. In China, the control of the nation by the Chinese Communist Party is total. It follows that all British institutions that lend themselves to China compromise their most distinctive virtues by doing so. They become little fig leaves for the nakedness of dictatorial power.” Charles Moore in The Daily Telegraph…

Why Ford is having to go small Patrick George The Atlantic “Ford didn’t invent the car,” said Patrick George, “but it might as well have.” Such was the success of its Model T that, by the early 1920s, about half the world’s cars were Model Ts. Today, however, Ford is barely a car company at all. Of the 1.9 million vehicles it sold last year, just 48,636 were cars; the rest were SUVs and trucks. It’s the same with the other big US automakers. They’ve all concentrated on selling Americans bigger and bigger vehicles, leaving the small-car market to firms such as Toyota, which now sells more cars in the US than Ford does. But the arrival of the electric age may prove to be Ford’s undoing, as it has…

A ham sandwich a day could increase your risk of developing diabetes by 15%, a study has suggested. The analysis of the meat consumption of 1.97 million people who took part in 31 different research projects around the world revealed that for every 50g of processed meat eaten per day – two slices of ham or three rashers of bacon – the risk of developing type 2 diabetes over the next decade goes up by 15%, while 100g of red meat a day (the equivalent of a small steak) is associated with a 10% increase in risk. Poultry was also associated with higher risk, but to a smaller extent. The authors of the study, published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, said it reinforced health recommendations limiting consumption of processed…

I’ve always “prided myself on giving my sons very long reins,” said Rowan Pelling in The Independent. Yet that said, I’m still a “bit in awe” of TV presenter Kirstie Allsopp, who last week revealed that her 15-year-old son has just returned from Interrailing around Europe for three weeks with a 16-year-old friend. “If we’re afraid our children will also be afraid,” she tweeted. “If we let go, they will fly.” Her post caused a predictable furore – and even prompted an anonymous report to social services, who have opened a file on her child, Oscar. As I see it though, said Sam Leith in The Spectator, we should be celebrating Allsopp’s decision to let him stray that far from the coop. Ignore the busybodies and helicopter parents: “The average…

When Lando Norris allowed Max Verstappen to “blast ahead of him” at the start of the Dutch Grand Prix, the 24-year-old British driver must have feared the worst, said Phil Duncan in The Daily Telegraph. “An unwanted statistic” must have lingered over him “as he headed into Sunday’s race”: despite claiming pole position three times previously in his career, he had never once led after the opening corner. And on none of those occasions had he gone on to win: his solitary F1 victory, at Miami in May, had come from fifth on the starting grid. Yet at the Circuit Zandvoort, despite having let his initial lead slip, Norris superbly held his nerve. He “slipstreamed his way back past” Verstappen – who was seeking his fourth straight victory in his…

Football Erling Haaland scored a hat-trick as Manchester City beat Ipswich 4-1 in the Premier League. Pep Guardiola’s team lead the table on goal difference after two games. Chelsea recovered from last weekend’s defeat to City to beat Wolves 6-2. Tennis Emma Raducanu was knocked out of the first round of the US Open by Sofia Kenin. Dan Evans beat Karen Khachanov in five sets to progress to the second round. Cycling Britain’s Adam Yates won stage nine of the Vuelta a España. The overall leader is Australia’s Ben O’Connor.…

Remastered at Cristea Roberts Gallery The premise of this all-star exhibition of prints and works on paper is a simple but delightful one. A dozen major artists consciously revisit preexisting art historical masterpieces, taking in everything from whimsical stylistic homages to politically-charged reinterpretations of canonical scenes – from Michael Craig-Martin’s tutti-frutti riffs on Seurat’s Bathers at Asnières to Paula Rego’s riotous feminist rethink of Hogarth’s Marriage A-la-Mode. Roy Lichtenstein, perhaps the 20th century’s most consummately referential painter, pops up with a primary-coloured spin on Picasso’s classic series Le Taureau, only to find himself trumped by fellow pop artist Tom Wesselmann, who incorporates one of Lichtenstein’s own works into a jazzy still life. Elsewhere, Richard Hamilton bootlegs Picasso and his demoiselles into Velázquez’s Las Meninas, while Idris Khan transforms conceptual photographers…

Walthamstow takes on Gail’s With its “pedestrianised café culture” and seven-figure house prices, Walthamstow Village, in northeast London, “looks like the last word in gentrification”, said Andrew Anthony in The Observer. So you’d think the potential arrival of a Gail’s – that “signifier of a neighbourhood’s middle-class credentials” – would be a cause for celebration. But no: this month, Walthamstow hit the news when nearly 2,000 locals signed a petition objecting to plans for a branch of the bakery. They seem to be motivated mainly by a desire to preserve the area’s character, said Abigail Buchanan in Daily Telegraph. They worry that Gail’s, with its “massive scale and advertising reach”, could drive trade away from local businesses. The campaign also has a political dimension: in “staunchly Left-leaning” Walthamstow, many object…

● Peep Eyewear (peepeyewear.co.uk) will take old prescription glasses in return for a £10 voucher. A family-run business, it sells secondhand frames, does repairs, and can even turn your old glasses into sunglasses. ● Uppers and soles of old trainers can be repaired. Trainerarmour.com sells hole preventer kits for trainer heels and toes. If they can’t be mended, you can send up to 15kg of running shoes, football boots and hiking boots in any condition to the Jog On campaign (jogonagain.com) via Evri for £2. ● If you’ve lost a piece from a favourite jigsaw and can’t face throwing it away, Jigsaw Doctor (jigsawdoctor.com) charges from £18 to replace missing pieces. ● Donate new unworn undies to the Scottish charity SmallsForAll.org, which will also take new or worn bras in…

Michel Guérard 1933-2024 The French chef Michel Guérard, who has died aged 91, was “the last living legend” of nouvelle cuisine, said Le Monde. A three-Michelin-star chef from 1977 onwards at his restaurant Les Prés d’Eugénie, in Eugénie-les Bains in southwest France, he was the author of bestsellers including 1976’s La Grande Cuisine Minceur (The Cuisine of Slimness), which “amplified his international renown”. Paraphrasing Claude Monet, Guérard liked to say that he aspired “to cook as a bird sings”. His culinary philosophy was “free and joyful, combining accuracy with fluidity – made possible by the former pastry chef’s technical mastery and encyclopedic knowledge of culinary history”. Michel Guérard was born in Vétheuil, a village northwest of Paris, the son of a butcher, said The Guardian. At 14 he was apprenticed…

Beyoncé/Jay-Z The Bey-Z collection includes works by pop artists Andy Warhol and Ed Ruscha – and “gothically-inclined Brits” Tim Noble and Sue Webster. A Jean-Michel Basquiat they bought for $4.5m in 2013 is now estimated at $20m plus. Leonardo DiCaprio The actor also likes Ruscha and Basquiat, and the US minimalist Frank Stella. Lenny Kravitz The rock star has hung his Paris home with works by Basquiat and Warhol (“them again”), and street-inspired art by Keith Haring and Banksy. Oprah Winfrey The chat show host made headlines in 2016 when she sold Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II for $150m – a tasty profit on the $87.9m purchase price a decade earlier. Alicia Keys/Swizz Beatz The US singer and hip hop star are “mega-collectors” of principally black artists, including…

The week’s best shares Admiral Investors’ Chronicle The insurer has navigated the recovery in motor and accident insurance rates to deliver a 32% rise in profits (to £310m), boosting the dividend. There are cheaper alternatives, but its quality is key. Buy. £30.12. Assa Abloy The Daily Telegraph The Swedish home safety company is a global leader in locks and doors whose huge stable of brands includes Yale and Mul-T-Lock. Impressive profitability (historic 14-16% margins) and solid 8.5% annual growth spell “secure returns”. Buy. SEK 320.20. Creo Medical The Mail on Sunday A pioneer of tiny surgical tools that fit inside long endoscopic tubes, Creo has been picked by Intuitive Surgical to co-develop lung treatments. Shares have yet to register this potentially transformative deal. Buy. 29p. North Atlantic Smaller Companies The…

THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1429 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 9 September. Send it to The Week Crossword 1429, 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 1 Henry’s attached to fine semi (4) 5 Sort of party making a right row in lavatory (8) 9 Eastern capital has the French going round (5) 10 One seed out of date? Got it! (1,3) 11 Sort of fare for comprehensive (8) 12 Offer made by…

Adults and children in England can now access mental health services through the 111 helpline, the NHS announced this week. Those who call the number – which was previously reserved for people seeking help with physical ailments – and select a mental health option will be put through to a trained mental health professional, who will be able to facilitate one-to-one support or direct them to relevant local services such as “crisis cafés”. A similar scheme is already in place in Wales and Scotland.…

Liz Truss, who was accused of having considered removing all cancer treatment from the NHS during her tenure as PM. In his new biography, Anthony Seldon reports that the idea was put forward as a cost-saving measure, in the wake of the disastrous mini-Budget. Asked about it this week, the then-chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, said he had never discussed such a thing – “but that doesn’t mean the prime minister and her team didn’t”. However a spokesman for Truss insisted that the story was “untrue”.…

Phoenix, Arizona New friends: Robert F. Kennedy Jr (left) suspended his presidential campaign last week and endorsed Donald Trump. Kennedy’s entry as an independent had once threatened to upend the race, with early polls giving him as much as 19% of the vote. But having slumped since then, his ratings fell as low as 5% following Kamala Harris’s nomination for the Democrats. Kennedy will keep his name on the ballot in some states, but remove it in battleground ones where it could act as a “spoiler” for Trump. The 70-year-old said that he was once a “ferocious critic” of Trump, yet when he appeared alongside Trump at a rally in Arizona the two agreed on many issues, such as ending the Ukraine War. This week, Kennedy’s siblings issued a joint…

How Labour is undermining Whitehall Robert Colvile The Sunday Times Talk about double standards, says Robert Colvile. In opposition, Keir Starmer raged against the Tories’ lax ethical standards: now he too is accused of “stuffing Whitehall with his cronies”. Ministers have appointed a slew of Labour donors and advisers to civil service roles with scant regard for procedures. Starmer’s biggest personal donor, Lord Alli, was given a pass to No. 10 (since returned). Ian Corfield, the ex-banker who donated £5,000 to Rachel Reeves, was made temporary director of investment at the Treasury, though following an outcry he has now stood down. Labour insists it’s just giving clearer political direction to the civil service and is only doing what the Tories did. Hardly a defence, seeing that Starmer flayed them for…

Humans age in two bursts There are times in life when it feels as if you have grown older almost overnight – and now science may be able to explain why. New research in the US journal Nature Aging suggests that we experience two rapid bursts of ageing in adult life, one in our mid-40s and another at around 60. For the study, 108 volunteers in the US provided blood and stool samples and skin, oral and nasal swabs every few months for up to seven years. Scientists then looked at how levels of 135,000 different molecules (RNA, proteins and metabolites) and microbes in the samples changed over time. This allowed them to pinpoint two periods of dramatic change. The first is at 44, on average, and involves molecules linked…

Just before midday last Friday, the bells of the local church rang out over the village of Porticello, on the north coast of Sicily, said Robert Hardman in the Daily Mail. These bells had been sounded over the preceding days, to mark the return to the shore of each of the bodies recovered from the wreck of the Bayesian. This, however, was the “saddest toll of all”. It marked the death of Hannah Lynch, the youngest of the seven people who lost their lives when the 183ft yacht – which resembled a traditional sloop, except for its vast scale – sank in a storm in the early hours of 19 August. Eighteen years old, Hannah had just received A-level results that had won her a place at Oxford. Specialist divers…

“I am personally familiar with the horrors of Alzheimer’s,” said Catherine Pepinster in The Daily Telegraph: it’s a disease my mother suffered from. So I was delighted to hear last week that the first drug found to slow down the onset of the condition had been approved for use in the UK. No sooner had this good news emerged, though, than the health watchdog Nice announced that the drug would be denied to NHS patients on cost grounds. Trials have shown that 70,000 people in England with early-stage Alzheimer’s might have been eligible for treatment with lecanemab, the drug in question, at a cost of £30,000 a year per patient – adding up to a total potential bill of some £2.1bn. Granted, that’s a lot of money, but the NHS…

“It wasn’t pretty, and it certainly wasn’t Bazball,” said Lawrence Booth in the Daily Mail. But in their first Test against Sri Lanka, England did enough to get “the job done”. As the shadows lengthened on the fourth day at Old Trafford, Joe Root advanced down the pitch and “lofted the left-arm spin of Prabath Jayasuriya over mid-on” to seal a five-wicket victory. It was only the batsman’s second boundary in his 128-ball 62: such “hard toil” was indicative of a performance that was more about graft than flair. There are good reasons why England “put Bazball in cold storage”, said Nick Hoult in The Daily Telegraph. They were missing their injured captain, Ben Stokes, the main inspirer of their ultra-aggressive style. Ollie Pope, his replacement, understandably prioritised winning over…

What about the bankers? To The Times Robert Colvile denounced the supposedly greedy train drivers for their recent pay increase, which is actually over a three-year period. Why do right-wing commentators not express outrage over the far bigger pay rises, bonuses, dividends and perks awarded to millionaire chief executives, City bankers and corporate shareholders? Why are those not condemned as excessive or inflationary? Is the bile poured upon the train drivers motivated by hypocrisy, or anti-working-class snobbery? Pete Dorey, Bath Italian efficiency To The Times Paying train drivers £80,000 is simply crazy. Here in Italy, train drivers earn about £34,000, and the service provided is many times better. Lucian Comoy, Italy Short-term justice… To The New Statesman The Government, the police and our justice system have all done an impressive…

The Bush Theatre in West London has long championed new theatrical voices, said Dzifa Benson in The Daily Telegraph – and under the leadership of artistic director Lynette Linton, it is “punching well above its weight in 2024”. It recently transferred Red Pitch, about three young black footballers on a gentrifying estate, to the West End; now, the Congolese-British playwright Benedict Lombe’s “superb” romantic comedy Shifters is moving to the Duke of York’s Theatre with “much glitzy fanfare”, thanks to its starry line-up of new backers (which includes Idris Elba). Funny and “unabashedly romantic”, yet covering “epic existential themes”, the play is a triumph that has had audiences getting to their feet and “whooping”. This “beautiful” two-hander is about two thirtysomethings, Des and Dre, who first met at school as…

George is holed up in his bedroom. After pleading from Will and Emma, he reluctantly agrees to go to the police the next morning, but later makes a secret call asking for help. Paul reassures Alistair that he didn’t make the complaint to Head Office; at their meeting, Don James tells a relieved Alistair he won’t be disciplined. Preparing to bring George to the police, Emma and Will are dismayed to find he’s missing and not answering his phone; later he texts to say he’s safe. Will covers for George at Bridge Farm. With Denise and Alistair craving their own space, Denise decides to move in with Kirsty. Their plan is short-lived as Roy calls to say he’s putting Willow Farm on the market. At her GCSE celebration, Emma is…

Serves 4 For the beans: 200g dried broad beans, soaked overnight 200g dried white beans, soaked overnight 1 onion, peeled and chopped 1 carrot, peeled and chopped 1 celery stick, chopped 300g unsmoked pancetta with rind 1 sprig rosemary 2 garlic cloves, peeled and left whole For the soup base: 2 tbsp olive oil, plus extra for drizzling 1 onion, peeled and diced 1 carrot, peeled and diced 2 celery sticks, diced 3 garlic cloves, peeled and minced 1 sprig rosemary 2 bay leaves 1 potato, peeled and diced ½ turnip, peeled and diced 500ml vegetable stock To serve: 1 head of cavolo nero, roughly chopped and blanched 4 slices day-old sourdough bread 50g parmesan, freshly grated • Place the beans in a large casserole or saucepan with the onion, carrot, celery, pancetta, rosemary…

Beyond Retro is “the godfather of vintage fashion” and their flagship store in Dalston has 12,000 vintage items, including Western apparel from the US (beyondretro.com). North Laine in Brighton, East Sussex, is packed with vintage shops, including Snoopers Attic, which houses sellers specialising in different eras, from the 1960s to vintage bridal (snoopersparadise.co.uk). Opened on Edinburgh’s Grassmarket in 1840, W Armstrong & Son stocks all forms of pre-loved clothes, including kilts and tweed (armstrongsvintage.co.uk). Harrogate’s Catherine Smith stocks designer labels from the ’50s onwards, with clothes and accessories from brands like Ferragamo, Hermès and Chanel (catherinesmithvintage.co.uk). Clobber, in Bournemouth, Dorset, has fine vintage swimwear, plus a haberdashery section with vintage fabric and ’70s sewing patterns (vintageclobber.com). SOURCE: THE SUNDAY TIMES…

Nest Farmhouse Docking, Norfolk This new restaurant with rooms from the people behind London’s Michelin-starred St. Barts is a brilliant base for a North Norfolk break, says Hattie Garlick in The Daily Telegraph. Housed in a renovated cattle shed, it sits on a working farm in Docking, ten minutes inland from Burnham Market and some glorious beaches. The open-plan dining room is an “epic” space, with views over meadows and the hotel’s pond, and the “farm-to-plate” food is “magical”. Upstairs, the five rooms are wrapped in a vast veranda with wicker chairs, and are furnished in an attractive, if somewhat “neutral”, style. Rooms from £200 b&b, plus £70 for extra child’s bed. nestfarmhouse.co.uk.…

Hewlett Packard Enterprise: next moves? The “complicated legacy” of Mike Lynch is being felt acutely in the boardroom of his erstwhile foe Hewlett Packard Enterprise, said Oliver Shah in The Sunday Times. The US IT giant, which won a 2022 civil case against Lynch and his former Autonomy CFO Sushovan Hussain in the UK High Court, is waiting to be awarded damages by the judge and has asked for $4bn. Mr Justice Hildyard has already indicated it’ll get “substantially less”. So will HPE try “to enforce collection” from Lynch’s estate? Its top ranks have changed entirely since former CEO Meg Whitman “launched the epic litigation war” a decade ago, and might well “shrink at the prospect of being seen to pursue the widow of a man who had just 73…

A turning point for tech billionaires? Katie Prescott The Times The arrest in Paris of Telegram boss Pavel Durov shocked the tech world, says Katie Prescott: #FreePavel posts went viral on social media, cheered on by Elon Musk – who warned that free speech is under attack in Europe. “Perhaps he is scared he might be next.” French prosecutors argue that “Telegram’s encryption and lack of moderation” made it complicit in crimes plotted on the platform. Others counter that expecting Durov to prevent these activities is like “holding President Macron accountable for every crime in France”. They say his arrest is the thin end of a wedge – every social media boss is now vulnerable. “Wherever you stand, the arrest is a watershed moment”, coinciding as it does with a…

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