BRADLEY Parky: the The “beige”

COOPER’S king of the nurse who

BIG NOSE chat show turned killer
TALKING POINTS P21 OBITUARIES P11 MAIN STORIES P2

26 AUGUST 2023 | ISSUE 1450 THE BEST OF THE BRITISH AND INTERNATIONAL MEDIA

The pride of England

A near miss for the Lionesses
Page 2

ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT EVERYTHING THAT MATTERS theweek.co.uk

2 NEWS The main stories…
What happened
Lucy Letby’s conviction
The former nurse Lucy Letby was jailed for
life this week for what the judge called a
“cruel, calculated and cynical campaign of child
murder”. On Friday, she had been found guilty
of the murder of seven babies and the attempted
murder of six more while working as a neonatal
nurse at the Countess of Chester Hospital
between June 2015 and June 2016. Two of her
surviving victims were left severely disabled.
Letby, 33, is only the fourth woman in British
history to receive a whole-life sentence that
prevents her from ever being released. The others
were Myra Hindley, the Moors murderer, who
died in 2002, and the serial killers Rose West
and Joanna Dennehy. In what victims’ families
described as “one final act of wickedness”, Letby
refused to attend her sentencing on Monday.
What the editorials said
Letby’s crimes “rank among the most appalling that any jury
has confronted”, said The Guardian. There has inevitably been
much speculation about why she did it (see
page 20), but the question that really needs
answering is how she was able to get away
with it for so long. Hospital managers
displayed “an almost wilful blindness” to her
crimes, said The Times. The neonatal unit’s lead
consultant first raised the alarm in July 2015,
after the initial cluster of three unusual deaths,
but managers did nothing, classing them as
“medication errors”. When he later made
specific claims about Letby, backed up by
staff rota records, he was rebuffed. Another
consultant who voiced his alarm was urged
“not to make a fuss”. Hospital executives
subsequently went so far as to force the
doctors to sign a letter of apology to Letby
Letby: whole-life sentence for repeatedly raising concerns about her.

In the wake of her conviction, the Government ordered
an independent inquiry to examine the circumstances
surrounding the murders and how concerns raised by
clinicians were dealt with. Senior doctors tried to blow the
whistle on several occasions, to no avail. Letby was shifted to
an administrative role in 2016, but police weren’t contacted
until the following year. They arrested her in 2018.
It beggars belief that the worries of senior clinicians could
be ignored in this way by bureaucrats “more concerned with
PR than patient safety”, said Reaction. The non-statutory
independent inquiry announced last week, which would
lack the power to compel people to give evidence, is “totally
inadequate”. We need a judge-led public inquiry, with a
broad remit, to expose the lethal failings in the NHS.

What happened What the editorials said

Defeat for the Lionesses
England’s Lionesses flew home from Australia
this week, after their historic appearance in
Sunday’s World Cup final ended in a 1-0
defeat to Spain (see page 22). Olga Carmona’s
first-half goal at Sydney’s Stadium Australia
sealed Spain’s first-ever women’s football
World Cup win, ending England’s hopes of
replicating their triumph at last year’s Euros.
Defeat “hurt”, admitted England manager
Sarina Wiegman, but the Lionesses should
still be “very proud” of reaching the final.
The match was watched by a peak television
audience of 14.4 million in the UK, a record Wiegman with her team
for a Women’s World Cup final. Rishi Sunak
and Prince William – who is president of the Football
Association (FA) – were criticised for not, like Spain’s Queen in person. The final was the second most-watched BBC TV
Letizia, attending the match. Sunak was mocked for telling
the Lionesses that they “left nothing out there” in their
defeat (the usual expression is “left everything out there”).
Alas, said the Daily Mail, England’s “elusive quest” for a first
football World Cup trophy since 1966 continues. The Lionesses
“electrified a nation” during their four-week
adventure in Australia, giving us all a welcome
lift during a “wash-out summer”. In the end,
however, they “fell agonisingly short”. Spain
were the better team, said The Times, and
deserved their win. Dogged and determined
though they were, the Lionesses simply couldn’t
match their opponents’ “skill, strength and
speed”. Yet England could still “fly home with
heads held high, a credit to their nation”.
As for the tournament itself, it was a “ringing
endorsement” of the rising profile and calibre of
women’s football, said the FT. Some two billion
people around the world tuned into the ninth
Women’s World Cup, and just under two million attended
event of the year, after King Charles III’s coronation, and was
attended by 75,784 fans in the stadium. By all measures, then,
the tournament was a “step-up on the 2019 contest in France”.

It wasn’t all bad A cargo ship that has

A dog that went missing
from Princes Risborough in
Buckinghamshire in March 2021
has been found over two hours’
drive away. When Lola, a cocker
spaniel, was stolen outside her
owner Lydia Rampin’s house,
Rampin followed even the
vaguest of leads to track her
down, with no luck. Lola was
eventually found by a driver
in West Sussex who nearly ran
her over, then took her to a vet.
When they were finally reunited,
Rampin said, Lola “just went
nuts, then fell asleep on me”.
THE WEEK 26 August 2023
been fitted with giant,
Surgeons performed Britain’s
first womb transplant this week,
rigid sails designed to on a 34-year-old woman whose
cut the vessel’s carbon sister donated the organ. The
emissions set out on team at Churchill Hospital in
its maiden voyage Oxford spent eight hours
from Singapore this removing the womb from the
week. The Pyxis Ocean 40-year-old donor, who already
was chartered by the has two children, then nine
US commodities group hours implanting it into her
Cargill, in an attempt sister, who was in the operating
to investigate how theatre next door. The womb is
wind power could reduce energy usage in the shipping industry, said to be working “perfectly”,
which is estimated to account for about 2.1% of global carbon and both women have made a
dioxide emissions. The ship’s 123ft-tall, fibreglass “WindWings” full recovery. The recipient, who
sails, which were developed by the British firm BAR Technologies, was born without a uterus, now
can rotate and fold down to the ship’s deck. If they prove a success, hopes to have two children with
hundreds more ships are expected to be fitted with them. her husband via IVF treatment.
COVER CARTOON: HOWARD MCWILLIAM
 …and how they were covered NEWS 3
What the commentators said What next?
Letby, mercifully, is an aberration, said Ian Birrell in The i Paper, but this case is all too familiar No. 10 has not ruled out
in some respects. There have been more than 100 inquiries into various NHS scandals over the upgrading the independent
past half century, and they always flag up the same problems: “defensive management, systemic inquiry into Letby’s crimes to
inertia and silenced whistleblowers”. The first modern healthcare inquiry, in 1969, into abuse a “statutory” probe. It is also
of people with learning disabilities at a psychiatric hospital in Cardiff, stressed the need for looking for ways to compel
staff to raise concerns “without fear of victimisation”. Some protective legislation has since offenders to appear in the
been introduced for health whistleblowers, but the medical bureaucracy still “clings to dock, and has promised to
hierarchies” and fails to emulate sectors, such as aviation, that put safety at their heart. change the law in the King’s
Speech in the autumn.
Lessons have gone unlearnt, agreed Minh Alexander in The Guardian. More than 20 years Labour says the change
ago, the inquiry into the death of babies at the Bristol Royal Infirmary recommended that should happen sooner.
NHS managers should be professionally regulated, as medical staff are. Yet it hasn’t happened.
Failed senior managers can still walk away into other high-paid jobs. “NHS managers are often The police, meanwhile,
unfairly maligned,” said Isabel Hardman in The Spectator. Critics portray them as a waste of are reviewing all 4,000
space, when in fact the efficient running of the NHS depends on them. Yet they should be as admissions to neonatal units
accountable as clinicians, given that their decisions “can have life-and-death consequences too”. at the Countess of Chester
and Liverpool Women’s
Another thing that needs fixing, said Ian Acheson on CapX, is the deplorable new trend of Hospital (where Letby
murderers refusing to attend court for their sentencing hearings. It’s extraordinary that judges completed placements)
are unable to compel perpetrators to appear, in order that they be forced to confront the between 2012 and 2016 – the
enormity of their crimes in the presence of devastated families. I can understand why many period Letby was employed
people want this reform, said the Secret Barrister in The i Paper, but I doubt compulsion as a nurse. A source close to
would work in practice. Far from guaranteeing “an obedient and contrite defendant sitting the investigation said that
meekly in the dock”, it would more likely lead to “the hideous spectacle of a wild, bloodied detectives have identified 30
and bruised prisoner shouting foul abuse at the victims’ families in court”, to ensure the judge other babies who suffered
sends them back down to the cells. Some have suggested piping recordings of the proceedings “suspicious” incidents while
into a prisoner’s cell. This “may, if achievable, offer something of a halfway house”. Letby was on duty.

What the commentators said What next?

Sure, it would’ve been better if they’d won, said Zoe Williams in The Guardian. But in reaching Competition to host the
a World Cup final, the Lionesses “won the respect that’s been denied their game for nearly a next Women’s World Cup
century”. Back in 1920, women’s football was thriving and a Boxing Day game between Dick, in 2027 is already heating
Kerr Ladies and St Helen’s Ladies drew a crowd of 67,000. Yet far from promoting this success, up, says Samuel Agini in
the FA voted a year later to ban women from playing on Football League grounds, reasoning the FT. The Netherlands,
that the game was “quite unsuitable for females”. That ban was only lifted in 1970; the first Belgium and Germany are
Women’s World Cup wasn’t held until 1991; and 1920’s record crowd wasn’t bettered until interested in jointly hosting
2012. Today, the Lionesses’ success is “turbo-charging” interest in women’s football, said Matt the tournament, as are the
Dickinson in The Times. Their triumph in last year’s Euros led to a 15% rise in the number of US and Mexico. Brazil and
female youth teams, and Women’s Super League attendances have nearly trebled. England’s South Africa are among the
showing at this World Cup should give the women’s game another welcome shot in the arm. other likely contenders.
Formal bids are due in
Maybe so, said Camilla Long in The Sunday Times, but this tournament was hardly the December, and Fifa expects
“landmark feminist event” you might imagine. Fifa president Gianni Infantino, for instance, to announce a host in May.
used it to advise women demanding change to just “push the doors” and they will “open” – but
tersely told a questioner asking if the women’s prize money ($110m) should match the men’s Spain’s acting PM Pedro
($440m) to “pick your battles”. Meanwhile, Nike refused to even make a replica of England Sánchez criticised Rubiales
goalkeeper Mary Earps’s shirt, and Spanish football federation president Luis Rubiales planted for his “unacceptable” kiss
a clearly unwanted kiss on the lips of Spain forward Jenni Hermoso as she collected her medal. of a player during the
For all the “immense pride” it allowed us to feel in the Lionesses, said Jonathan Liew in The medal ceremony; but the
Guardian, this World Cup also reminded us of the sport’s “double-edged realities”. Yes, football football chief was this week
“is a game for extraordinary women”. But never forget that it is “still run by mediocre men”. resisting calls to resign.

THE WEEK
Editor-in-chief: Caroline Law
It’s remarkable how many big jobs, in Britain in 2023, we just can’t Editor: Theo Tait
Deputy editor: Harry Nicolle
seem to get done. A few well-worn examples from the sad to-do City editor: Jane Lewis Assistant editors: Robin de Peyer,
list: provide timely GP appointments; build houses in sufficient Leaf Arbuthnot Contributing editors: Simon Wilson,
Rob McLuhan, Catherine Heaney, Xandie Nutting,
quantities; stop vast amounts of sewage flowing into our rivers and waters; train enough doctors; Digby Warde-Aldam, Tom Yarwood, William Skidelsky
Editorial: Anoushka Petit, Tigger Ridgwell, Fiona Paus,
prosecute more than a tiny proportion of rape cases; investigate burglaries; provide NHS dentistry; Billie Gay Jackson Picture editor: Annabelle Whitestone
Art director: Katrina Ffiske Senior sub-editor: Simmy
raise industrial productivity; reform the social care system; stop the boats (admittedly not a problem Richman Production editor: Alanna O’Connelll
Editorial chairman and co-founder: Jeremy O’Grady
restricted to Britain); limit legal migration to levels set by our own government; settle industrial
disputes; run reliable rail services across the Pennines; build a high-speed line that might one day Production Manager: Maaya Mistry
Account Directors: Aimee Farrow, Steven Tapp,
actually reach central London; and carry out renovations on the crumbling Houses of Parliament. Amy McBride
Classified Sales Executive: Nubla Rehman
Why the inertia? One explanation, according to Robert Colvile (see page 13), is that the country is a Advertising Director – The Week, Wealth
& Finance: Peter Cammidge
defective gerontocracy, ruled by “your nan’s bridge club”, that is too scared to take on the grey vote. Managing Director, The Week: Richard Campbell
But there are many others: the long tail of austerity, for example – or, if you prefer, the side effects of SVP Lifestyle, Knowledge and News: Sophie Wybrew-Bond

being “a socialist country with a capitalist system, struggling to reconcile the two”, as the Schroders Future PLC, 121-
141 Westbourne
boss Peter Harrison puts it (see page 37). Andrew Rawnsley suggests, surely rightly, that Keir Terrace, London
W2 6JR
Starmer could do with a positive electoral message (also page 13). But I suspect that going round the
Editorial office:
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any form or by any means without the written permission of the publishers 26 August 2023 THE WEEK
4 NEWS Politics
Controversy of the week New Covid-19 variant

The class of ‘23 A new Covid-19 variant that

is causing concern among
scientists has been identified
“One of the hardest parts of growing up is learning that life in a patient in London, who
is not fair,” said the Evening Standard. This year’s cohort of has been placed under
A-level students, though, will have grasped that lesson with no surveillance by UK health
difficulty whatsoever. This is the generation who lost critical officials. Although there is no
months of schooling in Years 10 and 11 due to pandemic evidence to suggest that the
strain, known as BA.2.86,
closures, and weren’t able to sit their GCSEs. Their A levels
causes more serious illness
this year were their first public examinations – yet, unlike the or is more infectious than
previous three years, they missed out on the more generous other variants in circulation,
teacher-assessed grades: the Government decided that a scientists have discovered
return to tighter pre-pandemic standards of A-level marking that it shows a particularly
in England was needed (Wales and Northern Ireland put it high number of mutations
off for another year). As a result, said Tara Cobham in The (34). The person who is
Independent, the proportion of A* and A grades awarded in known to have contracted
England slumped from 35.9% to 26.5%, while that of low the variant was tested in a
London hospital on 13
grades surged. More university applicants than ever (nearly A-level results in Aberystwyth August and had no recent
48,000) failed to get a place, leaving them to take their chances history of overseas travel,
in the clearing system. However, 79% of UK applicants did gain a place at their first-choice suggesting the variant is
institution, down only marginally from 81% last year, and higher than in 2019. circulating freely within
the UK. It has already been
“At some point, A-level grades had to be returned to their pre-Covid standards in order to retain identified in the US, Israel
their credibility,” said Martin Stephen in The Daily Telegraph. But unfortunately, “we have moved and Denmark.
to rectify that problem too quickly”, inflicting “yet another blow on the lockdown generation”. That
the quality of one’s grades depends on which part of the UK one took the exam in is “bordering on New train strike dates
madness”. Education Secretary Gillian Keegan tried to reassure disappointed pupils by telling them Train drivers at 16 rail
companies, including Great
employers won’t care about their A-level results “in ten years’ time”, said The Guardian. Of course,
Western Railway, LNER and
no one wants exams to “make or break” young people’s lives. But it’s still a “bizarre” argument for Greater Anglia, will stage
someone in her job to make. Good exam results build “self-esteem and a sense that hard work is a strike on 1 September in
rewarded”, and shape future life chances. Alas, this year’s results confirm that “a gulf” is widening an ongoing row over pay
“between the most- and least-deprived pupils, and between independent and state schools”. and changes to working
practices, it was announced
No one would blame this year’s crop of school-leavers for “feeling hard done by”, said Alan Smithers last week. Aslef, the UK’s
in the Evening Standard. But the return to normality is “actually good news”. Whereas “wildly main train drivers’ union,
over-generous” marking led to misjudgements and higher drop-out rates at universities, students – as said its drivers would also
refuse to work overtime on
well as admissions officers and employers – will once again have a sound basis for making decisions.
2 September. The RMT, which
All those who passed their exams deserve congratulations, said The Times – but also sympathy: those represents other rail workers,
heading to university now enter a troubled sector beset by underfunding, accommodation shortages is due to hold two strikes for
and the “disgraceful” marking boycott by lecturers at 145 institutions. “This year’s school-leavers did 24 hours on 26 August and
well to gain A levels in a tough climate; they do not deserve to have university life ruined as well.” 2 September.

Good week for:

Spirit of the age
Waitrose and John Lewis
are offering free hot drinks
and discounted food to
on-duty police officers, in a
bid to cut soaring shoplifting
and violence against staff.
It’s hoped that the “Thanks
a Latte” initiative may
discourage thieves from
targeting a branch, if they
see a police car parked
outside. Assaults on
Waitrose employees have
roughly doubled since 2020,
according to the British
Retail Consortium.
The cost of the average
British wedding has risen
from £18,400 last year to
£24,069 this year, driven in
part by couples paying for
drone camera-operators to
immortalise their big day.
“Every detail now matters
and will be captured,”
explained Hamish
Shephard, founder of the
Bridebook wedding app.
Oliver Anthony, a previously unknown country singer who has Poll watch
made an unprecedented leap straight to No. 1 on the Billboard US Labour now has a 28-point
singles chart with a lament for America’s working class. Rich Men lead over the Tories among
North of Richmond, dubbed a “right-wing anthem”, blames low women in England and
pay, taxation and Northern politicians for the hardships suffered Wales, compared with a
by Americans. It has been streamed tens of millions of times. 22-point lead among men.
60% of women who say
India, which became only the fourth country ever to land a space- they’re “very worried” about
craft on the Moon, and the first to land one near the lunar south their finances plan to vote
pole. The Chandrayaan-3 craft touched down on Wednesday in Labour, six times more than
an area deemed to be of special interest, owing to the presence of intend to vote Conservative.
water ice, which could be useful for further space exploration. Labour Together/YouGov
Bad week for: Fewer than one in four
people believe that the UK
Fine dining, with the news that Michel Roux Jr is permanently should leave the European
closing his renowned two-Michelin-starred London restaurant, Convention on Human
Le Gavroche, next year. It was opened in 1967 by Roux’s late Rights. 49% want the
father, Albert, and uncle, Michel; but the chef, 63, says he now country to remain a
wants “a better work-life balance”. member; 28% want it to
Craft beer enthusiasts, with reports that more than 100 small leave, and 23% don’t know.
The Times/More in Common
brewers have gone out of business in 18 months. The closures
were blamed on a combination of Brexit, Covid and tax reforms 34% of adults in Great
that penalise drinks with higher alcohol content (see page 41). Britain say that if they are
British honeybees, which entomologists warn could be under alone at home and see a
threat from a new predator. Asian hornets, which kill, dismember big spider, they capture it.
and eat bees, are rare in the UK, but have been spotted in their 29% leave it be; 23% kill
greatest numbers yet this year in areas such as Dorset and Kent, it; 5% hide or run away.
and have previously hit bee numbers in countries such as France. YouGov

THE WEEK 26 August 2023

 Europe at a glance
Parma, Italy
Cheese chips:
Italian parmesan-
makers have
begun embedding
microchips into
the rinds of their
cheeses, in a drive
to distinguish
their produce
from copycat
versions. The hard
cheese must be
matured for at least a year and made in
northern provinces such as Parma and
Reggio Emilia to qualify as Parmigiano
Reggiano under EU rules; but in recent
years, the market has been flooded by
counterfeits. In response, the Parmigiano
Reggiano Consortium has announced it
will fit cheese wheels with digestible micro-
transponders, which are about the size of
a grain of sand, and can be scanned by
buyers to verify the cheese’s authenticity.
Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain
Raging wildfires: The Canary Islands
saw their worst wildfire in at least 40
years last week when a blaze in a steep,
craggy area of northern Tenerife burned
out of control for six days. The fire was
located far from the island’s popular
southern tourist resorts, but threatened
11 townships and forced the evacuation
of 12,000 people as it tore through
more than 14,000 hectares of pine
forest and scrub. Authorities said it was
a miracle that no houses were touched.
Roughly 450 firefighters and soldiers
were deployed, with 23 water-carrying
helicopters and planes, but the
topography made access very difficult.
Meanwhile, in the Evros area of
northern Greece, 18 bodies were found
in a forested area that had been hit by
wildfires during the preceding four
days. Initial reports suggested that
those who died were migrants.
Lausanne, Switzerland
Chess ban: Transgender women have
been banned from competing in top-level
women’s chess tournaments for up to two
years or more, while the game’s governing
body assesses whether they have an unfair
advantage. The Swiss-based International
Chess Federation (FIDE) said that people
who have transitioned from male to female
could still compete in open tournaments,
but would have “no right” to join female
events, pending “further analysis”. The
move was criticised by current and former
players, who questioned whether biological
sex offers any advantage in the game
(though the top rankings of the game are
overwhelmingly dominated by men). Some
suggested it was publicised by FIDE to
distract from allegations raised this month
by senior players that chess has tolerated
prevalent “sexual violence” committed by
players, coaches, officials and managers.
Catch up with daily news at theweek.co.uk
NEWS 5
Stockholm Moscow
Nuclear plans: Sweden’s climate minister Space setback: Russia’s first lunar mission
has said the country will build at least in 47 years ended in failure on Saturday,
ten large nuclear reactors and return to when the country’s unmanned Luna-25
uranium mining in the next 20 years, as spacecraft spun out of control and crashed
it seeks to increase its low-emission energy into the Moon. The probe was due to be
capacity. Romina Pourmokhtari – who last the first to land at the lunar south pole,
year became the youngest-ever Swedish which scientists believe has reserves of
cabinet minister, at the age of 26 – said water ice that could be used as potential
that atomic energy was needed to keep resources for future missions, as well as
the country’s power supply steady through precious elements. But Russia’s space
the peaks and troughs of wind and solar agency, Roscosmos, said it had lost contact
power generation. The announcement with the uncrewed 800kg lander, and that
comes as several EU states are seeking local preliminary findings suggested it had
sources of uranium, because global supply “ceased to exist as a result of a collision
chains are vulnerable (almost 40% of the with the lunar surface” – a new setback
fuel is processed in Russia, for example). for Russia’s ailing space sector. In stark
Sweden has roughly 80% of the bloc’s contrast, India successfully landed a craft
uranium deposits, but a moratorium near the lunar south pole on Wednesday.
on mining them was imposed in 2018.
Pourmokhtari’s policy was criticised in
Sweden on the grounds that it would
be too expensive, too slow and too
environmentally damaging.
Chernihiv, Ukraine
Theatre attack: At least seven people, including a
six-year-old child, were killed and 180 injured in
a Russian strike on a theatre in the Ukrainian city of
Chernihiv on Saturday. Many of the casualties were
people returning from church having celebrated a
festival. The roof of the theatre later collapsed. A city
50 miles from the Russian border and 400 miles from
the war’s frontline, Chernihiv has no obvious military
significance, but it appears that Moscow may have
targeted the building because it was hosting a meeting of drone designers at the time.
The Netherlands and Denmark announced that they would donate US-made F-16
fighter jets to Ukraine, days after Washington approved their transfer. On visits to
both countries this week, President Zelensky greeted the decisions as “historic”,
indicating that he expected to receive more than 40 of the aircraft, though training
Ukrainian pilots to fly them will take six months, delaying their deployment. Zelensky
had been pressing for the use of F-16s for months, to counter Russian air superiority
and to help in Kyiv’s slow-moving counteroffensive. However, there were concerns
that Moscow would see any donations as evidence of direct Nato involvement;
Russian officials warned that it would lead to “an escalation” of the conflict.
26 August 2023 THE WEEK
6 NEWS The world at a glance
Kelowna, Canada
Mass evacuations: About 30,000 people were ordered to flee their
homes in British Columbia, as the worst wildfires in Canadian
history continued to rage across the country this week. Officials
declared a state of emergency covering the whole province as fires
charred homes in West Kelowna (pop. 36,000) and left nearby
Kelowna (pop. 150,000) choked with thick smoke. Some of the
flames from the fires reportedly reached 400ft high. About 1,000
miles north, more huge fires were edging towards Yellowknife, the
capital of Canada’s Northwest Territories, where about 19,000 of
the city’s 20,000 residents had evacuated by the time an official
deadline had expired last Friday. It is not yet clear when they will
be able to return. In all, more than 1,000 fires are still burning in
Canada. About 14 million hectares of land have burned in the
country this wildfire season, an area about the size of Greece.
Des Moines, Iowa
GOP race: A surge in support for
Republican presidential hopeful Vivek
Ramaswamy was fuelling speculation this
week that the biotech entrepreneur could
emerge as a potential vice-presidential
running mate for frontrunner Donald
Trump. Ramaswamy, the 38-year-old
son of Indian immigrants, has soared to
third in the polls in a crowded field of
GOP hopefuls by running to the right
of Trump, on a small government,
anti-woke and isolationist agenda. His
profile was raised last week when he rapped along to Eminem’s
Lose Yourself during an appearance at the Iowa State Fair.

Atlanta, Georgia
Trump’s surrender: Donald Trump announced this week
that he planned to surrender to authorities in Georgia,
where he faces 13 criminal charges related to his efforts
to overturn the 2020 election result. The former
president said he’d fly to Atlanta on Thursday this
week to be “arrested by a Radical Left District Attorney”,
referring to Fani Willis, the Democratic D.A. in Fulton County,
Georgia. Along with 18 others accused in the case, he had been
given until Friday to appear at Fulton County Jail, where he was
expected to be fingerprinted and have a mugshot taken. Trump
insists the charges filed against him are politically motivated, and
is expected to plead not guilty at a hearing in September.

Palm Springs, California

Storm hits: California was this week lashed by the first tropical
storm to hit the state in 84 years, bringing with it strong winds
and historic levels of rainfall. Storm Hilary had weakened from
a Category-1 hurricane before making landfall in the US, but still
caused significant disruption: the desert city of Palm Springs was
temporarily cut off, after the storm dumped months’ worth of rain
(3.18 inches) there in one day; and at least 13 people were rescued
from swollen rivers in San Diego, which recorded its wettest ever
day after 1.82 inches fell. The storm had earlier hit Mexico’s
Baja California with more ferocity: nearly 13 inches of rain were
recorded in 24 hours in some areas, and at least one person died.

Guatemala City
Shock winner: Anti-corruption
candidate Bernardo Arévalo
secured a shock win in
Guatemala’s presidential
election this week, as voters
turned against a political
elite that has faced repeated
allegations of graft. The 64-year
old – who is the son of the popular ex-president Juan José Arévalo
– won 58% of votes, to the 37% secured by his rival Sandra
Torres. Outgoing president Alejandro Giammattei had repeatedly
cracked down on anti-graft prosecutors, leading to warnings that
democracy was at risk. The result is likely to be challenged in the
courts before Arévalo’s scheduled inauguration in January.

Lahaina, Hawaii Quito

Biden visits: With some 850 people still missing in the wake of
the devastating wildfires that hit the Hawaiian island of Maui
earlier this month, President Biden visited the stricken state and
pledged federal government support “for as long as it takes”.
At least 114 people are confirmed to have died in the fires that
incinerated the tourist town of Lahaina; but experts said that
identifying all of the victims could take months or even years.
Biden described the destruction as “overwhelming” during
Monday’s visit, when he was heckled by protesters who have
complained that aid to Hawaii was too slow to arrive. Officials
said that 1,200 people previously listed as missing have been
found. Search and rescue operations continued this week.
Run-off awaits: After a campaign
marred by deadly political violence,
Ecuador’s presidential election failed
to produce a winner with a clear majority this week, paving the
way for a run-off vote to be held in October. Leftist candidate
Luisa González fared best in Sunday’s ballot, winning a 33%
vote share, while her 35-year-old rival Daniel Noboa, the son
of a well-known banana magnate, defied pollsters’ expectations
by taking second place, with 23%. The snap election was held
against a backdrop of rising crime in the Andean nation, where
three politicians, including anti-corruption presidential candidate
Fernando Villavicencio, were assassinated in the last four weeks.
The surge in violence has been blamed on organised crime gangs.

THE WEEK 26 August 2023

 The world at a glance
Fass Boye,
Senegal
Migrant tragedy:
At least 63
migrants are
believed to have
died on a boat
that broke down
en route from
Senegal to the
Canary Islands,
and was adrift in
the Atlantic for a
month. The boat reportedly left the fishing
village of Fass Boye on 10 July, carrying
roughly 101 people. It was found last week
by a Spanish fishing vessel 150 miles north
of the Cape Verde islands, with just 38
survivors on board. At least 778 others
are thought to have died on the route from
west Africa to the Canary Islands this year.
Riyadh
Mass killings:
Border guards in
Saudi Arabia have
regularly opened
fire on groups of
Ethiopian migrants
crossing into the kingdom from Yemen,
killing “at least hundreds”, according to
a new report from Human Rights Watch.
Covering the period between March 2022
and June 2023, the report draws on
photos, video footage, satellite imagery
and the testimony of dozens of witnesses
to detail alleged massacres of groups of
unarmed men, women and children, often
using explosives, along with a series of
other atrocities. There are about 750,000
Ethiopians living in Saudi, who have
mostly travelled there via Djibouti and
Yemen. The report says the violence has
escalated into a systematic campaign that
may amount to a crime against humanity.
Bangkok
Shinawatra returns: The former prime
minister Thaksin Shinawatra returned to
Thailand this week after 15 years in exile,
as one of the leading lights of his Pheu
Thai party, Srettha Thavisin, was chosen to
lead the country’s government. A populist
leader who was often at loggerheads with
Thailand’s powerful military establishment,
Shinawatra was ousted in a coup in 2006
and sentenced in absentia to eight years in
jail on corruption charges. On his return
to Bangkok he was imprisoned, but is
expected to receive a pardon or a reduced
sentence as part of an agreement that has
returned Pheu Thai to power. The general
election in May was won by the reforming
Move Forward Party, but its leader, Pita
Limjaroenrat, was blocked from office by
military-backed parties, which approved
the deal with Pheu Thai.
Battagram,
Pakistan
Cable car rescue:
Eight people,
including seven
children, were
successfully
rescued after
becoming trapped
in a cable car that
was left dangling
274 metres above
a ravine in a
remote mountainous area in Battagram
district, about 125 miles north of the
capital Islamabad. The gondola was left
dangling for 15 hours after one of its
cables snapped; it was carrying the
children, aged between ten and 15, to
school. Some of the group were rescued by
commandos using helicopters on Tuesday.
After nightfall, others were safely brought
back down to the ground by zip line.
NEWS 7
Fukushima, Japan
Radioactive waste: Japan announced
that it would begin pumping more than
a million tonnes of wastewater from the
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant
into the sea this week. The plant, wrecked
by a tsunami in 2011, is still decades away
from being dismantled, and continues to
contaminate 150 tonnes of water every
day as its reactors are cooled. Even after
treatment, the water – currently stored
in 1,000 tanks that are now nearly full
– contains traces of the radioactive isotope
tritium. Regulators from the International
Atomic Energy Agency say that nuclear
plants around the world regularly
discharge similar amounts and that,
pumped out over the course of 30 years, it
will have negligible environmental impact.
But China and environmental groups such
as Greenpeace expressed deep scepticism.
Beijing
Population gloom: China’s
fertility rate dropped to
a record low of 1.09 in
2022, new figures have
shown, further stoking
government concerns over
the country’s shrinking
and ageing population.
The rate – a snapshot of
how many children the
average Chinese woman
will have in her lifetime
– fell from 1.15 in 2021,
and is the lowest of any
country with a population
over 100 million. Last
year, the country’s
population shrank for
the first time in six
decades, falling by
850,000 to
1.41 billion.
New Delhi
Legal language: India’s supreme court has
issued new guidance urging lawyers and
judges to reject sexist language, and
alerting them to its distorting effects on
the application of the law. The 30-page
handbook singles out archaic terms for
women still widely used in Indian courts
– including “seductress”, “adulteress”,
“slut” and “harlot”, along with adjectives
such as “chaste”, “promiscuous” and
“ladylike”. It suggests using the phrase
“sex worker” in place of “prostitute”, and
“sexual harassment” instead of the popular
Indian term “Eve-teasing”.
26 August 2023 THE WEEK
8 NEWS
The £25,000 stairwell
A disused stairwell, encased in
dirty glass and backing onto a
southwest London car park, is
not something that would send
most people’s pulses racing,
says Jane Fryer in the Daily
Mail. But for Simon Squibb,
the entrepreneur who snapped
up the stairwell for £25,000 at
an auction earlier this month,
it is the most exciting thing he
has ever bought. “I’ve got a
nice house and a nice car, but
this is different,” he says. “It
really resonates.” At 15, Squibb
slept in a stairwell just like it,
having seen his father die of a
heart attack, then been made
homeless after a “catastrophic”
falling out with his mother. “It
was a traumatic time and I left
with nothing, not even a bag,”
he says. “I had no money, no
possessions. I begged for food
and money.” He got his life
together, however, and set
up a gardening business, then
went on to establish many
other companies. As for what
he’ll do with his stairwell now
he has it, he’s not sure. It could
be a pop-up space for fledgling
entrepreneurs – which he’d
offer free, along with advice.
Squibb, now 49, doesn’t see it
as just a stairwell. “It’s a tower
of hope!” he cries. “A stairwell
of dreams! One step at a time
and your dreams come true!”
Heroism on London Bridge
In November 2019, Darryn
Frost, who was then a rather
disillusioned civil servant
at the Ministry of Justice,
went to Fishmongers’
Hall in London to
attend a prisoners’
rehabilitation
event. In the
afternoon, he
heard shouting
outside the main
hall and went to
see what was going
on. He found a scene
of utter carnage: the
terrorist Usman
Khan had stabbed
two people (Saskia
Jones and Jack
Merritt, who died
of their injuries),
and was trying to
attack others. Frost
grabbed a pair of
narwhal tusks that
were on display on
the wall, and, along
with two other men
– both former prisoners
– forced Khan out of the
THE WEEK 26 August 2023
People
building and onto London
Bridge. There, Frost stabbed
Khan with the tusk, disabling
him, before he was shot dead
by police. Today, Frost says
he has been deeply affected by
that day. “I don’t want to seem
like a victim, but it affected me
mentally, psychologically”, he
told Sean O’Neill in The Times.
“Even now I sweat profusely
when I talk about it.” It also
triggered a radical change in
his life. He left his job and
started a project that provides
housing for prison leavers
in Northampton. Despite
everything, he sees Khan as a
person who was failed by the
system. Expelled from school
at 13, he was sent to prison for
terror offences at 20; he was
never rehabilitated. “I think
he still had humanity in him,
though I know that’s not a
popular view,” Frost says.
“He had nothing left to live for.
His life was one of boredom,
loneliness and misery and for
me, that is more dangerous
than anything else.”
Feltz’s return to dating
The TV presenter Vanessa Feltz
(pictured) broke up with her
fiancé Ben Ofoedu in January,
after learning he’d been
unfaithful. It was, she told Cole
Moreton in the Daily Mail, a
devastating time. “I felt like
a depleted balloon, like my
confidence had been crushed
out of me,” she says. But
her approach since has
been to keep furiously
busy. She has been out
“every single night
since 14 January”, as
she can’t bear the
idea of whiling
away the night
in an empty
house; and she’s
looking for love.
“People say,
‘Oh, when you
get to your age
[61], all you
really want is
a companion.’
Absolute tosh.
When you get to
this age, you want
exactly what you
wanted when you
were 14. You want
to fall in love and
be swept off your
feet. You want
to feel all the
flutterings in all
the different areas
of your anatomy.”
Grayson Perry has just opened the biggest exhibition of his career,
at Scotland’s National gallery – and it has brought on an epiphany,
he told Mark Hudson in The Independent. “I’ve come to realise I’m
a very old-fashioned artist,” he says. When he was pulling the show
together, his concerns were, “Do the colours go together, are the
compositions working, is it a nice texture?” – basically, “what looks
good together”. In the art world these days, he laments, “there is
a lot of emphasis on issues. People forget that it’s got to look nice,
that we go to galleries for fun. We go to galleries on our days off.
We don’t go to get homework.” He has, he concedes, covered plenty
of issues over the course of his career, from gender and sexuality to
class and religion. “But there’s a lot of art around today that has the
dour veneer of seriousness, but is actually just a bit shit,” he says.
A lot of it “feels like student work. Like it hasn’t occurred to the artist
that anyone else might have thought that climate change is a bad
thing.” His pieces, he says, aren’t thrown together to make a point.
“They take a long time to make. They’re special! I don’t want to
walk into a gallery and see any old bit of junk that’s been dragged in
and anointed with the magic fairy dust of contemporary art in a way
that goes back to Marcel Duchamp [who turned a urinal into a work
of art in 1917]. That fairy dust is now worn out. It’s been done!”
Viewpoint:
Farewell
The Barbie effect Beverley Hodson, OBE,
“Mattel plans to maximise on Barbie’s the first female
popularity by making films based on executive director of
Hot Wheels, Polly Pocket, Boglins, WH Smith, died 27 July,
aged 72.
Matchbox cars, Uno, Rock ’Em Sock
’Em Robots and the Magic 8 Ball. And Jerry Moss, co-founder
before Barbie came along, the highest- of A&M Records whose
grossing film of the year was The label sold millions of
records for Carole King
Super Mario Bros. Movie, based on and the Police, died
a Nintendo video game. Nintendo is 16 August, aged 88.
rumoured to be working on movies
based on The Legend of Zelda and Renata Scotto, Italian
soprano of dramatic
Donkey Kong. This is just where we are intensity, died 16
now, isn’t it? Every movie we ever go August, aged 89.
and see for the rest of our lives is going
to either be based on a toy or a game. Martin Walser, one
of Germany’s most
It’s enough to make you nostalgic for important postwar
© NICK MAILER
the Marvel superhero films. Barbie has novelists, died 26 July,
become death, destroyer of worlds.” aged 96.
Stuart Heritage in The Guardian
Desert Island Discs will return in the autumn
 Obituary 11

The leading British chat show host of his time

Michael For several decades, Parkinson moved to London to work
Parkinson Michael Parkinson, for the Daily Express, covering the Lady
1935-2023 who has died aged Chatterley’s Lover trial. On Fleet Street,
88, “was one of the he took any assignment going, writing
most ubiquitous figures on national about sport – as he would for the rest
television”, said Stephen Bates in of his life – and, after moving into
The Guardian. He was not the first to television, doing a stint as a war
host a chat show in the UK, but he was correspondent in the Congo and during
the most versatile and enduring. “With the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War. “With
his wry, confiding demeanour and his his craggy good looks, wit and a warm
characteristic facial twitchiness, asking personality attracting admiration across
polite but occasionally convoluted the TV industry, it was no surprise that
questions in his soft Yorkshire accent, in 1971 the BBC invited him to present
often while fiddling self-consciously with a chat show based on the American
his hair or scratching his nose, he model, such as The Ed Sullivan Show.”
interviewed more than 2,000 guests over
20 years”. They included many of the The show, Parkinson, would run for 11
biggest names of the age, from Lauren years, regularly attracting audiences of
Bacall to Madonna, David Bowie to 12 million, said The Daily Telegraph.
David Beckham, W.H. Auden to Henry The list of 1,000 guests reads like a
Kissinger, Miss Piggy to Nelson Mandela. compendium of showbiz and sporting
Parkinson’s technique was sometimes stars, with the occasional intellectual
criticised as deferential, even starstruck. heavyweight thrown in. He flirted with
He disagreed. “It’s not bloodsport and Raquel Welch, sparred with Muhammad
I am not interviewing war criminals or Parkinson: formed an easy rapport with his guests Ali (see box), coped with a drunken
paedophiles,” he pointed out. “I am Robert Mitchum, introduced a young
interviewing people whose only crime is to entertain people.” Billy Connolly to a wider audience, and was savaged by the
ventriloquist Rod Hull’s Emu (“The only thing I was ever
Born in Cudworth, South Yorkshire in 1935, he was the only remembered for,” he complained years later, “was being attacked
child of Jack Parkinson, a miner at Grimethorpe colliery, and his by a f**cking emu.”). The show made him a national figure; but
wife Freda, who encouraged her son to read and took him to the in 1982, at the height of his popularity, he quit the BBC when the
cinema four times a week. He described her as “the engine of my corporation refused to run his show five nights a week.
ambition”, opening up “the
prospect of a life beyond the The 1980s were “a frustrating
confines of a pit village”. From “He flirted with Raquel Welch, introduced period for Parkinson”. He was
his home on a council estate, a young Billy Connolly to wider audience, one of five big-name presenters
Parkinson won a scholarship co-opted to front TV-am’s
to Barnsley Grammar School. and was savaged by Rod Hull’s Emu” new breakfast programme, but
To make sure he never ended up the venture failed amid much
down the pit, his father took him into the mine as a boy to show acrimony, and Parkinson moved on to an undistinguished stint as
what working conditions underground were really like. But he the presenter of Desert Island Discs; he also did a series of minor
didn’t thrive at school, gaining only two O levels, and left at 16 TV shows. He drank heavily. To combat stress, he said, “I go out
to work as a journalist on the South Yorkshire Times. He bought and get pissed.” The 1990s would be better. He wrote an admired
a bike and cycled “25 miles a day around a cluster of pit villages, weekly sports column in The Daily Telegraph, and in 1998, after
interviewing anyone who would stand still for two minutes”. a gap of 16 years, Parkinson returned to the BBC, where it had
a very successful run until 2004. Then it was moved from its slot
When he was 19, Parkinson was a good enough batsman to keep to make way for Match of the Day, and Parkinson – who always
Geoffrey Boycott out of the Barnsley cricket team, said The Times. had a well-developed sense of his own worth – moved it to ITV.
But “a disastrous trial” with Yorkshire
put paid to his cricketing ambitions; Parky’s sticky moments He settled in Bray, Berkshire, and even
he was repeatedly bowled out by the There were times when Parkinson’s easy rapport after he retired from his show in 2007,
great Fred Trueman. He went to the with his guests failed him. He outraged Helen Mirren he continued to write and present TV
trial with his friend Dickie Bird, later in 1975 when he introduced her as the “sex queen” and radio programmes, and to dismiss
a celebrated umpire. “What does tha’ of the Royal Shakespeare Company, and asked if her other chat shows as “gimmicky, loud,
mate, Parkinson, do?” the coach, “equipment” – her “bosoms” – hindered her acting. vulgar and totally incomprehensible”.
Arthur Mitchell, asked Bird. “He (She later called him a “sexist old fart”, to which he Parkinson was married for more
works on the local newspaper,” Bird responded curtly: “I’m Yorkshire.”) More notorious than 60 years to Mary Heneghan,
replied. “I’ve got some advice for still was his run-in with Meg Ryan in 2003, when the a schoolteacher whom he met on
actress bristled at every question. In exasperation
him,” said Mitchell. “Tell him to stick he asked her: “What would you do now if you
a bus in Manchester, and who later
to journalism.” Parkinson took the were me?” She replied: “Why not wrap it up?” became a television presenter. They
hint, and continued as a cub reporter Parkinson’s exchanges with Muhammad Ali, whom had three children, who survive him:
until National Service. It proved “the he interviewed four times, were spiky. The boxer Andrew, a TV producer; Nick,
making of him” – he was made a press called him a “honky” and told him he was “too a restaurateur; and Michael Jr, who
officer, and a captain, during the Suez small mentally to tackle me on anything I represent”. ran his father’s production company.
Crisis of 1956. After being demobbed, He was, though, Parkinson’s favourite guest: “I went Parkinson was appointed CBE in
Parkinson joined the Barnsley in with him four times and I lost on every occasion,” 2000 and knighted in 2008. He liked
Chronicle and then the Manchester he said. Ali also enjoyed their sparring. “I used to to quote his father’s verdict on his
Guardian, where “the largely come here a long time ago to fight a guy called life: “You’ve done well, son, and I’m
Parkinson,” he said when he received the BBC’s
Oxbridge staff called him ‘clodpole’, proud of you, but you’ve got to admit
Sports Personality of the Century award in 1999.
reinforcing his Northern chippiness”. it’s not like playing for Yorkshire.”

26 August 2023 THE WEEK

 Best articles: Britain NEWS 13
“I wake up every morning imagining the ways in which we
could still f**k it up.” So a senior member of Keir Starmer’s team IT MUST BE TRUE…
Keir Starmer’s recently confided to me, says Andrew Rawnsley. Labour enjoys
a double-digit poll lead, and “virtually everyone” assumes they’ll
I read it in the tabloids

missing win the next election, but four consecutive defeats and 13 years in
the “wilderness of opposition have left deep psychological scars”.
A prominent Italian banker
has caused a furore with the
striking speech he gave at his
ingredient Hence their obsession with reassuring swing voters and closing off
Tory lines of attack, described as a “small target” strategy. Labour
engagement party. “Tonight
I want to give Cristina the
Andrew Rawnsley has postponed some of their more ambitious proposals, such as freedom to love,” Massimo
the green prosperity plan, and reversed many others, such as their Segre declared at a banquet
The Observer commitment to strengthen workers’ rights. The danger is that at his Turin mansion, as
it is “becoming best known not for the policies it promotes, but members of Torinese high
for the pledges it has ditched”. The caution is understandable, society looked on and his
fiancée Cristina Seymandi
and Starmer is right to think that today’s jaded electorate has no stood next to him.
appetite for “messianic speeches” and wild promises. To succeed, “Specifically, to love another
though, Labour does need to generate “some sense of excitement” person, a notable lawyer,
about what it could deliver. “The missing ingredient is hope.” whom she clearly cares for
more than me,” he added.
“Food rationing is over. People can swear on the BBC. Calling her “my dear
Homosexuality is legal.” We’ve moved on since the 1950s, thank Cristina”, he declared: “I
It’s time to goodness, says The Economist, but one holdover from that era
remains: the green belt. The swathes of protected land encircling
know how much you are in
love with him mentally and
sexually”; then he wished her
scrap the cities have grown over the years and now make up 12.6% of
England. This has prevented urban sprawl, but at the cost of
and the lawyer “happiness”.
A video of the speech,
green belt causing chronic housing shortages inside cities, and longer
commutes. We should scrap the green belt. “True greenfield land
which has gone viral, shows
Seymandi staring at Segre in
Editorial – the sort the public treasures” – could be just as well protected silence before walking off. Her
by designating more of it as, say, an Area of Outstanding Natural lawyers have since accused
The Economist Beauty. We’d then be free to put scrubbier areas on the fringes of him of committing an act of
cities to better use. Green-belt land within 800 metres of railway “psychological violence”.
stations around our biggest cities could fit 850,000 homes, while
just 10% of it could accommodate five million. The Labour Party
has promised to “take on the taboo” of the green belt. Let’s hope
it means it. By protecting the wrong bits of land, the green belt is
distorting housing policy and strangling our economy.

The best way to understand the British state today, says Robert
Colvile, is “to assume that it’s secretly controlled by your nan’s
Your nan’s bridge club”. Time and again, on issue after issue, politicians are
prioritising the interests of the elderly. While younger voters deal
bridge club with frozen tax thresholds, benefit cuts and ruinously expensive
childcare costs, the elderly get winter fuel payments and big rises A “state-of-the-art” school
runs the UK to the state pension under a triple-lock system that apparently
poses no inflation threat. It was typical that when ministers
in North Tyneside has been
mocked for looking like a
Robert Colvile came up with a plan to fix social care, it didn’t involve any levy giant sperm. The distinctive
on property wealth but a hike in national insurance – “a tax shape of Monkseaton High
The Sunday Times the elderly don’t even pay”. Owing to “hilariously unaffordable School was highlighted by
housing”, people are having to wait ever longer to start a family. a former pupil, who shared
And when they do, they receive far less support than parents in aerial shots of the building
countries such as France, which “slashes families’ tax bills by on Facebook, along with the
thousands of euros for every child they have”. The power of the allegation: “Surely someone
grey vote means politicians have little electoral incentive to push knew.” “Inconceivable,”
for more housebuilding and a fairer distribution of taxes and one Facebook user replied.
care costs. But the case must be made. “Justice for the young!” “Were there a lot of teen
pregnancies?” asked another.
Is it possible to have such a thing as an ethical corporate sponsor
An estate agent in Iran has
under our capitalist system? Not to judge by the recent fuss at
been arrested for selling an
The high Edinburgh’s International Book Festival, says the FT. The climate
activist Greta Thunberg, set to be the gathering’s big attraction,
apartment to a dog. The
incident came to light when
price of pulled out in protest at the event’s main sponsor, Edinburgh
investment firm Baillie Gifford. She said the company was trying
a video shared online showed
a childless couple transferring
green piety to use its sponsorship of the arts to “greenwash” its reputation.
An open letter signed by 50 authors called on the festival to find
the ownership of their
property to their small,
Editorial a new sponsor next year. But if Baillie Gifford’s money isn’t clean white dog, Chester. In the
enough, whose is? The firm only invests 2% of its clients’ funds in video, Chester places his
Financial Times paws on an ink pad (with
companies that make some of their profits from fossil fuels, which
human assistance), thus
is “beneath the average for its peers”. At the same time, 5% of its “sealing” the contract. Iran’s
clients’ funds are apparently invested in companies “whose sole deputy prosecutor general
purpose is to develop clean energy solutions”. The arts world has said the sale sought to
should tread carefully. If it makes unreasonable demands of the “normalise the violation of
sponsors it depends on, it risks – in the recent words of Sir Ian the society’s moral values”,
Blatchford, director of London’s Science Museum – being “eaten and had “no legal basis”.
alive by its own piety”. That won’t help the green cause.

26 August 2023 THE WEEK

14 NEWS Best of the American columnists
Trump’s violent rhetoric: a threat to the US justice system?
“And so it begins,” said Eugene
Robinson in The Washington Post.
“The masks, or hoods, are coming off.”
It was only a matter of time before the
angry rhetoric directed at the officials
holding Donald Trump to account
became “explicitly violent and racist”.
In Texas, one of the former president’s
supporters has been detained on
charges of threatening to kill Tanya
S. Chutkan, the judge presiding over
the federal case against Trump for
allegedly trying to overturn the 2020
election. In Georgia, meanwhile,
Trump supporters seem to have been Chutkan: death threats and fan T-shirts
publishing the names and addresses of
the citizens who served on the grand jury that last week indicted Attempts to persecute judges and prosecutors are inexcusable,
Trump on similar charges in the state. One message read:
“These jurors have signed their death warrant by falsely
indicting President Trump.” Surely even a Republican Party
in thrall to Trump must recognise that a line has been crossed.
Trump bears much of the blame for this situation, said Maggie
Haberman in The New York Times. He has repeatedly attacked
those involved in the criminal cases against him. He has
described Jack Smith, the special counsel who brought the two
federal indictments, as “deranged” and baselessly suggested that
he takes drugs. On his social media
website, Truth Social, Trump wrote
of Chutkan: “She obviously wants
me behind bars. VERY BIASED &
UNFAIR.” He also declared there last
week: “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M
COMING AFTER YOU!” Some
lawyers have argued that if Trump
were an ordinary citizen issuing
these attacks, he’d be behind bars
for contempt by now. Chutkan has
merely warned him against making
“inflammatory” statements, while
suggesting she may be forced to bring
his trial forward to protect the jury.
said Michael Schaffer on Politico. It doesn’t help, though, when
people go too far the other way and treat them as folk heroes.
As soon as Chutkan was assigned Trump’s case, T-shirts were
made emblazoned with slogans such as “Judge Chutkan Fan
Club”. Other officials in Trump’s crosshairs have been similarly
lionised. I understand the impulse to “show what side you’re
on”, but liberals should desist. It only fuels Trump’s claims of
bias. If progressives want to hero worship “people who battle
Trump, they ought to stick to folks who go out and get elected
– not public servants doing an officially apolitical job”.

The Big Apple is in a pickle, says Allysia Finley. Having proudly advertised itself as a “sanctuary
city” for undocumented migrants, New York is now struggling to accommodate the 100,000 or so
The self- migrants who have descended on it since last spring. Caring for them will cost about $5bn this fiscal
year. The city is paying $256 a night on average to shelter migrant families in hotels. That doesn’t
inflicted woes include the cost of food, medical care and services, which adds another $127 a day per family. “A
New Yorker would have to make around $280,000 a year before taxes to afford what the city is
of New York spending on each migrant family. No wonder they’re coming by the bus load.” It’s putting yet more
pressure on New York’s “overregulated and overtaxed” economy, which is already under strain as
Allysia Finley more wealthy residents flee the Democrat-run city, taking jobs with them. New York could face a
$40bn budget shortfall over the next three years. Mayor Eric Adams is now having flyers distributed
The Wall Street Journal at the Mexican border advising migrants to stay away from the Big Apple, and is appealing for a
federal bailout to ease New York’s “largely self-inflicted woes”. He apparently believes Americans
in the rest of the country should “help underwrite the city’s progressive folly. Sorry, not our job.”

President Biden is making Americans “ripe targets” for hostage takers, says Noah Rothman. The US
reached a tentative deal with Iran earlier this month to secure the release of five Americans unjustly
America is imprisoned inside the Islamic Republic. In return for their freedom, some $6bn in impounded
Iranian assets will be unfrozen – money that the mullahs will supposedly be allowed to use only for
being held humanitarian purposes. While it’s welcome news that these Americans will no longer be brutalised
in an Iranian prison, this deal shows “the ease with which the US is extorted by hostile foreign
hostage powers” under Biden. The template was set during last year’s negotiations with the Kremlin over
the basketball star Brittney Griner. “For the low, low price of taking one athlete hostage”, Russia
Noah Rothman won the release of the convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout. The Biden administration is now
reportedly scouring the West for “infamous Russians” it can trade for Wall Street Journal reporter
National Review Evan Gershkovich, who is being held in a high-security Moscow prison on bogus spying charges.
Biden wants to show the world that “Americans do not leave their own behind” – but all foreign
autocrats see is the concessions they can win by seizing our citizens.

He doesn’t rank highly in lists of US presidents, says Mitch Daniels, but Calvin Coolidge, who took
office 100 years ago this month, deserves a better press. At a time when America is “drowning in debt
In praise of and in serious need of a cultural course correction”, it could learn a lot from “the quiet man from
Massachusetts”. Coolidge, who limited government employees to one pencil at a time, was a natural
Coolidge, the economiser and succeeded in cutting the national debt by a third. “Would that we had him counting
the pencils today.” We could also do with some of his reticence and modesty, mired as we are in
great refrainer “a hot-dog, look-at-me, dance-in-the-end-zone world” where success in public life seems to rely on
© DIEGO M. RADZINSCHI/ALM

“sound bites, tweeting and other ‘performative’ arts”. “Silent Cal” wasn’t one for making a fuss. He
Mitch Daniels rejected Woodrow Wilson’s “innovation” of delivering a showy State of the Union speech in congress,
reverting to the traditional practice of simply sending in a written report. His funeral, in 1933, was
The Washington Post characteristically low-key: consisting of two hymns and zero speeches or eulogies, it lasted 22
minutes. “Improbable as it is, given the dominant prejudices and cultural predilections of our time,
America would greatly benefit from the arrival of another ‘great refrainer’ on the national stage.”

THE WEEK 26 August 2023

 Best articles: International NEWS 17

The death cap case: a mysterious poisoning in rural Australia

An ill-fated family meal in rural
Australia has captivated the nation,
and much of the world, said The Age
(Melbourne). On 29 July, 48-year-old
Erin Patterson invited her estranged
husband’s parents, Gail and Don
Patterson, for lunch at her home in
the town of Leongatha, Victoria. They
were joined by Gail’s sister, Heather,
and her husband, Ian Wilkinson,
a Baptist pastor. It seems the event
was an attempt at mediation between
Patterson and her husband, Simon.
She served beef wellington. Days later,
however, three of her guests were dead, Patterson: an account riddled with “inconsistencies” It has been reported, for instance,
and Ian Wilkinson was critically ill. All
had apparently ingested poisonous “death cap” mushrooms.
Homicide detectives are treating Patterson as a suspect, but she
has professed her innocence. “I didn’t do anything,” she declared, It was inevitable that she would fall under suspicion, said John
saying that her guests were “the best people I’ve ever met”.
Patterson’s story was riddled with “inconsistencies”, said
Michael Giles in the Sentinel-Times (Wonthaggi). Why was she
the only person at the meal who didn’t become seriously ill?
(She claimed that her children later ate the beef wellington too,
but that she’d “scraped off” the mushrooms.) She also claimed
that she had bought the mushrooms at a small Asian grocer
in Melbourne, “but couldn’t recall which one”; is that
convincing? And why did she dump a
food dehydrator – a device used to dry
mushrooms – at a local tip, and then
conceal it from police? “We all love
a mystery,” said John Silvester in The
Age. But before we get carried away
playing detectives, let’s not forget:
real people have died. The police are
keeping an open mind: they haven’t
even got the toxicology reports yet.
Rumours and mushrooms thrive in the
same conditions: you keep them in the
dark and feed them bullshit. And all
sorts of rumours are flying around.
that macabre graffiti about death
and murder was found by builders in Patterson’s former home.
Ferguson in The Australian (Sydney) – not least because her
estranged husband Simon “almost died twice last year from
gastric-related complications”, allegedly after eating with her;
it seems he believes she poisoned his family. But it’s crucial
that Patterson doesn’t face trial by media. The case of Lindy
Chamberlain – wrongly convicted of murdering her baby girl,
who was stolen by a dingo in central Australia in 1980 – “still
resonates”. Patterson told the press last week that she “just can’t
fathom what happened”. The truth is that, for now, no one can.

NIGERIA Is history repeating itself, asks Bisi Olawunmi. In 2011, Nigeria’s then-president, Goodluck Jonathan,
used his role as chair of the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) to make the case
The case for for invading Ivory Coast to oust its strongman leader, Laurent Gbagbo, who had been defeated in the
2010 election. Luckily for Nigeria, French and UN soldiers did the job instead, and Ecowas was not
not invading sucked into Ivory Coast’s internal conflicts. Twelve years on, however, a similar story is playing out,
as our current president, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, makes the case for Ecowas to intervene militarily to
Niger depose the army officers who ousted Niger’s elected president, Mohamed Bazoum, in July. He seems
“gung-ho” about such an operation, although most Nigerians oppose it, and the risks are vast: he
The Guardian would be declaring war on the military junta ruling Niger, which has the support of the military
(Lagos) rulers of Burkina Faso and Mali. Does Tinubu even understand the factors that triggered Niger’s
coup? He has shown little aptitude for tackling Nigeria’s own problems, such as the Islamist Boko
Haram insurgency. We must not allow ourselves to be “railroaded into a fratricidal war”.

SPAIN Spain’s Socialist Party, led by acting PM Pedro Sánchez, avoided an anticipated drubbing in July’s
elections, but still faces a struggle to form a new government. It received a boost last week, however,
when Sánchez’s candidate for speaker of congress, Francina Armengol, was narrowly elected, thanks
Gambling to votes from the Catalan separatist Junts party. That deal raised the prospect of Sánchez relying
with the on Junts to prop up a future government, says Julio Murillo. But at what cost? It was Junts, let’s
remember, that spearheaded the campaign for Catalonia to illegally break away from Spain in 2017,
nation’s future plunging the nation into a constitutional crisis. Its leader, Carles Puigdemont, has been living in exile
in Belgium for the past six years; some of his colleagues served jail terms. What could Sánchez give
Crónica Global them in return for their support? Puigdemont has demanded an amnesty for himself and other
(Barcelona) separatist colleagues, and a new independence referendum. But surely he can’t expect that? He might,
however, convince Sánchez to give in to Catalan demands for control over the region’s ports and
airports, along with its taxes and courts. “Or, put another way: de facto independence”, without the
need for a vote. In his hopes of clinging to power, Sánchez is playing poker with our nation’s future.

EU politicians often bemoan the loss of its world-leading position in the solar power industry to
EUROPEAN UNION China, says Ann Mettler. Now, the continent’s wind power sector is “firmly on the same trajectory”.
Much like solar, the wind industry was pioneered in Europe, and “painstakingly” built up over
The decline decades with subsidies. Five of the world’s 15 biggest turbine manufacturers are European, and they
should be well-placed to benefit from the green transition. Instead, they are “facing their worst crisis
of European ever, suffering record losses and issuing repeated profit warnings”, as high commodity prices and
wind power excessive red tape bite. “To add insult to injury”, far from subsidising them, EU governments are
increasingly demanding that developers “pay for the privilege” of building wind farms; European
Politico wind power now looks “too expensive, too slow and too weak” to compete with China’s, which
(Brussels) benefits from massive subsidies and a government working “hand in glove” with the sector. Eight
of the world’s leading turbine manufacturers are Chinese; their sales in Europe are growing. How
infuriating. Wind power meets many EU policy priorities, from combating climate change to energy
security to creating good jobs; yet, owing to our leaders’ “complacency”, we risk losing the industry.

26 August 2023 THE WEEK


What the scientists are saying…
A revolution in physics?
The behaviour of a tiny particle might
prove that the theoretical foundations
of modern physics are incomplete. This
particle is the muon; an unstable cousin of
the electron, it spins with a slight wobble
when placed in a magnetic field – but not
quite as the current theoretical framework
would predict. To study the muon’s
wobble, scientists at Fermilab, a particle
accelerator laboratory near Chicago,
blasted the particles around a 15-metre
magnetic ring at nearly the speed of light;
their wobbling was measured as they went.
It should have been possible to predict the
size of the wobble using the Standard
Model, the theory physicists use to explain
the subatomic world, which posits that
there are four fundamental forces of
nature, governing the behaviour of
everything from planets to particles. The
muons, however, wobbled slightly more
than expected. This could be due to the
influence of an unknown particle, a carrier
of a “fifth force”, or even a new dimension.
It is still too soon to declare the discovery
of a new force of nature. More data will be
needed to confirm these results, but if they
are verified, it could mark the beginning
of a revolution in physics.
The weed invading the Lakes
The lakes and rivers of some of Britain’s
most popular national parks are under
threat from a highly invasive weed,
conservationists have warned. New
Zealand pigmyweed, which was first sold
in the UK as an ornamental plant for
garden ponds, has been found in the New
Forest and in the Lake District, where it is
spreading rapidly. Bassenthwaite Lake and
Derwent Water have both been affected;
but its recent discovery in Crummock
Water is particularly “dismaying” because
Horses can spot a long face
A new study shows that horses can
differentiate between human expressions of
joy and sadness. To explore this, researchers
in France employed a technique that’s often
used in studying baby cognition, said Tom
Whipple in The Times: “they showed the
horses something that made no sense, and
watched to see whether it puzzled them”.
One by one, 28 horses were shown two
pictures of a woman’s face: one happy and
one sad. At the same time, they heard either
a happy or sad voice. The scientists were
interested in whether the horses knew what
made sense – which voice went with which
picture. The horses looked longer at the
unhappy picture when a happy voice was played, suggesting that they knew what
human sadness looks and sounds like, and were confused by mismatch. Océane
Liehrmann, who led the study, said her findings implied a degree of emotional and
cognitive sophistication in horses. The research, published in Animal Cognition, also
found, separately, that the horses spent longer overall looking at joyful pictures,
suggesting that they preferred to be around happy humans.
Health & Science
New Zealand pigmyweed in the Lake District
it means that just one lake in North
Cumbria remains free of the weed, West
Cumbria Rivers Trust has said. New
Zealand pigmyweed is highly adaptable;
it can grow in ponds, reservoirs, canals
and puddles, as well as lakes – and has no
native predators. It forms dense, knotted
mats that deprive native plants of sunlight;
fish, amphibians and invertebrates can
struggle to get the oxygen they need.
A tiny piece, just 2cm or so, is enough for
it to take hold, and swimmers, anglers and
other lake users are being urged to check
their shoes, clothes and sports equipment
to help curb its spread.
New moles unearthed in Turkey
Two new types of mole have been
identified by researchers; while new to
science, they are believed to have been
living in the Turkish mountains for up to
three million years. The new moles don’t
look very different to other species –
Horses prefer to be around happy humans
NEWS 19
underground living imposes constraints
on size and shape – but DNA analysis has
confirmed them to be biologically distinct.
Both inhabit the mountains of eastern
Turkey, and can survive in temperatures of
up to 50°C in the summer, and under two
metres of snow in the winter, reports the
Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.
One is a new species of Eurasian mole, the
other is a subspecies of a mole discovered
in the 1880s. It’s very rare to find new
mammals, but the scientists are confident
that many more species of mole are
waiting to be discovered. If conservation
work is to be successful, says study author
Prof David Bilton of the University of
Plymouth, we have to know how many
different species exist in the first place.
An AI breakthrough for the NHS
In trial after trial, it has been shown how
AI could transform medicine. Now the
technology looks set to become part of
day-to-day care – artificial intelligence has
been approved for routine use in the NHS
for the first time. The National Institute
for Health and Care Excellence (Nice), the
organisation tasked with deciding which
new treatments should be made widely
available, has said AI can be used when
planning radiotherapy treatment; patients
with lung, bowel and prostate cancers are
among those who could benefit. The
software will be used to mark up scans
to make it easy for radiographers to tell
tumours from healthy tissue. This task is
currently done by hand, but AI, says Nice,
produces work of “similar quality” needing
only “minor edits”. This should free up
hundreds of thousands of hours of time,
shorten waiting lists and relieve pressure
on radiotherapy departments, according
to draft guidance that is due to be finalised
next month.
Sugar in cereals
Colourful cereal boxes featuring cartoon
characters and the like should be
banned to protect children’s health,
campaigners have said. Action on
Sugar, based at Queen Mary University
of London, analysed 116 popular cereals
with packaging aimed at children. This
showed that 47% contained at least
a third of a young child’s daily
recommended sugar intake in a single
helping; only nine were low in sugar and
just four had low amounts of both sugar
and salt. Although there are restrictions
on the advertising of unhealthy food to
children, there are no specific rules on
the use of “child-appealing packaging”,
and bold action is needed from the
Government and food industry, said the
campaign group. Will Quince, the Health
Minister, said he was not in favour of
“nanny-state interventions”, adding
that it was “for the parent to make that
decision” about what their children eat.
26 August 2023 THE WEEK
20 NEWS Talking points
Lucy Letby: the “nice” nurse who murdered seven babies
“The trial of Lucy Letby will be doting parents from Hereford (who
remembered as one of the longest and attended the trial and remain fiercely loyal
most complex cases in English legal to her), Letby was a shy schoolgirl who
history,” said Tom Ball in The Times. had always wanted to be a nurse. She had
Twenty-two charges were brought against plenty of friends, and two godchildren.
her, relating to 17 babies in the neonatal Her life was an apparently normal one,
unit of the Countess of Chester Hospital with holidays to Ibiza, hen nights and
during 2015 and 2016: seven allegations salsa classes. She lived in a neat semi-
of murder, and 15 of attempted murder. detached house near the hospital, with a
Despite the great complexity of the bedroom decorated with framed pictures
detail, the prosecution case was based of her godchildren and two cats, and filled
on a simple assertion: Letby was the only with stuffed bears. When the consultant
“common denominator”, the only person who ran her unit first considered that she
present, at all 22 episodes – otherwise might be responsible, he said: “It can’t be
inexplicable collapses on a ward that Lucy. Not nice Lucy.”
generally saw very few such events. Most Letby: described as unremarkable and “beige”
of them happened during night shifts, Like most serial killers, Letby has been
when Letby was on duty; when she was moved to day shifts the silent about what drove her to kill, said David Wilson in The
attacks started happening during the day; when she was moved to Observer. But the truth is that such cases rarely yield satisfactory
clerical duties, they stopped. The jury was also shown a series of answers. Harold Shipman, for instance, maintained his innocence
apparent confessions: Post-It notes found in her home on which until he killed himself; the subsequent inquiry reached no
she admitted to having killed, and wrote: “I am evil I did this.” conclusion about his motive. “It really is only in TV dramas or
on film that such murderers want to discuss what might have
Much of the early trial was bogged down by the minutiae of motivated them” – to allow the central character “to enter the
medical detail, said Nigel Bunyan in The Independent. But the mind of a serial killer”. Letby was not a “dysfunctional loner”;
harrowing reality of Letby’s crimes gradually came into focus. there was no history of depression, let alone personality disorders
Dr B, a paediatrician, hidden by a or drug use. So we have to guess that
screen, described the scene shortly after she suffered from some kind of “toxic
a newborn triplet “had died in agony “Letby remains a deeply disturbing narcissism”. Prosecutors proposed
– and entirely without reason – just enigma: a killer stalking the quiet, various theories in court, said Matt
24 hours after his brother”. The boy’s Matthers in The Independent: that she
father, lying crumpled on the floor,
hopeful corridors of a neonatal unit” had attacked babies in order to gain the
desperately pleaded to have his one attention and sympathy of a doctor with
surviving son taken away from the hospital. Most of the babies whom she was “infatuated”; that she liked “playing God”; that
were killed by having air injected into their veins, or into their she got a “thrill” from the parents’ “grief and despair”.
stomachs; some by having their tiny stomachs pumped up with
milk. Others who survived were poisoned with insulin. Her victims The closest she came to a confession was in her Post-It notes, said
suffered terribly. Letby, prosecutors argued, derived a “sickening Josh Halliday in The Guardian. “I killed them on purpose because
pleasure from her attacks”. It was, they said, a bonus if she could I’m not good enough to care for them,” she wrote. “I’ll never have
console the bereaved parents, or “help” them by preparing a children or marry... I’ll never know what it’s like to have a family.”
memory box with the handprints and footprints of their lost baby. Yet these fractured statements were never held up in court as
proof of motive. Letby remains a deeply disturbing enigma: “a
There is “a void” that surrounds this case, said Sarah Vine in the killer stalking the quiet, hopeful corridors of a hospital neonatal
Daily Mail – reflected in Letby’s cool, calm, blank demeanour. unit”. But the truth is that Letby is far from the first nurse serial
“The normal human mind searches desperately for a reason, an killer, said Peter Hurst on UnHerd. There was Beverley Allitt, who
explanation – anything to help rationalise the horror. But with murdered four children in 1991, along with other cases: Colin
Letby, there is nothing.” Why did she do these unthinkable things? Norris, Victorino Chua. People who commit serious crimes often
She appeared to have been a very ordinary person, said Patrick do so through institutions that provide access to vulnerable people
Sawer in The Daily Telegraph: the detective leading the case and cover for their activities. Nursing – like medicine, church
described her as unremarkable, “beige”. The only child of two work and policing – provides just such a “cloak of respectability”.

In his new memoir, Born at the of financial problems. In fact,

Pick of the week’s
Gossip
Rishi Sunak visited a nursery
in North Yorkshire this week,
where his attempt at painting
a bee led some to wonder if
he had ever seen one, and
others to advise him to stick
to politics. The Times’s chief
art critic Laura Freeman,
however, was more generous
in her assessment of the
Prime Minister’s creation.
“There’s a pleasing freedom
to Sunak’s picture. Not just a
copy of a bee, but a bee with
bizazz,” she decided. “A touch
of Picasso, perhaps, in those
distorted features?”
Right Time, the screenwriter
Ray Connolly recalls a series
of starry encounters from the
1960s. In 1969 he interviewed
Germaine Greer, who “talked
non-stop” about sex. “I finally
asked her, as a joke, if she
ever thought of anything else,”
Connolly recalled. “‘My dear
Ray,’ she said, ‘since I’ve been
talking to you, I haven’t
thought of it once.’”
Katie Price has been in and
out of court countless times
in recent years – over a drink-
driving incident in which she
drove her pink Range Rover
into a hedge, and for a string
the former glamour model is
so tired of being threatened
with legal action that she has
begged to be sent to prison. “I
am not scared anymore,” she
told the Rule Breakers podcast.
“I have said, ‘Can’t you put me
into prison, just to cover it all?’
Be done with it. I’m fed up with
the reminders. I genuinely
don’t care if I go to prison.
Because it’s done then.” Being
jailed, Price added, could also
prove a good career move. “I
love all the prison stuff and I
can experience what it’s like,”
she pointed out. “I could do a
story when I come out and it’s
a win-win situation, isn’t it?”

THE WEEK 26 August 2023

 Talking points
Rishi Sunak: waging culture war
Get ready for “a long, dirty
election campaign”, said Andrew
Grice in The Independent. Until
recently, Rishi Sunak has traded
on his image as a hard-working,
courteous problem solver. But
with the Tories trailing 20 points
behind Labour, party leaders
have decided to take the gloves
off. Their unexpected victory in
the Uxbridge by-election was the
launchpad for a more aggressive
approach, led by Sunak, focused
on emotive issues such as
irregular migration, eco-activism
and trans rights. With reference
to the small boats, in July Sunak
tweeted: “The Labour Party, a
The PM: a populist tone
subset of lawyers, criminal gangs
– they’re all on the same side, propping up a
system of exploitation that profits from getting
people to the UK illegally.” Some of the PM’s
colleagues believe that this more populist tone
doesn’t suit him, but the change of tack has
“pleased right-wing Tories clamouring for
a ‘real conservative’ government”.
It’s not all cynical electioneering, said Dan
Hodges in The Mail on Sunday. The reality
is that some of the issues that “elements of
the liberal Left frame as ‘The Culture War’, in
order to suppress debate about them, cannot
be dodged”. Voters want their borders
controlled. They want their highways kept clear
of “eco-zealots”. They want women’s safe spaces Conservatives may succeed merely in driving
protected. If ministers genuinely address these
Bernstein’s nose: a prosthetic furore
Arguably the least interesting thing
about Leonard Bernstein, the great
American composer who wrote
the music for West Side Story, was
his nose, said David M. Perry on
CNN. Unfortunately, that nose
has become the focus of a furore.
Netflix recently released a trailer
for Maestro, its upcoming biopic
of Bernstein, showing Bradley
Cooper (who also directed
and produced) in the title role
– wearing a large prosthetic
nose. It sparked accusations of
antisemitism and reignited the
debate over so-called “Jewface”: Cooper: a caricature?
the exaggerated portrayal of Jewish
people by non-Jewish actors. Bernstein did, it’s
true, have “a pretty big nose”. But any non-
Jewish person putting on a fake nose in order to
portray a Jew “is colliding with a grim history”.
I felt “enormous irritation” on seeing Cooper
with his fake nose, said Hadley Freeman in The
Sunday Times, because it complicated my belief
that “Jewface is not really a problem”. It’s true
that there is a discrepancy when it comes to
casting minorities: directors routinely choose
non-Jewish actors to play Jews, while nowadays, nose will “scoop up all the attention – while
only an Indian actor would be cast to play an
concerns, voters will reward
them. If, however, they seek
simply to whip up divisions in
a bid to cling to power, they’ll
be punished at the ballot
box. Waging culture wars will
rebound on the Tories, agreed
Martha Gill in The Guardian.
Apart from anything, it will
alienate many of their own
supporters. Recent polls suggest
that the net-zero agenda, for
instance, enjoys wide support
among Tory voters: about 73%
of them back the 2050 deadline.
“Wedge issues” can be a very
effective political tool, said John
Burn-Murdoch in FT. The Tories
have used them to their advantage many times,
never more so than in the 2019 election, when
their pledge to “get Brexit done” helped them
trounce Labour. But the successful deployment
of a wedge issue depends on two things.
“First, the issue must be seen as one of the
most important facing the country. Second, the
electorate must have a clear belief that the party
driving the wedge also has the solution.” Neither
of those conditions apply to the small boats
issue. Immigration ranks in fourth or fifth place
in voters’ priorities in recent polls, far behind
the cost-of-living crisis, the NHS and the wider
economy – and voters trust Labour more than
the Tories on the issue. By fighting dirty, the
a wedge between themselves and the electorate.
Indian. But the idea of authenticity
in casting is “bunkum”. It’s acting,
isn’t it? Many Jewish actors have
played Italians and other Gentiles
– and that’s a good thing, unless
you think minority actors should
be restricted to playing minority
characters. But there is “no
justification for that schnozz”.
Bernstein’s nose was “nowhere
near the Cyrano proportions” of
Cooper’s fake appendage. “Feel
free to go Jew, Cooper. But maybe
not full Jew.” The prosthetic makes
Cooper “a living caricature”,
said Jake Wallis Simons in The
Spectator. For centuries, Jews have
been depicted as money-grabbing, malevolent
subhumans – always with a “grotesque” nose.
The difference is that Cooper’s not playing
an evil caricature, said Judson Berger in the
National Review. And Bernstein’s children say
they’re “perfectly fine” with the amplified nose.
Even so, said Tim Robey in The Daily Telegraph,
fake noses – like fat suits or accents – are
“low-hanging fruit for critical derision”. Cooper
could give “the performance of his life”, but the
putting plenty of other people’s out of joint”.
NEWS 21
Wit &
Wisdom
“Whatever you do, always
give 100%. Unless you’re
donating blood.”
Bill Murray, quoted
on The Knowledge
“Q: How many conspiracy
theorists does it take to
change a light bulb?
A: Do your own research.”
Comedian Darren
Walsh, quoted in
The Daily Telegraph
“Marriage is a fine
institution, but I’m not
ready for an institution.”
Mae West, quoted in
The Independent
“There are some things
a chancellor might like to
say, but only a novelist can.”
Martin Walser, quoted in
The Daily Telegraph
“When you make people
laugh, you open the door.”
Jean-Claude Carrière,
quoted in the
Financial Times
“An advanced city is not
one where even the poor
use cars, but rather one
where even the rich use
public transport.”
Colombian politician
Enrique Peñalosa, quoted
in Toronto Storeys
“If you would not be
forgotten as soon as you
are dead and rotten… either
write things worth reading,
or do things worth writing.”
Benjamin Franklin, quoted
on The Collector
“In Hollywood, an equitable
divorce settlement means
each party getting 50%
of the publicity.”
Lauren Bacall,
quoted in Forbes
Statistics of the week
The average weight of
strawberries in British
supermarkets has increased
by 60% in the past 12 years.
The Times
The number of babies born in
England and Wales dropped
in 2022 to 605,479, the lowest
level since 2002. Almost a
third of babies were born to
women from outside the UK.
ONS/The Guardian
26 August 2023 THE WEEK
22 NEWS
The Lionesses: outplayed at the last by Spain
“To lose in a World Cup final is one
thing,” said Ian Herbert in The Daily
Mail. “To do so when your performance
is so far below the required level that you
will want to shut it out of your mind for
all time, is something else.” That was the
harsh reality for England defender Lucy
Bronze, whose mistake led to athe game’s
sole goal. Bronze has now played in three
World Cups; at other times, against less
lethal opposition, her error might not
have been fatal. “But this tournament has
revealed the brutal consequences of being
way off the pace.” Unfortunately, this was
the case for England as a whole, who on
Sunday gave the impression of being
“stuck on a luggage carousel” as Spain
“fizzed passes” around their midfield.
Sport
Spanish put on a vintage display of tiki-
taka passing, and won a penalty when
a rebound off Caldentey’s boot brushed
Keira Walsh’s hand. But it took five full
minutes for the referee to confirm the
handball on the VAR screens – perhaps
giving Spain’s penalty taker Jennifer
Hermoso “a little too long” to think –
and Earps, who earned the Golden
Glove for best keeper of the tournament,
saved it. Briefly, there was a feeling that
England might rebound, said Dan King
in The Sun. But despite the bravery of
the likes of defender Alex Greenwood –
who channelled Terry Butcher by
playing with a white bandage around
her head after a blow to the forehead –
“there was to be no late redemption”.

“The match was lost in the opening 45 Remarkably, Spain won the World
minutes,” said Neil Moxley in the Daily “It is remarkable England came so close” Cup while enduring a “civil war”, said
Express. England could have opened the Miguel Delaney in The Independent.
shooting – Lauren Hemp’s first effort went straight at the keeper, Last year, 15 players resigned from the national team, complaining
while her second hit the crossbar – but Spain had the bigger share about how badly it was run, and the “oppressively disciplinarian”
of possession. They also had Salma Paralluelo, a former junior approach of coach Jorge Vilda, who is openly disdained by many
400m champion, attacking the left flank at lightning pace. of them. Some rebels were expelled, some were brought back into
Meanwhile, Sarina Wiegman’s three-at-the-back formation, which the fold. Amid this “uneasy truce”, they ended up with the trophy.
had proved fruitful since England’s final group game against China,
failed to fire. “Tired players make mistakes, and it was difficult to As for England, the future’s bright, said Suzanne Wrack in The
shake the feeling this was one match too far.” Desperate to press Guardian. This was their best-ever World Cup result, despite
forward, England left a hole in midfield, where “red shirts danced the absence of injured leading players such as Fran Kirby, Beth
with the liberation that comes Mead and even captain Leah
when excellence of technique Williamson. There was eve-of-
meets time and space”, said “England knew what to expect from tournament discontent in the
Daniel Storey in The i Paper. Spain, but they were unable to prevent it” team about commercial rights,
When Bronze drifted infield, and their performances in the
out of position, “you knew the group stages required Wiegman
ending already”. She lost possession in the centre circle, screamed to rip up her strategy and start again. “Given what they faced,”
in frustration, and then – “unforgivably” – failed to run back to said Jacob Whitehead and Charlotte Harpur on The Athletic, “it is
cover her territory. Mariona Caldentey stole the opportunity and remarkable England came so close.” This was a second successive
sent a perfect delivery to Olga Carmona, whose left foot arrowed World Cup final defeat for Wiegman, whose Netherlands team
the ball towards the inside of the left post – the one place England lost to the USA in 2019, said Luke Edwards in The Daily
keeper Mary Earps had no chance of covering. Telegraph. It must be agonising to come so close to the top of the
mountain twice over. But she has the prospect of managing Team
“Walk past any pitch in Spain and you will see youngsters with GB at the Olympics next year. And her England contract runs
the same freedom and love of the ball as this team displayed,” said until they defend their Euros title in 2025. With luck, this group
Molly Hudson in The Times. So England knew what to expect, will stay together until the next World Cup. By then, they’ll have
but were “not able to prevent it”. Shortly after half-time, the enough experience to be “a threat to whoever they face”.

Johnson-Thompson’s remarkable comeback Sporting headlines

“What a remarkable act of
resurrection,” said Riath
Al-Samarrai in the Daily Mail.
After years of “injury hell”,
Katarina Johnson-Thompson
returned to clinch gold in the
heptathlon at this year’s World
Athletics Championship. In the
heat of a scorching summer night
in Budapest on Sunday, she ran a
personal best of 2mins, 5.63secs “A remarkable act of resurrection” eighth place and considered
in the concluding 800m race and
defended a narrow lead against Anna Hall
of the US to win her second world title, “four
years and an eternity after she won her first”.
Johnson-Thompson’s return to top spot
was about more than “running, jumping and
throwing everything she had” at her seven
disciplines, said Matt Lawton in The Times. It
amounted to “one of the finest comebacks in
British sport”, after a ruptured
Achilles had threatened to end
her career in 2020, ruling her
out of the Tokyo Olympics
and forcing her to jump from
her other foot – “almost like
learning to walk again”. At
last year’s World
Championships, Johnson-
Thompson had finished in
quitting the sport. At the end
of the first day of this competition she lay in
second behind Hall, and a 6.54m long jump at
the start of day two nudged her ahead. A career-
best throw of 46.14m in the javelin left a “blunt
equation” for the climactic 800m, said Sean
Ingle in The Guardian: she had to stay within
three seconds of Hall. And with 200m to go,
she found a second wind that saw her home.
Athletics Zharnel Hughes
won Great Britain’s first
World Championship 100m
men’s medal in 20 years,
taking bronze.
Tennis Coco Gauff claimed
her biggest career win at the
Cincinnati Open, beating
world No. 1 Iga Swiątek
for the first time in seven
matches in the semis. Novak
Djokovic took the men’s title.
Football Manchester United
announced that forward
Mason Greenwood will leave
the club. The decision follows
a lengthy internal probe after
criminal charges, including
attempted rape, were dropped
against the 21-year-old.

THE WEEK 26 August 2023


Pick of the week’s correspondence
Failing A-levels
To The Guardian
Last Thursday, I was one of the
many students who received
their A-level results. Although
I didn’t achieve the exact
grades I needed, I still managed
to get into my first-choice
university. But I would like
to comment on the way that
the Government has treated
my year group.
The last proper formal
exams I sat before my A levels
were my Sats in Year 6. To
expect a group of children to
go through a pandemic and
suffer all the consequences –
a lack of proper education,
mental health problems, huge
disruption to our normal lives
– and then sit full A-level
exams seems extraordinary
and cruel.
When you do your A-levels,
a lot of the time you’re still
using skills and knowledge
developed during your GCSEs.
So having missed out on big
portions of this during the
pandemic will definitely have
had an impact on us. For the
Government to disregard this
and treat us almost like some
sort of statistical experiment
in order to return to 2019
levels is appalling.
Far too many students will
have fallen through the large
gaps created by the
pandemic and left to widen
by the Government. I feel
let down by a government
that doesn’t seem to care
for its state schools.
Leo David Crown,
Matlock, Derbyshire
Migrant pull factors
To The Spectator
Your lead article highlights
numerous issues related to
refugees, but does not offer
much in regard to why this
country is a magnet for
economic migrants. You state
that this is a rich country.
How can this be the case
when government debt is
100% of GDP? Further, when
we cannot provide adequate
services in healthcare,
education and housing, why
should we take in migrants
who cannot make an
immediate contribution
to the country’s tax base?
The reasons that this
country is so attractive are,
firstly, the English language,
which we can’t do much about.
O Letters have been edited
LETTERS 23
Exchange of the week financial problems is to
increase tuition fees. When
The lessons of the Letby case I began work as a lecturer
in 1970 there were no fees
To The Times but, equally, the central
The Lucy Letby case focuses attention on what happens when administration was tiny and
concerns are raised by hospital doctors. Internal investigations the books were balanced. By
are frequently set up and conducted by investigators who are the time I retired in 2002, the
both unqualified and inexperienced. The outcomes of these central overhead represented
investigations are often predetermined by hospital managers. 50% of each pound of revenue
The person who has been the subject of the concerns is and the faculty administration
encouraged to then raise a grievance against the complainants. took 40% of the remainder.
Doctors have to apologise or else their registrations with the As a result, a paper “loss”
GMC will be threatened. Often straightforward clinical was recorded after the
concerns are turned into team issues, following which the deduction of operating
hospital employs external mediators at vast expense. Clinicians costs – i.e. teaching. What
are accountable through their respective regulators – it is surely is needed is a drastic pruning
time that NHS managers experienced similar levels of scrutiny. of administration costs, such
Marjan Jahangiri, FRCS, professor of cardiac surgery; chair, as vice-chancellors’ salaries.
speciality advisory committee, Surgical Royal Colleges Peter Curwen, Leeds
To The Daily Telegraph Where are the Habs?
Why didn’t reforms after the murders committed by Harold To The Guardian
Shipman catch Letby? The Shipman Inquiry made two Weeks of plentiful coverage
recommendations: one was medical revalidation (for doctors of England’s World Cup
only); the other, which should have caught Letby, has still not women, yet little mention
been fully implemented. The Inquiry proposed a medical of husbands and boyfriends.
examiner system to scrutinise every death not investigated by Why the silence over Habs?
a coroner – including baby deaths. The legislation was passed Keith Macdougall, Knebworth,
in the Coroners and Justice Act 2009. Most thought that these Hertfordshire
reforms had been implemented, but this relied on the health
secretary setting a start date. He never did. Leadership credentials
To its credit, NHS England has recently implemented To The Times
medical examiners in most hospitals, but the system remains In your story about Suella
non-statutory. NHS managers who should have acted sooner Braverman (“No. 10’s Suella
are rightly being pilloried. But what about the politicians and dilemma: keep in or cast out?”)
civil servants whose inaction allowed more babies to die? you describe her as a polarising
Prof Peter Furness, ret’d consultant pathologist, Whissendine figure, with some of her
colleagues deriding her as
To The Daily Telegraph “totally useless” and others
As the owner of a small nursing home, I give all staff a session hailing her as a future party
on whistleblowing and how to raise a concern with the Care leader. I’d like to point out
Quality Commission (CQC) if they feel managers do not that, based on recent
handle complaints effectively. I cannot comprehend how NHS experience, the one doesn’t
managers with far more resources than we have are unable to rule out the other.
follow a similar process, and how the CQC missed cause for Ian Jones, Lingfield, Surrey
concern in its inspections of the hospital where Letby worked.
Isabelle Kenny, Bampton, Devon Theft at the museum
To The Guardian
Secondly, we have an easily disease. I applied for a disabled The British Museum has
accessible benefits system, parking blue badge early in sacked a worker over stolen
including healthcare. And most May, so last week sent an email artefacts. Oh, the irony.
importantly, there is no need to inquiring about the long delay. Andrew Vincent, Tewkesbury,
carry an identity document, I received the following: “Good Gloucestershire
making it possible to disappear afternoon. As we are
into the informal economy. The working remotely our
civil rights brigade complain post is only collected
about the need to carry a card; once a week. We have
but if you have a passport or a an extremely high
driving licence, you are already volume of post, so
in the system. It would be it will be some time
quick, easy and cheap to issue before we come
cards to at least half the to the documents.”
population. Laurie Kuhrt,
Lindsay Jamieson, Hartfield, East Sussex
Sherborne, Dorset
University costs
Snail mail To The Times “And then God said, and I hope
To The Daily Telegraph I disagree with James I’m getting the accent right...”
My wife is increasingly Kirkup’s view that the
incapacitated with Alzheimer’s solution to universities’ © PIA GUERRA/IAN BOOTHBY/NEW YORKER/CARTOON BANK
26 August 2023 THE WEEK
 ARTS
Review of reviews: Books
Book of the week
Fire Weather
by John Vaillant
Hodder & Stoughton 432pp £25
The Week Bookshop £19.99
At the end of a summer that has seen
wildfires rage from the Mediterranean
to Maui, “no book feels timelier” than
John Vaillant’s Fire Weather, said Cal
Flyn in The Times. This “adrenaline-
soaked” narrative tells the terrifying
story of one of Canada’s most
destructive conflagrations: the wildfire
(known as MWF-009) that tore through Alberta in May 2016,
incinerating a forest tract the size of Devon, and forcing 90,000
residents in the oil-rich city of Fort McMurray to flee for their
lives. As befits the subject, Vaillant’s description “rips along”,
drawing on interviews with firemen and oil workers, among
others, as the blaze – rechristened “The Beast” by locals – takes
hold with such intensity that trees and houses simply explode,
and even porcelain toilets and sinks are “vaporised”.
Fire Weather offers a “real-life fable about the causes and
consequences of climate change”, said David Enrich in The New
York Times. At the centre of events, Fort McMurray – or “Fort
McMoney” as it is known – is a city carved from Canada’s vast
boreal forest, created solely so that energy companies could
25
exploit Alberta’s tar sands to make
petroleum products. More than 40% of
US oil imports come from here, making
its “gargantuan mining and processing
operation” – so vast it is visible from
space – a “physical manifestation”
of global warming. Vaillant mounts
a “systematic investigation” into all the
factors that combined to wreak such
havoc in the bone-dry spring of 2016,
said Becca Rothfeld in The Washington
Post. The book takes on everything
from Alberta’s history of environmental
exploitation to the “flammability of
modern furniture”. Sometimes, it’s all
“too much” – there’s too much detail,
and too much heavy-handed lecturing.
There are still powerful lessons to be learnt from this “all-
consuming” book, said Tim Adams in The Observer. The ferocity
of the fire that led to Alberta’s “local apocalypse”, which reached
900ºC and created its own weather system, has recently been
matched by events in Australia, California and elsewhere. Global
conditions today are “more conducive to combustion than at any
time in the past three million years”. As Vaillant argues, these
“ideal conditions are not confined to the natural world”: banks
still plough trillions into oil and gas projects. And at the same
time, governments around the world continue to act much like
Fort McMurray’s council leaders on 1 May 2016 – who, while
openly acknowledging that the situation was out of control,
also advised citizens to “go about their business as usual”.

Different Times: A History

of British Comedy Novel of the week
by David Stubbs The Wren, The Wren
Faber 416pp £20 by Anne Enright
The Week Bookshop £15.99 Jonathan Cape 288pp £18.99
The Week Bookshop £14.99
The British sense of humour is a “source of
power, soft and otherwise”, said Joel Morris in Anne Enright’s eighth novel is the “finest I have
The Spectator. As one anthropologist has noted, read in a long time”, said Luiza Sauma in The
our national motto should be: “Oh, come off Daily Telegraph. Like her 2007 Booker-winner
it.” We see ourselves through a comic lens, a The Gathering, it explores “ancestral trauma”,
“nation of Delboys and Mainwarings, Brents telling the story of three generations of women,
and Leadbetters, Gavins and Staceys”. But despite and that of Phil McDaragh, a “long-dead, not
its central place in our culture, books on comedy terribly famous” Irish poet, whose influence
are few and far between. So this “nice, fat volume” about the history of British looms over them. The novel mostly alternates
humour from 1917 onwards provides “a valuable record”. between the perspectives of Phil’s daughter
As a survey, Different Times has its moments, said Roger Lewis in The Times. Carmel and his twentysomething granddaughter
Some of the appraisals are “excellent”; I liked the description of Tony Hancock Nell, who never knew him but tattoos her body
representing the “lumpy gravy of reality”. However, David Stubbs’s book is with references to his poems. The Wren, The
badly let down by the author’s politically correct priggishness. The Goons, Dad’s Wren is a “surprising and complex” book, lifted
Army, Little Britain and the rest all get a drubbing in this “anti-celebratory” by the beauty of Phil’s verse (written by the
history. Stubbs hands out anachronistic reprimands like a “proper little passive- novelist), with a “dark, lurking humour”.
aggressive commissar”, finding fault in everything from Chaplin to The League “Damn, Enright can write,” said John Self
of Gentlemen. According to him, Spike Milligan is “dated, crass” and Monty in The Times. Like Martin Amis, she is a
Python represent “cis-heteronormative ideas of sexual freedom”. In the end, novelist of “scenes and sentences, not plots and
it all feels like “some equivalent of the Chinese Cultural Revolution”, in which character arcs”. Her approach – with “shards
traditional relics and artefacts are vehemently purged. Stubbs forgets that comedy of brilliance flashing in every direction” – may
has little to do with being good or nice; it’s “about the perversity of human not be for everyone. “But if you believe a book
nature. It gives voice to the forbidden.” I’d file the book under “fascinating but is a conversation between reader and writer,
flawed”, said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph. Perhaps the real irony where you get out what you put in, then that’s
is that as it indicts the comics of the past, it provides a lasting record of “today’s a feature, not a bug.”
cultural assumptions”. Of it, too, we may soon say: “Well, that was then.”
To order these titles or any other book in print, visit
theweekbookshop.co.uk or speak to a bookseller on 020-3176 3835
Opening times: Monday to Saturday 9am-5.30pm and Sunday 10am-4pm

26 August 2023 THE WEEK

26 ARTS Drama & Music
Edinburgh Festival Fringe: theatre highlights
A selection of the best-reviewed Bill O’Neill: The Amazing
shows at this summer’s Banana Brothers This comic
Edinburgh Festival Fringe, tour de force is a “bizarro faux-
which will be touring around circus act gone wrong” in which
the UK in the coming months: the US performer Bill O’Neill
plays both parts of a clowning
Kieran Hodgson: Big In double act: Kevin Calamity,
Scotland In this “brilliant” who promises to slip on 1,000
one-man show, Yorkshire-born banana peels, or your money
Kieran Hodgson, who moved to back, and his brother-cum-
Glasgow in 2020, explores what gopher, Joey. An amazing,
it means to be Scottish. It’s less “twisted” show, full of death-
a comedy show, more a hilarious defying pratfalls (Guardian).
and captivating one-act play in Pleasance Courtyard until
which Hodgson plays all the 27 August, then Soho Theatre,
characters, including a spot-on London W1, 7-16 September.
Gordon Brown, a disgruntled
Highland barkeeper, and an England & Son Ed Edwards’
over-enthusiastic Gaelic teacher. The Grand Old Opera House Hotel: an “uproariously witty comedy” “blistering” one-man play holds
Hodgson takes “a topic it would a mirror up to England in the
be easy to get wrong and manages to get everything so right” form of a working-class man – played by Mark Thomas – whose
(National). Pleasance Courtyard until 27 August, then touring life has been dominated by his brutal, wife-beating father. Thomas
8 September to 6 April 2024 (berksnest.com/kieran). gives a superb, agile, nuanced performance (Daily Telegraph).
Roundabout @ Summerhall until 27 August, then tours from
Strategic Love Play This “effervescent and thoroughly 14 September to 9 December (markthomasinfo.co.uk).
unpredictable” two-hander by Miriam Battye, a writer on the last
season of Succession, charts a “close-up, blow-by-blow account” The Grand Old Opera House Hotel Isobel McArthur’s
of a pub first date. Letty Thomas is brilliant as the “wilful and “inventive, uproariously witty comedy” is set in a bland corporate
contrarian” unnamed woman, Archie Backhouse just as sharp hotel that “once led a much more romantic existence as a home
as the more conventional man. It’s a fascinating “Rubik’s cube of grand opera”. It blends operatic fantasias with screwball
of a play” (Times). Roundabout @ Summerhall to 27 August, comedy to vastly entertaining effect (Times). Traverse Theatre
then tours from 6 September to 21 October (painesplough.com). until 27 August, then Dundee Rep, 13-16 September.

Albums of the week: three new releases

Mozart: The Public Image The Hives: The
Piano Quartets Ltd: End Death of Randy
(Federico Colli, of World Fitzsimmons
piano) PiL Official Ltd Fuga
Chandos £12.99 £11.99
£9.99

The two piano quartets on this new
Chandos recording were composed in the
mid-1780s, when Mozart was at his peak,
said Richard Fairman in the FT. They have
“the scale and tone” of his piano concertos
of the time – yet they also have a “chamber
music intimacy, sensitive or lightly playful
as the music demands”. The darker
G Minor is “brooding rather than
passionate”, with viola and cello lending
a “touch of chromatic angst”. The E Flat
Major is “less outgoing than usual; gentle
and thoughtful” instead of ebullient.
The performances are “sparkling group
achievements”, said Geoff Brown in
The Times. On piano, Federico Colli is
thoughtful, probing, crisp and inquisitive.
He grabs the listener’s attention, while still
leaving space for the other musicians to
“spread delight”. Violinist Francesca Dego
is “sprightly and elegant, while darker hues
The latest album from Public Image Ltd,
John Lydon’s post-Sex Pistols vehicle,
provides what we have come to expect
from him over the last four decades, said
Will Hodgkinson in The Times. It is “angry,
abrasive, defiant and exciting”. L F C F takes
aim at old colleagues from the Pistols (it
stands for “liars, fakes, cheats and frauds”),
while Being Stupid Again rails at the online
tendency for “shutting down alternative
ways of thinking”.
Even so, this is probably Lydon’s “most
approachable” album ever, said Andrew
Perry in The Daily Telegraph. On some
songs, a “rather mellow, spacious groove
sets in” – a shock to listeners expecting
“sonic abrasion”. One track, Hawaii, is a
“moving ballad” for his beloved late wife
Nora, who died this year after a five-year
struggle with Alzheimer’s disease. The
song offers “support and the promise of
Swedish rockers The Hives are back with
their first album for a decade – and it’s
“riotously good”, said Katie Hawthorne
in The Guardian. The band’s familiar
“electrified vocals, staccato guitar and
relentless pace” remain in place, but the
new collection “finds the band heavier,
louder and faster than ever: tyres screech
on Trapdoor Solution, a 64-second Looney
Tunes sprint”. Two Kinds of Trouble is
“vintage Hives, with a riff like a thunderbolt
and a broken-down third act that will whip
crowds into chaos”.
The album’s strange title, said Rishi Shah
on NME, refers to an enigmatic fictional
character who was supposedly recruited
by The Hives and wrote all their music. “As
with most statements made by the band,
it’s crucial to the enjoyment of their work to
not take things too seriously or literally.” In
any event, this is a cracking return, full of
© TOMMY GA-KEN WAN

with a lyrical throb sing out from Timothy togetherness in the afterlife, to the strains raucous “pandemonium” and energy. “It’s
Ridout’s viola and the cello of Laura van der of idyllic twangs and uncharacteristically about time new generations received this
Heijden”. This is a “splendid showcase for smooth crooning – an extraordinary healthy dose of old-school Hives, packed
the musicians’ substantial gifts, and for moment of tenderness from punk’s with the same intensity, goofiness and, of
Mozart’s never-ending genius”. bilious firebrand”. course, the matching black and white suits”.
Stars reflect the overall quality of reviews and our own independent assessment (5 stars=don’t miss; 1 star=don’t bother)

THE WEEK 26 August 2023


Strays
1hr 33mins (15)
Vulgar but funny film
about dogs starring Will
Ferrell as a border terrier
+++
Film ARTS 27
“At its best, this crude comedy does for dog movies what Bad Santa did for Christmas films” – it
drags them through the gutter and rolls them in filth, “sometimes literally”, said Ed Potton in The
Times. Strays is “unlike anything else in cinemas at the moment”. It’s “a live-action film featuring real
but CGI-embellished dogs, in which Will Ferrell voices our hero”, a naive border terrier called Reggie
who adores his owner Doug (Will Forte). Doug, sadly, is an “abusive, bong-smoking, masturbating
slob, whose preferred names for Reggie are Shitbag and F**knugget”. When Reggie presents Doug’s
girlfriend with a pair of knickers that belong to another woman, Doug abandons him in an inner-city
neighbourhood, where he falls in with a bunch of other strays, and has his “doggy eyes opened, big
time”. The film “demands a high tolerance for swearing, knob gags and bodily fluids”, and at its
worst, it’s “lamely unfunny”. Even so, the moments of hilarity “outnumber the rubbish ones”, and
Reggie’s eventual revenge against Doug makes for a “finale for the ages”.
“The makers of Strays seem to have set out to make the filthiest, raunchiest talking-animal movie
in Hollywood history, and it would be difficult to argue that they failed,” said Kyle Smith in The Wall
Street Journal. Yet though it is “wildly inappropriate”, it’s also miles funnier “than almost everything
I’ve seen from the Hollywood comedy establishment lately”. Based on the poster showing two cute
dogs, I’d assumed Strays was a tame “kiddie film”, said Deborah Ross in The Spectator. But within
minutes I was thinking: “Christ on a bike, what the hell is this?” Be in no doubt: this is a “rude,
offensive and disgusting” movie. But it’s also great fun – and even, in the end, “rather touching”.

Lie with Me
1hr 38mins (15)
Tasteful French drama
about a young romance
+++
This “tasteful” French drama is based on a bestselling autobiographical novel by Philippe Besson that
has been dubbed the “French Brokeback Mountain”, said Cath Clarke in The Guardian. The story
follows novelist Stéphane (Guillaume de Tonquédec) as he returns to his home town for the first
time in 35 years. Growing up gay in provincial France, Stéphane couldn’t wait to escape. Now he’s
back, being paid by a cognac brand to speak at an event. In the audience is the company’s marketing
executive, Lucas (Victor Belmondo), who turns out to be the son of Stéphane’s long-lost first love.
In flashback sequences set decades before, we see how that love unfolded, between gawky young
Stéphane and “babe-magnet” Thomas (Julien De Saint Jean), who makes Stéphane promise to keep
their relationship a secret. There is “a sensual feel” to the film’s depiction of young love, even if the
themes of “shame and internalised homophobia” are familiar.
“The striking widescreen cinematography gives an impression of generous scope and openness,”
said Wendy Ide in The Observer. “But in fact, like Stéphane himself, the storytelling is oddly insular
and fussy. The highlight here is a supporting character: the long-suffering event organiser Gaëlle,
played by Guilaine Londez with a huge, over-stretched smile and the kind of clenched-jawed
positivity that seems to teeter on the brink of psychosis.” Lie With Me is, in essence, “quite a
conventional, small-scale French movie”, said David Sexton in The New Statesman. But it’s “wildly
romantic”, and director Olivier Peyon has neatly compressed the original book’s “complex narrative”.

Blue Beetle
2hrs 7mins (12A)
DC Comics gets its first
Latino superhero
++
Blue Beetle is “a likeable, if predictable” superhero film “that at no point invokes time travel, the
multiverse or a ginormous portal in the sky”, said Clarisse Loughrey in The Independent. “And thank
god for that.” Directed by the Puerto Rican filmmaker Ángel Manuel Soto, it stars Xolo Maridueña
as Jaime, a young Latino graduate who returns from college to discover “that his relatives have been
shielding their bright, promising spark from a few dispiriting truths”. His father, for one thing, has
had a heart attack and lost his shop; for another, the family home is about to be repossessed by a
corporation run by Susan Sarandon’s evil industrialist. Soon, however, Jaime gets his hands on her
secret weapon: an intergalactic scarab beetle that burrows into his body and lends him “bug-like
armour”, as well as assorted superpowers. The film isn’t, in truth, “all that remarkable”, but there
is “something pleasantly nostalgic about its straightforwardness”, a throwback to the earlier days
of the genre, when characters and emotions “had room to breathe”.
Seeing Jaime and his family switch unthinkingly between English and Spanish shouldn’t be “one of
the most startling things that’s ever happened in a superhero movie” – but it is, said Peter Hoskins in
the Daily Mail. It’s just a shame that the family scenes cede to humdrum superhero-movie fare: so we
have the insipid love interest, the baddie with a plan, and the “big CGI scrap” at the end. I found the
film “powerfully boring”, said Tim Robey in The Daily Telegraph. It’s hard to chalk it up as a win
for Latino representation when Jaime’s family “are cut from the Disney-ish cloth” of the clans from
Coco and Encanto; and the middle drags. If you’ve “an ounce” of superhero fatigue, steer clear.

Henpocalypse!: bawdy BBC Two comedy set in remote Wales

Be warned, said Anita Singh in The Daily
Telegraph: the opening of Henpocalypse!
(BBC Two) may put you off. “Imagine being
trapped on a stranger’s hen do, complete
with screeching women, straws in the shape
of penises, and a sozzled bride-to-be
enthusiastically dry-humping a male stripper”,
all set to the sound of Tom Jones’s Sex Bomb.
But if you can take it, don’t switch off, as the
series improves considerably when the action
cuts to nine weeks later. An epidemic of “crab Hen-do politics and the apocalypse carried along by them. It’s “a pink, penis-
measles” has decimated the male population,
and our hen party – including Callie Cooke’s “put-upon chief
bridesmaid” – is stranded in a Welsh Airbnb. What follows is a
“bawdy comedy” in which five women deal “with the end of the
world while navigating familiar hen-do group dynamics”. Some
might find the language “a bit coarse”, but
writer Caroline Moran (sister of Caitlin) has
“an eye for absurd details”, and the characters
become more likeable as the series goes on.
The trouble is, none of it is “actually very
funny”, said Francesca Steele in The i Paper.
I feel it may be “a bit early” for some of the
pandemic jokes (a Chris Whitty type dies at his
lectern). Yet it’s neither genuinely outrageous,
nor committed enough to its characters to be
paraphernalia-strewn mess”. With its endless
sex references, Henpocalypse! does feel “a little try-hard”, as if
Moran is “channelling an adolescent desperate to shock”, said
Jude Rogers in The Observer. Still, when it “takes a breath and
calms down”, it becomes really rather “affecting”.

26 August 2023 THE WEEK

28 ARTS Art
Exhibition of the week When the Apple Ripens: Peter Howson at 65
City Art Centre, Edinburgh (0131-529 3993, edinburghmuseums.org.uk/venue/city-art-centre). Until 1 October
Peter Howson is an artist who in response to his time in Bosnia,
has spent much of his life “tussling an experience that ultimately led
with the beast inside”, said to a breakdown, drink and drug
Waldemar Januszczak in The dependence and the collapse of
Sunday Times. Born in London in his marriage. Nevertheless, it
1958 and brought up in Glasgow, produced some impressive
he immediately “stood out” when pictures, notably his very
he first began exhibiting his work “powerful” drawings of heads,
in the mid-1980s. For one thing, in which “over-muscled flesh gives
he had been in the Army, an way to something more abstract”;
experience that “clearly did the effect is “actually more
something terrible to him” and visceral”. Howson found some
inspired more than a few of his solace in rehab and religion, but
earliest, already decidedly “bleak” his “wild paintings” inspired by
pictures. Secondly, his paintings the latter suggest that Christianity,
could hardly have been further too, has been a “ferocious and
from the tasteful, academic art terrifying experience” for him;
fashionable at the time: rather, there is “not much redemption
they depicted a frightening, ultra- here”. This is a glimpse into an
masculine world dominated by “unrelievedly dark” world – and
violence and ugliness. And as this the exhibition quickly becomes
“tense, sweaty, unhappy, creepy “quite overwhelming”. One’s
and, eventually, rather brilliant” tolerance for such “brutal”
retrospective in Edinburgh shows, imagery may well be stretched.
he has not mellowed with age.
The exhibition spans the length Howson is “a one-man heavy
of Howson’s career. There are metal band with the volume
tortured self-portraits and scenes turned up to 11”, said Jonathan
from the Bosnian conflict (where Trinity (2020): “a riotous roar of massive muscular bodies” Jones in The Guardian. His art
he served as Britain’s official war is “a riotous roar of massive
artist), along with the “thunderous” religious scenes that he has muscular bodies, faces like fists, emotions worn like football
spent much of the past few decades creating. This is a “sweaty shirts”. It is also decidedly macho: indeed, aside from a typically
bar-room brawl” of a show bristling with “anger, self-pity, terror, unflattering nude portrait of his celebrity fan Madonna, all
rage and, yes, talent”. It is not for the faint-hearted. “grotesque muscles and twisted sinews”, there is scarcely a
woman to be seen here. Howson’s “bombastic histrionics” may
Throughout, Howson displays his “constant preoccupation get a bit much at times, but his works prove “that excess is better
with a kind of brutal masculinity”, said Duncan Macmillan than good taste”. This is “a claustrophobic, repetitive rant of a
in The Scotsman. Particularly “harrowing” are works created show” – but there’s no doubting the fact that “it stays with you”.

Where to buy… Scandal at the British Museum

The Week reviews an
The British Museum
exhibition in a private gallery has sacked one of its
senior curators over
Alexander Gorlizki suspicions that he
has stolen artefacts
at Lyndsey Ingram from its collection,
said Gordon
Rayner in The Daily
The British artist Alexander Gorlizki Telegraph. Peter
(b.1967) has spent much of the past Higgs (pictured),
25 years immersing himself in the art 57, who was sacked
of the Indian subcontinent, creating earlier this year
work that responds to its aesthetic as the curator
styles with the kind of nuance that of Mediterranean cultures, is a leading authority
on ancient Greek and Mediterranean antiquities
only a comprehensive understanding of
who had worked at the Museum for more than
the subject can provide. His particular Detail from A Brand New Day (2020) 30 years. The items, jewellery made of gold,
area of interest is miniature paintings, semi-precious stones and glass that dated from
© FLOWERS GALLERY/PHOTOGRAPH ANTONIO PARENTE

a form that demands exacting precision.
Although he executes his paintings
with visible reverence for traditional
technique, he brings a wealth of
personal touches – strange hybrid
animals and Mexican wrestlers, to
name a few – into these energetic,
densely patterned and populated
compositions, as well as more modern
elements, notably found photographs.
This show, Conversation Pieces,
presents two dozen of Gorlizki’s recent
works alongside a series of staggeringly
beautiful Indian miniatures, some
dating back as far as the mid-17th
century. It’s debatable what the one
body of work tells us about the other,
but it certainly creates entertaining
work for the eyes. Prices on request.
20 Bourdon Street, London W1
(020-7629 8849). Until 29 September
between 1,500 BC and the 19th century AD,
went missing from the institution’s vaults over
a period of years. Some of them were sold on
eBay. Higgs’s son, Greg, said at the family
home in Hastings that his father had “not done
anything... He’s lost his job and his reputation
and I don’t think it was fair.” George Osborne,
the Museum’s chair, said the trustees had
“taken decisive action to deal with the situation”.
The Metropolitan Police have launched an
investigation, though no one has been arrested.

THE WEEK 26 August 2023

 The List ARTS 29
Best books… Sarah Raven Television
The celebrated gardener, cook and writer chooses her favourite books. Programmes
A newly reissued edition of Sarah Raven’s Garden Cookbook (Bloomsbury The Woman in the Wall
£35), her collection of seasonal recipes, is out this week New drama starring Ruth
Wilson. In Ireland in 2015,
The Concise British Flora in science-based cook, goes on to (Routledge £16.99). The book Lorna wakes to find a dead
woman in her house – an
Colour by Keble Martin, 1965 star in a TV cooking show à la that set me on loving science apparent murder linked to the
(Ebury, available used). The Julia Child. Plus, it includes the as well as art – groundbreaking town’s Magdalene Laundry.
wildflower book I really loved most adorable ever-protecting and charming, all about Sun 27 & Mon 28 Aug, BBC1
when I was a girl. My botanist dog, Six-Thirty. communication with birds and 21:00 (60mins each).
father taught me that if I saw other animals, and heart-lifting
100 plants of one variety, I French Provincial Cooking stuff about animal psychology. A Very British Space
could pick one flower, which by Elizabeth David, 1960 Launch The inside story of
I would then take back to my (Penguin £12.99). I did a Mushrooms by Roger Phillips, Virgin Orbit’s failed bid to put
Keble Martin to identify. His degree in history at Edinburgh 1981 (Macmillan £30). One Britain in the space race;
cameras follow the mission
highly atmospheric drawings University, but was much of the first foraging books to the ill-fated launch day in
are both delicate and precise. happier requesting Elizabeth I read from cover to cover. January 2023. Mon 28 Aug,
My favourites were the David from the National I was partly brought up on C4 22:00 (65mins).
Flowering Rush and Grass Library and reading about the west coast of Scotland,
of Parnassus, both of which extreme dishes like aligot, and spent much of my time The Following Events Are
I love to this day. made from a pan of boiled foraging for chanterelles in Based on a Pack of Lies
potatoes, beaten for ages the woods and field Dark thriller about a conman
Lessons in Chemistry by with vast amounts of garlic mushrooms in the pastures and the two very different
Bonnie Garmus, 2022 (Penguin and cheese. And it’s served after rain. This book kept me women he has duped – his
ex-wife and new girlfriend,
£9.99). Wonderful storytelling as a starter! – and those whom I cooked for a famous author. Tue 29 Aug,
about a pair of eccentric – safe. Only the tasty penny BBC1 21:00 (60mins).
chemists. The husband dies King Solomon’s Ring by buns, not the slimy slippery
and his widow, a brilliant, Konrad Lorenz, 1949 jacks and no deathcaps! Storyville: iHuman
Titles in print are available from The Week Bookshop on 020-3176 3835. For out-of-print books visit biblio.co.uk Documentary exploring the
current pivotal moment in the
rise of artificial intelligence,
The Week’s guide to what’s worth seeing and its far-reaching
implications for our lives. Tue
Last chance 29 Aug, BBC4 22:00 (90mins).
Carrie Mae Weems: Reflections for Now is
a “triumphant retrospective” of work by the Sir Simon Rattle at the
influential African-American photographer and Proms Live from the Albert
filmmaker – a master storyteller with a “political Hall, Rattle’s swansong as
edge” (Daily Telegraph). Until 3 September, music director of the London
Symphony Orchestra, with a
Barbican, London EC2 (barbican.org.uk).
performance of Mahler’s Ninth
Symphony. Sun 27 Aug, BBC2
Chichester’s “immaculate production” of 19:30 (120mins).
The Sound of Music makes for perfect
end-of-holidays fare – catch it before it says Films
so long, farewell etc. (Guardian). Until For a Few Dollars More
3 September, Chichester Festival Theatre, (1965) Clint Eastwood and Lee
Van Cleef star in the classic
West Sussex (cft.org.uk).
The Sound of Music: an “immaculate production” spaghetti western about two
bounty hunters. Sun 27 Aug,
Book now big names such as Karl Ove Knausgård, Zadie BBC2 22:30 (125mins).
The National Gallery’s autumn blockbuster, Smith, Jeanette Winterson and poet laureate
Frans Hals, draws together 50 works by one Simon Armitage. 7-22 October, various venues, In the Heat of the Night
of the greatest portrait painters in Western art Manchester (manchesterliteraturefestival.co.uk). (1967) Oscar-winning thriller
history – including The Laughing Cavalier, loaned about a black detective (Sidney
for the first time from The Wallace Collection. Tickets are selling fast for Stranger Things: Poitier) working with a bigoted
30 September-21 January 2024, National The First Shadow, the stage spin-off and origin sheriff in Mississippi. Tue
29 Aug, BBC2 23:15 (105mins).
Gallery, London WC2 (nationalgallery.org.uk). story of Netflix’s cult sci-fi series, co-written by
Jack Thorne and directed by Stephen Daldry.
Manchester Literature Festival has just 17 November-25 August 2024, Phoenix Theatre,
London WC2 (strangerthingsonstage.com).
Coming up for auction
announced its full programme – book early for
The late Charlie Watts was an
avid collector of first editions
The Archers: what happened last week and jazz memorabilia, which
At Grey Gables, Adil tells Oliver they need an event planner for the launch, but not Lynda – she’s will go on sale next month.
unmanageable. Tracy, though, unwittingly suggests the role to Lynda... Ian tells Helen he has Highlights of Charlie Watts:
accepted the Head of Food role, but awkwardly says he’s considering other cheese suppliers. Gentleman, Collector,
© JONATHAN BUCKLEY; MANUEL HARLAN

George offers to take Henry to the County Show; later, Henry tells George that his stepdad has Rolling Stone include a first
been texting and they plan to meet there. David gives Ben a pep-talk ahead of his return to uni.
edition of The Great Gatsby,
Pip is tetchy when Ruth invites Stella on a family roller-skating outing; Ruth can’t understand
what’s up with her. Learning of Henry and Rob’s history, George tries unsuccessfully to head off and a score of Porgy and Bess
their meeting. Rob tells Henry he’s dying and asks him to bring Jack to a future meeting, but his signed by George Gershwin.
tone changes when Henry refuses. Next day, Rob turns up at Henry’s swimming event. Helen is 15-29 September, Christie’s,
furious at Henry, calling him a liar and saying that he has put Jack in danger. Henry storms off, and 8 King Street, London SW1
Kirsty tries to calm Helen, saying Henry’s a victim too. Distraught Helen wonders what she’s done. and online (christies.com).

26 August 2023 THE WEEK

30 Best properties
Houses for cyclists

Cumbria: Hewthwaite Hall, Cockermouth. This delightful 16th century manor house is set in almost 8 acres of
gardens in the Lake District National Park. Main suite, 2 further beds, family bath, kitchen, dining room, 2 further
receps, utility, gardens, barn with workshop and stores, parking. £875,000; Fine & Country (01228-583109).

East Sussex:
Ewhurst Green,
Robertsbridge. A 14th
century house nestled
in the rolling hills of the
High Weald. 3 suites,
1 further bed, shower,
kitchen/breakfast room,
3 receps, utility, WC,
cellars, 2-bed annexe,
garden, 9.8 acres,
parking. £1.775m;
Inigo (020-3687-3071).

Suffolk: Pilgrim’s
Rest, Ashfield. An
18th century thatched
cottage in a rural
setting. Main suite,
2 further beds, family
bath, kitchen, 4 receps,
study, 4 acres. £695,000;
Fine & Country
(01379-646020).

Oxfordshire: High Street, Dorchester-on-Thames. In the heart of this historic village and
conservation area sits this picturesque property. Main suite with terrace, 2 further beds (1 en suite),
attic room, family bath, kitchen/family room, 2 receps. £695,000; Savills (01865-339702).

THE WEEK 26 August 2023

on the market 31

West Sussex: The Causeway, Horsham. A charming

Grade II timbered house in this pretty market town on
the edge of the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural
Beauty. 3 beds, family bath, kitchen, 2 receps, cellars, loft
room, garden. £750,000; Hamptons (01403-290283).

Powys: Druids Altar, Llangenny, Crickhowell. A Grade

II house with views across the Grwyne Valley and Sugar
Loaf mountain. Main suite, 4 further beds, family bath,
kitchen/breakfast room, 3 receps, garden, parking.
£850,000; Fine & Country (01873-736515).

Northumberland: Ogle Castle, Newcastle upon Tyne. This historic Grade I property dates back to
the 14th century, and is set in approximately 5 acres. Main suite, 6 further beds (2 en suite), 2 baths,
2 kitchens, 3 receps, carriage house, stables, garden. £1m; Galbraith (01434-693693).

Midlothian: Craigesk House, Dalkeith. An Cumbria: The Bield, Little Langdale. A

imposing property with views of the Dalhousie romantic former farmhouse by Lingmoor. Main
railway viaduct. 3 suites, 3 further beds, shower, 4 suite, 2 further beds, family bath, kitchen/dining
receps, kitchen, studies, gym, 2-bed lodge, gardens. room, 2 receps, utility, 1-bed annexe, garden,
OIEO £1.3m; Knight Frank (0131-222 9606). garage. £2m; Fine & Country (01539-733500).

26 August 2023 THE WEEK


Minimalist menus
As someone who writes about food,
I find that “every single day I have to
do something that completely boils my
urine”, says Tim Hayward in the Financial
Times: “I have to read bloody restaurant
menus.” At the moment, I’m particularly
exercised by the trend for a “kind of
adjective-free, mannered minimalism”.
Had Botticelli ever been asked to pitch
Nascita di Venere on a sheet of A4, I
doubt he would have typed: “Paint,
Canvas. Woman. Scallop.” So what
explains the terse brevity – “Pork,
potato, leaves, ferment” – that so often
characterises menu descriptions today? Do
chefs think that underselling their dishes
will help them “exceed expectations”
when they’re eaten? Do they imagine
a series of “nailed-together nouns” will
somehow convey the message “that they
are artists”, unaware that it “reads as a
very unappealing egotism”? Whatever the
cause, it seems “bloody minded” of chefs
to give customers so little information.
Restaurant food is “infinitely more
interesting” today than it was in the past
– so why miss out on the opportunity
to describe it? Besides, I’ve long believed
that anticipation plays a “huge part” in
making food enjoyable. To wilfully ignore
this chance to maximise that anticipation
strikes me as “beyond perverse”.
Omelettes: “difficult to master”
“There is something about omelettes,”
says Ed Cumming in The Daily Telegraph.
“Few dishes have more emotional heft.”
In film and TV, they are regularly used
to denote comfort and care. At the end of
LEISURE
Food & Drink
Sichuan peppercorns: “strange and addictive”
Big Night, Stanley Tucci’s 1996 film about
a struggling restaurant in New York, his
character responds to a culinary disaster
by silently making a restorative omelette.
In 2007’s Ratatouille, Remy, the “plucky
rat-chef”, cooks an omelette for his friend
Linguini on his first day of work. And in
The Bear, Disney+’s acclaimed drama
about a troubled chef in Chicago, the
second season climaxes with a character
making a French omelette to show “she
loves taking care of people”. Part of the
omelette’s symbolic power is that “eggs
have obvious clout as metaphors”. But
it’s also a dish that sits on an important
“fault line” within gastronomy, being
“easy to make but difficult to master”.
It’s extremely hard to cook an omelette
perfectly – in particular to master the
contrast between a “silken and loose”
33
middle but with a “hot and springy”
exterior. Seasoned cooks believe that
“everything you need to know about
a chef” will be clear from the way they
approach an omelette – which is why,
in French kitchens, it has long been used
“as a test of prospective employees”.
The appeal of the Sichuan peppercorn
Certain foods are “prized by gastronauts”
above all for the sensations they induce,
says The Economist. “The appeal of foie
gras is partly its lush richness.” Unripe
guava, often used in Thai cooking, “has
a tannic, mouth-drying quality that
balances fiery foods perfectly”. One of
the “strangest and most addictive” foods
in this category is the Sichuan peppercorn.
Berries of the prickly-ash tree – and part
of the citrus family – Sichuan peppercorns
contain a chemical named hydroxy-alpha-
sanshool, which “induces a tingling
numbness in the lips and tongue”. While
some people fail to see why anyone would
“want to anaesthetise their mouths while
eating”, others cannot get enough of
their “zingy” intensity. Fortunately for
enthusiasts, their use is not confined to the
“deliciously complex cuisine of Sichuan”.
Try dry-frying them and then crushing
with salt to make a “bracing topping for
popcorn”. If you toast some and then mix
them with cumin and fennel seeds, dried
chillies, anise, sugar and salt, you’ll have
an enlivening spice rub for fried potatoes.
And thanks to their “lemony intensity”,
Sichuan peppercorns also pair well with
desserts – whether the “austere richness
of dark chocolate” or the “buttery blank
slate of shortbread”.

Two simple tapas recipes

There are so many ways in which to enjoy chorizo, whether it’s on This dish is traditional throughout Catalunya, and in different
the BBQ or simply fried in a pan, say Anna Cabrera and Vanessa guises all over Spain. When entertaining, we love to pile all the
Murphy. This classic dish is easy to make – just be sure you have toasted slices of bread with the whole tomatoes, garlic, olive oil
enough sourdough to mop up all the cooking juices. and salt: then everyone can dive in and make their own.

Chorizo in white wine Tomato bread

Serves 4 350g raw cooking chorizo, left whole 1 medium red Serves 4 1 pa de pagès or a sourdough boule – it’s important for
pepper, sliced (approx. 85g) 1 medium green pepper, sliced (approx. the slice to be nice and long 2 garlic cloves, unpeeled 2 ripe vine
85g) 300ml white wine To serve: plenty of sourdough bread tomatoes a pinch of fine sea salt extra virgin olive oil

• Heat a dry frying reduce the heat to low • Preheat the grill. • To serve, rub the butt of
pan over a medium and cook for around • Slice the bread the raw garlic over the
heat. When the 25-30 minutes, lengthways so that slices of toasted bread.
pan is hot, add until the wine you get four lovely Cut a tomato in half
the whole has reduced long slices of and rub that half over
chorizo and but there’s still bread (one slice the slice of bread
cook for 5 enough for some per person). Toast – really mush it
minutes to bread soakage. on both sides in. Discard the
give it some • Once it’s cooked, under the grill. tomato once used.
colour. Add the sliced cut the chorizo into 2cm • Meanwhile, slice • Sprinkle with
peppers and cook, tossing pieces in the pan, then it’s the end (butt) off the a pinch of salt.
occasionally, for 4 minutes. ready to serve with a large garlic cloves, but Drizzle with oil.
• Add the wine to the pan, chunk of bread. leave the skins on. Ready to go.
© NICKY HOOPER

Taken from Tapas by Anna Cabrera and Vanessa Murphy, published by Blasta at £13. To buy from The Week
Bookshop for £9.99, call 020-3176 3835 or visit theweekbookshop.co.uk.

26 August 2023 THE WEEK

34 LEISURE Consumer
New cars: what the critics say
The Daily Telegraph
After 70 years and 11
generations, is this the final
blast for the fossil-fuelled
E-Class? The new range
features the base petrol
model, a diesel version,
and the popular 300e plug-
in hybrid with a 71-mile
all-electric range, and
Mercedes-Benz E-class which can do 0-62mph
Price: from around £56,000 in 6.4secs. All cars are
rear-wheel drive with
nine-speed automatic
transmission. A four-wheel
drive diesel-electric PHEV
will launch in September.
Sunday Times Driving
The new E-class is more
like a smaller version
of the range-topping
Mercedes S-class than
ever, delivering a polished,
enjoyable drive. With
better aerodynamics for
efficiency and to reduce
emissions, it glides serenely
at cruising speeds, with
plenty of grip and precise
steering. There are chrome-
capped wraparound LED
rear lights; and inside, the
sumptuous cabin is full of
high-end, glossy materials.
What Car?
The spacious interior is
packed with tech, notably
the MBUX Superscreen
– a central infotainment
touchscreen and passenger
display, which enables
Zoom and video calls
thanks to a high-definition
dashboard camera. The
tech extends to safety too,
with options for an Active
Brake Assist system, which
looks out for hazards, and
autonomous driving tech,
which means the car can
park and overtake by itself.

The best... blenders for making smoothies

Nutribullet GO portable
John Lewis On The Go Food Blender Smeg PBF01CRUK Red blender This handy cordless
This sleek blender has two speed Compact Personal Blender 70W blender can whizz for
settings and a pulse function, while There are two speed selections two periods of 30 seconds,
the 350W motor operates for two on this retro blender, which can before it needs a minute’s
minutes, before needing to cool. It take four ice cubes. The 300W rest. It charges from a socket
comes with two 600ml jugs, which motor can run for up to a or a computer, and the
don’t have carry handles. Ingredients minute, then must rest for 370ml to-go cup and lid
need chopping into small a minute. It comes with two are dishwasher-friendly.
pieces before blending, 600ml bottles Smaller than
and it has to be hand- and all parts are most, it can’t be
washed (£25; dishwasher-safe, used for fizzy
johnlewis.com). apart from the drinks, ice or
blade assembly hot liquids (£40;
(£110; shop. nutribullet.
Breville VBL248
smeguk.com). co.uk).
Blend Active
Personal Blender
Incredibly simple to
Kuro NutriPro Blender & Smoothie
use, this 350W blender
Maker With no button, you simply
comes with two sports bottles.
press down and twist to operate this
It can operate for 30 seconds,
1,000W blender, which can run for 30

SOURCE: THE TIMES

with a minute’s rest, and all of it,
seconds, before cooling for a minute.
including the blade, bottles and
It crushes ice and has a single large
lids, can go in the dishwasher
blending cup, which has to be hand-
(£23; argos.co.uk).
washed (£50; salter.com).

Tips… pitfalls to avoid And for those who Where to find... UK

with holiday money
ODon’t buy currency at the airport, unless
you order online in advance. In many
countries you don’t need cash any more,
and you can use your debit card in a
cashpoint on arrival if you do need cash.
OAvoid taking cash out on a credit card
abroad, it’s better to buy directly with the
card, and you’ll get legal protections too.
OForeign retailers often offer a conversion
to sterling when you pay by card. It’s likely
to cost more; choose the local currency.
OIf you can’t easily convert a currency in
your head, use a currency conversion app
or your phone calculator. Watch out for
extra noughts being added to bills.
OOverseas transaction charges vary wildly.
A Monzo card has no charges, and Which?
also recommends debit cards from Starling
Bank, Virgin Money, Kroo Bank and Chase.
OMany countries allow tourists to claim
VAT back on goods – up to 20% of the price.
You need a receipt to make a claim, often
at the airport as you leave.
SOURCE: THE DAILY TELEGRAPH
have everything…
Pureline’s Amalfi II Pool Dining
Table combines multifunctional
practicality with elegant design. When
not being used for a game of pool
or table tennis, the oak table can
seat up to eight people. It’s available
in two lengths, 6ft or 7ft, and four
different finishes.
from £539; libertygames.co.uk
SOURCE: EVENING STANDARD
cross-country swimming
Above Below Devon’s woodland camp
on Dartmoor is the original cross-country
swimming break. Their routes offer a mix
of hiking, scrambling and open-water
swimming, following the coastline (from
£334; abovebelow.sc or on eventbrite.co.uk).
Swim Wild Wales runs weekend breaks with
swims and walks along the Pembrokeshire
National Park coastal path, and offers the
chance of spotting seals and dolphins (£330;
swimwildwales.com for future dates).
Local guide Matt Lowe leads a three-swim
circular route from Maenporth in Cornwall,
with a sea-swim past caves and a swoosh
down Porthnavas Creek to end at a pub (full
day £100; email hello@agoodadventure.co).
Immerse Hebrides offers half-day swim-hikes
and more adventurous swims out to small
islands (from £175; immersehebrides.com).
Jurassic Coast Swimming runs day swims
with scrambling and ledge-jumping around
Durdle Door, Beer and Branscombe, Dorset
(from £90; jurassiccoastswimming.co.uk).
SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN

THE WEEK 26 August 2023

 Travel
This week’s dream: searching for “sea wolves” in Canada
Most wolves are land-based predators,
working in packs to chase down the
likes of deer and elk. But on the coastal
islands of British Columbia, these
adaptable creatures have carved out
a different existence, says Andrew
Eames in the FT. Having come for
the venison, they’ve stayed for the
seafood, “browsing the tides”, grazing
on barnacles, clams and crabs, and
“occasionally swimming to offshore
rocks to creep up on seals and sea
otters”. These “sea wolves” have thrived,
and are widespread today, but spotting
them amid the region’s dense forests is
not easy. Still, your chances are not bad
on the bespoke “wolf-searching” trips The elusive sea wolves of British Columbia
recently launched by Audley Travel, with
indigenous guides and much time spent near the islands’
shorelines, walking, camping and travelling by boat.
After a few nights in Vancouver and in Port Hardy, at the
northern tip of Vancouver Island, you sail northwards through the a nearby island before padding away into the gloom. A nine-day
smaller islands of the labyrinthine archipelago. There’s plenty of
LEISURE 35
other wildlife to spot, including bald
eagles, pods of humpback whales,
and “pungent” colonies of sea lions.
Particularly comical are the sea otters,
gathered in great “rafts”: you might
pause to watch mothers showing their
pups “how to open shells by thwacking
them on stones balanced on their
chests”. The first land stop is a shell
midden left by humans – the only trace
that remains of a former Tlatlasikwala
First Nations village on the site. You
then pitch camp on a smaller island
nearby, setting off on a walk through
a rainforest laced with wolf trails.
Amid the dense creepers and cedars
like “towering organ pipes”, there’s a
sense the animals are watching you. But
they’re most likely to reveal themselves at dawn, when they howl
together, drawing you out of your tent. With any luck, you might
spot one – its hair “the colour of ginger tea” – gazing at you from
trip costs from £5,870pp, including flights (audleytravel.com).

Hotel of the week Getting the flavour of…

Grand Hotel Son Net
Mallorca
Set amid beautiful gardens in
Mallorca’s Tramuntana Mountains,
this terracotta-pink 17th century
mansion has recently emerged
from a three-year makeover under
a new owner. It feels “timeless”
even so, says Toby Skinner in
Condé Nast Traveller. Each of the
31 rooms have been “individually
imagined” by the designer Lorenzo
Castillo to reflect a different aspect
of the island’s richly layered
history, with highly desirable
antiques set off against bespoke
fabrics at every turn. Still, this is no
dusty museum. A “Mediterranean
brightness” prevails, not least in
the six poolside cottages and the
10,000 sq ft spa, which is due to
open soon.
Doubles from £812; sonnet.es.
The secrets of Orford Ness
A 12-mile spit of shingle and reed marsh
caught between the River Alde and the sea,
Orford Ness in Suffolk is a National Trust
nature reserve of “stark” and “fragile”
beauty. But the hulking remains of concrete
buildings across it testify to a darker past,
says Simon Ingram in the Sunday Times –
as a testing ground for some of the 20th
century’s key military technologies, including
radar and the atomic bomb. These structures
– from the windmill-like Black Beacon to the
“sinisterly derelict” Control Room – lend a
surreal and unsettling edge to any visit, and
there’s an excellent exhibition, Island of
Secrets, for anyone interested. Still, “shingle,
sky and sea” are powerful presences too, and
so is resurgent nature, with sea pea and sea
campion “enlivening the stones”, and many
animals to spot, including hares, otters and
a rich array of birds.
New Jersey’s seaside jewel
Known as the “Queen of the Seaside
Resorts”, Cape May in New Jersey was the
summer playground of presidents in the 19th
century, and still makes for a “serene and
sophisticated” escape from the nearby cities
of Philadelphia and New York, says Cathy
Toogood in The Daily Telegraph. The town’s
huge, golden beach is the main attraction,
but it also has a lively arts scene, wild
surroundings and beautifully preserved
Victorian architecture (much of it painted in
“cheerful shades of cornflower blue, lemon,
pink and sage”). Sign up for a historic street
tour (the Cape May MAC trolley tour is
among the best), ride a “railbike” out along
the tracks of the old seashore railroad, past
beautiful salt marshes and wildflower
meadows, and be sure to take a whale-
watching boat tour in Delaware Bay,
where sightings are “extremely common”.
Cycling around Camembert
For lovers of cheese and gentle cycling, it’s
the perfect trip, says Chris Allsop in The
Times – a journey through the “rumpled”
heart of Normandy taking in three villages
that have lent their names to some of the
region’s finest fromage. Hire an e-bike from
Locvélo at the Ouistreham-Caen ferry port
and head first for Camembert, whose local
museum offers tastings. Next comes Livarot,
where a tour of Graindorge Fromagerie is
not to be missed. And the final stop is Pont
l’Évêque – beyond which the pretty seaside
towns of Deauville and Honfleur lie within
easy reach. The route takes you through “a
haze of hamlets overflowing with geranium-
filled flower boxes”, and there are other
“boutique” producers of cheese (such as La
Ferme de l’Instière) and cider (such as Bellou
Manor) to visit along the way. Visit
normandie-tourisme.fr and locvelo.fr for
more information.

Last-minute offers from top travel companies

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Explore the national parks Seven nights at the five-star Eight days aboard a traditional Enjoy a 7-night Sharm el Sheikh
of the Canadian Rockies. Hotel Pestana on Porto Santo, 90ft sailing boat with a small getaway at the Pickalbatros
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14 nights incl. accomm., car
hire and some meals cost from
£2,679pp (excl. flights). 020-
7368 1440, trailfinders.com.
Arrive September.
with a miles-long sandy beach,
cost from £811pp all-inclusive
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Depart 25 September.
group visiting idyllic islands
cost from £1,976pp full-board
(excl. flights). 020-8004 8886,
theadventurepeople.com.
Arrive 15 October.
Palace Resort on the Sinai
Peninsula from £570pp all-
inclusive (incl. flights). 020-
3474 0372, blueseaholidays.
co.uk. Depart 28 November.

26 August 2023 THE WEEK

 CITY CITY 37
Companies in the news
...and how they were assessed
Crest Nicholson: builders’ droop
Safe as houses? After 14 consecutive rises in interest rates, that old adage is “being tested
a bit”, said Alistair Osborne in The Times. The latest “to ramp up Britain’s housing
jitters” is one of the nation’s biggest housebuilders, Crest Nicholson, which has just issued
a whopper of a profits warning. In June, Crest’s “gung-ho” boss, Peter Truscott, assured
investors that full-year profits would be “in line” with forecasts of £73.7m. Now we
learn they’re more likely to be £50m. Cue a big sell-off that knocked 14% off Crest’s Seven days in the
already whacked share price – and caused knock-on damage across the sector, said Riya Square Mile
Makwana in The Daily Telegraph. Shares in Taylor Wimpey, Persimmon, Barrett, Vistry,
Redrow and Berkeley all tumbled. In the ongoing standoff between house buyers and The world’s central bankers met for their
sellers, the direction of travel is clear, said John Stepek on Bloomberg. The latest figures annual conference at Jackson Hole
against a background of falling market
from Rightmove show that UK asking prices have suffered the sharpest August fall since confidence. Global stock markets have
2018, and that the expensive ones are “proving the hardest to shift”. Yet housebuilders lost about $3trn in August, due to
like Crest “would rather whine about the Help-to-Subsidise-Homebuilder-Profit scheme worries ranging from the impact of high
being scrapped than be the first to visibly cut prices”. Crest says things will improve in interest rates to the economic malaise
the “medium term”, which really means “they can’t see anything but fog on the horizon”. in China. The Bank of England sounded
the alarm in the UK – where business
Microsoft/Activision: game on again activity unexpectedly contracted in
Following Microsoft’s battle to get its blockbuster $75bn acquisition of Activision cleared August – by warning that half of all
in the UK “has been almost as dramatic as playing the latter’s video game Call of Duty”, companies with borrowings will struggle
to meet debt payments by the end of
said Kate Beioley on FT.com. In the latest instalment, the pair have restructured the deal the year. The Chancellor faced renewed
in hopes of winning over the UK Competition and Markets Authority, which blocked the calls from Tory backbenchers for tax
original proposal on the grounds that “it would stifle innovation in the nascent cloud cuts to support the economy after
gaming market”. Microsoft appealed the ruling after US regulators failed to block the official figures showed the Government
deal and EU watchdogs passed it, said James Titcomb in The Daily Telegraph. Even so, borrowed less than expected in July.
the company appears to have pulled out all the stops to appease the CMA – by sacrificing The former boss of NatWest, Dame
the cloud streaming rights to all current and future Activision games released during the Alison Rose, will receive a £2.4m pay
next 15 years (except in the European Economic Area). It will be up to the new owner package this year, despite quitting in
of those rights, the French gaming group Ubisoft, to decide which service providers can disgrace over her handling of the closure
feature the likes of Call of Duty and World of Warcraft. The new plan addresses one of Nigel Farage’s bank account. Farage
of the CMA’s key concerns. But a new merger investigation is now under way and the called the move a “sick joke”.
watchdog’s boss, Sarah Cardell, is no pushover. “This is not a green light,” she said. Britain’s biggest defence contractor, BAE
Systems, paid $5.55bn for the aerospace
Bloomberg: rein-Carnation division of America’s Ball Corporation.
EY, the Big Four auditor, rejected a
Michael Bloomberg co-founded his eponymous company in 1981, after being fired by
proposal from the US private equity
Salomon Brothers, and his terminals – a fixture of trading desks globally – have made group TPG to break it up and take a
him a billionaire many times over. But, at 81, he isn’t getting any younger, said Daniel stake in its consulting business. Getir,
Thomas and Anna Nicolaou in the FT. Hence this week’s overhaul. In an extensive shake- the grocery delivery app, is to cut more
up of the media and financial services empire, Bloomberg has installed a new board of than a tenth of its workforce as it retreats
directors, led by former Bank of England governor Mark Carney, and has promoted the from European markets. Le Touquet
current chief product officer, Vlad Kliatchko, to CEO. The move follows “speculation in northern France announced plans
about succession at Bloomberg”; but, in a memo, the billionaire stressed he was “not to name its airport after the late Queen
going anywhere” and that power would continue to be shared. “I’ve never used a title Elizabeth II, after receiving the go-ahead
from King Charles.
in the company so I won’t change what I’ll be called,” said Bloomberg – “just Mike”.

Blue-chip bosses: 16% pay rise prompts calls for reform

The PM has called for “more moderation”
when it comes to pay, and the Bank of
England governor, Andrew Bailey, has warned
against “unsustainable” rises. Clearly, FTSE
100 boards haven’t got the message, said
Rupert Neate in The Guardian. According to
research from the High Pay Centre, the
bosses of Britain’s 100 largest listed
companies collected an average pay rise
of 16% (or £500,000) last year, taking their
median pay to £3.91m. Some of the
biggest hitters made much more, thanks
to performance-related bonuses and share Soriot: leading the pack
awards. Leading the pack was the pharma
boss Pascal Soriot of AstraZeneca, who took home £15.3m.
The figures will sit uneasily with millions of workers whose
own pay growth has failed to keep up with soaring inflation: the
median FTSE 100 boss is now paid 118 times the median full-time
worker. “Britain has become a land of gross extremes,” said the
TUC general secretary Paul Nowak. But for
all the “union fury”, City leaders, such as
London Stock Exchange boss Julia Hoggett,
are still pushing for even higher levels of
pay, said the FT, to close the gap with the US,
where the median S&P 500 boss was paid
$14.1m last year.
The High Pay Centre wants reforms –
including at least two elected representatives
on remuneration committees – “to give
workers more voice”, said Sarah Taaffe-
Maguire on Sky News. But with many
firms already fleeing abroad, it’s hard to see
how that will advance the Square Mile’s flagging fortunes, said
Oliver Shah in The Sunday Times. Schroders boss Peter Harrison
reckons that objections to risk-taking and eye-catching pay
may be the biggest obstacles to a revival in the City. “We are a
socialist country with a capitalist system, and we are struggling
to reconcile the two,”he said.

26 August 2023 THE WEEK

38 CITY Talking points
Issue of the week: chancing an Arm
The market debut of Britain’s chip champion is a litmus test – in more ways than one
If ever a float could be said to test
current market conditions, it may be
that of Arm, the SoftBank-owned British
chip designer that has “started the
countdown” for a Nasdaq IPO in early
September, said the FT. It promises to
be the biggest US listing in two years,
valuing the Cambridge-based company
at around $64bn. Chip stocks have
rebounded sharply this year on the back
of “the AI wave”, said Jacky Wong in
The Wall Street Journal. And Arm can
boast that its designs go into “almost
every smartphone” on the planet. Even
so, it is coming to market at a “lofty
valuation”. The bull case rests on the
hope that it can extend its reach into the Arm’s headquarters in Cambridge
central server processors that power AI
applications – and thus “experience the same sort of explosive
growth as Nvidia”, whose valuation shot through $1trn in May.
But the crucial question is whether investors will “pay up” for
these prospects. “The Arm IPO is shaping up as a useful stress test
for all the rosy assumptions” baked into the AI rally.
There are other issues, said Katie Prescott in The Times. As Arm’s
filing documents make clear, it is worryingly exposed to an
“unpredictable China”, which accounted for a quarter of revenues seeing what one analyst calls a “worrying de-equitisation across
in the year to March. The Biden administration’s crackdown on
Chinese access to US tech and investment doesn’t help. But Arm’s
problems extend far beyond the standard
geopolitical headwinds facing strategic
industries. It is also “at the mercy of
a Chinese entity it does not own”. The
UK company’s single largest customer
is “Arm China” – yet it has no control
over its Chinese namesake. A “farcical
episode” last year highlighted the
potential for mischief when the latter’s
CEO, Allen Wu, “was fired but refused to
leave”. As the filing notes admit, even the
name could prove an issue.“Although
Arm China operates independently of us,
[it] uses our trademarks in its marketing
and branding” – meaning “our own
brand and reputation may suffer
significant damage” if “Arm China’s
actions are imputed to us”.
For all these potential problems, there’s still “much lament” in the
City that London has missed out on the world’s biggest listing this
year, said Swetha Gopinath and Kit Rees on Bloomberg. “It’s the
latest blow for the London Stock Exchange, which has seen more
companies quit than join” this year, “and whose indexes lag
behind European and US peers”. Indeed, 2023 could prove “the
worst for UK listings since the global financial crisis”. We are
the London market”. Whatever the fortunes of Arm next month,
its loss to New York is symbolic.

Brics investing: what the experts think Inflation nation

O Building blocs
Expansion was on the
agenda when the 15th
summit of the Brics
group – comprising
Brazil, Russia, India,
China and South
Africa – opened in
Johannesburg this
week, says Jason Burke
in The Guardian.
Among the dozens of Modi with Chinese minister Wang Wentao however, caveats. The
nations at the summit,
which purports to represent about “40%
of the world’s population and a quarter
of global GDP”, are several potential new
members – including Iran and Venezuela.
But there are already deep divisions
between existing members. While China
is looking to build “a broader coalition of
developing nations” to challenge the US
economically on the global stage, India is
anxious to ensure the Brics group doesn’t
become “openly anti-Western”. Many
analysts are “sceptical” about whether
even an enlarged Brics grouping will
have much impact, given existing schisms.
O China vs. India
There’s no doubting which country is
currently in favour with global investors,
says The Daily Telegraph. Overseas funds
of “evangelists”, said
The Economist. Surveys
suggest its economy
“is growing at its fastest
pace for 13 years,” aided
by “Western companies
investing handsomely
in the country as they
diversify their supply
chains away from
China”. There are,
Indian economy is itself
still over-dependent on Chinese imports.
And steps taken by PM Narendra Modi to
limit those imports are already leading to
unwieldy new licensing restrictions and
growing protectionism.
O Spreading the wealth
Although the IMF projects that Indian
GDP will increase by 6.1% this year,
wealth remains “starkly concentrated”,
says Chloe Cornish in the FT. Still, there’s
evidence of a shift. Indian wealth managers
– including Yatin Shah’s 360 One group,
which manages about $47bn – are casting
their nets beyond India’s biggest cities,
“targeting a new class of entrepreneurs
making fortunes in everything from masala
factories to hospitals”. In another boost to
wealth, Indian equities have gained
First, the good news, said Jack
Barnett in The Times: UK inflation
“may be easing more quickly than first
thought”. Figures from the Office for
National Statistics – based on a new
model of statistical analysis – suggest
that “core inflation” fell to 6.8% in
July from 6.9% in June (from a
peak of 7.3% in May) indicating that
“underlying price pressures are
easing”. If the new measure, dubbed
the “common trend component rate”,
is accurate, it raises the chances that
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, will be able
to make good on his promise “to halve
the headline rate of inflation to about
5% by the end of the year”.
Now for the bad news, said Chris
Dorrell in City AM: warning lights are
flashing to indicate that the UK is
creeping closer to falling into recession.
The closely-watched S&P Global
Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI),
which assesses the health of an
economy’s services and manufacturing
sector, came in at 47.9 for the UK in
August, “far below the 50 reading
which indicates flat growth”. The
surprise fall hit the pound as investors
scaled back their forecasts of peak
interest rates to below 6%. Tighten your
seatbelts, said Marcus Ashworth on
Bloomberg. The BoE’s 14 consecutive
rate rises have made the pound the
© SCOTT BROWNRIGG

best-performing G10 currency this year.

have been “fleeing the Chinese market” , handsomely in recent years: the Nifty 50 But it won’t “hold its gains” if the
offloading the equivalent of £7.3bn in an index of largest companies is up almost economy weakens. “Sterling is heading
unprecedented 12-day run of withdrawals 10% in a year. India has its challenges, but for a Wile E. Coyote moment.”
until Tuesday. India, by contrast, isn’t short a lack of momentum isn’t one of them.

THE WEEK 26 August 2023

 Commentators CITY 41
The US economy continues to surprise on the upside, says Irwin
Stelzer. Inflation is falling even as economic growth accelerates City profiles
China won’t to an annual 4.1%, there are jobs “available for all who care to
work” and “new factories are breaking ground at record levels”.
Michael Burry
Batten down the hatches,
spoil America’s This is partly due to “the sugar high” created by a spend now, pay
later fiscal policy that will pile new deficits on top of the nation’s
says The Times, there’s a
crash coming. At least
party… $32.7trn debt mountain. But that’s a worry for future generations.
For now, it’s a case of “the Fitch downgrade be damned” – party
according to Michael Burry –
and he has form. The trader,
Irwin Stelzer on. What might threaten this happy state? “No economy is an who called the 2008 banking
island entire of itself” and even a successful one is susceptible “to crisis and was immortalised
The Sunday Times the ills of less healthy neighbours”. But plenty of pundits reckon by Christian Bale in the film
that China’s problems will only have “a limited impact” on the The Big Short, has bet $1.6bn
on another Wall Street crash
US. “Indeed, the deflationary effect of a slumping China – lower by the end of the year. A
demand for commodities, cheaper exports – is a blessing for the former medical student, who
world’s inflation fighters.” Analysts talk, money walks. The US spent his nights studying
share of all foreign direct investment has risen to 22%, while investment, Burry dropped
China’s has collapsed. If the bell tolls, it’s not for America. out of college to form Scion
Capital and started betting
If you talk to writers and actors on the picket lines of the against subprime mortgage
Hollywood strike, two stories emerge, says The Economist. “The products in 2005. It was like
“watching a plane crash”,
…but few first is of an industry in chaos”, as workers fret about the effects
of technological change on their pay cheques, and studios “baulk”
he later said. As America’s
“pre-eminent prophet of
are California at Wall Street’s voracious demand for streaming profits. But the
second story is about “a city that is shrinking because it is too
doom”, Burry has been
warning about a “passive
dreamin’ expensive for its workers”. Some worry that LA’s future as the
entertainment capital of the world may be lost as “high housing
investing bubble” – inflated
by the trillions that have
Editorial costs push regular folks out”. Hollywood is not about to abandon poured into index-linked
its hometown, but politicians are right to worry about what’s funds – since 2019. Two
The Economist happening “outside Tinseltown”, where the LA exodus is more years ago, he predicted
dramatic. A recent Stanford University report found that 352 “the mother of all crashes”.
The clock is still ticking.
firms moved their HQs out of California between 2018 and
2021, “with departures more than doubling in 2021”. Future Yang Huiyan
projections are even scarier: California’s Department of Finance
suggests that Los Angeles County could lose 1.7 million people,
or some 18% of its residents, by 2060. Los Angeles still sees
itself as “the urban embodiment of the California Dream”.
The footfall says otherwise. It is “repelling people”.

Craft beer drinkers prize variety, but the taps are beginning to run
dry, says James Tapper. Over a hundred small British brewers have
Crafty boom been forced out of business in the past 18 months, hit by a lethal
cocktail of Brexit, the pandemic, the cost-of-living crisis and the
ends with new threat of changes to beer duty. It’s playing havoc with a once
thriving culture “built around constant change and some esoteric
a hangover beers”. Customers haven’t lost their taste for craft beers – as
evidenced by continuing strong sales among larger companies,
James Tapper including BrewDog, the Camden Town Brewery and Beavertown.
But the real beneficiaries of the shift away from pricey, “hypey China’s property ructions
The Observer hops” have been multinational brewers, who took advantage have played havoc with the
finances of Yang Huiyan
of the downturn to offer pubs and free houses “cheap kegs” in who, just two years ago,
return for “control” of all their lines. One survivor, Pete Brown of “was the richest woman in
London’s Forest Road Brewery, says the UK market is following Asia” with a fortune put at
the same course as the US, where “the craft beer bubble burst” $30bn, says the FT. The vast
in the late 1990s – after being overwhelmed by new entrants. majority of that has now
“In a bust, people go back to things they recognise.” “evaporated”; the family
company, Country Garden,
I’m late to the trend, says Ruth Sunderland, but “Lazy Girl Jobs” is teetering. Yang, 42, was
– shorthand for ones that “don’t involve stress, long hours or raised in the property game,
often attending meetings as
Why are we interfere with your lifestyle” – have become the social media craze
of the summer. The phrase is actually deliberately provocative.
a teenager; when the firm
listed in Hong Kong in 2007,
celebrating Apparently, it’s not really about laziness at all, so much as “a
critique of the epidemic of work blighting Britain and leading
her self-made father turned
over most of his shares to
lazy girls? to mass burnout” – combined with a feeling that it’s pointless to
strive at work if the key rewards (a house and a decent pension)
her. Now she’s in the hot
seat. The coming weeks will
Ruth Sunderland remain out of reach. Productivity has been poorer in the UK be a test for Country Garden,
than in comparable developed countries since the financial crisis. which has liabilities close
Daily Mail “There are many and varied reasons for this, but a flimsy work to $200bn, and for the
Yangs. Thanks to Beijing’s
ethic cannot be helping.” The Lazy Girl Job movement – “if that “common prosperity”
is not too energetic a term” – is tongue in cheek. But it seems campaign against unchecked
to have struck a real chord, and that is depressing. It’s a shame capitalism, whatever assets
that young women, with so much potential and many more they salvage are bound to
opportunities than their predecessors, are being told that come under scrutiny.
“career ambitions are uncool and futile”.

26 August 2023 THE WEEK

 Shares CITY 43

Who’s tipping what

The week’s best shares Directors’ dealings
CentralNic CVS Group Johnson Matthey On the Beach Group
Investors’ Chronicle The Times The Times 170
The internet services firm uses The vet group is improving This “fallen giant” is focusing 160
AI to convert ad campaigns on facilities and ramping up on clean air ops and leveraging Director buys
150 2,823,863
search engines into e-commerce acquisitions in the resilient pet its “vast access” to platinum
transactions. Trading in line market. It has doubled its debt metals in uses ranging from 140

with expectations, it isn’t facility and is teaming up with emissions control to medical 130

showing signs of a sales vet schools to prevent staff implants. Bad news is already 120
slowdown – and is prioritising shortages. Buy. £20.54. priced in, and a breakthrough 110
shareholder returns with a innovation could see shares 100
second buyback. Buy. 131p. Headlam Group rocket. Buy. £16.08.
90
The Times
Checkit The UK’s leading flooring Just Group Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug
Investors’ Chronicle distributor has been hit by The Mail on Sunday

SOURCE: INVESTORS’ CHRONICLE

Checkit’s digital workflow
platform helps firms manage
deskless workers, improve
productivity and make
efficiency savings. Customers
include Waitrose and Compass.
Revenues are rising. Buy. 24p.
Covid and the cost-of-living
crisis. But it’s a survivor with
a strong balance-sheet,
underpinned by freehold
properties and good cash-
generation. One for
contrarians. Buy. 218p.
Simon Cooper, the online
This insurer specialises in holiday retailer’s founder
annuities for individuals, and turned NED, has bought
has developed clever tech to £2.5m-worth of shares. The
offer competitive deals to small stock has fallen this year amid
trading uncertainties. But the
and mid-size firms. Sales have group is now pushing into the
doubled and profits are more resilient “premium”
soaring. Buy. 83p. end of the market.

…and some to hold, avoid or sell Form guide

Bellway Hill & Smith Savills Shares tipped 12 weeks ago

The Daily Telegraph
Times are tough for
housebuilders, and Bellway
faces a 45% drop in earnings,
falling completions and a
shrinking order book. But it
has £232m in cash to buy land
cheaply and prosper in the next
cycle. Hold. £21.34
The Times Investors’ Chronicle Best tip
Hill & Smith is capitalising on Profitability has plunged due Pets at Home Group
America’s huge infrastructure to slowing UK and European The Times
spend with niche goods and transactions and disappointing down 0.17% to 357.2p
services including: solar recovery in China. But the
lighting towers and generators, estate agent has “a good Worst tip
SSP Group
steel products and safety kit. chunk of cash”, and is gaining
The Times
Revenues and profits are market share as rivals struggle. down 15.19% to 229p
soaring. Hold. £17.98. Hold. 909p.

Essentra Persimmon Shell

Investors’ Chronicle
Essentra has sold its filters
arm to focus on high-margin
components. Further cost-
cutting, helped by a new plant
in Mexico, and volume growth
when the economic cycle turns,
should drive margins higher.
Hold. 155p.
Investors’ Chronicle
The housebuilder’s forward
sales have surged and it’s
bullish about the future. But
rivals Barratt and Taylor
Wimpey have more plots with
planning consent, and larger
land banks. The premium is
unjustifiable. Sell. £11.61.
The Times Market view
Oil prices are rising, due
“A witches’ brew
to production cuts and an of risk-off forces.”
improving economic outlook, Mike Zigmont of Harvest
so big investor payouts should Volatility Management on
continue. Facing growing souring investor sentiment
public scrutiny, but making the after a bumper start to the
most of the “fossil fuel gravy year. Quoted in the FT
train”. Hold. £23.94.

Market summary
Key numbers
Key numbers for
for investors
investors Best and worst performing
Best performing shares
shares Following the Footsie
22 Aug 2023 Week before Change (%) WEEK’S CHANGE, FTSE 100 STOCKS 8,000
FTSE 100 7270.76 7389.40 –1.61% RISES Price % change
FTSE All-share UK 3963.58 4039.10 –1.87% Admiral Group 2386.00 +8.50 7,900

Dow Jones 34339.40 35057.27 –2.05% Centrica 146.45 +3.13

Glencore 429.80 +2.57 7,800
NASDAQ 13532.74 13716.41 –1.34%
Fresnillo 538.00 +2.28
Nikkei 225 31856.71 32238.89 –1.19%
Hang Seng 17791.01 18581.11 –4.25% Rio Tinto 4675.00 +1.92 7,700
Gold 1889.85 1903.75 –0.73%
Brent Crude Oil 84.16 84.37 –0.25% FALLS 7,600
DIVIDEND YIELD (FTSE 100) 3.89% 3.83% Abrdn 159.40 –10.15
UK 10-year gilts yield 4.74 4.68 Ocado Group 720.20 –9.91 7,500
US 10-year Treasuries 4.32 4.18 Airtel Africa 107.20 –8.38
UK ECONOMIC DATA Persimmon 984.80 –8.13 7,400
Latest CPI (yoy) 6.8% (Jul) 7.9% (Jun) Hiscox DI 968.50 –7.23
Latest RPI (yoy) 9.0% (Jul) 10.7% (Jun) 7,300
Halifax house price (yoy) –2.4% (Jul) FTSE 250 RISER & FALLER
−2.6% (Jun) Bank of Georgia 3475.00 +8.40 Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug
£1 STERLING: $1.174 s1.276 ¥185.850 Bitcoin $25,844.50 Synthomer 66.45 –15.20 6-month movement in the FTSE 100 index
Source: Refinitiv/FT (not adjusted for dividends). Prices on 22 August (pm)

26 August 2023 THE WEEK

44 The long read

How plastics took over

the modern world
Plastics have become central to almost every aspect of our lives. And they are now being found everywhere from human placentas
to the deepest parts of the oceans. Can we get out of the “plastic trap”? Elizabeth Kolbert reports

In 1863, when much of was a problem of scarcity

the United States was is now a problem of
anguishing over the Civil superabundance.
War, an entrepreneur named
Michael Phelan was fretting In the form of empty water
about billiard balls. At the bottles, used shopping
time, the balls were made bags, and tattered snack
of ivory, preferably obtained packages, plastic waste
from elephants from turns up pretty much
Ceylon – now Sri Lanka – everywhere today. It has
whose tusks were thought been found at the bottom
to possess just the right of the Mariana Trench,
density. Phelan, who owned 36,000 feet below sea level.
a billiard hall, also wrote It litters the beaches of
books about billiards and Svalbard and the shores of
was a champion billiards the Cocos (Keeling) Islands,
player. Owing in good part in the Indian Ocean, most
to his efforts, the game had of which are uninhabited.
grown so popular that tusks
from Ceylon – and, indeed, The Great Pacific Garbage
elephants more generally Patch, a collection of
– were becoming scarce. floating debris that
He and a partner offered a Much of the West’s plastic waste is being sent to India for recycling stretches across 600,000
$10,000 reward to anyone square miles between
who could come up with an ivory substitute. California and Hawaii, is thought to contain some 1.8 trillion
plastic shards. Among the many creatures being done in by all
A young printer from Albany, John Wesley Hyatt, learnt about this junk are corals, tortoises and elephants – in particular, the
the offer and set to tinkering. In 1865, he patented a ball with elephants of Sri Lanka. In recent years, 20 of them have died after
a wooden core encased in ivory dust and shellac. Players were ingesting plastic at a landfill site near the village of Pallakkadu.
unimpressed. Next, Hyatt experimented with nitrocellulose, a How worried should we be about what’s become known as “the
material made by combining cotton or wood pulp with a mixture plastic pollution crisis”? And what can be done about it? These
of nitric and sulfuric acids. He found that a certain type of questions lie at the heart of several recent books that discuss what
nitrocellulose, when heated with camphor, yielded a shiny, tough one author, Matt Simon, calls “the plastic trap”.
material that could be moulded into practically any shape. Hyatt’s
brother and business partner dubbed the substance “celluloid”. “Without plastic we’d have no modern medicine or gadgets or
The resulting balls were more wire insulation to keep our
popular with players – although, homes from burning down,”
Hyatt conceded, they too had “Without plastic we’d have no modern he writes in A Poison Like No
their drawbacks. Nitrocellulose, medicine or gadgets or wire insulation. With it Other: How Microplastics
also known as guncotton, is Corrupted Our Planet and Our
highly flammable. Two celluloid we’ve contaminated every corner of the Earth” Bodies. “But with plastic we’ve
balls knocking together with contaminated every corner
sufficient force could set off a small explosion. A saloon owner in of Earth.” Simon, a science journalist at Wired, is especially
Colorado reported to Hyatt that, when this happened, “instantly concerned about plastic’s tendency to devolve into microplastics.
every man in the room pulled a gun”. (Microplastics are usually defined as bits smaller than five
millimetres across.) This process is taking place all the time, in
It’s not clear that the Hyatt brothers ever collected the $10,000 many different ways. Plastic bags drift into the ocean, where,
from Phelan, but the invention proved to be its own reward. after being tossed around by the waves and bombarded with UV
From celluloid billiard balls, the pair branched out into celluloid radiation, they fall apart. Tyres today contain a wide variety of
dentures, combs, brush handles, piano keys and knick-knacks. plastics; as they roll along, they send clouds of particles spinning
They touted the new material as a substitute not just for ivory into the air. Clothes made with plastics are constantly shedding
but also for tortoiseshell and jewellery-grade coral. These, too, fibres, much the way dogs shed hairs. A study published a few
were running out, owing to slaughter and plunder. Celluloid, one years ago in the journal Nature Food found that preparing infant
of the Hyatts’ advertising pamphlets promised, would “give the formula in a plastic bottle degrades the bottle, so what babies end
elephant, the tortoise and the coral insect a respite in their native up drinking is a sort of plastic soup. In fact, children are feeding
haunts.” Hyatt’s invention, often described as the world’s first on microplastics even before they can eat. In 2021, researchers
commercially produced plastic, was followed a few decades later from Italy found microplastics in human placentas.
by Bakelite. Bakelite was followed by polyvinyl chloride, which
was in turn followed by polyester, polypropylene, Styrofoam, The hazards of ingesting large pieces of plastic include choking
Plexiglas, Teflon, polyethylene terephthalate (familiarly known as and perforation of the intestinal tract. Animals that fill their
PET) – the list goes on and on. And on. Annual global production guts with plastics eventually starve to death. The risks posed by
of plastic currently runs to more than 800 billion pounds. What microplastics are subtler, but not, Simon argues, any less serious.

THE WEEK 26 August 2023

 The long read
Plastics are made from by-products
of oil and gas refining; many of the
chemicals involved, such as benzene
and vinyl chloride, are carcinogens.
In addition to their main
ingredients, plastics may contain
any number of additives. Many of
these – for example, polyfluoroalkyl
substances, or PFASs, which confer
water resistance – are also suspected
carcinogens. Many of the others
have never been adequately tested.
As plastics fall apart, the chemicals
that went into their manufacture
can leak out. These can then
combine to form new compounds,
which may prove less dangerous Nurdles: an estimated ten trillion leak into oceans each year plastic-recycling businesses sprang
than the originals – or more so.
A couple of years ago, a team of American scientists subjected
disposable shopping bags to several days of simulated sunlight,
in order to mimic the conditions that they’d encounter flying or
floating loose. The researchers found that a single bag from the
drugstore CVS leached more than 13,000 compounds; a bag from feeding junk into a shredder. Workers in another, equally hot
Walmart leached more than 15,000. “It is becoming increasingly
clear that plastics are not inert in the environment,” the team
wrote. Steve Allen, a researcher at Canada’s Ocean Frontier
Institute who specialises in microplastics, tells Simon, “If you’ve
got an IQ above room temperature, you have to understand that
this is not a good material to
have in the environment.”
“The problem with recycling plastic is
Microplastics, meanwhile, don’t that a polymer degrades with heating. So
just leach nasty chemicals –
they attract them. “Persistent plastics can only be reused
bioaccumulative and toxic
substances,” or PBTs, are a hodgepodge of harmful compounds,
including DDT and PCBs. Like microplastics (often referred to
as MPs), PBTs are everywhere these days. When PBTs encounter
MPs, they preferentially adhere to them. “In effect, plastics are
like magnets for PBTs” is how the United States Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) has put it. Consuming microplastics is
thus a good way to swallow old poisons.
Then there’s the threat posed by the particles themselves.
Microplastics – and in particular, it seems, microfibres – can get
pulled deep into the lungs. People who work in the synthetic-
textile industry, it has long been known, suffer from high rates of
lung disease. Are we breathing in enough microfibres that we are,
in effect, becoming synthetic-textile workers? No one knows, but,
as Fay Couceiro, a researcher at the University of Portsmouth,
observes to Simon, “We desperately need to find out.”
Whatever you had for dinner last night, the meal almost certainly
left behind plastic in need of disposal. Before tossing your empty
sour-cream tub or mostly empty ketchup bottle, you may have
searched it for a number, and if you found one – inside a cheerful
little triangle – you washed it out and set it aside to be recycled.
You might also have imagined that with this effort you were
doing your part to stem the global plastic-pollution tide.
The British journalist Oliver Franklin-Wallis used to be a believer.
He religiously rinsed his plastics before depositing them in one
of the five colour-coded rubbish bins that he and his wife kept at
their home in Royston, north of London. Then Franklin-Wallis
decided to find out what was actually happening to his rubbish.
Disenchantment followed. “If a product is seen as recycled, or
recyclable, it makes us feel better about buying it,” he writes in
Wasteland: The Secret World of Waste and the Urgent Search
for a Cleaner Future. But all those little numbers inside the
triangles “mostly serve to trick consumers”. Franklin-Wallis
became interested in the fate of his detritus just as the old order of
Britain’s rubbish was collapsing. Up until 2017, most of the plastic
45
waste collected in Europe and in
the United States was shipped to
China, as was most of the mixed
paper. Then Beijing imposed a new
policy, known as National Sword,
that prohibited imports of yang laji,
or “foreign garbage”. The move left
waste haulers from California to
Catalonia with millions of mildewy
containers they couldn’t get rid of.
Trash, though, finds a way.
Not long after China stopped
taking in foreign garbage, waste
entrepreneurs in other nations –
Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Sri
Lanka – started to accept it. Small
up in places where they were
regulated laxly, if at all. Franklin-Wallis visited one such informal
recycling plant, in New Delhi; the owner allowed him inside on
the condition that he not reveal exactly how the business operates
or where it is situated. He found workers in a fiendishly hot room
room fed the shreds into an extruder, which pumped out little
gray pellets known as nurdles. The ventilation system consisted
of an open window. “The thick fug of plastic fumes in the air
left me dazed,” Franklin-Wallis writes.
Nurdles, which are key to
manufacturing plastic products,
are small enough to qualify
as microplastics. (It’s been
estimated that ten trillion nurdles
a couple of times” a year leak into the oceans, most
from shipping containers that tip
overboard.) Usually, nurdles are composed of “virgin” polymers,
but, as the New Delhi plant demonstrates, it is possible to produce
them from used plastic. The problem with the process, and with
plastic recycling more generally, is that a polymer degrades each
time it’s heated. Thus, even under ideal circumstances, plastic
can be reused only a couple of times. Franklin-Wallis toured a
high-end recycling plant in northern England that handles PET,
the material that most water and soda bottles are made from. He
learned that nearly half the bales of PET that arrive at the plant
can’t be reprocessed because they’re too contaminated, either by
other kinds of plastic or by random crap. “Yield is a problem for
us,” the plant’s commercial director concedes.
Franklin-Wallis comes to see plastic recycling as so much
(potentially toxic) smoke and mirrors. Over the years, he writes,
“a kind of playbook” has emerged. Under public pressure, a
company like Coca-Cola or Nestlé pledges to insure that the
packaging for its products gets recycled. When the pressure eases,
it quietly abandons its pledge. Meanwhile, it lobbies against
any kind of legislation that would restrict the sale of single-
use plastics. Franklin-Wallis quotes Larry Thomas, the former
president of the Society of the Plastics Industry, who once said, “If
the public thinks recycling is working, then they are not going to
be as concerned about the environment.”
Around the time that Franklin-Wallis started tracking his rubbish,
Eve O. Schaub decided to spend a year not producing any. Schaub,
who has been described as a “stunt memoirist”, had previously
spent a year avoiding sugar and forcing her family to do the same,
an exercise she chronicled in a book titled Year of No Sugar. The
year of no sugar was followed by Year of No Clutter. When she
proposes a trash-free annum to her husband, he says he doubts it
is possible. Her younger daughter begs her to wait until she goes
away to college. Schaub plunges ahead anyway. “As the beginning
of the new year loomed, I was feeling pretty good about our
chances,” she recalls in Year of No Garbage. “I mean, really. How
hard could it be?” What Schaub means by “no garbage” is not
26 August 2023 THE WEEK
46 The long read
exactly no garbage. Under her scheme, refuse
that can be composted or recycled is allowed,
so her family can keep tossing out old cans
and empty wine bottles along with food
scraps. What turns out to be hard – really,
really hard – is dealing with plastic.
At first, Schaub divides plastic waste into
two varieties. There’s the kind with the
little numbers, which her rubbish collector
accepts as part of its “single stream” recycling
programme and so, by her definition, doesn’t
count as trash. Then, there’s the kind with
no numbers, which isn’t supposed to go in
the recycling bin and therefore does count.
Schaub finds that even when she purchases
something in a numbered container –
guacamole, say – there’s usually a thin sheet
of plastic under the lid that’s numberless.
A lot of her time goes into rinsing off these Eve Schaub during her no-garbage year are the political obstacles. For all intents and
sheets and other stray plastic bits and trying
to figure out what to do with them.
She is excited to find a company called TerraCycle, which
promises to “recycle the unrecyclable”. For a $134, she buys
a box that can be returned to TerraCycle filled with plastic
packaging, and for an additional $42 she buys another box that
can be filled with “oral care waste”, such as used toothpaste
tubes. “I sent my TerraCycle Plastic Packaging box as densely
packed with plastic as any box could be,” she writes. Eventually,
though, like Franklin-Wallis, Schaub comes to see that she’s
been living a lie. Midway through her experiment, she signs up
for an online course called Beyond Plastic Pollution, offered by
Judith Enck, a former regional
administrator for the EPA.
Only containers labelled No. 1 “In the scheme of things, it wasn’t that long ago to all countries. This idea was
(PET) and No. 2 (high-density
polyethylene) get melted down
that we got along just fine without plastic”
with any regularity, Schaub
learns, and to refashion the resulting nurdles into anything useful
usually requires the addition of lots of new material. “No matter
what your garbage service provider is telling you, numbers 3, 4,
6 and 7 are not getting recycled,” Schaub writes. (The italics are
hers.) “Number 5 is a veeeery dubious maybe.”
TerraCycle, too, proves a disappointment. It gets sued for
deceptive labelling and settles out of court. A documentary-film
crew finds that dozens of bales of waste sent to the company for
recycling have been shipped off to be burned at a cement kiln in
Bulgaria. (According to the company’s founder, this is the result
of an unfortunate mistake.) “I had wanted so badly to believe that to be used 43 times and a cotton tote would have to be used an
TerraCycle and Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny were real, that
I had been willing to overlook the fact that Santa’s handwriting
looks suspiciously like Mom’s,” Schaub writes. Towards the end
of the year, she concludes that pretty much all plastic waste –
numbered, unnumbered, or shipped off in boxes – falls under her
definition of garbage. She also concludes that, “in this day, age
and culture”, such waste is pretty much impossible to avoid.
A few months ago, the EPA issued a “draft national strategy
to prevent plastic pollution”. Americans, the report noted,
produce more plastic waste each year than the residents of any
other country, nearly twice as much as the average European
and 16 times as much as the average Indian. The EPA declared
the “business-as-usual approach” to managing this waste to be
“unsustainable”. At the top of its list of recommendations was
“reduce the production and consumption” of single-use plastics.
Just about everyone who contemplates the “plastic pollution
crisis” arrives at the same conclusion. Once a plastic bottle (or
bag or takeout container) has been tossed, the odds of its ending
up in landfill, on a faraway beach, or as tiny fragments drifting
around in the ocean are high. The best way to alter these odds is
THE WEEK 26 August 2023
not to create the bottle (or bag or container)
in the first place.“We can’t rely on half-
measures,” Schaub says. “We have to go to
the source.” Her own local supermarket,
in southern Vermont, stopped handing out
plastic bags in late 2020, she notes. “Do you
know what happened? Nothing. One day
we were poisoning the environment with
plastic bags in the name of ultra-convenience
and the next? We weren’t.” “We now know
that we can’t start to reduce plastic pollution
without a reduction of production,” Imari
Walker-Franklin and Jenna Jambeck, both
environmental engineers, observe in Plastics.
“Upstream and systemic change is needed.”
Of course, it’s a lot easier to talk about
“turning off the tap” and changing the
system than it is to actually do so. First, there
purposes, the plastics industry is a subsidiary
of the fossil-fuel industry. ExxonMobil, for instance, is the
world’s fourth-largest oil company and also its largest producer
of virgin polymers. The connection means that any effort to
reduce plastic consumption is bound to be resisted, either openly
or surreptitiously, not just by companies such as Coca-Cola and
Nestlé but also by corporations like Exxon and Shell. In March,
2022, diplomats from 175 nations agreed to try to fashion a
global treaty to “end plastic pollution”.
At the first negotiating session, held later that year in Uruguay,
the self-described High Ambition Coalition, which includes
the members of the EU as well as Ghana and Switzerland,
insisted that the treaty include
mandatory measures that apply
opposed by major oil-producing
nations, including the US, which
has called for a “country-driven”
approach. According to Greenpeace, lobbyists for the “major
fossil fuel companies were out in force” at the session.
There are also practical hurdles. Precisely because plastic is now
ubiquitous, it’s difficult to imagine how to replace all of it, or
even much of it. Even in cases where substitutes are available,
it’s not always clear that they’re preferable. Franklin-Wallis cites
a 2018 study by the Danish Environmental Protection Agency,
which analysed how different kinds of shopping bags compare in
terms of life-cycle impacts. The study found that, to have a lower
environmental impact than a plastic bag, a paper bag would have
astonishing 7,100 times. “How many of those bags will last that
long?” asks Walker-Franklin. He and Jambeck also note that
exchanging plastic for other materials may involve “tradeoffs”,
including “energy and water use and carbon emissions”. When
Schaub’s supermarket stopped handing out plastic shopping bags,
it may have reduced one problem only to exacerbate others –
deforestation, say, or pesticide use.
“In the grand scheme of human existence, it wasn’t that long
ago that we got along just fine without plastic,” Simon points
out. This is true. It also wasn’t all that long ago that we got
along just fine without Coca-Cola or packaged guacamole. To
make a significant dent in plastic waste – and certainly to “end
plastic pollution” – will probably require not just substitution but
elimination. If much of contemporary life is wrapped up in plastic,
and the result of this is that we are poisoning our kids, ourselves,
and our ecosystems, then contemporary life may need to be
rethought. The question is what matters to us, and whether we’re
willing to ask ourselves that question.
A longer version of this article appeared in The New Yorker.
© The New Yorker 2023
 Crossword 47
THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1377 This week’s winner will receive an
An Ettinger pass holder and two Connell Guides will be given to the sender of the first Ettinger (ettinger.co.uk) travel pass
correct solution to the crossword and the clue of the week opened on Monday 4 September. holder in assorted colours, which
Send it to The Week Crossword 1377, 121-141 Westbourne Terrace, London W2 6JR, or email the retails at £115, and two Connell Guides
completed grid/listed solutions to crossword@theweek.co.uk. Tim Moorey (timmoorey.com) (connellguides.com).

ACROSS
1 It’s an old assembly, says senior
army officer (6-7)
10 Current cuts change Italian
city (5)
11 Pair cited in trouble as it makes
father late (9)
12 Kitchen equipment for a
racecourse by the sound of it (7)
13 Red-faced graduate in a cast (7)
14 African antelope snared by
many, alas (5)
16 Former partner, individual
on speed let off (9)
19 Model arouses high tension?
Renault perhaps (9)
20 Close friend I had clubs
expelled (5)
22 Irishman into tea and bread (7)
25 Such as Dire Straits (7)
27 Penny staying in the chair (9)
28 Cheers foreign aid given by
Brussels (5)
29 Brief Encounter? They didn’t
quite make it! (3-5,5)
DOWN
2 Rent wrong all around Californian
valley? Right! (4,5)
3 It’s dogma whichever way you
look at it (5)
4 Take the place of top tennis
player in speech (9)
5 Minor actor often seen at the
cricket (5)
6 David, for example gets port
in S Africa (9)
7 English novelist overlooking
hard US sect (5)
8 Express name for an island (6)
9 Mess with honour, so to speak (6)
15 Lots of love with a gift, right for
end of Ramadan (9)
17 Los Angeles in lawless shotgun
attack (9)
18 Entry in a deserted embassy (9)
19 Tolerate something done about
church parking (6)
21 Talk over unfinished field
event (6)
23 Some purchase an item from
trade association (5)
24 Not to be missed, spotting stuff
delaying plane? (5)
26 Pamphlet found in vehicle or
shed (5)

Name
Address
Clue of the week: Slow movement is this, bar after bar (3,5) The Times Tel no
Clue of the week answer:

Solution to Crossword 1375

Restore your
ACROSS: 7 Lukewarm 9 Pennon 10 Stud 11 Boxing ring 12 Grocer
14 Detached 15 Musical chairs 17 Staplers 19 Sanity 21 Springtime
22 Dope 23 Mortal 24 Goings-on

news-life balance
DOWN: 1 Butter 2 Feud 3 Barbaric 4 Spinet 5 Infraction 6 Rounders
8 Mixed blessing 13 Cashpoints 15 Metaphor 16 Hysteria 18 Engulf
20 Top dog 22 Digs
Clue of the week: Question repeated in Texas, Kansas, Kentucky and
Alaska (3) Solution: Ask
The winner of 1375 is Mr P.E. Berridge from Gosberton

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