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What happened What the editorials said Bloodshed in Gaza There was atime when the world longed for the day the US opened an embassy in Jerusalem, said The New York Times Gaza suffered its bloodiest day in years –because this event was supposed to mark on Monday, when Israeli troops opened the end of hostilities between Israelis and fire on mostly unarmed protesters massed Palestinians. For years, America had along the border fence between the withheld recognition of either side’s claim territory and Israel, killing at least 60 and to the city as acapital, pending apeace wounding thousands more. The killings treaty between the two. “But on Monday, prompted an international outcry, but President Trump delivered the embassy Israel insisted it had acted in self-defence as agift without concession or condition to defend its border. It blamed the to the Israeli government of Benjamin violence on Hamas, the Islamist group Netanyahu.” This would have inflamed that runs Gaza, aview backed by the US. tensions at any time, said the FT. That Trump did it “during the 48 hours when The bloodshed coincided with the opening APalestinian protester near the Israeli border Israelis and Palestinians are most divided –onthe 70th anniversary of Israel’s each year over their very different versions founding –ofthe new US embassy in Jerusalem after its of history was little short of diplomatic arson”. relocation from Tel Aviv. The move is highly contentious because the Palestinian authorities claim East Jerusalem as There was ahorrible contrast between the sight of Netanyahu their capital. Monday’s protests were the culmination of seven beaming with Ivanka Trump in Jerusalem –“what aglorious weeks of border demonstrations by Gazans demanding aright day,” he declared –and the horrific scenes, fewer than of return for Palestinians to areas that are now part of Israel. 50 miles away, in Gaza, said The Times. This kind of “malign Some two-thirds of Gaza’s population is descended from symbolism” is agift to terrorist recruitment. You have only to refugees who fled or were driven from their homes at the think of the Bloody Sunday shootings of 1972, in which time of Israel’s creation, an event Palestinians refer to as the 14 civilians died. Abrother of one of the dead recalled that Nakba, or “Catastrophe”, and mark each year on 15 May. “there were queues to join the IRA after that day”.

What happened What the editorials said Brexit deadlock It “beggars belief” that, only weeks from the EU summit, the cabinet is still split on such an important question, said The Theresa May’s inner cabinet was still split Daily Telegraph. “It is hard to imagine how this week over customs arrangements with negotiations can be won when one’s own team the EU after Brexit. Cabinet Office minister is uncertain what it wants.” Both options have David Lidington revealed that, at the last disadvantages. The max fac proposal, using meeting of the “Brexit cabinet” on Tuesday, CCTV and online customs declarations to “serious criticisms” had been made of both police the border, is favoured by Brexiteers. the options on the table: the “customs But it seems unlikely to result in “frictionless partnership” model, whereby the UK would trade” with the EU. It would also involve some collect import tariffs on behalf of the EU; infrastructure at or near the Irish border – and “maximum facilitation”, which proposes breaking May’s pledge to avoid ahard border. using technology to police borders without obstructing trade. Labour said it was “deeply The customs partnership is May’s preferred disturbing” that ministers could not agree option, said The Economist. The Brexiteers, “the most fundamental Brexit issues”. May: “perfectly clear” though, fear that it would be not only vastly complex –firms importing to the UK would Downing Street announced that aBrexit white paper would have to claim back tariffs if their goods didn’t travel on to the be published ahead of the key EU summit in late June, EU –but would inevitably evolve into afull customs union, setting out the Government’s positions. On Monday, David ending hopes of world trade deals and betraying “the spirit of Miliband, Nick Clegg and Nicky Morgan joined forces in a the referendum”. It is hard to see how the deadlock can be cross-party bid to prevent ahard Brexit –acampaign broken. “One of the many surreal features” of the row is that already well under way in the House of Lords. the EU has already “dismissed both options as unworkable”.

It wasn’t all bad Forty years after losing both of his The Australian Red Cross has feet to frostbite during an ascent paid tribute to “the man with The bestselling writer Jojo of Everest, 69-year-old Chinese the golden arm”: aretired Moyes has stepped in to save climber Xia Boyu has finally railway worker whose blood amajor adult literacy scheme conquered the peak. He is only the donations have saved the lives after its sponsors pulled out. second double amputee to climb of an estimated 2.4 million Moyes’ £360,000 donation will Everest, and the first to do it from babies over the past 60 years. enable the Quick Reads scheme the Nepal side. He lost his feet after James Harrison, now 81, gave to run for three more years aclimb in 1975, as aresult of giving the last of his 1,173 donations while longer-term funding is his sleeping bag to asick friend last week in Sydney, on the sought. Since 2006, the UK during astorm. On the same day advice of doctors. Probably as scheme has distributed this week (when spring weather aresult of atransfusion he had 4.8 million short novels to made the summit accessible), Steve received aged 14, his blood people with lower literacy Plain, from Australia, set anew contains arare antibody that levels. “Every now and then you record by climbing the highest is used to make Anti-D –alife- have to make adecision about peaks on all seven continents in saving treatment required by whether you’re going to make 117 days –four years after breaking about 17% of pregnant women adifference,” Moyes said. his neck in asurfing accident. in Australia.

COVER CARTOON: HOWARD MCWILLIAM THE WEEK 19 May 2018 …and how they were covered NEWS 3

What the commentators said What next? Viewing reports of the “slaughter” at Gaza’s border, many will “understandably feel that the Aregional peace initiative led Israeli authorities grossly overreacted”, said Mark Almond in the Daily Mail. It has been a by Trump’s adviser and son- “public relations disaster” for Israel. It’s worth bearing in mind, though, that had the border in-law Jared Kushner has fence actually been breached by thousands of Palestinians, it would have triggered far greater been shelved because of carnage. And it’s also the case that the central demand of the protests –toreclaim ancestral Palestinian anger over the homes in what is now Israel –threatens the very existence of the state of Israel. Still, the use of new US embassy, reports live rounds was surely excessive, said Paul Goodman on ConservativeHome.com. The worry is The Washington Post. But that this was less amilitary decision than “a political one, driven by government ministers who US officials insist the Trump have voters to satisfy. That doesn’t bode well for the liberal ethos in which Israel takes pride.” peace plan, which had originally been expected to The real question, said Amos Harel in Haaretz, is why Israel allowed things to come to ahead be unveiled earlier this year, in this way. For months, security forces have been warning that conditions in Gaza, which is is not dead and will be under an Israeli and Egyptian blockade, are becoming intolerable, leading to frustration and presented “at the right time”. rage among its two million inhabitants. It has also long been known that Hamas is “under unprecedented strategic pressure” owing to its strained relations with the Saudis and Egypt, Theresa May has called for and its incompetent management of Gaza. It was obvious that Hamas would seek to exploit an independent inquiry into the border protests to foment abloody clash to boost its own image. Yet Israel took no steps Israel’s “deeply troubling” to head this confrontation off, barely lifting “a finger to ease the distress in the Strip”. use of live ammunition against Palestinian protesters. Israel under Netanyahu’s Likud Party seems to think that if it ignores the Palestinian problem, Labour MPs have also called it will just go away, said Stephen Daisley in The Spectator. That’s adangerous attitude. Israelis for the Government to insist they have no partner for peace, and they have apoint: only this month, the Palestinian review arms sales to Israel president, Mahmoud Abbas, who counts as a“moderate”, reiterated his view that the Jews and to cancel aUKvisit by brought the Holocaust on themselves. But sometimes peace “only needs one side. The next President Trump in July, Israeli government –this one is beyond help –has to take charge and formulate aunilateral in protest at his stoking of plan.” Because one thing is for sure: Israel “cannot afford many more days like Monday”. Middle East tensions.

What the commentators said What next? “Theresa May usually avoids giving her own opinion in cabinet meetings,” said Rachel The PM has broken up the Sylvester in The Times. She tends to go around the table asking other ministers’ views, before Brexit cabinet into teams even-handedly summing them up. But on this issue she has been perfectly clear: she thinks the of mixed Remainers and customs partnership is the right policy. This “unprecedented display of clarity” makes it even Leavers, to find acomp- more extraordinary that, within days, Boris Johnson had condemned his boss’s plan as “crazy” romise, says Peter Foster –“such ablatant act of insubordination that you have to assume the Foreign Secretary was in The Daily Telegraph. trying to get fired”. “The mystery is why Leavers would choose to die in this particular ditch,” One may be to “delay the said Janan Ganesh in the FT. They have won: not just the referendum, but the interpretation of reckoning”: to stay in the the result. Despite “the closeness of the vote and the ambiguity of its meaning”, Britain is leav- customs union for some ing the EU, the single market and the customs union too. “Their dream is near. Why imperil years, while max fac it?” Under the customs partnership, Britain would have to collect tariffs for the EU, “but this technology is developed. seems asmall nuisance next to the prize of exit”. The cynic in me suspects that the Brexiteers don’t actually want to take responsibility for the final EU deal. Disavowing it now will allow The 28-29 June European them to escape the blame later on “if economic life deteriorates after its implementation”. Council meeting is the next hurdle. British officials fear On the contrary, the customs partnership would be genuinely disastrous, said Nick Timothy that if no consensus is in The Daily Telegraph. In practice, it would become “a customs union by another name”. reached by then, the EU Because of the complexity of tracking imported goods –tosee which ones stay in the country will refuse to discuss the and which ones travel on to the EU, so that tariff rebates could be claimed on the former –the future relationship, or UK would end up aligning itself very closely to EU regulations and bureaucracy. This would even withdraw the offer of make it impossible to agree trade deals with other countries –surrendering one of the key gains atransition deal –forcing of Brexit. Maximum facilitation is the only alternative. As for the Irish border, the EU must the UK to come to terms show flexibility. The responsibility “to find solutions is not only British but European too”. or crash out with no deal.

Editor-in-chief: Jeremy O’Grady Is it racist to compare awhite man to aslice of cured meat? That was Editor: Caroline Law THEWEEK the debate raging in the media this week, prompted by an article in Executive editor: Theo Tait Deputy editor: Harry Nicolle City editor: Jane Lewis Editorial assistant: Asya Likhtman The Times about the Left’s “weaponisation” of the word “gammon”. Contributing editors: Daniel Cohen, Charity Crewe,Thomas Hodgkinson, Simon Wilson, Rob McLuhan, Anthony Apparently, if you’re middle-aged, white, male and angry –perhaps atabloid-reading Brexiteer going Gardner, William Underhill, Digby Warde-Aldam, Tom Yarwood Editorial staff: Anoushka Petit, Tigger Ridgwell, red in the face about immigration –you’re agammon, and atarget for ridicule. It’s not entirely new. William Skidelsky, Claudia Williams Picture editor: Xandie Nutting Art director: Nathalie Fowler Sub-editor: Laurie People used to say that David Cameron looked like aside of ham. On Twitter, it has been traced back Tuffrey Production editor: Alanna O’Connell further: in Nicholas Nickleby,one of the characters is told that he has a“gammon tendency” and Founder and editorial director: Jolyon Connell Production Manager: Ebony Besagni Senior Production wonders if it is because of his propensity to “grow alittle too fervid... in extolling my native land”. Executive: Maaya Mistry Newstrade Director: David Barker Direct Marketing Director: Abi Spooner Inserts: Joe Teal But according to aDUP MP, Emma Little-Pengelly, to denigrate older white men as gammon is not Classified: Henry Haselock, Henry Pickford, Rebecca Seetanah Account Directors: Scott Hayter, John Hipkiss, Jocelyn merely rude, it’s aderogatory remark “based on skin colour and age”, and therefore “just wrong”. Sital-Singh, Chris Watters Digital Director: John Perry UK Advertsing Director: Caroline Fenner Naturally, left-wingers have been quick to rubbish this claim: no one has ever been deported for Executive Director –Head of Advertising: David Weeks being an indignant white man with pink cheeks, they argue. They also point out that right-wingers Chief Executive, The Week: Kerin O’Connor Group CFO/COO: Brett Reynolds deploy plenty of derogatory terms of their own (snowflake, cuck, libtard etc.). But like the use of Chief executive: James Tye “centrist dad” to belittle people who voted Labour in the 1990s, gammon does highlight ashift Dennis Publishing founder: Felix Dennis within the party –the shrinking of Tony Blair’s Big Tent. There are many white, middle-aged tabloid- THE WEEK Ltd, asubsidiary of Dennis Publishing Ltd, reading men, angry about one thing or another, who once thought that 31-32 Alfred Place, London WC1E 7DP. Tel: 020-3890 3890. Caroline Law Editorial: The Week Ltd, 2nd Floor, 32 Queensway, London Labour was their home. They’re out in the rain now. W2 3RX. Tel: 020-3890 3787. email: [email protected]

Subscriptions: 0330-333 9494; [email protected] The Week is licensed to The Week Limited by Dennis Publishing Limited. The Week is aregistered trademark of Felix Dennis. 19 May 2018 THE WEEK 4 NEWS Politics

Controversy of the week Leveson back and forth MPs have once again voted The rendition scandal against anew Leveson-style public inquiry into press “It was one of the most shaming, self-abasing apologies ever regulation. The House of made in the House of Commons,” said Will Hutton in Commons rejected the The Observer. In aletter read out to MPs last week, Theresa proposal by 301 votes to May acknowledged Britain’s complicity in what she described 289 on Tuesday. The result as the “appalling treatment” meted out to Libyan dissident came after the Government Abdel Hakim Belhaj and his wife, Fatima Boudchar. In 2004, promised additional scrutiny at the behest of the Libyan dictator, Colonel Gaddafi, they of newspapers, including five-yearly reviews of their were seized by CIA agents in Thailand and then –hooded and use of personal data and shackled –flown back to Libya to be tortured in Gaddafi’s regular reviews of the system jails. And it was MI6 who gave the tip-off as to their of press self-regulation. MPs whereabouts. Boudchar –who, heavily pregnant, was forced had already narrowly voted to hear her husband’s screams under torture –was freed after with the Government to four months. Belhaj was sentenced to death and remained in reject Leveson 2last week, prison for another six years. only for the Lords to support Belhaj: “appalling treatment” it. Peers could push it back to Ican understand why the CIA went after my husband, said the Commons for athird Boudchar in an article in The New York Times: he was the leader of an Islamist group opposed to time, but are unlikely to do Gaddafi. But why did they go after me? And why was my treatment at the CIA’s “black site” in so, not least because ditching Bangkok –which was run by Gina Haspel, Donald Trump’s nominee for CIA director (see page 6) the probe was agovernment –worse than anything Iendured in Libya? Although pregnant, Iwas hit in the abdomen and bound manifesto commitment. to astretcher from head to toe “like amummy”. These are the questions Iwould like answered. She Holyrood rejects Brexit deserves an answer, said the Daily Mail, just as she deserved this week’s apology and the £500,000 The Scottish parliament on payout that went with it. But it isn’t May who should have given that apology; it’s the leaders of the Tuesday rejected the EU last Labour government, above all Tony Blair, who forsook the principles of civilised society in Withdrawal Bill, the order to cosy up to the “murderous, oil-rich Gaddafi regime”. Former foreign secretary Jack Straw Government’s flagship Brexit also has some explaining to do, said Richard Norton-Taylor in The Guardian. Ayear after Belhaj’s legislation. MSPs voted 93 to abduction, he flatly dismissed suggestions of British involvement in illegal renditions as “conspiracy 30 against the bill, which First theories”. But official files found in the bombed-out ruins of Tripoli after Gaddafi was toppled told Minister Nicola Sturgeon has adifferent story. One letter from Sir Mark Allen, then head of counterterrorism at MI6, actually called a“power grab”. congratulated Libya’s intelligence chief for the “safe arrival” of Belhaj in Libya. Holyrood’s approval is not legally necessary for the bill It’s not the first time the UK government has paid out to victims of rendition, said Dan Lomas on to become law, but imposing The Conversation. In 2012 it offered £2m to the family of aLibyan dissident who was forced onto a it on Scotland without adeal plane in Hong Kong and flown to Tripoli. It has also compensated former detainees at Guantanamo would create “the biggest political rift between the Bay. Yet whereas in the US, the Senate has completed amajor investigation into the CIA’s detention two institutions since devol- regime, in Britain there has been no such attempt to get at the truth. Ajudge-led inquiry set up by ution,” said The Times. The David Cameron has been shelved, and the Crown Prosecution Service dropped alegal case of ill Government has vowed to treatment brought by Belhaj and afellow detainee, citing “insufficient evidence”. Apublic apology “push on”, but says there is is all very well, but what we really need now is an official inquiry into rendition by Britain’s spies. still time for an agreement.

Good week for: Spirit of the age Daniel Craig, who was identified as one of the five highest- Poll watch Madame Tussauds is paid stars in Hollywood. The actor has negotiated an £18.5m The Tories have a five- moving with the times and fee for the new Bond film. He and his wife, Rachel Weisz, are point lead over Labour: replacing wax models with estimated by The Sunday Times Rich List to be worth £125m. the parties are on 43% and animatronic ones –in The Rich List also revealed that 94% of Britain’s 1,000 richest 38% respectively, following China, at least. Visitors people are now self-made, up from 43% in 1989 (see page 48). adip in Labour support to the Shanghai outpost since mid-April. Asked will be able to meet an who’d make abetter PM, interactive robot version Bad week for: 39% say Theresa May and of the Chinese film star Club 18-30, the tour operator known for shipping generations 25% Jeremy Corbyn. Jing Boran. While this is of young Brits to cheap Mediterranean resorts for aweek of sun, YouGov/The Times Tussauds’ first “intelligent sex and tequila –which may be coming to an end. Thomas Cook figure”, the London branch says the concept doesn’t appeal to millennials, and is reportedly In the US, the Republicans recently introduced amodel putting the business up for sale. are experiencing asurge in of actor Tom Hardy heated support as they gear up for to 37°C, and with aheart- Donald Trump, who –ontop of everything else going on this November’s midterms. In beat, for amore realistic week –managed to enrage the Scots, by allowing his luxury golf February the Democrats led cuddling experience. resort in Ayrshire to ban Irn-Bru. Apparently, the management at by 16 points. Now they’re Trump Turnberry are anxious that the bright orange fizzy drink only three points ahead. Rolls-Royce has launched may stain the resort’s expensive carpets. CNN/The Daily Telegraph the world’s most expensive Royal Mail, which was criticised for advising businesses to SUV, marketing it as a exploit aloophole in new data protection laws. From 25 May, One in four parents have “weekend car you can put firms will in many cases need people’s consent before they can altered parts of classic fairy the kids in”. The £250,000 tales when reading them Cullinan is aimed at “ultra- send them marketing material. Royal Mail suggests they get to their children because high net-worth” millennials around this by sending the bumf out in unaddressed envelopes. they think that they’re –thirtysomethings who got The police, which was forced to admit that its facial-recognition inappropriate or too scary. rich in tech, say, and who software doesn’t work. It is often used at large events to detect Little Red Riding Hood is the are adecade younger than people on awatch list –but according to figures released by the story most often changed. the average Rolls buyer. Metropolitan Police, 98% of the time its “matches” are wrong. OnePoll/Daily Mail

THE WEEK 19 May 2018 Europe at aglance NEWS 5

Paris Budapest Kerch, Crimea Terror attack: Soros to close offices: The Open Society Prestige project: Russia’s President Putin The suspected Foundations –aphilanthropic organisation this week opened anew road and rail Islamist terrorist funded by George Soros –announced on bridge linking Russia with the disputed who stabbed a Tuesday that it is closing its offices in Crimean peninsula. The Kerch Strait man to death in Hungary, citing the interference it is facing Bridge, also known as the Crimean Bridge, central Paris from the country’s right-wing government. is 12 miles long –making it Europe’s last Saturday has It will move its operations from Budapest longest. It is also atriumph of engineering: been identified as to Berlin. “The government has denigrated there have been several previous plans to Khamzat Azimov, and misrepresented our work, and build abridge across this notoriously a20-year-old repressed civil society for the sake of windy stretch of water, all of which failed. Chechen-born political gain, using tactics unprecedented With up to 15,000 workers toiling on the French citizen in the history of the EU,” said its president, bridge at any one time, it took only who had been on an anti-terrorism watch Patrick Gaspard. Hungary’s PM Viktor 27 months to complete. Russia annexed list. France’s first suspected terrorist of Orbán was recently re-elected after Crimea in 2014, but the international Chechen origin, Azimov (pictured) shouted campaigning under a“stop Soros” banner. community continues to regard it as legally “Allahu Akbar”ashelaunched his attack In TV and billboard ads, he accused the part of Ukraine. Russia hopes the road in the busy Opera district, killing his Hungarian-born billionaire of supporting link will strengthen Moscow’s grip on 29-year-old victim and injuring four others migration to Europe as ameans of Crimea and boost its economy. before being shot dead by police. There are undermining nation states. His “stop around 30,000 people of Chechen origin Soros” legislation –likely to be passed in France, and it is estimated that 8% of in the coming weeks –will impose French nationals involved in Syria-based new restrictions on foreign-funded jihadist groups are ethnic Chechens. The NGOs in Hungary. attack was claimed by Islamic State.

Paris Les Anglicismes: The word globish, meaning abasic, globally understood version of English, has entered the French dictionary this year, along with abumper crop of other Anglicisms, in spite of language purists’ efforts to coin French alternatives, The Daily Telegraph reports. Words or phrases considered by Le Petit Robert dictionary to have entered common usage over the past year include le dark net (although the Académie française had proposed the term internet clandestin). Among the other words making their debut appearance in the latest edition of the dictionary are hoverboard, SUV, chatbot, e-sport, replay (a “watch again” service on TV), fashionista and queer (defined as “a person whose orientation or sexual identity doesn’t correspond with dominant models”). Non-English words to have been adopted into French include teriyaki and pavlova.

Barcelona Rome Meta di Sorrento, Italy Apresident at last: Catalonia’s parliament Closing the deal: Gang rape of tourist: Five Italian men have has this week sworn in apro-independence Italy’s far-right been arrested on suspicion of gang-raping hardliner, who was nominated by the League Party and aBritish tourist in the southern resort of ousted and exiled ex-president Carles the populist Five Meta di Sorrento, on the Gulf of Naples. Puigdemont, as the region’s new president. Star Movement The alleged attack happened at the Mar Catalan MPs voted Quim Torra in as were reported to Hotel Alimuri in 2016, and all those president by 66 votes to 65, ending the be on the brink arrested in dawn raids on Monday –after five months of political stalemate that of forming a two years of painstaking police work –are followed December’s inconclusive election. government this current or former employees of the hotel. Torra, 55, has already pledged to continue week, after two The woman, who was in her 50s, was the struggle for independence from Spain months of given the drug benzodiazepine, allegedly after last year’s referendum result. “Our post-election negotiations. Neither the by two barmen who took her to apool president is Carles Puigdemont, and we League’s leader, Matteo Salvini (pictured), area and sexually assaulted her. She was will be faithful to the mandate of nor Five Star’s Luigi Di Maio wants to be then taken to aroom in the hotel, where October... to build an independent state PM, but the question of who they do want at least ten men were waiting, and was in the form of arepublic,” he said. The in that role –and can agree on –seemed allegedly raped. She went to the police region has been under direct rule from to be the main obstacle in their talks. In on her return to the UK, and DNA Madrid since Catalan separatists unilat- an editorial, the FT warned if they did evidence was obtained which Italian police erally declared independence. Spain’s PM form agovernment, it would be the “most say they have matched with the arrested Mariano Rajoy has offered to meet Torra unconventional, inexperienced government men. They also say that they found images for talks, though it is not yet clear whether to rule awestern European democracy” of the attack that had been shared on a Madrid will lift direct rule. since the EU’s Treaty of Rome in 1957. WhatsApp group called “Bad Habits”.

Catch up with daily news at www.theweek.co.uk 19 May 2018 THE WEEK 6 NEWS The world at aglance

Washington DC New York Insulting McCain: AWhite House aide has been forced to Weinstein’s wife speaks out: In her first apologise for dismissing Senator John McCain’s objections to interview since Harvey Weinstein’s the appointment of Gina Haspel as director of the CIA, on the downfall, the fashion designer Georgina grounds that “it doesn’t matter, he’s dying anyway”. In a Chapman has said that until the scandal statement, McCain –who has brain cancer –had said that while broke, she never had suspicions about he did not doubt Haspel’s talents, the fact that she ran a“black her estranged husband’s behaviour. site” in Thailand in 2002, where an “enhanced interrogation “I had what Ithought was avery happy programme” was used, made her unfit to be the head of the marriage,” she told Vogue. The revel- agency. However, Haspel later told the Senate that she now ations had left her “so broken” that she believes that the programme had been amistake. Senators are had barely left the house, she said, adding expected to confirm her appointment next week. The aide has that she was deeply worried for their two reportedly apologised to McCain’s daughter for her crass remark children (aged five and seven), who love their father. But “I don’t –but has so far resisted calls for apublic apology. want to be viewed as avictim”, she said, “because Idon’t think I am. Iamawoman in ashit situation, but it’s not unique.” Menlo Park, California Facebook abuses: Facebook has released comprehensive details for the first time about its attempts to police the site’s content –revealing in the process the scale of the problem. According to the report published this week, in the first quarter of this year it tackled 837 million pieces of spam and took down 583 million fake accounts (and it estimates that 3-4% of its 2.2 billion active monthly users are currently fake). In the same period, it removed 3.4 million posts that contained graphic violence, 2.5 million that constituted hate speech and 1.9 million that it deemed terrorist propaganda. The company also revealed that it had suspended about 200 apps as part of its investigation into the misuse of personal data after the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Washington DC Sports betting to become legal: The US Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for betting on sporting events to become legal across the US –amove that could revolutionise the gambling industry. Currently, Nevada is the only state fully exempted from a1992 law that has made it illegal to bet on the results of sports matches. However, millions of Americans place illicit bets: the black market is worth an estimated £150bn ayear, and casinos, bookmakers and gambling websites will be racing to grab ashare of it. The case was brought by the state of New Jersey, which argued that the ban was unconstitutional. It will now be up to individual states to decide if they want to allow gambling. In London, shares in William Hill jumped 11% on the news.

Mexico City Leftist front runner: Aveteran left-winger who is aclose friend of Jeremy Corbyn has emerged as the front runner in Mexico’s presidential election, due in July. Andrés Manuel López Obrador, 64, aformer mayor of Mexico City, lost the 2006 election by less than apercentage point, prompting protests by supporters and claims of fraud. Now, he has apoll lead of 15-20% over his centre-right rival Ricardo Anaya Cortés. Corbyn and his Mexican wife, Laura, spent part of their Christmas holiday with López Obrador (pictured) in 2016. Caracas Managua Water crisis: Venezuela’s capital Violent protests: Tens of thousands of Nicaraguans took part in is in the grip of achronic water fresh anti-government protests last week in the capital, Managua, shortage caused by the effective and other cities, many of them holding aloft pictures of those collapse of Hidrocapital, the killed in the recent unrest. In the past month, the crisis has cost state-owned utility company. Although it is rainy season and the the lives of about 50 people, the majority of them students. The reservoirs are full, millions of people in Caracas have not had protests were sparked in mid-April by proposed social security regular running water for amonth. Over the years, billions have cuts. These have been abandoned –but the fierceness of the been invested in reservoirs and pumps to bring water to the city. crackdown on the demonstrations has incited more people to But owing to the economic crisis –and hyperinflation –wages are take to the streets and call for the resignation of President Ortega. so low that Hidrocapital’s maintenance staff are not turning up to The 72-year-old former leftist rebel has ruled Nicaragua for work, and there is no money for spare parts. President Maduro the past 11 years. Many younger Nicaraguans believe he has has vowed to repair the economy if re-elected this weekend –a morphed into adictator and that he is intent on being succeeded poll expected to be rigged and that the opposition is boycotting by his wife (and vice-president), Rosario Murillo. –but he has not said how he plans to do so.

THE WEEK 19 May 2018 The world at aglance NEWS 7

Baghdad Golan Heights Sadr emerges as kingmaker: In astunning Fears grow of an Israel-Iran war: Israel and Iran result unforeseen by either Iraqi politicians edged closer to all-out war last Thursday, when or Western analysts, acoalition headed by Israeli positions in the Golan Heights –Syrian Muqtada al-Sadr –the firebrand Shia cleric territory that Israel annexed after the 1967 whose militias killed hundreds of Iraqi and Six Day War –were hit by abarrage of Iranian US soldiers in the wars that followed the rockets. Iran, akey backer of Syria’s Assad regime US-led invasion of 2003 –has taken the and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, has deployed largest number of seats after the general thousands of missiles in Syria: last week’s attack election last Saturday. The party of the –two days after the US pulled out of the global current PM, Haider al-Abadi, who agreement over Iran’s nuclear programme –marked the first time it has launched a oversaw the battle against Islamic State, direct assault on Israeli forces. Israel responded with areported 70 air strikes targeting came third. Under Iraq’s system, no party Iranian forces across Syria, its biggest assault on targets in Syria since the 1973 Yom can easily dominate, and acoalition is Kippur War. Israel’s defence minister, Avigdor Lieberman (pictured), said Israel had likely to take months to build. Sadr, who successfully destroyed “nearly all the Iranian infrastructure in Syria”. has repositioned himself as an anti- The day before the Israeli action, Israel’s PM Benjamin Netanyahu met Russia’s corruption reformer opposed to Iranian President Putin, with whom he has aclose relationship, to notify him in advance of the influence, did not stand for aseat himself strikes. Russia and Iran both support the Assad regime, but Russia’s main concern is to and cannot head the new government. It secure its military bases in Syria: it probably has no wish to see the situation escalate. remains possible that –askingmaker –he could yet back Abadi for another term.

Pyongyang Warning Trump: Pyongyang suddenly ratcheted up tensions with the US this week, by declaring that it is pulling out of talks with South Korea, owing to the latter’s joint military drills with the US. It also warned that Kim Jong Un will “reconsider” meeting Donald Trump on 12 June if the US insists it give up its nuclear weapons, and advised Trump not to listen to his “repugnant” adviser John Bolton, who recently proposed a Libya-style denuclear- isation in North Korea.

Solai, Kenya Dam deaths: At least 48 Kuala Lumpur Surabaya, Indonesia people were Shock return: Terror attacks: Indonesia suffered its killed last week Fifteen years after worst terrorist atrocities in more than –about half of stepping down, adecade this week, when members of them children – the former PM of two apparently ordinary Muslim families when adam Malaysia has won carried out aseries of suicide bomb attacks collapsed on asurprise victory in the country’s second city, Surabaya. asprawling farm in Kenya’s Rift Valley. in the country’s On Sunday, amother and her two The collapse of the earthen structure general election: daughters, aged nine and 12, detonated released awave about 1.5 metres high at 92, Mahathir their suicide vests inside an Indonesian and 500 metres wide, which destroyed Mohamad is now Christian church; her two teenage sons everything in its path, including aprimary the world’s oldest detonated their explosives outside a school. According to Kenya’s water elected leader. He Catholic church, while her husband blew authority, the Patel dam had been built came out of retirement and defected to the himself up outside aPentecostal building. without the necessary permits, though the opposition to take on his former protégé, Between them, the six, who all died, killed farm’s manager denies this. Police have Najib Razak, who has long been mired in at least 13 people. The next day, afamily opened acriminal investigation, and other acorruption scandal. Although Mahathir of five, riding on two motorcycles, blew illegal dams on the farm are being drained (pictured) was himself known as an themselves up outside Surabaya’s police to avert another disaster. Torrential rains authoritarian strongman, his victory headquarters, injuring ten people. An over the past two months, following a is being seen as awelcome boost for eight-year-old girl, who had been wedged severe drought, have caused at least 132 democratic values in southeast Asia (see between her parents on the bike, survived. deaths and the destruction of the homes page 17). He has hinted he may govern Islamic State has claimed responsibility for of 220,000 people across Kenya. for only two years. organising the attacks.

19 May 2018 THE WEEK 8 NEWS People

In bed with rock’s greats beheadings, torture –they are Pamela Des Barres was the not like other children. “They ultimate groupie, says Craig [aren’t] used to playing football McLean in The Observer or painting. Fun was banned Magazine –and she believes by Daesh.” Some are so she played apart in nurturing traumatised they’re unable to rock’s great talents. She hung speak. Few are ready to face up out with The Doors and to the truth about their pasts: Jimi Hendrix, and her lovers “They all say [their parents] included Jimmy Page and Mick died in accidents or car crashes. Jagger –but she has aspecial The truth is most were killed place in her heart for Keith in fighting or by air strikes.” Moon. “He was such aneedy Many are deeply disturbed and soul… When he’d wake up in need of intense therapy. “All screaming about being a my friends ask me why Ihelp murdering f*** [Moon had these kids, when there’s so accidentally run over and killed many more in need,” he says. his driver] Icould calm him. It “I tell them if we don’t change was my duty as amuse to take them today, they will become care of this brilliant genius.” another Isis tomorrow.” She denies that fans like her were victims of sexual abuse The sadness of Fatboy Slim –the 1960s and 1970s were As DJ Fatboy Slim, Norman “a whole other universe” – Cook has thrilled countless but admits her promiscuity ravers, but latterly he’s not was hard to square with her been so happy himself –which Christian faith. “I fought with has given his work adifferent it. Until Ifinally realised that dimension. “Nowadays Ifeel the orgasm – la petite mort – the crowd provide asort of André Leon Talley was 15 when he set his heart on becoming is godly… so important, so therapy to me,” he told The afashion editor, says Emma Brockes in The Guardian. It was connecting with the divine.” Times’s Michael Odell. He is astrange ambition for agrandson of sharecroppers in North At 69, the memory of making still reeling from the end of his Carolina, fuelled by reading old copies of Vogue he found in alocal love with Jagger still makes her marriage to Zoë Ball in 2016, library. The magazine depicted awhite, upper-class world, yet he wistful: “On his pillows in the and isn’t ready to date anyone felt included, “because there were people Iwanted to be like – middle of his living room, new: “I’ve forgotten what the eccentric, original people who were artists, writers”. His entrée into listening to Dylan –there was rules are... My heart is still this dream world came courtesy of Andy Warhol, who in 1974 gave nothing better on Earth.” wounded to be honest.” Cook, him ajob at Interview magazine. He loved working for Warhol. “He 54, was also deeply affected by did not judge people; you could say or do anything. Drag queens Helping the orphans of Isis the loss of his father-in-law and were as important as Princess Caroline of Monaco.” Adecade later Zahar al-Atheel teaches the is now an ambassador for the he landed at Vogue itself, becoming its creative director and aclose world’s least-wanted pupils, hospice where he died. He’s friend of its formidable editor, Anna Wintour: “One sees the glacial says Josie Ensor in The Daily amazed by the courage of the sunglasses and impeccable dresses. But she cares.” Not everyone Telegraph: the 65 orphaned people he’s met there. They in fashion has been as supportive –inParis, he was dubbed “Queen and abandoned children at the don’t just confront death, he Kong” by one PR. “That was the most racist thing I’d ever heard. It Al-Zahour Centre in Mosul are says, “they dance with it. Let’s didn’t hurt me, Ididn’t show it, but Inever forgot.” Talley, 69, thinks all the sons and daughters of face it, few of us dare look the his resilience comes from the grandmother who raised him and Islamic State fighters. Exposed truth in the face. Certainly not gave him unconditional love. “When Iwent home Iwore maxi coats to abrutal jihadist ideology aDJwhose job is hedonism to the floor, with gold braid and buttons Ibought in New York. She and extreme violence –rapes, and prolonging adolescence.” didn’t blink an eye: Icould do no wrong.”

Castaway of the week Viewpoint: Farewell This week’s edition of Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs featured Lessons and learnings entrepreneur and philanthropist Peter Lampl Will Alsop, Stirling “Join me in acampaign against the Prize-winning architect, 1 She Loves You by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, performed new buzzword, ‘learnings’. We may died 12 May, aged 70. by The Beatles have failed to stop ‘going forward’ go Bob Bura, pioneering 2 Prelude And The Sound Of Music by Richard Rodgers and forward, and made no headway against Oscar Hammerstein II, performed by Julie Andrews animator known for the the onward march of ‘challenges’, but 3 Jumpin’ Jack Flash by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, performed Trumptonshire trilogy, by The Rolling Stones by ridicule we could surely stop died 7April, aged 93. ‘learnings’ in its tracks. The term is part 4 Theme from New York, New York by Fred Ebb and John Kander, Professor David performed by Frank Sinatra of the idiot speak of modern business Goodall, renowned 5 California Girls by Brian Wilson and Mike Love, performed by communications –‘And what learnings botanist and ecologist, The Beach Boys to do you take, Nikki, from your died 10 May, aged 104.

6 Swan Lake by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, performed by Seiji Ozawa experience at Carillion?’ –and really Margot Kidder, actress EDIA

and the Boston Symphony Orchestra means ‘lessons’, but manages to avoid who played Lois Lane &M any hint that someone might actually in the Superman films,

7* The Magic Flute by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, conducted by NEWS Charles Mackerras with Bryn Terfel, Christine Rice and the have made amistake. Think positive! died 13 May, aged 69. Scottish Chamber Orchestra Nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl Tom Wolfe, author and 8 Cecilia by Paul Simon, performed by Simon &Garfunkel presented challenges to those affected journalist who wrote The by radiation, but we have taken useful Book: The complete works of Robert Frost Bonfire of the Vanities, BRIGHT/GUARDIAN learnings from the episode.” died 14 May, aged 87. Luxury: two cases of champagne *Choice if allowedonlyone record Matthew Parris in The Times OSHUA ©J

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Briefing NEWS 11 May 1968 Astudent revolt that nearly brought down the French government fifty years ago has become part of the nation’s political mythology

Where did the protests begin? students and set out their own demands. In Nanterre, asuburb of Paris, on a By 16 May, workers had occupied some newly built campus of the University of 50 factories across France –including Paris. The campus had witnessed aminor those of the carmaker Renault and the sexual revolution in 1967 –aseries of aviation company Dassault. By 23 May, protests against rules preventing male some ten million workers –two-thirds of students from visiting female students in the workforce –were on strike. Although their dormitories. But on 22 March, led often forgotten today, the workers’ revolt by aFranco-German anarchist, Daniel was seen as far more significant than the Cohn-Bendit (see box), 140 students students’ by de Gaulle’s government. occupied abuilding to demonstrate on abroad range of issues, from the arrest What did the protesters want? of anti-Vietnam student radicals and The students’ demands were diffuse and overcrowding on campus to class utopian: as well as the release of those discrimination in French society. In early arrested, they wanted the decentralisation May, the dean of Nanterre shut down of economic and political power; free- the campus, and the students moved their dom from bourgeois norms; the end of protests to the university’s main site at what they saw as US imperialism. Their the Sorbonne, in Paris’s Latin Quarter. “Demand the impossible”: student rioters in Paris slogans were playful and open-ended: “Be realistic: demand the impossible.” “It is What were the underlying issues? forbidden to forbid.” The most famous –inspired by the sight of Most Western nations experienced student revolts and outbreaks sand under the cobblestones removed to fight the police –was: of anti-establishment violence in the late 1960s. Many, such as the “Sous les pavés, la plage”(“Under the cobblestones, the beach”). Grosvenor Square protests in London, focused on the Vietnam Across France, committees were formed to restructure univer- War: the Vietcong’s Tet Offensive had begun in January. From sities, schools, the news media and the film industry –the Cannes 1945, France had enjoyed unbroken prosperity and ababy boom: Film Festival ended after jury members resigned in support. The in the decade to 1968, the French student population had grown unions, for their part, had some concrete demands on pay and from 175,000 to 500,000, bringing with it athriving youth hours, but many workers were swept up in the idealistic fervour. culture and left-wing political movements. Yet France –and its universities –remained traditional and quietly authoritarian, its How did the events of May 1968 end? rigid hierarchies symbolised by the 77-year-old president, Charles On 29 May, de Gaulle disappeared from view. He had flown by de Gaulle, who had been in power for adecade. In March 1968, helicopter to the headquarters of the French army in Germany, Le Monde columnist Pierre Viansson-Ponté declared that France to seek the support of its commander, General Jacques Massu. was facing adangerous political problem: “boredom”. On 30 May, half amillion protesters marched through Paris, chanting: “Adieu, de Gaulle.” But that day, he returned to How did the May protests escalate? Paris and delivered aradio address in which he refused to resign, On 3May, the rector of the Sorbonne asked the police to clear threatened to impose astate of emergency, dissolved the National the main courtyard, which 300 or so students had occupied. Assembly and called new elections. There was also alarge protest The arrests that followed, many made by the notorious CRS by de Gaulle supporters on the Champs-Élysées. By early June, riot police, sparked violent resistance: police were pelted with the strikes and protests had melted away. (The government had cobblestones. On 6May, some 20,000 students marched on the negotiated agenerous deal with the unions in late May, agreeing Sorbonne, demanding its reopening and the release of arrested to a10% increase in wages.) On 16 June, the police retook the students. Police forced the students back with tear gas and Sorbonne, and later in the month the Gaullists won ahistoric truncheons. The escalating cycle of landslide, taking 353 of 486 seats. violence built up to the “Night of the Dany le Rouge Barricades” on 10-11 May, when a Daniel Cohn-Bendit became the face of May 1968. So the revolution failed? bigger protest, also on the Left Bank, Known as “Dany le Rouge” because of both his red Yes. As aresult, some have dismissed was halted by police. The students hair and his politics, at the time he advocated a it as ameaningless convulsion. The began removing cobblestones, over- mixture of Marxism, sexual liberation and anarchism: philosopher Raymond Aron called turning cars and building barricades. he advocated self-governing, stateless societies, it a“non-event”, a“psychodrama”, At about 2am, the police attacked, regarded elections as a“fool’s trap” and believed that in which students performed a firing tear gas and beating students sexual repression led to “fascist” politics. In fact, once farcical re-enactment of the great and bystanders. By dawn, nearly the protests got under way, he did not play abig role: revolutionary episodes of French the son of German Jews who had fled to France in the 500 students had been arrested and 1930s, he had aGerman passport and de Gaulle had history. However, many argue that, hundreds hospitalised (as well as him expelled on 22 May as a“seditious alien”. in the words of one student leader, 250 police officers). This perceived In the 1970s, Cohn-Bendit worked in an alternative Alain Geismar, it succeeded “as a aggression of the police turned much kindergarten in Frankfurt, before building anew career social revolution, not as apolitical of the public against the authorities. in Green politics: he led the Green group in the one”: it brought about aless rigid On 13 May, France’s biggest unions European Parliament between 2004 and 2014. His society, and heralded the birth of called astrike in sympathy. radical past occasionally troubled him: in the 1970s, he new political movements, from the had written describing “erotic” encounters with five- “new Left” to feminism. It remains How long did the strike last? year-olds, accounts he later disowned as untrue and controversial today. In 2007, Nicolas The union leaders only called a merely “obnoxious provocation”. Cohn-Bendit came Sarkozy promised to “liquidate” HERMANN one-day strike, but it developed into to support not just democracy but the free market. “I the 1968 legacy of “intellectual say forget May 1968,” he has explained. “It’s finished. something much bigger. Indefinite Society today bears no relationship with that of the and moral relativism”. This year,

PRESS/FRANK wildcat (unofficial) strikes followed, 1960s. When we called ourselves anti-authoritarian, we Emmanuel Macron –facing his own as workers in their thousands poured were fighting against avery different society.” protests and strikes –decided not to AMERA onto the streets to support the commemorate it officially. ©C

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There’s astrike going on that you’ve probably barely heard of, says Gaby Hinsliff. Yet “its implications are as grave as any that IT MUST BE TRUE… British justice make the headlines”. It involves criminal barristers from about Iread it in the tabloids 100 chambers who are refusing to take on new taxpayer-funded simply isn’t cases. They’re in despair over sustained cuts to the criminal justice Aretired Dorset couple have been convicted of attacking system that have been so severe, they’ve left many junior barristers working their pagan neighbour, a struggling on less than the minimum wage... and many defendants druid witch calling himself without proper legal assistance. Owing to fresh restrictions on Gaby Hinsliff Bearheart, after losing entitlement to legal aid –and now the barrister strike –more and patience with his full moon The Guardian more people, on charges ranging all the way up to murder, are rituals. Mark and Anne trying to “represent themselves, often with only the vaguest idea Denyer became infuriated by of what they’re doing”. It has led to chaotic scenes in courts, with the chanting and drumbeats some defendants apparently freezing like rabbits in the headlights, coming from the garden of and others interrupting constantly or going off on tangents. It’s no John Bennett’s bungalow during the monthly way to get at the facts and “the risk of miscarriages of justice is ceremonies, and stormed screamingly obvious”. Lawyers may not be as sympathetic figures over on last November’s as doctors or nurses, but their protest still deserves our attention. full moon, after averbal altercation over the fence. What’s the point of learning maths? For amaths teacher like me, Mrs Denyer hit Bennett with says Bobby Seagull, it reveals the beauty of underlying patterns an umbrella, and Mr Denyer Why British in the world. Did you know, for example, that cicadas emerge stabbed him with akitchen in prime number cycles in order to evade predators? But for most knife. Luckily, Bennett’s 22st maths teaching of us, the point of maths is to help deal with real-life problems frame protected him and he was only superficially injured. –something maths teaching today signally fails to do. You bone doesn’t add up up on trigonometry yet seldom encounter it again once you’ve left school. You can get atop grade at GCSE maths and still end Bobby Seagull up financially illiterate. Indeed, it turns out that almost half of UK Financial Times working-age adults have the numeracy skills of aprimary school child. Ateacher is meant to prepare young people to be responsible citizens, but if they don’t learn the basics of compound interest, how can they make informed decisions about, say, renting or buying aflat? That’s why what Icall “urban maths” should be central to the curriculum. Only if we stop asking questions of the “If Alice has three times as many sweets as Billy...” variety, and start asking pupils to compare the merits of bank accounts, will they be able to acquire the “survival skills” needed for adult life.

“Climate change is shifting politics as surely as it is shifting ice,” says Roger Boyes. Take the case of Greenland, aremote territory AGreat Game mostly covered by ice that has always been of huge strategic ASpanish potato farmer has significance, given its proximity to both Russia and the US, but become asocial media star that’s spreading which is becoming even more of ahotspot as the Arctic warms, because of her likeness to the ice melts and its minerals become easier to excavate. China, to the Arctic Donald Trump. Dolores Leis in particular, is now avery visible presence there, hoping not just posed for an article about to get hold of its rare earth metals, but to exploit the northern sea Roger Boyes life on her farm in the local route that would allow it to ship goods quickly to Europe. A paper, La Voz de Galicia, Chinese firm even put in abid to buy the Cold War US naval The Times and in short order achieved base put up for sale by Denmark, which is still the island’s worldwide viral fame. She sovereign power. This spooked Copenhagen, which rapidly took has since been asked to it off the market. But Greenlanders may soon win independence, comment on pressing and if they do they’d be happy to “exchange the Danish yoke US policy and international for ano-political-strings-attached commercial relationship with issues. “My photo seems Beijing”. In this way China, and Russia, are extending their reach to have travelled far,” she across the Arctic: agood deal for them, aclear threat to the West. remarked. “I say it is because of the colour of my hair.” There’s something about Gareth Southgate, the England manager, How football that embodies the modern idea of Englishness, says Simon Kuper. ARussian woman who Modest, self-deprecating, “with abig nose” and an “open, naive thought she was entering face”, he became anational hero after his penalty was saved in her PIN into the credit card taught us to the semi-final shoot-out in Euro 1996. His subsequent admission machine at aSwiss café accept reality that he was sure he’d score it, even though his mum reminded us was in fact paying atip. As a he’d only taken one penalty before and missed that too, marked result, Olesja Schemjakowa paid 7,709.70 Swiss francs Simon Kuper him out as alovable loser. He personified apost-imperial England “comfortable with defeat”. It wasn’t always so. For awhile, “the (£5,695) for acoffee and cake. The credit card company New Statesman default mode was astonishment each time England didn’t win a would not reverse her World Cup”. We were the home of football, after all. And that payment, because it was not belief in Britain’s innate superiority persists in politics, particularly considered fraudulent. The among older people who grew up on “maps swathed in pink”. café owner later promised Not in football, though: it’s hard to preserve the illusion of being to repay her, but filed for “great” when the scoreboard says otherwise. And football shapes bankruptcy before the money people’s idea of acountry even more than politics. So now every was returned. “That’s just humiliation at abig tournament celebrates afresh idea of England: not fair!” said Schemjakowa. “a land of unlucky heroes that no longer rules the world”.

19 May 2018 THE WEEK 14 NEWS Best articles: Europe

Will it be war? The seething tension between two old foes They may be Nato allies, but Greece said Piero Castellano on the Turkish and Turkey have seldom got on well, website AhvalNews.com.But with said Yiannis Baboulias in Foreign no navy, Atatürk couldn’t capture the Policy (Washington).They went to offshore islands –even though many war with each other several times in are so close Turks can hear cockerels the 19th and 20th centuries, and now crowing there –and in the Treaty of they’re on the brink again. Turkish Lausanne of 1923 they remained Greek nationalists have been agitating for territory. Since then, Ankara has laid the return of the Greek islands that claim to practically every barren rock lie just off the coast of Turkey, and not mentioned in the treaty: in 1996, to humour them in the run-up to next it almost went to war with Athens over month’s election, President Erdogan the Imia islets –still fiercely contested. is demanding the maritime border be renegotiated. And it’s not just aggres- The land border with Greece, 150 miles sive rhetoric he’s indulging in. This Kammenos and Tsipris: fighting provocation from Istanbul, is also aflashpoint, said month, aTurkish cargo ship rammed a Savvas Kalèndéridès on Voltairenet.org Greek patrol boat off the island of Lesbos. An accident, said the (Hong Kong).Villagers from both countries sometimes stray Turkish authorities, but the Greeks saw it as deliberate provo- across the border, and at worst are usually fined. But when two cation. Greek public opinion was equally enraged last month, Greek soldiers mistakenly crossed the line in March, they were when aGreek pilot died after his plane crashed during amission charged with spying. Erdogan freely admits he is holding them to intercept Turkish jets that had entered disputed airspace. as bargaining chips for the return of eight Turkish coup plotters Greece’s PM, Alexis Tsipras, has tried to keep alid on things, who fled to Greece and whom the Greek courts refuse to extra- but the reckless nationalist rhetoric of his junior coalition part- dite. The situation is now so volatile, said Boris Kálnoky in Die ner, Defence Minister Panos Kammenos, makes that very hard. Welt (Berlin),that conflict could be ignited by accident rather than by design. And that’s alarming when you bear in mind Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s expulsion of more than amillion that Greece and Turkey together own more tanks and artillery Greeks from their homelands in Turkey in the early 1920s is vehicles than the rest of Europe combined. If there’s awar, part of the foundation story of the modern Turkish republic, “this arsenal could do alot of damage in avery short time”.

SWEDEN The call to prayer blaring from minarets is common in Muslim countries, but many Swedes think it shouldn’t be heard in Europe, says Ingvar Persson. In the city of Växjö, conservative politicians are kicking up astink over the request by amosque for athree-minute call to prayer to be sent out at Why so much noon on Fridays. With elections looming in September, it’s become ahot topic, variously presented as “a threat to the Swedish nation” or acrucial test of religious freedom. But is it worth getting so fuss over acall steamed up about? True, we don’t want to hear it five times aday, but one prayer call aweek will to prayer? hardly disrupt Swedish culture or values. As for the noise, we’ve plenty already to put up with from emergency vehicle sirens and “stereo systems blaring hip-hop”. In the event, the police have ignored Aftonbladet the controversy and permitted it on the basis of local public order regulations; they merely require (Stockholm) that the speakers are pointed in the right direction and the volume is below 45 decibels as heard from the inside, “slightly less than the sound of amodern dishwasher”. Quite right too. Such decisions are best made on old-fashioned bureaucratic principles that have nothing to do with religion.

GERMANY The blowback from Angela Merkel’s policy of welcoming refugees is really starting to bite, says Wolfgang Bok. Some 370,000 asylum cases are pending in the courts, abacklog that will take years to clear. Only one in five wins permission to stay –often on the basis of documents officials have no The heavy cost way of verifying and may well be faked. They frankly admit they may give the nod for fear of being called racist. Applicants from countries like Pakistan and Nigeria that are not war-torn have virtually of Merkel’s no hope, yet lawyers encourage them to apply regardless, putting an intolerable strain on the legal bleeding heart system. Even when deportation orders are made, they can be near impossible to execute. Officials who tried to deport aTogolese man from arefugee centre back to Italy (his point of entry to the EU) Cicero were practically set upon by other migrants. It took hundreds of police to extract him, and further (Berlin) appeals were launched. Meanwhile, other applicants continue to receive generous benefits –which is precisely why even rejected asylum seekers stubbornly resist deportation. Aconservative politician who recently spoke of an “anti-deportation industry” at work was howled down by left-wingers. But most people agree things just can’t go on like this. “How much naivety can acountry afford?”

ITALY In most European cities abus in flames would be taken for aterrorist bombing, says Sergio Rizzo. Not in Rome. There, people have grown so used to the sight they barely take asecond glance. They know it’s because the buses aren’t being looked after properly. More than 150 have caught fire in The appalling three years, two on the same morning last week. One was in abusy shopping street; the passengers escaped, but the fire damaged anearby clothes shop. The other was aschool bus, which mercifully degradation of was empty apart from the driver. The municipally owned transport company, Atac, is s1.3bn in debt, and last year suppliers stopped providing spare parts: its buses run without sufficient coolant; life in Rome their worn electrical cables lie inches from pistons soaked in oil. Astray spark and in minutes abus La Repubblica is on fire. It’s another example of the appalling degradation of Rome. Its streets have an estimated (Rome) 50,000 potholes and it can no longer pay for other regions to take its rubbish, which keeps piling up. The authorities are losing control; some districts are effectively being run by criminal outfits. Yet Virginia Raggi, the Five Star Movement mayor, persists in the fiction that things are not that bad. Let us hope the shame of exploding buses will finally force the politicians to put things to rights.

THE WEEK 19 May 2018

Best articles: International NEWS 17

Michael Cohen: the “fixer” who could bring down Trump Michael Cohen has long served as owned, the firm effectively serves as Donald Trump’s personal lawyer and an investment vehicle for the Russian “fixer”, said Karen Tumulty in The oligarch Viktor Vekselberg and his Washington Post.But it seems those family (Columbus Nova’s CEO is titles barely do him justice. New Vekselberg’s cousin). The idea that revelations last week suggest Cohen – this high-level firm would hire Cohen aformer personal-injury lawyer with a for real-estate advice is ridiculous. It taxi business on the side –isaveritable would be “like McDonald’s calling the “all-purpose tool”. Consider the array proprietor of alocal diner and asking of companies that have apparently how to run arestaurant”. So what was called on his unique mix of expertise. the payment all about? The Swiss drug giant Novartis paid Cohen $1.2m for his advice on This is what a“smoking gun might healthcare policy. AKorean defence look like”, said Jed Shugerman on Slate. company paid him $150,000 to Cohen: an “all-purpose tool” This Russia-linked payment isn’t just advise it on accounting practices. The apossible breach of campaign finance telecommunications firm AT&T paid him $600,000 to laws. Given that we’re talking of an oligarch with connections provide “insights into understanding the new administration”. to Vladimir Putin funnelling cash to Trump’s personal lawyer – Altogether, Cohen appears to have raked in more than $2m through ashell company that was also used to pay hush money from this consulting work. “It remains to be seen whether any to the porn actress Stormy Daniels, and possibly other women – of this is illegal or merely unseemly.” But it certainly mocks the it could be astep towards “establishing quid pro quo bribery idea that Trump has cleaned up Washington. “The swamp is and conspiracy against the United States”. Proving it would be never drained; it just gets taken over by different reptiles.” very difficult. But Cohen, who is reportedly under investigation for bank fraud and election law violations, is under alot of One of the payments to Cohen raises particular questions, said pressure to cooperate with prosecutors. If he and other alleged Adam Davidson in The New Yorker:the $500,000 from New co-conspirators flip, they may yet “help ajury, the public and York investment firm Columbus Nova. Although American- perhaps Congress find proof beyond areasonable doubt”.

It’s the end of an era in Malaysia, says Isabella Steger. Last week, in astunning political upset, the MALAYSIA country had its first change of government since it gained independence from Britain in 1957. The 60-year rule of the Barisan Nasional coalition ended when an opposition alliance led by Malaysia’s Is the world’s former premier, Mahathir Mohamad, won asurprise majority in parliament, ousting Prime Minister Najib Razak, who had been embroiled in amassive corruption scandal. It’s a“seismic event” not oldest PM a just for Malaysia, but for the broader region, where it’s “almost unheard of for voters to overturn governments”. Indeed, over recent years a“renewed wave of strongman rule” has gripped force for good? neighbouring countries such as Cambodia and Thailand. The 92-year-old Mahathir, now the world’s Quartz oldest political leader, “is himself no progressive reformer”. As Najib’s one-time mentor, he ruled (New York) Malaysia with an iron grip, jailing his opponent Anwar Ibrahim on cooked-up sodomy charges. This time, though, Mahathir has vowed to tackle corruption and to cede power to Anwar once the latter, having now been pardoned and released, has won re-election as an MP. “If Mahathir keeps to his word, Malaysia could break the unsettling pattern of rising authoritarianism in southeast Asia.”

EAST AFRICA “Imagine paying more than $900 to agovernment agency just to be allowed to blog,” says Larry Madowo. That’s the latest idea from the government of Tanzania: it thinks all online content providers should have to pay afee and submit documents to gain alicence. On the other In Africa the side of Lake Victoria, Uganda wants to impose atax on users of social media. Rights groups have complained, but that won’t bother President Museveni: he famously shut down social media during state polices the 2016 election. Neighbouring Kenya has shown asimilar contempt for free speech: it closed three the culture... TV stations for aweek earlier this year. Together, these countries are “presiding over asystematic shrinking of the democratic space in East Africa”. And “cultural censorship” is abig part of the The Washington Post process. Kenya has just banned the movie Rafiki on the grounds that it “promotes” homosexuality; in Tanzania, pop star Diamond Platnumz was recently forced to apologise for posting avideo of himself kissing agirl on Instagram; Uganda, meanwhile, has created atask force dedicated to rooting out pornography –asifthe nation didn’t have more pressing problems. “East Africans’ freedoms are fading fast. It is adangerous time to be someone with an opinion in the region.”

UNITED STATES The “cultural appropriation police” have struck again, says David Frum. The latest target of their wrath is an 18-year-old girl from Utah who dared to post apicture of herself on social media wearing aChinese-style dress, a cheongsam,toher high school dance. “My culture is NOT your ... in America, goddamn prom dress,” raged one Twitter user, Jeremy Lam. Like many of these silly controversies about “people of one background adopting and adapting the artefacts of another”, this one was it’s the Twitter petty, coercive and infantilising –but it also exhibited aparticular historical ignorance. The style of dress worn by the student was conceived in China after the overthrow of the Qing dynasty in brigade 1912, when Chinese women found themselves free for the first time in 250 years to dress as they The Atlantic liked. The new garment, the cheongsam,isseen by some as “a fusion of old and new, East and (Washington DC) West”. It used Chinese fabrics, but its shape and purpose –toallow easy movement, unlike previous, highly restrictive clothes –was consciously appropriated from European fashion. America’s “would- be culture police”, in other words, were attacking aWestern girl for wearing a“dress designed precisely so that Chinese girls could live more like Western girls”.

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Foresight Group LLP is regulated and authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority. Capital is at risk. Health &Science NEWS 19 What the scientists are saying… Tolerating cold is in our DNA modelling, however, aNature Astronomy Early humans successfully migrated to study has detailed aclearer picture. It now freezing northern climates thanks to a seems that when the Sun’s core runs out of genetic mutation that made them better hydrogen, its centre will collapse, setting able to withstand the cold –but which also off nuclear reactions at its periphery. These made them more prone to headaches, new will cause it to swell into ared giant, about research suggests. In the human body, 250 times its present size, which will engulf there is only one known receptor that Mercury and Venus, and destroy Earth. As controls how we respond to the sensation its outer layers are blown off, the core will of cold. Ateam led by the Max Planck heat up, radiating ultraviolet light that will Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology turn the vast quantities of gas and dust has now discovered that avariant in the ejected by the dying star into aglowing DNA upstream of the TRPM8 gene that ring of plasma that will shine for 10,000 codes this receptor is far more prevalent at years –which would be afine sight, were northern latitudes. The further north you anyone left to see it. Most large stars die in go, the more widely the variant is found: this way, forming aplanetary nebula, but only 5% of people with Nigerian ancestry there had been doubts as to whether the carry it, but 88% of Finns do. As previous Sun had sufficient mass to do so. “They studies have found that some mammals are the prettiest objects in the sky and even that live in cold conditions have adapted Inuits: adapted to the cold though the Sun will only become afaint different versions of TRPM8, the scientists one, it will be visible from neighbouring speculate that the variant also makes had just one sauna aweek. The differences galaxies,” said study co-author Albert humans more tolerant of cold. The new were similar even after the researchers Zijlstra, professor of astrophysics at research suggests that when Homo sapiens adjusted for factors such as smoking, the University of Manchester. began migrating from Africa to Europe diabetes and high cholesterol –suggesting 50,000 years ago, those with the variant that they weren’t only down to sauna Too many under-fives are dying were more likely to prosper in the freezing junkies having better overall health. Children under five in Britain have a north and thus it spread. Intriguingly, the “Saunas appear to have ablood pressure significantly higher mortality rate than variant is also strongly associated with lowering effect, which may underlie the their counterparts in Sweden, despite the migraines. Why it should have this side beneficial effect on stroke risk,” said Dr countries having similar levels of economic effect is not clear, but it could help explain Setor Kunutsor, who co-wrote the study in development and universal healthcare, why the headaches are most commonly Neurology. However, clinical trials would according to astudy in The Lancet. reported in people of European descent. need to prove that saunas reduce stroke Researchers examined data on children risk –and in any case, they are not for born between 2003 and 2012, and found Do saunas prevent stroke? everyone: Finns use saunas from child- that the mortality rate in Britain was If you’re one of the few people in Britain hood, so their bodies are used to them. 29 per 10,000 –one of the highest in who have asauna, do be sure to use it Older sauna novices should be cautious western Europe; in Sweden, it was 19. regularly: it may stop you having astroke. and talk to adoctor first if in poor health. Deaths in the first year of life were the Researchers from the University of Bristol main driver of the difference. More UK tracked 1,628 Finnish people with an The Sun will have adazzling death babies were born underweight, preterm or average age of 63. They found that over Astronomers have long agreed that our sun with congenital anomalies. The researchers a15-year period, the people who had four will die in five billion or so years from said that poorer maternal health in Britain to seven saunas aweek were about 60% now. But they were less certain as to the was amajor factor, and that this could be less likely to suffer astroke than those who manner of its going. Using new data down to more unequal wealth distribution.

Birds flock back after rodent cull NHS “crisis” revealed

The island of South Georgia, in the South Atlantic, Britain has fewer doctors and nurses per was this week officially declared rodent-free after a head of population than most developed massive cull. Rats arrived in the 19th century on countries, new research has found. whaling vessels, and as their numbers grew to Researchers from the King’s Fund health several million, they gnawed their way through the think tank compared data from 21 OECD eggs and chicks of millions of ground-nesting countries. Britain was ranked 19th for birds, devastating their populations. In 2011, the number of doctors per capita, 16th for nurses per capita and 18th for conservationists launched aproject to kill the hospital beds. Britain has only 2.8 rodents by dropping poisonous pellets from the air doctors per 1,000 people, barely half the across the 100-mile-long island. number in Austria, which has the most, Their efforts have worked. To check the rats had at 5.1 per 1,000. Britain has fewer than been eradicated, the South Georgia Heritage Trust 8nurses per 1,000, whereas Switzerland employed three terriers from New Zealand to trav- has 18. On hospital beds, Britain has 2.6 erse the island sniffing out rodents. It also deployed per 1,000; Germany, the best performer, has 8.1. The analysis also revealed that more than 4,600 rodent-detecting devices, such as The albatross: flourishing chew sticks and small tracking tunnels to record Britain has fewer MRI and CT scanners per capita than any of the other nations footprints. Not asingle rat or mouse was found. By contrast, there has been “an on the list. Yet as aproportion of GDP, explosion” in the number of native pipits and pintails, and aresurgence in the UK spending on healthcare isn’t notably albatross population, according to Professor Mike Richardson, chair of the trust’s lower than that of other nations: 9.7% of steering committee. But he stressed that vigilance was still needed: “We only need one its GDP is spent on health; the average EDWARDS pregnant rat to get back onto South Georgia and we could restart the whole cycle.” across the 21 countries was 9.6%. WAN ©E

19 May 2018 THE WEEK 20 NEWS Talking points Donald Trump: unravelling the world order

He always said that he’d put America Shia influence in the region, funding first. It now seems that for President terrorism and military incursions in Trump, that means America alone. Since Yemen (where Iran is fighting aproxy coming to power last year, Trump has war with Saudi Arabia), Syria (where gone out of his way to isolate the US from Israel claims 80,000 Shia fighters are its traditional allies and undermine the under Iranian control), Lebanon (where fragile world order, said Barbara Slavin Israel’s foe, the Iran-backed Shia group on The Hill. In 2017, he defied his critics Hezbollah, is amajor political force) and by withdrawing the US from the Paris Iraq. In short, said The Daily Telegraph, climate accord. The great disrupter has Trump’s decision to quit the deal makes also pulled out of the 12-nation Trans- more sense the closer one lives to Iran. Pacific Partnership free-trade agreement; kept up aregular stream of criticism of But what does he expect to happen now? Nato; threatened new trade tariffs that In Europe, the three Ms –Macron, May would affect European manufacturers; and Merkel –are still hoping to salvage undermined the Middle East peace process The president: turning his back on Europe the deal, said Edward Luce in the FT. by relocating the US’s embassy in Israel to Iran’s President Rouhani says that if they Jerusalem; and pulled the US out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. can find away of keeping trade going, he will stick with it. But In the days before that announcement last week, President that “fork leads to adeepening Western split”: the US would Macron of France and Germany’s Angela Merkel had both levy sanctions on European entities, and Europe (which has long travelled to Washington to plead with the president to change chafed against the US’s use of secondary sanctions) would be his mind –tonoavail. forced to retaliate. Of course, the deal’s other signatories, China and Russia, would also continue to trade with Iran and would We shouldn’t have been surprised, said The Independent. retaliate against any US financial penalties. That would have a Trump was, yet again, only fulfilling apromise made during knock-on effect on Trump’s trade talks with China and on hopes his “maverick” election campaign and carrying on his “childish” of Beijing sustaining its pressure on North Korea to abandon its mission to “undo –just for the sake nuclear weapons. of undoing –everything that his predecessor achieved in office”. But the “The US leaving the Iran deal marks It’s not clear how, by reneging on this exit from the Iran deal is of adifferent the biggest rupture in transatlantic deal, Trump hopes to persuade Kim order from the rest, said Philip Stephens relations since the Cold War ended” Jong Un to trust him when it comes to in the FT: it “marks the biggest rupture North Korea, said the FT. But embold- in transatlantic relations since the end of ened by his apparent success with Kim, the Cold War”. Trump has effectively turned his back on Europe Trump is confident that he can get abetter deal out of Iran in the to join an unlikely alliance between Saudi Arabia and Israel, both 90 to 180 days before sanctions are reimposed. It’s ahigh-risk of which are banging “the drums for war” with Iran. strategy. What if hardliners in Iran –who never liked the 2015 deal –use the Great Satan’s betrayal to strengthen their hand? But Trump was right about one thing: the Iran deal was not a Rather than return to the negotiating table, they may force their good one, said Janet Daley in The Sunday Telegraph. Sure, it people to withstand the pain of sanctions, and restart the nuclear suited the Europeans to be able to do business with Iran –France programme, potentially triggering aMiddle East arms race. and Germany have done very nicely out of it, and are aghast that Trump is prepared for that outcome, said Christopher de the reimposition of US sanctions could put astop to trade worth Bellaigue in The Spectator. He is surrounded by anti-Iranians, billions. But the deal didn’t ask enough of Iran in return: it kept including John Bolton, his national security adviser, who has long its long-range ballistic missiles; its military bases were not subject called for regime change in Iran. If there’s no North Korea-style to inspections; and it was only asked to suspend, not end, its capitulation, we may be looking at war. Iran is amalign power, nuclear programme. Barack Obama’s optimistic idea was that said The Washington Post. But it is also an ancient civilisation, during this ten to 15-year pause, Iran’s economy would boom and with complex ties of influence in the region, that has withstood young, pro-Western moderates would prosper, weakening the US pressure and sanctions for decades. Even if we could topple grip of the Shia theocracy. But Tehran didn’t use the extra income the regime, do we want to? Surely, after the past 20 years, we to improve people’s lives. Instead, it used it to bolster an arc of know better than to risk opening that Pandora’s box.

His older daughter Samantha from an orthodox Jewish Pick of the week’s (Meghan’s half-sister, who is family. He’d been willing to not on the guest list) took the convert to Judaism, in order blame for the episode, saying to marry her in an orthodox Gossip that she had encouraged him ceremony, but as that process to cooperate with the photo can take several years, he With days to go before agency, to help “recast” his thought he might as well the royal wedding, Meghan image. If Thomas Markle investigate his maternal Markle’s father Thomas (pictured, with Meghan) does grandmother, aHungarian (one of only ahandful of her not come, it is likely that the émigré who moved to Britain relatives to be invited to the bride will be walked down the in the 1930s and died in 2004. occasion, and due to walk her aisle by her mother, LA-based While she never mentioned down the aisle), was reported social worker Doria Ragland. being Jewish, paperwork was to have pulled out of the uncovered that proved she proceedings. The former George Osborne has learnt and her family had been lighting director, who lives that he is Jewish. The members of asynagogue in quietly in asmall city in discovery was made by the Budapest. Arabbinical court Mexico, was said to have stage what had appeared to former chancellor’s brother ruled that Theo Osborne, 33, been upset and embarrassed be paparazzi photographs of after he got engaged to his was therefore Jewish already by reports that he had helped him preparing for the big day. American girlfriend –who is and had no need to convert.

THE WEEK 19 May 2018 Talking points NEWS 21 Gang violence: “check the scoreboard” Wit& “Hey, Londoners –been stabbed of little more than a“hunch” or or shot yet this week?” asked the youth’s taste in music. These Wisdom Rod Liddle in The Spectator. “uncorroborated assumptions” If not, count yourself lucky. are then allegedly shared with “I am glad not to have been The capital’s murder rate has other authorities such as housing arevolutionary when Iwas overtaken New York’s in recent associations, schools and job young, because it prevented months and is “approaching centres, causing individuals me from becoming a Detroit’s”. So far this year, there lasting harm. The report found reactionary bore in old age.” have been 63 suspected murders that 78% of people on the Robert Lowell, quoted in the city. Had the victims been matrix are black, although only in the London “nice little old white ladies called 27% of those prosecuted for Review of Books Betty, this carnage would have serious youth violence are black. “I doubt alcohol kills more captured abit more of our The youngest person on the people than it creates.” attention”. But almost all these matrix is 12 years old. Author John LeFevre, killings have involved young quoted on The Browser men from ethnic minorities, There are clearly problems with both as victims and perpetrators. how this data is retained and “Without Mozart we still have agreat deal To point out this demographic Ainsworth Barton: the latest victim shared with other agencies, said reality, though, is to risk being Janice Turner in The Times. The of great music. We have “cast as aracist”. Liberal critics are bizarre. fact remains, though, that we can’t tackle the Bach and Beethoven and They argue –“correctly, in my opinion –that scourge of shootings and stabbings in London Handel and Schumann etc. we are doing little to stop the crimes because without addressing gang culture. Police believe But with Mozart, we can we don’t care enough about black people killing social media and nihilistic “drill” music are dance to heaven.” each other”. Yet at the same time, they refuse fuelling the violence by glamourising it and Pianist Menahem Pressler to acknowledge that there is anything unique, “supercharging” gang disputes. That would on BBC Radio 3 culturally speaking, about these murders. certainly appear to be the case in the recent “Music is liquid killing of 17-year-old Rhyhiem Ainsworth architecture; architecture There are dangers in dwelling on the cultural Barton. Described in the press as an aspiring is frozen music.” dimension, said Becky Clarke in The Guardian. architect, he was also reportedly part of adrill Johann Wolfgang von Once the narrative becomes all about gangs, rap crew, Moscow17, based in Kennington, Goethe, quoted in the it has adistorting effect on policing –as which is at war with arival gang, Zone 2, in San Francisco Chronicle highlighted by Amnesty International’s scathing Peckham. Shortly before he was shot dead, “Your guilty conscience report last week on the Metropolitan Police’s Rhyhiem’s crew posted agoading video in which may move you to vote database of suspects, known as the “Gangs they told Zone 2to“check the scoreboard”. Of Democratic, but deep down Matrix”. The report claims that officers often course, we mustn’t stigmatise black youths. But you long for acold-hearted label young men as gang suspects on the basis “gang culture itself needs stamping on hard”. Republican to lower taxes, brutalise criminals and rule you like aking.” Grammar schools: back from the dead? The Simpsons’ Sideshow Bob, quoted in Grammar schools are “the zombie policy that be dependent on accepting ahigher proportion The Mail on Sunday won’t die”, said Fiona Millar in The Observer. of poor pupils. But in truth the whole policy is By rights, the idea of bringing them back should amere gesture, to pacify diehard Tory grammar “I can tell how intelligent have been killed off long ago. Grammars are a school supporters: £50m represents only 0.1% aman is by how stupid middle-class racket. It is well established that of the education budget. It’s a“distraction”, to he thinks Iam.” they “do little for social mobility”; the majority conceal “a major political U-turn” –the fact that Cormac McCarthy, quoted of their students “come from better-off homes”. May’s plan for grammar school expansion has in the LA Times Arecent long-term study of exam data revealed been axed, because too many Tory MPs would “Everyone has a that they “add barely any value. Their stellar have voted it down. Education Secretary Damian plan until they get results simply reflect the higher prior attainment Hinds should be congratulated for getting his punched in the face.” of their pupils.” Even so, before the last boss “out of the hole she dug for herself”. Mike Tyson, quoted in election, Theresa May promised to create anew The Daily Telegraph generation of grammar schools across Britain. We are left, though, with afairly pointless The plan was, thankfully, “seen off” when she policy, said David Butterfield on his Spectator lost her majority. But now, at atime when the blog. It’s widely believed that grammar schools Statistics of the week education budget is under massive pressure, the do nothing to help social mobility. This is The cost of clearing up fly- Government has set aside £50m for grammar certainly true today, when grammars are tipped rubbish in England school expansion. Grammar schools in England restricted to afew well-off parts of the country. rose to £57.7m over the past will be able to create thousands of extra places. But it wasn’t the case when there were 1,300 year, up 13%. In 2016-17, And though new grammars are banned, existing grammars across England and Wales. In 1959, there were 492,139 incidents schools will be allowed to create annexes on almost half of their pupils were the children in which enough waste to fill asmall van was dumped. different sites –essentially, new schools. of manual workers. Since then, this ladder of LGA/The Independent opportunity has been withdrawn in the parts “This is an inherently unjust measure,” said of the country that need it most. The ten most In the first four months of Jason Beattie in The Mirror. England’s 163 deprived education authorities have no grammar this year, motorists lodged grammar schools are predominantly in wealthy schools at all; of the 50 most deprived, only five 4,200 insurance claims parts of Kent, Lincolnshire and Buckinghamshire. have grammars. So restricting expansion to the related to pothole damage –more than in the whole “This is abung to schools in Tory-voting areas where grammars already exist makes little of 2017. middle-class areas.” Hardly, said the London sense. Geography dictates that they will remain AA/The Times Evening Standard. The money for expansion will “bastions of the better-heeled middle classes”.

19 May 2018 THE WEEK 22 NEWS Sport

Rugby union: Leinster’s European triumph Irish rugby’s remarkable year shows “absolutely But as number two, working under head coach no sign of ending”, said Robert Kitson in The Leo Cullen, he can focus on what he does best: Observer. In March, Ireland won the Six Nations hands-on coaching, rather than the “baggage” with aclean sweep. And in Bilbao, Spain, last that comes with managing anational side. Saturday, Dublin’s Leinster beat Paris’s Racing 92 Now, Leinster are “unbelievably difficult to 15-12 to win the Champions Cup, the top club break down”, said Will Greenwood in The Daily tournament in European rugby, for ajoint-record Telegraph. With “power and bludgeon”, they fourth time. Remarkably, they won the title with “swallow up” free-scoring sides such as Saracens. a100% win record, afeat that has been achieved Yet this is not just agroup of “street fighters”: just once before in this competition. All season, they are also deadly in attack. Leinster have been the best team in Europe, said Gerry Thornley in The Irish Times. In the group Leinster have abig advantage over their English stage, they faced Exeter, Montpellier and Glasgow rivals, said Owen Slot in The Times. Their –the leading teams in their domestic leagues. Yet domestic league, the Pro14, is far less competitive Leinster comfortably beat all three, home and than England’s Premiership, so they can afford to away, before disposing of Saracens, the back-to- rest their best players in the easier matches. Take back European champions, in the quarter-finals. James Ryan: man of the match James Ryan, the 21-year-old Irish lock who was man of the match on Saturday. He has played in Between 2009 and 2012, Leinster dominated European rugby, all nine of Leinster’s Champions Cup games this season and just winning three titles in four years, said Chris Jones on BBC Sport four of their 21 Pro14 ties. Ryan boasts an astonishing record, online. They then went into decline, and by the 2015-16 season said David Kelly in The Irish Independent. He has played 21 they finished bottom of their pool in the Champions Cup group matches for club and country –and won every single one of stage. Since then, however, this side has been transformed. And them. Locks aren’t supposed to peak until their mid-20s, but it’s ex-England head coach Stuart Lancaster who deserves much Ryan already looks like one of the greats. He is just one of of the credit. When he became Leinster’s senior coach, in 2016, the club’s bright young things: Dan Leavy, Garry Ringrose and his reputation was “in pieces”: he had been sacked as England’s Robbie Henshaw are all under 25, and already mainstays of the head coach after the first-round exit from the 2015 World Cup. national side. Leinster –and Ireland –are just getting started. Vasyl Lomachenko: one of the all-time greats Boxing has had “brawlers and maulers”, said won all but one of his 397 fights; as aprofessional, Tris Dixon on Boxing Scene. It has had artists and he has lost only once. Yet those numbers still don’t warriors. But it has never had “anything like Vasyl “do justice” to Lomachenko’s talent. His movement Lomachenko”. Last Saturday in New York, “the and punch variety are simply “incredible”. And little genius from Ukraine” stopped Jorge Linares in whereas most quick boxers concentrate on defence, the tenth round to claim the WBA lightweight world he “constantly boxes on the front foot, staying in title. Just 12 fights into his professional career, the range and pressuring his opponents”. With his latest 30-year-old has won world titles in three weight triumph, he has marked himself out as more than classes: his previous belts came at featherweight and just the best boxer in the world: he is now an “all- super-featherweight. On this occasion, he weighed time great”. As afighter, Lomachenko combines 9st 9lb –almost astone less than his Venezuelan the ancient and the modern, said Steve Bunce in opponent, who had put on 15lb since the weigh-in. The Independent. There are times when he moves But you would never have known that Lomachenko like the masters from the 1920s and 1930s, “his was at adisadvantage: he operated “like adefensive Ripping up the rule book shifting feet gliding by fractions, his fists flowing master with the attacking prowess of ahungry lion”. like amatador wielding the final dagger”. At other moments, he “cracks away with thoroughly modern punches, The Ukrainian’s statistics are remarkable, said Ron Lewis in angled in from wide”, making the most of his “sickening power”. The Times. As an amateur boxer he lifted two Olympic golds and Atruly unique boxer, Lomachenko is ripping up the rule book.

Arecord-breaking Premier League season Sporting headlines Truth be told, this wasn’t the teams play only 38 games Formula One Lewis Hamilton most exciting of Premier League aseason). Highest win won the Spanish Grand Prix seasons, said Martin Samuel in percentage in history (84.2%), in Barcelona, giving him a the Daily Mail. As early as last largest number of wins (32) – 17-point world championship October, it was clear that the records just kept tumbling. lead over Sebastian Vettel. Manchester City were going City weren’t the only ones Hamilton’s Mercedes to run away with the title. who ended up in the record teammate Valtteri Bottas What is staggering, though, is books, said Jim White in came second. the number of records that the The Daily Telegraph. Mohamed Cricket In Ireland’s first ever champions broke along the way. Salah finished his debut season Test, they lost to Pakistan by By beating Southampton 1-0 on Manchester City: triumphant at Liverpool with 32 goals – five wickets. Sunday, thanks to alast-minute more than anyone else has Golf American golfer Webb goal by Gabriel Jesus, they finished with scored in a38-game Premier League season. Simpson won the Players 100 points –the highest tally in the history That would be an extraordinary return for “the Championship by four shots. of English top-flight football. They ended the most seasoned poacher”, let alone awinger like season 19 points ahead of second-placed Salah. Playing in aforward line that perfectly Rugby union Wasps fly-half Manchester United, giving them the largest title- “complements his talents”, the Egyptian has Danny Cipriani signed for winning margin; with 106 goals, they were “the scored 44 goals in all competitions: whenever Gloucester. Wasps flanker most prolific goalscorers” since 1962-63, when Liverpool have needed something this season, James Haskell joined Tottenham scored 111 in 42 matches (today, “he has come up with the goods”. Northampton.

THE WEEK 19 May 2018

LETTERS 25 Pick of the week’s correspondence

Blame the parents Exchange of the week Junk mail’s purpose To The Sunday Times To The Daily Telegraph JustineGreeningtalks of the The Empire’s place in history Of course theRoyal Mail need formore help in white encourages junk mail.After the working-class homes, but Ido To The Times ill-thought-outdecision forcing not agree with her that “over- Whydoesitapparentlyrequire aboldscholar –inthiscase the end of its monopoly in whelmingly parents want to do BruceGilley–preparedtobrave thesocialmedia stormeven 2006, it lost to cherry pickers their best for their children”. I to suggestthat“colonialism” mayhavehad positive aspects? its profitable parcel post and have seen many parents from An advantageofbeing ahistorian of much earlierperiods mass mailings. poorer backgrounds who have is that oneviews the repetitions of history from afar distance. The financial stability of a no interest in their children’s Ahunt for blame then gathers pace in the fashionable terms reliable, cheap postal service education, and we need to be of alater age. Dante argued in his De Monarchia that it had was wrecked. Instead of parcel honest enough to admit this. all gone wrong for Europe when imperial power lost its grip. profits being ploughed back Some of my daughter’s In his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, into letter post, they went to friends received not the Edward Gibbon thought the Roman Empire’s syncretism had specialist companies. Letter slightest support from their been abetter bet than atyrannical new Christianity. Alexis de post is still struggling. parents when they took their Tocqueville saw the rise of democracy in colonial America as What should Royal Mail GCSEs. They coped with serial adangerous despotism. do but try to survive against new partners in their parents’ Some present “goods” in our Western orthodoxy of opinion the odds? Monopolies do need lives, received no help with are ecological soundness, sustainability, fostering human diver- awatchful eye, but they are exam preparation and faced sity and being non-elitist. The enthusiast for these fashions not always wrong. total indifference at sixth-form needs something to blame for failures to achieve them, and Mik Shaw, Goring-by-Sea, information events. “colonialism” seems to be just the thing at the moment. West Sussex All this resulted in these G.R. Evans, emeritus professor of medieval theology and young people having no intellectual history, University of Cambridge Cheer up, republicans academic success and no To The Guardian ambition beyond low-skilled To TheTimes Whatever your viewsonthe work. We must call parents No history of the British Empire is complete without the monarchy,itwould be abad out on this and stop blaming history of the people of the Empire in Britain. What causes idea for republicans to hold the Government. The state offence is not what Professor Gilley continues to write about protests near the wedding of provides free, good-quality colonialism, but the lack of any mention of the contributions Prince Harry and Meghan education. You alone are of the people of the Empire to the British way of life. Markle. Royal events such as responsible for raising Even the support given to the British war effort –men, weddings draw public interest, your children. money and munitions in the First and Second World Wars and have the support of much Nargis Walker, St Albans –ismerely afootnote to the history of the two wars. The of the nation, because they’re perfect example of that humiliation is the annual Festival of usually seen as aheartening Data disaster Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall, when there is never stream of colour in an To The Daily Telegraph any tribute paid to the soldiers of the Empire who died for otherwise drab and sometimes PeterMelloriscorrect in his acountry that was not theirs. Watching the programme, one gloom-laden world. When letter aboutthe colossal waste could be forgiven for thinking that Britain won the wars the Duke and Duchess of of resources expended by single-handed. And that hurts more than it offends. Cambridge married in 2011, small organisations to comply This is not to deny Professor Gilley the right to express it attracted an estimated global with the confusing minefield his views on the influence of the Empire, but he and other audience of more than two of the General Data Protection historians are guilty of telling aone-sided history of the billion. Fourteen US TV Regulation (GDPR). relationship between Britain and the people of the Empire. channels broadcast the Iamthe honorary secretary Britain may have ruled the colonies, but it has no right to edit nuptials and yet America is of alocal yacht club and have history in its favour. arepublic, so obviously many spent much time on our Dr Kusoom Vadgama, author, India in Britain 1852-1947 viewers wouldn’t have even compliance with the been monarchists, they just regulations. Ibelieve that lawyers and consultants trying that sleep under the stairs at wanted to watch ahappy virtually all processing of to frighten the unwary into my front door. People here in event. Those standing near data by membership-based using their high-priced services. the US hike in the hills and the royal ceremony carrying organisations can be done There has been adire shortage forests just to catch aglimpse placards or banners simply on the basis of “legitimate of advice from the Information of such wonders. risk making themselves look interests” or “proper Commissioner’s Office to help Northumberland National like spoilsports. performance of the contract those small organisations Park Authority needs some Emilie Lamplough, with the data subject”, both currently being left to flounder. perspective. Even though the Trowbridge, Wiltshire expressly permitted by the Tim Wood, Wivenhoe, Essex bobcat –our lynx –ispreva- GDPR. No extra “consent” lent across the US, is necessary unless amember’s Don’t fear missing lynx attacks on humans data is used in amanner they To The Times are rare, unlike would not reasonably have Your articlesuggestingthat attacks on humans expected from the club. bringing back lynxes “will by domestic dogs, Yet one cannot blame club scareoff tourists” made me which number three secretaries for taking the “safe smile. Iamanexpat and live to five million. How option” of obtaining consent, in the Santa Cruz Mountains in many dogs does the as the regulations are so California. My neighbourhood UK have, and how impenetrably written that only is visited by mountain lions many attacks are alawyer’s mind could begin to that would consider alynx a there on humans? “Not to lecture, but the skull of your fallen understand them. Online, there tasty morsel. My other home, Stephen J. Allen, enemy is reusable and much less wasteful”

is avirtual feeding frenzy of in South Lake Tahoe, has bears United States ©AVI STEINBERG/NEW YORKER/CARTOON BANK

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Book of the week For someone who is a“professed atheist” himself, Gray doesn’t present Seven Types of Atheism an “attractive bunch” of specimens, said John Carey in The Sunday Times. by John Gray “His selection includes several Allen Lane 176pp £17.99 inveterate misanthropes and one The Week bookshop £15.99 criminal lunatic, the Marquis de Sade.” But then Gray’s own views are “unflinchingly bleak”. He believes In this fascinating, highly readable that history has no meaning, that book, the philosopher John Gray “humanity” has no objective existence identifies a“fault line” that runs and that “the notion that everyone through atheism, said Richard Harries should obey the same morality is in The Observer. Atheists, he argues, absurd”. Gray’s intellect and brilliance, profess to reject religion, but actually combined with his negative take on do nothing of the kind. Instead, they life, makes his book “one of the most take over religion’s thought patterns depressing Ihave read”. and assumptions, substituting abstractions such as “progress” Gray may be right about most atheism being aform of and “humanity” for faith in God. Gray’s “seven types of atheism” repressed religion, said Jonathan Rée in the Literary Review, (the title is borrowed from William Empson’s Seven Types of but so what? Given that religion is “built into the brickwork of Ambiguity)include most forms of unbelief that have existed over practically every society in history”, it would be odd if our ideas the past two centuries. He targets the “secular humanism” that didn’t bear “residues of religiosity”. Even if we could “purify our unites John Stuart Mill and Ayn Rand, among many others; the minds” of the beliefs of our ancestors, we would still be left with political millenarianism of the Jacobins, communists and Nazis; the same “intractable” questions. Am Imybrother’s keeper? and the “new atheism” of Richard Dawkins et al. What almost What do parents owe to children, or children to parents? Do we all forms of atheism have in common, he points out, is the have obligations to the dead? In the end, Seven Types of Atheism eschatological idea that human history has an “ultimate purpose”. seems “more like aseries of amuse-bouches than asquare meal”. Gray is much more favourably disposed to the form of atheism he Rather than following “complex lines of thought”, Gray seems attributes to Joseph Conrad, which rejects the “assumption that “like ahigh-end version of the muck-raking journalist, fearlessly human beings can be changed for the better”. exposing the guilty secrets of the intellectual classes”.

Novel of theweek Our Place Kudos by Mark Cocker by Rachel Cusk Jonathan Cape 336pp £18.99 Faber 240pp £16.99 The Week bookshop £16.99 The Week bookshop £15.99 We British think of ourselves as nature-lovers, “In 2014, Rachel Cusk’s career took one of the but we actually “live in one of the most more unusual turns in recent literary history,” said denatured and wildlife-impoverished countries Edmund Gordon in The Sunday Times. Previously on Earth”, said Christopher Hart in The Sunday the author of six “conventionally well-made novels Times. Mark Cocker’s “magnificent” book of domestic life”, as well as three “brutally revealing” explores this disconnection. Using “rigorous” (and widely criticised) memoirs, Cusk (pictured) science, he paints apicture of wildlife “in free embarked on afictional trilogy unlike anything she’d fall” –of44million pairs of breeding birds lost written before. Outline (2014), Transit (2016) and now Kudos are all narrated in the past 50 years, of “an eerie absence of by awriter called Faye and structured around aseries of conversations. Gone is moths on asummer night on your windscreen”. the “baroque style” that was Cusk’s trademark; the prose is “pared down, lucid Meanwhile, we enthusiastically visit national and propulsive”. The books interrogate the “purposes and practices of parks, where we experience “landscape beauty storytelling” and have been rightly hailed as “radical departures”. almost devoid of biodiversity”. Cocker contends And this final instalment, I’m glad to say, is another “triumph”, said that in fact the British aren’t nature-lovers: we’re Katie Law in the London Evening Standard. This time we follow Faye travelling anation of “fatally tidy-minded” gardeners. to aliterary festival in southern Europe (possibly in Portugal) and having This book contains some exquisite writing conversations mainly with other writers (though she also talks to abusinessman about nature, but it is always powerfully and on aplane). Her sentences are “perfectly honed”. Some of her put-downs, insistently grounded in “its cause”, said Alex especially of “self-regarding journalists”, are “beautifully savage”. It’s awork Preston in The Observer. Cocker is especially that “puts most contemporary fiction to shame”. Idisagree, said Kate Clanchy good on environmental politics, writing of the in The Guardian. The trilogy is a“vast achievement”, but Iwas sorry it ended “diminution of the National Trust” from a here. In Outline and Transit,Faye rarely talked back to her interlocutors; she “visionary organisation” to a“stuffy pillar of listened to others talking and presented their monologues. Here, by contrast, the heritage industry”. Aradical polemic in the she continually talks back –atlength, and in avoice, moreover, that sounds tradition of Hazlitt and Cobbett, Our Place is a very like that of Rachel Cusk. This results in a“riddling, hall-of-mirrors” quality “seriously great book, important and urgent”. that’s the opposite of the “radical humility” of the earlier books. To order these titles or any other book in print, visit SCAMELL-KATZ www.theweek.co.uk/bookshop or speak to abookseller on 020-3176 3835

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19 May 2018 THE WEEK 28 ARTS Drama

An Ideal Husband was first from being incredibly funny – staged 123 years ago, said often by the most minimal, Caroline McGinn in Time Out, impassive means –towinningly and I’ve no doubt West End serious”. Never declaiming, he audiences will be enjoying “makes century-old aphorisms Theatre revivals of Oscar Wilde’s brilliant fresh-minted”. society comedy for at least It’s asuperb performance, another 150 years. This tale of mischievous and sprightly, an upright politician with adark agreed Sarah Hemming in the An Ideal Husband secret, as well as his witty but FT. And Fox is wonderfully frivolous friend and adastardly complemented by his real-life female blackmailer, is “light yet father, Edward Fox, who, as Playwright: Oscar Wilde indestructible”. And when it’s Lord Goring’s “curmudgeonly Director: Jonathan Church played, as here, with “dapper old stick of apater, wanders footwork, faultless patter and through the action in astate of emotional, moral depth, it perplexed apoplexy”. Frances Vaudeville Theatre, blooms as brightly as adandy’s Barber plays the blackmailer buttonhole”. I’m not sure I’d Mrs Cheveley in “full-on Bond Strand, London WC2 back director Jonathan Church’s Freddie Fox: simply brilliant villain” mode. Nathaniel Parker (0330-333 4814). claim that this is Wilde’s best subtly conveys the turmoil of Until 14 July play, said Michael Billington in The Guardian. the politician, Sir Robert Chiltern. And Susan However, in this strongly acted and “stylish” Hampshire is a“delight” as Lady Markby, said revival, it establishes itself as the intriguing “love Paul Taylor in The Independent, “wittering away Running time: child of amatch between Ibsen and Feydeau”. about modern manias in ahilarious tour de force 2hrs 45mins Whether or not this is Wilde’s best play, this of empty-headed high-society prattling”. (including interval) revival is easily the best so far in the (until now) somewhat lacklustre year-long run of Wilde The week’s other opening plays at the Vaudeville, said Dominic Cavendish ★★★ Nightfall Bridge Theatre, Potters Fields Park, in The Daily Telegraph. And much of the credit London SE1 (0333-320 0051). Until 26 May goes to Freddie Fox, who is simply brilliant as Barney Norris’s “poignantstudy of ruraldecay” Lord Goring, the incorrigible dandy who turns features strong performances,notably from out to have far more backbone than anyone Claire Skinnerasabereavedfarmer. Butthis expects. Fox, who made his name playing delicate pieceisbettersuitedtoastudiospace Wilde’s lover Lord Alfred Douglas (Bosie) in than thelarge stage of the Bridge (Guardian). aDavid Hare play, can “turn on asixpence

The creepy medieval psycho- on Skin director, Katie Mitchell. logical thriller Written on Skin – She includes bizarrely pretentious the “masterly” 2012 debut full- slow-motion sequences, destroys length opera from George momentum by bringing down Opera Benjamin and Martin Crimp – the front-cloth between each has received worldwide acclaim, scene and concludes with “the said Anthony Tommasini in The most feeble, anticlimactic final New York Times. And now the tableau I’ve seen for years”. Lessons in Love British pair “have done it again” This opera is unlikely “to with anew work based on the inspire affection”, said Richard and Violence fatal passion of Edward II for Fairman in the FT. Yet it still his courtier Piers Gaveston. The exerts agrip strong enough “to Composer: 100-minute opera has already make an audience hold its breath been booked to play in for stretches at atime”. Crimp’s George Benjamin Amsterdam, Hamburg, Lyon, focus on how power corrupts is Libretto: Martin Crimp Chicago, Barcelona and Madrid “positively Shakespearean”. Director: Katie Mitchell following its London premiere. It And though Benjamin doesn’t is Benjamin’s remarkable music write conventional arias, there’s that “gives the work its charge”. Barbara Hannigan: outstanding “barely aline that this cast His writing is so “lush, haunting does not shape with beauty Royal Opera House, and detailed –radiant one moment, piercingly and expressiveness”. Barbara Hannigan is out- Covent Garden, dissonant the next –that you are continuously standing, as ever, as the queen, Isabel, with other London WC2 enveloped by the raucous beauty of the sounds”. strong performances from Stéphane Degout as (020-7304 4000). But the new opera has little of its predecessor’s the king and Gyula Orendt as Gaveston. Until 26 May, then “riveting drama”, said Richard Morrison in The Times. Crimp gives us an “anodyne, over- CD of the week touring internationally intellectualised and often boring version of Arctic Monkeys: Tranquility Base Hotel until 2021 events that should be red in tooth and claw”, so &Casino Domino £9.74 CUMMISKEY it’s no accident Benjamin’s most dramatic music TheMonkeys’2013offering, AM,was “the occurs in the interludes between scenes, while Running time: perfectrockrecord”.Their newone is aradical STEPHEN 1hr 40mins (no interval) the settings for the libretto’s underwhelming departure, strippingout the rock for asci-fi words are mostly “so matter-of-fact that they theme and amore soulful sound; it’s a“riveting may as well have been spoken”. There’s also and immersive listen” (Observer). BRENNER; ★★★ ARC

a“bland, modern-day staging” by the Written ©M

Stars reflect the overall quality of reviews and our own independent assessment (4 stars=don’t miss; 1star=don’t bother) Book your tickets now by calling 020-7492 9948 or visiting TheWeekTickets.co.uk

THE WEEK 19 May 2018 Film ARTS 29

In June 1976, four anti-Israel terrorists –two German and two Palestinian –hijacked Flight 139 from Tel Aviv, redirected it to the dusty airport of Entebbe Entebbe in Uganda and issued their demands. In response, Dir: José Padilha Israel launched an extraordinary rescue mission: 100 1hr 47mins (12A) commandos stormed the airport and saved most of the hostages. It’s the stuff of which movies are made, said Brian Viner in the Daily Mail, and indeed several Flawed recreation of the have been –the “starriest” of which, 1976’s Victory Entebbe hostage crisis at Entebbe,featured Burt Lancaster and Elizabeth Taylor. This time the big names are Rosamund Pike ★★ and Daniel Brühl, who play the German terrorists, said Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian. And the result is “intensely silly and boring” –afilm in which “cardboard characters” explain stuff to each other about Palestine, the Holocaust and German guilt in “clunky dialogue”. Well Ifound it quite gripping, said Kevin Maher in The Times, and Pike gives asuperbly “unhinged” turn: she “seems to have cornered the market for female roles that require glacial calm hiding explosive inner rage”. But the good work is undone by an ending of “cataclysmic ineptitude”: director José Padilha drains the excitement out of the climactic final raid by intercutting it with a“tedious dance performance involving agirlfriend of one of the commandos”. The film then “limps towards the finish line with some platitudinous talk about finding peace in the Middle East”.

“Is the rape-revenge genre just away to bring the dual spectacles of rape and violence to amale audience?” This is the question, said Peter Bradshaw Revenge in The Guardian, that hovers over Coralie Fargeat’s Dir: Coralie Fargeat “smart” and “stylishly-made” debut feature, which 1hr 48mins (18) some have hailed as “a subversive feminist take on this form”. Arich alpha male (Kevin Janssens) takes his mistress (Matilda Lutz) to adesert villa in Fabulously deranged Morocco. There, she is raped by one of his friends French action thriller and then pushed off acliff, falling 100 feet before being impaled on an implausibly phallic tree. Yet ★★★ somehow this “nubile girl” survives and returns, barely clothed, to “perpetrate agrisly payback”, said Nigel Andrews in the FT. This “fabulously deranged” French action thriller “knows it’s off the grid” and that’s its strength. But it’s far from clear that being written and directed by awoman makes it any less exploitative, said Edward Porter in The Sunday Times. Still, if you can stomach the extreme violence, it’s hard to resist Revenge’s “sheer flamboyance”. And in the final sequence, at least, it’s the man who is “naked and objectified”.

This film’s selling point is that it marks the last hurrah of the late, great John Hurt, said Geoffrey Macnab in The Independent. It’s asentimental affair That Good Night but, as he so often did, Hurt transcends his material. Dir: Eric Styles He plays an old screenwriter, living with his young 1hr 32mins (12A) wife (Sofia Helin) in aPortuguese villa. Seeking to put his affairs in order before he dies, he invites his estranged son to visit, but so insults his son’s girlfriend John Hurt’s final bow that the couple has to leave. One highlight in this “enjoyable portrait of the final days of aworld-class ★★ misanthrope” is the arrival of Charles Dance as a sinister stranger, who may or may not be arepresen- tative of asecretive euthanasia society, said Ian Freer in Time Out. As he and Hurt mull over matters of mortality, we get to hear “two of the great voices in English acting”: Dance’s “deep, velvety tones” and Hurt’s “booze-and-fags rasp”. Even so, the film is undeniably “mawkish”, said Ed Potton in The Times. If you really want to raise aglass to the old hellraiser, better to rewatch The Elephant Man.

It’s 1977. Punk rock lands on Croydon like an alien invasion. So when agroup of punk kids, led by Enn (Alex Sharp), stumble on ahouse filled with flesh- How to Talk to eating aliens –including the dreamy, PVC-clad Zan Girls at Parties (Elle Fanning) –they assume they’re just some weird cultural sect. The premise of John Cameron Mitchell’s Dir: new film, freely adapted from aNeil Gaiman short John Cameron Mitchell story, is certainly intriguing, said Xan Brooks in 1hr 43mins (15) The Guardian. Yet I’m afraid what follows is “extravagantly muddled”. The bizarre spectacle of Punk rock sci-fi with Nicole Kidman playing apunk matriarch, complete with electroshock wig and dodgy cockney accent, Elle Fanning sums up the film’s silliness, said Tim Robey in The Daily Telegraph. It must have been fun to make, but, with the exception of Sharp’s “shy charm”, there’s precious little for audiences to enjoy. The ★ period detail is “slapdash”, the characterisation “cardboard”, said Kevin Maher in The Times. At best, you could argue that it embodies the “gutsy, amateur DIY punk ethos”. But to use the argot of Enn and his “tiresome punk coterie”, it’s “still bollocks” for all that.

19 May 2018 THE WEEK 30 ARTS Art

Exhibition of the week Superstructures: The New Architecture, 1960-1990 Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich (01603-593199, scva.ac.uk). Until 2September “In 1978, the future Foster and his contem- arrived in Norwich,” poraries took inspiration said Joe Lloyd in 1843 from Isambard Kingdom magazine. It came in Brunel and Joseph the form of agallery Paxton, architect of designed by the architect the Crystal Palace, and Norman Foster and drew on techniques from commissioned by the aerospace and oil rig Sainsbury family to construction. Ahighlight house their art collection. is an “outstanding” The Sainsbury Centre display of architectural changed British models, including architecture forever: Foster’s design for 130 metres long and Stansted Airport, clad in “shiny steel”, Grimshaw’s Waterloo it boasted “huge glass Eurostar terminal and windows” inside aframe the French architect Jean resembling “the internal Nouvel’s Fondation parts of arocket”. It Cartier museum in Paris. “was like no other However, there are museum in Britain” – “holes” in the exhibition this was “an art gallery –notably that it provides in the form of an aircraft Richard Rogers’ design for the Inmos microprocessor factory in Newport, Wales very little information on hangar”. The new style the architects themselves. came to be known as “high-tech”, and in the decades that followed it would proliferate around the world. Forty years on, The show will alert you to high-tech architecture’s “contra- the Sainsbury Centre is hosting a“thorough (and thoroughly dictions”, said Rowan Moore in The Observer. It presents itself enjoyable)” exhibition dedicated to the architectural style its as a“pragmatic” style concerned purely with function, yet its design helped to popularise, celebrating the work of Foster and buildings frequently fail to live up to this. At Foster’s recently his (mostly British) contemporaries, such as Nicholas Grimshaw completed Apple HQ in California, for example, staff have and Richard Rogers. The show explores the history of high-tech reportedly walked into the building’s “immaculate glass walls”. through drawings and models, demonstrating how it became “the Nor is high-tech suited to domestic settings, said Peter Yeung in dominant style for corporate headquarters and public buildings” The Times. Such structures that do exist –ahouse designed by everywhere from Swindon to Hong Kong. Michael and Patty Hopkins is recreated in part here –look “distinctly uncomfortable”. Nevertheless, the show itself is The show roots high-tech in the tradition of “Victorian engine- fascinating. For anyone wanting to understand modern ering”, said Isabelle Priest in the RIBA Journal. We learn how architecture, it will be “unmissable”.

Where to buy… The sale of the century The Week reviews an David and Peggy exhibition in aprivate gallery Rockefeller’s vast collection of artworks and other Anwar Jalal Shemza treasures set anew world record at Christie’s in New at Hales Gallery York last week, said The Guardian –selling for $832m, considerably In the 1960s, an explosion of artists more than any other and musicians attempted to fuse private collection. The Eastern cultural traditions with more top lot was aPicasso of a recent Western developments. In most naked girl holding abasket instances, such experiments now look of flowers (pictured), which had previously hung in embarrassing, at best. Others, however, their Manhattan home; it have stood the test of time surprisingly sold for $115.1m. AMonet well. The paintings of the Indian-born water lily painting went for artist and writer Anwar Jalal Shemza $84.7m, while aMatisse Advancing and Receding in Yellow Ochre (1928-85) fall comfortably into the depicting awoman in aTurkish harem fetched and Olive Green (1963), detail second camp. Shemza, who established $80.8m; both were records for the artists. All himself in Pakistan before moving style-straddling should be amess –but the 1,500 lots sold. Art dealers spoke of the “Rockefeller premium”, said The Times: the fact to the UK and settling in the West unlike so many Western dilettantes, (1985) Midlands, created works that still Shemza actually understood his points that the lots had been kept in the home of one of America’s most famous families drove up SPINE dazzle 50 years on. The paintings of reference. These works pack all the prices by about athird. Apair of cufflinks sold featured in this overview of his 1960s punch of contemporary op art while for $13,750 and aswan decoy for $348,500. CENTRAL output combine motifs lifted from remaining rooted in centuries-old Peggy Rockefeller died in 1996, and David, the Islamic architecture, art and calligraphy visual custom. Prices on request. grandson of the oil baron John D. Rockefeller, INMOS with Bauhaus modernism and the in 2017. The family will donate all the proceeds

colourful, sometimes migraine-inducing 7Bethnal Green Road, London E1 of the sale to charity. JOHNSON, imagery of psychedelia. By rights, such (020-7033 1938). Until 23 June. EN ©B

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The List 33

Best books… Paul Theroux Television Novelist and travel writer Paul Theroux picks his six favourite books. Programmes Acollection of his writing and essays, Figures in aLandscape: People Queen Victoria and Her and Places,has just been published by Hamish Hamilton at £16.99 Tragic Family Three-part series looking at Queen Madame Bovary by Gustave AHouse for Mr Biswas by The Day of the Locust by Victoria’s relationship with Flaubert, 1856 (Penguin V.S. Naipaul, 1961 (Picador Nathanael West, 1939 (Roads her nine children, and the iron control she exerted over them. £8.99). Emma Bovary, married £10.99). Naipaul’s masterpiece £9.99). The ultimate novel of Sat 19 May, C5 21:20 (60mins). to agood-hearted drudge, has and aclassic of family life. Hollywood, written by anative ahealthy libido, ashopping Much of it is based on his own (and author of the masterpiece AVery English Scandal addiction and an unhealthy family. Hilarious most of the Miss Lonelyhearts). Iread this Hugh Grant stars in Stephen sense of romance. Flaubert’s time and full of conflict, it is when Iwas young and it Frears’ three-part drama based landmark work is both one of the few books that have fuelled my ambition to be a on John Preston’s riveting modern and memorable. caused me to laugh out loud. writer. It’s funny, wicked and book about the downfall of wholly in the American grain. MP Jeremy Thorpe, who in Crowds and Power by Elias Civilization and Capitalism, 1979 was tried for conspiring to murder his ex-lover Norman Canetti, 1960 (out of print). 15th-18th Century, vol. 1: Henry David Thoreau: ALife Scott (Ben Whishaw). Sun This is one of those books that The Structures of Everyday by Laura Dassow Walls, 2017 20 May, BBC1 21:00 (60mins). explain everything –inthis Life by Fernand Braudel, 1979 (University of Chicago case, the way humans gather in (UC Press £35). Have you ever £26.50). Thoreauhad a The Handmaid’s Tale groups, how they seize power wondered when Europeans mind so original andopinions Second series of the acclaimed and the symbols they value. It began drinking coffee? Or so startling, hisConcord drama adapted from Margaret is astudy in tyranny and in when men started wearing neighbours (including Ralph Atwood’s novel, set in afuture other forms of domination – trousers rather than robes? WaldoEmerson) did not in which an environmental among them, amother serving This answers many such know what to make of him. disaster has caused mass infertility. With Elisabeth Moss. food. Canetti put 30 years into questions, showing the ingen- This outstanding biography Sun 20 May, C4 21:00 (75mins). writing it, and he deserved the uity, bravery and salesmanship illuminates the man and Nobel Prize he won years later. of people the world over. his times. Imagine... Rupert Everett: Titles in print are available from The Week Bookshop on 020-3176 3835. For out-of-print books visit www.biblio.co.uk Born to Be Wilde The story of the actor’s ten-year quest to write, direct and star in afilm The Week’s guide to what’s worth seeing and reading about the last years of Oscar Wilde’s life. Sun 20 May, BBC1 Showing now 22:30 (65mins). Out of the Block: Henry Moore Carvings, Henry Moore Studios &Gardens, Hertfordshire Carry on Brussels With (01279-843333). Exhibition bringing together rare access to the European 30 of Henry Moore’s works, made over six Parliament, this new series decades, as well as photographs and footage follows an eclectic group of British MEPs as they deal with of the sculptor at work. Ends 28 October. the challenge of Brexit. Wed Book now 23 May, C4 22:00 (65mins). Sinéad Cusack is starring in novelist Esther Films Freud’s debut play, Stitchers,about Lady The Second Mother (2015) Anne Tree (1927-2010), the aristocratic social Fabulous comedy about class reformer who founded Fine Cell Work to teach set in modern-day Brazil. With prisoners needlework. 30 May-23 June, Jermyn Henry Moore with Reclining Figure: Bone Skirt (1977) Regina Casé. Mon 21 May, Street Theatre, London SW1 (020-7287 2875). Film4 01:10 (140mins). will talk about their work, while Nicholas The Red Rooster festival brings the sound of Hytner and Simon Russell Beale discuss Slow West (2015) Michael blues and country to the ravishing grounds of Shakespeare. 30 June-1 July, Queen’s Park, Fassbender and Kodi Smit- Euston Hall in Suffolk. Alabama 3and Pokey London NW6 (www.qpbookfest.com). McPhee star in this western LaFarge are on the line-up. Weekend tickets charting the journey of a lovestruck Scottish teen across cost £59.50 and children under 12 are free. Just out in paperback 19th century Colorado. Mon 31 May-2 June (www.redrooster.org.uk). The Matter of the Heart by Thomas Morris 21 May, Film4 23:20 (100mins). (Vintage £10.99). This “intelligent” book traces Literary luminaries, leading chefs and thesps are the history of the once-unthinkable marvel of gathering at the Queen’s Park Book Festival. heart surgery –from its beginnings to its likely New to subscription TV Zadie Smith, Tessa Hadley and John Preston future (Times). Patrick Melrose Five-part The Archers: what happened last week adaptation of Edward St Aubyn’s acerbic romans- Adam’s pleased Brian has come clean about the insurers not paying out. Adam’s worried about the à-clef. Benedict Cumberbatch lack of pickers and fears they may have to leave one of the fruit tunnels to rot. Will tells Clarrie and plays the damaged aristocrat Eddie that Andrew’s spoken to asolicitor about having custody of Jake and Mia. Will’s worried that Melrose. Showing on Andrew, as their biological father, could win custody. Harrison’s keen to announce his engagement, Sky Atlantic. but Fallon’s embarrassed –asshe was so anti-marriage, she is worried that people will judge her, FOUNDATION especially as she proposed. At the quiz, Harrison surprises Fallon by staging asecond proposal.

Safe Michael C. Hall stars MOORE Fallon accepts. Freddie suggests Hannah rent the spare room at No. 1The Green. While Johnny as awidowed father of

and Freddie are showing her around, abrick flies through the window, hitting Johnny’s head. HENRY two daughters in this tense Will decides to return to work full-time after being told that he will have to move out of the cottage if crime drama set in agated he doesn’t. When Freddie accuses Ellis of throwing the brick, Ellis reminds him that no one deals at community in Manchester. college unless it is for him. Brian tells the whole family about the land sale and is relieved they’re all MCCURRY; Streaming on Netflix.

behind him. Will talks to asolicitor. He’s told he has agood case for keeping all the children together. TEVE ©S

19 May 2018 THE WEEK 34 Best properties

Grade II properties under £1m

▲ West Sussex: Cromwell House, High Street, East Grinstead. Although not strictly under £1m, this is arare chance to buy a historic Grade II* property in a central location with alovely garden. The house is in need of modernising and updating. Master bed, 6further beds, family bath, shower, kitchen, 3receps, study, 2cloakrooms, loggia, former kitchen, utility, box room, storage room, 2garages, garden. £1m; Strutt &Parker (01403-246790).

▲ Devon: Gorwell House, Barnstaple. AGeorgian house, dating from circa 1828, which is understood to have been built for John Miller, alacemaker of the period. 6/7 beds, 2baths, 3WCs, breakfast/kitchen, 3receps, hall, studio, garden room, utility, study/bed 7, cellar, colonnaded veranda, extensive parking, mature gardens approaching 0.74 acres. OIEO £595,000; Stags (01271-322833).

▲ Oxfordshire: Ellsdale Cottage, Postcombe. Apretty thatched cottage in this small hamlet at the foot of the Chiltern Hills. The house has been refurbished to ahigh specification by the current owners, and the low-maintenance rear garden was landscaped by award- winning garden designer Richard Key. Master bed, 2further beds, family bath, breakfast/kitchen, 2receps, hall, utility, private garden, parking. £695,000; Knight Frank (01865- 790077).

THE WEEK 19 May 2018 on the market 35

▲ Surrey: 19 Albury Park Mansion, Albury. This property is set in asmall mews courtyard to the front of Albury Park Mansion and was originally part of the estate stable block. Designed by Augustus Pugin in the 19th century, Albury Park sits within approximately five acres of landscaped gardens close to the villages of Albury and Shere, in the Surrey Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The cottage has been extended and refurbished to ahigh specification, and has views over the gardens and estate beyond from the reception room. Vaulted master bed with mezzanine dressing area, 1further bed leading to the roof terrace, shower, kitchen/dining room, double-aspect recep, utility, garage. £725,000; Savills (01483-796800). ▲ ▲ East Yorkshire: Suffolk: Reedness Hall, Hasketon Grange, Reedness, Goole. Hasketon, Ahandsome house, Woodbridge. with auseful This pretty former separate 1-bed farmhouse has been cottage, in this small carefully restored, village on the south without detracting bank of the River from the original Ouse. Master suite, character. Master 3further beds, suite, 4further family bath, beds, 2further breakfast/kitchen, baths, breakfast/ 3receps, study, kitchen, 3receps, wine cellar, double inner hall, WC, garage, cottage, study, utility, 2stables, tack room, conservatory, workshop, gardens, attic store, cellar, terrace, orchard, mature garden, paddock, parking, terrace, 0.94 acres. 1.05 acres. £895,000; Fenn £450,000; Savills Wright (01394- (01904-617820). 333346).

▲ Buckinghamshire: Missenden Road, Chesham. Originally built as two houses, this brick and flint home is in the heart of the old town, within easy reach of the station, and has many period features, from panelled walls to feature fireplaces and diamond-leaded windows. Master suite, 4/5 further beds, family bath, breakfast/ kitchen, 2receps, hall, study/bed 6, garage, garden with a tributary of the ▲ Somerset: Cross House, Milborne Port, Sherborne. Afine family River Chess running house, dating back to 1860 with later additions. Master suite with roof through. OIEO terrace, 7/8 further beds, family bath, shower, breakfast/kitchen, 3receps, £699,950; Hunters utility, study, WC, hall, second-floor kitchen/bed 9, double garage, parking, (01494-723322). pretty walled garden. £825,000; Jackson Stops (01935-810141).

19 May 2018 THE WEEK

LEISURE 37 Food &Drink What the experts recommend Hide 85 Piccadilly, London W1 +Foie Gras” was a“brilliant, ridiculous (020-3146 8666) hybrid: aJapanese dumpling with an Ollie Dabbous’s grand new restaurant is old-school French stuffing made by a the capital’s biggest opening of 2018, and New Zealander”. Dishes £3.90-£17.60; probably its most expensive –and it’s gyoza £6.90-£12.90. a“barnstorming success”, says Frankie McCoy in the London Evening Standard. Gaijin Sushi 78 Bristol Street, Dabbous’s backers, the Russian-owned Birmingham (0121-448 4250) Hedonism Wines (which also provides Depending on who is talking, gaijin is Hide’s vast choice of wines) could have either an “aggressively offensive word for invested in the flashiness of another non-Japanese people, or aself-mocking Sexy Fish, say. Instead, they’ve created a term used by non-Japanese people to fabulous “cellar-cool refuge from sticky signify their otherness”, says Jay Rayner Piccadilly”, with not one but two superb in The Observer. The latter applies here, restaurants. Ground (on the ground floor), because this delightful sushi joint is run by is arelatively casual all-day space, where “a tall Polish chap” called Michal Kubiak. we enjoyed gorgeous turbot, in asauce of The setting is admittedly unprepossessing. its own bones, and charred asparagus. Gaijin Sushi: amazing-value food Gaijin, which opened in March, sits on a Then up the art deco tree trunk staircase “slightly brutal” shopping parade next to there’s Above, where huge windows offer –formerly head chef at the super-luxe the A38. But the food is great and the vibe cinematic views across Green Park, the Novikov –isarevelation, says Tim convivial. The salmon and prawn tempura inspiration behind the sensational tasting Hayward in the FT. Iconfess Iexpected don’t quite qualify as tempura, seeing as menu. Delights include a“soul-enriching” it to be “amusingly pretentious”; in fact, both are panko-breadcrumbed, rather than bouillabaisse, Norwegian king crab, and it is precisely the opposite. Apre-lunch battered and lacy. But they are “very fine “stupendous” goose with crispy kale and snack of fresh lotus root crisps with deep-fried things” and amazing value. miso. Hide is like a“handsome friend who acorn yuzu dipping sauce is “light, “Just £8.50 brings you six big prawns, has inherited impossible wealth and lives a welcoming and utterly exceptional”. each longer than my middle finger and charmed life, but who is so lovely that you Asoft-shell crab salad is a“gorgeous, trust me, Ihave big hands.” The same cannot resent him”. Starters around £14, generous” thing. And the gyoza (Japanese goes for excellent nigiri sushi (about mains about £28, tasting menu £95. dumplings) are wonderful. “Chicken + £4 for two pieces). And spicy tuna rolls, Cheese” (an unusual combination Ihad prawn and eel rolls, crab rolls and tight Titu 1A Shepherd Street, Mayfair, thought might make agood gag) turns out prawn maki rolls are all very fine, too. London W1 (020-7493 8746) to be abeautiful balance of hand-chopped Currently Gaijin is unlicensed, but you This charming new gyoza restaurant bird, herbs and nuggets of what tasted can bring your own booze for asmall from the “seriously talented” Jeff Tyler like Gruyère. Asweetly spicy “Chicken corkage fee. Meal for two, about £60.

Recipe of the week

Scandinavians use alot of marzipan in baking, but only the good quality, 50% almond kind, says Brontë Aurell, and it’s really easy to make your own (see below). Ithink apricots are delicious with spice, so I’ve added cardamom and cinnamon, but omit if you prefer. Apricot tart with mazarin

Serves 8-10 sweet shortcrust pastry: 200g unsalted butter, cold and cubed 350g plain flour 125g plus 2tbsps icing sugar 1tsp vanilla extract or seeds from ½avanilla pod 1egg marzipan: 200g finely ground almonds 100g caster sugar 100g icing sugar 1tsp almond extract 1medium egg white, ideally pasteurised mazarin: 150g marzipan (as per recipe, or shop-bought with 50% almond content), grated 100g caster sugar 100g (minus 1tbsp) unsalted butter, softened 2eggs 50g plain flour apinch of salt to assemble: 10 ripe, fresh apricots ½tsp ground cardamom ½tsp ground cinnamon icing sugar, for dusting 36cm x13cm rectangular tart pan, greased

• To make the pastry, pulse all the ingredients in a combined, using awooden spoon or astand mixer food processor. Roll the mixture into aball, wrap in with the paddle attachment, then add the softened cling film and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes. butter. Mix again until smooth then add the eggs, one at atime, ensuring they are well incorporated. • If making your own marzipan, first re-grind the Sift in the flour and salt, and fold into the mixture. almonds if they feel coarse –they should be very fine. Blend all the ingredients in afood processor • Spoon out the mazarin onto the pastry base and until smooth. Roll the mixture into alog and wrap in spread evenly. Halve the apricots and remove the stones. Arrange the halves evenly across the mazarin. CASSIDY cling film, then chill in the fridge for at least 1hour. Add adusting of cardamom and cinnamon, and bake

PETER • Roll the pastry out on alightly floured surface to a the tart for about 45-50 minutes or until the pastry is thickness of about 4-5mm. Carefully transfer to line

EDIA; nicely browned at the edges and the mazarin has set. the tart pan and let the edges hang over. Refrigerate &M until ready to bake. Freeze any excess pastry for use • Remove from the oven and allow to cool before trimming away any untidy pastry edges and removing from the NEWS in another recipe. Preheat the oven to 180°C. pan. Dust with icing sugar and cut into slices. Serve with crème • To make the mazarin, mix the marzipan and sugar until fraiche or sour cream on the side, if you like.

PAOLA/GUARDIAN Taken from ScandiKitchen Summer by Brontë Aurell, published by Ryland Peters &Small at £16.99.

DE To buy from The Week Bookshop for £15.99, call 020-3176 3835 or visit www.theweek.co.uk/bookshop. ABIO ©F

19 May 2018 THE WEEK

Consumer LEISURE 39

New cars: what the critics say Autocar The Daily Telegraph What Car? The Sorento is not a At 4.8 metres long, it’s a While some manufacturers crossover spun from a big car –“hard to miss”, seem “hell-bent on trying family hatchback: it’s got in fact. But even after to inject sporty handling proper SUV architecture. this midlife facelift the into their large SUVs”, That means this spacious exterior isn’t up to much, Kia has focused on what seven-seater is acapable with “a tough, ready-for- matters most to the family tow car that feels “built anything mien chosen buyer: “a comfortable to last”. But it also means over conventional beauty”. ride”. In achieving this, it’s in ahighly competitive Inside, it all feels abit though, the Sorento, with Kia Sorento class. For the price, this retro, and while the only a197bhp 2.2-litre from £29,310 latest model (which has car is well put-together diesel engine available, 4WD as standard) is a in general, the seats aren’t has sacrificed agility, while compelling option, but that comfy (even if the the steering is “vague and it lacks the “polish and seat heaters feel “powerful inconsistently weighted”. sophistication” of its enough to incubate a Ultimately, it loses out to many impressive rivals. newborn lamb”). other, more “nimble” cars.

The best… gardening tools /T3

▲ Black &Decker INDEPENDENT GW3031 Collect your INDEPENDENT/T3 ▲ Black &Decker THE GL7033 This two-in- leaves into apile with THE one edger and trimmer this powerful leaf is light and manoeuvrable, ▲ Niwaki GR Secateurs Apair of blower, then but heavy-duty. Just switch it razor-sharp secateurs can make a swap in the SOURCES: to vertical mode and use the world of difference to aday in the suction guide wheel for an immaculate garden, so treat yourself to this pair. tube and lawn (£66.50; www.tesco.com). Hand-forged in Japan with carbon watch steel, they are beautifully them balanced and robust enough all disappear to tackle the toughest work into the 72-litre (£69; www.niwaki.com). collection bag (£102; www.tooled-up.com). ▲ Gardena Smart Sileno This robot lawnmower can handle the most complex shapes and slopes. Part of Gardena’s smart range, ▲ Gtech HT20 Abrilliantly versatile hedge trimmer, this Gtech it can be controlled remotely via an app, model is extendable and cordless –and it weighs only 2.25kg. or linked to their sprinklers, so it doesn’t The head can be angled at 90 degrees to tackle the very top of get in their way (£1,197; www.argos.co.uk). your hedges (£130; www.gtech.co.uk).

Tips of the week… hhowow AndA forrtthosehose who Where to find… to fall asleep on aplanlanee haveh everything…verything… food festivals

● In so far as it’s possible, replicate your Eat &Drink Festival in Glasgow will have usual night-time routine. Changing into mouth-watering food trucks and an array of pyjamas, brushing your teeth, removing popular street food dishes (31 May-3 June; your make-up or washing your face will www.eatanddrinkglasgow.com). send signals to your brain, telling it that For Taste of London,t, thehe capital’s it’s time to get ready for sleep. best restaurants gather in Regent’s Park ● Scent can be avery powerful relaxation and provide scaled-down versions of tool; use hand cream or dab essential oils their signature dishes ((13-1713-17 JuneJune;; on your neck or pulse points to nudge you london.tastefestivals.com). towards sleep. Scents that aid sleep include WilWilderness,O, Oxfordxfordshire,shire,iissllargelyargely about lavender, camomile and ylang-ylang. the music and theatre, but there’s great ● At least half-an-hour before you hope to food to be had too: ahighlight is the doze off, put away any electronic devices, banquet cooked by Yotam Ottolenghi turn off the in-flight film, and read or (2-5 August; www.wildernessfestival.com). meditate instead. Worried your dog gets bored when it’s River Cottage Festival in Devon has ● Before you fly, work out what types of home alone? Buy it arobotic dog bone to cooking masterclasses, talks (Prue Leith pillow, earplugs and eye mask work best and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall are on for you. Look for adark mask with asoft keep it entertained. Available to pre-order, the line-up), music and yoga (25-26 August; lining and alarge (if unattractive) shape, the Wickedbone will chase your pet around www.rivercottage.net). or run away from it. If you’re at home, you and see if you prefer wax or foam earplugs. At The Good Life Experience in north Wales, ● Don’t put pressure on yourself to sleep can control it via an app on your phone. you can learn wild cooking, fermenting and like alog. Think of it more as resting your £50; www.kickstarter.com spatula-making skills (14-16 September; eyes: even if you only rest, that will help. www.thegoodlifeexperience.co.uk).

SOURCE: THE INDEPENDENT SOURCE: STUFF SOURCE: THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

19 May 2018 THE WEEK

Travel 41 Three holidays with adifference Atherapeutic journey of treats from “smoked kangaroo Fifty years on from the Summer of and pickled crocodile” to Love, psychedelia is having another “roadkill emu”. Kakadu still moment, says Tarn Rodgers Johns retains a“Crocodile Dundee” in The Independent. Last year, reputation, but is aiming to widen ateam at Imperial College London its appeal during its annual food found evidence that psilocybin, a festival, ATaste of Kakadu, now compound in magic mushrooms, in its second year. Running until can “‘reset’ the brains of depressed the end of this month, it comprises patients”. Now, at Jamaica’s pop-up dining, masterclasses in Treasure Beach, there is atropical cooking bush tucker, and guest retreat where guests are invited to appearances from indigenous use magic mushrooms to explore chefs. Above all, it shows visitors “issues” in their personal or how, after centuries of “colonial professional lives in asupportive injustices”, the Bininj survive here –and legal –setting. You don’t on the lands they have inhabited have to be suffering from for millennia. ATaste of depression to take part, but no one The Inn at Dos Brisas: rancher luxe in Texas Kakadu (parksaustralia.gov.au) comes “to party”. Participants take runs until 27 May. Singapore mushrooms –ground down into capsule form –three times over Airlines (www.singaporeair.com) flies (with one stop) to the week, overseen by six facilitators who provide expertise and Darwin. Visit northernterritory.com for details. “make sure no one wanders off”. On rest days, you can indulge in herbal steam massages or go on island excursions. What Blowing away the cobwebs in cowboy territory happens outside of each mushroom trip “is just as important Not everyone is anatural cowboy or girl, says Sarah Ivens in as the trip itself”, as everyone shares their experience and reflects The Daily Telegraph. But on aLone Star weekend at Dos Brisas on their “new perspective” –having, with luck, “unplugged” you can spend acouple of days testing your mettle in 313 acres emotional blockages that may have been “festering for years”. of rolling Texas countryside, and blow away afew cobwebs in Magic mushrooms are proscribed Class Adrugs in the UK. the process. There’s no stinting on creature comforts, however. MycoMeditations (www.mycomeditations.com) has mixed Rooms have private plunge pools and the ranch boasts Texas’s and women-only retreats, from £1,285 per week. only Forbes five-star-rated restaurant. Even the horses have their own trainers, masseurs and personal chef. “This may explain their Tasting ants on abush tucker tour of Kakadu good nature.” You’ll spend the morning riding them along rocky The main danger when licking green ants is that they’re liable to trails; then there’s shooting practice, and perhaps fishing and bite you on the lip. But if they’re dead, you can safely nibble their archery. After asoak in the tub to soothe aching limbs, there’s an backsides to release a“tangy, citrus-like flavour that’s pretty tasty evening around the campfire, toasting s’mores “under ablanket if you close your eyes”, says Helen Davidson in The Guardian. of stars”. You may not leave as the next Wild Bill Hickok or You can try them on abush tucker tour around the Warradjan Annie Oakley, but the fresh air and new challenges will surely cultural centre in Kakadu National Park, in Australia’s Northern “put aswagger in your cowboy boots”. The Lone Star package Territory. Guided by Aboriginal elders from the Bininj people – at The Inn at Dos Brisas (www.dosbrisas.com) costs from £889 the park’s traditional owners –the walk takes in asmorgasbord per room per night, including meals and activities.

Soho House’s White City outpost Is your hotel spying on you? The 19th Soho House has opened its doors in the old BBC Television Centre The first rule of any business is –and this west London outpost of the “know your customer”, says empire is “weirdly delightful”, said Steve Christian Koch in The Sunday Times. King in Condé Nast Traveller. From the The hotel industry is certainly taking outside it may look like the “faculty that to heart: in order to “enhance” their guests’ experience, agrowing buildings of a1960s polytechnic”, but number of hotel companies are now inside the members’ club, the decor is an scouring social media in search of the ostentatious “display of wit and whimsy”. kind of information we used only to In the quirky communal spaces, there are share with our friends and families. curved, timber-panelled walls and retro So, tweet about your favourite beer squishy armchairs, where attractive people and you may find it in the minibar on work on laptops; there’s a24,000 sq ft arrival. If you stay at ahotel owned gym, and two swimming pools –one on arooftop with views over “the anonymous grey by Groupe Germain while in town for suburban smear that extends all the way to Heathrow”. ajob interview, don’t be surprised if the staff leave you agood-luck card. Back in the day, if apop star wanted adrink after lip-synching to their latest hit on Kimpton Hotels admits to having Top of the Pops,their only option was to head to the BBC Club bar and hang out with awhole team of “social agents” the electricians, said Sarah Turner in Forbes. Now, they’d be spoilt for choice. There monitoring social media 24/7 in are several bars and restaurants, including alarge ground space that is open to all, and an effort to “surprise and enthral” abranch of Electric Cinema. All over, there are riffs on “elements of BBC heritage”, guests –orjust freak them out. It’s HOUSE with panels in the lifts that look like daleks and BBC-inspired artworks –including worth noting that in some hotels, CITY alarge multicoloured test card –onthe walls. The 45 bedrooms, also open to non- “even the chambermaids are members, are housed in the Grade II circular building, in former production offices gathering intelligence”. They’re where classic shows such as Fawlty Towers were once “commissioned and nurtured”. not just “ghosts” coming in to make

HOUSE/WHITE your bed –they’re also clocking White City House (www.whitecityhouse.com) has doubles from £120. what kind of underpants you wear. OHO ©S

19 May 2018 THE WEEK

Obituaries 43

Labour minister who helped bring London the Olympics

Dame Tessa Jowell, who Jowell was health minister in Blair’s first Dame Tessa has died aged 70, was often government; she then moved to education Jowell depicted in the media as a and employment before replacing Chris Smith 1947-2018 prim, slightly nannyish figure, as Secretary of State for Culture, Media and said The Times. But at Westminster, she was Sport in 2001. In that role, she persuaded Blair known not only for her sense of humour, but to back Britain’s Olympic bid, in 2004. “Of for aquality that is far more rarely found course we may not win,” she told him, “but at in politics, said Stephen Bush in the New least we will have had the courage to try.” The Statesman: her kindness. As an MP, and later Games proved ahuge success, but there were as aminister, this least tribal of politicians controversies along the way (mainly to do made agreat effort to be kind to people she with budget overruns). She was castigated for had no need to be kind to. Of course, she approving the creation of super casinos (the was other things besides. She was astute and “nation’s nanny” was now a“gangster’s moll”, extremely effective: her achievements included she observed). And she was caught up in the the London Olympics, 24-hour licensing and scandal surrounding the “sexing up” of the the Sure Start programme. But it was partly Iraq dossier. She’d had reservations about the because she was kind that she was effective. 2003 invasion –but she would have “jumped It inspired people to work hard for her: they under abus” for Blair, she admitted. There wanted to help her achieve her aims. were embarrassments in her private life, too: in 2004, her husband David Mills –amillionaire Tessa Palmer was born in London in 1947, the Jowell: the least partisan of politicians tax lawyer with many controversial clients, daughter of aphysician and aradiographer, including Silvio Berlusconi –was accused of and brought up in Aberdeen, where she went to alocal fee-paying tax fraud by the authorities in Italy. In 2009, he was convicted school and the university. Having developed socialist leanings in of accepting a£350,000 “bribe” from the former Italian PM in her teens, she moved to London in 1969 to become asocial exchange for giving false testimony at two trials in the 1990s, worker; in 1974, after further study, she became apsychiatric and sentenced to four-and-a-half years in prison –which was social worker at the Maudsley Hospital. By then, she’d been overturned in 2010 on atechnicality. The episode was ahuge elected to Camden Council where, long before her party’s shift strain on their family and caused the couple briefly to separate. to the centre, she presented herself as amoderate, pitted against the “loony left”. Deciding that to find “big solutions” to social Jowell stood down as an MP in 2015. Last September, she problems she would need to be in government, she first stood revealed that she was suffering from cancer. (She was rumoured to be an MP in 1978, and was finally elected MP for Dulwich to have nicknamed her tumour Momentum.) Visibly frail, and in 1992. Two years later she supported Tony Blair’s bid for the in avoice cracking with emotion, she gave her final speech to the Labour leadership. He recognised her competence, her commit- House of Lords in January, describing her life with cancer and ment and her likeability, said The Guardian –all of which proved appealing for more treatments to be made available. In arare ahuge asset to the party as it sought to win over Middle England. breach of protocol, her fellow peers gave her astanding ovation. Film editor who won an Oscar for Lawrence of Arabia

When Anne V. Coates declared with him on Powell and Pressburger’s The Red Anne V. that she wanted to work in Shoes.Her ambition had been to direct, but it Coates the film industry, her uncle – dawned on her that in that male-dominated 1925-2018 J. Arthur Rank –found her a world, editing was the most interesting job a job at Elstree Studios repairing prints of religious woman could do, other than acting. “While it films known as Sunday Shorts. The idea was was just abackground job, they let the women that she would soon get bored and rethink her do it,” she said later. “But when people realised unsuitable career. The plan backfired, said The how interesting and creative editing could be, Times. Coates, who has died aged 92, became then the men... kind of took over.” one of cinema’s most respected editors. She won one Oscar, for Lawrence of Arabia,and In 1960, she offered to edit Albert Finney’s screen was nominated for four others. Moving with test for Lawrence of Arabia for afriend. Finney the times, both in terms of technology and social didn’t get the part, but David Lean was so imp- attitudes, she was in her 80s when she edited her ressed by her cuts, he took her on as the film’s last film, Fifty Shades of Grey.She thought it a editor. He shot 31 miles of film, which she edited bit tame. “I wanted more passion,” she said. Coates: still working in her 80s down into afour-hour movie, and in the process created one of the most famous cuts in cinema Born in Reigate, Surrey, in 1925, she was the daughter of an history –a“match cut”, from Lawrence blowing out amatch to architect, Laurence Coates, and Kathleen (née Rank), whose aburning desert sunrise. She went on to work on Becket and The grandfather had founded the Rank flour business. She was, she Elephant Man before, aged 60, she moved to Hollywood. There, said, born with a“silver spoon in my mouth”; one of her earliest among many other films, she worked on Erin Brockovich and memories was watching amaid iron her father’s copy of The Out of Sight.Onthe latter, she had been anxious at first about Times. She was quite “snotty” in her youth, but during the War using the new Avid digital technology, but as she explained to she worked as anurse at Sir Archibald McIndoe’s plastic surgery the film’s star, George Clooney, she had realised that the job unit, where she cared for wounded airmen and children who had was really the same. “It was just aquestion of calming down been injured while playing with bombs. The work, she said, was and cutting just like Ihad before, telling the story, making it “harrowing... [but] it opened my mind to communism and things funny, saving the actor’s performance.” Clooney laughed, but like that, which shocked my family”. After working as atea girl when he introduced her to his co-star Jennifer Lopez as the person at Rank, she blagged ajob in the cutting room at Pinewood, who was going to save her performance, Lopez was not amused. where she was mentored by the editor Reggie Mills, and worked In 2016, Coates was awarded alifetime achievement Oscar.

19 May 2018 THE WEEK We strive to discover more.

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BT: hanging up In its most radical overhaul for over adecade, BT last week announced plans to slash 13,000 jobs, shake up its business and leave its HQ, said Nic Fildes in the Financial Times. But one of the biggest surprises for investors contemplating the job cuts was that the chief executive, Gavin Patterson, “was not among them”. After revealing aprofit warning and aballooning pension deficit (now atroubling £11.3bn), BT’s stock sunk to its lowest level since Patterson took charge in 2013. The “always immaculately attired” Seven days in the boss “put on abrave face” as he pledged to lead aturnaround. But “questions over his Square Mile tenure –ranging from the decision to spend billions on football rights to the handling of an accounting scandal in Italy –will not go away”. “GPat” has “radically changed the The Bank of England kept interest rates look” of BT, said Jim Armitage in the London Evening Standard. But even its “whizz- on hold at 0.5% citing asoft patch in the bang new divisions” aren’t looking too clever: mobile and TV customer numbers are economy, and predicting that inflation would return to its 2% target within two both down. And Patterson’s hopes of channelling cost-savings into next-generation 5G years and remain on track. EU leaders technology may not be enough to assuage regulators and politicians applying pressure met to discuss their response to the US over BT’s botched Openreach fibre programme. No wonder the mood within the soon- threat to impose sanctions on European to-be vacated BT Centre near St Paul’s in London –the historic home of UK telecoms companies doing business with Iran, since the days of the General Post Office –isdescribed as sombre. and the prospect of looming steel and aluminium tariffs. Japan ended eight RBS: looming share sale straight quarters of consecutive growth; It was, declared the Royal Bank of Scotland’s CEO, Ross McEwan, last week, “a the economy surprised on the downside, milestone moment”. That seems “an oddly cheerful way” to describe adeal to hand over shrinking by 0.6% in the first quarter. $4.9bn to the US Department of Justice as punishment for mortgage mis-selling more The World Trade Organisation ruled than adecade ago, said Nils Pratley in The Guardian. “But we know what he means.” against Airbus and the EU in along- After years of waiting, it’s great finally to have an agreement –and the terms imposed running row involving Boeing.The US had accused the EU of providing $22bn by the Americans aren’t as severe as feared. “Some thought the hit could be $7bn.” RBS, of improper aid to build A380 and A350 which was rescued by the government in 2008, has now cleared what is widely seen in jets. The ruling could lead to more trade the City as the last substantial “hurdle” before afull-on share sale, said Harry Wilson in sanctions, but may be counterbalanced The Times. Government officials are already sounding out City brokers to gauge interest by aparallel case against Boeing. in the bank, which remains 71% owned by the taxpayer. We should probably prepare Barclays boss Jes Staley was fined to take adrubbing. The Government’s only sale of RBS shares, three years ago –when it £642,430 by regulators and had sold a£2.1bn chunk, equal to a5.4% stake –crystallised aloss of more than £1bn. With £500,000 docked from his pay over RBS stock currently even lower, asale now would “incur an even greater loss”. afailed attempt to identify awhistle- blower; critics said the sanction did not ZPG/Silver Lake: Zoopla falls to the Americans go far enough. US private equity giant “Talk about making akilling from the housing market,” said Ian King on Sky.com. Blackstone was criticised for muscling ZPG, the owner of property website Zoopla, and the comparison sites uSwitch and into the UK social housing market. Volvo appointed astring of Wall Street banks Money.co.uk, has been sold to the US private equity fund Silver Lake for £2.2bn. The to explore an IPO. WPP is reportedly deal nets Zoopla’s founder, Alex Chesterman, £61m. But “by far the biggest winner considering appointing ex-AOL boss Tim from the takeover” is ZPG’s largest shareholder, the Daily Mail &General Trust, which Armstrong to succeed Martin Sorrell. should scoop £640m. Zoopla has been something of a“Marmite” stock for investors. The ad giant faces an investor revolt Nonetheless, Silver Lake’s takeover will provoke mixed feelings. “British tech companies over its refusal to publish details of the are frequently accused of selling out to larger rivals, usually from the US, before they investigation into personal misconduct have reached their full potential.” ZPG, which was tipped by some to become the that prompted Sorrell’s resignation. “Amazon of housing”, looks to be no exception.

ZTE: trump card in atechnological cold war

Donald Trump’s recent threat to impose appears to have done the trick in terms of tariffs on some $150bn of Chinese goods drawing China to the negotiating table. looked like “the first volley” of a“full-scale Shortly after, Beijing agreed to send its vice- trade war”. Yet suddenly the US president premier, Liu He, to Washington for talks. “seems ready to make peace”, said The New York Times. Trump has indicated that he will It apparently took the president “less than help to save ZTE, aChinese electronics- aweek to forget that punishing companies maker that is on “the brink of collapse” for doing business with Iran was one of the after being punished by US officials last main current aims of US foreign policy”, month for breaking sanctions against Iran said the Financial Times. His U-turn and North Korea. “directly contradicts the strong views of many top officials in US intelligence and State-backed ZTE, which majors on mobile law enforcement, who have repeatedly technology and employs 75,000 people in ZTE: a“geopolitical pawn” warned that ZTE products could be more than 160 countries, is “an important employed to spy on American users geopolitical pawn for Beijing” in an increasingly frosty and are athreat to national security”. It seems that Trump’s “technological cold war”. Trump clearly views it as auseful “addiction to dealmaking has led him astray”. If he has “bargaining chip” too in his new quest to keep China onside as “bargained away aserious threat to US national security” for a events hot up in Iran and Korea. His offer of “a reprieve” for the short-term gimmick like ordering China to buy more American company drew “protests from Congress”, said The Times. But it exports, “it is one of the worst deals he has ever struck”.

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Issue of the week: “menopausal” Britain? Has the economy hit asoft patch? Or could we possibly be confronting a“once-in-a-century” slump? Bank of England governor Mark Carney territory –coping with relatively high has come under fire for his signature inflation and aslowing economy”. “forward guidance” policy, but this week Broadbent reckons the malaise may be adifferent kind of “communications more deep-seated, said Anna Isaac in controversy” erupted on Threadneedle The Daily Telegraph. He compares the Street, said Jill Ward on Bloomberg. productivity slowdown to the “lull at the Deputy governor Ben Broadbent was end of the 19th century, when the height forced to apologise after his description of the steam era was over but the age of of the UK economy as “menopausal” electricity was yet to begin”. He argues prompted adeluge of complaints about today’s economy may be undergoing a sexism and ageism. As Tory MP Claire similar “climacteric” phase, awaiting Perry tweeted: “I can’t be the only 50+ “the next big breakthrough” after the woman objecting to [this] pejorative digital boom. In short, we could be description... I’ve never been more facing aonce-in-a-century slump. productive! How about ‘andropausal’ instead? Then you get declining potency Something’s certainly up when and bonus grumpiness thrown in!” Greggs: slowing sales growth those two former stalwarts of “price- pummelling” consumer retail, Greggs The timing was especially unfortunate, because Carney had and JD Wetherspoon, both record slowing sales growth, said just hosted aconference on diversity in central banking. It Henry Mance in the FT. Either Britons are falling out of love also followed aslew of criticism over the Bank’s messaging on with cheap beer and bread, or this is “the start of the great Brexit monetary policy. “After afew months of implying that rates were consumer slump”. The omens aren’t great, said Zoe Wood in firmly on the upward path”, the monetary policy committee voted The Guardian. According to Visa’s consumer spending index, 7-2 to keep them on hold at 0.5% last week, said John Stepek on “shoppers are deserting the high street in greater numbers than MoneyWeek.com. “Carney doesn’t so much look like an ‘unrel- during the depths of the recession in 2009”. True, some of that iable boyfriend’ as arunaway bridegroom. The man just can’t cash has been diverted to online sales, but, as Visa notes, spending commit.” The issue facing the Bank is whether anaemic growth overall is still declining despite apick-up in wage growth. of just 0.1% in the first quarter is merely symptomatic of a“soft Whether or not the British economy is menopausal, andropausal patch”, as it hopes, or whether it will shortly be “in much trickier or climacteric, there are going to be challenging times ahead.

Making money: what the experts think The car crash ● Down in the basement… FT. Having surpassed $77/ at Carillion “Uncertainty about Brexit, barrel last week after the plus the possibility of a US decision to reimpose An excoriating report by MPs into the Marxist chancellor”, have sanctions on Iran, it’s now fate of construction giant Carillion caused the FTSE 100 to lag up by 50% year-on-year. claims that “shyster” bosses were “too most stock market indices in Unsurprisingly, energy- busy stuffing their mouths with gold to focused funds have been show any concern for the workforce or recent years, said Ian Cowie pensions” –and are “directly to blame” in The Sunday Times. When whizzing: seven out of ten of the top performers for the company’s collapse in January, measured by the cyclically said Rachel Millard on MailOnline. adjusted price-earnings in April were invested in Aprolific government contractor that yardstick Cape, British energy and natural employed 58,000 people, Carillion wildly shares are now considerably resources, according to pursued growth and misrepresented its cheaper than those of the US, data provider FE, with picks finances, according to the Commons Germany and Japan –and including Guinness Global Select Committee report, which also also many emerging markets. Energy and BlackRock slammed the “feeble” response of World Energy. But even regulators supposed to keep tabs on Most institutional investors the company. seem to have concluded that Oil stocks are “whizzing” investors without dedicated exposure have been making “Britain is abasket case”: Carillion’s senior team “could now face but agrowing number, including gains “due to the high weightings towards disqualification”, said Rhiannon Curry Ritu Vohora of M&G, reckon that oil and gas in many large UK and in The Daily Telegraph. The report the “uncertainty” is already discounted European equity funds”. paints adamning picture of directors’ and that there are “bargains” to be had. greed. Treating smaller firms with “Negative sentiment” can cause share ● Tin’s the thing contempt, they used aggressive prices to fall “far away from the intrinsic Another commodity doing aroaring trade accounting techniques to cover their own problems. Britain’s biggest value of abusiness”, agreed Richard is tin –up60% since January 2016 at corporate failure in over adecade has Buxton of Old Mutual. He reckons “cash- about $21,000/tonne, driven by demand come under particular scrutiny because generative stocks –including some banks, from consumer electronics companies, said the group was given aclean bill of miners and retailers” –offer opportunities Deirdre Hipwell in The Times. Twenty health by auditor KPMG last March. for long-term investors. He’s right. UK years after being mothballed, Britain’s Accusing the latter of being “complicit” shares look “unloved and undervalued”; last working tin mine, South Crofty in in directors’ “increasingly fantastical contrarians take note. Cornwall, has come astep closer to figures”, MPs called for the break-up of reopening. The mine’s Canadian owner, the Big Four accounting firms, arguing KPMG’s “cursory” audits at Carillion ● Rising oil Strongbow Exploration, is floating on were “symptomatic” of a“cosy club” One development likely to prove ashot in Aim, hoping to raise £25m to invest in the that “works for the members of the the arm to UK investors is “the sharp rise mine, which it dubs one of the “highest- oligopoly, but fails the wider economy”. in the oil price”, said Kate Beioley in the grade undeveloped tin projects globally”.

19 May 2018 THE WEEK 48 CITY Commentators

You’d think the arrival of “a populist, free-spending and Euro- sceptic” government in Italy would have sent markets spinning. City profile Is it folly to But the reaction so far has been one “big yawn”, says Nils Pratley. That’s extraordinary given “the radicalism being contemplated Jim Ratcliffe downplay in Rome” by the League-Five Star Movement coalition, whose programme, “even in watered-down form”, packs apunch Roman risks... against EU orthodoxy. It proposes aparallel currency to run alongside the euro; aflat tax rate of 15% for most companies and Nils Pratley households; a“universal income”; and the repeal of tough-minded pension reforms. Depending on the precise version adopted, “that The Guardian collection” of policies could increase government spending by s60bn-s100bn ayear, in acountry whose stock of debt is already 132% of GDP. Yet the bond markets have barely budged. “A lot of money is resting on the questionable assumption that the new government won’t do what it says” –orwill collapse. But just as likely is aconfrontation with the EU over fiscal rules. “That would be aserious showdown, with an uncertain outcome.”

If Italy’s new government is “serious about its promises”, we His wealth increased by can expect “lots of warnings about the chaos it will create”, says more than £15bn last year …orshould Matthew Lynn. But the conventional wisdom could be “100% and The Sunday Times has wrong”. True, if Italy either defaulted on its debts or crashed out just named him the richest person in Britain. It has taken the markets of the euro, “it would plunge the global financial system into a the fracking and chemicals serious panic”. But many of the ideas underpinning its “bold billionaire Jim Ratcliffe, 65, be cheering? experiment in economic radicalism” are sensible, and even the “just 20 years to make a dottier ones “might be worth atry”. It’s not as if Italy has been fortune of more than £21bn”, Matthew Lynn enjoying great economic success. “Ever since joining the euro, its said Robert Watts in that average growth rate has been zero”, in marked contrast to periods paper. He built up his private The Daily Telegraph of prosperity in the past. So be sceptical of the predictions of petrochemicals empire, catastrophe that always arise when populist politicians come Ineos, “by acquiring astring to power. Donald Trump’s mix of tax cuts and deregulation is of cast-offs from BP, ICI and other corporate giants”. To boosting growth in the US. In Europe, both Poland (forecast to his critics that makes him expand 4% this year) and Hungary have profited financially from an “asset stripper”. To his the “populist” governments Brussels keeps chastising. Markets supporters, however, “he should cheer Italy’s “fresh thinking” as asign of potential revival. is something between a Womble and an alchemist”. The banking establishment used to be unremittingly hostile to cryptocurrencies, says John Naughton. But the wind has changed. Brought up in acouncil Two exchanges have launched bitcoin futures trading operations; house near Manchester, Blockchain is even the New York Stock Exchange is setting up adedicated online the son of ajoiner and office manager, Ratcliffe was platform. But “the greed and cynicism surrounding bitcoin and its handmaiden sacked from BP after three peers” is aside issue in the cryptocurrency saga: far more signif- days –onaccount of the fact of democracy icant is the potential of the blockchain technology that underpins he had eczema, he claims – them. The crucial thing about ablockchain, as Don and Alex before finding berths at Esso, John Naughton Tapscott explain in their book Blockchain Revolution,isit Courtaulds and later Advent provides “an incorruptible digital ledger of economic transactions International, where he The Observer that can be programmed to record virtually everything of value”. learnt the art of dealmaking. That’s “a really big idea”, because well-governed societies depend He has overtaken the Hinduja on keeping documentation of all sorts in ledgers that are both brothers to take top spot in the 2018 Sunday Times Rich public and secure –aneed all the more pressing in developing List, which this year lists or authoritarian countries, which lack “trustworthy institutions” “a record 145 billionaires”, or democratic oversight to combat corruption. Implicit in the said The Observer – blockchain concept is “an endearing strain of technocratic two others being Ratcliffe’s utopianism, ahope that technology can overcome some aspects top lieutenants, John Reece of human frailty and corruption”. We should put it to good use. and Andy Currie (each worth £7bn). Ineos, which Sweden is about as close as you can now get to acashless society, is trying to frack for shale says Rene Chun. “Cold hard krona” accounted for barely 2% of in South Yorkshire, has just announced plans to build a Bye bye, bank the value of all payments made in 2015. And the shift to digital successor to the Land Rover currency has, to an extent, brought with it the expected reduction Defender. robbers. Hello, in crime: “Swedish bank robbers and light-fingered cashiers have gone the way of Abba hit singles.” But as paper money gets Ratcliffe lives in astunning owl thieves scarce, other types of crime have flourished. Internet scams mansion near Beaulieu in are increasingly popular among thieves; so are more “outlandish” the New Forest and sailing is Rene Chun physical thefts –including a“new enthusiasm for the endangered- his passion. He was recently species black market, previously cornered by reptile wranglers and rebuffed by the British The Atlantic orchid thieves”. Crimes involving protected species are at their Olympic Association, which said he would have to pay highest level in adecade: “a single great grey owl now goes for £6.6m if he wanted to use about 1m krona (about £85,000) on the dark web”. Sweden’s its Team GB trademark for new crime wave is worrying, but predictable. Research shows that his America’s Cup team. as we gain “psychological distance” from money, our willingness Ratcliffe told them to “take a to steal increases. Which is “why so many people cheat on taxes, long walk off ashort plank”. inflate insurance claims and steal Post-it notes from the office”.

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Who’s tipping what

The week’s best buys Directors’ dealings Ashtead Group TUI Wetherspoon Genel Energy Investors Chronicle The Times The Mail on Sunday The equipment rental firm is Thanks to rebranding, The pub chain has revealed 250 benefiting from strong US the travel business looks worse than expected Q3 sales demand, tax cuts and dollar reinvigorated, and now appeals growth. But Investec believes it 200 Director’s wife strength. Growth, profitability to ayounger and broader is “benefiting from trading buys 100,000 and upgrades continue to look clientele. Shares are up 47% down within the sector”, and 150 impressive, and buy-backs add in twelve months, but are still “continues to take market to the appeal. Buy. £20.61. trading strongly. Yields 3.6%. share from competition”. Buy. £17.66. Buy. £11.55. 100 Shire The Times Walt Disney Co XP Power The undervalued rare disease Investors Chronicle The Mail on Sunday Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May and neuroscience specialist The US entertainment XP makes power supply has agreed a£45bn takeover behemoth has an “immense” units and converters for the Buoyed by arising oil price, growing production and some by Takeda. It’s arisky deal for film and TV library, and a electronics industry. Analysts stability in Iraqi Kurdistan, the the Japanese pharmaceutical portfolio of “hugely popular” think the acquisition of its US oil firm looks to be recovering. CHRONICLE company, but necessary to theme parks. Astream of peer Glassman brings revenue Non-exec director Martin compete with rivals in box-office hits is expected opportunities: sales and profits Gudgeon’s wife, Emma,

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…and some to hold, avoid or sell Form guide

Electronic Arts International Personal Pearson Shares tipped 12 weeks ago The Daily Telegraph Finance Investors Chronicle Best tip The Nasdaq-listed games Investors Chronicle The educational publisher has Indivior publisher’s lucrative business Shares in the sub-prime lender enjoyed asizeable 7% share The Mail on Sunday model (charging for games, are up, thanks to astrong price leap, thanks to recovery up 20.97% to 463.3p then selling add-ons) has been performance in Mexico. Its in its key American market. Worst tip hit by disrupter Epic’s free-to- digital arm is also doing well. But competition remains fierce British American Tobacco download game Fortnite.One But competition and regulatory and the long-term outlook The Sunday Times to watch from the sidelines. pressures remain in the seems bleak. Sell. 911p. down 13.95% to £38.30 Sell. $122.53. European home credit market. Too risky. Sell. 235.2p. Telit Communications Greggs Investors Chronicle Market view The Mail on Sunday Mpac Group The “internet of things” “We might not see arate rise The high street baker’s stock Shares enabler has suffered a for the rest of the year. But plunged 15% after results Shares have been soaring at surfeit of “afflictions” – while savers will be disap- revealed profits ravaged by the the healthcare, pharma and not least a$12.5m hike pointed, it’s pretty good “Beast from the East”. Greggs nutrition packaging provider, in debt to $30.2m, as well news for investors. Stock isn’t a“bad company”, but both the chairman and as anegative cash flow. markets don’t tend to like concludes Peel Hunt. But the FD are leaving. Shares no Corporate governance issues rising interest rates much.” Ben Brettell of Hargreaves shares are still “much too longer look discounted. Take may continue rippling. Lansdown. Quoted on Citywire high”. Sell. £10.53. profits. Sell. 213p. Sell. 161p. Market summary

KeyKey numbers for investors BestBest andand worst performing shares Following the Footsie

15 May 2018 Week before Change (%) WEEK’S CHANGE, FTSE 100 STOCKS 7,800 FTSE 100 7722.98 7565.75 2.08% RISES Price %change FTSE All-share UK 4241.88 4164.36 1.86% Paddy Power Betfair 7760.00 +12.46 7,700 Dow Jones 24671.85 24317.11 1.46% ITV 165.65 +10.25 7,600 NASDAQ 7340.30 7255.38 1.17% Next 5628.00 +8.69 Nikkei 225 22818.02 22508.69 1.37% BHP Billiton 1712.20 +8.59 7,500 Hang Seng 31152.03 30402.81 2.46% Royal Bank of Sctl. Gp. 293.30 +7.36 7,400 Gold 1319.85 1309.40 0.80% FALLS 7,300 Brent Crude Oil 78.84 74.47 5.87% BT Group 206.80 –12.54 DIVIDEND YIELD (FTSE 100) 3.80% 3.88% Vodafone Group 198.38 –4.42 7,200 UK 10-year gilts yield 1.51 1.44 Burberry Group 1803.50 –4.30 7,100 US 10-year Treasuries 3.06 2.98 Land Securities Group 950.00 –3.49 UK ECONOMIC DATA Centrica 148.40 –3.42 7,000 Latest CPI (yoy) 2.5% (Mar) 2.7% (Feb) BEST AND WORST UK STOCKS OVERALL Latest RPI (yoy) 3.3% (Mar) 3.6% (Feb) 6,900 Webis Holdings 4.05 +326.31 Halifax house price (yoy) +2.2% (Apr) +2.7% (Mar) Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May Polemos 0.01 –99.00 £1 STERLING $1.350 E1.140 ¥148.724 Source: Datastream (not adjusted for dividends). Prices on 15 May (pm) 6-month movement in the FTSE 100 index

19 May 2018 THE WEEK 52 The last word “Dad convinced the IRA to give me only one bullet”

The former world champion boxer Eamonn Magee’s life has been scarred by sectarianism and alcoholism. But he insists he wouldn’t change athing. Donald McRae reports

“I’ve had abeautiful wee recently ran asensationalised life,” Eamonn Magee says book extract], and because soon after he has opened of me telling the truth, the front door in his dressing they’re scared of people gown and cracked open his coming to shoot me dead. first beer of the day, just They say: ‘What happens after 11 on aMonday if they shoot somebody morning. The former boxer, else as well?’” who knocked down Ricky Hatton in 2002 and was a Will Magee return to the world champion when he gym? “I’m busy this week won the WBU welterweight but back next Monday,” title, is cut and bruised from he says, defiantly. Could being attacked the night someone really walk in before. Magee’s left hand and shoot him? “What’s is also swollen with an keeping them?” Magee obviously broken finger, says with adark chuckle. making him wince whenever “It’s not as if they don’t it brushes against his can of know where Ilive.” Carling. Such pain, however, is fleeting compared with Ihad felt calm when Itook the deeper hurt that runs the call that told me about through him. Magee’s life, Magee’s latest scrap. My in Ardoyne, the tough mood remained the same in Republican enclave of the cab rumbling through the Belfast, has been scarred familiar streets of Belfast, by violent sectarianism, Eamonn Magee: “I wouldn’t change athing” passing the old Republican tragedy and alcoholism. murals and the high peace walls that still separate Catholic and Protestant communities. “I wouldn’t change athing,” Magee says as he takes another Ieven felt OK when, after Irang the bell, two pit bulls next slug of warm beer. His battered, 46-year-old face crinkles and door leapt at the fence, barking fiercely. “They’re wee nippers,” the lump under his left eye looks even more like apurple mouse their owner warned as he pulled the dogs away. as he echoes: “I’ve still had awee beautiful life.” Magee is in trouble again because he and the writer Paul D. Gibson have Yet it’s hard to feel serene now. Each time Magee’s phone produced araw and riveting book, The Lost Soul of Eamonn interrupts us, with its Who Let the Dogs Out? ringtone, Iscan Magee,which opens like this: his beaten-up face, wondering “A book? Listen, I’ve been if it’s acall to tell him a beaten with baseball bats, “I’ve been beaten with baseball bats, I’ve had paramilitary gunman is on I’ve had my throat slashed, I’ve my throat slashed, I’ve been kidnapped, exiled his way. Idon’t feel too hopeful been kidnapped and exiled out at the prospect of Magee, in his of the country. I’ve been shot out of the country and shot twice” dressing gown, and Italking twice, I’ve been in prison and our way out of trouble. “Why my son’s just been stabbed to death. Among all that, Iwas the the hell would you want to shoot me?” Magee asks. “I didn’t welterweight champion of the world while drinking the bar dry do anything wrong.” and doing enough coke to kill asmall horse every night. My life’s not abook. It’s af***ing movie script.” As away of changing the subject Ipoint to his beer. He has been drinking since he was nine and the book makes clear he The book has caused strife and he says he has been attacked is ahigh-functioning alcoholic, but does he ever wish he could on successive nights in Ardoyne. Exception has been taken to kick the bottle? “I tried rehab,” he eventually says, before Magee detailing many horrendous incidents, stretching from breaking into the Amy Winehouse song. “And Isaid, ‘No, no, Republican politics and sectarian violence to drink and drugs, no!’” Ican’t help laughing with him before Magee continues. and he shakes his head when Iask how he is feeling. “It’s more “I really did go to rehab and the only thing that f***ed me up embarrassing when I’m fighting,” he says softly, licking his was that you’re not allowed TV. Not having TV was worse

cracked lips. “Last night Iwas even talking to him while than no drink. You’re better off doing six months in jail.” EDIA

defending myself. I’m punching him and saying: ‘F**k sake, &M

what’s this about?’” Magee waves his bust hand at me. “Who Beneath all his scars the internal wounds have not healed. NEWS do you think came out the better?” His husky laugh fades. Magee tells achilling story of how, during internment raids in the 1970s, he and his three brothers would be turned out “What is it? Pick on Magee week? I’m training fighters in the of the two beds they shared. British soldiers marched them gym every day and one thing annoys me. We’ve got anew gym downstairs and they had to kneel, hands behind their heads,

on the way and the guys that own the building don’t want me while their photographs were taken for no apparent reason. MCERLANE/GUARDIAN near the place. Because of what’s been in the papers [a tabloid “Oh f**k, where are we starting?” Magee says as he remembers AUL ©P

THE WEEK 19 May 2018 The last word 53 the impact that internment –detention Iwasn’t doing anything wrong apart without trial –had on Catholic families from drinking and driving –and that’s in the Troubles. “My dad was a nothing to do with the IRA. They told through-and-through Republican me to concentrate on training and stop and had aproper understanding of partying. The main guy shook my what the war was about. It wasn’t about hand and said: ‘Best of luck when bothering Protestants. The war was you fight Ricky.’” against the British army in Ireland. But my dad was asmashing man. The Brits On the night of the fight, Magee was imprisoned him in Long Kesh and the seen smoking acigarette outside the Irish Republicans had abus run because MEN arena in Manchester. He smiles in them days people couldn’t afford at my bemusement. “I started smoking anything else. So we would take the bus aged 11, so in afight, at the end of each up to Long Kesh. Iwas awee nuisance round, I’d be coughing [Magee imitates and carried in letters that we’d written acharming phlegm-ridden cough]. on cigarette papers. Ifolded them and Whatever came out of my mouth hid them under my tongue.” would have knocked you out. But a smoke before afight opened my lungs.” Sitting in his dead father’s house, I’m Magee’s title bout with Ricky Hatton in 2002 It clearly worked in the Hatton fight upset by his memory of how, once his because, in round one, Magee knocked dad had fallen out with the IRA and been banished to England, down his celebrated opponent. “It was the worst punch Iever he snuck back into Ardoyne and was hidden away in his attic. threw because Ilanded it after 40 seconds. Bam! But he’s seven Magee, his mum, Isobel, and his brothers lived in fear of his years my junior, so of course he’s getting up when still so fresh. dad being discovered. They hid him in the attic for 18 months Iwish I’d landed that punch later.” –which contributed to Magee Senior’s acute depression and alcoholism. “I didn’t get over that,” Magee says. “My mum Hatton sealed aclose decision, but Magee won the vacant would have awee drink and dad would sit in there all night. WBU welterweight title by beating journeyman Jimmy Vincent I’d go in and slip him atin or afag. Nobody ever knew he in December 2003. He retained his world title until May 2006, was there.” but he only had two fights in that troubled time. Magee had fallen out with arespected figure in Republican circles and, in Later, when Magee had become one of the most accomplished agruesome attack in 2004, his left leg was clubbed to apulp. amateur boxers in Ireland, his father saved his career. Magee He suffered acompound fracture of his tibia and fibula, a had joined the IRA’s youth wing because he loved the mayhem shattered knee and apunctured lung. They called him the of rioting, but he also began taking and dealing drugs [to which Miracle Man when he returned to the ring. Magee’s legs stick the IRA was violently opposed]. out of his dressing gown, and An IRA punishment shooting the lumps and scars provide usually entailed being shot in “His father, who fell out with the IRA and was graphic proof of that terrible the kneecap or worse, but his banished to England, returned to the family beating. “It still gives me pain,” dad reminded the paramilitaries he says, balancing abeer on his that Eamonn was fighting in the house and hid in the attic for 18 months” knee as he studies his left leg. Irish championships. “The doctor thought I’d never walk again, but Iwas in the gym ayear later.” “If my dad hadn’t stepped in they were talking about me getting the six-pack –elbows, knees and ankle. But my father Isuggest we leave the house and go for awalk around Magee’s convinced them to give me only one bullet.” How did Magee neighbourhood. Rather than waiting inside for aknock on the feel waiting for the knock on the door before he took abullet door, we will be less exposed to any stray visitors. Magee in his calf? He shrugs. “It had to be dealt with. Iknew it was agrees but, first, we remember his son who was stabbed to going to be aflesh wound so hurry the f**k up. When he took death in May 2015 –bythe jealous ex-husband of his me down an alleyway, Iasked, ‘What’s it like getting shot?’ He girlfriend. Eamonn Junior was so different to him, studying said: ‘Like ahot poker going in your leg.’” Who Let the Dogs engineering at university while also boxing, and the grief Out? thumps again on cue. Magee shuts down his phone and becomes too much. Magee starts to cry, amuffled ache falling Isay it’s incredible he still won the national title afew months from his mouth as tears roll down his face. Isay how sorry I later. “I won, but there was blood streaming down my leg from am and Magee squeezes my hand only to curse the pain in his the gunshot wound.” broken finger, before wiping his eyes. We talk about his book and, of the title, he says: “‘The lost soul’ was beautiful. My Magee is ahard and sometimes violent man, but between mother called me alost soul and she was right.” the ropes he was aslick southpaw who boxed with artistry. “I never bullied anybody in my life, so you can rephrase that,” Magee goes upstairs to get dressed. When he returns, wearing he says quietly when Imention his violent infamy. “I went to ahat straight out of Peaky Blinders,healmost looks dapper. the gym because I’m the baby of four and my brothers all The old fighter sinks the dregs of his beer. We walk outside were boxers. After acouple of years I’d see wee openings. Bing, and Magee takes me on atour of the murals. Afterwards he bang. Soon as Istarted learning how to hit him before he hits hugs me in the street, calling me agentleman and ascholar, me it was ahell of alot easier.” even if Ican’t stay for alunchtime drink. Magee lifts his broken hand in astately wave as my taxi drives away. Icheck Magee’s best year in the ring was in 2002, when he knocked my recording in the back of the cab and Magee’s ghostly voice out Jon Thaxton, avery good pro, to secure acrack at Hatton’s echoes again as we drive through Belfast: “I’ve seen things not WBU light-welterweight title. He still drank six beers every many people have seen, but if they hadn’t happened Iwouldn’t Saturday night while training. “It was awee prize at the end be the man Iamtoday. So Iwouldn’t change athing. I’m more of the week, but Iwas well prepared for Thaxton. With the than happy with my wee life.” Hatton camp, life was aparty.” Magee would drive around town late at night visiting bars, with Magee vs. Hatton logos This article first appeared in The Guardian. ©Guardian News splashed across his Range Rover. Three senior IRA men paid and Media Limited 2018. The Lost Soul of Eamonn Magee by him avisit. “I don’t know why they gave me another warning. Paul D. Gibson is published by Mercier Press at £14.50

19 May 2018 THE WEEK 54 Marketplace

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