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29TH JULY 2017 | ISSUE 1135 | £3.30 EWTHE BEST OF THE BRITISHEEK AND INTERNATIONAL MEDIA Sexism at the BBC The revolt over pay Page 2

ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT EVERYTHING THAT MATTERS www.theweek.co.uk 2 NEWS The main stories…

What happened What the editorials said The BBC “fought tooth and nail” to prevent these revelations, Mind the gap said the Daily Mail, which were demanded by the Government Some of the BBC’s best-known female stars, as part of its latest Royal Charter agreement. including Clare Balding, Emily Maitlis and Fiona And no wonder. “Hard-pressed TV owners, Bruce, have called on the corporation to “act forced on pain of prosecution to pay £147 a now” to redress the glaring gap in pay between year” to keep Evans, Lineker and the like “in men and women. Salaries of 96 “creative staff” luxury”, must be furious. There is a debate to earning £150,000 or more were published last be had about “whether anybody is worth” the week. The figures showed that only a third of £2.2m that Evans is paid, said The Times. But the BBC’s highest-paid presenters are women, the “enormous disparity” between male and that its seven highest earners are all men, and female pay is “not only embarrassing for the that its best-paid man makes four times as much BBC but also clearly ridiculous”. as the best-paid woman: Chris Evans received £2.2m-£2.25m in the last financial year, while It is “unforgivable” that the BBC’s top male Claudia Winkleman, eighth on the list, earned talent earn much more than the women, “even £450,000-£499,999. The other highest-paid when they sit side by side in the studio” doing stars included Gary Lineker (£1.75m-£1.79m), what looks “very much like the same job”, said Graham Norton (£850,000-£899,999), Jeremy Lineker: worth nine Baldings? The Guardian. But in its defence, the BBC can Vine (£700,000-£749,999), and John Humphrys point out that the gender pay gap among its (£600,000-£649,999). top earners, of around 10%, is much better than the national pay gap of 18%. And if the salaries seem high generally, we The Prime Minister urged the corporation to “abolish this shouldn’t forget that “the BBC has to fight its corner in a gender pay gap”, while Culture Secretary Karen Bradley said highly competitive marketplace”. Ant and Dec reportedly stars should be conscious of “how this looks to the public”; signed a three-year deal with ITV last year worth £30m. Paul she called on licence fee payers to say whether they thought Dacre, editor of the BBC’s leading critic, the Daily Mail, “is such high salaries were “good value”. paid £1.5m before he counts his share options”.

What happened What the editorials said Edging to the exit Thank heavens for our “cool-headed” Chancellor, said The Mail on Sunday. Philip Hammond seems to have persuaded The first round of substantive Brexit talks his colleagues of the folly of a too sudden ended in Brussels last week with little sign of Brexit. Even hard-line Brexiteers such as Trade progress, and fears of deadlock on key issues. Secretary Liam Fox and Environment Secretary After four days of discussion, the EU’s chief Michael Gove now accept the wisdom of a negotiator, Michel Barnier, spoke of a “transition deal” giving business time to adjust. “fundamental divergence” on the questions Such a “pragmatic” solution amounts to a of how to treat EU citizens in the UK and “wise and typically British compromise”. Britons living in Europe, and the role of the Certainly, it makes practical sense, said The European Court of Justice (ECJ) in settling Times. To build new immigration and customs future disputes. He also insisted that no systems would be impossible in just two years. progress could be made on agreeing a post- At last we have a realistic approach to Brexit Brexit trading relationship with the EU until that “better serves the economy”. Britain “clarifies” how much it is prepared to pay on leaving the bloc. Barnier: “a fundamental Any celebrations are premature, said The divergence” Independent. It is a “dangerous assumption” However, Theresa May’s Cabinet signalled a that Barnier will recommend a transition period new flexibility over Brexit, by agreeing that a “transition to the European Commission – or that member states and the period” was needed to smooth the exit process. The Prime European Parliament will agree to it. The poor progress last Minister told business leaders that such an “implementation week suggests just how intransigent the EU may prove. Plenty phase” would allow EU citizens to work freely in the UK more “British vanities” will have to be “consigned to the for two years after Britain leaves the bloc in 2019. bonfire” before a final deal is reached.

An 89-year-old man who has been A girl fined by her local council It wasn’t all bad studying German at the same for setting up a lemonade stand Two original scores by the university in Leeds for the past has been inundated with job English composer Gustav Holst half-century has now won a prize offers. Two weeks ago, the five- have been discovered in New for modern languages. Thought to year-old was selling cups of Zealand, more than a century be Britain’s longest-enrolled lemonade on her street in east after they were written. The student, former chemical engineer London when four council manuscripts to Folk Songs from Ken Knapton (pictured) first joined officers marched up and gave Somerset and Two Songs the class in 1968; since then, he her a £150 fine for trading Without Words were found in has received several qualifications, without a permit. Distraught, an orchestra’s library, in including a German degree. His she burst into tears. “I’ve done Tauranga. Two Songs is still tutors at Leeds Beckett University a bad thing,” she told her performed today, but the have described him as a model father. But now several festivals original score was thought to be student. “I’ve continued studying and markets have offered her lost; Folk Songs was conducted German with the university for all space for a new stall – an offer by Holst, known for The Planets, these years because I enjoy it,” Mr her father says he hopes might at its 1906 premiere, but may Knapton said. “It’s easy to forget be extended to other children. not have been heard since. things, so I keep at it.” And the council has apologised.

COVER CARTOON: HOWARD MCWILLIAM THE WEEK 29 July 2017 …and how they were covered NEWS 3

What the commentators said What next? The “great reveal” of BBC salaries “has, for the most part, been grim fun”, said Emine Saner This is likely to be the last in The Guardian. Can Alan Shearer’s “most obvious of observations” really be worth up to time that “top presenters’ £450,000? “How many Clare Baldings would you get for one Gary Lineker? (Nine).” Who, salaries will be open to public outside of Northern Ireland, has heard of Stephen Nolan, a DJ who earns up to £449,999? And view”, says The Times. The who knew that Charlie from Casualty was raking in up to £399,999? The figures don’t tell the BBC intends to move many whole story, said Jane Garvey in The Daily Telegraph: many stars are “conveniently missing”, salaries into the accounts of because they’re paid through independent companies; others work exceptionally long or anti- BBC Studios, a commercial social hours. But they make a clear point. If you want to be valued by the BBC, “be a man with subsidiary that is subject to a very big ego; be a man with a very big brain; be a retired sportsman or, sod it, just be a man”. much more “feeble” transparency rules. It’s shocking that discrimination should be “rampant” at this “beacon” of progressive integrity, said Josie Cox in The Independent. Laura Kuenssberg, Fiona Bruce and Sophie Raworth all The publication of stars’ earned hundreds of thousands less than Huw Edwards. Sarah Montague, Jenni Murray and salaries is likely to fuel Emily Maitlis didn’t even earn enough to get on the list. Why? Having spent many years as another “internal row” at the a BBC executive, “I know that pay is largely governed by how loud the talent or their agent BBC, says The Observer: over screams and complains”, said Janet Street-Porter in the same paper. Some huge salaries are the pay gap between the explained by contracts dating back decades, with built-in yearly pay rises. Either way, the “real highest- and lowest-paid scandal” is the failure of BBC management to confront waste and keep costs down. employees. There are also 100 or so BBC managers who The BBC claims that it has to keep up with the competition, said Will Hutton in The Observer. are paid more than £150,000, This argument is “palpably overstated. Where else are John Humphrys or Jeremy Vine likely to and 400 employees who earn broadcast to such big audiences in such well-loved, prestigious programmes with such fantastic less than £20,000. The union production support?” Given half a chance, dozens of presenters would jump into their shoes. Bectu has stepped up “The most likely result of this BBC sex war will be that the women will get more while the men demands for the minimum stay the same,” said Charles Moore in The Daily Telegraph. “Then the whole point of exposing salary to be increased from the figures in the first place – to force the BBC to control its costs – will have been upended.” £16,000 to £20,000.

What the commentators said What next? Diehard Brexiteers are “frothing” at the very idea of a transition period, said Andrew The length of a transition Rawnsley in The Observer. With some justice, they fear it could be used by Remainers to period has still to be settled, delay our departure from the EU indefinitely. But what the plan really represents is belated but Trade Secretary Liam acknowledgement of the “perilous complexities” ahead. In the words of Brexit Secretary David Fox has said it should not Davis, the task “makes the Nasa moonshot look quite simple”. The belief that we could fix continue beyond the next everything from airline flight paths to the safety of medicines by 2019 was always “for the scheduled election, in birds”. A transition period is all very well, said Simon Nixon in The Times, but transition to 2022. His comments what? Ministers are no closer to resolving the central “dilemma”: do we want to be “rule- reflect fears that a new makers” or “rule-takers”? The former would entail cutting all ties with our largest trading government might seek to partner and so risk economic disaster. Seeking the closest possible relationship with Europe, on reverse Brexit before the the other hand, would inevitably mean accepting the diktats of Brussels and the ECJ. transition period ended.

Cheer up, said Fraser Nelson in The Daily Telegraph. However messy the negotiations may Preliminary talks on a free appear, there are still promising signs. Countries from Brazil to Turkey to the US are lining up trade deal with the US to negotiate free trade deals with us; a newly competitive pound has contributed to a 16% rise began in Washington DC in exports; tourist spending is up 14%. Nor should we beat ourselves up about having held the this week (see page 47). referendum in the first place. Given the “federalist path” the EU is heading down, we’d have But business leaders warned left sooner or later anyhow. And whatever some may fondly wish, our fate is now settled, said against a swift agreement, Wolfgang Münchau in the FT. Any attempt to reverse Brexit would need the approval of all claiming that big US the EU states, who would more than likely take it as an opportunity to reset our membership multinationals would seek terms, depriving us of our opt-outs and budget rebate. And Germany and France could well nix to dictate terms, and that it, as an EU without Britain offers them the chance to create a financial centre to rival London the UK didn’t have enough inside the eurozone. “If you think Brexit is messy, an exit from Brexit would be no different.” experienced negotiators.

Editor-in-chief: Jeremy O’Grady What’s your opinion? From our first day at school, that’s the question Editor: Caroline Law Deputy editors: Harry Nicolle, Theo Tait THE WEEK we get asked in exams, and by examiners. It soon gets to feel almost Consultant editor: Jemima Lewis Assistant editor: Daniel Cohen City editor: Jane Lewis shameful – a defect of personality – to be without one. Which is why Contributing editors: Charity Crewe, Thomas Hodgkinson, Simon Wilson, Rob McLuhan, William Underhill, Digby hymning the virtue of not having an opinion, as The Guardian’s Marina Hyde did not long ago, is so Warde-Aldam, Tom Yarwood Editorial staff: Asya Likhtman, Anoushka Petit, Tigger Ridgwell, William Skidelsky Picture refreshing – and so radical. It’s not a plea for ignorance or non-judgmentalism. It’s a recognition that editor: Xandie Nutting Art director: Nathalie Fowler Chief opinions and convictions are a kind of armour – the armour we humans use to protect ourselves sub editor: Kari Wilkin Production editor: Alanna O’Connell from doubt and uncertainty, from the very attributes most conducive to getting at the truth. Founder and editorial director: Jolyon Connell Production Manager: Ebony Besagni Senior Production Consider Brexit. Everyone I know has a strong opinion on it. Not just on the narrow question of Executive: Maaya Mistry Newstrade Director: David Barker Direct Marketing Director: Abi Spooner Inserts: Abdul Ahad whether they’ll personally be better or worse off (say, by losing easy access to a European university), Classified: Henry Haselock, Henry Pickford Account Directors: Scott Hayter, John Hipkiss, Victoria Ryan, Jocelyn Sital-Singh but on whether it’s good or bad for the country. Were these opinions formed by close analysis of the UK Ad Director: Caroline Fenner Executive Director – Head of Advertising: David Weeks EU’s regulatory regime? Did they involve a weighing up of which interests are served and which pen- Chief Executive, The Week: Kerin O’Connor alised by sticking to those regulations? I suspect not. Strong opinions, if my own adoption of them is Group CFO/COO: Brett Reynolds Chief executive: James Tye any guide, evolve as follows: you start with a wobbly leaning to a particular side – often for eccentric Dennis Publishing founder: Felix Dennis reasons – only to find your tentative view getting baked into certainty as others attack it. How much

less vitriol would be expended on Brexit and so many other issues had we been tutored from an THE WEEK Ltd, a subsidiary of Dennis Publishing Ltd, early age by Marina Hyde. You’re entitled to an opinion, she’d have told us, of course you are – even 31-32 Alfred Place, London WC1E 7DP. Tel: 020-3890 3890. Editorial: The Week Ltd, 2nd Floor, 32 Queensway, London if it’s stupid. But here’s the good news. You’re also entitled not to have one. Jeremy O’Grady 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 a registered trade mark of Felix Dennis. 29 July 2017 THE WEEK 4 NEWS Politics

Controversy of the week Charlie Gard decision The parents of Charlie Gard The next prime minister? decided this week to end their five-month campaign to Now that Parliament is in recess, Labour MPs have been left take their critically ill baby to wondering what to do with themselves, said Isabel Hardman on the US for experimental her Spectator blog. They’ve spent the past two summers holed up therapy, and to allow his life in windowless rooms, “listening to contenders for the [party’s] top support to be withdrawn. job”. But they now face the prospect of having to go to the beach, They made their decision because for the fi rst time in three years, there isn’t a leadership after an MRI scan showed contest to fi ght. Jeremy Corbyn is sitting pretty. After his that Charlie’s condition was too severe to be treated. unexpectedly strong performance in the election, he’s now seen as They implied that owing to the man who put Labour back on the path to power, not – as the legal battle, a “window of critics used to cast him – “the man who killed the party”. opportunity” had been lost. “J. Corbz”: the only game in town? However, Great Ormond Don’t be deceived, said Marie Le Conte in the New Statesman. Street Hospital said the scans While MPs are on holiday, a “quiet civil war” is taking place inside Labour for control of the party confirmed their view that machine. No longer the underdogs, the Corbynites are turning up in droves at constituency meetings Charlie had suffered to wrest control from the centrists. “We’re trying to make it more open and more accessible to irreversible brain damage younger people,” says a Momentum spokesperson, in particular to the 20,000-plus who have joined back in December, when he Labour since the election. Some are calling for the mandatory reselection of MPs. As the man in the started having seizures. This Corbyn T-shirt declares in one of the many Corbynista videos trending on Facebook: “There’s only week, Charlie’s parents, one game in town and it’s getting our boy J. Corbz into Downing Street.” That looks a lot less likely Connie Yates and Chris Gard, now he’s having to spell out his policies, said Peter Oborne in the Daily Mail. On The Andrew Marr returned to court to argue that he should be allowed to Show this week, Corbyn had to come clean about his belief that Britain must leave the single market; go home to die. Doctors said he even blamed immigration for harming the lives of British workers. That places him on a collision that posed many practical course with shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer, and with all 49 Labour MPs who voted for a problems, such as the fact single market amendment to the Queen’s Speech. Corbyn also had to admit he’d been less than that his ventilator would not honest on student fees, said Iain Martin on Reaction.life. Before the election, he’d upped Labour’s fit through their front door. manifesto pledge to scrap the system (cost: £11bn) by suggesting he’d also scrap pre-existing student debt. But as that would cost a whopping £100bn, he had to tell Marr it was just an “aspiration”. Diesel and petrol ban Corbyn’s “pious pitch that he is not like all the other politicians” has been revealed as “utter tosh”. New diesel and petrol cars are to be banned in the UK But here’s the thing, said Stephen Bush in the New Statesman: Corbyn’s reassertion of his from 2040. As part of the Eurosceptic beliefs won’t do much harm to party unity, because most Labour MPs agree with him. Government’s “air quality Those who don’t – the Remainer MPs defending majorities in big cities and university towns – can plan”, all new cars on the rest easy in the knowledge that Remain voters are in tune with him on most other issues. Nor will market will have to be fully the young be put off by Corbyn’s failure to grasp the economics of student debt reduction, said Katy electric (as opposed to hybrids); electric cars Balls on her Spectator blog. Fully 60% of 18- to 24-year-olds voted Labour in this year’s general currently account for less election (up from 43% in the 2015 election): but they did so not because they thought he was a than 1% of the total sold in “sound mathematician”, but “because he represented change”. More than that, said Julia Blunck in Britain. Environmental Prospect, they voted for Corbyn because, unlike all the other politicians, he did for them what every groups said the deadline demographic longs for a politician to do: he didn’t take them for granted. should be sooner.

Good week for: Spirit of the age Alice Cooper, the veteran US rock star, after he found an Andy Poll watch It seems 3D printers aren’t Warhol canvas worth up to $10m rolled up in a storage locker David Davis is Conservative just for plastic. Researchers alongside a collection of 1970s stage props. The singer had members’ preferred choice reckon vegetables should be completely forgotten about the artwork, given to him by a to succeed Theresa May as printed into fun shapes, to girlfriend some 40 years ago. “It was a rock’n’roll time,” said his leader: 21% back the Brexit make them more appealing manager, Shep Gordon. “None of us thought about anything.” Secretary; Boris Johnson is to children. In a trial, they their second choice, on 17%. put a mixture of bananas, Brenda Hale, who was appointed the first female president of 6% back Jacob Rees-Mogg, white beans, mushrooms the Supreme Court. Lady Hale, 72, will succeed Lord Neuberger and 5% Philip Hammond. and milk into a printer to in October. A champion of diversity in the judiciary, she has until PMP/The Observer produce a snack shaped like now been the only woman among the 12 justices of the Supreme an octopus. “Could different Court, but will soon be joined by Dame Jill Black. Theresa May has a net mixtures be mass-produced satisfaction rating of -25, and bought in by schools? Bad week for: the lowest ever recorded We strongly hope so,” said by a PM a month after an one of the team, from the Consumers, with official confirmation that thousands of election. The only previous University of Foggia, in Italy. products – from chocolate bars to packets of fish fingers – PM with a negative rating at have shrunk over the past five years. The Office for National this point was Tony Blair, Seven in ten British children Statistics identified 2,529 products that have fallen victim to who got -13 in 2005. have their first experience of “shrinkflation”, such as sharing bags of Maltesers (10% smaller), Ipsos Mori/London foreign travel before the age and Doritos, which have quietly gone down from 200g to 180g. Evening Standard of five, a survey has Schoolchildren, who finally broke up for the summer holidays suggested. And by the age 74% of voters consider the of eight, one fifth of them only to find that the long heatwave was over, replaced by clouds, Tories to be a divided party, own their own smartphone. blustery winds and, in many areas, relentless rain. The autumnal while 47% consider Labour By contrast, just 12% of weather was forecast to ease up for a day or two over the divided. In May, by contrast, over-50s had been abroad weekend, before resuming next week. just 29% thought the Tories by the time they were five: First class rail passengers, who may be ejected from their were divided, while 65% on average, they were 14 comfy seats. Transport Secretary Chris Grayling has vowed to believed Labour were. when they first went abroad. scrap first class carriages on busy routes, to tackle overcrowding. YouGov

THE WEEK 29 July 2017 Europe at a glance NEWS 5

Paris Berlin Donetsk, Ukraine Honeymoon over: Emmanuel Macron’s Crisis deepens: Deadliest fi ghting of the year: At least approval ratings have slumped ten points Tensions 15 Ukrainian soldiers were killed, and in the past month. Although the French between Nato 24 more wounded, over three days last president still enjoys the support of 54% allies Germany week, making it the bloodiest stretch of of voters, the fall is the most precipitous and Turkey fi ghting in eastern Ukraine this year, for a new president since Jacques Chirac escalated sharply according to fi gures from the Kyiv Post. At in 1995. A number of factors have been last week, after least six armed separatists were also killed. blamed for the abrupt end to Macron’s Germany’s The war in eastern Ukraine began in honeymoon period, including perceptions foreign minister 2014 after Russia annexed Crimea, and that he is arrogant and domineering, and advised German pro-Russian rebels – who the West believes anger over his proposed budget cuts. Last fi rms and are being funded, armed and aided by week, the head of the French armed forces investors to avoid doing business in Turkey, Moscow – proclaimed independent resigned after Macron unveiled an s850m and warned that German visitors to the “people’s republics” in the Donetsk and cut to defence spending. General Pierre country are “no longer safe from arbitrary Luhansk regions. Since then, the UN de Villiers said the cuts would leave him arrest”. Sigmar Gabriel said Germany was estimates that at least 10,090 people, unable to guarantee “the protection of “reorienting” its policy towards Turkey including 2,777 civilians, have been killed, France and the French people”. Days following the arrest of a German and nearly 24,000 wounded. earlier, Macron, 39, had used the Bastille consultant, Peter Steudtner, three weeks Day parade to tell the military top brass: ago (see page 15): he’s since been charged “I am your leader. I need no pressure, no with supporting a terrorist group. President commentary.” He is the fi rst postwar Erdogan (above, with Angela Merkel) French president who has neither been in has further fanned the fl ames by the army nor carried out military service, warning that Western agents are which was scrapped in the 1990s. “roaming free” in Turkey.

Saint-Tropez, France Coastal blaze: Wildfires raging in southern France forced the evacuation of at least 10,000 people overnight on Tuesday. The fi res broke out on Monday, in tinder-dry woodland close to tourist towns including Saint-Tropez, and on Corsica: 3,000 campers were among those escorted to safety. Meanwhile, in Italy the drought is becoming so severe that water may be rationed in Rome; and this week, Vatican officials announced they would be turning off the 100 or so fountains in Vatican City for the fi rst time in living memory.

Rome Istanbul, Turkey Bodrum, Turkey Corruption verdicts: The two leaders of Free press on trial: Seventeen journalists, Quake hits tourist spots: At least two a criminal gang that plundered Rome’s city editors, executives and cartoonists who people were killed and hundreds more coffers – as well as some 40 accomplices, work at one of Turkey’s last independent injured last Friday when a powerful 6.6 including politicians, officials and newspapers have gone on trial in Istanbul magnitude earthquake struck the tourist businessmen – have been found guilty of on charges of supporting terrorism, in a resort of Bodrum in southwest Turkey corruption at the end of a high-profile trial case that has become a symbol of the and the neighbouring Greek island of that started in November 2015. Massimo collapse of press freedom under President Kos, which lies a few miles off the Carminati, 59, a one-eyed former member Erdogan. The accused, most of whom Turkish coast. The undersea quake, of a notorious right-wing gang, who is have been in pretrial detention since last the strongest in the region for decades, known as “the last king of Rome”, was autumn, are accused of being covert struck at 1.31am, when many people sentenced to 20 years in prison; his members of the Gulenist movement that were still out enjoying the nightlife. In sidekick, convicted killer Salvatore Buzzi, Erdogan claims was behind the failed Kos, two tourists – one Swedish and 61, got 19 years. They were accused of army coup a year ago. In defiant court one Turkish – were killed when a bar using bribery and intimidation to win a statements, the journalists said they were roof collapsed. More than 120 people host of valuable public contracts covering victims of a cynical government assault were injured on the island. On the everything from building refugee centres on Cumhuriyet – a staunchly secular Turkish mainland, around 360 people to collecting refuse, and then skimming off newspaper that was founded in 1924. were injured in Bodrum and other millions. This corruption is believed to be “I am here not because I… helped a coastal towns and villages, many of one of the reasons Rome has fallen into terrorist organisation,” said Kadri Gürsel, them after jumping out of windows as such disrepair in recent years, with a columnist and long-time critic of the buildings shook. The earthquake also rubbish piled up on the streets, and its Gulenists, “but because I am an indepen- triggered 2ft-high tidal waves that roads riven with potholes. dent, questioning and critical journalist.” caused extensive fl ooding.

Catch up with daily news at www.theweek.co.uk 29 July 2017 THE WEEK 6 NEWS The world at a glance

Minneapolis, Minnesota Washington DC Police chief ousted: The police chief of Trump’s travails: President Trump caused consternation across Minneapolis resigned last week over the the political spectrum last week by appearing to suggest he could fatal shooting of an unarmed Australian simply pardon himself if found guilty of crimes in connection woman by a police officer. The city’s with Russian interference in the US election. And in a sign of his mayor, Betsy Hodges, said that the police growing frustration, the president used Twitter to attack his own chief, Janeé Harteau, had “lost the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, for his “VERY weak position on confidence of the people”; but protesters Hillary Clinton crimes”. Separately, Trump’s much-mocked press have also called for Hodges to step secretary, Sean Spicer, quit, following the appointment of former down. Justine Damond (pictured), 40, banker Anthony “The Mooch” Scaramucci as the White House’s made an emergency call to police on 15 new communications director. Spicer has been replaced by Sarah July to report a possible sexual assault in Huckabee Sanders. This week, Trump was widely criticised for an alley behind her house; when the making an inappropriately political speech at the Boy Scout police car drew up, she approached it – only to be shot, for Jamboree attended by tens of thousands of children; in a rambling reasons that remain unclear, by Mohamed Noor, a recent recruit 35-minute address, he lauded his own victory, and railed against who had been on an accelerated training programme. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and the “cesspool” of politics.

Bountiful, British Columbia Sect leaders guilty: Two former leaders of a breakaway Mormon sect, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, have been found guilty of polygamy by the Supreme Court of British Columbia. Winston Blackmore, 60, fathered 146 children with 25 wives. James Oler, 53, had fi ve wives. Seen as testing the limits of religious freedom in Canada, the case may end up in the federal Supreme Court. The sect has been based in the tiny community of Bountiful, close to the US border, since the late 1940s, and the authorities have been considering prosecutions since the 1990s. The mainstream Mormon church abandoned polygamy in 1890.

Carson City, Nevada Simpson gets parole: O.J. Simpson has been granted parole after serving nine years of a 33-year sentence for armed robbery, and could be freed as early as 1 October. The former American footballer was sensationally acquitted in 1995 of murdering his ex-wife Nicole Simpson, and her friend Ron Goldman, at the end of one of the most watched trials in history. Many continued to believe that he was guilty, however, and in 2008, he was jailed following a bizarre incident in which he and armed accomplices broke into a Las Vegas hotel room to retrieve sports memorabilia that he still maintains were his. “I’m not a guy that ever got in a fi ght in the street,” he told a parole hearing in Carson City last week. “I’m a guy who’s got along with just about everybody.”

San Antonio, Texas Migrants found dead in truck: Police discovered at least 38 migrants crammed into an airless truck parked outside a Walmart in the Texas city of San Antonio last Saturday night. Eight of them were already dead; two more died soon after. Many of the others were rushed to hospital suffering from extreme dehydration and heat stroke. The youngest was only 15. The migrants are believed to have paid traffickers to take them across the Mexican border, 150 miles away. The truck had no air conditioning, and its air vents were blocked. The driver – who has been charged with transporting undocumented workers, resulting in death – claims he had no idea there were people on board until he stopped to relieve himself and heard them banging. Temperatures in San Antonio reached 38ºC on Saturday. Caracas Washington DC Turmoil ahead of controversial McCain has cancer: The Republican vote: Five people were killed last senator John McCain has been diagnosed Thursday in clashes during a with an aggressive form of brain cancer, one-day national strike in Venezuela, he revealed last week. The tumour, taking the number killed in the violent unrest that has racked the known as a glioblastoma, was discovered country since April to at least 100. A further 48-hour general when he underwent surgery to remove strike was due to take place this week, ahead of voting on Sunday a blood clot above his left eye. McCain in elections for a new “constituent assembly” that President (pictured) – who endured torture during Maduro has said will rewrite the constitution. Many Venezuelans more than fi ve years of captivity as a believe the proposal for the constituent assembly is a nakedly prisoner of war in Vietnam – is widely anti-democratic attempt to seize power from the existing elected respected across the political spectrum. parliament, where the opposition parties have a majority of seats. Barack Obama, who defeated McCain in the 2008 presidential Maduro’s opponents are boycotting the poll; the president says

election, was among those to send messages of support. it is the only way to restore order to the country. © STEPHEN GOVEL/STEPHEN GOVEL PHOTOGRAPHY

THE WEEK 29 July 2017 The world at a glance NEWS 7

Jerusalem Clashes over holy site: Israel has removed Mosul, Iraq metal detectors from the entrance to an Gruesome revenge: Iraqi government forces important holy site known to Jews as the have been accused of perpetrating horrific Temple Mount, and to Muslims as the revenge attacks on Islamic State militants, and Noble Sanctuary. The detectors were on ordinary Iraqis they suspect of supporting installed last week, after Israeli Arabs the group during its occupation of Mosul. attacked and killed two policemen Commentators say that the attacks – many of guarding the site, in Jerusalem’s Old City. which were recorded on mobile phones – have The introduction of the new security tarnished Iraq’s victory in recapturing the city measures triggered days of unrest and a earlier this month, and threaten to unleash a diplomatic crisis with Jordan, which is the further cycle of violence. In one clip, troops are seen killing an unarmed fi ghter by custodian of the holy site as a result of the throwing him off a cliff. Other footage appears to show a special forces unit torturing peace deal it struck with Israel in 1994. and executing Sunni civilians. Bodies of prisoners, their hands tied, are a frequent Four Palestinians were killed in clashes sight on roads close to the city. The Iraqi PM, Haider al-Abadi, has said that the with Israeli security forces: hours later, perpetrators of such atrocities will be dealt with – but not yet, because it would three members of an Israeli family were “interfere with the current congratulatory victory messages”. stabbed to death at their home in a West Meanwhile, German authorities have confirmed that a 16-year-old Isis fi ghter Bank settlement. The crisis then spread to captured by Iraqi troops in Mosul is German schoolgirl Linda Wenzel (pictured), Jordan, where two Jordanians were killed who went missing from her home near Dresden a year ago. by a guard at Israel’s embassy in Amman.

Pyongyang Defector “kidnapped”: A North Korean defector who became a celebrity in South Korea appears to have been kidnapped and taken back to Pyongyang. Lim Ji Hyun – who frequently appeared on TV discussing the brutal conditions in the North – hadn’t been seen since April until she turned up last week in a North Korean propaganda video, in which she is seen weeping, castigating herself as “human trash” – a phrase often applied to defectors – and denouncing the “evils” of life in the South.

Salak, Hwange, Cameroon Zimbabwe Suspects tortured: Cecil’s son Hundreds of killed: One of people accused of the offspring having links to the of Cecil, the Islamist militant group Boko Haram – lion whose Jakarta often on the basis of fl imsy evidence or killing by an “Shoot drug dealers”: The president of no evidence at all – have been tortured by American trophy Indonesia has urged police to shoot dead security forces in Cameroon, according to hunter in 2015 drugs traffickers who resist arrest, to tackle Amnesty International. In its report, the caused global the “narcotics emergency” in his country. group says the torture amounts to war outrage, has also “Be fi rm, especially to foreign drug dealers crimes. Most of the 101 documented cases been shot dead. who enter the country and resist arrest,” involved men aged 18 to 45, but Amnesty Xanda (pictured), a six-year-old male who said President Joko Widodo at a political says women and children were also had fathered a number of cubs himself, meeting last week. Though the president’s tortured. Many of the victims were held at was shot earlier this month just outside spokesman insisted he was not advocating the headquarters of the Rapid Intervention the Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe a shoot-to-kill policy, Widodo was accused Battalion in Salak, in the north of by a tourist, as part of an organised hunt. of emulating the Philippines’ President Cameroon. Although Nigeria has borne Such activity is controversial but legal; the Duterte, whose call for an anti-drugs the brunt of Boko Haram atrocities, the hunter is believed to have paid around crusade last year has led to thousands of group has killed around 1,500 £40,000 for the shoot, and for Xanda’s drug dealers, and suspected drug dealers, Cameroonians in the past three years. head to be cured and mounted. being killed.

29 July 2017 THE WEEK 8 NEWS People

Britain’s top male vlogger People are drawing parallels If you’re over 20, and haven’t between its dystopian vision got teenage children, you may and Trump’s America. Others not have heard of Alfie Deyes. see in it the Islamic State. The But the 23-year-old is one of author insists that Gilead – the Britain’s most successful violent patriarchal theocracy vloggers, worth an estimated that uses Islamist terrorism as £4m. With his girlfriend and a pretext to seize power – is fellow YouTube star Zoe not based on any one group. “Zoella” Suggs, he’s half of That said, everything in the a media power couple. But he story, about female oppression didn’t set out to be. Aged 15, and state-sanctioned rape, has when he began making videos happened. “I put nothing in in his bedroom in Brighton, that people had not done at “it wasn’t a job”, he told Anna some time, in some place,” she Pointer in The Daily Telegraph. says. “Men have been stealing “There was no path to follow women for 5,000 years. or goal to achieve. It’d never Look at Argentina under the been done before.” Some might generals, look at Hitler, look struggle to understand quite at the Soviet Union in its what it is Deyes does now. His early phase… Just remember, videos notch up some 700,000 nobody’s off the hook – except views a day, yet only show him maybe the Quakers.” (and sometimes Suggs) “doing random stuff” – shopping in Gordon Ramsay’s drive Sainsbury’s, or playing with his Gordon Ramsay certainly has dog. He thinks people like it grit, says Natalie Whittle in the because it’s “real” – yet the FT. He is now a multi- couple try to keep a degree millionaire with an interest in She made her big-screen debut in the Australian fi lm Flirting – and of privacy, which isn’t easy. 30 restaurants worldwide. But has worked in Hollywood for years. But Naomi Watts is actually “People knock on our door,” he started at the bottom, and British by birth. Her mother, Myfanwy “Miv” Roberts, was a model; he says. “Every single day, worked his way up through her father, Peter “Puddie” Watts, was a sound engineer for Pink parents drive their kids over London’s best kitchens. Floyd. They were young when Naomi was born, in 1968, and hip. – and the adults are the ones Finally, in 1998, he opened One of the few surviving photos the actress has from that era shows who get annoyed when we a restaurant of his own – and her with her parents and the band on a beach in Saint-Tropez. Yet it say we won’t do pictures. They funded it by selling his and his was a very different life she craved. “I’d had enough of cool,” she lift their kids onto the walls wife Tana’s fi rst home. “You told Tom Lamont in The Guardian. “I didn’t want cool. I wanted my around our house, and throw can imagine her thoughts: parents to wear three-piece suits and tweed, not leather pants and stuff over. I’m always polite, ‘Well, how long are we going four-inch platform boots.” Her parents divorced in 1972: they but the way I see it, not even to have to rent for?’” he says. reconciled in 1976, but just weeks later, her father died, apparently my mum turns up uninvited.” “I didn’t shy away from [the of a heroin overdose. The members of Pink Floyd helped the family pressure]. I needed that kind of fi nancially (“It was kind that they did that”), but her life became yet Atwood on her dystopia drive, to make sure it had to more unsettled, as her mother moved from town to town trying to Margaret Atwood wrote The work. It wasn’t maybe, or what build a career. Each time, Watts had to start at a new school, and Handmaid’s Tale in 1985, says if, or we’ll see what happens. each time, she says, she’d stand on the edge of the playground, and Hannah Betts in The Times. No, this f***ing place is going try to work out what role – what accent – would get her admitted to Three decades on, her novel, to work and be one of the best the group. All perhaps useful training for the future, but that wasn’t now adapted into a TV drama, restaurants in the country. I am a silver lining she perceived at the time. “I just remember always has found a new relevance. going to eat, drink, sleep it.” wanting to be something else. Quite sad, isn’t it?”

Castaway of the week Viewpoint: Farewell This week’s edition of Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs featured The new Wild West Jayne-Anne Gadhia, the chief executive of Virgin Money John Heard, best “Last year, a website called Pornhub known for playing the 1* Canon in D Major by Johann Pachelbel had 23 billion visits. Some of the father in the Home 2 Bohemian Rhapsody by Freddie Mercury, performed by Queen popular search terms were ‘crying in Alone fi lms, died 3 Parisienne Walkways by Gary Moore and Phil Lynott, performed pain’, ‘sleep assault’ and ‘teen’. It’s 21 July, aged 71. by Gary Moore possible that people watch this stuff Lord McCluskey, 4 Baker Street by Gerry Rafferty, performed by Hugh Burns, Tommy online and remain loving partners and former solicitor general Eyre, Nigel Jenkins, Glen LeFleur, Raphael Ravenscroft, Henry for Scotland, died 20 Spinetti, Gary Taylor and Gerry Rafferty pillars of society. It’s more likely that they don’t. The internet has changed July, aged 88. 5 Keep on Loving You by Kevin Cronin, performed by REO Speedwagon so much of our culture. We rage. We Michael Nyqvist, Swedish actor, died 6 Now We are Free (from the film Gladiator) by Hans Zimmer, shriek. We hate. We do this in the name 27 June, aged 56. Lisa Gerrard and Klaus Badelt, performed by Lisa Gerrard, of free speech. We buy things with a The Lyndhurst Orchestra and Gavin Greenaway click. We swipe for sex. We want Raymond Sackler, 7 Survivor by Donny Osmond, Paul Begaud, Vanessa Corish, James instant everything, all the time. When pharmaceutical tycoon Jayawardena and Eliot Kennedy, performed by Donny Osmond Tim Berners-Lee imagined an ‘open and philanthropist, 8 Everything I Do (I Do it for You) by Bryan Adams, Michael Kamen platform that would allow everyone, died 17 July, aged 97. and Robert Lange, performed by Bryan Adams everywhere, to share information…’, Mary Turner, president Book: Les Misérables by Victor Hugo he probably didn’t dream of a Wild of the GMB union, died West that would do us so much harm.” 19 July, aged 79. Luxury: a sari * Choice if allowed only one record Christina Patterson in The Guardian

THE WEEK 29 July 2017

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Where did opinion polling begin? likely balance of power based on polling Like most modern political phenomena, predictions. They can also induce a in America. Between 1916 and 1932, a “bandwagon effect” – voters plumping popular news magazine, the Literary for the party that the polls deem the Digest, attracted much publicity by likely winner. A detailed study of the correctly predicting the results of 2003 Netherlands election found some presidential elections by mailing millions 20% of voters were affected by polls, of mock ballots to voters and counting with many swinging behind the surging the returns. But in 1936, George Gallup, PvdA (Labour) party. Such distortions of a statistician turned market researcher, “the people’s will” are even more became convinced the magazine was striking when predictions are wrong. heading for a fall: the mailing lists it used came from telephone directories and car And have they often been wrong? registrations, and thus excluded poorer In recent times spectacularly so, both in voters. So Gallup conducted his own the US (where almost all polls predicted a poll. It was far smaller but it used “quota win for Hillary Clinton), and in Britain, sampling”: it targeted a proportionate where the pollsters have called three UK mini-electorate, reflecting the race, age, elections wrongly in three years. In the sex and income ratios of the real one. George Gallup: “taking the pulse of democracy” 2015 general election, they said Labour Gallup correctly predicted both that FDR and the Tories were neck and neck; in would win, and that the Literary Digest would wrongly call his the EU referendum, they predicted a win for Remain; in this year’s rival, Alfred Landon, as the victor at 56%. The Literary Digest election, they foretold a clear Tory win, wildly underestimating went out of business, and the polling industry was born. Labour’s vote share. This distorted media coverage: in 2015, the media fi xated on the prospect of a hung parliament and the SNP Was it greeted with enthusiasm? holding the balance of power. As a result, many voters probably From the beginning there were doubts: the word pollster was cast their vote on a false prospectus. “If the polls had reflected initially an insult, like “huckster”. But polls were enthusiastically reality,” said an aide of then-Labour leader Ed Miliband of the adopted by the media, and by interest groups eager to commission 2015 election, “it would have been a totally different campaign.” pollsters to ask leading questions and gather “scientific” proof It has also been suggested that many voted for Brexit as a protest, that the public agreed with their concerns. Pollsters were soon thinking Leave would lose, and then suffered pangs of “Regrexit”. claiming to be able to assess matters as elusive as whether we believe in God, whether we’re happy, and who we trust. Their What can be done to correct such distortions? surveys have come to influence everything from policy on such Some 40 nations now ban opinion polls in the run-up to elections, key questions as immigration, gay marriage and drug legislation, to avoid affecting the result. In Israel, it’s illegal to publicise an to what kind of consumer products we get offered. For Gallup, election-related poll in the four days before the vote. In Norway, the new technique offered the best way to “take the pulse of there’s a 24-hour ban; South Korea has a blackout lasting seven democracy”. But many remained sceptical. To French philosopher days. However, in the US such a ban would be unconstitutional Jean Baudrillard, polls were a sorry reflection of a mass media age on freedom of speech grounds; it would probably be unacceptable in which “there is more and more information, and less and less in this country too. In any case, for all their shortcomings, polls meaning”. They fail to distinguish between strong and fl imsy are still arguably preferable to the alternative. “I think a society is preferences, say the critics, and they tend to trivialise politics. likely to operate more effectively if it understands itself better,” says the psephologist John Curtice. Without polls “all you get is a In what way are polls said to cheapen politics? bunch of politicians saying everybody thinks that, or everybody It’s often suggested they encourage politicians to pander to the thinks this, we’re winning votes, no, we’re winning votes. How latest popular sentiment – usually the hell do we know who’s right?” based on ignorance or short-term self- Polling in theory and practice The best solution is probably for the interest – rather than making long- Most polling in the UK is done by locating between media to give less credence to polls term decisions for the general good. 1,000 and 4,000 interviewees who fill quotas based on (the BBC now won’t lead a bulletin Polls are also said to divert attention demographic characteristics – young and old, southern on a poll result) and for the polling from the issues: their dominant role in and northern – and weighting the results to take into companies to improve their accuracy. the news narrows the media focus to account a range of factors, such as the likelihood of the performance of the leaders, voting. Most polls are done by phone, some are done How can the polls get better? turning elections into horse races. But face to face (which is thought to be less accurate), and An in-depth study commissioned by the most telling criticism is that polls some (a minority) on the internet. In theory, most the British Polling Council after the results are accurate to within a margin of error of +/-3% undermine the democratic process by – so, in a close election, even at the best of times that 2015 result has identified a series of influencing the election result itself. could easily mean calling the wrong result. failings, including giving insufficient weight to postal votes and to the low As it happens, pollsters before 2015 did tend to call the And do they influence elections? result correctly, though they got it wrong in 1970 and turnout among certain social groups. Almost certainly. For a start, they 1992 (when failure to predict John Major’s win was Pollsters were also considered to be often affect the timing of elections, blamed on “shy Tories” hiding their intentions). But guilty of “herding” – adjusting their because politicians only call elections today, polls are often well outside the margin of error. results to bring them closer to other when they think they can win. The key problem seems to be that finding interviewees companies’ results. But the basic Research over the past 30 years is getting harder: people are less inclined to share their problem was “unrepresentative suggests they also influence the way views. When Gallup was polling, the response rate sampling”: their samples of voters people vote, particularly in the late was over 90%; in 2015, ICM had to call 30,000 numbers under-represented some types of stages of a close-fought campaign. to get just 2,000 responses. And those who do respond voter and over-represented others – are often too politically engaged to be representative – They can encourage more tactical one reason errors are more common. a problem that goes to the very heart voting, as voters bear in mind the of polling (see box).

29 July 2017 THE WEEK

Best articles: Britain NEWS 13

Why are so many people on the Left so down on Brexit, asks Larry Elliott. It’s partly because when Thatcherism was in the ascendant, IT MUST BE TRUE… If you’re on the Labour saw Brussels as a check on “free-market zealotry”. But a I read it in the tabloids clutch of Labour MPs, including Jeremy Corbyn, always realised Left, you should that neo-liberalism was “hardwired into the European project”. Michael Phelps not only lost his made-for-TV race with They saw that its “stability and growth” pact had a bias towards support Brexit a shark; it now turns out he austerity; that its common agriculture policy was disastrous for wasn’t even competing with developing nations; that its neo-liberal competition laws inhibit Larry Elliott a live fish in the much-hyped new approaches to state aid, state ownership and public procure- Phelps vs. Shark event. The Guardian ment. Brexit provides the impetus to change all that: without it, Instead, the 23-time Olympic this country will never get the chance to adopt a “radical socialist champion was pitted against programme”. It’s not as if the status quo is so great. As a member a computer-generated shark of the single market, Britain has become a low-wage economy swimming at a pre-recorded with stagnant pay levels and a chronic balance of payments defi cit, shark speed. Online, viewers said they felt conned: even if where growth is “ever more dependent on consumers’ appetite for they hadn’t expected Phelps debt”. As Corbyn rightly recognises, the EU is part of the problem and the shark to swim in inherent in modern capitalism, not part of the solution. adjoining lanes, they had at least thought that a real If Donald Trump can be shown to have colluded with Russia, animal was going to be will his supporters “finally peel off”? Liberals are hoping so, says involved in the race. But Why football Simon Kuper. What they don’t realise is that many Trumpsters are Phelps insists he made it “more than just voters. They are political fans.” This is a modern clear that he had no intention is the template phenomenon, stoked by social media, that’s more like supporting of getting into the water with a great white. “I don’t think a sports team than a politician. As traditional sources of identity for our politics that would probably end very – race, class, religion, geography – fade or become less socially well,” he told Vanity Fair acceptable, political fandom appeals to those in need of a tribe. It Simon Kuper before the race. In the event, works best in two-party systems, as in the UK and the US, which Phelps – wearing flippers Financial Times mimic the “us versus them” format of sport. Partisans gather on designed to mimic a shark’s Twitter or Facebook to root for their candidate and boo at the tail fin, to boost his speed – other side. They go to rallies wearing branded merchandise lost to the pre-recorded shark declaring their affiliation, like football fans. Policy is a secondary by just two seconds. issue: that’s why Corbyn’s Euroscepticism is easily brushed off by left-wing Remainers. And as with football, diehard fans support their teams even – or especially – in adversity. “They cannot see their own team’s fouls, so presume that referees are against them.”

The free movement of people is the EU’s “most incendiary issue”, says Janet Daley. This “sacred principle” to which the Brussels Free movement ideologues remain devoted isn’t just a sticking point in Brexit negotiations, it’s a source of tension across the Union: currently, is a principle France violates its spirit by patrolling the Italian border to stop migrants slipping through. More than that, it’s played a key role in that’s doomed creating Europe’s mass migration problem. Movement of people from poor, chaotic countries to rich, stable ones has long been Elephants are good Janet Daley a fact of life – what’s new is “the miraculous invitation offered by swimmers, but in Sri Lanka the creatures seem to be The Sunday Telegraph a borderless Europe”. It sends a message to the world: “set foot on any Greek island, or on the southernmost rocky prominence of overdoing it a bit. Earlier Italy”, and you can “make your way unhindered to the fl ourishing this month, the navy had to nations of Western Europe”. Underpinning it is a basic refusal to rescue a wild elephant accept that member states have different needs: northern ones that had got into difficulty benefit from an influx of cheap labour, but many of the migrants ten miles out to sea; and are trapped in Italy, which has 40% youth unemployment. To this week, two youngsters save the EU, free movement will have to be restricted. “The only had to be towed to safety question is how organised or chaotic that process is going to be.” after being seen struggling about half a mile offshore. How often statistics that grab the headlines divert attention from It was, said rescuers, a what’s really going on, says Paul Johnson. From the furore over “mammoth effort”. Worry about BBC pay scales, you’d think incomes in the UK are getting more A rail operator in Sweden has unequal, and the pay gap between men and women larger. Not vowed to name one of its fl at wages, not so. Income inequality is lower than it was before the fi nancial trains Trainy McTrainface, crisis; and though women still earn less, their “earnings are higher after it came top in a public unequal pay relative to those of men than they have ever been”. It’s not rising poll. Trainy McTrainface swept to victory with 49% of Paul Johnson inequality but “the massive squeeze on incomes right across the population” that presents the biggest challenge of the past decade. the vote. This is “news that will be received with joy by The Times Average real incomes are below their 2008 level, a fall “unique in many, not just in Sweden,” at least 150 years”. But that’s not because more are out of work: said the operator, MTR most of those classed as poor live in families where someone has a Express, referring (it seems) job. As for middle-income families with children, a striking trend to the Britons who voted to is that half now rent their property: in the 1990s, more than have a new polar explorer two-thirds were owner-occupiers. Many also get in-work benefits, named Boaty McBoatface, so they increasingly feel they’ve more in common with the poor only to be overridden: the than the rich. These are the key trends shaping our society, not £200m boat is to be called some “non-existent spiralling in income inequality”. RRS Sir David Attenborough.

29 July 2017 THE WEEK

Best articles: Europe NEWS 15

Is democracy dying in Poland? A major assault on democracy and rein to pursue PiS critics, said Ewa judicial independence is under way Siedlecka in Polityka (Warsaw). in Poland, said Ingrid Steiner-Gashi All those who demonstrate against in Kurier (Vienna), yet the EU the monthly church services he has seems powerless to stop it. The introduced to honour his dead ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) – brother (the former president, who buoyed by the way Donald Trump died in the 2010 Smolensk air appeared to approve of their crash) could be given jail sentences authoritarian policies on his recent for “disrupting religious rites”. We visit – sought to take control of the might even see the former prime independent body that appoints minster Donald Tusk – whom judges. And now it has pushed Kaczynski has long blamed for through further bills, including one causing the crash through his that allows it to replace Supreme negligence – being put on trial. Court judges with party loyalists. Protesters in front of Krakow Court last week The PiS claims it is obliged to In Warsaw, thousands of people enact the new reforms because carrying candles took to the streets on Sunday to protest. Poland’s judges are corrupt and because the court system is too There is also “massive outrage” in Brussels. The European slow, said Leonid Bershidsky on Bloomberg (New York). Commission is threatening to invoke Article 7 of the EU Treaty, Neither claim is true: only five judges have been convicted of which is triggered when all the other member states in the bribe-taking in the past 15 years, and court hearings take about European Council agree that the offending state is guilty of a the same time as in Germany. Not that it’s necessarily a bad “serious and persistent breach” of the union’s values. If they thing for politicians to have some say in choosing judges: it do, this could lead to Warsaw being deprived of voting rights in happens in both the US and in Germany, for example. the European Council. But the EU is bluffing. The Council will never achieve the unanimity required as long as Hungary’s But the difference is that in those countries, the opposition has Viktor Orbán continues to side with Poland. But thanks to some say in confirming the candidates, said Bartosz Dudek in Poland’s President Andrzej Duda, there has at least been a Deutsche Welle (Berlin). It won’t in Poland. So disregard all the temporary reprieve, says Rick Lyman in The New York Times. PiS talk about “democratic legitimacy”. When Kaczynski Normally a staunch PiS supporter, Duda surprised everyone on speaks of “returning the courts to the people”, he really means Monday by vetoing two of the three bills before him. tightening his party’s grip on power, just as he did last year, when he began “reforming” the state media in the name of Poles shouldn’t think that the only victims in all this will be the “news diversity”: he actually turned it into an instrument of politicians and journalists – all of us are threatened, says Cezary state propaganda. The worrying thing, however, is that he will Michalski in Newsweek Polska (Warsaw). Imagine the effect on probably get away with his reform. The press may have given a women’s rights once fanatical Catholic conservatives are running lot of attention to the candlelit protest, but in reality, it was no our courts. Without the curb of judicial restraint, think how more than 10,000 people in a city of nearly two million. What’s easy it will be to fire teachers for opposing school reforms, or more, the PiS still polls at 35% to 40%, compared to 22% to to eavesdrop on our phones. PiS leader Jarosław Kaczynski, the 25% for the largest opposition party. “We can only hope that power behind the throne in Polish politics, will now have free the thousands of protesters did not carry their candles in vain.”

The shocking arrests of human rights activists in Turkey is new cause to regret the EU’s refugee deal TURKEY with President Erdogan, says Benjamin Abtan. The ten detainees include Amnesty International’s director for Turkey, Idil Eser, and a German consultant, Peter Steudtner, who was visiting Istanbul Scrap the for a seminar; both are charged with supporting “armed terrorism” and may be in jail for two years before going on trial. Erdogan thinks that as long as we need him to stop refugees travelling to refugee deal Europe (for which the EU is giving him s6bn) we can’t do a thing about it. But the agreement, made back in March 2016, has served its purpose and should be scrapped. The new European Border and with Erdogan Coast Guard Agency set up in October gives Europe a lot more control than before over its external Público borders, making it far less dependent on Turkey should the crisis erupt again. Erdogan will of course (Lisbon) threaten to unleash a new surge of refugees. But he has good reason to keep them in Turkey – to aid his campaign against Kurdish separatism. Settled in the southeast of the country, they’ll put pressure on the Kurds by competing for jobs and, once granted citizenship, will be a reliable source of support for the ruling AKP. The German public, livid at Steudtner’s detention, is putting pressure on Chancellor Merkel to act. She could make a start by cancelling this “useless” agreement.

In a disturbing echo of the 1930s, anti-Semitic tropes are reappearing in Hungary, say Christian Böhme HUNGARY and Judith Langowski. Members of Viktor Orbán’s right-wing government have been staging a public campaign against George Soros, the Hungarian-born Jewish philanthropist who funds the The anti-Soros pro-democracy groups that they see as enemies. So they’ve taken to calling Soros the “true president” of the EU, the shadowy fi nancier who pulls the strings of “puppet” leaders like Jean-Claude Juncker. attacks echo They claim that in support of the EU’s refugee settlement policy, Soros has been calling for a million immigrants to be let into Hungary, a claim he dismisses as nonsense. This month giant posters of his the 1930s face were plastered around Budapest, even on metro station fl oors, with the slogan: “Don’t let Soros Der Tagesspiegel have the last laugh” on immigration, a deliberate play on the Nazi “laughing Jew” stereotype. That’s (Berlin) not all. Orbán has heaped praise on former Hungarian dictator Miklós Horthy, a man who did not stop the Nazis deporting hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews to the gas chambers. Oddly, none of this seemed to trouble Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu on his visit to Hungary last week. He sees the autocratic Orbán as an ally: usually so quick to complain of anti-Semitism, he turned a blind eye. We must hope Europe’s leaders prove less supine in the face of such provocation.

29 July 2017 THE WEEK 16 NEWS Best articles: International

The Nobel Prize-winner who terrified China’s leaders China has earned a grim place in was making great strides economically, history with its mistreatment of Nobel lifting hundreds of millions of people Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, said out of poverty. “Western forces and The Globe and Mail (Toronto). The dissidents like Liu are disrupters of 61-year-old Chinese thinker and China’s steady progress.” No surprise dissident died of liver cancer earlier this that China’s state-controlled press month while under guard in hospital: should seek to denigrate Liu, said the officials had refused to let him go South China Morning Post (Hong abroad for treatment. The only other Kong). Beijing saw him as a direct Nobel Peace Prize laureate to die in threat to one-party rule. The kind of custody was the German pacifist Carl open debate Liu advocated has been von Ossietzky, who was imprisoned by the “persistent fear of Chinese leaders the Nazis. Liu had spent much of the through the centuries”: in Beijing’s eyes, previous 30 years in jail. He was first it could only “lead to disputes and then detained in 1989, for his part in the Liu with his wife, the artist Liu Xia chaos”. But for China and the world, Tiananmen Square protests. His final Liu’s death is actually “a tragedy”. stretch began in 2009, when he was locked up for co-authoring the pro-democracy manifesto Charter 08, which called for China’s Communist Party cadres are “not uniformly heartless”, “such dangerous innovations” as free speech, freedom of said Jamil Anderlini in the FT. “I know several who think Liu’s religion, and an independent judiciary. The regime remains so treatment was disgraceful.” But they also see it as a necessary afraid of Liu’s ideas that it had his body cremated and the ashes evil to avoid the civil strife that would result if his ideas were scattered at sea, depriving his supporters of a memorial site. allowed to spread unchecked. Yet the party is storing up trouble for itself. “By rejecting gradual top-down democratisation, it is Enough with the deification of this convicted criminal, said the increasing the likelihood of an eventual bottom-up rejection of Global Times (Beijing). The Western media has heaped laurels authoritarian rule.” No doubt when that time comes, demon- on Liu, likening him to Nelson Mandela. In fact, he was a strators will carry banners featuring Liu’s image and the words “paranoid, naive and arrogant” political agitator. During the he wrote, but was forbidden to read, at his 2009 trial: “There is decades that he was attempting to stir up trouble here, China no force that can put an end to the human quest for freedom.”

UNITED STATES President Trump is “incompetent at countless aspects of his job”, says Ronald A. Klain, but he has been “wildly successful” in one area: lining up conservative nominees for the federal courts. When he entered the White House, there were more than 100 judicial vacancies – largely because Senate Liberals in a Republicans had obstructed dozens of judicial picks at the end of Barack Obama’s second term. And in his fi rst six months in office, Trump has not only had a new Supreme Court justice confirmed, but spin over also selected no fewer than 27 lower court judges – three times as many as Barack Obama managed in his fi rst six months, and more than twice as many as Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Trump’s judges Clinton combined managed in that time period. Trump’s picks are mostly young and “strikingly The Washington Post Trumpian”, which is very bad news for liberals as federal judges serve for life. And the Democrats, being a minority in the Senate, can do little to block such picks since the Republicans have abolished the use of the fi libuster for judicial appointments. Trump may not be around for long, but many of his judicial nominees will still be interpreting America’s laws “in the year 2050 – and beyond”.

RWANDA “After decades of searching,” says Simon Allison, “Africa’s leaders think they have found a homegrown, Afrocentric development plan that works.” It’s called the “Rwanda model”. And you only need to visit that country to see why they’re so excited. Kigali is unlike any other African The downside capital. It’s an “immaculate” city of well-tended verges and world-class hotels. You can walk anywhere safely at night. The nation as a whole is also thriving, leading some to dub it “Africa’s of an African Singapore”. Life expectancy has shot up from 49 to 64.5 years since 2000. The key to Rwanda’s success is a strict system of accountability, in which each layer of society, down to the village level, success story must monitor its progress and answer to the one above. The system allows for “extraordinarily Mail & Guardian direct governance”, but also includes elements of “peer shaming” and “Big Brother” surveillance. (Johannesburg) And there are other darker aspects to Rwanda, too: there’s no free media, for instance, and human rights groups talk of “undesirable” people being rounded up off the streets and held in “rehabilitation centres”. Many would say these authoritarian aspects are an “acceptable trade-off” for the progress elsewhere. But the danger of holding up Rwanda as an example for other African nations is that the “repressive elements” of its model are “much easier to replicate than anything else”.

Health officials claim that the US is in the throes of an “unprecedented opioid epidemic”, says UNITED STATES Stephen Mihm, but that’s not quite true. There’s no denying the country is suffering an epidemic of drug abuse, stemming from the overprescription of a powerful new class of painkillers in the 1990s. We’ve faced a But unprecedented? No. A similar epidemic beset America 150 years ago, and it began in much the same way, with well-meaning doctors embracing a new type of drug as the answer to all manner of drug crisis like aches and pains. Back then, however, it was morphine, use of which became ever more prevalent in the 1870s thanks to the widespread introduction of the hypodermic needle. Many wounded veterans this before became addicts, but so, too, did many people suffering from arthritis. “Women also became addicts Bloomberg en masse, thanks to the practice of treating menstrual cramps – or for that matter, any female (New York) complaint of pain – with injections of morphine.” Eventually, doctors adopted a more responsible approach, and the epidemic of morphine addiction began to burn itself out. But it took decades. “It may take just as long before doctors kick the habit of prescribing powerful pain pills.”

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Health & Science NEWS 19 What the scientists are saying… Poor sleep linked to Alzheimer’s high as 150°C for a few minutes, and as Sleeping badly could put people at greater low as -200°C for days. They’re at home in risk of Alzheimer’s disease. So say the low-pressure vacuum of space; they’re researchers in the US, who have found a equally at ease in the crushing pressure of significant association between breathing the Marianas Trench, in the Pacific. “It is disorders such as sleep apnea, and the hard to work out how to kill tardigrades,” accumulation of biomarkers for said Dr David Sloan, an Oxford University Alzheimer’s. And though a cause and effect astrophysicist. “Could you get the planet link has not been proven, they think that cold enough? No. Increase the pressure treating these disorders might reduce enough? No. Make the oceans acidic people’s risk of the disease, or at least slow enough? No.” To eliminate them, he its progression. Obstructive sleep apnea is reckons you’d have to boil the oceans dry believed to affect around 30% of men and – “not a simple task”. The existence of 20% of women, and occurs when the such resilient creatures raises the chances upper airway closes during sleep. In one of life existing on planets with conditions study, the team looked at the accumu- that would seem to preclude it. It also lations of amyloid plaques – a marker for offers reassurance that long after the Alzehimer’s – in the brains of 500 people human race has been wiped out, life on who did not have dementia, and found Earth will continue. that people with sleep problems had more The remarkably resilient tardigrade of this plaque than those who did not. In a Beavers restoring wetlands second study, they looked at nearly 800 of plastic is piling up in landfill sites, or in Beavers reintroduced to rivers in Scotland people with mild cognitive impairment – the natural environment. In Britain, it is are helping to restore the local landscape, often a precursor to dementia – and found estimated that we throw away 16 million turning fi elds drained for farming back that levels of beta-amyloid were higher in plastic bottles every day. into biodiverse wetlands. A team from those with sleep problems. “These fi ndings Stirling University looked at the effects of a indicate that sleep apnea may be facilitating The last survivors group of beavers on land near Blairgowrie, cognitive decline,” said Megan Hogan, of When the nuclear war has been lost, and in Tayside, and found that over 12 years Wheaton College, Illinois. “Screening for the asteroid has struck, when our oceans from 2003, the number of plant species and [treating] sleep apnea should be a high are dead, and even the cockroaches have grew by 148%; in the same period, the priority, especially in individuals with mild given up the ghost, one creature will creatures built 195 metres of dams, 500 cognitive impairment.” endure: the tardigrade. These tiny, eight- metres of canals, and an acre of ponds. legged “extremophiles”, also known as “Wetland restoration normally involves Our modern, plastic world water bears, are so resilient, scientists raising water levels, for example by ditch Before the War, it barely existed. Since believe they will outlive every other species blocking, plus mowing or grazing to then, we have produced 8.3 billion tons of – and could even outlive our Sun. In fact, maintain diversity,” said Dr Alan Law, an plastic – equivalent to the weight of 25,000 it’s hard to imagine a cataclysmic event author of the study. “Beavers offer a more Empire State Buildings, according to a that could eliminate them. Deprived of hands-off solution.” However, farmers study published in the journal Scientific water, they dry into husks, but come back continue to express strong concern that if Advances. Some 70% of the plastic to life if rehydrated; put them in a freezer their populations are not contained, the produced has been thrown away; of that, at -20°C, and they’ll go into a suspended rodents are liable to cause enormous only 9% has been recycled, and 12% animation in which they can survive for damage to productive farmland – by, for incinerated. Which means billions of tons decades. They can endure temperatures as instance, destroying vital drainage systems.

“My hands can always help me” Life expectancy slowing The first child to receive a double hand transplant has Having risen for a century, life achieved his ambition of swinging a baseball bat. expectancy in England is grinding to a Zion Harvey’s hands and feet had to be amputated halt. The reason is unclear; however, Sir when, aged two, he contracted a life-threatening sepsis Michael Marmot, of University College infection, which also caused his kidneys to fail. He London, told the BBC that austerity had a kidney transplant aged four, using an organ could be to blame. According to Office donated by his mother, Pattie Ray, and had the hand for National Statistics fi gures, life transplant in 2015, at the Children’s Hospital of expectancy at birth had, until around 2009, been going up so fast that women Philadelphia, when he was eight. Involving 40 people, were gaining an extra year of life every the 11-hour operation was risky, but doctors decided fi ve years, and men every three-and-a- that the fact that Zion (pictured) was already taking half years. But post-2010, there has been immunosuppressant drugs, combined with his positive a dramatic deceleration. Now, women personality and determination to lead an independent are only likely to gain an extra year life, made him a good candidate. every decade; and men every six years. Within days, he was able to move his new fingers, Dismissing the idea that humans have and after 18 months of therapy, he was able to write, simply reached their natural lifespan, Sir feed himself, and dress himself. He can stroke his Michael noted that some other countries have longer life expectancies; he said mother’s face and feel her skin; he can catch and that it was far more plausible that cuts throw a ball, and, of course, grip a bat. It’s unclear to social care funding and the NHS were how far his therapy can take him. However, his doctors are optimistic, and so is he. having a negative impact on the quality “I have got one left hand and one right hand,” says the ten-year-old. “They can of care given to elderly patients – always help me. When I fall down, I’ll get right back up.” leading to their earlier deaths.

29 July 2017 THE WEEK 20 NEWS Talking points

Pick of the week’s Vince Cable: can he revive the Lib Dems? Vince Cable is no stranger to Brexit, yet left-leaning Remainers Gossip Lib Dem leadership, said knew that to get the Tories out, Paula Keaveney on The they had to vote Labour. Cable Returning from a recent G20 summit dinner in Hamburg, Conversation. Ten years ago, he is now the only party leader Donald Trump told the press was touted as a contender to offering a second referendum he had been seated next to replace Menzies Campbell. He on the terms of the Brexit deal Akie Abe, wife of the didn’t stand – but he did stand – but the chances of a substantial Japanese president. in, until Nick Clegg was proportion of the electorate Unfortunately, he said, they appointed. Now the former taking him up on it, and so had sat in silence for almost business secretary has taken the splitting the anti-Tory vote, two hours. “She’s a terrific reins on a more permanent basis. “are negligible”. woman, but doesn’t speak He formally declared his English. Like, not ‘hello’.” Mrs Abe is known to be candidacy last month, and when It’s funny that Cable is making reluctant to speak English – no other contenders emerged “exit from Brexit” such a central but not incapable. A from the party’s pool of just 12 plank of his leadership, said Asa YouTube video has MPs before last week’s deadline, Bennett in The Daily Telegraph. emerged of her delivering a he became, at 74, Britain’s oldest Only a year ago, he warned his 15-minute address at a New party leader since Churchill Cable: “too tardy” party that seeking to undo Brexit York climate symposium – resigned in 1955, aged 80. at this point was “disrespectful” entirely in English. “There is a huge gap in the centre of British to the electorate, and counterproductive. Yet politics, and I intend to fi ll it,” Cable said. He now he is having to sell that same policy with a indicated that he would start by exploring ways straight face. Is this what his party wants? A of easing inequality by, say, aligning capital leader offering the same approach as Tim gains tax with income tax. Farron, “but with greyer hair”? The Lib Dems face a dilemma, said Philip Collins in The Times. At 74, Cable is not too old, said Deborah Orr in If they can come up with some tub-thumping The Guardian, but he is “too tardy”. He should policies, they could – given the EU mess have put himself forward ten years ago, and so engulfing the Tories, and the feuds within perhaps have spared the party the damage Labour – win enough protest votes to play a key wrought by the decision to go into that “awful role in the formation of a future government. coalition”. Clegg’s slavish support for the Tories But were they to get back into power, they’d was such a disaster for the party that it cost Sir immediately once again lose their appeal as a Vince his own seat in 2015, and there was really sanctuary for protest voters. To break this cycle, no hope for the Lib Dems at the last election, the fi ssures in the two main parties will have to Jacob Rees-Mogg, who under our fi rst-past-the-post system. Neither of split wide open. If they do, then Sir Vince’s recently became a father the main parties were offering an alternative to “final act” might get interesting. for the sixth time, has admitted that he has never changed a nappy. “I’ve made no pretence to be Retirement: only for the rich? a modern man at all, ever,” he told Nigel Farage on “Pensions? Just don’t go there.” Truth is, many a “serious challenge” for any government; one LBC radio. The Tory MP of us prefer not to think about how we’re going that is complicated by the myriad ways in which (pictured) said he left such to fund our lives in retirement – and there’s a the world of work is changing. The idea that matters to “Nanny” – aka reason for that, said Iain Macwhirter in The people will stay in one career, let alone one job, Veronica Crook, who looked Herald (Glasgow): the fi gures are simply too for life is fast becoming outdated; and such is the after him as a child and now frightening. Consider this: if you want to buy pace of change, it’s not clear what kinds of jobs cares for his own brood. a pension delivering a modest £20,000 a year, we might be doing in a few years, let alone “She knows a thing or two index-linked, you’ll need to have saved well over decades. Nor is there any certainty that we’ll be about doing it properly.” £600,000 at present annuity rates. “That’s more able to work until we’re 68, said Gaby Hinsliff The human rights lawyer than someone on average earnings of £26,000 in The Guardian. Which is why the rise in the Geoffrey Robertson had earns in 20 years – all of it.” Now, to make our pension age is worrying even for the lucky few better excuses for avoiding prospects yet more bleak, the Government has of us who have cushy jobs that we’d love to keep nappy duty. Novelist Kathy announced that it’s raising the state pension age doing. Assuming we’re still in good health, and Lette revealed this week that earlier than planned. The upshot is that if you automation and new technologies haven’t swept her 27-year marriage to are 47 or younger, you won’t even get your away our roles, who will want to hire us when Robertson has come to an far-from-easeful £155 per week from the state we’re 62? As for manual workers, exhausted by amicable end. She added: (assuming that you’ve made 35 years of solid decades of labour, they may not be physically “The trouble with being married to a human rights NI contributions) until you are 68. The change capable of doing their jobs into their late-60s. lawyer is you can never get (which could yet be blocked in Parliament) is the moral high ground. expected to save the Government £74bn over We should be doing more, sooner, to address the When I’d say to him, ‘Geoff, the years up to 2045-46. issue, which is only going to be made worse by can you come in here and restricting immigration, said Nick Cohen in help me change this There’s a problem with pensions, said Jane Parry The Observer. Today’s pensioners are enjoying nappy?’, he’d say, ‘I’d like to, on The Conversation. The state system was set unparalleled prosperity. But as Theresa May but I have 250 people on up to serve “a very different demographic, with learned to her cost when she tried to tackle the death row in Trinidad.’ I a much shorter expected period of retirement”. social care crisis and tinker with the triple lock started saying, ‘Oh, let them die!’ After the second baby, People aged 65 today can expect to live about on pensions, the baby boomers won’t forgo I was like, ‘I’m going to go 20 years, on average, in retirement; up from their privileges without a fi ght – and they have there and kill them myself!’” 12 in 1940. To make sure future generations can serious political clout. “They cannot be made to have a good quality of life well into their 80s is pay, so their children must suffer instead.”

THE WEEK 29 July 2017 Talking points NEWS 21

Gender: a matter of choice? Wit & My friend Dave has “the would, among other best beard that I’ve ever things, remove the need to Wisdom seen anybody grow, and define their identity as a has a voice about three “mental pathology” – an “A change of nuisance is degrees shy of Barry important step forward as good as a vacation.” White”, said C.J. Atkinson for LGBTQ rights. As a David Lloyd George, quoted on the Huffington Post. gay man, I want everyone in the New Statesman What he doesn’t have is “a to be treated with dignity, “I have never taken any couple of hundred quid said Graeme Archer on exercise except sleeping and to throw around”. That’s ConservativeHome.com. resting, [but] we can’t reach what it would cost him to But “a desire for old age by another man’s get a Gender Recognition kindness” cannot overturn road. My habits protect my Certificate, to show that he “biological fact”. Our sex life, but they would has “transitioned” from a Revellers at London Pride earlier this month is determined by our assassinate you.” woman to a man, and a chromosomes. Apart from Mark Twain at his new passport. He would have to prove to the a tiny minority of intersex people, we’re all born 70th birthday party, Gender Recognition Panel that he has been with an XY or XX genotype that maps our quoted in The Times living as a man for at least two years, and would trajectory to physical and sexual maturity. While have to produce a certificate from a doctor you can argue “gender” is a construct – shaped “Economics is the study confirming that he suffers from “gender by social expectations and stereotypes – of human motivation dysphoria”. For transpeople like Dave and me, biological sex is “not a matter of opinion”. You with all the interesting changing our official identity is a slow, expensive can no more “self-define” your sex than your IQ variables set to zero.” and often humiliating process. So thank or your race – which, after all, “has much less Ad executive Rory goodness for Justine Greening, who has genetic basis than gender”. Sutherland, quoted on announced a review of the 2004 Gender The Browser Recognition Act. The Minister for Women and This “awkward matter of biology” has practical “For what do we live, but Equalities wants transpeople to be able to secure implications too, said Tim Stanley in The Daily to make sport for our a new passport and birth certificate simply by Telegraph. A man will only have to declare neighbours, and laugh at making a statutory declaration that we “intend himself female to gain access to women’s them in our turn?” to live in the acquired gender until death”. lavatories, changing rooms and hospital wards – Jane Austen, quoted on and even women’s sports. Many feminists are The Atlantic This “seems to me both decent and reasonable”, aghast at the way this “cultural revolution” is said Sam Leith in the London Evening Standard. being pursued without proper deliberation. And “The meek don’t inherit Half a century after the decriminalisation of Conservatives will hate it. “The Government is the Earth, not without homosexuality, it’s time we turned our attention picking a fi ght with its own supporters, and for a good agent.” to the treatment of transpeople. This measure what? To impress its friends at dinner parties.” Janice Turner in The Times “Everything in life is memory, save for the thin Love Island: the summer’s surprise hit edge of the present.” “There was only one story in town win. So it’s The Krypton Factor Cognitive neuroscientist this week,” said Ayesha Hazarika with Hep B.” The passion for Michael Gazzaniga, in The Guardian. ITV2’s Love turning people’s intimate moments quoted in The Guardian Island, the surprise hit of the into TV entertainment began with “You often hear reports summer, reached its fi nale on Big Brother in 2000, said Sam that some action or other Monday night. Some 2.43 million Taylor in The Mail on Sunday. has ‘prompted outrage viewers – a record for the channel But 17 years on, reality TV has on social media’. Why is – tuned in to see Kem, a reached a “sordid” new low. this considered news? hairdresser from Romford, and Outrage on social media is Amber, a dancer from North The show may be “manipulative” a daily occurrence, like rain Wales, crowned the winning and “crass”, but it’s not grubby or in the Hebrides.” couple. “Not since George explicit, said Ben Macintyre in Charles Moore in Galloway donned a leotard, got The implausibly taut winners The Times. And it’s “appallingly, The Daily Telegraph on all fours and purred, ‘Shall I be compulsively watchable”. As “an the cat?’, has there been so much interest in a anthropological experiment, it is quite “The trouble with life reality television show.” If you’ve been living remarkable”. The islanders create their own isn’t that there is no under a rock for the past two months, the primitive society, complete with mating rituals answer, it’s that there are premise is this, said Emine Saner in The – the men “preen and posture”, while the so many answers.” Observer: “a group of implausibly taut young women do the selection – and even have their Anthropologist Ruth people, most of them the colour of a digestive own language. (To “mug someone off” is to Benedict, quoted in biscuit”, are put up in a Mallorcan villa. They make a fool of them; to be “pie-ed” is to be The Washington Post are encouraged to couple up; and then have to dumped.) I thought Love Island would be convince the viewers to keep them on the show “exploitative and semi-pornographic”, said Statistic of the week in weekly voting rounds. The last couple Caitlin Moran in the same paper. But in fact, it’s One in three primary school standing win the prize, of £50,000. relatively low-key and realistic: a bit like going leavers cannot swim. In on a holiday as a teenager, where all you do is total, 300 Britons drowned last year, with summer In short, “Love Island puts young men and drink cider and talk about who you fancy. A holidays the worst period women in a villa and invites them to have sex”, retired colonel would certainly describe it as for child drownings. said Tim Stanley in The Daily Telegraph. “The “truly appalling”, but as reality TV goes, the The Daily Telegraph more sex they have, the more likely they are to show provides innocent, good-natured escapism.

29 July 2017 THE WEEK 22 NEWS Sport

Cricket: England’s thrilling World Cup win This Sunday saw the climax of the Women’s This tournament showed just how much the World Cup in cricket, said Mike Atherton in The women’s game has changed, said Jonathan Liew Times. And it was “one of the best Lord’s finals in The Daily Telegraph. At the first World Cup, in I’ve ever seen”. England edged India, bowling 1973, players paid for their own kits and travel; them out with just eight balls to spare. It was a they had to put up their own promotional posters “thrilling, almost unbelievable finish”: with ten and, in the case of Rachael Heyhoe-Flint, “wrote overs to go, India appeared completely in control; up the newspaper reports”. Even at the 1993 but as the pressure mounted, they collapsed, tournament, the players were still banned from the losing their last seven wickets for a measly 28 Lord’s Pavilion. On Sunday, however, that ground runs. This isn’t England’s first World Cup triumph, was packed to the rafters with an unusually vocal however – they’ve won it three times before. India, crowd, made up equally of male and female by contrast, are still awaiting their first victory, spectators, while as many as 100 million people and were “devastated” to lose. Yet both teams can tuned in on television. But there’s still a “long be “immensely proud” of their performance. way” to go, said Elizabeth Ammon in The Times. Since 2014, England’s women players have had Anya Shrubsole was the player who “cracked” professional contracts, yet their salaries are India, said Vithushan Ehantharajah in The Shrubsole: a “remarkable spell” a fraction of “what men earn”: their captain, Guardian. It was the “performance of a lifetime”. Heather Knight, makes about £60,000 a year, The 25-year-old pace bowler arrived at this tournament short whereas the top men make “something near seven figures”. But of match practice, but she peaked at exactly the right time: in a more and more girls and women are playing cricket, and “remarkable spell”, she took six wickets for just 46 runs, the best standards only keep rising. The World Cup was proof of that: it bowling figures in any Women’s World Cup final. England have felt like “a breakthrough moment for the women’s game”. improved dramatically over the past year, said Stephan Shemilt on BBC Sport online. And it’s their coach, Mark Robinson, Sporting headlines who deserves much of the credit. Last year, he stunned the side by axing their captain, Charlotte Edwards – one of the greatest Swimming In the semi-final of the World Aquatics female players in history. That proved to be a master stroke. For Championship, Adam Peaty sliced 0.15 seconds off his own all Edwards’ ability, her “dominant presence could be stifling”, 50m breaststroke world record, which he’d set earlier that day. and she was too dependent on a handful of players; but since Football Manchester City signed French left-back Benjamin her sacking, a number of talented cricketers – among them Mendy from Monaco for £52m, making him the world’s most Tammy Beaumont and Lauren Winfield – have managed to expensive defender. establish themselves in the team. Sport NEWS 23

Golf: Spieth purges his demons An unpopular champion Jordan Spieth did not merely birdie. That “ornithological triumph at The Open, said sequence” marks the point You’d expect the man who has just won the Tour de France for the fourth James Corrigan in The Daily when Spieth’s “status as time to be “one of the most loved Telegraph. The “remarkable” golf’s prodigy was restored”, sportsmen of this or any other era”, Texan also purged the said Paul Hayward in The says Tom Fordyce on BBC Sport online demons that have “stalked Daily Telegraph. In 2015, – particularly in his home country. Yet him” since last year’s when he won the Masters despite Chris Froome’s triumph on “infamous” Masters, when and the US Open, he was Sunday, the Team Sky cyclist remains he lost dramatically after hailed as the sport’s future. Britain’s “least loved great sportsman”. being five shots ahead. On Polite and friendly, he was True, he’s not an especially elegant or Sunday, too, he appeared “just about everything charismatic cyclist (though he does have an underappreciated sense of to be in “free fall”: on the America wants its golfers to humour). And some of Froome’s 13th hole, he hit a wayward be”. But after his “horrible detractors don’t even consider him drive 120 yards off the experience” at the 2016 British, as he was born in Kenya, fairway and into the rough. Masters, that status seemed schooled in South Africa and lives in But in perhaps “the greatest Spieth: “golf’s prodigy” to be in jeopardy. Now he Monaco. Yet he’s hardly unique in that turnaround” in any of golf’s has been “set free”. regard: Bradley Wiggins was born in majors, Spieth rescued himself, and Belgium, while Lewis Hamilton is also 90 minutes later he was lifting the The Open may be England’s elite golf a Monaco resident. Froome is not Claret Jug. He is now the second man competition, said Ian Ladyman in the “a man to bemoan his lot”, but you could forgive him for wondering “what ever to win three different majors before Daily Mail, but it has now gone 25 years else he must do” to be “cherished”. his 24th birthday. without an English winner. This time, the only “domestic challenger” who produced The 13th hole was a half-hour “mini- a performance of note was the “relatively epic”, said Tom Fordyce on BBC Sport unheralded” Matthew Southgate. When online. Spieth hit the ball so far astray he was diagnosed with testicular cancer that it cleared a “long line of humpbacked two years ago, at the age of 26, it was dunes”; so far that when it was first unclear whether he’d ever play golf again. apparently found, “it turned out to be the But on Sunday, in just his third major, wrong one”. Yet, miraculously, he Southgate was unflappable, and finished escaped with only a bogey, then went on joint sixth. He now looks ready for a remarkable charge: birdie, eagle, birdie, “a move up to the next level”.

LETTERS 25 Pick of the week’s correspondence

The EU’s siren voices Exchange of the week carriages are overcrowded To the Financial Times serves as evidence of this, since It is hardly surprising to read demand outstrips supply. that John Kerr and other Euro- Inequality at the BBC Abolishing first-class carriages zealots wish to reverse Britain’s To The Guardian will therefore only serve to democratic decision to leave I am bemused that the outrage is focused on the gender gap increase the price of standard- the EU. Article 50 was drafted in the BBC top-pay list story, and not on the grotesque gaps class tickets. Commuters, of by Lord Kerr for inclusion in between the top- and bottom-paid staff at the BBC. It’s a bit course, will not like that. the European Constitution, like bemoaning the fact that there aren’t more women They want to pay low fares signed in 2004, which was dictators in the world. There’s a very simple answer to the and travel in first-class subsequently rejected by gender gap: bring all the men’s top pay down to the level of comfort, which is the economic referendums in France and the the women’s top pay, halve it, and then halve it again. equivalent of my saying that Netherlands. The EU ignored Redistribute the savings to the people in the BBC who are I want to double my salary yet this inconvenient message from paid peanuts, so that they can have something approaching only work half the time. the people and incorporated a half-decent salary. I can’t believe that if BBC “stars” were Ulrik Jungersen Walther, most of the provisions of the replaced with women and men willing to do the job for London rejected constitution, including £100,000, we’d have any shortage of watchable talent. Article 50, into EU law Mark Doel, Sheffield Removing Assad through the Treaty of Lisbon To The Times in 2007 and by amending To The Daily Telegraph Anthony Loyd’s report, already existing treaties. In publishing the list of its highest-paid employees, the BBC “My family won’t be denied Article 50’s provenance is appears to have unwittingly given us some insight as to why revenge by the Iraqi courts”, damning evidence of the men are paid far more than their female colleagues. describes the ghastly acts of democratic deficit that Britons Almost twice as many men as women feature in the list, revenge exacted upon Isis rejected when they voted for but the proportion of men aged 50 and above is almost four prisoners in Mosul. This Brexit. It is gut-wrenching times that of the number of women in the same age group. illustrates why those who live to read the author of the Can we conclude that ageism, as well as sexism, mean that in government-held areas of disgracefully one-sided Article women are shown the door before they have a chance to Syria, including many 50 suggesting that, because its match the wealth of the men? Christians, are terrified lest the provisions do not work in the Ros Groves, Watford, Hertfordshire Assad regime should fall. Were leaver’s favour, Britain should that to happen, the so-called give up on leaving the EU. To The Guardian democratic opposition would Britons voting to leave Surely we must fear the reason for the BBC recruiting a female soon be replaced by extremists, understood that there would Doctor Who is so that they can pay her a smaller salary? with hideous consequences. be a short-term price, but Bryn Hughes, Wrexham The French no longer call for that the long-term outcome the downfall of the present would be very much in the regime. It is time we also took interests of our children and such searches annually are more than 30 times cleverer! a less moralistic and more grandchildren. Lord Kerr’s evidently based on an Impressive or what? realistic approach to this choir of siren voices should inaccurate hunch, a tinderbox Rob Symonds, Birmingham intractable problem. be ignored. is being created for A.F. Green, ambassador Gregory Shenkman, London community relations. Keep first class to Syria, 1991-95 Ben Summerskill, director, To The Daily Telegraph Searches are unfair... Criminal Justice Alliance Chris Grayling, the Transport Just the job To The Times Secretary, apparently wants to To The Guardian Rachel Sylvester complains ... but they work abolish first class on commuter During the 1980s, our local about a reduction in the police To The Times trains in order to ease fishmonger used to put an powers of stop and search. The Ben Summerskill states in his congestion in standard-class advert in his window: number in recent years has letter that nearly three-quarters seating areas. “Wanted, brainless youth for indeed fallen, from 1.2 million of “stops” resulted in nothing As any first-year economics nasty, wet, mucky job out the annually to 380,000. During being found. The corollary to student will know, the back.” He always seemed to that period, however, the that is that more than a quarter existence of first class on get the staff. chance of someone black being resulted in something being trains is a function of what Terri Green, Langley, stopped in relation to someone found during the search. the profession calls price Warwickshire white actually rose. A black That is surely not an discrimination. Some person is six times more likely insignificant number. consumers are willing to to be stopped on the street Leslie Shepheard, King’s Lynn, pay a higher price for than their white neighbour. Norfolk the same product, such Polling recently conducted as getting from A to B. by YouGov for the Criminal Brainier Britain In the case of rail Justice Alliance found that To The Guardian travel, price three-quarters of young black, Fifty years ago, only the top discrimination actually Asian and minority ethnic 2% of the population went to improves the overall people think that stop-and- university, and about 10% of welfare of commuters as search powers are used unfairly them got firsts, so that’s it allows for the transfer towards their communities. 0.2% of the population. of wealth from richer to Almost three-quarters of stops, Now, 30% go to uni, and poorer travellers by often felt to be deeply 25% of them get firsts, making making standard-class “Who are you kidding? You’re all humiliating, lead to nothing 7.5% of the population. The tickets relatively about small government until you get stuck in a tree.” being found. universities say there is no cheaper. The mere fact While tens of thousands of grade inflation, so we must be that standard-class © CHRISTOPHER WEYANT/THE NEW YORKER/CARTOON BANK

● Letters have been edited 29 July 2017 THE WEEK

ARTS 27 Review of reviews: Books

The best newly published holiday reads, based on summer round-ups in the press Hardbacks Other Minds Adults in Conversations by Peter the Room With Friends Godfrey-Smith by Yanis by Sally Rooney William Collins Varoufakis Faber £20 (£17) Bodley Head £14.99 (£12.99) This is a fascinating £20 (£17) This Dublin-set look at the “sly In this “superbly debut is a “page- brainpower” of the written” memoir, turning novel octopus, said The Greece’s ex-finance about love, sex Mail on Sunday. It minister recounts his and a four-way shows they are capable of a wide range bid to persuade Europe’s leaders to relationship”, said The Sunday Times. of skills and emotions: “puzzle solving, alleviate the harsh austerity they’d imposed It is full of bold and arresting ideas, but playfulness, contempt”. These remarkable on his country, said the FT. That he failed “wears its learning and sophistication creatures have evolved separately from “was – and is – a tragedy”. Varoufakis’s lightly”. Rooney’s characters matter to us vertebrates for the past 500 million or so “convincing critique” is most “jaw- – “we care about what kind of world they years, said the FT. For scientists searching dropping” in its portrayal of the “cynicism are going to make for themselves”, said for alien intelligence, they offer its “closest and duplicity” of the continent’s power The Daily Telegraph. This is an counterpart here on Earth”. players, said The Daily Telegraph. “extraordinary first novel”.

The Road to Missing Fay Darke Somewhere by Adam Thorpe by Rick Gekoski by David Jonathan Cape Canongate Goodhart £16.99 (£14.99) £16.99 (£14.99) Hurst £20 (£17) In Adam Thorpe’s This debut novel from This is a “thought- mould-breaking rare-book dealer Rick provoking analysis”, novel, Fay, a teenager Gekoski – who is in said the FT, of the from Lincoln, goes his 70s – centres on a growing gap in our missing after a row at misanthrope who society between the home, said The Times. “hates everything” geographically mobile, well-educated “Is she a runaway or has she been apart from Dickens, said The Times. It’s “anywheres” and their provincial counter- kidnapped?” The author “shows off his a book that will make “you laugh out parts, the “somewheres”, who retain a finest literary tricks” as he weaves Fay’s loud”, but which also explores death strong attachment to locality. It’s this split, story with those of locals who cross her and grief with “unflinching honesty”. claims David Goodhart, that drives the rise path. Thorpe is still best known for his How the protagonist came to “wall of populism in Europe. An intelligent study 1992 debut Ulverton, said The Sunday himself off from the world” is the of our changing political landscape, it has Times. Missing Fay, a “tour de force of “mystery at the heart” of this “moving introduced new and useful terminology to depth and nuance”, marks a “significant meditation on loss and redemption”, the debate, said The Sunday Times. return to form”. said The Mail on Sunday. Paperbacks The Dry Conclave The Power by Jane Harper by Robert Harris by Naomi Abacus Arrow Alderman £7.99 (£5.99) £7.99 (£5.99) Penguin In Jane Harper’s After the death of a £8.99 (£6.99) Australian-set thriller, pope, 118 cardinals, Alderman’s novel a detective returns to locked in a chapel imagines a world the drought-stricken within the Vatican, where women can town he left in dissemble and scheme control men by disgrace, for the as they choose his releasing electrical funeral of a friend who appears to have successor. Harris’s latest thriller jolts from their fingertips, said The Daily murdered his family, said the FT. Praise demonstrates all the “versatility and flair” Telegraph. Armed with this power, they for this book has been “resounding”, and we have come to expect from him, said soon “replace men as the bullies”. A rightly so: it’s truly “remarkable”. The Mail on Sunday. Fast-paced and deserving winner of this year’s Baileys Exploring the tensions of small-town life “brilliantly constructed”, this is a “thriller prize, The Power is “simultaneously and “the limits of human endurance”, The with a difference”, said The Observer. “All a high-concept thought experiment and Dry is a “chilling murder mystery”, said you wanted to know about the Vatican a rollercoaster, action-packed read”, The Mail on Sunday. but were too scared to ask.” said The Observer.

To order these titles from The Week Bookshop at the bracketed price, contact 020-3176 3835, www.theweek.co.uk/bookshop

29 July 2017 THE WEEK

Drama ARTS 29

“The Chichester hit factory production is firmly within this triumphs again,” said Fiona more realistic tradition, while Mountford in the London remaining both funny and Evening Standard. Over joyous. The set is a “distinctly recent years, Britain’s most austere and modern” space that Musical “consistently classy regional can be transformed with just a theatre” has served up a string few planks and suitcases. The of stonking musical revivals, and acting is emotionally honest and under its new artistic director, truthful, and the Jewish villagers Fiddler on Daniel Evans, it proves “tuneful come across not as remote business as usual” with this figures from the past, but as the Roof “rich and detailed” production contemporary people – they of the 1964 classic. Omid Djalili, could be today’s refugees – Book: Joseph Stein the Anglo-Iranian comedian, is driven from their homes by Music: Jerry Bock “inspired casting” as Tevye, the global politics. Lyrics: Sheldon Harnick Jewish milkman coping both I actually felt Evans’s “fleet Director: Daniel Evans with family life in the shtetl and revival” could have done with with the rumbling threat of even more “grime and grit”, said pogroms, said Christopher Hart Djalili: “inspired casting” Dominic Cavendish in The Daily in The Sunday Times. In a Telegraph. Still, Djalili is a Chichester Festival “superb” performance, Djalili is both hilarious “triumph” – more than earning the “temporary Theatre, Oaklands Park, and touching, and proves more than capable of right to sport a yarmulke” – and the show still Chichester, West Sussex putting over such brilliant numbers as Tradition, “raises the roof”. “Mazel tov!” In sum, it’s a To Life, and, of course, If I Were a Rich Man. winner, agreed Dominic Maxwell in The Times. (01243-781312) Tracy-Ann Oberman is also “terrific” as his “Don’t be surprised if it reaches the West End.” Until 2 September comically ghastly wife, Golde. For decades, Fiddler on the Roof was one of The week’s other opening Running time: those shows, much like West Side Story, whose Twilight Song Park Theatre, Clifton Terrace, “brilliance” was obscured by revivals which 2hrs 45mins London N4 (020-7870 6876). Until 12 August remained “locked into the staging traditions of Kevin Elyot’s final play (before he died in 2014) (including interval) the mid-20th century Broadway musicals”, said explores the historic pressures felt by gay men. Lyn Gardner in The Guardian. In recent years, The fine acting in this premiere underlines the ★★★★ that has begun to change: productions have guilt and passions lurking under a “polite, become less folksy and schmaltzy, and more Rattiganesque surface” (Guardian). realistic, restrained and dark. Evans’s excellent

The recent output of director Times. Beatriz Romilly “oozes Matthew Dunster has been a dubiousness” as Beatrice, the “head-scratching mixture of woman who “speaks in knives” the good, the bad and the ugly”, but is itching for someone to Theatre said Dominic Cavendish in match her wits. And as Benedick, The Daily Telegraph. His New Matthew Needham “has that York-bound staging of Martin rare ability to make his verse feel McDonagh’s Hangmen was like real thinking out loud, while Much Ado “flawless”, but his appalling he handles the physical gags as “mash-up” of A Tale of Two nimbly as he masters his later about Nothing Cities is currently “driving them slide into maturity”. out in droves” from Regent’s Needham is great, agreed Ian Playwright: Park Open Air Theatre. And Shuttleworth in the FT. But William Shakespeare I still “suffer flashbacks to his Romilly is so “strident”, it’s as if grim (and grime-music stuffed) “Kate the shrew has wandered Director: Matthew Dunster ‘gangster’ treatment” of into the wrong play”, making Cymbeline at the Globe last year. Benedick’s love for her utterly So it’s a relief and a pleasure to implausible. Another issue is the Shakespeare’s Globe, report that Dunster’s staging of Romilly: “adorable” “seemingly mandatory handful 21 New Globe Walk, Much Ado, set in the Mexican of Globe sex changes” – in this London SE1 Revolution of the 1910s, is a “colourful, warm- case, the elderly Antonio, and chief villain Don spirited and abundantly comic” triumph. John. Gender switches are all very well, but not (020-7401 9919) In place of ruff collars and a focus on textual when they “start making a nonsense of assorted Until 15 October clarity, this merry “romp” offers ponchos, lines, character traits and bits of business”. sombreros, machine-gun belts, a set dominated Running time: by a massive and brightly coloured goods train, CD of the week loud sound effects and multiple tweaks to the 3hrs (including interval) Mahler: Symphony No. 3 Channel £17.35 text, said Quentin Letts in the Daily Mail. “I’m Conductor Iván Fischer’s account of Mahler’s no trendy neophile”, but I loved the whole thing. ★★★ “Pastoral” symphony is “textually scrupulous, It stays true to Shakespeare’s “generous vision expansive, richly coloured and, finally, deeply of a world where love conquers cynicism”; moving”. One marvels anew at the “fresh, audiences will revel in its joyous “colour and pristine quality” of the playing from the verve”. The sparring lovers give “adorable” Budapest Festival Orchestra (Sunday Times).

performances, said Dominic Maxwell in The © JOHAN PERSSON; TRISTRAM KENTON

Stars reflect the overall quality of reviews and our own independent assessment (4 stars=don’t miss; 1 star=don’t bother)

29 July 2017 THE WEEK

Film ARTS 31

Dunkirk ★★★ A war film without heroes Dir: Christopher Nolan 1hr 46mins (12A) Most of us know the basic facts about the down enemy planes as his fuel gauge dips Dunkirk evacuation: how in May 1940, towards zero. And then, of course, there’s 300,000, mainly British, troops escaped the pop star Harry Styles, said Jamie East from the beach of a northern French port in The Sun. He has a significant role in while being bombarded by the Luftwaffe. the movie as another soldier fighting for The achievement of Christopher Nolan’s survival. And against expectations, he harrowing new film is that it makes these proves a “confident and watchable” events seem impossible to predict, said actor. Yet for all its glittering cast (which Dave Calhoun in Time Out. With a short also has Kenneth Branagh as a grizzled running time and minimal dialogue, it naval commander), this isn’t an “actory” exposes us to a concentrated dose of the film, it’s a director’s offering. But “what “oddness and horror of war”. One an incredible treat it is”. moment, we see Nazi propaganda leaflets, bearing the words “We surround you!”, A “staggering feat of immersive terror” I’d recommend doing a bit of historical falling like snow from an empty sky. The research before you see it, said Deborah next, we’re plunged into the churning sea with panicking Ross in The Spectator. Tricky structure and mumbled dialogue soldiers, struggling to keep our heads above water. A war film (itself drowned out by Hans Zimmer’s ear-shattering score) “without heroes or a straightforward story”, Dunkirk is also a often make the narrative confusing. These “106 clamorous “staggering feat of immersive terror”. minutes of big-screen bombast” are so taken up with spectacle, said Kevin Maher in The Times, they neglect “the most crucial From Memento to Inception, Nolan has always liked to element – drama”. There’s plenty of tension and explosions challenge our linear concept of time, said Mark Kermode in The galore, but where’s the character development? At least that Observer. Dunkirk continues the theme, skilfully blending three spares us the melodrama of a Pearl Harbor or Titanic, said Nick distinct timescales. There’s one week on land, following Fionn de Semlyen in Empire. If anything, Dunkirk “hews towards the Whitehead’s soldier as he waits to be rescued from the crowded art house”, its “spume-flecked tableaux” beautifully beach. There’s one day at sea, as Mark Rylance joins the civilian photographed by cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema. The flotilla, skippering his pleasure boat across the Channel to film is “effectively one enormous, stunningly rendered and France to do his bit. Lastly, we spend an hour in the air with thunderously intense set piece stretched to feature length”. Tom Hardy’s hard-bitten fighter pilot, relentlessly shooting There have been many WWII epics, but “never one like this”.

City of Ghosts ★★★★ Compelling documentary about the Syrian tragedy Dir: Matthew Heineman 1hr 32mins (18) Recent Isis-backed terrorist acts in Western tactics”, said Charlie Phillips in The Europe “pale by comparison” with those Guardian. It shows how Isis uses film- perpetrated in the city of Raqqa, in making techniques deliberately evocative northern Syria, said Geoffrey Macnab in of Hollywood movies as part of their The Independent. Matthew Heineman’s recruitment drive. Be warned: some images “grimly compelling” documentary follows are extremely disturbing, said Andrew the activities of the citizen journalists from Lowry in Empire. But what shocked me the city who formed the Raqqa is Being most was the “brainwashing” of Isis Slaughtered Silently (RBSS) group. Their victims. In one scene, a child of four, in full mission: to smuggle to the outside world combat gear, merrily beheads a teddy bear. videos and news about the atrocities being It’s a moment I found as “unsettling” as carried out by an organisation whose propaganda presents it as any horror film. Don’t let the harrowing subject matter put you a noble Islamic saviour. The stakes couldn’t be higher. If caught, off, said Joshua Rothkopf in Time Out. As front-line, on-the- RBSS members are killed. ground journalism goes, this “inspiring” documentary “has few City of Ghosts is a fascinating exploration of “modern media recent peers”. It is “essential viewing”.

Captain Underpants ★★★ Hilarious superhero spoof Dir: David Soren 1hr 29mins (U) Captain Underpants is an “unexpected has no very impressive superpowers) needs treat”, said Peter Bradshaw in The a nemesis, and one is duly provided in the Guardian. It’s a “thoroughly entertaining form of a malevolent Germanic science and likeable film: two qualities that look teacher, said Ed Potton in The Times. easy but are anything but”. It’s true, said “Hiya, class,” he says at his first lesson. Nigel Andrews in the FT. There simply “I’m your cool new teacher, not some aren’t that many animated films that adults scary guy with a secret evil agenda.” All can enjoy just as much as children. “Zoo- the while, he is plotting to disable the tropolis? In bits. Inside Out? Here and part of everyone’s brains that enables them there. Captain Underpants: The First Epic to laugh. Movie? Now you’re talking.” One thing the film’s makers have a feel In this hilarious superhero spoof, two naughty schoolboys, for, said Geoffrey Macnab in The Independent, is the power of George (voiced by Kevin Hart) and Harold (Thomas repetition in comedy. If the first mention of the villain’s name – Middleditch), hypnotise their stern headmaster and convince him Professor Poopypants – doesn’t force a smile, maybe “the second that he’s the titular hero. Naturally, Captain Underpants (who one will, or the third or the fourth or the fifth”.

29 July 2017 THE WEEK 32 ARTS Art

Exhibition of the week The Encounter National Portrait Gallery, London WC2 (020-7306 0055, www.npg.org.uk). Until 22 October “Some art can be made in solitude, his portrait of John Godsalve, straight out of the artist’s head,” a courtier to Henry VIII, is said Martin Gayford in The simply “unforgettable”. Spectator. Portraiture, however, is Elsewhere, however, this show “a game for two”, a “complicated has≈serious faults. Its title business” that is essentially a promises work by Leonardo and “record of a meeting between two Rembrandt, yet it contains only people”. A portrait will be affected one drawing apiece from both. “not only by what the artist knows There is a smattering of big names, about art, but also by how well he but it generally focuses on an or she knows the subject”. That is “eccentric selection” of obscure the “lesson” we take from The artists. Few of them are very Encounter: Drawings from compelling, and it reaches a nadir Leonardo to Rembrandt, a with two “horribly ugly” pictures “marvellous” new exhibition of of young men by the German works on paper at the National Renaissance artist Leonhard Beck. Portrait Gallery. The show is Despite including some of the essentially a “medley” of Old “greatest artists in history”, this Master drawings from various exhibition somehow manages to British collections, bringing together seem “unfocused and slight”. around 50 pictures by the likes of Holbein, Parmigianino, Pontormo There are “moments of graphic and Dürer. It contains many brilliance” here, said Waldemar “intimate” works that “take you Januszczak in The Sunday Times. physically close to the marks of the There’s a “thrilling” large work by artist’s hand”. Though this all Pontormo depicting a “snakily makes it sound “a little on the quiet strange and elongated” figure side”, the exhibition is “full of picking up a child, while the visual pleasures” and poses some Baroque artist Annibale Carracci’s “intriguing questions” about the likeness of a man with a physical nature of portraiture. deformity is impressive: his pose Holbein’s Woman Wearing a White Headdress (1532-43) “is awkward, and so is the intense Holbein is the “star” here, said psychological contact he makes Jonathan Jones in The Guardian. His work gives a “genuine and with us”. However, the show at large is “short on direction”, electrifying sense of encounter between artist and subject”. trying and failing to stick to a coherent theme and revealing Woman Wearing a White Headdress (c.1532-43), for example, nothing new about Old Master portraiture. These highlights and “stares at you with a cool disdain and self-possession”, while the wonderful Holbeins aside, this is a decidedly “flawed event”.

Where to buy… Dalí’s moustache miracle The Week reviews an Salvador Dalí’s exhibition in a private gallery remains were exhumed last Thursday night, Bram Bogart says The Guardian – at the Saatchi Gallery pulled from his crypt in Figueres, Catalonia, by officials Recently, the Saatchi Gallery has hoping to settle a devoted a small space in its basement paternity suit. The to showcasing international artists results of the DNA whose work has, by and large, been test will not be ignored or forgotten in this country. available for at least a month, but forensic The latest such is the Belgian painter experts did make one Bram Bogart (1921-2012), who is discovery: Dalí’s famous moustache remains represented here by a selection of intact. Narcís Bardalet, the embalmer who imposing paintings that cover his tended Dalí’s body after his death in 1989 and career from the early 1950s up to Variété (1961), 132cm x 110cm helped with the exhumation, said it was still in his death. Bogart initially trained as its classic “ten past ten” position, just as he a painter-decorator, and on the be rectangular sections cut from the liked it. “It’s a miracle,” said Bardalet, adding evidence of the sparsely coloured walls of dilapidated old buildings, that the body resembled “a mummy”, and was abstract works on show, his original such is the weight of the impasto. so hard that an electric saw, rather than a scalpel, had to be used to collect bone samples. trade played a key role in his art. Simply hanging them must require Dalí and his wife, Gala, had no children, and the Paint is trowelled on and manipulated a minor miracle of engineering. artist left his estate to Spain. María Pilar Abel, a to an almost impossibly heavy Prices on request. 61-year-old fortune teller, claims she is the consistency: many of the earlier result of a liaison her mother had with Dalí in works here have taken on the physical Duke of York’s HQ, King’s Road, 1955. If she is successful in her suit, she will property of warped concrete. Indeed, London SW3 (020-7811 3070). inherit a quarter of Dalí’s considerable fortune.

some of these paintings could almost Until 10 September. © ROYAL COLLECTION TRUST, HER MAJESTY QUEEN ELIZABETH II

THE WEEK 29 July 2017

The List 35

Best books… Marina Warner Television The author, critic and cultural historian Marina Warner picks her favourite Programmes books. She has written the introduction to the reprint of Down Below, Leonora Queer as Art Documentary Carrington’s memoir of her descent into madness (NYRB Classics £8.99) celebrating the LGBTQ community’s contributions to The Hearing Trumpet by detailed historical account, follows a young girl, the the arts in Britain in the 50 years since the decriminali- Leonora Carrington (Penguin while adding depths to the daughter of a migrant labourer sation of homosexuality. David £9.99). The Surrealist artist wooden hero of The Aeneid. family who are squatting a Hockney is among the also wrote darkly comic luxury block of flats – which interviewees. Sat 29 July, BBC2 stories. Here, in her only full- Out of Egypt by André has no outside walls. 21:00 (60mins). length novel, published in l974 Aciman, 1994 (Tauris Parke but written in the 1960s, she £11.99). In the current turmoil, Finders Keepers: Selected Wild Alaska Live The foresees decrepitude and fights I want to learn more about the Prose 1971-2001 by Seamus second episode in the stunning back against being sentenced to transformations that the people Heaney (Faber £20). Deep, three-part series filmed live in a care home. Droll, irreverent, of the Middle East have lived wise, full of goodness and the Alaskan wilderness. Sun 30 July, BBC1 19:00 (60mins). the story twists and turns with through. This memoir is a humour, Heaney has more to irrepressible invention. remarkable tale of growing up say about the reasons for I am Bolt Benjamin and Gabe in Egypt during its last years of literature than anyone. These Turner’s reverential but Lavinia by Ursula Le Guin, cosmopolitanism. Aciman’s richly varied essays offer one engaging look at the life of the 2008 (W&N £9.99). Under- Jewish family were among the important insight after another. world’s fastest man. Mon 31 sung novel by the sci-fi many forced to leave. July, BBC1 20.30 (90mins). utopian, which persuasively Memorial by Alice Oswald, enters the mind of Aeneas’s Ghosts by César Aira, 1990 2011 (Faber £10.99). The Iliad Man in An Orange Shirt wife, and tells the story of the (New Directions £9.20). A remade, without gods or epic Novelist Patrick Gale penned this two-part drama that foundation of Rome from her strange fable by the madcap heroes. The compressed grief in follows two gay love stories 60 point of view. Le Guin is Argentinian author who these poems is sublime, and the years apart, but linked by a always brilliant at imagining combines fantasy with social resonances with contemporary mysterious painting. With alternatives, and she builds a alertness. This spooky story troubles very powerful indeed. David Gyasi, James McArdle Titles in print are available from The Week Bookshop on 020-3176 3835. For out-of-print books visit www.biblio.co.uk and Vanessa Redgrave. Mon 31 July, BBC2 21:00 (60mins).

The Week’s guide to what’s worth seeing and reading Public Enemies: Jay Z vs Kanye One-off documentary Showing now about the meteoric rise of two Hokusai: Beyond The Great Wave at the world-famous rappers, and British Museum, London WC1 (020-7323 their colossal falling out. Mon 8181). “Entrancing” exhibition of 200 works by 31 July, C4 22:00 (65mins). the Japanese master, Katsushika Hokusai (The Times). Ends 13 August, limited availability. Films Pride (2014) Imelda Staunton and Dominic West star in this Zip World Southbank, London SE1 (www. film inspired by the true story zipworld.co.uk). For those looking for a frisson of an unlikely alliance between of danger – while enjoying views of the Houses gay activists and striking Welsh of Parliament – a new zip wire has opened over miners in the 1980s. Sun 30 Archbishop’s Park. It involves jumping off a July, BBC2 22:00 (110mins). 35-metre tower and travelling at more than Force Majeure (2014) 30mph. Adults: £22.50; children: £16.50. Zip World Southbank: seeking a frisson of danger? Until 1 October. Deliciously dark comedy about Swedish couple on a skiing Principle is the first production by Marianne holiday, whose relationship is Book now Elliott’s new company. Starring Anne-Marie tested by a near miss with an The five-day Boardmasters festival will hold a Duff, it is about the life-changing effects of a avalanche. Tue 1 Aug, Film4 particular appeal to surfers, but there’s much for chance meeting. 2 October-6 January, 23:10 (140mins). landlubbers too. Headliners include alt-J, Wyndham’s, London WC2 (0844-482 5120). Stormzy, Laura Mvula and Jake Bugg. There are Arbitrage (2012) Sleek, pro surf and skate competitions to watch, and Just out in paperback gripping thriller set in the free yoga. 9-13 August, Watergate Bay, A Horse Walks Into a Bar by David world of high finance. With Cornwall (www.boardmasters.co.uk). Grossman (Vintage £8.99). A “haunting” novel Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon and Tim Roth. Thur 3 Aug, C4 about a stand-up comedian exposing a life- 01:30 (105mins). Simon Stephens’ Heisenberg: The Uncertainty defining dilemma (Mail on Sunday). The Archers: what happened last week New to Netflix Clarrie’s upset when b&b guests turn up. Eddie had cancelled them, but they missed his text. Eddie Ozark Ten-part crime drama convinces Clarrie to host them, saying they’ll be gone before Oliver returns. Oliver calls to tell Shula starring Jason Bateman as a that Caroline’s cremation has been brought forward. He’ll try for an earlier flight. Matt’s Investors’ Chicago-based financial Day at Grey Gables is a flop – there are lots of no-shows. Justin crows about it to Lilian, who thinks adviser with a sideline in he’s being a bit mean. Matt accuses Justin of orchestrating the failure – every no-show has a business laundering Mexican drug connection to him. Justin tells Matt to stay out of his affairs and then he’ll stay out of his. Shula money. When his dodgy picks up Oliver from the airport. He’s very cheery, which worries her. Justin’s livid to hear Matt’s left dealing catches up with him, negative comments on the planning application for the pig unit. He resolves to teach Matt a lesson. he is forced to relocate with Lilian is shocked that Justin sabotaged the Investors’ Day. Justin says he’d be happy to use his contacts to get Matt fired. The b&b guests chip Caroline’s jug. Eddie and Clarrie return from buying his wife (Laura Linney) and glue to find Oliver at Grange Farm. He’s furious to find the broken jug and strangers in his house. He family to rural Missouri. trusted them! He throws the jug on the floor and leaves. Clarrie says they’ll have to move out. Streaming now. © CAROLINA MAZZOLARI

29 July 2017 THE WEEK 36 Best properties

Houses with lovely swimming pools

▲ Devon Holystreet Manor, Chagford. A restored Grade II house on Dartmoor, with a 3-bed cottage, two 2-bed flats, plus a heated “natural” swimming pool, AstroTurf tennis court and private fishing on the River Teign. Master suite with dressing room and fitness suite, 7 further beds, 5 further baths (2 en suite), kitchen/dining room, 2 receps, study, library, utility, conservatory, cinema room, boot room, 3 WCs, chapel, laundry, listed garage block and stables, listed mill house, woodland, kitchen garden, manège, paddocks, terrace, barn, 19.5 acres. OIEO £5.5m; Knight Frank (020-7861 1528).

▲ Surrey: The Lime House, Rushmoor, Tilford. A Georgian house set in 2.5 acres of lovely gardens with a heated swimming pool with slide, a summer house, tennis court, gazebo and large stone barn. 2 suites, 3 further beds, family bath, dressing room/bed 7, playroom/bed 8, kitchen, 3 receps, study, orangery, family room, utility, larder, 2 cloakrooms, terrace. £3.25m; Savills (01252-729002).

▲ Somerset: Bank House, Sheepway, Portbury, Bristol. Built in 1991 and winner of the 1995 Riba Regional Award, this bespoke detached low-energy house is single-storey and U-shaped, so that all rooms face onto the focal point – the 12m illuminated swimming pool. 2 suites, 2 further beds, shower, WC, breakfast/kitchen, 3 receps, gallery, garage with wine store, herb and kitchen garden, formal gardens, summer house. £1.2m; Savills (0117- 933 5800).

THE WEEK 29 July 2017 on the market 37

▲ Kent: Great Wadd Farmhouse, Frittenden. A Grade II farmhouse with a detached 4-bed oast house, plus a 16th-century timber- framed barn housing a heated swimming pool, changing and shower rooms and a mezzanine gallery/studio. The 33 acres of land include gardens with a tennis court, garaging and storage, and there is also planning permission for a 2-storey extension. Main house: 4 bed suites, 1 further bed, breakfast/kitchen, 3 receps, family room, study, hall, utility, 2 cloakrooms. £2.195m; Knight Frank (01892-515035). ▲ ▲ Somerset: Kent: The Rookery Farm, Grange, Chillenden, Ashwick, Oakhill. A Canterbury. A wonderful family Grade II thatched home in formal cottage with an gardens, featuring a enclosed heated Mediterranean garden, swimming pool a swimming pool with with entertaining automated solar cover, area, all set in about a hot tub and a pool an acre of gardens room, a tennis court, and grounds. 3 paddocks and suites, breakfast/ parkland. Master suite kitchen, 3 receps, with dressing room, 5 hall, WC, double further suites, kitchen, garage with WC breakfast room, 3 and office/studio receps, family room, above, further orangery, utility/boot double garage with room, office, hall, 2 workshop, cloakrooms, barn, greenhouse. 18.37 acres. OIEO £995,000; Jackson- £2.55m; Knight Frank Stops & Staff (020-7861 1717). (01227-781600). ▲ Gloucestershire: Springfield, Rendcomb. A family house in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty with fine views and beautiful gardens of 2.5 acres, which include an outdoor swimming pool, a tennis court, double garage and a small productive orchard. Master suite, 4 further suites, breakfast/ kitchen with Aga, 3 receps, conservatory, utility, cloakroom, study, 1-bed annexe ▲ Lincolnshire: The Grange, Dunsby, Bourne. A Grade II Georgian with sitting room, house with a fenced, solar-heated outdoor pool with a pool house, with kitchen and private sitting area, kitchenette and shower. Master suite, 5 further beds, family garden. £2.5m; bath, kitchen/double recep, 2 further receps, study/snug, utility, WC, boot Butler Sherborn room, workshop, courtyard, double garage, stable block, formal gardens, (01285-883745). vegetable garden, greenhouse. £845,000; Humberts (01780-438788).

29 July 2017 THE WEEK HUR 17th Ofer ends with Au RY gust 2017

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Terms & Conditions: Free delivery to UK mainland only, usually £15. Savings quoted include delivery. Orders dispatched within 14 days. Ofer ends date: 17th August 2017. While stocks last. LEISURE 39 Food & Drink What the experts recommend Kuch 133 Whiteladies Road, Bristol And “masterful” Anjou pigeon served (0117-253 0300) three ways (rare breast, confit leg and For those seeking “freshness, value and croquette), goes sublimely well with green a bit of a culinary adventure”, look no strawberries. “Who knew?” Tasting further than this unassuming restaurant menu, £42 for six courses; à la carte meal serving “southern Persian soul food”, says for two, with wine, about £130. Marina O’Loughlin in The Guardian. Kuch offers treat upon treat: bowls full of Five great trattorias in Rome fresh, colourful salads and glossy olives; There’s a southern Italian proverb that hot, oily flatbreads and spiced meats; I swear by, says Rachel Roddy in the FT: dishes that are sweet with pomegranate “whatever can be fried is good to eat”. and date molasses, tangy from tamarind, With that in mind, my first Roman and pungent with dried lime; and shelves recommendation is that you order all the stacked with jars of kashk (“liquid curd”), fritti at the trattoria Cesare al Casaletto: pickled vegetables, sour orange juice and anchovies, small coral-coloured octopus quince jam. The flurry of small dishes we and artichokes. It’s an easy tram ride from tried included kash_k bazanjon (“all Kuch: unassuming, but offers treat upon treat the Piazza Venezia and is more than descriptions very much sic”), which worth the effort. A few minutes from the turned out to be a lentil and smoked Standard. Alex Harper, ex-head chef of Testaccio street market is my local, aubergine dip boosted with whey, with the Michelin-starred Harwood Arms in La Torricella: it serves traditional, garlands of crisp garlic and onion; and Fulham, and Mark Jarvis, chef-patron homely food with “brusque charm and naan-o-paneer, which was fluffy bread of the raved-about Anglo, off Hatton generosity”, and specialises in fish. Or, if “with an exuberance of dill and mint, feta Garden, have got together to present their you want the best of the offal cookery for and walnuts in a sekanjabin dressing (an spin on “bistronomy” – first-rate classical which this slaughterhouse district is ancient drink made with honey and cooking in a relaxed bistro-style setting. famous, try trattoria Agustarello, and go vinegar)”. Don’t go hoping for a quick And they have done so in a corner of the for the “rich and silky” oxtail. Right by meal: everything is cooked to order and West End that’s crying out for some class the Pantheon, I’d recommend the “smart “it’s not speedy”. But do go. About £25 amid all the chain restaurants. There is but not fussy” Armando al Pantheon for a head, plus drinks and service. fabulous charcuterie made in-house; classic Roman pastas and traditional a serious wine list (“low intervention, dishes. And over on the other side of Neo Bistro 11 Woodstock Street, naturellement”); and “the best lamb Rome, a new trattoria, SantoPalato, Mayfair, London W1 (020-7499 9427) I have eaten in years” – crisp skin and a recently served me “two of the most If you need “reasons to be cheerful” in lushly flavourful interior – served with delicious things I’ve eaten lately”; a dish these tricky times, here’s a belter, says smoked eel. Buttery brill with white of peas, soft-boiled egg and Parmesan, Fay Maschler in the London Evening anchovies and sea kale is “irresistible”. and a marigold-yellow carbonara.

Recipe of the week Wine choice Georgia’s distinctive, acidic wines Soups made from matsoni, or cow’s milk yoghurt, are a popular and delicious always give me a “bad case of aspect of the national cuisine of Georgia, says Carla Capalbo. Many are wanderlust”, says David Williams in cooked with onions, rice and herbs and served hot. But I also love this The Observer. They’re not that traditional chilled soup – it’s so refreshing on a hot summer’s day easy to get hold of in the UK but, happily, M&S stocks Tbilvino Qvevris, Kakheti, Matsunis shechamandi (chilled yoghurt soup) Georgia 2015 (£10), a “rather brilliant example of orange-tinted Serves 4 dry white wine aged in qvevri, 500g plain yoghurt 240ml water 85g very finely sliced and the traditional Georgian clay vessel, with chopped cucumber 2 spring onions, finely chopped, white and green parts a subtly chewy, moreishly spicy character”. 1 tbsp finely chopped coriander 1 tbsp finely chopped dill 1 tsp finely chopped mint leaves 1 tsp finely chopped chives ½ tsp finely chopped The most recent wine to get me “idly medium-hot green chilli salt and freshly ground black pepper browsing for flights to Tbilisi” was Jakeli Khashmi Saperavi, Kakheti, Georgia (£18.50, www.MeadowDaleWines.com). • Whisk the yoghurt • Allow the soup to rest 2011 It’s a deeply coloured red with a “wild, almost with most of the water in the fridge for at least untamed intensity of tannin, finger-staining” until smooth. The 30 minutes before serving black fruit and “febrile acidity”. consistency should be in order to bring out the creamy but soup-like. If flavours of the herbs. I’d also highly recommend necessary, add a little Serve chilled. Pheasant’s more water. Tears Saperavi, Kakheti, Georgia 2015 • Tip: for the best results, (£22, www.HighburyVintners.co.uk). This • Whisk in the remaining use good-quality organic “arresting” red is “intensely sappy, crunchy ingredients and season yoghurt with a nicely and curranty, with a nutty streak”. No less with salt and pepper. acidic tang to it. savoury and rewarding is the Pheasant’s Tears Tsolikauri 2015 (£22.99, also from Taken from Tasting Georgia: A Food and Wine Journey in the Caucasus by Highbury Vintners), a dry orangey white that Carla Capalbo, published by Pallas Athene at £30. To buy from The Week is “aromatic yet grippy”. Bookshop for £26.99, call 020-3176 3835 or visit www.theweek.co.uk/bookshop. For our latest offers, visit theweekwines.co.uk

29 July 2017 THE WEEK 40 LEISURE Consumer

New cars: what the critics say Autocar The Daily Telegraph Auto Express Since its launch five years Those tweaks are so subtle In terms of ride and ago, Škoda’s “little city that you’d struggle to tell handling, too, the Citigo car” has earned rave the old and new models is “identical to before”. reviews and sold more apart. The Citigo’s still not There’s nothing wrong than 200,000 units. Now the most exciting-looking with that – it feels it has been given a midlife car, despite a new bonnet “composed and fluid” facelift – following in the and lamps. The cabin is on the road, with decent footsteps of its near- “thoughtfully” designed, body control and accurate identical sibling, the though, with materials steering. Neither of the Škoda Citigo Volkswagen Up. Wisely, that would “shame cars in engines on offer provide from £8,635 Škoda has “resisted the a couple of classes above”. “sparkling performance”, urge to make sweeping At 251 litres, the boot but they are relatively changes”; it hasn’t touched isn’t exactly huge, and the quiet. A “good-to-drive the mechanicals, instead “hammock-like” seats are all-rounder”, this is still tweaking the design and a bit unsupportive, but one of the best city cars adding more kit. there’s lots of headroom. on the market.

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● Book a free fire safety visit from your The Villa Cicogna Mozzoni garden, in local fire service. In London, these are Lombardy, is “a perfect Renaissance available for everyone; some areas, design”. It is still owned by the family who however, limit them to households that built it, and includes “possibly the most have elderly, disabled or young inhabitants. elegant ‘water staircase’ in existence” (open ● You should have a smoke alarm on every Sundays; www.villacicognamozzoni.it). floor. Which? recommends the brands Castel Gandolfo, the Pope’s “immaculately Kidde, FireAngel and First Alert. maintained” retreat outside Rome, was ● Change the batteries in your alarm private for centuries, but opened to the annually. Ideally, the alarm itself should public earlier this year. You travel there be tested weekly. on an electric train owned by the Vatican ● Don’t leave mobile devices or e-cigarettes (Saturdays; www.museivaticani.va). charging overnight. Villa Gamberaia, on a hillside outside ● Fires can be started by overloaded The Self-Propelled Aquanaut’s Suit allows Florence, is “one of the greatest” Italian sockets. Find out if yours are safe by using descents to 1,000ft below the water’s gardens – yet it receives relatively few the special calculator at www.london-fire. surface while maintaining sea-level air visitors. It has a fine Arts and Craft water gov.uk/overloading-electrical-sockets.asp. pressure (scuba divers, by contrast, are parterre and a 17th century nymphaeum (daily; www.villagamberaia.com). ● In house fires, one of the biggest dangers advised to go no more than 130ft deep). is people wasting time looking for insurance Movement is controlled by four built-in Villa Tasca, in Palermo, has a huge forms, passports, and so on, instead of thrusters – and there’s a video camera too. English-style garden dating back to the mid-19th century. “Beautifully kept,” it’s getting out, or otherwise protecting £635,000; www.hammacher.com themselves. Investing in a fireproof safe for home to numerous species of palms (by key documents should stop that temptation. appointment; www.villatasca.com).

SOURCE: THE SUNDAY TIMES SOURCE: FORBES SOURCE: THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

THE WEEK 29 July 2017 Travel LEISURE 41

This week’s dream: a tuk-tuk tour of Thailand’s wild hills Though it has “less grunt than some tourists (with higher roofs, bigger lawnmowers”, does 0-50mph in back seats and beefier suspension), 20 seconds, and makes for “a numb and its guests tend to drive them in bum” and sunburnt calves on the open convoy around a 470-mile circuit road, a tuk-tuk is the ideal vehicle for west of Chiang Mai. The route twists a self-drive tour of Thailand’s north- high into the jungled hills, past western mountains, says James Stewart “ramshackle” teak villages, plenty in The Sunday Times. This is “full- of elephants, and rivers that “wind beam exotic Asia”, far from the tourist slowly between banana trees”. trail, and pottering around it in one of Arriving in the old town of Mae these open-sided motorised rickshaws Sariang at dusk as “nasal chanting” allows you to “breathe in the aromas drifts from its temples is “magical”. of the country” – “composting jungle, The “no-name, tin-roof” café wood smoke, incense” – and make opposite the temple in Khun Yuam the most of the passing views. Go with serves some of the world’s best Thai the Tuk Tuk Club of Mae Wang and The villages of the Lahu hill tribe: time itself seems to drift food, including “sour, lemony” you’ll also benefit from prearranged mushroom soup, and larb, a mix of accommodation (“including one pinch-me jungle hideaway ground pork, chilli, mint, shallots and lime. And in the villages of where Brad and Angelina stayed a few years back”) and a support the Lahu hill tribe, where chickens chuckle and pigs grunt among car to take care of your luggage. stilted wooden houses, time itself seems to drift – making for a Tuk-tuks are rarely seen outside Thailand’s big cities, so drivers peaceful end to this “backcountry journey into a nation’s soul”. attract plenty of smiles, thumbs ups and selfie requests from The Tuk Tuk Club (+66 92 250 5182, www.thetuktukclub.com) locals. The club has a fleet of six, specially adapted for Western has an 11-day self-drive tour from £1,295pp, excluding flights.

Hotel of the week Getting the flavour of… The ancient secrets of Jordan the adventure. A stone marks its source in a There can be few guides capable of bringing field near Cheltenham, and by the time you Jordan’s ancient sites to life like Professor reach nearby Cricklade, the history – and the Konstantinos Politis, says Alice B-B in the river – is flowing thick and fast (think battles FT. Amid the rock-carved ruins of Petra, the with Romans and fortifications built by King veteran archaeologist and “ace” raconteur Alfred). Persevere through London to one of evokes the rose-coloured city’s heyday as a the most beautiful sections of all – the first-century Las Vegas, where frankincense marshes of the Hoo Peninsula, where herons traders from southern Arabia would party “stand sentinel” by ancient dykes. Tom after their long journey across the desert. Chesshyre’s From Source to Sea: Notes from Following an air-balloon flight over Wadi a 215-mile Walk Along the River Thames is Bill and Coo Coast, Rum, he leads you to the ancient Bedouin published by Summersdale (£16.99). Mykonos petroglyphs hidden deep amid this great valley’s “burnt ochre” cliffs. And most Summer in the Rockies The latest Bill and Coo hotel on haunting of all is the cave he discovered in Think of Aspen and chances are “snow and this fashionable Greek island (the original is in Mykonos Town) 1991, in which the name of Lot was carved celebrities” spring to mind – this is the resort sits on an “enviably hard-to-find” three times – suggesting an ancient belief that into which the Kardashians sweep each beach on the Agios Ioannis this was the hideout from which the Biblical January. But it is beautiful in summer too, Peninsula. Designed, by “super- patriarch watched the destruction of Sodom and more peaceful, says Georgina Wilson- hip” Athenian architects k-studio, and Gomorrah. Cazenove + Loyd (020-7384 Powell in The Independent – with outdoor with “upper-A-list” guests in 2332, www.cazloyd.com) has a group tour concerts and famers’ markets, festivals, and mind, it is a pleasing exercise in from £4,433pp (excluding flights), departing endless hiking, biking and rafting to enjoy. “understated chic”, says Condé 4 October 2018. Perched at 2,400m in one of the most Nast Traveller. Rugged stone, “stunning” parts of the Rocky Mountains, it bleached wood and cast iron dominate the 15 “secluded” Walking the Thames has swanky shopping streets, but also a suites, which have private Churchill called it “the golden thread of our counter-cultural history and a “rebel heart”. terraces and plunge pools with nation’s history” – and on a walk along the To celebrate this, go for a drink at the Hotel sea views. There’s a pretty pool, Thames from its source in Gloucestershire to Jerome, where Hunter S. Thompson (a past and a lunchtime-only taverna the sea, you’ll discover “a tale or two” in Aspen resident) often held court, ordering whose fans allegedly include every mile, says Tom Chesshyre in The “weird” dishes in order to test the chefs. Heston Blumenthal. Times. The river is 215 miles long, but add Scott Dunn (020-8682 5400, www. Doubles from £420. +30 228 902 the most tempting diversions and you’ll cover scottdunn.com) has a seven-night trip from 6292, www.bill-coo-hotel.com. nearly twice that, so set aside three weeks for £2,525pp, including flights.

Last-minute offers from top travel companies Two nights in Oxford 4-star Barcelona stay Hawaiian beach resort Full board Malaysian break Ideally set in the medieval city The Serhs Rivoli Rambla has Revel in stunning shores by Enjoy a private paradise with a centre, the Vanbrugh House much on offer as it’s right on the Wailea Beach Resort as 7-night stay at the Meritus Hotel is offering two nights Las Ramblas. 4 nights on a you spend 5 nights on a b&b Pelangi Beach Resort, with breakfast from £174pp b&b basis costs from £615pp, basis. From £667pp, excl. Langkawi. From £1,055pp, (based on two sharing). 020- excl. flights. 0871-474 3000, flights. 020-3564 5165, incl. Manchester flights. 01293- 3024 8216, www.hotels.com. www.onthebeach.co.uk. www.tripadvisor.co.uk. 762404, www.hayesandjarvis. Arrive 29 August. Depart 8 September. Arrive 8 September. co.uk. Depart 15 September.

29 July 2017 THE WEEK

Obituaries 43 Hollywood director who gave new life to zombies

George A. Romero, who has accident”. Jones had simply given the best George A. died aged 77, didn’t invent audition. But his casting gave the film “extra Romero the zombie movie. The first resonance”, said the New Statesman, “which 1940-2017 film to feature zombies – was exploited in shooting and editing”. Then, figures from Haitian folklore – came out in just before its release, Martin Luther King was 1932. But he revolutionised the genre by murdered; at that point, Romero realised that stripping the undead of their cultural context, they had caught the zeitgeist. In 1999, Night of and making his horror films social and political the Living Dead was declared “culturally, commentaries on contemporary America, said historically, and aesthetically significant” by The Guardian. Released during the civil rights the US Library of Congress. era, and when the Vietnam War was at its height, his big-screen directorial debut, Night of Though panned by many critics, who objected the Living Dead (1968), featured a bunch of to everything from its goriness to its shaky misfits who, holed up in a house in rural camerawork, the film was a box office smash. Pennsylvania, come under attack from flesh- Yet fans had to wait ten years for the sequel, eating zombies. Filmed in black and white, to Dawn of the Dead. The highest grossing of the give it a newsreel quality, it featured in the lead series, it had the zombies stumbling around role a black actor, Duane Jones, who survives a shopping mall. “It is gruesome, sickening, the onslaught – only to be shot dead by a disgusting, violent, brutal and appalling,” said member of a redneck posse that has come to the critic Roger Ebert. “It is also… brilliantly drive the zombies away. “The zombies, they Romero: caught the zeitgeist crafted, funny, droll and savagely merciless in could be anything,” Romero said in 2008. its satiric view of the American consumer “They could be an avalanche, they could be a hurricane. It’s a society.” Day of the Dead came out in 1985; Romero described it disaster out there. The stories are about how people fail to as a “tragedy about how a lack of human communication causes respond in the proper way.” chaos and collapse”. A flop, it was followed by Land of the Dead, in 2005, and Diary of the Dead, in 2007. By then, there were so Born in The Bronx in 1940, Romero was the son of a Cuban- many zombies about the place, Romero joked that he wouldn’t be born commercial artist, and his mother was of Lithuanian surprised to see one on Sesame Street, teaching children to count. descent. A fan of horror comics, and a keen moviegoer, he studied drama and design at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, His other films included Martin (1978), about a man who thinks and started his career in television. That first film – made for just he is a vampire, but who may be a serial killer, the biker drama $110,000 – was originally titled Night of the Flesh Eaters. The Knightriders (1981), and Creepshow (1982), written by Stephen word zombie isn’t in the script: the undead are referred to as King. Romero’s own favourite film, the one that inspired him to ghouls. “I didn’t think of them as zombies,” Romero recalled. make films, was Powell and Pressburger’s The Tales of Hoffman “Then people started to write about them, calling them zombies, (1951). He liked to recall travelling as a teenager to a distribution and all of a sudden that’s what they were.” As for the fact that the house in Manhattan, hoping to rent it on 16mm – only to learn it lead character was black, that was “damn near a complete had already been taken out by a “kid” named Martin Scorsese. Russian poet sentenced to seven years’ forced labour On her 29th birthday, Irina dead end, she went to university to study physics. Irina Ratushinskaya was sentenced After graduating, she became a teacher and Ratushinskaya to seven years’ hard labour in a married Igor Gerashchenko, a childhood friend. 1954-2017 Soviet prison. Her crime was In 1980, both became involved in human rights writing poetry, and being in jail didn’t stop her. protests; they lost their jobs and were briefly Using burnt matchsticks, she’d scratch her poems jailed. Though she described herself as apolitical, on bars of soap, before memorising them. Then, she was jailed again in 1982, for her writing; then, when the chance arose, she’d scrawl them on in 1983, she was convicted of anti-Soviet agitation cigarette papers and pass them to her husband, and propaganda and given the maximum term. In who smuggled them to the West. “The Soviet prison, she was held in the “small zone” for Union, as Russia was before it, is a land where dangerous female prisoners; they survived by poet is the proudest and the most dangerous of all forming strong bonds of friendship and loyalty. In professions,” wrote Professor Maria Carlson, in a her memoir, Grey is the Colour of Hope, New York Times review of one of Ratushinskaya describes enduring regular Ratushinskaya’s poetry anthologies. Her themes, beatings, a diet that consisted of little more than Carlson noted, were those that have tortured so Ratushinskaya: a cause célèbre bread and rotten fish broth, and sub-zero many Russian poets – “memory, history, fate, temperatures. “Hair starts falling out, your skin love, poetry, faith and freedom” – and she wrote without gets loose,” she wrote. “There are days and weeks when you can’t rancour. “If you allow hatred to take root, it will flourish and stand up because of hunger. I was quite close to death.” spread,” she said, “and ultimately corrode and warp your soul.” Thanks to Igor’s efforts, her poems were published in the West, Born in Odessa, Irina was the daughter of an engineer and a and her plight became a cause célèbre. In 1986, on the eve of the teacher of literature. Her parents, who had Polish roots, brought Reykjavík Summit, President Gorbachev announced her early her up an atheist – it was safer – but she developed a strong faith release. Seriously ill, she came to England for treatment. She, her all the same. She began composing poetry at the age of five, but husband and twin sons lived both here and in the US – her Russian only rarely wrote them down. Once, a Soviet official came across citizenship having been revoked. But she never felt settled, and in one of her written works: he told her if she wanted state sanction, 1998 wrote to Boris Yeltsin, asking for permission to go home. she should write a poem about the Communist Party, and Lenin. “To be a Russian poet, I need to be together with my people,” she She declined. In 1971, having realised that humanities were a said, in 1999. She died of cancer earlier this month, aged 63.

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Standard terms and conditions apply and can be viewed online www.dennis.co.uk/comp/terms. For further details, including individual ofer/competition terms and conditions, please visit online www.theweeksociety.co.uk. CITY CITY 45 Companies in the news ...and how they were assessed

Goldman Sachs: fried squid It was a “tale of two banks” on Wall Street last week, as Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs reported their second-quarter results, said Brooke Masters in the Financial Times. Most of the gloom was being felt by Goldmanites. “Both banks are suffering from the long slowdown” in their fixed income, currencies and commodities (FICC) businesses, but traders reckon that Morgan Stanley is dealing with the problem better. Certainly, Goldman has been hit much harder than its peers: trading revenues were down by Seven days in the 40% on the same period last year. “According to an old Wall Street adage, one should Square Mile never bet against Goldman Sachs,” said Iain Dey in The Sunday Times. But if the bank memorably christened the great “Vampire Squid” doesn’t “crush its rivals in the brutal The IMF slashed its growth forecast for the UK to 1.7% this year, from a business of trading, what is its purpose”? CEO Lloyd Blankfein “is thrashing around in previous forecast of 2%, citing a slump all directions”, into areas far removed from the bank’s core business. Over the past year, in economic performance since last he has bought Honest Dollar (a retirement savings business) and another firm that consol- year’s Brexit vote. But there are rays idates high-risk credit card debt, on the grounds that it’s easier to turn a profit lending to of hope. In an upbeat monthly ordinary consumers. Classy stuff. “All empires come to an end eventually. The great manufacturing survey, the CBI found Vampire Squid is increasingly looking more like a piece of breadcrumbed calamari.” that UK production in July rose by its fastest rate since 1995 – and that the German carmakers: cartel probe balance of manufacturers reporting that Congratulations if you’re the proud owner of a German automobile, said David Charter total order books were “above normal” in June was at its highest in 29 years. in The Times: you could be in for a windfall. “Millions of British motorists may be owed Expectations that the US Federal Reserve compensation for overpriced cars” following allegations, now under investigation by the would keep interest rates on hold at its European Commission, that leading German carmakers Volkswagen, BMW and Daimler monthly meeting fuelled confidence in operated a cartel. Last year, almost one in three new cars registered in Britain (about emerging markets: the MSCI Asia Pacific 800,000 vehicles) were made by German firms. Shares in the three car giants plunged this Index neared a ten-year high. week, wiping some s10bn off valuations, as investors digested allegations of “decades of The Bank of England renewed its collusion”, said Alan Tovey in The Daily Telegraph. The three companies are alleged to warnings about “dangerous” levels of have shared information about emissions, engines, brakes and other technologies in personal borrowing in Britain, outlining secret meetings dating back to the 1990s. “The whiff of scandal around the German car that outstanding car loans, credit card manufacturing industry” is intensifying, said Gwyn Topham in The Guardian. Investors balance transfers and personal loans are right to brace themselves. If the allegations are proved, the ensuing fines and compen- have risen by 10% in a year. sation could eclipse the emissions scandal, which has so far cost VW s25bn worldwide. The German carmaker BMW announced plans to build an electric Mini at its plant Michael Kors/Jimmy Choo: vampish deal in Oxford, after rejecting alternative The American handbag maker Michael Kors was once a runaway leader in the locations in Europe. Boots, the high- street pharmacy chain, apologised for “accessible luxury market”, said Elizabeth Paton in The New York Times. Of late, it has charging twice as much for emergency been left “exposed”, as customers have “gravitated towards brands at extremes of the contraception as other retailers – to style and price spectrum”. Now Michael Kors has bought Jimmy Choo for £896m from avoid “incentivising inappropriate use”. its German owner JAB Holding, betting that the London shoemaker can add a little Arconic, the US company which sold glitter to its fortunes. Founded 20 years ago by Malaysian-born Jimmy Choo and the the combustible panels installed at British entrepreneur Tamara Mellon, the shoemaker has the right upmarket credentials: Grenfell Tower, reported better-than- its “vampish aesthetic” has been embraced by “celebrity patrons” from Princess Diana to expected profits. The TV presenter Michelle Obama. Jimmy Choo’s staff seem keen on the deal, said Lisa Armstrong in The Noel Edmonds upped his compensation Daily Telegraph. The word from the fashion house is that even heading downmarket claim following a long-running fraud at Lloyds/HBOS, to £300m. with Michael Kors is better than being “passed around by more venture capitalists”.

Ryanair/easyJet: the battle for Europe Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary is planning quarter, and the airline is sticking to its “a new push for European dominance”, forecasts for the rest of the year. Yet shares beginning with a bid for all, or part, of Alitalia, fell by 4% following the update, echoing an said Robert Lea in The Times. The Irish carrier even bigger 10% drop suffered by its fellow – already the Continent’s largest short-haul expansionist rival easyJet last week. Why airliner – is reportedly one of around ten is the City in such a funk? potential buyers staking out the Italian flag carrier, which went into administration in Put it down to “altitude sickness”, said Lex May, with s3bn of debt. “A combined Ryanair- in the Financial Times. “Frankly, Ryanair’s Alitalia could speak for 50% of the Italian valuation already incorporates plenty of hope” short-haul market,” and is bound to prompt – particularly given pressure from strapped competition concerns. But Italy is just one of consumers to cut fares. The financial hit has several countries where the “ambitious” been partly cushioned by lower fuel prices, Irish outfit is “aiming to take advantage of said Nils Pratley in The Guardian. But it’s also struggling incumbent airlines”. It revealed this O’Leary: has a beady eye on rivals “easier for smaller rivals to buy new aircraft week that it is also keeping a beady eye on the and add new routes” when fuel prices are low. fortunes of Air Berlin in Germany, and of Poland’s Lot. “Both easyJet and Ryanair have been guilty of overhyping the thought that competitors can’t live with the pace they are Overall, Ryanair looks in good financial shape for expansion, setting.” Thankfully, for flyers, those rivals are “still capable of said The Daily Telegraph: pre-tax profits rose by 55% in the last being irritating by surviving”.

29 July 2017 THE WEEK

Talking points CITY 47

Issue of the week: Dr Fox and his chickens The International Trade Secretary’s attempt to further a UK-US trade deal has been hampered by a row over poultry “Chlorinated chicken is hardly the most the US or the EU, but not both”. On appetising sounding of dishes,” said The the face of it, it doesn’t “make a lot of Independent, “but it is now firmly on the sense” to abandon “one well-established political menu.” When Trade Secretary trading relationship” to sign up with a Liam Fox travelled to the US this week, country whose president promises to put to sow the seeds of a future post-Brexit “America first”. “The dangers of Britain trade deal, his agenda was hijacked by being rolled over in its desperation to questions about cheap US poultry secure post-Brexit deals with the US imports. Americans don’t seem to mind and beyond are obvious.” eating chicken that has been chlorine washed to kill bacteria, but the practice A “rushed deal” with the US, however is currently banned under EU rules. Cue politically attractive, “risks handing an outcry. “Is this what Brexit means? American firms the upper hand”, said Is this what Liam Fox is going to bring Michael Savage in The Observer. As us back for supper?” Adam Marshall, director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, points When challenged by the pro-EU pressure Fox: challenged to eat a chlorinated chicken out, we’re up against some of “the group Open Europe to eat chlorinated world’s toughest trade negotiators”, and chicken on live TV, Fox accused the British media of obsessing there’s a danger that British companies will “continue to face over a detail, said Jeremy Warner in The Daily Telegraph. But higher upfront costs and regulatory requirements”, while tiny though the trade of chicken is, in the context of access to opening themselves up to the risk of predatory takeovers by America’s £2trn economy, the row “goes to the heart” of the “bigger, cash-rich US competitors”. Clearly, any agreement with post-Brexit free trade debate. If reaching a trade agreement with the US, our single biggest trading partner, “will impact on some the US necessitates “opening up our markets to chlorinated trading sectors”, said The Daily Telegraph. But that’s no reason chicken and otherwise lowering our agricultural standards”, it for defeatism. On the contrary, America’s clear “enthusiasm” creates a big problem when it comes to trading with the EU, for a free trade deal should be cheered. It is encouraging that “which will want to ensure that no non-compliant foodstuffs get Dr Fox has been “able to provide an optimistic counterweight to into its food chain”. The fuss rams home the point that Britain those who see nothing but gloom ahead”. Trade deals can take “can have a free trade agreement on its own terms with either years to negotiate, “but the direction of travel is what matters”.

Making money: what the experts think Pass the freehold ● Greek milestone “biggest casualty” of the debt crisis – Good news for homebuyers, said The Greece’s return to the Times. The Government is putting an sovereign bond market particularly as “the end to the “great scandal” of new this week, after a three- eurozone’s recovery is houses being sold on leases that year absence, has been in full swing”, and the “force owners to make escalating rental billed as a major ECB is “starting to payments on top of their mortgages”. “milestone” in the edge towards an exit Communities Secretary Sajid Javid has country’s return to from stimulus”. outlined plans to ban the practice in new builds, and “reduce ground rent economic health, said payments to almost nothing” where Liz Alderman in The ● Beyond Dover… they already apply. Most flats are sold New York Times. The Super Mario’s 2012 as leaseholds, so the owner can recover “jubilant” Greek PM, A return to economic health in Athens? “bazooka” marked a the costs of the building’s upkeep Alexis Tsipras, called turning point in the through ground rent. But in recent the sale of five-year bonds – which raised euro crisis – and “investors have good years, developers such as Bellway and s3bn for Athens’ coffers – a “significant reason to celebrate”, said Ian Cowie in Taylor Wimpey have extended the step” towards ending the country’s The Sunday Times. European Assets Trust, practice to houses – “often without “unpleasant adventure” with bailouts. The for instance, has delivered a “remarkable” buyers fully understanding the contracts” – before flogging the sentiment is bound to be echoed elsewhere: 37% total return over the past year. Better freeholds on to investment companies. since 2010, when Athens was “shut off yet, it’s still yielding 5.7%. “Who says you As a result, ground rents have soared. from borrowing in global markets”, the can’t have income and growth?” European EU and the IMF have provided a funds still “look inviting”: as Darius Among the biggest players in the field “staggering” s326bn in financial lifelines. McDermott of Chelsea Financial Services are Vincent Tchenguiz’s Consensus notes, they’re “an opportunity to buy into Business Group, said to hold 300,000 ● Super Mario anniversary a region where company profits are being residential freeholds worth £4bn; and Let’s not get too carried away about revised upwards”. McDermott tips HomeGround, which administers investor enthusiasm for Greek risk, said BlackRock Continental European Income, freeholds on behalf of various landlords, and whose directors Kate Allen and Eleftheria Kourtali in the and Fidelity European Values, which has include David Cameron’s brother-in- FT. About half of the bond’s buyers were “consistently beaten performance law, William Waldorf Astor IV. The owners of existing Greek debt, who were benchmarks”. Alternatively, you might “pass-the-parcel world of freehold “enticed to swap their holdings” with a consider Schroder European Alpha speculation” has proved a gravy train s40m sweetener from the government. Income, or JPM Europe Dynamic, for landowners and “mysterious” Even so, “there could be few better ways” which has a bias towards mid-sized and offshore firms, said Patrick Collinson in to mark the fifth anniversary of Mario smaller companies. Whatever happens The Guardian. Many of the funds claim Draghi’s pronouncement that he would do with Brexit talks, investors would do their investors are pension groups “whatever it takes” to preserve the euro well to remember that “opportunities do looking for “secure long-term income”. Homeowners call it “daylight robbery”. than a successful bond issue from the not end at Dover”.

29 July 2017 THE WEEK 48 CITY Commentators

The summer holidays are a lifesaver for the travel industry, says The Economist: all those “all-inclusive trips to the Mediterranean” City profiles Why Britons more than make up for losses incurred in lean winter months. But tour operators and hoteliers are entering this summer with Masayoshi Son are puking The SoftBank founder has trepidation owing to “an epidemic of food-poisoning claims”. The a warning for any human for payouts number of such claims made by Britons has surged by 500% since foolish enough to dismiss 2013, according to the Association of British Travel Agents. Most Pepper, his pet “humanoid”, Editorial are fake, but with claimants typically demanding £5,000 in as a novelty, says Tim compensation, and up to £100,000 in lawyers’ fees, they’re costing Bradshaw in the FT. Those s The Economist the industry dear. Hoteliers in Mallorca reckon they’re losing 50m who “deride Pepper will face a year. The surge in “puke for payout” claims is the “unintended a future in which they will be result” of the crackdown on car-insurance whiplash scams: when overtaken by robots”, he the Government imposed a cap on the fees lawyers could charge, warned darkly last week – “smart robots” that “can it excluded claims for injuries sustained abroad. A further crack- learn by themselves and down might dissuade tourists from making claims out of an “iffy act on their own”. Son’s tummy”. But evidence that organised criminals are now getting in Japanese conglomerate is on the act suggests the sickening bonanza is likely to continue. investing heavily to bring this future closer. Last week, Better electricity storage is one of the modern world’s biggest its $93bn Vision Fund technological challenges, says Patrick Hosking. That’s why splashed out on Brain Corp, The UK’s flat batteries are the “product of the moment”. In the US, where a Californian outfit whose electric-car entrepreneurs, including Tesla founder Elon Musk, mission is to make robots approach to “as commonplace as have invested heavily in battery power, there is great business computers and mobiles are battery power enthusiasm for supercharging; but in the UK, the best we can do today”. Son reckons artificial is set up a Whitehall committee. The worthy aim of the Faraday intelligence will “outstrip Patrick Hosking Challenge Advisory Board, formed by Business Secretary Greg human capabilities” within Clark last week, is to make battery technology more accessible 30 to 50 years, but professes The Times and affordable. But how this fits into the Business Department’s to be quite relaxed about “slowly evolving industrial strategy” is “anyone’s guess”: batteries that. “AI is not created to put appear to be just one of a string of sectors that Clark “likes the mankind at risk. It is created look of”. The Government has wisely warned against “the to make humans happy.” discredited 1970s practice of trying to pick industry winners”, yet Jayne-Anne Gadhia Clark has “gone to the other extreme and seems to want to pick everything”. The first of Musk’s zippy new Model 3 cars are due for delivery this week – “probably before the Faraday committee gets round to ordering its first consignment of paper clips”.

In 2007, shortly before the start of the great financial crash, the International Monetary Fund confidently predicted that the global The IMF wants economy looked “well set” for robust growth, says Larry Elliott; so we tend to approach the fund’s pronouncements more cautiously to keep its these days. Nonetheless, its latest growth downgrade for the UK looks “perfectly reasonable”. The IMF expects the economy to trousers on expand by just 1.7% this year, some 0.3 points lower than its last prediction, in April. That tallies with evidence at home that the Larry Elliott economy is hardly “going gangbusters”. Indeed, unless stronger The Guardian growth in the eurozone and emerging markets generates higher demand for UK exports, “a further IMF downgrade to about Seeing as how bankers have 1.5% in the autumn looks probable”. But might a surging world been personae non gratae economy ride to Britain’s rescue? The IMF “is still hedging its for much of the last decade, it took a brave BBC producer bets”. It worries about China’s credit bubble and the risk of a to put Virgin Money chief US-inspired trade war; it fears that overvalued financial markets Jayne-Anne Gadhia on are “heading for a fall”. Its caution is understandable. “The IMF Desert Island Discs, says has no desire to be caught with its trousers down a second time.” Alex Brummer in the Daily Mail. But Gadhia “came up News that Facebook and Google are trying to combat soaring with the goods”, blaming an rents in Silicon Valley by building new houses marks a revival of “alpha-male” culture for the Google is going the 19th century concept of the “company town”, says George downfall of her ex-employer, Hammond. Both companies stress their role as “responsible” RBS. Her claim that banking back to the has been “transformed” by corporate citizens (Facebook’s new Willow Campus includes the crisis isn’t strictly true, 19th century plans for 15% of the 1,500 homes to be made available to the however. On the contrary, public at below-market rates), but they’ve a self-interested reason behaviour in the “post-crisis George Hammond for upping housing provision. If rents in “Googleville” (aka period” (Libor fixing, money Mountain View in California) rise much higher, even Google’s laundering, fraud…) has Financial Times well-heeled workers will be outpriced. Will the schemes succeed? been “as ugly as ever”. And The record is mixed. Some 19th century company towns – with the huge build-up of Hershey in Pennsylvania, Cadbury’s Bournville in Birmingham – consumer debt, “there are dramatically improved conditions for workers; but Henry Ford’s signs of history repeating itself”. Gadhia may be the bid to establish “Fordlandia” in Brazil was a spectacular failure. “acceptable face” of Problems occur when a company’s fortunes start to fade – which banking, but she can’t claim is why Hershey and Bournville established trusts “to guarantee the sector has been the future of the towns after their founders were gone”. Google completely reformed. and Facebook should regard that as a safeguard worth repeating.

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The week’s best buys Directors’ dealings CentralNic Glencore Shaftesbury Dixons The Mail on Sunday The Sunday Telegraph Investors Chronicle Turnover at this top-level Shares in the commodities Shaftesbury’s property 340 domain name seller has jumped giant are up fourfold since their portfolio – which includes 113%, and underlying profits 2016 nadir, and its balance nearly 600 buildings and 320 have grown by 68%, thanks to sheet hasn’t been so strong 14.5 acres in London’s West expansion and the “astute since its fl otation. Given rising End – seems “Brexit-proof”. 300 acquisition” of Instra Group. commodity prices, there’s hope A steady income stream and Expect further growth as the of more to come. Worth a rental growth should ensure Deputy CEO sector consolidates. Buy. 51.1p. short-term punt. Buy. 313.55p. it weathers any economic 280 sells 1m downturn. Buy. 978p. Conviviality Morgan Sindall Group 260 Shares The Sunday Times Walker Greenbank Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Drinks wholesaler Convivality This construction fi rm “can do Investors Chronicle remains “resilient” in a tough little wrong”, consistently This luxury interior furnishings Back in February, Dixons Carphone’s chief exec and consumer market, thanks to its topping the list of contractors group has bounced back from CFO offloaded shares. Now competitive pricing and market winning the most work. They a devastating factory fl ood. it’s the turn of deputy chief reach. Full-year profits are up aren’t blockbuster deals, but International orders and executive Andrew Harrison. 100%, and “compelling cash “they add up”. Shares are up licensing sales are rising, and He has netted nearly generation” has boosted the 119% in a year, but there is there’s a major acquisition in £2.8m through the sale of total dividend. Buy. 339.7p. “room to grow”. Buy. £12.84. the pipeline. Buy. 228p. a million shares. SOURCE: FINANCIAL TIMES

…and some to hold, avoid or sell Form guide

British Land National Grid Paddy Power Betfair Shares tipped 12 weeks ago The Times The Times Sharecast Best tip The commercial property fi rm National Grid enjoys a The bookie’s market Associated British Foods is “flush with cash”, but the reputation as a safe haven dominance, strong balance The Times market looks due a correction. stock, but regulatory risks may sheet and exposure to online up 7.47% to £29.21 Tesco and Sainsbury’s sites weigh on the share price. sports betting bode well for the comprise nearly 10% of British Watchdog Ofgem is under future. But a recent lacklustre Worst tip Land’s book, giving worrying increasing pressure to deliver performance, and a worsening Totally exposure to any consumer a “tougher regime” that could regulatory outlook, raise short- The Mail on Sunday down 13.51% to 48p slowdown. Sell. 624.50p. hit returns. Hold. 945.50p. term concerns. Sell. £69.70.

Halfords N Brown Group Pearson Investors Chronicle Investors Chronicle The Daily Telegraph Market view The bicycle retailer had a The plus-size fashion specialist The market is confused by the “When it comes to European robust fi rst half, but squeezed faces a compensation bill of up educational publishing fi rm’s crises, the markets have margins suggest vulnerability to £40m for selling customers decision to sell part of its stake learned that it is always wise to a low pound. Cracks are fl awed insurance products. in Penguin Random House. to bet on a deal. But Brexit showing in the autocentres Underlying trading remains Given profit warnings and an may be different.” arm, and strategic leadership strong, but cash fl ow, post- expected dividend cut, wait for Simon Nixon in The Wall has been lacking since CEO Jill Brexit, is a worry, and shares August’s interim results to Street Journal McDonald left. Sell. 334p. may be vulnerable. Sell. 211p. reassess. Avoid. 631.5p. Market summary

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

25 July 2017 Week before Change (%) WEEK’S CHANGE, FTSE 100 STOCKS 7,600 FTSE 100 7434.82 7390.22 0.60% RISES Price % change FTSE All-share UK 4068.25 4046.36 0.54% Antofagasta 951.00 +7.52 Dow Jones 21634.07 21548.01 0.40% Standard Chartered 841.20 +4.59 7,500 NASDAQ 6416.05 6326.15 1.42% Sage Group 700.50 +4.24 Nikkei 225 19955.20 19999.91 –0.22% Segro 519.50 +3.90 Hang Seng 26852.05 26524.94 1.23% Hargreaves Lansdown 1349.00 +3.85 7,400 Gold 1254.40 1240.75 1.10% FALLS Brent Crude Oil 50.09 48.77 2.71% Easyjet 1271.00 –10.05 7,300 DIVIDEND YIELD (FTSE 100) 3.77% 3.80% Provident Financial 2163.00 –7.56 UK 10-year gilts yield 1.32 1.27 Royal Bank of Sctl.Gp. 585.50 –5.72 US 10-year Treasuries 2.32 2.26 Royal Mail 391.80 –4.69 7,200 UK ECONOMIC DATA G4S 325.40 –4.60 Latest CPI (yoy) 2.6% (Jun) 2.9% (May) BEST AND WORST UK STOCKS OVERALL Latest RPI (yoy) 3.5% (Jun) 3.7% (May) 7,100 Alba Mineral Res. 0.66 +114.52 Halifax house price (yoy) +2.6% (Jun) +3.3% (May) Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul RM2 International 7.50 –44.44 6-month movement in the FTSE 100 index £1 STERLING $1.303 E1.120 ¥145.681 Source: Datastream (not adjusted for dividends). Prices on 25 July (pm)

29 July 2017 THE WEEK 52 The last word Is most of what we’re told about autism wrong? The novelist David Mitchell has a son with severe, non-verbal autism. He was told his child was intellectually disabled. Then Mitchell read, and helped translate, a first-person account of the condition, The Reason I Jump, written by a 13-year-old Japanese boy

Naoki Higashida is an amiable and my son’s autism – but a little thoughtful young man in his early mortification never hurt anyone. 20s who lives with his family in On YouTube I found a few clips of Chiba, a prefecture adjacent to Naoki and was taken aback at how Tokyo. Naoki has autism of a type visibly manifest his autism was – labelled severe and non-verbal, so a more so than my own son’s. This free-flowing conversation of the gap between Naoki’s appearance kind that facilitates the lives of and his textual expressiveness made most of us is impossible for him. a deep impression. Clearly, he By dint of training and patience, struggled with meltdowns, physical however, he has learned to and verbal tics that not so long ago communicate by “typing out” would have ensured a short, bleak sentences on an alphabet grid – a life of incarceration. Yet in The keyboard layout drawn on card Reason I Jump, the same boy was with an added “YES”, “NO” and exhibiting intelligence, creativity, “FINISHED”. Naoki voices the analysis, empathy and an phonetic characters of the Japanese emotional range as wide as my hiragana alphabet as he touches the own. What intrigued me as much corresponding Roman letters and as anything was that these last two builds up sentences, which a attributes – empathy and emotional transcriber takes down. (Nobody range – are precisely what people else’s hand is near Naoki’s during with autism are famous for this process.) lacking. What was going on? There were two possibilities: either If you think this sounds like an Naoki Higashida is a one-in-a- arduous way to get your meaning million person, who has severe across, you’re right, it is; in non-verbal autism yet is also addition, Naoki’s autism bombards intellectually and emotionally him with distractions and prompts intact; or society at large and many him to get up mid-sentence, pace Naoki: the second most widely translated living Japanese author specialists are partly or wholly the room and gaze out of the wrong about autism. window. He is easily ejected from his train of thought and forced to begin the sentence again. I’ve watched Naoki produce a Evidence against the “uniqueness possibility” came in the form complex sentence within 60 seconds, but I’ve also seen him take of other non-verbal writers with severe autism, such as Carly 20 minutes to complete a line of just a few words. By writing on Fleischmann. Naoki’s ability to communicate might be rare but a laptop, Naoki can dispense with the human transcriber, but the it’s not one in a million. The “wrong about autism” theory is screen and the text converter (the drop-down menus required for bolstered by the errors that could serve as chapter headings in the writing Japanese) add a new layer of distraction. history of autism. Leo Kanner, the child psychiatrist who fi rst used the word “autism” in the I met Naoki’s writing before I 1940s in a context distinct from met Naoki. My son has autism “Naoki’s autism is classified as ‘severe’. Yet in schizophrenia, blamed the and my wife is from Japan, so his book, he exhibits intelligence, empathy and condition in part on when our boy was very young “refrigerator mothers”, a notion and his autism at its most grimly an emotional range as wide as my own” whose credibility now is on a par challenging, my wife searched with demonic possession. The online for books in her native language that might offer practical 1960s and 1970s saw psychiatrists advocating autism “cures” insight into what we were trying (and often failing) to deal with. based on electrotherapy, LSD and behavioural change techniques That led to The Reason I Jump, written when its author was only that utilised pain and punishment. 13. Our bookshelves were bending under weighty tomes by autism specialists, but few were of much “hands-on” help with I understand that science progresses over the bodies of debunked our non-verbal, regularly distressed fi ve-year-old. theories, and I know that judging well-intentioned psychiatrists from the higher ground of hindsight isn’t particularly fair, but When the book arrived, my wife began translating chunks of it when I consider the damage they surely inflicted on children like out loud at our kitchen table, and many of its very short chapters my son, I don’t feel like being particularly fair. What if the shed immediate light on our son’s issues: why he banged his head current assumption that people with severe autism have on the fl oor; why there were phases when his clothes seemed matching severe intellectual disabilities is our own decade’s unendurably uncomfortable; why he would be seized by fi ts of wrongness about autism? What if Naoki’s conviction that we laughter, or fury, or tears, even when nothing obvious had are mistaking communicative non-functionality for mental happened to provoke these reactions. Theories I’d read previously non-functionality is on the money? were speculations, but The Reason I Jump offered plausible explanations directly from the alphabet grid of an insider. My wife and I saw no harm in “assuming the best” and acting as

Illumination can mortify – I realised how poorly I’d understood if, inside the chaotic swirl of our son’s autism and behaviours, © JUN MUROZONO; ADAM PATTERSON/THE GUARDIAN

THE WEEK 29 July 2017 The last word 53 there was a bright and perceptive – if a truer understanding of the grievously isolated – fi ve-year-old. condition. Autism has a habit of We stopped assuming that because making clean labels such as “verbal” he’d never uttered a word in his life, and “non-verbal” murky. While he couldn’t understand us. We put my son’s comprehension appears morsels of food he didn’t eat on the to be good and he can name many edge of his plate of pasta, like Naoki hundreds of objects in English and suggests, in case he was feeling Japanese, his spoken communication experimental that day. Often he is limited to a few phrases, and wasn’t, but sometimes he was, and he’s never had a conversation longer his food repertoire grew. We started than three or four exchanges of these asking our son to pick things up that phrases. Compared with some of his he’d dropped by taking his hand to peers who have never uttered a word the object, instead of thinking, “Oh, and, indeed, compared with Naoki, why bother?” and doing it for him. my son is rather verbal: but relative We began speaking to him normally, Mitchell: endured a crash course in the politics of special needs to his neurotypical contemporaries, rather than sticking to one-word he’s a step away from muteness. sentences. I didn’t know what percentage of these longer, more natural sentences our son understood – I still don’t – but I do Naoki, meanwhile, has a near-total inability to conduct a spoken know that our daily lives got better. His eye contact improved, conversation or give verbal answers to questions. He is better able he engaged with us more and, with help from an inspiring tutor, to deploy the short menu of set phrases drilled into Japanese our son came into the kitchen one day and almost made me fall children and used throughout their lives – such as the universal off my chair by asking, “Can I have orange juice please?” His pre-meal expression of gratitude “itadakimasu”, though this has vocabulary snowballed and episodes of self-harm dwindled away morphed into a fi xation whereby he has to check that every other to near zero. diner in the room has also said it. (Problematic at large gatherings.) If Naoki’s mother uses her ordinary voice when she Autism is not a disease, so there are no “cures” – never give your calls out his name to check where he is in the house, Naoki is credit card details to anyone who tells you otherwise. But The unable to respond. If she uses his full name in the formal manner Reason I Jump did help us understand our son’s challenges and of a schoolteacher taking the class register, however, Naoki can the world from his point of view more than any other source. confirm his presence verbally. Initially, my wife and I translated the book for our son’s special needs assistants; now it has been published in more than He can also say – or, more accurately, is compelled to repeat – 30 languages. To the best of my knowledge, this makes Naoki words or short phrases that have embedded themselves in his Higashida the most widely translated living Japanese author after mind. These might be advertising jingles, place names or words Haruki Murakami. that catch his fancy. Verbal fi xations are deeply rooted: during most of a 20-minute drive I was surprised and pleased by along slowish winding Irish the success of Naoki’s book. My “What loving parent wants to be told we’ve lanes, Naoki repeated the involvement in it, however, gave been underestimating our child’s potential? Japanese word for “expressway” me a crash course in the politics in order to prompt his mother of special needs. Entrenched Shooting the messenger is less messy” into replying with the sentence: opinion is well armed, and its “No, it’s an ordinary road.” default reaction to new ideas is often hostile. The accusation was (As he explains in the book, Naoki would love to stop being a levelled that nobody with “genuine” severe autism could possibly slave to these verbal overrides, but the fi xation is insurmountable.) have authored such articulate prose. Therefore, Naoki must have been misdiagnosed and doesn’t have autism at all; or he’s an Naoki’s verbal comprehension, however, is comparable to a impostor at the Asperger’s syndrome end of the spectrum; or his neurotypical adult. In general he understands my less-than-fluent books are written by someone else, possibly his mother. Or me. spoken Japanese, but because he’s unable to let me know that he The New York Times reviewer cautioned the translators against has understood, I can be left dangling until he begins to spell out “turning what we fi nd into what we want”. his answer letter by letter on his alphabet grid. Naoki has only ever answered one of my questions aloud, without using his I was told point-blank by a fellow contributor to a radio alphabet grid. We were at lunch. His answer was a simple “Yes” programme that The Reason I Jump couldn’t be genuine because and the whole table smiled in surprise at this achievement, Naoki Naoki employs metaphor, and people with severe autism can’t included. (I’m embarrassed to admit I’ve forgotten the question.) understand what a metaphor is, let alone create one. In fact, I’ve watched Naoki spell out similes and metaphors on his alphabet Naoki’s autism is classified as “severe” by the Japanese grid on a number of occasions. My co-contributor’s son also had authorities and he carries an ID card bearing this designation in severe autism, and I’ve tried hard to understand her indignation. case a swift explanation is needed. What the designation “severe” To be told that we’ve been underestimating our child’s potential involves, however, is as relative as the label “non-verbal”. My can feel like we’re being accused of collaborating in our child’s son is free from many of the classic autistic “tics” that Naoki is imprisonment, and what loving mum or dad would sign up for burdened with, and over short periods he can even pass as that? Shooting the messenger is a less messy reaction. neurotypical. In contrast, ten seconds in Naoki’s company is enough for his autism to become unmistakable. My son, However, I do believe that while severe non-verbal autism looks however, shows no sign – yet – of being able to communicate the like a severe cognitive impairment, the truth is that it’s not: it’s richness of his inner life in the way that Naoki can. Whose autism a severe sensory-processing and communicative impairment. is more severe? These words hold a world of difference. To deny that a severely autistic brain may house a mind as curious and imaginative as Naoki Higashida’s follow-up book, Fall Down 7 Times Get anyone else’s is to perpetuate a ruinous falsehood. If a critical Up 8: A Young Man’s Voice from the Silence of Autism, about mass of people hadn’t called time on previous “truths” about his experiences, thoughts and feelings as a young adult with autism, the refrigerator mother theory – or even the demonic autism, is published by Sceptre. It has an introduction by David possession theory – would still be reigning supreme. Naoki Mitchell, and is translated by Mitchell and K.A. Yoshida. A and other pioneers may be fl agging up the next shift towards longer version of this article fi rst appeared in the New Statesman.

29 July 2017 THE WEEK 54 Crossword

THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1066 This week’sw crossword winner will receive An Ettinger Brogue Collection key case and two Connell Guides will be given to the an EttingerEtt (www.ettinger.co.uk) Brogue sender of the first correct solution to the crossword and the clue of the week opened on Monday CollectionCollec 4-hook key case, which retails 7 August. Send it to: The Week Crossword 1066, 2nd floor, 32 Queensway, London W2 3RX, or at £125,£12 and two Connell Guides (www. connellguides.com).connel email the answers to [email protected]. Tim Moorey (www.timmoorey.info) 1 2 3 4 5 6 Three words to be shaded (3,3,4), included within three across answers, complete a book title. Its authors are in two across 7 89 answers, clued without definition

ACROSS DOWN 7 Starry with temperature 1 Making denial say, in a state (8) 10 11 dropping (6) 2 Third-rate laptop due for repair 8 Who has change in his care? (7) is shattered (7,3) 10 Effeminate and theatrical David, 3 Heard King in ruins (6) 4 Image of semi-conductor not say in America (4) 12 13 14 11 Glowing in short Canadian entirely visible (4) fall (10) 5 Record is broken by policeman? 12 Various water-birds (6) On the contrary (4) 13 Sweet afternoon treats winning 6 Fruit for duck on top of lots of trophies? (8) cooker (6) 15 16 17 18 15 Gen’s pregnant, Al’s gone 9 Express tears over one Woody missing! (4) Allen movie (7) 16 Irons perhaps and clubs used in 13 More attractive coastal patrol round recalled (5) boat leaking tons (5) 19 20 21 17 Name of US State line (4) 14 Finish sounding like a drunken 19 PM out to stop leaks from top of side-kick! (10) the House? (8) 16 Lack of belief he is showing in 21 Silly old man is a nut (6) source of money (7) 22 23 24 25 22 Woozy could make neat 18 Stay that is pants? Could be! (8) birdie (10) 20 Sweeties: humbugs not 25 Vegetable vessel overturned (4) opened (6) 26 Many eat bananas (7) 21 Quote from a dead Italian 26 27 27 Cordial help mostly given by leader (6) Conservative (6) 23 Some fear bankruptcy coming up for Scottish bank (4) 24 Fish and a loaf served up (4) Name Book title: Address Clue of the week: What an MP does before he takes his seat (6, first letter S, Tel no last S) Financial Times, Dante Clue of the week answer:

Solution to Crossword 1064 ACROSS: 1 Usages 5 Budgeted 9 Appendices 10 I see 11 Cadavers Subscribe to today for just £2.16 per 12 Aweigh 13 Dali 15 Attorney 18 Bonehead 19 Lynx 21 Stasis 23 In the can issue – saving over £58 on the annual UK shop price. 25 Fast 26 Even number 27 Hebrides 28 Supper DOWN: 2 Supra 3 Grenadine 4 Sadder 5 Backseat drivers 6 Distaste 7 Elite 8 Evergreen 14 About-face 16 Relief map 17 Bedstead 20 Stones 22 Sitar Your subscription will start with 6 trial issues. You can cancel your subscription 24 Adele at any time during the first six weeks and we’ll refund your money in full. YES! I would like to subscribe to The Week with 6 TRIAL ISSUES. Clue of the Week: Winning batsman to take out (6, first letter U) Nn Solution: UPROOT PLEASE COMPLETE FORM IN BLOCK CAPITALS

The winner of 1064 is Ian Griffiths from Stoke Poges TITLE FORENAME

The Week is available on CD and via the e-text service from National SURNAME Talking Newspapers on 01435-866102; www.tnauk.org.uk ADDRESS

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