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16-22 SEP 2017 | ISSUE 176 | AED 15 THE BEST OF INTERNATIONAL MEDIA Blair’s big idea Stopping Brexit at the border Page 21

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What happened What the editorials said Winning a vote by a majority of 36 is a decent result for a Battling over Brexit minority administration, said The Daily Telegraph. But this Britain’s departure from the EU came a step was just the “opening skirmish of what will be closer this week when the Government’s flagship a bruising series of set-piece clashes in both the Brexit bill cleared its first parliamentary hurdle. Commons and the Lords”. MPs have already Labour had threatened to lead a successful revolt tabled a raft of 157 amendments. The “key against the legislation, but in the event, Theresa battle” is likely to come at the end of this May cleared a second reading of the EU process, with “Labour pressing for any deal (Withdrawal) Bill by a comfortable majority of with the EU to be implemented through an act 36 votes. There was no Tory rebellion, and seven of Parliament”. In the meantime, Labour’s Labour MPs defied their party whip by voting cynical blocking tactics are “undermining the for the Bill. Formerly referred to as the Great chances of getting a good deal”. Repeal Bill, the legislation ends the supremacy of EU law in the UK, while at the same time Labour has every right to challenge the transposing all existing EU laws onto Britain’s Government’s Brexit plans, said The Observer. statute book to ensure there are no gaps in An exercise in cant? Besides, if anything is disrupting and slowing legislation on Brexit day. this process down, it’s infighting among the “inept” Tories. Thanks to the incoherent stance of their Brexit May heralded the Commons vote as a “historic decision to negotiators, there is now “almost no chance” that next back the will of the people”, and said it would give clarity and month’s EU summit will agree that sufficient progress has been certainty through the Brexit process. But critics called the Bill made in the Brexit talks to progress to the next stage. Little a “naked power grab”, arguing that it gave ministers too more than a year will then remain to renegotiate all aspects of much leeway, under so-called Henry VIII powers, to amend Britain’s relationship with the EU. Such are the “insuperable laws without consulting MPs. The Bill will now receive line- practical difficulties” of leaving the EU, said The Independent, by-line scrutiny in its committee stage, which will start when that we’re likely to abandon the plan in the end. “The Great MPs return to Parliament after their party conferences. Repeal Bill may one day itself have to be repealed.”

What happened on Sunday, where an astonishing 6.3 million people had been evacuated to shelters and safe areas both inside and outside Irma’s trail of destruction the state. The Florida Keys bore the brunt of the storm: 25% of homes in the low-lying archipelago were destroyed, and Hurricane Irma, the most powerful ever 65% were damaged. But Irma had recorded in the Atlantic Ocean, swept weakened, from a maximum category five through the Caribbean and into the to a category three storm, by the time it United States last week, leaving a trail of reached the Florida mainland. Its path also destruction behind it. The storm, which avoided Miami and the heavily developed reached peak intensity in the middle of Atlantic seaboard. Nevertheless, heavy rain last week with sustained winds of more and storm surges brought flooding in than 185mph, killed at least 55 people, Miami and Jacksonville, and some 60% of and caused damage expected to run into homes in Florida were left without power. the tens of billions of dollars. The islands of the northeast Caribbean were worst The UK Government allocated £32m in aid A flattened building in St Martin hit, among them the British Virgin Islands to the British territories affected, and 1,250 and Anguilla, another British overseas territory. Nearby troops were deployed from warships to help with the relief Barbuda was left “barely habitable”, according to its prime effort and to maintain order; around 100 “very serious” minister Gaston Browne; 90% of structures on the island prisoners escaped from jail on the British Virgin Islands. The were destroyed. There were similar levels of damage on the UK response was criticised by the shadow foreign minister French island of St Barts and on St Martin, which is split Emily Thornberry as “too little and too late”. On both French between Dutch and French control. Saint-Martin and Dutch Sint Maarten, widespread looting was reported, in the face of severe food and water shortages. The Last Friday, Irma raked the north coast of Cuba, where it territories’ respective governments stepped up their relief killed at least ten people, before making landfall in Florida efforts in response.

It wasn’t all bad A 13-year-old who died of a brain A crater on Pluto has been aneurysm has helped save a record named after the British woman Britain’s Arctic tern population is number of lives by donating her who christened the dwarf booming, thanks to intense organs. Just two weeks before she planet, 87 years ago. The Burney conservation efforts. In 2016, suddenly collapsed in 2012, crater honours Venetia Burney, only two of the birds that Jemima Layzell (pictured), from who was 11 when her hatched in one of their largest Horton in Somerset, had told her grandfather, an Oxford librarian, breeding grounds, on the parents that were she to die, she mentioned that the newly Northumberland coast, left their would want to donate her organs. discovered planet still didn’t nests: the rest fell victim to high Her organs had eight recipients, have a name. Venetia, who died tides, marine pollution and five of whom were children. in 2009, suggested to him that predators. But last year, the According to the NHS Blood and Pluto, the god of the underworld, National Trust bought a further Transplant Unit, no donor in the would be an apt fit for such a 200 acres of land, at Tughall Mill. UK has helped more people: dark and remote place. He Rangers set up tents on the site, typically, a donation results in one passed the idea to an Oxford monitored the birds around the or two transplants. “Everyone astronomer, who in turn sent a clock – and this year, 500 left wants their child to be unique,” said Jemima’s mother, Sophy. telegram to Clyde Tombaugh, their nests unscathed. “This, among other things, makes us very proud.” the discoverer of Pluto. COVER CARTOON: HOWARD MCWILLIAM HOWARD CARTOON: COVER

THE WEEK 16 SEPTEMBER 2017 …and how it was covered NEWS 5

What the commentators said What next? Spare me all the “cant” about Henry VIII clauses, said Iain Dale on ConservativeHome.com. May is reportedly preparing Labour MPs are suddenly aghast at the thought of being bypassed, yet the whole purpose of to make a major speech on this Bill is “to repeal a single giant Henry VIII clause”, the European Communities Act of 1972, Brexit next Thursday, says which implemented our membership of the Common Market, and which, for the past 44 years, BBC News Online. The media has allowed EU law to become binding on UK citizens without Parliament having any right to have dubbed it Lancaster amend or reject it. But MPs are quite right to be worried about the scope of the executive House 2.0, in reference to the powers in the new Bill, said Nick Dearden in The Independent. Such powers would enable speech she made in London ministers not just to make minor technical changes, but also, potentially, to dilute workers’ in January. In that address – rights or environmental standards. The Government has promised not to scrap any such laws, widely regarded as the Tories’ but you “don’t have to scrap them in order to render them useless”. Brexit blueprint – she confirmed the UK’s intention Ministers will almost certainly have to give some ground to get this Bill through to leave the single committee stage, said James Forsyth in The Spectator – indeed, they’ve already market and indicated that they’re open to amendments curtailing the Henry VIII powers. But a customs union. leaked letter from some Tory MPs last week, warning against a transition deal that kept the UK in the EU “by stealth”, is a reminder that if May gives too much Tory officials have ground to supporters of a soft Brexit, “she’ll have trouble on her right flank”. also signalled that Labour is also vulnerable. For months, it has been able to maintain a studied May will use a ambiguity on Brexit. But it will now be attacked for voting against leaving the EU. “robust” Tory conference speech Britain’s politicians face a gruelling 18 months of late-night Brexit votes, said in Manchester on 4 George Parker and Robert Wright in the FT. Tories have taken some heart from “We weren’t warned October to reassure the fact that “Labour’s own divisions on the issue are starting to show”, but they that voting Brexit would activists that she have few other reasons for cheer. Labour has opted for “attritional tactics”, mean talking about it remains committed suspending the informal “pairing” system that allows politicians from rival parties for EVER!” to making a clean to sit out votes, thereby cancelling each other out and giving both an evening off. © MATT/DAILY TELEGRAPH break from the EU.

What the commentators said What next? Hot on the heels of Hurricane Harvey, Irma ought to “kill any doubt that climate change is The Atlantic hurricane real”, said Michael E. Mann in The Washington Post. Hurricanes are increasing in strength season runs from June to because of the changing climate. Cyclones get their energy from warm ocean waters, and the the end of November, says oceans are warming because of the greenhouse gases released by burning hydrocarbons. “Over The Weather Channel, but the past two years, we have witnessed the most intense hurricanes on record for the globe, both we are “now past its hemispheres, the Pacific and now, with Irma, the Atlantic.” Actually, the science is not all that climatological peak”. The clear-cut, said Matt Ridley in The Times. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is on frequency of storms reaches record as stating that there has been no recent increase in the frequency of tropical cyclones: in its statistical maximum fact, Harvey and Irma have ended a historic 12-year hurricane drought for the mainland US. point on 10 September. The Climate change may have made hurricanes “slightly fiercer”, but adequate preparation for later months can occasion- extreme weather more than compensates for this. When Galveston, Texas, was hit by a ally produce “impactful hurricane in 1900, 10,000 people died. By contrast, the death toll for Harvey and Irma has storms”, but conditions are been spectacularly low. “Adaptation is and always will be the way to survive storms.” usually calmed by autumnal cold fronts. The problem with adaptation is that it costs a lot of money, said Susan Matthews on Slate. Sceptical Republicans “may refuse to believe the science on climate change, but they will pay Estimates for the damage attention to the fiscal costs of these events”. Congress is planning to spend at least $15.3bn caused in the US by Irma dollars on relief following Harvey, which dumped an unprecedented amount of rain on Texas. range from $49bn to In time, such numbers may make them willing to think about “climate change mitigation”. As $100bn, says Time – for the British Government, its aid package for the affected territories is “derisory”, said Rupert considerably less than the Jones in The Guardian. Is £32m all it can afford, from its £12bn foreign aid budget, for this £176bn bill for Hurricane “enormous” reconstruction effort? Schools, hospitals and airports have all been flattened. If Katrina, which swamped this had happened to the Falkland Islands or Gibraltar would the response have been the same? New Orleans in 2005.

Editor-in-chief: Jeremy O’Grady In this age it is an article of faith Editor: Caroline Law that apparent differences in Deputy editors: Harry Nicolle, Theo Tait THE WEEK Consultant editor: Jemima Lewis aptitudes and inclinations between Assistant editor: Daniel Cohen City editor: Jane Lewis Contributing editors: Charity Crewe, Thomas Hodgkinson, Editor-in-Chief: Obaid Humaid Al Tayer men and women must be artefacts of cultural conditioning. A Simon Wilson, Rob McLuhan, William Underhill, Digby Managing Partner and Group Editor: Ian Fairservice Warde-Aldam, Tom Yarwood Editorial staff: Asya Likhtman, Editorial Director: Gina Johnson Google employee has been given the sack for the heresy of doubting Anoushka Petit, Tigger Ridgwell, William Skidelsky Picture Deputy Group Editor – Business: Guido Duken editor: Xandie Nutting Art director: Nathalie Fowler Chief it. And when what appeared to be an innate gender difference in sub editor: Kari Wilkin Production editor: Alanna O’Connell Contributing Editor: Dominic Ellis Senior Art Director: Tarak Parekh Founder and editorial director: Jolyon Connell proficiency at Scrabble recently came to light – the best players are Designer: Sanil Kumar Production Manager: Ebony Besagni Senior Production Editorial Assistant: Londresa Flores men even though more women than men play the game – Executive: Maaya Mistry Newstrade Director: David Barker Direct Marketing Director: Abi Spooner General Manager – Production: S Sunil Kumar researchers at once set about bringing this anomaly to heel. The Inserts: Abdul Ahad Classified: Henry Haselock, Henry Production Manager: R. Murali Krishnan Pickford Account Directors: Scott Hayter, John Hipkiss, Assistant Production Manager: Binu Purandaran equality doctrine isn’t “women = men”. It’s “women ≥ men”. Warner Victoria Ryan, Jocelyn Sital-Singh UK Ad Director: Caroline Fenner Chief Commercial Officer: Anthony Milne Bros. failed to grasp the point. Far from being lauded for making an Executive Director – Head of Advertising: David Weeks Publisher: Jaya Balakrishnan all female film of Lord of the Flies, it has been damned on Twitter for Chief Executive, The Week: Kerin O’Connor Senior Sales Manager: Manish Chopra Group CFO/COO: Brett Reynolds daring to suggest that girls marooned on an island would end up Chief executive: James Tye Head office: Media One Tower, Dubai Media City, Dennis Publishing founder: Felix Dennis PO Box 2331, Dubai, UAE. killing each other in the way the boys do in Golding’s novel. Women, Tel: +971 4 427 3000; Fax: +971 4 428 2260 Jolyon Connell email: [email protected] it failed to see, are better than that. THE WEEK Ltd, a subsidiary of Dennis Publishing Ltd, 30 Cleveland St, London W1T 4JD. Tel: 020-7907 6000. The Week is a registered trademark of Felix Dennis. OUR Dubai Media City: Abu Dhabi: London: Editorial: The Week Ltd, 2nd Floor, 32 Queensway, Licensed by Dennis Publishing, 30 Cleveland Street, OFFICES Office 508, 5th floor, Building 8, PO Box 43072, UAE Acre House, 11/15 William Road, London W2 3RX. Tel: 020-7907 6180. Dubai, UAE, Tel: +971 4 390 3550; London NW1 3ER, UK London, W1T 4JD Tel: +971 2 677 2005; Fax: +971 2 677 0124 email: [email protected] Fax: +971 4 390 4845 email: [email protected] email: [email protected]

16 SEPTEMBER 2017 THE WEEK 6 NEWS Politics

Controversy of the week Boring but important The politics of integrity Pay cap lifted The 1% cap on public sector pay rises in England and “These are odd times in British politics,” said Philip Collins in The Wales has been lifted, Times, and above all in the Tory party. It always used to make “good ministers have announced. sense and survival” its priority – and with that in mind made sure to Public sector wages were attract liberals into its fold. But now “everything solid has melted into frozen for two years in 2010, air”. In a survey of Tory members last week, Jacob Rees-Mogg then capped at 1%. Now, emerged as clear favourite to be the next party leader. This is a man police officers have been given a 2% pay rise – half in who denies climate change, who was a big fan of Donald Trump, and the form of a one-off bonus – who, in a TV interv iew last week, declared he was against marriage Rees-Mogg: core family values and prison officers an equality. As if infected by “a Corbynism of the right”, the Tories seem average rise of 1.7% (see to be opting for “ostentatious integrity” over stable leadership. page 48). From next year, ministers for other Rees-Mogg’s views sparked outrage among those who’d earlier seen him as a loveable caricature of departments will also be able Britishness, said Holly Baxter in The Independent. What did they expect? He’s never pretended to be to breach the cap. However, anything but “a relic of a bygone era”: he happily admits to never having changed a nappy for any of unions said that – with his six children. Why assume his reactionary nature stops “at the aesthetics”: the accent, the nanny, the inflation at 2.9% – the rises still amounted to a cut in real Mayfair abode? Why, indeed, asked Suzanne Moore in The Guardian. He isn’t a “charming upper- terms. Several unions have crust throwback”. He’s a “thoroughly modern, neocon servative bigot” who uses his Catholic faith to threatened industrial action excuse “appalling” anti-women views. He was happy to be guest of honour at the annual dinner of the in favour of higher rises. Traditional Britain Group, an outfit that wants to return black people to “their natural homelands”. Sure, he later sought to distance his views from theirs, yet he still went ahead and spoke at their do. I Stonehenge tunnel don’t agree with Rees-Mogg’s views, said Sarah Vine in the Daily Mail, but I salute him as a man of Controversial plans to build a principle. He doesn’t tailor his ideas to ingratiate himself with “fashionable feminists”. He doesn’t road tunnel past Stonehenge apologise for his belief in “core family values”. He appeals to people precisely because “he possesses have been given the go- something that too many politicians do not: authenticity”. ahead. However, the route has been shifted 50 metres, There’s something disturbing about this new tendency to admire the Corbyns and Rees-Moggs of in response to complaints that it passed too close to the this world just because they stick to their principles, said Michael Deacon in The Daily Telegraph. ancient site. Ministers say Why applaud them for the courage of their convictions if their convictions are inflexible and diverting the A303 into a unpleasant? Would we say of Ayatollah Khomeini: he may not have been “politically correct in 1.8-mile-long tunnel will hanging prisoners from cranes, but at least he stood for something. At least he was authentic?” I enhance Stonehenge – think not. We should be wary of moral certainty. “Give me a politician with doubts,” not conviction. restoring its tranquillity and Don’t fret, said Janan Ganesh in the FT. Rees-Mogg is history: right or wrong, his views “are being easing congestion, but eclipsed by the passage of time”. In Britain, 71% of 18- to 24-year-olds claim to have no religion, and archaeologists are opposed they are increasingly liberal in their attitudes to gender and immigration. Demographics, social and to the move. The project, they cultural mobility – the impersonal processes that underlie attitudes over time – are all ranged against say, could compromise the World Heritage Site, parts of traditional conservatism. The general trend, here in Britain, is “away from Rees-Moggery”. which have never been fully excavated.

Good week for: Spirit of the age Apple, with the much-anticipated launch of its latest iPhone. Poll watch Students’ handwriting has Released on the tenth anniversary of the first iPhone, the £1,000 Democrats embrace become so illegible that iPhone X has several striking features, including a large edge-to- single-payer health bill Cambridge University is edge screen, and sophisticated facial recognition technology, so At least 15 Democratic considering letting that the user need only hold the phone up to his or her face to senators, most of them undergraduates use laptops unlock it. It is supposed to be 20 times more secure than the presidential hopefuls, lined in exams. The university has previous Touch system. At the launch, it proved a little too secure, up to support Sen. Bernie launched a consultation, however: the phone remained resolutely locked. Sanders (I-Vt.) this week as following complaints from he introduced legislation examiners that a reliance on Boarding times, after Ryanair announced that it is going to start that would expand computers has left young charging passengers to carry wheelie bags on board, and cut the Medicare into a universal people unable to use a pen. cost of putting luggage in the hold. It said people trying to stuff health insurance program. “We have been concerned large bags into small overhead compartments were holding up Sanders has introduced for years about the declining flights, and that in future passengers will only be allowed to bring single-payer health handwriting problem,” said one small bag onboard unless they pay £5 for priority boarding. legislation three times historian Sarah Pearsall. before, but he has never had a co-sponsor. For a decade, four flower Bad week for: baskets have hung outside Thames Water, with the discovery of a 250-metre-long, 130- 56% of British men over 65 The Pantry café, in the tonne “fatberg” blocking a Victorian era sewer in East London. consider themselves to be Highland town of Cromarty. Engineers described the fatberg, made up of wet wipes, sanitary completely masculine. But now, a council official towels and solidified cooking fats, as a “total monster”. Among men aged 50 to has deemed them a safety which was forced to change the recipe for its 64, the figure drops to 32% hazard – on the grounds Farrow & Ball, – and to just 2% among that they are too low – and paints, in response to long-standing complaints that it is hard to 18- to 24-year-olds. 59% of ordered the café’s owner, apply and requires extra coats to get proper coverage. Many women over 65 consider Jean Henderson, to remove decorators now charge clients extra for using the premium brand. themselves completely them or face a £1,000 fine. The NHS, with warnings that it could be facing the worst flu feminine, as do 14% of “The whole thing is season in its history. Hospitals in England have been told to women aged 18 to 24. laughable,” said Henderson. empty thousands of beds over the next six weeks in preparation. YouGov

THE WEEK 16 SEPTEMBER 2017 Middle East at a glance NEWS 7

Cairo, Egypt Damascus, Syria Baghdad, Iraq 18 killed: At least 18 policemen have been Territorial gains: US-backed militias and Kurdistan struggle: Iraqi Kurdish leaders killed in an attack on a convoy in Egypt’s the Syrian army advanced in separate must be prepared to face the consequences Sinai peninsula according to security sources. offensives against Daesh in eastern Syria, if they unilaterally declare independence Militants detonated a roadside bomb near the piling pressure on shrinking territory the and find implementation more difficult town of el-Arish, reportedly destroying three group still holds in oil-rich areas near than they expected, Iraqi Foreign Minister armoured vehicles and incapacitating a fourth the Iraqi border. Syrian government Ibrahim al-Jaafari said at an Arab League with signal-jamming equipment. They then forces fought their way to an air base on summit in Cairo. Kurds are set to hold the opened fire with machine guns at survivors of the outskirts of Deir al-Zor city that had referendum on September 25 but Baghdad the blast. The interior ministry confirmed been besieged for years by the terrorists. opposes it, with lawmakers voting to there had been an attack and that several The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a reject it. Iraq’s neighbours – Turkey, Iran policemen had been killed or injured. The US-backed alliance of mostly Arab and and Syria – also oppose the referendum, attack appears to have been the deadliest on Kurdish fighters, meanwhile launched fearing it could fan separatism among security forces in Sinai since July, when at attacks against Daesh in the north of Deir their own ethnic Kurdish populations. least 23 soldiers were killed in a suicide car al-Zor province in an operation to However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin bombing that targeted a checkpoint near the capture areas east of the Euphrates river. Netanyahu supports the establishment of Gaza border. Daesh claimed it was behind the The advances against Daesh are another a Kurdish state. Israel has maintained attack via its news agency Amaq. The attack blow to control over territory it held for discreet military, intelligence and business came a day after the interior ministry said years as part of a self-declared caliphate. ties with the Kurds since the 1960s, security forces had killed 10 suspected It will also likely bring US-backed forces viewing the minority ethnic group – whose militants in Cairo. and the Syrian government side, backed indigenous population is split between by Russia and Iran, into closer proximity. Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Iran – as a buffer against adversaries.

Tehran, Iran Power deal: Iran signed deals with Damascus last week to repair Syria’s power grid, state media said, a potentially lucrative move for Tehran that points to a deepening economic role after years of fighting in the Syrian conflict. Shunned by Western powers, the Syrian government is looking to friendly states such as Iran, Russia and China to play a major role in rebuilding the country, as the war heads toward its seventh year. Since at least 2012, Iran has provided critical military support to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government, helping it regain control of swathes of the country. Iran experts say Tehran is now looking to reap a financial dividend. In January, Iran’s government and entities close to Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards signed major telecommunications and mining deals with Damascus.

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia Terrorists foiled: Saudi Arabia said last Dubai, UAE Tuesday it had foiled a Daesh plot to Green fuel: Dubai-owned Emirates bomb its defence ministry headquarters National Oil Company has announced the and also said it had arrested several Abu Dhabi, UAE introduction of a new green fuel product people suspected of carrying out espionage Visa rules relaxed: The UAE cabinet for diesel engines. Biodesel 5 is produced in the kingdom on behalf of foreign approved a decision last week to grant visas from vegetable oil, waste cooking oil and powers. The would-be bombers were on arrival to Indian passport holders who animal oil and fats. It is claimed to reduce identified as two Yemeni nationals living have UK and the European Union residence greenhouse gas emissions such as carbon under aliases in the kingdom who were visas. The decision is aimed at improving the monoxide, black smoke and unburnt detained along with two Saudi citizens also long-term strategic partnership between the hydrocarbons and can be pumped, stored suspected of involvement in the attack UAE and India and promoting political, and burned like petroleum diesel. ENOC planned for the capital Riyadh. The economic and trade interests between the said the product launch was in line with the assailants were training in the use of two countries. The latest move comes after UAE’s 2050 clean energy plan and it would explosive belts, while authorities said they the UAE began granting visas on arrival mainly be used by companies in the also seized grenades and firearms during to Indian nationals with a valid US visa commercial and industrial segment for the operation to foil the attack. Saudi or a green card from May 1. The only existing trucks and heavy construction Arabia has previously been hit by deadly condition is that the validity of the equipment. It has been tested in the UAE bombing and shooting attacks by Daesh passport as well as the US visa or green and can used without upgrading engines militants targeting security forces and card must be for at least six months. The and fuel storage facilities. The UAE is Shi’ite Muslims. The investigations are on-arrival visa costs Dhs100 for a period planning to increase the contribution of continuing in the case, according to the of 14 days, and can be renewed for a clean energy in the total energy mix to Saudi Press Agency. similar period for the same cost. 50% by 2050.

16 SEPTEMBER 2017 THE WEEK 8 NEWS The world at a glance

San Francisco, California Washington, DC Monkey case settled: A British Clinton’s account: Hillary Clinton has published a new memoir, wildlife photographer has reached giving her account of her failed presidential campaign, and a a settlement with the animal rights forthright assessment of the man who defeated her. In What group Peta, ending a two-year legal Happened, she describes President Trump as a “clear and present battle concerning the copyright danger to the country and the world”; compares his authoritarian over a photograph of a monkey. “war on truth” to an Orwellian dystopia and to Soviet Russia; While working in Indonesia in and argues that the ongoing Trump-Russia inquiry is “much more 2011, David Slater encouraged a serious than Watergate”. She also describes Trump’s inauguration group of crested macaques to press speech as a “cry straight from the white nationalist gut”. Clinton the shutter of his camera: the apologises for using a private email server, but says the issue was resulting “selfie” (pictured) attracted global attention. In 2015, blown out of proportion by the media, and cites the “dramatic however, Peta sued Slater on behalf of a monkey called Naruto, intervention of the FBI director” – when the then-chief James arguing that since Naruto had taken the picture, the monkey Comey reopened the long-running inquiry just before the election owned the copyright. Last year, a San Francisco judge dismissed – as the crucial factor in her ultimate defeat. Peta’s case, on the grounds that animals cannot own copyright, and this week the group dropped its appeal – after Slater agreed to donate 25% of future proceeds from the photo to conservation.

Washington, DC Trump sides with Democrats: President Trump astonished and angered Republican leaders in Congress last week by supporting a Democrat plan to push back a crucial deadline for raising the so-called “debt ceiling” – the amount that the US government can legally borrow. The row is the latest sign of the fracturing relationship between the Republican president and his party: House Speaker Paul Ryan had called the Democrats’ plan “ridiculous”. In his first TV interview since quitting as Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon accused the “Republican establishment” of trying to “nullify the 2016 election”. “They do not want Donald Trump’s populist, economic nationalist agenda to be implemented,” he said.

Plano, Texas Barbecue massacre: Eight people were shot dead during a “cookout” at a house in a quiet suburb in Texas on Sunday, where a group of friends had gathered to watch a Dallas Cowboys game on TV. The gunman – who was shot dead by police – was identified as Spencer Hight, the estranged husband of the party’s host. Meredith Lane Hight, 27, had recently filed for divorce. Spencer, 32, is believed to have crashed the party at around 8pm, opening fire and killing his wife and seven of her friends, the youngest of whom was 22. “I think he saw our comfort, ease and happiness, and her embracing a new life, and resented it to the maximum and responded the way he did,” Meredith’s mother, Debbie, told the press.

Juchitán de Zaragoza, Mexico Killer quake: At least 96 people were killed last week when Mexico was hit by its biggest earthquake for more than a century. The epicentre of the magnitude 8.1 quake was about 50 miles off its southern Pacific coast. It destroyed thousands of homes, prompted mass evacuations amid fears (in the event unrealised) that it would trigger a tsunami, and left 2.5 Caracas, Venezuela million people in need of some kind of assistance. The worst “Crimes against humanity”: affected state was Oaxaca, which is one of the poorest in The Venezuelan security forces Mexico: dozens of people died in the city of Juchitán de may have committed “crimes Zaragoza, as churches, hospitals and buildings were flattened. against humanity” in their treatment Hundreds of miles away in Mexico City, people fled swaying of anti-government protesters, according to the UN human rights buildings in panic, but there were no reported casualties. chief. Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein had already accused the Maduro On Monday, Mexico – which was also struck by Hurricane government of violating human rights by using excessive force to Katia last week – rescinded its offer to send aid to Texas for crush demonstrations – and has now called for a criminal victims of Hurricane Harvey, so that its emergency services investigation. Hussein said his office had received new evidence of could focus their efforts on people affected by the earthquake. arbitrary detentions and the torture of detainees, and warned of a President Trump didn’t acknowledge Mexico’s initial offer, or further escalation in tensions. Venezuela’s foreign minister, Jorge express concern regarding the quake; however, the White Arreaza, dismissed Hussein’s claims as “baseless”, and said his House later scheduled a condolence call for Tuesday. report was “riddled with lies”. More than 120 people have been killed in protests in Venezuela since April.

THE WEEK 16 SEPTEMBER 2017 The world at a glance NEWS 9

Masyaf, Syria Israel strikes “chemical weapons facility”: Rakhine state, Myanmar Israeli jets bombed a Syrian government “Ethnic cleansing”: The UN’s top human rights official has military facility in the northwest of the warned that the “cruel military operation” against the country last week, which is believed to be Rohingya minority in western Myanmar looks like a crucial to the Assad regime’s Iran-backed “textbook example of ethnic cleansing” – and has urged chemical weapons programme. Israel has Myanmar’s government to end it. Since 25 August, when the largely stayed out of the Syrian conflict, current wave of violence was triggered by attacks on border limiting its role to targeting weapons posts by Rohingya militants, more than 370,000 Rohingya shipments en route to Hezbollah (the Muslims have fled to Bangladesh to escape what the Lebanese Shia militia which is a key ally Burmese call “clearance operations”. Rakhine state is closed of Assad). Analysts say last week’s strikes to journalists, but satellite images reveal burning villages signal a more proactive strategy by the across the north of the state, and survivors report Israeli government as the prospect of an widespread atrocities – including villages burnt to the end to the Syrian war draws closer. Israel ground and civilian massacres, committed by the Burmese fears that a settlement in Syria could result army and Buddhist nationalist mobs and militias. Bangladesh has condemned the in Iran (or Hezbollah) being given bases in wave of violence against the Rohingya as “genocide”. the country from which they could launch Aung San Suu Kyi (pictured), the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who is now attacks. Israel has also just conducted its Myanmar’s leader, has defied intense international pressure to speak out against the biggest military exercise in 19 years on its atrocities, and continues to deny that systematic abuses have even taken place. border with Lebanon.

Pyongyang, North Korea New sanctions: The UN Security Council has unanimously agreed fresh sanctions on North Korea in response to its recent nuclear weapons test. The measures, restricting oil imports and banning textile exports, are intended to starve the North of fuel and income for weapons programmes. Even harsher sanctions, blocking all oil imports into the North, had been opposed by China and Russia. Pyongyang vowed “forthcoming measures” would see the US suffer Kinshasa, “the greatest Democratic pain” in Republic of its history. the Congo Cholera sweeps Jerusalem the country: At PM’s wife facing least 528 people charges: Israel’s Singapore have died so far in attorney general Selected, not elected: Singapore got its first the cholera epidemic has formally female president by default this week, after sweeping the DR notified Sara the four other candidates were disqualified. Congo, according to the World Health Netanyahu (left), Halimah Yacob, 63, is a former speaker of Organisation (WHO), with the situation wife of PM the city-state’s Parliament. Singapore expected to deteriorate further because of Benjamin recently changed the eligibility rules for the the widespread breakdown in security in Netanyahu, that presidency: Candidates must be ethnic the vast country. Cholera is common in she is facing Malay, and they must have either held a Congo, owing to a lack of sanitation and potential criminal high elected office for at least three years access to clean water in many areas. But charges for using or been head of a private company with this year’s epidemic – which has already hit more than $100,000 of state money on more than $370 million in market ten towns and cities including Kinshasa – lavish meals at the couple’s official capitalisation. Dissent is rare in Singapore, is likely to be made worse than usual by residence. The announcement, which but there were a few gentle murmurs of the separatist and sectarian violence in follows a two-year investigation, is a major dismay over the lack of competition, with the Grand Kasai region. With some 1.4 blow to the Netanyahus, and is expected one opposition politician saying it million people displaced, the area is to be the first step in a protracted legal detracted from the president’s “moral particularly vulnerable to the disease. battle. Meanwhile, several of the PM’s authority.” The presidency, a six-year term, To date, there have been 24,000 suspected close associates have been arrested on is largely ceremonial, but it does confer the cases in 20 of the country’s 26 provinces. suspicion of corruption in a separate case. power to veto some government decisions.

16 SEPTEMBER 2017 THE WEEK 10 NEWS Europe at a glance

Paris, France Tapa, Estonia Moscow, Russia Angry “slackers”: Emmanuel Macron has War games commence: The head of Nato, Surprise breakthrough for opposition: faced the first big anti-government protests Jens Stoltenberg, has warned that the A “United Democrats” coalition of liberal of his presidency. Demonstrations against world is at its most dangerous point for a opposition parties won a series of surprise his labour market reforms took place in generation, owing to the number of victories in local council elections in cities across France this week, and converging threats – including that posed Moscow last weekend, taking 11 out of 12 thousands of workers took part in strikes by weapons of mass destruction in North seats in Tverskaya, a wealthy neighbour- called by the hard-line CGT union. The Korea, and a “more assertive Russia”. His hood close to the Kremlin, and all 12 seats protests were given added impetus by a warning came as Moscow prepared for in the Gagarinsky district, where President speech Macron gave last week, in which he large-scale military exercises on the EU’s Putin cast his vote. Overall, Putin’s United appeared to describe his opponents as lazy. eastern border – potentially the biggest Russia remained firmly in control, taking “I am fully determined and I won’t cede since the end of the Cold War. The Zapad around three-quarters of all seats. any ground, not to slackers, nor cynics, 2017 (“West 2017”) exercises, due to begin However, the vote was a rare success for nor hardliners,” he said. The protesters this week in western Russia, Belarus, the the liberal opposition, whose candidates responded by carrying placards reading Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad, officially are often barred from standing. In separate “too lazy to think up a slogan” and involve 13,000 personnel from Russia and elections across Russia for regional “slackers on the move” – a play on the Belarus. However, intelligence analysts say governors, some opposition-friendly name of Macron’s centrist “Republic on the true number taking part is closer to candidates were kept off the ballot, and the Move” party. Organisers said they 100,000. Ukraine’s President Poroshenko United Russia won all 16 polls. would be holding more demonstrations in described the build-up to the exercises as the coming weeks; the next one is “preparations for an offensive war on a scheduled for 23 September. continental scale”.

Figueres, Spain Dalí not the dad: DNA tests have shown that Salvador Dalí was not the father of a 61-year-old tarot reader who had brought a paternity suit against his estate. María Pilar Abel Martínez (pictured) claimed her mother had an affair with Dalí in 1955, and described herself as the spitting image of her surrealist father. In June, a court ordered the exhumation of Dalí’s body from its burial place in his hometown of Figueres for paternity tests – which have come back negative. Dalí and his wife Gala did not have children. He was rumoured to be horrified by the female anatomy; and claimed to be impotent, saying “you’ve got to be impotent to be a great painter”.

Barcelona, Spain Palma, Mallorca Livorno, Tuscany Rally ahead of planned vote: Up to a Fake sickness Tuscan floods: At least seven people were million Catalans marched in Barcelona scam: A heavily killed on Sunday when a violent rainstorm on Monday to show their support for pregnant British lashed the Tuscan coastal town of Livorno secession from Spain, ahead of an mother-of-two, (aka Leghorn), causing devastating flash independence referendum planned for suspected of flooding. Four of the dead were members 1 October. The Spanish national govern- organising a of the same family. When their building ment in Madrid insists that any such vote £10m fake was flooded, Roberto Ramacciotti, 65, would be illegal under Spain’s constitution, holiday sickness who lived in a separate apartment above and last week the constitutional court in compensation that of his children and grandchildren, Madrid suspended the referendum scam, has rushed downstairs and dived into the flood legislation passed by the Catalan appeared in court waters to save them. He was able to rescue parliament. However, separatist leaders in Mallorca for his three-year-old granddaughter, Camilla, have vowed to go ahead, even at the risk an initial hearing. Laura Joyce (pictured), but lost his life during his repeated of being prosecuted for civil disobedience. 28, who runs a bar and nightclub on the attempts to bring out her brother. The Yet it’s not clear how much popular island, is alleged to have managed a team children’s parents, whose garden flat was support there really is for the referendum, of touts who targeted British tourists and inundated as they slept, also drowned. or independence. An opinion poll recently encouraged them to submit fraudulent “The situation is... critical. The city is on published in El País found that only 38% food poisoning claims against local hotels. its knees,” said local mayor Filippo of Catalans believe that the vote would be Four fellow Britons accused of Nogarin. The heavy rains affected much of valid and legal; some 56% do not. Other involvement appeared alongside her in Tuscany and other parts of Italy. In Rome, polls have shown that only around 41% of court. None has yet been formally underpasses flooded and seven metro Catalans are in favour of independence. charged, and all were released on bail. stations were shut.

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motivatepublishing.com 12 NEWS People

How Sharon forgave Ozzy religion with culture. At 18 It is exactly a year since Sharon – the year he made his Osbourne threw her husband first-class debut – Ali became Ozzy out of the house, after a practising Muslim; praying, discovering that the Black fasting and devoting his life to Sabbath singer had been having Allah. His England teammates, a four-year affair with his he says, have always been hairdresser. In truth, it wasn’t touchingly respectful of his his first transgression. “There faith. For example, after they wasn’t just the one woman. won this summer’s series There were six of them,” she against South Africa, there was told Celia Walden in The Daily a photocall with champagne. Telegraph. “Some Russian “Cookie [Alastair Cook, the teenager, then a masseuse in former England captain] said, England, our masseuse out here ‘Let’s do a picture without [in LA], and then our cook. He champagne first and make sure had women in different Moeen’s in it, then he can walk countries. Basically, if you’re a away.’ Things like that you woman giving Ozzy either a appreciate. It’s great to be in back rub or a trolley of food, that environment where we all God help you.” Nevertheless, get along, no matter what she has taken back her errant background you have or what husband. Ozzy is now in you look like.” treatment and, after 35 years together, the pair have renewed Brand’s new mission their marriage vows. “Oh, I’m Russell Brand has taken a step never going to divorce him,” back from political rabble- she admits cheerfully. “What rousing, says Miranda Sawyer on Earth for? He’s nearly 70!” in The Guardian. The Robbie Williams is the most successful British solo act in history, comedian – who hogged the but it hasn’t made him happy. The 43-year-old pop star suffers from The best beard in cricket headlines during the 2015 depression, anxiety and agoraphobia. It runs in the family, he told Moeen Ali – known to fans as election, urging young people Krissi Murison in The Sunday Times. But “I don’t know if I’d be this “the beard to be feared” – has not to vote and issuing mentally ill without fame. I don’t think it would be as gross or as the most luxuriant facial hair half-baked diatribes – admits powerful if it hadn’t have been for fame. You get a magnifying glass seen in English cricket since now he was out of his depth. in the shape of the world’s attention and your defects will obviously W.G. Grace. The Birmingham- “Yes. I’m on the edge of the magnify too.” He can’t help reading what people say about him on born all-rounder is proud to community – a trickster, a the internet, for example. “And it crushes the soul. If there’s ten wear this outward symbol of joker, a playful person – I good comments and one bad one, I concentrate on the bad one. his devotion to Islam, especially don’t need to be working out I’m addicted to stuff that makes me feel, full stop.” For a while, as he came to the faith relatively how the Metropolitan Police Williams sought comfort in vices and women – but now, as late. “My family weren’t force should be run.” He is a married father of two, his only vice is food. “I have a sleepwalking religious,” he told Andrew also trying to live a better, and eating problem that’s happening – every night,” he confesses. Anthony in The Times. But calmer life – which means not “Last night I ate everything in the [hotel] minibar. Nuts, mainly, and then he met a pandering to his own hunger a quarter pack of Pringles.” As a result, he tends to look like an “out Christian for attention. “I still have this of shape doorman”, instead of the skinny rock god he would like to convert tremendous ambitious drive, be. “I love food and I want to eat, so whenever I look slightly good to Islam but I know now, if I give that or my shirt’s fitting in my trousers, it’s a horrendous time for me who drive to my ego to contend because I’m thinking about food all day. I’m either thin and inspired with, it wreaks havoc.” depressed or fat and ashamed. There’s no middle ground.” him to Indeed, he has written a book connect – Recovery: Freedom From with his Our Addictions – to help Viewpoint: faith by others achieve this humility Farewell Political pets explaining and self-awareness. Sir Edward du Cann, that Ali was True, it has a giant “My distrust of President Macron Buoyant chairman of the conflating picture of Brand grows. Just when his popularity Conservative Party who on the front – but ratings plummet he obtains a dog. suffered a dramatic fall the message is Not just any mutt but one that from grace, died 31 sincere. “I know appears, like everything he does, to August, aged 93. I’m narcissistic. have been exhaustively focus- Sir Peter Hall, Founder I know I’m no grouped. Nemo was obtained after of the RSC and National different from staff scoured French rescue centres; Theatre director, died 11 September, aged 86. anyone with ego he’s an adorable, classy black problems, Labrador but, to appear inclusive, Kate Millett, American showing off, not pure-bred. Macron does not even feminist whose Sexual going, ‘Love me, love have Obama’s excuse of placating his Politics book challenged western patriarchy, died me, adore me, give children. Nemo is a furry distraction, 6 September, aged 82. me attention’, but it a humanising force, rather like the ain’t just that. It’s Downing Street cats, something the Don Williams, country something else. And president can raise with journalists singer famed for his ballads on the enduring that thing, I’ve got and voters to make them melt. A dog power of love, died 8 to do something not for life but for photo ops.” September, aged 78. with it.” Janice Turner in The Times

Desert Island Discs returns on 17 September

THE WEEK 16 SEPTEMBER 2017 Briefing NEWS 13 The plight of the Rohingya Since August, an estimated 270,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar (formerly Burma)

Who are the Rohingya? on 9 October last year, in which nine That’s a vexed question. They are a officers were killed. It was blamed on the Muslim ethnic group over a million Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (Arsa), strong who live mostly in Myanmar’s and the army launched a large-scale western state of Rakhine, bordering counter-insurgency operation. Bangladesh. But their identity and their origins are fiercely contested. They claim What are conditions like today? to have lived in the region for centuries, Conditions for Rohingya are atrocious at while Myanmar, which is the best of times. Even those outside the overwhelmingly Buddhist, regards them camps are subject to laws restricting their as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, movement, marriages and how many and denies them citizenship. The state children they can have; they are barred officially refers to them as “Bengalis”: the from education, healthcare, voting and term Rohingya is forbidden. They are the civil service jobs. But the latest UN report world’s largest group of stateless people, describes the abuses suffered in recent and have often been described as one of months at the hands of the security the world’s most persecuted minorities. forces and state-backed Rakhine mobs. Summary executions are common: Where did they come from? Rohingya crossing the Bangladesh-Myanmar border people are shot from helicopters or at There has been a Muslim community in close range; children and adults have Rakhine, also known as Arakan, since at least the 18th century, their throats slit in front of their families. Women are routinely but it grew greatly during colonial times. Muslim workers from gang-raped. Homes and food supplies are burnt. Large numbers the Chittagong area of Bengal were brought in to work the rice of men of fighting age have been taken away. “Now is the worst it fields when Burma was part of British India, mostly settling in the has ever been,” said one interviewee. The report concluded that it north of the state; between the 1880s and the 1930s, Rakhine’s was “very likely” crimes against humanity were being committed; Muslim population grew from 13% to 25% of the total. Today, Muslim world leaders have called it genocide. the Rakhine or Arakanese ethnic group, who are Buddhist, make up around 60% of the state’s population; they greatly resent the What can be done to improve the situation? Rohingya, the second largest group. There was serious violence An independent commission appointed by Myanmar’s elected between the two communities during the Second World War, when leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, and chaired by Kofi Annan, recently the British armed the Rohingya, and the Rakhines sided with the reported. Its findings give some idea of the scale of the problem. It Japanese. Before independence, some of Rakhine’s Muslim leaders recommended, inter alia: giving Muslims in Rakhine citizenship tried to join East Pakistan (Bangladesh), then fought for rights and political representation; closing the state’s camps and autonomy from Burma, created in 1948. They were unsuccessful. allowing displaced people to return home; ending restrictions on movement; ensuring access to education, healthcare and How did they fare after independence? government jobs; promoting “inter-communal dialogue”; opening In the 1950s, the Rohingya were acknowledged as one of Burma’s up the state to the media and humanitarian groups; and ensuring ethnic groups. But after the military coup in 1962, the ruling that the security forces respect human rights, and enforce the rule generals established themselves as guardians of a Buddhist of law. It also pointed out that Rakhine is one of Myanmar’s socialist state, and ruthlessly suppressed minority insurgencies in poorest states, and is in desperate need of development. the borderlands. From the 1970s, the Rohingya were denied full citizenship, and faced systematic persecution. In 1978, the Why hasn’t Aung San Suu Kyi done more? military reacted to a low-level Rohingya insurgency with a brutal Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize-winner whose National operation which led 200,000 people League for Democracy in 2015 won to flee into Bangladesh. This set the The virulence of Buddhist nationalism the country’s first free elections for pattern for recent decades. In 1982, Since feudal times, Buddhism and the Burmese state half a century, has been much new citizenship laws entrenched the have been closely intertwined. And the liberalisation of criticised for failing to tackle Rohingya's status as foreigners. From politics in Myanmar since 2011 has been accompanied well-documented abuses. Last week, 1991-92, another 250,000 fled into by a surge in extreme Buddhist nationalism. As a post on her Facebook page blamed Bangladesh, fleeing forced labour, authoritarian controls were lifted, new media gave “terrorists” for the violence, and rape and persecution at the hands of voice to old grievances – many dating from the railed against a “huge iceberg of the army. (They were later repatriated colonial era, when large-scale Indian (and particularly misinformation” on the issue. In her Muslim) immigration was a cause of great public under a UN agreement.) anger. These are particularly focused on Rakhine state: defence, it has been pointed out that it is regarded as the country's "western gate", she is part of a power-sharing Why is there a crisis now? protecting Myanmar – and Buddhist Southeast Asia – government in which the army The current cycle of misery began in from incursion by large numbers of Muslims. Local controls defence, and is effectively 2012, when rioting between Rakhines media coverage of the crisis hinges almost exclusively above the law. In addition, there are and Rohingya led to nearly 200 on the violence committed by Rohingya militants. only votes to be lost on Rohingya deaths, mostly of Rohingya. Muslims The most prominent manifestation of Buddhist rights amid a wave of Buddhist were largely driven out of the cities. nationalist fervour is the Association for the Protection nationalist feeling in the country (see Tens of thousands fled to Bangladesh; of Race and Religion, known by its Burmese acronym box); and she is facing a tough 130,000 were confined to squalid Ma Ba Tha, and led by charismatic monks who have election in 2020, against the USDP, camps inside Rakhine state. In 2015, condoned and incited violence against Muslim the army-backed opposition party. around 25,000 sought to travel by sea minorities. Linked to Ma Ba Tha is the 969 Movement, Nevertheless, her failure to denounce led by Ashin Wirathu, a monk dubbed "Burma's Bin to Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, Laden", which has been particularly vocal in spreading indiscriminate state violence – or the with hundreds dying en route. The rumours about Muslim plots to take over the country, army’s current blocking of UN aid to spark for the immediate crisis was an and about rapacious Muslim men. Rakhine – scarcely befits her status as attack on police outposts in Rakhine a symbol of resistance to tyranny.

16 SEPTEMBER 2017 THE WEEK 14 NEWS Best of the Arabic language articles

Corruption cases have lessened since the start of 2011, with several prime ministers reporting no corruption cases Corruption and during their tenure. Nevertheless Jordan’s ranking has not improved in the Corruption Perception Index, which is building trust based on opinion polls within the countries themselves. Amman Rather the country’s ranking declined from 37 in 2003 to in Jordan 66 in 2013, improving only slightly in 2016 to 57. There are three logical explanations for this. The first is loss of Dr. Marwan Moasher confidence in the government – people do not trust the Jordan measures taken by the government, even if new cases of Al-Ghad corruption are not discovered. This is a dangerous issue that has been addressed by many – including myself – as the decline in trust is met with government inaction. The second explanation is that people have recently begun experiencing corruption of another kind; an increase in small and medium-sized bribes and nepotism. As a result, no one is convinced that financial or administrative corruption is on the decline. The third and perhaps most important explanation is that people do not feel there is a real will within the government to fight corruption as no legislative measures have been drafted to nip corruption in the bud.

Speaking in fascism’s tongue a few weeks ago, the president of the Syrian regime announced the victory over his people by saying that Syria has gained a “more healthy and harmonious Who was society” as a result of his devastating war. The question is: who was defeated by who, and who are the winners in this Syrian tragedy? We all know that the president’s speech is a joke. There defeated in the is no doubt that both the regime and the opposition were defeated. Not only because Syria was destroyed, and is now a place filled with fear, murder and displacement, but also because both Syrian war? projects failed. Assad failed to keep his iron fist on the Syrians and the opposition failed to overthrow Assad and create the Syria it aspires to. If we were to accept what many leaders and Wael El Sawah analysts say, then Syria was a proxy war where the greatest victors to date are the Russians and Al-Hayat the Iranians. The biggest losers are the US administration, along with its prestige and global status, and its allies. But among the losers are also those who dreamt of a new democracy in this part of the world. At the beginning of the Syrian revolution, there was a golden opportunity to remove historical misunderstandings between Syrians and the US administration, and to achieve a historic reconciliation between both sides. It could have also resulted in a lasting and genuine peace between Syria and Israel. But this opportunity was lost. First because of the reluctance of Obama’s administration, and then again after President Trump failed to change US policy toward Syria. Today, Iran is in the heart of Damascus and at the gates of Israel.

The Louvre Abu Dhabi is no longer a source of concern for the French, but rather it has The Louvre become a source of pride. This is good news after all the anger and musings when this Abu Dhabi project was first announced 10 years ago. French newspapers now compete to write liberates France about this “achievement”, and images and information about the museum are Sawsan Alabtah continually leaked in the media. When the Asharq Al-Awsat museum finally opens on November 11, the Louvre Abu Dhabi will be one of the most striking museums in the world, if not the most striking – according to Jean-Luc Martinez, current president of the museum in France. Since he took office, this project has been a top priority for him, particularly after several predecessors, deliberately or ignorantly, slowed the project down. The final results required a great deal of effort and sophistication. France was proud of exporting “Francophonie” and the country is proud now of exporting its “Louvre” and its “Sorbonne”. And this is only the beginning. Architect Jean Nouvel, a genius of our time, completed a masterpiece on Saadiyat island; one which will remain a “jewel” in the history of architecture. The dome alone, inspired by Islamic heritage and covering the main building, is a piece of art. The Louvre Abu Dhabi is the result of Abu Dhabi’s aspirations to become a cultural hub, and France’s decade-long inner struggle to emerge from a closed mindset and excessive protectionism that no longer works.

The disagreement between Iran and Moqtada al-Sadr is no longer limited to the resentment of Khomeini ideology the latter and his followers towards Iran’s interference in Iraq’s affairs. The visit to Saudi Arabia, combined with Moqtada urging Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down, and his challenged by condemnation of Hezbollah’s deal with Daesh, opened new possibilities for al-Sadr’s return to the political front. Not only in Iraq but in the region. The old Iranian concerns regarding al-Sadr’s Moqtada al-Sadr family and their influence on Shiite Arabs in the region was reawakened due to Moqtada’s new policy that has distanced itself from the Iranian project. Today there are quarrels in Shiite circles Kafi Ali about Khomeini’s doctrine and the legitimacy of the rule of the Faqih (jurists). But what is Moqtada al-Sadr's role in this conflict as the legitimate heir to his father’s legacy and followers? Al-Arab London It is difficult to bet on Moqtada’s ability and steadfastness, but the endorsement by Najaf’s religious authority of his project could be a way out of Iranian guardianship and a return to his Arab identity – an identity that sits on the Arabic tongue of 80% of his people.

THE WEEK 16 SEPTEMBER 2017 Best articles: International NEWS 15

The “messenger of God” now behind bars for rape You’d have thought the conviction rest of Indian society denies them. of an Indian guru for the brutal Low-caste women, in particular, rape of two female followers would flock to him to escape the would have opened the eyes of his drudgery of their “unending tens of millions of devotees to servitude”, and to break “the what a terrible man he really was, stranglehold of social structures said The Hindu (Chennai). Not a and cultural strictures governing bit of it. When news broke that their everyday lives”. Where we Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, see a narcissist who allegedly, spiritual leader of the Dera Sacha in a weird ritual, would make Sauda sect, had been sentenced his female followers “submit to 20 years in jail, all hell broke to his lust” in return for godlike loose. Tens of thousands rioted forgiveness, these women see in India’s northern states, burning a genius with “supernatural cars and buildings and viciously powers”. No wonder he could attacking security personnel. Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh: the self-styled “baba of bling” prey on them so easily. At least 38 people died in the mayhem. The bearded 50-year-old guru wailed that he was The other thing to bear in mind, said Srinivasa Prasad on innocent as the sentence was read out; but lawyers for the First Post (Mumbai) is that gurus like Singh are hugely victims believe he is guilty of raping many more women at his powerful politically. In Haryana, where electoral outcomes are compound in the north Indian state of Haryana. often decided by a few thousand votes, he could make or break political careers. Political leaders flocked to him. India’s To non-devotees, the self-styled “baba of bling” came across ruling party, the Hindu nationalist BJP, owes its victory in as ridiculous, said The Indian Express (Mumbai). Decked out Haryana to the “messenger of God”. in rhinestones and sequins, encircled by Kalashnikov-wielding guards wherever he went, and given to leaping around in At least four other Indian gurus have been accused of rape in multi-coloured costumes, Singh in his heyday was not just recent years, said Sharanya Gopinathan, in the same paper. a holy man – he was an entertainment industry. He has One of them, Asaram Bapu, who was jailed in 2013 for released six albums of high-energy pop, the most recent of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl on the pretext of which, Highway Love Charger, sold three million copies in “exorcising evil spirits”, ran more than 400 ashrams in India three days. His movies – in which he credits himself as writer, and abroad. These “godmen”, as they call themselves, “exist director, actor and musician – portray him as part motorcycle- at the intersection of religious fervour, political power, public riding action hero, part divinity. Even when not acting, he support and, often, massive wealth”. They groom their calls himself “messenger of God” and his sprawling sect followers as child-sex predators do, until their victims believe headquarters is “like a township”, with dorms, factories, even “they are being gloriously singled out for preferential treat- a hospital. And all are run by his followers. ment from the leader”. Later, the raped women are afraid to tell anyone, and for good reason: accusers and their But don’t mock those devotees, said Mani Shankar Aiyar on supporters have been murdered. The journalist who first NDTV.com (New Delhi). People from “the backward classes” exposed Singh was shot dead outside his home in 2002, (those deemed by orthodox Hinduism to be outside the caste months after reporting the rape allegations. The predatory hierarchy), find in gurus like the “baba of bling” someone guru is behind bars, but how many more are still running their who provides them with the “dignity and social support” the own private harems?

Kenya’s recent elections were so badly flawed, they’re having to be re-run, says Abdi Latif Dahir. As KENYA five million ballots turned out to be unverified, the supreme court had to annul the poll and overturn the victory of the incumbent president, Uhuru Kenyatta. So why did former US secretary of state John How did the Kerry, speaking for international observers from the EU and elsewhere, endorse the vote as “free, fair and credible” save for a few “little aberrations”? Days earlier, the official responsible for security in monitors get it the new electronic voting system had been found strangled, and on election day the system broke down. Totals from many voting stations were sent by text message instead, many lacking serial so wrong? numbers, many coming from non-existent polling stations. This was no isolated case: international Quartz monitors have endorsed past elections that many Kenyans believed were rigged, and have failed to denounce election chicanery in countries such as Uganda and Rwanda. It’s not enough to look for (New York) voter intimidation and ballot box stuffing: the cheating in Kenya occurred in transmitting the results. The monitors argue that they simply didn’t have enough staff; but if so, they should have refrained from making any endorsement at all. No wonder they’re increasingly distrusted across Africa.

It’s been obvious for some time that something’s rotten in the royal house of Denmark, says Jyllands- DENMARK Posten. Queen Margrethe’s 83-year-old consort, Prince Henrik, tired of being ranked number two, has been voicing his resentment. He thinks he should have been made king on their marriage in The hounding 1967, even though he’s just a French commoner. But he also says he doesn’t wish to be buried next to his queen in Roskilde Cathedral when he dies, and that “she has been making a fool of me”. His of a Danish petulance has been much mocked. Media pundits contrast his behaviour with the dignity shown by the Duke of Edinburgh, who has never moaned about being upstaged by his wife. Maybe he should prince seek therapy, some have suggested. But now we learn why Henrik has been behaving so erratically Jyllands-Posten – he’s suffering from dementia. Rumours have long swirled about his mental health, so it’s amazing (Copenhagen) he hasn’t been given a thorough examination before now. If only those around him had acted sooner, he’d have been spared the journalists’ “cynical persecutions”. But that doesn’t excuse the media commentators’ rush to judgement. It now befits them to reflect on their atrocious behaviour.

16 SEPTEMBER 2017 THE WEEK 16 NEWS Best articles: British

Across the world, from India and Turkey, to Hungary and the US, a tide of religious zealotry is on the rise, says Janice Turner. IT MUST BE TRUE… Don’t let the Britain – ignoring the hardline views of Jacob Rees-Mogg – I read it in the tabloids seems one of the few places to have escaped the trend: the religious tide British Social Attitudes survey shows that for the first time A memory champion has proved her mettle by engulf Britain non-believers are in a majority (53%). But don’t let’s be memorising the 328-page complacent about the encroachment of religion into the public Ikea catalogue. Yanjaa sphere. It’s occurring here too, and our leaders are doing Janice Turner Wintersoul, 23, spent a week nothing to resist it. The Left has “abandoned Enlightenment poring over the catalogue; The Times principles for the fractured discourse of identity politics”, and she can now recall all 4,818 indulges “those who cry racism at every challenge to religious products in it, along with rule”. It stays silent about courts that discriminate against their descriptions, and the women. The Tories have let faith schools proliferate to please page they appeared on – as their Catholic and Anglican base. Theresa May wants to well as the sets they were featured in. Asked in a test to overturn even the modest requirement that selection by religion recall pages 92-3, she replied: be capped at 50%. We must stand up for our secular values. “It’s a kitchen... there’s a “That we will hold together can never be taken for granted.” chequered floor and a giant trash can... there’s a citrus Warnings about resurgent nationalism come thick and fast these plant near the window.” days, says Rupert Cogan. Frans Timmermans, first vice- Democracy president of the European Commission, denounced it in a recent A Japanese company is speech, arguing that true patriots are Europeans. The marketing a $1,000 robot dog is built on international lawyer Philippe Sands did likewise in an article that will tell owners whether their feet smell. If the feet national pride that linked neo-Nazis, white supremacists, the Daily Mail and smell fresh, Hana-chan will Brexit to the “poison of slow-burning nationalisms”. What’s wag its tail; if there’s a pong, Rupert Cogan striking about such diatribes, beyond their occasionally it will bark; and if they stink, hysterical tone, is the way they conflate bigotry and extremism it will fall over in a dead faint. Spiked with national pride, as if fondness for one’s country of birth is inherently dubious. “Statehood,” wrote Sands, is the “most fake of constructs.” To him, maybe. For most of us it is the basis of popular democracy, the “only framework powerful enough to handle the big issues” – defence, taxation, infrastructure – in a responsive manner. To support or acquiesce in collective projects, people need to feel a sense of shared culture with the others involved. They do feel that at a national level; they don’t, whatever the liberal elite may like to think, at a European one.

Huge eyesores are sprouting across our university towns, says Oliver Wainwright. They look like prison blocks with their How student “cliff-faces of tiny square windows”, but they’re actually PBSA: purpose-built student accommodation. PBSA is immune from digs are ruining many of the codes that govern residential dwellings, from space standards to daylight and acoustics, and developers have rushed A woman had to be rescued our cities to exploit this by building a mass of “mean-spirited, pile-’em-high after climbing out of a date’s Oliver Wainwright cells”, often on land originally allocated for housing. The growth window – to retrieve a poo. of such blocks is also being fuelled by a surge of money from rich The woman, an amateur The Guardian foreign investors looking for a decent return on their capital after gymnast, had gone to the the slowdown of the high-end residential market: Singapore alone toilet at Liam Smith’s house invested £1.2bn in PBSA last year. And to lure well-heeled overseas after a date – and found that students, the developers are “applying a thin veneer of ‘luxury it wouldn’t flush. Panicking, living’ to their cheaply-built shells”. They boast swimming pools, she decided to throw the gyms and a 24-hour concierge service; bedrooms come with faeces out of the window. 40-inch smart TVs. Thus are these carbuncles not only blighting But it didn’t land in a our cities, but “destroying the very experience of being a student”. garden. It became wedged in a tiny space between two These are unhappy times, says Robert H. Lustig. Rich countries non-opening windows. So are suffering an alarming growth in addiction, anxiety and she decided to climb in, head The pleasure depression. And few more so than the UK, where antidepressant first, to get it out – and got prescriptions have more than doubled in the past decade, and stuck too. Eventually, Smith principle is which is the scene of almost a third of Europe’s drug overdoses. – a student at Bristol All manner of individual factors are behind this trend, but the University – called the fire making us sad root cause is that people’s sense of well-being is being undermined brigade. He posted the Robert H. Lustig by their “incessant quest for pleasure”. Modern life offers endless photo (above) to raise opportunities for people to enjoy little fixes of dopamine – the money to cover the cost of The Observer “reward” neurotransmitter that tells the brain: “this feels good, fixing the window. As for I want more” – thanks to the ubiquity of triggers such as sugar, their future as a couple: tobacco and social media. Yet the evidence suggests that all this “It’s too early to say if dopamine, particularly when combined with stress, drives down she’s the one,” he said. “But levels of serotonin, the “content ment” or happiness we got on very, very well – neurotransmitter that tells our brain: “this feels good. I have and we’ve already got the enough. I don’t want or need any more”. Popular culture tells us most difficult stuff out of that pleasure and happiness are the same thing. It’s not true: the way.” chasing the former restricts our ability to enjoy the latter.

THE WEEK 16 SEPTEMBER 2017 Best of the American columnists NEWS 17

An unhappy time for America’s “Dreamers” They call them the “Dreamers” – the Obama himself admitted that he undocumented children who entered didn’t have the constitutional America illegally with their parents authority to grant an amnesty to and, through no fault of their own, nearly a million illegal immigrants. face growing up in a land where they Trump has rightly returned the issue can never become legal residents. They to Congress, and given lawmakers acquired their name after the Dream another chance to put a new regime Act, a law first proposed in 2001 that on a sound legal footing. was set to give them a path to citizenship, but which repeatedly failed Since when has Trump given “a fig for to get through Congress. However, in constitutional niceties”, asked 2012 Barack Obama came to their Michael Gerson in The Washington rescue by enacting the Deferred Action Post. There is a theme to his for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) presidency, but it’s not “respect for the programme. Nearly 800,000 Dreamers A Dreamer protesting at a rally in New York rule of law”; it’s the stirring up of now live and work openly in the US racial resentments. Still, given that the thanks to Daca. But for how much longer, asked the Los Supreme Court would most likely have struck down Daca at Angeles Times. Last week, in “an act of pure cruelty”, Donald some point, Congress might as well get on with fixing it. And Trump said that he was rescinding Daca. All those people, who fortunately, there’s clear room for a compromise deal between registered their details in good faith, are now at risk of being Republicans and Democrats: “stronger border enforcement deported to lands they barely know. (though not the surpassingly silly wall) in return for a new version of Daca”. Don’t count on it, said Jennifer Rubin in the Relax, said Rich Lowry in the New York Post. Nobody is being same paper. The GOP caucus is filled with hardliners who deported any time soon. Trump has simply announced that the erroneously claim that Dreamers are stealing US jobs. How system will be phased out in six months’ time, and has likely is it that Republicans, who can’t even pass bills high on challenged Congress to replace it. Before he introduced Daca by their agenda, such as repealing Obamacare, are about to write executive order (as what he called a “temporary stopgap”), into law the immigration policy of the president they detest?

One of President Obama’s better decisions, says Adam Bates, was banning the federal government from distributing surplus military equipment to local police forces. The move followed the riots in Heavily-armed Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, where the police were condemned for their heavy-handed military response. The bad news, though, is that the Trump administration has now rescinded that ban, police just freeing the police once again to stock up on high-calibre firearms, grenade launchers, bayonets and camouflage uniforms. The all too predictable consequence will be more violence and more casualties. invite trouble A study earlier this year unambiguously showed that, after receiving military gear, police Adam Bates departments were more likely to kill civilians (as well as dogs). Law enforcers always justify their need for this kit by citing rare cases such as terrorist attacks and mass murders, but the problem is Newsweek that they inevitably resort to them in other situations, too. Witness the way that Swat raids have “ballooned from hundreds per year to tens of thousands”; or the way officers have slipped into using mobile phone trackers, bought with counter-terrorism grant money, for everyday police work. “It turns out that having a hammer really does make everything look more like a nail.”

Ever since 9/11, many Americans “have come to regard Muslims with fear or suspicion”, says Jeff Jacoby. As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump “fuelled that animus”, calling for “a total and You’re wrong complete shutdown” of Muslim immigration, and alleging that many Muslims harbour “great hatred toward Americans”. Nothing could be further from the truth. A new Pew Research Centre about Muslims, poll reveals that, in reality, Muslim immigrants “adopt American values, reject fundamentalism” and assimilate very well. A heartening 92% of them say they’re “proud to be American”, and only Mr President 36% say all or most of their friends are fellow Muslims – “far less than the 95%” global average Jeff Jacoby calculated by Pew. The poll shows that US Muslims are even more opposed to terrorism than the general population: 76% of them say killing civilians for a political or religious cause “can never be The Boston Globe justified”, compared with only 59% of Americans overall. Nearly two-thirds of US Muslims also believe that there is room for “multiple interpretations” of their religion. The good news here is that our tradition of freedom, religious tolerance and pluralism continues to have great power. “Immigrants of every faith still come to America, and become Americans.”

The “increasingly strident Left” has some strange notions, says Bari Weiss. Perhaps the silliest is its current obsession with stamping out “cultural appropriation”. In Portland, Oregon, activists have Let’s celebrate created a blacklist of “white-owned appropriative restaurants” to boycott, because Caucasians apparently have no right to make tacos or dosas. The University of Michigan is hiring a “bias our “mongrel response” worker to “enact cultural appropriation-prevention initiatives”. Is there a more un- culture” American idea than this? Our country’s “mongrel culture” is so wondrously vibrant because it blends food, music, art, languages, clothing and sensibilities from all over the world. This is not Bari Weiss “stealing”, but “syncretism” – creating something new by mixing old ideas “in revelatory ways”. The US is a nation where the Russian-born Jewish immigrant Irving Berlin wrote “God Bless The New York Times America”, where the black Southern singer Jessye Norman is famous for her Wagner repertoire, and where even our national symbol, Lady Liberty, was made in France. Yet the dour enforcers of the cultural appropriation ban would have us “remain in the ethnic and racial lines assigned to us by accident of our birth”. No, thanks. “Culture should be shared, not hoarded.”

16 SEPTEMBER 2017 THE WEEK 18 NEWS Health & Science What the scientists are saying… The agony going undiagnosed sneeze a lot, but assumed they were merely Doctors are failing to diagnose a clearing their airways. But when a team condition that can leave women in monitored them more closely, in the crippling pain, and lead to infertility, the Okavango Delta of Botswana, they noticed NHS watchdog has warned. As many as that when the dogs gather for rituals one in ten women of reproductive age known as “social rallies”, they appear to suffer from endometriosis: in some cases decide whether to go hunting – or simply the pain is so acute, they cannot work. Yet to go back to sleep in the shade – on the many are told it is “normal”, and on basis of how many of them sneeze. They average, patients wait seven or eight years found that the more sneezes there were, before they get a diagnosis, during which the more likely the dogs were to go off and time the condition can become harder to hunt for impala. However, the number of treat, according to the National Institute sneezes required to trigger the decision for Clinical Excellence (Nice). “The seemed to depend on whether or not the condition is difficult to diagnose as top dogs had initiated the rally. “When the symptoms vary and are often unspecific,” dominant male and female were involved, said Professor Mark Baker, of Nice. the pack only had to sneeze a few times “However, once it has been diagnosed before they would move off,” said Reena there are effective treatments that can ease Walker of Brown University. “However, [the] symptoms.” Nice’s new guidelines Wild dogs: democratic habits if the dominant pair were not engaged, state that GPs should refer women for more sneezes were needed – approximately scans if they suffer from one of a list of 2500BC and 1650BC. By examining ten – before the pack would move off.” symptoms that includes pelvic pain, severe chemical signatures in their teeth, they That they have a quorum is particularly period pain, pain during intercourse, and established that although they had been interesting as, in other respects, the dogs chronic tiredness; and that even if the scans buried according to local custom, two seem to live under an autocracy: the top come back normal, they should not rule thirds of the group of women had travelled dogs eat first, and the dominant female’s out the condition. Delayed diagnosis of a considerable distance from their place of puppies – fed and babysat by subordinate endometriosis – which is caused when birth – between 180 and 300 miles. By dogs – are the only ones allowed to survive tissue similar to the lining of the womb contrast, the men appeared to have lived until adulthood. starts appearing elsewhere in the body – and died in that region. According to study is believed to be a worldwide problem. leader Professor Philipp Stockhammer, the Sick notes for stress and anxiety findings cast new light on human mobility One in three “sick notes” handed out The bold Bronze Age travellers in the late Stone Age and early Bronze Age. by GPs are now for mental health The idea of independent women striking “It appears that at least part of what was problems, an NHS report has shown. out in the world, while men stay at home, believed to be migration by groups was That makes psychiatric ill-health the might be thought to be a relatively modern based on an institutionalised form of most common reason for people taking one, says The Daily Telegraph. But new individual mobility,” he said. time off work, ahead of back pain and archaeological research has suggested that other musculoskeletal problems. There during the Bronze Age, women were great Wild dogs sneeze to vote was a 14% rise in fit notes (as sick notes travellers, spreading ideas and culture, Democracy isn’t only for humans. African are now called) for anxiety and stress- whereas men tended to stay where they hunting dogs also make decisions as a related conditions between 2015-16 and were. A team from Munich examined the group – with sneezes acting as votes, a 2016-17, from 503,000 to 573,000. More remains of 84 people buried in what is study has found. Scientists have in the past than one in five psychiatric sick notes were now the Lech Valley, in Germany, between observed that the highly sociable animals issued for longer than 12 weeks.

“Zero carb” diet helps mice live longer The strongest X-ray laser Mice fed a “zero carb” diet have been The world’s largest and most powerful found to live longer and perform better X-ray laser has opened in a s1bn facility in physical and mental tasks than those near Hamburg, reports The Guardian. fed a normal diet. “These are pretty The machine – in a two-mile tunnel deep profound effects,” said molecular biologist underground – is capable of generating Eric Verdin, CEO of the Buck Institute for ultrashort X-ray flashes 27,000 times Research on Ageing in California. “The per second, a billion times brighter than conventional radiation sources. Among older mice on the [zero carb] diet had other things, scientists will be able to a better memory than the younger ones use the flashes generated by the [in the control group].” The extension European X-ray Free Electron Laser to their lifespan was equivalent to seven (XFEL) to map the three-dimensional years in humans. On the downside, the structure of biomolecules and other diet led to significant weight gain that would eventually have left them obese. biological particles with more detail than The zero carb or ketogenic diet fools the mice’s bodies into thinking they are has previously been possible. The idea is starving – with the result that the body shifts to burning fat instead of glucose. At the that by using incredibly fast cameras same time, the liver starts producing (from fatty acids) molecules known as ketone with a frame rate of 4.5MHz – 4.5 million pictures per second – chemical reactions bodies; a particular type of those, BHB, are thought to boost energy production, and and biological processes will be to have a protective effect against the free radicals that damage cells. However, even captured as they occur. These images if the diet had the same benefits for humans, it might still lead to health problems: it will be stitched together to create film is 90% fat. And it would be very hard to stick to. For that reason, the team are now sequences, giving a far more complete hoping to find drugs that mimic its effects. picture than ever before.

THE WEEK 16 SEPTEMBER 2017 Technology NEWS 19

Startups: The wild world of Innovation of the week Static electricity could help robots ‘coin offerings’ finally conquer the fashion “You know a market frenzy exchange for their industry, said has turned surreal when work. The hope among Marc Bain on Paris Hilton joins in,” said cryptocurrency fans is Qz.com. While robots can deal Jacky Wong in The Wall that ICOs will allow fairly easily with Street Journal. The hotel promising companies the mostly uniform and rigid materials heiress recently followed and technologies to that go into cellphones and automobiles, billionaire Mark Cuban avoid the laborious they have trouble handling the wide and boxer Floyd process of attracting variety of soft materials needed to Mayweather in hyping a real-world venture make footwear and clothing. “A vacuum may pick up pieces of leather, new finance fad called capital, said The for instance, but it can’t deal with initial coin offerings (ICOs), Economist, and that mesh.” As a result, the apparel industry which is a way to fund Even Paris Hilton is getting these digitally funded has been slower to automate. That startups using the in on the game. startups “could one day could change with the Stackit robot, technology behind bitcoin. Instead of disrupt the tech giants.” Filecoin, which which “uses electroadhesion – basically the cling of static electricity – buying stock in a company, “investors walk recently raised $250 million via an ICO, to let robots pick up and handle away with virtual coins.” Depending on the would allow miners to earn tokens for objects of all kinds.” Stackit’s makers offering, the digital coins can be used to buy providing storage space or retrieving data say the device can manipulate the company’s future products or services, for users – thus making a run at Dropbox or everything from an egg to soft fabrics or will entitle the owner to royalties down Amazon. “ICOs may indeed be a bubble, but to a 50-pound box. “The firm has Nike the road. Investors can also buy or sell the perhaps a mostly healthy one, generating convinced.” The shoemaker is installing Stackit robots in about a dozen of its coins on exchanges. The ICO market has much innovation.” factories this year. boomed in recent months, with sales reaching nearly $2 billion this year, up The problem is that the market is basically from $256 million last year. But skeptical unregulated, said Rhett Jones in Gizmodo. governments are increasingly concerned com. With an initial public offering (IPO), about swindlers preying on naïve investors. you might be making a bad investment, Just hours after Hilton tweeted that she’d “but you can trust that a certain number be participating in an upcoming ICO, of precautionary checkboxes have been “Chinese regulators put a damper on the marked,” thanks to strict rules. But with fun,” banning the offerings outright. ICOs, pretty much anything goes. Plenty of ICOs are “downright predatory,” said Elaine “Don’t feel bad if you’re still wondering, Ou on Bloomberg.com. While some tokens ‘What the hell is an ICO?’” said Mike Orcutt enjoy astronomical gains, about 60% wind on TechnologyReview.com. These token sales up dead or dormant. “Curbing token sales, are a little like a crowdfunding campaign, though, won’t be easy.” The blockchain’s except they use blockchains to verify decentralized nature makes the market hard transactions. Blockchains are encrypted to manage or monitor, because there is no ledgers powered by a decentralized network single point of control. “How can any of computers all over the world, whose government control a phenomenon that operators, known as miners, receive bitcoin transcends national borders and rules?” or other cryptocurrencies as payment in We’re about to find out.

Bytes: What’s new in tech Unmasked by artificial intelligence It won’t be long before facial recognition software can figure out who you are even if your face is covered up, said James Vincent in TheVerge.com. A group of researchers based in the UK and India say they’ve trained an algorithm to identify people even when they are wearing disguises. The results are “far less accurate than industry-level standards”; for instance, the system can correctly identify someone wearing a cap, sunglasses, and scarf only 55% of the time. But the research shows how quickly facial recognition technology is progressing, meaning “staying anonymous in public will be harder than ever before.” Facebook can already recognize people based on their hair, body shape, and posture. Zello to the rescue In the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, a “digital walkie-talkie” named Zello “became the go-to app for rescuers working to save thousands of people trapped by floodwaters,” said Peter Holley in The Washington Post. The free app “relies on cellphone data plans or WiFi and is designed to operate in places where signals are weak,” helping volunteer groups coordinate search-and- rescue efforts. Volunteers monitoring social media used Zello to feed information to rescue boats patrolling flooded neighbourhoods. As Hurricane Irma bore down on the Florida coast last week, Zello surged to the top download spots on Google Play and the Apple App Store. The app has 100,000 users worldwide, and is particularly popular with Hong Kong taxi drivers, as well as people in countries like Egypt and Venezuela “where government services struggle to meet demand.”

16 SEPTEMBER 2017 THE WEEK 20 NEWS Talking points

Pick of the week’s University vice-chancellors: too much gravy? When I left Oxford 17 years much less in the private sector. Gossip ago, the university’s vice- As for Richardson’s obser- chancellor was paid £100,000 vation that footballers earn far When Meghan Markle first began dating Prince Harry, a year in today’s money, said more, that’s a classic example she wasn’t well known in Ben Chu in The Independent. of Lynton Crosby’s “dead cat” this country. But Howard Today, its vice-chancellor strategy, said Sonia Sodha in Hodgkin knew exactly who – Louise Richardson – earns The Guardian – a distraction she was. The late artist’s £350,000. That’s a 250% real to divert attention from the partner, Antony Peattie, has terms increase. And she’s not real issue: is she value for revealed that after a long even the UK’s highest paid money? Universities like to be day in the studio, there was university boss: the head of the opaque about their finances, nothing the great abstract University of Bath earns but since it’s taxpayers who painter liked to do better than settle down in front of £451,000 a year. Over the fund research and underpin an episode (or four) of Suits same period, salaries paid to student loans, we’ve a right to – the preposterous but junior academics have gone up know where the money’s entertaining legal drama in in line with average pay – in going. Universities Minister which Markle stars. Suits the region of 10%. “Why the Jo Johnson is now rightly “was addictive”, Peattie told discrepancy?” Richardson uses Richardson: the “dead cat” strategy demanding that universities The Times. “We would an argument that has become reveal how many of their staff watch two or three or four all too familiar in relation to soaring executive are paid over £100,000 – and that they justify, in episodes. Oh, the pay: there is, she says, a “global marketplace” writing, any salaries above £150,000. shimmying walk of the women down the corridors. for people capable of running large institutions. And of course we knew If Oxford didn’t pay her so well, she’d sell her Even if vice-chancellors are paid a bit less, said about Meghan Markle first.” talents elsewhere. Really? It’s far more likely this Joanna Williams in The Daily Telegraph, it salary inflation at the top reflects a change in won’t lead to lower tuition fees or higher pay attitudes among the people who sit on for academics. But then this row has little to remuneration committees. Once, they had a do with struggling students, and a lot to do with sense of restraint; now, it seems, anything goes. both Tories and Labour’s Blairites feeling they must “do something” to lure the youth vote Richardson is right that top US colleges pay far away from Jeremy Corbyn. And they’re right, more, said Iain Martin in The Times. But that said Martin. Under the current system of high doesn’t mean Harvard would come over here to fees and high interest rates, graduates may end poach, say, the man who runs the University of up paying £100,000 for a course that cost a Bolton (£220,000pa). Most VCs (who tend to fraction of that. Voters under 40 feel they are the be from academic, not business, backgrounds) victim of a rigged system. Their anger is would struggle to find better-paid jobs abroad, perfectly legitimate. It needs to be addressed. Race and justice: are the courts biased?

Katie Holmes has finally In her first public statement as Prime Minister, successive studies have shown that juries in confirmed rumours that she Theresa May vowed to fight injustice. If you are England and Wales deliver equitable results is in a relationship with black, she noted, you are “treated more harshly regardless of race. And as Lammy admitted, Oscar-winning actor Jamie by the criminal justice system than if you’re there are many other likely reasons for the Foxx (pictured, with Holmes). white”. This was “hardly a revelation”, said The disproportionate figures, such as high levels of The pair were first seen Guardian. But if proof were needed, the Labour lone parenthood and poverty among ethnic dancing together at a party MP David Lammy’s comprehensive review of minority people. Lammy suggested that some in 2013, but until now, they the treatment of black, Asian and minority Bame people’s prosecutions should be deferred have always strongly denied being an item. Why? ethnic (Bame) individuals in the criminal justice or dropped, to even up the numbers, said Rod According to rumours, it’s system, which was published last week, Liddle in The Sunday Times. “I suppose another all down to Tom Cruise (who, highlighted the problem starkly. Bame people solution might be to jail random white folk who as it happens, co-starred make up 14% of the population of England and haven’t committed crimes.” with Foxx in the 2004 thriller Wales, but 25% of its prison population. Black Collateral). It is alleged that people make up 3% of the population, but 12% His proposals “are not easy sells politically”, when Cruise and Holmes of prisoners (and 20% of young offenders in said The Guardian. But it is vital to tackle the divorced in 2012, the custody). For every 100 white women handed “lack of trust in the system” among Bame famously controlling star custodial sentences at crown courts for drug people, which discourages them from pleading stipulated – as a condition of the financial settlement – offences, 227 black women are jailed. Ethnic guilty and means that many lose the chance of that his former wife should minorities, Lammy concluded, still face bias and the reduced sentence that comes with a guilty do nothing to embarrass “overt discrimination” in the justice system. plea. Improving minority representation among him for five years. And judges and prison staff would help. So too publicly dating another man Lammy found plenty of evidence of “racial would deferred prosecutions: a pilot scheme in was supposedly one disparities” in the system, said David Green on the West Midlands, allowing charges to be example of things that his Spectator blog. The problem with his review dropped if offenders receive rehabilitation, has might embarrass Cruise. is that it assumes any such disparities “must be cut reoffending rates by 35%. Lammy’s review is “In my 50 years [of practice] the result of discrimination”. Prejudice, he well-intentioned, said The Daily Telegraph. “But I’ve seen everything,” said celebrity lawyer Raoul stated, “has declined, but still exists in wider the Government must proceed with caution” Felder. “But [if true], this society – it would be a surprise if it was entirely and bear in mind that “our police and courts is unprecedented.” absent from criminal justice settings”. Yet in exist primarily to uphold law and order”, not to fact, he found no compelling evidence for that: deliver politically correct statistics.

THE WEEK 16 SEPTEMBER 2017 Talking points NEWS 21

Tony Blair: getting tough on migrants Wit & “It’s tempting simply to laugh wash at a time “when at Tony Blair’s latest people in full-time work Wisdom intervention in the Brexit cannot afford to feed their debate,” said Paul Goodman children, let alone to buy or “If I am selling to you, I on ConservativeHome.com. rent a decent home”. I speak your language. If I am As PM, he unleashed a flood don’t question Blair’s buying, dann müssen sie of EU immigration in 2004 motives, said Matthew Deutsch sprechen.” by waiving restrictions on d’Ancona in The Guardian, Willy Brandt, quoted entry for workers from ten but I can’t see the EU in The Times new member states. His agreeing to his immigration “We are what we government predicted that curbs. David Cameron was pretend to be, so we 13,000 people would head to “handed his hat when he must be careful about the UK from Eastern Europe; asked for considerably what we pretend to be.” in the event, over a million less from Brussels before Kurt Vonnegut, quoted in did. But now that the horse the referendum”. The Guardian has bolted, Blair is desperately flapping at the stable door. The irony, said Jenni “The past is never dead. His grandly named Institute Flapping at the stable door? Russell in The Times, is that It’s not even past.” for Global Change has called the UK has long had many William Faulkner, quoted for tougher border controls, including mandatory powers to control free movement that it hasn’t in The Sunday Times registration for entrants and an emergency brake bothered to use. Not only did our leaders waive “Always tell the truth. on EU migration if numbers require it. Such the right to restrict migration from new EU It’s the easiest thing measures could satisfy public concerns about members for seven years; they also removed exit to remember.” immigration, Blair argues, perhaps obviating the checks in the 1990s, only reapplying them in David Mamet, quoted on need for us to pull out of the EU. 2015. Under current rules, new EU migrants can The Browser already be sent home after three months if they “It is a game which the Blair bears a heavy responsibility for the Brexit have no job or other means of support. Belgium, English, not being a vote, said Matthew Norman in The which registers every visitor, is increasingly strict spiritual people, have Independent. His administration encouraged about enforcing these rules. Germany is invented in order to give rampant immigration, having allowed the lure of clamping down on the employment of themselves some conception “economy-turbocharging cheap labour to blind Romanians and Bulgarians in the construction of eternity.” it to the possible consequences when the industry, arguing that they are not covered by Lord Mancroft’s economy stagnated or crashed”. Now that the pay-bargaining deals. Having neglected to use definition of cricket, predictable backlash has happened, Blair the tools at their disposal, our leaders are now quoted in The Times suggests the situation can somehow be magically proposing harsh new controls that risk fixed. While such “glib vagaries” served him alienating our EU allies. “What a miserable, “If you’re going through well in the “mid-1990s boom times”, they won’t avoidable mess.” hell, keep going.” Winston Churchill, quoted on Forbes.com The 2016 election: How Russia used Facebook “I never travel without my diary. One should always “As if we needed more evidence that American voters.” Want to target women ages have something sensational Facebook influenced the election,” said 22 to 45 or African-Americans who live in a to read in the train.” Christine Emba on WashingtonPost.com. Last swing state like Wisconsin, and give them Oscar Wilde, quoted in week, the social media giant admitted that it reasons not to vote for Clinton? For just The Sunday Telegraph had sold more than $100,000 in ads between $1,000 a day, a Russian troll farm could reach 2015 and 2016 “to a Kremlin-linked ‘troll up to 35,000 of them. Another $1,000 could “I wonder how farm’ seeking to influence US voters.” The provide motivating propaganda to that number many chameleons snuck ads – which Facebook refused to release – of possible Donald Trump voters. onto the Ark.” contained divisive messages on hot-button Adam Hess at the topics “from LGBT matters to race issues to Russia’s interference in the 2016 election was Edinburgh Festival Fringe immigration.” Russia’s election meddling didn’t an outrageous act of “information warfare,” “Inspiration usually end there, said Scott Shane in The New York said Fred Kaplan on Slate.com. We have to get comes during work, Times. An investigation by the Times reveals that better at defending ourselves – starting by rather than before it.” the Kremlin deployed “a legion of Russian- forcing Facebook and Twitter to demand real Novelist Madeleine L’Engle, controlled impostors” to target Democrat Hillary human IDs, so that a Russian troll can’t quoted on International Clinton. These impostors set up sophisticated pretend “to be a housewife in Ohio.” It’s also Business Times fake Facebook accounts, pretending to be time to ask some “hard questions,” said Will ordinary Americans with names like “Melvin Bunch in Philly.com. Did Kremlin trolls tip the Redick” and “Katherine Fulton,” and used those election to Trump? Why did some Democrats Statistics of the week accounts to post thousands of anti-Clinton in North Carolina and other swing states find There are 59 theatres at attacks, which Russian bots and real people then when they went to the polls they couldn’t vote, London’s private schools; passed along on Facebook and Twitter. These because poll records were mysteriously altered? there are 42 in the West End. efforts represent “an unprecedented foreign In Wisconsin, don’t forget, Trump won by only The Sunday Times intervention in American democracy.” 22,748 votes. These questions demand answers Only 20% of Muslims of – and yet the Trump administration seems working age in England and By using Facebook’s sophisticated algorithms determined to look the other way. It’s as if they Wales are in full-time work, and precision ad targeting, said Donie “don’t really want to know whether Moscow’s compared with 35% of the O’Sullivan on CNN.com, Russia’s troll interference was so great that it actually overall population. campaign “could have reached millions of decided the race.” The Guardian

16 SEPTEMBER 2017 THE WEEK 22 NEWS Sport

Cricket: Anderson joins the 500 club “In the end, the West Indies simply could not live Having settled, early in his career, on a technique with Jimmy Anderson,” said Lawrence Booth in “he could trust”, he has resisted the urge to The Mail on Sunday. On Friday evening, in the meddle with it unnecesarily, relying on a smooth second innings of the third Test, the 35-year-old action that “takes relatively little out of him” became the first England bowler to take 500 Test physically. And he has avoided the mistakes of wickets; then, the next day, he took seven wickets those bowlers who “bulk up in the gym with for 42 runs – the best figures of his extraordinary mindless weights training”, taking years off their career. England’s batsmen “ensured Anderson’s careers; instead, he makes the most of his “lean, artistry” did not go to waste, securing a nine- athletic” physique, and understands that “rest and wicket victory and a 2-1 series win “that has been recovery matter just as much as sweat and tears”. harder work than anyone imagined possible”. At the end of his first season as captain, Joe Root Anderson wasn’t the only bowler who thrived this managed to avoid an upset, and could take pride summer, said Jonathan Liew in The Daily in “a pair of series triumphs”. And he owed much Telegraph. This is “Test cricket’s most bowler- of that success to Anderson, whose 39 Test wickets friendly year in a generation”: there have been this summer – a tally beaten by only one England fewer runs and fewer centuries than in any year cricketer, Jim Laker in 1956 – put him back on top Anderson: bowling “artistry” since 2000. In this Test, for instance, wickets “fell of the world rankings, and proved that he is “the faster than the pound” – 23 of them in the first greatest swing bowler the game has known”. two days – while just two batsmen scored half-centuries. Local factors have played a part: in England, a wet summer has offered By their mid-30s, most cricketers are in decline, said Scyld Berry encouragement to seam and swing bowlers; in Bangladesh and in The Sunday Telegraph. Not Anderson: he just “keeps on India, “vicious turning wickets” were prepared for Australia’s getting better and better”. He has always been an astonishingly batsmen. What’s clear, though, is that cricket is emerging from reliable bowler, taking at least 40 Test wickets in eight of the last “a golden age of Test batsmen”: of the eight highest run-scorers in ten years. Yet he has been at his most deadly this summer, con- cricket history, seven have retired in the last five years. After the ceding just 15 runs per wicket. What’s the secret to Anderson’s sport’s longest period of “batsman-dominance”, the bowlers are “glorious longevity”, asked Ed Smith in The Sunday Times. “finally fighting back”. Cycling: Froome’s historic double At the start of July, many people wondered whether suited to four legs than two wheels” – and Froome Chris Froome’s best days were behind him, said Tom prepared by cycling up “goat tracks” in the Alps. For Fordyce on BBC Sport online. Two months on, it’s all his success, however, he remains unloved in clear that the 32-year-old is not, in fact, the rider he Britain, said Matt Dickinson in The Times. That’s once was. “He is a superior one.” After bagging his partly down to his “mixed nationality”: he grew up fourth Tour de France in the summer, he has become in Kenya and South Africa, and lives in Monaco. the first British cyclist to win the Vuelta a España – Cycling for Team Sky doesn’t help either: the team and only the third cyclist in history to win the are still dogged by questions over the mysterious double. Froome’s triumph required monumental “Jiffy bag” delivered for Bradley Wiggins during a physical and mental exertion: across the two Tours 2011 competition. But Froome has benefited from he raced for more than 4,200 miles, through six Sky’s huge resources, said William Fotheringham in countries, “in blazing heat and pouring rain”. The Guardian. In France and Spain, they fielded two almost completely different line-ups of riders, both of Froome’s double “bears comparison with the Froome: a superior athlete “virtually equal strength” – ensuring that in the achievements of any British athlete”, said Matt Vuelta, at a time when many rival teams were Lawton in the Daily Mail. The Vuelta might not be as prestigious “racing on fumes”, Froome could rely on fresh back-up. “Love as the Tour de France, “but the climbs are steeper and more them or loathe them,” Sky certainly know how to manage a frequent”. Competitors must ascend “dusty dirt roads better Grand Tour: they are “the supreme practitioners of their art”.

The power vacuum in women’s tennis Sporting headlines Men’s tennis appears to be stuck recent decades”: just six weeks Football Crystal Palace sacked in a time warp, said Mike Dickson ago, following a long absence Frank de Boer after just 77 in the Daily Mail. Between them, while she recovered from foot days as manager. Man City the veterans Roger Federer and surgery, she had dropped down beat Liverpool 5-0. In the Rafael Nadal have “carved up” to No. 957 in the world. Champions League, Chelsea all four of this year’s Grand In Williams’s absence, the thrashed Qarabag 6-0. Man Slams, taking two each – with more experienced players on the Utd beat Basel 3-0. Nadal crushing Kevin Anderson tour had a chance to “capitalise”, Rugby union Bath beat on Sunday to claim the US Open said Stuart Fraser in The Times. Saracens 31-21. Northampton title. In women’s tennis, by Yet no one has been consistent beat Leicester 24-11. contrast, the youngsters are enough to be considered “a new Golf Matthew Fitzpatrick won cleaning up. Since April, when a dominant force”. In the past four Stephens: an “unlikely winner” the European Masters, pregnant Serena Williams months, three different players defeating Scott Hend in a announced that she was going to miss the rest have held the No. 1 ranking – Angelique Kerber, play-off. At 23, he is the of the season, the three Grand Slams have Karolína Plíšková and now Muguruza – but youngest English golfer to “thrown up three different winners aged 24 or “never by virtue” of having won the most recent win four European Tour titles. under”: Jelena Ostapenko, Garbiñe Muguruza Grand Slam. Stephens certainly made “a and Sloane Stephens, who won the US Open significant breakthrough” last week, but Tennis Jamie Murray and last week. The 24-year-old American’s victory Williams won’t feel threatened by her – nor by Martina Hingis won the US made her one of the “most unlikely winners of anyone else in the sport. Open mixed doubles title.

THE WEEK 16 SEPTEMBER 2017 ARTS NEWS 23

Book of the week Based on his experiences scanning the brains of PVS patients, Owen Into the Grey Zone estimates that “as many as a fifth” may be conscious, said Helen by Adrian Owen Rumbelow in The Times. There Guardian Faber 320pp £16.99 could, in other words, be “hundreds” such patients in the UK, and “thousands” in the US. Their plight must be hellish: the “modern The author of this “fascinating” equivalent of being accidentally book is a British neuroscientist buried alive” – except that they are renowned for his work scanning the “buried in their own bodies”. And it brains of supposedly “vegetative” “gets worse”: one apparently patients, said Helen Davies in The vegetative woman, who later Sunday Times. Unlike victims of recovered, was “played a Celine “locked-in” syndrome, who can Dion album on repeat for months”. “talk” by moving their eyes, those (On recovery, she told her mother: in “persistent vegetative states” “If I ever hear that Celine Dion (PVS) are awake but physically album again, I will kill you.”) “I unresponsive – which once led loved this book,” said Rumbelow: it doctors to assume that they couldn’t is an honest and moving account of be conscious. However, in a series of an astonishing discovery. experiments that made “medical Owen’s discoveries are certainly history”, Owen found evidence to “remarkable”, and he writes with suggest that many are, in fact, An MRI scan of a conscious brain “evangelical fervour”, said Henry conscious. In 2006, he became the Marsh in the New Statesman. Yet his first doctor to “communicate” with a vegetative patient, when book should be treated with “some care”. At times, he comes he asked a young car accident victim to imagine two separate close to making it sound as though most vegetative patients are scenarios – playing tennis and walking around their home – and “potentially wide awake but locked in” – when all he has really watched as her scans “lit up” exactly like those of a “fully shown is that a minority have “some kind of inner life”. Not conscious person” would. This was Owen’s “eureka moment”: everyone in this field agrees with Owen that demonstrating an ability to follow instructions is a hallmark of consciousness. awareness is “the same as having a conscious sense of self”. This absorbing book, written with “infectious” enthusiasm, Consciousness is a complex phenomenon, “not simply a matter of should be “required reading” for “caregivers, doctors, ethicists, on or off”. The truth is that, despite his efforts, “we cannot know lawyers and philosophers”. what these patients are experiencing”.

Mayhem by Sigrid Rausing Novel of the week Hamish Hamilton 208pp £16.99 My Absolute Darling by Gabriel Tallent Fourth Estate 432pp £12.99 “The bare facts are gruesome, and well known,” said Craig Brown in The Mail on Sunday. In July 2012, Hans Kristian Rausing, the heir to the Gabriel Tallent’s debut novel – proclaimed a Tetra Pak fortune, was arrested in London for “masterpiece” by Stephen King – looks set to be erratic driving. When the police (who had this year’s literary sensation, said Robbie Millen discovered drugs in his car) searched his “vast” in The Times. Turtle Alveston, its 14-year-old Belgravia home, they found, wrapped inside a protagonist, is a “solitary waif” who lives in tarpaulin in a sealed off room, the rotting corpse rural California with her survivalist father of his wife, Eva. Two months earlier, she had died Eva and Hans Rausing Martin, a “fiercely intelligent” man who, when of an overdose, and Hans, who described himself as “unable to confront the he isn’t quoting David Hume, is abusing his reality of her death”, had tried to act as if nothing had happened. Since 2007, daughter “violently”. When Turtle meets Jacob, the couple’s four children had been in the care of Hans’s elder sister Sigrid – a local teenager who introduces her to a more who, in this “very literary sort of memoir”, sets out to “tell her own version of normal life, the novel becomes a “‘will she, events”. Unfortunately, Mayhem is written in an irritatingly “arch” style and won’t she?’ escape drama”. My Absolute “revolves almost entirely around” its author. Frustratingly, Rausing leaves key Darling may tell an “old story”, but it feels questions “unanswered” – such as what she now thinks of her brother (who has “original and full of youthful power”. subsequently overcome his addiction and remarried), and what he and his Tallent writes with “courage” about Turtle’s children think of her book. abuse, showing that, for all Martin’s viciousness, I disagree, said Lara Feigel in The Guardian: this is a “beautifully structured” there is “intimacy and love between the isolated memoir of “astonishing power”, and Rausing’s “scrutinising” of her own pair”, said Claire Lowdon in The Sunday Times. motivations is part of its appeal. She acknowledges that, at times, she could have This is a “compelling exploration of a done more to help her brother – though she is adamant that her decision to take complicated case of Stockholm syndrome”. At his children into care was done “solely out of the urge to protect”. Readers the same time, a few things – Tallent’s often hoping for “lurid details” will be disappointed by Rausing’s “cooly observant” “overdone” prose, his “implausibly” precocious approach, said Lucy Hughes-Hallett in the New Statesman. However, while this teenagers – prevent it from being “great”. For all is an “awkward” and “tentative” book, it’s “also a brave one, lit up by its its merits, this isn’t a truly “grown-up novel”. author’s remarkable candour”.

16 SEPTEMBER 2017 THE WEEK 24 ARTS Drama

In showbiz circles, Stephen The score is so rich that “no Sondheim is revered said Matt sooner has one number Trueman in Variety. And registered as a favourite, another watching this “divine” revival of comes along to supersede it”: Musical his masterpiece, Follies – a paean Losing My Mind (shatteringly to the lost world of old delivered by Staunton), to take Broadway, and a profound one example; or I’m Still Here “philosophical meditation on the (movingly, fiercely, defiantly sung Follies passage of time and the agonies by Tracie Bennett). of ageing” – one begins to For me, the most moving of understand why. Here, given a all, said Sarah Hemming in the Music and lyrics: lavish, inordinately stylish FT, is Josephine Barstow’s Stephen Sondheim production – with a “frankly “quavering duet” with her Book: James Goldman extraordinary cast” headed by younger self, One More Kiss. Director: Dominic Cooke Imelda Staunton and Janie Dee – And the male leads are brilliant Follies is “to the average West too, said Paul Taylor in The End song-and-dance show what Independent – both Philip Quast Shakespeare’s sonnets are” to the Imelda Staunton: “shattering” and Peter Forbes giving Olivier Theatre, trashiest of trash TV, said beautifully judged, matchlessly National Theatre, Andrzej Lukowski in Time Out. Unbelievably, sung performances. The costumes are exquisite, South Bank, London SE1 this is Dominic Cooke’s debut as a musical the music is perfection and the choreography is theatre director; his achievement – and that of “giddily pleasurable”. In sum, this first full (020-7452-3000) the National Theatre – is “towering”. staging of Follies in London for 30 years Until 3 January Follies – which requires a vast cast plus an “surpasses all your wildest dreams for this Broadcast in cinemas on orchestra – is a notoriously expensive show to show”. It is “jaw-droppingly great”. 16 November stage and a hard one to get right, said Matt Wolf in The New York Times. But in my decades as a The week’s other opening critic, I don’t think I have ever seen a production One Day, Maybe King William House, Hull Running time: “that carries the punch” of the National’s. The (www.hull2017.co.uk). Until 1 October 2hrs 10mins setting for the show is a reunion-cum-wake for a This “technically miraculous” play – about (no interval) grand Broadway theatre marked for demolition, consumerism, political unrest and technology – to which one-time impresario Weismann has is dazzlingly performed by a 30-strong Korean invited the Follies showgirls of his glory years – cast in a Hull office block and car park. Thought- ★★★★ and theirs – to share memories and music. And provoking and deeply moving (Observer). “as ever with this show, one listens in wonder”.

At 78, Alan Ayckbourn is having 1965, it’s an arts centre, where “another prolific year”, said he comforts the betrayed wife Mark Shenton in The Stage. The of a pantomime dame. And in Divide, a dystopian six-hour epic 1985, he is the retired manager Theatre in two parts, met with a muted of Kirkbridge Manor Hotel, response from Edinburgh critics. welcoming back the 98-year-old But with this, his second Lady Caroline. The play gets premiere of 2017, the playwright richer as it goes on – alighting A Brief History is back on “more familiar and on moments of real connection satisfying territory”. A Brief amid the “bickering teachers, of Women History of Women is a “beau- the gossiping toffs, the self- tifully mapped memory play”, involved theatrefolk” – and Written and directed by: charting with “delicacy, verve reaches its “tear-inducingly and wit” the life of one ordinary tender” conclusion. Alan Ayckbourn man – and some of the women Part of the fun is to observe the in his life – across 60 years. mutating “character” of an Antony Eden plays the man – English country house across the The Stephen Spates – at each stage of his life, decades, and “the changing Joseph Theatre, “with eagerness, dignity and Antony Eden (right) as Spates mores of men and women” with Westborough, grace, while the other five actors it, said Dominic Cavendish in create multiple characters with “chameleon-like The Daily Telegraph. It’s an interesting, though Scarborough cleverness”. The play’s “elegiac, reflective tone hardly earth-shattering, conceit, and this non- (01723-370541) proves both moving and liberating as it reaches vintage “late Ayckbourn” does not rank with his Until 7 October an ending of haunting beauty”. finest. But it is “worth seeking out” nonetheless. As the piece moves through its four acts, all of Running time: them set in the same grand country house, it CD of the week becomes “progressively more funny, more Nick Mulvey: Wake Up Now Fiction £9.99 2hrs 30mins tender, more Ayckbourn”, said Dominic (including interval) This follow-up to the Mercury-nominated First Maxwell in The Times. We begin in 1925, when Mind is “suffused with a sense of reawakening Spates is a 17-year-old footman who steals a kiss and acceptance”, and the lilting, folk-tinged ★★★ from the lady of the house after saving her from arrangements (with shades of Cat Stevens and her husband’s violent rage. By 1945, the house Paul Simon) add to the sense of peace. has become a girls’ school where Spates is a “A wonderful album” (Sunday Times).

teacher involved in a clandestine romance. In PERSSON © JOHAN

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

THE WEEK 16 SEPTEMBER 2017 Film ARTS 25

If you like your thrillers “lean and mean”, you won’t want to miss Wind River, said Joshua Rothkopf in Time Out. Written and directed by Taylor Sheridan, Wind River whose script for last year’s Hell or High Water earned him an Oscar nomination, this “gripping, Dir: Taylor Sheridan unusually wise” film is set in a Native American 1hr 47mins (15) reservation in the wilds of Wyoming. A woman is found dead in the snow, barefoot and raped. On the Engrossing thriller trail of her assailant is Elizabeth Olsen as a fish-out- with Jeremy Renner of-water FBI agent, and Jeremy Renner as a gruff animal tracker with demons in his past. A classic failing of writer-directors is to be self-indulgent with ★★★ dialogue, and Sheridan is no exception, said Tom Shone in The Sunday Times. When Renner squints into the distance, and murmurs, “You can’t steer away from the pain”, I found myself thinking: is that really true? Nevertheless, Sheridan excels at ratcheting up the tension in some “blistering” action set-pieces, said Robbie Collin in The Daily Telegraph. Always engrossing, and beautifully acted, Wind River confirms him as “a rising star”.

“It was never going to be easy” to convert Stephen King’s 1,000-page horror novel into a two-hour movie, said Kevin Maher in The Times. And if that wasn’t enough of a mountain to climb, the film- It makers had to “erase” memories of the 1990 TV miniseries, in which Tim Curry was chilling as Dir: Andrés Muschietti Pennywise, a demon in clown form who terrorises 2hrs 15mins (15) children by conjuring their worst fears and then eating them. Here, Pennywise is “nightmarishly Pennywise is back incarnated” by Bill Skarsgård, complete with “leering grin” and “creepy chuckles”, said Nigel Andrews in the Financial Times. Unfortunately, after a disturbing ★★★ opening, the film “collapses into junk”. We get Gothic houses, fountains of blood and all the other tired horror tropes. But it works a treat as a coming-of-age story, said John Nugent in Empire. The juvenile cast, which includes Jaeden Lieberher as the sensitive hero and Sophia Lillis as the tomboy, are uniformly excellent. All told, this is “among the better” adaptations of a King story; and that, when you remember that the category includes The Shining and Stand By Me, is “no small praise”.

Coming to our cinema screens already garlanded with praise from the film festival circuit, God’s Own Country looks set to be “one of the big British hits of the year”, said James Luxford in Metro. Some have God’s Own compared it to Brokeback Mountain, but it’s far more Country than “a retread”. Josh O’Connor (known for playing Lawrence Durrell in ITV’s The Durrells) is Johnny, a Dir: Francis Lee dour Yorkshire farmer with a drinks problem. That 1hr 45mins (15) changes with the arrival of Gheorghe (Alec Secareanu), a Romanian farmhand who comes to A touching love story set help at lambing time, and has all the sensitivity, with in the Yorkshire Dales animals and people, that Johnny lacks. The men’s relationship is portrayed in a way that is “muddy and vigorous”, said Robbie Collin in The Daily Telegraph. Meanwhile, the film works its magic, drawing you towards its emotional centre. Alas, ★★★ towards the end, God’s Own Country becomes as “mushy” as the “fields the farmers tramp through”, said Geoffrey Macnab in The Independent. Still, it’s a “highly impressive debut feature”, with “very fine performances from its two young leads”.

Scrap the torture manuals: how the CIA keeps Hollywood in line Why was there never a sequel to Top Gun? The insist on changes. This is what happened, for surprising answer, said Matthew Alford in The example, with the 2000 comedy Meet the Parents, in Independent, is that there was going to be one – which the prospective father-in-law (Robert De Niro) a script was, in fact, in the pipeline; but it got is a former CIA agent. In an early draft, Ben Stiller’s blocked by the Pentagon, which took against some character comes across torture manuals in De Niro’s controversial plot elements. That’s just one of the possession. To the CIA, this wasn’t on and had to be discoveries that Tom Secker and I made while cut. In other instances, as with Top Gun 2, the entire researching our book National Security Cinema, said project may have to be binned if found unacceptable. Alford. We found – after trawling through thousands This sort of thing has always happened, but has of documents obtained under the Freedom of recently gone into overdrive, thanks to the modern Information Act – that US national security agencies preoccupation with the secret state: of the 1,100 TV have played a remarkably active role in influencing shows made with Pentagon backing, 900 were in the Hollywood’s output from its earliest days. past 12 years. And, as many files are still withheld by The way it works is this: if you want the Pentagon’s security services, said SputnikNews.com, it’s likely or the CIA’s help in making a film – which you often No sequel for Maverick the interference is even more widespread. So next do for logistical reasons, or to check authenticity – time you see a film or TV show featuring US military you approach their entertainment liaison officer, who draws up a and/or intelligence, keep your wits about you. Chances are its contract. That then gives them the right to read your script and to content “may have been fiddled with by the US secret state”.

16 SEPTEMBER 2017 THE WEEK 26 ARTS Art

Exhibition of the week Folkestone Triennial Various locations across Folkestone, Kent (01303-760740, www.folkestonetriennial.org.uk). Until 5 November

The “faded bucket-and- that the art itself isn’t up spade resort” of to much. Gormley’s Folkestone has seen contribution – three better days, said Skye metal casts of his own Sherwin in The body positioned beneath Guardian. It was once a the pier – consists of prosperous holiday “works that are already town, but its economy overexposed in all collapsed with the senses”; while six decline of the local “brightly coloured tourist industry in the house-shaped boxes” by 1970s, and has never Richard Woods, located really recovered. Ever in various places around since, it has been the town, are little more blighted by than “a mildly amusing “unemployment”, comment on the housing “empty shops” and crisis”. The “nadir” is “social tensions”. David Shrigley’s effort, Recently, however, for which he asked a there have been signs of friend to recreate one of a revival, the most Folkestone’s Edwardian obvious manifestation Woods’ Holiday Home (2017): a “mildly amusing comment on the housing crisis” lamp posts after of which is its triennial studying the originals art festival. This autumn sees the fourth instalment of the event, for just 40 seconds. It “seems to embody a contempt for the an exhibition in which work by major international artists is intellectual level of the general viewer”. displayed in venues across Folkestone’s “dramatic landscape” with the aim of fostering regeneration through culture. There are Nevertheless, there is much to admire, said Nancy Durrant in The many “unexpected delights”, from a pavilion created in the shape Times. HoyCheong Wong has bolted a temporary facade onto of a “vintage jelly mould” by Turner Prize contender Lubaina Folkestone’s Islamic Cultural Centre, making it look like a Himid, to a number of Antony Gormley’s signature “iron men”. “shimmering” Muslim monument; while a usually inaccessible In a town which can often feel like a “petri dish of Split Britain’s Baptist burial ground hosts a “magical” choral work by composer problems”, the impulse behind the triennial seems “necessary” Emily Peasgood that is activated by a visitor’s presence. Besides, and “laudable”. “there’s nothing wrong with filling the streets of a rather tired town with art in the hope that someone will come and look at it”. At best, this year’s Folkestone Triennial makes for a “pleasantly When I visited, it was raining heavily – and it is “a tribute to the quirky trail through this interesting town’s nooks and crannies”, charm of this peculiar art festival that, despite becoming half- said Mark Hudson in The Daily Telegraph. What a shame, then, soaked, I didn’t mind”.

Where to buy… A life portrait? The Week reviews an One of the three exhibition in a private gallery shortlisted entries for the prestigious Taylor Wessing Jim Moir photographic at Grosvenor Gallery portrait prize this year “features a clear-skinned young It’s unlikely that many readers will woman gazing out have heard of the painter Jim Moir – of the frame with a but under his alias Vic Reeves he is slight smile”, says known as one of the most original The New York voices in British comedy. Once you Times. “Her name is Erica, and her know the work in this intriguing show secret is that she is not human.” She is an is connected to such pioneering android, made at Osaka University’s Intelligent programmes as Shooting Stars and Robotics Laboratory in Japan, and designed to House of Fools, it’s hard to look at it converse and move like a human. The Finnish dispassionately. Nevertheless, it’s photographer Maija Tammi was given half an tremendous fun. With titles like Idris hour at the laboratory to take her picture. Elba runs from the Storm with his Technically, the photo – One of Them Is a Kestrals (said depiction bears next to Jamaican Pub Fight (2017), acrylic Human #1 (above) – breaks the prize’s rules, on canvas, 120cm x 80cm, £12,000 no resemblance to the eponymous which stipulate: “all photographs must have been taken by the entrant from life and with a actor) or Luftwaffe Love School, the the most jaded of art-world habitués living sitter”. But the National Portrait Gallery in paintings here are very much an will struggle to stifle a giggle at the London, which runs the prize, stated: “It was felt extension of Moir’s dadaist on-screen bizarre propositions in front of them. that the subject of this portrait, while not persona. The bulk of these works are Prices range from £350 to £12,000. human, is a representation of a human figure a curious and explicitly referential mix and makes a powerful statement as a work of of Bacon-ish composition and Robert 35 Bury Street, London SW1 (020- art in its questioning of what it is to be alive.” Delaunay-informed patterns, yet even 7484 7979). Until 22 September.

THE WEEK 16 SEPTEMBER 2017 The List 27

Best books… Yotam Ottolenghi Television Chef and restaurateur Yotam Ottolenghi picks his favourite books about food. Programmes He and Helen Goh will be talking about their book, Sweet, at the Stratford- WWII’s Great Escapes: The Freedom Trails In this four- upon-Avon Literary Festival on 22 September (www.stratlitfest.co.uk). parter, Monty Halls meets some of the perpetrators of A New Book of Middle ingredients – but it is brilliantly writing is crystal clear and the War’s most daring Eastern Food by Claudia taut and precise. And funny! knowing, but also wise and escapes, and retraces their Roden, 1985 (Penguin £25). It delights and informs in warm. She cuts through extraordinary journeys. Sat This is one of my “book end” equal doses. whatever she’s examining as 16 Sept, C4 20:00 (60mins). books: the book on my shelf though her knife has just been Letters from Baghdad which holds everything How to Eat by Nigella sharpened, letting all the Acclaimed documentary about together. Claudia was the Lawson, 1998 (Chatto & ingredients be seen in a slightly the charismatic explorer and person who got me out of the Windus £18.99). This is a new light. diplomat Gertrude Bell, library and into the kitchen. book I constantly return to, as featuring (an unseen) Tilda Her books showed me – and reference in the kitchen or just The Third Plate by Dan Swinton reading from the constantly remind me – of the to read for the sheer pleasure Abacus, 2014 (Penguin letters Bell sent home from the links between food, recipes of Nigella’s writing. There are £10.99). A must-read for Middle East after WWI. Mon and cooking on one hand, and so many people telling us how anyone interested in food and 18 Sept, BBC4 21:00 (90mins). history, geography and politics to eat these days that this the future, and the relationship Bad Move New six-part on the other. book, ironically, feels like an between the two. Dan examines comedy series about a couple un-dictatorial return to the big issue of how we can who make the big move to the The Flavour Thesaurus by common sense. keep good food on our plate in country – and regret it almost Niki Segnit, 2010 (Bloomsbury a way that’s sustainable long- instantly. With Jack Dee and £18.99). This book could have How To Cook A Wolf by term. The subject is big but Kerry Godliman. Wed 20 Sept, been big and baggy – it takes M.F.K. Fisher, 1942 (North Dan’s writing is accessible ITV1 20:00 (30mins). one ingredient at a time and Point Press £12.50). Fisher’s enough to really let everyone then points to all sorts of ways collection of columns can be in and believe in the reality Fugitives Walter Presents screens this pacy crime drama it can be combined with other read again and again. Her of the vision. series from Chile. Four drugs mules find themselves on the run after a failed attempt to Your guide to what’s worth seeing and doing transport huge quantities of by What’s On magazine narcotics across Bolivia. Wed 20 Sept, C4 22:35 (60mins). over a three-course menu and a Electric Dreams Star- free cup of sake. studded, ten-part series based on science-fiction writer Philip DoubleTree By Hilton, JBR, K. Dick’s short stories. The first Dubai, 1pm, Dhs99. Tel: (04) episode, The Hood Maker, is 5595300. Tram: JBR. ramusake.ae set in a dystopian 1970s London and stars Holliday Grainger. Sun 17 Sept, C4 WELLBEING 21:00 (70mins). MONDAY PAMPERING Here’s a brilliant deal: For only Films Dhs150, ladies receive six free The King of Comedy (1982) Martin Scorsese’s satire about drinks at Nikki Beach Resort & celebrity features Jerry Lewis, Spa, bites at Soul Lounge, and who died last month, in a rare 50% off selected Nikki Spa straight role. Robert De Niro treatments every Monday. If you co-stars. Sun 17 Sept, Film4 fancy staying over at the resort, 00:50 (135mins). you’ll receive 50% off room rates, she’s a pioneer; she’s a musical MUSIC with F&B vouchers starting from The Two Faces of January legend and, in her spare time, Dh200. (2014). A stylish adaptation of JOHNNY CLEGG LIVE she’s a Disney princess. She Patricia Highsmith’s thriller, The singer songwriter famous for performs a solo concert at Dubai Nikki Beach Resort & Spa, Dubai, starring Viggo Mortensen and his Zulu/Western pop fusion Opera this weekend. Mon noon to 9pm. Tel: (04) Kirsten Dunst. Mon 18 Sept, appears in Dubai with his band Film4 19:05 (115mins). 3766000. Taxi: Nikki Beach. for a final bow. September 22 & 23, Dubai Opera, nikkibeachhotels.com/dubai The Opera District, Downtown New to Netflix September 20, Dubai Opera, Dubai, Dubai, Fri and Sat 8pm, Downtown Dubai, Dubai, 8pm, Dhs255. Tel: (800) 36227. Metro: Strong Island Yance Ford’s Dhs250. Tel: (04) 4408888. Metro: Burj Khalifa/Dubai Mall. award-winning documentary Burj Khalifa/Dubai Mall. dubaiopera.com examines the racially charged dubaiopera.com murder of his 24-year-old brother, William, and the LEA SALONGA DINING killer’s acquittal by an all-white jury. Streaming now. Behind the Oscar-winning song ‘A ‘BUSINESS’ LUNCH Whole New World’ from Disney’s Narcos Season three of the 1992 animation, Aladdin, is Lea Make it a long business lunch on Thursdays from 1pm at ultra-violent war-on-drugs Salonga. She is the very first drama continues to grip despite Ramusake. You and your Asian woman to ever win a Tony the demise of kingpin Pablo for a Broadway performance; colleagues can plan the weekend Escobar. Streaming now.

16 SEPTEMBER 2017 THE WEEK 28 Best properties

UAE Properties

Dubai: This luxury five- bedroom villa in Meadows 1 is located in a cul de sac at Emirates Living Community and boasts stunning views of the Jumeirah Lake Towers skyline. Built on a large open-plan layout the ground floor offers dining and sitting rooms with marble flooring. The first floor comprises of four bedrooms and the master suite leads to a closed terrace. The 16,377 sq ft plot is diamond shaped and designed by Bel Hasa with an award winning swimming pool, garden, barbecue area, outdoor seating and spa area. Maintained to a very high standard it can only be fully appreciated after viewing. POA. Luxhabitat. (+9714-550 8335)

Houses designed by well-known architects

▲ Pembrokeshire: Ffynone, Newchapel. A Grade I mansion designed by John Nash, who is famous for London’s Regent’s Park terraces. Master suite with dressing room, 12 further beds (4 en suite), 3 further baths, 2 kitchens, 2 receps, library, music room, billiards room, utilities, 2 three-bed flats, 1 five-bed flat, outbuildings, grounds of 34.84 acres. £1.75m; Savills (020-7016 3780).

▲ Hampshire: The Saltings, Hayling Island. A Grade II modernist waterfront property, designed in the 1930s by the acclaimed Connell, Ward and Lucus, who were themselves inspired by Le Corbusier. It has floor-to-ceiling Italian marble throughout, and a large roof terrace. Master bed with balcony and dressing area, 3 further beds (1 with dressing area), 2 baths, 2 receps, kitchen, garage, garden. £1.3m; Henry Adams (02392-006537).

THE WEEK 16 SEPTEMBER 2017 on the market 29

Dubai: This brand new villa on Palm Jumeirah is one of five that form a very private gated residence at the very tip of Frond M. Designed with a beach lifestyle in mind it has impressive floor to ceiling windows to harness the amazing views of the beach and Dubai Marina skyline. The villa also boasts six en-suite bedrooms including a very large master suite, walk in closet, formal sitting and family rooms, two kitchens with high-class finishes, large balconies, private pool, BBQ area, three external sitting areas, private lift serving all floors, parking for up to five cars and much more. AED85m. James Hatton, Core Savills, (+97156 712 1822) ▲ ▲ Cambridgeshire: Surrey: The Old Vicarage, Sandpipers, Stow cum Quy, Farnham. Finished Cambridge. to a high standard Designed by William by the award- White, this Grade winning architect II* property is a rare James Gorst, this example of a impressive family structurally unaltered home comes with Victorian vicarage. wonderful views Master suite with over the River Wey. dressing room, 4 Master suite with further beds, cinema/ dressing room, 4 bed 6, 2 further further beds (2 en baths, study, dining suite), kitchen/ room, reception, breakfast room, 2 family room, receps, study, kitchen, scullery, library/family room, pantry, library, cellar, garage, swimming patio and landscaped pool, outbuildings, gardens. £1.895m; gardens; 1 acre. Savills (01223- £2.5m; Savills 347147). (01252-729002).

▲ Hampshire: Hawkley Hurst, Hawkley. In the South Downs National Park, amid woodland with fine views of the famous “Hangers”, sits this Grade II mansion (divided into wings) designed by the Victorian architect Samuel Sanders Teulon. 2 suites, 2 further beds, family bath, study, dining room, drawing room, kitchen; private and communal ▲ Buckinghamshire: Roughwood Farmhouse, Chalfont St. Giles. A gardens, garaging. handsome Grade II Victorian farmhouse, which incorporates a 1902 wing £995,000; Jackson- designed by Charles Voysey. Master suite, 6 further beds, family bath, Stops & Staff kitchen/breakfast room, dining room, cellar, music room, garage, 3-bed (01962-844299). cottage, gardens, paddocks, pool; 6.8 acres. £3m; Savills (01494-725636).

16 SEPTEMBER 2017 THE WEEK 30 LEISURE Food & Drink What the experts recommend onion soup”. Blackened sea bass fillet came with burnt apple sauce and “dribbles of verjus”. But the real “showstopper” was dessert, or rather The Dessert, as it is “boosterishly billed”. As it turned out, The Dessert was three or four rather good desserts, “artfully strewn” across a big ceramic tile, surrounded by fruit coulis and “chocolate soil” – and with a cup full of dry ice pellets at its centre that drew “animated oohs and aahs” when activated at the table by a “sploosh” of fragrant rose tea. Wildly over the top and a bit ridiculous? Possibly. But it was splendid nonetheless. Dinner for two around £150.

A chef’s guide to Birmingham Birmingham, where I have lived all my life, used to be “the worst place in the country for food” but is now one of the finest, says chef Glynn Purnell in the FT. For culinary inspiration and sourcing great ingredients, I would suggest heading Zahira The H Hotel, Sheikh Zayed Road, add flavour”. The Wagyu beef was to Wing Yip oriental grocers, which sells Dubai (04-501 8606) another “satisfyingly meaty dish”, crisply everything from “dehydrated squid to “This is too pretty. I just can’t eat it.” seared and pink in the middle. If you have mooli”, and to the Bull Ring Indoor That’s a phrase “we said several times” at room for dessert menu, we recommend the Market. “We turn up at George Smith’s Zahira reports What’s On. Yet “we’d “pretty” knife and fork ice cream with shellfish stall first thing and wait for the expect nothing less from Greg Malouf,” chocolate and honey molten truffles. van to arrive from the coast.” For street who heads up the kitchen. The Australian- Price Dhs 250 upwards food, I’d recommend the Digbeth Dining Lebanese celeb chef has taken “meticulous Club, each Friday and Saturday night. My care” over the detailed menu, which offers Restaurant 27 27a South Parade, favourite stall is Andy Stubbs’ Low ‘n’ an “ultra-modern take” on traditional Southsea, Portsmouth (023-9287 6272) Slow, specialising in slow-cooked meats: Middle Eastern cuisine. If you’re a cheese There is “plenty to like” about Restaurant the brisket and ribs are consistently fan, you “have to order the halloumi and 27, says Keith Miller in The Daily superb. For dining out, my very favourite cheese” fondue, which is “wonderfully Telegraph. The staff are “charming and place to eat in Birmingham is Sushi Passion. rich”. The homemade Ma’hani sausages patient and skilful”. And the food is And University College Birmingham has are a “nice meaty alternative”, and we imaginative and “immaculately sourced” two “award-winning restaurants that are “loved” the sweet yet spicy harissa potato (I loved two “spectacular” Isle of Wight close to my heart”; under the guidance of salad. For mains, we had the lahem cheeses). We enjoyed an amuse-bouche of lecturers and food experts, the student-run meshwi. The lamb loin itself was smoky little red pepper croquetas with Atrium and Brasserie offer “creative flair, “perfectly cooked”, generously seasoned burnt onion mayonnaise, then a “pre- top-quality seasonal produce and and with “just enough fat on the bone to starter” of a “sweetish, nurturing white outstanding value for money.”

Recipe of the week Always use fresh seafood for this dish, says Gennaro Contaldo. Prawns and crab make a great combination but if you prefer not to use crab, just substitute extra prawns. If you find it difficult to extract the crab meat from its shell, ask your fishmonger to do it for you. King prawns and crab with garlic and chilli Serves 4 2 large fresh crabs (ask your fishmonger to prepare for you and reserve the shells) 175ml extra virgin olive oil 12 fresh, raw king prawns, shell on 4 garlic cloves, sliced lengthways 2 red chillies, sliced lengthways into strips 2 handfuls of fresh parsley leaves 250ml white grape 1 lemon, cut into quarters, to serve slices of bread, to serve salt, to taste

• Heat the olive oil in a large for 2 minutes with the lid on. frying pan, add the prawns • Add the parsley, increase and cook for 1 minute over a the heat and pour in the grape high heat. and any reserved juices • Turn them over and cook the from the crab. other side for another minute. • Bubble until evaporated, • Add the garlic, chillies and then serve immediately, with crab chunks, season with salt, lemon quarters and lots of bread then reduce the heat and cook to mop up the juices.

Taken from Gennaro’s Passione: The Classic Italian Cookery Book by Gennaro Contaldo, published by Pavilion at £20.

THE WEEK 16 SEPTEMBER 2017 Consumer LEISURE 31

The best… electric bikes E-bikes keep getting better, thanks to improved designs and lighter batteries that last longer and recharge more quickly.

▲ Haibike XDURO Trekking 4.0 ▲ Volt Pulse Designed for use both in This rugged mountain bike from cities and on off-road routes, the respected German brand Haibike is Pulse is very comfortable to ride. designed with long- It has a range of 60 or 80 distance riding in mind: miles, depending on it can travel up to 100 which model you go miles on a charge. A for – but at almost weighty 24kg, it has 23kg, it is quite an 11-speed heavy (from £1,499; gear system and www.voltbikes.co.uk). lightweight brakes (£3,200; www. evanscycles.com).

▲ Carrera Crossfire-E If you’re looking for a relatively cheap all-rounder, the ▲ Tern Vektron An electric bike Crossfire-E is a decent bet. The that folds up, the Vektron battery can last up to 60 miles; it has has an impressive Bosch a top speed of 15.5mph per hour battery that can reach – and a built-in 20mph and has a range of mini-USB port up to 60 miles. It weighs so you can a not-inconsiderable charge your 22kg, though, so phone while commuters may you cycle find it too hefty (£1,200; www. (£2,949; www.e-bike halfords.com). shop.co.uk). ▲

Juicy Roller With a top speed ▲ of 25mph, the Roller is Budnitz Model E At just 13kg, the a very powerful bike: titanium-framed Model E is the world’s just the lightest touch sends lightest e-bike, and has an impressive it surging forwards. It range of 100 miles. It is custom-made copes well with hills, according to your height but the range (33 or and you can control 50 miles, the motor on your depending on the phone, which is model) is on the mounted on the short side (from handlebars £1,585; www. (£3,100; www. juicybike.co.uk). budnitzbicycles. com). SOURCES: T3/CYCLING WEEKLY/THE SOURCES: T3/CYCLING WEEKLY/THE OBSERVER/ REVIEWS EXPERT

Tips of the week... how to And for those who Apps... for science and look after your cactus have everything… nature enthusiasts

● Keep your cactus in a spot that gets Quantum offers a relatively accessible plenty of light and sun. Too much sudden introduction to quantum theory. It covers exposure to bright light can cause damage, the different particles, from quarks to though, so if you’re moving your plant to a bosons, and uses graphics and a brighter area do it slowly. manageable amount of text (free; Android). ● During the winter, however, it should also Oceans looks at the effect of human activity be kept cool, with a temperature of between on the world’s seas, suggesting ways we 8°C and 10°C. can make it more sustainable. There are stunning full-screen photos of marine life ● To ensure there’s sufficient water (which you can zoom in on) as well as drainage, try to avoid packing the compost interactive diagrams (free; iOS). too densely. Stephen Hawking’s Pocket Universe, based ● From spring to autumn, water the cactus on A Brief History of Time, covers six topics, regularly, but not so much that the compost from the Big Bang to black holes. It’s less gets soggy (good drainage is key). intimidating than the book, though, with ● In winter, water only sparingly, allowing A 3D printer for children, the Toybox 3D superb illustrations and a glossary that lets the soil to dry out. produces toys and plastic figures. you look up any terms (£5; iOS). ● By mimicking the natural conditions of Youngsters can choose from 500 options EarthViewer shows you how the planet the seasons, you’ll encourage your cactus – or use the app to design their own. It’s has been transformed over the past 4.5 to flower in the spring and summer. available for pre-order until the end of next billion years. You can follow a city or ● Don’t give it too much attention, though, week, and will be dispatched in January. continent, seeing how its position has shifted, and monitor the way sea levels or it won’t flower. You’re more likely to £225; www.make.toys overwater a cactus than to underwater it. have changed (free; Android, iOS). SOURCES: THE SUNDAY TIMES/LONDON EVENING STANDARD SOURCE: DAILY MAIL SOURCES: THE SUNDAY TIMES/PC MAG/GEEKWRAPPED

16 SEPTEMBER 2017 THE WEEK 32 Travel

This week’s dream: a botanical wonderland in the mid-Atlantic Isolated in the mid-Atlantic just south land, 800 miles away. Charles Darwin of the equator, Ascension is one of the visited, as did the botanist Joseph world’s most remote and unusual Hooker, who planted trees, trapping islands, says Matthew Teller in the FT. moisture and gradually transforming A UK Overseas Territory used largely as the island into a “smorgasbord” of an RAF base, it emerged above the plant life. Climb Green Mountain – waves only a million years ago, the the island’s main peak, at 859m – “cragged, forbidding” summit of an to see the best of this “botanical undersea volcano. “Contorted” flows wonderland”, and enjoy “stupendous”, of black lava ring its coast, red cinder 360-degree views of the rest. You’ll see cones stud its interior, and among them satellite dishes and radar arrays on lies the world’s only man-made cloud every hilltop – the island is one of four forest, planted in the 19th century. global nodes in the GPS navigational The surrounding seas are rich in life. system – as well as the Nasa station Adventurous tourists may well enjoy (now defunct) that received the news of a visit – but be warned: the island’s Neil Armstrong’s moon landing. runway is out of action, so the only way Ascension: has a “smorgasbord” of plant life The island has golden beaches, and to get here is on a cruise ship, or by offshore, its reefs teem with colourful boat from Cape Town, a journey of ten days. fish, but you might also see Galapagos sharks: swimmers and When humans first spotted Ascension in 1501, it was home to divers are advised to exercise extreme caution. RMS St Helena nothing but seabirds, turtles, and a few tiny ferns. The Royal (020-7575 6480, rms-st-helena.com) has return fares from Cape Navy garrisoned it in 1815, fearing French efforts to spring Town from £1,670. For entry permits and information on the Napoleon after he was exiled to St Helena, the nearest speck of island, see www.ascension-island.gov.ac.

Hotel of the week Getting the flavour of… Skiing in South America restaurants and “rustic-chic” cafés. In the If you visit Chile during the British summer, pine-covered hills above it perch beautiful it’s possible to tour the country’s great villas built by the British in the 19th century, sights (the Atacama Desert, the glaciers of including the Villa della Pergola (now a Patagonia and so on) and fit in a bit of luxury hotel), whose former guests include skiing. It feels odd to be out on the snow at the Edwards Lear and Elgar. All around lie this time of year, says Tom Chesshyre in The lovely villages, such as Laigueglia, which has Times, but rather wonderful – especially for its own “pretty” beach, and Cervo, a hilltop guests at the Hotel Portillo, a “marvellous” hamlet with “sweeping” Mediterranean five-star lodge set high in the Andes, with views. The “pleasant” Hotel Eden (00 39 exclusive access to some of South America’s 0182 640 281, www.edendalassio.it) has s The Pheasant, Berkshire best slopes. Dating from 1949, and still run doubles from 90 b&b. by the family who took over in 1961 – the A former drovers’ inn with fine Purcells – it is popular with the continent’s views of the Berkshire Downs, Galicia’s ancient vineyards The Pheasant has been given a “social set” and has regular visits from the It was the Romans who started making revamp by its new owner, jockey US ski team. The off-piste runs are devilishly vintages in the green hills of Galicia in Jack Greenall. It’s now “smart and challenging, but there’s plenty for beginners northern Spain, carving “cascading terraces” sophisticated” in racing green and too – including great pisco sours at Tio Bob’s into the vertiginous slopes to cultivate grapes. red, says Condé Nast Traveller, with café, which has “stupendous” views over the Working these steep plots is “backbreaking a “cracking” atmosphere in the waters of the Laguna del Inca. Scott Dunn and dangerous”, says Lauren Mowery in lively bar, and “intimate corners (020-3553 1327, www.scottdunn.com) has a The Independent – but in the past two for quiet feasts”. Chef Andy Watts ten-night trip from £4,200pp, incl. flights. decades, some vitners have revived the produces “superior pub grub” – practice, largely abandoned almost a century unusually good Scotch eggs, salt- baked saddle of lamb to share, Italy’s forgotten riviera ago. The remote canyons of the Ribeira Sacra Dover sole and “fabulous” The tourist hotspots of Liguria – the Cinque region, which yield light, “elegant” reds from puddings. The 11 bedrooms are Terre and “swanky” Portofino – lie east of the mencia grape, are spectacular. But the “immaculate” and great value, Genoa. Head west instead and you’ll come gentler countryside of Valdeorras is also well with rich colours, eye-catching art to Alassio, a small seaside town that was worth a visit. Its “rich, round” whites made and beds with Egyptian cotton and beloved by British holidaymakers until the from godello grapes are a little-known duck-down duvets, as well as 1930s – then all but forgotten. It’s a delight, as are its charming villages. For a plenty of books. charming place, says Mary Novakovich in place to stay, try the Parador de Santo Estevo Doubles from £110 (01488-648284, The Guardian, with one of the loveliest (www.parador.es) or the Pazo do Castro www.thepheasant-inn.co.uk). urban beaches in Italy, lined with “romantic” (pazodocastro.com).

Last-minute offers from top travel companies Picturesque Sussex stay Green Heart of Antwerp Lakeside in Italy 5-star Balinese luxury Unwind at Deans Place Hotel Superbreak is offering 3 nights With superb scenery and a long The Conrad Bali, set in acres in Alfriston for 3 nights, with at the high-rise Crowne Plaza promenade along Lake Garda, of tropical gardens with breakfast each morning and Antwerp on a b&b basis. From the Du Lac et Du Parc Hotel waterfalls, offers a 6-night, cream tea on arrival. From £308pp, incl. Eurostar from offers a 3-night, half-board full-board stay from £1,562pp, £123pp. 0845-070 7090, Ebbsfleet. 01904-717362, stay from £729pp, incl. flights. incl. Glasgow flights. 01204- www.classicbritishhotels.com. www.superbreak.com. Depart 01483-345659, www.inghams. 821984, www.destinology. Arrive 23 October. 9 November. co.uk. Depart 25 October. co.uk. Depart 3 December.

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Sponsors Vote Processing Partner Presented by 34 Obituaries Courageous young spy who warned Britain about the V2

As a young woman in Rousseau, then 19, agreed to act as interpreter Jeannie Occupied Paris, Jeannie for the mayor, and made it her business to chat Rousseau Rousseau worked as an to the officers she met. In September 1940, she 1919-2017 interpreter for an association was asked, by an unnamed visitor, if she’d of French businessmen, representing their share what she learned. “I said, ‘What’s the interests, and helping them to negotiate point of knowing all that, if not to pass it on?’” contracts with the Germans, at their HQ in the Hotel Majestic. Attractive, vivacious and In fact, she passed on so much intelligence, fluent in German, she was well liked by the the Germans realised there must be a spy in Nazi officers – and was invited to their parties, Dinard, and in January 1941 she was arrested. where they chatted blithely about their work. Employing her usual ingenuity, however, she But the woman they knew as Madeleine persuaded her interrogator she couldn’t be an Chauffour was not the naïf she seemed, said agent – and was released, on the condition that The New York Times. On the contrary, she was she left the coast. Returning to Paris, she a French Resistance agent – using her charm secured her job with the business association, and guile to winkle out their secrets. “I teased and resumed her intelligence-gathering. Soon them, taunted them, looked at them wide- after, on a night train, she ran into an old friend eyed,” she told The Washington Post’s David – Georges Lamarque. Talking in the corridor, Ignatius, decades later. “I insisted that they he told her that he had a “little outfit” she must be mad when they spoke of the might like to join. She passed him the basic, astounding new weapon that flew over vast “One of the most remarkable women” commercial intelligence that she had already distances, faster than any aeroplane. I kept gathered; then began work on military secrets. saying, ‘What you are telling me cannot be true!’ I must have said that a hundred times.” In 1944, the British decided that she should come to the UK to be debriefed. En route, however, the French agent helping to arrange Eventually, one of the Germans decided to prove to her that he her passage was captured; her cover was blown, and she was was telling the truth – and showed her the plans for Peenemünde, arrested. She ended up in Ravensbruck, then at an even harsher an experimental station by the Baltic Sea where the V1 and V2 camp in Königsberg, where she was tortured and starved. By the rockets were being tested, and drawings of the rockets themselves. time she was liberated by the Swedish Red Cross in 1945, she was Rousseau didn’t have the expertise to understand everything she near death. Recovering in a sanitorium in Sweden, she met and saw, but she had a photographic memory – and was able to relay fell in love with Henri de Clarens, a fellow patient and Auschwitz the information in astonishing detail. Her report about this survivor, who became her husband. In later life, she worked as a “stratospheric” new weapon found its way to the British physicist translator. They once tried to tell their children about their and miltary intelligence expert Reginald Jones – and landed up on experience in the camps, but “it was too hard”. Nor did she talk, Churchill’s desk. Based on it, the Allies bombed the plant, in public, about her Resistance work. “The curtain came down on delaying the implementation of the V2, and saving thousands of my memories, she told Ignatius. “What I did was so little... I was lives. When Jones asked who had compiled the report, he was one small stone.” told only that her code name was Amniarix, and that she was “one of the most remarkable women of her generation”. Nevertheless, she was made a member of the Legion of Honour in 1955 and a grand officer in 2009. She was awarded the Born in 1919, Jeannie Rousseau excelled at languages at school, Resistance Medal and the Croix de Guerre, and at a ceremony and graduated top of her class from the elite Sciences Po in 1993, she and Jones were both honoured by the CIA for their university in Paris in 1939. When war broke out, her father – “momentous” contribution to the Allied war effort. Asked why a civil servant – moved the family to Dinard, in Brittany, hoping she’d done what she did, she seemed puzzled by the question. it would be beyond the reach of the advancing Germans. But the “I just did it... It wasn’t a choice. It was what you did. At the time, occupiers arrived in their thousands, and when they did, we all thought we would die. How could I not do it?” The theatre director who wrote The Knack

Ann Jellicoe, who has died aged 90, Mother as an experiment in directing, and was shocked Ann Jellicoe was a “linchpin” of the English when it came third in an Observer competition for new 1927-2017 Stage Company based at the Royal playwrights in 1956. Although it flopped, the Girl Court theatre in the 1950s, said Guides Association then commissioned her to write a Michael Coveney in The Guardian, and wrote two work with a cast of 1,000. “Write anything,” they said plays that are now part of its “legendary canon”. The – inadvisably. Jellicoe produced The Rising Generation, Sport of My Mad Mother, a drama about teenagers in in which girls were urged to reject men and leave Earth East London that largely relied on noise, dance and to colonise a new planet. The Guides wanted nothing music in place of dialogue, proved too experimental to do with it. “For some insane reason, somebody in for its first audiences: it lasted just 14 performances. the Guides got the idea that I write nice, safe plays for But The Knack was a huge hit. It made Jellicoe’s name teenagers,” remarked Jellicoe. The play was eventually and turned Rita Tushingham – who had the lead role staged, successfully, with a cast of 150 children. in the original stage production – into a star. In the mid-1970s, she left London with her family for Dorset – Born in Middlesbrough, and brought up in Saltburn, Ann Jellicoe where she found her real calling when her local comprehensive (above) knew her future was in the theatre at the age of four, said asked for her help in staging a play. The production expanded The Times, and enrolled at the Central School of Speech and until it involved the whole town, and a new career in community Drama after leaving school. She spent time acting in rep, then theatre was born. In 1978, she set up the Colway Theatre Trust, founded the Cockpit Theatre Club in London, where she staged producing 40 pieces over the next few years, including new works works by Ibsen and Strindberg. She wrote The Sport of My Mad by the likes of David Edgar and Howard Barker.

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Platinum Partner Sustainability Partner Water Partner Media Partner Venue Partner 36 BUSINESS Companies in the news ...and how they were assessed

Hurricane finance: Irma takes mercy The world’s reinsurance giants “are breathing a huge sigh of relief”, said Ambrose Evans- Pritchard in The Daily Telegraph. Had Hurricane Irma “smashed into the metropolis of greater Miami” – with five million people and a GDP equal to South Africa’s – “it would have ravaged the capital base of the global reinsurance industry”, already reeling from Hurricane Harvey. Shares in all the big reinsurers including Beazley, Everest Re, Munich Re and Swiss Re surged once it became clear that Irma “didn’t take the expensive route”. Seven days in the There may be a further silver lining for insurers “if alarm boosts premiums”. The Square Mile catastrophe modelling firm Air Worldwide has halved its estimate of Irma’s insured damage to a range of $20-$40bn, said The Wall Street Journal: “still painful for the The pound hit its highest level against smaller Florida-focused primary insurers”, but the losses look “manageable”. Hurricanes the dollar this year, and also rebounded Harvey and Irma have actually done us a favour, said Alex Brummer in the Daily Mail. by 7% against the euro, following a stronger than expected jump in CPI They have highlighted the potentially toxic nature of opaque “cat bonds” – high-yielding inflation to 2.9% in August. Currency securities designed to share the risk of catastrophes. Meanwhile, despite being flattened markets are betting that the surprise by Irma, the British Virgin Islands swiftly declared its Financial Services Commission figure, way over the Bank of England’s open for business. “Amid tragedy and devastation, the wheels of commerce turn.” 2% target, could mean more pressure for an interest rate hike. The rising Trinity Mirror/Northern & Shell: room in the lifeboats? pound subdued the FTSE 100 during a Unions fear the loss of hundreds of jobs “in the biggest shake-up to hit Britain’s buoyant rebound on Wall Street, where newspaper business in more than a decade”, said Robin Pagnamenta in The Times. the Dow Jones posted its biggest one- Trinity Mirror has confirmed it is in talks to buy Richard Desmond’s Express titles. The day gain since March, climbing back up above 22,000, as fears eased about media tycoon’s Northern & Shell group, whose assets include the Express and Star North Korea and Hurricane Irma. newspapers and the celebrity magazine OK!, is holding talks with unions to discuss the proposed sale. Any deal, thought to value the titles at around £100-£130m, would also The scandal-ridden PR firm Bell Pottinger was put into administration have to be cleared by competition authorities. A sale would signal “Dirty Desmond’s” after last-ditch efforts to find a buyer exit from publishing after 43 years. Having earned his initial fortune in pornographic failed. The firm’s Asian and Middle magazines, he acquired the Express titles in 2000 for £125m. “Since then, he has Eastern arms will continue trading as extracted hundreds of millions in profit by aggressively cutting costs.” Does this takeover independent entities; Bell Pottinger make any sense, asked Peter Preston in The Observer. Not politically (it would unite the Asia has rebranded itself Klareco right-wing Express with the left-leaning Mirror); and maybe not commercially either. Communications. The fallout from the Trinity Mirror, unlike the Express titles, is still profitable, but both groups are in fast South African scandal also threatened to decline: “think lifeboats tossed in tumultuous seas”. Doubtless there will be all manner of embroil KPMG, auditor to companies “efficiencies” to play with, but this deal looks “only as good as next year’s bottom line”. owned by the controversial Gupta family. Shares in the credit-monitoring company Equifax dropped sharply Saudi Aramco: IPO delay? after it suffered one of the largest US Saudi Arabia is reportedly preparing contingency plans for a possible delay to the cybersecurity breaches on record; biggest IPO in history, the listing of state oil giant Saudi Aramco. Bloomberg cited some 143 million Americans are sources as confirming the government was still aiming for an initial public offering in affected. A management shake-up at the second half of 2018 but due to the tight timetable it could be pushed back into builder Carillion saw a mass autumn 2019. Aramco told the publication the IPO “remains on track” and the process was clear-out of senior executives. “well underway”, echoing assurances to investors on September 9 after it was reported Transport for London called time on the kingdom was scaling back its economic reform efforts. However, several major the Chinese-backed Uber rival Taxify after just three days: it didn’t have an decisions have yet to be taken that could limit the ability for the company to sell shares operating licence. before the end of next year.

Goldman Sachs: vampire minnow targets Britain “The squid has grown a new tentacle,” said Financial Times. In July, Goldman’s market Alex Brummer in the Daily Mail. Eighteen capitalisation slipped below that of Morgan months after throwing open its doors to the Stanley, its closest rival, for the first time in mass-market in America, Goldman Sachs, the more than a decade. so-called vampire squid of global finance, is extending its reach into UK retail banking. “Given the limp returns currently on offer in From next year, it will begin offering online investment banking”, Goldman’s new career as savings accounts, under the brand name a banking “minnow” is certainly worth a shot, Marcus. As part of its British push, Goldman said John Foley on Reuters Breakingviews. And has also injected £100m into a local loan start- being “fashionably late” to the UK market may up, Neyber, said City AM. The outfit, founded be an advantage: unlike established rivals, by two Goldman alumni, lends cash to Goldman starts free of “legacy issues” such individuals via their employers (repayments as decrepit IT systems and mis-selling are deducted from the borrower’s salary). Lloyd Blankfein: branching out scandals. There’s another advantage too. Existing customers include Bupa, the NHS, Because the UK bank is buried in a group with London City Airport and the police. $907bn of assets, shareholders won’t know exactly how it is performing until CEO Lloyd Blankfein “chooses to tell them”, or The moves reflect Goldman’s “steady march from Wall Street to until it becomes a significant size. “In other words, Marcus can Main Street” as its traditional business lines struggle, “crimped nurse losses for a good while without investors getting twitchy. by new rules on risk-taking”, said Ben McLannahan in the Not many banks can do that.”

THE WEEK 16 SEPTEMBER 2017 Talking points CITY 37 Issue of the week: all power to windpower? Cheap renewable energy is no longer the stuff of fantasy. Should Britain rip up its current energy strategy? It was billed as “a huge step forward in in the UK without subsidy”. Costs are the energy revolution”, and for once the forecast to fall even further in the coming hyperbole wasn’t out of place, said years as technology improves – particu- Alistair Osborne in The Times. News larly in battery power storage. The big that the cost of subsidies for Britain’s problem, as the nuclear lobby is quick to offshore windfarms has halved in two note, is that “renewable energy is heavily years – making wind energy cheaper intermittent”: you can’t rely on wind to than electricity from new nuclear power provide the “baseload power” Britain for the first time – prompted a euphoric needs. All the more reason to create a reaction from renewables fans. Not even new electricity system “designed with the greenest Green had expected quite flexibility in mind”. Renewable power such “a dizzying drop”. Following the may be unpredictable, but the Govern- latest auction for government subsidies, ment can still have “a predictable energy in which the lowest bidder wins, the policy”. We badly need one to manage guaranteed price for wind energy from Subsidies for offshore wind have halved in two years these big changes in power provision. two big contracts will fall to £57.50 per megawatt-hour (MWh) in 2022-23. That compares with subsidies Successive governments “swallowed the line” that Hinkley Point of £92.50/MWh for the new Hinkley Point C nuclear power C represented a plausible answer to the UK’s threefold energy plant. Opponents of wind farms point to the harm they cause conundrum: “keeping the lights on, reducing carbon emissions seabirds, but surely “there’s an even bigger casualty in the animal and producing the juice at affordable prices”, said Nils Pratley in kingdom than our feathered friends... nuclear white elephants”? The Guardian. Yet it’s becoming ever clearer that the costs involved are “obscene”. There are surely limits on how far the “Sceptics have always denied that renewable energy could be cost- nuclear industry can push the argument that “we must pay up for competitive with old-fashioned fuels,” said Juliet Samuel in The reliable baseload supplies” – with wholesale energy prices below Daily Telegraph. But the industry is “clawing its way into £50/MWh, gas can provide baseload power far cheaper than contention, moving ever faster towards a day when it will no nuclear. Last year, Theresa May “bowed to pressure” from longer require a subsidised price”. Onshore wind is already “cost- Hinkley’s supporters to give the project the green light, said James competitive” (though understandably unpopular with those who Moore in The Independent. “Reversing that decision won’t prove have to live near it); and “some solar farms are already operating easy,” but she should bite the bullet and admit she was wrong.

Making money: what the experts think London pride equities and private equity ● The super-rich march on London has, at least temporarily, defied Just 4% of the world’s are still all the rage: they fears that the City will become less richest families lost money now comprise 27% and attractive for financiers in the wake of last year, “thanks to booming 20% of the average family Brexit, said the FT. The City has retained stock markets and money- office’s investment portfolio. its place as the “world’s top financial spinning private equity “The benefits of this bolder centre”, according to the Z/Yen Global deals”, said Rupert Neate in approach” were evident in Financial Centres Index, which ranks 92 this year’s strong returns, financial centres globally. “Interestingly, The Guardian. Indeed, the despite the ongoing Brexit negotiations, average return generated by said Sara Ferrari of UBS. And, looking to the future, London only fell two points, the “family offices” – which smallest decline in the top ten,” noted invest and manage rich most family offices are still the report. That means it extended its people’s fortunes – came in at risk-on. In gung-ho style, lead over New York and also left top 7%. That compares rather 60% plan to maintain their EU centres in the dust. Both Frankfurt favourably with “the average investment in “developing and Dublin’s scores rose this year: interest rates of just 0.35% market” equities; and 40% Frankfurt’s by a credible 12 points. But intend to allocate more to they are still ranked at 11 and 33. offered by instant access The super-rich get richer private equity funds or high-street bank accounts”. Talk to any bank chief about Brexit Or, indeed, with the measly 0.3% returns invest directly in companies themselves. Private equity is now so in vogue – and the “and the conversation quickly turns to generated by family offices in 2015, when the practical difficulty of persuading stock markets “were in turmoil”. 2016 was competition for plum deals so intense – senior employees to move to “absolutely, no question, a marked that the chief headache facing many family Frankfurt”, said Nils Pratley in The performance” for the fortunes of the offices is sourcing the right investment. Guardian. As the RBS chairman Sir wealthy, said Dominic Samuelson of Howard Davies observes, it’s often Campden Wealth, which researched the ● A force for good? because they “don’t like the schools”. report with the Swiss bank UBS. Family offices “were pioneered by the True believers in the City’s post-Brexit future might count this as “another “Irrespective of the economic challenges, Rockefellers in the late 19th century to demonstration of London’s great wealth is continuing to be generated preserve their wealth for future gener- superiority” in matters beyond across the globe.” ations”, said Neate. The average office in financial. “But if the biggest concern the survey has an average $921m assets is education, London needs to watch ● Private preoccupations under management, and last year gave just out.” As Davies suggests, “a shortage The study offers a fascinating insight into $5.8m to philanthropic causes. Still, they of overpriced schools for the offspring the current investment preoccupations of may become a greater force for good, as of overpaid bankers sounds like a the super-rich, said Lucy White in City younger generations get more involved, problem the market can fix”. His AM. They appear to have lost their zest for said White. Firms are reportedly increasing tip: invest in any company planning to open international hedge funds and property – both are seeing allocations to “impact investments” seen schools in Frankfurt. “a gradual decline in take-up”. But as environmentally and socially sound.

16 SEPTEMBER 2017 THE WEEK 38 CITY Commentators

The Brexit process is proving so slow and difficult, says David Smith, that many yearn for what’s sometimes called “the first City profile Brexit: the Brexit”: Britain’s abrupt ejection from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), 25 years ago this week. That debacle, Keith Hellawell lessons from As chairman of controversial which scuppered plans to join the euro, “destroyed the Tory retailer Sports Direct, Keith 1992 Party’s reputation for economic competence”; but it’s now mostly Hellawell has become “a remembered as the start of “the longest period of continuous lightning rod” for share­ economic growth in our history”. No wonder there’s nostalgia for David Smith holder concerns about it. Couldn’t we reap similar advantages today by making a clean corporate governance, said The Sunday Times break? Alas, “liberation from the ERM and departure from the BBC Business online. Yet EU are very different animals”. The first Brexit “provided an once again, the former chief opportunity” to slash interest rates deeply and quickly. No such constable of West Yorkshire monetary stimulus is available now. Moreover, within weeks of police has “narrowly Black Wednesday, the government had devised “an alternative survived an attempt to oust him”. At last week’s AGM, policy framework”, paving the way for the eventual independence independent shareholders of the Bank of England. Again, no such “gamechanger” is in sight voted 53% in Hellawell’s today. History may yet repeat itself: if Theresa May succumbs to favour – defying a concerted backbench pressure for a cliff-edge departure, it would likely as attempt by several big not prove “toxic” for the Tories. And they’d fully deserve it. institutions to bring about his removal. As was the case News that police and prison officers will get a pay rise has been last January, Hellawell, 75, billed as the end of one of the Government’s most contentious “survived by the skin of his Hammond is teeth”, said Royal London’s austerity measures. Yet it would be “premature” to assume the Ashley Hamilton Claxton. He current 1% pay cap on public sector workers is “in jeopardy lives to fight another day. blind to the across the board”, says Phillip Inman. The Treasury has seen to that. Britain might be enduring “the longest period of earnings coming crisis stagnation for 150 years”, but Chancellor Philip Hammond Phillip Inman refuses to abandon the Government’s latest attempt to balance the books. The pressure, though, is mounting. Private sector pay is up The Guardian by 2.3% this year, and the gap to public sector pay is predicted to widen this Parliament. The Institute for Fiscal Studies predicts a recruitment and standards crisis if the 1% cap remains in place, or if any pay rise is funded from within existing budgets. Hammond sees himself as a strategist, who must help the economy “bridge the Brexit gap” and spend carefully on long-term projects. For him, that means resisting calls to relax pay and welfare caps. “Few outside the Treasury believe it is a tenable position.”

“Growing up, I admired nobody more than Warren Buffett,” says Robin Harding. With “nothing but wisdom and charm”, the How Warren Hellawell “is nothing if not a greatest ever investor made $75bn beating the market. Buffett still survivor”, said the Daily Mail. Buffett broke wields vast influence on US business and finance, much of it good. His childhood featured “a But it “has a dark side”. The secret of Buffettism, celebrated in a sadistic aunt who made him US capitalism thousand investment books, “is to avoid competition and to walk to school in the snow minimise capital investment in the real economy”. And it’s ripping barefoot” and a “louche­ Robin Harding the heart out of US capitalism. Buffett is upfront about his desire sounding” mother who to reduce competition: “widening the moat” is the folksy name he “shackled him to a table leg Financial Times gives it. And if he’d just bought a few unusual companies on the when she went out dancing”. cheap, rather than “buying into monopoly profits” – if his acolytes After five years down a coal pit, he went on to a glittering hadn’t taken his methods “economy-wide” – then maybe it would police career in which he not matter. But it does. We can’t easily solve the malaise he helped revelled in his tough guy create, though better antitrust enforcement would help. But we image. “Tall, broad­ can decide “who to admire”. Buffett “doesn’t start companies or shouldered with a gimlet­ gamble on new ideas”. The US is full of entrepreneurs who do. eyed gaze, his soup­strainer “Celebrate that kind of business. It is the kind America needs.” moustache bristled with pent­up aggression.” He then Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox is on the back foot once did a stint as New Labour’s again in its ongoing quest to secure the 61% chunk of broadcaster “drugs tsar”. Yet his Time to throw Sky that it doesn’t already own, says Alex Brummer. The latest reputation as a boardroom “enforcer” has been far from in the towel, setback is that Culture and Media Secretary Karen Bradley “has, stellar, and some “gamey in effect, overruled regulator Ofcom”, and is preparing to refer employment practices” Rupert? the deal to the Competition and Markets Authority on grounds of forced a parliamentary “media standards”. The CMA is already probing the £11.5bn bid enquiry. “Some suspect him Alex Brummer on competition grounds, but the Murdoch clan had hoped to of being little more than CEO avoid a second investigation. Fox has certainly faced serious Mike Ashley’s appointed Daily Mail criticism in both the US and Britain over “allegations of sexual stooge.” Most top­flight harassment and perceived political bias”. But politicians such as chairmen claw their way to the former Labour leader Ed Miliband, and Lib Dem leader Vince the top after a long career in executive roles, said Cable, have whipped this up into a “sustained campaign” to Management Today, “but scupper the deal, which now appears to be bearing fruit. “There there’s a lot to be said for must be a real chance now” that James Murdoch, Fox’s chief alternative experience.” Or executive, decides “that the hassle of dealing with Britain’s possibly not. political pygmies has become too much, and pulls the offer”.

THE WEEK 16 SEPTEMBER 2017 Sharewatch CITY 39

Who’s tipping what

The week’s best buys Directors’ dealings Card Factory Medica Group Randgold Resources Dixons Carphone Investors Chronicle Shares The Mail on Sunday This greetings card retailer Floated in March, Medica Geopolitical tensions have 350 holds a market-leading provides teleradiology services driven up the price of gold position and is growing and consultant radiologists to – as Kim Jong Un flaunts his 300 impressively with 30 new the NHS to help provide early nuclear prowess – and shares stores, and another 50 due. diagnosis of diseases. Growing in Randgold. Pricey, but the Cash-generative, yields 7.7%, rapidly, thanks to strong miner is a “solid gold stock” 250 and analysts expect special demand and lack of supply. with an “enviable reputation”. 7 directors dividends. Buy. 337p. Buy. 210.2p. Buy. £81.25p. 200 buy 206,384

Charles Taylor Micro Focus International Redrow 150 The Times The Times Investors Chronicle Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Charles Taylor provides After a “wildly erratic share The appetite for new homes is technology solutions to the price” this summer, the driving Redrow’s profits and After shares plummeted 30% on a profit warning, board insurance industry. It has purchase of Hewlett-Packard’s earnings. Completions are up members moved to show that suffered accounting write-offs software arm is complete – and 15%, selling prices up 7%. prospects are good. CEO Seb after acquisitions, yet there’s fears seem overdone. Margins Margins are rising and the James and CFO Humphrey plenty of potential, including a have improved from 17.8% to order book is a record £1.1bn. Singer each invested £44,500. possible Lloyds contract. Yields 24.9%, and the rating is “There’s more to come.” Chairman Ian Livingston 4.5%. Buy. 240p. undemanding. Buy. £23.36. Buy. 639.5p. bought £99,472-worth. SOURCE: INVESTORS CHRONICLE SOURCE: INVESTORS

…and some to hold, avoid or sell Form guide

Gym Group Indivior Sophos Group Shares tipped 12 weeks ago Investors Chronicle Investors Chronicle The Times Best tip The low-cost gym group is The drug-maker, which majors Shares in the cybersecurity Watkin Jones Group opening 20 new sites and on treatments for opioid specialist have reached their The Daily Telegraph trialling a “premium” addiction, remains impeded highest point since floating in up 18.23% to 214p membership. But increased by legal battles and patent 2015 as customer billings Worst tip competition could impinge on disputes. Rising competition increase, giving strong forward JD Sports Fashion growth, and shares are highly for its flagship drug Suboxone visibility. But the high Investors chronicle rated with little room for error. could “knock two-thirds off valuation is worrying: take down 15.49% to 383.27p Sell. 206p. the top line”. Sell. 292.8p. profits. Sell. 521.5p.

Halfords Group IQE Victrex Market view Investors Chronicle Investors Chronicle The Times “That North Korea didn’t do The car and cycling products This high-growth semi- A tax cut, due to a Government anything, on a weekend they retailer has had decent results. conductor supplier has posted scheme to encourage innovation, knew the US was going to be But there’s no relief to the a 2% decline in operating sent shares in the plastics in flux because of hurricanes, downward momentum, nor profit and a 10% drop in cash specialist soaring. But is the primary reason we’re seeing this big rally.” improvement on margin generation. There are fears that Hurricane Harvey will hit J.J. Kinahan of TD Ameritrade guidance, and the CEO Jill demand for its “much vaunted demand from US oil refineries, on Wall Street’s rebound. McDonald is leaving to go to VCSEL wafers” was slower and it faces a new rival in Quoted in WSJ Marks & Spencer. Sell. 323p. than expected. Sell. 146p. Georgia. Take profits. £22.20. Market summary

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

12 Sep 2017 Week before Change (%) WEEK’S CHANGE, FTSE 100 STOCKS 7,600 FTSE 100 7400.69 7372.92 0.38% RISES Price % change FTSE All-share UK 4054.83 4044.60 0.25% Micro Focus Intl. 2398.00 +8.65 Dow Jones 22119.36 21844.14 1.26% AstraZeneca 4925.00 +7.69 7,500 NASDAQ 6438.37 6395.62 0.67% Provident Financial 832.00 +4.00 Nikkei 225 19776.62 19385.81 2.02% Shire 4074.50 +3.91 Hang Seng 27972.24 27741.35 0.83% Ashtead Group 1759.00 +3.90 7,400 Gold 1326.50 1335.55 –0.68% FALLS Brent Crude Oil 54.16 53.44 1.35% Persimmon 2503.00 –4.61 DIVIDEND YIELD (FTSE 100) 3.91% 3.89% Barratt Developments 596.00 –4.49 7,300 UK 10-year gilts yield 1.19 1.07 Associated Brit.Foods 3142.00 –4.47 US 10-year Treasuries 2.17 2.08 Randgold Resources 7765.00 –3.90 7,200 UK ECONOMIC DATA Antofagasta 1008.00 –3.82 Latest CPI (yoy) 2.9% (Aug) 2.6% (Jul) BEST AND WORST UK STOCKS OVERALL Latest RPI (yoy) 3.9% (Aug) 3.6% (Jul) Empyrean Energy 24.62 +129.07 7,100 Halifax house price (yoy) +2.6% (Aug) +2.1% (Jul) Jersey Oil and Gas 53.50 –77.09 Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Source: Datastream (not adjusted for dividends). Prices on 12 Sep (pm) £1 STERLING $1.328 E1.108 ¥146.026 6-month movement in the FTSE 100 index

16 SEPTEMBER 2017 THE WEEK 40 The last word “Once this Pandora’s box is opened, it will be hard to close”

Driverless cars, robot bricklayers and killer drones are just the start, says John Arlidge – artificial intelligence is about to transform human civilisation. But do we really want to live in a world run by robots?

Las Vegas is where you go deaths will fall to near zero, for old-fashioned fun, but carmakers predict. Auto- I’ve got an appointment with mation will also help to cure the future. It’s 7am and the us if we are one of the Sun is beginning to rise over unlucky few who do still faux Paris, New York, Venice crash our cars or simply and the Egyptian pyramids fall ill. Bots study X-rays, when a silver BMW pulls up MRI scans, medical research on the Strip to pick me up. papers and other data, and I’m going to take Frank pick up signs of disease that Sinatra Drive to Interstate doctors sometimes miss. 15, but I won’t be driving. Lord Darzi, the surgeon No one will. The car will do who pioneered keyhole and it itself. I get into the robotic procedures, tells me “driver’s” seat, press the blue robots can also perform button on the steering better surgery than humans column that “engages – and he’s one of the best. personal co-pilot” and take “Robots are more precise, my hands off the wheel and have greater range of my feet off the pedals. The movement in keyhole car, a prototype, stays surgery and no hand tremor, perfectly central in its lane which makes delicate and about 40 yards behind A robo-doc can perform better surgery than a human stitching easier,” he says. the truck in front, at a steady 55mph. It is – remarkably – not at all scary, so I set a course north Since we’re all going to be living longer, it’s a good thing that bots for Seattle, the second stop on my tour of the future. will help many of us get richer. By reducing labour costs – robots work tirelessly and don’t demand raises – automation will make I arrive at the Amazon Go store on the corner of 7th Avenue and existing companies more profitable and help spur the creation of Blanchard Street in the downtown area. It looks like any other new ones, techno-optimists predict. Consultants at the accountancy supermarket you might duck into to pick up dinner. There are the giant PwC say AI could boost the British economy by 10% over “We prep, you cook” meal kits, jumbo jars of anything you might the coming decade, adding an extra £232bn to GDP by 2030 and fancy and, this being America, a “no weapons” sign at the door. creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs. Automation will But there’s one thing missing. also make many existing jobs Checkouts. I will soon be able more fulfilling. No one actually to walk in and out again with “Humanity could split into a small class wants to answer the phones in dinner but without paying – of ‘superhumans’ who run the AI, and a call centre. or fear of arrest. Sensors and cameras will monitor what I a huge underclass of ‘useless’ people” These benefits, great though they pick from the shelves, and my are, are only the beginning. Amazon account, activated via my iPhone when I walk in, will be Andrew Salzberg, head of transportation policy and research for charged before I’ve even reached the next block. The store is due the taxi app Uber, believes that automation will make cities, to open any day now. where most of us now live, greener and more pleasant lands. Uber has collected so much data from the hundreds of millions of rides Thanks to huge leaps in machine learning, speech recognition, its users have taken that it knows how and when we travel. That mapping and visual-recognition technology, artificial intelligence means it can anticipate when and where we will need to go and (AI) is, at last, walking off the pages of sci-fi books and into make sure there are autonomous cars available. Salzberg argues our lives. It’s not just robot cars and robot shops. Those that, soon, rides will be so abundant and – with no driver to pay Facebook photos you’re tagged in? That’s AI. So are our Netflix – so cheap, there will be no need to own a car at all. He says the recommendations, Spotify playlists, and Google and Skype number of cars on the road could fall by more than 90%. Most translators that enable us to talk to anyone in the world in any of those that remain in fleets such as Uber’s will be electric. If language. AI is spreading so fast, it will soon be integrated into that happens, it will not only reduce congestion and improve the almost everything we touch, kick-starting what many call the air we breathe, it will transform how and where we live. “Some “fourth industrial revolution” – the first being steam engines, 20%-30% of city centres are devoted to parking,” Salzberg the second oil and electricity and the third computers. The only explains. “If you don’t need parking, streets can change. We can difference, analysts say, is this new revolution is likely to be ten have more park spaces, instead of parking spaces.” times faster, 300 times the scale and have 3,000 times the impact. It sounds like the latest self-serving Silicon Valley woo-woo. AI offers some big advantages to the human race. For one thing, After all, he has – shock! – forgotten to mention Uber stands to it will help us live longer. Traditional carbon life forms make benefit to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. But then I lots of mistakes. More than 90% of the 1,810 people who die take an Uber to the San Francisco neighbourhood of Parkmerced, annually on Britain’s roads (1.25m globally) do so at the hands between downtown and San Francisco airport, and find out that of malfunctioning humans. Remove the nut behind the wheel and what Salzberg is talking about not only works in theory, but is

THE WEEK 16 SEPTEMBER 2017 The last word 41 happening. Parkmerced is the most high- proposes something radical: universal basic density new housing development in any income. The idea is that governments would Western city – 9,000 homes are being built hugely increase the welfare state using tax for 30,000 residents, most of whom will revenue – much of it derived from the highly dump their cars. They have no choice. The profitable tech firms that politicians would developer, Maximus Real Estate Partners, has have to force to cough up their fair share, not scrapped parking. To make sure buyers can dodge it, as they now try to. Everyone would still get around, residents get Uber credits, receive the minimum they need to live, with car-share vehicles from Zipcars available regardless of whether they have a job. So, if for longer rentals. Urban planners and you lost your job or simply did not want one, developers in other cities are following San you could do something else. “Imagine six to Francisco’s lead. Moda Living is investing ten billion people doing nothing but arts and £1bn creating 6,000 rental-only homes in sciences, culture and exploring and learning. London, Leeds, Manchester, Edinburgh, What a world that would be,” enthuses the Birmingham, Glasgow and Liverpool, where Silicon Valley investor Marc Andreessen. tenants will get up to £100-worth of Uber credits a month if they agree not to have a Free cash and a future where work is parking space. optional does sound great. It has gained The next step in the automation of war? support here. Labour has set up a working But there’s a snag to automation. With tech, group to examine it. But is there a catch? there always is. And it’s the problem innovation has raised ever I decide to ask Steve Hilton. He used to advise David Cameron since the Luddites began smashing up automated weaving looms before moving to California to set up his own tech firm, in northern mill towns 200 years ago. Jobs. Despite all the Crowdpac, and co-write a book, More Human, in which he economic growth and employment opportunities proponents say argues we should use technology to create “a world where AI will generate, few doubt it will also spell redundancy for many. people, not Silicon Valley, come first”. The idea of universal A new report by the National Bureau of Economic Research in basic income makes Hilton so angry, he practically spits out his the US argues that jobs are already being lost to AI and are tea when we meet in a café. “Doing meaningful work and being unlikely to come back. Between 1990 and 2007, the addition of rewarded for it is a basic human need. Depriving people of that each robot into US manufacturing resulted in the loss, on average, is morally evil,” he says. “It’s revoltingly patronising for the of 6.2 human jobs. You’ll soon see this happening on your local ‘great geniuses’ of Silicon Valley to say, ‘We can continue our building site. Robots called Sam (semi-automated mason) are fascinating work and earn vast incomes, so we can live in our already beginning to replace brickies in America and will arrive gated communities guarded by robots and drones. But, sadly, here any day now. They can lay up to 3,000 bricks a day, you won’t. Don’t worry, though: we’ll pay you not to work.’” compared with the human average of 500. He has a point. We go to work so we can take care of ourselves and our families. But jobs also enable us to learn new skills, John Hawksworth, chief economist at PwC, estimates that almost make friends and, for many of us, find our life partner. Home a third of existing UK jobs may be automated away over the next brew and poetry only go so far. 15 years. That’s a lot – and it’s not merely “routine” jobs. Professional jobs, once considered immune from the ravages of Surely, though, all of us will benefit from having more time, more AI, are also threatened. Automated services such as SimpleTax, space, and living in the greener cities promised by men such as KashFlow and Rocket Lawyer, which prepare annual accounts Uber’s Andrew Salzberg? Don’t bet on it, says Christian Wolmar, and tax returns and do simple legal tasks, are putting human a leading transport analyst. He acknowledges fleets of self-driving lawyers and accountants out of work. Job losses could herald cars could lead to cleaner, more sustainable cities. But they could a new era of unprecedented just as easily do the opposite. inequality. Humanity could “Why not live 90 minutes away split into a small class of “Robots working for big companies will be from the office and work on the “superhumans” who control turned against their employers – spying on way there and back?” Already, the AI that will run the lives of New Yorkers are taking so many the huge underclass of “useless” them or disrupting production lines” Uber and Lyft rides that the people, says the historian Yuval number of people using the Noah Harari. If that happens, social revolt won’t be far behind. subway is falling for the first time since the financial crisis, and traffic gridlock is increasing. Silicon Valley usually turns a blind eye to the havoc its products wreak on traditional industries and communities. Monetise first, Smart machines have plenty of other downsides, too. Automated moderate later, is their mantra. But amid all the scandals cars have been hacked, and the hackers have taken control of the surrounding hacking, trolling, hate speech, fake news, advertising brakes and the steering. The cyber-security experts IOActive scams and murders streamed live on Facebook, tech firms are on predict that robots working for big companies will be turned the defensive. The last thing they want is to be blamed for job against their employers – spying on them or disrupting production losses and inequality far greater than anything wrought by lines. A hacked robo-doc in an operating theatre would be even globalisation. So they are already trying to persuade us that AI more dangerous. And that’s before you get to the really scary stuff will be what they would call “net positive”. First, they echo PwC’s about machines ganging up on us, Terminator-style. Drones can work, arguing that AI will create far more new jobs than it will shoot bullets and launch grenades. What would happen if a drone destroy. They cite the example of telecoms. Sure – each advance, were hacked? Tech pioneer Elon Musk has said that the rise of from fixed lines and telex through fax to mobile phones and machines smarter than us poses humanity’s “biggest existential email, displaced some types of workers. The typing pool is threat... With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the a distant memory. But the increase in new jobs has more than demon.” Last month, Musk and the founders of 115 technology made up for those lost. Today, millions of people work as app companies signed an open letter to the UN calling for a ban on developers, virtual-world designers, ride-sharing drivers, social killer robots, warning of conflicts on an unprecedented scale if media marketers – jobs that would have been difficult even to an arms race to build autonomous weapons continues. “Once this imagine ten years ago, before AI took off. Pandora’s box is opened,” they warned, “it will be hard to close.”

In the short term, however, few dispute that many ordinary A longer version of this article first appeared in The Sunday Times workers are likely to be left behind. For them, Silicon Valley © The Sunday Times Magazine/News Syndication.

16 SEPTEMBER 2017 THE WEEK 42 Crossword

THE WEEK CROSSWORD 176

DOWN ACROSS 1 Element against wealth no end of 1 Dodgy Asian lot taking on unproven trouble (8) claims (11) 2 Lounge with one old man being 7 Behind in Frankfurt regularly (3) sweet (8) 9 Captain’s call heard in narratives (5) 3 Enthusiasm shown by little Angus 10 Revised version of wine case (9) aristo? Not half! (5) 11 Daimler or Rolls? Unlikely method of 4 Angry outbursts current in businesses purchase (4-5) (7) 12 A break for Brexiteers? (5) 5 Well-behaved hospital worker? (7) 13 Some pasta in November? A good 6 Crop cutter attached to Maria’s partner deal (7) getting time off work (4-5) 15 It’s OK going west in Haringey but 7 Plate put up for a cat? (6) remove precious metal band (4) 8 Offer dinghy that’s easily damaged (6) 18 Ruler in seeing himself in the 14 Revise column re ending of middle- mirror? (4) aged spread (5,4) 20 First of May perhaps (7) 16 Defeat after a turn is a stroke of luck (8) 23 One squeezed between two legs? It 17 No charge for storage in one type of could lead to tears (5) property? (8) 24 Abuse island name (9) 19 Doesn’t go with the rest? (7) 26 Counsel is about to get retirement (9) 20 Head of zoo quitting Cornish resort 27 Live number entertaining a party (5) gets punishment (7) 28 It precedes Prime Minister on TV? 21 Sentimental about son? That’s silly and Indeed (3) foolish (6) 29 Lovely to replace Liberal in flat that’s 22 Event that’s almost all talk (6) messy (11) 25 Avoiding extremes, better walk slowly (5)

Clue of the week: Red Cross is in the market (7, first letter M) The Times

Solution to Crossword 174 ACROSS: 1 Hugo 3 Adolescent 9 Gum tree 11 Tripoli 12 Prognosticate 14 Infringe 16 Drill 18 Sprog 19 Colorado 21 Up to the minute 24 Spartan 25 Unhitch 26 Freeholder 27 Rear DOWN: 1 High priest 2 Gumbo 4 Dressage 5 Let rip 6 Spit and A poignant tale of destiny polish 7 Esoterica 8 Trim 10 Running stitch 13 Altogether 15 Fortunate 17 Home Rule 20 Atonal 22 Untie 23 As if and polygamy – and one man’s Clue of the week: Quantities served in pubs and bars (8, first letter M) personal struggle to come to terms Solution: MEASURES with his two wives and two lives. Sudoku 176

Fill in all the squares so that each row, column and each of the 3x3 squares contains all the digits from 1 to 9

Solution to Sudoku 228

Solution to Sudoku 175

Charity of the week

UAE Dolphin Project The UAE Dolphin Project is a non-profit initiative dedicated to investigating the dolphin population along the UAE coastline to provide scientific Available in all major bookstores information and to support the conservation of these local marine species. This is done through the implementation of a research programme, as and at booksarabia.com well as running a media campaign and educational programmes involving the public and private organisations. The ultimate goal is to promote the conservation of dolphin species and the local marine environment. To find out more visit wp.uaedolphinproject.org

THE WEEK 16 SEPTEMBER 2017