The world’s GOOD Bringing

most divisive RIDDANCE the hijab

drink TO WONGA? into fashion
BOOKS P 29 TALKING POINTS PEOPLE P 10
P 22

THE WEEK
8 SEPTEMBER 2018 | ISSUE 1192 | £3.50 THE BEST OF THE BRITISH AND INTERNATIONAL MEDIA

Boris breaks cover

Has the Chequers plan had it?
Page 4

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4 NEWS The main stories…
What happened
Labour backs down
In the hope of drawing a line under a row
that has dogged the party all summer, Labour’s
ruling body finally agreed this week to adopt,
in full, the definition of anti-Semitism espoused
by the International Holocaust Remembrance
Alliance (IHRA). The National Executive
Committee (NEC) had previously opted to
exclude from its code of conduct some of the
definition’s associated examples, because of
concerns that they’d curtail criticism of Israel.
The NEC added a short statement emphasising
freedom of expression on Israel, but rejected a
stronger caveat proposed by Jeremy Corbyn.
Corbyn’s proposal angered his critics, as did the
earlier re-election to the NEC of Peter Willsman;
he had suggested in July that Jewish “Trump Corbyn: still digging?
fanatics” had made up anti-Semitism allegations.
Last week, one of Labour’s longest-serving MPs, Frank Field,
resigned the whip, saying it was a “cry of desperation” about
the state of the party under Corbyn. The MP for Birkenhead
said Labour had become “a force for anti-Semitism in British
politics”, and also condemned its new “culture of intolerance,
nastiness and intimidation”.
What the editorials said
Alastair Campbell knows a thing or two about news
management, said The Independent. If a story runs for more
than 11 days, the former spin doctor once
remarked, then it won’t disappear of its own
accord; you have to take decisive action to
make it go away. The lack of such action
explains why Labour’s anti-Semitism row
has been able to dominate the headlines all
summer. Corbyn should have moved sooner,
agreed The Times. The Jewish community
“will not easily forget” how long it has taken
Labour to adopt the full IHRA definition. But
better late than never: the party has now taken
a first step towards rebuilding trust.
There was never any need to pick a fight over
the IHRA definition in the first place, said
The Guardian. Labour argued that it might
preclude legitimate criticism of Israel, but that’s
not true. The definition expressly states that “criticism of
Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot
be regarded as anti-Semitic”. If Corbyn had just accepted the
IHRA version and moved on, he “might have begun to allay
the Jewish community’s fears”, said the Daily Mail. Instead,
he tried to include a caveat, stating that it should be acceptable
to describe Israel as “racist”. He just “keeps digging”.

What happened What the editorials said

Checkmate for Chequers?
Theresa May’s Brexit plans suffered a
devastating blow this week when the EU’s
chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, joined her
political opponents in condemning the
so-called Chequers deal. In a newspaper
interview, Barnier said he “strongly opposed”
May’s proposals, which would destroy the
European project. The PM faced just as much
opposition at home, where former foreign
secretary and leading Brexiteer Boris Johnson
said the White Paper would hand “victory”
to the EU and leave the UK with “two-
thirds of diddly squat”, while former
cabinet minister and Remain supporter
Justine Greening described Chequers as
“more unpopular than the poll tax”.
Brushing off the attacks, May said Johnson had “no new
ideas” to offer. She also insisted that there would be no
second Brexit referendum. To hold a new vote, she said,
would be a “gross betrayal” of democracy.
The Chequers plan is now “on life support”, said The Times.
May finds herself with no room to manoeuvre. To win
over Barnier, she would need to make major
concessions, but any hint of compromise might
trigger a “mutiny” in her party, as well as a
leadership challenge: reports that Johnson has
consulted Lynton Crosby, the leading election
strategist, suggest he is already “positioning
himself” for a contest. Even in their present
form, said The Daily Telegraph, May’s pro-
posals are unlikely to win Parliament’s support:
20 Tory MPs announced last week that they’d
vote against them, which, given her slender
majority, could prove decisive. May should
“acknowledge reality” and ditch Chequers.
Not so fast, said the Daily Mail. Chequers is
Johnson: no new ideas? undeniably a “fudge”, but it offers the smoothest
path to Brexit. Besides, once we’re out of the
EU, there will be time enough to renegotiate. As for a leader-
ship challenge, that would only increase the risk of a party
split and a Corbyn-led government. Brexiteers and Remainers
would surely agree that nothing “could be worse than that”.

It wasn’t all bad The reintroduction of medieval

Nothing frustrates drivers like
roadworks and the traffic they
cause. But help will soon be
at hand: the Government has
invested in a new system to
monitor traffic jams in real time,
which can be utilised by route-
finding apps such as Waze.
Street Manager, which is due
to be launched next year, will
enable councils and utility
companies to log where and
when roadworks are happening,
so that apps can be kept up to
date. It will also help authorities
coordinate their repairs.
THE WEEK 8 September 2018
farming techniques has helped
A former Royal Marine has
become the first blind person
bring rare wildlife back to the to row across the Pacific.
Gower Peninsula in Wales. Competing in the Great Pacific
Until the 1940s, the Vile – Race, Steve Sparkes, from
overlooking the coast at south Devon, set off from
Rhossili – was strip farmed, a California in June with his
13th century system in which teammate, Mick Dawson. At
fields are partitioned into one point, the 57-year-old was
sections, with alternating swept overboard, and was only
crops. Intensive farming saved because he was tethered
methods were later introduced, to the boat. More recently,
but two years ago the National they hit giant waves caused by
Trust, which owns most of the Hurricane Lane and had to lock
111-acre patch, reverted to the themselves in the boat’s cabin
old methods. Since then, the for 36 hours. But after 82 days
number of species of wildflower has tripled and rare birds, such as at sea, they finally docked in
the grasshopper warbler (pictured), have begun to appear. Hawaii last week.
COVER CARTOON: NEIL DAVIES
 …and how they were covered NEWS 5
What the commentators said What next?
Will the NEC vote draw a line under the anti-Semitism row? No chance, said Tom Harris Labour has a large backlog
on CapX. This is partly because even the NEC’s brief clarification of the IHRA definition of unresolved anti-Semitism
reinforces the impression, given repeatedly by Labour over recent months, that the party allegations against members.
“knows better than Jews what anti-Semitism is”. But it’s also because the affair has shown that A dossier containing many of
Corbyn is indeed biased against Jews, and a useless politician to boot. A better leader would them was leaked on Tuesday
have accepted that Labour got this issue wrong, offered a heartfelt apology and vowed to make to Scotland Yard. The
amends. “Instead, all we got from Corbyn was a petty and petulant ‘Well? Happy now…?’” Metropolitan Police said it
would investigate a number
What more does Corbyn need to do, one wonders, before Labour MPs take steps to get rid of the allegations, many of
of him, said Matthew Parris in The Times. It’s surely as evident to them as it is to everyone which, in the judgement of
else that a credible Labour leader would make mincemeat of the current shambolic Tory one senior officer, should
government. Isn’t it time for other Labour MPs “to ask, as Field has, what’s left to lose”? have been reported to the
At least a dozen are indeed thinking of jumping ship, said Tim Shipman in The Sunday Times. police as hate crime incidents.
As a ringleader of this group puts it: “The idea of sitting by forever, going in to serve in shadow
cabinets, hoping Momentum is going to get bored and go away, that it will come right in the Field says he has been told
end, all of that is for the birds.” by Labour’s chief whip that
he cannot remain a party
The “cult of unity at any price” dies hard, said Rafael Behr in The Guardian, but it’s idle member if he acts as an
to pretend that a productive accommodation can be reached between Corbyn’s allies and independent in Parliament.
opponents in Parliament. Besides, even if Labour centrists don’t jump ship, they might be But the MP has vowed to
pushed out anyway. The Momentum pressure group is agitating for rule changes at Labour’s fight his expulsion in the
party conference later this month, calling for “open selections” that would make it easier to courts. He will not resign as
dislodge sitting MPs. “I hate to say it,” said Daniel Finkelstein in The Times, “but I think these an MP, saying that he’ll be
activists are right.” While reselection would threaten the careers of some of Labour’s most too busy with his legal battle
capable, hard-working MPs, it’s hard to fault the logic behind it. Labour Party members to fight a by-election in his
overwhelmingly support the Corbynite agenda, so they’re surely entitled to Corbynite MPs. constituency.

What the commentators said What next?

The Chequers plan has many enemies, said Peter Foster in The Daily Telegraph, each with their President Macron is
own motive for wanting it dead. Brussels hates it because it may encourage other members to reportedly preparing to
seek similar “sweetheart deals”; Brexiteers because they think it’d leave Britain in “vassalage”, throw May a lifeline at the
unable to pursue an independent trade policy; Remainers because of the damage they think it Salzburg summit by urging
would do to the economy. Together they’ve sealed its fate. When EU leaders meet in Salzburg fellow EU leaders to agree
this month, the plan may be consigned to history. The only question now is whether British a close relationship with
concessions might lead to its partial resuscitation. I doubt that, said Robert Peston in The Britain after Brexit.
Spectator. Insiders say Barnier won’t even contemplate Chequers. The only trade deal he’ll According to The Times,
countenance is a “Canada-style” free trade agreement, which would take years to negotiate and the French leader is worried
offer far less favourable trade terms than if we stayed in the single market. David Davis, who by the damage that would
resigned as Brexit secretary in July in protest at Chequers, always insisted that a “Canada plus” be done to Europe by
arrangement was the “only realistic proposition. And it looks as though he was right.” a no-deal Brexit.

If Chequers is finished, so too may be May, said Peter Oborne in the Daily Mail. But don’t The pro-Brexit European
underestimate the opposition of many Tory MPs to the idea of Johnson as her successor. Research Group of Tory
My hunch is that many will choose to “stay their hand” rather than see him in Downing MPs, led by Jacob Rees-
Street. That should keep May in power long enough to negotiate a “messy Brexit”. Don’t Mogg, will soon publish its
bank on it, said Matthew Norman in The Independent. To be sure, many of his fellow Tories blueprint for a hard Brexit.
“actively hate” Boris. But under pressure from their local parties, and with opinion polls citing Rees-Mogg noted this week
“Baby Trump” as their best chance of holding their seats, they are quite capable of backing his that Brexiteers’ disdain for
nomination. And in the present climate there’s every chance he would emerge the winner in a Chequers meant they are
contest against a “moderate” figure such as Sajid Javid or Jeremy Hunt. “People laughed at more in tune with Brussels
Boris when his ambition first became obvious... they’re not laughing now.” than with Downing Street.

THE WEEK
Editor-in-chief: Jeremy O’Grady
“Never argue about facts,” a wise aunt always used to tell me. “Just Editor: Caroline Law
Executive editor: Theo Tait Deputy editor: Harry Nicolle
look ‘em up.” What a lot of trees could be saved if more pundits and City editor: Jane Lewis Editorial assistant: Asya Likhtman
politicians were to follow her advice, and let the evidence do the Contributing editors: Daniel Cohen, Charity Crewe, Thomas
Hodgkinson, Simon Wilson, Rob McLuhan, Anthony
talking. Take income tax. Will hiking the top rate from 45% to 50% – as Labour proposes – raise tax Gardner, William Underhill, Digby Warde-Aldam, Tom
Yarwood Editorial staff: Anoushka Petit, Tigger Ridgwell,
revenue? In the press, it’s routinely asserted that it will merely lead to greater tax avoidance, but William Skidelsky, Claudia Williams Picture editor:
Xandie Nutting Art director: Nathalie Fowler Sub-editor:
does the evidence support this? The Institute for Fiscal Studies analysed three recent research papers Laurie Tuffrey Production editor: Alanna O’Connell

on the issue, and concluded that given certain conditions, it could actually boost government coffers, Founder and editorial director: Jolyon Connell
Production Manager: Ebony Besagni Senior Production
albeit by less than Labour expects. That doesn’t mean we have to endorse the idea: there may still be Executive: Maaya Mistry Newstrade Director: David Barker
Direct Marketing Director: Abi Spooner Inserts: Joe Teal
good reason (the effect on enterprise?) to reject it, but let’s at least start from what we know to be the Classified: Henry Haselock, Henry Pickford, Rebecca Seetanah
Account Directors: Scott Hayter, John Hipkiss, Jocelyn
case. And so it is with Brexit and supply lines. As the Briefing on p.13 makes clear, there’s really no Sital-Singh, Chris Watters Digital Director: John Perry
UK Advertsing Director: Caroline Fenner
point disputing what many still dispute – that major disruption will ensue if a “no deal” Brexit leads Executive Director – Head of Advertising: David Weeks
to hold-ups at the border. Even allowing for scaremongering, it just is so. Accepting this doesn’t mean Chief Executive, The Week: Kerin O’Connor
Group CFO/COO: Brett Reynolds
you have to accept the preferability of a “soft” Brexit. You can still argue that technological solutions Chief executive: James Tye
Dennis Publishing founder: Felix Dennis
will eliminate delays; that the threat of disruption works both ways, so Brussels will have to play ball;
that the costs of disruption are worth bearing for whatever else Brexit brings. What accepting it does THE WEEK Ltd, a subsidiary of Dennis Publishing Ltd,
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6 NEWS Politics
Controversy of the week Salisbury suspects
Infiltrating the Tories British prosecutors have
named two Russian
nationals as suspects in
“For two decades the Conservatives have been panicking about the attempted murder of the
haemorrhaging members,” said Matt Chorley in The Times: former Russian spy Sergei
by this March, membership had fallen to 124,000, down from Skripal and his daughter,
about 400,000 in the mid-1990s. But now, numbers are rising Yulia, in Salisbury. European
– and “some Tories are panicking all over again”. Why? Arrest Warrants have been
Because the insurance tycoon Arron Banks, the former UKIP issued for Alexander Petrov
and Ruslan Boshirov.
donor and the co-founder of Leave.EU, is urging thousands
According to the Govern-
of Eurosceptics to flood the Tory party, so as to “unseat” ment, the pair are officers in
Theresa May and push the party towards a “true” Brexit. Russia’s military intelligence
There are fears that the party is falling victim to “entryism”, agency. Yet the Kremlin says
of the kind that swelled Labour’s membership to half a million their names and photos
and installed Jeremy Corbyn as leader. Some pro-Remain Tory “mean nothing” to Moscow.
MPs reported a sharp rise in applications to join their local Banks: agitating for a “true” Brexit The men arrived at Gatwick
associations. One such MP, Anna Soubry, called for new on 2 March, and were filmed
vetting procedures to ensure that “we are not being infiltrated by people who are not Conservatives”. by CCTV cameras in
Salisbury on 4 March, the
day the Skripals collapsed.
“And so now the UKIP army – once derided by David Cameron as ‘fruitcakes, loonies and closet Hours later, they flew back
racists’ – is flooding into Conservative associations, hoping to remodel the party in its own image,” to Russia, police believe.
said Owen Jones in The Guardian. The Tories look “ripe for takeover”: they are led by a “zombie”
PM and now receive “more money from the dead than the living” (in 2017 the party raised twice as Crossrail delay
much from bequests as from membership fees). For years, mainstream Tory leaders have humoured The opening of Crossrail, the
and courted the UKIP tendency – by imitating its rhetoric on immigration and holding the EU new £15bn rail line across
referendum. Now “the Tory hierarchy is set to be devoured” by the monsters it has “suckled and London, has been delayed,
reared”. Steady on, said Janet Daley in The Sunday Telegraph. What’s the fear here, exactly? “That to allow more time for
the newbies might be ex-UKIP supporters? If so, what party do you suppose they supported before testing. A section of the line
(to be known as the Elizabeth
that?” Most of the new members are, in all likelihood, “simply coming home” now that the
Line) from Paddington to
referendum has been won. This isn’t “entryism” – a term used to describe Trotskyists who infiltrated Abbey Wood, in east
Labour in order to turn it into “an instrument of their political will”. This is politics as usual. London, had been due
to open in December.
The new members certainly won’t be able to topple May, said Anoosh Chakelian in the New That has now been pushed
Statesman: only Tory MPs can do that. But they may be able to unseat a handful of pro-Remain back at least nine months.
parliamentarians. In some constituencies, membership numbers are so low that even a few dozen Designed to ease London’s
newcomers could have a real influence and could push to get their MP deselected. True enough, chronic congestion, the line
said Iain Martin in The Times, but the steady rise in Tory membership is not Banks’s doing. “It will eventually run west-east
across the capital, from
began well before the current panic”: a recruitment drive was launched in the spring, and I suspect
Reading and Heathrow, to
that most of those joining now are motivated by a fear of a hard-left Corbyn government, not by Abbey Wood and Shenfield.
anything Banks has said. And as the MP Robert Halfon put it, the party would be “bonkers” The project is already almost
to object to new members: it’ll need the manpower when the next election comes around. £600m over budget.

Good week for:

Spirit of the age
The Royal Academy has
announced that, in light of
the #MeToo movement, it
will make sure there are as
many naked men as women
in its forthcoming show
tracing the development of
the nude in Renaissance art.
This week, the Guardian
art critic Jonathan Jones
welcomed the initiative,
but pointed out that it
wouldn’t be hard to ensure
parity: Renaissance artists
celebrated the male form
every bit as enthusiastically
as the female.
Britain is falling out of love
with the cuppa. The amount
of all types of tea bought
last year was down 2.6
million kg – equivalent to
870 million cups – although
sales of green and fruit tea
rose. Last month, Tesco cut
the shelf space for Tetley tea
by nearly 40%, to make way
for fruit and herbal lines.
Chris Evans, who announced that he is leaving BBC Radio 2 for Poll watch
a new, more lucrative job at Virgin Radio. Evans took over Radio 22% of secondary school
2’s flagship morning show in 2010, replacing Terry Wogan, and pupils say they’ve changed
is the second highest-paid star at the BBC, on £1.6m a year. schools because of bullying.
Although the Murdoch-owned Virgin Radio is a digital-only 38% have missed school
station with just 413,000 weekly listeners (compared to Radio 2’s because of bullies; 46%
have worried about
15 million), it was able to offer Evans a £2m-a-year deal.
returning to school after a
Amazon, which briefly became the second US-listed firm, after holiday because of bullying.
Apple, to be valued at more than $1trn (see page 45). YouGov/The Daily
Telegraph
Bad week for:
47% of Scots say they will
Red Bull, after ministers announced plans to ban the sale of
back Scottish independence
energy drinks to children in England. Around two-thirds of once Britain leaves the EU,
children aged ten to 17 regularly consume energy drinks, although while 43% will oppose it.
these typically contain 65% more sugar than normal soft drinks. 52% of people in Northern
Red Bull also contains three times more caffeine than Coca-Cola. Ireland say they will support
Daylight saving time, which could be scrapped across the EU, Irish reunification after
after a survey found that 84% of EU residents don’t like putting Brexit; 39% will oppose it.
the clocks back and want to have summer time all year. The EU Deltapoll/The Scotsman
Commission has endorsed the survey’s findings; however, any
39% of voters would vote
change will have to be agreed by member states and MEPs. for the Tories in a general
Kirsty Young, who announced that she is having to take a break election. 37% back Labour.
from Desert Island Discs, because she is suffering from the 35% think Theresa May
chronic pain condition fibromyalgia. For the next few months, the would be a better PM
Radio 4 show will be hosted by the 6 Music DJ Lauren Laverne. than Jeremy Corbyn;
23% favour Corbyn.
Nigel Farage, after a portrait of the ex-UKIP leader, on sale at
YouGov
the Royal Academy, failed to attract a single bid.

THE WEEK 8 September 2018

 Europe at a glance
Chemnitz, Germany
Protest concert: About 65,000 people
attended an anti-racism concert in the
eastern German city of Chemnitz this
week, in response to a wave of far-right
protests over the fatal stabbing of a
German man, allegedly by two
immigrants. The free event, which featured
some of the country’s biggest punk and
hip-hop groups, had to be moved to a
bigger venue than planned because of
demand. It was held under the banner
#wirsindmehr, meaning “There are more
of us” – a riposte to the far-right slogan
“We are the people”. Chemnitz has been
racked by neo-Nazi protests and counter-
protests since the stabbing, which renewed
anger about the government’s immigration
policy (see page 16). “We’re not naive –
we’re not under the illusion that you hold
a concert and then the world is saved,” a
singer from the group Kraftklub told the
concert crowd. “But sometimes it’s
important to show that you’re not alone.”
Paris
Actor accused:
Gérard Depardieu
has become the
latest celebrity
to be accused
of sexual
misconduct.
A 22-year-old
actress told police
last week that the
69-year-old actor
had raped and
assaulted her at his Paris home on two
occasions last month. Reportedly, she is
the daughter of one of Depardieu’s friends
and had been working with him. The star
denied the allegations through his lawyer,
who said the claims were “the opposite of
who he is”. A preliminary police inquiry
will determine whether prosecutors should
open criminal proceedings.
Madrid
Catalonia referendum: Spain’s prime
minister has proposed a referendum on
greater autonomy for Catalonia, in an
attempt to head off resurgent calls for the
region’s independence. Pedro Sánchez said
he would happily hand more power to
Spain’s wealthiest region – but firmly
ruled out a vote on independence. “It is a
referendum for autonomy,” he said, “not
for self-determination.” Catalonia already
has control over its police, schools, prisons
and health service; future reforms could
put the region in charge of its own tax
system and judiciary. Since taking power
in June, Sánchez has moved to ease
tensions between Madrid and Barcelona.
But his proposal was dismissed out of
hand by Quim Torra, the region’s hard-
line president, who renewed his call for a
referendum on independence. “Catalonia’s
right to self-determination cannot be
swept under the carpet,” he said.
Catch up with daily news at www.theweek.co.uk
Stockholm
Far-right gains:
Sweden’s leading
far-right party
is tipped to
make big gains
in the general
election this
Sunday. Polls
put the Sweden
Democrats on
course for about 20% of the vote. If, as
expected, neither the ruling centre-left
bloc nor the centre-right opposition win
a majority, the Sweden Democrats could
end up as kingmakers. Although shunned
by mainstream politicians because of its
neo-Nazi roots, the party has gained
significant support under Jimmie Åkesson
(pictured), its leader, who has purged it of
its openly racist elements. He claims he
welcomes Swedes of all colours – but
wants further immigration to be
strictly limited.
Marseilles, France
McDonald’s campaign: While the French
have traditionally been deeply opposed to
US fast food, some residents of Marseilles
are now campaigning to save a branch of
McDonald’s. The owners of the franchise
in Saint-Barthélémy, a suburb blighted by
gang violence and high unemployment,
want to close the loss-making restaurant.
But residents say the branch has become
an essential centre for the community: it
employs 77 people – more than almost
any other local private-sector employer
– and has been praised for hiring school
dropouts and ex-prisoners. The franchise’s
employees have launched a legal challenge
to stop the closure, and have the backing
of the city’s conservative mayor and its
Socialist senator. “There’s nothing left
in areas like this,” said Salim Grabsi, a
member of a local residents’ association.
“McDonald’s is a place where families
can sit down and relax with their kids.”
NEWS 7
Moscow
Putin TV show: The launch of a
new weekly television show in praise of
Vladimir Putin is being seen as a sign of
the Kremlin’s growing anxieties about the
president’s approval ratings. In the first
episode of state TV’s Moscow. Kremlin.
Putin, the strongman’s press spokesman
hails him as “a very humane human” –
echoing a famous description of Lenin
– while a journalist gushes about his
“relatability”. Putin’s ratings have fallen
sharply since he proposed to raise the state
pension age. More than 10,000 people
took part in demonstrations against the
reforms in Moscow on Sunday, even
after Putin had watered down the plan by
offering to raise the pension age of women
by five years instead of eight (see page 16).
Donetsk, Ukraine
Separatist killed: The Russia-backed leader
of the self-declared Donetsk People’s
Republic was assassinated last week,
raising fears of an escalation in hostilities
in eastern Ukraine. A former electrician
who had led the breakaway region since
2014, Alexander Zakharchenko died in an
explosion at a café in Donetsk. One other
minister of the separatist government
was injured in the blast. Russia’s foreign
ministry said there was “every reason to
believe” that Ukraine was behind the
killing, while Russia’s President Putin
said those responsible were “making
a dangerous bet on destabilising the
situation”. But Kiev denied any
involvement. A spokesman for the
head of Ukraine’s security services
said the assassination was likely the
result of infighting among separatists,
or a Moscow-backed operation to remove
a man who had outlived his usefulness.
8 September 2018 THE WEEK
8 NEWS The world at a glance
Washington DC
Trump book: President Trump has
dismissed as a “con” an explosive new
book about his administration written
by the renowned Watergate journalist
Bob Woodward (pictured). In
Fear: Trump in the White House,
Woodward quotes Trump’s chief of
staff, John Kelly, privately describing
his boss as an “idiot” and the defence
secretary, Jim Mattis, saying the
president has the foreign policy chops
of a ten- or 11-year-old. After a 2017 chemical attack in Syria,
Woodward writes, Trump urged Mattis to have President Assad
assassinated, saying “let’s kill the f***ing lot of them”.
Havana
Microwave attacks: Scientists investigating “sonic” attacks on
US diplomats now suspect the use of microwave weapons. Since
2016, more than three dozen embassy workers and their families
in Cuba and China have reported hearing intense high-pitched
sounds, before suffering from nausea, dizziness and severe
headaches. Those affected were recalled to the US, because
of fears they were being attacked by an acoustic weapon.
An initial study into their ailments, published in March, was
inconclusive. But that report’s lead author, Douglas H. Smith
of the University of Pennsylvania, said this week that the
diplomats had almost certainly suffered some form of brain
damage, and identified microwaves as the most likely cause.
Analysts believe their brains may have been tricked into perceiving
microwaves as sounds – a phenomenon known as the Frey effect.

Washington DC
Palestinian aid: The US has halted its funding for the UN’s
Palestinian refugee agency, on the grounds that it is
“irredeemably flawed”. The United Nations Relief
and Works Agency provides food, education and
healthcare to five million Palestinians in Gaza, the
West Bank, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Last month, the US
withdrew $200m in separate funding for projects in Gaza and the
West Bank. A spokesman for Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian
president, described the withdrawal as an “assault” on his people,
and warned that the US no longer has any role in the region, and
is “not part of the solution”. Late last year, President Trump
enraged Palestinians by recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

San Francisco
Divisive campaign: Sportswear giant
Nike is estimated to have generated
$43m worth of free publicity, by naming
Colin Kaepernick as the face of its new
“Just Do It” campaign. Kaepernick is the
American footballer who divided sports
fans in 2016 by kneeling for the national
anthem before his San Francisco 49ers
team’s matches to highlight racial injustice.
His stance won him an Amnesty award
– and the opprobrium of Donald Trump.
Nike’s decision has also proved divisive:
some customers have posted pictures of themselves burning Nike
trainers (using the hashtag #JustBurnIt), but others (including
tennis champion Serena Williams) have praised the campaign.

Kingston
Windrush deaths: At least three people wrongly deported from
Britain to Jamaica have since died, according to the Jamaican
foreign minister, Kamina Johnson-Smith. They were among
63 members of the Windrush generation that British officials had
been trying to trace in order to discuss their repatriation. A lawyer
for one of the three said that her client had retired to Jamaica but
then regretted it. She’d wanted to move back to the UK to be with
her children, but died “heartbroken”. Johnson-Smith described her
story as “heart-rending”, but an official said the British government
had made a “sincere effort” to find the victims of the scandal.

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Buenos Aires

Museum catastrophe: Brazil’s National Museum was completely
gutted by a fire this week and most of its contents destroyed.
The 200-year-old institution – Brazil’s equivalent of the British
Museum – went up in flames after closing for the day on Sunday.
Officials estimate that about 90% of its 20 million scientific and
historical artefacts have been lost, including Roman frescoes,
Andean mummies and “Luzia”, the oldest human remains ever
found in Brazil. “This is 200 years of work,” said museum worker
Marco Aurelio Caldas. “Everything is finished. Our work, our life
was all in there.” The cause of the fire is unknown; however,
Brazilians were quick to point the finger at government neglect.
The museum had no sprinkler system and the two fire hydrants
outside the building were not functioning.
Debt crisis: Argentina’s president
has announced a raft of extreme
austerity measures in a desperate
attempt to stabilise the country’s currency and stave off a financial
crisis. The Argentinian peso has lost about half its value against
the US dollar this year, despite the central bank raising interest
rates last week to 60% – the highest in the world. Investors fear
the government will be unable to repay its ballooning debts.
President Macri said this week that he would slash spending,
axe half his government ministries and impose a tariff on certain
exports; his finance minister urged the International Monetary
Fund to release a $50bn loan earlier than scheduled. “This is not
just another crisis,” Macri said. “It has to be the last.”

THE WEEK 8 September 2018

 The world at a glance
Idlib province, Syria
Impending catastrophe: Russian warplanes
launched air strikes on Idlib on Tuesday,
as Syrian government troops massed
ahead of what was predicted to be a major
offensive in the province, the last rebel
stronghold in Syria. An estimated 30,000
fighters remain in the area, along with
about three million civilians – a million
of whom are refugees from other parts of
Syria. Before the strikes, President Trump
had warned the Assad regime not to attack
“recklessly”, which would put hundreds
of thousands of lives at risk, while the UN
said a full-scale assault could create a
humanitarian emergency “on a scale not
yet seen” in the seven-year conflict. Syria’s
foreign minister, Walid Muallem, said that
while he hoped to avoid civilian casualties,
his forces would “liberate” the area, “no
matter the sacrifices”.
Tripoli
Violent unrest:
Rival militias
agreed a tentative
ceasefire in
Tripoli on Tuesday,
following a week of violence that had
brought renewed chaos to Libya’s capital.
Some 50 people were killed, the airport
was closed and 400 prisoners escaped
from a prison while rockets struck the
city. The unrest began when the rebel
Seventh Brigade, based in Tarhunah, some
40 miles away, attacked Tripoli’s southern
suburbs, which have been defended by
pro-government militias. The UN-backed
Government of National Accord labelled
the attack “an attempt to derail peaceful
transition”. Seven years since Colonel
Gaddafi was toppled, Libya is lawless
and divided, with rival administrations
in Tripoli and the eastern city of Tobruk.
Xinjiang region, China
Uighurs detained: The UN has expressed
alarm at reports that up to a million
Uighur Muslims are being held in extra-
judicial “re-education” camps in China’s
autonomous Xinjiang region. A Turkic
ethnic minority, Uighurs have long been
seen in China as dangerous separatists, but
in recent years, Beijing has been accused of
turning Xinjiang into a police state. There
are said to be checkpoints everywhere,
many fitted with facial recognition
cameras, and residents must carry ID cards
that identify them as “safe”, “normal” or
“unsafe”. Beijing insists the detention and
mass surveillance of Uighurs is necessary
to combat terrorism. However, there have
been reports of Uighurs being detained for
simply giving traditional greetings.
Ex-inmates have spoken of being beaten,
tortured and forced to renounce Islam.
Arua, Uganda
Politician
“tortured”: A
Ugandan pop
star-turned-
opposition
politician has
provided details
of the “brutal
torture” he says
he endured at the
hands of the army
after his arrest
last month. Bobi Wine, 36, was detained
over an incident in which stones were
thrown at a convoy carrying President
Museveni in the town of Arua. Released
on bail and now in the US, he says he was
beaten with an iron bar, punched and
kicked. The charismatic musician (above)
is seen as a political threat to Museveni,
who has held power since 1986.
NEWS 9
Yangon,
Myanmar
Journalists jailed:
Two Reuters
journalists
arrested in
Myanmar last
December, while
investigating
atrocities
committed by
security forces
against Rohingya
villagers, were sentenced to seven years in
jail this week. The case against Wa Lone,
32, and Kyaw Soe Oo (pictured), 28, has
caused international outrage; the UN and
the EU had both called for them to be
acquitted. However, a judge ruled that by
collecting confidential documents, the pair
had breached a state secrets act.
Seoul
Spy-cam epidemic: Public
toilets in Seoul are to be
checked daily for hidden
cameras, in a bid to stamp
out “spy-cam porn”. The
use of secret cameras to
record footage of (mostly)
women – much of which
ends up online – is a
growing problem in South
Korea: more than 6,600
people were arrested for
the offence in 2014, up
from 1,110 in 2010.
Last month, some 70,000
women protested in
Seoul over the issue. City
officials say cleaners
will now sweep
toilets for
hidden
devices.
Dungun, Malaysia
Women caned: Two Muslim women have
been caned in a sharia court in Malaysia
for attempting to have sex. The unnamed
women, aged 22 and 32, were arrested by
Islamic enforcement officers in April, when
they were found in a car in a public square
in Terengganu state. Having pleaded guilty,
they were fined RM3,300 (£619) each and
caned six times in front of 100 witnesses.
While homosexuality is illegal in Malaysia
under secular and religious law, the
women are believed to be the first to have
been caned for attempting to have sex.
8 September 2018 THE WEEK
10 NEWS
Letts on Notting Hill
As a young man in London in
the 1970s, Don Letts was often
trailed by the police, says
Emine Saner in The Guardian.
Sometimes, he’d stop his car,
jump onto the roof and stand
with his arms outstretched.
“I’d go: ‘Why are you guys
crucifying me?’ And I’d start
taking my clothes off, to get
people looking. The minute
you’ve got an audience, the
cops don’t know what to do.”
But mostly the DJ, musician
and film-maker, now 62, just
adjusted to the sus law (police
stop and search powers): he’d
leave the house half an hour
early, “because I’d probably
get stopped on the way. You
know what’s really sad about
it? You expected it – it was
normal.” Even so, such
incidents built up a pressure-
cooker atmosphere in the black
community that exploded at
the 1976 Notting Hill carnival.
“Everyone thinks it was a race
riot, but it wasn’t a black-and-
white thing, it was a right-and-
wrong thing. It wasn’t about
hurting anybody, it was about
frustration.” The carnival was
never meant to be just a party,
he says: it was founded, after
the 1958 race riots, to promote
strength and solidarity. And
now? “It has undoubtedly
become a massive party, but
that’s true of culture around
the world. People, offered the
choice between thinking or
partying, they’re all partying.
Why do you think the culture
is so thin in the 21st century?”
From A&E to Love Island
Among the contestants on
Love Island, Alex George
stuck out from the start, says
Elizabeth Day in The Daily
Telegraph: a well-spoken
boy from Carmarthenshire,
he’d graduated
ated with
a distinction
ion from medical
school and
nd had a job
in A&E at
a London
hospital. He
still doesn’tt
know
why
he was
invited to
compete:
“The
producers
messaged me
on Instagram
am and at
first I thought
ght it was a
prank: I only
nly had 500
followers.”” It was his
People
medical experience that
persuaded the 27-year-old to
take part: “As a doctor, I’ve
been there at the last moments
of people’s lives, and there are
always regrets about what they
haven’t done, not what they
have. I asked myself, ‘Could
I live with it if I didn’t take
the opportunity?’” It came
as a shock when, in the first
episode, none of the female
contestants named him as a
man they found attractive. “In
A&E, I deal with high-pressure
situations, but Love Island was
so far out of my comfort zone.
My confidence was broken
down and I had to find the
strength to come back from
that.” He didn’t win, but he
made lasting friendships, and
was especially gratified to be
congratulated by a GP for
explaining caesarean sections
on prime-time TV. And how
many Instagram followers
does he have now? “Er... I
think nearly 1.4 million.”
The daredevil octogenarian
Dilys Price has packed a lot
into her 86 years. A former
dancer and teacher, she is also
– according to Guinness World
Records – the oldest female
solo skydiver. She was 54
when she overcame a fear of
heights to make her first jump,
says Helen Nianias in The
Times. Exhilarated by the sense
that she’d cheated death, she
trained in the US and has since
completed 1,100 dives all over
the world, which have helped
raise funds for the charity she
founded: Touch Trust provides
movement therapy for disabled
people. More recently, she’s
moved into modelling. In
the latest Helmut Lang
campaign, Women
of Wales, she stands
hands on hips outside
her house in Cardiff,
in a striking blue
corduroy suit (left).
“We’re alive, we’re
still alive,” she
told the BBC.
“We’re alive
until the day
we die.
This is my
mission
now – to
tell older
people like
myself to
keep a
passion. They
have to be
active.”
Dina Torkia is a 29-year-old fashion influencer from south Wales
with more than two million followers on social media, says
Julia Llewellyn Smith in The Times; what sets her apart is that her
posts are about how to look fabulous in a hijab. “Women of faith
are always depicted as boring and drab,” she says. “I was itching
for some half-different styling.” Born to a British mother and an
Egyptian father, she grew up as a tomboy and hated it when she
was told, aged 11, that it was time for her to cover up. Unhappy and
self-conscious, she developed an eating disorder in her teens and
gave up on her dream of going to fashion college; but in 2010, she
got a second-hand sewing machine, and started making her own
clothes and showing them online. Within a few years, brands such
as H&M and Tom Ford were vying to work with her. In her posts,
she experiments with different styles – sometimes wearing a turban
rather than a headscarf. Recently, she suggested Muslim girls
consider wearing a beanie. Her point was that it would stop them
being targets for racist abuse – but the idea still caused outrage,
mainly from men. “It really pisses me off,” she says. “I’ve got every
man in my own family wanting to give me advice on how I should
be looking as a Muslim woman. Well, shut up. I’d like them to walk
a day in our shoes. It’s the women who bear the brunt of Islamo-
phobia because we have made this commitment to wear the hijab.”
Viewpoint:
Farewell
Dodging the issue Inge Borkh, soprano
“We Europeans, it has been noted, have and noted interpreter of
a habit of talking about the hideous Strauss, died 26 August,
Augu
reaction to a problem rather than the aged 97.
problem itself. Why? Because it’s easier. Rita Borsellino,
It’s easier, for instance, to discuss how Sicilian pharmacist a
and
awful Tommy Robinson – the anti- anti-Mafia campaigner,
campaigner
Islamist campaigner – is than to discuss died 15 August, aged 73.
the child-grooming gangs that sparked Lady Coleridge, nurse
the backlash that made Robinson and adventurer, died
© ALEXANDRA LEESE COURTESY OF HELMUT LANG
famous. Yes, Robinson is very easy to 12 August, aged 71.
talk about. We’ve seen home-grown Professor Sir
thugs like him come and go for decades, James Mirrlees,
and we know why they’re wrong and Nobel Prize-winning
what words to use about them. The economist, died
problem with migrant criminals, 29 August, aged 82.
however, is harder to articulate. How Paul Taylor, titan of
do we address that without sounding contemporary dance
dance,
like… well, Tommy Robinson?” died 29 August, aged 88.
Tim Stanley in The Daily Telegraph
Desert Island Discs
scs returns on 16 Septe
September
 Briefing NEWS 13

The just-in-time Brexit

Will a no-deal Brexit cripple the crucial just-in-time systems that keep Britain supplied, or are company bosses crying wolf?

What is the big anxiety? hike in imported food costs. But longer
That there will be chaos at the borders if term, the impact could be just as
Britain crashes out of the EU without a punishing for manufacturing, especially
deal on 29 March 2019 and reverts to for engineering-heavy sectors like defence
“third country” status – thereby abruptly and aviation, as well as the car industry
severing our seamless trading links with (which employs 850,000 in the UK).
the bloc. The implications of sudden
ejection from the single market and Why is the car industry vulnerable?
customs union are sobering for Britain’s Because it’s so reliant on the efficiency
135,000 exporters to the EU. The road of JIT systems. The boast at Honda, for
haulage industry – on the front line in example, is that two million European-
any “no deal” scenario – warns of sourced components “flow like water”
potential gridlock around UK ports. through its Swindon plant: they do so
We had a taste of that in 2015 when with such streamlined precision that
French strikes halted operation of the warehouse capacity allows only 36 hours’
Channel Tunnel, turning sections of the breathing space to keep production of
M20 into a giant lorry park. Disruption the Honda Civic rolling. What’s more,
would be much more widespread this carmakers often split assembly
time. In June, Paul Drechsler, then head A BMW Mini on the production line in Cowley between plants in different countries.
of the Confederation of British Industry, The crankshaft used in BMW’s Mini
warned that without the guarantee of frictionless transition at the crosses the Channel three times in a 2,000-mile journey before
border, parts of British manufacturing risk becoming “extinct”. the finished car rolls off the company’s Cowley production line.
If there is “a stop at the border”, says BMW, which operates four
Doesn’t that sound like doom-mongering? factories in Britain, “we cannot produce our products in the UK”.
Up to a point. Desperate talk of immediate food and medicine
shortages is probably overplayed. But any extra red tape at the How would a no-deal outcome interrupt the JIT process?
border is bound to have a disproportionately big knock-on effect If border checks are introduced as a result, the Channel Tunnel is
on the flow of goods for one simple reason: the reliance of so likely to become a major bottleneck – terrible news for a firm like
many UK companies on just-in-time systems. JIT is an inventory Honda, which sources 75% of its parts through it. The congestion
strategy that dispenses with the need to stockpile components in may force Honda to use sea routes, which are slower and more
vast warehouses by only ordering them in at the precise moment intermittent: even assuming ports here and in Europe have the
they’re needed. It is thus hyper-sensitive to the slightest glitch or capacity to meet the extra demand, that would play havoc with
delay – a major issue for those companies whose JIT systems are production and delivery schedules. Honda calculates that this
deeply entwined with those of partner operations in the EU. means EU-sourced parts would then take from two to nine days
to reach its plant. And to house up to nine days’ stock would
How did JIT systems become so ubiquitous? require a 300,000-square-metre warehouse – equivalent in size
The concept really took root in Japan (see box): it was introduced to 42 football pitches: a prohibitively costly alternative.
to Britain when carmakers Honda and Nissan arrived in the early
1980s and became the first companies to use a truly pan-European But isn’t the warning of a systems meltdown overdone?
supplier base. And when “JIT fever” hit US boardrooms around Probably. Some Brexiteers compare it to previous threats that
the same time, it sparked a bonanza for “enterprise” software proved to be groundless – like the millennium bug – and accuse
providers – the likes of Oracle and IBM – whose marketing efforts company bosses of fanning fears for self-interested reasons: using
in turn contributed to the rapid uptake of the technology. Another it as an excuse, for example, to shift production to China. Yet the
pioneer was Walmart: its masterly use hard-nosed analyses of specific risks
of JIT is credited with sealing its dom- Who invented JIT? produced by many companies are
inance in the US grocery market. (By In some ways JIT is but the latest whizzy version of the hard to gainsay. Over time (Honda
introducing “cross-docking” between eternal quest to boost productivity and profit margins reckons at least 18 months) big multi-
suppliers’ trucks and its own, it vastly by refining processes and tightening inventories – nationals may be able to absorb the
reduced warehouse costs.) And the dating back at least a century to Henry Ford’s Model T extra costs and adapt their systems
rise of consumer e-commerce has assembly line, and probably beyond. In Britain, the to life beyond the EU customs union.
accelerated the process further: concept was of vital importance during the production A lot of the smaller firms that
look at the disruptive impact that drive in the Second World War, when Vickers used ministers like to call “the backbone of
“lean” methods to maximise Spitfire production.
“fast fashion” – as practised by JIT our economy” probably would not.
specialists like Zara and Asos – has But corporate historians usually credit the invention
of modern JIT to Taiichi Ohno, a Japanese industrial
had on the established rag trade. What’s the likely outcome?
engineer, who pioneered what became known as the
Toyota Production System in the 1940s. It was based The threat of mass disruption to the
Which firms will be worst hit? around the idea of on-demand supply – regular, small flow of goods is real enough to make
M&S’s chairman, Archie Norman, deliveries of exactly the correct amount of components it unlikely any government would
claims the first casualties of a no-deal just as they are needed on the assembly line. Ohno countenance an overnight cut-off.
Brexit would be Parisian fans of its was obsessed with eliminating waste of any sort, The likelihood is that even a formal
sandwiches, who rely on same-day observing in his “ten precepts” for winning that no-deal Brexit would result in a
delivery from a giant factory in “valueless motions are equal to shortening one’s life”. “quick and dirty” sub-deal with
Northampton. As Britain imports He ran his original system – swiftly copied by a rash of the EU to keep the nuts and bolts
Japanese carmakers and electronics firms – using
30% of its food from the EU, moving. The agony for those running
order signals on kanban boards displayed around the
a disruptive Brexit would inevitably factory. Since then, the process has been constantly companies is that, when it comes
limit choice and raise prices in this streamlined in line with rapid developments in to cementing deals, the Government
sector – even if supermarkets did their computer and communications technology. seems to have fully embraced the
best to absorb the estimated 22% idea of a just-in-time delivery.

8 September 2018 THE WEEK

 Y O U R D R I V I N G E X P E R I E N C E T O TA L LY T R A N S F O R M E D

G et tin g b e h in d th e w h e el of th e All-N ew F o cus h a s n eve r b e e n

m o re co mfo r t ab le o r le s s d e m an d in g th an k s to it s n ew d r i ve r a s s i s t an ce
te ch n o lo gi e s s u ch a s Ad apti ve Cr u i s e Co ntro l w ith Sto p & G o,
Intellige nt Sp e e d A s s i s t an d B lin d Sp ot Info r m ati o n Sy s te m (B LIS).

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th e F o rd B us in e s s Ce ntre: 03457 2 3 2 3 2 3 | flinf o r m@f o r d .co m

P11D BIK C0 2 COMBINED MPG

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Official fuel consumption figures in mpg (l/100km) for the All-New Ford Focus range: urban 36.2-74.3 (7.8-3.8), extra urban
54.3-85.6 (5.2-3.3), combined 45.6-80.7 (6.2-3.5). Official CO2 emissions 138-91g/km.
The mpg figures quoted are sourced from official EU-regulated test results (EU Regulation 715/2007 and 692/2008 as last amended), are provided for comparability
purposes and may not reflect your actual driving experience. Information correct at time of going to print.
 Best articles: Britain NEWS 15
On her tour of Africa last week, Theresa May declared, as if it
IT MUST BE TRUE…
Foreign aid – were something dramatically new, that from now on Britain’s aid
budget would be used to serve British trade and political interests. I read it in the tabloids
a system based But since when did we use it for anything else, asks Kenan Malik.
Our aid system has never been confined to relieving poverty: not A security guard has been
fired from his job at a Florida
on fraud one of the five poorest countries – DR Congo, Haiti, Mozambique,
Uganda, Tajikistan – is among the top ten recipients of British aid.
hospital after his bosses
discovered that he’d been
No, our top aid targets are either key markets, such as Nigeria, or posting recordings of his
Kenan Malik
strategically important countries, such as Pakistan or Afghanistan. thunderous flatulence on
The Observer “Indeed, half of all international development aid is tied, meaning Instagram for five months.
that recipient countries must use it to buy goods and services from The man, who uses the nom
the donor nation.” Much of the rest is in the form of loans, which de guerre Paul Flart, began
often earn rich nations more in interest than they actually give recording his farts after
noticing that the lobby where
in “aid”. There’s invariably a political agenda, too: the EU
he worked had “really great
increasingly makes aid to African nations conditional on curbing acoustics”. In August, Flart
migration to Europe. Some forms of aid, like disaster relief, do a went viral, accumulating
vital job. But the system as a whole is “a fraud”. more than 90,000 followers,
and was then sacked. He now
“We are sorry for the pain we’ve caused to the many communities hopes to turn himself into

Enough of affected.” That was the formal apology issued by the US magazine
The Nation in July, for running a poem about homelessness by
an internet brand. “There’s
a whole new opportunity out
there for me now,” he said.
this confected a white writer that included the word “crippled” and was rash
enough to use African-American Vernacular English. The howls
A fishmonger in Kuwait
outrage of online protest this elicited drew abject expressions of remorse
from magazine and poet alike over the “harm” caused. What a has been closed down for
charade. Did this poem cause genuine distress to anyone? Of sticking googly eyes on its
Lionel Shriver fish in order to make them
course not. The professional offence-takers who prowl “the
cultural veldt” for infractions feel nothing but grim satisfaction appear fresher. Rival shops
The Spectator reacted by advertising fish
when they spot a target. “Any source of umbrage presents an
opportunity to score a trophy and hang it on your (Facebook) “without cosmetics”,
wall.” People talk of the so-called snowflake generation being along with a picture of
oversensitive, but there’s nothing delicate about the activists who a fish and a selection of
hound academics off campuses and tear down statues. They may coloured contact lenses.
“employ the language of fragility”, what with their “safe spaces”
and vaunted concern for the feelings of the less fortunate, but do
not be fooled. “This stuff is about pushing other people around.”

The worst thing about austerity, says Anoosh Chakelian, is that

it’s the most essential services that tend to get axed. Youth clubs,
Axing youth for example. More than 600 of them have closed in Britain since
clubs is a 2010. You only have to visit a place like Haringey to realise the
damage this entails. In this deprived London borough, a third of
costly mistake the population is under 20 years old, 70% of them from ethnic
minority backgrounds. For many, the youth centre is a “lifeline”
– an oasis where they can hang out with peers, use a gym, play
Anoosh Chakelian pool, or take classes in things like cooking or fashion design.
Those who go there come to regard staff as their “second family”.
New Statesman
Yet under the pressure of funding cuts, Haringey has reduced its
youth services budget by more than 67% since 2011: there’s now A paraglider from Sussex is
only one council-run youth club left. True, that saves the council being investigated by police
after being accused of
money in the short term (the yearly cost per youth club member is
swooping down on members
£500-£1,000), but it’s a fraction of what youth clubs help save it of the public and shouting
by reducing gang violence and improving children’s mental health. abuse at them. Paul Satchell,
(It costs as much as £70,000 a year to keep a young person in who calls himself “Mad
social care.) What a shockingly “false economy”. Paul”, faces allegations of
causing criminal damage,
Any day now, in a field near Blackpool Tower, fracking for shale obstructing the highway and
“generally behaving in an
Giving the gas will resume in the UK, says John Ashton. Locals have fought
tooth and nail to stop it, and who can blame them? Fracking at antisocial manner”. Satchell
described the accusations
green light a nearby site in 2011 had to be halted after it triggered earth
tremors, and there’s evidence from the US that fracking can harm
as “lies” put out by those
jealous of his freedom. “Get
to frackers the health of those living close by. Yet the Tories have overruled
Lancashire County Council and given the project the green light.
a life saddos,” he declared.

What’s more, they’re proposing to fast-track future projects Dazzle & Fizz, a high-end
John Ashton
by allowing shale gas explorers to drill test sites in England Surrey children’s party
without planning permission, and by moving subsequent planning planner, recently organised
The Guardian a glitzy £5,000 birthday
decisions to the national, rather than local, level. This would be
justified were there an “overriding national interest” in exploiting party for an eight-year-old:
a chihuahua named Oscar.
shale gas, but there isn’t. On the contrary, fracking will only delay
Each of Oscar’s ten canine
our transition to a low-carbon economy based on renewables. guests had a personalised
The Government talks of being green and devolving power to gift bag, a bespoke cake and
local people, but while “it keeps trying to force open the door a bowl with organic food.
to wholesale fracking” it can’t be taken seriously.

8 September 2018 THE WEEK

16 NEWS Best articles: Europe
An anti-immigrant backlash on east Germany’s streets
Anyone who thinks populism poses
no threat to democracy should look
at video footage of last week’s street
protests in the east German city of
Chemnitz, said Schwäbische Zeitung
(Ravensburg). The 5,000-strong
protest (which was followed by similar
demonstrations over the weekend)
was a reaction to a report that two
immigrants, a Syrian and an Iraqi, had
stabbed a German citizen to death. The
video shows people kicking counter-
protesters, making Hitler salutes and
shouting “we are the people”. These
weren’t just the usual crowd of far- Protesters giving Nazi salutes in Chemnitz
right activists and football hooligans,
though – they included ordinary people, the type often referred
to as “worried citizens”. But people who “run behind neo-Nazis
like lemmings” are nothing more than a despicable mob.
Even reporters used to covering anti-immigrant marches were
shocked by the behaviour on display, said Michael Bartsch in
Die Tageszeitung (Berlin). Thanks to social media, people came
from all over east Germany – a region that’s no stranger to
xenophobic sentiment – as if they’d been waiting for just such
a murder to strike against “hated foreigners”. One got a sense
of what lies in store if the rightward shift carries on unchecked.
Rampaging mobs, authorities that can’t cope – the conditions
feel eerily similar to the Weimar
Republic, said Roland Nelles in
Der Spiegel (Hamburg). The divisions
within the government are especially
worrying: Chancellor Angela Merkel
denounced the violence at once, but
the hard-line interior minister Horst
Seehofer took almost two days to
comment. Having fanned the flames
with anti-immigrant rhetoric to please
his conservative base in Bavaria, he
bears a share of the blame. And with
the rise of the far-right Alternative for
Germany party, said Detlef Esslinger in
Süddeutsche Zeitung (Munich), we now
have MPs who show their “contempt
for the democratic order” by actually encouraging vigilantism.
Chemnitz is being treated as a law-and-order failure, but it’s an
economic failure too, said Georg Anastasiadis in the Münchner
Merkur. Today German businesses may be enjoying gold-rated
balance sheets, but further down the economic ladder there’s
widespread anxiety about pensioner poverty, unemployment and
uncontrolled immigration. And when people see the obstacles
that courts put in the way of deporting immigrants guilty of
serious offences it just makes matters worse. Immigration is the
populists’ most powerful weapon: you can be sure that scenes
like these will continue until it’s brought under control.

RUSSIA Reforming Russia’s pension system is the most politically risky decision Vladmir Putin has ever made,
says Vladislav Inozemtsev. The retirement age for men is set to rise from 60 to 65 (though as male
Why Putin is Russian life expectancy is 66, many won’t make it that far) and for women from 55 to 63 – at least
it was until last week, when Putin, spooked by his plummeting poll ratings, dropped it to 60. But to
spooked by no avail. Russians are still seething: it’s hard to overstate the unpopularity of the reform. So why did
Putin do it? Yes, the current situation is unsustainable in the long term: the pension fund deficit is
pension reform huge (Russia has 36.3 million pensioners for 72.7 million in work). Yet since Putin’s final term ends
in 2024, he could easily have plugged it for a few years: a total of 2.74trn roubles is expected this
The Moscow Times year alone from oil and gas. So why didn’t he kick the problem down the road? Creating difficulties
for one’s successor is a traditional Russian political sport, after all. The answer is that Putin doesn’t
plan to stand down in 2024: he plans to find some way of circumventing the constitutional limit of
two terms. And he needs to get this unpopular reform done and dusted so that by 2024, it no longer
affects his ratings. It’s not economic necessity that gave rise to this reform – it’s power politics.

We like our politicians to think creatively, says Joseph Martin, and Paris’s mayor, Anne Hidalgo, has
FRANCE certainly done that. Paris is cursed by the nuisance of men relieving themselves on the pavements, so
she has come up with the idea of installing open-air urinals for them to turn to when they’re caught
Please stop short. These uritrottoirs are tastefully designed as red flower planters – the urine goes into a waste
Parisian men bin filled with straw, which is then made into compost as the nitrogen and phosphate act as natural
fertilisers. They were first trialled in badly affected areas such as the Gare de Lyon, and are now
peeing in pots being rolled out across the capital: tourists have been gawking in surprise at the sight of men casually
peeing into flower pots. But I fear this “wacky” idea won’t help dry the puddles of urine on Parisian
RSE Magazine pavements, it will merely normalise the practice of unzipping in public, whether or not one of these
(Paris) ecological devices is to hand. It has also infuriated feminists, who are seething about men being
provided facilities that women can’t use. Two uritrottoirs have already been vandalised, and they
won’t be the last. Creative thinking is all very well, but sometimes it’s better to be conventional.

Have people had enough of experts? Dutch pig farmers have, says Ingrid Jansen. A few years ago,
THE NETHERLANDS following complaints about the pong of faeces and ammonia emanating from their farms, they were
The Dutch pig ordered by the government to fit their sties with “air scrubbers”. Not any old scrubbers, mind you,
but devices certified as having passed smell-removal tests conducted by a German institute commis-
farmers kicking sioned for the purpose by the environment ministry. At up to s100,000 per unit, some farmers had
to invest more than a million euros. But guess what? Local residents still went on about the smell. So
up a stink the state secretary responsible, Stientje van Veldhoven, commissioned new tests, this time by a Dutch
university. And their experts have now concluded that some of the units approved by the Germans
Trouw work only half as well as thought. It turns out that the testing of odour levels, whether by Dutch or
(Amsterdam) German experts, is done not by instruments, but the human nose. Does that mean Dutch noses are
more sensitive than German ones? Van Veldhoven doesn’t care: she knows only that emissions have
doubled and pig farmers must now buy costly new equipment that meets the new standard or lose
their licences. If those farmers now prefer to spend the money suing her instead, who can blame them?

THE WEEK 8 September 2018

 Best articles: International NEWS 19
Judicial appointments “form the nuclear isotope of a presidency, radiating energy long after their
UNITED STATES patrons have left the White House”, says David Von Drehle. Some 14 years after Ronald Reagan’s
Cranking up death, for instance, dozens of his appointees are still issuing rulings. This is one aspect of the
presidency that Donald Trump understands very well. He knows the Republican Party will stay
the “judge loyal to him if he keeps stocking the courts with conservative judges. Thus, while he tolerates chaotic
infighting in many parts of his administration, he “brooks none in the judge-making factory”; the
factory” operation “purrs like a well-oiled machine”. So far, Trump has nominated two Supreme Court
justices, 36 court of appeal judges and 99 district judges. At this rate, he “could replace more than
The Washington Post 30% of all active judges by the end of his first term”. Many of these judges would once have been
blocked by the Senate, but in 2013 the Democrats scrapped the filibuster for most confirmations,
allowing appointments to pass by a one-vote margin. “You’ll regret this,” warned a top Republican
at the time. How right he was. “Having undone the Senate’s traditional role as a moderating brake
on presidential agendas, Democrats are now powerless to slow Trump’s judicial juggernaut.”

Obesity is a serious problem in Thailand, says

THAILAND Muktita Suhartono – and nowhere more so than
among its population of Buddhist monks. Whereas
The expanding one in three Thai men are overweight or obese,
waistlines of nearly half of the nation’s monks are. The situation
is so grave that officials recently “issued a nation-
the holy men wide warning” urging laypeople to offer healthier
alms to monks and advising monks to be more
The New York Times mindful of their dietary habits. Monks roam the
streets each day in their saffron robes collecting
donated food in the Buddhist tradition, and are
not allowed to eat after noon. To keep their
energy levels up, many rely on sugary drinks. These Nearly half of Thailand’s monks are overweight
beverages, together with the junk food that many
devotees now give them, have taken a toll on their health. Many monks say they didn’t realise they
were putting on weight because of their loose-fitting robes. To counter this problem, officials have
issued belts with knots to indicate where a heathy waistline should be. And in the hope of defusing
what one expert has called a “ticking time bomb”, they’ve also suggested that monks “add more
physical activity – like cleaning their temples – to their sedentary lives of prayer and meditation”.

SOUTH AFRICA The US president is using lies about South Africa to whip up racial animus in his own country, says
Sisonke Msimang. The good news, though, is that while Donald Trump’s recent fanciful remarks
Trump’s about the “large-scale killings” of white South African farmers may have “mobilised the lunatic
fringe in America”, his intervention has been a PR disaster for white nationalist groups in South
misguided Africa. The most high-profile such organisation, AfriForum, toured the US earlier this year in a
bid to call attention to what it calls “the plight” of white farmers. While it has been careful to stop
intervention short of asserting that a “genocide” is being perpetrated against whites, it is affiliated with groups
that make such claims, and is fuelling a false narrative about widespread land seizures. The reality
Al Jazeera is that a public consultation process is taking place about land reform, a process that will follow
(Doha) the rule of law and involve appropriate compensation. Thankfully, the indirect endorsement of
a US president whom South Africans of all colours and political persuasions widely regard as
“unhinged and blatantly racist” has undone much of AfriForum’s efforts to appear reasonable.

Australia is behaving like a “spoiled brat”

It has been “a bruising few years” for global democracy, said
Bo Seo in the South China Morning Post (Hong Kong).
President Trump has sent America’s political system into
convulsions; and Europe is wrestling with Brexit and waves of
far-right insurgencies. So in this tumultuous climate, you might
see Australia as “a reliable tick in democracy’s ‘win’ column”.
It is enjoying a record 27th year of uninterrupted economic
growth, and has a well-established, effective two-party system.
Yet despite such promising conditions for stability, Australian
politics is a madhouse. In the latest of a series of internal
leadership coups, the ruling centre-right Liberal Party has just
ousted premier Malcolm Turnbull and replaced him with his
treasurer, Scott Morrison. That makes Morrison the nation’s
fifth prime minister in just over five years. Australian PMs are
changing at such a rate that Madame Tussauds in Sydney says
it may have to stop making waxworks of them.
Our democracy is a “laughing stock”, said Peter Hartcher in
The Sydney Morning Herald. There wasn’t even any great
principle at stake in the latest coup. It was just a petulant act
of sabotage by a Liberal right-wing faction against a PM it
considered a bit too left-wing. The faction’s favoured candidate
then failed to win the leadership contest. So the upshot of
this “earthquake” is that one moderate Liberal PM has been
replaced with another, leaving the Right as disgruntled as ever.
Why has Australian politics become so crazy? It’s partly down
to the same factors that have disrupted many other advanced
democracies, said Gareth Evans in The Japan Times: the
relentless 24/7 news cycle, the rise of social media and the
modern “preoccupation with personalities and popularity
polls”. But Australia has an extra burden: its “ludicrously short
three-year electoral cycle”, which is briefer than that of almost
any other country and which “makes it almost impossible to
govern in a campaign-free atmosphere”. Australia is acting like
“a spoiled brat”, said Ralph Ashton in The Sydney Morning
Herald. Many of its institutions – not just its parliament –
appear to have succumbed to a “self-indulgent malaise”.
Religious leaders have refused to face up to clerical child abuse;
the finance industry has “ripped off its clients”; the “national
cricket team has descended to cheating”; and the media have
become shallow and sensationalist. “So far, we’ve escaped
serious consequences. But when a country’s leaders and
institutions behave this badly, something has to give.”

8 September 2018 THE WEEK

BEDS, SOFAS AND FURNITURE FOR LOAFERS
LOAF.COM LONDON GUILDFORD WILMSLOW SOLIHULL ST ALBANS
 Health & Science NEWS 21

What the scientists are saying…

The “holy grail” of diet pills
Advocates of slimming pills like to claim
that they offer a halfway house between
dieting and weight-loss surgery, but their
use has been limited by concerns over
their safety. Several products have been
withdrawn from sale after being found
to damage the heart. Now a large-scale
randomised double-blind trial of the
slimming pill lorcaserin has shown it to
be both safe and effective, says The Times.
Lorcaserin is an appetite suppressant that
works by stimulating brain chemicals to
induce a feeling of fullness. It has been
available in the US (as Belviq) since 2012,
but is currently unlicensed in Europe.
“There’s a history of these drugs having
serious complications,” says Dr Erin
Bohula of Brigham and Women’s Hospital
at Harvard University, who led the new
research into lorcaserin. For the study
(sponsored by the drug’s maker, Eisai
Inc.), 12,000 obese or overweight adults
were given either lorcaserin or a placebo,
and were followed up over 40 months,
while also being encouraged to exercise
more and make dietary changes. Those
on lorcaserin lost an average of 4.2kg,
compared with 1.4kg in the placebo group,
and did not appear to be at any greater
risk of cardiovascular “events” such as
heart attacks and stroke. Tam Fry, of
British charity the National Obesity
Forum, said a drug that could suppress
appetite without harmful side effects was
the “holy grail” of obesity medication.
The filter that keeps out germs
Scientists in the US have designed a filter
that works in the opposite way to most
other filters: it blocks small particles
while allowing larger objects to pass
through. Made of sodium dodecyl sulfate
and water, the “reverse filter” consists of
The zebra finch: aged by traffic sounds?
a transparent liquid membrane a bit like
the film that stretches across a toy bubble
dispenser. Owing to its surface tension,
small objects bounce off it, while larger
ones puncture the seal – which then
instantly self-heals. Among its many
possible uses the scientists, writing in the
journal Science Advances, highlight using
it as a surgical seal to allow operations to
be performed in non-sterile environments.
“The membrane filter could potentially
prevent germs, dust or allergens from
reaching an open wound, while still
allowing a doctor to perform surgery
safely,” said Dr Tak-Sing Wong, from
Pennsylvania State University. The filter
could also be used to keep odours trapped
inside waterless toilets.
Car noise makes birds age faster
It’s not just humans who are stressed out
by city living: scientists have found that the
noise of road vehicles produces premature
signs of ageing in zebra finches. Studies
have suggested that urban birds have
shorter lifespans than rural ones, which
led researchers from the US and Germany
to investigate whether artificial noise could
be partly responsible. Their study involved
comparing the telomeres of zebra finch
offspring exposed to recordings of street
traffic with those of birds raised without
background noise (telomeres are the caps
on the ends of chromosomes that protect
genes from damage: they get shorter as
the body biologically ages). At 120 days,
the telomeres of birds exposed to the
sounds after leaving the nest were shorter
than those of the control group, and were
also shorter than those of birds hatched
to parents who’d been exposed to noise.
“Our study suggests that urban noise
alone, independent from the many other
aspects of city life, such as light or
chemical pollution, may contribute to
ageing in zebra finches,” said Dr Adriana
Dorado-Correa, of the Max Planck
Institute for Ornithology in Germany.
Cannabis extract eases psychosis
A trial involving the brain scans of people
who had experienced psychotic episodes
may open the way for the first new drug
treatment for psychosis in decades. The
team from King’s College London
found that unusual brain activity in
their subjects appeared to be noticeably
dampened when their subjects were given
cannabidiol, a non-intoxicating extract of
the plant. Current antipsychotic drugs,
which target the brain chemical dopamine,
were discovered and developed in the
1950s, but they don’t work for everyone.
The researchers are now launching a
large-scale trial, with a view to eventually
developing a new, and hopefully more
effective, class of antipsychotics.

Does pollution make you less smart? The energy drink ban
Breathing dirty air is more than just a Children in England are to be banned
physical hazard – it also seems to make from buying caffeinated energy drinks
people less intelligent, says The Guardian. under government plans to tackle child-
This is the conclusion reached by an inter- hood obesity and bad behaviour, says
national team of researchers after examining The Times. The restrictions, announced
the test scores of 20,000 people in China. by Theresa May, are expected to apply
to brands – including Red Bull, Monster
The subjects were of different ages, but they
and Relentless – that contain more than
all took a set of language and arithmetic 150mg of caffeine per litre. More than
tests – first in 2010, then tests of equivalent two-thirds of 10- to 17-year-olds, and a
difficulty in 2014. The team compared the quarter of 5- to 9-year-olds, are thought
two sets of scores taken by each examinee to consume the drinks, which have been
and then matched them with air quality linked to various health problems,
data for the regions in which he or she lived. including obesity (due to their high sugar
And the results suggest the impact of dirty content), headaches and hyperactivity.
Commuters in Beijing
air on intelligence is “huge”: across all Although many major retailers already
refuse to sell them to under-16s, the
participants, increases in pollution were associated with significant falls in test scores
drinks, which cost as little as 25p a can,
– a 1mg rise in pollution being equivalent to losing more than a month of education. can still be bought easily by children
The effect was most marked among men, the elderly and those with low education from corner shops. Under the proposals,
levels (who are likelier to work outdoors). “Cognitive decline imposes a huge burden shops that flout the ban would face fines
on the society,” said researcher Xiaobo Zhang of Peking University. “Although the air of up to £25,000 – the same penalty for
quality is getting better... there are bigger problems down the road.” selling cigarettes to under-18s.

8 September 2018 THE WEEK

22 NEWS
Pick of the week’s
Gossip
Patrick Leigh Fermor was
held in high esteem, but
his party piece, reciting
Jabberwocky in Hindustani,
didn’t impress Lucian Freud.
“I felt I could not stand it,”
the artist told his friend and
model Martin Gayford. “So I
slowly tipped my chair back
until I fell out of the window.
I must have fallen 15ft and
landed on my head. I might
easily have been killed; as it
was I landed in a bramble
bush. I was covered in twigs
when I came back in.” He
was equally scathing, after
a visit to the West Indies,
about The Traveller’s Tree,
Leigh Fermor’s book on the
islands: “It was hopeless.
He’d describe a house and
everything about it would
be different.”
Kanye West has declared
that he will run for president
in 2024. The hip-hop artist
believes his experience of
show business deals makes
him an ideal candidate.
“There’s one thing I learnt
by hanging around with
Jay-Z and being married to
my wife [Kim Kardashian]:
you can’t f*** up the paper
[money]. That’s the problem
with a lot of the radical
leaders in the past.”
The Who’s drummer
Keith Moon had a
formidable reputation as a
hellraiser, but beneath the
wild exterior there was a
more gentlemanly soul,
according to the comedian
Barry Cryer. He remembers
drinking with Moon at
The Angel Inn in Highgate,
London, shortly before the
star’s death in 1978: “He
grabbed his pint of lager,
shouted ‘bleurgh!’ and
threw it to the floor.
But when we left he
leant over the bar and
whispered, ‘How much do
I owe you for the glass?’”
THE WEEK 8 September 2018
Talking points
Payday lending: good riddance to Wonga?
Few tears were shed last
week when Wonga, the
poster boy for Britain’s
payday lending industry,
collapsed under a
mountain of compensation
claims, said The Observer.
The company was “too
greedy and at times crossed
the ethical line”, charging
some desperate cash-seekers
annual interest rates of
more than 5,000%. But
the demise of Wonga
doesn’t spell the end of the Wonga: the cuddly face of high-cost lending Come off it, said Clare
high-cost, short-term credit
industry. The conditions that gave rise to the
emergence of Wonga and many other such
lenders over the past decade or so are still very rapacious ends. Short of miraculously banishing
much with us. There are more than two million
people in this country earning the minimum
wage today. Another 4.8 million people are
self-employed, while millions of others get by on regulations. In 2015, new rules were introduced,
part-time wages. That adds up to a lot of people
“living from hand to mouth, for whom it takes
only a small jolt to be in financial jeopardy”.
For these people, Wonga and its competitors
have often been the best option available, said
Martin Vander Weyer in The Spectator. In the
wake of the credit crunch, high street banks
“had nothing to offer the suddenly strapped-for-
cash personal customer”, and the alternative
was to seek out shady loan sharks whose terms
were even worse. “The new breed of lenders
who stepped into that gap conducted their
The scallop wars: fury in the Channel
Last week, French and British fishermen clashed
off the coast of Normandy, said Lee Rotherham
on CapX. By “clashed”, I mean that some 40
French fishing boats “rammed and threw rocks,
smoke grenades and lumps of iron” at five
British vessels, and drove them off. The violence
followed a long-simmering row over the right
to harvest scallops, known in France as coquille
Saint-Jacques, and specially prized there. In
order to conserve stocks, French law dictates
that its fishermen are only allowed to harvest
the shellfish between 1 October and 15 May.
But under the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy,
British boats are allowed to dredge for scallops
up to 12 nautical miles from the French coast –
and they are not bound by French law. It’s a
frustrating situation for the French fishermen,
certainly, but the British boats were perfectly
within their rights. And nothing justified this
display of “dangerous, and illegal, aggression”.
I hate to admit it, “but the French are in the
right about those scallops”, said Rod Liddle
in The Sunday Times. Shouldn’t British boats
using French fishing grounds observe local
rules designed to manage stocks? Indeed, until
very recently they did, said The Times. But an
agreement that stopped large British vessels
dredging for scallops in the Baie de Seine during
the summer months has broken down. Hence
business in daylight,
online and via television
advertising, making their
terms explicit even if they
were exploitative.” The
real problem wasn’t that
Wonga lied about its interest
rates; it was that borrowers
“too often lied about their
incomes and existing
debts to secure loans
for holidays and luxuries
they couldn’t afford”.
Foges in The Times: the
reality is that Wonga was ruthlessly exploiting
the needy and the naive alike for its own
poverty, or “transforming human nature”, how
can we stop its rivals ensnaring others in the
high-cost credit trap? One answer is tighter
stopping payday lenders from charging more
than 0.8% a day in interest and fees. As a result,
the number of people contacting Citizens Advice
about runaway payday loan debts halved within
a year. But we also need to better educate
consumers about the risks of borrowing. Too
many people lack basic financial literacy, such
as knowing what APR (annual percentage rate)
means. This is something schools must address.
In the meantime, it may be an idea to require
borrowers to pass a simple test, or answer some
basic face-to-face questions, “to show that they
are not just credit-worthy but credit-savvy”.
the understandable rage of French fishermen,
“seeing future catches scraped away by British
dredgers capable of taking a month’s catch for
a smaller boat in a single day”. In fact, there are
real doubts about whether we should be eating
the shellfish at all, said Daniel Lavelle in The
Guardian. Scallops spend much of their lives
under the seabed, so most are caught using
heavy-toothed dredgers: vast steel frames with
long teeth and chain-mail collecting bags. These
“monstrous contraptions” plough up the seabed
and cause terrible damage to marine life.
Still, French fishermen resorting to violence
against British fishermen fishing in shared EU
waters is “hypocrisy in the extreme”, said
Owen Paterson in The Daily Telegraph. The
Common Fisheries Policy, which allocates fish
quotas to national fleets, is “startlingly loaded
against the UK”: for 40 years, EU fishermen
have been awarded some 60% of the fish in
British waters; EU fleets receive a 90% share
for cod, haddock and whiting in the Channel.
“UK fishermen would not have been pushed to
targeting scallops in wider EU waters had they
not been deprived of fair access to abundant
resources in British waters.” This would be one
of the great benefits of a clean Brexit: being able
to manage our own fish stocks, allowing our
fishing industry to “thrive”.
 Talking points NEWS 23

Alex Salmond: a reputation in jeopardy Wit &

It’s hard to overstate how
much harm the allegations
of sexual misconduct against
Daily Telegraph: it was
designed to show the strength
of his support. And there’s
Wisdom
Alex Salmond have done to no doubt that by raising more “Why is everyone always
the Scottish National Party, than £100,000, Salmond has angry on the internet?
said Chris Deerin in the New emphatically done that. All Because it’s the simplest
Statesman. The SNP’s former this couldn’t have come at a way to make a living. The
leader is accused of assaulting worse time for the SNP: it has perpetual outrage machine
two female members of his cast “a huge shadow” over prints money.”
staff while he was first minister this week’s Programme for Helen Lewis in the
(he allegedly told one of the Government (the Scottish New Statesman
women to lie down in his bed, equivalent of the Queen’s “Left-wing people are
then groped her) – complaints Speech) and the forthcoming always sad because they
that surfaced almost as soon as party conference, at which mind dreadfully about their
his successor, Nicola Sturgeon, Sturgeon had planned to causes, and the causes are
in a spirit of openness brought seek support for another always going so badly.”
in a procedure for calling independence referendum. Nancy Mitford, quoted in
ministers to account. Even if Salmond: not such a “secular saint”? Given the revulsion that many The Guardian
the charges prove groundless, voters feel about this matter,
they are bound to cause deep divisions within she seems unlikely to push on with Indyref2 in “[Cricket is] a game which
the SNP. Ever since Sturgeon replaced him, the near future. the English, not being a
Salmond has been acting as a back-seat driver spiritual people, invented
and promoting his “personal brand”; many The party’s strategists are certainly worried in order to give themselves
members still see him as a “secular saint”. about losing support among women, who they some conception
believe to be less resolute about independence of eternity.”
By petitioning for a judicial review of the than men, said Euan McColm in The Scotsman. The late Tory minister
complaints procedure and crowdfunding the But whatever the outcome, the charges against Lord Mancroft, quoted
costs of this legal manoeuvre, Salmond has made Salmond are unlikely to do much long-term in The Times
this affair far “more explosive” than it may have damage to the SNP, for the simple reason that
“A great idea is usually
been, said The Guardian. He has turned himself pro-independence voters have nowhere else to
original to more than one
into the victim, shown total disregard for a turn. And if the charges are not proved, said
discoverer. Great ideas come
process designed to help vulnerable women and Kevin McKenna in The Observer, Salmond is
when the world needs them.
fanned the paranoia of those nationalists in his almost bound to be welcomed back into the
They surround the world’s
party who see every setback as a Westminster- party, as indeed any innocent person should be.
ignorance and press
inspired plot. It’s not as if the crowdfunding was He “may yet have a crucial role to play in any
for admission.”
really about money, said Alan Cochrane in The second independence referendum”.
US theologian Austin
Phelps, quoted on Forbes
Self-harm: why are girls cutting themselves? “Work is where you go
to escape your family.”
The adolescent years – that 1990s, the gap had been closing. Janice Turner in The Times
“liminal, destabilising time” It’s not clear what lies behind the
when children become adults – reversal – but the pressure of “These guys don’t have a
have never been easy, said social media “is one suspect”. skeleton in their cupboards,
The Guardian. We know this from they’ve got entire graveyards
Hamlet and Wuthering Heights. It’s true that the iPhone of skeletons.”
Yet young people today are facing launched in 2007, just before Chess grandmaster
“unparalleled” challenges, and it happiness levels among girls Nigel Short on corruption
seems that this is leading to a started to go into decline, said in the sport, quoted in
rising tide of teenage mental ill David Aaronovitch in The Times. The Guardian
health. It affects both genders, But I’m no more convinced that “Intelligence without
but in one “distressing area”, girls social media – and the malign ambition is a bird
are suffering disproportionately: comparisons it encourages – is without wings.”
self-harm. Last year, a report in he to blame, than I am by the claims Salvador Dalí, quoted in
British Medical Journal found that made for other suspects – exam The Observer
self-harm among girls in the UK Teenagers face new pressures pressure, “gender expectations”
aged 13 to 16 had risen by 68% in or the economy. If social media
just over three years. Now, a Children’s Society is making girls unhappy about their looks, how Statistics of the week
survey of 11,000 14-year-olds has indicated is it, as the report finds, that girls are getting Land in the UK is worth
that more than one in five girls in Britain are happier about their appearance? If it’s exam £5trn: 51% of the country’s
self-harming, along with one in ten boys. pressure, how come they’re happier at school? net wealth. In France, by
No one is sure what’s going on, so we need to be contrast, land accounts for
42% of net wealth.
Girls aren’t just self-harming more than boys, wary of proposing solutions that could make the
said The Economist. The survey found that, problem worse by pathologising the messy years ONS/Financial Times
overall, they are less happy than boys. On a of adolescence. In my view, the key is resilience. Half of maths and physics
ten-point scale of self-reported happiness, the As parents, we need to teach our children to put teachers in England quit
average score for girls aged 11 to 15 fell from their problems into context, and to understand teaching within five years
8.2 in 2010 to 7.8 in 2016, while boys’ scores that some negative emotions are rites of passage. of starting.
hardly changed, moving from 8.3 to 8.2. Girls “You could call it renormalising the normal. Education Policy Institute/
have always been a bit sadder, yet starting in the This is life – no one escapes unscathed.” The Times

8 September 2018 THE WEEK

24 NEWS
Cricket: England lose a legend...
All opening batsmen face a fundamental question,
said Jonathan Liew in The Independent. “When
to play, and when to leave.” So it’s no surprise
that “when the time came for Alastair Cook to
apply that question to himself, he addressed it
with the same equanimity, the same unflappable
judgement” with which he has treated each of
the 26,086 balls he has faced in his “long and
fascinating” Test career. The 33-year-old batsman
has announced that he will be retiring from inter-
national cricket after the fifth Test against India.
He will bow out as “the leviathan of England’s
batting”: he has scored 12,254 runs, the sixth
highest tally in the history of Test cricket, more
than 3,000 ahead of any other English batsman.
Sport
jobs are more “mentally draining” than opening
the batting in Test cricket – yet, remarkably, Cook
has done it for 161 matches. Cook’s legendary
“imperturbability” has its origins in his childhood,
said Scyld Berry in The Daily Telegraph. When
he was eight, he became a chorister at St Paul’s
Cathedral. It was singing in front of a large
audience that “conditioned his temperament to
walking out to bat in front of capacity crowds”.
That stoicism served him well when he served as
Test captain, between 2012 and 2017. He never
“lost his rag with his bowlers or fielders, or even
manifested disappointment with them”; after
standing down from the position, he proved
himself to be the “least egotistic of team-men”.

Cook has never been the most naturally talented Cook: fortitude and guts
of cricketers, said Mike Atherton in The Times. “If
anything, he got runs in spite of his technique rather than because
of it.” But he still had many strengths. He played fast bowling
“superbly”; he became a “remarkable” player of spin. But
what really distinguished him, as an opening batsman, was his
“resilience, fortitude, concentration and guts”. Cook is the only
batsman whose name appears twice in the list of the ten longest
Test innings: his “monumental” 263 against Pakistan in 2015, in
the searing heat of Abu Dhabi, lasted an astonishing 836 minutes;
his 294 against India in 2011 stretched over 773 minutes. Few
The “twin peaks” of Cook’s career took place
overseas, said Andy Bull in The Guardian. There
was the successful Test series in Australia in 2010-11, where he
made 766 runs in five Tests; and another in India two years later,
where he made 562 in four. England hadn’t won a series in either
country since the 1980s; “had it not been for Cook’s batting, they
still would not have”. But those are now distant memories, said
Andrew Miller on ESPNcricinfo.com. Since Cook relinquished the
Test captaincy, his decline has been unmistakable. His average in
the past 20 Tests is 34.20; that drops to 18.62 in the nine Tests he
has played this year. He is bowing out at the right time.

...and defeat the world’s top Test team

England’s Test side still don’t know their best top
order, said Paul Newman in the Daily Mail. And
they have “much to do to convince us they really are
making progress”. Yet on Sunday, that didn’t stop
them clinching “the most tense and thrilling” series
victory over India, the team that tops the world
rankings. With their 60-run victory in the fourth
Test, in Southampton, the hosts took an unassailable
3-1 lead in the series. Over four days of twists and
turns, the match could have gone either way –
but once Virat Kohli was removed for 58, India
collapsed from 123-3 to 184 all out. “What a
fantastic, gripping Test this was and what a fillip
for the great old game this series has been.” Ali: a vital all-rounder
Moeen Ali was playing in his first Test since he was dropped in
March, said Nick Hoult in The Daily Telegraph. And on this
evidence, he should be a fixture of the side for years to come. He
took nine wickets – including two in two balls – and
scored an important 40 in the first innings. There can
be no doubt that he is the “best spinner in England”
– better than Adil Rashid, nominally the first-choice
spinner, who bowled only 14 overs. Yet Ali doesn’t
like to be first choice; he prefers to be the second
spinner, so he is under less pressure to deliver. For
that reason, Rashid has a role to play: “he is
the comfort blanket Ali needs to bring the best out
of his bowling”. Ultimately, it is all-rounders like
Ali who have made the difference for England, said
George Dobell on ESPNcricinfo.com. Ben Stokes
produced a “match-clinching spell” in the first Test;
Chris Woakes scored a century in the second. And
England’s top two scorers in the series, Sam Curran
and Jos Buttler, are both all-rounders. The wealth of such players
is what has made England “hard to kill off”: even when the top
order flounders, there is usually someone to “lead a recovery”.

Watford’s stunning start Sporting headlines

When the Premier League
season began last month,
Watford were tipped for the
drop, said Sam Dean in The
Daily Telegraph. They were on
their ninth manager in six years;
they had just lost their star
player, Richarlison. But in the
first four games of the season,
Javi Gracia’s side have silenced
the doubters. On Sunday, they Holebas: “rigorously well-drilled” wonders up front, said
defeated Tottenham 2-1, joining
Chelsea and Liverpool as one of the three teams
that have won all their matches so far.
This is the first time since 2013 that the
Hornets have started September with the same
manager who finished the previous season, said
James Gheerbrant in The Times. If they have
any sense, they’ll hold on to Gracia. It’s not that
the Spaniard has brought in much new talent:
all ten of his first-choice
outfield players were at
Watford last season. Yet he is
getting the best out of them.
Daryl Janmaat, Craig Cathcart
and José Holebas may not be
elite defenders, but they are
“rigorously well-drilled”; only
Liverpool have conceded fewer
goals. Gracia is also working
Paul Wilson in The Guardian.
Last season, Watford “found goals quite hard to
come by”, netting only 44; now they have nine
in four matches, the third-highest tally in the
league. Watford have “started with a bang
before”, said James Gheerbrant. Last season,
they were fourth after eight games, only to
finish 14th. Can they now “turn a flying start
into something more long-lasting”?
Formula One Lewis Hamilton
won the Italian Grand Prix,
extending his world
championship lead over
Sebastian Vettel to 30 points.
Ferrari driver Kimi Räikkönen
came second.
Rugby union In the opening
weekend of the Premiership
season, Saracens beat
Newcastle 32-21. Exeter beat
Leicester 40-6.
Tennis Roger Federer was
knocked out of the US Open
in the fourth round by world
No. 55, John Millman.
Football Manchester United
beat Burnley 2-0. Liverpool
beat Leicester 2-1.

THE WEEK 8 September 2018

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Pick of the week’s correspondence
Stand your ground
To The Daily Telegraph
I read Allister Heath’s article
as a cry of despair over our
seeming inability to maintain
the free speech, free inquiry
and free debate that are our
inheritance from the
Enlightenment.
As it is impossible to have
a rational discussion with
what he describes as the
“new totalitarian thugs”, or
to restrict their right to free
speech, there is another way
– ignore them.
We have a classic example
of the success of that tactic.
It was recently demanded of
Boris Johnson, often through
use of defamatory language,
that he apologise for his
comments on the burqa.
He ignored his critics, didn’t
apologise and continues as
usual, leaving them where?
Nowhere.
I have been in politics for
58 years, and learnt a long
time ago that the best defence
against vitriolic abuse is to
be sure that your opinions
are well founded, that they
are anchored in principles
and are honestly expressed.
When that test is met, I
don’t give a damn what others
may think of me. That was
my attitude before, and it is
so now in the world of social
media, where I have been
targeted with ridiculous
accusations and abuse. Some
tell me I am arrogant to take
up such a position. Better
arrogant than bullied into
submission to unreason.
Jim Sillars, former deputy
leader of the SNP, Edinburgh
Helmets are a choice
To The Sunday Times
Cyclists should wear
whatever makes them feel
safe, but I am strongly
opposed to making helmets
mandatory. This may seem
strange for someone who
has been a cycle safety
campaigner for more than
half their life, and whose
mother was killed in a road
traffic accident while riding
(with a helmet on).
In Australia and New
Zealand, where helmets have
been made compulsory, cycle
use dropped dramatically,
with no corresponding
increase in safety. Indeed,
countries that have the
● Letters have been edited
LETTERS 27
Exchange of the week Is it possible that not giving
them a smartphone in the
Parsing Corbyn’s meaning first place may boost their
resilience? Do you really
To The Times want a £500 device that
I am Jewish. Although I wrote Yes Minister and Yes, Prime allows you to obsess over
Minister, Jeremy Corbyn says I don’t understand English yourself and your friends,
irony. My co-writer Tony Jay was only half-Jewish, so bully and be bullied, and
perhaps he half-understood irony and was able to supply once in a blue moon actually
some. The Labour Party continues to deny that Corbyn is use it to make a phone call?
an anti-Semite, but as Sir Humphrey said: “Never believe There is a blatantly obvious
anything until it’s been officially denied.” Philip Collins’s and inexpensive solution to
article shows that Corbyn’s speech, ironically, reveals what this crisis, yet the inability
seems hidden to him. to see or acknowledge it
Jonathan Lynn, US simply represents a wider
spinelessness at government,
To The Guardian school and parental level.
To compare Jeremy Corbyn to Enoch Powell is outlandish, This solution does not
particularly for a respected public figure such as the former involve employing an
chief rabbi, Jonathan Sacks. It serves to obfuscate growing army of navel-gazing
racism in this country. Powell’s speech was made in the school counsellors to
highly charged context of the arrival of thousands of whom teenagers rarely
Kenyan Asian British citizens and the debate over the listen or respect. We
1968 Race Relations Act to outlaw discrimination. His have legislation aimed at
language of “the River Tiber foaming with much blood” children and adolescents
and “the black man will have the whip hand over the rightly prohibiting cigarettes,
white man” was seemingly chosen to incite. And it was alcohol, driving and sex, and
Powell who started “the numbers game” over immigration now energy drinks are in the
in the UK. firing line. Why not limit
Corbyn’s “crime”, committed five years ago at a relatively smartphone sales?
small gathering, but unearthed now by political forces that Just because the damage
want to end his leadership, was to describe as Zionist those can’t be seen on an X-ray,
who, through their behaviour, clearly were, and to make an it doesn’t mean the effects of
off-the-cuff remark about English irony. Is a lack of these devices aren’t damaging
proportion also an English trait? to well-being.
Jenny Bourne, editor, Race & Class Gillian Kemp, South Africa
highest use actually have drugs in 2015. This figure Abe’s honest advice
the worst safety records and rose by 4.6% to 2,593 in To The Economist
the highest levels of inactivity- 2016. In the same two-year “No deal for Britain is
related illness. period, recorded drug better than a bad deal for
Helmets are a reaction to possession offences fell from Britain,” Theresa May has
feeling unsafe. If you want 122,975 to 111,328. said, regarding Brexit.
to wear one, go ahead. But Last month, you reported Agree, disagree or both.
making them mandatory that Chief Constable Just remember what
may end up killing more Anthony Bangham had cited Abraham Lincoln said
people than it saves. a 4% increase in road deaths more than 150 years ago:
Chris Boardman, Wirral in the UK over the same “Elections belong to the
period as justification for a people. It’s their decision. If
Reaping what you sow? zero-tolerance approach to they decide to turn their back
To The Times speed limit enforcement. But on the fire and burn their
Some Tories may now the second-lowest number of behinds, then they will just
“fear infiltration by UKIP road deaths ever recorded on have to sit on their blisters.”
members”, but wasn’t the British roads, 1,730, was in Bernabé Guitérrez, Spain
entire point of the referendum 2015. Of these, speed
to shoot the UKIP fox and was recorded as a
return errant UKIP voters contributory factor
back to the Conservative fold? in only 222 cases.
Alex Gerald, London Could these two
men swap jobs?
Policy by numbers David Warden,
To The Sunday Telegraph Coleford,
In June you reported that Gloucestershire
Chief Constable Mike Barton
had called upon the House Ditch the phones
of Lords to consider a To The Times
more lenient approach David Aaronovitch
to illegal drugs. suggests we give our “Unfortunately, a tiny percentage of
Official statistics attribute children “more tools” the drones are opposed to violence”
2,479 deaths in England and to boost their
Wales to overdosing on illegal emotional resilience. © FARLEY KATZ/NEW YORKER/CARTOON BANK
8 September 2018 THE WEEK
 ARTS
Review of reviews: Books
Book of the week
Milk!
by Mark Kurlansky
Bloomsbury 400pp £18.99
The Week bookshop £14.99
Mark Kurlansky’s books tend to focus
so intensely on a single commodity
that they end up “telling the story of
everything”, said Rich Cohen in The
New York Times. In the past, he has
done this to great effect in his books “The most argued-over food in human history” make the world’s best Camembert,
Paper, Salt and, most famously, Cod.
“Now it’s milk’s turn.” Kurlansky begins his account with the
ancient Greeks, who were the first to use the term “Milky Way”,
believing that our galaxy “resulted from a spill while the goddess
Hera was breastfeeding baby Hercules”. He discusses other
milk-based creation stories, including those of the Sumerians
and the Norsemen. Our reverence for milk, he argues, has
persisted through the ages, and can be seen today in the belief
that human breast milk has unique health-giving properties
(which underpins the often ferocious “breast versus bottle”
debate). Digressive, charming and “often fascinating”, this is the
“sort of book that Proust might have written had Proust become
distracted by the madeleine”.
Despite its importance to human history, milk isn’t universally
29
loved, said James Marriott in
The Times. Some 60% of the world’s
adults “can’t even drink the stuff”,
being lactose intolerant. According
to Kurlansky, there are “sound
evolutionary reasons” why this is the
case: “if you never stopped being able
to drink milk, your poor mother might
be left breastfeeding you indefinitely”.
Kurlansky unearths many bizarrely
compelling stories, among them the
19th century craze on the Continent
for suckling children on goats, and
Fidel Castro’s doomed attempt to
from cows kept in special air-
conditioned sheds. So comprehensive is his coverage that “you
could almost say he’s milking it – if it weren’t all so interesting”.
But the book also advances a thesis, said Joanna Blythman in
The Spectator, which is that “milk is the most argued-over food
in human history”. Along with the merits of breastfeeding, people
have long debated milk’s healthiness, the best sources of it, the
virtues of raw versus pasteurised, and so on. The vegan lobby’s
insistence that “dairy is scary” is only the latest “manifestation
of this perpetual discussion”. Even the real extent of lactose
intolerance is far from clear: despite the belief that it affects most
Asians, 40% of Chinese people now drink milk. One thing that
this “rich, fascinating and comprehensive history” makes clear
is that our “arguments about milk” are unlikely to stop.

England: The Biography –

The Story of English Cricket
by Simon Wilde
Simon & Schuster 624pp £25
The Week bookshop £19.99
In this “meaty” book, Simon Wilde, the cricket
correspondent for The Sunday Times, surveys
the history of English cricket from 1877 to the
present, said Michael Henderson in The Times.
With the domestic game now at an all-time low,
it might have been tempting to “wallow” in
nostalgia, but Wilde wisely resists this course –
instead taking a clear-eyed look at the highs and
lows of cricket’s past. For a game that is “often
considered inert, even boring”, cricket has
always been the “most controversial of sports”.
All the main sagas are covered by Wilde: the
Bodyline series of 1932-33; the D’Oliveira affair
of 1968; and Kevin Pietersen’s controversial
deselection from the Test team in 2014. He also
challenges some of the sport’s enduring myths –
such as the idea that “gentlemen” players never
engaged in rough tactics.
For “cricket tragics” like me, this book is
heaven, said Dominic Lawson in The Sunday
Times. Even the lists with which each chapter
ends are riveting. Want to know the top ten
England left-arm orthodox spin Test bowlers
Novel of the week
Normal People
by Sally Rooney
Faber & Faber 288pp £14.99
The Week bookshop £11.99
Sally Rooney is the “best young novelist
– indeed one of the best novelists – I’ve
read in years”, said Olivia Laing in the
New Statesman. Having made a splash
last year with her debut, Conversations
with Friends, the 27-year-old Irish writer
has produced a follow-up that is already
being touted as a possible Man Booker Prize-winner. Partly set, like its
predecessor, at Trinity College Dublin (which Rooney [pictured] attended),
Normal People charts the on-off relationship of Connell and Marianne, both
from rural Sligo, as they emerge from adolescence into anguished adulthood.
At school, wealthy Marianne is the “weird girl, ostracised and excluded”,
while working-class Connell is “adored by everyone”. But when they get
to university, this is “abruptly reversed”: Marianne is “at home among the
privileged surrounds”, while Connell is a “culchie” – a hick. The book adroitly
tackles love, power dynamics and the passing of time, among other themes
– but what impresses most is the “extraordinary pitch of Rooney’s writing”.
This book surpasses even Rooney’s “astoundingly accomplished” debut, said
Julie Myerson in The Observer. Although its narrative appears straightforward
and linear, it “slyly and constantly” loops back on itself, revisiting past events.
This “uniquely clever” structure both “illuminates the present” and “creates
a delectable, mounting suspense”. Its author may be formidably talented, but
© JONNY L. DAVIES

since 1884, by averages? Or the numbers of full this meandering, often “airless” novel disappoints, said Claire Lowdon in The
days’ play lost to rain, by ground? It’s all here – Sunday Times. Descriptions are imprecise and the authorial voice lacks “ironic
and a great deal more besides. distance”. Rooney should have “left this one in the barrel a little longer”.

To order these titles or any other book in print, visit

theweek.co.uk/bookshop or speak to a bookseller on 020-3176 3835
Opening times: Monday to Saturday 9am-5.30pm and Sunday 10am-4pm

8 September 2018 THE WEEK

30 ARTS Drama
Tamburlaine, written by
Christopher Marlowe when he
was only 23, was “the first big
hit of the Elizabethan stage”,
Theatre said Paul Taylor in The
Independent. The “mass-
murdering protagonist” is a
Scythian shepherd who – in
unremittingly bloody fashion
Tamburlaine – rises to form a huge empire
stretching across Asia.
Remorseless, egocentric and
Playwright: sociopathic, Tamburlaine is
Christopher Marlowe a compelling character: “the
Director: Michael Boyd megalomaniac’s megalomaniac”.
Today, Marlowe’s play is rarely
staged – too bloody, perhaps, or
too long, with two parts and ten
Swan Theatre, Waterside, acts in total. But for this version, Owusu: a “plausible physicality” action unfolds, it creeps into
Stratford-upon-Avon former RSC artistic director
(01789-403493). Michael Boyd has trimmed the action down to
Until 1 December a manageable three-and-a-half hours – and the
result is as “incisive” as it is “vivid”.
Boyd certainly doesn’t “stint on grisliness”,
Running time: said Susannah Clapp in The Observer. Parents
3hrs 20mins kill their children, “four virgins have their guts
(including interval) spattered across a plastic screen”, two people
“dash their brains out on the bars of a cage”.
At one point, Tamburlaine (Jude Owusu) forces
★★★ two subjugated kings to pull him around on
a chariot piled high with captured crowns. It
makes for “transfixing” drama. Owusu “has
the plausible physicality” the role requires, said
Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph. But
he doesn’t grandstand – he stays calm almost
“It’s not Shakespeare’s best,
Love’s Labour’s Lost,” said
Matt Trueman on What’s On
Theatre Stage. The structure’s “wonky”;
the wordplay “overcooked”. But
there is “no surer way” to make
the Bard’s comedies unfunny
than to “strain for gags” – and
Love’s Labour’s that, alas, is precisely what
director Nick Bagnall does here.
Lost The plot is simple. Four Spanish
noblemen (three in this version)
Playwright: swear off women for three years,
only for the Princess of France
William Shakespeare and her friends to “trot into
Director: Nick Bagnall town”. The men showcase
their abysmal flirting skills, the
women rebuff them “with witty
Sam Wanamaker aplomb” – and much jollity Dancing and general absurdity
ensues. Except, in this version, it
Playhouse, New Globe doesn’t. Bagnall lays on so much singing,
Walk, London SE1 dancing and general absurdity that the whole
(020-7401 9919). thing feels “way over the top”.
Until 15 September It really is “distractingly bizarre”, said
Andrzej Lukowski in Time Out. At one point,
Jos Vantyler plays two characters arguing with
Running time:
each other – the braggart Don Armado and his
2hrs 30mins
pageboy, who for some reason has a “high-
(including interval)
pitched Yorkshire accent” and who may or
may not be imaginary. It’s like watching “a
★★ particularly unruly Saturday morning kids’
TV show”. The production isn’t all bad, said
Dominic Maxwell in The Times. The music and
dancing that bookend the action are “gorgeous”;
Stars reflect the overall quality of reviews and our own independent assessment (4 stars=don’t miss; 1 star=don’t bother)
Book your tickets now by calling 020-7492 9948 or visiting TheWeekTickets.co.uk
THE WEEK 8 September 2018
throughout, often smiling. That
approach “chimes with the aura
of today’s strongmen”: Syria’s
President Assad, for example,
“wears his menace in business-
like blandness”. But what we
don’t get with this Tamburlaine
is a true feel for the “psycho-
logical forces raging” within.
Well, I thought it was superb,
said Sam Marlowe in The Times.
The violence is brilliantly
stylised: the set is lined with the
kind of plastic curtains you find
“in a butcher’s shop or an
abattoir”, and those killed
are “daubed with blood from
a metal bucket”. And as the
the present: “fatigues and flak
jackets replace cloaks, and blades are exchanged
for guns”. By the end, when Tamburlaine has
“contemptuously” burnt the Koran and
slaughtered women in hijabs, the drama “comes
hurtling to the heart of our divided present”.
The week’s other opening
The Rise and Fall of Little Voice
Park Theatre, London N4 (020-7870 6876).
Until 15 September
This revival of Jim Cartwright’s “bittersweet”
1992 comedy – about a hopeless single mother
and her “paralytically shy” daughter – “grabs
you from the start” (Times).
the “verse-speaking is clear”.
On the night I went, a “fair
few audience members” were
enjoying themselves enormously.
But I suspect most people will
definitely find the fun “forced”;
the wackiness “too much”.
I have to say, I enjoyed most
of it, said Ben Lawrence in The
Daily Telegraph. There are some
terrific performances from the
cast, many of whom play more
than one role. The childhood
aesthetic – the characters ride
through the forest on hobby
horses, the courtiers dress like
toy soldiers – “works well”.
But the production’s relentless
exuberance and chutzpah “jars”
in the more sombre final act,
which culminates in the death of the Princess
of France’s father. After two-plus hours of
silliness, Bagnall tries to affect a “melancholy
ending” – and it simply doesn’t feel “deserved”.
CD of the week
Eminem: Kamikaze
© ELLIE KURTTZ; MARC BRENNER
Aftermath/Shady/Interscope £10.99
Eminem spends “virtually the entirety” of this
surprise release complaining about reviews for
his comeback album, 2017’s Revival. That gets
“wearying” – but “the sound of him raging can
still make for electrifying listening” (Guardian).
 Film ARTS 31
If you’ve ever been “stuck hundreds of miles from the
love of your life, wondering if it’s really worth all the
heartache and phone-checking”, Paweł Pawlikowski
Cold War has made a film you’ll relate to, said Phil de Semlyen
in Time Out. This “dazzling” new Polish-language
Dir: Paweł Pawlikowski film from the director of 2013’s Oscar-winning Ida is
1hr 28mins (15) a sweeping period romance that kicks off in Poland
in 1949. Tomasz Kot plays Wiktor, the middle-aged
leader of a troupe of folk musicians who are forced
A dazzling art-house
to promote the communist cause. Joanna Kulig is his
romance passionate, impulsive lead singer, Zula. The two fall
in love – only to be separated when one defects,
★★★★ leaving the other behind. In some ways, Cold War is a “glorious throwback”, a film in the mould
of old-school epics such as Doctor Zhivago, said Geoffrey Macnab in The Independent. What
prevents it being a mere “exercise in sepia-tinted nostalgia” is Kulig’s “wonderfully fiery and
mercurial” performance. The film is beautifully shot in black and white, but there’s nothing austere
about it, said Andrew Lowry in Empire. Accessible, humane – even funny in places – it’s “a treat”.

The British actor Idris Elba makes an “impressive”

directorial debut with this stylish adaptation of the
cult crime novel by Victor Headley, said Andy Lea in
Yardie the Daily Express. It tells the story of D (Aml Ameen),
Dir: Idris Elba a young Jamaican who takes to a life of crime after
seeing his brother murdered during a street party in
1hr 42mins (15) Kingston. Ten years on, he gets sent to London’s East
End where he falls foul of the local kingpin, a white
Idris Elba’s Jamaican played “with relish” by Stephen Graham.
directorial debut Undaunted, D strikes out on his own and stumbles on
a chance to avenge his brother’s killing. Sadly Elba’s
inexperience is revealed in his rather “pedestrian”
★★ style of storytelling, said Ed Potton in The Times. There’s too much voice-over to explain the plot
even as it plays out on screen. Yet despite a too-slow middle section, it’s still impressively watchable,
said Tim Robey in The Daily Telegraph. Boasting engaging performances, and some beautiful
cinematography by John Conroy, Yardie may not quite come off, but it does Elba “no disgrace”.

Searching isn’t the first thriller to play out entirely on

a character’s computer screen, but it must be the most
ingenious, said Tom Shone in The Sunday Times.
Searching John Cho plays a single dad named David, who
wakes up one day to find that his teenage daughter
Dir: Aneesh Chaganty Margot (Michelle La) has gone missing. Frustrated by
1hr 42mins (12A) the incompetence of the police search, he turns sleuth
and embarks on an online investigation, questioning
Gripping laptop thriller Margot’s Facebook friends, hacking her phone and so
with John Cho on. What he learns forces him to question if he ever
really knew his daughter. And Cho centres this grip-
ping drama with a compelling turn as a man addicted
★★★ to his laptop, said Olly Richards in Empire. I beg to differ, said Tim Robey in The Daily Telegraph.
This film has been “bafflingly well-received”: director Aneesh Chaganty mismanages it from
beginning to end, and the plot is upheld by a series of “ludicrous” contrivances. The best Chaganty
can hope is that Searching will one day be hailed as a “camp classic”. It’s halfway there already.

How Orson Welles’ swansong finally got made

“You either hate it or loathe it” was Orson Welles’
wry remark about the experimental style of his
final film, The Other Side of the Wind. A
nightmarish Hollywood satire, it was a tale of a
legendary film-maker (played by a fellow director,
John Huston) struggling to finish his last movie
– a theme that carried a deep irony, given that
Welles abandoned the project having edited
only 40 minutes of footage. Yet last week, fully
48 years after shooting began, that irony was
redeemed when a finished version was shown
at the Venice Film Festival, to an enthusiastic Welles: satirised Hollywood
response from critics.
The story of its tortuous journey to the screen is itself worthy
of a film, said Geoffrey Macnab in Screen Daily. What first put
the kibosh on it was that Welles fell out with one of his backers,
Mehdi Boushehri, who was brother-in-law to the shah of Iran.
And when the shah was overthrown, the mullahs claimed the film
belonged to them. For years after, the original 100 hours’ worth of
uncut footage was kept locked in storage in France, while the
rights to it were fought over by the various
parties, who also included Welles’ daughter,
Beatrice, and his lover Oja Kodar, who co-wrote
the film with him and frequently appears, scantily
clad, in the final cut.
Thus things remained in limbo until 2014, when
a young LA producer, Filip Jan Rymsza, broke the
deadlock. Buying the rights to the uncut footage,
he persuaded the online streaming service Netflix
to put up the money required for completing the
film. The Oscar-winning editor Bob Murawski was
hired for the trickiest bit of the job. Aided by the
voluminous notes Welles kept during shooting,
and starting with the section of the movie that Welles had
completed, he painstakingly pieced together the rest. The
episodic, hallucinogenic style of the finished product won’t be
to everyone’s taste, said Robbie Collin in The Daily Telegraph.
Yet as a scathing attack on an industry that never fully appreciated
his talents, Welles’ swansong “could scarcely be improved”. It
will be released on Netflix and in cinemas on 2 November.

8 September 2018 THE WEEK

32 ARTS Art
Exhibition of the week Life in the Dark
Natural History Museum, London SW7 (020-7942 5000, nhm.ac.uk). Until 6 January 2019
It is humbling to think of creatures including the
how little we understand Atlantic footballfish;
the cave systems of our the cookiecutter shark,
planet, said Jonathan “a long and menacing
Jones in The Guardian. presence up on a plinth”;
Indeed, only about 10% and the “adorably cute”
of the spaces carved Dumbo octopus
beneath the Earth’s (named for its “large
surface are known to and flapping” ear-like
humans, and exploring fins). Many of the displays
them is “almost as difficult are interactive, and the
and adventurous as space exhibition is rendered
travel”. Yet as this more immersive by the use
“engrossing” exhibition of “soundscapes, scents,
reveals, these forbidding and an array of lights and
recesses are starting to colours”. It is also very
yield some “startling dark, and while this may
scientific discoveries”. be appropriate given the
The show is a fascinating subject matter, it does
exploration of the make the “eye-opening
creatures that thrive at facts” presented in
night and in the planet’s individual captions rather
darkest places: at the The Atlantic footballfish: a creature from the deep “difficult to read”.
bottom of the ocean, in
pitch-black caves. We encounter a worm that can survive in There are further drawbacks, said Mark Cocker in The Spectator.
“near-boiling water”, a “cave boa that hunts bats in the dark” Sadly, we see only a “single live species”: a tank of Mexican
and the cockroaches that eat the bats’ guano. Bringing together tetra fish that, in adapting to living in caves, have “not only lost
specimens from the Natural History Museum’s collections of vision”, but “have no eyes at all”. Getting up close to these
preserved animals with a range of “immersive installations” that “weirdly beautiful animals” is “affecting”, to say the least, and
allow visitors to get an idea of what it is like to inhabit a world it’s a shame that further living specimens aren’t included. Yet this
devoid of light, this exhibition is a triumphant “journey into some is a laudable show that makes a serious point: human activity has
of the most extreme ecosystems on Earth”. This “gallery of been “catastrophic” for many of the creatures here. Nocturnal
wonders” will make you “gawp like a deep sea fish”. species are being imperilled by light pollution, which is now
increasing annually; “there is so much ambient light that prev-
The exhibition introduces us to “some of the most interesting and iously diurnal animals are switching to hunt at night”. Ultimately,
elusive animals on the planet”, said CultureWhisper.com. Visitors this “compelling and memorable” exhibition will leave you in no
will be “among the first human beings” to see specimens of doubt that we need to “do more to protect nature”.

Where to buy… A Stalinist Truman Show

The Week reviews an Next month, an
exhibition in a private gallery art project – and a
social experiment
Justin John Greene – on an astound-
ing scale, long
at Simon Lee Gallery shrouded in
mystery, will
finally be
Californian painter Justin John unveiled, says
Greene (b.1984) is not an artist Mark Brown in
much concerned with good taste. The Guardian.
From 2008 to
© COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND SIMON LEE GALLERY; JORG GRUBER/PHENOMEN IP, 2018

His canvases present a riot of gaudy

tropical colour, pedantically faithful
depictions of junk food and figures who
seem to have drunk far too much, their
bonhomie turning to aggression. Some
may take issue with the deliberate
ugliness and vulgarity in this show,
Welcome To Our Mess, but there’s
no doubting Greene’s skill. Certain
details – painted toenails, glimpses of
suburban foliage, beer cans – sing out,
accentuated by multiple perspectives
that recall the work of George Grosz.
There are nods that stretch further back
into art history too: in one particularly
odd scene, a domestic barbecue pit is
peopled by sinister imps straight out
of a Hieronymus Bosch tableau, while
Yard Sale Hero (2018), 127cm x 106.7cm
another has a mannerist Madonna
reclining beside a ketchup-splattered
hotdog. If Bruegel the Elder somehow
found himself at a D-list celebrity’s
garden party, he might produce
something that looked remarkably
similar. Prices on request.
12 Berkeley St, London W1
(020-7491 0100). Until 28 September.
2011, the
Russian artist
Ilya Khrzhanovsky convinced more than 400
people to live in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv in
a specially constructed set, which was designed
to replicate life in a Stalin-era research institute.
Participants had to eat the same food as Soviet
citizens of the time would have eaten, wear the
same clothes, read the same books and obey
the same rules. They fell in and out of love,
conceived 14 children, argued and turned on
each other. More than 700 hours of footage
were captured for a film that will be shown as
part of a larger, eclectic art project entitled Dau,
which will be launched in Berlin in October and
later taken to other European cities. The launch
will take place in a “city within a city”, featuring
a full-sized replica of a section of the Berlin Wall.

THE WEEK 8 September 2018

 The List 35
Best books… Wendy Cope Television
The poet Wendy Cope picks the five books she’s most enjoyed this year. She is Programmes
reading from her new collection of poetry, Anecdotal Evidence, at the Budleigh Black Earth Rising Taut
Salterton Literary Festival in Devon on 20 September (budlitfest.org.uk) eight-part thriller about the
prosecution of war crimes.
Educated by Tara Westover, collection of short stories, 100 Poems by Seamus Michaela Coel plays an
adopted child of the Rwandan
2018 (Hutchinson £14.99). each of them connected to Heaney, 2018 (Faber & genocide who becomes a legal
This is the author’s account the theme in the title. Faber £10.99). This investigator, and is then drawn
of her childhood and Shriver is particularly good excellent selection was into a case involving an
upbringing in an eccentric on money and the effect it put together by the Heaney African militia leader. Mon
Mormon family in Idaho. has on relationships. I also family five years after the 10 Sept, BBC2 21:00 (60mins).
Her father didn’t believe recommend her most recent poet’s death. It draws on all
in sending his children to novel, The Mandibles. 12 of his original collections, Strangers New drama
school, and she spent her time and includes the very last series starring John Simm as
helping out in his scrapyard. The Art of Not Falling poem he wrote, addressed a professor trying unravel the
events leading up to his wife’s
Eventually she managed to Apart by Christina Patterson, to his granddaughter. death in Hong Kong. With
get into a local university, 2018 (Atlantic £14.99). A Emilia Fox. Mon 10 Sept, ITV1
and then to Cambridge, study of the ways people The Mystery of Three 21:00 (60mins).
England, where she gained a survive difficult and/or tragic Quarters by Sophie Hannah,
doctorate. A remarkable story circumstances. Patterson 2018 (Harper Collins Princess Margaret: The
of courage and determination. writes about her own £18.99). This is the third Rebel Royal Two-part
struggles with ill health, the of Hannah’s Poirot novels, documentary about a princess
Property: A Collection by loss of a job, and an unhappy written with the approval who was both a modernising
Lionel Shriver, 2018 (The love life (which has turned out of Agatha Christie’s family. force and highly conventional.
Contributors include Lady
Borough Press £14.99). I’m all right in the end). She also She gets it just right. The Anne Glenconner, a childhood
an enthusiastic fan of this includes stories about other first two were good; this friend, and Craig Brown, a
courageous and outspoken people and their struggles. one – set in 1930s London recent biographer. Tue 11
author. Property is a Brave, honest and readable. – is even better. Sept, BBC2 21:00 (60mins).
Titles in print are available from The Week Bookshop on 020-3176 3835. For out-of-print books visit biblio.co.uk
Trust Starry ten-part drama
based on the 1973 kidnapping
The Week’s guide to what’s worth seeing and reading of John Paul Getty III, with
Donald Sutherland and Hilary
Showing now Swank. Wed 12 Sept, BBC2
Underground Railroad Game at Soho Theatre, 21:00 (60mins).
London, W1 (020-7478 0100). Jennifer Kidwell
and Scott R. Sheppard’s “lacerating” comedy, Press The second episode
in which two teachers give a lesson on the (watch the first on iPlayer)
of Mike Bartlett’s (Doctor
American Civil War, had rave reviews in
Foster) new drama following
Edinburgh (Sunday Times). Ends 13 October. the fortunes of two rival
newspapers, starring Charlotte
Book now Riley and Ben Chaplin. Thur
V&A Dundee (vam.ac.uk/dundee). The V&A’s 13 Sept, BBC1 21:00 (60mins).
first outpost opens in Scotland. Among the big
draws is a restored Charles Rennie Mackintosh No Offence Paul Abbot’s
tea-room interior, not seen for 50 years. The first raucous police comedy returns
exhibition, Ocean Liners: Speed and Style, has for a third series. With Joanna
The V&A Dundee opens on 15 September Scanlan. Thur 13 Sept, C4
sailed up from London. Opens 15 September. 21:00 (60mins).
there are talks by David Attenborough, Darcey
5x15, in which five speakers talk for 15 Bussell and Francis Fukuyama. 5-14 October, Films
minutes, is spreading its wings to Hackney. Cheltenham (cheltenhamfestivals.com). Spotlight (2015) True story
Musician and polymath Brian Eno and scientist of The Boston Globe’s
Hannah Critchlow are on the podium on Just out in paperback investigation into child abuse
3 October at EartH, London, N16 (5x15.com). The Book of Dust Vol I: La Belle Sauvage by Catholic priests. With Mark
by Philip Pullman (Penguin £7.99). The prequel Ruffalo. Sat 8 Sept, BBC2 21:00
(120mins).
There’s a terrific lineup at this year’s to Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, which
Cheltenham Literature Festival. As well follows the trials of baby Lyra Belacqua and the
as literary stars, including Chimamanda Ngozi two children who swear to protect her from the Coming up for sale
Adichie, Sebastian Faulks and Lionel Shriver, Magisterium (Times). Serious bargains can be found
at the Art Car Boot Fair,
a mash-up between an art
The Archers: what happened last week fair and car boot sale. Peter
Alistair tells Shula he wants to petition her for divorce on the grounds of unreasonable behaviour, not Blake, Keith Coventry, Polly
the other way round. Lily’s grateful to her mum for being understanding about Russ. Elizabeth just Morgan and Gavin Turk are
wants to be sure that Lily isn’t being taken advantage of. Elizabeth admits to Shula she’s not happy among the artists selling their
about Lily’s affair, but is hoping it will fizzle out. As long as she doesn’t have to see them she can own art from car boots and
pretend it isn’t happening. Unfortunately, Lily invites Russ round for dinner. Helen thinks the bicycle panniers. Kevin
problem with the Borsetshire Blue started when they sold the dairy herd. Tom’s shocked by Rowland and Andrew
Natasha’s feedback. She’s damning about most aspects of the farm. With Clarrie’s blessing, Susan
Weatherall will be on the
tells Lynda it was Clarrie who stole the llama. Lynda agrees not to pursue the matter. The licensing
committee doesn’t reinstate Elizabeth’s drink licence. Arriving at Lower Loxley for dinner, Russ decks. 16 September, Granary
admits to Lily that he still hasn’t told his wife. Over supper it becomes clear to Elizabeth that Russ is Square, Kings Cross, London
still living with his wife. Lily reveals that Russ is moving to Manchester. Elizabeth calls Shula in tears. N1 (artcarbootfair.com).

8 September 2018 THE WEEK

36 Best properties
Attractive town houses

▲ Shropshire: Stone House, Corve Street, Ludlow.
This Grade II property is understood to be the work
of Charles Cockerell, who designed the Ashmolean
Museum in Oxford, and is only a short walk from
the town centre. Master suite, 5 further beds, 2 further
baths, kitchen/breakfast room, 4 receps, cellar, garden,
parking. £975,000; Strutt & Parker (01584-873711).
▲
Lincolnshire: Kelham House, Broad Street,
Stamford. A beautifully renovated and extended Grade
II town house in the centre of Stamford, home to the
stately Burghley House. Master suite, 4 further beds,
family bath, 1 further bath, kitchen, 2 receps,
conservatory, cellar, garden, parking spaces. £1.1m;
Strutt & Parker (07471-227352).
Wiltshire:

▲
St Ann Street,
Salisbury. A cosy
Grade II property,
dating back to the
16th century, located on
a street that forms part
of the city’s medieval
grid system. Master
bed, 1 suite, 2 further
beds, family bath,
sitting room, drawing
room, kitchen/
breakfast room, study,
cloakroom, utility room,
entrance hall, garden,
patio. £675,000;
Myddelton & Major
(01722-337575).

Berkshire: Fishlock’s
▲

Cottage, Hungerford. A
beautiful Grade II town
house, thought to date
from the early 18th
century, which combines
both period and more
contemporary features.
The town sits in the
North Wessex Downs
Area of Outstanding
Natural Beauty, and
Freeman’s Marsh,
Hungerford Common
and the Kennet and
Avon canal are all
▲ Oxfordshire: Church View, Market Place, nearby. Master bed,
Faringdon. A substantial detached Grade II period 4 further beds, family
house in the historic market town, which dates back bath, shower room,
to at least the 12th century. Master suite, 4 further kitchen/dining room, 2
beds, family bath, kitchen/breakfast room, sitting receps, playroom, study,
room, family room, snug, utility room, cellar, garden, cellar, garden, terrace.
storage sheds. £740,000; Perry Bishop and Chambers £700,000; Knight Frank
(01367-240356). (01488-682726).

THE WEEK 8 September 2018

on the market 37

▲ Somerset: Grove House, Bruton. A very

attractive Grade II house that benefits from an
adjoining cottage. It is thought to be pre-Georgian
and is mentioned by Pevsner. 4 beds, 2 baths,
kitchen, dining room, drawing room, 3-bed cottage,
detached coach house, garage, store, garden.
OIEO £1m; Lodestone (01749-605099).

Wiltshire: The Close, Salisbury. A charming

▲
residence, which is Grade I listed because of its
attachment to Harnham Gate, with pretty gardens
in the historic Cathedral Close. Master bed with
built-in wardrobe, 2 further beds, family bath,
kitchen, dining room, sitting room, garden room,
WC, garden. £595,000; Myddelton & Major
(01722-337575).
East Sussex:
▲

26 Church Square,
Rye. A lovely
Grade II timber-
framed house dating
from the early 16th
century, with
frontage onto a
cobbled street in
the heart of the
Rye’s Conservation
Area. Master bed,
2 further beds,
family bath, shower
room, kitchen,
dining room, sitting
room. £499,999;
Phillips & Stubbs
(01797-227338).

▲ Kent: Calverley Park Crescent, Tunbridge Wells. A Grade II town house designed by Decimus Burton, in
a central location close to Calverley Grounds. Master suite with fitted dressing room, 1 further suite with
built-in wardrobes and open-plan study, 1 further bed, kitchen, dining room, sitting room, balcony, utility,
communal gardens, residents’ parking. £965,000; Savills (01892-507000).

8 September 2018 THE WEEK

PROPERTY Advertisement feature

MARKET REPORT

Property transaction levels remain steady across the UK.

According to the Nationwide House
Price Index, UK property prices grew 2.3%
in the year to Q2 2018. Year on year (Y-o-Y)
growth over the same period shows that on a
regional basis, the best performers have been
the East Midlands (4.5%), West Midlands
(4.3%) and Wales (4.1%). Despite historically
having one of the strongest growth rates
in the UK, London as a whole continued
to have the weakest growth in the country
for the quarter (-1.9%). Despite this dip in
growth, it is worth noting that London prices
are still 53% above the 2007 peak, while
national house prices are 15.7% above 2007.
Guy Robinson, Head of Residential
Agency at Strutt & Parker, said: “Since the
chilly temperatures and snow that we
saw in the early spring, the sun has been
positively shining across the UK and the
property market has been getting gradually
warmer too. Transaction levels have been
steady throughout April, May and June
in comparison to last year. However, the
number of registered buyers is dwindling,
although those that are contacting us are
more focused on their search, thereby
sustaining momentum.”
In Prime Central London (PCL),
transaction levels have seen an overall
4.4% increase compared to Q2 2017.
This uptick in volumes is a positive sign
for the market. However, this increase has
masked the fact that the £2-5m and £5m+
brackets experienced -12.0% and -10.8%
(respectively) decreases on the previous
quarter. It should be noted that transactions
in PCL are dominated by the sub £2m
bracket, accounting for circa 70% of
total transactions.
Charlie Willis, Head of London Residential
Agency at Strutt & Parker, said: “Transaction
volumes in the PCL market remain low,
but we have seen a slight improvement in
sales since 2016. We are seeing competitive
bidding for some stand-out properties.
Larger family homes that might have been
on the market for 12 months already are
now moving and being picked up by families
who have sat on the fence since December
2014, when major stamp duty increases
were imposed.”
In the lettings market, the take-up of
new rental tenancies increased by 27.7% in
Q2 2018 compared to the same period last
year, and is down 16.1% on the five-year
average for the second quarter. The Buy-
to-Let market looks to be relatively stable,
albeit with subdued levels of new uptake.
According to UK Finance, there were 5,500
new Buy-to-Let house purchase mortgages
completed in May 2018 (most recent data
released) showing a Y-o-Y decline of 9.8%.
Additionally, there were 14,600 new Buy-to-
Let remortgages completed in May 2018,
resulting in a Y-o-Y increase of 15.0%.
Kate Eales, Head of Residential Lettings at
Strutt & Parker, said: “Whilst lettings values
have remained static in PCL since 2017,
properties in the £700 to £1,000 per week
bracket continue to show real movement.
At the other end of the market, super prime
is doing well, and we are seeing appetite
for properties at £4,000 per week and over.
The properties that are sticking are those in
the mid-range which are in need
of refurbishment.”
In summary...
• Total transaction levels for England and
Wales look to be relatively equivalent to
this time last year.
• Despite transactions picking up over
the course of 2017 in Prime Central
London, they continue to be low by
historic standards.
• Strutt & Parker holds its residential house
price forecast for both the UK (2.5% for
2018) and PCL, where prices are forecast
to be flat in 2018 as a best case scenario,
with a downside risk of -5.0%.
• PCL lettings prices are also forecasted
to remain flat at 0% in 2018.

Near Westbury, Wiltshire Battersea Church Road, London SW11

Guide Price £1,075,000 Guide Price £1,650,000
A Grade II Listed historic family home with four/five- A bright Victorian terraced house which is noticeably
bedrooms, believed to date from the 13th century, with views wider than the neighbouring houses. The property has four-
of the established gardens and neighbouring countryside from bedrooms and three windows spanning its facade and is set
all rooms. behind a pretty front garden, close to Battersea Park.
Salisbury office 01722 569733 Chelsea office 020 3813 9448

To find out more about current market trends, visit

struttandparker.com/quarterly, or to view a range of
properties across the UK, visit struttandparker.com Brought to you by

Strutt & Parker is a trading style of BNP Paribas Real Estate Advisory & Property Management UK Limited, which provides a full range of services across the residential, commercial and the rural property sectors.

What the experts recommend
Stem 5 Princes Street, London W1
(020-7629 9283)
This friendly, fantastic-value new
restaurant in a Georgian town house just
off Regent Street is chef Mark Jarvis’s
latest venture, says Jay Rayner in The
Observer. I haven’t yet tried either of his
recent-ish and widely acclaimed other
London openings – Anglo and Neo Bistro
– but as soon as I taste the amuse-bouche
at Stem I know I’m in the safest of hands.
It’s a “tiny, exceedingly crisp tart filled
with a deep chive emulsion, all onion kick
and adoration” and piled with the tiniest
dice of lightly dressed, crunchy green
beans. “It’s an extraordinary amount of
attention to detail for a single mouthful.”
Everything we eat here shows class, from
an “intense and velvety” white onion soup
(“more caramel tones than a toffee shop”)
to “killer” toasted sourdough with whorls
of soft, warm Winchester cheese (“all
lactic funk and power”). Rectangles of
“luscious” chicken thigh – the skin crisped
and salted – come with poached breast
and chargrilled baby leeks. And a lime leaf
granita atop whipped cream cheese and
biscuit crumb is “loveliness” incarnate.
Three-course meal about £30, plus drinks.
Sir Charles Napier Sprigs Holly,
Chinnor, Oxfordshire (01494-483011)
There are ten or so pubs named after the
commander-in-chief of the British Indian
Army, says Tom Parker Bowles in The
LEISURE
Food & Drink
Parker’s Tavern: swanky, with food to match
Mail on Sunday. This one in Oxfordshire
is a red-brick, wood-beamed place with
an “exuberantly flowering” garden, far
removed from the “hurly-burly of battle
and an empire long passed”. Napier was
by all accounts an interesting mix of the
hardcore imperialist and the relatively
enlightened. So it is fitting, perhaps, that
his gastropub namesake “melds the
traditional with the quietly modern”. Fat
strands of “immaculate” crab, picked that
morning, are “fresh as a saline-scented
breeze”. A beautiful salmon dish of “gentle
cured, vivid amber translucence, coated in
a slip of herbs” is served with a splodge of
Avruga caviar: as “pretty as a Fabergé
39
brooch”. A great hunk of chewy, well-bred
rump steak, cooked rare, “oozes macho
minerality”. A side order of braised baby
gem with crisp chicken skin is “what every
side dish should dream of being when it
grows up”. And service is as “sweet as the
home-made ice cream”. In short, it’s all
good. £45 a head.
Parker’s Tavern Regent Street,
Cambridge (01223-606266)
This excellent British brasserie – which sits
in the newly reopened, seriously swanked-
up University Arms hotel – is all parquet
floors, dark wood and velvet sofas, says
Tony Turnbull in The Times. It’s modern
but coolly elegant, as if “Soho House
or The Ivy has gone up to read law at
a particularly well-endowed college”,
and chef Tristan Welch’s cooking does
the space proud. Burrata, produced
in-house, had a fresh creaminess that’s
“near impossible to find outside Italy”,
and arrived with heirloom tomatoes and
a “nicely acidulated dressing made from
its juices”. The best of our mains was
fillet of sole with shrimps, beurre noisette,
samphire and confit potatoes – a “classic
done well”. And as for the truffle risotto
– “it was like a forest floor in autumn,
thick with a carpet of shaved Somerset
fungus”, and the rich rice possessed
“bosky depth” with just the right balance
of creaminess and bite. Starters from £7,
mains about £15.

Recipe of the week A last taste of summer

Here are four refreshing drinks to help
Cider works well with light game meat such as partridge, rabbit or pheasant, say keep the summer holiday spirit alive
Phil Vickery and Simon Boddy. This is a great way of cooking red-legged as we head into autumn, says
partridge. If you can get English grey, we’d suggest roasting it Fiona Beckett in The Guardian.
Xoriguer Gin (£23.95;
Sautéed partridge with cider, tarragon and apple masterofmalt.com). This herby
Minorcan gin (pronounced
Serves 2 50g unsalted butter, plus another 25g, ice-cold and diced 1 Bramley “sho-ri-gair”) is made from
apple, peeled, cored and cut into 5mm pieces meat from 2 partridges, including grapes (rather than grain-based
legs and skin, chopped into 2cm pieces 175ml dry cider ¼ of a 10g good-quality alcohol) in wood-fuelled copper stills, and
chicken stock cube, crumbled 2 tbsps roughly chopped fresh tarragon a pinch is perfect for a Spanish-style gintonica.
of sugar salt and freshly ground black pepper 2 tsps finely chopped chives
Kechris Tear of the Pine 2017 (s14.90;
• Heat the 50g butter • Add the dry cider and greeceandgrapes.com). A fine retsina wine
in a non-stick frying pan stock cube quarter to with a slight smokiness and a lovely
until slightly golden and the pan and bring to the minerality that goes well with Greek meze.
bubbling. Add the apple boil, them simmer until
and gently sauté for reduced to about half the Cockburn’s Fine White Port (£9 for 75cl;
2-3 minutes until original volume. Add the Morrisons). White port and tonic over
slightly coloured. tarragon, sugar, salt and ice has been the surprise hit of the
• Add the partridge black pepper to taste. summer, according to Sainsbury’s. Try it
and again cook for about • Finally, swirl the with Merchant’s Heart hibiscus tonic water
2-3 minutes until slightly 25g cold butter through (£1.30 for 200ml; Sainsbury’s).
coloured, but do not overcook – the the mixture. To serve, place the
meat should be rose pink when cut partridge and apple in deep bowls, Kayra Beyaz Kalecik Karasi 2017 (£12.42;
open. Remove the apple and partridge pour over the cider mix and sprinkle strictlywine.co.uk). This “delicate, pale Turkish
from the pan and keep warm. over the chives. rosé with a whiff of pink grapefruit and orange
blossom” is a perfect end-of-summer treat.
© PETER CASSIDY

Taken from Game by Phil Vickery and Simon Boddy, published by “Beats many from Provence.”
Kyle Books at £22. To buy from The Week Bookshop for £17.99,
call 020-3176 3835 or visit theweek.co.uk/bookshop. For our latest offers, visit theweekwines.com

8 September 2018 THE WEEK

40 LEISURE Consumer
New cars: what the critics say
Auto Express
The MG3 supermini has
had an “extensive facelift”
since its last UK launch in
2013, and it has paid off.
Inside, it’s a “totally clean
sheet of paper”, and the
car is modern and very
affordable. It’s just a
shame MG has stuck
MG3 with the same 1.5-litre,
from £9,495 four-cylinder, naturally
aspirated engine. It’s a unit
that was outdated before,
and now feels “Jurassic”
next to the turbocharged
norm in its class.
The Daily Telegraph
Overall, the revamp has
been pretty successful.
A new bonnet, wings,
bumpers, lamps and
tailgate give the car more
presence, and the interior
is better-looking. The
seven-year warranty is
also a nice perk. The
boot is a modest 285 litres
(slightly less if you want
a spare tyre). But the new
touchscreen is “basically
just a display for the audio
system”, and satnav isn’t
even an optional extra.
Autocar
“Fifty feet’s worth of
interaction with the
MG3 is enough to find
out where it is most
vulnerable to criticism.”
While it handles brilliantly,
the petrol engine feels
“decidedly 20th century”,
and it’s the only one
available so far. Its
48.7mpg and emissions
figures are disappointing
for a car of this size. And
while 105bhp should be
enough to get it going, it
still feels slow to pick up.

The best… bike storage solutions

Bikeshelf A

▲
Hiplok AIRLOK To keep simple-as-can-
▲

your bike really secure be solution to

outdoors or in a garage, bike storage,
consider this hanger. this shelf holds
You’ll need a your bike, and
nd its
load-bearing bits and bobs. The
wall to bolt it into: frame rests on the inside of the shelf,
in stress tests, the wall gave which comes in five colours (£66.50;
way before the fixings did (£140; cyclehoop.com).
.com).
evanscycles.com).
▲
Clug The stylish
yli Clug

SOURCES: THE INDEPENDENT/LONDON CYCLIST

Bikehut Bike clip claims to be the world’s
▲

Storage Tent If ▲ Cycloc Solo Ideal for indoor smallest bike rack. Available
you’re going use, this simple, clever design in several tyre sizes, it can
camping with has won several awards over hold your bike either
your bikes and the past few years. Just bolt the vertically, by clipping
want to keep plastic into the wall and rest one wheel to the
them out of the your bike frame on the hooks. wall while the other
elements, this It’s available in seven different rests on the ground;
narrow tent is colours and you can also put or horizontally,
just the job. It’s easy to put up and holds up to small bike accessories inside it standing on the ground as
three bikes (£30; halfords.com). (£65; cycloc.com). normal (£15; thehornit.com).

Tips of the week… how to
escape the tourist crunch
● If you’re going somewhere popular with
day trippers – Venice, Oxford, Versailles –
stay the night. You can explore the hotspots
in the quiet morning and evening, and go to
a less popular area in the middle of the day.
● But bear in mind that some places – e.g.
Egypt’s Valley of the Kings – are quietest
in the hottest part of the day, when tour
groups are taken to lunch. Use the “popular
times” widget on Google to check patterns.
● If you’re going to a city for museums and
food, go in winter, when galleries are empty
and restaurants full of locals. Vienna and
St Petersburg are great in the snow, and
Seville and Marrakech are still warm.
● Experience cathedrals like Notre Dame
in Paris as they were meant to be seen
by attending a church service. Just dress
appropriately and stay until the dismissal.
● Some sites, including the Sistine Chapel,
offer private tours outside normal hours.
They’re not cheap, but may be worth it for
a place you’ve always wanted to visit.
SOURCE: THE DAILY TELEGRAPH
And for those who
have everything…
If you assumed deodorant was one item
that could never be “on trend”, you were
wrong. Rosy Pits currently has a 5,000-
person waiting list. Rather than blocking
sweat ducts like an antiperspirant, it
apparently uses natural ingredients to stop
smelly bacteria forming on the skin.
$18; megababebeauty.com
SOURCE: THE TIMES
Where to find…
Wh fi d
online wine shops
The friendly, knowledgeable team at
Honest Grapes make it easy to navigate
an “exceptional” wine list. They also have
nifty food matching and quiz tools to help
you choose (honestgrapes.co.uk).
The Wine Society is a cooperative, and
lifetime membership costs only £40. You’ll
get free delivery, a say in how the company
is run and £20 off your first purchase
(thewinesociety.com).
Borough Wines’ stores won The Drinks
Business’s best independent retailer award
this year. Online there’s even more stock.
Pick from small wine producers, in bottles
or curated cases (boroughwines.co.uk).
Just as in Majestic stores, you’ll be asked
a few simple questions online to help you
choose. The “buy it again” rating by other
users is also handy (majestic.co.uk).
The Vino Beano team aim to unearth
undiscovered gems from around the world,
made by producers who are yet to hit the
mainstream (thevinobeano.com).
SOURCE: THE INDEPENDENT

THE WEEK 8 September 2018

 Travel LEISURE 41

This week’s dream: living with nomads on the Mongolian steppe

Mongolia tends to inspire feverish
fantasies in travellers – of an immense
landscape of mind-boggling emptiness,
of nomadic herders careening on sturdy
horses, of eagle hunters and shamans,
of ceremonially decorated caravans of
camels and yaks. In fact, the country
is in “great flux”, owing partly to the
ravages of climate change, but on a
trip with Mandala Mongolia, you can
experience both its timeless grandeur
and its complex modern realities,
says Maria Shollenbarger in the FT.
Accommodation is a “high-spec”
mobile camp, consisting of traditional
gers (round felt herders’ tents) that
can be set up anywhere. Guests Mongolia: “wildflower-strewn” grandeur
“shadow” nomadic families,
participating in their lives, and walking and riding their land.
True wilderness can be found only 90 minutes’ drive from
the capital, Ulaanbaatar, on a “wildflower-strewn” plain not
far from Hustai National Park. Here, one family of herders
has settled from May to October for going on 40 years, together
with some 600 or 700 animals –
cows, goats, sheep and native horses.
Chimeddamba, Tsedeusuren and their
children and friends welcome guests
into their routine, erecting gers,
wrangling animals and playing on
horsehead fiddles. But in the evenings,
guests can retire to their own camp,
which has hot showers, king-sized beds,
a film projector, a turntable, a telescope
and an excellent chef.
Sustained periods of drought and
harsh winters have recently decimated
livestock across the country, forcing
many herders to relocate their gers
into encampments around Ulaanbaatar.
Mandala Mongolia provides financial
assistance, so that some of these
“city nomads” can begin to reassimilate and move back to the
land. Listening to their stories provides an insight into a less well-
imagined Mongolia. Cazenove + Loyd (020-7384 2332, cazloyd.
com) has six nights from £6,300pp or 11 nights from £8,950pp,
excluding flights.

B&B of the week Getting the flavour of…

1902 Townhouse, Majorca
The town of Sóller, on Majorca’s
wild west coast, is set among
the “dramatic” Tramuntana
mountains, but is also only ten
minutes from the sea. In this
recently converted town house,
ex-Londoners Pete Holman
and Martin Grant have struck
a pleasing balance between
“classic Spanish” and “clean,
contemporary” style, says
Condé Nast Traveller. There
are minimalist four-posters in
the six bedrooms, where graphic
art hangs beside traditional
local raffia figurines. There’s
no restaurant, but breakfast is
a daily-changing feast, served
(on warm days) on a terrace beside
an “elegant sliver” of a pool.
Doubles from £130 b&b. 00 34 658
841 648, hotel1902soller.com.
An Afro-Colombian port city
Not long ago, it was Colombia’s most
dangerous city, dominated by violent drug
gangs. But in 2014, the president sent troops
into Buenaventura – the country’s busiest
port, on its Pacific coast – and now the
murder rate is below the national average.
It’s not a good-looking place, says Seth Kugel
in The New York Times, but it is worth a
visit to experience the region’s unique Afro-
Colombian culture. Stay at Tequendama Inn
Estación, a beautiful 1920s hotel, and eat
at Café Pacifico, which elevates traditional
dishes to fine dining. Go walking in the
nearby jungles of the San Cipriano Natural
Reserve (accessed on a motorbike-powered
wooden cart, along disused railway tracks),
and explore the beaches (“silty brown”,
but idyllic nonetheless) of Juanchaco, “one
of the easy-going beach villages inside the
national park”, by motorboat. See colombia.
travel for more information.
Virginia’s vineyards by bike
In 1773, an ambitious Italian arrived
in Virginia to found America’s first
commercial vineyard. It wasn’t a success,
but today the state ranks fifth in the
country for wine production, with nearly
300 wineries. Exploring them by bike is
a delight in autumn, says Will Hide in The
Sunday Times. The stifling heat of summer
has departed and the lush hillsides are ablaze
in yellows and reds. Fly into Washington
DC, hire a bike and a car with a bike rack,
and head to “buzzy” Charlottesville to visit
Thomas Jefferson’s house, Monticello, next
to where that first vineyard was planted, and
The Inn at Little Washington, a “charming”
restaurant with rooms. From there, you
could repair to Loudoun County (“horse
and hunting country”) to visit its wineries,
such as Boxwood, with its appealing modern
architecture. America As You Like It (020-
8742 8299, americaasyoulikeit.com) has
seven nights from £1,540pp, incl. flights.
A gourmet seaside break in Wales
With glorious beaches hemmed in by
black slate cliffs, Pembrokeshire’s Marloes
peninsula rivals Cornwall’s finest coastline
for natural beauty – but is a great deal less
crowded. And while eating out there used to
mean “pub nosh”, this summer it acquired
its first “contemporary foodie destination”,
says Louise Tickle in The Guardian. Sited
in a black-timbered barn, Runwayskiln is
a “superb” café by day, and offers dinners
for groups of ten or more by night. Next
year, its proprietors plan to operate as a full
restaurant, with guest accommodation in the
farmhouse next door. Marloes Sands lies
nearby, and Skomer Island, known for its
birdlife, makes for a great kayaking trip.
See runwayskiln.co.uk or call 01646-636545
for more information.

Last-minute offers from top travel companies

Four nights in Dublin
Set in 12 acres of beautiful
landscaped gardens, the IMI
Residence is the ideal retreat.
Exeter flights and b&b from
£262pp. 0800-083 4000,
lastminute.com. Depart
11 October.
5-star Turkish resort
Seven nights all-inclusive at
Labranda Mares Marmaris,
with views of the Aegean Sea,
cost from £322pp, including
Birmingham flights. 020-3474
0372, blueseaholidays.co.uk.
Depart 2 November.
European b&b break
Spend 2 nights in Prague and
2 nights in Budapest, with
luxurious accommodation and
train transfer. From £219pp,
including London flights. 020-
3326 1516, viva-holidays.co.
uk. Depart 18 October.
Cultures of the Omo Valley
Spend 9 nights in Ethiopia
meeting the region’s tribes,
and enjoy a boat excursion.
From £1,939pp b&b,
including Dublin flights.
020-8068 3176, exoticca.co.
uk. Depart 20 October.

8 September 2018 THE WEEK

 Obituaries
Hugely successful playwright who wrote The Odd Couple
Between 1965 and 1980,
Neil Simon Neil Simon, who has died
1927-2018 aged 91, wrote so many hit
plays there was rarely a
time when his name wasn’t up in lights on
Broadway. In 1967, he had four plays running
concurrently. His work was staged all over
the world, and many of his plays – including
Barefoot in the Park and The Odd Couple –
were turned into major films, said The Daily
Telegraph. Such was his commercial success
he was afforded the rare honour, for a living
playwright, of having a Broadway theatre
named after him. Yet the critics never took to
his plays in the way audiences did, dismissing
them as unchallenging and middlebrow.
“Neil Simon didn’t have an idea for a play
this year,” read one New York Times review,
“but he wrote it anyway.” Simon argued that
he was a victim of his own success, that he was
too popular to be admired – but the criticism Simon: steered clear of showbiz parties relentless: he aimed for a funny moment
clearly hurt. He wanted his plays to make
people laugh, he said, but not if they didn’t also make them think.
Born in New York in 1927, Marvin Neil Simon had a difficult
childhood as the son of a “tyrannical”, philandering father,
who worked in the garment industry, and a “doting, put-upon
mother”, said The Times. There were serious tensions at home:
money was tight and his father was often absent. Aged seven,
Simon began writing funny stories to leaven the atmosphere or,
as he put it, to “do something to laugh until I was able to forget
what was hurting”. Later, he and his older brother, Danny, began
mapping out sketches together; they used a book called 1,000
Jokes and Stories for reference, and Simon spent hours in the
library, reading the works of famous humorists for tips. He and
Danny started sending material to comedians – anyone they could
think of – and were soon getting work on TV and radio (after
that, they went their separate ways: Danny would become a
Aristocratic eco-warrior who became head of Greenpeace
Lord Melchett was an Old
Lord Melchett Etonian who turned his back
1948-2018 on the establishment to become
one of Britain’s best-known
eco-warriors, said The Times. As executive
director of Greenpeace, he was famously concil-
iatory in his manner: when the big oil companies
realised they needed to address their environ-
mental records in the 1990s, “they found
Melchett’s door open” to them. “I can’t seem
to get them off the phone nowadays,” he said of
Shell, in 1997. But though he was willing to talk
to “the enemy”, he insisted he was still a radical,
and proved it in 1999, when he led boiler-suited
activists in a raid to sabotage a government trial
of GM maize in Norfolk. “A farcical scene Melchett: the radical “Lord Pop” heard the fragrant voice of Lady Olga Maitland
ensued as an enraged farmer chased the protesters
around the field in his tractor, shouting, ‘Melshit, Melshit, you’re
a right democrat you are.’” Melchett was charged with criminal
damage, but – in a surprise verdict – a jury found him not guilty.
Peter Robert Henry Mond, who has died aged 70, was born in
1948, into a family that owed its wealth to chemicals: his great-
grandfather had founded ICI in the 1920s. Brought up in
Norfolk, he was sent to Eton where, aged 13, he became
interested in environmentalism after reading Rachel Carson’s
Silent Spring. Some years later, he became a vegetarian. He read
law at Cambridge, then studied for a master’s in criminology
43
highly successful TV writer). By the time Simon
was in his mid-20s, he was writing sketches for
Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows, alongside
the likes of Mel Brooks, Woody Allen and
Carl Reiner. Yet he was still so shy he only
survived in the “raucous” writers’ room by
whispering his ideas to Reiner, who would
stand up and boom: “Neil’s got it!”
His first couple of plays made little impact, but
then, in 1963, came Barefoot in the Park – a
runaway hit that ran for 1,532 performances.
Over the next 30 years, he wrote “dozens of
plays, the scripts for five hit musicals and more
than 20 screenplays”, said The Washington
Post. His characters tended to be white,
middle-class and Jewish – but they, their
foibles, and their trials and tribulations,
were highly “relatable” to theatre audiences
of all sorts. As for the jokes, they were
every 15 seconds. At his peak, in 1970, he
was reputed to be earning about $45,000 a week. Yet Simon, a
balding, bespectacled figure, lived modestly and steered clear of
showbiz parties. Like many of his characters, he was a loner at
heart and he suffered from periods of depression.
The death of his first wife, Joan, from cancer in 1973, proved a
“turning point”, said The Guardian. As he went through another
four marriages, he began mining his “personal traumas” for his
writing and at last began to win over the critics, with plays
such as 1982’s Brighton Beach Memoirs (which made a star of
Matthew Broderick); in 1991, he won a Pulitzer Prize for Lost in
Yonkers. Yet he remained strangely detached from his success,
said The Times. “It’s as if it is happening to the outside me, that
dumb, shallow introvert called Neil Simon,” he said. “The writer
in me who is so much more knowledgeable and perceptive, the
guy who really deserves the credit, just stands there watching.”
at Keele. When his father died in 1973, he
considered renouncing the title, but decided
instead to join the Labour benches to champion
the causes he had by then espoused, including
squatters’ rights. He was soon made junior
environment minister, in which role he chaired,
in 1976, a committee that produced a favourable
report on Britain’s music festivals: it earned him
the nickname Lord Pop. Later, he was made
minister of state at the Northern Ireland Office.
Yet the lure of direct action proved irresistible: in
1985, he joined a CND protest at a US air force
base at Sculthorpe, Norfolk. He gave a speech,
then started to cut through the perimeter wire. “I
from the back of the crowd,” he recalled. “She
cried: ‘Peter, Peter, don’t do it – it’ll ruin your career.’” He
ignored her pleas, and was convicted of attempted criminal
damage. A year later, he said that he’d had enough of the “lying
game” of politics, and joined Greenpeace, where, among other
things, he campaigned successfully to stop the Sellafield plant in
Cumbria dumping toxic waste at sea. He resigned his executive
position in 2001 and controversially accepted a consultancy role
with the US PR company that had advised Union Carbide after
the Bhopal disaster in India; it also worked with Monsanto.
Meanwhile, he continued to work tirelessly for various commu-
nity and environmental groups, including the Soil Association.
8 September 2018 THE WEEK
GOOD NEWS FOR BUSINESS
Transport and logistics – better connected

New global link for Scottish islands

Inhabitants of Scotland’s northern and western islands will benefit from cheaper and easier international
travel after a deal was struck last week between Loganair and Turkish Airlines. The Scottish airline’s
passengers will be able to buy a single ticket from their home airports – including Stornoway, Benbecula
and Fair Isle – through to international destinations via Edinburgh. Travelling on a single ticket could save
air passenger duty charges of as much as £78 per passenger, says Glasgow’s The Herald. A similar
agreement already connects Loganair with KLM – but as Turkish Airlines flies to more destinations than
any other carrier, the new partnership will broaden the islanders’ options.
“This is a deal with one of the biggest names in international air travel, and we see it as the start of a
partnership that will develop into a full codeshare agreement later in the year,” Loganair’s commercial director, Kay Ryan, says. The plan is part of the
airline’s ‘Better Connected’ programme, intended to improve links for tourists as well as those who live in the Highlands and islands.

Uber’s next challenge: build a better scooter Advertisement feature

World-conquering taxi app Uber has built a business around Brexit challenge: logistics
cars, but its latest innovation heralds a shift in focus towards firms ‘must embrace change’
self-propelled transport. It bought the electric bike-sharing Uncertainty over what Brexit will
service Jump Bikes for more than $100m (£78m) in April and is mean for business is casting a cloud
an investor in one of its rivals, Lime, which offers bike sharing over many sectors of the economy –
in more than 75 US cities. Now the company is looking to build but leaving the EU could be a catalyst
its own scooters, says Bloomberg Businessweek, a surprising for change for the better in
move for a company that doesn’t currently make anything. It is at least one field: logistics.
reportedly “tinkering” with a scooter in a San Francisco facility where it is also investigating self-driving cars Steve Twydell, chief executive
and flying taxis. of 3T Logistics, says it is “almost
Uber has not confirmed details of the report, but said it was committed to ending its dependence on cars. inevitable that Brexit will be a
Chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi told the Financial Times: “During rush hour, it is very inefficient for a catalyst for a massive change over
one-tonne hulk of metal to take one person ten blocks.” Switching to bikes may cost the company in the the next few years in the way that
short term, he added, “but strategically in the long term we think that is exactly where we want to head”. transport works, as well as in the

Car-part makers enjoy UK ‘renaissance’

British car part manufacturers have benefited from £41m in
extra private investment over the past four years, thanks to a
£13m government stimulus scheme, according to the Society of
Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT). The Long Term
Automotive Supply Chain Competitiveness programme, which way that our lives will look and feel
began in 2014 and ended this year, helped 27 British suppliers to in the future”.
compete globally, Production Engineering Solutions reports. He said UK logistics firms should
The programme was managed by the SMMT for the be quick to adopt emerging
Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy. Participating firms improved manufacturing technologies, including AI, which can
processes as well as their research and development skills, says the SMMT, leading to growth in turnover and help mitigate driver shortages by
the opening-up of new markets. As a result, 3,200 jobs were created or safeguarded. Production Engineering planning more efficient delivery
Solutions says the local content of British-made cars has risen by eight percentage points since 2011. The routes, for instance.
percentage of UK-manufactured parts in the average British-made car is now 44%, and Business Secretary
Greg Clark has called the UK’s automotive industry “one of our biggest success stories”. How banks can help
In the shorter term, many
international businesses are
Eddie Stobart advances despite Brexit worries concerned about their ability
to carry out the basic financial
Logistics firm Eddie Stobart, famed for its green-liveried lorries, functions needed to trade with EU
enjoyed a surge in turnover in the first half of this year, despite nations immediately after Brexit.
worries about how a no-deal Brexit might affect the movement Barclays is addressing those fears by
of goods across UK borders. Turnover increased to £359.3m in preparing for all possible outcomes.
January to May this year, a rise of more than 25% compared “Our industry experts are well
with the same period in 2017. The firm recorded pre-tax profits positioned to help clients to
of £1.4m, says Motor Transport, compared to a loss of £6.3m understand the impact Brexit will
last year. The strongest performance came in the e-commerce have on their supply chains, and
sector, in which revenues rose by 118%, from £37m to £80m. Retail rose by 27.5% from £80m to £102m. make the most of opportunities it
Eddie Stobart Logistics’ chief executive, Alex Laffey, says: “We are pleased to have delivered a strong provides, as well as mitigating the
first-half performance as we continue to implement our strategy of becoming a leading provider of risks,” says Richard Smith, head of
end-to-end supply chain solutions. We have won new contracts with blue chip customers, adding an transport and logistics at Barclays
annualised £158m of new business. The recent acquisition of The Pallet Network further adds to the range of Corporate Banking.
services we provide to our customers across the supply chain.” barclayscorporate.com

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 CITY CITY 45
Companies in the news
...and how they were assessed
Amazon: hitting a trillion – at what price?
“There is something fundamentally wrong when thousands of Amazon workers are
on food stamps while their boss, Jeff Bezos, is the richest man in the world,” tweeted
the leftist former US presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders, last month. The timing
was apposite, said Joe Williams in the Washington Examiner. Not only is Bezos worth
$166bn, but his e-commerce giant has just become America’s second “trillion-dollar
company” alongside Apple; shares have doubled in value in a year. Amazon, which Seven days in the
made $2.5bn in the last quarter, counters that the Vermont senator is “spreading Square Mile
misleading information”: it claims that pay rates for over 90% of its “associates” now
top $15 an hour. But the row will be further grist to the mill of President Trump and Renewed turmoil in Argentina and
other critics as they step up their attacks on the online giants amid threats of antitrust Turkey – both trying to contain currency
crises – prompted fears of a wider sell-
break-ups. Sanders has not made the case for what Amazon’s warehouse wages “should”
off across emerging markets. Argentina
be, said Lex in the FT. Yet “the rise of trillion-dollar companies and the collapse of raised interest rates to 60%, the world’s
unions” have certainly undermined “the classic labour demand model”. Sanders may be highest rate, in an effort to prevent the
“grandstanding”, but the heat is on Amazon. peso falling further. Contagion worries
sent stocks and currencies lower in
Funding Circle: heading for the Square Mile Indonesia, South Africa, Poland and
Britain’s maturing “fintech” sector looks to have created another “unicorn”, said Mexico. The Indonesian rupiah sank
Hasan Chowdhury in The Daily Telegraph. Funding Circle, the peer-to-peer lender close to its weakest level since the
started by a group of Oxford graduates in 2010, is heading for the market in a planned 1997 Asia crisis. Donald Trump, the
US president, ratcheted up trade war
£300m listing that could value it at about £2bn. The online platform of the company,
anxieties by threatening to pull out of
which is still loss-making, links borrowers with savers looking to make returns of up the WTO and spurning a deal with the
to 6.5%. It was launched to plug a hole in small business funding and reckons it is “a EU that would end import tariffs on cars.
long way” from realising its full potential: “We have £2.5bn of loans under management,
Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit
but actually the addressable market in the UK, US, Germany and the Netherlands is negotiator, said he “strongly opposed”
£470bn,” said co-founder and CEO Samir Desai. It has been held up as a potential key parts of the Chequers trade proposal
“bank killer”, with savers looking for alternatives to established high street lenders, said and urged Britain to adopt a Canada-
Harry Wilson in The Times. But the sector is not without its risks. Indeed, two of its US style deal favoured by Brexiteers. The
peers, LendingClub and OnDeck, have both “hit hard times”, said Alex Brummer in the former Bank of England governor
Daily Mail. Funding Circle started “in the depths of recession” and has built up its loan Mervyn King called the Government’s
book during a recovery. “What happens when the economy tanks again is less clear.” Brexit preparations “incompetent”,
saying that plans to stockpile food
TSB: computer says go and medicines “beggared belief”.
“Somewhat unbelievably, TSB is still struggling with its IT,” said Aimee Donnellan The DIY chain Homebase was saved
on Reuters Breakingviews. The bank, which was spun out of Lloyds and bought by the from administration after creditors
approved a restructure that will force the
Spanish outfit Sabadell in 2015, hit the deadlines in April when its five million customers closure of 42 stores. Royal Mail made its
suffered chaos after it botched an upgrade to a new technology platform. After presiding biggest acquisition since floating in
over “another outage” last weekend, CEO Paul Pester has now resigned. His departure 2013, buying the Canadian parcel
(albeit sweetened by £1.2m in pay and benefits, and a £480,000 bonus) “should rattle” company Dicom for £213m. The Chinese
other bosses who, until now, “have survived cyberattacks and IT failures with few dents parent of dating app Grindr announced
to their careers”. Under new rules, bank bosses “theoretically face jail time for crimes plans to list the company. Richard Liu,
committed by their staff”. IT systems with hidden weaknesses “pose an even murkier the founder of the Chinese e-commerce
threat” and can now cost CEOs their jobs. “Those already wary about accepting senior giant JD.com, was arrested in the US on
banking positions” have “another reason” to give the sector a wide berth. a rape allegation and later released.

Whitbread/Coca-Cola: Coke stakes its future on Costa Coffee

“Say hello to Costa-Cola,” said James Moore
in The Independent. Whitbread shareholders
are certainly toasting the match. Shares in the
former brewing group jumped 14% on news
that Coca-Cola has snapped up its coffee shop
chain, Costa, for a “fizzy” £3.9bn, “rating the
business more highly than even rival
Starbucks”. The deal is a coup for Whitbread
boss Alison Brittain – “a wisecracking
northerner” who has been “chivvied” by
activist investor Elliott Advisors to sell or float
the coffee chain, said Lex in the Financial
Times. She reportedly struck the deal directly
with Coke boss James Quincey after meeting
him in May at a “CEO summit” in Seattle – Sold for a “fizzy” £3.9bn
ironically the home of Starbucks.
“Wake up and smell the froth,” said Alistair Osborne in The
Times. No question, Coke is shelling out “a few beans above
City expectations” for Costa: “£1.4bn to be precise” – a steepish
premium for 2,400 UK shops and 1,400 more
globally. Still, Coke reckons it is buying “a
scalable coffee platform with critical know-
how and expertise in a fast-growing, on-trend
category”. And analysts tend to agree, said the
FT. The cost of Costa is “small in the context
of Coke’s $191bn market capitalisation”, but
one banker has dubbed this deal “the biggest
strategic shift” in the Atlanta-based company’s
history as it accelerates efforts to “diversify”
beyond increasingly shunned sugary drinks.
As ever, the net loser is Britain, said
Alex Brummer in the Daily Mail. Whitbread
has “been bullied by activist investors into
abandoning the only global challenger to
Starbucks” – leaving it with only one big asset: Premier Inn.
Brittain has vowed that Whitbread won’t be stripped of its own
276-year-old name on her watch. Really? Shorn of Costa, “it will
be a sitting duck for takeover”.

8 September 2018 THE WEEK

 Talking points
Issue of the week: banking on Carney
The Bank of England governor’s offer to stay on to “smooth” Brexit might soothe markets, but opponents allege a stitch-up
All those financial worthies who
have been “sharpening their CVs and
interview techniques” ahead of this
autumn’s contest to become the next
governor of the Bank of England “can
relax”, said Alex Brummer in the Daily
Mail. The incumbent, Mark Carney, has
informed MPs on the Treasury Select
Committee that “he is game to stay at
Threadneedle Street to see through the
Brexit wobbles”. Carney was due to
depart in June next year after six years
in the job, but is now expected to extend
his stay until the second half of 2020.
The final decision still rests with
Downing Street, but government sources
suggest that Theresa May has endorsed Carney (right) and Hammond: “cosy”
the plan – which was apparently hatched
with the Chancellor, Philip Hammond, before the summer break.
Either way, Carney has the Government “over a barrel”. Were
they to reject his “public offer” now, “it would be a new excuse
for the gnomes of Zurich to sell sterling”.
Carney’s comments put an end to a week of speculation after
the London Evening Standard – which is edited by the former
chancellor, George Osborne, who appointed Carney in 2013 –
ran an article stating that the Treasury had asked him to stay. It
was a fine example, said Alistair Osborne in The Times, of “how
not to run an appointment process”. There is a reason the BoE
CITY 47
governor serves a fixed term – “and
it’s not just to bring certainty to the
markets”. It “drives home key messages,
central to public trust” in the institution.
“First, that the Bank is bigger than the
person running it. Second, that it really
is independent. Third, that the hiring
process is transparent. Fourth, that
the governor’s tenure is not dependent
on some cosy relationship with the
chancellor of the day.” All that has now
been put at risk. You don’t have to be
“a loon Brexiteer” to get “the overriding
impression” of “a stitch-up between pro-
Remain chancellors (past and present)
and a pro-Remain governor”.
Carney “has a proven record of coping
well with a crisis”, and continuity at the Bank would certainly
“be a comfort to investors facing a host of Brexit-related
uncertainties”, said Swaha Pattanaik on Reuters Breakingviews.
But this ad hoc extension sends “a bad signal in the long run”.
The stakes are currently too high for that to matter: ultimately,
pragmatic considerations should hold sway, said Nils Pratley
in The Guardian. A departure next June “suddenly looks like
rotten planning” if a no-deal Brexit is on the cards. It is con-
ceivable that we could face “a Greek-style episode” of extended
deadlines and ultimatums that lasts beyond next March. “Why
insert a new governor into a potential mess if you don’t have to?”

Making money: what the experts think Brexit bulls

● Booze to weed
Investing in “sin” is
“in the throes of a
major structural shift”,
said Garry White in
The Daily Telegraph.
Booze companies are
currently rushing to
get into cannabis:
Constellation Brands,
the US group behind
Corona beer, is Cannabis: “the potential market is huge” “significantly” this year
upping its investment
in the Canadian medicinal cannabis
producer Canopy to 38%, in a $4bn deal.
And now others are following suit. Drinks
giant Diageo is reportedly in talks with at
least three Canadian cannabis producers
ahead of full legalisation in the country
in October. Anheuser-Busch InBev,
Pernod Ricard and even Coca-Cola are
all believed to be trying to find a way
into the fledgling “drinkable cannabis”
market. “These moves appear wise.”
Even when cannabis use is permitted
for medical purposes alone, it has been
shown “to have a significant impact on
sales of beer and spirits”.
● Pot of gold?
The potential market for cannabis is huge:
RBC Capital Markets estimates that legal
sales of cannabis in the US could hit $47bn predicts that will fall to 1% by year-end.
in ten years, implying compound annual
growth of 17%. But US banks have been
hesitant in funding the industry because
of political uncertainty.
That has limited
opportunities for
ordinary punters. The
only listed exchange-
traded fund (ETF)
specifically devoted to
marijuana – ETFMG’s
“Alternative Harvest”
fund – has a volatile
history. It fell
before jumping 30% in
the past month. This industry has “great
potential”, but any investment is “highly
speculative”. Perhaps the best way to play
the trend is via the brewers themselves.
● House price fall
Anyone in Britain with big interests in
residential property may be forgiven
the urge to lose themselves in cannabis.
According to Nationwide, house prices
recorded their biggest monthly fall for six
years in August, said Rupert Jones in The
Guardian – lopping more than £2,200 off
the typical price tag. The decline is “likely
to have been driven by falling prices in
London”, which are now falling at their
fastest rate since the financial crisis. Across
the country, the annual rate of house price
growth is now 2%. But Nationwide
However, estate agents report that the
outlook in northern cities like Manchester
and Liverpool remains “positive”.
When Aston Martin announced plans
to float last week, CEO Andy Palmer
shrugged off concerns about Brexit
damaging the car industry. Here are
some other captains of industry who
are “sanguine about the future”, says
Richard Partington in The Observer:
Sir James Dyson The billionaire
inventor of vacuum cleaners, fans and
hairdryers has long argued that Britain
would benefit from an independent
trade policy. Dyson recently earmarked
£200m to expand his research campus
in Britain, to test electric cars.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe The founder of
chemicals firm Ineos (and currently
Britain’s richest person, with a
£21bn fortune) is reportedly moving to
Monaco for tax reasons, but believes
Britain would thrive outside the EU.
“Never forget that we have a decent
set of cards,” he has declared.
Dame Helena Morrissey The head of
personal investing at Legal & General is
one of the City’s most prominent Brexit
supporters. She has condemned the
EU’s “top-down, command-and-control,
one-size-fits-all approach to business
and politics”.
Lord Simon Wolfson The chief
executive of the Next clothing chain
reckons that leaving the EU could spark
an “economic renaissance” for Britain
– provided the economy isn’t whacked
by a botched deal.

8 September 2018 THE WEEK

48 CITY Commentators
A decade on from the fall of Lehman Brothers and the start of
the global financial crisis, have we learnt anything to prevent a City profile
Have we learnt rerun, asks Gillian Tett. The figures don’t inspire confidence.
Between 2007 and 2017, the ratio of global debt to GDP jumped Mark Read
the lessons from 179% to 217%, according to the Bank for International
Settlements. And China’s debt numbers are especially “worrying”:
“Sir Martin Sorrell used to
demand £70m a year for

of 2008? gross public and private debt has doubled in the past decade to
running WPP.” The new
man in charge of the
about 300% of GDP, surpassing “even Japan’s wild 1980s debt world’s largest advertising
Gillian Tett binge”. Yet China has “powerful strengths”, including “fat conglomerate, Mark Read,
currency reserves” and a government able to fight any crisis comes at “a tenth of the
Financial Times “without being distracted by voters”. Its obsession with history price”, said Alistair Osborne
also stands it in good stead: officials have examined other people’s in The Times: the most he’ll
get if he hits all his targets
disasters, in order to avoid them. But has China learnt enough to
is a comparatively modest
avoid the fate of Japan in 1997 or America a decade ago? “That £7m. Truly, “a new era is
trillion-dollar question will not be answered for several years.” under way”. Read, 51, is
Yet if Beijing does succumb to its own boom and bust, the impli- actually an old hand
cations for the global economy could be devastating. “Never who first joined WPP as a
before have those financial history books mattered quite so much.” graduate in 1989 when he
wrote to Sorrell asking for
Although fears about trade wars have occasionally weighed a job. Latterly, he ran the
on stocks since President Trump announced tariffs on steel and group’s Wunderman digital
Trump’s trade aluminium in February, US stock markets have continued to
set new records, says Peter Eavis. Yet the possibility of “a sharp
agency before being “thrust
into the hot seat”, as joint

wars are escalation” of conflict with China should shake the complacent
view that Trump’s threats are mostly “negotiating tactics”. The
COO with Andrew Scott in
April, when Sir Martin quit

starting to bite president is reportedly keen to impose tariffs on $200bn of

“amid all those prostitute
allegations he denies”. The
Chinese products, adding to those already placed on $50bn of duo have since steadied the
Peter Eavis goods. “This may be the point at which investors have to start ship: “of the eight pitches
taking Trump’s trade wars much more seriously.” If a “stepped- WPP has contested since,
The New York Times up conflict” begins hitting the great corporate “earnings boom” it has won six”.
that has driven stocks, the S&P 500 is “at risk of a steep decline”.
Investors may “comfort themselves” that Trump won’t risk a
market rout ahead of the autumn’s midterm elections. “After all,
he likes to trumpet the stock market’s nearly 30% ascent under
his administration”, and last week predicted “more good news”
on Twitter. Investors now have to decide whether the prospect of
“a much nastier fight with China fits into that bullish narrative”.

The “Big Six” energy firms are set to shrink to only five, says The
Observer: the Competition and Markets Authority has given the
An existential green light to a merger between Npower and SSE. This marks a
U-turn on its view four months ago that consolidation “would
fight in the substantially cut competition and drive up household bills”. So
what changed? The “logical conclusion” is that lobbying by the
energy market firms won the day. But a “more generous interpretation” is that
Read, like Sorrell, was
the big suppliers are already “losing hundreds of thousands more
Editorial customers to keenly priced rivals”. Npower and SSE have pitched educated at Cambridge and
their merger as “good news for householders”, arguing that the Harvard, but he cuts rather a
The Observer different figure to his mentor,
new firm – which will rival British Gas for size – “will be more
who has since launched a
efficient and agile”. But customers can forget about a price competitor company, said
“bonanza”. This merger is “an existential reaction” to a market Kate Holton on Reuters.
that is now “a hostile environment for the Big Six”, and which is Colleagues describe him
likely to get worse for them in December when the Government’s as “a good listener and
new price cap cuts margins. Npower and SSE have cleared the delegator, with no obvious
competition hurdle, but they have “bigger challenges” ahead. ego”. Still, he can be
“exacting”, said The Wall
Rumours are swirling that Ford is about to cease production Street Journal. “A wine
connoisseur, he is known
of its Mondeo range as part of a round of cost-saving measures,
The car that says Paul Hudson. Cue an outpouring of nostalgia. Whether
remembered fondly as a family car, or “barely remembered as a
for bringing his own bottle
to social events in case the

defined a minicab home after a night out”, it’s safe to say that the Mondeo
wine being served isn’t up
to scratch.” Read himself
has featured in the life of nearly every Briton. The model entered
generation into political folklore: “Mondeo man” came to symbolise the type
claims to have “no hobbies”.
“Family and work are my
of ambitious, company car-driving voter that New Labour needed interests,” he says, “in that
Paul Hudson to sweep to power in 1997. But we tend to forget what “a breath order.” He apparently has
of fresh air” it once was. For car buffs, it “democratised ride no plans to break up the
The Daily Telegraph group. But his big challenge
and handling” – giving the sort of “driving pleasure” that was
now, said Bloomberg, is to
“previously the preserve of expensive sports cars”. Latterly, step beyond the founder’s
sales have been squeezed “by a shift in the company car market shadow. He must prove that
towards premium brands” and the “relentless growth of leasing”. he has a vision for WPP
Why opt for a Ford when you can impress the neighbours with bold enough to set him
an expensive BMW 3 Series or an Audi A4? The Mondeo helped “apart from Sorrell”.
“define a generation”. But it’s time to leave it in the past.

THE WEEK 8 September 2018

A different
The perspective.
test of time

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neptune.com/adifferentperspective
 Shares CITY 51

Who’s tipping what

The week’s best shares
Brooks Macdonald Group
The Daily Telegraph
The wealth manager has
high margins, good growth
prospects and a modest
valuation. It’s expanding its
network of branches and
should reap the benefits of
“operational gearing” as
capex falls. Buy. £19.93.
Directors’ dealings
Circle Property Volex Clarkson
The Mail on Sunday The Daily Telegraph
3,500
Circle develops undervalued This power cord and cable
office space in the regions. Its assembly specialist boasts a
portfolio of 17 properties has “skilled and global workforce,
risen 23% in value year-on- blue-chip customers” and a Director and wife
3,000 sell 72,941
year, while income is up 21%. “reputation for quality”. A
Demand is fuelling a pipeline successful turnaround puts
of opportunities and strong it on a “path to profitable
growth is expected. Buy. 202p. growth”. Buy. 82.6p. 2,500

Bunzl Restaurant Group Whitbread

The Times Investors Chronicle Investors Chronicle Apr May Jun Jul Aug
This producer of healthcare, As part of an “impressive The sale of Costa Coffee

SOURCE: INVESTORS CHRONICLE

industrial and office essentials
is proving resilient despite
the threat from Amazon. It
combines acquisitions with
organic growth and is a
consistent dividend payer.
Buy. £23.25.
strategic process”, the Frankie
& Benny’s owner has bought
Food & Fuel – a portfolio of
11 premium leasehold London
pubs. Sales are up 2.4%
thanks to a World Cup boost.
Buy. 282p.
to Coca-Cola represents a Despite rising optimism at
the shipping services firm,
16.4-times premium to executive director Peter Anker
Costa’s 2018 cash profits. and his wife have sold £2m’s
A “significant majority” worth of shares. This follows a
of the proceeds will be 17,500-share disposal by them
returned to shareholders. in July, which was put down to
Buy. £40.20. “personal reasons”.

…and some to hold, avoid or sell Form guide

Card Factory
The Daily Telegraph
The greetings card retailer
has shaved 4% off analysts’
profit forecasts, blaming
bad weather, weak consumer
confidence and margin
pressure. Cash-flow cover for
the fat yield is getting thinner.
Sell. 185.8p.
Centrica
Investors Chronicle
The owner of British Gas
has been fined by Ofgem for
exit fees and overcharging.
Although the impact is
“unlikely to be meaningful”,
this will not help stem the
tide of departing customers.
Sell. 143p.
Hunting
The Times
Hunting makes highly
specialised products for the
oilfield, such as shale guns and
steel pipe threading. Costs
have been cut and efficiencies
improved. Shares have risen
strongly with the oil price
recovery. Hold. 849p.
Petrofac
The Times
Petrofac builds, operates and
maintains oil and gas refineries
in India and the Middle East.
Shares, which crashed on
a SFO investigation, have
recovered, but there is
uncertainty over its ability
to grow. Avoid. 651.75p.
The Gym Group Shares tipped 12 weeks ago
The Mail on Sunday Best tip
The 147-strong budget gym Strix Group
group is in “fantastic shape” The Daily Telegraph
as turnover rises 36%, profits up 15.08% to 164.8p
are up 8% and membership
41% in half-year results. Worst tip
Shares have soared, but there’s Oxford Biomedica
The Sunday Times
still potential. Hold. 334p.
down 10.37% to 862.08p
WH Smith
The Times
Some 60% of the retailer’s Market view
profits are driven by travel “The biggest risk to the UK...
stores that operate in train is that this issue isn’t going
stations and airports. The 610 to go away.”
high street stores are profitable Former BoE governor
Mervyn King on fears that
and cash-generative, but have
Brexit uncertainty could
struggled to grow sales. drag on for years. Quoted
Shares are “not compelling”. on BBC News online
Hold. £20.70.

Market summary
Key numbers
Key numbers for investors
investors Best
Best and
and worst performing shares
shares Following the Footsie
4 Sep 2018 Week before Change (%) WEEK’S CHANGE, FTSE 100 STOCKS 7,900
FTSE 100 7457.86 7617.22 –2.09% RISES Price % change
7,800
FTSE All-share UK 4113.26 4194.24 –1.93% Whitbread 4700.00 +17.00
Dow Jones 25869.64 26052.18 –0.70% Bunzl 2415.00 +3.87 7,700

NASDAQ 8062.64 8013.07 0.62% Micro Focus Intl. 1316.00 +2.65 7,600
Nikkei 225 22696.90 22813.47 –0.51% London Stock Ex.Grp. 4681.00 +1.83
7,500
Hang Seng 27973.34 28351.62 –1.33% Centrica 143.20 +0.88
Gold 1200.05 1197.70 0.20% FALLS 7,400
Brent Crude Oil 78.27 75.92 3.10% Sage Group 590.80 –9.28 7,300
DIVIDEND YIELD (FTSE 100) 3.99% 3.91% Fresnillo 870.40 –9.13 7,200
UK 10-year gilts yield 1.28 1.31 WPP 1196.50 –8.03
US 10-year Treasuries 2.90 2.87 Antofagasta 794.40 –6.25 7,100

UK ECONOMIC DATA Vodafone Group 164.30 –6.22 7,000

Latest CPI (yoy) 2.5% (Jul) 2.4% (Jun)
BEST AND WORST UK STOCKS OVERALL 6,900
Latest RPI (yoy) 3.2% (Jul) 3.4% (Jun)
Toople 0.65 +225.00 Apr May Jun Jul Aug
Halifax house price (yoy) +3.3% (Jul) +1.8% (Jun)
Footasylum 38.25 –54.73
£1 STERLING $1.282 E1.108 ¥142.889 Source: Datastream (not adjusted for dividends). Prices on 4 Sep (pm) 6-month movement in the FTSE 100 index

8 September 2018 THE WEEK

52 The last word

My friend Philip Larkin

Andrew Motion’s 1993 Whitbread Book Award-winning biography of the celebrated – but secretive – poet was highly praised,
but it had one crucial omission: Motion’s own memories of his subject, who was a colleague and a friend

When I was writing the official and a glimpse of red socks

biography of Philip Larkin 25 (surprisingly informal) – and
years ago, I gave no description the nervousness I felt at being
of the friendship I had with him in his presence – rendered me
during the last nine years of his near speechless. Larkin was
life. I told myself I was present 54 – a year younger than my
everywhere in the book anyway father but in appearance and
– as the shaper-interpreter- manner much older-looking.
selector of the material I had I was 23 and suddenly as
collected, and the supplier of uncertain as I had been as
occasional quotations and a schoolboy.
opinions that derived from my
conversations with Larkin. I feel It was not an auspicious start,
differently now. I feel that I can but then Larkin took a large
do as I expected my original swig from his beer glass, only
interviewees to do, and deliver to find most of it going down
my memories of Larkin before his throat the wrong way.
I forget them or die. This meant that instead of
standing disabled by
Before we met, I had no clear admiration, I was suddenly
idea of what his own life might pounding him on the back.
be like, of course. Neither, He put down his glass and
apparently, did anybody else; took off his glasses to wipe
Larkin himself made sure of his eyes; there was a sore
that. Although his poems, a few patch of skin either side of
interviews and the dust jackets his nose. It made him seem
of his books revealed that he almost pitifully unshelled. I
had been born in Coventry, Larkin: “I find a glass of port at breakfast is very comforting” thought he must look like this
read English at Oxford, and when he was asleep.
since then had worked as a librarian, he had always kept
himself to himself. This was part of his appeal, of course, since When he recovered we began talking more easily. Now there was
it shrouded what might be – for all that anyone knew – a dull Hull university chat, Oxford chat (it struck me that he was a bit
existence in veils of mystery. Enough mystery, at any rate, to of a snob about Oxford, and liked that I’d been a student there),
make me jump at the chance to work at the University of Hull, poetry chat (he approved of my having written my thesis about
where Larkin had run the Brynmor Jones Library since 1955, Edward Thomas), and a bit of life chat: I was alone in Hull,
when I completed my graduate seeing my first wife, Joanna, on
work at Oxford in 1976 and alternate weekends. He seemed
saw a job advertised there. “For the first few months, despite my spending to approve of that too, and said
I knew no one in the whole of a certain amount of time lingering in his he had a similar arrangement
Yorkshire, let alone Hull itself, “with Monica”, whose name
and I would be spending more
library, Larkin remained as elusive as any yeti” I recognised as the dedicatee
time teaching 19th century prose of The Less Deceived. At some
than 20th century poetry. But never mind: there was a greater point he asked me what my father did. “He’s a brewer,” I told
chance that I’d meet Larkin in Hull than anywhere else. I applied, him. His face lit up, as though this proved I came from stock that
was offered a position as a lecturer and happily accepted. produced something – alcohol – that people really wanted, rather
than something – poetry – they could take or leave.
As soon as I arrived in Hull, my new colleagues told me that I
should now consider myself one of the more deceived. Larkin I ended this encounter assuming we would next see each other
really was a hermit. He disliked virtually everyone who worked when we happened to coincide in the staff bar – but another sort
for the university, and especially those in my department, because of meeting took place almost immediately. The Hull Daily Mail
he thought we talked nonsense about poetry (by which he meant decided to launch a two-part poetry competition (one part for
structuralism). And they weren’t exaggerating. For the first few children, one for adults), and invited us to be the judges. Despite
months, despite my spending a certain amount of time lingering Larkin’s reluctance to have anything to do with “poetry
in his library, he remained as elusive as any yeti. Then my head business”, he said yes – perhaps feeling that he had now lived
of department, John Chapple, took pity on me and offered to in Hull for so long, it would be churlish to decline. I expected
introduce me to him one lunchtime in the university staff bar. him to suggest we did the work in his office in the library. Instead,
he invited me round to his home at 105 Newland Park. I forget
Over the years I’d seen plenty of photographs of Larkin, and had the exact date – some time in December 1976 – but not my first
a clear picture of him in my mind: owl-faced, “death-suited” and impressions of his house. It was a large box built of pale local
© CAMERA PRESS/ROGERS/RBO

balding. And when I first clapped eyes on him he was all these
things, but much taller and bulkier than I expected – to the extent
that when we shook hands (his skin was rather moist) he seemed
to loom over me like a shadow, cupping one ear with his free
hand to compensate for his deafness. The effect, combined with
a watch-chain stretched across his waistcoat (surprisingly formal)
brick, with an ugly garage door dominating the view of the front,
and a severely pollarded tree standing guard. As I parked outside,
I found it hard to believe the place had been chosen as home by
someone whose poems showed that he cared a great deal about
beauty of various kinds. Until I reminded myself how often the
same poems decided that beauty – like the chance of a happier

THE WEEK 8 September 2018

 The last word
life – was for complicated reasons generally
not available to the “I” that created them.
The Larkin that opened the door that evening
was the same and not the same man that I
had seen a few days before. Still taller and
heavier than I expected, still imposing, but
younger-looking, and far more relaxed: he
had his jacket off, his top button undone
and a big glass of white wine in one hand.
With the other, making a flipper-ish gesture
that I came to associate strongly with him, he
ushered me left through the hall, past stairs at
the foot of which hung a plate inscribed with
the words “Prepare to meet thy God”.
Then we were in his sitting room. Soft
side-lights and a standard lamp by a
G Plan chair in the corner – the chair where he Motion: with the Larkin statue in Hull was hardly a surprise; Larkin had seldom
used to sit in the evenings, writing poems on a
board he rested across its wooden arms. Dark green William
Morris wallpaper. Paler green fitted carpet. Bookshelves either
side of a burbling gas fire. A pretty watercolour on the wall above
the sofa – a Rowlandson, it turned out, of cows lying in the shade
of a small copse. Long curtains, also in a Morris pattern, shielding thought impossible but how/ And where and when I shall myself
French windows and the garden beyond. Much later, when I
knew that Larkin’s love-talk with Monica involved a good many
references to rabbits, I realised that he had wanted to make the
room feel like a burrow. Or at least, as he said to me once, “like
a woodland glade”.
We got through the judging pretty quickly, with Larkin rising to
his feet at several points to fill our glasses, and at one to announce constantly replenishing its capacity to be so. I saw it in him
(giving a little caper) that the
entries proved his theory that
poetry by children was generally “For Larkin death was a close and
better than poetry by adults, continual presence: horrific, and constantly politeness, sometimes as a rather
and that he should have entered
the competition himself. How
replenishing its capacity to be so”
about: “I put my luncheon in the
fridge/ And go and look at Humber Bridge”? By the end of the
evening, I thought there was a good chance Larkin and I might
become friends, and for the remainder of what turned out to be
my three years in Hull, we met at regular-irregular intervals.
A lot of our talk was about trivial and now forgotten university
business. A lot was about poetry – not so much discussions of
theory and practice, but enthusiastic agreements about people we
admired. Sometimes he talked a little about the complications of
his love-lives with Monica and with Maeve Brennan, a colleague
who was also a girlfriend, and I told him something of my own
circumstances. “Are you drinking enough?” he asked me gently
on one occasion. “I find a glass of port at breakfast is very
comforting.” “Probably not enough,” I told him – slightly warily.
It was clear Larkin was drinking a great deal; his skin was sweaty
and waxy-looking, and he often complained about his difficulty
keeping his weight down, and of the embarrassment (as he felt it)
of having to buy his clothes at High and Mighty as a result.
I soon discovered that to an unusual degree Larkin divided his
life into discrete compartments: Hull friends; London friends
(Kingsley Amis, his closest male friend since university, never
came to Hull in all the 30 years that Larkin lived there); Oxford
friends. Given all this, I felt sure there must be walks of Larkin’s He told me he did not expect to recover, speaking quite steadily,
life that I knew nothing about. Furthermore, we both realised
there were irreconcilable differences between us. I was a member
of the Labour Party, enjoyed travelling abroad and wanted to
have a family one day. He “adored” Mrs Thatcher, shrank from
the idea of “abroad” and told me gleefully that he sometimes
ended his letters to Amis not with “love” or some such endear-
ment, but with “F*** off Oxfam”. Early in our friendship, we
silently agreed to avoid all such subjects, and concentrate instead
on the things we had in common. So it was a friendship with
53
holes. And not only that. Although I knew
Larkin when he published his collected prose
pieces in Required Writing in 1983, I barely
knew him as a “practising poet”. High
Windows had appeared two years before
I moved to Hull, and every time I asked him
whether he had anything on the stocks, he’d
sigh and shake his head, then give me a look
that made me feel that if I myself ever
admitted to writing anything, he’d consider
it extravagant. “I’m a chicken with no egg to
lay,” he said. “It’s a sorrow, but not a crushing
sorrow. Rather like going bald.”
Except once. Soon after his mother’s death
in 1977, he said he’d found a way to finish
a poem that had been stalled for years. It was
his bleak late masterpiece, Aubade. Its subject
taken his eyes off death, the “black-sailed
familiar”, since he began writing as a boy. But the tone in this
poem was plainer than any he had used before: “In time the
curtain-edges will grow light./ Till then I see what’s really always
there:/ Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,/ Making all
die.” When we first met after its publication, I told him that it had
come close to spoiling my Christmas. He gave a rueful laugh and
said, “Well, yes, but it’s true.”
For most people, the sense of impending death exists as a dimly
remembered certainty, which occasionally lurches into full view.
For Larkin it was a close and continual presence: horrific, and
continually, sometimes as naked
dread, sometimes as a steady
melancholy underlying surface
desperate clinging to distractions
(the “toad work”, or “people
or drink”); sometimes as a
distracting enthusiasm for life’s pleasures. Listening to jazz.
Watching cricket or rugby on the television – the sound turned up
very loud so that he could hear, and his pot plant fairly bouncing
around on top of the set. When I think of him in this vein, I
remember him once snatching from my mantelpiece a bookmark
on which was inscribed Logan Pearsall Smith’s remark, “People
say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading”; he threw it down
in anger, protesting that nothing is more important than life.
By the time he was diagnosed with the oesophageal cancer
that killed him, I had left Hull and moved back to Oxford.
When we spoke on the telephone during this time, he tried to
sound optimistic. But it was clear that he was petrified. Furnace
fear. Once he was able to have visitors, I went with my second
wife, Jan Dalley, to visit him in the Nuffield Hospital in Hull.
Jan and I sat either side of his bed, on which he lay wearing
casual clothes beneath a dressing gown. He was shockingly
thin, but valiantly cheerful. We made the usual hospital small
talk. We watched tennis on his television – Wimbledon was on,
and Boris Becker was playing. “He looks just like young Auden,”
Larkin said approvingly. When the match ended, we walked arm
in arm round the garden behind the nursing home, bending our
heads as we passed under the low branches of the cherry trees.
without a hint of melodrama. He reminded me of my duties as
his literary executor and assured me that everything would be
straightforward. He stood framed in the glass window of the
door to his room when we left, and rather than waving us
goodbye, lifted his hand in a solemn salute, palm outwards.
The new edition of Philip Larkin: A Writer’s Life by
Andrew Motion is published by Faber & Faber at £18.99
© 2018, Andrew Motion.
8 September 2018 THE WEEK
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