It’s Hartlepool, not Newcastle!
Who’s
a good
boy?
A day in the
life of a pet
groomer
 G2
‘A man without shame’:
PM savaged over parties
Starmer berates Johnson
as senior Tory MPs join
calls for him to resign
Heather Stewart
Aubrey Allegretti
Keir Starmer called the prime min-
ister “a man without shame” during
furious exchanges in parliament
yesterday as MPs prepared to vote
on whether Boris Johnson should
be investigated for lying about the
Partygate scandal.
Addressing MPs for the first time
since receiving a fixed-penalty notice
for attending a party thrown for his
birthday in June 2020, Johnson spoke
of his humility but said that it had not
occurred to him that the gathering
was a breach of Covid rules.
In a fierce response, Starmer
accused the prime minister of dis-
honesty and said he didn’t “respect
the sacrifice of the British public”.
The senior Tory MP Mark Harper
became the latest backbencher to call
for Johnson to go, after hearing his
apology, saying: “I no longer think
he is worthy of the great office that
he holds.”
MPs will vote tomorrow on a
Labour motion that would trigger an
investigation by the House of Com-
mons privileges committee into
whether Johnson misled parliament
over a string of lockdown-busting
parties in Downing Street.
Starmer urged Tory MPs to seize
the opportunity to get rid of John-
son and “bring decency, honesty and
integrity back into our politics”.
In his statement to parliament,
Johnson insisted he had broken the
rules unwittingly.
“It did not occur to me then or
subsequently that a gathering in the
cabinet room, just before a vital meet-
ing on Covid strategy, could amount
to a breach of the rules. That was my
mistake and I apologise for it unre-
servedly,” he said.
Johnson added that the “hurt and
anger” prompted by the row had
given him “an even greater sense of
•••
obligation to deliver on the priorities
Canoe drama in accent spat
▲ Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak
during a torrid session in the
House of Commons yesterday
PHOTOGRAPH: PIXEL8000
‘I no longer think
[Boris Johnson] is
worthy of the great
office that he holds’
Mark Harper
Conservative MP
 News
of the British people, and to respond
in the best traditions of our coun-
try to Putin’s barbaric onslaught on
Ukraine”.
He stressed that he had been dis-
cussing the Ukraine conflict today
on a call with fellow world leaders,
including presidents Joe Biden and
Emmanuel Macron and the German
chancellor, Olaf Scholz.
But Starmer called the apology
“mealy-mouthed” and accused
Johnson of being “dishonest”. When
asked by the Speaker to withdraw
that as unparliamentary language,
Starmer said: “The prime minister
knows what he is.”
Harper also rejected Johnson’s
apology, saying: “I regret to say that
we have a PM who broke the laws
that he told the country to follow,
hasn’t been straight about it, and is
now going to ask the decent men and
women on these benches to defend
what I think is indefensible.”
Harper subsequently tweeted that
he had already sent a letter of no con-
fidence in Johnson to the chair of the
1922 Committee, Sir Graham Brady.
Yesterday evening Craig Whit-
taker, a Tory MP who has previously
called for Johnson to resign, urged
the prime minister to refer
4 
himself to the privileges
Wednesday
20 April 2022
£2.50
From £1.85 for subscribers
Russians
overrun
city in
Donbas
Lorenzo Tondo and
Luke Harding Kyiv
Isobel Koshiw Dnipro
Russia’s large-scale offensive to seize
the Donbas region was under way
yesterday when troops overran the
city of Kreminna in eastern Ukraine
and began advancing towards the
strategic Ukrainian military hub of
Kramatorsk.
The regional governor said
Ukrainian soldiers had abandoned
Kreminna, a city of more than 18,000
people, after it came under ferocious
Russian attack. The assault took place
“from all sides”, he said. It is the first
victory for Moscow since its battle for
the Donbas began on Monday.
“Kreminna is under the control
of the ‘Orcs’ [Russians]. They have
entered the city,” Serhiy Haidai, the
governor of the Luhansk region,
told a briefing. “Our defenders had
to withdraw. They have entrenched
themselves in new positions and con-
tinue to fight the Russian army.”
Haidai said it was “impossible” to
know how many civilians had been
killed: “We have official statistics –
about 200 dead – but in reality there
are many more.” He said that “street
fighting” was taking place, with four
people shot by Russians as they tried
to escape by car.
The city had already been pulver-
ised by extensive Russian shelling.
It is located close to territory held
by pro-Moscow separa- 13 
tists. Russian forces are
Self-drive cars
Watching films
to be allowed
Changes to rules will
allow drivers to stream
movies, but mobile
phone use still banned
News Page 7 
 ••• The Guardian Wednesday 20 April 2022

Inside 20/4/22 News

Four sections
every day

‘A truly
 Hayden Wood, chief executive of
News and Sport Bulb Energy, apologised for the ‘way
things turned out with Bulb’

horrific
PHOTOGRAPH: CHRIS J RATCLIFFE/GETTY IMAGES
Johnny Depp
the poorest people in the country in
Actor claims to be ‘obsessed October and the government or con-
with truth’ as he testifies in
libel trial against his ex-wife
Page 7
winter’: sumers would then pay this off over
10 years, he suggested.
Ofgem lifted the price cap on bills

Journal Outside G2
40% could earlier this month, sending the aver-
age household dual-fuel tariff from
£1,278 to £1,971. That is due to rise

Opinions and ideas face fuel
 Fear of coronavirus
poverty
quarantine stalks
us here in Shanghai
Mary Adams
Page 4
Jane Clinton and Jasper Jolly
G2 Centre pullout As many as four in 10 people in Brit-
Features and arts ain could fall into fuel poverty when
the price cap rises again this autumn,
Who was Casanova? energy bosses have told MPs as they
Lyndsey Winship asks called for more government support
for vulnerable households facing a
if he was more than just “truly horrific” winter.
a legendary lothario Michael Lewis, the chief executive
Page 8 of E.ON UK, said between 30% and
40% of people in Britain face fuel pov-
erty from October when the industry
Save up to 33% regulator, Ofgem, is again expected
with a subscription to put up the annual limit on tariffs.
“We are expecting a severe impact
to the Guardian on customers’ ability to pay,” he told
MPs at the business, energy and
and the Observer industrial strategy select commit-
Visit theguardian. tee in parliament yesterday, adding
that he expected debts of custom-
com/paper-subs ers to rise by 50%, or £800m. A larger
number of people moving into fuel
poverty would lead to a significant
Weather increase in bad debt, he said.
Page 36 Customers have been calling pro-
viders expressing their worry at the
Quick crossword huge increase in their bills. Scottish-
Power alone had received 8,000 calls
Back of G2 from customers concerned about
their ability to pay, its chief execu-
Cartoon tive, Keith Anderson, told MPs.
Journal, page 4 He said he was “massively con-
cerned” for people facing rising bills
who would “really, really struggle”,
Cryptic crossword and called for the introduction of a
Back of Journal £1,000 deficit fund or social tariff
for vulnerable customers. The fund
would take £1,000 off the bills of
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Bulb CEO still paid £250,000
The boss of the failed company
Bulb Energy has been criticised
for continuing to draw a £250,000
salary, funded by UK taxpayers.
Once the seventh-biggest
energy supplier, Bulb was in
effect nationalised in November
2021 after collapsing amid the
surge in global energy prices.
That left the taxpayer with
a potential bill of up to £3bn,
making it the biggest state bailout
since the collapse of the Royal
Bank of Scotland in 2008.
Speaking at a hearing before
MPs, the chief executive and
co-founder, Hayden Wood,
apologised for the “way things
turned out with Bulb”.
Bulb was placed into a rare
“special administration”, giving
it access to government funds to
keep it supplying energy to its 1.7
million household customers.
Wood, who had provided
management consultancy to
the energy sector before he
co-founded Bulb Energy, said:
“My salary now in the last year is
£250,000 a year.
“Both Bulb and Simple [Bulb’s
parent company] asked me to
stay on to help … We wanted to
support customers [and] have
a smooth transition into special
administration.”
However, the Labour MP
software from the Israeli company
NSO Group allowed a “wide range of
actors” to engage in sophisticated
espionage.
Anybody with access to secret
information needed to be aware
of the fast-changing risk, the peer
Andy McDonald, a member of
the business select committee,
questioned the amount and asked
whether it was “morally justifiable”
for taxpayers to be paying his
£250,000-a-year salary.
Wood responded: “I think
everything we are doing right now
is to try and complete a sale of the
company so that we can minimise
the cost to taxpayers and minimise
the disruption to consumers.”
But McDonald said it was
“staggering” that he was
continuing to get paid “the same
salary that you were pre-collapse”.
A spokesperson for the
Department for Business, Energy
and Industrial Strategy said that
Bulb’s administrators had “agreed
to keep Mr Wood temporarily
in place to ensure a smooth
handover and sales process”.
Jane Clinton
▲ Bulb collapsed in November, but
the CEO is still on £250,000 a year
person’s mobile phone, take and copy
data from it and even turn it into a
remote listening device without the
person’s permission. But for it to be
effective, it needs to be given a phone
number to target.
NSO Group said the allegations
again in October, with some experts
expecting the price cap to hit £2,600.
“Come October that’s going to get
horrific, truly horrific,” said Ander-
son. “It has got to a stage now where
the size and scale of it is beyond what
I can deal with, beyond what I think
this industry can deal with. I think it
needs a massive shift, a significant
shift, in the government policy and
approach towards this.”
The chief executive of EDF, Simone
Rossi, said the energy supplier was
“concerned” to see a 40% uptick in
calls from customers worried about
debt. “Unfortunately pre-payment
customers are being hit first. We now
see bills being higher for longer, so I
would expect government to reassess
in short order to see what is possi-
ble,” he said.
Earlier, the chief executive of
Ofgem, Jonathan Brearley, had said
rises in fuel bills would be investi-
gated amid concerns suppliers might
be charging households unfairly.
Gas prices in particular have surged
in recent months, prompting almost
every household energy supplier to
raise prices to the maximum allowed.
However, some consumer groups
have argued that energy firms have
raised prices by more than needed, to
strengthen their own balance sheets
at customers’ expense.
Brearley told BBC Radio 4: “We’re
going to take a close look at those
direct debits. We’re going to make
sure that they are raised fairly –
clearly prices have gone up – and if
they haven’t been we’ll take action
and make sure companies put it right.
You shouldn’t take more than is nec-
essary. You shouldn’t be building up
a credit balance.”
He said price increases must be
brought in “reasonably and fairly”
and not for “other reasons outside
of the customer interest”.
uncovered evidence of “multiple
suspected instances of Pegasus spy-
ware infections” within official UK
networks including Downing Street
and the Foreign Office.
Using digital forensic techniques
developed over several years, its

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PM warned
Dan Sabbagh
Defence and security editor
Boris Johnson should “pay close
attention” to basic rules of cyber-
security, a former national security
adviser said yesterday, after it
emerged that the United Arab Emir-
ates was accused of hacking into a
mobile phone at Downing Street.
Peter Ricketts, who held the
post between 2010 and 2012, said
the cyber-attack demonstrated
that “commercially made” Pegasus
added, including the prime minister,
who was forced to change his mobile
number last year after it emerged it
had been available online.
“It’s vital that anyone with access
to sensitive material up to and includ-
ing the PM have to pay close attention
to the basic rules of cybersecurity
including their phone numbers,”
Ricketts said.
Johnson was forced to suddenly
change his mobile phone last spring
after it emerged that his number had
been available online for 15 years.
It was published on a thinktank
press release from 2006 and never
deleted.
Pegasus is sophisticated software
that can covertly take control of a
were “wrong and misleading” and the
company denied involvement. “For
technological, contractual and legal
reasons, the described allegations are
impossible and have no relation to
NSO’s products,” the company said.
On Monday, Citizen Lab, a group
of technology researchers based at
the University of Toronto, said it had
‘Anyone with access
to sensitive material
should pay attention’
Lord Ricketts Former
national security adviser
researchers said they concluded the
attack on Downing Street was “asso-
ciated with a Pegasus operator we link
to the UAE” and took place on 7 July
2020. The Foreign Office declined to
discuss the story, but Citizen Lab said
it had alerted the UK.
The UAE’s ambassador to Lon-
don, Mansoor Abulhoul, denied the
state may have used spyware to hack
into Downing Street or the Foreign
Office. He said: “These reports are
totally baseless and we reject them.
The UK is one of the UAE’s closest and
dearest allies and we would never do
such a thing to them.”
Catalan independence movement
targeted with spyware Page 27 
Wednesday 20 April 2022 The Guardian
Biennale is
back – with
black female
voices taking
centre stage
Charlotte Higgins
Venice
A choir of joyful, experimental, vir-
tuosic black female voices greets
visitors to the British pavilion at the
59th Venice Biennale, the world’s
most prominent international art
event, which was delayed for a year
by the Covid pandemic.
Sonia Boyce, 60, the artist rep-
resenting Britain at the Biennale,
invited four black singers of differ-
ent generations – the jazz singer
Jacqui Dankworth, singer-songwriter
Tanita Tikaram, blues-influenced art-
ist Poppy Ajudha and experimental
vocalist Sofia Jernberg – to improvise,
at first together under the direction of
the composer Errollyn Wallen.
Called Feeling Her Way, the result-
ing videos of the singers play out in an
immersive, bright environment full
of colourful “wallpaper” and golden
embellishment. Boyce also shows
items from her Devotional project,
an expanding archive begun in 1999,
of vinyl, CDs and memorabilia of an
often hidden history of black female
musicianship. It is, she said, “a collec-
tive attempt against amnesia”.
As is characteristic for Boyce, who
often collaborates with others, she
did not direct or instruct the musi-
cians or her film crew after she
brought them together. Rather, dur-
ing the day-long session at Abbey
Road Studios, she let them “play”.
“One of my most abiding memo-
ries of the day was watching Tanita
Tikaram improvising five different
songs on the spot,” said the artist.
“For me that is the answer to why the
Devotional project might be impor-
tant. There is all this incredible,
skilful knowledge in these perform-
ers who, by being reduced to being
‘female’ or ‘black’ – if we only focus
on that – we can miss what they can
do. Even when we are actually sur-
rounded by it.”
It is a statement that might be a
warning to remember that Boyce,
whose long career began when she
was associated with the Blk Art
Group in the early 1980s, is not to
be reduced to being the first black
woman to occupy the British pavil-
ion at the Biennale – or to being the
first black British woman elected a
Royal Academician, or to being the
first black British woman to have a
painting collected by Tate, in 1987.
Nevertheless, representing one’s
country at a cultural event that is
unusually embroiled in geopolitics
is a heavily freighted experience for
any artist.
•
News
Just down the wide avenue from
the British pavilion in Venice’s
Giardini, one of the event’s two main
venues, is the Russian pavilion. The
Lithuanian curator of Russia’s pro-
ject, as well as its artists, resigned
shortly after the invasion of Ukraine,
and the art nouveau pavilion is lying
empty, conspicuously patrolled
yesterday by an armed guard.
By contrast the Ukrainian pavilion,
featuring artist Pavlo Makov – who
managed to make it out of Kharkiv
and to Venice along with his team –
will be very much present, with all
eyes too on a last-minute exhibition
in the Giardini, titled Piazza Ucraina
• Sonia Boyce’s
installation
for the Venice
Biennale,
Feeling Her Way,
puts videos of
virtuosic black
female singers
in an immersive
environment
in tribute to an
often hidden
history of
black female
musicianship
ALL PHOTOGRAPHS:
DAVID LEVENE/
THE GUARDIAN
and staged in solidarity with the
country.
On what she referred to as “the
burden of representation” in her
occupation of the British pavilion,
Boyce said: “I cannot represent all
the black artists in Britain, and all the
female artists, and I wouldn’t want
even to suggest I was doing that.”
She added: “This is not a flag-wav-
ing scenario. Most artists see this as
an opportunity to be part of a global
dialogue with a lot of joyous and
global conversations taking place.”
Aside from 80 national pavilions,
each Biennale features a central
exhibition organised by an invited
curator, this year Cecilia Alemani of
New York’s High Line Art. Occupy-
ing the large International pavilion
in the Giardini, and the city’s former
naval Arsenale, Alemani’s show is
titled The Milk of Dreams, after a chil-
dren’s story by the British surrealist
artist and author Leonora Carrington.
Of the 213 artists from 58 coun-
Sonia Boyce tries in Alemani’s exhibition, most
at the British of them, for the first time in the Bien-
pavilion nale’s history, are women.
The Venice Biennale was founded
in 1895. Always highly politicised, it
was a scene of a meeting between
Hitler and Mussolini in 1934. The
Russian pavilion was built in 1914 by
Alexey Shchusev, who later designed
Lenin’s mausoleum.
From Saturday until 27 November
3
Venice to trial
€10 entry fee in
bid to control
day-trippers
Angela Giuffrida
Rome
Authorities in Venice are pushing
ahead with a plan to charge day-
trippers up to €10 (£8.30) to enter the
lagoon city as they scramble to gain
control of tourism after visitor num-
bers hit pre-pandemic levels over the
Easter weekend.
The booking system will begin in
June with a six-month pilot before
potentially taking full effect in Jan-
uary next year. Luigi Brugnaro, the
mayor of Venice, said the city is “the
first in the world” to conduct “this
difficult experiment”.
Plans for an entrance fee have been
in the pipeline since the measure was
approved by the Italian government
in late 2018 as a solution to mass
tourism in a city which, before the
coronavirus pandemic, attracted an
estimated 30 million people a year.
That figure was demolished by
the pandemic, and although visitors
have returned, the Easter weekend
was the first real sign of the tourism
sector bouncing back as more than
125,000 people filled Venice’s squares
and alleyways.
“Tourism in Venice is starting
again, and is a breath of fresh air
for [tourism] operators,” Brugnaro
wrote on Twitter. “Today, many have
understood that the booking system
is the right path to take for a more bal-
anced management of tourism.”
The measure will apply to day-
trippers, who will need to book ahead
and pay between €3 and €10, depend-
ing on how busy the city is on the day
of their visit.
“The experimental phase begins
in June, when day tourists will be
invited to book through a website that
is being completed by the council,”
Simone Venturini, Venice’s tour-
ism councillor, told La Repubblica.
“Those who book will receive incen-
tives such as discounts on entering
museums. To determine the access
fee, we will set a maximum threshold
of 40,000 or 50,000 visitors a day.”
People living in the Veneto region
will be required to book too, even
though they are exempt from pay-
ing the fee. A list of other exemptions,
for example people who need to come
to the city for a funeral or to visit a
relative, will be announced over the
next few weeks.
Those who stay overnight will
be  exempt as they already pay a
tourist tax.
▲ Trial online booking starts in June
with a limit of 50,000 visitors a day
 ••• The Guardian Wednesday 20 April 2022

4 Natioinal
Politics

‘Without shame’:
Starmer savages
Johnson over
Partygate scandal
 Continued from page 1
committee to prevent taking Tories
“to the brink”, in comments made
to BBC Newsnight.
Despite calling for the PM to quit,
Whittaker said he has not sent a let-
ter to the 1922 Committee calling for
a no-confidence vote.
However, other Conservative MPs
who have private reservations about
Johnson said neither the apology nor
the move for a vote on a new investi-
gations by the privileges committee
had shifted their view. They remain
in a “holding pattern”, waiting to see
if further fines are issued and hope-
ful that the facts will come out in the
long-awaited report into Downing
Street gatherings by the senior civil
servant Sue Gray.
One Tory backbencher said they
were considering voting for the
‘I obeyed his rules’
privileges committee investiga-
tion, but admitted it would likely be
treated as a confidence vote, meaning
they would lose the whip and prob-
ably their seat at the next election.
Starmer cited the story of John
Robinson, who wrote to the Guard-
ian last week to say he could not hold
the hand of his wife as she died, or
hold a proper funeral for her, add-
ing of Johnson: “Anger doesn’t even
touch the sides of how I feel about
this pathetic excuse for a man.”
Starmer told a subdued House of
Commons: “If the prime minister had
any respect for John and the millions
like him who sacrificed everything
to follow the rules, he’d resign. But
he won’t. Because he doesn’t respect
John. He doesn’t respect the sacri-
fice of the British public. He is a man
without shame.”
Labour sources said Starmer had
returned from an Easter break with
his family freshly enraged about the
prime minister’s attempts to wriggle
out of the Partygate fiasco.
Johnson will be on a trade visit to
India when tomorrow’s vote is held,
as he seeks to demonstrate to col-
leagues that he is getting on with the
job of running the country.
In a signal that the Conservatives
will whip their MPs firmly against
tomorrow’s motion, the Cabinet
Office minister Jacob Rees-Mogg cast
doubt on the privilege committee’s

Cakes, raves and robbery

The letter in the Guardian last
Friday, which was cited by Keir
Starmer in parliament yesterday:
When my wife died of Covid early
in the pandemic, my family and
I obeyed Boris Johnson’s laws
and rules. I couldn’t see her in
hospital, couldn’t hold her hand
as she died. Our two daughters
and three grandchildren drove
100 miles clutching a letter from
the funeral director explaining
why they were on the motorway
in case they were questioned by
the police.
We met in the churchyard and
bid tearful farewells there, as
we were not allowed to meet at
home. No service in the church,
no other relatives or friends, as
only six mourners were allowed.
Our son-in-law had to stay at
home as he would have been the
forbidden seventh mourner.
Johnson flouted his own laws
and rules. He partied his way
through them. Am I angry? Anger
doesn’t even touch the sides of
how I feel about this pathetic
excuse for a man, and I suspect
that the majority of us little
people share my views, will never
forget and will never forgive.”
John Robinson, Lichfield
suitability to investigate Johnson’s
conduct. He said it was a “distin-
guished body of the Commons but it’s
chaired by a Labour party politician”
and added: “I’d bear that in mind.”
The privileges committee is always
chaired by an opposition politician.
According to the ministerial code,
ministers who “knowingly mislead
parliament” are expected to offer
their resignation.
The prime minister reassured
MPs in December that “all guidance
was followed” in Downing Street
during the pandemic – a statement
apparently contradicted by the Met-
ropolitan police’s decision to impose
a fixed-penalty notice.
Johnson has since argued that
he did not knowingly mislead MPs
because he had not believed rules
had been broken. Asked directly by
the veteran Tory MP Peter Bone: “Did
you deliberately mislead the house at
the dispatch box?” Johnson replied
simply: “No.”
Another senior backbencher, Steve
Baker, said Johnson should be for-
given, stressing the need for “justice,
and mercy, and humility”.
The prime minister and senior
government officials could yet face
further sanction as the Met contin-
ues its investigation into lockdown
gatherings.
How Tory loyalists got
creative to defend PM
Geneva Abdul
Boris Johnson became the first
sitting prime minister to be
criminally sanctioned when he
was fined for breaking his own
Covid laws by attending a party
for his birthday in No 10. While the
development prompted renewed
calls for his resignation, loyal
ministers and Downing Street
sources have reached for some
creative and elaborate defences of
his law breaking.
It’s ‘like a
parking fine’
As Johnson prepared
to argue he did not
mislead parliament,
the Northern Ireland
secretary, Brandon Lewis, told Sky
News yesterday morning: “I think
we do see consistently, whether
it is through parking fines or
speeding fines, ministers of both
parties over the years have been in
that position.”
‘It’s not as if
he walked
into a rave in Ibiza’
A senior
government source
told the Financial
Times that he had
“no idea” what was guiding the
Metropolitan police investigation
after Johnson was given a fixed-
penalty notice for attending a party
for his birthday in No 10.
He added: “It’s not as if
[Johnson] walked into a rave in
Ibiza,” said the source.
He was there for ‘a very
short time’ eating ‘a
salad lunch’
This was another
defence for Johnson,
who was fined for
breaching the rules by attending
his 56th birthday party in June
2020. Sources told the Daily Mail
Johnson was only there “for 10
minutes” and the cake “did not
even leave the Tupperware box”.
“The prime minister was there for
a very short time. He was eating
a salad lunch in the cabinet room
with people he worked with all day.
People kept popping in.”
It’s not as if ‘pole
dancers’ were present
The Tory MP Michael Fabricant
dismissed the fines on BBC Radio
5 Live, saying lots of people, from
civil servants to nurses, “did at the
end of the day have a quiet drink”.
He also said: “The ways it’s been
characterised, you would think
there were pole dancers.”
An exemption for ‘people
working in close proximity’
A source told the Times there was
an exemption for those working in
No 10, in close proximity and for
Wednesday 20 April 2022 The Guardian
▲ In the Commons yesterday, Keir
Starmer said Johnson’s ‘dishonest’
excuses were an insult to the public
PHOTOGRAPH: JESSICA TAYLOR/UK PARLIAMENT
long hours. “There was always an
exemption around work but the
prime minister accepted mistakes
were made. If you’re going from
meeting to meeting and it’s
something at 2pm in the afternoon,
people wouldn’t particularly call
that a party.”
He has ‘not
robbed a bank’
Those were the
words of the
Conservative MP
Andrew Rosindell
in January, saying there
are ministers who get parking
tickets and speeding fines. “Lots
of people break the law in small
ways, sometimes unintentionally,”
he said, adding: “He’s not robbed a
bank. This is getting out of control.”
He doesn’t ‘own his own diary’
Stepping to Johnson’s defence
in January, the Conservative MP
James Heappey told the BBC no
prime minister could possibly
own all that is put into their diary,
•
adding that they relied entirely on
those around them for briefs and
support for what goes into diaries
in the first place. He said: “My
take as someone who has worked
in Downing Street is that the
prime minister doesn’t really own
his own diary.”
‘Ambushed
with cake’
The Tory MP
Conor Burns told
Channel 4 News
in January it was
not a “premeditated” party and
that Johnson was working in the
room before staff came in with a
birthday cake: “He was, in a sense,
ambushed with a cake.”
‘I don’t recognise this as a party’
In January, the Conservative MP
Peter Bone described the party for
Johnson to BBC Newsnight as “a
very funny party” with colleagues
for less than 10 minutes. He added
that “political people alike” likely
spoke about work while eating
their “bit of cake”: “Well, I just
don’t recognise that as a party.
And if that’s the sort of parties
you go to they’re not much fun,
are they?”
The privileges
committee
How would an
inquiry work?
What is the privileges committee?
Opposition parties have called
for a special body known as the
privileges committee to look into
whether Boris Johnson deliberately
misled MPs.
The prime minister made
repeated denials to the Commons
that any rules were broken in
Downing Street – but Scotland
Yard has now put paid to that,
and confirmed that parties which
breached of lockdown laws did take
place in No 10.
Given that the ministerial code
carries the unambiguous direction
that any breaches should result in
a resignation, Labour wants the
matter to be scrutinised instead of
being brushed under the carpet.
Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons
speaker, has said Keir Starmer can
table a motion on Wednesday for
debate about referring the matter to
the committee.
How would its
investigation work?
MPs on the committee would
have to look into an incredibly
tricky subject – trying to ascertain
whether Johnson deliberately
misled parliament.
This is a charge many opposition
MPs admit would be difficult to
prove. But, to uncover the truth,
the committee could call for
papers, summon witnesses and – if
necessary – recommend a sanction
such as suspension or expulsion.
Is there any chance MPs will back
a privileges committee probe?
The short answer is probably not.
Partly because many Tory MPs
seem to have accepted Johnson’s
apology, but also because the
Conservative whips’ office may
effectively treat it as a confidence
vote. This means they could tell
any backbenchers that the price for
voting with the opposition is being
kicked out of the parliamentary
party – effectively ending their
political career.
So what is the point?
There are some that feel it is an
important constitutional principle
that ministers should not be
allowed to mislead parliament, so
do not want Johnson to get off.
But there are other, more
political, motivations at play.
There are a large number of Tory
MPs whose backing of Johnson
has been far from full-throated,
instead choosing to keep quiet,
waiting for the Met investigation to
conclude and Sue Gray’s report to
be published. They will be forced
to nail their colours to the mast and
vote to let Johnson evade further
scrutiny if they decide to oppose
a privileges committee probe.
Aubrey Allegretti
Sketch
John Crace
He may be a slightly
better apologiser, but
the Convict knows the
damage has been done
O
n any other day, the sight of Theresa
May telling Priti Patel that her Rwanda
immigration environment was too
hostile even for her would have been
parliamentary box office. But, as it was,
most eyes were on the prime minister’s
Partygate apology that followed.
It was certainly a three-line whip for the cabinet.
Patel was joined by Liz Truss, Dominic Raab and
Nadine Dorries nice and early in an enforced show of
support. And just after 5pm, Boris Johnson and Rishi
Sunak filed in to take centre stage. They could have
been mistaken for defendants in a court were it not for
the fact they had both already been found guilty.
The Convict began by saying he wanted to make
a full apology. Which would have sounded more
convincing if he hadn’t already made several
apologies to the commons, each time hoping to draw
a line under whatever he had done wrong – or more
importantly been found out to have done wrong. But
if practice doesn’t make perfect, it certainly makes
Johnson a slightly better apologiser. In the past he
has never sounded that sorry for
Starmer was so anything. Just irritable that he had
got himself into another situation
forceful it took the where he was obliged to apologise.
Speaker a few seconds Now though, he did sound a
little bit sorry. Mostly for having
to remember to ask been caught. But that was a start.
him to withdraw And given that he’s likely to have
to come to the house several more
the word ‘dishonest’ times in the future to apologise for
more egregious breaches of the law,
he’s still got time to sharpen up his
act. Who knows, come the end he
might even sound almost sincere. It’s a thought.
Not that anyone is holding their breath. Saying
you’re sorry for not knowing a law that you’ve been on
TV countless times telling people they will be in deep
shit if they break is too feeble even for a recidivist up
on a shoplifting charge at Snaresbrook Crown Court.
It’s not about the cake. It’s not even about the booze.
It’s about the fact that the Convict never thought that
the rules applied to him or his crew.
He understood how angry and disappointed
people were, he said. And the country had deserved
better from him. Nearly there, Boris. What he should
have said was that the country deserved better than
him. But he wanted to make it up to everyone. So
much so that he wished he’d done far worse as then
there would be more to repay. At least that was the
implication. No worries there, then. There’s worse
coming down the track and the Convict knows it. Much
worse. But hopefully if he looked busy in Ukraine then
the country would forgive him.
Some hope. Keir Starmer was not in the mood to
forgive or forget. This was his strongest commons
performance in months. The Convict was a joke. No
one could believe a word he said. Worst of all, Johnson
knew he was dishonest. Starmer was so forceful it took
the Speaker a few seconds to remember to ask him to
withdraw the word “dishonest”. Which he did.
But the damage was done. For a second the Convict
had allowed himself a rare glimpse into his own soul
and been revolted by what he had seen. He turned
pale. Deep down Johnson knows he’s a liar and a
fraud. He won’t resign because that’s not his style.
But something inside him has been broken. He’s no
longer funny. No longer clever. Just a pathetic nobody,
desperately clinging to power.

6 National
May questions legality
and trafficking risk of
Rwanda asylum plan
Rajeev Syal
Home affairs editor
Theresa May has questioned the
“legality, practicality and efficacy” of
ministers’ plan to send asylum seek-
ers to Rwanda, amid demands from
MPs that the government should dis-
close the cost of the scheme.
The former prime minister, who
devised the “hostile environment”
policy, warned yesterday that the
plan – to fly people on to the African
country if they have arrived in the
UK by “unauthorised” means – could
lead to an increase in trafficking of
women and children.
The claim came as Priti Patel, the
home secretary, was pushed in the
Commons to explain how much the
scheme, announced last week dur-
ing recess, would cost. The UK said
it would pay an initial £120m to the
Rwandan government.
May, who was blamed in part for
the Windrush scandal, questioned
•••
whether the policy was within the
law. “I do not support the removal
to Rwanda policy on the grounds of
legality, practicality and efficacy.”
She asked if reports were correct
in claiming that families would not
be broken up by the government as
it sought to send people to Rwanda.
“Where is [Patel’s] evidence that this
will not lead to an increase in the traf-
ficking of women and children?”
Patel did not clarify if women and
children would be sent to Rwanda
but insisted the policy was legal and
needed to tackle smuggling gangs.
Andrew Mitchell, the former inter-
national development secretary, was
one of a series of Tory backbench-
ers who joined opposition MPs in
expressing concerns over the pol-
icy, saying it “will simply not work”.
In response to earlier criticism of
the proposal from Justin Welby, the
archbishop of Canterbury, and the
former archbishop Rowan Williams,
Boris Johnson reportedly criticised
“senior members of the clergy”
during a meeting of the 1922 Commit-
tee of backbench Tory MPs yesterday
evening.
The prime minister said they “had
been less vociferous in their condem-
nation on Easter Sunday of Putin than
they were on our policy of illegal
immigrants”, according to PA Media.
Patel refused to directly answer
MPs’ questions on whether there was
a cap on the cost per migrant forcibly
deported, on top of the £120m.
Yvette Cooper, the shadow home
secretary, told MPs that the gov-
ernment was looking for help from
Rwanda because Home Office deci-
sion-making had “totally collapsed”.
The Guardian Wednesday 20 April 2022
‘I do not
support the
policy, on
the grounds
of legality,
practicality Cooper said: “On [Patel’s] watch
and efficacy’ the Home Office are only taking
14,000 initial asylum decisions a year.
Theresa May That is half what they were doing five
Former PM years ago.
“So, the costs of the UK taxpayer
have soared by hundreds of millions
of pounds because she isn’t capable
of taking the basic asylum decisions.
And because she’s not capable of tak-
ing those decisions, she is trying to
pay Rwanda to take those decisions
instead.”
The SNP’s home affairs spokesper-
son, Stuart McDonald, said the policy
would not hurt smugglers but harm
people who had fled persecution.
“Her government has completely
failed to stop abuses in UK deten-
tion centres, never mind centres
that are 5,000 miles away. This dis-
▲ Theresa May in the Commons astrous policy has nothing to do with
challenging Priti Patel, below, as the global migration crisis, it is every-
other MPs questioned the plan’s cost thing to do with distracting from the
PHOTOGRAPH: JESSICA TAYLOR/UK PARLIAMENT PM’s political crises.”
Patel urged the Lords, which has
rejected the nationality and borders
bill twice, to accept it.
Dame Diana Johnson, a Labour MP
who chairs the home affairs select
committee, asked: “Who would actu-
ally be eligible to be sent to Rwanda?
Is it going to be single young men, is
it going to be women and children?”
Patel replied: “Everyone consid-
ered for relocation will be screened,
interviewed and have the right access
to legal advice and services.”
Wednesday 20 April 2022 The Guardian
Depp claims to be ‘obsessed
with truth’ as he testifies in
libel trial against his ex-wife
Edward Helmore and agencies
Johnny Depp told a US courtroom
yesterday that he was “obsessed with
the truth” as he took to the stand to
give evidence in his defamation trial
against former wife Amber Heard.
Depp is suing the Aquaman star for
libel over a 2018 article she wrote in
The Washington Post, which his law-
yers say falsely implies he physically
and sexually abused her.
Depp, 58, alleges Heard, 35 ,
defamed him when she wrote the
December 2018 opinion piece about
being a survivor of domestic abuse.
Heard maintains her opinion is pro-
tected as free speech under the first
amendment to the US constitution.
Depp filed a $50m (£38.5m) lawsuit
against Heard in 2018. Heard later
filed a $100m counter-claim.
The actor told a courtroom in
Virginia yesterday that Heard was
bringing “heinous and disturbing”
allegations against him and it was
“diabolical” that his children had
been exposed to them at school.
“It was a complete shock... it just
didn’t need to go in that direction as
nothing of the kind had ever hap-
pened,” he said.
“[In] the relationship there were
arguments and things of that nature,
but never did I myself reach the point
•••
National
of striking Ms Heard … nor have I ever
struck any woman in my life.”
Depp said he had initially thought
his relationship with Heard had
been “too good to be true” but had
noticed things that “might be a bit of
a dilemma at some point”.
“Within a year or year and a half
she had become another person
almost,” he said.
The actor also spoke about the
emotional and physical abuse that
he was subjected to by his mother
▲ The actor Amber Heard attends the trial of the defamation case brought by
her ex-husband, Johnny Depp, in the courthouse in Fairfax, Virginia
and father during his own childhood.
Depp said at the time the accu-
sations had “permeated” the
entertainment industry and had
become a “quote, unquote fact”.
“It’s been six years of trying times.
Very strange when one day you’re
Cinderella, so to speak, and then in
0.6 seconds you’re Quasimodo,” he
told the courtroom.
“I didn’t deserve that, nor did my
children, nor did the people who have
believed in me all these years.
▼ Johnny Depp testifies in the
Fairfax, Virginia, courtroom:
‘I know I’m doing the right thing’
PHOTOGRAPHS: JIM WATSON/EPA
“I pride myself on honesty... on
truth. Truth is the only thing I’m inter-
ested in. Lies will get you nowhere ...
I’m obsessed with the truth so today
is the first opportunity that I’ve been
able to speak about this case in full.”
Depp’s testimony comes a week
into a trial in Fairfax, Virginia, as part
of a defamation case in which he
accuses his ex-wife, Amber Heard, of
ruining his career with false accusa-
tions of violence in their relationship.
In November 2020 Depp lost a libel
action in the London courts against
the Sun newspaper’s publishers after
it described him as a “wife beater”.
The high court dismissed Depp’s
claim for compensation with the
judge finding News Group News-
papers had proved what was in the
article was “substantially true”.
During the current US trial, wit-
nesses for the actor have largely
conformed to Depp’s contention that
his wife, not he, initiated marital dis-
cord and fights. But the testimony has
come at a cost, with the actor being
depicted as a childlike, drug-and-
alcohol-abusing A-lister surrounded
by doctors, nurses, assistants, friends
on the payroll and hangers-on.
The actor has accused Heard of
throwing a bottle at him, severing a
finger. Heard has said Depp proba-
bly cut his finger when he smashed
a telephone. During the fight, she has
alleged, Depp beat her, choked her
and sexually assaulted her.
Before Depp’s testimony, the court
heard from his sound technician,
Keenan Wyatt, who testified that he
accompanied Depp, his former wife,
Vanessa Paradis, and his children to
their home in the Bahamas several
times. Wyatt testified that Depp was
a loving father whose personality did
not change when he drank – when
instead “he became sleepy”.
The trial at Fairfax County District
Courthouse continues.
7
Plan to allow
users of
self-driving
cars to watch
films and TV
Tobi Thomas
Users of self-driving cars will be
able to watch films on the motor-
way under planned changes to the
highway code, although it will remain
illegal to use mobile phones.
The update, proposed by the
Department for Transport (DfT), will
allow those in the driver’s seat to use
a car’s built-in screens to watch mov-
ies and TV programmes.
The new rules also state that insur-
ance companies will be financially
liable, rather than individual motor-
ists, for accidents in self-driving cars.
However, those behind the wheel
must be ready to resume control of
the vehicle when they are prompted
– such as when they approach motor-
way exits. These measures were
described as an interim measure by
the government to support the early
deployment of self-driving vehicles.
Although there are no vehicles
currently approved for self-driving
on roads in the UK, the first could be
approved later this year. The intro-
duction of the technology is likely
to begin with vehicles travelling at
slow speeds on motorways, such as
in congested traffic.
In April 2021, the DfT said it would
allow hands-free driving in vehicles
with lane-keeping technology on
congested motorways. Existing tech-
nology, including cruise control and
automatic stop/start, is classified
as being “assistive”, meaning users
must remain fully in control.
Trudy Harrison, a transport minis-
ter, said the updates followed a public
consultation, and would be a “major
milestone in our safe introduction of
self-driving vehicles”, which would
“revolutionise the way we travel”.
Earlier this year, the Law Commis-
sion of England and Wales and the
Scottish Law commission published
a joint report that recommended the
introduction of a new Automated
Vehicles Act.
The proposals would be that
when a car is authorised to be “self-
driving”, and those features are in
use, the user would no longer be
responsible for how the car drives;
rather, the company that obtained
the authorisation would. Therefore,
the user would be unable to be prose-
cuted for offences that come directly
from the driving, and so would be
immune from offences that include
dangerous driving.
UK, Scottish and Welsh govern-
ments are currently deciding whether
to accept the reports recommen-
dations and bring them into
legislation, with the governments
expecting to have a full regulatory
framework in place to support the
widespread deployment of driver-
less vehicle technology by 2025.

8 National
Yer jokin’ arn
ya? Teesside
irate over ITV
drama accents
Mark Brown
North of England correspondent
It has had rave reviews for the qual-
ity of its writing and acting, but for
many local people there has been a
problem with ITV’s “canoe man” fake
death drama: the accents.
“Why is it that ITV thinks people
from Teesside speak with a geordie
accent?” asked one disgruntled
viewer. “Insulting!”
“The thing about [north-east]
accents is they change about 10 times
in a 20-mile radius,” said another,
more forgiving, viewer. “I sound dif-
ferent to someone from six miles up
the road. They’re so nuanced.”
The drama The Thief, His Wife and
the Canoe stars Eddie Marsan and
Monica Dolan as John Darwin and
his beleaguered wife, Anne.
It tells the true story of one of the
most remarkable crimes of recent
years in which Darwin pretended to
• The Guardian Wednesday 20 April 2022
have perished while out canoeing
in the North Sea. It is set in Seaton
Carew, a fishing village on the out-
skirts of Hartlepool, where the couple
lived in a seven-bedroom house
overlooking the sea.
The social media storm over their
accents prompted the drama’s writer,
Chris Lang, to defend the actors.
“It’s lovely that people are so pas-
sionate about their own accents,” he
tweeted. “John and Anne of course
weren’t from Seaton Carew, they only
moved there in 2002. They were both
born near Blackhall and over the next
five decades lived and worked in (to
name a few) Newcastle, Chester-le-
Street and Durham.”
It was a noble gesture but only led
to more questions for some.
“If they were from Blackhall they’d
have had a Pitmatic accent,” said the
Twitter user Mad Mackem. “Thoo,
thow, thy, and the knaws – every vil-
lage, town and hamlet has a different
accent up here. My wife and I are from
the same city but have slightly dif-
ferent accents from each other, she’s
from north of the river.”
It was also confusing for some in
that Marsan and Dolan had said in
interviews that while filming they
spoke to each other exclusively in
a Hartlepool accent to “sound like
a couple who live together, so that
they have inflections and tones that
are complementary to each other”.
Actors’ accents are often a cause
▲ Eddie Marsan as John Darwin of controversy. Russell Crowe once
and Monica Dolan as Anne Darwin walked out of a BBC Radio 4 interview
in The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe after Mark Lawson suggested his per-
PHOTOGRAPH: ITV/PA WIRE formance in Robin Hood sounded
more Irish than Nottingham.
“Bollocks,” was Crowe’s response.
‘Thoo, thow, thy, “You’ve got dead ears, mate. You’ve
seriously got dead ears if you think
and the knaws – that’s an Irish accent.”
every village, town Whatever the truth about the
accents in The Thief, His Wife and the
and hamlet has a Canoe, at least local residents could
different accent here’ enjoy seeing Seaton Carew on screen.
“Looks like it was filmed on the
Headland rather than Seaton Carew,”
one Twitter user pointed out.
Mad Mackem Yes, replied Lang. “Couldn’t film
Twitter user there for all sorts of reasons.”
Guitar smashed
in Oasis split put
up for auction
Tobi Thomas
A guitar belonging to Noel Gallagher,
which was damaged backstage at an
Oasis concert on the night they broke
up, will go up for auction on 17 May.
The destruction of the red Gibson
ES-355 backstage at a Paris festival in
2009 was a “cult moment” in music
history, according to Jonathan Berg,
a co-founder of the Artpèges gallery,
which is holding the auction.
The guitar’s starting price will be
€150,000 (£125,000), but the auction-
eers predict it could fetch more than
€500,000.
The band had been lined up to
headline Rock en Seine, but it was
reported that Gallagher had got into a
fight with his brother, Liam, minutes
before their scheduled appearance.
He later said: “I simply could not go
on working with Liam a day longer.”
Gallagher initially repaired the
guitar, but “got rid of it in the end,
because it reminds him too much of
Oasis”, said Arthur Perault, the gal-
lery’s other co-founder.
Wednesday 20 April 2022 The Guardian
Woman has six-hour wait for
ambulance on 100th birthday
Geneva Abdul
A woman has described how she
spent more than six hours of her
100th birthday waiting in agony for
an ambulance after slipping and frac-
turing her pelvis while getting ready
for a family lunch.
Irene Silsby was due to be picked
up by her niece, Lynne Taylor, for a
celebration to mark her centenary on
9 April. But she fell in the window-
less bathroom of her care home in
Greetham, Rutland, and staff called
an ambulance at 9am after she man-
aged to summon help.
“All I remember is I was in terrible
pain,” said Silsby from her hospital
bed on Saturday. When asked of the
ambulance delay, she said: “It’s dis-
gusting. I don’t know how I stood it so
long, the pain was so severe.”
Taylor expected to meet the ambu-
lance as she arrived 45 minutes later.
But when she reached the care home,
the manager said it would be a 10-
hour wait, she said.
What was to be her aunt’s first trip
outside the care home in more than
five months turned into her lying on a
cold floor surrounded by pillows and
blankets to keep her warm and quell
some of the discomfort.
Taylor, 60, recalled her aunt say-
ing: “They’re not coming to me
because they know I’m 100 and I’m
not really worth it any more.”
Taylor said she had never felt so
scared and worried. After calling 999
and expressing her outrage, she was
told that life-threatening conditions
were being prioritised.
“I thought she was going to die,”
she said. “I didn’t think that any frail,
tiny, 100-year-old body could put up
with that level of pain on the floor.”
To distract her aunt, Taylor read
aloud the card Silsby had received
from the Queen wishing her a happy
100th birthday. She said her aunt
replied: “I bet she’s not lying on the
floor waiting for an ambulance.”
 Irene Silsby was getting ready
for a family lunch when she
slipped and fractured her pelvis in
the bathroom of her care home
‘Potential revolution’ for prostate
cancer care as bacteria link found
Ian Sample
Science editor
Scientists have found bacteria linked
to aggressive prostate cancer, in work
hailed as a potential revolution for
the prevention and treatment of the
most deadly form of the disease.
Researchers led by the University
of East Anglia made genetic analy-
ses of the urine and prostate tissue
of more than 600 men, who either
had prostate cancer or did not. They
•
National
The incident was upgraded to crit-
ical at about 3pm and the ambulance
arrived an hour later, Taylor said.
As she was carried down the care
home’s small staircase, Silsby strug-
gled to use the administered gas and
oxygen. To have morphine delivered
she would have had to wait another
35 minutes for a paramedic.
“I know why they had to do it,
because they are under pressure,”
Taylor said. “Her being in pain going
down the stairs just almost had to be
the case because they had to move on
to the next person, and I don’t criti-
cise them for this.”
When Taylor arrived at the hospi-
tal behind the ambulance, she was
not permitted inside. In the follow-
ing days Taylor was still in shock. “It
was just such an awful thing to hap-
pen,” she said.
NHS leaders have said lives are
being put at risk by ambulance wait
times. Hospitals are under pressure
found five species of bacteria linked
to rapid progression of the disease.
The study does not prove the bac-
teria drive or exacerbate prostate
cancer, but if further work confirms
their role, researchers can develop
tests to identify men most at risk and
potentially find antibiotics to stop the
cancer claiming thousands of lives.
“This has the potential to truly rev-
olutionise treatment for men,” said
Dr Hayley Luxton, at Prostate Cancer
UK, which co-funded the research.
Writing in European Urology
Private care on the rise
Growing numbers of Britons are
paying for private medical care
because of the record delays people
are facing trying to access NHS
treatment, a new report reveals.
They are using savings to fund
procedures with the longest NHS
waiting times, such as diagnostic
tests and cataract removals.
Private hospital operators think
the boom is likely to continue for
at least three to five years, with
half of industry leaders expecting
the market to grow by 10%-15%
by 2025, according to the report
by private health sector analysts
LaingBuisson. Older working-age
adults and pensioners are driving
the increase, says consultant Liz
Heath, the report’s author.
Denis Campbell
Oncology, the scientists describe how
their investigations found five spe-
cies of bacteria, three new to science,
that were associated with advanced
prostate cancer. Men who had one
or more of the species in their urine,
prostate or tumour tissue, were 2.6
times more likely to see their early-
stage cancer progress to advanced
disease than men who did not.
The lead scientist, Colin Cooper,
a professor of cancer genetics at
the University of East Anglia, said
it was possible the bacteria were
not involved in the disease. But
the researchers strongly suspect
the microbes are involved, just as
Helicobacter pylori infections raises
the risk of stomach cancer. “If you
knew for sure that a species of
as a result of unprecedented demand
from patients after two years of the
coronavirus pandemic, compounded
by staff shortages in the NHS and
social care as well as a fall in bed num-
bers in both settings.
Dr Katherine Henderson, the
president of the Royal College of
Emergency Medicine, told the Guard-
ian this month that some 999 callers
were experiencing waiting times of
up to 22 hours.
In one instance, a man died after
waiting four hours for an ambulance.
In another, a man was left in pain for
14 hours, having phoned 999 multi-
ple times.
Taylor, 60, believes a succession of
governments have overseen a decline
in the NHS, exacerbated by the coro-
navirus pandemic and Brexit.
“There was not the funding when
we went into Covid, the national
health was not in a healthy, good
way,” she said. “Before that we had
Brexit where we lost lots of really val-
uable people that work for the NHS,
and I think there’s been a pretty stra-
tegic working towards privatisation
which has actually cost the service
so much money that it has broken it.”
The Midlands NHS trust and East
Midlands ambulance service have
been approached for comment.
bacteria was causing prostate can-
cer you could work out an antibiotic
… and that would prevent progres-
sion, one would hope,” Cooper said.
He added. “There are many com-
plications. Antibiotics don’t get into
the prostate very well and you’d need
to choose an antibiotic that only kills
certain bacteria.”
The more aggressive forms of pros-
tate cancer claim about 12,000 lives in
the UK each year. But in many cases
patients die with the disease rather
than because of it.
Luxton said. “If the team can dem-
onstrate that these newly identified
bacteria can not only predict but
cause aggressive prostate cancer,
for the first time we may be able to
prevent prostate cancer occurring.”
9
Lives at risk as
Covid disrupts
diabetes care,
charity warns
Andrew Gregory
Health editor
Thousands of lives are being put at
risk because of delays and disrup-
tion in diabetes care, according to a
damning report that warns patients
have been “pushed to the back of the
queue” during the Covid pandemic.
There are 4.9 million people living
with diabetes in the UK, and almost
half had difficulties managing their
condition last year, according to a sur-
vey of 10,000 patients by the charity
Diabetes UK.
More than 60% of them attrib-
uted this partly to a lack of access to
healthcare, which can prevent seri-
ous illness and early mortality from
the cardiovascular complications of
diabetes. In the most deprived areas
the proportion was 71%.
One in three had had no contact
with healthcare professionals about
their diabetes in 2021, while one in
six had not had contact since before
the pandemic, the report said. NHS
figures show that just 36% of people
with diabetes in England received all
their recommended checks in 2020-
21, compared with 57% in 2019-20.
Diabetes UK said that while min-
isters had focused on tackling the
elective surgery backlog, diabe-
tes patients had lost out as a result,
and there was now an urgent need
to get services back on track. Chris
Askew, its chief executive, called for
a national diabetes recovery plan.
“Diabetes is serious and living with
it can be relentless,” he said. “If peo-
ple with diabetes cannot receive the
care they need, they can risk devas-
tating, life-altering complications
and, sadly, early death. We know the
NHS has worked tirelessly to keep us
safe throughout the pandemic, but
the impacts on care for people living
with diabetes have been vast.”
If diabetes is not managed well,
high blood sugar levels, high blood
pressure and high cholesterol can
cause problems with the vascular
system that can lead to serious com-
plications. Every week diabetes leads
to more than 190 amputations, 770
strokes, 590 heart attacks and more
than 2,300 cases of heart failure.
Patients can reduce risk by self-
manag ing their condition with
support. Regular checks are asso-
ciated with fewer deaths and a
reduction in emergency admissions
and amputations.
4.9m
Number of people in the UK living
with diabetes, which carries serious
risks if not appropriately managed
36%
Proportion of people with diabetes
in England who received all their
recommended checks in 2020-21
Wednesday 20 April 2022 The Guardian
Robbie Williams
puts own paintings
on show alongside
sale of art favourites
Lanre Bakare
Arts and culture correspondent
He’s better known for stepping out on
stage and providing some of the most
memorable British pop moments in
recent memory, but now Robbie Wil-
liams is swapping the microphone
and the spotlight for an easel as he
presents his first ever exhibition.
Williams and his creative part-
ner, Ed Godrich, are presenting an
exhibition of their black and white
paintings and curating a sale at
Sotheby’s that will feature some
of their favourite artists, including
Grayson Perry, Damien Hirst and
Jean-Michel Basquiat.
The pair’s love of street art, which
created their bond and inspired their
paintings, is the thread that runs
through the exhibition and the sale.
Godrich and Williams’s Black and
White Paintings exhibition will be on
show at Sotheby’s New Bond Street
galleries from 13-25 May, while their
Contemporary Curated sale runs
from 22-28 April and includes works
by graffiti writer turned art world star
Basquiat and Richard Hambleton.
The pair describe the Canadian-
born, New York-based Hambleton
– who uses brushes and black paint
in pots to create “immense human
shadows” – as “the daddy” of them
all and a huge influence on their work.
“He was at the forefront of a rev-
olution that has continued to this
day. To own a Richard Hambleton
acknowledges your deep under-
standing of street art,” they said.
Williams and Godrich, who co-
founded the interior architecture
studio, Godrich Interiors, said they
go into “a meditative trancelike state”
when they create their own work.
“There are references to so many
things buried in the layers of each
Harry and Meghan ‘invited
to palace balcony’ for jubilee
Caroline Davies
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have
reportedly been invited to appear on
the Buckingham Palace balcony dur-
ing the platinum jubilee.
Whether Prince Harry and Meghan
will choose to take up the invitation
and fly to the UK for the June celebra-
tions is not yet known. The duke is
still involved in legal action with the
Home Office over security for him and
his family while they are in the UK.
However, despite the controversy
over remarks by the couple that
•••
National
work, some private, some not,” they
said. “On closer inspection each
viewer will perceive the content in
a totally different way.”
The duo create the paintings while
listening to music (often Annie Mac’s
DJ sets) in the Los Angeles studio they
share. In total, 14 of their works will
be on display at the exhibition.
Other works in the curated sale
include 2-Hydroxypyridine, a spot
painting by Damien Hirst, who they
describe as “a mischievous scamp”,
and Grayson Perry’s self-portrait
have been critical of the royal family
in interviews since they stepped
down as working royals, it seems
the Queen, who celebrates her 96th
birthday tomorrow, firmly believes
that family trumps all.
The invitation for Harry and
Meghan to join other royals for the
balcony appearance, which seems
likely to take place at the trooping the
colour birthday parade, is said to have
been issued after the Sussexes paid
a low-key visit to the Queen during
a stop-off at Windsor Castle on the
way to the Netherlands, where the
Invictus Games for wounded service
personnel are being held this year.
‘We are proud of
what we created and
it is time to share
what’s been coming
out of our brains for
the last few years’
Robbie Williams
and Ed Godrich
The couple also had a brief meet-
ing with Prince Charles and Camilla,
Duchess of Cornwall.
Harry later told the BBC “it was
great” to see his grandmother. There
are unconfirmed reports that he and
Meghan had promised the Queen
that she would meet her grandchil-
dren Archie and Lilibet “in the near
future”, which suggests they may be
contemplating a return for the four-
day jubilee bank holiday.
As non-working royals, they
would play no formal role in the jubi-
lee celebrations, but as the balcony
appearance would be “a general fam-
ily gathering” it seems this would be
an ideal time for a public show of fam-
ily rapprochement.
“I think the ice was broken at
Windsor last week” said Joe Little,
managing editor of Majesty maga-
zine. “But will he come back?”
ceramics piece Him and Her. “The
intriguing thing about this piece is
it covers so many areas of Grayson’s
creativity,” they said.
“We all need a ceramic of Gray-
son and a pink creature in our lives.
Without Grayson, it all feels a frac-
tion normal.”
Williams, an early investor in
Banksy, has dabbled in the art mar-
ket before. In January he put up for
sale three works by Banksy from his
private collection for a combined esti-
mate of £10m. At the time he said the
Netflix shares
drop 20% after
subscriber loss
Dominic Rushe
New York
Netflix lost subscribers for the first
time in 10 years at the start of the year
and said it expects to lose even more
in the spring, sending its share price
crashing again yesterday.
The streaming giant’s share price
initially fell close to 20% on news
that it had lost 200,000 subscribers
globally during the first quarter. Wall
Street had been expecting the com-
pany to add 2.5 million subscribers.
11
PHOTOGRAPHS: SOTHEBY’S; BRIAN J RITCHIE/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK
 Works by ▲ The former
(clockwise from Take That singer
right) Banksy; Robbie Williams
Williams first told fans
and Godrich; about his love
Hambleton; and for art in a
Grayson Perry 2011 blogpost
aim was to free up space to be able to
buy “new art from new people” and
help fund his own work.
The former Take That singer first
told fans about his love for art in 2011.
In a blog post on his official website,
he said he was inspired by Jackson
Pollock and Andy Warhol.
Williams reportedly created 40
large works during the Covid lock-
downs and recently sold greetings
card-sized artworks to help promote
his new gallery, which also doubles
as a nightclub.
Godrich and Williams said: “We are
proud of what we have created and it
is time to share what has been coming
out of our brains for the last few years.
An exhibition gives the work a chance
to breathe outside of the studio.”
Netflix expects to lose 2 million global
subscribers in the current quarter.
The company blamed the drop on
several factors, including increased
competition, the war in Ukraine, and
the large number of people who share
their Netflix accounts with non-pay-
ing households.
The company recently announced
a crackdown in Chile, Costa Rica and
Peru on people sharing their Netflix
accounts with other households. It
is expected to expand the scheme.
According to its latest financial
report, on top of its 222 million paying
households, Netflix is being shared
with over 100 million additional
households, making it “harder to
grow membership in many markets”
and a problem that was obscured by
its growth during the pandemic.
Netflix made $1.6bn in profit over
the quarter on $7.8m in sales.
 ••• The Guardian Wednesday 20 April 2022

12 News
War in Ukraine

 Ukrainians
at an event
in Uzhhorod
yesterday show
their support for
those who have
had to flee their
homes following
the Russian
invasion

Moscow pitches
thousands of
mercenaries into
push for Donbas
Julian Borger
Washington
Russia has deployed up to 20,000
mercenaries from Syria, Libya and
elsewhere in its new offensive in
Ukraine’s Donbas region, sent into
battle with no heavy equipment or
armoured vehicles, according to a
European official.
The official said the estimates
of mercenary involvement on the
ground in eastern Ukraine range from
10,000 to 20,000 and that it was hard
to break down that figure between
Syrians, Libyans and other fighters
recruited by the Russian mercenary
organisation the Wagner Group.
“What I can tell you is that we did
see some transfer from these areas,
some sort of victory Vladimir Putin
can announce at the 9 May military
parade in Moscow commemorating
the second world war.
The Kremlin is seen as having four
objectives in this second phase, the
European official said: capturing
the Donbas; securing a land bridge
to Crimea in which the besieged city
of Mariupol is key; seizing Kherson
oblast to secure the supply of fresh
water to Crimea; and capturing ter-
ritory that could be used as a buffer
or a bargaining chip in negotiations.
Russia is still thought to have
three-quarters of the armed force it
began the war with in February – 76
battalion tactical groups, or about
60,000 troops in all.
Western officials said the army
faces many of the limitations

‘All our souls are hurting’

Syria and Libya, to the eastern Don-
bas region, and these guys are mainly
used as a mass against the Ukrain-
ian resistance,” the official said. “It’s
infantry. They don’t have any heavy
equipment or vehicles.”
Syrian ex-soldiers have been
offered monthly salaries of $600-
$3,000 (£460-£2,300), depending
on rank and experience, to fight in
Ukraine. Wagner is reported to have
moved most of its soldiers who had
been fighting in Libya to Ukraine and
last month, Ukrainian military intelli-
gence claimed Russia had made a deal
that led to its defeat in the battle for
Kyiv and the north. It has logistical
challenges even though the sup-
ply lines are shorter, and much will
depend on the condition of the roads
and railways.”
Furthermore, morale in the Rus-
sian ranks is low and getting lower,
the official said. “They don’t like
this war because they don’t like the
idea of killing people who speak Rus-
sian. They have lost many comrades
in the north and they have lost the
Navy cruiser Moskva.” They added
that Russians still do not have guaran-
to still come,” said Chekhuta. “It
was so hard; since then we’ve had
no contact.”
That silence is becoming a
Kreminna’s residents flee familiar characteristic of the
Russian occupation and mobile
phone signals are jammed in the
as Putin’s forces move in cities that have been overrun.
Olena Stetsenko, the head
of the City Korupus volunteer
organisation in Kreminna, was
Kyiv, which yesterday became the evacuated from the city in mid-
Ed Ram latest to be occupied in the second March. Stetsenko was one of the
Isobel Koshiw phase of the Russian invasion, last to reach someone inside the
Dnipro, Ukraine evacuations were initially slow. city before her mobile signal was

with the Libyan warlord, Khalifa Haf- teed air superiority so cannot provide
tar, to send Libyan fighters. permanent close air support to their
The mercenaries are joining troops on the ground.
the Russian bid to capture eastern Russian commanders are seeking
Ukraine in what western defence offi- to crush Mariupol to free up troops to
cials have described as a rush to have push north with the aim of cutting off
Ukrainian forces fighting in Donbas, a
senior US defence official told report-
‘They don’t like this ers yesterday. They said that was not
inevitable, pointing out the Ukrain-
war because they ian military is being replenished daily
don’t like the idea of with new weaponry.
US howitzers will arrive in Ukraine
killing people who “very, very soon” they said, adding
speak Russian. They that seven planeloads of equipment
will begin arriving in the next 24
have lost comrades’ hours. The Pentagon said Ukraine had
also received aircraft recently, but not
from the US, though Washington has
Anonymous supplied aircraft spare parts to help
Europe official Ukraine get more of planes in the air.
W
hen Vladimir
Putin ordered
his all-out
invasion of
Ukraine, towns
and cities
on the border with Russia found
themselves first in the line of fire –
checkpoints on a bloody warpath.
But despite their proximity
to danger, and perhaps having
become used to the looming
presence of the Russian military
threat, some residents in the east
were hesitant to leave their homes
– choosing to stay and fight against,
or at least endure the occupation.
In Kreminna, a city of more than
18,000 people about 350 miles
(560km) south-east of the capital,
Natalia Chekhuta, a former
head of Kreminna’s regional
administration from 2015-19, had
been running volunteer evacuation
missions since the start of the war.
At first not many people wanted
to evacuate, she said, but in the
last three weeks evacuations had
begun  en masse.
Chekhuta and her team were
heading to Kreminna on Monday
to collect people as Russian troops
broke through Ukrainian lines and
entered the city. Ukrainian soldiers
in a neighbouring town would not
let them pass. She learned that
one family had tried to leave and
their car was shot at – two died and
another was injured.
“The people we were going to
collect were ringing me, asking me
cut off at lunchtime on Monday,
she said, hours after Russian forces
reportedly took the city.
“My relative said [on Monday]
that there were Russian planes and
helicopters flying over the town,”
she said. “They said that [the
Russians] were using every single
type of heavy equipment: grads
[rocket launchers], tanks.”
On Saturday , two days before
Russian forces occupied the city,
the Guardian travelled there to
witness what was to be the last
evacuation of Kreminna residents
before the Russian attack.
In the city centre a white
armoured bus pulled up on at a
street corner and civilians dashed
out of basements under scuffed
apartment blocks towards the
Wednesday 20 April 2022 The Guardian
▼ A police officer checks the body of
a woman who was killed during the
Russian bombardment of Kharkiv
PHOTOGRAPH: FELIPE DANA/AP
vehicle, clutching bags and pets in
their arms. The conductor of the
evacuation bus, which was being
run by the local humanitarian
organisation Vostok SOS, crammed
their belongings into the hold.
The 17 evacuees hugged loved
ones and said teary goodbyes to the
sound of nearby explosions. Those
who stayed watched the bus pull
away from the cover of the arches
of Soviet-era apartment blocks.
A stone’s throw away from the
pickup point in Kreminna, debris
from a recent attack blocked access
and the bus had to take a longer,
more dangerous detour around the
city under the constant threat of
incoming artillery rounds.
Victoria Slobodyansk, a 61-year-
old retired English teacher, who
was travelling with her husband,
Oleksandr, her cat in a basket on her
▲ A woman prepares to board
an evacuation bus in Kreminna
•••
lap and a guinea pig in a bag at her
feet, said she was leaving because
of the images she had seen of Bucha
and Hostomel, two towns in the
Kyiv region that were devastated
under Russian occupation.
Speaking from a town in the
Dnipro region after having been
evacuated, Slobodyansk said she
had been trying to contact friends
and help other people contact their
relatives without success.
“We are all so worried. All of our
souls are hurting for Kreminna.
It’s a small town, but it’s clean and
pretty and we all love it very much.”
Slobodyansk said that before
she had left the city there had been
no gas for three weeks. She said
electricity had been cut several
times though local workers had
managed to re-establish the
connection last Thursday. She said
that Kreminna’s residents had been
cooking in the streets when there
was no electricity.
“We knew that it was going to
be hard and we knew that they
were going to bomb us, but our
guys would manage to withstand
them,” said Slobodyansk. “But we
understand that it was hard for
them; they were defending their
positions for weeks.”
Reuters contributed to this report
Russians take
first city as
offensive in
east Ukraine
intensifies
 Continued from page 1
now creeping towards the cities of
Slovyansk and Kramatorsk, 40 miles
south-east.
Meanwhile in the south, Moscow is
edging closer to full control of Mari-
upol in what would be its biggest
prize since it invaded Ukraine in Feb-
ruary. Relentless bombardment and
street fighting have left much of the
city pulverised, killing at least 21,000
people by Ukrainian estimates.
Yesterday evening, according to
reports that could not be indepen-
dently verified by the Guardian, the
Russian defence ministry offered a
ceasefire for Wednesday to the out-
gunned and outnumbered Ukrainian
soldiers holed up with thousands of
civilians in the Azovstal iron and
steelworks, one of Europe’s biggest
metallurgical plants. Earlier in the
day, Russia called on Ukrainian forces
to “immediately lay down arms” by
issuing a new ultimatum for the
defenders to end their resistance,
after Ukrainian forces ignored a pre-
vious ultimatum on Sunday.
In a video address late on Monday
night, Ukraine’s president, Volody-
myr Zelenskiy, said the second phase
of Vladimir Putin’s invasion had
begun – a statement Russia’s foreign
minister, Sergei Lavrov, confirmed
during a visit to India. “A signifi-
cant part of the entire Russian army
is now concentrated on this offen-
sive,” Zelenskiy said.
Late last month the Kremlin gave
up its violent attempt to seize Kyiv. It
says its new war goal is to conquer the
administrative borders of Luhansk
and Donetsk regions. To do so will
involve overcoming Ukraine’s experi-
enced and well-dug-in eastern army.
Oleksiy Arestovych, a Zelens-
kiy aide, predicted the new Russian
offensive would fail because of
insufficient forces to achieve a break-
through. Another senior adviser,
Mykhailo Podolyak, said a hubris-
tic Kremlin was making the same
mistake as with Kyiv, which it report-
edly expected to capture in 72 hours.
“Russians love to tell fairy tales,” he
tweeted sarcastically.
So far, according to Ukrainian
officials, the frontline in Ukrainian-
controlled Donbas is still holding.
The Ukrainian military expert Oleh
Zhdanov described Kreminna in the
northern Luhansk region as a “weak
spot”. Moscow’s troops frequently
attack Ukrainian positions from all
sides, he added, and were occupying
jumping-off points on three sides of
the Donbas: north, east and south.
The Institute for the Study of War, a
US thinktank, said Russian forces may
be able to take some territory because
of superior numbers and artillery. It
stressed, however: “Russian opera-
tions are unlikely to be dramatically
more successful than previous major
Russia’s assault on the Donbas
Russian-controlled territory
Russian advances
Kharkiv region
Ukrainian forces
recaptured the villages
of Bairak, Bobrivka and
Husarivka
Bobrivka
Kharkiv
Ukraine
Husarivka
Kreminna
Russian forces broke
through Ukrainian lines on
Monday and there were
reports of street fighting
2014-22 frontline
Ukrainian positions here are
long established and reportedly
some of the strongest
Melitopol
40 km
40 miles
Source: The Institute for the Study of War with AEI’s Critical Threats Project
Captured Briton
Anger over ‘interview’
Relatives of a British man who was
taken prisoner while serving with
the Ukrainian Marines have spoken
of their distress at seeing him
paraded in front of cameras by his
Russian captors.
Aiden Aslin’s family have said he
had been a legitimate combatant
with the Ukrainian armed forces,
and was speaking under duress
during an interview posted online
this week that was described as a
breach of Geneva conventions.
Images of Aslin in handcuffs
appeared last week shortly after he
had indicated via his social media
accounts, which are controlled by
a third party, that he had no longer
had any choice but to surrender as
the unit he was serving with inside
the besieged city Mariupol had run
out of food and ammunition.
This week, a 45-minute film was
released online, during which he
was questioned by Graham William
Phillips – a British man who has
previously worked for the Kremlin-
backed television channel RT.
During the film, Aslin answers
no when asked several times
if he is speaking under duress.
At his interviewer’s prompting
he repeats several of Moscow’s
propaganda lines; including that he
is mercenary.
“The video of Aiden speaking
under duress and having clearly
suffered physical injuries is deeply
distressing,” his relatives said.
Kevin Rawlinson
Heather Stewart
▲ Aiden Aslin in Ukraine before
being taken prisoner by Russia
13
Areas where Ukraine regained control
Reported Ukrainian partisan warfare around Melitopol
Donbas (Donetsk/Luhansk)
Russian forces continue to
Bairak
build up with units newly
deployed or withdrawn from
the north-east
Kharkiv
Izyum
Luhansk
Donetsk Russia
Luhansk
Donetsk
Azovstal steel plant
Defenders continue to hold out
against heavy Russian artillery
and air bombardment
Mariupol
Kyiv
Sea of Azov
offensives around Kyiv. The Russian
military is unlikely to have addressed
the root causes – poor coordination,
the inability to conduct cross-coun-
try operations, and low morale – that
impeded prior offensives.”
In the northern Kharkiv region,
Ukrainian forces mounted several
successful counterattacks. They
recaptured the villages of Bairak
and Bobrivka north-east of Kharkiv
city, and Hurisivka, another village
between Kharkiv and Izyum, where
Russia has assembled a formidable
attack force.
On Monday, Oleksandr Motuzi-
anyk, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s
ministry of defence, said Izyum was
the area with highest concentration
of Russian troops. Izyum, regarded
for centuries as the gateway to the
Donbas region of eastern Ukraine
and, from there, to the Black Sea, fell
fully to Russian forces on 1 April, trap-
ping thousands of civilians in a city
where as many as 80% of its residen-
tial buildings have been destroyed.
“The enemy has accumulated
its forces in Izyum and, unfortu-
nately, has a predominant number
of manpower and heavy equipment,”
Maksym Strelnyk, the deputy mayor,
who managed to flee with thousands
of fellow citizens before the town was
captured, told the Guardian.
“The Russians are trying to move
in the direction of Donetsk region,
but there are no serious successes.
They are using Izyum as a foothold
for the offensive and concentrating
all their forces in the city. They set up
their barracks, ammunition depots,
hospitals, canteens.”
The mayor of the besieged Ukrain-
ian city of Mariupol alleged that
about 40,000 civilians had been
forcibly moved to Russia or Rus-
sian-controlled regions of Ukraine.
“Unfortunately I have to declare that
as of today they are forcibly deport-
ing” people, Vadym Boichenko told
Ukrainian television. “We have ver-
ified through the municipal register
that they have already deported over
40,000 people.”
The fall of Mariupol, the larg-
est trading port in the Sea of Azov,
, would be an blow to Ukraine and a
symbolic victory for Russia.

14
‘This mad war!’ Russians reeling over
Putin venture grow increasingly vocal
Andrew Roth
Pjotr Sauer
E
ven Vladimir Soloviev,
a state TV host,
was having trouble
swallowing the loss
of Russia’s flagship
cruiser Moskva last
week as he took aim at a rare target
– the Russian military. “You just tell
me how you were able to lose it,”
he said on his talkshow. “Tell me,
what the hell were you doing in that
particular area of the Black Sea at
that moment?”
Soloviev remains pro-Putin and
pro-war. But the outburst points
to how the stress of Russia’s war in
Ukraine is growing as the invasion
enters its third month, with both
sides announcing a “new stage” in
the “battle for Donbas”.
Vladimir Putin decorated the
64th Separate Motorised Rifle
Brigade for “mass heroism and
• The Guardian Wednesday 20 April 2022
National
News
War in Ukraine
xSubjectxxxx
courage” after the unit was accused
by Ukraine of war crimes in Bucha.
But with the cost of the invasion
growing, some unlikely critics have
become more outspoken.
“I don’t see a SINGLE beneficiary
of this mad war!” Oleg Tinkov, a
businessman, wrote yesterday.
“Innocent people and soldiers
are being killed. Generals have
woken up from their hangover to
understand they have a shit army.
And why would the army be good,
if everything else in the country
is shit and rife with nepotism,
lackyism, and servility? Dear
‘collective west’ please give Mr
‘Please give Putin a
clear exit to save face
and stop the massacre’
Oleg Tinkov
Russian businessman
Putin a clear exit to save his face
and stop this massacre.” Russian
MPs suggested charging him with
discrediting Russia’s armed forces.
On both sides of a polarised
Russian society the failures of the
first stage of the war have raised
the stakes of the conflict, turning
what the Kremlin calls a “special
operation” into an existential one.
“We are seeing that the fate of
Putin, Russia and society as a whole
is being merged into one,” said Greg
Yudin, a sociologist. “I hear more
often that while people think the
war might have been a mistake,
they say there is no way back and
‘we’ve got to finish the job’.”
Marina Litvinovich, a Russian
politician and opposition activist,
said she saw the war as a stress test
for the government that threatened
to bring down the “colossus with
clay feet” that Putin had built over
20 years. But among Russians
generally, she said she also saw
signs of war fatigue. Apathy was
on the rise. “I see people becoming
used to the war, from some kind of
nightmare [it’s] become ordinary.”
People were “emotionally
burnt out”, she suggested, and
increasingly turning away from the
news even as the failures onboard
the Moskva cruiser were exposed.
The early economic shocks of the
war had passed for many and few
were thinking of the economic
recession to come. “Right now
there’s this kind of false sense that
life has normalised.”
The government has taken
extraordinary steps, including the
introduction of capital controls, to
prevent an economic collapse.
Maksim Reshetnikov, head of
Russia’s economic development
ministry, claimed yesterday the
country had “withstood the first
blow of sanctions”. But within the
business community there are clear
signs of distress, as international
companies continue to exit Russia.
Moscow’s mayor predicted a
▲ Children play on an old cannon
in Moscow as Russia prepares next
month to mark Victory Day of 1945
PHOTOGRAPH: YURI KOCHETKOV/EPA
loss of 200,000 jobs, and said that
out-of-work professionals might be
retrained or employed, including
for “socially important” work.
Several big names have voted
with their feet. The business daily
Vedomosti reported on Monday
that Lev Khasis, a former senior
executive at the state-owned
Sberbank, had left for the US.
But government officials have
mostly remained in their posts.
Temporary work stoppages at some
large factories have not led to the
kind of economic protests that the
Kremlin is truly concerned about.
“People are mobilising and
working as hard and creatively as
possible,” a senior director for a
metals company said.
Polling by the Levada Centre
indicated that Russian views on
the west grew more negative in
March. Those views largely were
encouraged by state media, with
remarks that would have been seen
as fringe and genocidal. “There
are a lot of people who believe in
this stuff,” said a state news agency
manager. “And even if not, any
Russian at our level is apoliticised.
It’s not for us to analyse the
decisions … made by the bosses.”
Wednesday 20 April 2022 The Guardian
‘Everyone
has to get it’
Ukrainians
queue for
new stamp
Luke Harding
Kyiv
After spending four hours in a queue,
Viktor Fyodorovich showed off his
shiny new purchase. “I’m 63 years
old. I’ve never felt so much pride
before in our nation. It’s a symbol
of our courage and steadfastness,”
he said.
Fyodorovich was the proud owner
of two sheets of stamps, 16 in total.
Available from Kyiv’s central post
office, the stamps show a Ukrainian
soldier giving the finger to the flag-
ship Russian cruiser Moskva. On
the sheet’s perforated margin is the
phrase that has become a rallying slo-
gan for Ukrainians in their underdog
battle against Moscow: “Russian war-
ship, go …!” The “fuck yourself” is
tactfully omitted.
The words were spoken by Roman
Hrybov when the warship’s crew
asked him and his fellow border
guards on Snake Island, south of
the port of Odesa, to surrender in
the early hours of Vladimir Putin’s
invasion. The phrase has since gone
global. Now the national postal ser-
vice, Ukrposhta, has released the
design as a commemorative stamp.
“People are in love with it. It
reflects the mood around the world
towards Russia,” said Igor Smelyan-
sky, Ukrposhta’s director general.
Scuffles broke out when one des-
perate woman tried to force her way
into the high-ceilinged neo-classical
postal building in Kyiv’s Independ-
ence Square.
Smelyansky came up with the idea
of a stamp in the early days of the war.
He asked the public for suggestions.
Collaborators Police hunt
for suspects in Donetsk
Isobel Koshiw
Ed Ram
O
leksandr Malish,
the patrol police
chief for the cities
of Kramatorsk and
Slovyansk in the
Donetsk region,
does not see people suspected of
collaborating with Russia as his
fellow citizens.
“I cannot even call these people
Ukrainians, even though they have
Ukrainian passports and were
born here and lived here all their
lives,” said Malish. “These are
not professional spies who were
trained in Moscow and sent here.”
•
▲ Top, Ukraine’s stamp, middle,
postal service celebrating
head, Igor the ‘battle of
Smelyansky, Snake Island’,
wears a T-shirt prompted
with the long queues
stamp’s design
PHOTOGRAPHS:
in Kyiv. The ALESSIO MAMO/
release of the THE GUARDIAN
The two cities he oversees
are in the pocket of the Donetsk
region still controlled by Ukraine
but surrounded by Russian forces
on three sides. Part of his team’s
job is rooting out and detaining
suspected collaborators. Pro-
Russian feeling still exists, he said,
especially among marginalised
sections of the population.
Malish said there were Telegram
groups with the “Z” branding
that were targeting residents.
The administrator of the group
would put out a notice asking for
coordinates or photos of a certain
place in exchange for money. When
a person sent the “goods” to the
administrator, they received up to
£500 on their bank card.
A shortlist of 50 designs were put to
a vote, with the warship the trium-
phant winner. “It was democratic,
just like Ukraine,” he said. “Even
when air-raid sirens sound, people
refuse to leave their place in the line.”
The postal service printed a mil-
lion warship stamps. Seven hundred
thousand are on sale across Ukraine,
Smelyansky said, with 200,000
reserved for territories currently
occupied by Russian troops, includ-
ing Crimea. Another 100,000 will be
sold online from tomorrow, he said,
including to buyers abroad.
Yesterday, the only way to get hold
of a sheet was to join the back of the
Kyiv queue. It was several thousand
people long. Smelyansky emerged
from his office mid-morning and
reassured those waiting outside
that there were enough to go round
– 70,000 on sale that day, limited to
16 per person.
Several people asked him for self-
ies. Others applauded and shouted
“Slava Ukraini” (glory to Ukraine).
Meanwhile, Smelyansky’s phone
rang continuously with requests from
VIPs. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr
Malish said his team had
found evidence of such Telegram
exchanges and bank transfers
on the phones of “numerous”
suspected collaborators. The
Guardian was not able to find the
Telegram groups Malish described.
But it did find public Telegram
groups for Kramatorsk and
Slovyansk with “Z” branding that
carry pro-Russia messaging.
The groups have about 15,000
subscribers. The Guardian was not
able to confirm that they were all
genuine residents of the two cities
and neighbouring villages, though
some appeared to be.
Malish said police were asked
by residents to inspect a man on
Saturday. When they searched his
£500
Payment residents can supposedly
receive for supplying information to
Russia such as coordinates or photos
Zelenskiy, posed with the stamp
and covers last week, telling his cit-
izens on Instagram: “Everyone has
to get it.”
Smelyansky said he would not
reprint the stamp once it sold out,
despite its success. He showed off
designs for a successor stamp. One
featured Ukrainian police dragging
away Vladimir Putin, above the words
“War criminal arrested”. Another
depicted a burning Kremlin and a
demonic-looking Red Square.
The director general pointed out
wryly that the original stamp was
published the day before two Ukrain-
ian anti-ship missiles smashed into
the Moskva. It sank in the Black Sea.
“We should win this war. We will win
it,” he said. “The Russians don’t know
what they are fighting for.”
Natalii Tkachenko said she man-
aged to buy stamps on the first day
they were released. “It’s a symbol, a
message. It reflects our inner patriot-
ism,” she said, wrapping up a parcel.
“I was born here. I live in this coun-
try. They want to destroy us. I’m not
going to surrender. My husband is not
going to surrender.”
phone, he said, they saw he had
received about £400 from a Russian
bank account on 8 April. As the man
was not able to explain the transfer,
and the Kramatorsk railway station
was hit the same day, they decided
to detain him as a suspect.
More than half the cities’
populations have left. According to
one officer on duty, Ihor Yunusov,
this makes it easier for the police to
identify suspicious behaviour. “If
before there could be 500 people
on the main square in the evening,
now there are around 10,” he said.
Driving around Kramatorsk,
the police struggled to find cars
or people to inspect. Instead,
they took the Guardian to see
the damage from a double rocket
attack apparently intended for
the Kramatorsk regional security
services headquarters. One of
the three officers, Volodymyr
Filonenko, had evacuated his
family from one of the 40 damaged
buildings shortly before it was hit.
15
United Nations
Senior ex-staff
urge Guterres
to do more to
foster peace
Patrick Wintour
Diplomatic editor
More than 200 former senior UN offi-
cials have written to the UN secretary
general, António Guterres, warning
him that unless he does more per-
sonally to try to mediate a peace in
Ukraine, the UN risks not just irrel-
evance but its continued existence.
The ex-staff, including many for-
mer UN undersecretaries, urged him
to raise his profile and be prepared to
take personal risks to secure peace,
saying the UN was facing an existen-
tial threat owing to the invasion of
Ukraine by one of the five permanent
members of the security council.
“What we and the broader public
want to see, though, is a political UN
presence and public engagement, in
addition to the UN’s notable humani-
tarian response to the Ukraine crisis,”
the authors said.
“We want to see a clear strategy
to re-establish peace, starting with
a provisional ceasefire, and the use
of the UN’s capacity for good offices,
mediation and conflict-resolution.
“That could include visits to the
conflict-stricken areas, discussions
with the opposing sides, even mov-
ing your own office temporarily to
Europe, closer to the urgently needed
negotiations and, thereby, indicating
the UN’s resolve to address this major
crisis head-on.”
The letter’s authors include Jeffrey
Feltman, a former undersecretary
general for political affairs; Andrew
Gilmour, a former assistant secretary
general for human rights; Franz Bau-
mann, a former assistant secretary
general for the general assembly; Ajay
Chhibber, a former assistant secre-
tary general for the UN development
programme; and José Ocampo, a
former undersecretary general for
economic and social affairs.
“We have decided to raise our
voice out of concern for the existen-
tial challenge that the United Nations
is facing in this historic juncture,”
they write.
“The Russian invasion of Ukraine
severely undermines the post-World
War II global order. It is the pinnacle
of a series of threats to humanity’s
peace and security, shared prosper-
ity and respect for human rights that
the UN embodies.”
Critics say Guterres has been
immobilised by the scale of the splits
between the permanent members
of the security council, and by votes
in the general assembly that have
revealed deep divisions, including
the expulsion of Russia from the
human rights council.
His supporters argue that he has
been as clear as he can in criticising
the invasion without jeopardising his
professional role.
The authors of the letter admit they
do not know if Guterres is involved in
any behind-the-scenes mediation.
 • The Guardian Wednesday 20 April 2022
16 News
War in Ukraine
Sanctions Reuters
US targets The US is seeking to seize a super-
superyacht in yacht suspected of belonging to a
Russian oligarch that is docked in
Fiji, according to a restraining order
Fiji believed filed yesterday by the Pacific island
nation’s head of public prosecutions.
to belong to The luxury vessel, the Amadea, is
believed to be owned by Suleiman
oligarch Kerimov, who is subject to economic
sanctions by the US and EU imposed
in response to Russia’s activities
in Syria and Ukraine. It arrived in
Fiji a week ago after leaving Mexico
18  days earlier and crossing the
Pacific.
Authorities in various countries
have seized luxury vessels and vil-
las owned by Russian billionaires in
response to sanctions imposed on
Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.
Fiji’s director of public prosecu-
tions, Christopher Pryde, filed a high
court application seeking to prevent
the Amadea from leaving Fiji’s waters
until a US warrant to seize the yacht
is registered.
▲ The Amadea’s owner is believed to
be Suleiman Kerimov, who is subject
to US and EU economic sanctions
Seasonal workers who
flee ‘unacceptable’ UK
farms lose refugee path
Diane Taylor
Hundreds of Ukrainians are believed
to be living and working informally
in Britain after escaping from farms
where they were employed, with
many said to have been subjected to
conditions of modern slavery.
Ukrainians made up by far the larg-
est proportion of workers in the UK
on seasonal worker visas in 2021. But
many of the farm workers are not eli-
gible for the two main government
schemes that support Ukrainian ref-
ugees – the family scheme and the
community sponsorship scheme.
From 3 May, the Ukraine extension
scheme will be open for applica-
tions. This will allow people to stay
for three years and switch to a dif-
ferent visa route, allowing them to
seek alternative employment. How-
ever, it does not apply to those not
working on farms at the time appli-
cations are made whose visas expired
on or before 31 December 2021.
The Guardian has spoken to one
Ukrainian worker who is in a state
of acute distress after fleeing con-
ditions on farms that she said were
“akin to modern-day slavery”. An IT
expert with two university degrees,
she came to the UK with her partner,
who is training to become a doctor, in
the hope of earning money.
She has provided an account
almost 3,000 words long to the Work
Rights Centre, a charity that helps
migrants access employment justice.
Her statement details appalling work-
ing conditions on the farms she and
her partner worked on from August
2021 until they escaped in January.
She and her partner are now work-
ing in cleaning and construction in
the underground economy.
“We have come across many, many
other Ukrainians who, like us, have
run away from farms, cannot return
to Ukraine and so have been forced to
work here illegally,” she said. “I feel
like I am a hostage in the UK.”
She added: “I thought our rights
would be well protected in the UK but
this has not happened. Working on
the farm is probably one of the worst
experiences … of my life.”
She and her boyfriend worked
on a fruit farm where they were not
allowed to wear gloves, causing their
The US embassy did not imme-
diately respond to a request for
comment, but last week said it was
“committed to finding and seizing
the assets of the oligarchs who have
supported the Russian Federation’s
brutal, unprovoked war of choice
against Ukraine”.
A superyacht agent in Fiji acting for
the Amadea said last week lawyers
were contesting that Kerimov was the
owner. Registration records viewed
by Reuters show the yacht is regis-
tered to a company in the Cayman
Islands.
hands to bleed. She said workers on
one of the farms staged a protest over
the poor conditions and were pun-
ished by being suspended for a week.
“They set unachievable targets,”
she said. “Through threats and humi-
liation, people were forced to work
tirelessly, wearing off the skin on
their hands and feet.”
On their huge farm workers’ camp-
site, all but 38 workers fled. She said:
“People left to work illegally in the
cities. I will never go to work on any of
the farms again – there are no happy
stories. Everyone runs away.”
A review by the Home Office and
the Department for Environment,
Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) pub-
lished at the end of last year found
that seasonal workers on a post-
Brexit pilot scheme launched in
2019 were subjected to “unaccepta-
ble” welfare conditions. Issues cited
by some workers included a lack of
health and safety equipment, rac-
ism, and accommodation without
running water.
Graham O’Neill, policy manager at
the Scottish Refugee Council, said: “It
is dreadful that hundreds of Ukrain-
ians here … now find themselves
destitute, their seasonal visas expired
due to having to flee conditions on
farms.” He called on the home secre-
tary to give seasonal workers the right
to remain in the UK and bring family
members to safety here.
A government spokesperson said:
“Ukrainians on seasonal worker visas
can apply for three years’ leave under
the Ukraine extension scheme.
“Under no circumstances should
any seasonal workers in the agri-
cultural sector be forced to work in
exploitative conditions. We strongly
advise any people in these circum-
stances to report issues to the police
so steps can be taken for their safe-
guarding and wellbeing.”
▲ One Ukrainian said her job on a
UK farm was like modern slavery
Wednesday 20 April 2022 The Guardian
‘I dreamed my son was hugging me’
The women going home to Ukraine
Lorcan Lovett
A
s the war crept
closer to Odesa,
Ann heeded the
pleas of her friends
abroad and fled to
Holland. A month
later, as she tried to calm her son
over the phone while Russian
missiles shook the Black Sea port
city around him, she decided to
return. “I couldn’t stick it,” she
says. “I needed to get home.”
Ann, 50, moved through a
crowd of women and children at
Przemyśl railway station in Poland
to board her train. “I do not care
what will happen to me,” Ann
says. “If something happens to my
family, why do I need to live?”
As the war continues, and
allegations of Russian war crimes
reach the international community,
it is hard to understand why anyone
would risk returning to Ukraine.
But since Russia’s invasion on
24 February, of the more than
2.5 million people who have
entered Poland, about 502,000
are estimated to have returned.
Figures provided by the Polish
border guard show that between
4 and 10 April 117,129 people
•
entered Ukraine from Poland. It is
not possible to know who among
those numbers are civilians as the
figure includes aid workers and
other officials, but volunteers on
the border in the Polish village of
Medyka say they saw an increase
in the numbers heading back in
the previous week. For men, the
journey may be a necessary one,
after Ukraine conscripted males
aged 18-60 to fight.
Over the course of a week, the
Guardian spoke to women at two
different railway stations, on either
side of the Ukraine-Poland border,
to find out why they were going
home. They gave a range of reasons
but many, like Ann, were motivated
by a desperate desire to be with
loved ones again.
“We saw about 200 people
waiting in line to go out to Ukraine
the other day. At times there’s a
surge of people going out,” says
Ralph Yatsko, at a stand for World
Central Kitchen in Medyka.
Jim Clayton, from non-profit
Siobhan’s Trust, who has been
handing out pizzas to people at
the border for 11 days, says he
has seen a definite increase in
Ukrainians returning home. “It’s
nice in a way but also scary. It’s
hard to know if they are going back
into a dangerous situation.”
Fear of living in the besieged
country is still very real. “If you
heard the news, you know,” says
a mother shepherding her two
young children through passport
control at the station. Her parents
need her care in eastern Ukraine,
she says, though she is keen to
return to Poland.
On the blue and yellow sleeper
train to Odesa, smartphones light
carriages with calls to loved ones,
until the blinds are pulled shut to
avoid the train being spotted by the
Russians. Checks by armed soldiers
and plainclothed Ukrainian agents
delay the first stop, at Lviv, by two
and a half hours.
In Odesa, Ann will join her son
and his wife along with his father-
in-law, whose home in Kherson
was destroyed by Russian shelling.
They were last together, sipping
wine hours before the invasion, on
23 February – a Soviet-era holiday
known as Men’s Day. It now feels
like a lifetime ago, Ann says. “I
dreamed my son was hugging me
and saying: ‘Please do not leave me
again’,” she adds. “The atmosphere
of my presence may help.”
On the same train, Tatiana, 57,
is heading to Kolomyia, western
Ukraine, where her mother has
relocated after their apartment
in the north-eastern city of
Kharkiv was shelled. She briefly
accompanied her daughter-in-law
and grandson to Poland before
going back to care for her mother
and other elderly residents.
Her Ukrainian friends in
Germany are also returning to
reclaim a sense of home that was
lost in the flight from war.
While Tatiana’s 27-year-old son
is in Odesa, her elder son, who is 34,
has been unreachable for weeks.
“He is a medic on the frontline,” she
says. “I don’t know where he is, and
he can’t call because of security. All
I can do is pray for him every day.”
Iryna, 29, had been in Poland for
just a night before getting the train
back. She took her daughter for
biometrics so that the 10-year-old
can obtain a passport and apply for
a UK visa. After that, she said, they
‘A lot of people are
returning to Kyiv
and Kharkiv because
they’ve heard it’s
become calmer’
Yelizaveta Sokolova
Volunteer
17
 People fleeing Ukraine gather at
Lviv’s railway station in March.
Thousands have since returned
PHOTOGRAPH: PAVLO PALAMARCHUK/REUTERS
will move from Ternopil in western
Ukraine to a host in Warwick.
“It was so hard to come back to
Ukraine,” she says. “I need to take
care of my baby. I don’t want her to
feel I am worrying and crying all the
time. If the Russian army doesn’t
come to this part of Ukraine, it will
be more rockets or something else.”
Her daughter plays with
someone’s pet terrier as videos
of Russian atrocities are passed
between the adults.
A 58-year-old woman, also
called Tatiana, from the western
Ukrainian city of Khmelnytskyi,
was having medical treatment at
a Kyiv hospital when the invasion
started. Her medical records were
lost as the hospital was forced
to close. She now travels across
Ukraine for up to 12 hours to see a
specialist cancer doctor in Poland.
“I did not believe in the
possibility of war in Ukraine until
the last day,” she says, looking
exhausted and touching the
dressing on her face from a biopsy.
“Now I don’t know what to think.”
At Lviv station a few days later,
close to the border with Poland,
returning refugees wait for train
and bus connections alongside
eastern Ukrainians, heading in
the opposite direction after the
horrors of a strike at Kramatorsk
railway station in the Donbas and
an expected Russian offensive in
the region.
Near the station, Yulia, 30, steps
off a bus from Kraków with her two
children and sister. Before boarding
the next bus to her home town of
Ternopil, she tells of how old Polish
women had cried with sympathy
for Ukrainians during her month-
long stay in Kraków. “But I couldn’t
find work [in Poland], and without
work it’s hard. It’s easier to be here,
this is home.”
Returning from Poland and now
on a bus bound for the western city
of Kamianets-Podilskyi, Lyudmila,
59, hurls invective towards the
Russian president, Vladimir Putin.
“I would have never believed
that the Polish would help us and
the Russians would kill us,” says
the grandmother, who spent half
her life under the Soviet Union.
“We don’t need to be liberated by
the Russians.”
She has returned to care for
her sick husband, while another
grandmother, Helena, is travelling
from Milan with her daughter and
10-year-old grandson back to their
home near Kyiv, which they had
left two weeks previously.
“A lot of people are returning to
Kyiv and Kharkiv because they’ve
heard it’s become calmer,” says
Yelizaveta Sokolova, a volunteer at
the station. “They want to be in the
country they were born in.”
Uniformed soldiers crowd
around a truck at one end of the
station. “It’s very dangerous,”
says one soldier. “Many people
are coming back but they need
to wait longer. It’s too early.”
Full names of those mentioned in
this article have not been used in
order to protect their security
Wednesday 20 April 2022 The Guardian •

National 19

University’s prestige
may be less valuable
than thought – report
Richard Adams
Education editor
Students are advised to be “more
relaxed” about the reputation of the
universities they want to attend after
research revealed they could be bet-
ter off graduating with a good degree
from a less prestigious university
than with a lower-class degree from
a selective institution.
The report by the Institute for Fis-
cal Studies found that graduates in
England with first class or upper sec-
ond class (2.1) honours degrees had
higher average earnings by the age of
30 than those who finished with lower
second class (2.2) awards, regardless
of institution – meaning that degree
class was often more important than
institutional reputation.
Figures in the report also sug-
parents and policymakers should
take note of the findings, and be
“more relaxed” about which insti-
tutions they aim to study at.
“The findings imply that degree
classification may matter as much as
university attended for later life earn-
ings,” Waltmann said.
The research, based on detailed
government data, found that five
years after graduation, annual pre-
tax earnings for both women and men
who obtained a lower second-class
degree in 2013 were around £3,800
lower than for those who received an
upper second-class degree.
The study also found that the
rewards for higher degree classes
vary “hugely” depending on subject.
Jack Britton, a co-author of the Foxes are red, woodlands are blue A fox in a sea of
report, said: “For many subjects, the
difference between a first and a 2.1 is
bluebells in Sevenoaks, Kent. Woodlands, meadows and PHOTOGRAPH:
inconsequential for earnings. How- parks are set to be turned vivid blue by the spring flowers. SHANE STANBRIDGE

gested it was less difficult to obtain
a higher-class degree outside of selec-
tive universities with competitive
entry requirements, despite those
universities tending to award a larger
proportion of 2.1s and firsts.
Ben Waltmann, senior research
economist at IFS and a co-author of
the report, said prospective students,
‘For many subjects,
a difference between
a first and 2.1 is
inconsequential. For
some it’s substantial’
Jack Britton
Report’s co-author
ever, for others, such as economics,
law, business, computing and phar-
macology, it is substantial.”
For men and women studying law
or economics, getting a 2.2 rather
than a 2.1 was associated with 15%
lower earnings or worse, while there
was “no significant difference” in pay
between degree classes for those who
majored in education or English.
But achieving at least a 2.1 led to
much higher average pay for grad-
uates of more selective universities.
Men and women who gained a 2.2
from the most selective universities
– Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial Col-
lege London and the London School
of Economics – earned 20% less on
average by the age of 30 than those
who achieved a 2.1. At the least selec-
tive universities, a 2.2 degree led to
around 6% lower pay for women and
8% for men.
Sex education
theatre show
called off after
‘violent threats’
Lanre Bakare
Arts and culture correspondent
A theatre show that promised to reim-
agine sex education by discussing the
issue in a frank and open manner with
audience members as young as five
years old has been cancelled after
“violent threats” were made against
its organisers.
The Family Sex Show was due to
tour this spring but was pulled from
venues after what its creators called
a series of “violent and illegal threats
and abuse” were directed at the com-
pany and venues by “a small group of
people with extremist views”.
The show had been in develop-
ment since 2017 and promised to
confront subjects including bound-
aries, gender, relationships, and
masturbation in a production aimed
at families. After the show was
announced and news of its content
began circulating online, a petition
was started which claimed the pro-
duction was “wholly inappropriate
and is a blatant attempt to sexualise
children and break down their natu-
ral boundaries”.
ThisEgg, the company behind the
production, said audiences were
given information about the con-
tent before booking, so could make an
“informed decision” about the show.
A online comment piece for The
Critic magazine claimed The Family
Sex Show could lead to inappropriate
conversations between children and
adults and “is creating a gap, nay, a
canyon, for predators to enter”.
The Guardian understands
threatening and abusive calls and
communications were sent to the
venues hosting the show and This-
Egg, which led on 14 April to the
cancellation of the performances.
The show had been due to visit the
Tobacco Factory in Bristol and the
Norfolk & Norwich festival in May,
but just an invite-only date in Bath
remains.
Wednesday 20 April 2022 The Guardian
Greens
Popularity
in Burnley
foretells
local poll
victories
Peter Walker
Political correspondent
S
tanding on the doorstep
of his terraced house
in Brunshaw, a few
minutes’ walk from
Burnley FC’s stadium
Vic is perhaps not
everyone’s idea of a typical Green
party voter. For one thing, he was
formerly a Conservative. There
is also the fact that he is 85.
“They’re working hard all the
time. It’s not just at elections you
hear from them,” Vic says, having
just promised his support to Alex
Hall, who hopes to become the
Greens’ second councillor in the
ward on 5 May. “The other parties
take you for granted.”
Stories about Green successes
have become something of a repeat
event in recent local elections, and
one of the near certainties of this
year’s vote is that the party will end
up with another record number of
councillors – their current total of
about 460 was a record, and they
expect to make net gains.
The Greens will field more than
2,500 candidates across England,
Wales and Scotland, with the latter
having a separate organisation and
about 20 councillors.
Such is the party’s ubiquity,
officials say, if they do not stand in
•
National
a particular ward, voters now email
to complain. While the Greens
hope for increases in traditional
metropolitan hunting grounds
such as London, Manchester and
Birmingham, the battle in Burnley
demonstrates how their appeal has
expanded, in terms of geography
and in range of potential voters,
a factor in traditional party loyalties
breaking down.
If all goes well for them the
party could go from having had its
first Burnley councillor in 2018,
to five now, then up to eight next
month, potentially making it the
second biggest party, albeit well
behind Labour.
Three of the current Green
councillors represent the central
ward of Trinity, which has
significant deprivation. But among
targets this year are second seats in
more middle-class Brunshaw, and
in Worsthorne, an affluent village.
Nationally, more than half the
Greens’ target seats this year are
held by Conservatives, officials
say. On the Burnley campaign trail
it becomes clear that promises of
support come from people across
political backgrounds and ages.
Some of the appeal comes from
core policy offerings, for example
opposing speculative homebuilding
on greenfield sites devoid of
promises of infrastructure. But a
good deal of the success is based on
being visible and knocking on lots
of doors, activities the party argues
have been neglected by Labour and
Conservatives in their strongholds.
“Maybe that is the difference –
we’re seen around here and they’re
not,” says Scott Cunliffe, who
was elected in the Cliviger with
Worsthorne ward in 2021. A third
of Burnley seats are contested each
‘What we offer is the
sort of grassroots,
out and about,
politics that Labour
should stand for’
Andy Fewings
Green party councillor
▼ From left: Alex Hall, Scott Cunliffe
and Andy Fewings campaigning
for the Green party in Burnley
PHOTOGRAPH: RICHARD SAKER/THE GUARDIAN
year, with county council elections
in the fourth.
Andy Fewings, who became
the town’s first Green councillor
2018 and is seeking re-election
in May, talks of bigger parties’
“complacency”, adding: “What
we offer is the sort of grassroots,
out and about, politics that Labour
should be standing for, and perhaps
has moved away from as they’re
so used to winning in these kinds
of areas. In part it’s just people
responding to the fact it’s been so
long since they had a conversation
with a politician on a doorstep.”
Chris Williams, the Greens’
head of elections in England and
Wales, says one factor is the general
lack of trust in politics, and the
perception that his party may be
different. “There is understanding
that people don’t get involved
in the Greens for some sort of
political career. Voters can see the
authenticity of what [we] offer. A
lot of our members see that winning
elections is viable, whereas 10 years
ago they might have focused more
on internal policy making. Now our
members see there is a path.”
21
Call for ban on
water firm boss
bonuses over
sewage spills
Helena Horton
Bonuses should be banned for water
company bosses until sewage spills
into rivers stop, the Liberal Demo-
crats are to demand.
Executives were awarded £27m
in bonuses over the past two years
despite pumping out raw sewage into
waterways 1,000 times a day, analysis
by the party has found.
The former Lib Dem leader Tim
Farron is tabling a 10-minute rule
bill asking for mandatory targets and
timescales for the end of sewage dis-
charges into waterways and coastal
areas. It would require quarterly
reports on the environmental impact
of sewage discharges, and place a rep-
resentative of environmental groups
on water company boards.
Companies House records show
executives at England’s water and
sewage companies were paid £48m
in 2020 and 2021, including £27.6m
in bonuses, benefits and incentives.
This is despite recent reports from
the Environment Agency showing
772,000 sewage dumping events took
place in 2020 and 2021 – more than
1,000 a day.
The Lib Dems have suggested the
money spent on bonuses would be
better spent on infrastructure to pre-
vent sewage spills, which can harm
wildlife as well as human health.
The party’s leader, Ed Davey, said:
“The Conservatives are allowing
water companies to pump raw sew-
age into our precious rivers and lakes
while awarding themselves obscene
bonuses. These bosses should be
made to hand back the millions of
pounds already received in bonuses
to help clean up their mess.”
The bill is likely to stir up tension
among Tories. The government had
to U-turn last year after its MPs voted
not to ban sewage spills into rivers,
and later wrote its own legislation
putting a legal duty on water com-
panies to prevent sewage spills.
 • The Guardian Wednesday 20 April 2022

22
Eyewitness
Wednesday 20 April 2022 The Guardian •

▼ Glenridding, Cumbria 23
The steamer Lady of the Lake,
launched in 1877, cruises across
Ullswater en route to Pooley Bridge
PHOTOGRAPH: ANDREW MCCAREN/LNP
Wednesday 20 April 2022 The Guardian •

Rice rice, baby! Press in the line of fire 25

hai
Rapper Milli puts Thai Mexican cartels turn
snack on the menu guns on journalists
Page 26 Page 28

 Volunteers delivering free food

supplies to a Shanghai gated
community in lockdown this week
PHOTOGRAPH: XU CHONGDE/VCG/GETTY IMAGES

week were of people aged between

60 and 101, with underlying condi-
tions. Officials said the “direct cause”
of the deaths had been their under-
lying conditions, but still recorded
them against the outbreak.
The decision to attribute this
week’s 10 deaths to the outbreak
appeared to mark a change in policy,
however, it was unclear why these 10
people were highlighted over others,
with widespread reports of deaths in
Shanghai nursing homes and hospi-
tals where there have been outbreaks.
Prof Jin Dong-yan, a virologist at
the University of Hong Kong, said
Chinese health authorities did not
usually count deaths from infectious
diseases if there were underlying
conditions, and that this had also
been seen during past influenza sea-
sons and the 2003 outbreak of Sars.
“I don’t think they deliberately
covered this up or want to play down
this. It’s not true. They are just doing
what they did in past years,” he said,
adding that he could “only guess”
why authorities decided to announce
this week’s 10 fatalities. “They might
be trying to tell the people that there
are deaths.”
However, Jin said at the same time
officials were pointing at death rates
in Hong Kong, which reports differ-
ently and has recorded almost 9,000

Shanghai gears up to
deaths in recent months, as a warning
not to abandon zero-Covid policies
such as lockdowns.
In Shanghai, the low official death

ease lockdown after

toll has led to suspicion of the official
narrative, as people claim deaths of
family members in nursing homes
and hospitals are not acknowledged,

China’s worst Covid

and media reports are censored.
The lockdowns have caused major
disruptions to daily life. Businesses
and factories across Shanghai have

outbreak since Wuhan

Helen Davidson
Taipei
Shanghai is preparing to ease its
lockdown over the city’s 25 million
people, with authorities hoping
Covid transmissions will mostly be
limited to quarantine facilities.
Factories are resuming production
in closed-loop systems, with Tesla
staff reportedly told to sleep onsite.
Amid China’s worst outbreak since
once there is no further spread
among the local population outside
of quarantine and isolation facili-
ties. Reaching such a target led to an
easing of restrictions in other cities
during recent outbreaks.
The number of new local trans-
missions detected on Monday fell
to 19,442 from 21,395 the previous
day, with 550 cases found outside the
quarantine zones, down from 561 the
day before.
Shanghai’s new target was com-
because they handled it so well,” said
Prof Robert Booy, an infectious dis-
eases and vaccine expert from the
University of Sydney.
“The problem China has now is
the Wuhan virus had a reproduction
number of two, where the new ones
have 12 or more. So it will be almost
impossible to control despite the
extraordinary efforts of quarantining
millions of people at a time and test-
ing them. It would be a miracle if they
could control the virus despite their
▲ A Covid testing site in Shanghai.
The city’s low death toll has led to
suspicion of the official narrative
PHOTOGRAPH: ALEX PLAVEVSKI/EPA
Covid were still Covid deaths. “People
who die with Covid die because of
Covid … you can’t blame the death
on the underlying problems,” he
said. “It’s the combination of the
two and that’s why you get so very,
very ill.” All the deaths reported this
been shut or restricted for more than
three weeks, with impacts on pro-
duction and supply chains, further
exacerbated by closed roads and
other pathways in and out of the city.
Major companies including Tesla
and Volkswagen are among 666
firms told they could restart pro-
duction this week, under closed-loop
management.
A memo reportedly circulated at
Tesla told employees they would
have to sleep at the factory, with the
company providing each worker with
a sleeping bag and mattress, daily
meals and a stipend.
Drone footage taken by Chinese
media appeared to show Tesla

Wuhan at the start of the pandemic,
Shanghai continues to report tens of
thousands of cases a day, with the
majority among people in quaran-
tine or isolation. On Monday, Reuters
reported officials had set a target of
reaching “zero-Covid at the commu-
municated in a speech officially
dated Saturday, to the city’s Com-
munist party and organisations such
as schools, according to Reuters’
sources, who declined to be named
as the information was not public.
China remains committed to its zero-
extremely fastidious approaches.”
More than 340,000 cases have
been reported since Shanghai’s out-
break began in March. This week,
city officials reported the first deaths
officially attributed to the outbreak,
including three on Sunday and seven
340,000
The number of cases of Covid-19
reported in Shanghai since this
latest outbreak began in March
employees arriving at the factory
yesterday with luggage, and several
people moving the frame of a Tesla
car around the site.
Volkswagen, which restarted pro-
duction at its Changchun factories
after restrictions there eased, said it

nity level” by today.
At present, all positive cases must
be isolated, mostly in dormitory-style
warehouses, or in hospitals if treat-
ment is required. Community-level
zero-Covid will have been achieved
Covid policy, despite the spread of
the highly infectious Omicron variant
across the country.
“The Chinese population has a
degree of immunity because of vacci-
nation but not exposure to the virus,
on Monday. The apparent absence
of any reported Covid-19 fatalities
despite more than 340,000 cases
since March had been met with scep-
ticism from experts.
Booy said the deaths of people with
666
The number of firms – including
Tesla and Volkswagen – told they
could restart production this week
was still studying the feasibility of
resuming production in Shanghai,
Reuters reported.
Additional reporting Xiaoqian Zhu,
Chi Hui Lin and agencies

26
Thai frenzy for mango sticky
rice after US festival cameo
Rebecca Ratcliffe
Navaon Siradapuvadol Bangkok
Bangkok’s famous Mae Varee mango
sticky rice shop has barely kept up
with demand over recent days. At one
point so many delivery drivers had
lined up outside to collect orders that
the police arrived, concerned that
their bikes were blocking the traffic.
“Yesterday we needed to close the
delivery orders from time to time
because we couldn’t prepare [the
rice] in time,” said Naparom Sun-
tiparadorn, whose family owns the
shop. On Sunday, orders were six or
seven times higher than usual.
The frenzy came after a 19-year-
old rapper known as Milli became the
first Thai to perform solo at Coachella
festival in California, and marked the
occasion by eating the sweet treat on
stage. Her performance, including
the way she mocked cliched stereo-
types of Thailand (“I don’t ride an
elephant”) and the Thai govern-
ment, was applauded by many young
Thais. “The country is good, people
are good, our food is good but the gov-
ernment is bood [rotten],” she said.
Across Thailand the demand for
mango sticky rice has since rock-
eted. One food delivery app told Thai
media that orders more than tripled
in the 24 hours after Milli’s perfor-
mance. Social media has been filled
with images of the dessert: one meme
replaced Bangkok’s Democracy Mon-
ument with a mound of sticky rice
shielded by four slices of mango.
The government has sought to cap-
italise on the trend, despite Milli’s
strong criticism of its leadership.
The prime minister, Prayuth Chan-
ocha, said the culture ministry might
propose recognition of mango sticky
Shear ecstasy for ram after
three winters on the lam
Eva Corlett
Wellington
A merino ram named Shrekapo
that grew an enormous fleece while
evading capture in New Zealand is
now 18.6kg (41lb) lighter after hav-
ing its first shave.
Shrekapo was named after the
famous sheep Shrek that was found
carrying a 27kg fleece after six years
on the run in 2004, and Lake Tekapo,
which is near where it was found.
Shrekapo was spotted hiding in
the rocks last week, and was caught
later that day. The animal had prob-
ably been roaming the hills alone for
the past three winters, said Gavin
Loxton, the owner of Sawdon sheep
station at Lake Tekapo.
“He had been spotted up there
before by rabbiters and tahr hunters
and had probably had about three
• The Guardian Wednesday 20 April 2022
World
rice – khao nieo mamuang – as an item
of Thai cultural heritage through
Unesco.
“It’s important for Thailand to use
its soft power abroad. We have plenty
of resources that can be promoted
on the international stage,” Prayuth
said, according to the Bangkok Post.
Awkwardly for Prayuth, last year
Milli – whose real name is Danupha
Khanatheerakul – was fined 2,000
baht (about £45) for a “public insult”
after she criticised the government’s
Covid response.
 Milli eating mango sticky rice on stage at the California music festival Coachella PHOTOGRAPH: KEVIN MAZUR/GETTY/COACHELLA
sightings. But anytime we had been
up there to get him nobody had been
able to find him,” Loxton said. “We
had pretty much given up on the
whole process, but he’s made it back,
so that’s excellent.”
The four-year-old is the latest in a
series of elusive sheep to have devel-
oped overgrown fleeces, entering
an unofficial leaderboard of shaggy
heavyweight champions across
New Zealand and Australia includ-
ing Chris, Shrek, Ewenice, Baarack
and Shaun the Sheep.
Loxton runs 5,000 sheep at his
station and said it was unclear how
Shrekapo had become a hermit sheep.
It had had its ear marked and had
been tailed, which involves remov-
ing the tail to reduce the chance of
blowfly strike.
“We put the lambs back out after
tailing … when we brought them all
back in for weaning he must have
For shops that sell the dessert,
however, the buzz is a welcome relief.
Before the pandemic most of Mae
Varee’s customers had been tourists,
Naparom said, but it had been rely-
ing on local customers as the travel
sector was yet to recover.
She said the shop used the best
ingredients from all over the coun-
try. “The rice needs to be in perfect
shape, with no cracking. We clean it
well and steam it. The coconut is from
Surat Thani province. We simmer it.
“It tastes sweet, but not too sweet,
and aromatic. Our mango is also aro-
matic. It has a natural sweetness. Our
signature is we sprinkle crispy mung
beans on top.”
Naparom would welcome Unesco
recognition. “I guess it’s like a Thai
Delivery orders took off massage, in that you need to come
after Milli’s performance here to Thailand to experience it,” she
said. “It won’t taste the same if you
eat it anywhere else.”
 Shrekapo was blinded by his own
wool after three winters in the wild,
but was sheared of his 18.6kg fleece
by New Zealand’s world champion
blade shearer Tony Dobbs, below left
been left behind up there on his
own,” Loxton said. “Whether he was
snoozing under a bush or something,
nobody will ever know.”
Shrekapo was blinded by his wool
and, as a roughly 40kg sheep, was car-
rying nearly half his body weight in it.
Loxton and his crew had a few cele-
bratory drinks after finding Shrekapo
and “hatched a plan” to shear him
at the Easter Monday farmer’s mar-
ket in Tekapo. Three hundred local
residents and visitors watched the
spectacle, which Loxton said was
great for the community after a quiet
couple of pandemic years.
The 18.6kg fleece should yield
‘We had pretty much about 14kg of clean wool, which
given up, but he would “get you quite a few gar-
ments”, Loxton said. Shrekapo was
has made it back’ a little wobbly after the shave but,
having adjused to his new weight,
was now happily “following the sun
Gavin Loxton around like a sundial”. Loxton added:
Sheep farmer “It’s a weight off his shoulders.”
Japan invents
electronic
chopsticks that
make your
food taste salty
Justin McCurry
Tokyo
In what they claim is a world first,
researchers in Japan have developed
chopsticks that artificially create
the taste of salt, as part of efforts to
reduce sodium levels in some of the
country’s most popular dishes.
The chopsticks work using electri-
cal stimulation and a mini-computer
worn on the eater’s wristband.
The device transmits sodium ions
from food, through the chopsticks, to
the mouth where they create a sense
of saltiness, says Homei Miyashita, a
professor at Meiji University in Tokyo,
whose laboratory collaborated with
the food and drink manufacturer
Kirin to develop the device.
The team plan to refine the proto-
type and hope to make the chopsticks
available to consumers next year.
The utensils could find a receptive
audience in Japan, where the tradi-
tional diet tends to be high in salt due
to the use of ingredients such as miso
and soy sauce.
The average Japanese adult con-
sumes about 10 grams of salt a day,
double the amount recommended by
the World Health Organization. The
health ministry has proposed reduc-
ing daily salt intake to a maximum
of 7.5 grams for men and 6.5 grams
for women.
The chopsticks use “very weak
electricity – not enough to affect the
human body – to adjust the function
of ions such as sodium chloride and
sodium glutamate to change the per-
ception of taste by making food seem
to taste stronger or weaker”, Kirin
said in a statement.
Miyashita and Kirin said clinical
tests on people who follow a low-
sodium diet had confirmed that the
device enhances the salty taste of
low-sodium food by about 1.5 times.
High salt intake can contribute
to high blood pressure, the leading
cause of heart attacks and strokes.
“To prevent these diseases, we
need to reduce the amount of salt
we take,” said Kirin researcher Ai
Sato. “If we try to avoid taking less
salt in a conventional way, we would
need to endure the pain of cutting
our favourite food from our diet, or
endure eating bland food.”
Miyashita’s lab has also invented
a lickable TV screen that imitates the
flavours of various foods.
▲ The invention is part of efforts to
cut sodium levels in popular dishes
Wednesday 20 April 2022 The Guardian
Brass roots
revival
Freetown’s
Area 10 scouts
brass band
gathers on
Lumely Beach.
Sierra Leone’s
brass marching
bands, which
regularly train
and compete,
have sprung
back since
the civil war.
PHOTOGRAPH: JOHN
WESSELS/AFP/GETTY
Call for investigation
after alleged targeting
of Catalan separatist
leaders with spyware
Sam Jones
Madrid
The Catalan president has called on
the Spanish government to launch
an “official and independent inves-
tigation” into how and why he and
more than 60 figures associated with
the regional independence move-
ment reportedly had their mobile
phones targeted using NSO Group’s
Pegasus spyware.
Pere Aragonès told the Guard-
ian that the alleged targeting,
revealed by Citizen Lab cybersecu-
rity experts yesterday, constituted
a violation of individual rights, an
Macron allies warn ‘game not
over’ despite lead over Le Pen
Jon Henley
Paris
Senior political allies of Emmanuel
Macron lined up to warn against com-
placency in France’s presidential
race, saying the incumbent was not
certain to win despite polls indicating
that his lead over his far-right chal-
lenger, Marine Le Pen, was widening.
Speaking ahead of the candidates’
crucial head-to-head debate tonight,
•
World
attack on democracy, and a threat to
political dissent.
According to Citizen Lab, Arago-
nès and his three pro-independence
predecessors were among at least
65 individuals whose phones were
targeted or infected with merce-
nary spyware using fake texts or
WhatsApp messages. Almost all the
incidents took place between 2017 –
the year of the failed bid for Catalan
regional independence – and 2020.
Although NSO Group claims that
Pegasus is sold only to governments
to track criminals and terrorists, a
joint investigation two years ago
by the Guardian and El País estab-
lished that the speaker of the Catalan
the French prime minister, Jean Cas-
tex, told French radio: “The game
isn’t done and dusted and we cer-
tainly cannot draw the conclusion ...
that this election is already decided.
“We have to convince the French that
Macron’s programmes are the best
for France.”
Castex’s predecessor, Édouard
Philippe, mayor of Le Havre and,
according to a recent survey France’s
most popular politician, also said
nothing should be taken for granted.
▲ Pere Aragonès was among the
politicians said to have been targeted
regional parliament and at least two
other pro-independence supporters
were warned the spyware had been
used to target them.
Aragonès said the apparent spying
had been on such a “massive scale”
that it could not have escaped the
attention of the Spanish authori-
ties. Nor, he added, was it likely to
have been the work of a single agent
within Spain’s National Intelligence
Centre (CNI).
“Big and significant resources
would have been needed to set up
this spying system,” he said.
“We need to know exactly how
many times it was used, against
whom, and with what justification.
He told Le Figaro the “Republican
front”, the alliance of centre-right
and centre-left voters that has so far
excluded the far right from power,
was “no longer a natural reflex”.
François Bayrou, another Macron
backer, told La République des Pyré-
nées newspaper: “Either candidate
could win. Everything is possible. We
have all seen voters make choices his-
torians later consider crazy.”
Macron made clear he did not
consider the election already won,
recalling the political earthquakes
of 2016 when British voters chose to
leave the EU and the US electorate put
Donald Trump in the White House.
Macron told the TV show C à vous:
“Think back to what British citizens
That will determine who was
responsible... because this is about
persecuting political dissent.”
Aragonès said that while the tar-
geting had “decimated” trust in the
Spanish government, his adminis-
tration was still open to finding a
negotiated solution to the political
conflict that plunged Spain into cri-
sis almost give years ago.
He also warned the use of spy-
ware such as Pegasus needed to be
addressed around the world because
“we’re dealing with behaviour
here that hasn’t only happened in
Catalonia”. Even if Pegasus were
to disappear, Aragonès added, new
software would soon take its place.
“We need limits on this technolog-
ical intrusion into people’s privacy,”
he said.”
The Spanish government has
denied any wrongdoing, while the
Policía Nacional and the Guardia Civil
have said they have had no dealings
whatsoever with NSO.
A spokesperson for NSO said: “We
have cooperated with governmental
investigations, where credible alle-
gations merit. However, information
raised regarding these allegations are,
yet again, false.”
were saying hours before the Brexit
referendum, or in the US before the
Trump vote – ‘I’m not voting, what’s
the point?’ I can tell you, the next day
they regretted it.”
Polls suggest that since the first-
round vote, of 10 April, increased
scrutiny of Le Pen’s manifesto – her
proposals, for instance, for the econ-
omy and for “national preference”
in jobs, welfare and housing, which
experts said would violate equality
laws – have slowed her progress.
Macron’s projected lead for Sun-
day’s decisive second-round vote
now averages eight or nine percent-
age points across all polls, the latest,
from yesterday, suggesting the gap
has shrunk from eight to 12 points.
27
Israel strikes
Gaza after
rocket attack
as Jerusalem
tensions soar
Agence France-Presse
Jerusalem
Israel has carried out its first air-
strikes on the Gaza Strip in months
in response to a rocket fired from
the Palestinian enclave as tensions
soared after a weekend of violence
around a holy site in Jerusalem.
Warning sirens sounded in south-
ern Israel on Monday night after the
rocket was fired from the en\clave
controlled by the Islamist group
Hamas, the first such incident since
early January. The projectile crashed
into the sea off Tel Aviv.
The Israeli military said in a state-
ment: “One rocket was fired from the
Gaza Strip into Israeli territory. The
rocket was intercepted by the Iron
Dome air defence system.” Hours
later, the Israeli air force said it had
hit a Hamas weapons manufacturing
site in retaliation.
Hamas claimed to have used its
“anti-aircraft defence” to counter
the air raids, which caused no cas-
ualties, according to witnesses and
security sources in Gaza.
No faction in the enclave of 2.3 mil-
lion inhabitants immediately claimed
responsibility for the rocket strike.
Israel holds Hamas responsible for
all rocket fire, and usually carries out
airstrikes in response.
The incident followed a weekend
of Israeli-Palestinian violence in and
around Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque
compound in which more than 170
people, mostly Palestinian demon-
strators, were wounded.
Similar violence in Jerusalem
around the same time last year trig-
gered repeated Hamas rocket fire into
Israel that escalated into an 11-day
war. This year the increase in ten-
sions coincides with the Muslim holy
month of Ramadan and the Jewish
festival of Passover.
Al-Aqsa mosque compound,
known to Jews as Temple Mount, is
the holiest site in Judaism and the
third holiest in Islam. Palestinians
have been angered by repeated visits
to the site by Jewish worshippers,
who are permitted to enter but may
not pray there.
Hamas had warned on Sunday that
“al-Aqsa is ours and ours alone” and
swore to defend Palestinians’ right
to pray there.
▲ Smoke and flames during Israeli
airstrikes in response to a rocket
attack launched from the Gaza Strip

28
‘We’re caught in
the crossfire’
Journalists pay the
price as Mexico’s
drug wars rage on
Tom Phillips
Tijuana, Mexico
I
t was a gift that would change
Margarito Martínez’s life
and illuminate some of the
darkest moments of Mexico’s
recent history: a second-
hand Canon SLR bought
from another photographer.
Through its lens the Mexican
photojournalist would witness his
country’s slide into drug-fuelled
carnage – bodies strung from
bridges, dumped on sidewalks,
dismembered, burned – without
ever losing his trademark grin.
“Margarito was a sweetie – a
sweetie to everyone,” said Bibi
Gutiérrez, his close friend and
mentor, her voice breaking as she
remembered giving Martínez one
of his big breaks in journalism by
buying him his first professional
camera. “He was always smiling.”
As the start of Mexico’s
2006 “war on drugs” plunged
parts of their country into a
grotesque frenzy of violence,
Martínez and Gutiérrez had stood
together on the frontline, racing to
firefights and massacres to expose
the scale of the horror.
“There were corpses
everywhere. Machine guns. AK-47s
… it was a frightful slaughter,”
Gutiérrez said of one notorious
shootout where they found
themselves tiptoeing around more
than a dozen bodies, some taking
their final breaths.
Martínez would cover countless
killings over the coming years,
earning his reputation as Tijuana’s
premier street-level police reporter
– a local legend who helped visiting
journalists from around the world,
including the Guardian. Then, at
lunchtime on 17 January, as the
49-year-old set off from his home
on Tijuana’s gritty southside, the
crime scene came to him.
Details of what happened next
are still emerging but investigators
reportedly believe that as Martínez
approached his car three shots were
fired. “It’s done,” the assassin’s
accomplice, loitering nearby,
informed the gangster suspected of
ordering the hit over WhatsApp.
Martínez’s teenage daughter
and wife ran outside and found
him on the pot-holed road. “What
cowards,” Gutiérrez, 57, said of the
• The Guardian Wednesday 20 April 2022
World
Mexico
▲ A forensics expert at the scene
of Margarito Martínez’s killing
killers. “Like all of us, Margarito
defended himself with a pen,
a notebook, a telephone and a
camera, while these murderers use
guns that take away your life.”
As Martínez’s wife cradled her
dying husband, local reporters
exchanged messages questioning
his unusual radio silence. “Ay Dios,”
one exclaimed after hearing of his
death. “What should we do?”
Journalists across Mexico are
asking the same question after a
wave of murders targeting their
colleagues in what was already
one of the world’s most dangerous
countries for the press.
At least eight Mexican
journalists have been killed this
year, prompting an outpouring of
anguish and anger that has been
exacerbated by a politically charged
feud with Mexico’s media-bashing
president, Andrés Manuel López
Obrador.
Six days after Martínez’s slaying,
another well-known Tijuana
reporter, Lourdes Maldonado, was
murdered outside her home. Two
years earlier she had publicly told
López Obrador, or “Amlo”, she
feared for her life.
“She was cool, she never fucked
around with no one,” one of
Maldonado’s neighbours said as he
sipped a Sunday afternoon can of
Mexican beer near the glass-strewn
spot where she was shot.
“I just think, why? Why this
lady? She never argued with no
one,” the man added, asking not to
be named for fear of being targeted
himself.
Martínez’s path into the
increasingly perilous world of
Mexican journalism began in the
late 1980s when his journalist
mother roped him into taking
photos for her political magazine.
Eglantina Esquivel said she had
hoped journalism would keep her
teenage son off the streets of their
city, a longtime smuggling hub
on the US border that would soon
become one of the most violent
places on Earth.
Martínez shared his mother’s
thirst for news, although he
preferred nocturnal “nota roja”
crime reporting to politics. “It was
always about getting the scoop,”
Esquivel, 80, remembered at the
family home overlooking Tijuana’s
urban sprawl.
After receiving his first
professional camera in the early
2000s, Martínez became an
inimitable chronicler of Tijuana’s
▲ Margarito Martínez, who was intensifying narco battles and an
murdered in January, photographs a icon of its tight-knit journalism
crime scene in Tijuana in 2019 community, known for his
PHOTOGRAPHS: EMELIO ESPEJEL/THE GUARDIAN generosity and good humour.
“Nobody knew the city like him,
or understood what was dangerous
and what wasn’t,” said Guillermo
‘We have a Arias, a photojournalist who
befriended Martínez after moving
government that’s an to Tijuana to cover the escalating
enemy of journalists drug conflict. “He became an
essential source of information and
– that’s an enemy of right now there’s a huge void,” Arias
the pen’ added. “This is the problem with
the murder of journalists – it creates
Eglantina Esquivel these vacuums.”
Mother of murdered journalist Martínez’s work stopped short of
exploring the rampant corruption
and narco politics driving so much
of the bloodshed. “He wasn’t trying
to do any major investigating or
exposing anybody. [At a crime
scene] he’d get the details – the
who, what, when, why. Maybe
there was a witness he might
interview … and then he would
pull out and go to the next scene,”
said Wendy Fry, a Tijuana-based
reporter for the San Diego Union-
Tribune and a friend of Martínez.
Yet the murder of eight
journalists so far this year –
compared with seven in the
whole of 2021 – has prompted
a profoundly political dispute,
with many accusing Mexico’s
government of failing to stop
the slaughter. Some even
accuse López Obrador – who has
bristled at growing international
Wednesday 20 April 2022 The Guardian
condemnation of the crisis – of
stoking the violence with his
hostility to the media. Attacks on
the press surged 85% in the first
three years of his administration.
“Right now the Mexican press
is caught in the crossfire between
the threats and bullets of narco-
traffickers and organised crime,
and the threats and verbal attacks
and attempts to morally annihilate
us from the federal and state
governments,” said Adela Navarro
Bello, the general director of
the Tijuana weekly Zeta and the
godmother of Martínez’s daughter.
“Every day he urges society to
discredit the journalistic profession
– and clearly we are paying the price
in blood,” said Sonia de Anda, a
Tijuana journalist who confronted
Amlo when he travelled there a
•
Seven journalists were murdered
in Mexico last year
Attacks on journalists in Mexico in 2021, by type
Physical attacks 62
Journalists murdered for their work
7 against the government over the
Torture or cruel, inhumane treatment
4 crisis.
Murder of family members
2 grip of its most painful economic
Murder of non-editorial staff
2 1948, with regular blackouts and
Disappearance
1 goods causing widespread misery.
Source: Negación: Annual Report 2021, 4 April, 2022
month after Martínez’s murder in
an apparent effort to calm tensions.
His appearance had the
opposite effect. After voicing
regret, the 68-year-old populist
began one of his trademark
anti-media tirades, horrifying
many grieving journalists who
were present. “They earn huge
amounts of money. They are high-
level mercenaries … they don’t
defend the people,” Amlo said of
the journalists he claimed were
being paid to malign his historic
“transformation” of Mexico.
Martínez was not an influential
media “mercenary”. In fact, he was
a devoted family man who lived
in Camino Verde, a hardscrabble
gang-run hillside ghetto. Friends
say he often struggled to fill the
tank of his decrepit 20-year-old
Dodge car so he could reach crime
scenes, photographs of which he
was paid for by the piece.
“He worked so hard because he
needed to work so hard,” said Fry.
She said friends had long worried
about Martínez’s safety: “His job
put him in close contact to all this
danger, all the time.”
Those fears sharpened last
December when he was falsely
accused of running Tijuana at War,
a sensationalist Facebook page that
unmasks cartel crooks. Martínez
inquired about being included in
a government protection scheme.
But before that could happen
the hitmen pounced, reportedly
because they wrongly believed
Martínez was behind a 14 January
newspaper report about Cabo 20,
an infamous local mobster.
Hours after that story’s
publication, Cabo 20’s henchmen
began plotting the assassination,
▲ Photographs according to the Tijuana website
of murdered Punto Norte. At about the same
Mexican time Eglantina Esquivel was
journalists held hugging her son for the last time.
up by members “How could I not love you when
of the press it was I who brought you into this
during a protest world?” she said as they parted.
in Mexico City The night before his shooting
PHOTOGRAPH: Esquivel couldn’t sleep. She
PEDRO PARDO/AFP/ shuffled out on to her balcony to
GETTY IMAGES
contemplate the city. “It was as
though someone was warning me
what would happen.”
Esquivel said she struggled to
fathom the psyche of her son’s
murderers but was certain who was
emboldening such killers.
“López Obrador couldn’t care
less about journalists,” she said.
“We have a government that’s an
enemy of journalists – that’s an
enemy of the pen.”
In brief 29
Sri Lanka Protesters have called for the
resignation of the government,
One dead after police which is preparing to negotiate an
fire at demonstrators urgently needed bailout with the
International Monetary Fund.
Sri Lankan police shot dead a Police fired at a crowd that
protester and wounded 24 others had blockaded a railway line and
yesterday, in the first fatal clash highway connecting the capital
with residents demonstrating Colombo with the central city of
Kandy to protest oil shortages and
island nation’s crippling economic high prices.
“One man died of gunshot
The South Asian country is in the injuries,” a hospital official told
AFP. Another 16 protesters were
downturn since independence in wounded while eight officers were
injured when protesters threw back
severe shortages of fuel and other tear gas canisters they had fired at
the crowd. AFP
Timor-Leste
Presidents face off in
final round of election
Timor-Leste held the second and
final round of its presidential
election yesterday, with the Nobel
peace prize laureate and former
president José Ramos-Horta, his
picture held aloft by supporters in
Dili, right, the clear frontrunner.
Ramos-Horta, who received
46.5% of votes in the first round
last month, was up against the
incumbent president Francisco
“Lú-Olo” Guterres, who got 22.1%,
in a ballot widely seen as key to the
nation’s political stability. Reuters
Afghanistan Khalid Zadran, said yesterday’s
blasts at the Abdul Rahim Shahid
Six killed in bomb blast school were caused by improvised
at Shia school in Kabul explosive devices. He said there
was a third blast at an English-
At least six people have been killed language centre in the same area,
and 11 wounded in two bomb blasts but did not specify whether it was
at a boys’ school in a Hazara Shia caused by an explosive.
neighbourhood of Kabul. The school is in an area
The frequency of bomb blasts inhabited mainly by the Hazara
in the country has declined community, and has been
significantly since the Taliban previously targeted by IS.
ousted the US-backed Afghan Yesterday’s blasts occurred
government in August last year, but as students came out of classes,
Islamic State has claimed several a witness said. Images on social
attacks. media showed bodies at the gate
A Kabul police spokesperson, and in the school compound. AFP
Happy birthday for an OAP ape
Lady Bella poses for photographers as she
takes a well-deserved break in her enclosure
at the Hagenbeck zoo in Hamburg, Germany,
on her 61st birthday. The simian sexagenarian
PHOTOGRAPH: DANIEL
is considered by primatologists to be the
REINHARDT/DPA world’s oldest living Sumatran orangutan.
Wednesday 20 April 2022 The Guardian
FTSE 100 All share
-15.10 - 12.40
7601.28 4219.72
IMF cuts its global growth
forecast over Ukraine war
Larry Elliott
Economics editor
The International Monetary Fund
has cut its global growth forecasts
because of the war in Ukraine, warn-
ing that Russia’s invasion could lead
to the fragmentation of the world
economy into rival blocs.
In a half-yearly update, the IMF
said prospects had worsened “sig-
nificantly” in the past three months
as it reduced its growth estimate for
2022 from 4.4% to 3.6%.
The fund said every member of the
G7 group of leading industrialised
nations and the bigger developing
countries would grow less rapidly
this year than previously expected,
and there was a strong risk of an even
worse outcome.
“In the matter of a few weeks, the
world has yet again experienced a
major, transformative shock. Just as a
durable recovery from the pandemic-
induced global economic collapse
appeared in sight, the war has created
the very real prospect that a large part
of the recent gains will be erased,”
said Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, the
IMF’s economic counsellor and direc-
tor of research.
The UK is expected to be the joint-
best performer in the G7 this year
despite having its growth estimate
cut from 4.7% to 3.7%, but is set to be
•
31
Dow Indl Nikkei 225 £/€ £/$
+400.42 +185.38 1.2044 1.2991
34812.11 26985.09 -0.0017 -0.0027
 A crowded
Waterloo station
Analysis
in London. Larry Elliott
Economies just
recovering from
Covid will be
affected by the
war in Ukraine
Conflict makes
two key policy
PHOTOGRAPH:
ANDY RAIN /EPA
dilemmas
even trickier
G
loom at the
‘The war has
International
created the Monetary Fund is
very real nothing new. Since
prospect that last summer the
a large part body responsible
of the recent for stabilising and supporting the
gains will world economy has been growing
be erased’ ever more pessimistic.
First it was rising inflationary
pressures caused by supply-side
Pierre-Olivier bottlenecks. Then it was the arrival
Gourinchas of the new Omicron variant of
IMF Covid towards the end of 2021.
Now it is the war in Ukraine,
which dominates the IMF’s
world economic outlook.
April and October, with updates in It is not just the fact that Russia’s
January and July. Six months ago it invasion will lead to appreciably
was expecting the easing of pandemic slower growth and higher inflation
pressures to result in global growth this year. The IMF also warns
of 4.9% this year. that the war has exacerbated two
“Global economic prospects have tricky policy dilemmas, one for
worsened significantly since our last central banks and one for finance
world economic outlook forecast in ministers. For central banks the
January,” Gourinchas said. issue is how to tackle mounting
“This crisis unfolds while the cost of living crises without killing
the worst performer next year when had their growth estimates reduced global economy was on a mending off still-incomplete recoveries
the IMF is pencilling in expansion of by 1.7 points and 1.5 points respec- path but had not yet fully recovered from the pandemic. That’s not
just 1.2%. Consumer spending is pre- tively, to 2.1% and 2.3%. from the Covid pandemic, with a going to be easy, as the IMF freely
dicted to be weaker than expected as Russia is on course for two years of significant divergence between the admits. For finance ministers it is
the cost of living crisis bites, while falling output as a result of western economic recoveries of advanced getting the balance right between
tighter financial conditions are sanctions (8.5% this year and 2.3% economies and emerging market and protecting the most vulnerable
expected to cool investment. in 2023), while Ukraine’s economy developing ones. Overall risks to eco- while repairing the damage caused
The US will suffer the least dam- will shrink by 35% in 2022 and feel nomic prospects have risen sharply to the public finances by Covid-19
age from the war and has had its the impact of the conflict for years to and policy trade-offs have become spending. The IMF understands
growth forecast for 2022 shaved by come, the IMF said in its world eco- ever more challenging.” the difficulties but warns against
0.3 points to 3.7%. Germany and Italy, nomic outlook. Against a backdrop of soaring infla- being too penny-pinching.
both more exposed to Russia, have The IMF produces the outlook in tion fuelled by Vladimir Putin’s war, “Following a huge and necessary
the Washington-based fund said fiscal expansion in many countries
“decisive actions” to rein in spiral- during the pandemic, debt
IMF cuts its global growth projection for 2022 ling prices needed to be taken by levels are at all-time highs and
Difference from January 2022 projection global central banks. However, it governments are more exposed
said this process must be clearly com- than ever to higher interest rates,”
World -0.8 US -0.3 Germany –1.7 France –0.6 Italy –1.5
municated to avoid a sudden shift in it said. “The need for consolidation
10% 10% 10% 10% 10%
financial markets. should not prevent governments
Projections
3.6% 3.7%
Publishing its global financial sta- from prioritising spending with
2.1% 2.9% 2.3% bility report alongside the economic well-targeted support for the
0 0 0 0 0 outlook, the IMF warned rates rising vulnerable – including refugees,
further than expected could cause a those struggling because of
“sharp decline” in the value of assets. commodity price spikes, and those
-10 -10 -10 -10 -10 The IMF said a further two percent- affected by the pandemic.”
2021 2022 2023 2021 2022 2023 2021 2022 2023 2021 2022 2023 2021 2022 2023 age points could be shaved off global The war, the extent to which
Japan -0.9 UK -1.0 Canada –0.2 China –0.4 Russia –11.3 growth next year in the event the war central banks raise interest rates,
10% 10% 10% 10% 10% in Ukraine led to even higher energy and the speed at which finance
prices, entrenched inflation and big ministries raise taxes and cut
3.7% 3.9% 4.4% losses on financial markets. spending will be three of the five
2.4%
0 0 0 0 0 Gourinchas said the war had key factors shaping the short-term
increased the risk of “a more per- direction of the global economy,
manent fragmentation of the world the IMF says. The other two will be
-10 -10 -10 -10 -10 -8.5% economy into geopolitical blocs with the slowdown in China caused by
distinct technology standards, cross- lockdowns and whether the impact
2021 2022 2023 2021 2022 2023 2021 2022 2023 2021 2022 2023 2021 2022 2023
border payment systems, and reserve of the pandemic fades as expected
Source: IMF currencies”. from this spring onwards.
 • The Guardian Wednesday 20 April 2022

32 Financial

to Anderson’s idea are available,

Business view but it’s time for Sunak to get
serious about designing a support
Nils Pratley scheme that can last longer than
a summer. Crucially, it also needs
to be announced ahead of time
to reassure consumers. Allowing
It’s time Rishi Sunak got serious events to drift until October would
be inexcusable.

about helping the 8 million UK Failure pays for Bulb boss

Hayden Wood, the co-founder and
chief executive of Bulb, at least
households facing fuel poverty had the sense to sound sheepish
before the same MPs. Apologies
for his firm’s failure came thick

R
ishi Sunak’s first
attempt to “take the
sting out” of rising
household energy
bills was a bits-and-
pieces £9bn support
package that seemed to rest on
the idea that the crisis would go
away soon.
The giveaway in the thinking
was the £200-per-household
“rebate” that represented about
half the headline figure. It wasn’t
a rebate in a true sense – it was
just a means to shove a portion
of customers’ bills into later
years, when, the chancellor
was presumably calculating,
wholesale prices would be lower.
The plan sounded hopeful
when announced in February
but now reads as naive and
politically unfeasible. Latest
projections suggest October’s
price cap will rise by another
£600 per household on average –
that’s on top of the £694 increase
that kicked in at the start of this
month. And a key point, as a
battalion of energy bosses told
MPs on the business and energy
select committee yesterday, is
that the new tariff will apply
during the winter months of
peak consumption.
That matters to anybody who
pays for their energy via a pre-
payment meter, which typically
tends to be lower-income
households. At the moment,
the hit from April’s higher tariff
has been slightly softened by
lower consumption levels.
Come October higher prices will
coincide with a rise in demand.
Further fiddles with rebates, or
even a further widening of the
£150-a-year warm homes discount
scheme, aren’t going to cut it.
Even today’s position is
generating a surge in bad debts and
calls from concerned customers, all
the chief executives reported. Here
was Keith Anderson of Scottish
Power: “It has got to a stage now
where the size and scale of it is
beyond what I think this industry
can deal with. I think it needs a
significant shift in the government
policy and approach towards this.”
His suggested shift was a
£1,000-a-year discount for
households in fuel poverty or
on pre-pay meters via what he
called a “deficit fund”. If 8 million
households will soon be in fuel
poverty (defined as those spending
at least 10% of their net income on
energy), as some forecasts suggest,
that’s a commitment to find £8bn
a year – in real money, rather than
artful deferrals and suchlike – as
long as the crisis lasts.
The chancellor may take fright
at such sums, but they sound like
a hardheaded appraisal of the
problem. Barring a miracle in the
wholesale gas market, the real price
shock has yet to arrive. Alternatives
Further fiddles with
rebates, or even a
further widening of
the £150-a-year warm
homes discount scheme,
aren’t going to cut it
and fast. Quite right, too: Bulb
was the biggest collapse within
the retail energy sector and the
company is being propped up
in special administration via
taxpayer support that, at the Office
for Budget Responsibility’s last
estimate, will reach £2.2bn.
In the circumstances, the
revelation that Wood is still
being paid his £250,000-a-year
salary is extraordinary. Yes, the
administrators may want him to
hang around but, come on, it’s
been five months since Bulb’s
corporate lights went out and
a buyer isn’t yet in sight. An
invitation to Wood to cut his salary
(massively) is in order.
TDR’s paper profits
There’s little doubt that the private
equity firm TDR Capital and
the Issa brothers enjoyed good
timing when they financed last
year’s £6.8bn leveraged buyout of
Asda. Morrisons, the yardstick for
comparison, was subsequently sold
at a higher multiple of earnings.
Even so, one should take TDR’s
claim of a near 20-fold return on
its thin equity slice with a pinch of
salt. Yes, the marketing documents
seen by the Financial Times
probably offer valuation support
of a sort. The nosebleed level of
gearing made the deal a work of
supreme financial engineering
and a few post-acquisition
disposals will have eased the debt
metrics slightly.
Yet the tricky part is turning
a paper profit into a real one.
Morrisons is already warning of
lower profits and Tesco is making
aggressive noises on prices. TDR’s
pathway to getting out of Asda
currently looks long and uncertain.
▲ Analysts, sceptical about TDR Capital’s claim that its stake has soared in
value, say Asda’s performance has been weak PHOTOGRAPH: DANIEL LEAL/AFP/GETTY
Asda stake is worth 20 times the
original investment, says owner
Sarah Butler
Asda’s private equity owner has
claimed the value of its investment in
the supermarket chain has increased
by nearly 20 times as it gears up for
a potential bid for the Boots chain.
TDR Capital said its stake as co-
owner of Asda was now worth €1.7bn
(£1.4bn) on paper, or 19.8 times its
original investment, indicating it put
just over £70m of fresh cash into the
deal, according to documents seen by
Rolls-Royce gets
ready to build
small reactors
Jasper Jolly
Rolls-Royce is to start building parts
for its small modular nuclear reac-
tors in anticipation of receiving
regulatory approval from the Brit-
ish government by 2024, one of its
directors has said.
the Financial Times. The presenta-
tion to investors paints a rosy picture
of TDR’s investment as it prepares to
potentially raise more funds to back
a £6bn buyout of Boots.
The details behind the claim are
unclear, as TDR put in an estimated
£390m of equity to back the £6.8bn
Asda buyout.
Analysts said they were scep-
tical of the raised valuation. One
said: “Asda’s performance has been
really weak in the market according
to [research firm] Kantar … The ques-
tion is, could they sell it at this price?”
Paul Stein, the chairman of Rolls-
Royce SMR, a subsidiary of the FTSE
100 engineering company, said he
hoped to be providing power to the
UK’s national grid by 2029.
Proponents see small modular
reactors (SMRs) as a way to build
nuclear power plants in factories,
which could be cheaper and quicker
than traditional designs. The tech-
nology is seen by Rolls-Royce as a
potential earner far beyond any pre-
vious business such as jet engines.
SMRs are expected to play an
important role in an expansion of
nuclear to supply a quarter of the UK’s
energy needs. Lower costs would be
crucial in justifying the nuclear push.
Wednesday 20 April 2022 The Guardian
Brewing
storm
Starbucks
workers’
battle to
unionise
gains pace
Michael Sainato
W
hen Starbucks
opened its
flagship
Reserve
roastery in the
Meatpacking
District of Manhattan in late
2018, the “sleek, inspiring coffee
extravaganza” was supposed
to show the world a new,
sophisticated side of the chain.
Now the site is emblematic of
another big trend at Starbucks –
unionisation. It is the site of the
first unionised Starbucks location
in New York City, and the first
Starbucks Reserve roastery to
unionise after workers voted in
favour on 1 April by 46 votes to 36.
Sam LaGow, who has worked
at Starbucks for about six years
and at the Reserve roastery in
Manhattan since 2019, said the
union organising effort developed
from conversations after the first
Starbucks’ union victory in Buffalo
in December.
“There was plenty of impetus
for it, both in terms of frustrations
about working conditions and
thoughts about why we like the
Ultra-fast fashion site Shein
accused over rival’s designs
Fleur Britten
The Chinese ultra-fast fashion
website Shein has been accused of
copying designs by high street rival
Zara after images were shared on
social media showing virtually iden-
tical garments from the two outlets.
On the video platform Tiktok,
the hashtags #zaravsshein and
#zaradupe - where users share the
very similar items from Zara and
Shein, often wearing them - have had
38.3m and 39.8m views respectively.
The hashtag #sheinstolemydesign
has had 6.4m views.
•
Financial
idea of a democratised workplace,”
said LaGow. He said workers face
constant problems with staffing
and day-to-day operations that
accommodate customers far more
than Starbucks employees, adding
that working conditions worsened
throughout the pandemic.
“Since Covid, we’ve seen an
almost exponential increase
in our responsibilities at the
roastery, and with this has come no
commensurate compensation for
it,” said LaGow. Meanwhile, “life
in New York and the world at large
has grown more expensive in the
last year or two. It has everyone
wondering what they the hell
they’re still doing here.”
Even some of Starbucks’
benefits, such as healthcare, are
too expensive and inaccessible for
workers, LaGow added.
Now he and his co-workers face
the daunting task of negotiating
their first union agreement with
the company. Organisers are
circulating a bargaining survey to
establish the priorities and issues
workers would like to focus on.
“We understand just what a
Shein has already faced legal action
alleging copyright infringement,
including from global companies
such as Levi Strauss, Dr Martens
producer AirWair International and
Ralph Lauren.
However, some fashion influenc-
ers appear to celebrate Shein’s ability
to replicate Zara’s designs at a frac-
tion of the cost. One post, captioned
“Dupe AllyLikes”, shows a pastel
pink and orange Zara shirt costing
€29.95 alongside an apparently iden-
tical Shein shirt for €4.49, complete
with the product codes to purchase it.
The profile for the Instagram
account @zaravsshein says in Span-
ish: “Find Zara clothes at Shein twice
‘When you put your
life into a company,
you expect something
commensurate
to come out of it’
Sam LaGow
Starbucks employee
monumental task we have before
us. But we’ve sort of come this far,
and I don’t feel any less encouraged
to do what I’m doing,” LaGow said.
“When you put so much
of your life and energy into a
company, you expect something
commensurate to come out of
that, and not for many years has
that been the case in any part of
the service sector in America.”
Since the first union election
victory in America at a Starbucks
corporate store location in Buffalo
in December, workers at more than
200 Starbucks chains across the
US have filed for union election
 A pink satin
dress from
Zara that the
fast fashion
giant Shein
stands accused
of imitating –
and (right) a
lookalike outfit
seen online
PHOTOGRAPH: ZARA
petitions with the National Labor
Relations Board (NLRB) and
18 stores have officially won their
union elections as of 13 April.
Starbucks senior management
has remained steadfast in their
aggressive opposition to unions.
The chief executive, the billionaire
Howard Schultz, claimed the
company is being “assaulted” by
the threat of unionisation.
“Going forward, it will be
important for all of you to recognise
that outside labour unions are
attempting to sell a very different
view of what Starbucks should be,”
Schultz said in a letter on 10 April.
Workers have filed dozens of
unfair labour practice charges
against Starbucks since the union
organising campaign took off in
Buffalo, and workers in New York,
Tennessee, North Carolina, Kansas
and Arizona have alleged they
were fired in retaliation for union
organising. Workers at stores in
Washington, New York, Kansas,
North Carolina, Arizona, Tennessee
and Pennsylvania, have gone on
strike over conditions or held
protests in support of fired workers.
as cheap!!!! Every day new garment!!
References of all garments. Start
saving!”
Shein has more than quadrupled
its revenue since 2019, according
to the Business of Fashion website,
33
 Starbucks’ Reserve roastery in
Manhattan’s Meatpacking District,
the first unionised branch in the city
PHOTOGRAPH: SPENCER PLATT/GETTY IMAGES
A spokesperson for Starbucks
said all allegations of retaliation are
“categorically false”.
The NLRB has issued two
complaints against Starbucks
for retaliation against workers in
Arizona, and prosecutors with the
board plan to declare the firing of
seven workers in Memphis illegal
unless the company settles.
Miguel Perez Glassner, a
Starbucks employee at the Reserve
roastery since October, said the
idea began to take hold after the
first union win in Buffalo, when
workers at the Reserve roastery in
New York City were working during
a surge of Omicron cases. Several
of his co-workers became ill, and
Perez Glassner said it was stressful
waiting for management to make
decisions. They planned to switch
to a takeaway model, but at the last
minute opted to close the store for
three days.
“There was this horrible
suspense of waiting for them
to decide our fate,” said Perez
Glassner. “That was the moment
where I realised there needs to be
some kind of better system that can
address our concerns for our health
and our ability to staff well.”
In mid-February, workers went
public with their union organising
campaign at the Reserve roastery in
filing for a union election petition.
At that point, management began
pushing for workers to vote no.
“Our management on the retail
side of the roastery put up this
letter about how Starbucks Workers
United has abandoned the roasting
team,” said Perez Glassner.
“It’s funny to me how
management had been demanding
that we be respectful, but it
didn’t seem very respectful in
misrepresenting what was going on
there. It was very misleading.”
A Starbucks spokesperson said
stores throughout the company
had adjusted hours and levels of
operations during Covid-19 surges.
“We took a great deal of pride in
not only communicating clearly
with our partners, for making those
adjustments based off the staffing
levels,” they said.
reaching $15.7 billion in sales. It is
reportedly looking for $1 billion in
funding, and a $100 billion valuation.
Alex Crumbie of campaign group
Ethical Consumer said imitation
“seems to be the cornerstone of
super-fast fashion”, adding: “These
brands typically reproduce fashion
seen elsewhere and turn it around in
a week. Copying designs decreases
the lead time.”
How they do it so quickly and
cheaply is not known. “There is not
a huge amount of information on
Shein,” said Crumbie. “They will
have supply chains all over the world
where they can keep costs low, but
where, we don’t know.”
Zara’s owner Inditex declined to
comment. A Shein spokesperson
said: “Shein suppliers are required
to comply with the company’s code of
conduct and certify their products do
not infringe on third-party IP.”
 The Guardian Wednesday 20 April 2022

34 Classified
The Guardian Wednesday 20 April 2022

35
Classified
 • The Guardian Wednesday 20 April 2022

36

Weather
Wednesday 20 April 2022
UK and Ireland Noon today Forecast Around the UK

London
Sunny Mist Fog Low 6 High 15 Lows and highs Precipitation Air pollution
Tomorrow
10 8 17 5% Low
Sunny intervals Hazy
Manchester

Mostly cloudy
13 Inverness Shetland 6 16 10% Low
Overcast/dull Edinburgh
13 15
9
4 13 15% Low
Sunny showers Slight
Belfast
Edinburgh
9 Low 6 High 14
Sunny and heavy showers Glasgow 6 14 5% Low
1016 Friday
Birmingham
Light showers Newcastle
ca
14
4 16 20% Low
Rain Sleet Light Belfast Slight
Brighton
snow 17
York

Snow showers 8 16 5% Low

13
Dublin Liverpool
rpoo
ol 15 1020
Bristol
Heavy snow Ice
35C
Nottingham
Nott m
Norwich
Carbon
15 5 16 20% Low
30
Birmingham
ming count
Thundery rain Cardiff
25 Daily atmospheric CO2
readings from Mauna Loa,
20 13 17
1 Hawaii (ppm):
Thundery showers 15
Cardiff
Ca L
London 7 16 20% Low
Latest
X
10 18 17 Apr 2022 420.87 Newcastle
5
Dover Weekly average
Temperature, 0 10 Apr 2022 420.16
ºC
-5
15 3 14 10% Low
Plymouth 19 Apr 2021 419.00
-10 16
19 Apr 2012 396.76 Penzance
-15
Slight 19 Pre-industrial base 280
Wind speed, Windy
-20 1016 Safe level 350
mph The Channel Islands 8 14 25% Low
Source: NOAA-ESRL

L
Atlantic front 1008
1016 1032 1016 H
1008
Plantwatch Around the world
1008
1008 1032
1000 L 1000 H
1016 Dunes are more than just piles of Algiers 20 Lisbon 16

1024 H 1016 sand blocking the way to a beach. Ams’dam 16 Madrid 11

L 1008
1024
L These are some of Britain’s most Athens 17 Malaga 18
L
precious and threatened habitats, Auckland 22 Melb’rne 18
a sanctuary for rare plants and B Aires 24 Mexico C 27
H
wildlife adapted to living in sand, Bangkok 32 Miami 26

1032 H such as fen orchids, natterjack Barcelona 16 Milan 16

Cold front 1008
toads and sand lizards. Basra 35 Mombasa 30
But sand dunes have declined Beijing 28 Moscow 15

Warm front L
by a third since 1900, under assault Berlin 11 Mumbai 33

1024 H
from aggressive invading plants Bermuda 21 N Orleans 26

1016
such as sea buckthorn, and nitrogen Brussels 16 Nairobi 25
Occluded front pollution has enriched the poor Budapest 14 New Delhi 41
1016
nutrient soils, driving out native C’hagen 13 New York 15
1008
Trough dune plants. The management of Cairo 25 Oslo 18
dunes has also been bungled by Cape Town 30 Paris 18
fencing and hedging them in to Chicago 11 Perth 26

Sun & Lighting stop the sand blowing away. That Corfu 18 Prague 12
High tides
Source: © Crown Copyright. All rights reserved. Times are local UK times

prevented the dunes from shifting, Dakar 25 Reykjavik 9

Moon up so they became carpeted in grass Dhaka 35 Rio de J 26
and scrub; a healthy dune needs Dublin 12 Rome 18
Aberdeen 0422 4.2m 1646 4.2m London Bridge 0455 7.3m 1717 6.8m Belfast 2038 to 0609 open areas of sand that can blow in Florence 21 Shanghai 25
Avonmouth 1030 13.1m 2249 12.8m Lossiemouth 0250 4.0m 1512 4.0m Birm’ham 2014 to 0556 the wind, with depressions where Gibraltar 17 Singapore 31
Barrow 0221 9.4m 1445 9.3m Milford Haven 0926 7.0m 2146 6.8m Brighton 2004 to 0554 birds and amphibians can shelter. H Kong 25 Stockh’m 13
Belfast 0152 3.4m 1427 3.5m Newquay 0818 6.9m 2038 6.7m Bristol 2015 to 0603 Dynamic Dunescapes, a huge Harare 20 Strasb’g 17
Cobh 0838 4.0m 2058 4.0m North Shields 0628 5.0m 1851 5.0m Carlisle 2025 to 0554 project run by conservation Helsinki 13 Sydney 23
Cromer 0941 4.9m 2201 5.0m Oban 0843 3.8m 2104 3.7m Cork 2040 to 0625 charities and Natural England, is Istanbul 15 Tel Aviv 20
Dover 0150 6.9m 1410 6.7m Penzance 0749 5.5m 2011 5.4m
Sun rises 0554
Dublin 2035 to 0612 halfway through rejuvenating nine Jo’burg 18 Tenerife 22
Dublin 0221 4.0m 1456 4.0m Plymouth 0907 5.3m 2122 5.3m Sun sets 2005 Glasgow 2034 to 0558 of the major dune areas in England K Lumpur 32 Tokyo 17
Galway 0824 5.0m 2044 4.9m Portsmouth 0220 4.8m 1444 4.7m Moon rises 0012 Harlech 2025 to 0605 and Wales. Diggers have removed K’mandu 25 Toronto 10
Greenock 0329 3.4m 1548 3.6m Southport 0128 9.1m 1349 9.0m Moon sets 0746 Inverness 2038 to 0551 topsoil, scrub, bracken, grasses and Kabul 20 Vancouv’r 12
Last Quarter 23 April
Harwich 0240 4.1m 1505 3.9m Stornoway 0956 4.6m 2222 4.5m London 2005 to 0552 other invading plants, allowing Kingston 28 Vienna 13
Holyhead 0112 5.6m 1335 5.6m Weymouth 0915 1.4m 2134 1.3m M’chester 2019 to 0556 the sand underneath to blow in Kolkata 33 Warsaw 8
Hull 0927 7.4m 2150 7.3m Whitby 0707 5.4m 1929 5.5m Newcastle 2021 to 0549 the wind, with gullies dug into L Angeles 20 Wash’ton 16
Forecasts and
Leith 0542 5.5m 1806 5.6m Wick 0218 3.3m 1443 3.4m
graphics provided by
Norwich 2003 to 0544 the dunes to free up more sand. Lagos 31 Well’ton 21
Lima 21 Zurich 17
Liverpool 0201 9.4m 1422 9.3m Workington 0223 8.4m 1444 8.3m AccuWeather ©2022 Penzance 2024 to 0617 Paul Simons
Wednesday 20 April 2022 The Guardian •
Cycling Women’s football
Wiggins offered Player blasts Euros
‘full support’ over stadium choice
grooming claims as ‘disrespectful’
Page 38  Page 40 
David Squires on … Sean Dyche and the Burnley blues County cricket
Daniel Gallan
April showers
with runs as
batters pile up
the centuries
M
aybe it was
the sight of
Rory Burns’s
magnificent
mane of brown
hair, bouncing
behind him as he trundled up to the
wicket to deliver a tame dobbler
against Warwickshire. Perhaps
it was Sir Alastair Cook against
Kent, sporting an impish grin as he
approached the crease at an angle,
his arms fanned out and bent at the
elbow before serving a ball high on
humour but lacking any bite.
It could have been Michael
Burgess’s 178 from No 8 at
Edgbaston against Surrey in the
opening round of the County
Championship season. Or the
drawn match in Derby a week
later in which Cheteshwar Pujara,
Shan Masood and Tom Haines all
managed double tons. Then again
it might have been any of the other
32 centuries scored across eight
days of domestic cricket. Whatever
prompted it, a counterintuitive
idea spilled over the horizon and
opened our eyes to its inarguable
truth: batting in April in England
isn’t so difficult after all.
“Growing up I took it as fact that
you didn’t want to be an opening
batsman in April,” says Nick Browne,
who scored 107 at the top of the
order for Essex on the season’s first
day at Chelmsford. “I reckon most
people believed that when they first
came through. The numbers say
otherwise, don’t they?”
Indeed they do. Since 2015, there
have been more April hundreds
scored per game – 1.58 – than in any
other month in the year. Since 2002
teams have averaged 30.04 runs per
wicket, a mere 0.96 runs per wicket
less than the most productive
month of July. Batting in the
final innings is empirically less
challenging in April where batters
coming in from one to six averaged
almost 35 – more than any other
month – over the past 20 years. The
avalanche of stats goes on.
Several reasons have been
offered. Burgess, who also keeps
wicket for Warwickshire, says that
the pitches are at their best at the
start of the season: “People think
they’re green, which they can be,
but the groundsmen have been
David Squires archive Peruse our resident cartoonist’s previous work at theguardian.com/profile/david-squires
37
working on them for months.
They’re great. Apart from being a
little slower than they would be in
the summer, they’re great.”
That slowness, though, is
helpful to batters. Any lateral
movement extracted is more
easily covered. If the edge is
found the ball is less likely to
carry to the slip cordon or the
wicketkeeper. Both Browne and
Burgess said they witnessed
several balls landing just short of
the catchers behind the stumps
last week. Those that do reach the
cordon need to be held by hands
stiff from cold. Both batters also
claimed to be more watchful at
the start of the campaign. “You
don’t want to be the guy who
nicks off from a booming drive in
April,” Browne says.
A lack of match preparation
is another variable that tilts
the scales towards batters in
April. “There’s no proper way
to replicate those overs,” says
Hampshire’s Kyle Abbott, who
arrived in the UK from South
Africa in 2017 believing that
bowling in April would be a dream.
“I thought I could just turn my arm
over and take a bag of wickets. It’s
not like that. It’s a long season and
you have to pace yourself.”
This may be a result of the
winter work conducted on hard
indoor nets or away in some sunny
country. For Ben Sanderson, whose
nine for 132 for Northamptonshire
against Gloucestershire was the
best match return of any bowler
in the opening round, pre-season
training can have an adverse
effect on seam bowlers.
There is also the psychological
component to batting to consider.
“Everyone’s nervous and eager
to hit the ground running,” says
Tim Murtagh, Middlesex’s captain
and opening bowler, “but batters
aren’t scarred by failures yet.
Maybe in June or July they’ve had
a bad run, they’re struggling for
big scores, they’re overthinking
their techniques or stance. The
start of a season is a clean slate.”
Browne agrees. “This was
the first time I started the year
without worrying about my
score,” he says. “I just went out
there [with Cook, who scored 100
in a 220-run opening stand] and
focused on each ball. I know that’s
something we should always do,
but I felt relaxed. Talk to me at the
end of the month though. I’m not
sure I’m ‘Team April’ just yet.”
▲ Nick Browne started the season
for Essex with 107 on opening day

38
Cycling
Governing body offers Wiggins support
following claims of grooming by coach
Sean Ingle
British Cycling’s safeguarding team
has reached out to Bradley Wiggins
following the Tour de France winner’s
“deeply concerning” allegations
that he was sexually groomed by his
coach when he was 13.
The sport’s governing body also
confirmed it had offered Wiggins
its full support after he revealed in
an interview that he had “buried”
what happened to him because he
Fury declines
questions on
alleged crime
boss Kinahan
 continued from back page
Dillian Whyte. Warren said: “Let me
make a couple of things very clear
– one, Daniel Kinahan has nothing
to do with this show and two, as
Tyson said, he was unaware of any
payments made by Top Rank to
Daniel Kinahan.”
Warren and Fury were asked if they
felt concern about the implications
for their sport and the veteran British
promoter said: “I am concerned, but
I’m also concerned about some of the
• The Guardian Wednesday 20 April 2022
Sport
had no one to turn to for help. “We
are deeply concerned by the matter
raised by Sir Bradley Wiggins and
our  safeguarding team has made
contact with  him today to offer
our full support,” a British Cycling
spokesperson said yesterday.
“We would encourage anybody
who has suffered abuse or has
concerns about the welfare of others
– regardless of when the incident took
place – to utilise the support offered
both by our trained team at British
Cycling and the dedicated NSPCC
Helpline, which in turn helps us to
misinformation that’s going around.
We’re not stupid people. All of us
understand what has happened from
the US Treasury. It’s been going on
now for three years and we all know
what we have to do and we will not
be breaking the law. We’ve never
broken the law.”
Fury joked: “I had a speeding
ticket once.”
Warren then said: “Is it a bad
image for boxing? We sold 94,000
tickets in two days. Are we going to
do good business on pay-per-view?
Yes we are. We are very conscious
about what we have to do as the
guardians of the sport but we are not
policemen. It’s only last week that
[allegations surrounding Kinahan
have] come to something.”
Asked if the Kinahan saga, which
holds such serious implications for
boxing, has been distracting, Fury
shook his head. “Not really, it’s got
nowt to do with me, has it? If I say
ensure that our sport is a safe and
welcoming place for all.”
Wiggins, who won the 2012 Tour
de France and eight Olympic medals
during his career, told Men’s Health
that he had been groomed when
he was about 13 and “I never fully
accepted that”. Asked if he was
groomed sexually, he said: “Yes. It all
impacted me as an adult … I buried it.”
Wiggins said he had been
unable  to  speak to his stepfather
because he beat him: “My stepfather
was quite violent to me, he
used to call me a faggot for wearing
there’s a war in Ukraine and people
ask me about that, it’s got nowt to
do with me. I keep my business to
myself. I’ve got my own troubles to
look after with six kids and a wife
nagging me to death for not being
at home to help with the kids. I’ve
got a lot more to think about than
other people’s business. I’ve got a
man who wants to punch my face
in [on Saturday] and I’ve got to deal
with that. Anything else is out of my
control.”
When pressed to admit that it is a
significant story, Fury said: “I don’t
really take any notice of the media.
I know what the media can do and I
was the victim of a witch-hunt in 2015
and 2016 [when he was suffering from
mental health problems and retired
for a year from boxing].”
Earlier yesterday, it was confirmed
that Bob Yalen had resigned as
chief executive of MTK Global. The
American is said to have made his
Bradley Wiggins
said he had
‘buried’ his
experiences
Lycra and stuff, so I didn’t think I
could tell him.”
The 41-year-old was also praised
by the NSPCC for being brave enough
to come forward. Michelle North,
head of the charity’s child protection
in sport unit, said: “It takes a lot of
courage to speak out about sexual
decision amid mounting pressure
as scrutiny of Kinahan became a
public priority of the US government.
MTK was founded under the name
of MGM by Kinahan and the former
boxer Matthew Macklin in 2012. The
company has tried to protest that it
is no longer associated with him but
various MTK boxers, including Fury,
have posted photographs of them-
selves with Kinahan on social media.
There was no MTK logo on Fury’s
tracksuit at Wembley and he said:
“This was made for me to wear today
and these are all my sponsors. I have
never been sponsored by MTK ever.”
Reminded that he has worn the
MTK logo before, his previously
jocular mood became sharper. “That
was from 2017 until 2020. Three years
and that was it. Done. End of. Any
more probing questions that you can
think of to trip me up? Because you
can’t. There is nothing that I have to
hide. Is there any more?”
abuse and Sir Bradley Wiggins
has shown real bravery in revealing
how he was groomed as a young
cyclist by his coach who should have
been protecting him.
“Sports coaches hold a great deal of
power and influence over the children
in their care and can all too easily
exploit this trust to groom and abuse
them. It’s common for victims to feel
guilt and shame or to even be unaware
that they are being abused and some
may not come to accept it until dec-
ades later but nonetheless the impact
can be devastating and long lasting.”
In the UK, the NSPCC offers support
to children on 0800 1111, and adults
concerned about a child on 0808
800 5000. The National Association
for People Abused in Childhood
(Napac) offers support for adult
survivors on 0808 801 0331.
▲ Tyson Fury said he had
nothing to hide when asked
about Daniel Kinahan
TOM JENKINS/THE GUARDIAN
Asked about the photograph
taken of him and Kinahan smiling
together in Dubai in February, Fury
said: “A picture doesn’t mean I am a
criminal. There could be a criminal in
this building now. It doesn’t mean I
am involved in his criminal activity
does it?”
Whyte, meanwhile, was notably
absent from the open workout. “I
am very disappointed he is not here
today,” Warren said. “Apparently he
is stuck on a plane or whatever it is.
He will certainly be here tomorrow
[at the press conference].”
Fury added, with a big smile. “I’m
sure he will because if he doesn’t
show up, there’ll be murders. There’ll
be trouble. [Dillian] you’d better show
your ass.”
Wednesday 20 April 2022 The Guardian
The Breakdown
Robert Kitson
Smith’s shift from barnstorming
assist to gut-twisting miss could
light a fire under his career
P
laying top-level sport,
in the end, is less about
talent than the ability
to bounce back from
failure. “I’ve failed
over and over again in
my life and that’s why I succeed,”
said the great Michael Jordan,
who knew a little about turning
talent into consistent achievement.
There is not a single great athlete
who, at one stage or another,
has not experienced a jolt of gut-
twisting dismay.
Sometimes, as happened to
Marcus Smith on Easter Saturday,
the worst of moments can
collide with the most uplifting.
Which is where this piece simply
has to start. There have been
hundreds of tries scored in this
long northern hemisphere season
but none liable to stick longer in
the memory of everyone present
at the Twickenham Stoop at the
weekend for the Harlequins v
Montpellier fixture.
It was just before the half-hour
and the game had already been
lively. Quins had made a fast start
but Montpellier were still ahead
in the tie and, as their director
of rugby, Philippe Saint-André,
memorably observed afterwards,
had not just come over to London
“to take the sun and drink beer”.
At which point Danny Care, ever
the optimist, leapt acrobatically
to keep a restart in play inside
his 22 and shovelled the ball
backwards in the direction of his
half-back partner Smith.
The rest was a glorious blur, as
if someone had pressed the fast-
forward button. Having scooped
the ball deftly off the deck, Smith
took off like a scalded Easter bunny,
throwing a cheeky dummy to
André Esterhuizen before goose-
Lawes faces
missing rest
of season with
hand injury
Gerard Meagher
Robert Kitson
The England captain Courtney Lawes
is set to see a specialist to determine
whether he will play again this sea-
son after sustaining a “nasty” hand
injury, Northampton’s director of
rugby, Chris Boyd, has revealed.
Lawes sustained a compound
dislocation of his left thumb in the
•
Sport
Rugby union
stepping and accelerating past five
Montpellier defenders. He had
almost made it to the 10-metre line
when he found the speedy Cadan
Murley who expertly drew the final
defender to put Joe Marchant over.
It will be mighty hard to beat as the
European try of the season.
Which was why no one at the
Stoop saw the unexpected final
twist coming. Smith, having had
another scampering try disallowed,
appeared to have clinched victory
for Quins when another beautiful
little delayed pass put the ever-
improving Louis Lynagh over for
his second try of the game. All
that was needed, with Quins now
only one point behind, was the
angled conversion from close to the
15-metre line. Smith had slotted his
previous four conversions without
missing a beat and, normally, it
would have been a routine kick.
Except that this time it wasn’t.
▲ Marcus Smith shone before missing a crucial conversion on Saturday
BOB BRADFORD/CAMERASPORT/GETTY IMAGES
European Challenge Cup quarter-final
defeat by Gloucester last Saturday
and was replaced after 15 minutes.
Boyd did not put any sort of time-
frame on the 33-year-old’s recovery,
stating only that he will definitely not
be in contention for the Premiership
match against Bath on Saturday.
His short-term absence is a blow
for Northampton, who are chasing a
top-four spot. England’s three-Test
tour of Australia this summer is also
coming into view and Eddie Jones,
the head coach, will be desperate
to have Lawes fit, given he has cap-
tained the national side five times this
term in Owen Farrell’s absence.
When asked if Lawes would be
back before the end of the season,
Boyd said: “The hand specialist
will come back and say X, Y or Z and
whatever he says will happen.
“It [the injury] was quite nasty.
Smith tugged it a fraction and
the ball sailed the wrong side of
the left upright. It was so close
that many Quins fans assumed it
had gone over. Even the assistant
referees behind the posts looked
at each other as if slightly baffled.
From the stands it looked as if
Smith had not even conceived of
the possibility of it missing.
So what kneejerk conclusions
should we draw? That Smith is a
flawed genius? That he choked at
the crucial moment? That it just
goes to show that the 23-year-
old is not yet quite the finished
article? Perhaps all those things
are true but how many people
were thinking or saying that an
hour earlier? It just depends
upon which of the two Saturday
snapshots you perceive as the
most telling.
A more reasoned response,
perhaps, is to remind ourselves
that sport is played by human
beings. The best snooker players
miss the occasional black, even
Wimbledon finalists find the net
on match point. Does that render
all the other shots they play
irrelevant? Of course not. It just
underlines that talent on its own is
not always enough.
It feels as if we are entering
The bone actually came out, but it
either popped back in or it was put
back in and it has been irrigated and
sewn back up again. Until we get a
clear medical view, all I can say is he
won’t play on Saturday.”
Lawes missed the first two games
of England’s Six Nations campaign
because of a problem with his
vestibular system, symptoms of
which included headaches and
▲ Courtney Lawes is taken off at
Gloucester after injuring a hand
Rory McIlroy territory here. How
good was he during the final round
at Augusta? How many dull lives
does his fabulous swing enrich?
Sure, but how come he has never
won a Green Jacket? At which point
people tend to forget the fact he
has finished in the top 10 in seven
of his 14 trips to the Masters and is
still only 32. Once again there is a
choice of narrative, as there is with
so many top sportspeople. Which
merely underlines the universal
truth: the more you achieve, the
greater the expectation to keep
doing it.
Q
uins’ senior coach
Tabai Matson also
made an interesting
point after the game
when he pointed
out that the margin
of error involved
is so tiny that playmakers and
goalkickers should be treated more
sympathetically. “The guys who
touch the ball the most get a bit
of leeway,” he stressed. Which is
worth bearing in mind whenever
we discuss mercurial fly-halves, in
particular.
If Finn Russell, as he did again for
Racing at the weekend, creates a try
with a beautiful pass over the top,
the number of people basking in
its gorgeousness tend to be fewer
in number than those asking why
his Six Nations form for Scotland
tailed off. Danny Cipriani, Owen
Farrell, George Ford and even
Beauden Barrett have also had to
battle similarly split opinions, as
has every Welsh fly-half since Barry
John.
But what, ultimately, is better?
A mechanical robot who barely
makes a mistake but creates very
little? Or a magician who makes
the occasional howler? The answer
is an athlete who learns from
their mistakes and, as per Jordan,
emerges the stronger for the
experience. Saturday’s aberration
will sting but, perversely, it could
just be the making of Smith’s career.
What we already know for certain is
that the game is fortunate to have
him.
“head-rush”, which kept him out
for six weeks. He returned to captain
England in the narrow win against
Wales, however, and counting in his
favour Jones at the time said Lawes
was someone who “tends to play
pretty well fresh on to the paddock”.
Marcus Smith, meanwhile,
has been told he cannot dwell on
Harlequins’ European exit if he and
the club wish to retain their Premier-
ship title. Smith missed a crucial late
conversion last weekend but – with
Quins hosting Leicester this weekend
– their senior coach Tabai Matson is
urging the fly-half to bounce back.
“If you’re as successful a goal-
kicker and game leader as him you
can’t dwell on things for too long,”
Matson said. “You have to be good
at bouncing back. He moves on
quickly which is an important trait
for someone in his position.”
39
Ash Barty is set
to play in a golf
exhibition event
Sport
In brief
Snooker
Young British players
are ‘lazy’, says Brecel
Belgium’s Luca Brecel said the
new generation of British snooker
players are “lazy” and “impatient”
as he prepared to begin his World
Championship campaign. No home
nation player under 30 has been
seeded. “For the new generation
[of British players] it’s all about
social media and money,” Brecel
said. “These days they all seem so
lazy and it will be difficult for more
players like [John] Higgins and
[Mark] Williams to break through.
You must accept it’s going to take a
long time to be good at something.
Impatience is the word.”
Meanwhile Neil Robertson has
issued a radical proposal for dual
venues after sweeping into the
second round with a 10-5 win over
Ashley Hugill, suggesting a second
auditorium in Sheffield could act
alongside the Crucible as a second
table through the early rounds.
Robertson said: “My idea is to
make it kind of like Wimbledon,
where you have Centre Court and
Court One, so you give everyone
who qualifies the one-table
experience.” PA Media
Golf
Barty swaps racket for
clubs in next challenge
Ash Barty will return to the world
stage of sport wielding a golf club
rather than a tennis racket. The
former world No 1 will play in a
teams exhibition event in New
Jersey on 30 June, alongside some
of sport’s biggest names. Barty,
who retired from tennis last month
aged 25, will be a headline act in the
Icons Series. Team USA, captained
by Fred Couples, will take on a Rest
of the World team captained by
Ernie Els. AAP
Greg Wood’s racing tips
Ludlow 1.00 Sayadam 1.30 Magic Dancer
2.05 Lily Glitters 2.40 Vivas 3.15 Chillabella
3.50 Dieu Vivant 4.20 Earth Cry
Catterick 1.40 Val De Travers 2.15 Zwift
2.50 Colinton 3.25 Beluga Gold 4.00 Shabs
4.30 Wizard D’Amour 5.05 Motawaazy
Perth 1.50 Amenon 2.25 Uncle Alastair
3.00 Coach Carter 3.35 Famous Bridge
4.10 Pink Legend 4.41 Timetoroe 5.16 Auditoria
Lingfield 4.15 Haunted Dream (nap) 4.50 Smart
Connection 5.30 Adelita 6.00 Hey Ho Let’s Go
6.30 Shibori 7.00 Coolagh Magic 7.30 Winnetka
Salisbury 4.25 Kaasib 5.00 Eternal Glory
5.35 Majeski Man 6.10 Belhaven 6.40 Girl Inthe Picture
7.10 Alpine Stroll (nb) 7.40 Mr Tambourine Man
 ••• The Guardian Wednesday 20 April 2022

40 Sport Results
Football Sky Bet Championship

Football

Mitrovic scores 40th of season

fans began to implore their promo-
tion heroes to shoot from all angles PREMIER LEAGUE
P W D L F A GD Pts
and distances.
Liverpool 32 23 7 2 83 22 +61 76
With 15 minutes left, Carvalho

to fire Fulham into top flight

Man City 31 23 5 3 72 20 +52 74
left the field to a standing ovation. Chelsea 30 18 8 4 64 23 +41 62
Soon after, so did Mitrovic, no hat- Tottenham 32 18 3 11 56 38 +18 57
Arsenal 31 17 3 11 45 37 +8 54
trick but his tally of goals a brilliant Man Utd 33 15 9 9 52 48 +4 54
achievement nonetheless. Emblem- West Ham 33 15 7 11 52 43 +9 52
atic of his club, Mitrovic is highly Wolves 32 15 4 13 33 28 +5 49
with flair and enterprising football. the Liverpool-bound Carvalho might potent in the Championship and Leicester 30 11 7 12 46 50 -4 40
Fulham 3 Brighton 32 9 13 10 29 37 -8 40
“They’ve been the best team in the have resulted in a second in the yet has usually disappointed in the Brentford 33 11 6 16 41 49 -8 39
Mitrovic 9 41, Carvalho 34
division by far,” said the Preston man- 25th minute, only for the teenager higher echelon. Southampton 32 9 12 11 38 52 -14 39
ager, Ryan Lowe. to fire wide. Carvalho did not wait “Mitro has been exceptional, phe-
0
Crystal Palace 31 8 13 10 43 40 +3 37
Preston Newcastle 32 9 10 13 36 55 -19 37
After losing their last two matches long, soon scoring with a flick after nomenal,” said Silva. “When Mitro Aston Villa 31 11 3 17 42 46 -4 36
to Coventry and Derby, merely edging Neeskens Kebano’s cross deflected can play with his energy and is fresh, Leeds 32 8 9 15 38 68 -30 33
over the line would have sufficed for into his path. And by the 42nd min- he is a completely different player.” Everton 30 8 4 18 33 52 -19 28
John Brewin Fulham but there was no such ten- ute, the party could begin in earnest, The game having petered out, Ful- Burnley 31 4 13 14 26 45 -19 25
Watford 32 6 4 22 30 62 -32 22
Craven Cottage sion, even if Preston did begin with Mitrovic firing under Iversen after ham could then celebrate with the Norwich 32 5 6 21 22 66 -44 21
zest. It took a clawing save from Harry Wilson’s pass. paying public. Now to try and last Liverpool (2) 4 Manchester Utd (0) 0
Fulham are back where they belong, Marek Rodak to deny Ched Evans Not that the party was too raucous, longer than a single season. Díaz 5, Salah 22 85, Mané 68
that netherworld between the Cham- after Cameron Archer and Daniel a third promotion in six seasons “I know what the club wanted from SKY BET CHAMPIONSHIP
P W D L F A GD Pts
pionship and Premier League where Johnson’s interchange had left the being a tad low on novelty. Admit- me,” said Silva. “And it is just the Fulham P 42 26 8 8 98 37 +61 86
the club has spent the last five sum- Fulham goalkeeper exposed. Rodak tedly, it was hard to raise the roof on beginning of a long journey I hope. Bournemouth 41 22 11 8 65 35 +30 77
mers. Each one of those has seen was soon required to palm over Ben an entirely empty Riverside Stand, We have to prepare for the big chal- Huddersfield 43 20 13 10 58 45 +13 73
Luton 43 20 11 12 61 47 +14 71
them either promoted to or demoted Whiteman’s dig from distance. the towering new structure being lenge ahead of us.”
Nottm Forest 41 20 10 11 65 37 +28 70
from the top division. Fulham began to make use of the readied for next season, though the Sheffield Utd 43 18 12 13 55 44 +11 66
With two goals from Aleksandar space created by Preston’s ambition. Hammersmith End sounded happy Fulham Preston Millwall 43 17 14 12 48 42 +6 65
4-3-2-1 3-5-2
Mitrovic taking him to 40 for the sea- Mitrovic had scored against every enough belting out its “stand up if Rodak; Williams, Iversen; Van den Berg,
Blackburn 43 17 12 14 53 45 +8 63
Middlesbrough 42 18 9 15 52 44 +8 63
son and another from Fabio Carvalho, team in the Championship this sea- you’re Premier League” chants. Adarabioyo, Ream,
Bryan; Cairney•,
Lindsay, Hughes;
Potts (Sinclair 69), QPR 43 18 9 16 58 55 +3 63
two stars of the campaign made sure son other than Coventry and Preston. The second half began almost like Reed (Seri 70); Carvalho Whiteman•, McCann, Coventry 43 17 11 15 58 56 +2 62
(Reid 75), Wilson, Johnson, Earl (Diaby 45);
Fulham achieved their objective for By the 10th minute, only Coventry the first, Rodak making a fine save Kebano; Mitrovic Evans (Maguire 25),
West Brom 43 16 12 15 47 45 +2 60
Swansea 42 16 11 15 53 58 -5 59
the season. At full time, their fans remained. Joe Bryan surged in from from Archer before Mitrovic lost to (Rodrigo Muniz 77) Archer
Subs not used Subs not used Stoke 43 16 10 17 54 48 +6 58
rushed on to the field to lift their the left, his angled pass finding the Iversen in a one-on-one duel. Pres- Hector, Chalobah, Cunningham, Rafferty, Preston 43 14 16 13 44 50 -6 58
heroes high. A more orderly display Serb in perfect position to stroke ton’s Danish goalkeeper then made Gazzaniga, Robinson Huntington, Hudson Blackpool 42 15 11 16 51 50 +1 56
followed later, once the pitch was beyond Daniel Iversen. a fine double stop from Carvalho and Cardiff 42 14 7 21 48 64 -16 49
Bristol City 43 13 10 20 54 74 -20 49
cleared. Neat play between Mitrovic and Mitrovic. As Fulham dominated, their Referee Leigh Doughty
Hull 43 13 8 22 37 48 -11 47
Marco Silva is set to manage his Birmingham 43 11 12 20 46 70 -24 45
fourth Premier League club in just Reading* 43 13 8 22 54 82 -28 41
Peterborough 43 8 10 25 38 83 -45 34
over five years and has almost as
Derby** R 43 13 13 17 42 49 -7 31
much to prove as Fulham. Having Barnsley 42 6 12 24 31 62 -31 30
not dropped below a top-two position *deducted six points **deducted 21 points
since the 13th match of the campaign Fulham (3) 3 Preston (0) 0
Mitrovic 9 41, Carvalho 34
and scored 98 goals, 33 more than
SKY BET LEAGUE ONE
anyone else, his team are more than P W D L F A GD Pts
worthy of their elevation. But as Nor- Wigan 43 26 10 7 76 40 +36 88
wich and Watford have shown this Rotherham 43 25 8 10 65 31 +34 83
MK Dons 44 24 11 9 71 44 +27 83
season, Championship domination Sheffield Wed 43 22 13 8 71 46 +25 79
represents zero guarantee of Premier Plymouth 44 23 10 11 67 42 +25 79
League comfort. Wycombe 44 21 14 9 72 50 +22 77
“The gap is getting bigger, I know Sunderland 43 22 11 10 72 51 +21 77
Oxford Utd 44 22 9 13 80 56 +24 75
it,” Silva admitted. “Every season you Portsmouth 43 18 13 12 61 44 +17 67
can see it. Now we have to celebrate Bolton 44 19 10 15 68 54 +14 67
and to prepare for next season. It’s Ipswich 44 17 15 12 62 45 +17 66
Cambridge Utd 44 15 12 17 53 67 -14 57
a nice word, a ‘yo-yo’ team, a good Charlton 44 16 8 20 53 55 -2 56
nickname. The challenge is huge, def- Cheltenham 44 13 16 15 63 76 -13 55
initely. We have to be really positive,  Fabio Accrington Stanley 44 15 10 19 55 76 -21 55
we have to have desire and ambition.” Carvalho puts Burton Albion 44 14 11 19 50 63 -13 53
Shrewsbury 44 12 14 18 47 46 +1 50
Having spent £100m on players for Fulham 2-0 Lincoln City 44 13 10 21 52 60 -8 49
the doomed 2018-19 campaign and up and on the Morecambe 44 10 12 22 57 85 -28 42
reported losses of £93m for a simi- way to the Gillingham 44 8 16 20 34 64 -30 40
Fleetwood Town 43 8 15 20 57 74 -17 39
larly fated 2020-21 season, the club’s Premier League AFC Wimbledon 44 6 18 20 45 70 -25 36
American billionaire owner Shad as Aleksandar Doncaster 44 9 7 28 34 81 -47 34
Khan will have to keep digging deep. Mitrovic Crewe R 44 7 7 30 35 80 -45 28
A similar set of players came down (above, centre) Burton (1) 2 Rotherham (0) 0
Borthwick-Jackson 3
last season under Scott Parker, and celebrates with Brayford 69 3,537
Silva and Khan must augment them teammates Cambridge Utd (0) 0 Charlton (0) 2
with greater quality, even after CLIVE ROSE/ Blackett-Taylor 73
GETTY IMAGES 5,409 Washington 80
promotion was breezily achieved
Ipswich (0) 2 Wigan (1) 2
Chaplin 61, Morsy 73 Keane 45 86 21,329
Oxford Utd (0) 1 MK Dons (0) 0
Women’s football will stage three group matches, in big stadiums and I’m pretty sure at the City Academy Stadium. All of Bodin 86 9,685
Sheffield Wed (0) 1 Crewe (0) 0

Euro 2022 including Iceland’s fixtures with

Belgium and Italy in July.
they’re going to be sold out.”
Organisers revealed yesterday that
England’s group matches are sellouts,
with the opening game against Aus-
Gregory 54pen
CINCH SCOTTISH CHAMPIONSHIP
22,566

criticised for
having games at
City’s academy
The Iceland international Sara Björk
Gunnarsdóttir has branded the use
of the Manchester City Academy
Stadium as a venue for the European
Championship this summer as “disre-
spectful” to women’s football.
The stadium, which hosts Man-
chester City Women’s games, is the
tournament’s smallest ground and
Gunnarsdóttir told the Their Pitch
podcast: “I’m a little bit disappointed
with some of the stadiums that we
got. It’s shocking. You’re playing in
England, you have so many stadiums,
and we have a training ground from
City. It’s just embarrassing. Women’s
football today, they’re filling out the
stadiums. If you see Barcelona against
Real Madrid, we have 95,000 [official
attendance was 91,533] watching.
“They are not prepared for that,
that we will sell more tickets than
4,000. It’s disrespectful towards
women’s football at this stage
because it’s so much bigger than
people think. But there will be games
eight matches have now sold out,
including both of Iceland’s contests
Iceland’s Sara Björk
Gunnarsdóttir called the
decision ‘disrespectful’
tria at Old Trafford on 6 July the latest
to hit capacity.
Gunnarsdóttir has urged a rethink.
“I don’t know what’s going on in their
heads or if they’re even following
women’s football,” the Lyon mid-
fielder said. “Because if you would,
it’s just common sense. Women’s
football’s exploding, it’s getting so
much better, and it’s just stupid to
speak about it because it doesn’t even
make sense.
“They should 100% reconsider it,
because I think you see the reaction
and how fast the tickets are going and
how popular it is, they have to recon-
sider their decision.”
Queen of the South 2 Inverness Caledonian Thistle 1
Snooker
BETFRED WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS (Sheffield)
First round: N Robertson (Aus) bt A Hugill (Eng) 10-5;
S Bingham (Eng) bt Lu H (Chn) 10-5
Tennis
ATP BARCELONA OPEN (Spain)
Second round: C Norrie (GB) bt E Gerasimov (Blr) 5-7 6-4
6-4; L Musetti (It) bt D Evans (GB) 6-4 7-6 (10-8)
Basketball
NBA PLAYOFFS
First round: Eastern Conference Philadelphia 112 Toronto
97 (Philadelphia lead series 2-0)
Western Conference Dallas 110 Utah 104 (series tied 1-1);
Golden State 126 Denver 106 (Golden State lead series 2-0)
Fixtures
Football (7.45pm unless stated)
Premier League
Chelsea v Arsenal; Everton v Leicester; Manchester City
v Brighton (8pm); Newcastle v Crystal Palace
Wednesday 20 April 2022 The Guardian
City ‘had 71
treatments’
in buildup
to semi-final
Jamie Jackson
Fabrizio Romano
Pep Guardiola has revealed that 711
treatments were administered to
his weary players in the 65 and a halff
hours between Manchester City’s
draw at Atlético Madrid and the
FA Cup semi-final defeat by Liverpooll
last Saturday.
The high number of treatments
was because of the toll of “three
LARS BARON/GETTY IMAGES
finals”, Guardiola said – the home
and away legs against Atlético and
the Premier League game at home
against Liverpool in between.
“Our physios made 71 treatments
in the space between Atlético Madrid
and the semi-final against Liverpool,”
City’s manager said. “The full figure is
71. I saw the people there. The doctor
came to me. But it’s not for just one
game, it’s after these three ‘finals’.
“They [the medics] told me as it
was more than usual. The schedule is
what it is. At Millwall [City’s training
base for the Cup semi-final] we had
six massage tables by the side of the
pitch for players – they watched those
who didn’t play in Madrid train.”
Guardiola was without Kyle
Walker, Kevin De Bruyne and Rúben
Dias at Wembley. Walker’s ankle prob-
lem rules him out of Brighton’s visit
for the league match tonight but De
Bruyne and Dias await fitness tests.
Dias has not played for seven
weeks because of a hamstring injury
but Guardiola is not concerned about
putting the defender back in. “He
could [play 90 minutes],” he said.
“It depends on the game. Tomor-
Dyche dismissal has no effect
on Everton, says Lampard
Andy Hunter
Frank Lampard has said Everton
cannot expect to benefit from Sean
Dyche’s shock sacking because
Burnley are adept at fighting for
Premier League survival.
Burnley’s decision on Friday to
remove their long-serving manager
has been portrayed in some quarters
as a boost to Everton’s chances of
avoiding relegation, given Dyche’s
experience and the timing of his
removal. Everton, who host Leicester
tonight, are three points above their
relegation rivals with a game in hand
and Lampard insists only his team,
not events at Turf Moor, can deter-
mine the club’s top-flight status.
“Sean Dyche has been an incredi-
ble manager of the club with what
he’s done in the time he was there,”
the Everton manager said. “But the
club have decided to make a change
•
Sport
Football
Will Erlingg Haaland be wearing
Manchester City colours
next season?
row’s game is so demanding. I haven’t
decided on the lineup. I think maybe
the last minutes for him but he could
start. I have no doubts about Rúben.
With Rúben, it is not a problem.
“Over seven weeks, he went to
sleep at 10pm, up at 7am – lunch at
the same time every day and he stays
in the gym and the pool for I don’t
know how long. He does it when he
is fit and when he is not fit. When he
says ‘I’m OK’, then he is OK.”
Despite having had to cope with-
out Dias, De Bruyne and Walker
because of injury Guardiola prefers
to have a small squad. “I like to work
with not a big depth of squad. I’ve
lived this situation many years in my
life, fortunately, as I have been in top
clubs – Barcelona, Bayern Munich and
now City – and we arrive in the latter
stages, fighting for all competitions.
and Sean Dyche, I’m sure, deserves
maybe a bit of a rest and will then get
himself a fantastic job because of the
level of manager he has shown him-
self to be.
“In terms of what it means for
Burnley going forward, nobody
knows. You can go through history
and see there have been good reac-
tions to change and not so good reac-
tions. It doesn’t affect Everton.
“I saw a quote this week saying
we’ve been let off the hook because
this happened. I don’t see how.
▲ ‘Frank Lampard: ‘Burnley are
used to fighting to stay in the league’
“I learned from that: that if you
want to fight to win, you have to be
fit. You need 16, 17 or 18 who you have
to have all the while fit, otherwise it’s
difficult to handle all of the competi-
tions. This is not an argument, it’s a
fact, because I lived it.”
Next season Guardiola hopes to
have Erling Haaland in his squad.
City are the frontrunners in the race
to buy the Borussia Dortmund striker
and talks will continue in the com-
ing days. Personal terms and other
details have been discussed and City
are ready to pay the 21-year-old’s
release clause if agreement is reached
on all aspects of a deal.
Guardiola, pressed on the latest,
said: “No answer to your question.
No questions – I have no concern
about what will happen in this club
next season.”
Burnley are a good team and are
used to fighting to stay in the Pre-
mier League. That fact will remain
the same.”
Lampard says he does not under-
stand the decision to sack the Premier
League’s longest-serving manager
but insists Everton’s focus must be
towards building on their win against
Manchester United last time out.
“I presume – because I don’t know
at all – that the intent behind the
change was for an uplift because this
is the Premier League and it’s busi-
ness and it is too big a deal for a club
to get relegated for what it means for
everyone involved at the club,” said
Lampard, who has Yerry Mina availa-
ble for the first time since 8 February.
“I don’t think it was a decision
made lightly but I don’t understand
it. It is very important I put across
what a job Sean has done because I
don’t want to make it look as if they
are going to get better now. That’s
why my answer is I don’t know.
“The situation for us is very clear,
the table is very clear. If we do our
job well enough we will stay in this
league. And we can’t control what
Burnley do whether it is with Sean
Dyche in charge or someone else.”
Tuchel shows no sympathy
for rivals’ fatigue complaints
Jacob Steinberg
Thomas Tuchel believes that Arsenal,
Manchester United and Tottenham
have spurned opportunities to
capitalise on their early exits from the
domestic cups and European com-
petitions by making a stronger push
for Champions League qualification.
Arsenal, United and Spurs have
had long spells to prepare for league
games this season but their incon-
sistency has left them scrapping over
fourth place. They have been unable
to challenge Chelsea, who have a tight
grip on third before hosting Arsenal
tonight, and Tuchel was amused to
hear some of his side’s rivals have
been complaining about fatigue.
Chelsea have played 54 games
this season after winning the Club
World Cup and the European Super
Cup, making it to the last eight of the
Champions League and reaching the
FA Cup and Carabao Cup finals.
Tuchel is surprised that Mikel
Arteta feels Arsenal are at a
disadvantage due to their trip to
Stamford Bridge being rescheduled
three days before they host United.
“Because they have one more day
off ?” Tuchel said when the topic was
raised, sarcastically pointing out that
Arsenal’s defeat by Southampton in
the league last Saturday came 24
hours before his side won their FA
Cup semi-final against Crystal Palace.
There was another shrug of the
shoulders when the German heard
that United are unhappy about the
scheduling of their fixture against
Chelsea next month. Arsenal have
Football
In brief
West Ham
Diop injury adds to
Moyes’s defensive woes
West Ham’s hopes of winning the
Europa League have been hit with
David Moyes facing a defensive
crisis after Issa Diop sustained
an ankle injury that could rule
him out for the rest of the season.
Diop picked up a knock during
the final stages of the 1-1 draw
against Burnley on Sunday and
initial tests have indicated the
defender could be out for eight
weeks with ligament damage,
leaving Craig Dawson as West
Ham’s only fit centre-back. With
Angelo Ogbonna and Kurt Zouma
already unavailable for the season
Moyes now has a major selection
headache before his side’s Europa
League semi-final against Eintracht
Frankfurt. One solution could be
to move Ben Johnson, who can
play in both full-back positions,
alongside Dawson. Another would
be to promote the youngsters Jamal
Baptiste or Aji Alese or play Declan
Rice in defence. Jacob Steinberg
41
played 38 games after missing out on
European qualification and losing in
the third round of the FA Cup, United
lost in the Champions League last 16
and Spurs failed to qualify from their
Europa Conference League group.
“They have been given a huge
advantage,” Tuchel said. “It depends
what you make about your situation.
We can use it to feel very tired and
we feel the challenge at the moment
mentally and physically. We can use it
to have an excuse if things go wrong.
Or we can just accept the challenge.
“I was not happy when Tottenham
were out of the Conference League
because I thought ‘Wow, I know what
Antonio Conte can do with teams
when they are focused and he can
train them physically’, and the same
for Arsenal when they went out of
the Cup. I thought it would be a huge
boost for them, because they have a
very young and talented team.”
Tuchel, who said that Mateo
Kovacic is out for two weeks with
damaged ankle ligaments, hinted
that Romelu Lukaku could start
tonight against Arsenal.
Thomas Tuchel’s
Chelsea have played
54 games this season
Arsenal
Lacazette admits
talks with other clubs
Mikel Arteta admits Arsenal took
a risk in delaying contract talks
with Alexandre Lacazette until
the summer – with the captain
now revealing he has opened
discussions with other clubs.
Speaking to Canal Plus this
week, Lacazette said he was “in
discussions with a lot of clubs”,
adding he was “missing” playing
in the Champions League and had
“never cut contact” with Lyon,
whom he left to join Arsenal five
years ago. Asked if he was surprised
by Lacazette’s remarks, Arteta
replied: “His contract situation
allows him to make the decision
about his future.” PA Media
Scotland
Premiership agrees to
use VAR next season
VAR technology will be introduced
in Scottish football’s top flight next
season after plans were backed by
clubs. The video technology will
be installed in every Premiership
ground and is expected to be
available to assist referees after the
World Cup in December. PA Media
 ••• The Guardian Wednesday 20 April 2022

42 Sport Salah
puts seal
Football Premier League
on Reds’
rampage

Mo Salah
chips David
de Gea
to score
Liverpool’s
fourth goal
against
Manchester
United
PHIL NOBLE/
REUTERS

Díaz dazzles
To borrow another line from the
Liverpool 4
Díaz 5, Salah 22 84, Mané 68
Liverpool support, their arch rivals How they stand at the top
hardly touched the ball during what
was another chastening defeat. After
Manchester United 0 the 5-0 Old Trafford shellacking back P W D L F A GD Pts

and Salah Possession

Liverpool
70%
Man Utd
30%
in October, this was another occasion
that showed Liverpool to be on an
altogether different plane.
United were a shambles, especially
Liverpool 32
Man City 31
Chelsea 30
Tottenham 32
23 7 2 83 22 +61 76
23 5 3 72 20 +52 74
18 8 4 64 23 +41 62
18 3 11 56 38 +18 57

doubles up as
in the first half, their defeat inevitable Arsenal 31 17 3 11 45 37 +8 54
Shots on target
from the moment that Luis Díaz gave Man Utd 33 15 9 9 52 48 +4 54
5 1
Liverpool an early lead and they were
Fouls on their knees when Mohamed Salah Top two run-in
3 6 ran on to a pass from the substitute Liverpool Man City

Liverpool throw Diogo Jota to chip home the fourth in Everton (h) Brighton (h)
Sun 24 April
David Hytner the final minutes.
Newcastle (a)
Today
Watford (h)
Inspired by Thiago Alcântara, who
Anfield appeared to be playing his own game
Sat 30 April Sat 23 April
Tottenham (h) Leeds (a)

gauntlet to City
for long spells, Liverpool got the Sat 7 May Sat 30 April
With the second-half restart delayed, result they needed to send them to Aston Villa (a) Newcastle (h)
bizarrely, while the referee, Martin the top of the Premier League table, Tue 10 May Sun 8 May
Atkinson, had his microphone refit- at least until Manchester City play Southampton (a) West Ham (a)
ted, Manchester United’s players Brighton at home tonight. A draw Sun 15 May Sun 15 May
tried to stay on their toes by passing would have taken them there but vic- Wolves (h) Aston Villa (h)
a ball about. The Kop responded with tory was never in doubt, the United Sun 22 May Sun 22 May
olés. It was a typically caustic judg- support having arrived fearing the Wolves (a)
ment but it felt entirely appropriate. worst and seeing it all realised. Date tbc
Wednesday 20 April 2022 The Guardian
Salah got the second– his first goal
in open play for 12 matches – with
Sadio Mané adding the third and
Liverpool can chalk off another one
in their quest for the perfect finish
which, they hope, will pressurise City
into a slip.
It is now 11 consecutive league wins
for Liverpool at Anfield but perhaps
the more revealing statistic is the one
that shows they have dropped only
one result that has really mattered
since 2 January – the 2-2 draw at City
on the Sunday before last. The talk of
the quadruple will not stop – not with
them in such rare form, everything
coming together for Jürgen Klopp and
his players.
These are dark days for United,
the air thick with rancour and pro-
test; the travelling supporters once
again chanted for the removal of
the Glazer family.
They have even turned on some
of the players, Harry Maguire and
Paul Pogba having been barracked
of late. Pogba limped off after 10
•••
minutes here and it was easy to
think  that, even so early, he had
concluded he was better off away
from the pitch.
United have almost forgotten
what it is like to win convincingly
or to have a coherent and consistent
plan. Ralf Rangnick started with a
back three featuring the lesser spot-
ted Phil Jones before hooking him
at half-time and switching to 4-3-3.
Neither approach worked. The club’s
top-four hopes are a mirage.
Liverpool started with the goal-
keeper, Alisson, pulling a Cruyff-style
move on Bruno Fernandes, high-
lighting the confidence in their
veins, and the breakthrough goal
showcased their well-grooved under-
standings and United’s inability to
defend with any physicality. The
visiting side could not lay a glove on
the red shirts as they worked the ball
up from the back, Mané eventually
releasing Salah and his cross made
to measure for Díaz.
It was a lovely moment on seven
minutes when the Liverpool sup-
porters joined their United counter-
parts in clapping for Cristiano
Ronaldo, who was on compassion-
ate leave following the death of his
baby boy in childbirth.
Back to the action and Liverpool
called the tune for the remainder
of the first half, supremely untrou-
bled at the back, pressing brilliantly,
dominating the ball. United chased
shadows and it was remarkable to
see how Liverpool found spaces in
between the lines and out wide, par-
ticularly on the right through Salah
and Trent Alexander-Arnold.
The second goal came when Joël
Matip stepped forward, got the ball
back from Diaz and played it to Mané.
Salah was already running off Diogo
Dalot, the makeshift left wing-back,
and Mané pivoted to find him. It was
a brilliant assist. Salah took a touch
before steering home.
United were error-strewn, treating
the ball like a hot coal and, on the
two occasions before the interval that
they thought they had got Marcus
Rashford away with high balls over
the top, the striker’s touch deserted
him. Rashford struggled sorely, his
confidence seemingly in tatters.
Rangnick was fortunate that the
half-time damage was not heavier;
Liverpool, certainly, had the chances.
Things did get a little better for
him during the first 20 minutes of
the second half, even if Thiago con-
tinued to dazzle, pinging his passes,
gliding over the turf.
Rashford, flagged offside but
clearly on for VAR purposes, blew a
one-on-one with Alisson.
But then United played Anthony
Elanga into trouble, Andy Robertson
tackled him and fed Díaz, whose
cut-back teed up Mané.
Liverpool’s fourth also followed
a United turnover, this time by the
substitute, Hannibal Mejbri. For
United, the only mercy was the
full-time whistle.
Liverpool Manchester United
4-3-3
Alisson; Alexander-
Arnold, Matip, Van Dijk,
3-4-2-1
De Gea; Maguire,
Jones (Sancho ht),
Robertson; Henderson, Lindelof; Wan-Bissaka,
Fabinho (Milner 86), Pogba (Lingard 10),
Thiago (Keïta• 80); Matic, Dalot; Fernandes•,
Salah, Mané, Elanga (Mejbri• 84);
Díaz (Jota 70) Rashford
Subs not used Subs not used
Kelleher, Konaté, Henderson, Bailly, Mata,
Gomez, Jones, Lingard, Telles,
Tsimikas, Origi McTominay, Garnacho
Referee Martin Atkinson
Analysis
Andy Hunter Anfield
Tale of two 6s sums up Anfield
mauling with Thiago masterful
while Pogba hobbles away
A
n aggregate score of
9-0 this season is a
fair representation
of Liverpool’s
superiority over
Manchester United
and the highest number of goals
they have scored against their
old rivals in a single campaign
since 1895-96, when United were
known as Newton Heath. The
tale of the two No 6s on display at
Anfield encapsulated why such a
chasm exists.
In the United No 6 was Paul
Pogba, an expensive, richly
rewarded asset who lasted 10
minutes before limping off injured,
perhaps never to be seen playing
for the club again before leaving on
a free transfer this summer.
Wearing Liverpool’s No 6 was
Thiago Alcântara, two years Pogba’s
senior and radiating the kind
of class, composure and vision
that underpinned Liverpool’s
ascent to the top of the Premier
League. He would also hobble off
nursing what appeared a tight left
hamstring – his laughing embrace
with Jürgen Klopp suggested it
was not a serious blow – although
that followed an 80-minute
performance that left Anfield and
his manager drooling.
Thiago orchestrated Liverpool’s
latest humiliation of the team from
Old Trafford, his disguised passes
and frequent dissection of United’s
hastily arranged formation adding
to the sense that Klopp’s side were,
to be blunt, extracting the Michael.
Alisson had set that tone as early
as the third minute when executing
a Cruyff turn on Bruno Fernandes
inside his own penalty area. Thiago
needed no encouragement to pick
up the baton. The former Bayern
Munich midfielder has timed the
best run of form of his Liverpool
career to perfection.
Ominously for Manchester
City, Villarreal, Chelsea and
anyone else who stands in the
way of Liverpool’s pursuit of an
unprecedented quadruple, several
‘Embarrassing’
Rangnick left
humiliated by
capitulation
 continued from back page
it is extremely embarrassing. We just
have to admit they are better than us –
I would say they have 25 Formula One
cars in their squad.
of Thiago’s colleagues have also hit
their stride as the season enters its
defining phase. None more so than
Sadio Mané.
As in the first-half destruction
of City in the FA Cup semi-final
on Saturday, Mané epitomised
the fight, quality and relentless
endeavour of the new Premier
League leaders.
The Senegal striker was
central to both first-half goals.
His first-time ball sent Mohamed
Salah scampering through a badly
exposed United defence to cross
for Luis Díaz’s opener. His assist for
the second was sublime. Receiving
Joël Matip’s pass at the end of a
flowing, one-touch Liverpool move
Mané, his back to goal, flicked a
glorious chip over Harry Maguire
into Salah’s run. Having taken so
much from the Egypt international
in recent months – an Africa
Cup of Nations title plus World
Cup qualification, both with the
decisive spot-kick in a penalty
shootout – it was only fair that
Mané gave Salah something back.
Salah’s confident finish brought
him a first goal from open play
since the win against Norwich on
19 February. A second completed
the rout, and Salah could have
had a hat-trick by the time the
referee Martin Atkinson called an
end to United’s misery.
Salah’s timely return to the goals
was an added benefit for Klopp
beyond the three points he had
described as the most important of
Jürgen Klopp hugs
Thiago Alcântara
after his virtuoso
midfield display
“What I say in the locker room
stays there but in general it is simi-
lar to what I say now. In the first half
we were onlookers to what happens
on the pitch, when you play like that
against a team like Liverpool. If you
cannot get hold of the ball, put a little
pressure because we just didn’t attack
them, It almost looked as if we were
afraid to be outplayed.”
While Paul Pogba may miss the
next two matches after limping off
in the first half, Klopp hailed a “per-
fect” night for his side. “It was top
level, a great night, nothing to moan
about football-wise,” he said.
43
Liverpool’s lives. Thiago, Mané
and Díaz were on a different level
to anyone else on the pitch – as
they were in the first half against
City – with the carelessness
and evident lack of belief in the
visiting ranks reinforcing the
sense of a mismatch.
It was not merely Mané’s role
in three goals that underlined
his enduring value to Klopp’s
team. Before sweeping home
his 19th club goal of the season,
finding the bottom corner of
David de Gea’s net with ease from
Díaz’s cut-back, his work rate
had embarrassed United’s effort.
The 30-year-old hassled United
from first whistle to last. From
the kick-off he made a beeline for
Phil Jones who, through no fault
of his own, also showed how far
from the Premier League elite his
employers have fallen.
Jones was handed his second
start of the season by Ralf
Rangnick following what the
interim manager had called an
encouraging day’s training with
a new three-pronged defensive
shape. The formation, and
Jones, were abandoned after 45
minutes. The recalled defender
has been unlucky with injuries
and vindictive personal criticism
in recent years. His misfortune
here was to be thrust into one of
the most high-profile fixtures in
the sport, in the midst of Victor
Lindelöf and Maguire, against one
of the strongest forward lines in
world football.
One exchange, a minor note in
the grand scheme of Liverpool’s
victory, was telling. In the 19th
minute Jones sprinted out of the
backline to stop Mané receiving
possession in the Liverpool half.
Mané got there first, flicking the
ball out to Andy Robertson before
spinning into the United half. By
the time Robertson returned the
pass Mané was 20 yards ahead of
Jones and pressurising Nemanja
Matic into conceding a corner.
Minutes later Mané was back
in his own half pressurising
Aaron Wan-Bissaka into running
the ball out of play for a Liverpool
throw. Shortly afterwards, he
and Thiago combined to do a
number on Fernandes in the
build-up to a Díaz goal that was
disallowed for offside.
That is what is so impressive
about Liverpool and so galling for
the United fans looking on aghast
from the Anfield Road Stand.
There is tireless graft behind the
brilliance of Klopp’s side. United
have neither.
Of the 9-0 aggregate score over
United, Klopp said: “It is for sup-
porters if they want to celebrate, not
for me. I am not here to humiliate the
opponent. We started the game bet-
ter than we finished, in between we
had a spell where we had to adjust
to the different high-press system
organisation of the opponent [after
half-time]. We were clearly better in
the first half.”
In the seventh minute the whole
stadium applauded for Cristiano Ron-
aldo, whose baby son died on Mon-
day. “My favourite moment,” Klopp
said. “Pure class in this moment.”
 •••

Bounce back Injury-hit City

ity The Gu
Guardian
Wednesday 20 April 2022
Wednes
Record-chasing ‘71 treatments’
ts’
Mitrovic seals needed in three
hree
promotion days last week,
ek,
for Fulham says Guardiola
ola
Page 40  Page 41 

‘None of my
business’: Fury
evasive over
Kinahan issue
Donald McRae

Tyson Fury chose to avoid discussing

the troubling news story that
continues to reverberate as he met
the media in person for the first time
since the US Treasury announced last
week that it had imposed sanctions
against a leading figure involved in
boxing. Daniel Kinahan, who has
been subject for years to allegations
that he leads a notorious drug cartel,
has advised and acted on behalf of
many fighters, including Fury.
The US authorities have offered a
$5m reward for further information
that could lead to the exiled Irishman
being arrested and then brought to
trial to answer numerous serious
criminal allegations. An American
state spokesman also warned that
anyone in boxing who is still involved
with Kinahan needs to cut all ties with
him or risk being implicated in his
activities. Kinahan has no criminal
convictions and has always denied
any wrongdoing.
Fury, speaking to the Guardian,
stressed that he was not willing to
discuss any business but his own
Match report and that he was “just a boxer” who
was not qualified to comment on the
and analysis US government’s stance. Later, when
Pages 42-43 meeting a small group of national
newspaper journalists, including
▲ Mohamed the Guardian, Fury repeated: “It’s

Liverpool Manchester
United left red-faced Salah enjoys
the moment
after his late
none of my business. I keep my own
business to myself, that’s it.”
When it was pointed out that his

Rangnick ‘humiliated’ as
United fourth goal for American promoter, Bob Arum, had
Liverpool put admitted over the weekend that he

4 0
Díaz 5
Salah 22 85
Mané 68
Jamie Jackson
Anfield
A clearly unhappy Ralf Rangnick
branded Manchester United’s 4-0
rout by Liverpool at Anfield as
“embarrassing and humiliating”,
with Jürgen Klopp’s team pulling two
points ahead in the Premier League
title race before Manchester City host
Brighton tonight.
Rangnick made the surprise selec-
tion of Phil Jones in an unfamiliar
three-man defence which was
breached after only five minutes by
Liverpool take top spot
Luis Díaz. Two goals from Mohamed
Salah and a Sadio Mané strike com-
pleted a Liverpool league double over
United with an aggregate score of 9-0.
Rangnick said: “It is embarras-
sing, it is disappointing, maybe
even humiliating. We have to accept
they are six years ahead of us now.
When Jürgen Klopp came [in October
2015] they changed at the club and
lifted not just the team but the club
and city to a new level. That is what
needs to happen with us in the next
transfer windows.
“We have to be critical of our-
selves. The way we played in the *
first 45 minutes was in no area what
we wanted to see or play. Since we
had all our defensive midfielders not
available we decided to go with the
back five. I made the decision imme-
diately after the Norwich game [a 3-2
win]. Norwich had five or six massive
opportunities to score and had it not
been for David de Gea we could have
conceded three or four.
“I don’t think the first half had any-
thing to do with our formation. The
way we conceded the first goal was
definitely not part of our gameplan. It
affected our confidence. The first half
was not good enough. We changed
United on
the floor
JON SUPER/
AP PHOTO
from a back five to a back four [at the
break] and the first 25 minutes of the
second half was better.”
The defeat leaves United in sixth
place, three points behind Totten-
ham in fourth, having played a game
less, denting their Champions League
qualification hopes. “I don’t think
they have mentally checked out, it
is just a different level,” Rangnick
said. “They have better players than
we have and this was really reflected
by the result today.
“There will be a rebuild for sure,
that was obvious in the first
43 
three or four weeks. For us
had paid Kinahan more than $4m for
four fights featuring Fury between
2019 and 2021, the world heavyweight
champion said: “That’s Bob Arum’s
personal business. He can spend it all
on gummy bears if he wants to. What
someone does with their money is
out of my control.”
Fury and his British promoter,
Frank Warren, were at Wembley to
publicise the title fight on
38 
Saturday between Fury and
‘What someone
does with their
money is out
of my control’
Tyson Fury
 •
Putin’s war has entered a new stage. It’s every bit as brutal Editorials, page 2
France may well vote for Macron. But only reluctantly Owen Jones, page 3
Fear of Covid quarantine stalks us, here in Shanghai Mary Adams, page 4
The Guardian Wednesday 20 April 2022
Opinion
and ideas
There is no pooper scooper big
enough for Boris Johnson’s mess
Defending the indefensible
prime minister over pandemic
lawbreaking, one Tory MP
sniffed to the Financial Times:
‘It’s not as if he walked into a rave
in Ibiza.’ I mean … all the clubs in
Ibiza were dutifully shut, what
with it being a pandemic?
But yes, how encouraging that Amnesia holds itself
Marina to a higher standard than No 10. Yesterday marked
1,000 days of Boris Johnson’s premiership, and
Hyde you have to agree that he has truly delivered on
his flagship levelling-down agenda. Johnson drags
everyone to the bottom. In the afternoon of this
totemic day, the prime minister was forced to stand
up in the House of Commons – or the Bollocksseum,
as his behaviour repeatedly casts it. Here, in the
course of spouting some more utter cobblers, he
acknowledged that he had been fined by the police
for breaking a law. This was not only a law he had
made himself, but one that he had stressed the
absolutely vital importance of sticking to, every
night on television. Meanwhile, a load of Tory MPs
will gibber their way across the airwaves to explain
that this is no biggie. With the exception of those few
backbenchers to have called for the prime minister’s
resignation, the hardest line you’ll hear from any other
Conservative member of parliament is that they are
“waiting to see the local election results”.
To which the only possible retort is: why? Why do
you need to wait for the public to tell you right from
wrong? Don’t you think the public might be a bit busy
with matters such as the cost of living crisis to have to
G2
Daily
pullout
life &
arts
section
Inside
explain the absolute basics to a bunch of betas whose
job is supposed to include having a clue? Honestly,
if you can’t work out that it is beyond a pisstake for
the prime minister to make draconian new laws
then break them himself, it does feel like your public
service mechanism is completely shot.
Unfortunately, there’s a lot of it about. People
break out the term “gaslit” for everything these days,
but this is an occasion where it fits the bill. Contrary
to what the Northern Ireland secretary, Brandon Lewis,
claimed yesterday morning, this is not like a parking
fine, unless we’ve all forgotten the bit where the
government cleared the broadcast schedules at 5pm
every night to impress on the British people the life-or-
death importance of not breaking parking regulations.
Last weekend it was reported that the prime
minister himself had kicked off his adviser Lee Cain’s
leaving do by pouring the drinks. Picking back through
the archives, it wasn’t so long after this event that HM
government unveiled a hard-hitting new advertising
campaign, one image of which showed a woman being
given oxygen as she stared accusingly into the camera.
The caption: “Look her in the eyes and tell
her you never bend the rules.”
What can you say to those defending 
 • The Guardian Wednesday 20 April 2022
2
There is no pooper scooper big
enough for Boris Johnson’s mess
Marina Hyde
 Continued from front
the government not just bending the
 rules, but breaking the law? Look us in
the eyes and tell us you didn’t tell us to
look her in the eyes. Even the cake-assisted birthday
gathering in the cabinet room, for which Johnson
has already been penalised by the Metropolitan
police, came not long after he had tweeted a letter in
which he explained to a seven-year-old girl that she
was right to cancel her birthday party. As the prime
minister piously instructed the public in the attendant
hashtag: “#BeLikeJosephine”. As has now been
revealed, he himself continued to #BeLikeBoris.
Speaking of stuff that seven-year-olds have grown
out of, we know Johnson is a big fan of The Lion King,
recently quoting the movie’s “change is good” line
when several of his closest No 10 staff walked out
on him. Put simply, the Conservatives hanging on
to Johnson now is like the entire pride hearing what
Scar did but keeping him in post anyway. Weirdly,
that wasn’t the plot structure Disney went with in
the end – and they know a thing or two about popular
narratives. Incidentally, any MPs who react to this
analogy by inquiring rhetorically “then who and
where is Simba?” merely make matters worse. Just
go the whole hog and run the local election campaign
M
under the slogan “There is no Simba – this is it.”
Ps who can’t wait to tell you
“Boris always brings the
house down!” haven’t yet
realised that they’ll probably
get buried in the rubble.
You don’t need to be an
esteemed political historian
to work out that politicians
defending prime ministerial lawbreaking will be
doing something devastating and long-term to
trust in the whole of politics.
Then again, it does help to be one. On Sunday,
the distinguished constitutional sage Peter Hennessy
– not exactly given to intemperate public statements
– declared of Johnson’s failure to resign for breaking
the actual law: “I think we’re in the most severe
constitutional crisis involving a prime minister
that I can remember.” Describing Johnson as “a
rogue prime minister, unworthy of [the Queen]”,
Hennessy went on to judge him “the great debaser
in modern times of decency in public and political
life, and of our constitutional conventions – our very
system of government”. As his diary entry for the
day Johnson’s police penalty was revealed reads:
“I cannot remember a day when I have been more
fearful for the wellbeing of the constitution.”
Well, give it till the next fine drops. There’ll be
another black day along soon enough. And that’s
arguably the most genuinely poleaxing bit of the
whole story. The prime minister’s defenders have
still failed to grasp one of the most essential truths
of Johnson’s lifelong practice of behaving badly then
lying about it: that there is always, always more to
come. Being dismissive about cake in the cabinet
room is very obviously going to leave you hostage
to fortune if it turns out that Johnson is fined for
more serious lawbreaking down the line.
Yet his allies are currently sticking to variations
of a defence that basically amounts to, “Hey – that
birthday party was the least criminal thing he did!”
By the time we get to the fallout over who did or
didn’t pour the first vat of wine at Caino’s leaving
do, Johnson will be forced into some truly batshit
contortions. Are you familiar with sovereign citizens?
A new breed of conspiracy wingnut who argue that,
actually, they can opt out of laws they don’t think
should apply to them? No? Then do make sure to
bone up on them, because you’re governed by one.
In the meantime, consider the sheer amount of
time that an entire government and parliamentary
party appears willing to spend clearing up after one
man. Did they really get into politics to do this? Are
they really waiting until the public tells them to stop?
It certainly looks like it. Even at this late stage in the
game, Conservative MPs remain too wet to wield the
knife, preferring instead to grasp the pooper scooper.
Founded 1821 Independently owned by the Scott Trust № 54,636
‘Comment is free… but facts are sacred’ CP Scott
Partygate
The prime minister has
ignored constitutional
standards. He should go
Boris Johnson does not care about parliamentary
customs or decency or the truth. If he did then he
would have gone long ago. By breaking the lockdown
rules he had made, the prime minister breached the
ministerial code – which expresses the country’s
constitutional conventions – on two counts.
First, despite his denial, Mr Johnson has “knowingly
misled parliament”. This is a resigning matter because
parliament could not do its job to scrutinise the
government without truthful ministerial responses to
MPs’ questions. Mr Johnson’s claim of ignorance of his
government’s policy on the biggest issue of the day is
risible. He may face many more fines. It seems fanciful
to go on claiming that such gatherings, lubricated
by alcohol, were impossible to distinguish from the
business of the state.
Not only has Mr Johnson lied; his mealy-mouthed
apology reveals him to be man who wears his
mendacity lightly. This is dangerous for democracy.
A prime minister whose words are not believed is not
capable of leading. What happens if Covid rates are
judged in the near future to require masks to be worn in
crowded areas? Mr Johnson has lost the trust of voters,
and it is unlikely that the public would want to hear any
message about restrictions that he was bearing.
The second violation of the ministerial code is
perhaps even more serious. Mr Johnson is the first
serving British prime minister to be punished for
breaking the law when the ministerial code expects
him to follow it. Unfortunately, it is Mr Johnson who
has to decide the sanction he ought to face. There is
Ukraine
Putin’s war has entered a
new stage. It is every bit
as dangerous and brutal
Russia’s war on Ukraine has entered a new phase with
the launch of its punishing offensive on the eastern
Donbas region on Tuesday. But this next stage, the
result of its utter failure to quickly capture Kyiv and
overthrow the government as Vladimir Putin planned,
is set to be as brutal and dangerous.
Almost 5 million Ukrainians have now fled their
country. Yet on Friday and Saturday, for the first
time since Mr Putin’s troops invaded on 24 February,
more people crossed into Ukraine from Poland
than left that way. Some of those will have been aid
workers; many were Ukrainians who hoped that
the withdrawal of Russian forces from central areas
of the country late last month allowed at least a
temporary return to their homes or a brief reunion
with husbands, fathers and sons.
It might superficially appear that the war is entering
a no less vicious but at least more predictable phase
with its concentration in the Donbas. After eight years
of war there, claiming over 14,000 lives, its people now
face a relentless barrage of missiles as Moscow attacks
along a 300-mile front. Around 70% are estimated to
have left the region already, and some local officials
have urged all civilians to evacuate. Russian forces had
seized the city of Kreminna within hours. In the south,
they were attempting to crush the last resistance in
Mariupol, aiming to create a land bridge between
annexed Crimea and the east. At least 1,000 civilians,
including children and the elderly, were reportedly
no sign that he is prepared to do the right thing
and resign. His career has been marked by a belief
that the rules are for other people. A government
that imposes laws it does not follow itself has no
legitimacy in the eyes of the public.
In response to Mr Johnson’s drift – or gallop –
towards an authoritarian administration, Lindsay
Hoyle, the Commons speaker, suggested that
MPs vote later this week on whether to refer the
prime minister to the parliamentary privileges
committee to investigate whether he misled MPs.
This allows for all parliamentarians to put on
record their view of the prime minister’s evasions.
Mr Johnson’s argument that this is a partisan act
because the privileges committee is presided over
by an opposition MP evaporates when one discovers
that this is a requirement of parliamentary rules.
In the UK, lawmakers can dismiss the executive
if not satisfied with its performance. Strong party
discipline can prevent this – but unpopular leaders
are dethroned. Fealty may explain why some
Conservatives have argued that Mr Johnson’s fine is
no more serious than a speeding ticket, even when
they know the fine that the prime minister paid
was for breaking rules regarding his key life-saving
Covid policy.
Mr Johnson disregards constitutional standards
for short-term and politically self-interested
reasons. A diminished prime minister who has few
fixed opinions might be seen as useful to MPs who
yearn to reassert themselves. However, the result
will be policymaking marked by chaos rather than
purpose. Many Tories fear making life harder for
council candidates in May’s local elections.
But the longer he is in office, the more the
organising principle of Mr Johnson’s Tory party will
be loyalty. Not devotion to a vision or a legislative
platform, but to just one man and his many
shortcomings. Conservative MPs should realise
that this is dangerous to them, their party and
the country, and turf Mr Johnson from office.
sheltering in the Azovstal steelworks as the Russian
military advanced on the last Ukrainian troops
holding out in underground passages there.
US officials have said they believe Mr Putin wants
something to celebrate on Victory Day, 9 May, when
Nazi Germany’s defeat in the second world war is
marked with a vast military parade in Red Square.
Military analysts suggest that Russia’s troops could
gain the advantage in more conventional warfare on
largely open, flat terrain. The shorter supply lines
should help them overcome the logistics problems
they encountered earlier, while the Russian air force
will have easier, less risky bombing runs. They are
also aided by Ukrainian separatists in the Donetsk
and Luhansk self-styled republics.
Set against this are claims of low morale among
Mr Putin’s troops, who face Ukraine’s most
experienced forces, spirits raised by their country’s
initial success in repelling Russia. The flow of arms
from western countries, while still well short of
Kyiv’s aspirations, is steadily increasing in scope
as well as quantity. Above all, Ukrainians have
every reason to fight. They have seen that Russian
“liberation” may leave little more than ruins. They
assume Mr Putin’s aim remains the subjugation
of the whole of their country, with victory in
the east not a suitable, face-saving exit from an
unexpectedly bruising conflict but a staging post
along the road to complete domination.
Yet they are painfully aware that Russian failures
can come at a high cost too: the brutality seen in
Bucha and elsewhere; the threat of non-conventional
weapons. With families, homes and communities
shattered by the earlier attacks or the shadow of
conflict, the best that Ukrainians outside the east can
expect for now is a temporary respite. Meanwhile, it
is not only Ukrainians who are chilled by the prospect
of further escalation. Fifty-six days after this war
began, its end appears no clearer or closer.
Wednesday 20 April 2022 The Guardian •
Opinion
T
France may
he promise of Emmanuel Macron’s
presidency was straightforward:
he would transcend the concepts
of left and right and consign populism
well vote for
to the margins of French politics.
His rise to power in the spring of
2017 was an apparent lifeboat for
liberals traumatised by Brexit and
Macron. But
Trump: here was the “centrist” prince over the water,
a beacon of good governance and confirmation that
the grownups were back in the room.
It hasn’t worked out that way. Champions of
only reluctantly
so-called centrism believed Macron would be a
desperately needed antidote to political polarisation.
But Macronism has acted as an accelerant, not a
coolant, leaving the country more troubled, divided
and disillusioned than when this former investment
Owen banker secured office. Macron’s likely re-election,
Jones thanks to tactical voting, should not obscure a damning
fact: the far right will come closer to holding power in a
western European nation than at any time since 1945.
As I arrived in Paris a couple of hours before voting
concluded in the first round, a taxi driver voiced what
has become a common refrain: “Macron is for the
rich.” Within months of Macron taking the post, more
than eight out of 10 French citizens believed his tax
policies favoured the wealthy. His drive to hike the
pension age is a class issue, too: after all, the richest
French men have a life expectancy 13 years higher
than their poorest counterparts.
As the first-round post-election poll revealed
that the leftwing candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon
had narrowly failed to reach the second stage of the
contest, the expressions of grief and rage on the faces
of his supporters were strikingly similar to those who
had witnessed the routs of Bernie Sanders and Jeremy
Corbyn: these were younger citizens aggrieved at their
hopes being snatched away by older generations.
On his election, Macron became the youngest
president in French history, but his base of support
comes from older voters – above all, the over-70s – and
he is a distant third among under-35s. It is Mélenchon
who is most popular among the young, many of whom
say they may abstain in the second round. “I am scared
if I vote, and I am scared if I don’t vote,” one young
3
If he does
win, expect a
mixture of relief and
triumphalism from
centrists. This failure
to learn lessons is
a profound error
woman told me, arguing that by waging war on the
public sector “he [Macron] is creating a monster”
and laying the foundations for a far-right victory
next time. I hear this narrative again and again.
It is easy to berate these youngsters: to tell them
that, however profound their fury with Macron,
the victory of the far right’s Marine Le Pen would be
infinitely worse. Yet attacking the disillusioned is
rarely convincing. When I put to these voters the racist
menace posed by the far right, they note that Macron’s
interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, denounced Le Pen
for being “too soft on immigration”.
Macron has praised Nazi collaborator Marshal Pétain
as a “great soldier”, and been condemned by Human
Rights Watch for tearing down refugees’ tents. In his
2017 campaign, he pledged to curtail police excesses,
yet, when his carbon tax unleashed the gilets jaunes
movement, protesters were dealt with brutally. Rather
than acting as a firewall against rightwing extremism,
his “centrism” absorbs its racism and authoritarianism.
Undoubtedly, a minority of Mélenchon supporters
will defect to Le Pen’s camp: these are voters who
don’t think in terms of “left” and “right”, but who
Posters for resent a system they believe is rigged against them,
presidential and who were most convinced by the radical left’s
candidates answers in the first round. “Macron is a guy who’s all
Macron and about the money,” one older Mélenchon supporter in
T
Le Pen in Paris the northern city of Douai tells me.
this week
PHOTOGRAPH: hat doesn’t mean the left has
MOHAMMED BADRA/EPA nothing to answer for: the nearby
town of Hénin-Beaumont is a
former stronghold of socialists
and communists, but is now
Le Pen country, and the place she
cast her own vote. Many working-
class voters came to believe the
socialists had nothing but contempt for them, and
under François Hollande’s presidency – which
promised to confront austerity and then did no such
thing – the party collapsed. Indeed, in this election,
the centre-left’s standard-bearer, Anne Hidalgo,
chalked up a paltry 1.74% in Paris – where she is
mayor. While Mélenchon did unexpectedly well,
the radical left – as in other European countries,
except where it governs as a junior partner – is yet
to emerge victorious from the rubble.
If Macron wins, albeit with a tighter margin than in
2017, expect a mixture of relief and triumphalism from
centrists. This failure to learn lessons is a profound
error. Witness, too, the fate of Joe Biden in the US:
again, the promise here was that with the “grownups”
back in charge, the turbulence would end. But it
didn’t: instead, Biden’s popularity has collapsed –
not least among the young, who cannot be described
as natural Trump supporters – and a revival of the
president’s predecessor is entirely plausible, with
potentially terminal consequences for US democracy.
This is an age of grievance and fury driven by
stagnating living conditions and justifiable pessimism,
however much predominantly affluent centrists
dismiss the consequences as mass irrationality. One
Macron supporter told me that far-right success was
down to conspiracy theories and the fact that “a lot
of French people forget they are extremely lucky”.
The centrists believed that by presenting an image of
moderation and statesmanship they could make all
that go away. They were wrong.
 • The Guardian Wednesday 20 April 2022
4 Opinion
Quarantine
Shanghai, and life has changed significantly in the last
few months, our movements increasingly restricted.
Some factories are beginning to reopen, but it seems
other restrictions will remain until cases fall further.
stalks us, here
If there is one case in your district, thousands
of people are locked down and millions tested
repeatedly. Daily cases are rarely in double figures
where I live. But half the people I know are still in
in Shanghai
quarantine without even having tested positive. You
have to quarantine as a secondary contact, or if you
have visited what the government calls a “restricted
area”. A local family have been locked down for two
weeks after visiting a park that subsequently became a
Mary restricted zone. They didn’t even see anyone there.
Adams Such stories are common. All it takes is one person
in your apartment building to test positive and
every resident, plus their close contacts, also have
to quarantine. Rules combined with fear discourage
people from living a normal life. Every time you go
W
outside, you think: will this be it? Is this the trip to the
wrong supermarket that lands us all in quarantine?
hen the cases of Things could be worse, though. Most university
coronavirus grew in students have been held on campuses since last
Shanghai, I was hopeful. October. Some have tried to scale the walls; some have
I thought there would be taken to social media threatening to hurt themselves
no way Shanghai would be and others. It’s creating a mental-health timebomb.
like Jilin and Changchun, Government data shows our city is a low-risk
smaller cities that had area. But this means nothing. As in Shanghai, most
recently locked down residents are unable to leave their building, compound
millions of people to contain Covid outbreaks. I or area code. Queueing up for daily tests has become
assumed the government would finally have to relax mandatory in most areas. A test taken within 48
its kneejerk “zero Covid” approach. I could not have hours is required to enter supermarkets. Rules change
been more wrong. Restrictions throughout China suddenly, and new complexities are frequently added.
have become more draconian. For parents, the fear of separation is the killer.
We call this the Shanghai effect. After 24 million Schools in the Shanghai region closed not because
people became locked down here, everything was Covid cases appeared, but because authorities feared
amped up elsewhere too. I live in a smaller city near they might. Recently a child arrived at school with
a red code, meaning they had crossed a restricted
zone, and was taken away in a government vehicle.
Everyone was told to remain calm: the child had not
breached the school gates. Far from reducing panic,
all everyone could think was: what if my child is next?
The graphic video of a health worker killing a corgi
in Shanghai – apparently out of fear that it could
spread the virus from its infected owner – made
international headlines. But similar situations have
happened across China. Everyone has a group of
neighbours who are primed to grab their pets if
Covid quarantine calls. Although I still walk my dog,
we have bought some packed grass for an indoor
dog toilet in case we get fully locked down. Fitting
the grass and wiping dog excrement off it was one of
those surreal Covid moments we thought had been
consigned to the dark days of 2020.
Those of us now in disbelief at the harshness of the
government response are suffering from collective
cognitive dissonance. Policies here have always
prioritised fighting the virus over individual needs.
Although China won the initial fight in Wuhan, the
public made significant sacrifices. However, at that
time the government response matched public
fear and the perceived threat. The virus was more
deadly in 2020, and we knew little about it. Much has
changed. We have a vaccine, and are better at treating
the virus. Omicron is less deadly than the initial
variant. Yet the government’s response is the same.
Fighting the virus has metamorphosed from being
 driven by the preservation of life to the preservation
Mary Adams of image. China’s greatest strength during the Covid
is a pseudonym; pandemic – its ability to fight the virus – has become
the author its downfall. Those who love China wait to see how
is a British long it will take the government to realise what
writer based everyone else can see. We just hope they realise it
in Shanghai before too much more is lost.
Wednesday 20 April 2022 The Guardian
Established 1906
Country diary
Langstone,
Hampshire
I’d just knocked a raspberry cane
out of its pot when a metallic flash
of emerald green caught my eye.
A 2cm-long, lozenge-shaped rose
chafer beetle (Cetonia aurata)
crawled out of the compost. As
the light struck its forewings, they
shimmered iridescent violet, copper
and rose gold, like oil on water.
This iridescence is a form
of structural coloration – the
production of colour by complex
nanostructures found in the
beetle’s exoskeleton that reflect
light at different angles, causing the
colour-changing effect. For many
years, scientists have believed
that biological iridescence has
two primary purposes: attracting
a mate, or warning off potential
predators. These jewel-like scarab
beetles may appear impossible to
overlook when spotted feeding
on flowers, but recent research
suggests that their iridescence
actually works as a highly effective
form of camouflage in grassland,
scrub and woodland edges.
The sun-loving adults usually
emerge between late May and
mid-June, so it was a surprise to
find one in the garden more than
a month earlier than in previous
years. Posting on the Natural
History Museum’s UK biodiversity
Facebook page, I discovered that
mine wasn’t the only unseasonable
sighting. One had been seen
squashed on a path near Reading,
and there were another three in
a conservatory in Colchester.
Like many insect species,
rose chafers have been affected
by climate change. The average
daytime temperature in Langstone
in March is 11C, but high pressure
had brought a lengthy spell of
sunshine, with the temperature
peaking at 18C, triggering the
beetle’s premature emergence.
Unfortunately, this meant that
the beetle was out of sync with the
flowering stage of its typical food
plants. As their name suggests, they
are particularly fond of roses, but
will also feed on elder, viburnum,
hogweed and soft fruit, consuming
pollen, nectar and petals. With
none of these species in flower,
I encouraged the chafer to cling
to my finger with its grappling-
hook-like feet and relocated it to a
winter-flowering honeysuckle.
Claire Stares
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•
Letters
Johnson’s tenure is a sad
indictment of the Tories
Jonathan Freedland does well to
rubbish four of the main “spurious
arguments” advanced by Tories for
Boris Johnson to stay in office, but
strangely fails to mention the one
that is possibly the most damaging
for the Tory party (War in Ukraine
only makes it more urgent that
Johnson goes, 16 April). Many Tory
MPs have openly acknowledged
that there is no one in the party
ready to take Johnson’s place, so
the first prime minister ever found
to have broken the law in office has
to stay. What an admission.
Presumably from this we can
assume that no other Tory MP
would be able to persuade voters
that the party is committed
“both to the observance of the
law, and also to the rule of law”,
in the words of Lord Wolfson?
Furthermore, is there nobody
with better, more humane ideas
for dealing with asylum seekers,
or ready to impose fair taxation
policies after facing scrutiny of
their own tax records? Even more
importantly, does no one better
than Johnson exist in the party
with the necessary empathy to help
the millions of people suffering in
the cost-of-living crisis?
Fat chance of safe water for bathers
The UK’s failure to designate inland
bathing waters has a long and
sorry history (Here’s how we really
clean up England’s rivers, 18 April).
When I was the lawyer for Surfers
Against Sewage from 1992 to 2000,
we regularly berated both Tory
and Labour administrations (and
the Environment Agency) for their
persistent refusal to comply with
the bathing water directive, which
the European Commission had
passed as long ago as 1976.
The directive was and is intended
to apply to waters where bathing
is “traditionally practised by a
large number of bathers”. Whereas
it was largely taken on board by
most European countries (even
Luxembourg had 33 sites), the
UK devoted huge amounts of
NCT deserves thanks, not criticism
Re your article (‘I was told that
they didn’t offer C-sections’,
14 April), the National Childbirth
Trust has worked tirelessly for
women for more than 60 years. Do
you expect your partner to be with
you in the labour ward? Thank
the NCT for that. When I had my
first baby, I decided to have a
home birth because men were not
“allowed” in the delivery suite.
If Labour can exploit these
weaknesses by launching a full
attack on the government’s appalling
record and debunking the Tory
propaganda about how efficiently
Covid was dealt with, the May local
elections results should at least force
the men in grey suits into action.
Bernie Evans
Liverpool
• There is another spurious
argument to add to Jonathan
Freedland’s analysis. It is the
Tory mantra that whatever Boris
Johnson’s faults, they should be
forgiven because on Covid he “got
all the big calls right”. No he did not.
On PPE, stock was allowed to
deteriorate and then he introduced
a wasteful, inefficient and corrupt
system for replacement contracts.
On test and trace, he instituted
an expensive privatised tracing
system that could have been much
better handled by existing local
public health authorities.
On lockdowns, he dithered
and then was overeager to lift
restrictions. On excess deaths,
despite the early vaccine
rollout (thanks to the NHS), our
performance has been worse than
time and money into avoiding
compliance wherever possible.
The only plausible reason for this
foot-dragging was to protect the
profits and dividend payments of
what were then the newly privatised
water companies. That remains the
only reason for the UK’s continued
failure to designate bathing waters
and protect the health of thousands
of citizens every year.
Now that we’ve left the EU, I
suspect that the chances of this
government complying with
an EU directive are about as
good as finding a non-sewage-
polluted stretch of inland
water anywhere in the UK.
Charlie Hopkins
Planning and environmental
consultant, Axminster, Devon
Do you expect your baby’s father
to be with you during ultrasound
scans? Thank the NCT for that
too; similarly, his presence on the
postnatal ward. Interesting that
many of these humane situations
have so quickly been removed
“due to Covid”.
Did you have a “gentle
caesarean” with the lights dimmed
and voices quietened for the birth
 guardian.letters@theguardian.com
 @guardianletters
comparable countries. All of which
suggests that whatever the outcome
of the official investigation, it is
already clear that on Covid, Johnson
did not get all the big calls right.
Dr Colin J Smith
West Kirby, Wirral
• Where is the attorney general,
the senior government law officer,
in all this? Nowhere to be seen.
The person who occupies the
role has an overriding obligation
to ensure that the rule of law
is paramount. No attorney can
continue to be part of a government
led by ministers found to have
flagrantly violated this principle,
accompanied by denials and lies – a
position clearly understood by Lord
Wolfson in his resignation speech
as justice minister. Anything less
is tantamount to complicity.
Michael Mansfield QC
London
• We’ve received our postal ballots
for the May council election and
see that the Tory candidates appear
as “local Conservatives”. All the
literature mentions only local
issues. This is the first time in our
50-plus years of voting that the
local Tories have tried to separate
themselves formally from the
national party, so evidently Boris
Johnson, partygate and inflation are
cutting through as disadvantages.
Is this happening elsewhere?
Laurie and Susan Smith
Carshalton, Surrey
Feeding obesity
Tom Lamont’s fascinating piece
on the world of vending machines
(The long read, 14 April) raises
the question of how much their
round-the-clock availability of
confectionery, energy drinks,
savoury snacks and chocolate
adds to the UK’s obesity crisis?
There are more than half a million
vending machines in the UK and
some operators are trialling more
nutritional fare. However, drinks
and packets are the mainstay.
The annual cost of obesity to the
NHS is £6bn (Report, 16 April).
A partnership between vending
machine operators and the NHS
could reap dividends in improving
the nation’s diet and health.
Sam White
Lewes, East Sussex
of the baby – again, thank the NCT.
What about the cord? Was the cord
allowed to finish pulsating so that
the baby received its full quota of
blood? Thank the NCT. Finally,
why is there more research into
childbirth than any other area of
medicine? Again it is the NCT.
The fact that no one tells women
about research results and that
research findings are ignored is
not really the fault of the NCT.
Caroline Flint
Edinburgh
5
Corrections and
clarifications
• An article referred to two
Conservative MPs and said Andy
Carter represents Leigh and James
Grundy represents Warrington
South. It is the other way round
(Shapps tells influential Tory MP he
will scrap HS2 branch, 7 April, p2).
• The company that provided
the bulk of the funding for a
new turbine in Bristol is Thrive
Renewables, not Thrive Energy
(Blowing up a storm: community
to build England’s tallest turbine,
16 April, p34).
Editorial complaints and corrections can be sent to
guardian.readers@theguardian.com or The readers’
editor, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU.
You can also leave a voicemail on 020 3353 4736
Anarchic delight in
the UK’s north-west
The rural touring scene in the
Highlands in the late 1980s was
greatly strengthened by the arrival
of Maggie Fox (Obituary, 9 April)
and Sue Ryding. As LipService
Theatre, they brought wonderful
cultural anarchy to many village
halls and were followed by other
small companies that had heard
of the delights of heading north in
a van. Performers often stayed in
local houses, and I am delighted
to have Maggie and Sue’s names in
my visitors’ book from November
1990. They returned in 2016 to
reach out to new communities.
Duncan MacInnes
Founder, Skye Events for All
• DG Owen (Letters, 19 April)
rightly criticises the Football
Association for unnecessarily
making fans travel a long distance
to Wembley. But when I read that
the two teams were from “the
north-west of the UK”, I wondered
if I’d missed a big game between
Fort William FC and Mallaig FC.
Manchester and Liverpool are in
the north-west of England, but
well south of the middle of the UK.
Adam Rennie
Edinburgh
• I hadn’t realised that Channel 4
was a youth-focused broadcaster
(Report, theguardian.com, 15 April).
Perhaps my enjoyment of some of
its programmes reflects my mental
rather than my physical age.
Shirley Williams (age 70)
Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire
• John White asks whatever
happened to Flamin’ Nora (Letters,
19 April). I’m happy to confirm that
I’m alive and well, and that I have
been blogging at flamingnora.
blogspot.com since 2007. I also
tweet at @flaming_nora – so please
come and say hello, chuck.
Glenda Young
Sunderland

6 Obituaries
Mira Calix
Composer and artist
whose work ranged from
electronica to opera and
interactive sound sculpture
T
he composer,
electronic
musician and
installation
artist Mira Calix,
who has died
unexpectedly
aged 52, started
out working for indie record labels
and organising club nights in
the experimental hinterland of
the 1990s rave scene. From the
moment she arrived (then known
as Chantal Passamonte) in the UK
from South Africa in 1991, she was
making connections and changes
in the music world.
In 1996, she released her debut
record, the EP Ilanga, for Warp
Records, becoming one of the first
female artists to sign to the label.
She came to prominence in 2003
when the London Sinfonietta
premiered her work Nunu at the
Royal Festival Hall, as part of
the Warp Works/20th-Century
Masters concert, a collaboration
• The Guardian Wednesday 20 April 2022
that was pivotal for her and the
record label in expanding beyond
electronica. From then on Calix was
unconstrained by medium, creating
work in sculpture, spoken word and
conceptual art as well as musical
composition and performance.
Nunu – for which Calix used
the sounds of insects both
recorded and live on stage as part
of the performance – was her first
commissioned piece for orchestra.
She went on to produce work in
theatre and opera, including the
multimedia opera Elephant and
Castle (2007) in collaboration with
the composer Tansy Davies (and
with a libretto by Blake Morrison),
for the Aldeburgh festival, and Dead
Wedding, a remaking of the Orpheus
myth with puppetry, commissioned
by Opera North for the 2007
Manchester international festival.
For the Sydney festival in 2015,
she created the installation Inside
There Falls, a vast, rustling paper
maze providing an immersive
experience of music, voice and
dance, and in 2017 she composed
scores for Royal Shakespeare
Company productions of Julius
Caesar and Coriolanus. With each
commission or collaboration she
made intellectually rigorous,
politicised yet accessible works that
reached large audiences.
Perhaps her biggest audience
came with her 2018 Armistice Day
sound art piece accompanying
Tom Piper’s Beyond the Deepening
Shadow installation at the Tower
of London, in which thousands
of flames were lit in the moat.
It was a complex composition
centred on a choral piece, a setting
The Tower of of a poem by the war poet Mary
London, left, Borden, illustrating the fragile and
was the setting ephemeral nature of social and
for Beyond political alliances.
the Deepening However, Calix never left her
Shadow, the roots in club culture, and continued
installation that to DJ around the world, while
commemorated releasing records filled with echoes
the centenary of from her early years in London’s
Armistice Day more far-out nightspots and also
in November grappling with the newest sounds.
2018, for which Her last album, absent origin, was
Calix created a released at the end of last year.
complex sound Calix was born and grew up in
art piece Durban, the daughter of Gabriele
ANDY RAIN/EPA-EFE/ and Riccarda Passamonte. Hers
SHUTTERSTOCK; was a liberal middle-class family
WARP RECORDS
with English and Italian heritage,
and she grew up learning ballet
and immersed in jazz and classical
music – she credited her Zulu
childminder with sparking her
political engagement.
She moved to London to study
photography, escaping a culture
that had been stifled by apartheid.
Her favourite music at the time
was the experimental indie rock of
Spacemen 3 and “shoegaze” bands,
and by 1993 she was a press officer
for the indie label 4AD.
She was also part of the electronic
music scene, working behind the
counter of the Ambient Soho record
shop in Berwick Street, booking
acts for the chillout room of the
psychedelic rave night Megatripolis
and putting on squat parties in
Brixton. She became part of the
Telepathic Fish collective, who put
on 14-hour ambient sessions; her
earliest DJ gigs were under the name
Chantal Telepathic Fish.
In 1994 she became the press
officer at Warp Records and began
a relationship with the label that
would last for the rest of her life.
When her first tracks were released
in 1996, there was no career plan
to be a musician – she considered
herself a DJ – and it would be two
years until her next single, and
another two after that before she
made an album.
But that album, One on One
(2000), was an extraordinary work.
Sadly, in the then overwhelmingly
male world of electronica she
did not get the kudos of her Warp
contemporaries Aphex Twin,
Squarepusher, Boards of Canada
and Autechre, with some fans
accusing her of not making her
own music (she was married at the
time to Autechre’s Sean Booth –
they later separated). The album
Skimskitta followed in 2003 and
Eyes Set Against the Sun in 2007.
Her final After the Sinfonietta collaboration
album
was both
in 2003, Calix began to branch out.
She had toured with Radiohead in
2000 and continued to DJ, but she
joyous
and full of
also built installations in tunnels
and churches. For Opera North, with
United Visual Artists, she created
righteous
anger
Chorus (2009), an installation
of light-and sound-emitting
pendulums, presented first at the
Howard Assembly Room, Leeds, and
then at Durham Cathedral.
Nothing Is Set in Stone, for
the 2012 Cultural Olympiad in
London, was an interactive sound
sculpture at Fairlop Waters park
in Ilford. It took the form of an
egg-shaped cluster of “singing
stones” (activated by the presence
of people) whose music evoked
ancient mystery. Calix’s fluency in
explaining her ideas and the same
easy geniality that had allowed
her to network so fast on arriving
in London made her adept at
navigating the art world.
Her records and artworks buzzed
with the pleasure principle, and
she could often be found dancing
at shows. Her final album was
both joyous and full of righteous
anger, and showed her as creatively
invigorated as she had ever been.
She is survived by her partner,
the visual artist Andy Holden, her
mother and her sister, Genevieve.
Joe Muggs
Mira Calix (Chantal Francesca
Passamonte), musician and artist,
born 28 October 1969; died 25 March
2022
Wednesday 20 April 2022 The Guardian
Other
lives
David Mallinson
Painter of semi-abstract and
landscape works and head of the art
school at Isleworth Polytechnic
My father, David Mallinson, who
has died aged 95, began his career
as an artist in London in the 1950s,
at first painting only at weekends
and in the evenings, while during
the day he worked as a teacher.
However, his paintings, many
of London streets and squares,
soon found a ready market at the
Quadrant gallery, then in Trafalgar
Square, as well as being shown
at the Royal Academy, Royal
Society of British Artists, the Royal
Institute of Oil Painters and the
Royal Society of Portrait Painters.
Influenced by Nicolas de Staël,
he turned to semi-abstraction
and landscape, exhibiting at the
Piccadilly gallery.
His career prospered, and in
1980, he was made head of the art
school of Isleworth Polytechnic
(now West Thames College) in west
London, and built up a number
of design courses, one of which,
a higher national diploma in art
and design, had an international
reputation, with 90% of graduates
obtaining a job with firms such
as Saatchi & Saatchi. David was
elected as the West London
secretary of the Greater London
Arts Association (GLAA). He
Colin Slater
Sports journalist whose links to Notts
County FC were reflected in the title
of his memoir Tied Up With Notts
My friend and former colleague
Colin Slater, who has died aged 87,
reported on more than 3,000 Notts
County football matches, first for
local newspapers and then, over a
span of more than 50 years, for BBC
Radio Nottingham, following the
club’s fortunes as they rose and fell
from the fourth to the first tier of
English football and back again.
Few football journalists can
have so clearly embodied the
institution on which they reported
in the minds of supporters, players
and officials. When Colin wrote
a memoir of his time at Meadow
Lane in 2011, he gave it the title
Tied Up With Notts. He was proud
of his close and warm association
with what was, until recently,
the world’s oldest professional
league club, founded in 1862, but
he never forfeited his journalistic
•
 obituaries@theguardian.com
 @guardianobits
retired in 1990, and in 2003 had a
retrospective exhibition at Sally
Hunter Fine Art, where 26 of his 30
exhibited paintings were sold.
David was born in Carlisle, the
son of William, deputy manager of
the Midland Bank in the town, and
Mary, a school teacher in the nearby
village of Great Salkeld, where
the family lived. While at Queen
Elizabeth grammar school, Penrith,
David was an accomplished rock-
climber, runner and tennis-player.
But he also realised that he wanted
to paint, and in 1943 gained a place
at the Slade School in London.
His studies were interrupted
by wartime service when
the following year he was
commissioned into the Black
Watch. He was seconded to the
Frontier Force Regiment, serving
in Burma (where he was machine-
gunned by the RAF in a friendly
fire incident) and then in Kashmir,
the Dodecanese islands, Egypt,
Palestine (where he survived a
A blue abstract by David Mallinson; earlier work depicted London scenes
objectivity and was as critical
as any disaffected fan on the
occasions when the team fell into
the hands of unscrupulous owners.
When, during one of the odder
periods in the club’s history, Sven-
Göran Eriksson, the former England
manager, was appointed director of
football at a club then in the fourth
tier, lured by what soon turned out
to be nonexistent financial backing
from North Korea, Colin was given
the first one-to-one interview.
He was pleasantly surprised
when the Swede opened their
conversation by asking a question
of his own: “I hear you’ve been here
a long time and attend every game,
so I want to know something about
you. Tell me about yourself.”
No one, Colin reflected, had
ever asked him to explain his
background. An outsider might add
that this was their mistake.
Colin was born in Shipley, and
went to Belle Vue grammar school
in nearby Bradford. After training
on local weekly newspapers,
terrorist attack) and Germany, where
he was in charge of Bielefeld station.
In Rhodes, he had briefly met
his future (Greek) wife, Tina
Tusgioglu, corresponding with her
for four years from his postings
until he married her in Rome in
1950, having decided to continue
his studies at the Slade. The years
following his graduation in 1952
were productive. While Tina began
her career at the Foreign Office’s
information research department,
he began teaching art, first at
schools in north London, and then
at Isleworth Polytechnic.
In 2007, David and Tina began
dividing their time between
London and the south of France.
Following an exhibition at the town
hall of Cagnes-sur-Mer, simple
old age meant that he had to cease
painting in his last four years.
He is survived by Tina and by
two sons, Adrian and me. Our
sister, Leila, died in 2017.
William Mallinson
covering Bradford City, he moved
to Nottingham, where he joined
the Evening News, becoming
their Notts County correspondent
in 1959. As early as 1965 he was
helping to save the club from
extinction by persuading a local car
dealer to write a cheque for £10,000.
In 1968 he accepted an offer
to become the first press officer –
later chief information officer – of
Nottinghamshire county council,
while taking on commentary duties
on Notts for the newly created BBC
Radio Nottingham. In the summer
he would commentate on the
cricket at Trent Bridge, running
Nottinghamshire CCC’s marketing
department from 1988 until 1996.
Rosie Wyatt
Management consultant who
encouraged a healthy work-life
balance including flexible hours
My friend Rosie Wyatt, who has
died aged 67 of cancer, began
her career teaching English
in Germany and went on to
become a founding director of
VIA International management
consultancy in 1989. She was a
pioneer of flexible working.
Her career as a management
consultant was global, taking her
to India, Spain and frequently
the US, among other countries.
While at Arthur Andersen, which
she joined in 1986 as a change
manager, she advocated part-time
working, and at VIA she created
an environment that promoted
a healthy work-life balance,
before the term had really been
invented. She implemented
open communication, all-round
feedback, transparent pay, flexible
hours, working from home, and
longer maternity leave.
Rosie was born in Yeovil,
Somerset, one of four children of
Rowena (nee Bedford), a farmer’s
daughter and full-time mother,
and David Wyatt, a bank manager
with Lloyds. She grew up in Exeter,
where she went to Bishop Blackall
school for girls and Exeter college
for the sixth form. Following her
degree in German at University
College London, she taught
English as a foreign language in a
language school in Trier, Germany,
where she went on to become head
of the English department.
After returning to the UK in 1979
she did a PGCE at the Institute of
Education in London, and went
on to teach French and German
at an inner city comprehensive,
Woodside school in Plaistow, east
London, before leaving teaching
for management consultancy. She
retired from VIA in 2016.
He never lost the trace of West
Yorkshire, either in his gentle
conversational voice or the more
urgent tone that came through
the radio on the occasions when
the Magpies did something worth
getting excited about. The club
named a suite after him, making
him a lifetime honorary president;
he chaired their former players’
association and was a trustee of the
Notts County Foundation.
A tall man of great humour and
unfailing courtesy, he chaired the
local bench of magistrates, helped
found the East Midlands branch of
the Lord’s Taverners charity, and
was a trustee of Nottingham’s day
centre for homeless people.
Active in the Christians in
Sport organisation, in 1995 he was
elected to represent the diocese of
Southwell and Nottingham as a lay
member of the General Synod.
In 2001 he was appointed MBE
for services to radio broadcasting
and the community in Nottingham.
Richard Williams
7
Rosie and I met in 1980
through a mutual friend and
ended up living 10 doors apart
with our respective husbands
in Telegraph Hill, south-east
London, where our children grew
up together. Rosie believed in the
power of working together for the
common good. She volunteered
as a governor at local schools
and as box office manager for
the Telegraph Hill arts festival.
In 2020 she also helped set up
Hatcham House, a co-working
space in New Cross Gate.
The essence of Rosie was her
interest in others, and her innate
empathy, energy and warmth
drew people to her. She was also
a wonderful mentor to many,
making time to share her wisdom,
or to problem solve with a smile.
Whatever she turned her hand
to she encouraged people, never
patronised and always listened.
She was able to see the world
through other people’s eyes. Rosie
instigated a local walking group
in 2000; her last walk was in June
2021. Even then, the rest of the
group could not keep up with her.
She also loved music and
singing and was an active and
enthusiastic member of the
Lewisham Choral Society,
performing at the Royal Festival
Hall and Queen Elizabeth Hall.
She is survived by her
husband, Alex Brewood, whom
she met in 1983 and married
in 2012, and their daughters,
Siobhan and Katherine.
Maxine Ostwald
Birthdays
Lord (Alan) Beith, former Lib Dem
MP and deputy party leader, 79;
Lady (Christine) Blower, former
general secretary, NUT, 71; Ray
Brooks, actor, 83; Gro Harlem
Brundtland, former prime minster
of Norway, 83; Sebastian Faulks,
author, 69; Graeme Fowler,
cricketer, 65; Sir John Eliot
Gardiner, conductor, 79; Sarah
Gavron, film director, 52; Paul
Heiney, broadcaster, 73; Louise
Jameson, actor, 71; Andrew Jaspan,
co-founder, The Conversation
website, 70; Jessica Lange, actor,
73; David Leland, film director,
75; Nicholas Lyndhurst, actor,
61; Leslie Phillips, actor, 98; Lord
(Eric) Pickles, former Conservative
minister, 70; Sir Hugh Roberts,
art historian, 74; Christopher
Robinson, conductor and organist,
86; Andy Serkis, actor, 58; Peter
Snow, broadcaster, 84; Dame
Rachel Whiteread, sculptor, 59.
 • The Guardian Wednesday 20 April 2022

8 Puzzles

Yesterday’s Killer sudoku Codeword

solutions
Easy Each letter of the alphabet makes at least one appearance in the grid,
and is represented by the same number wherever it appears. The letters
Killer sudoku The normal rules of decoded should help you to identify other letters and words in the grid.
Easy Sudoku apply: fill each
row, column and 3x3
box with all the numbers
from 1 to 9. In addition,
the digits in each inner
shape (marked by dots)
must add up to the
number in the top corner
of that box. No digit can
be repeated within an
inner shape.

Medium

Medium

Codeword

Cryptic crossword Guardian cryptic crossword No 28,736 set by Vlad

Solution No. 28,735
L A T H G C P P
OF F COLOUR R I O J A
S F C O E O P N
T I ARA K E E P COUNT
I P E N L (7)
BARR I ER FA I R I ES
E T L N S H
LYCRA DAY PETER
L A L A A E
SUPPL ER P I RATED
T L I A I
B R AMB L I NG L A ND S
O I O N G L K T
WE ND Y GU I N E V E R E
L S S S E L R P
Stuck? For help call 0906 200 83 83.
Calls cost £1.10 per minute, plus your
phone company’s access charge.
Service supplied by ATS.
Call 0330 333 6946 for customer
service (charged at standard rate).
Want more? Get access to more than
4,000 puzzles at theguardian.com/
crossword. To buy puzzle books, visit
guardianbookshop.com or call
0330 333 6846.*
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Across Down
1 Image of Bill deep in conversation 1 Thailand? I’m confident it’s
mainly Buddhist (5)
5 Prince’s saying more protection 2 Time went quickly when
9 10 (7) discussing complaint (4,3)
9 Simpson losing head in drinking 3 Incident not beginning in
spree? He may be a facilitator (9) Trafalgar Square (4)
10 Current resistance breaking 4 Sale’s not open? (5,3,7)
11 12 around capital (5) 5 Coffee planters destroyed son’s
11 Spat hard bit of sausage out (4) private property (8,7)
13 12 Bighead Romeo coming in — he 6 Fail to pick prize up — fifty in
loves being on the job (10) stock (4,1,5)
14 15 14 Island that’s good for religious 7 Really wanting bishop to avoid
leader (6) making spiteful comments (7)
15 Singer Jones carries on, not yet 8 Looked good impaled (7)
proven (7) 13 Stig mostly capable racing
16 17 18 19 16,21 Killer from Portugal caught — around though it’s not good for
arrested by state police (7,4) the environment (7,3)
18 Maybe you can finally, you said, 16 Female, one in school, is looking
have children? Not so! (6) humourless (2-5)
20 21 22
20 Physical coming-together? 17 Open hosting North American
Duke is accepting restraint on team (7)
23
movement (10) 19 His missus being unfaithful
21 See 16 makes him horny (7)
24 25
24 Vicar obliged to hold tree (5) 22 Kill fellow getting closer outside
25 Take off after sign of approval — (2,3)
lounge finally is carpeted (6,3) 23 Told Pip to give up (4)
26 Comic actor’s hugging widow
26 27
(who might get the hump) (7)
27 English poet who’s liable to lash
out? (7)
 Because I’m
woof it!

How dog grooming

became big business

Wednesday 20/04/22
Arwa Mahdawi
Why I had to
leave New York
page 3

Libertine or
librarian?
Will the real Casanova
please stand up?
page 8

2 The Guardian
A moment that changed me
A film director forced me to finish my novel
Courttia Newland
had written three
chapters of his novel
on a borrowed word
processor, then
stopped when he
had to give it back.
But an unexpected
gift meant he was
out of excuses …
I ’ve got to admit, my
expectations were low the day my
old school friend Selwyn Musa told
me some film director was looking
for students. Selwyn had met the
director, Barney Platts-Mills, in
Ladbroke Grove, west London. He
had asked if Selwyn knew anyone
interested in making movies. No,
Selwyn replied, but my mate is
writing a book. That hadn’t seemed
to faze him, and he asked Selwyn
to tell me to drop by St Helen’s
church, where he was running
evening workshops.
There was no doubt whether I
should go. In the 90s west London
was a media mecca, and although
we were poor and mostly on the
dole, all kinds of artists and celebs
walked our streets. I’d strolled by
(though not spoken to) Sigourney
Weaver and Christian Slater.
Selwyn once met Fab Five Freddy
at Hammersmith station and
passed his business card on to me. I dishevelled
gathered up my first three chapters,
written and printed on a Canon
Starwriter I’d returned to its owner
months ago, and went to the church
at the first opportunity.
It was an autumn night, if my
memory serves me. Another
school friend attended St Helen’s
regularly, and I’d been there with
him, so we both went down to the
basement just as the workshop was
finishing. Barney was a tall, very
middle-class man who smelled
faintly of tobacco, with a serious
air that only pertained to the arts.
Everything else he did was suffused
with tinder-dry humour. An
example: pretty soon after we met,
Barney started calling me Gotcha.
Only he could get away with that.
•
Courttia
Newland
in 2003
It was a clever pun no one else had
the insight to make. I always rolled
my eyes, but allowed it.
I handed him my creased,
I handed him dishevelled sheets. It was a novel
about my manor, called The
my creased, Scholar, I told him. And if I saw it
published anywhere, I’d already
sent it to myself in a self-addressed
envelope that hadn’t been opened.
sheets. I didn’t With that as proof of authorship, I
would sue him for everything.
even have Barney gave me a deadpan
look and glanced over the sheets.
an envelope I don’t even think I had another
envelope to put them in. At that
point, I couldn’t even afford to
enter the Saga prize novel-writing
competition, as the entry fee
was £10. He read and muttered
to himself, and said he’d get back
to me. Even then I didn’t think
much. I’d made a few connections
like that over the years. None ever
amounted to anything.
I’m not sure how much time
passed after that. I couldn’t write
because I had no computer, and I
loathed freehand – my hands would
swell up, as I couldn’t put words
down as fast as I thought. I suppose
I just hung out with friends, signed
on, and dreamed of scenes from
my novel.
One day, I was at home in my
mum’s house when the phone
rang. It was Barney. He’d called to
make sure I was in, he said. He was
coming to my house.
Less than 20 minutes later,
Barney turned up with another
man standing behind him. Between
them, they lugged in a sand-
coloured PC monitor, a keyboard
and a huge hard drive. Each had
“ILEA” (Inner London Education
Authority) stamped on the side,
meaning they were all ex-school
or college hardware. They shoved
the lot into my arms while my
mum hovered at my shoulder,
whispering: “What does he want?”
I had no idea. Barney hadn’t ever
mentioned bringing round a
computer.
It turned out that what he
wanted was simple. “You’ve got no
excuse,” Barney said. “Now you
can write.”
Later, I learned the truth about
Wednesday 20 April 2022
Barney. How he’d shot the classic
film Bronco Bullfrog (1969) with a
group of non-professional Stratford
teenagers for just £18,000. That his
second feature, Private Road (1971),
starred Bruce Robinson (who wrote
and directed Withnail and I). He
had a passion for taking people like
me and guiding us into the often
class-biased world of the arts,
time and again. The dedication he
had for giving was largely at the
expense of his own work, which
was brilliant.
Three further episodes sum
Barney up, to my mind. Finding a
screenplay he’d written, one of the
best I’d read. A copy of the script for
PHOTOGRAPH: BEN SMITH/SHUTTERSTOCK
Withnail and I lying about his video
drama workspace, nonchalant
as the man himself. And the day
he knocked at my door once The
Scholar was published, to take back
the PC he’d lent me, so someone
else could have it. “You can buy
your own computer now,” Barney
said. And I could.
Buy Cosmogramma by Courttia
Newland (Canongate Books, £12.99)
for £11.30 at guardianbookshop.com
 •

3
Pass notes
The Guardian
Wednesday 20 April 2022

Arwa
Mahdawi
Masculinity is in peril I’ve left New
York, and I am
– but is testicle obliged to tell
tanning the solution? you about it

L
et me be the first to admit that I’m not an expert on
testicles. I’m not even an amateur enthusiast, if I’m
being honest. Still, even with my limited knowledge
of the subject, I was taken aback by recent reports that
applying infrared beams to the little fellas might be the
key to saving men and averting the apocalypse.
The source of these unusual claims? Fox News, that perennial
font of spuriously sourced wisdom. Tucker Carlson, one of the
most popular pundits on the network, recently had the Ohio-based
fitness professional Andrew McGovern on his show to discuss how
one might “reverse the effects of falling testosterone”. (As everyone
knows, if you’ve got a complex question about hormones, personal
trainers make far better sources than endocrinologists.)
One of McGovern’s ideas to increase testosterone was red
light therapy or “testicle tanning”, which he described as a
“bromeopathic” therapy. Carlson, who has spent much of the past
year spreading misinformation about Covid vaccines, and recently
joked about how he’s unvaccinated, appeared intrigued by the
unorthodox concept. “Open your mind,” he told the singer Kid Rock,
a guest on his programme, who was rather more sceptical. “Don’t
you think, at this point, when so many of the therapies, the paths
they’ve told us to take, have turned out to be dead ends that really
hurt people, why wouldn’t open-minded people
It’s not woke seek new solutions?” (Kid Rock did not agree.)
Carlson’s own mind, it should be said, has been
culture men need bursting open at the seams with testosterone
recently. The broadcaster has a new documentary
to worry about: it’s coming out called The End of Men which, as far
as I can gather, is all about how men aren’t as
toxic chemicals tough as they used to be and don’t produce as
much sperm as they used to do. I say “as far as I
and pollution can gather”, because the documentary’s trailer,
a condensed version of which just went viral on
Twitter, doesn’t contain a coherent argument,
just lots and lots of crotch shots. It’s an incredibly
homoerotic montage of muscly men.
While Carlson’s visual metaphors are inspired,
the meat of his documentary appears to be
anything but. If I had a penny for every time a
highly privileged rightwing man proclaimed
masculinity to be in peril I would have more
money than Elon Musk. Last year, for example,
the Republican politician Josh Hawley lamented
that feminists and the left want to “give us a
world beyond men”. These evil forces have
COVER: PETER FLUDE/THE GUARDIAN. PHOTOGRAPHS: GETTY; GETTY/500PX; REUTERS
After more than a decade spent
considering myself a New Yorker
I have finally left Manhattan for
cheaper pastures (Philadelphia).
I am, of course, obliged to tell you
all about it. One does not get out of
Metropolis quietly. No, ever since
Joan Didion wrote Goodbye to All
That in 1967, anyone who moves
out of New York (or London) must
file a Why I Left essay on their
way out. It’s the law. And I’m very
law-abiding.
I’m also, luckily for you, on a
strict word limit. Therefore I’m
going to have to boil down my
completely unique, never-before-
experienced reflections on how
the combination of having a new
baby and living in a one-bedroom
flat throughout the pandemic
made me realise I wasn’t young
enough or rich enough to have the
sort of life I wanted in New York.
And what sort of life did I want?
The pandemic, middle age and
motherhood made me figure out
what was really important: having
a washing machine in my house.
They are surprisingly hard to come
by in Manhattan.
Happily, dreams do come true!
For the price of a tiny hovel in NYC,
I’ve just moved into a big old house
with a washer and dryer in Philly.
There’s even a garden where I could,
hypothetically, air-dry my clothes.
This, by the way, is something
Americans don’t do. They’re very
weird about it.
I digress. I am not here to opine
on the US’s odd relationship with
laundry. I am here to say that I
have made a very good life choice.
“So much space, so much house,”
№ 4,397
Serial houseguests
Age: As old as the oldest dwelling.
Appearance: Regular and unrelenting.
You know what they say: houseguests, like
fish, start to stink after three days. I think
that rather depends on the guest.
I’m sorry, but the rule has no exceptions.
Not even Elon Musk?
Why would Musk be anyone’s houseguest?
Doesn’t he live in a solid gold mansion on
the moon or something? No, nothing like
that.
Where does he live, then? You know,
around.
You mean he has lots of houses all over the
place? He doesn’t have any houses.
Then where does he sleep? He’s a serial
houseguest. “I don’t even own a home right
now,” he said in a recent interview. “I’m just
literally staying at friends’ places.”
This is Musk the rich guy, right? The one
who just tried to buy Twitter for $43bn? Yes,
he’s the world’s richest man.
And he’s couchsurfing? Maybe not quite.
“If I travel to the Bay Area, which is where
most of Tesla’s engineering is,” he said,
“I basically rotate through friends’ spare
bedrooms.”
How irritating. Musk was responding
to a question about people’s hatred of
billionaires, and pointing out his relatively
frugal approach to life. Last year, he
announced he was getting rid of his
possessions.
It’s one thing to have admirably modest
outgoings; it’s quite another to be a
constant imposition. We don’t know that
he’s an imposition – maybe his friends are
really pleased to see him.

demonised men, Hawley said, forcing them I thought, when we moved in last I’m sure. “Oh look, it’s Elon at the door
to withdraw into the “enclave of idleness and week. Amazing! And then there with another suitcase full of dirty laundry.
pornography and video games”. Which honestly was a leak in the basement and ants How thrilling!” He wasn’t specific about the
‘Bromeopathy’ doesn’t sound like such a bad deal to me. invaded the kitchen. Still, at least I arrangements, so it’s hard to …
fan Tucker But I’ll give credit where it’s due. Carlson’s have a big shiny washing machine. “A hotel? Don’t even think about it! Stay as
Carlson opinions on the crisis of masculinity may I loaded it up the other day and, long as you like, shave in the downstairs loo,
be trite, but I think his embrace of testicle tanning is, overall, a with a little shiver of pleasure, finish all the milk and then bore us about
positive development. Much of the man’s time is currently spent pressed “start”. And guess what? the future of artificial intelligence!” Maybe
broadcasting racist and hateful ideas to large swathes of the US. If The bloody thing is broken. There’s he’s handy with broken appliances,
we can get him to embrace “bromeopathy” instead, if we can turn a lesson in there somewhere. or relationship advice.
him into the male equivalent of Gwyneth Paltrow, we can minimise “Guess what, Elon! After your last visit I
his harm. Far better that he sells luxury testicle tanners on his own found this scrunched-up $1m bill in the
version of Goop than peddles hate on Fox News. dryer. Do you think it might be yours?”
That said, I don’t want to imply that people like Carlson This is all speculation on your part – it has
and Hawley are entirely off base when they complain about no basis in …
masculinity being in peril. They are, in fact, entirely correct that “Also this pillowcase with the insignia of
the modern world is bad for men. But it’s not woke culture men your private jet on it. Don’t worry, I’ve
need to be worried about: it’s toxic chemicals and pollution, not ironed it.” Still, I’ll bet he remembers to
gender theory, that are are shrinking penises and lowering sperm send a nice note afterwards.
counts. But how on earth do we get these rightwingers to realise I’ll bet he doesn’t. No, you’re probably right.
they need to be more concerned about the climate crisis than the Do say: “The week of the 15th? I think we
left? It’s a tough nut to crack. might be away.”
Don’t say: “The wifi password is
GETYOUROWNPLACEELON, all uppercase.”

4 The Guardian
How an
untreated
tooth
infection
destroyed
my life
Keren Levy was fit and healthy
when she felt pain in a molar. After
numerous dentists and GPs refused
to treat the tooth, she has been left in
constant pain and unable to work
I
n 2019 I was fitter than
at any other point in my life – and
I had a life I loved. It was my third
year at the BBC. Every day at New
Broadcasting House, I knew that
I was seeing world events from a
rare vantage point. I loved being
surrounded by all the TV monitors
and feeling at the centre of things. It
had its trials, like any job, but it never
stopped feeling like a privilege.
Alongside my work, I was an
Levy on holiday
in the Cyclades
in 2018
•
Wednesday 20 April 2022
open-water swimmer and had just
topped 20 years of swims between
islands and across lakes and rivers
with an outing in the Galápagos. In
the past I’d climbed Kilimanjaro,
raced across the Hellespont in
Turkey and along the Thames.
I swam between the Cyclades
in Greece every autumn and
loved the Aegean with a passion.
I relished returning to London.
I was the first at plays and the Keren Levy:
cinema. I loved clothes; I probably ‘I was
bought too many. At weekends repeatedly
I would run along the river, then ignored’
have long breakfasts with friends.
And, in a way that is now not
unusual, I was in better shape at 52
than I had been at 32.
When a routine blood test
detected my mother’s cancer that
spring, it was devastating. The but by the end of January the tooth necrosis. Without a visible sign this
amount of time she had left was was agonising, and the gums in my was needed, she refused. Instead,
uncertain; but I spent it all with upper jaw had paled, with visibly she referred me to my GP, implying
her. For months I ate sugary treats reduced blood supply. An adjacent my distress was bereavement, an
left by visitors in that inattentive tooth began to hurt. These physical argument it is impossible to beat.
way we can have when our focus changes, after the increased pain, By early February, pain I knew the tooth
is elsewhere. Uncharacteristically, became alarming. in a neighbouring tooth was
I neglected my teeth and The day after my mother died accompanied by acrid liquid. My was dying. I
toothbrushing. So it didn’t
surprise me when, by November,
I went to a different dentist. This
was the last thing I wanted to be
gums remained blanched. The
top of my left cheek reddened begged her to
I had intermittent toothache
in a left molar. An emergency
doing. But it was three months
since the intermittent tooth pain
and the skin at the edge of my left
eye dried and developed a crust. treat it. Instead,
dentist X-rayed it and told me this
showed nothing untoward. I was
and I was worried by the further
effects I could feel and see. Another
If a body could scream infection,
mine was doing so. The dentist she referred me
surprised but reassured.
In the manner of turning points,
“non-definitive” X-ray ensued.
Now desperate, I said I didn’t care
was implacable. The fact several
teeth hurt meant she couldn’t to my GP
I remember that appointment about the X-ray. I had developed “narrow it down” to one. I said it
vividly. But three weeks later the a horribly specific rotting taste. I had been just the molar for months,
pain was constant. Once again the knew the tooth was necrotic – in making it more urgent, not less.
dentist said there was no visible other words, dying. I could feel it I begged her to treat it, reiterating
issue, so it couldn’t be dental. leaching into the surrounding area the effects on my gums. “Gums
I began to suspect, however, that and beyond. I begged her to give can be pale,” she told me. I said
one does not necessarily imply the me a root canal treatment or extract mine had not been, before months
other. I made it through Christmas, it. These are the only options for of dental pain. I was clear that if

The Guardian
Wednesday 20 April 2022
the tooth went untreated I would
end up with multiple necrotic
teeth, and my health destroyed.
She offered me a night-guard,
refusing me treatment. It felt
like having gangrene and being
offered a bandage.
I was four months into my ordeal
and facing a pandemic. In the
March 2020 lockdown, dentists
stipulated emergencies only.
Existing X-rays were requested,
which I already knew did not
show the issue sufficiently. I was
referred, against my wishes, to
an oral surgeon and facial pain
specialist. Neither is relevant for
tooth infection. I attended because
it seemed the only route to get back
to a dentist. The acrid taste grew.
Peering over half-moons, the
surgeon conveyed the sense of
unlimited time to rule things out.
He told me I had “atypical facial
pain”, perceived as dental. I was
clear this would not bring a rancid
taste, visible loss of blood supply
or discolouration. The second non-
dental specialist diagnosed “burning
mouth syndrome”, although I had
only one of eight symptoms.
O
ver the next
four weeks, starting from the
false assumption that I was not
suffering from a dying tooth – now
teeth – every opportunity was
taken to refer me to non-dental
specialists. I was misdiagnosed
as many times. If it hadn’t been
so damaging, the refusal to look
inside the tooth would have been
comic. Did I know what “referred
pain” was, the specialists asked?
I did. But this wasn’t a case of
perceiving more teeth to be affected
and being unable to identify
which hurt. More teeth were now
affected. The surgeon prescribed
pain suppressants and duloxetine
antidepressants, for three months.
He informed my GP surgery,
and a doctor who had never met
me insisted I take them. It is a
particular horror to have no choice
over your health when the solution
is available. In despair, I took
the pills knowing neither treats
infection. When I said so to a virtual
GP, he told me to double the dose.
The leaching sensation
increased. Sugarless gum became
the only way to reduce the rotting
taste from my teeth. Several
became dark yellow. Finally, the
first dentist agreed to carry out a
PHOTOGRAPHS: LINDA NYLIND/THE GUARDIAN
root canal on the original tooth,
only to withdraw this, having
attended a dental conference,
because “perhaps you need a
massage for facial pain”. The
tooth remained intact. By April,
referred by 111 to a new dentist,
I knew not to mention my mother’s
death, to avoid further onward
referral on the basis this was pain
related to grief.
Having to start again meant
this new dentist did not have
•
direct experience of the progress
and impact of the infection. Now,
in stark contrast to the previous
November, I looked as if I had
never been particularly healthy.
A 3D scan showed the original
tooth to be necrotic, as I had said
five months before. Evidence
of the infection was clear in the
surrounding bone. By the time
it is seen in the bone, dental
infection is advanced. Molars are
our largest teeth and mine had four
canals, which had increased its pain
and impact. My dentist records
that the delay in treating the
original dental infection appears
to have triggered a systemic
response in my body’s autonomic
or endocrine system.
Having had perfect health,
eventually I had to have 12 root
canals; all those teeth were
necrotic. Few showed up as
dramatic issues on X-ray. Before
these surgeries, my teeth, bones
and skin were affected. My
vitamin D levels plummeted.
Even my toenails became liable
to infection. By June 2020 an MRI
showed me to have developed
scoliosis, bursitis in my left
shoulder and tendinitis in my
left hip. Once known for walking
at speed, I now inch forward.
My skin became sensitive  to
sunlight. Problems with my
circulation, particularly when
I face downwards, meant I had
to stop swimming. I  developed
numerous inflammations.
Confronted by the facts, the
first dentist said that, had he been
in his Athens surgery, he would
have carried out a root canal on
the original tooth. But here, in the
UK, he had been concerned he
could be held to account by General
Levy in
2019 ... ‘Now
I look almost
unrecognisable’
Levy in 2018,
when she was
a committed
open-water
swimmer
Dental Council (GDC) regulations,
given the X-ray image had not
been “definitive”. He had not
said this at the time.
A doctor and trainee dentist that
I spoke to confirmed the chilling
reality of “defensive dentistry”,
whereby fear of litigation sees
dentists offering patients minimal
or no treatment when they cannot
“justify” the need, largely via X-ray,
and particularly seek to avoid
doing any endodontic (root canal)
treatments in major teeth.
I have learned that there is
widespread recognition that
X-rays do not always capture
dental issues. In my case this
was disastrous, but should not
have been left to become so. The
idea that a patient’s worsening
dental pain in one tooth, then
several, followed by a rotting
taste, does not justify physically
looking inside the original
tooth is dangerously wrong. All
characterise dental infection.
An editorial in the British Dental
Journal (BDJ) as long ago as 2014
described a climate of “fear and
distrust” that had led to defensive
dentistry because of the prospect
of legal action or disciplinary
procedures if anything goes wrong.
The journal makes it clear this is
widespread in the UK. It clarifies
that defensive dentistry “does
more than prudently assess risk
… It shrinks from suggesting, let
alone attempting, any action or
treatment whether or not it is
in the patient’s interest ‘just in
case’.” More recently, in 2019,
David Westgarth, the editor of the
magazine BDJ in Practice, found
that “the effects of defensive
dentistry are plain to see; clinicians
will routinely deny treatments
which they could reasonably offer
but wouldn’t due to the risk of a
possible escalating complaint, even
despite mentioning all the risks and
gaining ‘valid’ consent”.
My own experience extended
to hospitals when I tried to seek
treatment, in the wake of the
dentists’ refusal to provide it.
I was referred to the oral medicine
department, which offers “non-
surgical management of non-dental
pathologies”. Withholding of
dental investigation and treatment
was accounted for, and recorded,
by dentists on the basis of my
recent bereavement, or facial pain,
or neurological possibilities (which
did not fit the account I provided).
I was then corrected on the order
and nature of my symptoms, to fit
with these diagnoses.
In a letter to the BDJ, a dentist
with experience of working in
hospitals argued in November 2020
that “the GDC and the medical-
negligence lawyers have created
a climate of fear and defensive
dentistry of unprecedented
proportions. I feel that this pattern
will continue to evolve to a point
where any and all slight variations
from the absolutely normal will
be referred on to secondary care.
The only way to circumvent this
inevitability is a fundamental
change in the system.”
Another BDJ report from
2018, incorporating the views
of dentists, found the GDC “has
rather perversely created the
current threatening environment
where many younger dentists find
it difficult to adhere to their first
commandment, which is ‘to put
patients’ interests first’”.
My case was a horrific example of
excessive diagnostic testing delay,
instead of treatment. Months of
referrals to neurologists, maxillo-
facial specialists, psychologists,
GPs, oral medicine departments
and other dentists went against
common sense and ensured
responsibility could never be
laid at a particular dentist’s door.
Invariably, the first question was:
“What did the last dentist say?”
Each delay cost me. Arguably,
being a woman presented further
challenges in securing the correct
diagnosis. It would have been
5
Two years after
the original
misdiagnosis,
I have no
quality of life
entirely different if the dentists’
resistance to doing treatment
had been made transparent. In
January 2020, my offer to sign a
document saying I had asked for
treatment after prolonged dental
pain, and accepted any outcome
if the tooth proved healthy, was
refused. To lose one necrotic tooth
was nothing compared with the
consequences of leaving this dental
infection untreated. The afternoon
the original dentist told me he
would not, after all, treat the tooth,
I was so upset I rang Samaritans.
I knew my health was lost.
Two years after the original
misdiagnosis, I have no quality
of life and am in constant pain.
Although the root canal treatments
mean my teeth no longer hurt,
they were too late to reverse the
knock-on effects on my body.
I won’t work again, and I look
almost unrecognisable. It hurts
when I see the faces of former
colleagues. Sometimes the careful
politeness of friends is worse still.
I am alienated from the raucous
directness I cherished.
It is telling that online searches
about dental infections, including
their urgency and possible impact,
take you to numerous American
and continental dental practices
and their websites. There is no
wilful conflation, as there was in
my experience in Britain, of “do
nothing” with “do no harm”.
Many of us will know of
someone whose health was
affected by overzealous dentistry.
Equal focus needs to be given to
failure to treat where treatment
is essential. My nightmares are
not of what happened but the
dream in which the first dentist,
by the third appointment, does
the only logical thing and looks
inside the tooth. I am saved
all further misdirection. What
happened to me would have been
avoidable if someone had simply
listened to what I described, when
I described it, and carried out
timely action. It wouldn’t have
mattered even if I had a bad
physical response to the initial
tooth infection. I conveyed
everything at the time, repeatedly,
but was, repeatedly, ignored. It
should have been unthinkable.
 •
6 The Guardian
Zorro the
Afghan hound
enduring his
session with
Maria Pratley
‘My dog’s
‘I
haircut
’m not going to
get any dog in a headlock. These
are beings that are alive. I’m not
costs more
running a torture chamber.” Stuart
Simons, 48, is a dog groomer and
co-founder of Tails of St Leonards,
which, at mid-morning on a Friday,
is extremely busy but surprisingly
quiet. That’s because the Afghan
than mine!’
hound they call Zorro has not yet
arrived. Ernie, a six-year-old racing
greyhound until he retired, had
never seen a ball; he is here to get
his nails done. Bear is also six, a
bernese mountain dog with a (step)
brother, Sully, of the same breed,
and they both need grooming
every three months. If they get
dirty in between, their owner puts
a swimming costume on and walks
them into the shower. If you knew
how big these dogs are, you, too,
would find that image difficult to
Britons spend billions on trimming terriers, shake. I’m still a bit puzzled about
the swimming costume. Does your
cleaning up cockapoos and beautifying dog mind if you’re naked? Amber
is a cockapoo that goes wild with
bernese mountain dogs. Zoe Williams joy whenever she sees a man, but
cockapoos always have a really
goes behind the scenes at a busy groomers strong opinion about something.
Then there’s Simons’ own dog,
a standard poodle called Ralph,
and his colleague Maria Pratley’s
cockapoo, Oscar. Oscar had such
bad separation anxiety that, when
she is washing another dog, he
has to lie underneath the bath.
Otis, a cavapoochon (part cavalier
king charles spaniel, part poodle,
part bichon frise) is biddable, as a
third groomer, Sophie Humphrey,
shaves him back to glory, but his
eyes keep asking: “Why? Why
does it matter what my tail looks
like?” Simons is under no illusions
about his profession: “People say,
‘I’ve booked him in for a treat, for
a spa day,’ but dogs don’t want to
be here. They’d rather be out and
about.” Nonetheless, they need
these visits, because a matted life
is miserable. Grooming is a serious,
and also very big, business.
Simons started grooming nearly
20 years ago, as a side hustle
when his main job was in musical
theatre. He still does musicals and
cabaret, and has a second salon
in east London. He had the idea
when he was visiting family in
Vero Beach, Florida, in 2004, and
noticed that there were groomers
on every corner. “I just thought to
myself, ‘We always follow the US.
It’s coming.’” Between 2010 and
2016, the grooming market grew
by 25%, according to one study,
with pet owners spending steadily
Wednesday 20 April 2022
more on their dogs, partly down to
changing norms around husbandry.
It has become routine to worry
about their moods, their diet and
their allergies. They’ve morphed
into children, which is how people
unabashedly talk about them.
Simons calls Ralph “a child in a dog
suit – so intelligent”; the owner of
the berneses, Vanessa, 53, says she
adopted Sully “when his parents
got divorced”; Kim Denman, 62,
says of Zorro, “My kids are grown
up – he’s my new baby. He had me
up at 10 to six this morning.” It
makes sense in one way: you love
them, you feed them, you tell them
to do things and they don’t listen
– they are essentially children. But
it’s weird if you have even a fleeting
memory of dogs in the 70s and 80s,
as Simons and I do – people still
loved them, but they happily hit
them over the head with rolled-up
newspapers, and nobody ever
talked about “socialisation”.
By 2018, pet care and grooming
– this is leaving aside food, the
main expense, and vet bills, which
is the thing everyone complains
about – cost approximately £1.7bn
a year, and the projection then was
that it would rise to £2.1bn by 2023.
But, by 2020, grooming costs in the
UK had already reached £3.8bn.
Two things had happened: the
pandemic, and the cockapoo.
Everyone’s heard of the
lockdown puppy: 11% of
households had, between them,
bought 3.2 million new pets by
the end of 2021. There are now
12m dogs in the UK, and 33% of
households have at least one. As
lockdown lifted, “businesses had
to adapt, because people didn’t
want to go out without their dogs,”
says Simons. Along Kings Road,
St Leonards, signage reading
“Dogs welcome” is the new “No
smoking”. Register offices take
dogsmaids instead of bridesmaids,
and there’s a niche side industry
for wedding outfits and concierge
services (AKA clearing up dog poo,
which even I, a feminist, can see
is not the work of a bride). Simons
has done countless grooming
sessions for weddings, though the
most memorable romantic gesture
involved trimming the words “Will
you marry me?” into the side of
a cockapoo. “I never heard what
she said. And I never saw the dog
again,” he says, reflectively.
Simons:
‘People say,
I’ve booked
him in for
a treat – but
dogs don’t
want to be 
here’

The Guardian
Wednesday 20 April 2022
Teddy the
Maltese
with Claire
Clarkson
The most popular single breed
in the UK, now, is the crossbreed,
a deliberate cross between two
Kennel Club approved breeds, not
to be confused with the mixed
breed, which is just the result
of two random dogs getting it
on. Pomeranians and poodles
are often used as the base breed
for specific qualities (the first
is cute and small, the second
hypoallergenic), resulting in the
pomsky (half Siberian husky),
the pomchi (half chihuahua), the
cockapoo (half cocker spaniel),
the Maltipoo (half Maltese) and
the labradoodle (half labrador).
“Long-haired” and “short-
haired” don’t really hold up as
denominators where dogs are
PHOTOGRAPHS: PETER FLUDE/THE GUARDIAN
concerned: they’re hair-bearing
or fur-bearing. A hair-bearing
dog’s coat is like human hair,
and will grow and grow until
you cut it – this is the poodle,
the lhasa apso and the Afghan
hound. Fur-bearing means it will
grow to a predetermined length
and then stop, but that doesn’t
mean it stops short – the fluffy
pomeranian is a fur-bearer. There
are dogs that are a mixture – as
Clarkson
(left) and
Pratley
tackling Bear
•
Simons points out, “cocker spaniels
are fur-bearing on the body and
hair-bearing on the legs and ears”,
which is why their ears always
smell like dishcloths. (No groomer
has said that to me. It is merely
something I have observed.)
There are also gradations within
each category, so dogs bred as
ratters – border terriers, wire
haired dachshunds – have to be
“hand-stripped” rather than
clipped, which involves plucking
out unwanted hairs either entirely
manually or with the help of a
special tool. Long story short, or
hair story fur, if you prefer, this
is the business of experts – if you
shear a dog that’s meant to be
hand-stripped, if you groom the
puppy coat too early, if the owner
doesn’t brush the dog in between
grooms, you can really mess things
up, change the coat colour, destroy
the waterproofing, cause alopecia.
There are breeds that can suffer
serious health detriment if you
don’t groom them at all. Simons
once groomed a dog with hair so
matted that, when he removed
the hair from its legs, its nail beds
started bleeding because the hair
The remnants
of a grooming
session
If Zorro had
a picket board,
it would say,
‘Do not touch
my bum’
had been constricting its blood
supply. Opinions will clearly differ
about the best starter dog, but,
from a maintenance perspective,
getting a poodle-cross as your first
pet is like getting a violin as your
first musical instrument – which is
to say, surprisingly hard.
“Certain breeds of dog have more
high maintenance owners,” Sophie
Zorro takes
a bow
Humphrey says, diplomatically.
“A lot of owners want the hair
to remain long, but if you want
that, you have to look after it.”
People think it’s like going to the
hairdresser, and they can just ask
for what they want. But, in fact, “it’s
like going to the dentist when you
haven’t brushed your teeth. If they
go, ‘You need a filling’, you can’t
turn round and say, ‘But I don’t want
a filling’.” As she speaks, the fourth
and final groomer, Claire Clarkson,
43, is washing eight-month-old
Zorro. You’ve never heard anything
like it. He sounds so human, so
amazed and appalled, like a builder
falling off some scaffolding. He’s
just making his presence felt
though, apparently. “If he was that
unhappy,” said Clarkson, “he’d be
doing a lot more than ‘Ar-ar-ar’. He’s
a proper protester, Zorro. If he could
have a picket board, it would say,
‘Do not touch my bum’.”
Humphrey trained as a groomer
straight from Plumpton College,
but the more usual route is via
humans – Clarkson worked in hair
and beauty, while Pratley was
a barber for 25 years before she
shifted to dogs. (Is there anything
she misses about man clients?
“Nope.”) “People always say, ‘My
dog’s haircut costs more than mine
does’,” says Simons. Unlike so
many things people say, this is no
exaggeration: a “shave-down” is
between £40 and £75, a scissor cut
between £50 and £90, depending
on the breed. Which makes sense
to Simons: “Look at the dog. It’s
wriggly, it will take two hours,
sometimes it will poo on the table.
At least a human will sit still. It’s a
much bigger job than your hair.”
T
he principles
of grooming, for all but poodles
and bedlington terriers, are
simple – if you knew the theory
of five different styles for head,
feet and tail, you would be able
to master the breed standard –
but that masks a huge number
of crucial techniques, from
nail clipping to hand stripping,
7
control and restraint, bathing and
cleaning, and the training is quite
involved, though the industry is
unregulated. Simons runs The
Groomers Spotlight, a guild to
prove groomers’ qualifications,
not unlike a Spotlight for actors.
“In any creative, unregulated
industry, people need some way
to know what they’re getting.” The
trend is to make groomers more
like hairdressers – open-plan, lots
of cute dogs you can see, a social
experience – which is a staffing
challenge more than anything.
“People who work with dogs, they
often aren’t very sociable,” Simons
says, though his own team is a
carefully curated exception.
But there is deeper knowledge
than anything a City & Guilds
qualification can teach you.
Dachshunds have a tendency to
bite. In September and October,
almost every dog has fleas, which
are trying to find a warm host; the
rest of the year, they live in the
carpet. Brachycephalic (flat-nosed)
breeds should never go in a drying
cabinet because their internal
cooling system is shot. Cavapoos
are prone to heart defects.
None of the groomers in Tails of
St Leonards have ever been bitten,
because there are so many signs a
dog will give you before the bite – a
lip curl, a whale-eye. Noise doesn’t
always mean anything: Ernie, for
instance, is a “classic sportsman”,
says his owner Abby Harris, 41.
If he gets an injury he’ll hugely
over dramatise: massive yelp; hop
around; never walk again. Then
he’s fine.” Even dogs with short
hair should see a groomer for their
nails, though Clarkson and I both
have staffies and neither of us have
ever set foot in a salon as a punter.
“Is it ever nice?” I ask, as she
grooms Teddy the Maltese, which
takes for ever, “to leave all this at
work …”
“And have a proper dog at home?
Yes.”
This doesn’t stop me sharing
my hair woes with Simons, as my
dog is almost completely bald,
and, after a number of visits, the
vet finally lost patience with me
and said: “It’s like if your husband
goes bald. You just live with it.”
(“Funny you should say that,” I
said, “because my first husband
actually was bald.”) “We have a
great relationship with the vets
round here,” Simons says, “so
nothing against vets. But our entire
knowledge is skin and coat, so we
take it a bit more seriously.”
Look, it takes a long time to
train, and it can be very noisy,
and the work is very physical and
none of this is for sissies, but I’ve
rarely seen so much pleasure in
a workplace. But then, I wasn’t
here for the one day a month they
devote to cats. It’s a great day,
money-wise, but that’s all danger
money. Simons explains: “You
can only do what a cat allows
you to do. They have weapons.
You can get cat-scratch fever.
A dog will go, ‘I don’t like that,
wham’. A cat can really store
resentment. There’s a massive
gap in the market for cat grooming.
Because they’re arseholes.”
 •
8 The Guardian
Arts
Ultimate sleazeball –
or tortured romantic?
‘O
He has been
portrayed as
a lascivious
lothario, a likable nce I
started the research,” says Kenneth
scamp and even a Tindall, “I was shocked at how much
Casanova achieved, how brilliant his
female librarian. mind was, how many different roles
he played in one lifetime.” The son
But who was the of two Venetian actors, Casanova
was a priest, a violinist, an author,
real Casanova? a gambler, a soldier, a diplomat,
an occultist and a prisoner. Tindall
As Northern begins his wonderment afresh: “To
translate The Iliad, to speak seven
Ballet takes languages, to start the state lottery
in France – the list is sort of endless.
on the world’s I came away thinking, as I sat there
watching Netflix, ‘I’m really not
most infamous living enough!’”
But then, everyone thinks they
lover, Lyndsey know who Giacomo Casanova
was: the famous cad whose
Winship finds out name became synonymous with
seduction; the breaker of hearts
all across Europe. But if that were
all there was to the 18th-century
libertine, there’s no way he would
have become such an enduring
cultural figure, inspiring everything
from the 1918 novella Casanova’s
Homecoming by Arthur Schnitzler
to the Pet Shop Boys song Casanova
in Hell. Then there are the film stars
who brought the unscrupulous
lover back to life, from Bela Lugosi
to Richard Chamberlain and John
Malkovich. More recently, we’ve
had a Divine Comedy album, a
Horrible Histories song – and a
ballet by Tindall, premiered in 2017,
now restaged and touring the UK.
“I quickly realised,” he says, “that
people don’t really know anything
about Casanova at all.” That he was
charismatic and quick-witted is a
given, but for multiple incarnations,
on stage and on screen over the
decades, each creator has taken a
different view, informed as much by
their own times and sensibilities as
the protagonist’s.
Dennis Potter made Casanova
the subject of his first TV series in
1971. Starring Frank Finlay, who
was Oscar-nominated for his Iago
in Olivier’s Othello, Potter’s version
‘Entangled
bodies’ … the
new Northern
Ballet version
takes freedom as its theme. Framed
by Casanova’s incarceration in
the Doge’s palace – from which he
made an audacious escape – the
story is told in flashbacks and
flashforwards, with multiple bare-
breasted women opening their arms
to him, looking straight down the
camera lens (très risqué at the time).
This Casanova is both a complete
sleaze (“There is not a woman alive
who cannot be conquered”) and a
tortured romantic haunted by the
various loves he’s left behind. The
women seem to be giddily enjoying
themselves, although as Casanova’s
advances move from flattering
Wednesday 20 April 2022
In Fellini’s
film, the sex is
either comic or
disturbing – one
of Casanova’s
conquests is a
mechanical doll
to cajoling to domineering, it’s
impossible not to feel ill at ease in
the #MeToo era. Potter may skirt
the darkness but it’s still simmering
beneath. The writer was sexually
abused by his uncle as a 10-year-
old. Talking about it in the 1990s,
he said: “I was trapped by an adult’s
sexual appetite.” It feels like that’s
the story he’s telling here about
Casanova’s young “conquests”.
Nonetheless, in Potter’s telling,
you are mostly on the character’s
side. When the great Italian
film-maker Federico Fellini read
Casanova’s memoir, however, he
apparently took a serious disliking
to the man. You can see that disgust
in the director’s 1976 film, in which
Donald Sutherland plays him as a
strangely blank, increasingly lonely
and pathetic figure – a slave to his
impulses who desires (and fails) to
be taken seriously for his mind.
It’s a film full of high hairlines,
powdered faces, Oscar-winning
costume designs and a look so
ripe it seems about to rot. The sex
is clothed and either comically
choreographed or disturbing –
especially the rape of an artist’s
model in front of a bawdy court
– and his conquests include a
mechanical doll. At the end,
Casanova is reduced to a shabby
relic as the librarian at the Castle
of Dux in what is now the Czech
A ripe romp
… Donald
Sutherland in
Fellini’s film

The Guardian
Wednesday 20 April 2022
Gender swap libertine remains a juicy subject on
… Hayley
Carmichael
as the seducer
Republic, where he died aged 73.
Thirty years on, the mood had
changed, with troubling symbolism
replaced by comedy capers. The
way to treat Casanova’s legacy now
was to make light of it. Two screen
versions appeared in 2005: Lasse
Hallström’s film, starring Heath
Ledger, and a BBC series by Russell
T Davies that made David Tennant
a leading man just before he took
over Doctor Who (in case you are
wondering, the titles of these works
are almost always Casanova). Both
leads are likable scamps rather
than lascivious lotharios, getting
one over on authority (and their leg
over while they’re at it). Both also
feature women masquerading as
men in order to have their voices
heard – and a big dose of feminism.
Tennant’s hero is an adventurer,
resilient, upbeat, always coming
out on top, and he falls genuinely
in love. That version is full of
colour, noughties music and jokes
… until it suddenly descends
into a surprisingly dark ending
as Casanova finally reaps what
he sows and Davies shows us
where complete liberty leads.
In Hallström’s Hollywood take,
it’s all happy endings, with
Ledger consciously undermining
Casanova’s reputation. “I don’t
conquer,” he insists. “I submit.” This
PHOTOGRAPHS: CAROLINE HOLDEN; TRISTRAM KENTON/THE GUARDIAN; TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX
reading is based around a single
(fictional) love affair with a feisty
feminist scholar, played by Sienna
Miller. He meets his match, she can’t
stand him, but in the end falls for
him anyway. It’s pure romcom.
Not long after, theatre company
Told By an Idiot went one step
further in the feminist stakes and
made Casanova a woman. Director
Paul Hunter wanted to subvert
this iconic male figure and give
actor Hayley Carmichael a meaty
part. Poet Carol Ann Duffy wrote
a fantastical script which takes
Casanova from falling in love on
a 1940s ocean liner to a heavily
symbolic scene in which our
heroine is about to be gored by a
bull but charms the animal into
submission instead.
The effect of making Casanova a
woman? “I think she was able to be
more surprising in her conquests,
harder to read somehow,” says
Hunter. “We’d always been
fascinated by the space between
•
laughter and pain – and it felt like
there was something really juicy
here. When she was working in the
library, it was very poignant, this
old woman on her own, revisiting
the ghosts of her past. It became
more complex.”
Interestingly, they ended
up cutting out most of the sex.
Carmichael said at the time that,
even if she was in control, she still
somehow looked like a victim.
“However much you tried to
subvert that,” says Hunter, “at
times there was a sense of ‘Oh
poor Casanova’ because she was a
woman.” The possibility of a female
screen, though, as the success of
Fleabag shows.
So when Tindall came to remake
the story for Northern Ballet, what
type of Casanova did he want?
Dance is perhaps the hardest form in
which to capture the wiles, wit and
complexities of such a multifaceted
character. But Tindall found himself
pulled in by the politics. “At that
time,” he says, “Venice was the most
policed state in the world. They’re
morally loose, but religion is huge.
Casanova is essentially arrested for
being free-thinking and for joining
the Enlightenment – for jumping
social class. All things that are
relevant now.”
But it’s the senses that are
stimulated when the curtain
first goes up, revealing a
sumptuous set with beautiful
dancers made to look ravishing
by Tindall’s choreography, long
legs everywhere, pointe shoes
like talons. All these bodies
do eventually have to become
entangled, however, and one
difference in restaging the show
now – even compared with making
it in 2017 – was the treatment of
sexual encounters. Scottish Ballet,
for example, recently hired an
intimacy coach to work on a new
production. “Dance is intimate by
its nature,” says Tindall. “Bodies
touch immediately, so it’s different
from acting. But it’s essential to
create a safe working space where
everybody feels comfortable. It was
a huge conversation for us.”
Tindall’s story, written with
Casanova biographer Ian Kelly, tells
the tale through his relationships
with three key women, with new
sections that reflect on Casanova’s
failing intellect and the loss of all
the loves in his life. “He was always
yearning for connection,” says
Tindall. “It’s very Freudian with his
mother at the beginning of his life.
He’s neglected.”
For Tindall, Casanova’s story is
still worth telling because he is so
much more than a serial seducer.
“That’s absolutely part of his life,”
he says. “But the statistics – his
bed-post notches compared to
other libertines of the time – it’s low
numbers.” The reason Casanova is
the best known is because he wrote
his own story, self-mythologising in
his memoirs. “He was trying to leave
behind something he was proud of,”
says Tindall. “He would be over the
moon to know there are still works
being made about him now.”
Northern Ballet’s Casanova is on
tour until 21 May.
‘Hollywood actors
have amazing skin’
… Ten Percent star
Trevaldwyn; below,
in The Bubble
‘I’ll be cast as Bond next!’
One minute, he was posting skits in his bedroom.
The next, he was auditioning for Judd Apatow. Harry
Trevaldwyn tells Laura Martin about his rapid rise
H
arry Trevaldwyn is preparing
for the A-list premiere of
the first TV series he’s ever
appeared in. “I’ve been
loaned this amazing red suit,”
he says. “I wonder if I could
also wear it to the wedding I’m going to at the
weekend?” Navigating the red-carpet world
is a new experience for the 28-year-old who,
in the space of just two years, has gone from
posting comedy skits from his London flat on
social media to appearing in The Bubble, a
Hollywood movie, and Ten Percent, the British
remake of the hit French series Call My Agent!
Bored with his temping job in 2019, but
quietly soaking up all the idiosyncrasies of
the people around him, Trevaldwyn started
posting hilariously biting two-minute
character sketches on Instagram. Highlights
include the Office Chat Guy (“Oh, you brought
a packed lunch! You’re so good”) and The Guy’s
Girl (“I’ve recently got into rapping, but not in
a culturally appropriative way; in a culturally
appropriate way”). He
Preparing for my hails from the school
of online comedians
Zoom call with who shot to fame over
lockdown, when we were
Judd was four all starved of live culture
and tied to our phones.
hours of panic But while he may
not have been on the
public’s radar for long,
his newfound success has been a long time in
the making. “If you’re asking if I was always
a show-off as a child, then yes,” he laughs.
He got his first taste of fame aged seven in a
school production of The BFG: “It wasn’t the
biggest part but it was quite funny. And as I
heard people laughing, I was like, ‘Do you like
this? OK, well, I’ll do more.’”
Hailing from a small village in Oxfordshire,
he wasn’t well placed to be fast-tracked to
fame. So he picked up his iPhone, turned the
camera on himself and hit record. Agents and
industry people soon began sliding into his
DMs. Then came a call to audition for Judd
Apatow’s new part-improv film, The Bubble.
Trevaldwyn was cast as Gunther, a health
and safety officer for the film-within-a-film,
set in the UK. “I got a text from my agent
saying, ‘You’ve got a Zoom with Judd.’ It was
PHOTOGRAPH: YELLOW BELLY
the most panic-ridden four hours of my life,
and then he offered it to me.”
Walking on to a set with David Duchovny,
Leslie Mann and Fred Armisen was daunting.
“First of all, Hollywood stars all have amazing
skin,” he says. “Leslie walked in to our
readthrough and I was like, ‘You’re a shining
beacon of an angel!’” Did he feel pressure
9
after his unconventional route into acting?
“Yes, I definitely felt that imposter thing,” he
says. “I don’t think I dealt with it very well.”
While filming The Bubble he also bagged
the role of Ollie in Ten Percent – Herve, in the
original – a celebrity-obsessed assistant to an
actors’ agent. The new series – developed by
John Morton, writer of W1A – leans heavily
on the storylines of the original but is slightly
different in tone. The characters are a bit more
awkward, passive-aggressive and, well, British.
Trevaldwyn says: “The Parisians are so
great with their emotions whereas in England
we’re terrible. So my character, you’ll see
the way he deals with fancying someone, or
being in love, and it’s the most British thing in
the world. It’s so fun to play as it rings true.”
One area in which the Brit version excels
is the line-up of celebrities playing fictional
versions of themselves: Helena Bonham-
Carter, Dominic West, Kelly Macdonald.
“There was one time I was in the makeup
chair and Helena and Olivia Williams were
next to me and I was like, ‘Eeeeek!’”
Next up for Trevaldwyn are a couple of
projects he’s working on but, in true celebrity
style, can’t tell me about. However, he can
tell me he’s working on a comedy for Channel
4 called Billi, to be written and performed by
himself. Billi is “a 20-year-old who is a horrible
narcissist, but weirdly kind of charming,”
Trevaldwyn tells me. When I ask him what
else he has planned, he jokes: “I would be very
surprised if I wasn’t cast as Bond next.”
If this all sounds like a dream come true,
that’s because it is. “A few years ago me and
my cousin had a few glasses of wine and did
these joke Instagram photos of me leaning
over a fence and captioning it: ‘Styled by
Gucci.’ Fast forward a few years and I’m
actually dressed in Gucci for a magazine
shoot, leaning on a fence. Maybe I’ve got some
sort of weird manifestation thing going on.
That’s my magic power: I do a pithy Instagram
post and three years later it comes true!”
Ten Percent is available on Amazon Prime
Video from 28 April.
 •

10 The Guardian

TV and radio Wednesday 20 April 2022

Inside No 9
10pm, BBC Two

Sweet and
thoughtful …
Thomasin
McKenzie
as Ursula

Diane Morgan steals the show in the

opener of the seventh season of Steve
Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith’s
darkly comic anthology series. She plays
ditsy, foot-in-her-mouth Donna, who
Review Life After Life, accident: it’s what makes her incessant dying entirely
plausible. Although the first world war doesn’t directly
joins her new boyfriend Darren and his
BBC Two affect her bucolic childhood, it still kills her (her father old uni friends Callum and Lawrence
volunteers to fight, which leads to the window fall). (played by Shearsmith, Pemberton and
The 1918 influenza pandemic is harrowing. “Hasn’t
there been enough suffering?” is the dismissive their former League of Gentlemen
response of Ursula’s steely, capable mother. co-star Mark Gatiss) for a reunion. It’s not
A devastating Yet it’s when the action moves into the second world
war that the universe darkens more profoundly. Until exactly what she expects: they spend the
drama about death this point, Ursula’s lives have got longer and generally
better. Now that progress stalls: she cannot avoid news
of her beloved little brother Teddy’s death, however
day on a pedalo that gets stranded, and
talk quickly turns to troubling topics.
for anyone in need many times her life reboots. Her wartime experiences
vary wildly, but they are all deeply disturbing.
Hollie Richardson

In one sense, Life After Life has found a dramatic

of a good cry cheat code. Killing off a protagonist – especially
such a sweet, thoughtful, young one – is a shortcut
Anyone Can Sing
8pm, Sky Arts
strong focus on the roles
Piers Morgan and
to brutal emotional impact. Surely a drama almost After three endearing Rebekah Brooks played in
entirely made up of that moment is an easy way to get episodes, our favourite provoking and monetising
★★★★☆ viewers on tenterhooks? And yet it soon begins to feel tone-deaf singers get his downfall. HR
miraculous that we are never inured to the awfulness ready to step on to the
Rachel Aroesti of Ursula’s deaths. You can’t mourn her when you’ll be
seeing her in the next scene, and yet you still do.
London Coliseum stage to
perform in front of 2,500
Raised By Wolves
9pm, Sky Atlantic
That’s not so much because of a particular affection people. Before that, priest The inventive and often
for Ursula (Thomasin McKenzie) herself. She’s not a Ellen leads the choir at bizarre sci-fi drama
hugely distinctive personality, something necessary to King’s College London for manages to allegorically
accommodate all the twists her life takes. It’s not even the first time in 28 years. explore aspects of religion

U
rsula Todd can’t stop dying. That’s the really because of the convincing nature of the show’s Tissues at the ready. HR and belief, while staying
premise of this devastating drama, a world, though it does a brilliant job of making period genuinely entertaining.
four-part adaptation of Kate Atkinson’s archetypes – the grumpy servant, imperious mother, Interior Design Masters Tonight, having acquired
2013 novel, which documents its gadabout maiden aunt – seem three-dimensional With Alan Carr generative powers,
protagonist’s many demises – each (thanks mainly to the stellar cast: Jessica Hynes, Sian 9pm, BBC One Marcus (Travis Fimmel)
as distressing as the last. Born to a Clifford and Jessica Brown Findlay, respectively). What It’s semi-final time for the seeks to grow and harvest
wealthy middle-class family in 1910, Ursula dies makes Life After Life so upsetting is that it feels real high-stakes makeover his own congregation.
almost instantly, strangled by her umbilical cord. in a broader way. Whether these deaths have actually show, with designers Elsewhere, Amanda
And
But, then again, she survives – a fact relayed to us by befallen the fictional Ursula is beside the point. Their Amy, Paul and Banjo each Collin’s Mother becomes
another
Lesley Manville’s equanimous narrator. It’s a pattern historical grounding means we know they happened to in a lakeside Cotswolds protective of the serpent.
thing
that repeats throughout Ursula’s many comfortable somebody, somewhere, at some time. lodge. They have 48 hours Phil Harrison
childhoods: there’s a drowning incident, a fall out of Keep watching Life After Life to make sense of its to transform their spaces
a bedroom window, multiple battles with Spanish flu. central mystery – or its protagonist – and you will be If you missed into luxurious holiday The Lady and the Dale
And then, suddenly, she is back, being born, and doing disappointed. Ursula never gets close to unravelling Mood, Nicôle homes. Carr, meanwhile, 9pm, Sky
it all over again – but this time with self-protective a purpose behind her predicament. “I don’t know Lecky’s one- gets to mess around in a Documentaries
instincts she can’t quite account for. It’s The Butterfly why we live – all we do is die,” she mourns on a blitz woman show Jacuzzi and do his best This compelling four-part
Effect meets Groundhog Day (or rather “Groundhog deathbed of rubble towards the end of the series, still turned sadcom, Shirley Bassey. documentary is a twisty
Life”), only with none of the latter’s droll cosiness. mystified by the meaning of her multiple lives. binge it now Graeme Virtue tale of confidence trickery
There’s not a huge amount to laugh about in Life Ursula gets only glimmers of comfort from others. on iPlayer: that centres on three-
After Life. The show’s main priority is apparent from Her journalist aunt Izzie – a 1920s Carrie Bradshaw – thrilling, Gazza wheeled 70s car the Dale.
the start: making people cry. If you like the feeling of advocates viewing life as an adventure. Her avuncular morbidly funny 9pm, BBC Two It’s all the more complex
being overwhelmed by vicarious trauma and grief then psychiatrist quotes Nietzsche on amor fati – embracing and a powerful After charting the rise as entrepreneur Elizabeth
you’re in for a treat. And the anguish is thoroughly your own fate. Her father, meanwhile, offers more tonic against of “Gazzamania”, the Carmichael transitioned
addictive. It’s what makes Life After Life incredibly banal words about human kindness. Insta-life concluding part of this from Jerry Carmichael –
compelling, binge-worthy even, despite being Really, it is less about the content of their advice fakery. documentary recalls the prompting media
practically plotless from one episode to the next. than the love implicit in it, which is a powerful footballer’s fall from questions as to whether
The tragedy of Ursula’s life is amorphous and consolation for death. That love radiates from Ursula glory, with reports of this was an assumed
inevitable and not particularly personal; it has no after the conversation with her father as she boards domestic abuse, identity to escape her
through-line besides the fact that the story is set during the train back to wartime London with a heartbreaking alcoholism and an eating criminal background.
a uniquely dangerous time in British history. That’s no spring in her step, ready to die all over again. disorder. There’s also a Alexi Duggins
 •
The Guardian
Wednesday 20 April 2022 11

BBC One BBC Two ITV Channel 4 Channel 5 BBC Four

6.0 Breakfast (T) 9.15 Morning
Live 10.0 Scam Interceptors
(T) 10.45 Close Calls: On
Camera (T) 11.15 Homes
Under the Hammer (T) (R)
12.15 Bargain Hunt (T) (R) 1.0
News (T) 1.30 Regional News
(T) 1.45 Five Bedrooms (T)
(R) 2.30 Virtually Home (T)
(R) 3.0 Escape to the Country
(T) 3.45 Antiques Road Trip
(T) (R) 4.30 The Bidding
Room (T) 5.15 Pointless
(T) (R) 6.0 News (T) 6.30
Regional News (T) 6.55 Party
Election Broadcast (T) (R)
Labour. 7.0 The One Show (T)
7.30 EastEnders (T)
6.30 The Bidding Room (T) (R)
7.15 Dynasties II (T) (R)
8.15 The Super League
Show (T) (R) 9.0 News (T)
10.0 Live Snooker: The
World Championship (T)
11.15 Politics Live (T) 1.0
Live Snooker: The World
Championship (T) 6.0
Richard Osman’s House of
Games (T) 6.30 Lightning
(T) 7.0 Great Continental
Railway Journeys (T) (R)
6.0 Good Morning Britain (T)
9.0 Lorraine (T) 10.0 This
Morning (T) 12.30 Loose
Women (T) 1.30 News and
Weather (T) 1.55 Local
News and Weather (T) 2.0
Dickinson’s Real Deal (T)
(R) 3.0 Lingo (T) (R) 3.59
Local News and Weather
(T) 4.0 Tipping Point (T)
5.0 The Chase (T) 6.0 Local
News and Weather (T) 6.25
Party Election Broadcast (T)
By the Labour party. 6.30
News and Weather (T) 7.30
Emmerdale (T)
6.10 Countdown (T) (R)
6.50 Cheers (T) (R) 7.50
Everybody Loves Raymond
(T) (R) 8.45 Frasier (T) (R)
10.15 Ramsay’s Kitchen
Nightmares USA (T) (R) 11.10
Undercover Boss USA (T) (R)
12.05 News (T) 12.10 Couples
Come Dine With Me (T) (R)
1.10 Find It, Fix It, Flog It (T)
(R) 2.10 Countdown (T) 3.0
A Place in the Sun (T) 4.0
A New Life in the Sun (T)
(R) 5.0 Sun, Sea and Selling
Houses (T) 6.0 The Simpsons
(T) (R) 6.30 Hollyoaks (T) (R)
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(T) 12.15 George Clarke’s
Build a New Life in the
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1.45 Neighbours (T) 2.15
Killer Family: A Nanny
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in the Sun (T) 5.0 News (T)
6.0 Neighbours (T) (R) 6.30
Eggheads (T) 7.0 Secrets of
the Fast Food Giants (T) (R)
7.55 News (T)
7.0 Live Snooker: The World
Championship (T) Coverage
of the evening session on
day five in Sheffield.

8.0 The Invictus Games (T)
Highlights of day four.
8.30 Panorama: Obesity – Who
Cares If I’m Bigger? (T)
Clair Norris examines the
government’s strategy to
help the nation lose weight.
9.0 Interior Design Masters
With Alan Carr (T) The semi-
finalists upgrade luxury
lodges in the Cotswolds.
8.0 Secrets of the Museum (T)
Curator Christine works
on a major new exhibition
highlighting African fashion.
9.0 Gazza (T) Part two of two.
Paul Gascoigne’s career
reaches a high point at
Euro 96, but he is rocked by
injuries and scandal, with
the press using illegal means
to chart his downfall.
8.0 Coronation Street (T) Daisy
learns the truth after trying
to matchmake for Nicky.
9.0 The Thief, His Wife and the
Canoe (T) The truth emerges
as Anne and John are
interviewed by the police.
The case goes to trial, where
Anne pleads not guilty on the
grounds of marital coercion.
Last in the series.
8.0 The Great Home
Transformation (T) Help is
given to a Suffolk couple who
are struggling with working
from home while also dealing
with their two children.
9.0 Grand Designs: The Streets
(T) Kevin McCloud follows
Vineet and Simmi, who have
asked a friend to build their
new home in Graven Hill.
8.0 Springtime on the Farm (T)
The latest local news, and
Adam Henson reports from
his farm in the Cotswolds.
Includes news update.
9.0 Council House Swap (T) Dave
and Fran in Christchurch,
Dorset, are looking to swap
to a bigger home, and Steven
from London is looking to
move to the coast.
9.0 Putin, Russia and the West
(T) (R) The inside story of
Barack Obama’s campaign to
win over Dmitry Medvedev,
and a look at the Russian
president’s own relationship
with Vladimir Putin, plus
insights into how Putin was
eventually nominated to run
for the presidential election
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 •

TODAY’S PET CORNER ANSWER MILEY CYRUS

12
Puzzles
The Guardian
Wednesday 20 April 2022

Yesterday’s Quick crossword no 16,209

solutions 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Wordsearch Across Down 8

1 Continue moving forward (5,2) 1 Fussy (5)
8 Stuck (7) 2 Smartphone function (5) 9
9 Alterations (7) 3 A genuine trust (anag) – identifying
10 Die down (7) notes? (9,4) 10
11 Crimean resort, where Stalin, 4 Capital of the Bahamas (6)
Roosevelt and Churchill met in 5 Strauss waltz (3,4,6)
11 12
February 1945 (5) 6 Holiday afloat – Kidman’s ex (6)
13 Aggressive and discourteous (9) 7 Period leading up to Christmas (6)
15 Artificial (9) 12 In addition (4) 13 14
18 Incendiarism (5) 14 Roman emperor (who reportedly
21 Concert performance (7) fiddled) (4)
22 Boasted (7) 15 Vicar’s assistant (6)
23 Learner (7) 16 Divine drink (6)
15 16 17
24 Foot-operated lever (7) 17 Rich soft fabric (6)
19 Replete (5)
Solution no 16,208 18 19 20
20 Gentle poke (5)
I C E H O C K E Y W D
A U Y I B E D E 21
G R E E N G A G E S S
E S N H S T O P
S P Q U I T S P E 22
WA L R U S H U MO U R
I A E P I A
23
T A U R U S P E N N E D
C S E L G A R T O
H E I R I R S B 24
O B O V E R S HO O T
F O L K E O U N
F E G R A T I T U D E
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Sudoku no 5616

Sudoku no 5617 Suguru Wordsearch

Medium. Fill the grid so that each row, column and Fill the grid so that each square Can you find 15 words associated
3x3 box contains the numbers 1-9. Printable version at in an outlined block contains a with racing in the grid? Words can
theguardian.com/sudoku digit. A block of 2 squares contains run forwards, backwards, vertically
the digits 1 and 2, a block of three or diagonally, but always in a
squares contains the digits 1, 2 straight, unbroken line.
and 3, and so on. No same digit
appears in neighbouring squares,
not even diagonally.
Word wheel
CORRELATE

Suguru

Word wheel Pet corner

Find as many words as Which singer adopted a rescue dog
possible using the letters named Angel last year?
in the wheel. Each must a. Miley Cyrus
use the central letter b. Ariana Grande
and at least two others. c. Billie Eilish
Letters may be used only d. Selena Gomez
once. You may not use Answer top right
plurals, foreign words or
proper nouns. There is at
least one nine-letter word
to be found. TARGET:
Excellent-40. Good-33.
Average-24.*