Heroes
Provincial nightclubs, according to Lisa Nandy. Labour’s shadow levelling up secretary reckons their widespread closure is depriving towns of cultural and economic hubs. I totally agree, says Ed Cumming in The Daily Telegraph. “The Bad Provincial Nightclub is a cornerstone of British identity” and a training ground for “vital adult skills”: how to lie about your age, how to manage limited resources for drinks, food and transport, and how to deal with people who look “a bit fighty”.
Villain
Amazon, which is shafting authors with its policy for e-book “returns”. If a customer buys a virtual volume to read on their Kindle, they can cancel an “accidental” order within seven days and get their money back. This is often enough time to finish a book, return it, then get refunded for it, “effectively treating Amazon like a library”, says NPR. Some authors are left owing the company money because all their royalty payments are belatedly cancelled.
Hero
Bernie Ecclestone, for sticking up for his old pal Vladimir Putin. I’d “take a bullet for him,” the 91-year-old motorsport mogul told Good Morning Britain. “I’d rather it didn’t hurt but I would still take a bullet.” When pressed on why exactly, Ecclestone said that Putin is “a first-class person, and what he’s doing” – invading a sovereign nation at vast human cost – “is something that he believed was the right thing”.
Villains
Gender-neutral loos, which will “almost certainly lead to the total collapse of civilisation”, says Michael Deacon in The Daily Telegraph. This has nothing to do with the trans debate – the problem is that if women see the state of men’s public lavatories, they’d be so appalled they would never have anything to do with a man again. “Every nunnery in Britain will have a 10-year waiting list. By 2030 the birth rate will be down to zero. And by the turn of the century, mankind will be extinct.”