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13 December

In the headlines

Nurses will press ahead with their first ever national strike on Thursday, after 11th-hour talks to avert industrial action collapsed last night. About 6,000 non-urgent operations will be cancelled as a result. When paramedics strike next Wednesday, says The Daily Telegraph, taxis could be used as “makeshift ambulances”. Disgraced crypto entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried has been arrested in the Bahamas. The move came at the request of the US government, which is pursuing the 32-year-old for the collapse of his cryptocurrency exchange FTX. The NHS is trialling the use of ketamine to help alcoholics stay off the booze, says The Guardian. Participants in the £2.4m study will be given a “large recreational dose” of the Class B drug in combination with psychological therapy.

Geopolitics

Why was the “Merchant of Death” allowed to walk free?

The release of American basketball star Brittney Griner after 10 months behind bars in Russia is “cause for justifiable celebration”, says Bloomberg. The 32-year-old faced nearly a decade of hard labour after being caught at Moscow airport with cannabis oil. But the process that brought her home gives “cause for concern”. In exchange for Griner, the US handed over Viktor Bout, a convicted arms dealer known as the “Merchant of Death”. It’s hardly a fair trade: Bout has supplied weapons to terrorists and rogues around the world, from the Taliban to Colonel Gaddafi. He’s believed to have links to Vladimir Putin’s inner circle; a Kremlin spokesman called his release “a true Christmas present”. Griner, by contrast, is an “athlete with no discernible intelligence value”.

British politics

Starmer’s success is down to luck, not skill

The journalist Helen Lewis has been gushing about Keir Starmer’s “quiet, winning ruthlessness”, says Harry Lambert in The New Statesman. She seems to think his “pivots, lever-pulling and intentional vagueness” make him some sort of political mastermind. It’s an attractive argument – but it’s wrong. Only 18 months ago, Tony Blair was disparaging Starmer for lacking a “compelling economic message” and being walked over by the “woke left”, arguing the party needed “total deconstruction and reconstruction”. Back then, of course, Labour trailed the Tories by 10 points in the polls; now it leads by more than 20. But that’s no thanks to Starmer, who is yet to address any of the problems Blair outlined.
On the money

Since 1953, the Italian bank Credem Banca has allowed customers seeking a loan to put down a massive wheel of parmesan cheese as collateral. The scheme was set up to help cash-light farmers, says The New European, whose interest rates on the loans are offset by the value of the cheese, which increases as it matures. The bank’s two high-security warehouses contain around 500,000 wheels, worth an estimated €200m.

Quirk of history

Back in the 1950s and 1960s, before mobile phones, the government needed a way to contact the prime minister in his car if the country was under nuclear attack. The “bizarre” solution, says Max Hastings in his new book Abyss, was that the AA’s radio rescue system would be co-opted to alert the PM’s driver, who would then stop at the nearest phone box. It was even suggested that the chauffeur be issued with “the four pennies then necessary to operate a public call-box”.

Quirk of history

Back in the 1950s and 1960s, before mobile phones, the government needed a way to contact the prime minister in his car if the country was under nuclear attack. The “bizarre” solution, says Max Hastings in his new book Abyss, was that the AA’s radio rescue system would be co-opted to alert the PM’s driver, who would then stop at the nearest phone box. It was even suggested that the chauffeur be issued with “the four pennies then necessary to operate a public call-box”.

Books

After debut author Chelsea Banning tweeted her disappointment that nobody showed up for her book signing, several famous authors responded with stories of their own dispiriting experiences. “At my first Salem’s Lot signing,” said Stephen King, “I had one customer. A fat kid who said, ‘Hey bud, do you know where there’s some Nazi books?’” Margaret Atwood said at one event nobody came “except a guy who wanted to buy some Scotch tape and thought I was the help”. Jonathan Coe, author of The Rotters’ Club, recounted a crime writers’ festival where his appearance clashed with a talk by Inspector Morse creator Colin Dexter. “Only one person showed up for me,” he tweeted. “We chatted for a while and I told him how glad I was that he’d come. He said, ‘Actually I’m Ian Rankin and I was supposed to be introducing you’.”

Nature

Rotating, “saucer-shaped” lenticular clouds, like these over the Andes in Argentina, are created by “turbulent airflow” around mountain ranges, says The Washington Post. As air rushes across a chain of peaks, eddies form “like horizontal rotors”. The result is a “magical and otherworldly” atmospheric occurrence.

Love etc

Americans are paying $4,000 to go to break-up boot camp, says SFGate. At The Land, a 162-acre retreat in California, sad singletons spend three nights in a cabin with their meals cooked by a private chef. Drugs and alcohol are banned, with daily activities including primal screaming, writing letters to exes then ceremonially burning them, and lessons from a professional dominatrix about power dynamics through the lens of BDSM.

Snapshot

It’s Thor, a walrus that rocked up on Hampshire’s Calshot beach on Sunday morning in what one expert called an “extremely rare” sighting for the UK. The moping mammal is thought to be en route from the Netherlands to the Arctic, but appears to have stopped off in England to search for a mate. “He’s gorgeous,” says one walrus-spotter. “He was sitting on the beach… Eventually he got up and had a bit of a stretch, and off into the water he went.”

Quoted

quoted 13.12.22

“I base everything on the idea that all men are basically just seven years old.”

Joan Collins