After Britain’s ignominious exit from Afghanistan, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab might also soon be on the way out. He has “about as much chance of being in a top four position by next spring as Arsenal”, a government source told The Sun. Astonishingly, the man tipped to replace him, Michael Gove, was spotted at an Aberdeen club at 2.30am on Saturday night. The 54-year-old, who is getting divorced from his wife, Sarah Vine, was filmed “hip jolting and headbanging with fellow ravers”, who allegedly bought him drinks all night. “I’m almost sure he was by himself,” clubber Emma Lament told Scotland’s Daily Record. Hurricane Ida has slammed into New Orleans overnight, bringing 150mph winds on the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. More than a million people in Louisiana were left without power.
A 1982 interview with a precocious 12-year-old Jacob Rees-Mogg, sitting in the back of a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce, has resurfaced on YouTube. The future Tory MP sets out three ambitions: make millions (“or billions”), become PM by the age of 70 and remain a bachelor. The married millionaire father-of-six is now 52, so has just 18 years to fulfil his one outstanding ambition.
Tomorrow’s world
India’s vast train network is getting an upgrade, with facial recognition cameras installed at 500 of the country’s 7,349 railway stations. The aim is to catch fare dodgers and people traffickers – and to spare conductors the task of eyeballing every one of the 22 million passengers who ride the lines each day.
Noted
Sky-high demand has made staycations pricier than trips abroad. A week’s accommodation at a top hotel near Windermere, in the Lake District, is now almost four times more expensive than a swanky stay on Lake Garda, according to a Which? study. And a week at a hotel in Nice costs two-thirds as much as a week in Brighton.
On the way out
Men’s suits, which M&S stopped selling at more than half of its 254 clothing stores as casual wear took hold during the pandemic, says the BBC. It follows a decade-long decline in spending on suits, according to data analysts Kantar, from a high of £534m a year in 2011 to just £159m in the 12 months to July.
Quoted
Quoted 30-08
“When I was young, I believed in three things: Marxism, the redemptive power of cinema and dynamite. Now I just believe in dynamite.”
Sergio Leone
Sport
A children’s soccer game in New York in 2013 was short of a referee, so a Hispanic-looking man in a baseball cap stepped out of the crowd of watching parents to volunteer, says Simon Kuper in his new book, Barça: The Inside Story of the World’s Greatest Football Club. As well as refereeing, he kept stopping play to advise both teams on positioning, which irked the parents. “Come on, let them play,” they shouted – unaware that the ref was Pep Guardiola, Barcelona’s former coach and the most successful football manager on the planet.
Snapshot answer
It’s a market in Málaga, Spain, where local crochet teacher Eva Pacheco enlisted her students to replace a tatty old plastic awning. Crochet is hot right now: British Olympic diving champion Tom Daley was spotted with crochet needles by the pool throughout the Tokyo Games. “His dive won gold,” said NBC News. “His knitting won the internet.”
