Swift, Trump and a daft conspiracy theory

George Osborne “bagged his 13th job” this week, says Fraser Nelson in The Daily Telegraph, joining the cryptocurrency firm Coinbase as an adviser. The former chancellor, who also chairs the British Museum and works for an investment bank, looks set to follow Tony Blair’s example of “getting seriously rich as a result of politics”. This never used to happen. After his time as PM, Jim Callaghan worked as an MP until he was 75; Ted Heath continued until he was 84. Rather than turning their “clout into cash”, they spent their post-No 10 days “lending their experience to the House and their constituents”.

Airbnb has revealed its most-liked listings on Instagram. They include a cabin overlooking Quintay Bay in Chile; a treehouse in the Tuscan countryside; an eco-friendly bamboo house on a riverside in Indonesia; and a three-level ocean view villa in Costa Rica. Have a look at the full listings here.

Israel’s days of isolation are over

It’s hard for people below a certain age to appreciate just how “diplomatically isolated” Israel used to be, says Edward Luttwak in UnHerd. In 1967, when Egypt, Jordan and Syria were “openly” threatening war, neither Europe nor America provided any support. France was the only nation willing to sell weapons to Israel, but its then president, Charles de Gaulle, put a stop to that as soon as the fighting began. In Italy, the authorities even refused to allow a shipment of gas masks to be exported to Tel Aviv. It was the same in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, in which Israel suffered “10 times as many casualties as in all of the Gaza fighting to date”. The US agreed to airlift urgent supplies – but neither the UK nor France nor Spain would allow the planes to fly over their airspace. In both conflicts, the UN Security Council sat on its hands until Israel began winning – whereupon it immediately demanded a ceasefire.

Fifty years later, “it has all been very different”. The US, the UK and the EU didn’t try to stop Israel launching its counter-offensive. While Russia and China have “ceremonially” declared their support for the Palestinians, neither has done anything to directly impede the Israelis. Not one of the Arab countries with whom Israel has diplomatic relations has “interrupted” them in any way. And the Saudis have made it clear that they still want to normalise ties with the Israelis – a crucial development, given Iran’s main goal for Hamas’s horrific attack on October 7 was to scupper that very relationship. For all the mounting pressure on Israel to call a ceasefire, “its days of isolation are over”.

Hollywood legend Cary Grant may have frequented some of the world’s finest restaurants, says The Guardian, but one of his favourite haunts was a chippy in Bristol. The actor – real name Archibald Leach – was born in the West Country city in January 1904. Whenever he was in town, he would always head back to Rendezvous Fish Bar for a bag of fish and chips, before eating them in his Rolls-Royce.

In 1831, says Tom Holland on The Rest is History, the first act of violence in the Peasants’ Revolt was against a tax-collector. His name? William Payable.

It’s Chicago’s newest tourist attraction, says The New York Times: a rodent-shaped hole imprinted in a pavement. The unimaginatively named “Chicago Rat Hole” is thought to have been formed – by one of the namesake creatures, or possibly a squirrel – decades ago. But a tweet about it went viral at the start of this year, prompting hoards of Chicagoans to visit the site for themselves. Some made offerings, including candles, coins, flowers, toy rodents and “a small tomb with a photo of a rat”. At one point someone filled in the hole with plaster or concrete, but residents immediately scraped it out and restored it to its full ratty glory.