All the week’s wisdom in one place
1-7 October 2021
Sarah Everard
Women are “furious, devastated, scared and frustrated”, says Laura Bates in the Evening Standard. We learnt this week how Metropolitan Police officer Wayne Couzens used his badge to “arrest” Sarah Everard, handcuff her, trap her in his car, then drive out of London to rape and murder her.
Fuel crisis
“The Prime Minister is thought to thrive on chaos,” says Kate Andrews in The Spectator. “If so, then he should be in his element.” Winter heating bills are set to be the highest on record. Our lack of 100,000 HGV drivers has already sparked a fuel crisis and could lead to food shortages in supermarkets.
China
Every month brings a “landscape-altering surprise” in China, says Leo Lewis in the Financial Times. We’ve seen Xi Jinping cuff the mighty property sector with a cap on borrowing, sending heavily indebted giants such as Evergrande into a tailspin.
Heroes and villains
The sexy Italian statue was unveiled this week in Sapri to honour a 19th century socialist uprising. The sculpture of a female labourer “possesses some very particular, ah, assets”, says The Cut. She looks “extremely hot” in her “sheer and very clingy dress”. Not everyone is impressed, however: one female politician has called it an “offence to woman” and there have been calls for it to be knocked down.
Tomorrow’s world
The James Webb space telescope is expected to “revolutionise astrophysics and cosmology” when it launches on 18 December, says Nikk Ogasa in Scientific American. But this fragile $10bn observatory the size of a tennis court must first be packed up and sailed from California to French Guiana – via the Panama Canal and the Caribbean – during hurricane season.
Quoted
“You can’t rule out the possibility that beneath the elaborately constructed veneer of a blithering idiot, lurks a blithering idiot.”
Inside politics
Keir Starmer’s party conference speech “took Labour a step closer to power”, says the Daily Mirror. While the arrogant Boris Johnson lurches from crisis to crisis, Starmer delivered a “serious speech for serious times”. The far-left hecklers “only drew attention to the fact they are now on the margins of the party”. And with strong performances from Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Shadow Home Secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds, Starmer looks like he has a “Cabinet in waiting”.
Zeitgeist
It’s not only the left who are banning books these days, says Charlie Sykes in The Bulwark. Now the right are at it too. In Pennsylvania, parents complained that a school’s reading list put their children at risk of “growing up feeling guilty” because they’re white. The schoolboard put a freeze on children using a children’s book about Rosa Parks, Malala Yousafzai’s autobiography and CNN’s Sesame Street town hall on racism.
Noted
TikTok has reached a billion users in the four years since its launch – half the time it took Instagram.
The case for
Is 007 really fit for purpose in the #MeToo age?
Julian Assange
In 2017 senior CIA officials considered some outlandish plots to assassinate or kidnap Julian Assange in central London. “Nothing’s off limits,” CIA boss Mike Pompeo is alleged to have told agents
The Lovers’ Guide
In September 1991 an unknown producer of gardening, cooking and pet videos released The Lovers’ Guide and “began the second sexual revolution”, says Michael Hann in The Guardian.
Elon Musk and Grimes
Tesla founder Elon Musk and his musician girlfriend, Grimes, announced last week that they had “semi-separated” after three years together. I’m rather sad, says Heather Schwedel in Slate.
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran is taking fatherhood seriously. He has lost weight since his first child, Lyra Antarctica, was born last year, and he turned up on The Graham Norton Show last week in a tuxedo, looking “slim and swell and obviously polished up”, as the host put it.
The Queen’s Gambit
In the final scene of The Queen’s Gambit, the fictional female chess player Beth Harmon competes against men. Harmon is revolutionary, says an announcer. “There’s Nona Gaprindashvili, but she’s the female world champion and has never faced men.” Gaprindashvili, a real Georgian chess star who is still alive, was furious.
Quoted
“I believe that every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don’t intend to waste any of mine running around doing exercises.”
Staying young
We’re often told to feel grateful for our jobs, friends and pets, says Matthew Syed in The Sunday Times. Yet we mustn’t forget the extraordinary gift of our existence. “To be alive when we might never have lived – isn’t this the greatest mystery and most confounding gift?”
Love etc
Gen Z has invented a new side hustle, says Zoe Strimpel in UnHerd. “Sugaring” – a trend where young women (“sugar babies”) are paid to spend time with older men (“sugar daddies”). Not all sugar babies sleep with the sugar daddies, but plenty do.
Sport
Usain Bolt isn’t just good at running, says Rich Pelley in The Observer. The sprinter tried to become a professional footballer and backs himself as a good cricketer. He spent his childhood playing football and cricket on the streets of Sherwood Content, the small town in Jamaica where he grew up.
Society
At the Human Library in Copenhagen, the books are “flesh and blood”, says Claire Bates in the BBC’s People Fixing the World podcast. Rather than ink and paper, each “open book” is someone who has faced prejudice in their lives. Visitors get to talk to them for half an hour about whatever they want.
Afghanistan
When US forces withdrew from Afghanistan and the Taliban seized the country, President Biden placed the blame squarely on Afghan soldiers, says Michael Barbaro in this podcast for The Daily. “He said they gave up, many of them without a fight.”
Film and TV
No Time to Die is “a huge, thundering epic”, says Kevin Maher in The Times. Daniel Craig bows out as James Bond “in terrific, soulful, style”, a moving portrait of an antiquated hero facing his own obsolescence.
Books
The story of coal is the story of Britain, says Jeremy Paxman in Black Gold: The History of How Coal Made Britain (William Collins £25). Coal gave us railways, an industrial revolution and entire towns and villages. So it’s surprising that, these days, we don’t often discuss it.
Book it
Robbie Williams put a lot of love and affection into his 17th-century house in Compton Bassett, Wiltshire, which is now up for grabs. It’s set in 71 acres, with a tennis court, a football pitch, a temple, paddocks, parkland and woodland. Mod cons include an indoor pool, a spa and a helicopter hangar. £6.75m.
Noted
The Dutch supermarket chain Jumbo is introducing 200 “chat registers” for unhurried customers who want to have a natter during checkout. The initiative is designed to address loneliness, especially among the country’s elderly.
Eating in
Polish football star Robert Lewandowski follows a “backwards eating” plan to keep trim, says Alice Hall in the Telegraph. The Bayern Munich striker will have a chocolate brownie as a starter, followed by rice or buckwheat, meat or fish and finally salad or soup.
The great escape
Not for the faint-hearted, the remote Tropoja region, in Albania’s evocatively named Accursed Mountains, is coaxing adventurers with its “wild beauty and warm hospitality”
Quoted
“We have a terrible fear that if we stop for a moment we will miss something. The exact opposite is true.”
You’ll see beaches, tidal marshes and coastal channels on this five-and-a-half-mile circular stroll from Old Hunstanton, one of Condé Nast Traveller’s best pub walks in the UK. After your hike, head to the Michelin-starred Neptune for locally caught fish and lobster.
On the way out
Pasta. Canada exports two thirds of the world’s durum wheat supply, but 49.6C temperatures destroyed the harvest this year. Production fell by a third. “As if fuel shortages are not bad enough,” says Paul Simons in The Times.
Rihanna launched her latest lingerie collection last week. For lacy bralettes, snakeskin slips and silver lamé shorts hot off the runway, check out the Savage X Fenty website. Two bras cost £29, and they’re now selling men’s boxers too.
Moneymakers
Rupert Murdoch turned 90 in March, but only managed to throw a belated birthday party this month. Held at Holmwood, his £11.25m Georgian manor in the Chilterns, it was attended by a who’s who of politicians, including Rishi Sunak and Michael Gove.
On the money
Amateur traders on TikTok have a new strategy, says Tim Mak in NPR: watching where members of Congress invest their money, then copying them. “I’ve come to the conclusion that Nancy Pelosi is a psychic,” says one TikToker, calling the 81-year-old Democrat the “queen of investing.”
When Daniel Craig first played James Bond in Casino Royale, the scriptwriters saved the film’s most famous line right until the end. “The name’s Bond, James Bond” are the last words Craig says on screen. But how does his delivery compare to previous 007s? Watch them all here.
Desert Island Discs
Netflix’s £500m deal to snap up Roald Dahl’s estate, announced last week, would sit uncomfortably with the children’s author if he were alive today. Dahl, who died in 1990, thought the 1971 adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory “a rather crumby film”, he told Roy Plomley on Desert Island Discs in 1979, and vowed never to let Hollywood near his work again.
Quirks of history
A Dutch electronics salesman is being hailed as an unsung hero of World War Two, says The Guardian. Jan Zwartendijk, known as “Mr Radio Philips”, worked at Philips before becoming acting Dutch consul in the Lithuanian city of Kaunas. In 1940, when the country was under Soviet occupation, he issued thousands of counterfeit visas to Jewish refugees, granting them passage to the Dutch Caribbean island of Curaçao. His operation was almost thwarted when a curious Russian soldier spotted queues outside the embassy and went to investigate. Zwartendijk saw him off by bribing him with a newly released Philips electric razor, which the Russian declared to be miraculous. A close shave indeed.
