 8 May, 2021 Fishing  Glyn Kirk/AFP/Getty Images French brawlers get a shot across the bow "Britain has often gone to war to defend great principles," says Marc Roche in Le Point. The Falklands, Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya… and now, perhaps, Jersey. That's right – as part of a new "tug of war" between France and Britain over fishing rights, Boris Johnson this week dispatched two gunboats to the British Crown Dependency to "thwart the threats of Paris". HMS Tamar and HMS Severn didn't do much: they sat off the island's coast as 60 or 70 French fishing boats sailed into St Helier harbour, hung around protesting for a few hours, then headed home. But it's the thought that counts. Maybe "the old empire is not as decayed" as we all assumed. It sure felt like war reporting, says the Telegraph's Paris correspondent, Henry Samuel, who was on one of the French fishing vessels. At one point my hosts muttered about making me walk the plank. Red flares raged. A little French boat rammed its Jersey rival. The "armada" was pelted with bottles and a "lone member of the Jersey Militia re-enactment group" shot a blank round from a musket. It was the French who started this "barney", says Alex Wickham in Politico. Their fishermen are "furious" that their access to British waters around Jersey has been limited because of the Brexit deal, and claim unnecessary new red tape has been added to the licence process. David Sellam, head of the joint Normandy-Brittany sea authority, declared that he was "ready for war" and could "bring Jersey to its knees if necessary". Incredibly, "that language was backed up by the actual French government" when maritime minister Annick Girardin threatened to cut off the island's electricity supplies, 90% of which come from France via undersea cables. As one Whitehall source quipped: "At least when the Germans invaded in World War Two, they kept the lights on." Joking aside, a "stable democracy doesn't threaten to cut off its neighbour's energy supplies", says Daniel Hannan in the Daily Mail. "That is the sort of behaviour we associate with rogue states." Alas, it is part of a trend – the EU's "wider campaign of intimidation since our decision to leave". It has refused to give regulatory "equivalence" to British financial services companies in the EU, even though the UK has granted this for European firms. It tried to blockade our vaccines. The sad truth is that Europe's leaders view Britain "not as a partner, but as a renegade province". Either way, "I think we can all be very proud of the part we played in the War of Jersey", tweeted journalist Dan Hodges. "Everyone held firm. No panic buying. A moment of national pride." My only sadness is that we didn't send our new flagship aircraft carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth, to show Paris who's boss. Alas, it turns out she's on a joint exercise. With the French.
Long reads shortened  Cultural commotion in the ocean Whales have distinct cultures, "just as some humans eat with chopsticks while others use forks", says Craig Welch in National Geographic. Different pods pass dialects "as different as Mandarin and Swahili", favourite greetings and ingenious hunting traditions down the generations. This was a pretty fringe take when biologists Hal Whitehead and Luke Rendell pitched it in 2001. Anthropologists considered culture "a strictly human affair" – even though Aristotle knew songbirds learnt from one another. But the empirical proof is in the pods. Cameras have caught killer whales off the coast of Washington state holding "greeting ceremonies", facing off in tight lines before exploding in underwater parties of rubs and calls. Northerners from Canada (they don't fraternise with their neighbours), prefer "bumping noggins like bighorn sheep". Some corral schooling fish by blowing bubbles and stunning them with their flukes or fins. Others hunt sharks or seals, while some feast almost exclusively on salmon. It seems to be a matter of taste as well as convenience. The most compelling evidence of deviation is language. Male humpbacks pick up songs, phrasing and melody from one another, and "are into fresh beats" – a few years ago, scientists' microphones picked up a new tune as it "swept across the South Pacific" like a chart-topping smash. On a more local scale, small units emit family-specific click codas, almost like surnames, while individuals exchange subtler "first names". What else can the oceans tell us? Read the full article here.
Zeitgeist The FA has updated England's Three Lions football crest, in use since 1872, to include a lion cub, a lioness and a lion. The new lions represent "progression, greater inclusivity and accessibility in all levels of the beautiful game", says England Football on Twitter. "No, they don't," tweets think-tank director Matt Kilcoyne. "The three lions passant guardant represent Richard I's principal three positions as King of the English, Duke of Normandy, and Duke of Aquitaine."
Property  THE GETAWAY This villa on a 24-acre estate on the Peloponnesian Riviera has six bedrooms, two kitchens, a home cinema and staff quarters. There's a 2,600ft stretch of private coastline, a pool with a bar, an outdoor lounge and an open-air dining table seating 30. The island of Spetses is 15 minutes away by water taxi and Athens airport is a two-hour drive. €25m.
On the money A so-so offering from Soho House Join Soho House – or stay at home and buy the shares? According to Nimrod Kamer in Air Mail, the 50,000 or so people on the combined waiting lists of the London-based members' club operator might be better off putting their money into its forthcoming IPO. It may be billed as "an oasis of exclusivity and swank", but in truth "there's absolutely no more cool factor left" at Soho House. Following rapid growth in recent years – it now has 27 locations and 110,000 members in 10 countries – the bankers have "rolled in" and many clubs once targeted at the artsy crowd have lost their lustre. "There are two types of [new] members: failed influencers who need a cheap gym/workspace, and finance bros who hawk crypto," says a former member of Soho House Hong Kong. "The Hong Kong house is an expat cesspool disconnected from the local context. It has nothing to do with Hong Kong culture and seems more like an embassy of American-British hypebeast types and Sex and the City wannabes. I've never heard Cantonese spoken there." Other member gripes include the "fees for no benefits" approach during lockdown. Investors eyeing up the IPO may balk at the idea of Soho Works – sleek workspaces that Kamer calls "Soho House's answer to WeWork". That said, when people go back to work and travel resumes, the clubs will be there for the after-work drinks and half-price dinners for under-27s. And we have to assume that the group's two biggest shareholders, American billionaire Ron Burkle and British restaurateur Richard Caring, "know what they're doing".
Tomorrow's world Egypt could trigger the first water war  For 10 years Ethiopia and Egypt have teetered "on the verge of the first transboundary water war", says Rosa Lyster in the London Review of Books. Egypt's population of 100 million, which is growing at 1.8 million a year, relies almost entirely on the Nile. Apart from a few tributaries, however, the river originates in the Ethiopian highlands, where the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam project – "Africa's biggest hydroelectric dam" – will be completed in 2023. "Farmers elsewhere look to the sky and ask for water", but in Egypt "they look to Ethiopia". Ethiopia doesn't think a colonial British mandate entitling Egypt to 87% of the Nile is worth the paper it's written on. Egyptians, on the other hand, think of the river "as their water, stored in other people's countries". Either way, Egypt's supply of drinkable water is predicted to drop to "the UN threshold for absolute water scarcity" by 2025. And it's nothing to do with the dam. A third of drinking water is lost to dilapidated pipes. Rising sea levels flood aquifers with saltwater. Sprawling cities clog irrigation channels with garbage. Entire villages go "days if not weeks" without water. Egypt's strongman president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, warned recently that "no one will ever take a drop of water from Egypt". He largely escapes criticism because academics and journalists who ask tricky questions join the estimated 60,000 political prisoners in jail. Meanwhile, for ordinary Egyptians, thinking about water – "how to get it, how to use and reuse it, how not to get sick from it" – becomes "something you can't escape".
Noted A 2000 bottle of Pétrus that spent more than a year in orbit is being sold by Christie's for £720,000. It was part of a case that spent more than 400 days on the International Space Station, returning to terra firma in January. Wine critic Jane Anson, comparing it with an earthbound bottle of the same vintage (retail price about £4,500) told the BBC: "It was definitely different. The aromatics were more floral and more smoky."
Quoted "On the first day, her child flooded the bathroom at 6am, trying to shower... on the second day, she left my husband on the beach with seven children to chat up the man in the surfboard shop... on the third day, she left the house with him to have sex on the beach or, if it rained, the car park, leaving us to babysit." Tanya Gold on the houseguest from hell, in the Telegraph That's it. You're done. Been forwarded this newsletter? Sign up here to receive it every day Click here to register for full access to our app and website Download our app in the App Store Follow us on on Instagram
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May 08, 2021
French brawlers get a shot across the bow
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