 19 July, 2021 In the headlines Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak will spend Freedom Day self-isolating after their Cabinet colleague Sajid Javid tested positive for coronavirus. With new cases surging towards 100,000 a day, one minister said last night: "I just can't escape the feeling that this is all about to go terribly wrong." Roula Khalaf, the FT's editor, is among 180 journalists targeted by an Israeli spyware company, says The Guardian. NSO reportedly selected possible civilian targets for its clients, using technology that extracts smartphone data and hijacks a phone's microphone to eavesdrop. Lewis Hamilton won the British Grand Prix yesterday following a dramatic first-lap crash with title rival Max Verstappen, who labelled Hamilton's driving "unsportsmanlike".
Comment of the day  Cuban influencer Dina Stars, 25, was arrested live on TV last week. @dinastars_ Socialism has failed in Cuba – and everywhere else I feel sorry for Keir Starmer, says Rod Liddle in The Sunday Times. The more he tries to prove his party is fit to govern, the more "shrieks of manifest derangement emanate from his backbench MPs". Cubans are rioting because they "don't have enough to eat... and have no freedom". But for much of the Labour party, if it weren't for the US trade embargo, the country would be "a utopia". Cuba is a "dynastic totalitarian dictatorship" of "cigar-chomping bullies" who imprison gay people and suppress free speech. Yet because it is "anti-capitalist", Labour MPs such as Richard Burgon and Ian Lavery (who paid off his mortgage with the £165,000 he trousered from a miners' union) are all tweeting solidarity. Not with the people, but with the "glorious revolution" and "that pin-up psychopath" Che Guevara. "All socialist states fail." More than a million people have fled Venezuela, "the Labour party's wet dream". Marxist Ethiopia saw mass starvation and death. In Zimbabwe, under "Big Bob Mugabe", 60% were "food insecure". Millions starved in Mao's China and the Soviet Union. And how's the food in North Korea, another socialist country with which senior Labour figures, "incredibly", stood in solidarity? Of course there's something "shifty and cruel" about capitalism, but that's nothing to the misery created by anti-capitalism. Lavery and Burgon are "too stupid to grasp this", but the kids marching for Extinction Rebellion and Black Lives Matter (both of which insist it is capitalism that causes poverty and misery) don't know their history. "Someone, please, show them the bodies." Read the full article here (paywall).
Don't call this Freedom Day, Boris We were promised Freedom Day, says Camilla Tominey in The Daily Telegraph, but instead we've got "FRINO (Freedom in Name Only)", a watered-down return to "nothing remotely resembling normal". Despite millions of vaccines, we're more restricted than we were last summer thanks to the government's "incomprehensible" travel policy and the "ludicrous" test-and-trace system, which in some cases is "pinging people through walls". Legal requirements on masks and social distancing might have been lifted, but rather than leaving this to our individual discretion, Boris has devolved decision-making to the most risk-averse members of our "post-pandemic United Pingdom": headteachers, council bosses and "London's virtue-signalling mayor", Sadiq Khan. The PM's repeated failure to take control in the face of "repeated fearmongering" means we have no idea when we're really getting out of this. He's once again been captured by "zero Covidists pushing worse-case scenarios". Balanced thinking has collapsed in the face of a "scientific onslaught" of "Grim Reaperish" forecasts. Time after time we end up in a parallel universe where thousands can cram into Wembley, but parents are banned from sports day. Only Boris can break this cycle, yet one remains under the disturbing impression that we will remain trapped in this unachievable quest for zero Covid, "potentially forever". Why it matters A view from Europe Read the full article here (paywall).
Quirk of history Forty years ago this month, Prince Charles married Diana Spencer in St Paul's Cathedral. Among the thousands of people desperate to catch a glimpse of the couple was a 14-year-old David Cameron, says Emma Craigie in The Mail on Sunday. The future PM was so excited, he arrived at 10am the day before the wedding "to bag a good spot in The Mall and set up camp". He stayed there for more than 24 hours until Diana emerged the next day at 11.20am.
Zeitgeist  Rihanna goes braless in the video for Wild Thoughts Like many women, I abandoned bras in lockdown, says Dayna Evans in The Cut. And even now we are unlocked, I won't be putting one back on. "The thought of returning my boobs to any state of confinement has left me horrified. How could I go back to imprisoning my ladies after a wondrous year of letting them roam?" I've weathered a global pandemic and "have bigger things to worry about than how to restrain some fatty tissue on my chest". This summer, miserable bras, with their prodding wires and tight straps, can step aside: "I'm only here to have fun."
On the money Neighbours of a luxury flat in Chelsea owned by the Vatican have complained about "hellish noise" from late-night parties at the "unoccupied" triplex apartment, says the FT. Residents of Hans Place, one of London's most expensive addresses, have written to the council and the Pope's ambassador to the UK to moan about loud events, sometimes involving DJs, at the flat, which is available to rent for £30,000 a week. It recently had a pool installed as part of a multimillion-pound refurb.
Snapshot 
Noted We don't need "higher taxes on sugar and salt" or "the prescribing of fruit and vegetables by GPs", says India Knight in The Sunday Times. We simply need to teach people to cook. Just as "few lung surgeons are smokers", so people who can cook don't usually eat rubbish. Instead they have decent, nutritious diets. It's "ludicrous" our schools don't teach future adults how to feed themselves. Okay, you'd have to build a few kitchens, but bad eating costs the UK £74bn a year and causes 64,000 needless deaths, so that seems like "the tiniest price to pay".
On the way out Rounders, which is being quietly dropped from the curriculum, with prep schools saying the number of girls playing cricket has doubled in two years. Twice as many girls as boys have signed up for cricket matches next year. Schools attribute this to the rise of professional women's cricket.
Snapshot answer It's a building site in Manhattan that has been turned into a citrus-themed art installation. Citrovia, as it's called, was originally going to be a construction shed at the bottom of a 58-storey office tower. Instead the developer has created a zesty walkway with 18ft lemon trees, 700 lemon sculptures and a constant stream of lemon-scented air freshener.
Quoted "I have a small mind and I mean to use it." French writer Antonin Artaud 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 Instagram
Unsubscribe from the newsletter |
July 19, 2021
Socialism has failed in Cuba – and everywhere else
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment