Convenience Big Store: Are we heading for a Winter of Discontent? 🥶

5 August, 2021

In the headlines

Fully vaccinated travellers arriving from France will no longer have to quarantine after landing in the UK, while India and Dubai are moving from the red list to amber. "At last," says the Express, "summer is saved." Eight people have died and thousands have been evacuated as firefighters on Turkey's Mediterranean coast battle the most intense forest blazes on record. More than 100 fires are raging in neighbouring Greece, in locations including the ancient site of Olympia and the suburbs of Athens. Rihanna has become the world's richest female musician, worth $1.7bn. Nearly all the singer's cash comes from her make-up brand, Fenty, and its sister firm, Savage x Fenty, which makes pants.

Comment of the day

The explosion in Beirut's port last August killed more than 200 people. Ibrahim Amro/AFP/Getty Images

Lazy leaders are destroying Lebanon

It's been a year since a huge explosion levelled Beirut's port, killing more than 200 people and destroying thousands of homes, says David Rosenberg in Haaretz. No meaningful investigation has taken place and the rubble from the blast is still sitting there. Lebanon's bickering politicians, who "can't trouble themselves to form a government", haven't responded to the "host of foreign companies" offering to rebuild it. The latest prime minister, Najib Mikati, is a billionaire, just like his predecessor. "Even by global standards of corrupt and irresponsible governments, Lebanon is a standout."

Part of the problem is that the country's misfortune is "purely economic and entirely the consequence of its venal and corrupt leadership". Its people are truly suffering – 77% of households don't have enough food – but you don't get the same visuals as you would from a war or natural disaster, both of which would prompt international aid. "Soft loans and grants" worth $11bn have been on the table for three years, but Lebanon's political class refuses to undertake the reforms demanded in return. "Maybe the economic equivalent of a UN peacekeeping force – a cadre of economists and accountants – should be created to take charge of places like Lebanon." It seems crazy, but all other options have been exhausted.

Are we heading for a Winter of Discontent?

Soon after becoming prime minister in 2010, David Cameron said we should measure Britain's progress "not just by our standard of living, but by our quality of life". Of course "life is about more than money", says Charles Moore in The Daily Telegraph. But if our standard of living drops, so does our quality of life. Thanks to Covid and post-Brexit disputes, some goods have become harder to obtain and more expensive. Constrictions on the movement of labour, "and perhaps the desire to go on living on furlough", have created severe labour shortages. A 1970s-style cost-of-living crisis is on the horizon: "too much money chases too few goods", so prices rise and inflation returns. The "vast" increase in government spending hasn't helped.

This could spark a "cycle of trouble", with trade unions striking so their members' wages match rising prices. The "triple lock", which raises the basic state pension by 2.5%, the rate of inflation or average earnings growth, whichever is highest, will go from "dangerously inflexible" to outright unfair if taxes on workers rise. Then there's soaring energy bills and the "five-figure sums for new heat pumps" meant to address climate change. Quality of life suffers from this "profound instability" – from your house being cold or it taking half a day to charge your car. "All of the above states the obvious. Yet so far this government has not admitted it."

Inside politics

Dominic Cummings's attitude to Westminster is straightforward. "I don't like the people and they don't like me," he tells Lynn Barber in The Spectator. He certainly doesn't like Carrie Johnson, who he thought was "a wrong 'un" from the day he met her in 2016. He says Boris Johnson offered him a peerage when he left No 10, and talked of finding Carrie "a job with lots of foreign travel". Cummings now spends his days reading, talking to his wife and young son, and writing on his Substack blog, to which more than 1,500 people subscribe for £100 a year. "As I leave," says Barber, "Dom is eagerly opening a parcel that has just arrived: an out-of-print book on Bismarck that he'd thought was unobtainable."

Life

More than three months ago, Mauro Morandi moved off Budelli, an island off the north coast of Sardinia. He was its only resident and unofficial caretaker for more than 30 years, living in a Second World War shelter until the national-park authorities turfed him out. Now the 82-year-old is in a one-bedroom flat on the nearby island of La Maddalena. The "continuous noise... distracts you so much you don't have time to think", he tells The Guardian. "You journalists keep pestering" as well.

Noted

A female monkey has become the leader of a Japanese colony of macaques for the first time in its 70-year history. Nine-year-old Yakei recently roughed up Sanchu, the alpha male who had led the 677-strong troop at a zoological garden on the island of Kyushu for seven years. Yakei has since taken to climbing and shaking trees, and walking aggressively with her tail up. Her pre-eminence was confirmed when peanuts were thrown to the troop and Sanchu deferred to Yakei for the first taste.

Snapshot

Tomorrow's world

The UAE is testing a machine that could create drinking water out of nothing but air. Housed in a shipping container near Abu Dhabi's main airport, the bank of 20 "hyper-dehumidifiers" will produce 6,700 litres of water when the surrounding air is at 26C and 60% humidity. The solar-powered "water generator" would be carbon-neutral, easy to move around and capable of producing limitless supplies of clean water in semi-arid to humid climates, says its US developer, Aquovum.

Snapshot answer

It's the coconut shell that saved John F Kennedy's life. Before becoming president, he commanded a patrol torpedo boat in the Second World War. On August 2, 1943, his boat was rammed by a Japanese ship in the South Pacific – it split in half, killing two crew members. Kennedy, then 26, swam three miles to the nearest island, dragging his crewmate by a lifejacket strap. For six days the survivors were stranded, until Kennedy decided to carve a message on a coconut shell. It read: "NAURO ISL COMMANDER. NATIVE KNOWS POS'IT. HE CAN PILOT. 11 ALIVE. NEED SMALL BOAT. KENNEDY." He gave the shell to two locals, who delivered it to a US base by canoe. The team were swiftly rescued. Years later, JFK used the shell as a paperweight in the Oval Office.