Convenience Big Store: Back to work? I’d rather have a nap

26 August, 2021

In the headlines

The real threat to those fleeing Kabul isn't the Taliban, says Catherine Philp in The Times. It's Isis-K, the Isis offshoot that thinks the Taliban is "too soft". The Foreign Office fears its car bombers may attack the airport within "hours", fight the Taliban for control of Afghanistan, then target the West. As supermarket shelves empty, pubs run dry and McDonald's milkshake stocks collapse, the NHS is rationing blood testing due to a test tube shortage. "Let us concede that Brexit and a lack of EU drivers is among various factors responsible," says The Sun. We need lots more British lorry drivers, paid properly, to get us out of this mess. England's fearless former cricket captain Ted Dexter has died aged 86. "He squeezed every last drop out of life," said a more recent successor, Mike Atherton.

Comment of the day

Former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani, centre, inaugurating a dam on the Helmand River in March. Chine Nouvelle/SIPA/Shutterstock

Iran is cheering on the Taliban

"Iran has a peculiar relationship with the Taliban," says David Patrikarakos in The Spectator. Iran is Shia and the Taliban Sunni, for one thing, so "each considers the other to be deviant". And they nearly went to war in 1998 after 11 Iranian diplomats were killed by what the Taliban called "renegade forces". But Iran was happy to shelter al-Qaeda leaders in Tehran and has long sponsored Taliban groups in Afghanistan.

The key to their on-off relationship is water – currently in such short supply in Iran that the ruling mullahs fear revolution. The Helmand River flows from Afghanistan into Iran, and former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani inaugurated a dam on it in March. He declared that the Iranians would have to hand over fuel if they wanted the water to flow. It's "no coincidence" that the city nearest the dam was one of the first targeted by the Taliban – and there are rumours that the militants' first action was to turn on the taps for their neighbours. Iran seems to be the "immediate winner of the Taliban takeover" – just as one theocratic regime takes power, the existential peril of another is washed away.

Back to work? I'd rather have a nap

"Work has become intolerable. Rest is resistance," says Cassady Rosenblum in The New York Times. In China this April, 31-year-old former factory worker Luo Huazhong told social media he "had a right to choose a slow lifestyle" of reading, exercising and doing odd jobs to get by. The post, alongside a picture of Luo snoozing, went viral. American news outlets described the "lying flat" trend as symptomatic of China's "hyper-competitive" 996 regime: 9am to 9pm, six days a week. Luo tips his nightcap to Diogenes, the Greek philosopher who lived in a barrel to "criticise the excesses of Athenian aristocrats".

But lying flat has "global resonance". In the West, workers simply aren't returning after the pandemic. Me? I've quit my job as a copywriter and gone back to live with my parents. And it's not just low earners. At Goldman Sachs, where salaries start at $150,000, entry-level analysts complain they work 98-hour weeks, don't shower and hardly sleep. "I've been through foster care," said one in a leaked report. "This is arguably worse." Black American thinkers argue that "rest is not only resistance, it is also reparation", owed because enslaved ancestors were never allowed to stop working. If jobs are sustenance, careers are now "altars upon which all else is sacrificed". Work is "a false idol". Take a nap. Be free.

Noted

Bestselling writer Anthony Horowitz admitted to a terrible memory for faces on Paul McKenna's Positivity podcast. "I remember going up to somebody at a party and saying, 'Excuse me, what do you do?' And the person said, 'I am Prince Andrew.'"

Zeitgeist

The man who was photographed naked as a baby for the cover of Nirvana's 1991 album Nevermind is suing the band for child pornography, says the Mail. Spencer Elden, 30, has recreated the image four times, most recently for the album's 25th anniversary. His father was paid $200 for the photo, which was taken at a pool party. Elden is now claiming $2.5m in damages.

Quirks of history

A letter to The Daily Telegraph from David Miller of Newton Abbot, Devon: "Sir – Referring to the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, France's foreign minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, says that "France does not forget those who have worked for her". This is demonstrably untrue. In Indochina in 1954, France signed the ceasefire and abandoned the French and indigenous men of the GCMA, anti-guerrilla squads operating deep in enemy territory. They were hunted down and killed by the North Vietnamese over the following three years. In Algeria in 1962, the French abandoned the Harkis, several thousand men who had fought as auxiliaries against the rebels. They, too, were hunted down and killed. The foreign minister should make sure of his history before making such vainglorious pronouncements."

Snapshot

Love etc

Filming kissing scenes was tricky during the pandemic. While shooting Only Murders in the Building last November, Selena Gomez had to wash her mouth out with Listerine after each take – up to 10 of them. "It burned my mouth," she tells Elle.

Snapshot answer

It's Australian sheep farmer Ben Jackson's tribute to his aunt, who recently died of cancer. Covid state border closures prevented Jackson, who lives in New South Wales, from attending her funeral in Brisbane. So he poured out grain in the shape of a heart, released his ewes and filmed the results with a drone. "My auntie loved coming down to my farm and poking around, so I just thought a heart for her would be very appropriate."