Convenience Big Store: Everyone should be woke ✌️

3 August, 2021

In the headlines

Boris Johnson has dumped the "amber watchlist" and tweaked the sensitivity of the NHS Covid app to reduce the number of people having to self-isolate. The chief of the Joint Biosecurity Centre, which advises on travel rules, has quit, adding to "days of chaos" at No 10, says The Guardian. The Afghan general in charge of defending Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province, has warned that a victory for the Taliban will increase extremist attacks in Europe and the US. "This is a war between liberty and totalitarianism," General Sami Sadat told the BBC. Britain has won two Olympic sailing golds in the 49er and Finn classes. "Britannia rules the waves," cheers the Telegraph. A Buckinghamshire farmer is kitting out his cows with Fitbits to track their movements, the Daily Star reveals in a "moos flash".

Comment of the day

Zhang Peng/LightRocket/Getty Images

China faces a social crisis

China's social contract is "fraying", says James Kynge in The Financial Times. A new Chinese youth trend – "lying flat" – makes a virtue of rejecting stressful jobs and kicking back, the "antithesis" of the economic model that has driven the country's extraordinary growth by "enlisting maximum effort from its people". Beijing is more than a little perturbed. "In this turbulent era there is no such thing as lying flat," said government spokesman Wu Qian this week. "There is only the splendour of struggle and endeavour. Young people, come on!"

President Xi Jinping is so worried that he's banning the $100bn after-school tutoring industry, calling it a "chronic disease". His fear is that for tens of millions of middle-class families in China's big cities, life has become a hamster wheel of "increasing effort and diminishing reward". Housing, education and healthcare costs are rising faster than salaries, giving many people the sensation of "running to stand still". Seeing the stress this all causes, young couples are getting married later and the birth rate is falling precipitously, creating long-term worries over economic growth. Xi's credibility relies on constantly rising living standards for Chinese people. If he can't offer the middle class a better deal, "lying flat" will be only the start of his problems.

Everyone should be woke

We should all be woke, says Perry Bacon Jr in The Washington Post. After all, the central agenda of wokery isn't to force more people to use funny terms such as "Latinx" or read books about "white fragility". Instead, it's a rebalancing of society "that will bring more cultural, economic and political power to those who have been historically marginalised". And, let's face it, America needs rebalancing. Currently, the median wealth of a black family is $24,000. For a white family it's $188,000 – and Jeff Bezos, the Post's owner, is worth $192bn. "Is the problem that we are too woke or that we are insufficiently woke? This is not a hard question."

Of course there have been "excesses" – cancel culture and Twitter spats have torn people limb from limb. Alexi McCammond was unceremoniously removed as Teen Vogue's editor after the publication of tweets she sent at 17. Although "I didn't agree with her ouster", these may just be teething problems: "Every political movement has its learning curve." In its purest form, wokeness is spurring on exciting change – from making voting more accessible to reducing income inequality. These are all steps towards fairness. Once you define it properly, woke is a force for good.

Noted

These intricate dioramas are part of Miniature Calendar, a series by the Japanese artist Tatsuya Tanaka. He has been creating the pieces, which reflect the seasons and world events, every day since 2011. They have been exhibited around the world, attracting more than 1.5 million visitors, says Digital Synopsis.

Inside politics

Scottish police dropped the codename Operation Bunter while drawing up plans for protecting Boris Johnson to avoid causing offence. The name was generated at random for a prime ministerial visit to Scotland, but a police insider told The Sun: "Several people pointed out the foolishness of calling it after a fat, posh English public schoolboy – not least given the PM is known for being a bit portly." Author Charles Hamilton created Billy Bunter, a fictional tubby, lazy and vain 15-year-old at Greyfriars public school, more than a century ago.

Snapshot

Sport

Why does no one like Novak Djokovic, wonders Yiannis Baboulias in The Spectator. There was a "palpable sense" of satisfaction among tennis fans when he lost his Olympic bronze-medal match, smashing two racquets in frustration. That temper is part of the reason, but there's also "pure snobbery" at play: the Serbian is a scrappy "kid from the Balkans", less suave than Roger Federer and not as good-looking as Rafael Nadal. Off court Djokovic is "perfectly jovial and warm", and his family has donated more than $1m to help fight Covid in Serbia.

Snapshot answer

It's Osama bin Laden's half-brother Ibrahim, who has put his seven-bedroom Bel Air mansion in Los Angeles on the market for $28m. The 7,100 sq ft property needs doing up, says the New York Post – Ibrahim has not lived there since 9/11. He was holidaying abroad at the time of the terrorist attacks masterminded by his half-brother and never returned to the US, "fearful of the notoriety his last name would bring".