Convenience Big Store: Saudi camels are getting the hump 🐪👄

11 August, 2021

In the headlines

A British embassy worker in Berlin has been arrested on suspicion of spying for Russia in exchange for cash. The man, identified as David S, was taken into custody at his Potsdam apartment on Tuesday, said The Independent. The lawyer representing Prince Andrew's sexual-abuse accuser says the royal risks a "default judgement" against him if he ignores the lawsuit. I doubt that's making Andrew sweat, says Marina Hyde in The Guardian: he is, famously, "biologically incapable of perspiration". The Red Arrows' red, white and blue smoke trails are going green to save the planet, says The Sun. The aerobatics aces currently use a mix of dye and "dirty diesel".

Comment of the day

Anti-government protests in Tunisia, 2018. Anis Mili/AFP/Getty Images

Democracy's failure in the Arab world

A decade after the Arab Spring, the region is "cheering the fall of democracy", says Gideon Rachman in the Financial Times. In Tunisia, President Kais Saied's apparent coup has brought approving crowds onto the streets after years of inept government. Democracy is important, but it "ranks lower in the hierarchy of needs than food, shelter and security". A strongman promising stability is more appealing than a failing elected government. Lebanon and Iraq are unfortunate examples of the latter. It's not unusual to hear Iraqis, suffering through power and water shortages, "sound nostalgic for Saddam Hussein, a vicious dictator who at least delivered reliable electricity".

Contrast that with the Middle East's richest, most powerful countries: Saudi Arabia, Iran, the UAE and Qatar. All are autocracies. It's not that the Middle East is particularly attached to dictatorship – rather, it shows how hard it is for democracy to take root. "Enlightened despots" in 18th-century Europe, and in 20th-century South Korea and Taiwan, built stable economics and institutions that allowed a transition to democracy. But while the "China model" of stability and order might look tempting, the "years of corruption and stagnation" that sparked the Arab Spring show that in the Middle East, "unenlightened despots have been more common than the enlightened variety".

Britain is jailing far too many people

The British prison system is positively Victorian, says Frances Crook in The Guardian. I should know – I've spent 35 years working in them. Inmates spend almost all day in their cells, breaking only for the occasional class or shower. They wear the same clothes day and night: "saggy prison uniforms, unwashed for days on end". The food is unchangingly abysmal, a sandwich for lunch and stodge for supper. It's a dangerous sort of monotony. "Life inside does nothing for the mental health challenges many prisoners face." And life outside is not much better. With no proper rehabilitation schemes in place, many ex-prisoners lose contact with their family and are destined for homelessness and joblessness. No wonder almost half of them reoffend. "It is a merry-go-round but without cheer."

The system needs a "radical overhaul". To start with, we should stop locking people up so frivolously. There are 78,600 people in prison in England and Wales. That's double the number locked up under Margaret Thatcher – and she was "no softie on criminal justice". Prison should only be used in exceptional circumstances, "for the most egregious crimes or when someone poses a serious and continuing threat to public safety". For everything else, local rehabilitation services would "save the taxpayer a fortune, change lives and transform incarceration for good".

Noted

Fayez Nureldine/AFP/Getty Images

Scandal has struck Saudi Arabia's fiercely contested annual camel beauty contest, says Samir Salama in Gulf News. In pursuit of perfectly pouting lips and wrinkle-free noses, some competitors in the King Abdulaziz Camel Festival have injected their dromedaries with Botox in an effort to win the top prize. A video showing camels with ruptured lips sparked outrage and officials are now checking for lip fillers with an ultrasound machine. Offenders face a fine of about £19,000.

On the money

Vaccine lotteries save money, according to a study by the University of California. The state of Ohio spent $5.6m on a lottery only the vaccinated could enter. That led to 82,000 more people getting jabbed, at a cost of $68 each. But Covid sufferers spent 5,000 fewer days in intensive care, which costs $13,500 a day – giving the state a saving of $56m.

Snapshot

Zeitgeist

Go Jauntly is a unique navigation app – rather than the fastest route from A to B, it plots the most interesting journey. It "names every pub that will let you use their loo, and every major tree along the way", says Zoe Williams in The Guardian. A walk to St Paul's from Van Gogh's house in Stockwell, south London, was full of curiosities, including Charlie Chaplin's house in Kennington and "the titchy Tinworth Fountain".

Love Island has aired its most profane episode to date, with contestants swearing 125 times in one hour. The main culprit was Faye Winter, a 26-year-old lettings manager from Devon, who said "f***" 57 times. That's almost once a minute. But the ITV2 show is tame compared with The Wolf of Wall Street. Martin Scorsese's banking drama is the most foul-mouthed film in history, according to Guinness World Records. It contains 687 expletives – an average of 3.81 a minute.

Snapshot answer

It's a polka dot-covered pumpkin sculpture by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. It's usually found on a pier on the Japanese island of Naoshima, and has "long been an Instagram darling", says Daniel Victor in The New York Times. But on Monday a 78mph gust of wind knocked the sculpture into the sea, where it thrashed about "like an enormous and beautiful seashell". It was eventually fished out and is being restored.