Jeremy Hunt, the new Chancellor, has reversed almost all of the mini-Budget in an emergency statement this morning. Plans to cut the basic tax rate from 20p to 19p have been scrapped, and the blanket price cap for energy bills will end in April rather than in two years' time. Met Police Commissioner Mark Rowley has said hundreds of officers should be sacked, after a damning independent report found evidence of widespread lawbreaking within the force. One officer remained in post despite facing 11 misconduct allegations, including sexual assault and domestic abuse. The "Wags" of the England football team have been given a "strict list of do's and don'ts" for the Qatar World Cup, says The Sun. The players' partners have been told to "dress modestly", and to refrain from swearing and boozing in the ultra-conservative Gulf state. "They drink... it's all over." |
"Magical thinking"? Kwarteng and Truss at the Tory party conference. Leon Neal/Getty |
The real cause of Tory woes |
When historians look back at Britain's current predicament, they will discern one overriding cause, says Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian: Brexit. There's the "obvious impact" of our economy being 5.2% smaller than it should be, which makes surging inflation much harder to deal with. Then there's the outbreak of "magical thinking" that Brexit triggered. The ludicrous belief that leaving a trading bloc of your closest neighbours could somehow make you richer led directly to the nonsense of Trussonomics. Most important is the "sovereignty delusion": the idea that taking back control from Brussels would mean Britain becoming "the sole master of its destiny". There is no such thing as "pure, untrammelled sovereignty" in our interdependent world – as Kwasi Kwarteng found out when his mini-Budget was flatly rejected by the markets. The "Tory hallucination of an island able to command the tides was no more than a fever dream". |
The problem for the Conservatives, says James Kirkup in The Times, is that to get growth going they'll have to reverse their stance on two key issues: immigration and housing. With our ageing population, Britain's economy is "only going to need more labour". Big Business knows this – at the Tory conference, the boss of one of Britain's biggest companies told Truss acolytes he was moving operations to countries "where I can find the workers I need". As for housing, the Conservatives have to accept that eternally rising house prices – and the inequality they're causing – are "a problem, not a blessing". Addressing these issues will require some fairly "unconservative" policymaking. But there are some global trends governments can't control. "Parties claiming they can stand in the way of such forces only end up crushed beneath their wheels." |
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A jellyfish infestation in the Mediterranean has damaged fish farms, clogged power plants and upended tourism by making the water unsafe for swimming, says Hakai magazine. So in Italy, boffins and cooks have joined forces to try to convince gastronomes to start eating them. Early efforts to make the gelatinous invertebrates tasty included serving them "dried, fresh, and frozen", and turning them into "mousse, meringue, seasonings, and thickeners". But the two most promising options, say chefs, are cooking them to resemble the texture of soft calamari or a crispy chip. |
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There's a new self-help group for recovering public schoolboys called The Privileged Man. For £1,995 a year, men who feel they have been damaged by their elite educations can pour out their hearts to each other on weekly Zoom calls and weekend retreats every three months. Co-founder Esmond Baring, scion of the Barings banking dynasty, tells The Sunday Times he was "judged and tested" because of his background while working in finance, but that he wanted to show privileged men have feelings too. "We are all, as Nelson Mandela said, one race – the human race." |
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As Liz Truss began her disastrous press conference on Friday afternoon, her former Cabinet rival Michael Gove sent a tweet from a school in his Surrey constituency. "Good to talk to headteachers today," he wrote, "providing strong leadership for the next generation." Earlier, amid rumours Kwasi Kwarteng was being sacked, Gove posted a picture with a councillor who was overseeing local repairs, with the caption "good to see work being done on trip hazards".
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Why good art can be dangerous |
"Can a work of art be separated from its creator?" An upcoming Channel 4 show is putting this age-old philosophical conundrum to the test, says Martha Gill in The Observer. A studio audience will be presented with works by unsavoury artists, like Hitler and paedophile Rolf Harris, and asked to vote on whether presenter Jimmy Carr should destroy them. I think bad art is "perfectly safe to consume": we are insulated from the soul of the artist by a "thick layer of plexiglass cliché". Hitler's "postcard watercolours", after all, "might have been created by any number of sentimental daubers". |
Far more dangerous are "great but corrupt artists", for they try to persuade us to join them in their depravity. Paul Gauguin was a child abuser who took underage Tahitian girls as his sex slaves, and his paintings "invite the viewer to join him in gazing lustfully at these same teenagers". Caravaggio, genius and murderer, "produced art that makes violence beautiful" – the bright spurts of blood give you "a taste of what it might be like to want to kill someone". Current sensibilities assume that all great art and literature is somehow "improving"; judges have even taken to prescribing criminals reading lists. But you can hardly argue that Lolita and The Picture of Dorian Gray were written with moral enlightenment in mind. "How do we deal with immoral art? It's still a question worth grappling with." |
London's Natural History Museum has announced the 2022 winners of its Wildlife Photographer of the Year contest. The top nod went to Karine Aigner's snap of a ball of swarming cactus bees rolling across the hot Texas sand. Other selections included a snake snacking on a bat, and a small wood wren bent over, listening to the earth. See the full selection here. |
In 1911, the suffragettes issued their "advice on marriage to young ladies", says Shaun Usher in Lists of Note. Number one reads, quite simply, "Do not marry at all." "But if you must," it continues, avoid "the Beauty Men, Flirts… and the Football Enthusiasts". Even if you find a "Fire-lighter, Coal-getter, Window Cleaner and Yard Swiller", don't expect too much, for "most men are lazy, selfish, thoughtless, lying, drunken, clumsy, heavy-footed, rough, unmanly brutes". The advice continues: "If you want him to be happy, Feed the Brute. The same remark applies to Dogs." |
Kim Jong-un has been cutting a dash at recent missile tests, with ensembles including a white tunic with a khaki safari hat. Former CIA analyst Bruce Klingner tells CNN the North Korean dictator is trying to demonstrate how "bold" he is. Perhaps, says one Twitter user, but the effect is more "post-menopausal love affair in Tuscany". |
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"In six short weeks Britain has acquired Italian-style politics and finances, without the sunshine."
Camilla Cavendish in the FT |
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