Convenience Big Store: Spare us the moral lectures, Gary

21 December, 2022

In the headlines

"You'd better watch out," says Metro, after ministers and health chiefs warned people to avoid getting drunk, making car journeys and partaking in "risky activities" like rugby during today's ambulance strike. Eight of England's ten major ambulance services have declared critical incidents, with NHS officials admitting they "cannot guarantee patient safety" during the walkout. Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky will visit Joe Biden at the White House today in his first foreign trip since the Russian invasion. Ahead of the meeting, the US government confirmed a new $2bn military package for Kyiv, including a Patriot missile defence system. Bob Dylan has revealed that he unwinds by watching Coronation Street. The American musician, 81, claims the Manchester-set soap makes him "feel at home", says the Daily Mail. "Like a Rolling (cobble) Stone."

Comment

Spare us the moral lectures, Gary

Everyone can judge who they listen to "on the subject of ethics and morality", says Libby Purves in The Times, but I'm afraid I "really, finally, utterly draw the line at being lectured by Gary Neville". During ITV's coverage of the World Cup final, the retired footballer went on a bizarre rant about how Rishi Sunak's government is "demonising" rail and ambulance workers and "terrifying" nurses. Neville, who pocketed a reputed six-figure pay packet to analyse games for Qatari broadcaster beIN Sports, used this exaggeration to "ward off criticism" of the host nation. "We have to pick up on workers' rights," the 47-year-old declared, "wherever it goes."

Can he be serious? Is he suggesting that denying nurses an over-inflation pay increase is basically the same as shoving south Asian workers into miserable desert accommodation and "working them like dogs"? That there is no "moral distinction" between negotiating with the rail unions and the "Qataris' cavalier ways with late pay, confiscated passports and acceptance of migrant deaths by the hundred"? It's enraging. Equally so is watching the world of football try to "clean up its dirty reputation" on the back of the on-pitch exploits of Messi, Mbappé and the rest. Fifa is up there with the Taliban as "one of the world's most disreputable organisations: corrupt, self-satisfied and unwilling to change". And after Sunday's fantastic final, "it probably thinks we forgive it".

Eating in

TikTok's latest holiday hosting trend is somewhere between a "warming snack" and a "hot mess", says NBC's Today show: butter candles. Made by shaping lumps of the dairy spread around hemp or beeswax wicks, it is typically flavoured with garlic so that you can "light it at the table and dip bread into it". The best bit about this "delicious" festive centrepiece? "It makes your whole house smell amazing!"

Yesterday's world

Despite being a nation "home to humanoid robots", Japan has a "steadfastly analogue" bureaucracy, says The Washington Post. Many official documents are still sent via fax or floppy disk. Bank transactions and housing contracts "often require the use of hanko, a personal seal, in lieu of signatures". In August, the government finally appointed a digital minister to oversee a massive shift of public services online.

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Inside politics

The Conservative Party has given its members a handy list of stocking fillers, says Clemmie Moodie in The Sun. They include a stainless-steel Winston Churchill water bottle, a Tory-branded baby bib ("the poor, blameless young soul who's shoehorned into this"), and a Margaret Thatcher apron with the slogan: "this food is NOT for burning".

Comment

Eva Kaili, who has been charged in the EU corruption scandal. Menelaos Myrillas/SOOC/AFP/Getty

Bribery is endemic in Brussels

The EU establishment has been quick to spin recent allegations of bribe-taking as "limited to a few bad apples", says Thomas Fazi in UnHerd. In fact, corruption is "endemic" in Brussels. There are some 30,000 lobbyists working in the bloc's capital, more than in any other city bar Washington DC, and they have "huge sums at their disposal": €1.8bn across 12,400 companies and organisations. All this cash buys top-level access. Between December 2019 and May 2022, EU President Ursula von der Leyen's team held 500 meetings with oil, gas and coal lobbyists. She arranged a €35bn Covid vaccine deal with Pfizer "via a series of text messages with the company's chief".

Regulations around Brussels lobbying leave a lot to be desired. The bloc's lawmakers are "encouraged" but not required to report the meetings they have with interest groups. Pro-EU types think a bit of "institutional tinkering", such as tightening up the rules and setting up an ethics committee, should resolve the issue. Others argue that the solution is to "democratise the EU" by strengthening the European Parliament. They all miss the point: the EU is at heart a "supranational and technocratic" beast, distanced physically and linguistically from ordinary people. Because of that, it'll always be "prone to capture" by vested interests, be they foreign governments or multinational corporations. EU corruption isn't a bug – it's a feature.

Noted

Finnish PM Sanna Marin: how happy is she really? Saara Peltola/Lehtikuva/AFP

Finland has topped the list of the world's happiest countries for several years, says Peter Zashev in The Helsinki Times. But you could have fooled me. We Finns guzzle down anti-depressants like they're Smarties: we're in the top 10 for consumption in Europe, along with our supposedly perky Nordic neighbours Denmark, Sweden and Iceland. "Are the pills the secret to our happiness, or did too much happiness drive us to depression?"

Sport

Argentina's triumphant footballers had a helping hand from an unlikely source, says The New York Times: an "army of witches". During the World Cup, hundreds, if not thousands of Argentine brujas took up arms "in the form of prayers, altars, candles, amulets and burning sage". They used rituals to "absorb negative energy from Argentina's players and exchange it with good energy", and cast spells on opposing players, "particularly the goalkeepers". The football-loving witches found France a particular challenge – "Their players are protected by dark entities and the energy can bounce back!!" warned one group on Twitter – but evidently found a way to prevail.

Snapshot

Snapshot answer

It's the original mechatronic model for ET, the alien from Steven Spielberg's ET the Extra-Terrestrial, which has just sold for $2.56m. The skin has mostly disintegrated, says CNN, revealing the skeleton's intricate structure underneath. With 85 moving parts operated via a cable system, the model cost a whopping $1.5m to build – a hefty chunk of the 1982 film's $10m budget. Now, of course, they'd just use CGI.

Quoted

"How do you make a small fortune in social media? Start out with a large one."