Convenience Big Store: It’s shameful what presidents can get away with

11 May, 2023

In the headlines

TransPennine Express will be nationalised due to poor service, after cancelling about a quarter of all its trains in January and February. The rail company, which operates in northern England and parts of Scotland, is the fourth to be taken into public hands in five years. The Archbishop of Canterbury has criticised the government's migration bill as "morally unacceptable", saying it risks "great damage to the UK's interests and reputation". Justin Welby made the comments in the House of Lords, where the bill, which will bar almost anyone entering Britain on small boats from claiming asylum, is being debated. Starbucks has opened its first café in central Rome. The American chain has established 25 branches in coffee-loving Italy since 2018 and is now "in striking distance" of Naples, says The Times, "where locals swear the water gives their espresso a unique quality".

Comment

E Jean Carroll during the trial in Manhattan. Stephanie Keith/Getty

It's shameful what presidents can get away with

A jury in New York finding Donald Trump liable for sexually abusing E Jean Carroll is "undeniably a victory for women", says Maureen Callahan in the Daily Mail. The trouble is, there's no law that says sexual abusers cannot run for high office. Past presidents have got away with treating women appallingly. The political and media class covered up JFK's "execrable behaviour", including getting the teenage White House intern Mimi Alford drunk and "taking her virginity on his wife's bed". Women accusing Bill Clinton of sexual assault or even rape were dismissed as fabulists, sluts or "poor white trash looking for a payout". Trump has adopted the same tactic – "call your female accuser crazy" – by describing Carroll as "mentally sick".

But what's truly sick is that people choose to believe women only when the allegations are against their political opponents. I heard countless liberals claim that the then-New York governor Andrew Cuomo, accused of sexual harassment by multiple women, was the victim of an "orchestrated witch hunt by Republicans". And what about the accusations of "unwanted physical contact" against Joe Biden? Multiple videos show him "grabbing women and young girls, sniffing their hair from behind or placing his hands on their shoulders" – and yet much of the mainstream media dismisses it "as the unfortunate behaviours of an old man from another time". While Biden's actions are of course nothing like as bad as Trump's, this is where modern America is at: two "compromised elderly men" as frontrunners for the presidency.

Photography

This year's 100 for the Ocean campaign, which showcases wildlife photography to raise funds for conservation efforts, includes pictures of a turtle in a shoal of glass fish in Western Australia, two polar bear cubs playing with their mother in Canada, the plumage of an Edward's fig parrot in New Guinea, and a surfer in the waves of the Aleutian Islands off the coast of Alaska. See more here.

Climate

The main argument used by anti-nuclear campaigners in Germany – which shuttered its last three atomic power plants last month – is that it's dangerous. In fact, says Hannah Ritchie in The Washington Post, Germany's main power source, coal, is far worse. The country relies on lignite, the "dirtiest" form of the fossil fuel, which releases sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and other nasties. It's likely that more lives have been lost in Germany due to air pollution from coal power "than from all of the world's nuclear accidents to date, Fukushima and Chernobyl included".

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Staying young

No snoring, please: Air New Zealand's "Skynest" bunk beds

Sleep "can be almost priceless" for passengers on long-haul flights, says Bloomberg. "Now Air New Zealand plans to sell it for around $100 an hour." From next September, the antipodean airline will offer four-hour slots in its new "Skynest" bunk beds to economy-class travellers on flights from Auckland to New York (16 hours) and to Chicago (15 hours). The crew will "politely wake" any passengers who oversleep.

Comment

Polish soldiers on military exercise last week. Artur Widak/NurPhoto/Getty

Poland is putting western Europe to shame

The Ukraine war has created an unlikely new power in Europe, says The Wall Street Journal: Poland. In a bid to deter Vladimir Putin, the country has been on an "arms-buying spree" that puts western Europe's measly defence spending to shame. Last month, Polish officials announced a $2.3bn deal to buy missiles from the UK – the largest deal of its kind by any Nato member since the invasion. That's on top of the $30bn of military kit they have ordered from the US, including advanced Himars rocket launchers. New legislation passed in Warsaw mandates military spending of at least 3% of GDP – higher than the 2% set by Nato, which 21 of the treaty's 30 members already fail to fulfil. This will see Poland's military manpower doubled to 300,000, including the recruitment of 50,000 "part-time warriors".

Poland's financial commitments to Ukraine now top 0.6% of its GDP, including $2.5bn in military support – more than France, which has an economy about four times larger. It has also taken in 1.5 million Ukrainian refugees, who now comprise around 4% of the entire population. Officials in Warsaw have clocked something that most Western leaders ignore: Putin's "territorial ambitions" won't be sated if he's allowed to capture Ukraine; he'll just move on to another target. Given all this, Poland may be replacing Germany as "the indispensable Nato ally in Europe".

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Noted

New York's office buildings feel "eerily empty", says The New York Times, with occupancy rates around 50% of their pre-pandemic level. Combined, the roughly 75 million sq ft of vacant office space in the city would fill 26.6 Empire State Buildings.

Inside politics

"Every prime minister has at least one guilty pleasure," says Katy Balls in The Spectator. "Rishi Sunak has several." The PM is often teased by colleagues for "his taste in music (Michael Bublé), television (Emily in Paris) and literature (Jilly Cooper)". One of his favourite books is Cooper's first "bonkbuster", Riders, about the great and the good "frolicking in the fictional Cotswolds county of Rutshire".

Snapshot

Snapshot answer

It's a composite of ultra-high-definition images of Earth, taken by the European Space Agency's flashy new satellite. The pioneering tech makes it possible to see certain meteorological features for the first time, including cloud vortices over the Canary Islands, snow cover on the Alps, and sediment in the water along the coast of Italy. Explore it for yourself here.

Quoted

"Vote for Guy Fawkes. The only man to enter parliament with honest intent."

Spotted on a poster during the 1979 general election

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