Convenience Big Store: The 2020s are crueller than the Noughties

21 September, 2023

In the headlines

The Bank of England has kept interest rates at 5.25%, says the FT, "as evidence grows that inflation is slowing". It's the first time the Bank hasn't raised borrowing costs in its regular announcements since the end of 2021. India has suspended visas for Canadians, after Ottawa linked the murder of a Sikh separatist on Canadian soil to the Indian government. The two countries have also expelled some of each other's diplomats, while New Delhi has warned citizens of "growing anti-India activities and politically-condoned hate crimes" in Canada. The King addressed France's senate this morning as part of his three-day state visit. He spoke, partly in fluent French, of the "rich and complex tapestry" of Franco-British relations, and the "golden thread" of his mother's relationship with France. It follows a formal banquet last night, where guests including Mick Jagger and Hugh Grant dined on blue lobster and 30-month-old Comté cheese.

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A more innocent time: Anna Kournikova signing copies of FHM magazine at the Virgin Megastore in 2001. Evan Agostini/Getty

The 2020s are crueller than the Noughties

Since the Russell Brand allegations were published last weekend, says Michael Deacon in The Daily Telegraph, Britain's commentators have all "deplored" not just the man himself but the entire decade in which he shot to fame: the 2000s. "The Nasty Noughties: Russell Brand and the era of sadistic tabloid misogyny," fumed The Guardian. "The Noughties enabled Russell Brand," explained UnHerd. BBC News described old clips of Brand's work as "a sobering reminder of Noughties culture". Amid all this "horrified disbelief", we're in danger of overlooking something: "the 2020s are far, far worse".

Yes, the tabloids used to write unkind things about Britney Spears and others. But today, these poor women must endure the "unrelenting onslaught of abuse" hurled at them on social media. Noughties hacks might have been rude, but they weren't sending "death threats and photos of their own genitals". And compared to the hardcore pornography freely available to men and boys online today, an old issue of Nuts or FHM "looks like a cheeky seaside postcard from the 1950s". The other point we keep hearing is that in the Noughties, "misogyny was applauded". That's true, but the 2020s have bred a new, more insidious form of misogyny "disguised as compassion". Any time a woman like JK Rowling dares to speak up for women's rights, a man can "scream that she's a hateful transphobic bigot", while still affecting to be one of the good guys. That's why the 2020s are "crueller than the Noughties". Still, it's taken us 20 years to see how awful the Noughties were. "It'll probably take us another 20 to see how awful this decade is, too."

Photography

The Minimalist Photography Awards are all about "stripping away distractions" and "allowing visual stories to emerge from the interplay of light, shadow, and subject", says competition president Milad Safabakhsh. For 2023, photographer of the year went to Martin Annand, for his long-exposure work focusing on the British coast. See the winners of individual categories here.

Inside politics

"The class war is over," said Tony Blair in 1999, echoing a similar statement by his deputy PM, John Prescott, in 1997: "We are all middle class now." Well, no longer, says The New Statesman. According to the latest British Social Attitudes Survey, the proportion of people who say they are working class has risen by an astonishing 23 percentage points since 2015, despite that fact that more Brits than ever go to university and do white-collar work. Some 46% of the total claim working-class status, while only 29% admit to being middle class.

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Books

Probably reading Harry Potter or something. Getty

The English-language section of French bookshops used to be reserved for "tourists in need of a holiday read", says Le Monde. But today they have become thriving hubs of activity, with groups of teenagers flocking to them in search of hot new titles. It's all because of TikTok, or more specifically #BookTok, the corner of the social media site dedicated to reading recommendations. Impatient Gen Zs don't want to wait for the French translation of the latest must-read, so they're buying the English original and muddling through.

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The UN building in New York. Sergi Reboredo/Getty

The UN is a busted flush

New York City is full of dignitaries from around the world this week, gathering for the United Nations General Assembly, says The Wall Street Journal. "The Lady Godiva question no one wants to ask is: Why?" In the emerging world order of "rogue regimes and multi-polar power centres", what good does the UN do? The presidents of Russia, China and France and the prime minister of Britain didn't even turn up. One person who did was the Iranian president, Ebrahim Raisi, who gave a "lecture about American perfidy". In a show of their respect for the UN, the Iranian government expelled the organisation's most experienced nuclear weapons inspectors the night before Raisi arrived.

At least Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky came, making a rare appearance in New York to "make the moral case for support" against Russia's invasion. But the UN has been "worse than useless" during the Ukraine conflict – Russia's veto on the Security Council has blocked any serious response to the Kremlin's "marauding". The one thing the UN has done, helping negotiate a deal to allow grain exports, has recently been nixed by Vladimir Putin. In reality, Zelensky's visit was a "drop-by" en route to Washington, "where the real business of enforcing world order will take place", as it has for decades. The multilateral dreams of the UN are increasingly irrelevant as China, Russia, Iran and others assert their power. "Liberal internationalists" might enjoy the odd knees-up, but the truth about today's world order "lies in the rubble of Bakhmut".

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Bit of a pay gap: Bragg, left, and Lineker. Roberto Ricciuti; Dave Benett/Getty

Melvyn Bragg, who has recorded 1,000 episodes of In Our Time, is a "passionate supporter of the BBC", says Ben Dowell in The Times. But he's not sure about its pay structure. "I get about the same audience as Gary Lineker" on Match of the Day, he says – about two million or so. Yet Lineker, who earned £1.35m last year, "is paid 27 times more than I am."

Noted

Leo in London. Dave Hogan/ Getty

Leonardo DiCaprio has found a canny way to cross London incognito, says The Sun: "diplomatic immunity". The A-lister has apparently been zipping around town in a bright blue £80,000 Range Rover with blacked-out windows, which belongs to a diplomat at the London embassy of the Ivory Coast. As the vehicle is equipped with diplomatic plates, police simply ignore the odd bit of speeding or jumping a red light. Alright for some.

Snapshot

Snapshot answer

It's the performance artist Marina Abramović's Imponderabilia, which opens at the Royal Academy of Arts on Saturday as part of a retrospective of her 50-year career. Visitors must squeeze between two nude performers to gain entry to the rest of the exhibition, which forces a "confrontation between nakedness, and the gender, the sexuality, the desire", says Andrea Tarsia, the RA's head of exhibitions. There will also be a normal entrance for the prudish.