| | The Conservatives are heading for a 1997-style electoral wipeout, according to a shock new poll. The YouGov survey of 14,000 voters forecasts that the Tories will retain just 169 seats while Labour sweeps to power with 385, in what would be the biggest collapse in support for a governing party since 1906. Rishi Sunak will face MPs this afternoon for the first time since the US and UK airstrikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen on Friday. The PM has described the operation as "self-defence" following attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea. A volcano in Iceland has erupted for the second time in a month, spewing lava towards the town of Grindavik. Residents were evacuated before the new fissures opened up; to limit damage to buildings, officials are considering pumping in seawater and using it to cool the lava. | | | |  | The aftermath of an Israeli airstrike on Gaza. Mahmud Hams/AFP/Getty |
| It no longer makes sense just to blame Hamas | The atrocities of October 7 were designed to "replicate the anti-Semitic madness of the Holocaust", says Andrew Sullivan on Substack. Like the architects of 9/11, Hamas had the "psychologically astute" goal of triggering the deepest fears of its victims, pushing them into "trauma and overreach". In this, the terrorist group has surely succeeded, just as al-Qaeda did. And just as Americans did in 2001, Israelis have "lost their minds a little". Who can blame them? There is no way to experience an assault that violent and remain sane in the aftermath. The question now is "whether they will lose their souls as well". | What's happening in Gaza is not genocide – there is no evidence Israel wants to exterminate the Arab race, or even the Palestinian part of it. But the "wasteland of mass death and destruction" is disturbing enough. Some 85% of the population have fled their homes, 70% of which have been destroyed or heavily damaged. In just three months, nearly 24,000 people have been killed – some by 2,000-pound bombs that kill or maim anyone within 1,000 feet – with civilians, "especially women and children", vastly outnumbering Hamas militants among the dead. Yes, the terrorist group deliberately uses civilians as "fodder and human shields", which means they bear "ultimate responsibility for the carnage". But when you see the "sheer scale of the punishment" Israel is meting out – the wrecked hospitals, the mass starvation, the 10,000 dead children – it no longer makes sense "to put all the blame on Hamas". | | Nice work if you can get it |
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| | Denmark has a new monarch. King Frederik X took over from his 83-year-old mother Queen Margrethe II when she formally abdicated yesterday, the first Danish sovereign to do so in nearly 900 years. Though there is no elaborate coronation ceremony as in Britain, tens of thousands of Danes gathered outside Christiansborg Castle in Copenhagen to see 55-year-old Frederik, blinking back tears, declare that he hoped to be a "unifying king" – and then kiss his wife Mary, the daughter of two Scots, to whoops from the crowd. |
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| | | American politicians who want to "seek compromise" with Russia over Ukraine, in order to focus on competition with China, haven't thought things through, says Paul Mason in The New European. Ukraine is "home to the largest untapped lithium deposits in Europe", produces 7% of the world's titanium and is the sixth-biggest iron ore producer. If Kyiv doesn't get enough weapons from the West, Moscow could win the war outright and subjugate Ukraine economically. Vladimir Putin would not only gain access to all these commodities, but also control of a quarter of the world's wheat supply. And all these vast resources would be available to the Kremlin's most powerful ally: Beijing. | | | | Enjoying The Knowledge? Click below to share |
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| | | | | The finalists of the Close-up Photographer of the Year competition, selected from nearly 12,000 entries spanning 67 countries, include shots of wood ants in the Netherlands defending their nest by spraying acid; a translucent moray eel curved into a heart shape in the Philippines; a juvenile fish sheltering beneath a blue-button hydroid in the Pacific; and a weevil with its head stuck in an acorn. See more here. | | |  | A "self-serving apparatchik"? Former Post Office chief Paula Vennells. Simon Dawson/Bloomberg/Getty |
| In Britain, the little guy always loses | Though the Post Office scandal is an especially shocking example, says Camilla Cavendish in the FT, it follows the pattern of other tragedies where the "self-serving apparatchik class" tries to cover its tracks. The deaths of babies at Morecambe Bay hospital were uncovered by a father, James Titcombe, who was "repeatedly fobbed off" about the death of his own child. The sexual abuse of girls in Rotherham was revealed by The Times, despite "extensive obfuscation" by the local council. The Post Office, which is state-owned but independent, is one of many "fundamentally unaccountable" hybrid organisations in Britain, like the privatised water monopolies which have spent years "illegally dumping sewage into our water". And the cadre in charge almost always get plush new jobs despite their "egregious failings": former Post Office chief Paula Vennells, for example, went on to chair an NHS trust. "Individuals may occasionally be caught out, but the machine just rolls on." | One reason this scandal has particularly resonated, says Camilla Tominey in The Daily Telegraph, is that it speaks to how the "honest, hard-working and upstanding" are hounded by these organisations, even at an everyday level. From dealing with quangos like HMRC and the Passport Office, to doing "something as simple as trying to park your car", you'll encounter obstructive forces eager to dole out "overly harsh punishments with little right of reply". Dissent over "supposed innovations", like paying for parking by smartphone, never seems to have an effect. Institutions invariably hide behind online chatbots and "helplines" with no actual humans at the end of them, yet are quick to punish you if, for example, you're a pensioner who struggles to deal with paperwork. These "exasperating encounters" are nothing compared to what the victims of the Post Office scandal have been through – but we can all identify with their "David vs Goliath battle". | | | | | | Fashionable teens are increasingly living in the past, says The Times. In a new social media trend, users share videos of their "historical lives" in which the costumes, cooking and habits of past ages are the norm. "Roman wax tablets replace a pen and paper; Tudor recipes are used for Christmas dinner." Netflix's Bridgerton has inspired a wave of Georgian cosplay, for example, in which kids bedeck themselves in wigs, lace and bodices. One leading proponent is tailor and influencer Zack Pinsent (pictured), who ceremonially burned his jeans aged 14 and lives full-time in Regency garb. | |
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| | Working from home is bad for your career, says The Wall Street Journal. A new study of two million white-collar professionals in the US over the past year has found that remote workers were promoted 31% less frequently than those who went into the office either every day or on a hybrid basis. Nearly 90% of chief executives surveyed for the research said they were more likely to give "favourable assignments, raises or promotions" to those willing to commute in. | | | | | | It's the X-59, Nasa's new "quiet" supersonic aircraft. Known as the "Son of Concorde", the experimental jet is expected to fly at 1.4 times the speed of sound, or around 925mph, says The Guardian. It has no forward-facing windows – the pilot will instead rely on some presumably pretty high-end cameras – and an engine positioned above the cockpit to help prevent sonic booms. The hope is that the plane will be quiet enough to persuade US regulators to overturn the 1973 ban on commercial supersonic flights over land, potentially opening up a new era of super-fast air travel. | | | | | "The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom."
HL Mencken |
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