| Labour has pledged to make it simpler for people to change gender, cutting down paperwork to "remove indignities" for trans people. The current rule requires people to prove they have lived for two years as their preferred gender. It will be replaced with a two-year cooling-off period after their application for a gender recognition certificate is submitted. Barcelona's mayor has promised to ban Airbnb by 2028. Over 10,000 tourist flat licences will be eliminated following a wave of public protest against mass tourism and rent increases, which have soared by 70% in the past decade. A 13-year-old boy from Somerset has become the first patient in the world to trial a new device fitted into his skull to treat severe epilepsy. Oran Knowlson sometimes suffered hundreds of seizures a day before he was fitted with the neurostimulator, which sends electrical signals deep into his brain, reducing the number by 80%. | | | | John Phillips/Getty |
| JK Rowling's right about Starmer | I have long wanted Labour to win this election, says Matthew Syed in The Sunday Times. But like JK Rowling, I'm increasingly worried about their willingness to "bend to the latest manifestations of progressive opinion". In a powerful article on Saturday, the Harry Potter author highlighted the opposition front bench's "shifting and often craven" stance on trans activism, and the "absurdity" of some of their views. Anneliese Dodds, shadow secretary for women and equalities, said the definition of a woman "depends on what the context is". David Lammy called feminists like Rowling "dinosaurs hoarding rights". As for Keir Starmer, when he was asked in 2021 if he agreed with Labour MP Rosie Duffield's assertion that "only women have a cervix", he responded: "Well it is something that shouldn't be said. It is not right." | This isn't the only issue on which these people have shown a tendency to "obediently spout the ideology of the dominant group", like Red Guards in the Cultural Revolution. When Jeremy Corbyn was ascendent, they "paraded themselves with this radical socialist" and happily "dog-whistled to the anti-Semitic base in the Labour Party". Today, they have "surreptitiously backtracked" on Israel and are trying to pass themselves off as "fiscally responsible types". My concern is that a future Labour government will "genuflect before any campaign with sufficient momentum". What if a determined clique calls for billions in slavery reparations? What if there's another pandemic and teaching unions demand the closure of schools for a year? Does anyone have any idea how Starmer would react? I've been a Labour member for most of my life, but when it comes to this front bench, "I honestly don't". | | | | Advances in colour printing technology at the end of the 19th century unleashed a flood of intricately detailed handbills and fliers, which had suddenly become an affordable way to advertise the latest books and magazines, says the art magazine Hyperallergic. Top literary journals like Lippincott's Monthly and Harper's were some of the first to avail themselves of the new tech, with cover art featuring, among other things, "thoroughly modern" girls riding bikes, snuggling cats and, of course, reading. A new exhibition at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Art of the Literary Poster, has gathered some fine examples. Buy the accompanying book here. |
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| | | 🗳️ 10 days to go… Political betting isn't big business, says Gus Carter in The Spectator: a measly £426,000 has been wagered on the general election on Betfair, compared to about £300m on the Grand National. But it's not uncommon in Westminster. A member of the Remain campaign reportedly put £5,000 on Leave, then "irritated colleagues by appearing cheerful as the results came in". Someone on Theresa May's 2017 team apparently lost their life savings betting on a Tory majority. And one parliamentary aide tells me he bet against a candidate in a Tory leadership contest, knowing this person was the subject of a "dossier's worth of gossip". Sure enough, the hopeful dropped out and the staffer made a "healthy return". | | | | Advertisement | | Millions of drivers who took out a motor finance deal to purchase a vehicle could be eligible for financial compensation. After a recent investigation by the Financial Conduct Authority, it has emerged that financial lenders including Black Horse, Barclays Partner Finance, Santander, MotoNovo, Close Brothers and many others could be ordered to pay substantial amounts of compensation back to their motor finance customers. Anyone who bought a vehicle with a finance agreement between January 2014 and January 2021 can do a free check to find out if they can make a claim. To see if you're eligible, click here. |
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| | | | The Iberian lynx in Castilla la Mancha, Spain. Antonio Liebana/Getty |
| Successful conservation efforts have brought the Iberian lynx back from the brink of extinction, says BBC News. Thanks to an extensive project aimed at increasing the abundance of the big cat's main food source – the also endangered European rabbit – numbers in the wild grew from 62 in 2001 to 648 in 2022, allowing for its removal from the extinction red list. Francisco Javier Salcedo Ortiz, who led the scheme, calls it the "greatest recovery of a cat species ever achieved through conservation". | | | | Enjoying The Knowledge? Click below to share | | |
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| | | | Matthew McConaughey and Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) |
| Why Wall Street billionaires are backing Trump | One puzzling aspect of the US election, says Janan Ganesh in the FT, is why so many Wall Street billionaires and tech titans are backing Donald Trump. Self-interest obviously plays a part, what with Trump's enthusiasm for low taxes. But there's another, more important factor: "the self-made super-rich tend to grossly overrate contrarianism". Dissent is at the heart of all financial success. "Why buy an asset unless you think the market has underpriced it? Why set up a business unless you think the world is wrong not to have offered that product or service already?" That's why, when people seek investment from venture capitalist Peter Thiel, he apparently asks them: "What important truth do very few people agree with you on?" Without original thought, "it is hard to make serious money". | "All power to this attitude", and the prosperity it creates. But that doesn't mean it should be applied to public life. It's not just that it can result in undergraduate-level insolence – a partner at the VC firm Sequoia Capital says he is pro-Trump because he doesn't "drink the media Kool-Aid". It also leads to "cavalier action and a mispricing of risk". In business, if you support a radical proposition that turns out to be wrong, the most you can lose is your original investment. In politics, "the consequences might be, oh I don't know, societal ruin". Self-made tycoons are, pretty much by definition, people "whose moments of iconoclasm have worked out". Let's hope their judgement is as sound "when being wrong entails something worse than a sheepish call with investors". | | | | Li Tinnirai beach in Sardinia: steer clear of the "cursed buttercup". Andrea Comi/Getty |
| A surprising number of English words are derived from Italian place names, says Engelsberg Ideas. Jeans comes from the Ligurian port town of Genoa, and milliner from Milan, a city renowned in the Middle Ages for selling bonnets. Some say pistol has its roots in the Tuscan city of Pistoia, "famous for its gun-smithing". And sardonic comes from Sardinia: in around 560AD, the historian Procopius wrote that people who ate the Sardinian herb Ranunculus sceleratus, or "cursed buttercup", had fatal convulsions that had "the appearance of embittered laughter". |
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| | | People constantly bang on about Joe Biden's supposed senility, says Susan Glasser in The New Yorker. They should try listening to Donald Trump. In recent months the former president – who at 78 is only three years younger than his Democratic opponent – has confused Nancy Pelosi with Nikki Haley, Biden with Barack Obama, and South Dakota with Iowa. The other week he interrupted a campaign rally in Nevada for an extended rant about sharks and electrocution. Look back at his speeches from 2016, or even 2020, and they seem "positively lucid" by comparison. "If ever there were a case for age-related diminishment of a candidate, Donald Trump is it." | | | | | | | | It's Wild Thang, the winner of this year's World's Ugliest Dog competition. The eight-year-old Pekingese triumphed over several other horrible hounds, including a one-eyed 14-year old Pug named Rome; a white-coated mongrel called Daisy Mae who has lost her teeth, hair and vision; and Freddie Mercury, a Brussels-Griffon/Pug cross with a massive underbite and splaying gnashers. Wild Thang, who won the $5,000 prize at the fifth time of asking, was diagnosed with canine distemper as a 10-week-old puppy, meaning he has no teeth. Check out the runners-up here. | | | | "Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see." German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer |
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