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| | | Cases of "superflu" could triple in the coming weeks, Wes Streeting has warned, saying a surge in the particularly infectious strain means the health service is facing "a challenge unlike any it has seen since the pandemic". NHS figures showed flu cases at a record level for the time of year after jumping 55% last week. Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte has warned that Europe must prepare for war with Russia as he urged allies to rapidly boost military spending to meet the threat. Speaking in Berlin, the former Dutch PM said "we are Russia's next target", and that the continent faces a conflict "on the scale of war our grandparents and great-grandparents endured". The most spectacular meteor shower of the year will reach its peak this evening, offering skywatchers the chance to see up to 100 shooting stars an hour. If it's a dark, clear night, the Geminids will be at their best at around 2am, but you should be able to see meteors from mid-evening onwards. | | |  | Worth preserving? Views of Modern Rome by Giovanni Paolo Panini (1759) |
| The real reason America has soured on Europe | The best way to understand the Trump administration's new National Security Strategy – which effectively questions whether Europe can remain an American ally – is in the context of "civilisational ties", says Noah Smith on Substack. The American right has traditionally valued Europe because they think of it as a "White Christian homeland"; as the "source and font of Western civilisation". Whereas America itself was a rough, contested frontier, the Old World stood across the Atlantic as a place of "timeless homogeneity" where the native white population had always been and would always remain. This, as much as anything, was what motivated American conservatives in the Cold War: "preserving Christendom from the threat of godless communism". | In recent years it has dawned on these Americans that this "hallowed image" of Europe is no longer accurate. European countries have taken in millions of Muslim refugees and other immigrants from the Middle East and Asia, many of whom haven't assimilated as well as their peers in the US. Increasingly, you'll hear Americans say "Paris isn't Paris anymore" or "London isn't London". For America's rightists, this is a catastrophe. That's why the National Security Strategy lays into Europe, claiming it lacks "civilisational self-confidence" and "Western identity". Its authors don't intrinsically care about democracy or Nato. They care about "Western civilisation". So unless Europe starts expelling Muslim immigrants, say, or talking up its Christian heritage, America's right won't lift a finger to help it, with Ukraine or anything else. Personally I wish that weren't the case, but it's the reality Europe faces. "America is not riding to the rescue this time, or for the foreseeable future." | 🇷🇺🥰 All this also helps explain why the MAGA movement is so uncritical of Vladimir Putin, says Thomas Friedman in The New York Times. They think the Russian strongman is more likely than Europe to defend white Christian nationalism and "traditional values". |
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| | | | | | Heritage England has added nearly 200 new and updated entries to the national heritage list, says Mark Brown in The Guardian, including the pyramid-shaped anti-tank obstacles known as "dragon's teeth" in Surrey's Thorneycroft Wood; Tudor Croft garden with its terracotta elves and gnomes overlooking the North York Moors; the timber-framed Draper's Windmill near Margate, Kent; the garden of Great Ruffins in Essex; the submarine telephone cable hauler and gantry at Enderby's wharf in Greenwich, which helped facilitate the first successful transatlantic phone call; and the tiny Broxwood Court Garden Chapel in Herefordshire. Click on the image to see the rest. |
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| | | There is an idea on parts of the US right that World War Two was an "unnecessary disaster" for Britain, says Daniel Finkelstein in The Times. For the likes of Tucker Carlson, Hitler's invasion of Poland was nothing to do with us, so why care? This is a "spectacularly ill-informed position". In 1943, Hitler's foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop celebrated his 50th birthday, and his colleagues gave him a beautiful silver casket filled with the many treaties he had negotiated. Confusion and embarrassment arose when it was realised that "the Nazis had broken almost all of them". When Hitler was told, "he thought it absolutely hilarious". | | |  | A pair of Soay sheep: absolute love rats. Getty |
| Cambridge biology boffins have produced a "monogamy ranking" of dozens of different mammals, says Aylin Woodward in The Wall Street Journal. To decide which fauna are faithful and which have "cheatin' hearts", the scientists compared the number of full siblings in a population with the number of half-siblings. More full siblings = more monogamous; more halfies = more love rats. Bottom of the list was Scotland's ultra-promiscuous Soay sheep, with just 0.6% full siblings; top was the upstanding California deermouse, with an astonishing 100% full-sibling rate. Humans had a so-so 66%, putting us in seventh between the Lar gibbon and the Eurasian beaver. | | | | |  | Peter Nicholls/Getty |
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| Streeting is right about doctors | With flu cases at record levels and hospital trusts declaring critical incidents, says Fraser Nelson on Substack, the leaders of the British Medical Association have scheduled five days of strikes from 17 to 22 December, "right through the Christmas crunch". This is disgraceful, but it's no surprise junior doctors are peeved. Britain rejects around 16,000 medical school applicants each year while importing roughly 20,000 doctors. One in six of Nigeria's registered doctors now works in Britain, alongside one in 10 of Pakistan's. A BMA survey in July found that 52% of doctors finishing basic training had no job for August. That's not "hadn't found their preferred role" – it's no job at all. Despite spending seven years training at vast public expense. Only one in five applicants for GP specialism succeeds, "in a country crying out for GPs". Psychiatry and radiology are numerically harder to get into than Oxford. | In online forums, junior doctors complain far more about these absurdities in the training pipeline than they do about pay. Which is why Wes Streeting's latest offer to see off the strikes is clever. The health secretary is ignoring the lefty leadership of the BMA – who are obsessed with pay, demanding ever more ridiculous sums – and appealing directly to members by promising to fix training and career opportunities. Emergency legislation would prioritise UK graduates for specialty training posts, add 4,000 additional posts over the next three years and end the ludicrous system of making young doctors pay to sit mandatory exams. "On pay: nothing." Streeting is betting that the promise of a functioning career is worth more than another percentage point in salary. We'll soon find out if doctors agree. | | | | This video of a terrifying skydiving snafu in Australia has racked up millions of views, says Arpan Rai in The Independent. Footage shows a backup chute activating by mistake, hoiking the jumper out of the plane – and knocking his pal off the side of the aircraft – before snagging him on a rear wingtip. Thankfully he was able to use a "hook knife" to cut himself free, before releasing his normal parachute and landing safely. Watch the whole video here. | | | | | The Spectator has found someone pretty decent to provide Christmas book recommendations this year: Her Majesty the Queen. The novels Camilla suggests giving as presents include the "irresistibly charming" The Cazalet Chronicles by Elizabeth Jane Howard; The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng, full of "immensely skilled writing"; the "accomplished and ambitious" Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead; Gill Hornby's Miss Austen, "funny, warm and engaging"; the "wonderfully rich family saga" A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth; and William Boyd's The Predicament, following "my favourite reluctant spy", Gabriel Dax. | | | | The perfect Christmas present | | This year we're offering readers a bundle of all three of our wonderful little books – Notes & Quotes, Insults and Love Etc. – at a 23% discount, so just £29.99 (including free UK p&p). It's the perfect Christmas present, or three presents if you have lots of stockings to fill. | |
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| | | | | | They're four Afghan lads, says Mahfouz Zubaide on BBC News, who were ordered to report to the Taliban government's department of vice and virtue for dressing up in costumes inspired by the BBC series Peaky Blinders. The friends were told that their outfits were "in conflict with Afghan and Islamic values", said a Taliban spokesman, adding that the TV show – charting the rise of murderous gangsters filling a postwar power vacuum – went against Afghan culture. Which, you know. Pot, kettle. | | | "The state is the kind of organisation which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly too."
JK Galbraith |
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