In the headlines

Keir Starmer has given doctors 48 hours to call off their planned six-day strike next week, or face losing 1,000 extra training places. The British Medical Association rejected an offer last week that would have provided resident doctors (formerly known as junior doctors) with pay rises of up to 7.1% this year, and is seeking "full pay restoration" to 2008 levels, equivalent to a 26% raise. Donald Trump has told aides he is willing to end US military action in Iran without reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Officials tell The Wall Street Journal the US president has decided that if diplomatic efforts fail, he will leave it to allies in Europe and the Gulf to get trade flowing through the waterway again. The Treasury is set to receive a multi-billion-pound tax windfall thanks to levies on oil and gas firms. If fuel prices remain elevated for 12 months, says The Times, the government will pocket an extra £8bn.

Comment

Matt Cardy/Getty

The ruling in California last week that social media is designed to addict users has been hailed as the tech industry's "Big Tobacco" moment, says James Marriott in The Times. But the most important factor in declining rates of smoking wasn't lawsuits – it was its "eroding social status". The key with the indoor smoking ban was that it forced smokers to "repeatedly ostracise themselves" from friends on a night out. Dread of social exclusion was a much stronger spur to action than the distant prospect of emphysema. If we are to cure our screen addictions, smartphones will have to go on a similar cultural journey "from high to low status". And there are already signs of that happening.

When I was growing up, a smartphone was an "incontestably glamorous object". Now everyone has one and not being on social media is considered far classier than being on it. Mindless scrolling is increasingly viewed as being rather "common". Restricting your phone use has become a social signifier: you have will power; you've read your Jonathan Haidt. Same for your children. In the US, nannies to "upper-bourgeois" families can be sacked for so much as looking at their phone in front of the kids. Ostentatious self-denial has always been a feature of middle-class status – think of those prosperous burghers in Rembrandt's Amsterdam dressed in "sober black", or the vogue for veganism and marathons in our modern era of abundant calories. So it's not impossible to imagine a world where the "statusful" middle-class activities of the future will be book clubs, maths olympiads and tech fasts. And that an aversion to screen time will become a habit that trickles down through society, like baby names or fashion. Here's hoping.

Advertisement

Carbon munchers, historic monuments, wildlife heroes. Trees mean something different to us all, but they have one thing in common – we need them, and they need us.

The Woodland Trust is the UK's largest woodland conservation charity, and when you become a member, you're helping them protect the trees we all need. From rare temperate rainforests to burgeoning new woods, your membership will ensure they can nurse neglected forests back to health and get more trees in the ground. Join today from just £4 a month and play your part in nurturing thriving wild spaces for generations to come.

Architecture

Dezeen has compiled a pleasing list of houses that "rethink the roof", including a re-imagined dormer window in West Sussex; a house in Melbourne where brickwork runs seamlessly from the walls over the pitched roof; a holiday home on Ishigaki Island, Japan topped with a circular garden; a house in the Cotswolds with tiered roofs in the shape of leaves; and a home in Tamil Nadu, India where ribbons of earth-toned concrete connect two bungalows in a staggered wave. Click the image to see the rest.

Don't you dare

Lucille Ball with the right idea in I Love Lucy

Don't subscribe to The Knowledge. Please. We've been hearing from subscribers that when they go to parties and make witty, erudite points about the issues of the day, or bring up quirky facts and bizarre online trends, more and more of them are finding fellow guests saying: "oh yes, I read about that in The Knowledge". This must stop at once. Our readers rely on us to help them stand out in even the most informed company, and I'm afraid we have to discriminate to protect their advantage.

So don't subscribe, even though it's just £4 a month – a quid a week – or an even more keenly priced £40 for the whole first year. Forget that you would spend that on an ok meal out, or a big round at the pub. Put out of your mind that for that low low price you, too, could dazzle at work, or at bridge, or while making idle chit chat at the garden centre. We're sorry, but you simply must not subscribe.

Don't even think about clicking the button below.

Click here to subscribe

Let us know what you thought of today's issue by replying to this email
To find out about advertising and partnerships, click here
Been forwarded this newsletter? Try it for free
Enjoying The Knowledge? Click to share