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2 NEWSTHE WEEK 27 August 2016 The main stories… It wasn’t all bad “What a great Games!” said The Daily Telegraph.. All the big economic powers invest in the Olympics, said Dominic Sandbr

2 NEWS

THE WEEK 27 August 2016

The main stories…

It wasn’t all bad

“What a great Games!” said The Daily Telegraph The hostcity’s performance has been uneven – with empty seats, pools

that turned green, and filthy water inGuanabara Bay, where the sailing tookplace “But Team GB has truly stolen theshow.” Just 20 years ago, at the AtlantaOlympics, Britain won a solitary goldmedal, in rowing “With the help of theLottery, combined with the added impetus

of hosting the 2012 Games in London, ithas been possible to identify and train topathletes in sports across the board.”Britain won golds in 15 disciplines, awider spread than any other country.British athletes in Rio have covered themselves in glory, saidThe Observer But Team GB’s “no compromise” model also

“raises difficult questions” The £347m in Lottery and publicmoney spent since 2012 has been targeted ruthlessly Sportsthat were unlikely to reap a medal were denied funding – even

if, like basketball and football, they are popular at grass-rootslevel among the country’s less well-off and less healthy Bycontrast, sports such as cycling and rowing, favoured by thebetter-off, have received massive investment Meanwhile,across the country, public sports facilities are “decaying”

We “must nurture the shoots as well as the tallest blades”

The Rio 2016 Olympic Games ended with

a carnival-inspired closing ceremony on

Sunday night, bringing to a close 16 days

of competition, featuring 11,303 athletes

from 206 nations, along with a refugee

team A total of 306 gold medals were

doled out in a Games that cost the host

nation £8.8bn Team GB finished second in

the medal table, below the US and above

China, with 27 golds and 67 medals in all

– bettering its haul of 65 at London 2012

In the later stages of the Games, Nick Skelton won a

showjumping gold at the age of 58, while brothers Alistair and

Jonny Brownlee took the gold and silver in the triathlon The

women’s hockey team beat the favourites Netherlands in a

penalty shoot-out in the final, watched by some nine million

viewers on the BBC Nicola Adams became the first woman to

successfully defend an Olympic boxing gold, while Jade

“Headhunter” Jones also retained her title in taekwondo

Last Saturday, Mo Farah won the 5,000m, completing a

“double-double” of 5,000m and 10,000m titles in consecutive

Olympics Mark England, Team GB’s chef de mission, said:

“I have no doubt this is our greatest ever Games.”

A Games to remember

Over the last five years “tens of thousands” of civilians havebeen killed in Syria’s civil war, said The Times Yet it has

taken the picture of one small, traumatised boy

to “prick the world’s conscience” His

“shocked face” is a reproach to the West forletting “this madness continue” But inter-national condemnation has little effect on theAssad regime, said The Guardian Last summer

a similar storm of protest greeted pictures of athree-year-old Syrian boy, found drowned on aTurkish beach after a refugee boat capsized.Yet a year later the combatants were stilllocked in a war being “fought with callousdisregard for humanitarian conventions”.The conflict is actually intensifying, said TheWall Street Journal Russian and Syrian aircrafthave stepped up their attacks in Aleppo indirect response to recent rebel gains But even with the Russianair cover, Syria’s “demoralised” army – Assad can now deployonly 20,000 “battle-ready troops” – seems incapable ofwinning an outright victory in the city The “bloodystalemate” looks set to continue

Harrowing pictures of a dazed and

blood-covered Syrian boy rescued from his bombed

home in Aleppo last week provoked

international outrage Video footage showed

five-year-old Omran Daqneesh in the back of

an ambulance just minutes after he had been

pulled from the rubble of an apartment

building destroyed by an air strike on the

rebel-held east of the city Released by

opposition activists, the pictures were

immediately shared on social media across

the world Five other members of Omran’s

family were pulled out alive, but his

ten-year-old brother later died in hospital

The attack was widely blamed on Russian

warplanes supporting the army of President Assad, which is

attempting to encircle the city To deflect international

criticism, Moscow agreed to support a 48-hour truce to

allow humanitarian relief into the east of the city, which has

been entirely cut off from aid since last month

The tragedy of Aleppo

A San Francisco-based tech

tycoon is pouring millions into

the small north Devon village

where he spent his childhood

holidays British-born Bebo

founder Michael Birch, 46,

returned to Woolsery – where

members of his family have

lived since the 1700s – and was

shocked to find that its pub,

hotel and chippy had all closed

down So rather than see the

village die, he set about buying

and restoring them Residents

have described his support as

like “winning the lottery”

A gang of muggers chose thewrong target when they setupon 77-year-old Winifred Peel.The trio surrounded Mrs Peel at

an ATM, near her home on theWirral, shoved her aside, andpressed the button to get £200from her account Mrs Peel,who goes to the gym four times

a week, was shaken, but wasn’tgiving up without a fight Shemanaged to grab one of thethieves by the collar, thenrammed his head against themachine several times Themuggers ran off, but were sooncaught – and all three have nowbeen jailed

Water voles have returned to a lake in the Yorkshire Dales for the first time in half a century.

Around 100 voles were reintroduced last week to Malham Tarn, England’s highest freshwater lake The creatures were once found in nearly every waterway in Britain, but are now the country’s fastest-declining mammal – facing a range of threats, including the American mink, which preys voraciously on them Reintroduction schemes and efforts to control minks are yielding dividends, however: voles are now repopulating parts of Cornwall and the South Downs.

COVER CARTOON: HOWARD MCWILLIAM

The Brownlee brothers: silver and gold

Omran: a reproach to the West

NEWS 3

27 August 2016 THE WEEK

…and how they were covered

What next?

“Imagine a country that isn’t very successful, but wants to boost its image in the world,” said

Peter Hitchens in The Mail on Sunday Its economy is “rocky”, its cities “grubby”, its schools

poor So this country spends huge amounts of money on winning medals, choosing sports

where the competition is weak “The country I am thinking of is East Germany.” But doesn’t it

apply equally to Britain today? “We used to ridicule the communists for this,” said Simon

Jenkins in The Guardian Now we’ve joined them They call it “financial doping” It’s no

surprise that it works “Who needs to cheat with drugs when medals go to money?”

Come, come, said Martin Kettle in The Guardian “The truth is that the Olympics is good

national value.” The £350m that we have put into the Olympic effort since 2012 is “a tiny

proportion of total public spending over the same period” And it creates all sorts of benefits:

inspiring people to take part in sports; making people from all sorts of backgrounds feel a part

of Britain; creating a general “feel-good factor” All the big economic powers invest in the

Olympics, said Dominic Sandbrook in the Daily Mail: just look at the medal tables Shouldn’t

it be a source of pride that we do it well? And the old sneer, that we are only any good at

specialised “sitting-down sports” such as rowing, cycling and sailing, is no longer true, said Jim

White in The Daily Telegraph Hockey, swimming, diving, running, triathlon, boxing,

gymnastics, tennis, golf and taekwondo are not exactly “sedentary”

For Brazil, though, the games were less of a success, said Jonathan Watts in The Observer In

the midst of an economic crisis, it has spent billions on stadiums though it “can barely afford

wages for doctors and teachers”; while a big security presence in the Olympic areas led to chaos

in the favelas Yet the Games will certainly leave a positive legacy, said Beatriz Garcia on The

Conversation Tourism has boomed The run-down areas chosen as venues for the Games have

been rehabilitated And thanks in large part to the Olympic infrastructure effort, 63% of the

population now have access to public transport, up from 18% seven years ago

What the commentators said

Tokyo 2020 will be moredifficult for Team GB, saidThe Daily Telegraph Japanwill invest heavily in itsathletes, and the Chineseteam, after a disappointingshowing in Rio, will be keen

to make a strong statement

on its own doorstep TheAustralians, likewisedisappointing in Brazil,

“won’t lie down” And –assuming that Russia canallay the concerns of theOlympic authorities overdoping – there will be a fullRussian delegation as well.The Paralympic Games willtake place in Rio next month,said BBC News online.However, they face majorbudget cuts, as the organisingcommittee has not raisedenough money in ticket sales

to fund them (see page 6).

What next?

The picture of Omran Daqneesh has “captivated the world”, said Robin Wright in The New

Yorker But he is just one of a generation of “war-ravaged” young Syrians facing the worst

conditions in the world More than a third of all casualties in Aleppo are now children Only a

“trickle of food” is reaching the city, there is no safe drinking water, and the injured are in

constant danger: last month alone saw 42 air strikes on medical facilities, according to a group

of Aleppo doctors who appealed to the White House for US intervention What’s more, only

35 doctors remain for a population of 300,000 in the rebel-held district, said Zaher Sahloul, a

Syrian-American doctor, in The Guardian On my own visits, I have had to operate in hospitals

without anaesthetics and under bombardment Omran’s plight should remind the world of “a

tragedy that has been unfolding for years”

It’s high time for a “robust” intervention from the US, said Thanassis Cambanis in Foreign

Policy Under the “detached” leadership of President Obama, America “has let deadline after

deadline lapse without consequence”, emboldening Assad and his Russian allies Let’s now step

up our training of “vetted” rebel groups, provide them with anti-aircraft weapons and deploy

US special forces But who precisely are our allies, asked Jonathan Spyer in The Spectator The

idea of a potent “moderate” rebel force is a “myth” Today the Syrian rebellion is run by

Islamist forces, in particular the so-called “Army of Conquest” coalition, which has links to

al-Qa’eda To be sure, an Assad victory would be a “disaster” leading to the region’s

domination by an anti-West Shia coalition led by Iran But a rebel victory would turn Syria

into a “Sunni Islamist dictatorship” The best answer may be to leave Assad in control of some

“enclaves” while helping Kurdish-led forces, our strongest allies, to crush Isis That would at

least recognise the new reality: that, as a “unitary state”, Syria “no longer exists”

What the commentators said

The UN says it is prepared

to start delivering aid toAleppo this week, but itfirst wants a commitmentfrom all the warring parties– not only Russia – thatthey will respect the truce

It is also calling for aregular, weekly two-dayhalt in the fighting

According to The Times,Moscow is pressing Turkeyfor permission to operatefrom the key Incirlik airbase, already used by Natoand home to a stock of USnuclear warheads Ankara’sagreement would be seen inWashington as evidence of

an alarming alliancebetween Moscow and avital member of Nato

Blackmail or child abuse – which is more harmful? Which meritsmore police attention? You might think these precisely the sorts ofquestion that call for nuanced human judgement, the answersvarying according to the context You’d be wrong As The Times reports this week, senior police

officers now seem eager to outsource such judgements to a “menu of harm” index developed by

Government statisticians and Cambridge University academics Taking a range of factors into account

– the number of offenders in jail for a given crime, for example – the index vouchsafes that blackmail

is actually more serious than child abuse, robbery of personal property than child abduction

This contracting-out of moral judgement to expertise is not a lone example: we do it all the time

Look how we defer to economists Their proper role is to explain economic outcomes (which they’re

good at) and, to a lesser extent, to predict them (which they’re pretty bad at) What they’ve no

busi-ness telling us, however, is what those outcomes should be and how we must act (The assumption

that economic expansion is the overriding purpose of social organisation is itself a moral judgement.)

Yet such is the urge to divest ourselves of moral responsibility, we invite them to do so In his new

book, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, Yuval Noah Harari speaks of our ever growing

anxiety about losing control of the power to decide our fate, as authority shifts from humans and

politics to algorithms and indices But we’re not losing control We’re ceding it

THE WEEK

Jeremy O’Grady

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4 NEWS Politics

THE WEEK 27 August 2016

Controversy of the week

Cutting the flab

“Why are you looking so grumpy?” That’s what my

kids asked me when I got home last Wednesday night,

said Jamie Oliver in The Times I had to explain to them

I was angry because “the Prime Minister had let British

children down” Last week Theresa May flunked her

first big test as PM She had a golden opportunity to

show she was serious about tackling the scourge of

obesity, by fulfilling the promise that Health Secretary

Jeremy Hunt made last year to take “draconian” action

to force food companies to change their ways But when the Government unveiled its long-awaited

obesity strategy, it proved utterly feeble “Everything about it stinks of ‘we don’t care’.”

It certainly looks as if May has put the interests of business before those of the nation’s children, said

George Eaton in the New Statesman The key measures advanced by health campaigners – curbs on

advertising (notably the use of cartoon characters to promote cereals and snacks) and on

super-markets offering promotional deals on junk foods – have been ditched And although the industry is

being asked to reduce the sugar content in food that children enjoy by 20% by 2020, said Sarah

Boseley in The Guardian, it’s only a voluntary process, which was started under Cameron’s

govern-ment – and which has been largely ineffectual The key measure is the sugar tax, already announced

by George Osborne in March: yet this only applies to soft drinks (it will put 8p on a can of Coke)

and won’t come in for two years Nor is any action being taken on fat – as much a cause of obesity

as sugar Instead, schools and parents will be asked to push children to do an hour of exercise a day

And that’s exactly where responsibility should lie, said Emma Gill in the Manchester Evening News

“How long are we going to blame the Government and advertisers for a problem that ultimately lies

with us parents?” It’s we who decide what our children put in their mouths It may not always be

fun being “the fruit-and-veg pusher, but it’s part and parcel of being a parent”

No, said Polly Toynbee in The Guardian: what we refuse to admit is that “fat is a class issue” A

third of British children are deemed to be overweight, but “most of the seriously obese are poor”

And that’s hardly surprising: when you have no prospects, are excluded from the finer things society

has to offer, and are regarded as bottom of the pecking order, small pleasures occupy a key place in

your life “It is inequality and disrespect that make people fat.” That’s why Government has a

central role to play And under the previous Labour government it played it rather well, said The

Observer It devolved responsibility for nutrition to an independent Food Standards Agency which

was “insulated from heavy industry lobbying” Hence it was able to broker industry-wide deals – to

reduce salt content in food, for example – that were copied around the world But to its shame, the

coalition government in 2010 restored nutrition policy to the Department of Health, so exposing it

once again to the powerful food and drinks lobby And May’s “craven” U-turn is the result

A third of British children are overweight

Spirit of the age Good week for:Emigration, with reports that 10,647 UK passport holders

enquired about the possibility of moving to New Zealand in theseven weeks after the Brexit vote, more than double the number

in the same period last year Nearly 1,000 of them registeredwith Immigration New Zealand on 24 June – the day the resultwas announced

Noel Edmonds, who was tipped to become Britain’s paid daytime TV presenter Although Channel 4 is axing his best-

highest-known game show, Deal or No Deal, Edmonds is due to present

several new shows for the station next year, including one called

Sell or Swap, and another called Cheap Cheap Cheap These are

expected to earn him £10m a year

Ramen noodles, which were reported to have overtakentobacco as the most valuable commodity in US prisons

Researchers say the terrible quality of the food in American jailsprobably explains the popularity of the instant noodles

Bad week for:

Working mothers, who face a growing gender pay gap, newresearch has found Young childless women working full-timetypically earn 10-15% less than male peers; but among women

with children, the gap rises to more than 33% (see page 44).

Waste management, with news that councils had to divert338,000 tons of potentially recyclable rubbish to landfill lastyear, because it was contaminated In some areas, 15% ofwaste sorted for recycling has to be rejected, often becausehouseholders haven’t washed out containers properly

Boring but important

Help to Buy “sham”

The Government’s Help toBuy Isa has been criticised

as a “sham”, followingrevelations that it can’t beused to fund the exchangedeposit on a home Since thescheme’s launch last year,more than 500,000 aspiringfirst-time buyers haveopened the accounts, whichpay a 25% “bonus” of up to

£3,000, supposedly towards

a deposit However, itemerged last week that thebonus is only paid after theexchange of contracts, asthe sale nears completion;the Treasury says this isintended to ensure recipientsuse it to buy a house.Labour called the scheme

“misleading”, while expertswarned that savers might beable to take legal action

Ofsted chair resigns

The chair of Ofsted hasresigned over hiscontroversial commentsabout the Isle of Wight At

a conference last month,former City businessmanDavid Hoare described parts

of the island – where he has

a home – as a “ghetto”where “there has beeninbreeding”, blighted by

“a mass of crime, drugproblems, and hugeunemployment” Following

an outcry, Hoare apologisedtwice, but this week he quitwith immediate effect

Poll watch

84% of people think EU

migrants living in Britainshould be allowed to remainafter Brexit, according to anICM poll for The Observer

62% want the number of

low-skilled migrants cut

However, just 12% want to

cut the number of highly

skilled immigrants; 46%

want it to increase

Meanwhile, an Ipsos Moripoll found that people areless gloomy about theeconomy than they wereimmediately after the EU

referendum 43% expect the

economy to worsen over the

next year (down from 57% last month), while 28% think

it will improve

38% of people think more

grammar schools should be

created 23% want all

existing grammar schools to

be scrapped 67% would

send their children to one

YouGov/TES

Burial space in Manhattan is

at such a premium that one

church is charging $7m for

the privilege The Basilica of

St Patrick’s Old Cathedral is

offering for sale a crypt that

can accommodate six

people The church, one of

New York City’s oldest, is

billing the crypt as “a

premier place of eternal

rest” Of the 11 remaining

cemeteries in Manhattan,

just one, New York Marble

Cemetery, still sells plots:

last year, it put two on the

market for $350,000 each

As more and more councils

introduce parking charges,

thefts of blue badges are

skyrocketing More than

2,000 of the badges – which

enable disabled drivers to

park for free, and on some

single and double yellow

lines – were recorded stolen

last year, triple the total

stolen in 2013

NEWS 5

Europe at a glance

27 August 2016 THE WEEK

The Hague,Netherlands

Jihadi repents:AMalian jihadi hasbecome the firstperson to beconvicted of warcrimes fordestroying culturalartefacts A formermember of theAnsar Dine group,Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi entered a guilty

plea at the International Criminal Court

on Monday He admitted to ordering the

destruction of nine shrines and a mosque

in the ancient Malian city of Timbuktu

after it was captured by Islamists in 2012,

and destroying several artefacts himself,

using iron bars and a pickaxe In court,

al-Mahdi (pictured) begged the Malian

people for forgiveness, described the

jihadis’ actions as “evil”, and urged other

Muslims not to “get involved in the kind

of acts I got involved in”

Paris

Race hots up:President Hollande’s former

economy minister, Arnaud Montebourg,

has announced that he plans to stand for

his party’s presidential nomination The

third – and most high-profile – of

Hollande’s former ministers to announce

his candidacy, Montebourg accused the

president of betraying his Socialist Party’s

left-wing ideals, and described his

presidential term as indefensible Hollande

himself has not yet confirmed that he will

stand in the primaries, in January, but he

is expected to do so, and Montebourg’s

declaration is a further blow to his already

slim hopes of re-election Hollande’s

current economy minister, the 38-year-old

pro-business centrist Emmanuel Macron,

is also expected to enter the race

Separately, Nicolas Sarkozy formally

launched his campaign to win the

centre-right’s presidential nomination

Amatrice, Italy

Devastating earthquake:A 6.2-magnitude

earthquake struck central Italy in the early

hours of Wednesday morning, killing at

least 60 people Hundreds have been

injured and thousands may have been left

homeless The village of Pescara del

Tronto, in Le Marche, was levelled to the

ground, as was much of the small town of

Amatrice, in Lazio, about 80 miles

northeast of Rome “The town isn’t here

anymore,” said its mayor, Sergio Pirozzi

Many of the dead are believed to have been

asleep when their houses collapsed around

them The tremor – which was followed by

several aftershocks bigger than magnitude

5.0 – shook Lazio, Umbria and Le Marche,

and was felt in Rome The death toll was

expected to rise this week as rescuers

reached remote hamlets in the area As

daylight dawned on Wednesday, villagers

were using shovels and even their bare

hands to try to dig out their neighbours

Ventotene,Italy

Show of unity:Theleaders ofGermany,Italy andFrance – theEU’s threelargest countries by population onceBritain leaves – met for a summit this week

to discuss the union’s post-Brexit future

The meeting was long on symbolism:

Merkel, Renzi and Hollande (pictured)met on the small island of Ventotene,where they visited the grave of AltieroSpinelli, an anti-fascist intellectualconsidered a progenitor of European unity

However, it was short on substance, with

no concrete policy proposals The talkswere aimed at agreeing a common positionbefore a summit of all EU countries, apartfrom the UK, in Slovakia next month

Budapest

Pig’s head comment:A Hungarian MEPhas suggested that pigs’ heads should bestrung up along Hungary’s border fence todeter migrants György Schöpflin, amember of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’sright-wing Fidesz party, made thecomment on Twitter, after AndrewStroehlein of Human Rights Watchcriticised border guards for usingscarecrows made from sugar beet to try toput off refugees “Refugees are fleeing warand torture, Hungary Your root vegetableheads will not deter them,” Stroehlein hadwritten The MEP replied: “Might do so.Human images are haram But agree, pig’shead would deter more effectively.”Campaigners say his comment reflects adeep strain of xenophobia within theFidesz government According to HumanRights Watch, migrants at Hungary’sborder with Serbia have been attacked bydogs, and beaten with batons and fists

a complete ban on full-face veils (althoughthese are a rare sight in Germany) but werereportedly warned that this would amount

to an unconstitutional encroachment onreligious freedom De Maizière is amember of Chancellor Merkel’s CDU, andone of her close confidants Merkel herselfrecently underlined her objections to theburka and other veils, when she told aninterviewer that “a fully veiled woman hasalmost no chance of integrating

successfully in German society”

Catch up with daily news at www.theweek.co.uk

Berlin

Germans told to stockpile food:TheGerman government is set to advise itscitizens to stockpile food and water in case

of a national emergency, for the first timesince the end of the Cold War, according

to a leaked report The Concept for CivilDefence, which was leaked to theFrankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitungnewspaper, states that “an attack onGerman territory, requiring conventionaldefence of the nation, is unlikely” butcannot be ruled out Under the plans,which were due to go before ministers thisweek, citizens would be advised to storeenough food to last ten days, and fivedays’ worth of drinking water, as well asfuel, candles, torches, matches and cash.Opposition MPs have dismissed theproposed advice as “scaremongering”

6 NEWS The world at a glance

THE WEEK 27 August 2016

Shishmaref, Alaska

Climate refugees:The residents of a village on a tiny low-lying

island off the coast of Alaska have voted to abandon their

homes to the rising seas, and relocate en masse to the mainland

Shishmaref (population 580) lies on a slither of land north of the

Bering Strait which has been losing 10ft a year to coastal erosion

for several years A number of houses have already crumbled into

the sea, and the Inupiat Eskimo villagers have been warned that

unless more is done to protect the island, their whole settlement

could be under water by the middle of the century The cost of

the necessary sea defences has been put at $110m; relocating the

village could cost $180m Dozens of coastal villages in the US

are similarly threatened: in February, the US government granted

$48m for the relocation of 60 people from Isle de Jean Charles,

in Louisiana, which is disappearing into the Gulf of Mexico

New York

Swimmer under fire:The gold winning swimmer Ryan Lochte has lostlucrative sponsorship deals with Speedo,Ralph Lauren and others as a result ofhis drunken escapade at the Olympics,and subsequent lies to the police Lochteand three teammates vandalised a toiletdoor at a petrol station after a night out

medal-in Rio de Janeiro, and were confronted

by security guards However, he latertold his mother he’d been robbed at gunpoint by men dressed aspolice She reported this to the press, and when he was questionedabout it, he stuck to his story – only for it to unravel in the face

of CCTV evidence This week, the New York Post said herepresented “everything the world hates about Americans”.Charlotte, North Carolina

Trump’s non-apology:Donald Trump surprised the US

last week by striking a more emollient tone, and finally

apologising – or appearing to apologise – for some of

the caustic and offensive comments he has made on

the campaign trail “Sometimes in the heat of debate

and speaking on a multitude of issues, you don’t choose the right

words or you say the wrong thing,” the Republican presidential

candidate told a rally in Charlotte “And believe it or not I regret

it And I do regret it – particularly where it may have caused

personal pain.” It was not entirely clear, though, whether Trump

really meant to apologise, or to whom – of the many people he

has insulted – he was referring When asked whether he was

apologising to the people he has hurt, he replied: “Well they have

to take it as they see it.” (See page 15.)

Caracas

Coup warning:Venezuela’s embattledsocialist president, Nicolás Maduro, haswarned his opponents that if theyattempt to overthrow him, he willrespond with a force that will makePresident Erdogan’s crackdown onpresumed coup plotters in Turkey looklike child’s play “Did you see whathappened in Turkey?” Maduro(pictured) asked during a televised eventlast week “Erdogan will seem like anursing baby compared to what the Bolivarian revolution will do

if the right wing steps over the line with a coup.”

San Bernardino, California

Thousands flee wildfires:A state of emergency was declared in

California last week as 2,700 firefighters – plus ten air tankers

and 17 helicopters – struggled to contain a wildfire that has

destroyed around 300 buildings over a 37,000-acre area More

than 82,000 residents were ordered to evacuate their homes after

the fire broke out near the Blue Cut hiking trail in San Bernardino

county, 70 miles east of Los Angeles In a rare phenomenon

known as “firenadoes”, flames were sucked up by whirlwinds,

causing ash to rain down across the area Years of drought and a

scorching summer have fuelled a reported 4,084 fires in California

this year, up from 3,790 in the same period in 2015

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Paralympics in crisis:TheParalympic Games are to bedramatically scaled down owing to afunding crisis and disappointing ticket sales With just a fewweeks before the Games kick off, on 7 September – theInternational Paralympic Committee’s president, Sir PhilipCraven, announced earlier this month that only 12% of ticketshad been sold, and the Games would be subject to large-scale cuts

to venues, staffing and transport “Never before in the 56-yearhistory of the Paralympic Games have we faced circumstances likethis,” he said The Brazilian organising committee was two weekslate in paying £7m in travel grants, meaning that ten countriesmay now struggle to get any competitors to Rio at all

Mexico City

Police “executions”:An investigation by the Mexican human

rights watchdog into a notorious police raid, in which 42 alleged

members of a drugs cartel were killed, has concluded that half of

the dead were executed by officers who then conspired to cover

up the extrajudicial killings The police, whose raid was backed

up by a Black Hawk attack helicopter, said that the suspects had

been killed in a firefight However, the fact that only one officer

died raised suspicions The report concludes that five suspects

were killed in the initial assault on the ranch in Michoacán state,

but that 22 people were then executed; the remaining 15 died in

unclear circumstances Many are believed to have been asleep on

a verandah, and to have been shot as they fled across fields

NEWS 7

The world at a glance

27 August 2016 THE WEEK

Cairo

Lose weight or face sack:Egypt’sstate TV hassuspended eightfemale presentersfor beingoverweight, andtold them to slimdown within amonth, or face thesack Theultimatum– reportedly issued by the station’s female

boss, Safaa Hegazy – has outraged the

women affected, and been condemned by

women’s rights groups Khadija Khattab

(pictured), who has worked for the channel

for 20 years and presents a current affairs

show, defended her appearance as that of a

“common, natural Egyptian woman”

Gaziantep, Turkey

Wedding bombed:At least 54 people werekilled and scores more injured when asuicide bomber attacked a Kurdishwedding party in the Turkish city ofGaziantep, close to the Syrian border, lastSaturday Around half of the dead arebelieved to have been under the age of 14

Although President Erdogan initially saidthe bomber was a child, aged 12 to 14,working on the orders of Islamic State,officials later backtracked, saying theywere still conducting DNA tests toestablish his or her identity If Isis wasbehind the atrocity, it may have been inretaliation for offensives by Kurdishmilitias and pro-Ankara Syrian oppositionforces against Isis in Syria Hundreds ofrebel fighters are reportedly in southernTurkey, preparing for an offensive on theIsis-held Syrian town of Jarablus

resurgence in violent civil disorder

Fighting broke out in the capital Juba in

July, between Machar’s bodyguards and

President Kiir’s government troops

Machar subsequently claimed that he

had left the city following a botched

assassination attempt According to his

spokesman, Machar escaped into the

bush, and made his way to DR Congo

He is now said to be in Khartoum, the

capital of Sudan, preparing to undergo

medical treatment Two weeks ago, the

UN Security Council voted to send

4,000 more peacekeepers to Juba

However, President Kiir has so far

refused to accept them

Manila

1,800 killed in seven weeks:Almost 1,800people suspected of beingeither drug dealers or usershave been shot dead bypolice (712) or murdered

by vigilantes (1,067) in theseven weeks since RodrigoDuterte was sworn in asthe Philippines’ president

on 30 June The figureswere cited by the country’stop police officer at asenate hearing intoextra-judicial killings.Vastly higher thanprevious estimates, theyexclude those killedbetween Duterte’selection on 9May and hisswearing-in

Kinshasa

Yellow fever kills hundreds:The WorldHealth Organisation is spearheading anurgent vaccination campaign, centred onKinshasa, the capital of the DemocraticRepublic of Congo, aimed at halting theworst outbreak of yellow fever in theregion for 30 years The epidemic began

in Angola late last year and has sincespread into DR Congo and claimed atleast 500 lives; related cases have alsobeen seen in Kenya and China (to whichAngola has close economic ties) Yellowfever, which is passed on by mosquitoes,has no known cure, and the current strainhas a fatality rate of around 20% Thevaccine is effective, but officials arestruggling to get hold of it in sufficientquantities: each batch takes up to sixmonths to make, and only four companiesproduce it Last month the WHO said itwas nine million doses short

Riyadh

Bin Laden’s boy:

Osama binLaden’s favouriteson has called onSaudi citizens tojoin al-Qa’eda, inorder to overthrowthe kingdom’srulers and drive USinfluence out of theArabian peninsula

In an audio message posted online, Hamzabin Laden (pictured as a young boy) – who

is believed to be about 24 and whosewhereabouts are unknown – urged Saudiyouths to join al-Qa’eda in Yemen to

“gain the necessary experience” to fightthe House of Saud It was Hamza’s secondpropaganda message in weeks, and hasincreased speculation that he aims to takeover the leadership of the terror network

8 NEWS People

THE WEEK 27 August 2016

Why Farage can’t forgive

Nigel Farage is thoroughly

enjoying his retirement from

politics “The pressure is off,

and it is wonderful,” he told

James Lyons in The Sunday

Times Having stepped down

as leader of UKIP after the

Brexit vote, he hopes to forge

a new career as a talk radio

host, here and in the US “The

English accent is really quite an

advantage there, it really is I

mean, James Corden and what

he is doing out there – it is

amazing.” Farage feels only

sympathy towards his main

Brexit opponent, David

Cameron “I thought to myself

that morning when he walked

out that the only thing I’m

going to say is something nice,

because on a human level I

always feel a bit sorry for

him.” The same is not true of

George Osborne – “that

departing weasel” – whose

warnings of economic

apocalypse Farage cannot

forgive “I’d have dragged him

out by the scruff of his neck

I thought his behaviour was

despicable Pasty-faced bastard

I’m pleased to see the back of

him I hope he never, ever

appears in public again.”

Working for Goebbels

Brunhilde Pomsel is 105, and

the last surviving member of

the Nazis’ inner circle As

Joseph Goebbels’s secretary,

she was at the heart of his

propaganda machine – yet she

insists she had no idea

about Nazi atrocities,

including “the matter

of the Jews” “I know

no one ever believes

“We knew nothing

– it was all kept

wore “suits of the

best cloth, and

always had a light

tan He had

well-groomed hands – he

probably had a

manicure every day

There was really

to wage “total war” “Noactor could have been anybetter at the transformationfrom a civilised, serious personinto a ranting, rowdy man Inthe office he had a kind ofnoble elegance, and then to seehim there like a raging midget– you just can’t imagine agreater contrast.” Still, sheinsists her own conscience isclear “Those people nowadayswho say they would have stood

up against the Nazis – I believethey are sincere in meaningthat, but believe me, most ofthem wouldn’t have Theidealism of youth might easilyhave led to you having yourneck broken.”

Trump’s doppelgängerAnn Coulter has found herperfect man The right-wingpolemicist (pictured) has beenarguing for years that the USneeds to crack down onimmigration, build a wall tokeep Mexicans out, and stoppandering to politically correctliberals And now DonaldTrump is promising to turn hervision into reality “I’ve beendoing nothing but watchingTrump on TV,” she told WillPavia in The Times “I wishthere was a Trump channelwhere you could justwatch him 24 hours aday I’d never sleep

He’s like the alphamale doppelgänger ofme.” She approves ofall his ideas – evenhis threat not tohonour America’scommitments toNato “Whocares?” sheshrugs “Maybeyou guys arelosing sleep overwhat happens toUkraine, but Ipromise youout-of-work steelworkers could notgive two f***s.” She

is confident, too, that

he will build the wallshe dreams of

“Absolutely A big,beautiful wall withbig, gold Ts on it.”

You have to be tough to survive 60 years in Hollywood – but EllenBurstyn has always had grit The 83-year-old actress grew up inDepression-era Detroit with a single mother who was physicallyviolent “If it were now, I would have gone to a police station, butthere were no laws then,” she told Tom Shone in The DailyTelegraph “There was no such thing as child abuse Parents ownedtheir children They could do whatever they wanted All my life Ihave asked myself the question: who would I be if I had grown up

in a loving home? I don’t know if I would be placid and satisfied; ahappy, jolly, sedentary person Did hardship stimulate me? I wantedout of there, and I got out on the day I was legally able to.” Burstynjumped on a bus to New York, taking just two suitcases and $3,and built a career as an acclaimed character actress She remainsfascinated by the idea of being someone else – so much so that sheonce spent three days sleeping rough in New York, to see how itfelt “That was a big experience I went up to a restaurant withoutside tables where there were two women eating I said: ‘Excuse

me but I have to take a subway and I have no money, can you spare

a dollar?’ One of them reached into her pocket and gave me adollar As I walked away I felt really proud that I had gotten that Iwas like: ‘Hey, I begged! I got it!’ Yet I felt tears streaming down myface Why was I crying? It was because she hadn’t looked at me.”

Viewpoint:

A university education

“The characteristic gift of the university

is the gift of an interval Here is anopportunity for you to put aside the hotallegiances of youth without the necessity

of at once acquiring new loyalties to taketheir place Here is a break in thetyrannical course of irreparable events; aperiod in which to look around upon theworld and upon oneself without the sense

of an enemy at one’s back or the insistentpressure to make up one’s mind; amoment in which to taste the mysterywithout the necessity of seeking asolution And all this, not in anintellectual vacuum, but surrounded byall the inherited learning and literatureand experience of our civilisation

Michael Oakeshott, quoted in The Observer

Marianne Ihlen, Leonard Cohen’s lover and muse, died 29 July, aged 81.

Lord Rix, actor and manager of West End farces, who campaigned for people with learning difficulties, died 20 August, aged 92.

Desert Island Discs returns on 25 September

Important information: Past performance is not a guide to future returns The value of an investment and any income from it are not guaranteed and can go down as well as up and there is the risk of loss to your investment FP CRUX European Special Situations Fund, previously Henderson European Special Situations Fund was restructured and consequently renamed on 8th June 2015 This financial promotion is issued by CRUX Asset Management, who are authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority of 25 The North Colonnade, Canary Wharf, London E14 5HS A free, English language copy of the full prospectus, the Key Investor Information Document and Supplementary Information Document for the fund, which should be read before investing, can be obtained from the CRUX website, www.cruxam.com or by calling us on 0800 304 7424 For your protection, calls may

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NEWS 11

Briefing

27 August 2016 THE WEEK

Why the cause for concern?

In recent years, Russia’s military has

asserted itself on the world stage in a way

not seen since the Cold War In early

2014, Russian special forces annexed the

Crimean peninsular in Ukraine, while

large numbers of well-equipped troops

were sent into the east of the country to

help pro-Russian separatists (although

Moscow officially denies this) Since

September 2015, Russia has fought a

brutal air campaign in Syria, in support

of President Assad Closer to home,

Russian aircraft have aggressively buzzed

US and Nato forces and intruded into

European waters and airspace In April,

two Russian fighters passed within 30

feet of a US destroyer in the Baltic Sea

Russia has also conducted big military

exercises near its western borders, some

involving nuclear weaponry The image conveyed by these, says

Johan Norberg of the Swedish Defence Research Agency, “is that

they’re preparing for large-scale inter-state war”

What is Russia up to?

Throughout his 16-year rule, Vladimir Putin has used Russia’s

military as a blunt instrument of Kremlin policy, to project power

abroad and to shore up his popularity at home But the 2008 war

with Georgia was a turning point: the conflict both confirmed that

he could deploy forces outside Russia’s borders without risking a

Western military response, and also laid bare the weaknesses of

the country’s ill-trained conscripts and outdated equipment Since

then the military budget has grown by more than a third, with

billions spent on a new generation of missiles, tanks and fighter

jets Russian forces have been reformed: improved pay and

conditions, and better-trained officers, have created a much more

professional army The Black Sea Fleet, headquartered at the

Crimean port of Sevastopol, recently added around a dozen

warships “The Black Sea has almost become a Russian lake,”

said Turkey’s President Erdogan

Why the upgrade?

Putin wants Russia to once again become a credible counterweight

to the US and Nato He wants to

protect Russia’s dominion over its

traditional sphere of influence, which

was threatened by the pro-Western

“colour revolutions” in Georgia and

Ukraine, and by the expansion of the

EU and Nato to its borders Russian

forces are designed to be deployed

fast to any part of the former Soviet

Union New units have been stationed

on its western borders, ready to

intervene Further afield – from the

western Mediterranean to the Arctic,

Putin is determined to maintain a

powerful presence

How powerful are its forces?

Some analysts claim that Russia is the

second-strongest military power in the

world, with 766,000 active personnel

and the largest tank fleet in the world

It devotes a very large proportion of

its GDP to military expenditure: 5%

in 2015, compared to 3.2% in the US

and 1.95% in the UK

Could Russia rival the US?

There’s no chance of that Even thePentagon’s top brass – who are usingPutin’s build-up to argue for greaterfunding – don’t believe Americanmilitary supremacy is in jeopardy Lastyear, the US spent nearly ten times more

on defence (about $600bn) than Russia($66.4bn) It has 19 aircraft carriers toRussia’s one, and 13,500 aircraft toRussia’s 3,500 A series of treaties overthe past 50 years have brought Russiaand the US to approximate nuclearparity But Nato’s 28 nations havearound four times Russia’s militaryfirepower Strategically, there’s nocontest However, in smaller-scaleconfrontations, Russia has shown itself

to be intimidating, unpredictable and

very effective (see box).

What are the possible flashpoints?

Nato sources think that the Russians could easily overrun itseastern flank: Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia are veryvulnerable But more likely than an actual invasion, suggests theFT’s defence editor Sam Jones, would be a semi-covert act ofaggression “calibrated to be just below the alliance’s Article 5threshold, the all-for-one-and-one-for-all clause that triggersoutright war” – such as a huge cyber-attack on Estonia’s nationalinfrastructure, followed amid the chaos by a limited, “temporary”invasion to protect the country’s ethnic Russian minority The realaim of such an operation would be to undermine Nato

What is Nato doing to counter the threat?

At the Nato summit in Warsaw in July, it committed to deployfour combat battalions to Poland and the Baltic states: one US,one British, one Canadian and one German Nato is prevented by

a 1997 treaty with Russia from deploying any new “substantialcombat forces” in the east The idea is that the battalions fallshort of that deterrent, yet create deterrent “tripwires” – makingRussian interference in these states too risky to contemplate Natohas also doubled its existing response force to 40,000 men, andcreated a 5,000-strong rapid-reaction brigade – and pressed ahead

with a missile defence system with abase in Romania, along with a series

of exercises across Eastern Europe.How did Russia react?

With fury “Nato must stop reacting

to a non-existent threat,” said theKremlin, warning that these

“provocative” deployments wereputting Europe’s security at risk Andeven some EU politicians felt thatNato was engaging in a dangerousgame of bluff The difficulty is instriking a balance: providing a firmdeterrent while not risking adangerous escalation Russianintentions are hard to fathom Many

in Eastern Europe genuinely fear war.Optimists point out that in UkrainePutin has shown himself unwilling toincur large numbers of casualties, andthat with Russia’s economy

stuttering, the current level of militaryspending is unsustainable: a cut ofsome 5% is expected over 2016

Putin’s military build-up

The Kremlin is modernising its military and threatening its neighbours Is a confrontation looming?

Russia has the largest tank fleet in the world

Hybrid warfare: Russia’s “edge”

Russia’s recent conflicts have been used as a testingground for its new weaponry (and as a shop window:

the Syrian campaign has generated arms salesdiscussions with Algeria, India and Iran) The resultsare worrying for Nato forces According to a leakedBritish Army report into the conflict in Ukraine, Russianrocket launchers and air defence systems are morepowerful than their British equivalents, giving Putin’sforces a “significant capability edge”: Britain and the

US have spent the last 15 years fighting insurgency operations, eroding their “high-endmilitary capabilities” The report also said that the UKand its Nato allies were “scrambling to catch up” withRussia’s ability to use electronic warfare: jamming andhacking enemy transmissions; using acoustics tolocate snipers; deploying drones in pairs to locateUkrainian units and bring down devastating fire

counter-The Russian campaign in Ukraine has been described

as an act of “hybrid warfare”, including clandestineand regular troops, heavy weaponry and cyber-war

Russia has been more active than any other country indeveloping its cyber-operations, which range fromattacks that brought down part of the Ukrainian powergrid to trolling Western servicemen on Twitter

NEWS 13

Best articles: Britain

27 August 2016 THE WEEK

fourth-Let’s blame the

Islington is the 14th most deprived local authority in England

Indeed, if anyone belongs to the elites it’s probably the anti-elitecheerleaders – on the Right, Boris Johnson (Eton, Oxford, Londonmayor, MP), who rages against the “unelected elite in Brussels”;

on the Left, Diane Abbott (MP since 1987) who rails against “theWestminster elite” Donald Trump’s supporters, too, are said to berebelling against “the elites”, yet in many states, they’re the voters

on above-average incomes The truth is that power is so dispersedand counterbalanced in our complex, interconnected world, thateven those at the top of their profession – be it journalism orpolitics – feel a lack of power That’s why “the only thing we cansay for sure about the elites is that they are always someone else”

stunt (see page 20), but they point to a broader truth, says Janice

Turner Britain’s trains are a disgrace So much so that, in recentpolls, up to two-thirds of voters say they favour renationalisingthe railways This is one Corbynite policy that unites everyone,from hard-left trade unionists to “crotchety old-school Tories”

Privatisation has created a “shoddy, provisional, chaotic” railwaysystem, in which rival operators enjoy state subsidies to the tune

of £4bn, charge the highest fares in Europe – and provide a ingly poor service “There is no moment you feel more ripped off

shock-by rapacious, free-market capitalism than when paying £3,000 for

a season ticket for a late train, full because the company only laid

on four carriages, knowing that tonight you will miss your kids’

bedtime and stand all the way home.” Other countries, such asFrance and the Netherlands, have comfortable, efficient railwaysystems run by the state It is surely not beyond us to follow suit

You can’t jail a

man for being

a scoundrel

Brendan O’Neill

Spiked

Indian surgeons who opened

up a patient with abdominalpains were astonished todiscover 40 knives lodged inhis stomach The 42-year-oldman, who underwentemergency treatment after anultrasound scan showed acancer-like mass in his body,later told doctors that he hadeaten the blades over a three-month period, because heliked their taste One of thesurgeons described it as themost horrifying surgery hehad ever performed in 20years of practice

Life-size statues of Donald Trump naked have been popping up in cities across the US The artworks (pictured) are large, imposing and unflattering: the presidential candidate is depicted with his arms folded across a bulging belly, and is lacking testicles An accompanying engraving reads: The Emperor Has No Balls In New York, one appeared in Union Square, but was swiftly removed.

An American man has warned dog-owners not to programme robot vacuum cleaners to come on overnight, after waking up one morning to find a

“poopocalypse” Jesse Newton, of Arkansas, had forgotten to take his puppy out for its last walk, with regrettable consequences The robot had then run through the pile of fresh faeces, spreading the waste over “every conceivable surface” as it continued its ceaseless rounds of the downstairs rooms Newton’s online description of the incident went viral – but he’s not the first person this has happened to “Quite honestly, we see this a lot,” admitted the manufacturer.

IT MUST BE TRUE…

I read it in the tabloids

You wouldn’t think that in Britain in 2016 a man could be sent tojail for thinking bad thoughts and saying bad things But that’swhat has happened to Anjem Choudary, says Brendan O’Neill

The finger-wagging Islamist, a lawyer turned preacher, has been

“spouting intolerant nonsense for years” – praising 9/11;

advocating the imposition of sharia law But when he recentlystarted “bigging up” Isis, the authorities judged he’d gone too farand now he has been jailed for “inviting support for a proscribedorganisation” Yet there’s no evidence that Choudary organisedviolence or gave financial support to jihadis: all he did was swearallegiance to Isis in an east London curry house in front of a fewclose aides He’s a braggart, a blusterer, but he’s not – as the pressludicrously brands him – “one of the most dangerous men inBritain” By convicting him, the authorities have just been putting

on a show of toughness to cover up their inability to stem thespread of anti-Western, anti-liberal ideas among young Muslims

And by censoring him, the British state is effectively espousing anilliberal ideology similar to his How depressing that “in seeking

to solve the Choudary problem, we become like Choudary”

NEWS 15

Best of the American columnists

27 August 2016 THE WEEK

Why the Left

Global warming isn’t all bad, says Will Oremus True, it risks destroying the planet, but on the plusside, it has opened up some brilliant new tourist opportunities for the world’s richest people Around1,000 of these lucky folk are currently enjoying a luxury cruise on the $350m, 68,000-tonne CrystalSerenity, which is travelling from Anchorage, Alaska to New York by way of the mythical

Northwest Passage Or, to be more accurate, “the formerly mythical Northwest Passage”: thanks to

ocean warming, the once-impassable route is now navigable in summer A “growing trickle” of shipshave managed the trip in recent years, but the 820ft, 13-deck Crystal Serenity – with its multipleswimming pools, restaurants, casino and driving range – is by far the largest craft to attempt it As aprecaution, it will be accompanied by an ice-breaker and two helicopters The passengers, who paidbetween $22,000 and $120,000 for the 32-day trip, were required to have insurance coverage of atleast $50,000 for emergency evacuation The marketing copy described the cruise as “the ultimateexpedition for the true explorer” In reality, it’s “an abomination – a massive, diesel-burning,waste-dumping, ice-destroying, golf-ball-smacking middle finger to what remains of the planet”

If you thought the old Trump

campaign was crazy, said Eugene

wait until you see the new one The

Republican presidential nominee was

apparently feeling “boxed in” and

“controlled” by the few people around

him who actually knew something

about politics So Trump last week

demoted his campaign chairman Paul

Manafort (who was facing awkward

questions in any case about his

financial ties to the deposed Ukrainian

leader Viktor Yanukovych, and later

resigned from Trump’s team) In the

driving seat now is a man named

Stephen Bannon, who is sure to “not only let Trump be Trump

but encourage him to be even Trumpier” Bannon runs

Breitbart News, a fiercely right-wing website, and is a

“practised provocateur” and propagandist: the site’s late

founder, Andrew Breitbart, once described him, admiringly, as

the “Leni Riefenstahl of the Tea Party movement”

With his polls sinking fast, Trump “needed to make a change”,

Bannon – a former naval officer and Goldman Sachs banker

who has also had stints in Hollywood – is a man very much in

the Trump mould However, Bannonhas never run a political campaign, so

it remains to be seen whether he can

do anything to improve Trump’sgeneral election prospects

The theory doing the rounds is thatthis campaign reshuffle isn’t abouttrying to win the election, said John

it’s a “business play”: Trump is

“laying the groundwork for a newconservative media empire” tochallenge Fox News, the cable newsnetwork founded by Rupert Murdochand Roger Ailes Trump apparentlyresents the fact that his campaign has brought in huge ratingsfor many news organisations, and wants to get in on the action.This idea seems all too plausible, said Levi Tillemann and Julian

that America needs a new network, and has clashed with FoxNews With the help of Bannon and Ailes – who was recentlyousted from Fox News over sexual harassment claims and isnow advising Trump ahead of next month’s presidential debates– he is well placed to shake up the conservative media establish-ment just as he’s shaken up the GOP We’ve seen Trump hotels,Trump University and Trump wine “Up next, Trump TV.”

Bannon: a “practised provocateur”

Is Trump trying to build a media empire?

16 NEWS Best articles: International

THE WEEK 27 August 2016

1941 massacre of at least 340 Jews by Polish residents of Jedwabne, on the grounds that doing so

“harms Poland’s reputation” The effect will be to damage our image as an “open and kind” people,able “honestly to deal with its past”, especially at a time when xenophobia and anti-Semitism are onthe rise Trying to legislate in such matters is always “dangerous” This terrible idea must be dropped

It wasn’t the only slight the Israeli team suffered in Rio – earlier, the Lebanese team refused to ride

on the same bus Israel’s supporters offered consolation, suggesting that such boorish behaviour onlyincreases sympathy for it That may be true in the long term, but it gives little solace right now.Leaders can sign peace treaties, Israelis sigh, but nothing will ever “mollify the Arab street” In othercountries, the medals would have been occasion for joy But it brought home to Israelis that “theJewish state has a long way to go before it experiences anything remotely approximating normalcy”

“In Russia, the elites are callous and arrogant,” says Juri Rescheto Take Prime Minister DmitryMedvedev, for example Earlier this year in Crimea, he told pensioners desperate about their tinypensions: “There’s no money Hang in there.” The video of this incident has been watched over fourmillion times; the phrase has become an internet meme Now Medvedev is in hot water for tellingteachers in Dagestan that if they think they don’t get paid enough they should get a second job (auniversity lecturer had asked him why police are paid five times more) This “cynical” suggestionbrought back painful memories from the 1990s Visiting my family home in Siberia I found that

“chaos reigned” People were standing in line “for a few grams of butter” I spotted my formerRussian teacher – who “proudly and passionately” taught me Pushkin and Gogol – selling pickles tomake ends meet Even after two years of economic free fall things aren’t quite that bad But teachers,like many Russians, are paid “obscenely” little: £120 to £180 per month No wonder Medvedev’s

“thick-headed” aside caused uproar: more than 250,000 people have signed an online petitiondemanding his resignation His behaviour shows just how out of touch Russia’s leaders have become

In the “country of Chanel and Brigitte

Bardot” the burkini can only be seen as

“a provocation”, said Jean-Michel

The hideous full-length swimsuit that

some Muslim women have taken to

wearing on beaches is not just “an

affront to human dignity” – as an

“ostentatious religious symbol”, it’s a

challenge to the secular republic So

full marks to the mayor of Cannes for

having the gumption to ban it, on the

grounds that the sight could stir up

trouble in a country still “traumatised”

by recent Islamist terror attacks As if

to prove his point, a riot broke out in

Sisco in Corsica last week, as men of North African origin

clashed with holidaymakers who’d been taking pictures of their

burkini-wearing female relatives Now a ban is in place there

too, while 15 other French towns have followed suit

These bans are a symptom of racism as much as a stand on a

Yet French Muslims need to be sensible: this isn’t a good time to

wear the burkini They must know that people are jittery, and

they should “adapt their behaviour” instead of getting into

fights they can’t win Islam, after all, enjoins its followers to

respect the countries they live in as minorities After the

massacre in Nice, the authorities are in

no mood to compromise, said Berna

Prime Minister Manuel Valls fullysupports the bans, calling the burkini

“the expression of a political project, acounter-society, based notably on theenslavement of women” Mostpoliticians of the Left and Right agree.All the same, the French should avoidleaping to “irrational intolerance” Thecritics can hardly claim there’s a directlink between wearing a “cumbersomeand impractical” bathing suit andcommitting mass murder The existingprohibition on religious symbols inschools and public institutions is fair enough, but “in the name

of equality and liberty, please keep the battle off the beaches”

the plot’ more than demonising what is, let’s face it, a wetsuit.”

has been prohibited on the basis that it is “variously, a threat topublic order, hygiene, water safety and morality” SavingMuslim women from “enslavement” by “dictating to themwhat they can and can’t wear” makes no sense at all Thismadness threatens to “further stigmatise France’s Muslims at atime when the country is listing to the Islamophobic Right”

A threat to hygiene, safety and morality?

The burkini ban: France’s battle of the beaches

1 Official EU MPG test figure shown as a guide for comparative purposes and is based on the vehicle being charged from mains electricity This may not reflect real driving results 2 Up to 32 mile EV range achieved with full battery charge 541 miles achieved with combined full battery and petrol tank Actual range will vary depending on driving style and road conditions.

3 Domestic plug charge: 5 hours, 16 Amp home charge point: 3.5 hours, 80% rapid charge: 30mins 4 Government subsidised charge points are available from a number of suppliers for a small fee - ask your dealer for more information 5 Congestion Charge

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NEWS 19

A Greenland shark accidentally killed

by fishermen was nearly four

centuries old, scientists believe,

making it easily the world’s

longest-living vertebrate The female was one

of 28 sharks analysed by researchers

after being collected as “by-catch”

between 2010 and 2013 Until now,

scientists haven’t had a way of

calculating the age of Greenland

sharks, despite suspecting them of

being abnormally ancient But the

team devised an unusual method that

involved taking tissue from the shark’s eye lenses and estimating its age using

radiocarbon dating Because the technique isn’t perfect, they built a large margin of

error into the calculations: the oldest shark in the study, measuring just over 5m, was

judged to be between 272 and 512 – although her “most likely” age was 392

However, even at its most cautious, this estimate still makes her considerably older

than the previous best contender for longest-living vertebrate, a 211-year-old

bowhead whale found in 2007 Indeed, only one non-vertebrate animal – a

507-year-old ocean quahog clam – has ever been shown to live longer

Health & Science

27 August 2016 THE WEEK

Why tall means Tory

Scientists have discovered that being tall

increases a person’s likelihood of voting

Conservative – especially if they’re a man

Each additional inch of height raised a

man’s chances of supporting the Tories by

0.8%, the Ohio State University

researchers found; for women, the

equivalent spike was 0.4% The team used

data from the 2006 British Household

Panel Study, which includes information

on the height and political beliefs of

around 10,000 adults Professor Sara

Watson, co-author of the study, which was

published in the British Journal of Political

Science, said the results weren’t as strange

as they initially seemed: other studies have

suggested that tall people generally earn

more than short people, and that income

plays a part in shaping political beliefs –

with people’s views becoming more

conservative the higher up the income

scale they are

How pollutants enter our water

Harmful chemicals present in our water

system could well be getting there via our

washing machines Scientists have long

been puzzled as to exactly how phthalates

(used to make plastic more flexible),

flame-retardants and other chemicals end

up in lakes and rivers But now researchers

at the University of Toronto think they’ve

found the answer: the pollutants become

trapped in our clothing after being released

into the air from everyday objects, before

being swept into the sewage system when

the clothes are washed As wastewater

plants extract only about 20% of the

pollutants, most make their way into rivers

and lakes – and, potentially, into our food

and tap water In the study, a range of

fabrics were exposed to an ordinary office

environment Natural fibres such as cotton

picked up considerably more pollutantsthan polyester garments, the researchersfound When the fabrics were

subsequently laundered, significantquantities of the chemicals leachedout into the wash

water “Theseresults support thehypothesis that clothingacts as an efficientconveyor of [chemicals]

from indoors to outdoors,”

said Dr Miriam Diamond,lead author of the study

Phthalates and flame-retardantshave been linked to a host ofproblems, including decliningfertility, thyroid disorders, diabetesand premature puberty

Diet link to ADHD

If a mother eats high quantities of fatand sugar while pregnant, it mayincrease her child’s chances ofdeveloping attention deficithyperactivity disorder (ADHD),scientists have found The study, led byresearchers from King’s CollegeLondon and the University of Bristol,examined the effect of maternalnutrition on IGF2, a geneinvolved in the development ofthe cerebellum and hippocampus– parts of the brain implicated inADHD The researchers found thatmothers who ate a lot of processed foodand confectionery during pregnancy weremore likely to give birth to children withmodified IGF2 – and there was evidence tosuggest that those children were then morelikely to develop ADHD symptomsbetween the ages of 7 and 13 However,co-author Dr Edward Barker said thatparents whose children had ADHD

shouldn’t blame themselves, as thecondition was “multi-determined”

“Diet could be an important factorbut it’s going to be importantalongside a host of other risks,”

he added

The leather-loving iceman

New research on Ötzi theIceman – a naturallymummified, 5,300-year-oldcorpse found trapped in theice of the Italian Alps in

1991 – has revealed him tohave been a “picky” and

“sophisticated” dresser,reports The Guardian When

he was discovered, the icemanwas decked out in an array ofleather garments, but their poorcondition meant that it wasunclear which animals theycame from Now researchersfrom Ireland and Italy havedetermined their source byanalysing a type of geneticmaterial, known asmitochondrial DNA,extracted from six ofthe garments Theiceman, it transpired,created his clothes fromfive species: his loinclothwas sheepskin, hisshoelaces cow leather and his leggingsgoat hide More exotically, his cap camefrom a brown bear and he fashioned hisquiver from the skin of a roe deer NiallO’Sullivan, one of the researchers, saidthat Ötzi had been “opportunistic andresourceful” in using the “scarceresources” available to him in a “veryharsh environment”

An athlete from the former EastGermany has warned today’scompetitors about the lifelong healthproblems that may result from takingperformance-enhancing drugs “I hadhuge problems with my kidneys and myinner organs were poisoned,” InesGeipel, a former relay runner, told anAustralian broadcaster She added thatthere were other athletes in their mid-40s with “two artificial hips, two artificialknees”, as well as a “large number ofdialysis patients and many, manypsychological illnesses” Geipel is head

of the German Doping Victims’

Association, which campaigns forcompensation for athletes involved inEast Germany’s state-sponsored dopingprogramme Under the programme,which was sanctioned by a secret edictissued in 1974, up to 12,000 athleteswere forced to take illicit pills, whichthey were often told were vitamins

Ex-doper speaks out

Greenland sharks: abnormally ancient

What the scientists are saying…

The 400-year-old shark

ng

Ne

Ötzi: a “picky” dresser

20 NEWS Talking points

THE WEEK 27 August 2016

It’s a measure of how farLabour has travelled that lastweek Jeremy Corbyn casuallyabandoned a security policythat has been followed byevery British government since

1949, said Oliver Kamm inThe Times Asked on theleadership hustings how hewould react if a Nato ally wasattacked by Russia, Corbynsaid he would “avoid getting

us involved militarily”, addingvaguely: “I don’t wish to go towar What I want to do isachieve a world where wedon’t need to go to war.” Heappeared to suggest that,under his leadership, Britain would abandonNato – since its rationale is collective self-defence “He implied that Britain’s central[military] alliance is not an alliance, thatBritain’s word was not its bond,” said SimonJenkins in The Guardian “That is wild.”

But Corbyn’s rival Owen Smith was not to beoutdone, said Rod Liddle in The Sunday Times

Last week he suggested that peace in Syriawould come about if we could get Islamic State

“round the table” That sounds dangerous

What table would that be? Would there be

“separate dining areas for men and women”?

Smith later “clarified” his position, saying thatIsis could only be involved if it were to renounceviolence Still, it was more evidence of Labour’s

“terrible dissipation This is the summer the UK

lost its opposition party.”Labour now resembles a “vastand imbecilic student union at

a recently upgraded poly”.The party under Corbyn is not

“as dismal as it is sometimesmade out by the media”, saidThe Independent It has had astring of wins in mayoralcontests and by-elections, andhas been on the right side ofthe argument about austerity,

as the Government nowappears to be tacitly admitting

“Nor can the enthusiasmCorbyn generates amongpeople hitherto apathetic ordisenchanted about politics be dismissed.” Butthe hard fact remains that Labour is at least tenpoints behind the Tories, and Corbyn “hasneither the policies, the strategy nor the personalskills to win back the voters” Sadiq Khan andKezia Dugdale, Labour’s leaders in London andScotland, are only the latest to point this out anddeclare their support for Owen Smith But Smithhimself appears to be making little headway,said George Eaton and Stephen Bush in the NewStatesman Faced with the apparently

overwhelming support for his rival inside theparty, he has offered a “left-wing, Corbyn-stylepolicy platform”: railway renationalisation, awealth tax, a ban on zero-hour contracts Themessage seems to be: “I’m the same as him butI’m more competent; I look better in a suit.” As

a pitch, it seems unlikely to turn the tide

Pick of the week’s

Gossip Owen Smith: a pale version of Corbyn?

Soaring unemployment; boarded up high streets;

tumbling financial markets That was thedystopian future we were told to expect, notonly in the run up to the EU referendum, butalso in its immediate aftermath, as disappointedRemainers comforted themselves with thethought that the Leavers would soon beovercome by an acute case of buyer’s remorse

But it hasn’t worked out that way, said LarryElliott in The Guardian Retail sales defiedpredictions by jumping 1.4% in July, and thenumber of people claiming jobless benefits fell

“The financial markets are serene.” Share pricesare close to a record high And Project Fear isover Fearing that their doom-mongering mightspark a recession, officials effected an abruptU-turn on 24 June, and began seeking toreassure the voters they’d worked so hard tospook; meanwhile, at the Bank of England,Mark Carney stopped issuing dire warnings, andintroduced a stimulus package Of course, it’searly days, but the indications are that Britain’seconomy is not about to nosedive

For Brexiters, these figures may seem like mannafrom heaven, said Geoffrey Smith in Fortune

But others show that job openings (a futureindicator rather than a lagging one) fell in July;

and the retail boost may have been at leastpartly due to the good weather, and tourists

taking advantage of the weak pound In otherwords, it was a good sign, but not solid groundfor long-term economic growth Besides which,Brexit hasn’t actually started yet, said TobyHelm in The Observer Britain’s key negotiatorshaven’t even agreed a division of responsibilities,let alone an answer to the multi-billion euroquestion: how to guarantee the UK access to thesingle market while also satisfying Brexiters onissues such as freedom of movement With ourlaws so closely entwined, disentangling Britainfrom the EU is a hugely complex task

That’s why Theresa May is in no hurry totrigger Article 50, said Juliet Samuel in TheDaily Telegraph Once she does, we will havejust two years to negotiate terms with remaining

EU states – some of which are eager for Brexit tofail So it’s vital that we get our house in orderbefore we start That means finding skilled tradenegotiators, and thousands of lawyers and civilservants to consider everything from the impact

of leaving the Common Agricultural Policy tothe constitutional implications for Scotland TheGovernment also needs time to sound out wherethe national consensus lies Some Brexiters arecalling for May to activate Article 50 now,because they are convinced their victory is going

to be taken away; but an unseemly rush to theexit would not be in anyone’s best interests

When footage emerged of

Jeremy Corbynsitting on

the floor of a “ram-packed”

train last week, the Labour

leader was praised for

refusing to upgrade to first

class But now Virgin Trains

has released CCTV footage

which seems to show that

Corbyn and his team walked

through two carriages with

plenty of empty seats,

before settling on the floor

to make the video, in which

he called for the

renation-alisation of the railways

Virgin Trains claims that,

moments after he stopped

filming, Corbyn sat down in

one of many free seats,

where he remained for the

rest of the journey from

London to Newcastle

Ian McKellenturned down a

$1.5m offer to officiate at a

billionaire’s wedding –

dressed as Gandalf The

venerable British actor was

asked to conduct the

ceremony forSean Parker–

the billionaire co-founder of

Napster – and singer

Alexandra Lenasin 2013

The Tolkien-themed

wedding allegedly cost

$10m, but they failed to

secure the wizard of their

dreams “I said: ‘I am sorry –

Gandalf doesn’t do

weddings,’” McKellen told

The Mail on Sunday “I

don’t do dressing up –

except in plays and things.”

George Osbornewas

spotted last week “going

Rambo” with a machine

gun The former chancellor

– who was sacked last

was on holiday in Vietnam,

and visited a former

battlefield where tourists

can fire vintage weapons

“He went down to the range

and fired the biggest

machine gun they’ve got,”

said an onlooker

Smith: looking better in a suit

NEWS 21

Talking points

27 August 2016 THE WEEK

“The trouble with fightingfor human freedom is thatone spends most of one’stime defending scoundrels.”

H.L Mencken, quoted

on Spiked

“There is nothing moreagreeable in life than tomake peace with theestablishment – and nothingmore corrupting.”

A.J.P Taylor, quoted in The Spectator

“Shyness is the overtly conscious thinking that youare the only person in theworld; that how you lookand what you do is of anyimportance.”

self-Charles Schulz, quoted in The Guardian

“A developed country is not

a place where the poor havecars It’s where the rich usepublic transportation.”

Enrique Peñdosa, former mayor of Bogotá, quoted

in The Times

“An id with hair.”

Hillary Clinton on Donald Trump, quoted on Politico

“Social ease can and should

Frank Lloyd Wright, quoted on Forbes.com

“People don’t do what theybelieve in They just dowhat’s most convenient,then they repent.”

Bob Dylan, quoted in The Wall Street Journal

“Don’t let off your celebratory

party poppers just yet,” said

Emma Webb in The Spectator

Anjem Choudary, the

notorious hate preacher

convicted last week of inviting

support for Islamic State, may

be heading for jail at last – but

that doesn’t mean “his

radicalising will stop” In fact,

Choudary’s recruiting talents

(he is known to have had a

personal connection with one

in ten of all convicted Islamist

terrorists in the UK) may prove

even more effective in jail In

some prisons, 20% of inmates

are Muslim; many are

vulnerable and searching for a new identity By

locking up Choudary, we may be “letting a wolf

loose among captive sheep”

Terrorists always make troublesome prisoners,

said The Guardian The “classic dilemma” is

whether to disperse them through the prison

system (which risks spreading their toxic

ideology over a wider field), or concentrate them

in a few “supermax” prisons This keeps the

radicals “away from their prey”, but creates a

symbolic focal point for grievances The Maze

and Guantánamo Bay both became “effective

recruiting sergeants for the prisoners’ causes”

The new Justice Secretary, Liz Truss, is hoping

to find some middle ground, said the Daily Mail

She announced this week that specialist isolation

units will be built in top-security prisons, to hold

the “most dangerous” terroristconvicts Some will also be

“ghosted”: moved betweenprisons to stop them building

up networks of supporters

Her proposal is based on areport by the former prisongovernor Ian Acheson, whichwarns that Muslim inmatesare already facing “aggressiveencouragement” to becomejihadis Acheson claims thatsome warders turn a blind eyebecause they are afraid ofseeming racist Thus, Musliminmates are being leftunsupervised at prayers, andextremist literature iscirculating in prison libraries

None of these problems is wholly new, said AlanTravis in The Guardian In 1994, five IRA menescaped from the supposedly high-security unit

at Whitemoor Prison They had “intimidatedand then groomed” the prison staff to the pointwhere “they were not only having lobstertakeaways delivered to the special unit, but gunsand even Semtex” But housing Islamistterrorists under one roof has an added danger:

unlike IRA members, most Islamists are “loneoperators”, unconnected to any broadercommand structure Bringing them together maygive them a golden opportunity to create thekind of “hierarchical organisation” they so farlack Quarantining jihadis behind bars may end

up making them stronger

In 2003 – before he came up with

Facebook – Mark Zuckerberg

launched Facemash It featured

photos of Harvard students side

by side, and invited users to vote

on which was the more attractive

The site was swiftly closed down

by college authorities, said

Amelia Tait in the New

Statesman, and Zuckerberg later

admitted he’d been a “jerk” for

starting it – but it wasn’t an

original idea RateMyFace.com

had launched in 1999; it was

followed by Hot or Not, and Fitsort It still goes

on, but today’s teenagers don’t have to visit a

specialist website to find out what people think

of their looks: it’s all over social media It seems

that ten to 14-year-olds in particular are

obsessed with posting selfies on Facebook and

Instagram, and seeing how many “likes” they

generate It’s unclear why they feel the need to

open themselves up to such public judgement –

but it’s hard to believe it’s healthy

Certainly, there is a growing concern about girls’

mental health, said Radhika Sanghani in The

Daily Telegraph According to a new

Department for Education survey, more than a

third of 14 to 15-year-old girls suffer from

symptoms of psychologicaldistress – 10% more than adecade ago The figure for boys

is just 15% Experts say thatgirls are facing a huge range ofpressures, but the way they usesocial media may be a majorfactor It has been noted thatwhereas boys tend to use it forgaming, girls use it to see whattheir friends are doing If thereality of their own livesdoesn’t match their perception

of other people’s, feelings ofanxiety and low self-worth may follow

There are myriad theories about why girls aresuffering, said Gaby Hinsliff on The Pool Itcould be partly down to them living on socialmedia, where everyone seems to be prettier andthinner and smarter Or it could be the burden

of schoolwork, and anxieties about their future:

today’s teenagers have little hope of walking intothe kind of secure jobs their parents took forgranted But the truth is, we don’t know Wedon’t even know whether boys are suffering less– or just less willing to admit to feelings ofinadequacy It’s a serious problem, and withmental health services already overstretched, onethat needs urgent investigation

Statistics of the week

The number of pupilsstudying French at A-levelhas slumped to an all-timelow of 9,672 In 1992, thefigure was 31,261

The Daily Telegraph

Wit & Wisdom

Living in another world Choudary: “wolf among captive sheep”

22 NEWS

“Mo Farah has joined the immortals,” said Oliver

Brown in The Sunday Telegraph Last Saturday, he

became the second long-distance runner in history to

secure a “double-double”, winning his second

successive gold medals in the 5,000m and 10,000m

His “exquisitely judged” victory in the 5,000m

followed “the conventional narrative of Farah

dominance”: the cagey start, the surge to the front,

“the signature last-lap pounce” The 33-year-old is

undoubtedly the “outstanding” long-distance runner

of this era: he has now won nine successive titles at

major championships – no one else has managed

more than five in a row

Farah has the ideal physique for endurance racing,

said David Walsh in The Sunday Times: the long

limbs and stride, the lightness on his feet His

bullishness is unrivalled, too: he believes he’s

stronger and faster than any rival, and tries to

intimidate them before a race Yet there are some blemishes on

Farah’s reputation His coach, Alberto Salazar, is being

investigated over allegations of doping And he hasn’t come close

to breaking the 5,000m and 10,000m world records There can

be no such reservations about Usain Bolt, said Chris Almeida on

TheRinger.com True, the 30-year-old Jamaican sprinter is not as

fast as he once was But that hardly matters Bolt hasn’t “raced

against competitors in years”: since 2008, “he’s been chasing his

own records” In Rio, he capped his final Olympics with an

unprecedented “triple-triple”: he won the 100m, 200m and

4x100m relay for the third Games in a row Such longevity would

be amazing in any sport, let alone the sprints, “the razor edge of

athletic competition”, said Barney Ronay in The Guardian Bolt

bowed out of the Olympics as the greatest ever trackand field athlete, and the most compelling: no oneelse has made “being this good look so human”.Those qualities have made him indispensable toathletics, said Oliver Holt in The Mail on Sunday

As the sport lurches from one doping crisis toanother, Bolt has always been “the shining light”

He has nine of the 30 fastest 100m times in history;the remaining 21 were run by athletes who havefailed a drugs test When he retires next year, thesport will struggle desperately without him Ifanyone can fill Bolt’s running shoes it’s Wayde vanNiekerk, said Andrew Longmore in The SundayTimes In Rio, the 24-year-old South African shaved

an incredible 0.15 seconds off the 400m worldrecord Not bad for someone who weighed just over1kg at birth, and was given only 24 hours to live.Off the track, however, van Niekerk is less exciting:coached by a 74-year-old great-grandmother, he is “a quietlyspoken” man He boasts “much of Bolt’s talent”, but “none ofhis showmanship”

Track and field: three great Olympians

Sport

MotoGP Cal Crutchlow won the Czech Republic Grand Prix to

become Britain’s first MotoGP winner in 35 years

Football Man City beat Stoke City 4-1 Leicester drew 0-0 with

Arsenal Man Utd beat Southampton 2-0 Crystal Palace boughtChristian Benteke from Liverpool for £27m

Rugby league St Helens’s seven-match winning run came to an

end when Wigan Warriors beat them 25-0 in the Super 8s

Sporting headlines

Bolt: the “shining light”

NEWS 23

Sport

Last Saturday, Caster

Semenya won the

women’s 800m in one

minute and 55.28

seconds, said Andy Bull

in The Guardian It was

the fifth-fastest time in

Olympic history – and it

was one of the most

controversial This time it

wasn’t about drugs – it

was about the fact that

the hyperandrogenic South African has

unusually high testosterone levels

No female athlete has ever come under

“such brutal scrutiny” as Semenya, said

Jeré Longman in The New York Times

After her victory in the 2009 World

Championships, at the tender age of 18, she

was called a man by many rivals, subjected

to invasive tests and temporarily barred

from races The International Association

of Athletics Federations (IAAF) then

introduced new rules obliging

hyperandrogenic athletes to reduce their

testosterone levels – so Semenya started

taking hormones, as a result of which her

running times slowed But after a court

ruling last year, the restriction was lifted –

and Semenya, as she showed in Rio, was

running faster than ever The IAAF was

right to penalise womenwith abnormal

testosterone levels, saidRoss Tucker in the DailyMail, because it gives

“an unfair advantage”

For every women’s trackathletics world record,there are at least 8,000men who have runfaster And why is that?

Testosterone makesthem stronger If it isn’t used as a “dividingline” between men’s and women’s sport,women will “disappear from most elitesport” Not surprisingly, the IAAF wants itsrestrictions reintroduced

But it’s not just testosterone that makesthe difference, said Olga Khazan in TheAtlantic There were several

hyperandrogenic athletes in Rio: one ofthem, Indian sprinter Dutee Chand,brought the case against the IAAF last year

But it didn’t do her any good: she didn’tmake it beyond the heats of the 100m Noone denies that extra testosterone is anadvantage, but so are the other

“unorthodox features” that give athletes anedge: Michael Phelps’s flipper-like feet, forinstance We must accept that to be anOlympian is “to be abnormal”

Like all great managers, Pep Guardiolacan be “hard, unflinching and a bit of

a bastard”, said Daniel Taylor in TheObserver And at Manchester City, hehas quickly demonstrated his ruthless-ness by dropping Joe Hart (pictured).After a decade at the club, thegoalkeeper is no longer first choice; he

is expected to leave this month Hart’scareer has been marked by “periods

of brilliance”, but he is too prone” for a manager of Guardiola’sclass – as he showed at Euro 2016.Still, this isn’t about whether Hart isgood enough, said Jamie Carragher inthe Daily Mail He’s just the wrongkind of player Guardiola prefers a

“accident-“sweeper keeper” who can play like adefender, and “ping passes withunerring accuracy” – someone likeBayern Munich’s Manuel Neuer.Guardiola has revolutionised the role:his keepers need to be “better withtheir feet than their hands”

Semenya: “brutal scrutiny”

It was harder in 1972

To The Times

Looking back through my

papers from the 1972 Munich

Olympics, when Britain won

only 18 medals (four gold,

five silver and nine bronze),

reminded me of the very

different amateur rules that the

underfinanced GB teams of the

past worked under To be

eligible to compete we had to

“have always participated

without any remuneration”,

our “livelihood must not be

derived from sport”, and we

had to be “engaged in a basic

occupation” to “provide for

our present and future” The

rules also stated that the

“recognised period of full

training must not normally

exceed an aggregate of 30

days and in no case exceed

60 in one calendar year”

Communist bloc countries

flouted these rules and, aided

by drugs, were dominant Any

GB Olympian who won a

medal under those conditions

was truly outstanding

Rooney Massara, member of

the GB rowing team at the

1972 Olympics, Wrelton,

North Yorkshire

A comrade in carping

To The Guardian

I have but one response to the

miserable carping of Simon

Jenkins and his attack on the

baffling hysterics from our

BBC commentators over such

issues as the hamfisted draping

of the Union Jack Thank you

I now feel less alone

Dr Tudor Rickards,

Woodford, Cheshire

Gold to the bogeyman

To The Daily Telegraph

Jeremy Warner sees the spirit

of free-wheeling,

no-holds-barred capitalism behind

success at the Olympic Games

But the invisible hand didn’t

select, train and fund British

athletes Plainly, this winning

strategy vindicates an old

bogeyman of the Right –

state-led planning

Dr David Epstein, York

Fat lot of good

To The Daily Telegraph

There is an irony in the two

most successful countries at

the Games also having the

highest percentage of obese

individuals

Simon Baynham, London

Lagoons don’t add up

To The Guardian

Steve Emsley is wrong when hecompares tidal lagoons withHinkley and asks why tidalenergy is not being discussed

The latest estimated cost of thelagoon proposed for SwanseaBay is £1.3bn Hinkley wouldproduce 65 times as muchelectricity, all day, every day –true “baseload” Tidal lagoonswould produce variableamounts (four times as much

on a spring tide as on a neaptide in Swansea, and a biggerdifference further up the Severnestuary), and the generationwould be intermittent (fourthree-hour blocks a day) –that’s not “baseload”

Lagoons could onlyproduce 8% (about 25 TWh ayear) of the UK’s electricityrequirements (a figurechallenged by tidal energyexperts) if five others followedSwansea, each many timeslarger and much more costly

than Swansea (many timesmore than £5bn in total) Butconsent for the next two –huge lagoons further up theSevern estuary – is mostunlikely because of various EUenvironmental designations

As to why no one is discussingthem: in fact, Charles Hendry

is conducting a review of tidallagoons to assess, among otherthings, whether they could play

a cost-effective role in the UKenergy mix (see www.hendryreview.com) Some

think the review wasprompted by thebelated Governmentrealisation that thefigures bandied aroundfor lagoons just don’tadd up

Phil Jones, Ynystawe, Swansea

Poldark stress

To The Daily Telegraph

With the new series of

Poldark starting soon, I

find it annoying that, wheneverthe name is pronounced, theemphasis is placed on “Pol”rather than “dark” InCornwall, nearly all namesbeginning with “Pol”

emphasise the second syllable.Examples include Polperro,Polzeath, Polruan

New series, new stress, I say

Judith Argent, Bodmin, Cornwall

Hug a planner

To The Observer

In my experience, plannersdeserve big hugs owing to thehard time they have controllingaggressive developers Manypieces of land selected bydevelopers for housing lie onthe outskirts of existing villages

or towns A typical developersubmits an outline applicationthat raises many objections andreveals areas of concern Theplanning authority and electedcouncillors are then quite likely

to refuse permission

The developer then returnswith amended plans and a fullapplication The authority maywell refuse permission again,and for good reasons

The developer then appealsand brings along his legalteam, headed by a barrister

to present his case to aGovernment inspector at apublic hearing The counciland residents probably havelimited funds, so are in somedifficulty, and the developerhas a good chance of gettinghis way This is howdevelopers are really in charge

of what’s being built, and notthe planners I suggest we giveplanners greater powers toencourage design anddevelopment of entirely newvillages with properinfrastructure rather than ruinexisting ones by adding moreand more, bit by bit

Mike Haywood, Cheltenham

27 August 2016 THE WEEK

the first place.”

● Letters have been edited

Hands off the burkini

To The Guardian

I’m a pale person and I spent my formative years turningred on the beach and laying the groundwork for animpressive selection of brown blotches and spots that couldeasily turn nasty at some point I could have done with atiny burkini to keep my skin safe from the sun’s burningrays My teenage years were riven with angst andembarrassment as I sought to hide my imperfections frompublic gaze How I would have welcomed a swimsuit thatcould have shielded my pale, skinny frame from the eyes ofthe world instead of having to suffer the worst of Britishdesign that incorporated armoured bra cups which soaredskywards when I lay on my back

A trip to hotter climes saw me swathed head to foot intowels and sporting an impressive weight of greasy sunblockwhen I really needed a decent garment that didn’t leave myshoulders and thighs bare Luckily these clothes are nowavailable in the shape of swim tights and swim shirts so I can

go to the beach covered head to foot in clothing that isdesigned to keep me safe in the sun and that works well asswimwear If I want to add a swim hat to keep my hair fromgetting tangled in the water, I can do that… unless I am aMuslim woman The burkini isn’t a million miles from some

of the clothing sold to surfers or those who wish to stay safe inthe sun, but because of the religious overtones, Muslim womenare being denied the right to enjoy the beach and go swimminglike any other person

Whatever your beliefs, there shouldn’t be rules about whatpeople can and cannot wear on the beach Semi-nudity or totalcover-up, it should be up to the individual

Michelle Gibson, Cambridge

To The Guardian

Haven’t noticed many nuns on the beaches during years ofFrench holidays Must be because their robes are “notcompatible with the values of the French Republic”

Bernard Clarke, Oxford

27 August 2016 THE WEEK

ARTS

When Karl Marx died in 1883, only 11

people attended his funeral, said Dominic

Sandbrook in The Sunday Times Outside a

“tiny circle of left-wing radicals”, nobody

took his ideas seriously Yet by the 1920s,

they’d helped inspire revolutions around the

world and millions saw him as the “secular

equivalent of a God” In Karl Marx, Gareth

Stedman Jones attempts to rescue the man

from the “myth-making of the 20th century”

While the Marx invoked by communist

revolutionaries was a thinker of “merciless consistency”, the man

himself was an “anxious, sickly, flawed human being” who

frequently changed his mind and never even finished his

masterpiece, Das Kapital “Dauntingly impressive” and

“relentlessly high-minded”, this is a work of “old-fashioned

intellectual history” While academics are sure to enjoy it, general

readers may find it “frustratingly austere”; one yearns for more

personal details, such as the boils on Marx’s bottom that Francis

Wheen chronicled with such relish in his earlier biography

Marx was born to well-off parents in thetown of Trier, western Prussia, in 1818, saidOliver Bullough in The Observer His firstambition was to be an academic, but by his late20s he was a communist, and his radicalismmade this impossible Instead, he became ajournalist, working in Cologne and Paris.Having been carried across Western Europe bythe revolutionary upheavals of 1848, he settled

in London the following year There, FriedrichEngels, another German émigré, became bothhis collaborator and financial backer Much ofwhat we think of as Marxism, Stedman Jonesargues, was in fact created by Engels, who

“codified” his friend’s theories after his death.Much about this “rich and deeply

researched” portrait of Marx is “interestinglydifferent”, said John Gray in the LiteraryReview For example, Stedman Jones isunusually blunt about Marx’s “complicatedrelationship with his Jewish ancestry”: hisfather converted to Lutheranism, and he often made “catty anti-Semitic jibes” The book aims to put Marx back in his 19thcentury context, said Mark Mazower in the Financial Times But

it also asks what “his value is for us today”; and argues that heremains an “outstanding model” of how to critique capitalism.Communism may have failed, but it can scarcely be said thatcontemporary capitalism has succeeded Marx shows how to

“think about the world as a whole for the sake of its betterment”– and this book is an “admirable guide to how he did it”

Karl Marx: Greatness

and Illusion

by Gareth Stedman Jones

Allen Lane 768pp £35

The Week Bookshop £30 (incl p&p)

Review of reviews: Books

Book of the week

Clive James “might as well have invented” the

TV critic’s job, said A.A Gill in The Sunday

Times Before him, it was a “grudging,

unconsidered cul-de-sac”, usually given to

washed-up hacks “too long-serving to fire” or

celebrity writers who “despised the box” But

James, the Observer’s TV columnist from 1972 to

1982, treated TV “seriously” while also being

“very funny about it” Now, after a “generational interregnum”, he has returned

to writing about TV with Play All, a book about box sets Since being diagnosed

with terminal leukaemia several years ago, James has enthusiastically watched

shows such as The Wire, The Sopranos and Mad Men, often accompanied by

members of his family Such shows, he acknowledges, have replaced books and

even films as the “cultural reference points of our time” Here, he analyses them

with a characteristic mix of “thigh-slapping wit and forehead-slapping insight”

James has still “got it”, said James Medd in the New Statesman He writes as

well as ever about character, and identifies new tropes, such as the “irritating

daughter” (as seen in Homeland and The Americans) And he gets stuck into the

“big question”: what exactly is it that we find so fascinating about these shows?

Yet his glibness can irritate (“Don Draper is Don Giovanni in a Brooks Brothers

shirt”) and his “love” for The Good Wife, which isn’t in the same class as other

series he discusses, is perplexing Play All isn’t quite the book about “long-form

TV drama” that we needed I disagree, said Andrew Anthony in The Observer:

these essays are “brilliantly illuminating” On every page, there’s a sentence

which you can only stop and admire James’s own show may be “drawing to a

close”, but he remains as “interested, amused and engaged” as ever

Play All: A Bingewatcher’s

Notebook

by Clive James

Yale University Press 216pp £14.99

The Week Bookshop £11.99

Novel of the week

The Knives

by Richard T Kelly

Faber 496pp £14.99

The Week Bookshop £11.99

Richard T Kelly’s new novel offers a welcomeredress to the idea that politics has to be sleazy

to be interesting, said Nick Cohen in TheGuardian The story of an essentially “honest”Tory home secretary dragged down by acombination of political machination andpersonal weakness, it displays a refreshingwillingness to break liberal taboos Kelly’s Toriesaren’t “collectively wicked” but are “variedindividuals” capable of good and bad The work

of a “deft storyteller”, this is “the best novelabout modern politics I have read in years”

A couple of months ago, The Knives would

have had the “unmistakable tang of topicality”,said Andrew Holgate in The Sunday Times.Kelly’s home secretary, though a man, has quite

a bit in common with Theresa May But “somuch has changed” since the Brexit vote thatthis tale of “low-key political infighting” hasbeen “overshadowed by the sheer, madmelodrama” of recent events Kelly is animpressive writer Yet despite an “admirablynuanced” portrayal of its central character, this

is a “confusing and oddly disjointed read”

To order these titles or any other book in print, visit

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