The week UK English Magazine

2 NEWS

The main stories…

What happened

A Games to remember

What the editorials said

“What a great Games!” said The Daily Telegraph. The host
city’s performance has been uneven – with empty seats, pools
The Rio 2016 Olympic Games ended with
that turned green, and filthy water in
a carnival-inspired closing ceremony on
Guanabara Bay, where the sailing took
Sunday night, bringing to a close 16 days
place. “But Team GB has truly stolen the
of competition, featuring 11,303 athletes
show.” Just 20 years ago, at the Atlanta
from 206 nations, along with a refugee
Olympics, Britain won a solitary gold
team. A total of 306 gold medals were
medal, in rowing. “With the help of the
doled out in a Games that cost the host
Lottery, combined with the added impetus
nation £8.8bn. Team GB finished second in
of hosting the 2012 Games in London, it
the medal table, below the US and above
has been possible to identify and train top

China, with 27 golds and 67 medals in all
athletes in sports across the board.”
– bettering its haul of 65 at London 2012.
Britain won golds in 15 disciplines, a
The Brownlee brothers: silver and gold
wider spread than any other country.
In the later stages of the Games, Nick Skelton won a
showjumping gold at the age of 58, while brothers Alistair and British athletes in Rio have covered themselves in glory, said
Jonny Brownlee took the gold and silver in the triathlon. The
The Observer. But Team GB’s “no compromise” model also
women’s hockey team beat the favourites Netherlands in a
“raises difficult questions”. The £347m in Lottery and public
penalty shoot-out in the final, watched by some nine million
money spent since 2012 has been targeted ruthlessly. Sports
viewers on the BBC. Nicola Adams became the first woman to that were unlikely to reap a medal were denied funding – even
successfully defend an Olympic boxing gold, while Jade
if, like basketball and football, they are popular at grass-roots
“Headhunter” Jones also retained her title in taekwondo.
level among the country’s less well-off and less healthy. By
Last Saturday, Mo Farah won the 5,000m, completing a
contrast, sports such as cycling and rowing, favoured by the
“double-double” of 5,000m and 10,000m titles in consecutive better-off, have received massive investment. Meanwhile,
Olympics. Mark England, Team GB’s chef de mission, said:
across the country, public sports facilities are “decaying”.
“I have no doubt this is our greatest ever Games.”
We “must nurture the shoots as well as the tallest blades”.

What happened

The tragedy of Aleppo

Harrowing pictures of a dazed and bloodcovered 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-yearold brother later died in hospital.

What the editorials said
Over the last five years “tens of thousands” of civilians have
been 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 for
letting “this madness continue”. But international condemnation has little effect on the
Assad regime, said The Guardian. Last summer
a similar storm of protest greeted pictures of a
three-year-old Syrian boy, found drowned on a
Turkish beach after a refugee boat capsized.
Yet a year later the combatants were still
locked in a war being “fought with callous
disregard for humanitarian conventions”.
The conflict is actually intensifying, said The
Wall Street Journal. Russian and Syrian aircraft
have stepped up their attacks in Aleppo in

direct response to recent rebel gains. But even with the Russian
air cover, Syria’s “demoralised” army – Assad can now deploy
only 20,000 “battle-ready troops” – seems incapable of
winning an outright victory in the city. The “bloody
stalemate” looks set to continue.

Omran: a reproach to the West

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.

It wasn’t all bad
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”.

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.

A gang of muggers chose the
wrong target when they set
upon 77-year-old Winifred Peel.
The trio surrounded Mrs Peel at
an ATM, near her home on the
Wirral, shoved her aside, and
pressed the button to get £200
from her account. Mrs Peel,

who goes to the gym four times
a week, was shaken, but wasn’t
giving up without a fight. She
managed to grab one of the
thieves by the collar, then
rammed his head against the
machine several times. The
muggers ran off, but were soon
caught – and all three have now
been jailed.

COVER CARTOON: HOWARD MCWILLIAM
THE WEEK 27 August 2016


…and how they were covered

NEWS 3

What the commentators said

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?”

Tokyo 2020 will be more
difficult for Team GB, said
The Daily Telegraph. Japan
will invest heavily in its
athletes, and the Chinese
team, after a disappointing
showing in Rio, will be keen
to make a strong statement
on its own doorstep. The
Australians, likewise
disappointing in Brazil,
“won’t lie down”. And –
assuming that Russia can
allay the concerns of the
Olympic authorities over
doping – there will be a full
Russian delegation as well.

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.

The Paralympic Games will
take place in Rio next month,
said BBC News online.
However, they face major
budget cuts, as the organising
committee has not raised
enough money in ticket sales
to fund them (see page 6).

What the commentators said

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”.

The UN says it is prepared
to start delivering aid to
Aleppo this week, but it
first wants a commitment
from all the warring parties
– not only Russia – that
they will respect the truce.
It is also calling for a
regular, weekly two-day
halt in the fighting.

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”.

According to The Times,
Moscow is pressing Turkey
for permission to operate
from the key Incirlik air
base, already used by Nato

and home to a stock of US
nuclear warheads. Ankara’s
agreement would be seen in
Washington as evidence of
an alarming alliance
between Moscow and a
vital member of Nato.

THE WEEK

Blackmail or child abuse – which is more harmful? Which merits
more police attention? You might think these precisely the sorts of
question that call for nuanced human judgement, the answers
varying 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 business 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. Jeremy O’Grady
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27 August 2016 THE WEEK


Politics

4 NEWS
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
A third of British children are overweight
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 supermarkets 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 government – 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.

Spirit of the age
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.

THE WEEK 27 August 2016

Good week for:

Emigration, with reports that 10,647 UK passport holders
enquired about the possibility of moving to New Zealand in the
seven weeks after the Brexit vote, more than double the number
in the same period last year. Nearly 1,000 of them registered
with Immigration New Zealand on 24 June – the day the result
was announced.
Noel Edmonds, who was tipped to become Britain’s highestpaid daytime TV presenter. Although Channel 4 is axing his bestknown 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 overtaken
tobacco as the most valuable commodity in US prisons.
Researchers say the terrible quality of the food in American jails
probably explains the popularity of the instant noodles.

Bad week for:

Working mothers, who face a growing gender pay gap, new
research has found. Young childless women working full-time
typically 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 divert
338,000 tons of potentially recyclable rubbish to landfill last
year, because it was contaminated. In some areas, 15% of
waste sorted for recycling has to be rejected, often because
householders haven’t washed out containers properly.

Boring but important
Help to Buy “sham”

The Government’s Help to
Buy Isa has been criticised
as a “sham”, following
revelations that it can’t be
used to fund the exchange
deposit on a home. Since the
scheme’s launch last year,
more than 500,000 aspiring
first-time buyers have
opened the accounts, which

pay a 25% “bonus” of up to
£3,000, supposedly towards
a deposit. However, it
emerged last week that the
bonus is only paid after the
exchange of contracts, as
the sale nears completion;
the Treasury says this is
intended to ensure recipients
use it to buy a house.
Labour called the scheme
“misleading”, while experts
warned that savers might be
able to take legal action.

Ofsted chair resigns

The chair of Ofsted has
resigned over his
controversial comments
about the Isle of Wight. At
a conference last month,
former City businessman
David Hoare described parts
of the island – where he has
a home – as a “ghetto”
where “there has been
inbreeding”, blighted by
“a mass of crime, drug
problems, and huge

unemployment”. Following
an outcry, Hoare apologised
twice, but this week he quit
with immediate effect.

Poll watch
84% of people think EU
migrants living in Britain
should be allowed to remain
after Brexit, according to an
ICM 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 Mori
poll found that people are
less gloomy about the
economy than they were
immediately 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


Europe at a glance
The Hague,
Netherlands
Jihadi repents: A
Malian jihadi has
become the first
person to be
convicted of war
crimes for
destroying cultural
artefacts. A former
member of the
Ansar 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”.

NEWS 5

Berlin
Partial burka ban: Germany’s federal
interior minister has proposed a partial ban
on the wearing of the burka and other
full-face veils, saying that such coverings
“have no place in our society”. Thomas de
Maizière said he planned to introduce
legislation to have the veils banned in
places where “it is necessary for our
society’s coexistence”, including
government offices, courts, schools and
universities. Officials had been considering
a complete ban on full-face veils (although
these are a rare sight in Germany) but were
reportedly warned that this would amount
to an unconstitutional encroachment on
religious freedom. De Maizière is a
member of Chancellor Merkel’s CDU, and
one of her close confidants. Merkel herself
recently underlined her objections to the
burka and other veils, when she told an
interviewer that “a fully veiled woman has
almost no chance of integrating
successfully in German society”.

Berlin
Germans told to stockpile food: The
German government is set to advise its
citizens to stockpile food and water in case
of a national emergency, for the first time
since the end of the Cold War, according
to a leaked report. The Concept for Civil
Defence, which was leaked to the
Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung
newspaper, states that “an attack on
German territory, requiring conventional
defence of the nation, is unlikely” but
cannot be ruled out. Under the plans,
which were due to go before ministers this
week, citizens would be advised to store
enough food to last ten days, and five
days’ worth of drinking water, as well as
fuel, candles, torches, matches and cash.
Opposition MPs have dismissed the
proposed advice as “scaremongering”.

Ventotene,
Italy
Show of
unity: The
leaders of
Germany,
Italy and
France – the
EU’s three

largest countries by population once
Britain 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 Altiero
Spinelli, an anti-fascist intellectual
considered a progenitor of European unity.
However, it was short on substance, with
no concrete policy proposals. The talks
were aimed at agreeing a common position
before a summit of all EU countries, apart
from the UK, in Slovakia next month.

Budapest
Pig’s head comment: A Hungarian MEP
has suggested that pigs’ heads should be
strung up along Hungary’s border fence to
deter migrants. György Schöpflin, a
member of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s
right-wing Fidesz party, made the
comment on Twitter, after Andrew
Stroehlein of Human Rights Watch
criticised border guards for using
scarecrows made from sugar beet to try to
put off refugees. “Refugees are fleeing war
and torture, Hungary. Your root vegetable
heads will not deter them,” Stroehlein had
written. The MEP replied: “Might do so.

Human images are haram. But agree, pig’s
head would deter more effectively.”
Campaigners say his comment reflects a
deep strain of xenophobia within the
Fidesz government. According to Human
Rights Watch, migrants at Hungary’s
border with Serbia have been attacked by
dogs, and beaten with batons and fists.

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

27 August 2016 THE WEEK


6 NEWS

The world at a glance

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.
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.)

New York
Swimmer under fire: The gold medalwinning swimmer Ryan Lochte has lost
lucrative sponsorship deals with Speedo,
Ralph Lauren and others as a result of
his drunken escapade at the Olympics,
and subsequent lies to the police. Lochte
and three teammates vandalised a toilet
door at a petrol station after a night out
in Rio de Janeiro, and were confronted
by security guards. However, he later
told his mother he’d been robbed at gunpoint by men dressed as
police. She reported this to the press, and when he was questioned
about it, he stuck to his story – only for it to unravel in the face
of CCTV evidence. This week, the New York Post said he
represented “everything the world hates about Americans”.

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.
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.
Caracas
Coup warning: Venezuela’s embattled
socialist president, Nicolás Maduro, has
warned his opponents that if they
attempt to overthrow him, he will
respond with a force that will make
President Erdogan’s crackdown on
presumed coup plotters in Turkey look
like child’s play. “Did you see what
happened in Turkey?” Maduro
(pictured) asked during a televised event
last week. “Erdogan will seem like a
nursing baby compared to what the Bolivarian revolution will do
if the right wing steps over the line with a coup.”
THE WEEK 27 August 2016

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Paralympics in crisis: The
Paralympic Games are to be
dramatically scaled down owing to a
funding crisis and disappointing ticket sales. With just a few
weeks before the Games kick off, on 7 September – the
International Paralympic Committee’s president, Sir Philip
Craven, announced earlier this month that only 12% of tickets
had been sold, and the Games would be subject to large-scale cuts
to venues, staffing and transport. “Never before in the 56-year
history of the Paralympic Games have we faced circumstances like
this,” he said. The Brazilian organising committee was two weeks
late in paying £7m in travel grants, meaning that ten countries
may now struggle to get any competitors to Rio at all.


The world at a glance
Cairo
Lose weight or
face sack: Egypt’s
state TV has
suspended eight
female presenters
for being
overweight, and
told them to slim
down within a
month, or face the
sack. The
ultimatum

– 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 were
killed and scores more injured when a
suicide bomber attacked a Kurdish
wedding party in the Turkish city of
Gaziantep, close to the Syrian border, last
Saturday. Around half of the dead are
believed to have been under the age of 14.
Although President Erdogan initially said
the bomber was a child, aged 12 to 14,
working on the orders of Islamic State,
officials later backtracked, saying they
were still conducting DNA tests to
establish his or her identity. If Isis was
behind the atrocity, it may have been in
retaliation for offensives by Kurdish
militias and pro-Ankara Syrian opposition
forces against Isis in Syria. Hundreds of
rebel fighters are reportedly in southern
Turkey, preparing for an offensive on the
Isis-held Syrian town of Jarablus.

NEWS 7

Pyongyang
Anger at defector: North Korea has
denounced its former deputy ambassador
to the UK, who defected to South Korea
last week, as “human scum who lacks even
an elementary level of loyalty and even
tiny bits of conscience and morality that
are required for human beings”. The
Korean Central News Agency, the official
mouthpiece of the Pyongyang government,
said that Thae Yong Ho – who had been
living with his family at the North Korean
embassy in Ealing, west London – was a
criminal who had defected in order to
escape charges of misusing government
funds, selling state secrets and child rape.
The South Korean government said Thae
was the highest-ranking diplomat to have
defected from the North to the South, and
that he had been motivated by his disgust
for Kim Jong Un’s regime.

Manila
1,800 killed in seven
weeks: Almost 1,800
people suspected of being
either drug dealers or users

have been shot dead by
police (712) or murdered
by vigilantes (1,067) in the
seven weeks since Rodrigo
Duterte was sworn in as
the Philippines’ president
on 30 June. The figures
were cited by the country’s
top police officer at a
senate hearing into
extra-judicial killings.
Vastly higher than
previous estimates, they
exclude those killed
between Duterte’s
election on 9
May and his
swearing-in.
Juba
Leader flees:
South Sudan’s
opposition leader
and former
vice-president Riek
Machar has fled the
country following a
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.

Kinshasa
Yellow fever kills hundreds: The World
Health Organisation is spearheading an
urgent vaccination campaign, centred on
Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic
Republic of Congo, aimed at halting the
worst outbreak of yellow fever in the
region for 30 years. The epidemic began
in Angola late last year and has since
spread into DR Congo and claimed at
least 500 lives; related cases have also
been seen in Kenya and China (to which
Angola has close economic ties). Yellow
fever, which is passed on by mosquitoes,
has no known cure, and the current strain
has a fatality rate of around 20%. The
vaccine is effective, but officials are

struggling to get hold of it in sufficient
quantities: each batch takes up to six
months to make, and only four companies
produce it. Last month the WHO said it
was nine million doses short.

Riyadh
Bin Laden’s boy:
Osama bin
Laden’s favourite
son has called on
Saudi citizens to
join al-Qa’eda, in
order to overthrow
the kingdom’s
rulers and drive US
influence out of the
Arabian peninsula.
In an audio message posted online, Hamza
bin Laden (pictured as a young boy) – who
is believed to be about 24 and whose
whereabouts are unknown – urged Saudi
youths to join al-Qa’eda in Yemen to
“gain the necessary experience” to fight
the House of Saud. It was Hamza’s second
propaganda message in weeks, and has
increased speculation that he aims to take
over the leadership of the terror network.
27 August 2016 THE WEEK

8 NEWS
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
us nowadays –
everyone thinks we
knew everything,”
she told Kate
Connolly in the
The Guardian.
“We knew nothing
– it was all kept
well secret.”
Goebbels, she says,

always had a
“gentlemanly
countenance”. He
wore “suits of the
best cloth, and
always had a light
tan. He had wellgroomed hands – he
probably had a
manicure every day.
There was really
nothing to criticise
about him.” She
fondly recalls

People
watching him walking into the
office: “He’d trip up the steps
like a little duke, through his
library into his beautiful
office.” Only once did she
glimpse something frightening
behind the façade: when she
saw him on stage in 1943,
calling on the German people
to wage “total war”. “No
actor could have been any
better at the transformation
from a civilised, serious person
into a ranting, rowdy man. In
the office he had a kind of

noble elegance, and then to see
him there like a raging midget
– you just can’t imagine a
greater contrast.” Still, she
insists her own conscience is
clear. “Those people nowadays
who say they would have stood
up against the Nazis – I believe
they are sincere in meaning
that, but believe me, most of
them wouldn’t have. The
idealism of youth might easily
have led to you having your
neck broken.”
Trump’s doppelgänger
Ann Coulter has found her
perfect man. The right-wing
polemicist (pictured) has been
arguing for years that the US
needs to crack down on
immigration, build a wall to
keep Mexicans out, and stop
pandering to politically correct
liberals. And now Donald
Trump is promising to turn her
vision into reality. “I’ve been
doing nothing but watching
Trump on TV,” she told Will
Pavia in The Times. “I wish
there was a Trump channel

where you could just
watch him 24 hours a
day. I’d never sleep.
He’s like the alpha
male doppelgänger of
me.” She approves of
all his ideas – even
his threat not to
honour America’s
commitments to
Nato. “Who
cares?” she
shrugs. “Maybe
you guys are
losing sleep over
what happens to
Ukraine, but I
promise you
out-of-work steel
workers could not
give two f***s.” She
is confident, too, that
he will build the wall
she dreams of.
“Absolutely. A big,
beautiful wall with
big, gold Ts on it.”

You have to be tough to survive 60 years in Hollywood – but Ellen
Burstyn has always had grit. The 83-year-old actress grew up in

Depression-era Detroit with a single mother who was physically
violent. “If it were now, I would have gone to a police station, but
there were no laws then,” she told Tom Shone in The Daily
Telegraph. “There was no such thing as child abuse. Parents owned
their children. They could do whatever they wanted. All my life I
have 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; a
happy, jolly, sedentary person. Did hardship stimulate me? I wanted
out of there, and I got out on the day I was legally able to.” Burstyn
jumped on a bus to New York, taking just two suitcases and $3,
and built a career as an acclaimed character actress. She remains
fascinated by the idea of being someone else – so much so that she
once spent three days sleeping rough in New York, to see how it
felt. “That was a big experience. I went up to a restaurant with
outside 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 a
dollar. As I walked away I felt really proud that I had gotten that. I
was like: ‘Hey, I begged! I got it!’ Yet I felt tears streaming down my
face. 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 an
opportunity for you to put aside the hot
allegiances of youth without the necessity
of at once acquiring new loyalties to take
their place. Here is a break in the

tyrannical course of irreparable events; a
period in which to look around upon the
world and upon oneself without the sense
of an enemy at one’s back or the insistent
pressure to make up one’s mind; a
moment in which to taste the mystery
without the necessity of seeking a
solution. And all this, not in an
intellectual vacuum, but surrounded by
all the inherited learning and literature
and experience of our civilisation.
Michael Oakeshott, quoted in
The Observer

Farewell
Arthur Hiller,
director of Love
Story, died 17
August, aged 92.
Donald Henderson,
epidemiologist,
died 19 August,
aged 87.
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

THE WEEK 27 August 2016


Consistency - that’s the

FP CRUX European Special Situations Fund* - decile rankings†
Since Launch**

6 Years

5 Years

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FP CRUX European Fund* - decile rankings†
Since Launch††

Year to Date

6 Months

3 Years

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1 Year

6 Months

Hitting targets again and again
3 Months

As you can see from the tables shown, the managers
of CRUX’s European funds, have a strong track record
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†

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Briefing

NEWS 11

Putin’s military build-up

The Kremlin is modernising its military and threatening its neighbours. Is a confrontation looming?
Why the cause for concern?
Could Russia rival the US?
In recent years, Russia’s military has
There’s no chance of that. Even the
asserted itself on the world stage in a way
Pentagon’s top brass – who are using
not seen since the Cold War. In early
Putin’s build-up to argue for greater
2014, Russian special forces annexed the

funding – don’t believe American
Crimean peninsular in Ukraine, while
military supremacy is in jeopardy. Last
large numbers of well-equipped troops
year, the US spent nearly ten times more
were sent into the east of the country to
on defence (about $600bn) than Russia
help pro-Russian separatists (although
($66.4bn). It has 19 aircraft carriers to
Moscow officially denies this). Since
Russia’s one, and 13,500 aircraft to
September 2015, Russia has fought a
Russia’s 3,500. A series of treaties over
brutal air campaign in Syria, in support
the past 50 years have brought Russia
of President Assad. Closer to home,
and the US to approximate nuclear
Russian aircraft have aggressively buzzed
parity. But Nato’s 28 nations have
US and Nato forces and intruded into
around four times Russia’s military
European waters and airspace. In April,
firepower. Strategically, there’s no
two Russian fighters passed within 30
contest. However, in smaller-scale
feet of a US destroyer in the Baltic Sea.
confrontations, Russia has shown itself
Russia has also conducted big military
to be intimidating, unpredictable and
Russia has the largest tank fleet in the world

exercises near its western borders, some
very effective (see box).
involving nuclear weaponry. The image conveyed by these, says
Johan Norberg of the Swedish Defence Research Agency, “is that
What are the possible flashpoints?
they’re preparing for large-scale inter-state war”.
Nato sources think that the Russians could easily overrun its
eastern flank: Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia are very
What is Russia up to?
vulnerable. But more likely than an actual invasion, suggests the
Throughout his 16-year rule, Vladimir Putin has used Russia’s
FT’s defence editor Sam Jones, would be a semi-covert act of
military as a blunt instrument of Kremlin policy, to project power
aggression “calibrated to be just below the alliance’s Article 5
abroad and to shore up his popularity at home. But the 2008 war
threshold, the all-for-one-and-one-for-all clause that triggers
with Georgia was a turning point: the conflict both confirmed that outright war” – such as a huge cyber-attack on Estonia’s national
he could deploy forces outside Russia’s borders without risking a
infrastructure, followed amid the chaos by a limited, “temporary”
Western military response, and also laid bare the weaknesses of
invasion to protect the country’s ethnic Russian minority. The real
the country’s ill-trained conscripts and outdated equipment. Since
aim of such an operation would be to undermine Nato.
then the military budget has grown by more than a third, with
billions spent on a new generation of missiles, tanks and fighter
What is Nato doing to counter the threat?
jets. Russian forces have been reformed: improved pay and
At the Nato summit in Warsaw in July, it committed to deploy
conditions, and better-trained officers, have created a much more
four combat battalions to Poland and the Baltic states: one US,

professional army. The Black Sea Fleet, headquartered at the
one British, one Canadian and one German. Nato is prevented by
Crimean port of Sevastopol, recently added around a dozen
a 1997 treaty with Russia from deploying any new “substantial
warships. “The Black Sea has almost become a Russian lake,”
combat forces” in the east. The idea is that the battalions fall
said Turkey’s President Erdogan.
short of that deterrent, yet create deterrent “tripwires” – making
Russian interference in these states too risky to contemplate. Nato
Why the upgrade?
has also doubled its existing response force to 40,000 men, and
Putin wants Russia to once again become a credible counterweight created a 5,000-strong rapid-reaction brigade – and pressed ahead
to the US and Nato. He wants to
with a missile defence system with a
protect Russia’s dominion over its
base in Romania, along with a series
Hybrid warfare: Russia’s “edge”
traditional sphere of influence, which
of exercises across Eastern Europe.
Russia’s recent conflicts have been used as a testing
was threatened by the pro-Western
ground for its new weaponry (and as a shop window:
“colour revolutions” in Georgia and
How did Russia react?
the Syrian campaign has generated arms sales
discussions with Algeria, India and Iran). The results
Ukraine, and by the expansion of the
With fury. “Nato must stop reacting
are worrying for Nato forces. According to a leaked
EU and Nato to its borders. Russian

to a non-existent threat,” said the
British Army report into the conflict in Ukraine, Russian Kremlin, warning that these
forces are designed to be deployed
rocket launchers and air defence systems are more
fast to any part of the former Soviet
“provocative” deployments were
powerful than their British equivalents, giving Putin’s
Union. New units have been stationed
putting Europe’s security at risk. And
forces a “significant capability edge”: Britain and the
on its western borders, ready to
even some EU politicians felt that
US have spent the last 15 years fighting counterintervene. Further afield – from the
Nato was engaging in a dangerous
insurgency operations, eroding their “high-end
western Mediterranean to the Arctic,
game of bluff. The difficulty is in
military capabilities”. The report also said that the UK
Putin is determined to maintain a
striking a balance: providing a firm
and its Nato allies were “scrambling to catch up” with
Russia’s ability to use electronic warfare: jamming and deterrent while not risking a
powerful presence.
hacking enemy transmissions; using acoustics to
dangerous escalation. Russian
locate snipers; deploying drones in pairs to locate
How powerful are its forces?
intentions are hard to fathom. Many
Ukrainian units and bring down devastating fire.
Some analysts claim that Russia is the

in Eastern Europe genuinely fear war.
second-strongest military power in the The Russian campaign in Ukraine has been described
Optimists point out that in Ukraine
as an act of “hybrid warfare”, including clandestine
world, with 766,000 active personnel
Putin has shown himself unwilling to
and regular troops, heavy weaponry and cyber-war.
and the largest tank fleet in the world.
incur large numbers of casualties, and
Russia has been more active than any other country in
It devotes a very large proportion of
that with Russia’s economy
developing its cyber-operations, which range from
its GDP to military expenditure: 5%
stuttering, the current level of military
attacks that brought down part of the Ukrainian power
in 2015, compared to 3.2% in the US
spending is unsustainable: a cut of
grid to trolling Western servicemen on Twitter.
and 1.95% in the UK.
some 5% is expected over 2016.
27 August 2016 THE WEEK



Best articles: Britain
The gross
exploitation of
hotel staff
Yvonne Roberts

The Observer

Let’s blame the
elites – if we
can find them
Helen Lewis
New Statesman

Corbyn is
right: our trains
are a rip-off
Janice Turner
The Times

You can’t jail a
man for being
a scoundrel
Brendan O’Neill
Spiked

Robert De Niro is about to join the ranks of Britain’s fourthbiggest employer, says Yvonne Roberts – the hotel and tourism
industry. The actor and his two US billionaire business partners
are opening a luxury boutique hotel in Covent Garden, no doubt
one of those chic places where a glass of water costs the same as
the London living wage (£9.40). It’s a wage most hotel workers
– 70% of whom are immigrants – can but dream of. As Unethical
London, a report by Unite’s Hotel Workers branch, makes all too
clear, global hotel chains in London do all they can to hobble
collective action. Those showing an interest in unionising are
assigned extra rooms to clean or get shift time cut on their zerohour contracts. In many New York hotels, by contrast, workers

get holiday pay, a guaranteed working week and even medical
insurance. That’s partly because they’re unionised, but it’s also
due to a kitemark system that tells consumers if a hotel operates a
fair policy on wages. Here in Britain we, as consumers, could
easily set up something similar via TripAdvisor. But do we really
care enough about the exploitation of labour to make it happen?
Blame it on “the elites”. That’s the incessant cry these days, says
Helen Lewis. But who are they? We can’t accuse them of being
“metropolitan”, since 81.5% of us live in cities; but narrowing the
focus and fuming against “Islington elites” is equally off the mark:
Islington is the 14th most deprived local authority in England.
Indeed, if anyone belongs to the elites it’s probably the anti-elite
cheerleaders – on the Right, Boris Johnson (Eton, Oxford, London
mayor, MP), who rages against the “unelected elite in Brussels”;
on the Left, Diane Abbott (MP since 1987) who rails against “the
Westminster elite”. Donald Trump’s supporters, too, are said to be
rebelling against “the elites”, yet in many states, they’re the voters
on above-average incomes. The truth is that power is so dispersed
and counterbalanced in our complex, interconnected world, that
even those at the top of their profession – be it journalism or
politics – feel a lack of power. That’s why “the only thing we can
say for sure about the elites is that they are always someone else”.
The recent photographs of Jeremy Corbyn sitting on “the filthy
floor of a rammed London to Newcastle train” might have been a
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 recent
polls, up to two-thirds of voters say they favour renationalising
the 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” railway

system, in which rival operators enjoy state subsidies to the tune
of £4bn, charge the highest fares in Europe – and provide a shockingly poor service. “There is no moment you feel more ripped off
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 as
France and the Netherlands, have comfortable, efficient railway
systems run by the state. It is surely not beyond us to follow suit.
You wouldn’t think that in Britain in 2016 a man could be sent to
jail for thinking bad thoughts and saying bad things. But that’s
what 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 recently
started “bigging up” Isis, the authorities judged he’d gone too far
and now he has been jailed for “inviting support for a proscribed
organisation”. Yet there’s no evidence that Choudary organised
violence or gave financial support to jihadis: all he did was swear
allegiance to Isis in an east London curry house in front of a few
close aides. He’s a braggart, a blusterer, but he’s not – as the press
ludicrously brands him – “one of the most dangerous men in
Britain”. By convicting him, the authorities have just been putting
on a show of toughness to cover up their inability to stem the
spread of anti-Western, anti-liberal ideas among young Muslims.
And by censoring him, the British state is effectively espousing an
illiberal ideology similar to his. How depressing that “in seeking
to solve the Choudary problem, we become like Choudary”.

NEWS 13
IT MUST BE TRUE…

I read it in the tabloids
Indian surgeons who opened
up a patient with abdominal
pains were astonished to
discover 40 knives lodged in
his stomach. The 42-year-old
man, who underwent
emergency treatment after an
ultrasound scan showed a
cancer-like mass in his body,
later told doctors that he had
eaten the blades over a threemonth period, because he
liked their taste. One of the
surgeons described it as the
most horrifying surgery he
had ever performed in 20
years 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.

27 August 2016 THE WEEK

Best of the American columnists

NEWS 15

Is Trump trying to build a media empire?

If you thought the old Trump
the Trump mould. However, Bannon
campaign was crazy, said Eugene
has never run a political campaign, so
Robinson in The Washington Post, just
it remains to be seen whether he can
wait until you see the new one. The
do anything to improve Trump’s
Republican presidential nominee was
general election prospects.
apparently feeling “boxed in” and
“controlled” by the few people around
The theory doing the rounds is that
him who actually knew something
this campaign reshuffle isn’t about
about politics. So Trump last week
trying to win the election, said John
demoted his campaign chairman Paul
Cassidy in The New Yorker. Rather,
Manafort (who was facing awkward
it’s a “business play”: Trump is

questions in any case about his
“laying the groundwork for a new
financial ties to the deposed Ukrainian
conservative media empire” to
leader Viktor Yanukovych, and later
challenge Fox News, the cable news
resigned from Trump’s team). In the
network founded by Rupert Murdoch
Bannon: a “practised provocateur”
driving seat now is a man named
and Roger Ailes. Trump apparently
Stephen Bannon, who is sure to “not only let Trump be Trump
resents the fact that his campaign has brought in huge ratings
but encourage him to be even Trumpier”. Bannon runs
for many news organisations, and wants to get in on the action.
Breitbart News, a fiercely right-wing website, and is a
This idea seems all too plausible, said Levi Tillemann and Julian
“practised provocateur” and propagandist: the site’s late
E. Zelizer in the Los Angeles Times. Trump has hinted before
founder, Andrew Breitbart, once described him, admiringly, as
that America needs a new network, and has clashed with Fox
the “Leni Riefenstahl of the Tea Party movement”.
News. With the help of Bannon and Ailes – who was recently
ousted from Fox News over sexual harassment claims and is
With his polls sinking fast, Trump “needed to make a change”,
now advising Trump ahead of next month’s presidential debates
said Olivia Nuzzi on The Daily Beast. And the irrepressible
– he is well placed to shake up the conservative media establishBannon – a former naval officer and Goldman Sachs banker
ment just as he’s shaken up the GOP. We’ve seen Trump hotels,
who has also had stints in Hollywood – is a man very much in

Trump University and Trump wine. “Up next, Trump TV.”

Prepare for
the sexist
backlash
Michelle Cottle
The Atlantic

Why the Left
welcomes
race riots
Ben Shapiro
National Review

This luxury
cruise is an
abomination
Will Oremus
Slate

“Get ready for the era of The Bitch,” says Michelle Cottle. Make no mistake: if Hillary Clinton wins
the White House in November, becoming America’s first-ever woman president, it will usher in years
of “down-and-dirty public misogyny”. Just as Barack Obama’s election “did not herald a shiny,
new post-racial America”, so Clinton’s election won’t deliver one of gender equality. Sexist insults
slamming her as a “menopausal nutjob” are already rife. At the recent Republican convention,
vendors did a fast trade in badges emblazoned with slogans such as “Life’s a Bitch – don’t vote for
one” and “KFC Hillary Special: Two fat thighs, two small breasts... left wing”. At GOP rallies, it’s
common to see T-shirts reading: “Trump that Bitch!” And one of Clinton’s own rallies was
disrupted by hecklers chanting: “Iron my shirt!” It would be nice to think this was just a “heat-ofthe-campaign thing” and that the sexism would die down once Clinton was in office. But the
experience of Julia Gillard, the first woman PM of Australia, was that the sexist attacks got worse

over time. In the long run, of course, Clinton’s candidacy will help move attitudes forward, but
change always triggers a backlash. So brace yourself for some “in-your-face sexist drivel”.
Last week saw the latest in a spate of urban riots in the US, says Ben Shapiro. The place this time
was Milwaukee. The trigger? The shooting by a black cop of a black suspect armed with a stolen
gun. There’s no suggestion that racial discrimination played any part in the killing, but that didn’t
stop looters going on the rampage – and it didn’t stop the liberal media presenting this violence as
some sort of “uprising” against “oppression”. Why would the Left seek to justify riots that damage
black communities? Because it has a “long tradition of using riots to push redistributionist policies
that don’t work”. Progressive Democrats have “governed virtually every city in which major riots
have taken place, from Milwaukee (no Republican mayor since 1908) to Baltimore (no Republican
mayor since 1967) to Los Angeles (before the 1992 LA riots, no Republican mayor since 1961)”.
Instead of governing properly and tackling the urban pathologies that lead to unrest, leftists help
foster the sense of victimisation, seeing it as an effective way of bolstering their power base and
expanding the welfare state. And so it is. “All it costs is the businesses of local black people, the
safety of black residents and the possibility of recovery in high-crime black areas.”
Global warming isn’t all bad, says Will Oremus. True, it risks destroying the planet, but on the plus
side, it has opened up some brilliant new tourist opportunities for the world’s richest people. Around
1,000 of these lucky folk are currently enjoying a luxury cruise on the $350m, 68,000-tonne Crystal
Serenity, 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 ships
have managed the trip in recent years, but the 820ft, 13-deck Crystal Serenity – with its multiple
swimming pools, restaurants, casino and driving range – is by far the largest craft to attempt it. As a
precaution, it will be accompanied by an ice-breaker and two helicopters. The passengers, who paid
between $22,000 and $120,000 for the 32-day trip, were required to have insurance coverage of at
least $50,000 for emergency evacuation. The marketing copy described the cruise as “the ultimate
expedition 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”.
27 August 2016 THE WEEK

16 NEWS

Best articles: International

The burkini ban: France’s battle of the beaches
In the “country of Chanel and Brigitte
massacre in Nice, the authorities are in
Bardot” the burkini can only be seen as
no mood to compromise, said Berna
“a provocation”, said Jean-Michel
González Harbour in El País (Madrid).
Servant in Midi Libre (Montpellier).
Prime Minister Manuel Valls fully
The hideous full-length swimsuit that
supports the bans, calling the burkini
some Muslim women have taken to
“the expression of a political project, a
wearing on beaches is not just “an
counter-society, based notably on the
affront to human dignity” – as an
enslavement of women”. Most
“ostentatious religious symbol”, it’s a
politicians of the Left and Right agree.
challenge to the secular republic. So
All the same, the French should avoid
full marks to the mayor of Cannes for
leaping to “irrational intolerance”. The
having the gumption to ban it, on the
critics can hardly claim there’s a direct

grounds that the sight could stir up
link between wearing a “cumbersome
trouble in a country still “traumatised”
and impractical” bathing suit and
by recent Islamist terror attacks. As if
committing mass murder. The existing
A threat to hygiene, safety and morality?
to prove his point, a riot broke out in
prohibition on religious symbols in
Sisco in Corsica last week, as men of North African origin
schools and public institutions is fair enough, but “in the name
clashed with holidaymakers who’d been taking pictures of their
of equality and liberty, please keep the battle off the beaches”.
burkini-wearing female relatives. Now a ban is in place there
too, while 15 other French towns have followed suit.
Quite, said Remona Aly in The Guardian. “Nothing says ‘losing
the plot’ more than demonising what is, let’s face it, a wetsuit.”
These bans are a symptom of racism as much as a stand on a
The burkini ban is “farcical”, agreed The New York Times. It
point of principle, said Aziz Benyahia in Algérie-Focus (Algiers).
has been prohibited on the basis that it is “variously, a threat to
Yet French Muslims need to be sensible: this isn’t a good time to public order, hygiene, water safety and morality”. Saving
wear the burkini. They must know that people are jittery, and
Muslim women from “enslavement” by “dictating to them
they should “adapt their behaviour” instead of getting into
what they can and can’t wear” makes no sense at all. This
fights they can’t win. Islam, after all, enjoins its followers to
madness threatens to “further stigmatise France’s Muslims at a
respect the countries they live in as minorities. After the
time when the country is listing to the Islamophobic Right”.

POLAND

Don’t
criminalise
ignorance
Polityka
(Warsaw)

ISRAEL

A painful
Olympic
snub
Bloomberg
(New York)

RUSSIA

The arrogant
disregard of
Moscow’s elite
Deutsche Welle
(Berlin)

THE WEEK 27 August 2016

When Barack Obama uttered the phrase “Polish death camps” in a 2012 speech, Polish nationalists
hit the roof, says Krzysztof Burnetko. The correct description is “Nazi death camps”, they fumed: to
call them “Polish” implies that Poles themselves had a hand in the Holocaust. Now ministers from

the ruling right-wing Law and Justice party say it’s time to get tough; phrases like this, which “falsify
Polish history”, will soon be a criminal offence, punishable by fines and up to three years in prison.
Can they be serious? Are they going to criminalise ignorance, and punish foreign politicians who
make ill-considered statements? The plan also carries huge risks for Polish society: it could suffocate
free debate about the War. A “zealous” prosecutor could go after anyone who, say, mentions the
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 on
the rise. Trying to legislate in such matters is always “dangerous”. This terrible idea must be dropped.
One expects Nobel Prizes galore from Israel – Olympic gold medals, not so much, says Daniel
Gordis. It has never been an Olympic “powerhouse”. So when two Israeli athletes, Yarden Gerbi
and Or Sasson, each won a bronze in judo in Rio last week, the media went into a “celebratory
frenzy”. Alas, Sasson’s victory was marred by the refusal of his defeated Egyptian opponent Islam El
Shehaby to accept the customary handshake afterwards. In Israel, it was seen as symbolic of the
Arab street’s continuing rejection of the legitimacy of the Jewish state. (Egyptians are puzzled: surely,
they say, Israel should be pleased that their man was even willing to get on the mat with an Israeli.)
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 only
increases 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 other
countries, the medals would have been occasion for joy. But it brought home to Israelis that “the
Jewish 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 Dmitry
Medvedev, for example. Earlier this year in Crimea, he told pensioners desperate about their tiny
pensions: “There’s no money. Hang in there.” The video of this incident has been watched over four
million times; the phrase has become an internet meme. Now Medvedev is in hot water for telling
teachers in Dagestan that if they think they don’t get paid enough they should get a second job (a
university lecturer had asked him why police are paid five times more). This “cynical” suggestion
brought 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 former

Russian teacher – who “proudly and passionately” taught me Pushkin and Gogol – selling pickles to
make 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 petition
demanding his resignation. His behaviour shows just how out of touch Russia’s leaders have become.


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Health & Science

NEWS 19

What the scientists are saying…

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 pollutants
than polyester garments, the researchers
found. When the fabrics were
subsequently laundered, significant
quantities of the chemicals leached
out into the wash
water. “These
results support the
hypothesis that clothing
ng
acts as an efficient

conveyor of [chemicals]
from indoors to outdoors,”
said Dr Miriam Diamond,
lead author of the study.
Phthalates and flame-retardants
have been linked to a host of
problems, including declining
fertility, thyroid disorders, diabetes
and premature puberty.

shouldn’t blame themselves, as the
condition was “multi-determined”.
“Diet could be an important factor
but it’s going to be important
alongside a host of other risks,”
he added.

The leather-loving
iceman

Ne
New research on Ötzi the
Iceman – a naturally
mummified, 5,300-year-old
corpse found trapped in the
ice of the Italian Alps in
1991 – has revealed him to
have been a “picky” and
“sophisticated” dresser,
reports The Guardian. When

he was discovered, the iceman
was decked out in an array of
Diet link to ADHD
leather garments, but their poor
If a mother eats high quantities of fat
condition meant that it was
and sugar while pregnant, it may
unclear which animals they
increase her child’s chances of
came from. Now researchers
developing attention deficit
from Ireland and Italy have
hyperactivity disorder (ADHD),
determined their source by
scientists have found. The study, led by
analysing a type of genetic
researchers from King’s College
material, known as
London and the University of Bristol,
mitochondrial DNA,
examined the effect of maternal
extracted from six of
nutrition on IGF2, a gene
the garments. The
involved in the development of
iceman, it transpired,
the cerebellum and hippocampus
created his clothes from
– parts of the brain implicated in
Ötzi: a “picky” dresser five species: his loincloth

ADHD. The researchers found that
was sheepskin, his
mothers who ate a lot of processed food
shoelaces cow leather and his leggings
and confectionery during pregnancy were
goat hide. More exotically, his cap came
more likely to give birth to children with
from a brown bear and he fashioned his
modified IGF2 – and there was evidence to quiver from the skin of a roe deer. Niall
suggest that those children were then more O’Sullivan, one of the researchers, said
likely to develop ADHD symptoms
that Ötzi had been “opportunistic and
between the ages of 7 and 13. However,
resourceful” in using the “scarce
co-author Dr Edward Barker said that
resources” available to him in a “very
parents whose children had ADHD
harsh environment”.

The 400-year-old shark

A Greenland shark accidentally killed
by fishermen was nearly four
centuries old, scientists believe,
making it easily the world’s longestliving 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
Greenland sharks: abnormally ancient
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-yearold ocean quahog clam – has ever been shown to live longer.

Ex-doper speaks out
An athlete from the former East
Germany has warned today’s
competitors about the lifelong health
problems that may result from taking
performance-enhancing drugs. “I had
huge problems with my kidneys and my
inner organs were poisoned,” Ines
Geipel, a former relay runner, told an
Australian broadcaster. She added that
there were other athletes in their mid40s with “two artificial hips, two artificial
knees”, as well as a “large number of
dialysis patients and many, many
psychological illnesses”. Geipel is head
of the German Doping Victims’
Association, which campaigns for
compensation for athletes involved in
East Germany’s state-sponsored doping

programme. Under the programme,
which was sanctioned by a secret edict
issued in 1974, up to 12,000 athletes
were forced to take illicit pills, which
they were often told were vitamins.

27 August 2016 THE WEEK


20 NEWS
Pick of the week’s

Gossip

When footage emerged of
Jeremy Corbyn sitting 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 renationalisation 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 McKellen turned 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 for Sean Parker –
the billionaire co-founder of
Napster – and singer
Alexandra Lenas in 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 Osborne was
spotted last week “going
Rambo” with a machine

gun. The former chancellor
– who was sacked last
month by Theresa May –
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.

THE WEEK 27 August 2016

Talking points
Owen Smith: a pale version of Corbyn?
It’s a measure of how far
lost its opposition party.”
Labour has travelled that last
Labour now resembles a “vast
week Jeremy Corbyn casually
and imbecilic student union at
abandoned a security policy
a recently upgraded poly”.
that has been followed by
every British government since
The party under Corbyn is not
1949, said Oliver Kamm in
“as dismal as it is sometimes
The Times. Asked on the

made out by the media”, said
leadership hustings how he
The Independent. It has had a
would react if a Nato ally was
string of wins in mayoral
attacked by Russia, Corbyn
contests and by-elections, and
said he would “avoid getting
has been on the right side of
us involved militarily”, adding
the argument about austerity,
vaguely: “I don’t wish to go to
as the Government now
war. What I want to do is
appears to be tacitly admitting.
achieve a world where we
“Nor can the enthusiasm
don’t need to go to war.” He
Corbyn generates among
Smith: looking better in a suit
appeared to suggest that,
people hitherto apathetic or
under his leadership, Britain would abandon
disenchanted about politics be dismissed.” But
Nato – since its rationale is collective selfthe hard fact remains that Labour is at least ten
defence. “He implied that Britain’s central
points behind the Tories, and Corbyn “has
[military] alliance is not an alliance, that
neither the policies, the strategy nor the personal
Britain’s word was not its bond,” said Simon

skills to win back the voters”. Sadiq Khan and
Jenkins in The Guardian. “That is wild.”
Kezia Dugdale, Labour’s leaders in London and
Scotland, are only the latest to point this out and
But Corbyn’s rival Owen Smith was not to be
declare their support for Owen Smith. But Smith
outdone, said Rod Liddle in The Sunday Times.
himself appears to be making little headway,
Last week he suggested that peace in Syria
said George Eaton and Stephen Bush in the New
would come about if we could get Islamic State
Statesman. Faced with the apparently
“round the table”. That sounds dangerous.
overwhelming support for his rival inside the
What table would that be? Would there be
party, he has offered a “left-wing, Corbyn-style
“separate dining areas for men and women”?
policy platform”: railway renationalisation, a
Smith later “clarified” his position, saying that
wealth tax, a ban on zero-hour contracts. The
Isis could only be involved if it were to renounce
message seems to be: “I’m the same as him but
violence. Still, it was more evidence of Labour’s
I’m more competent; I look better in a suit.” As
“terrible dissipation. This is the summer the UK
a pitch, it seems unlikely to turn the tide.

Brexit: should the doom-mongers recant?
Soaring unemployment; boarded up high streets;
tumbling financial markets. That was the

dystopian future we were told to expect, not
only in the run up to the EU referendum, but
also in its immediate aftermath, as disappointed
Remainers comforted themselves with the
thought that the Leavers would soon be
overcome by an acute case of buyer’s remorse.
But it hasn’t worked out that way, said Larry
Elliott in The Guardian. Retail sales defied
predictions by jumping 1.4% in July, and the
number of people claiming jobless benefits fell.
“The financial markets are serene.” Share prices
are close to a record high. And Project Fear is
over. Fearing that their doom-mongering might
spark a recession, officials effected an abrupt
U-turn on 24 June, and began seeking to
reassure the voters they’d worked so hard to
spook; meanwhile, at the Bank of England,
Mark Carney stopped issuing dire warnings, and
introduced a stimulus package. Of course, it’s
early days, but the indications are that Britain’s
economy is not about to nosedive.
For Brexiters, these figures may seem like manna
from heaven, said Geoffrey Smith in Fortune.
But others show that job openings (a future
indicator rather than a lagging one) fell in July;
and the retail boost may have been at least
partly due to the good weather, and tourists

taking advantage of the weak pound. In other
words, it was a good sign, but not solid ground

for long-term economic growth. Besides which,
Brexit hasn’t actually started yet, said Toby
Helm in The Observer. Britain’s key negotiators
haven’t even agreed a division of responsibilities,
let alone an answer to the multi-billion euro
question: how to guarantee the UK access to the
single market while also satisfying Brexiters on
issues such as freedom of movement. With our
laws so closely entwined, disentangling Britain
from the EU is a hugely complex task.
That’s why Theresa May is in no hurry to
trigger Article 50, said Juliet Samuel in The
Daily Telegraph. Once she does, we will have
just two years to negotiate terms with remaining
EU states – some of which are eager for Brexit to
fail. So it’s vital that we get our house in order
before we start. That means finding skilled trade
negotiators, and thousands of lawyers and civil
servants to consider everything from the impact
of leaving the Common Agricultural Policy to
the constitutional implications for Scotland. The
Government also needs time to sound out where
the national consensus lies. Some Brexiters are
calling for May to activate Article 50 now,
because they are convinced their victory is going
to be taken away; but an unseemly rush to the
exit would not be in anyone’s best interests.


Talking points

Muslim inmates: how jail creates jihadis
“Don’t let off your celebratory
the “most dangerous” terrorist
party poppers just yet,” said
convicts. Some will also be
Emma Webb in The Spectator.
“ghosted”: moved between
Anjem Choudary, the
prisons to stop them building
notorious hate preacher
up networks of supporters.
convicted last week of inviting
Her proposal is based on a
support for Islamic State, may
report by the former prison
be heading for jail at last – but
governor Ian Acheson, which
that doesn’t mean “his
warns that Muslim inmates
radicalising will stop”. In fact,
are already facing “aggressive
Choudary’s recruiting talents
encouragement” to become
(he is known to have had a
jihadis. Acheson claims that
personal connection with one
some warders turn a blind eye
in ten of all convicted Islamist
because they are afraid of
terrorists in the UK) may prove

seeming racist. Thus, Muslim
even more effective in jail. In
inmates are being left
some prisons, 20% of inmates Choudary: “wolf among captive sheep” unsupervised at prayers, and
are Muslim; many are
extremist literature is
vulnerable and searching for a new identity. By
circulating in prison libraries.
locking up Choudary, we may be “letting a wolf
loose among captive sheep”.
None of these problems is wholly new, said Alan
Travis in The Guardian. In 1994, five IRA men
Terrorists always make troublesome prisoners,
escaped from the supposedly high-security unit
said The Guardian. The “classic dilemma” is
at Whitemoor Prison. They had “intimidated
whether to disperse them through the prison
and then groomed” the prison staff to the point
system (which risks spreading their toxic
where “they were not only having lobster
ideology over a wider field), or concentrate them takeaways delivered to the special unit, but guns
in a few “supermax” prisons. This keeps the
and even Semtex”. But housing Islamist
radicals “away from their prey”, but creates a
terrorists under one roof has an added danger:
symbolic focal point for grievances. The Maze
unlike IRA members, most Islamists are “lone
and Guantánamo Bay both became “effective
operators”, unconnected to any broader
recruiting sergeants for the prisoners’ causes”.

command structure. Bringing them together may
The new Justice Secretary, Liz Truss, is hoping
give them a golden opportunity to create the
to find some middle ground, said the Daily Mail. kind of “hierarchical organisation” they so far
She announced this week that specialist isolation lack. Quarantining jihadis behind bars may end
units will be built in top-security prisons, to hold up making them stronger.

Social media: a danger to teenage girls?
In 2003 – before he came up with
symptoms of psychological
Facebook – Mark Zuckerberg
distress – 10% more than a
launched Facemash. It featured
decade ago. The figure for boys
photos of Harvard students side
is just 15%. Experts say that
by side, and invited users to vote
girls are facing a huge range of
on which was the more attractive.
pressures, but the way they use
The site was swiftly closed down
social media may be a major
by college authorities, said
factor. It has been noted that
Amelia Tait in the New
whereas boys tend to use it for
Statesman, and Zuckerberg later
gaming, girls use it to see what
admitted he’d been a “jerk” for
their friends are doing. If the

starting it – but it wasn’t an
reality of their own lives
original idea. RateMyFace.com
doesn’t match their perception
Living in another world
had launched in 1999; it was
of other people’s, feelings of
followed by Hot or Not, and Fitsort. It still goes
anxiety and low self-worth may follow.
on, but today’s teenagers don’t have to visit a
specialist website to find out what people think
There are myriad theories about why girls are
of their looks: it’s all over social media. It seems
suffering, said Gaby Hinsliff on The Pool. It
that ten to 14-year-olds in particular are
could be partly down to them living on social
obsessed with posting selfies on Facebook and
media, where everyone seems to be prettier and
Instagram, and seeing how many “likes” they
thinner and smarter. Or it could be the burden
generate. It’s unclear why they feel the need to
of schoolwork, and anxieties about their future:
open themselves up to such public judgement –
today’s teenagers have little hope of walking into
but it’s hard to believe it’s healthy.
the kind of secure jobs their parents took for
granted. But the truth is, we don’t know. We
Certainly, there is a growing concern about girls’ don’t even know whether boys are suffering less
mental health, said Radhika Sanghani in The
– or just less willing to admit to feelings of

Daily Telegraph. According to a new
inadequacy. It’s a serious problem, and with
Department for Education survey, more than a
mental health services already overstretched, one
third of 14 to 15-year-old girls suffer from
that needs urgent investigation.

NEWS 21

Wit &
Wisdom
“The trouble with fighting
for human freedom is that
one spends most of one’s
time defending scoundrels.”
H.L. Mencken, quoted
on Spiked
“There is nothing more
agreeable in life than to
make peace with the
establishment – and nothing
more corrupting.”
A.J.P. Taylor, quoted in
The Spectator
“Shyness is the overtly selfconscious thinking that you
are the only person in the
world; that how you look
and what you do is of any
importance.”
Charles Schulz, quoted in

The Guardian
“A developed country is not
a place where the poor have
cars. It’s where the rich use
public 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
be faked.”
Alan Bennett, quoted in
The Guardian
“A doctor can bury his
mistakes but an architect
can only advise his client to
plant vines.”
Frank Lloyd Wright,
quoted on Forbes.com
“People don’t do what they
believe in. They just do
what’s most convenient,
then they repent.”
Bob Dylan, quoted in
The Wall Street Journal

Statistics of the week
The number of pupils

studying French at A-level
has slumped to an all-time
low of 9,672. In 1992, the
figure was 31,261.
The Times
Only 8,896 – or fewer than
half – of the 18,179 officers
in the Metropolitan Police
actually live full-time in
London.
The Daily Telegraph

27 August 2016 THE WEEK


Sport

22 NEWS

Track and field: three great Olympians

“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.

bowed out of the Olympics as the greatest ever track
and field athlete, and the most compelling: no one
else has made “being this good look so human”.

Those qualities have made him indispensable to
athletics, said Oliver Holt in The Mail on Sunday.
As the sport lurches from one doping crisis to
another, 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 have
failed a drugs test. When he retires next year, the
sport will struggle desperately without him. If
anyone can fill Bolt’s running shoes it’s Wayde van
Niekerk, said Andrew Longmore in The Sunday
Farah has the ideal physique for endurance racing,
Times. In Rio, the 24-year-old South African shaved
said David Walsh in The Sunday Times: the long
an incredible 0.15 seconds off the 400m world
limbs and stride, the lightness on his feet. His
record. Not bad for someone who weighed just over
bullishness is unrivalled, too: he believes he’s
1kg at birth, and was given only 24 hours to live.
Bolt: the “shining light”
stronger and faster than any rival, and tries to
Off the track, however, van Niekerk is less exciting:

intimidate them before a race. Yet there are some blemishes on
coached by a 74-year-old great-grandmother, he is “a quietly
Farah’s reputation. His coach, Alberto Salazar, is being
spoken” man. He boasts “much of Bolt’s talent”, but “none of
investigated over allegations of doping. And he hasn’t come close
his showmanship”.
to breaking the 5,000m and 10,000m world records. There can
be no such reservations about Usain Bolt, said Chris Almeida on
Sporting headlines
TheRinger.com. True, the 30-year-old Jamaican sprinter is not as
MotoGP Cal Crutchlow won the Czech Republic Grand Prix to
fast as he once was. But that hardly matters. Bolt hasn’t “raced
become Britain’s first MotoGP winner in 35 years.
against competitors in years”: since 2008, “he’s been chasing his
Football Man City beat Stoke City 4-1. Leicester drew 0-0 with
own records”. In Rio, he capped his final Olympics with an
Arsenal. Man Utd beat Southampton 2-0. Crystal Palace bought
unprecedented “triple-triple”: he won the 100m, 200m and
Christian Benteke from Liverpool for £27m.
4x100m relay for the third Games in a row. Such longevity would
Rugby league St Helens’s seven-match winning run came to an
be amazing in any sport, let alone the sprints, “the razor edge of
end when Wigan Warriors beat them 25-0 in the Super 8s.
athletic competition”, said Barney Ronay in The Guardian. Bolt


Sport
The Caster Semenya controversy

Last Saturday, Caster

right to penalise women
Semenya won the
with abnormal
women’s 800m in one
testosterone levels, said
minute and 55.28
Ross Tucker in the Daily
seconds, said Andy Bull
Mail, because it gives
in The Guardian. It was
“an unfair advantage”.
the fifth-fastest time in
For every women’s track
Olympic history – and it
athletics world record,
was one of the most
there are at least 8,000
controversial. This time it
men who have run
wasn’t about drugs – it
faster. And why is that?
Semenya: “brutal scrutiny”
was about the fact that
Testosterone makes
the hyperandrogenic South African has
them stronger. If it isn’t used as a “dividing
unusually high testosterone levels.
line” between men’s and women’s sport,
women will “disappear from most elite
No female athlete has ever come under

sport”. Not surprisingly, the IAAF wants its
“such brutal scrutiny” as Semenya, said
restrictions reintroduced.
Jeré Longman in The New York Times.
After her victory in the 2009 World
But it’s not just testosterone that makes
Championships, at the tender age of 18, she the difference, said Olga Khazan in The
was called a man by many rivals, subjected
Atlantic. There were several
to invasive tests and temporarily barred
hyperandrogenic athletes in Rio: one of
from races. The International Association
them, Indian sprinter Dutee Chand,
of Athletics Federations (IAAF) then
brought the case against the IAAF last year.
introduced new rules obliging
But it didn’t do her any good: she didn’t
hyperandrogenic athletes to reduce their
make it beyond the heats of the 100m. No
testosterone levels – so Semenya started
one denies that extra testosterone is an
taking hormones, as a result of which her
advantage, but so are the other
running times slowed. But after a court
“unorthodox features” that give athletes an
ruling last year, the restriction was lifted –
edge: Michael Phelps’s flipper-like feet, for
and Semenya, as she showed in Rio, was
instance. We must accept that to be an
running faster than ever. The IAAF was

Olympian is “to be abnormal”.

NEWS 23
Hart’s harsh demotion
Like all great managers, Pep Guardiola
can be “hard, unflinching and a bit of
a bastard”, said Daniel Taylor in The
Observer. And at Manchester City, he
has quickly demonstrated his ruthlessness by dropping Joe Hart (pictured).
After a decade at the club, the
goalkeeper is no longer first choice; he
is expected to leave this month. Hart’s
career has been marked by “periods
of brilliance”, but he is too “accidentprone” for a manager of Guardiola’s
class – as he showed at Euro 2016.
Still, this isn’t about whether Hart is
good enough, said Jamie Carragher in
the Daily Mail. He’s just the wrong
kind of player. Guardiola prefers a
“sweeper keeper” who can play like a
defender, and “ping passes with
unerring accuracy” – someone like
Bayern Munich’s Manuel Neuer.
Guardiola has revolutionised the role:
his keepers need to be “better with
their feet than their hands”.



LETTERS

Pick of the week’s correspondence
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-holdsbarred 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

Hands off the burkini
To The Guardian

I’m a pale person and I spent my formative years turning
red on the beach and laying the groundwork for an
impressive selection of brown blotches and spots that could
easily turn nasty at some point. I could have done with a
tiny burkini to keep my skin safe from the sun’s burning
rays. My teenage years were riven with angst and
embarrassment as I sought to hide my imperfections from
public gaze. How I would have welcomed a swimsuit that
could have shielded my pale, skinny frame from the eyes of
the world instead of having to suffer the worst of British
design that incorporated armoured bra cups which soared

skywards when I lay on my back.
A trip to hotter climes saw me swathed head to foot in
towels and sporting an impressive weight of greasy sunblock
when I really needed a decent garment that didn’t leave my
shoulders and thighs bare. Luckily these clothes are now
available in the shape of swim tights and swim shirts so I can
go to the beach covered head to foot in clothing that is
designed to keep me safe in the sun and that works well as
swimwear. If I want to add a swim hat to keep my hair from
getting tangled in the water, I can do that… unless I am a
Muslim woman. The burkini isn’t a million miles from some
of the clothing sold to surfers or those who wish to stay safe in
the sun, but because of the religious overtones, Muslim women
are being denied the right to enjoy the beach and go swimming
like any other person.
Whatever your beliefs, there shouldn’t be rules about what
people can and cannot wear on the beach. Semi-nudity or total
cover-up, it should be up to the individual.
Michelle Gibson, Cambridge
To The Guardian

Haven’t noticed many nuns on the beaches during years of
French holidays. Must be because their robes are “not
compatible with the values of the French Republic”.
Bernard Clarke, Oxford

Lagoons don’t add up
To The Guardian

Steve Emsley is wrong when he

compares tidal lagoons with
Hinkley and asks why tidal
energy is not being discussed.
The latest estimated cost of the
lagoon proposed for Swansea
Bay is £1.3bn. Hinkley would
produce 65 times as much
electricity, all day, every day –
true “baseload”. Tidal lagoons
would produce variable
amounts (four times as much
on a spring tide as on a neap
tide in Swansea, and a bigger
difference further up the Severn
estuary), and the generation
would be intermittent (four
three-hour blocks a day) –
that’s not “baseload”.
Lagoons could only
produce 8% (about 25 TWh a
year) of the UK’s electricity
requirements (a figure
challenged by tidal energy
experts) if five others followed
Swansea, each many times
larger and much more costly

than Swansea (many times
more than £5bn in total). But
consent for the next two –

huge lagoons further up the
Severn estuary – is most
unlikely because of various EU
environmental designations.
As to why no one is discussing
them: in fact, Charles Hendry
is conducting a review of tidal
lagoons to assess, among other
things, whether they could play
a cost-effective role in the UK
energy mix (see www.hendry
review.com). Some
think the review was
prompted by the
belated Government
realisation that the
figures bandied around
for lagoons just don’t
add up.
Phil Jones, Ynystawe,
Swansea

Poldark stress

To The Daily Telegraph

With the new series of
Poldark starting soon, I

find it annoying that, whenever

the name is pronounced, the
emphasis is placed on “Pol”
rather than “dark”. In
Cornwall, nearly all names
beginning 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, planners
deserve big hugs owing to the
hard time they have controlling
aggressive developers. Many
pieces of land selected by
developers for housing lie on
the outskirts of existing villages
or towns. A typical developer
submits an outline application
that raises many objections and
reveals areas of concern. The
planning authority and elected
councillors are then quite likely
to refuse permission.
The developer then returns

with amended plans and a full
application. The authority may
well refuse permission again,
and for good reasons.
The developer then appeals
and brings along his legal
team, headed by a barrister
to present his case to a
Government inspector at a
public hearing. The council
and residents probably have
limited funds, so are in some
difficulty, and the developer
has a good chance of getting
his way. This is how
developers are really in charge
of what’s being built, and not
the planners. I suggest we give
planners greater powers to
encourage design and
development of entirely new
villages with proper
infrastructure rather than ruin
existing ones by adding more
and more, bit by bit.
Mike Haywood, Cheltenham

“Typical. I get to the other side and
have no idea why I wanted to cross in
the first place.”

● Letters have been edited

27 August 2016 THE WEEK

© SATZ/THE OLDIE

It was harder in 1972

25