Новости за 22.08.2015

A common criticism of David Cameron’s government in his first term as Prime Minister is that it favoured older people over younger. That rich pensioners, in particular, were spared the burden of balancing the nation’s books, while students were loaded with debt and young people were shut out of home ownership.

A history of Turkey is very much bound up in headgear. Back in 1829, the then Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Mahmud II, banned the wearing of the turban in an early attempt to Westernise his subjects. It was part of the extensive Tanzimat reforms that aimed to curb national separatist movements throughout the empire by making everyone feel that little more Ottoman. In its place it was decreed that all subjects should now wear the fez.

When Angela Merkel said recently that the EU’s refugee crisis could “preoccupy” Europe “much, much more” than the issue of Greece and the stability of the euro, was she actually understating the case? Pay attention, holiday-makers: what is now happening on the EU’s external borders threatens the entire post-war European project, and it will take more than her Berlin meeting with President François Hollande tomorrow to sort it out.

I have spent years trying to persuade people that the theatre is for everyone. Sure, it usually costs more to go to a play than to go to the pictures. But it can be a life-changing experience (I saw Diana Rigg as Medea when I was a teenager, and a lifetime as a classicist has followed). But Elf, a musical adaptation of the Will Ferrell movie, has just knocked my beliefs into a cocked, red-and-green-striped hat.

To run or not to run? That is the question Joe Biden is pondering during this month of August (and of Donald Trump), as the tentacles of the great email controversy wrap themselves ever tighter around Hillary Clinton and swathes of the Democratic party beg him to throw his hat into the ring for the party’s 2016 nomination.

I was about to write that August 2015 is a good time for Blackpool, but it would be naive to be straightforwardly cheerful about the town that gave us the “brides in the bath” murders of George Joseph Smith, or was chosen as the setting for a Channel 4 documentary series called 999: What’s Your Emergency?.(Much to the council’s relief, a proposed  follow-up called Holiday Hospital 999 was cancelled.)

Good news about dementia is in short supply. There is no cure as yet, and so many new cases have been predicted that it’s been described as an epidemic. I’ve seen its devastating effects on my mother, who suffered from dementia for the last three-and-a-half years of her life, and another relative has recently been diagnosed with a mild form of the condition. So has one of my closest friends.

I haven’t seen the new Barbican production of Hamlet, nor will I get the chance to, but moving The Speech to the top of the show, to what writers call the “cold open” slot, was a bold choice.

The attempt to impose a privately held and/or sacramentally ordained set of moral values on society at large is a relatively unusual sight in the Western world these days. Naturally, you can still be stoned to death for coveting your neighbour’s wife in certain Muslim jurisdictions, but the steady decriminalisation of marital infidelity has been a feature of European and (latterly at any rate) American law for several centuries. Even the mid-17th century English Puritans had trouble in making adultery a capital crime... Читать дальше...

Last week pop star Perrie Edwards showed us all how to tackle a break-up. It’s simple really. Just conquer America. The Little Mix member, who split with her fiancé, Zayn Malik, a few weeks ago, has been storming around LA with her bandmates, proving that girl power is still the best balm for a broken heart.

I am not going to predict that there will be a legal challenge to the result of the Labour leadership election, because of my new self-denying ordinance against pointless forecasts. In any case, my non-pointless forecast is that Jeremy Corbyn will win by a large enough margin to mean that the general public, if not a judge, would take the view that a court case would be vexatious.

When the surge in support for Jeremy Corbyn first became evident a month ago, the immediate reaction in Conservative circles was a mixture of disbelief and exhilaration. It prevailed for a couple of weeks, but has now been replaced by a certain caution. This has little to do with any concern over his political stance and much more to do with the sheer size of the crowds he continues to attract. He is tapping into something not seen south of the border for at least a decade.

Since we are told those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it, let us return to Seoul on Tuesday 27 September 1988. It is 3.40am. Telephones begin to ring. Bedroom lights suddenly illuminate the Olympic media village. Shadows stalk walkways and solidify in stairwells.

Billed as the mother of all battles, for now the mother is on top. Jessica Ennis-Hill acted like she had never been away taking her customary place in gold medal position in a major championships at the end of the first day of the heptathlon in Beijing.

Mo Farah knew it, his coaching team knew it, even the Kenyan athletes who tried to derail him mob-handed knew it.

Jessica Ennis-Hill and Katarina Johnson-Thompson towered over their World Championship rivals after the opening two events of the heptathlon in Beijing.

Here is the opening of a news story published on Thursday: “Working 55 hours or more a week can increase the chances of suffering a stroke by a third compared to the risk for those who work 40 hours or less.” Yes, but a third of what? What is the risk for those who work 40 hours or less? The story does not say.

Keep little ones well fed and food fresh with a clever container

We annoyed all the right people with Thursday’s front page: “The ‘plot’ against Chilcot.” Our exclusive story, by James Cusick, had the first words from Sir John Chilcot’s camp, which has been on the receiving end of a lot of abuse because of how long its inquiry is taking to report.

The life of the former US President Jimmy Carter, who announced this week that he had brain cancer, is proof of two things: that America is the land of second chances and very often more good can be done from outside government than from within it.

Rarely have the prurient of the world owed so much to so few. What is presumably a small group of “ethical” hackers has now dumped thousands of personal details of adulterers, and would-be adulterers, on to the web.

The Caribbean island of Anguilla boasts a solitary grass track, which doubles as a cricket pitch. To the side is a cracked runway leading to  a long jump sandpit – hardly the launch pad for a world champion.

Mo Farah will use the difficulties of a troubled summer as motivation to get Britain off to a golden start on the first day in Beijing, according to British Athletics’ performance director, Neil Black.

Can there be such a thing as a banker in 30-degree heat, running 25 laps through Beijing’s smog-filled air? If so, Britain has one in Mo Farah in the 10,000 metres at the World Championships here today.

I've been to the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall five times so far this season. Not a sentence I thought I'd ever type, but the "finding solace in classical music stage" happens to many ex-ravers, usually after the point when The Archers becomes compelling and just before one finds oneself lugging a 10-litre bag of mutipurpose compost into the house shouting, "Why buy herbs, indeed? I'll grow my own!"