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The PM will face Sir Keir Starmer later with issues for his government mounting
Good morning. Rishi Sunak is preparing for PMQs this morning. It will only be his fifth exchange with Keir Starmer, and he may be wondering what happened to the notion about new prime ministers enjoying a honeymoon in their first few weeks in holiday. As he ponders what Starmer might ask about, he will realise that the outook is dire. Here, in no particular order, are 10 of the problems he has to address.
1) Strikes are getting worse. Today Royal Mail workers, university lecturers and sixth-form college staff are all taking industrial action. And last night Unison announced that health workers in England, including ambulance staff and 999 call handlers, have voted to go on strike, probably before Christmas. Christina McAnea, the Unison general secretary, said:
The decision to take action and lose a day’s pay is always a tough call. It’s especially challenging for those whose jobs involve caring and saving lives.
But thousands of ambulance staff and their NHS colleagues know delays won’t lessen, nor waiting times reduce, until the government acts on wages. That’s why they’ve taken the difficult decision to strike.
Continue reading...With digital bioacoustics, scientists can eavesdrop on the natural world – and they’re learning some astonishing things
Scientists have recently made some remarkable discoveries about non-human sounds. With the aid of digital bioacoustics – tiny, portable digital recorders similar to those found in your smartphone – researchers are documenting the universal importance of sound to life on Earth.
By placing these digital microphones all over Earth, from the depths of the ocean to the Arctic and the Amazon, scientists are discovering the hidden sounds of nature, many of which occur at ultrasonic or infrasonic frequencies, above or below human hearing range. Non-humans are in continuous conversation, much of which the naked human ear cannot hear. But digital bioacoustics helps us hear these sounds, by functioning as a planetary-scale hearing aid and enabling humans to record nature’s sounds beyond the limits of our sensory capacities. With the help of artificial intelligence (AI), researchers are now decoding complex communication in other species.
Continue reading...Haven’t found the time to read Richard Osman’s The Bullet That Missed yet, or Dawn O’Porter’s Cat Lady? Relax – we’ve done it for you. And it was a treat!
Not so long ago, you couldn’t move for celebrity memoirs. It didn’t matter how famous you were – a television presenter, a professional footballer, some vaguely recognisable reality TV git – at some point you would write an autobiography (or bark some nonsense at an indifferent ghostwriter), give it a terrible title such as Reflections or Unfiltered or My Story and sit back as you watched the money roll in.
Now, celebrity autobiographies haven’t gone away completely – two of the most inescapable books this autumn are memoirs by Matthew Perry and Bono – but they are sputtering out. After all, there are only so many celebrities in the world, and traditionally you can only tell your life story once. But if you are a public figure with a large and willing audience, you might be loath to give up all that sweet publishing cash, so what is a celebrity to do?
Continue reading...It’s not fear-mongering to suggest that in the absence of proper government support this winter, people are going to die
As the winter chill hits and the energy crisis starts to become very real, it is hard to shake off the feeling that not only is suffering becoming normalised in this country, but those in power have an ever-decreasing interest in easing it.
Few examples are starker than the news that the NHS is trialling “heating prescriptions” to give to people who can’t pay their soaring energy bills. Some patients need electricity for disability equipment, such as ventilators, wheelchairs and feeding tube pumps. Others need to put the heating on to ward off stiff arthritic joints or to ease breathing. Warmth and electricity used to be human rights – now they’re medicine.
Continue reading...Art activism has increased in and outside the country since death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini
Dozens of Iranian artists have called for an international boycott of cultural institutions run by or affiliated with the Islamic Republic in protest against the regime’s worsening human rights abuses.
The call by artists, writers, film-makers and academics living in Iran and among its diaspora comes amid growing anti-government art activism by Iranians inside and outside the country after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini.
Continue reading...Whether anybody else could see it or not, I had lost someone: my former, healthy self.
On Friday, 14 December 2012, I would experience the sudden onset of an illness that, looking back almost a decade later, bears a powerful resemblance to the narratives of those suffering from long Covid.
That night, I had plans to meet a woman I was seeing. At the time, I was working as an adjunct English professor at a local college in Westchester, New York, commuting over the George Washington Bridge from my fourth-floor walkup in Hoboken, New Jersey, and trying to persuade distracted 19-year-olds to appreciate the black comedy and cryptic comeuppances of Flannery O’Connor. After walking back to my apartment from the gym, I showered and sprayed on cologne. But before I could leave, a wave of weakness and disorientation crashed over me. My balance became wobbly, and my stomach lurched forward and back. I staggered through my apartment as if it was the cabin of a boat heaving and pitching in a storm.
Continue reading...The millennial habit of Googling everything kills parental instinct. Better to accept that the answer is blowing in the wind
The longer I spend as a parent, the more I realise that it’s a bit like being a detective, and not only because I look strung out, wear a trenchcoat and am full of droll maxims such as: “You can have a hangover from other things than alcohol. I had one from a baby.”
Having a baby who can’t tell you what’s going on with it means having to solve a mystery every single day. Say the baby is whingeing. First, you run through the usual checklist. Is the baby hungry? Is his nappy full? Is he sleepy? Does he have wind? Once you’ve ascertained which one it is, you go back to the start, because it’s probably something else by now.
Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist
Continue reading...Gourmet Fadi Kattan wants to give the UK capital an authentic taste of his homeland’s cuisine with a new restaurant venture
Akub, also known as gundelia, is an unruly plant that blossoms across the eastern Mediterranean and Middle East after the winter rains. Some believe that the crown of thorns placed on Jesus’s head during the crucifixion was made from this long-lasting, sweet-smelling thistle.
It is foraged everywhere, from the Kurdish highlands and Cyprus to the Sinai peninsula, for its earthy, tender stems and delicate-tasting flower buds, but is most highly prized in Palestinian cuisine. Each spring, people defy the Israeli authorities – who say the plant is in danger of overcollection – to bring as many bags of prickly akub as they can carry back to their kitchens to throw into meat stews or fry with eggs and lemon.
Continue reading...Emotionally charged scenes in the stands, a seismic shock on the pitch and £11.50 for a can of Budweiser far away from it
No more sleeps. And not an overwhelming sense of a country waking up with World Cup fever. The assignment is to reflect what it is like in Doha as Qatar opens the first World Cup to be staged in the Middle East with a game against Ecuador. On a two-hour walk around the city before ending up at Souq Waqif, a traditional magnet for locals and tourists, the only signs of World Cup life are an organised gathering for Qataris (100 maximum) outside Millennium Plaza, a few cars driving past waving both Qatar and Palestine flags, and two men sat outside a refrigerator repair shop with a TV propped up on a chair. Souq Waqif is livelier, although more people are gathered around a Korean technology stand than looking for the game. There is dangerous overcrowding at the Fan Festival, however, where too many people descend on the 40,000-capacity venue and are kept in a holding area for almost an hour before being herded away. An inevitable consequence, you might say, of hosting a World Cup in and around one city that offers few options for football fans.
Continue reading...Clearly they should have gone for this, in full.
Australia’s choice is the ubiquitous Down Under by Men at Work. I just think it’s a shame they didn’t opt for one of theses versions.
Continue reading...A nil-nil result proved little – except that the outcome is profoundly un-American
The limitations of the “special relationship” were on display during England’s first round World Cup game with USA, as soccer fans in New York grappled with split allegiances to European club sports and the US national team.
In the end, a nil-nil result proved little – except that the outcome is profoundly un-American. “A tie is like kissing your sister,” said David Dunbar, a professor of New York history at Columbia University. “In America, you’ve got to win. We don’t do well with dichotomies, and ambiguity is a bad word – it makes us worried.”
Continue reading...BGT spokesperson says no decision made amid reports judge is stepping down after apology for ‘disrespectful comments’
David Walliams’ future as a judge on Britain’s Got Talent is “very much up in the air”, a spokesperson for the ITV programme has said, amid reports he is leaving the show after 10 years.
Walliams apologised recently for making “disrespectful comments” about contestants during the recording of an episode of the programme, following a Guardian report.
Continue reading...Tech titans like Elon Musk and Sam Bankman-Fried have been feted for their wealth, but see the world in ways that also merit scrutiny
The new gods are running into a bit of trouble. From the soap opera playing out at Twitter HQ, the too-big-to-fail bankruptcies in the cryptocurrency space, to mass tech layoffs, the past month has seen successive headlines declaring a litany of woes facing the bullish tech boyos in Silicon Valley and beyond.
The minute-by-minute coverage of Elon Musk’s escapades and the global levels of interest in the FTX collapse both go well beyond what you’d expect from a business story. I’m willing to gamble a few Bitcoins that the popular fixation has little to do with any particular interest in successful software engineering; rather it is the personalities who inhabit these spaces, and the philosophies that propel them in their godlike ambition. What is their end goal, we wonder. What drives them, beyond the pursuit of growth? It is easy to assume that money is all that motivates the likes of Mark Zuckerberg, Musk and Jeff Bezos. Except, when you start to examine the mindsets of these men, it’s clear that cash is far from the whole story.
Moya Lothian-McLean is a contributing editor at Novara Media
Continue reading...Deputy PM’s former private secretaries reportedly preparing to submit formal complaints
Dominic Raab is facing multiple fresh complaints from “a raft” of senior civil servants in multiple government departments over allegations of bullying behaviour, according to reports
The deputy prime minister’s former private secretaries, responsible for handling the day-to-day affairs of government ministers, are preparing to submit formal complaints, according to BBC Newsnight.
Continue reading...As a teenager, I argued with my parents about covering up. Then I saw a photo of my mother wearing a short dress in 1950s Sudan
On 16 September, Mahsa Amini was arrested by Iran’s morality police after supposedly wearing her hijab incorrectly and sporting skinny jeans. Later that night, she died in their custody. Amini’s family claim the morality police beat her to death, an accusation they have since denied. What has followed have been the country’s largest protests in recent years. Iranians of all ages, ethnicities and genders have joined in the demonstrations. I watched on and did my due diligence by posting on social media too, but I also couldn’t help reflect on my own relationship to clothing – and freedom.
Can you be free and wear the hijab? It’s worn by many of my family and friends, and it was always presented to me as a choice when I was young. Modesty, however, was more important. I’m of Sudanese origin but I grew up in Northern Ireland, where, as a teenager, it wasn’t trendy to cover up. I spent years battling with my parents, who would be telling me that I was showing too much skin, that I should never show my cleavage or midriff. In the late 1990s fashions changed from crop tops to long T-shirts. I remember my mother’s relief that we wouldn’t have to go through the “go get changed” conversation every time I wanted to leave the house.
Basma Khalifa is a Sudanese multi-disciplinary creative living in London
Continue reading...The second season of the hit series scales up in size and down in critique to the most base and personal. What are humans if not messes of desire?
To stay at The White Lotus in Sicily, the fictional hotel at the center of the HBO show’s second season, is to feel exposed. Caught alone, several characters meet the stares of Renaissance-style wall paintings. Each room contains a statue of a man’s head that, as a hotel staffer explains, honors a Sicilian legend of a beheaded seducer. A disguised door connects two married couples’ rooms. The visual motif of the first season of The White Lotus, set at a Hawaiian resort, was rot – molding fruit in the title sequence, tropical leaves crawling across the bedspreads, the stench of moral corrosion – but the second season’s is more vigorous: wandering eyes, backdoor arrangements, creeping lust.
As in the first, the second season, again written and directed by Mike White, kicks off with a dead body (actually, several) then jumps back a week. But the real mystery is how tangled the erotic web will get. Sex is both undercurrent and tidal wave: suggested with a glance; debated at the dinner table between three generations of DiGrasso men (F Murray Abraham, Michael Imperioli and Adam DiMarco); bared by Cameron (Theo James) to his college roommate’s uptight wife Harper (Aubrey Plaza) in a swimsuit change ripe for internet chatter; sold by local sex worker Lucia (Simona Tabasco) and her friend, aspiring singer Mia (Beatrice Grannò).
Continue reading...Too many people still face the prejudices I had to confront as a working-class Liverpudlian when I tried to become a journalist
A job interview in Liverpool. I’m Liverpudlian. “Do you write the way you speak,” I was asked. And that was my greeting, I suppose: welcome to the middle-class world. In this case, journalism. Welcome to the closed world of mores and customs and assumptions and inflections that allow class borders to be policed, admitting those who are granted approval while denying entry to others.
Entering a middle-class profession from a working-class background means all manner of things for society. Consider the recent Social Mobility Foundation report on the social class pay gap, which found working-class employees were paid on average about £7,000 less than those from better-off backgrounds. It’s a colossal price to pay for the sheer circumstance of birthplace and family background. The price is higher for women, who face a pay gap of £9,500. Someone from a working-class Bangladeshi background, or with black Caribbean heritage, can expect losses of £10,432 and £8,770 compared with their white peers. Losses can mount up when forced into playing the UK’s intersectionality lottery of misfortune.
Continue reading...In the two days of the tournament so far, Fifa has shown itself to be utterly uninterested in LGBTQ+ inclusion
During Monday’s World Cup matches, the upper arms of various team captains took on a new significance. In Monday’s match against Iran, England’s Harry Kane wore an armband reading “no discrimination”, in black and white – which, despite its stated message, meant more cold-shoulder treatment for lesbian, gay, bi and trans people at this World Cup.
When it was announced back in September that eight competing nations would support the One Love campaign, with multicoloured hearts appearing on captains’ sleeves, the power of the gesture lay in allyship. “Wearing the armband together on behalf of our teams will send a clear message when the world is watching,” said Kane.
Continue reading...If Qatar 2022 feels uncomfortable, we can at least count on the battle of the broadcasters – BBC v ITV is a competition in itself
There’s a perception that working in the media is glamorous, especially when it comes to covering massive cultural and sporting events. Well, my first involvement with Glastonbury as a journalist was live-blogging it from an office, and it’s an absolute pleasure to be bringing you coverage of the World Cup from my kitchen. As someone who is, according to Qatari World Cup ambassador Khalid Salman, “damaged in the mind”, this is probably for the best.
Usually, watching the home nations from the home nations during big tournaments means bagsying pub‑garden tables alongside fans with England flag face-paint sweated off into strawberry swirls. The Tartan Army teaming tracksuit tops with kilts. Wales supporters quoting Michael Sheen’s rousing speech from The Last Leg. And, though we’ve collectively tried to forget, observing men with flares up their arses.
Continue reading...The government left the job of helping refugees to local authorities and volunteers. Now the system is at risk of collapse
Ukraine may be enjoying success on the battlefield, but displaced Ukrainians in the UK face renewed trauma. The Homes for Ukraine scheme, which has housed more than 100,000 people in Britain since the start of the war, is now at risk of collapse. Without early and drastic intervention, the scheme will compound rather than ease the suffering of the Ukrainian families it was meant to help.
The single biggest problem with the scheme is that it was drawn up with a six-month time limit attached, and the war has been going on for nine months. That means families reaching the end of the allotted period face a cliff-edge where essential support can suddenly stop, with no alternatives in place. By mid-October this year, nearly a third of displaced Ukrainian families were approaching the end of their hosting arrangements. When placements have ended, local and central government officials have told many displaced Ukrainians that they should look for new accommodation on the local private housing market, perfectly aware that letting agencies demand security and credit histories that people who have been subsisting in the country for only six months will find impossible to provide. Some local authorities advise that the only way to access further support is to deliberately make Ukrainian mothers and children homeless – which makes little sense, given that emergency housing is much more expensive than hosting arrangements.
Continue reading...The radio presenter was given an Eminem record by his mum when he was six and has a soft spot for country. But which 70s glam-era classic bores him?
The first single I bought
Daniel Bedingfield’s If You’re Not the One. I remember that it came out around Christmas. Me and my best friend at the time, Elliott, really liked that tune and we went to HMV on our own and bought it. I just listened to it over and over again, pretending I was in a music video.
My karaoke go-to
Tom Jones – It’s Not Unusual. I think Tom and I have a similar range and karaoke is built for 60s music, with the cheese and the dancing. You have to pick a song that everyone knows, and that’s a tune. And it’s two minutes, so you’re not up there too long.
Defender on ‘scary’ Brazil, leaving Chelsea for Real Madrid and donating his World Cup earnings to help children in Sierra Leone
Antonio Rüdiger is bullish but realistic. “Honestly, if we speak about favourites we have to speak about form,” the defender says as he considers Germany’s hopes of winning the World Cup in Qatar. “And before the last international break you look at teams like Brazil and France. I think because of our current form, maybe not so much. But we are a big nation and have a good team. You can never count us out. Anything can happen.”
The delivery is typical Rüdiger: forthright, honest, no prisoners taken. The Real Madrid centre-back’s role for Germany has developed. He has become one of the elder statesmen and is aware he has a responsibility to keep standards high in the dressing room. “I am one of the players who’s been there longest,” Rüdiger says. “I have to be one of the leaders.”
Continue reading...The great Washington Post reporter has published 20 interviews he conducted with the then president – who is now running again
Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water. Donald Trump is running for president again. That was not a prospect Bob Woodward had to deal with when Richard Nixon resigned in 1974, after Woodward and his Washington Post colleague Carl Bernstein cracked open the Watergate scandal.
“Our long national nightmare is over,” declared Nixon’s successor, Gerald Ford, and it was. Nixon faded into jowly retirement. But Trump yearns to regain the crown.
Continue reading...