Nadhim Zahawi may not go quietly after his sacking as Tory chairman yesterday, says The Times. An independent ethics inquiry concluded that the multimillionaire had repeatedly broken the ministerial code over his tax affairs, but he is considering publishing a formal response to put across his side of the story. Five thousand new beds will be added to hospitals across England before the end of this year, boosting NHS capacity by 5%. The £1bn investment will also include 800 additional ambulances, increasing the overall fleet size by 10%. A “selfie-crazy” black bear has snapped more than 400 pictures on a motion-activated wildlife camera in Colorado. The photogenic predator was caught testing out a variety of poses, from full-face staring into the lens to side profile and tongue out.
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Yes! My walls are insulated. Getty |
When the bills go down, off come our clothes |
Will someone please tell Keir Starmer that the policy at the heart of his promise of a “fairer, greener” future will achieve neither goal, says Dominic Lawson in The Sunday Times. The Tory government has already spent billions on insulating people’s homes, and the results are dispiriting. A barely reported Cambridge study has found that while gas use dropped at first, by perhaps 7% in the first 12 months, any benefit had completely disappeared after four years. The reason is simple: seeing their bills go down, people started taking more hot showers and walking around with “fewer (or no) clothes on”. Economists call this age-old phenomenon the “rebound effect” – when steam engines became more efficient, coal use went up instead of down because people used the engines more.
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Politicians are often “surprisingly ignorant” about how humans really respond to policies designed to change their behaviour. When Nicola Sturgeon introduced a minimum alcohol price of 50p per unit in Scotland in 2018, she boasted it would “save lives”. In fact, consumption among hardened boozers remained the same; they just spent less on things like food and utility bills. “In other words, the policy caused more, not less, misery to the very families it claimed to help.” It’s the same with Westminster’s efforts to tackle obesity with a sugar tax. Since food companies cut the amount of sugar in products such as ultra-processed breakfast cereals and yoghurts, sales have indeed plummeted. But overall British consumption of sugar has increased, as sweet-toothed consumers just get their fix elsewhere. Often, obvious solutions prove to be anything but.
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Photographer Chris Hytha uses drones to capture striking images of iconic skyscrapers across the US, says My Modern Met. They include the Baltimore Trust Building, the Guardian Building in Detroit, the Carbide and Carbon Building in Chicago, and the Cathedral of Learning in Pittsburgh. See more of his work here.
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Brian Morgan/Popperfoto/Getty |
Donald Trump’s deceit on the golf course is “legendary”, says The Upshot, whether he’s “booting away opponents’ balls” or claiming “fictional holes in one”. In a recent competition at the club he owns in West Palm Beach, the “commander-in-cheat” missed the first day’s play. So players arriving for day two were “a little surprised” to see Trump’s name at the top of the leaderboard. The former president explained he’d played a “very good round” earlier in the week, and would use that as his first day’s score. The eventual winner of the tournament? Mr Donald J Trump – “a worthy champion!”
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Prince Andrew “just cannot help himself, can he”, says Camilla Long in The Sunday Times. Presumably as part of a campaign to reopen his out-of-court settlement with Virginia Giuffre, the Telegraph has presented us with “the photo that ‘clears Duke’ over bath sex”. Organised by Ghislaine Maxwell’s brother Ian, the picture shows two people sitting in the tub in which Giuffre claims Andrew once licked her toes and feet – supposedly proving it is “too small for any kind of sex frolicking”. Yes, that’s right – “they took a picture of two people in a bath to show that two people couldn’t get into it”. Not only that, the two models had pictures covering their faces: one of the Duke, one of Giuffre. How on earth did anyone – anyone – think this was a good idea?
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“No, Minister, I really think you’d be better off doing it this way instead” |
Civil servants are in open revolt, says Dan Hodges in The Mail on Sunday. One minister tells me that when she asks anyone in her department to do something, she is told: “No, Minister, I really think you’d be better off doing it this way instead.” These officials can sense “change is in the air”. They read the polls and the body language of their ministers; they know that soon they’ll no longer serve the “doomed” Tories but Keir Starmer. And as a result, the “Whitehall machine has begun flexing its collective muscle”, moving beyond “obstructionism to outright sabotage”.
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With Levelling Up funding, for example, the PM was told he would face a judicial review if he got involved in selecting winning bids – so civil servants were given sole authority for dishing out the £2bn pot. The Treasury is “leaking like a sieve”: officials are briefing on anything that will damage the government and counting down the days until Labour’s Rachel Reeves comes sweeping in. Tom Scholar, who was sacked as the department’s permanent secretary by Liz Truss, is now said to be in the running for a job as Keir Starmer’s chief of staff. Clearly, three years after Dominic Cummings reportedly pledged a “hard rain” would fall on anyone who defied his efforts to reform the civil service, the mandarins are having their revenge. It’s also self-preservation. “They know we’re basically done for,” one minister tells me. “So their attitude is, ‘We might as well help finish them off.’”
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Mick Jagger, Ronnie Wood and Keith Richards in 1979. Richard Aaron/Redferns/Getty |
Bands are now almost entirely absent from the music charts, says The Observer. Only four new songs by groups made it into last year’s top 100 singles, along with a “smattering of classics” by old timers like Fleetwood Mac and Arctic Monkeys. One factor is social media. Rather than “trying to size up a four-piece performing in a sweaty pub”, record labels are scouting new talent online – and platforms like TikTok and Instagram are much more of an individual pursuit. Another is technology: with today’s kit, solo artists can “release studio-quality music from their bedrooms for less than the cost of an electric guitar and amplifier”.
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Until the late 18th century, it was widely believed that ringing church bells during a storm would stop lightning from striking the steeple, says The New York Review of Books. This had some rather unfortunate consequences: between 1753 and 1786, 386 churches in France were struck by lightning – and 103 bell ringers were electrocuted. |
It’s the Rezvani Vengeance, a hyper-secure 4x4 designed to keep baddies out. It’s styled like a “steroidal tank”, says The Guardian, and features include bulletproof glass, electrified door handles and blinding strobe lights. Drivers can also blast pepper spray out of the wing mirrors and release a James Bond-style smokescreen out of the back. Get yours, with all the bells and whistles, for just £400,000 here.
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“To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer.”
Anonymous, from the 1978 Farmers’ Almanac |
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