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19 July, 2023

UK inflation slowed more than expected to 7.9% in June, the lowest rate in more than a year. The fall was driven in large part by a drop in petrol and diesel prices, which are around 20% cheaper than they were 12 months ago. Coutts closed Nigel Farage’s accounts because his views do not “align with its purpose and values”, according to a newly released internal document. The private bank compiled a dossier – including evidence of the Ukip leader’s friendship with Donald Trump and views on LGBT+ rights – which labelled the politician a “grifter” and a “chancer”. British passports bearing the title “His Majesty” will be issued from this week. It’s the first time since 1952, the end of King George VI’s reign, that the documents will be printed featuring the male title. 

In the woods... Queen Bopea Taylor Swift

The rise of the new “Bohemian Peasantry”

We had the hippies and the yuppies, says Louis Elton in UnHerd, and now we have the “Bopeas”: the “Bohemian Peasantry”. This emergent social group consists of downwardly mobile creative types who can’t afford to buy houses in London, or to replicate their parents’ lifestyle. So, rejecting the “refined hedonism” of urban life, they embrace “a neo-medieval peasant worldview” rooted in “community values, rituals and natural rhythms”. One woman I met had ditched an east London photography job to run an “enchanted sauna” in a Sussex forest. Bopeas also enjoy wild swimming, knitting, foraging and fermenting.

Bopeanism is a kind of “post-internet Arts and Crafts movement”, reacting against ad agencies and tech start-ups rather than “soulless Victorian workhouses”. In place of John Ruskin and William Morris, Bopeas have King Charles, with his “tireless environmentalism” and “mystic outlook”, and Taylor Swift, whose recent aesthetic goes heavy on knitted cardigans and forests. Other “Bopea elders” include Jeremy Clarkson, who has quite literally started a farm, and Tilda Swinton, who set up a tiny Steiner school in rural Scotland where “phones are banned and children must learn to care for bees”. The Bopeas may “go the same way as the hippies” and be stripped for parts by novelty-hungry corporations. But they seem more robust than their ancestors – rather than simply having a “set of aesthetics” you can pick up and discard, they have “a mindset inspired by a hunger for timelessness”.

French actor Vincent Cassel, 56, with his 26-year-old wife Tina Kunakey

New research by the dating website OKCupid proves, unsurprisingly, that men and women “have slightly different ideas” when it comes to age gaps in relationships. While female users prefer partners roughly the same age as them, men look for women in their early twenties, “regardless of their own age”. Curiously, says The Economist, there’s evidence that both groups are “searching wisely”. While men with younger spouses tend to survive for longer than those with partners the same age as them – perhaps because a healthier young wife can help look after them into old age – women who marry younger husbands don’t get the same life expectancy boost.

If you want to live out your own “Barbie fantasy” in honour of the forthcoming film, then why not stay at a pink hotel, asks The Washington Post. They’re generally located in tropical areas, and the colour was particularly popular in the 1920s and in mid-century design. Examples in the US include Miami’s Goodtime Hotel; Don CeSar, on Florida’s Gulf Coast; the Trixie Motel in Palm Springs; and Waikiki’s Royal Hawaiian Resort.

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Janet Yellen, the US treasury secretary, provoked puzzlement during a trip to Beijing recently, when she kept bowing to her Chinese counterpart. Some are speculating that magic mushrooms are to blame. On the top finance official’s first night in the Chinese capital, she ate at a restaurant where she ordered four portions of jian shou qing – a dish made with mushrooms which can be hallucinogenic if not properly cooked. “She loved mushrooms very much,” restaurant staff wrote on social media. “It was an extremely magical day.”

Tolkien’s vision of England in Lord of the Rings

The “Hobbits” can't go on calling the shots 

Britain is “nowhere near as rich as it thinks it is”, says Adrian Wooldridge in Bloomberg. Real incomes haven’t increased for 15 years; the average UK household is 20% poorer than its neighbours in northwestern Europe. “On current trends, the average Polish family will be richer than the average British family by the end of the decade.” But members of the ruling class, who “float through life in a bubble of affluence”, can’t see the problem clearly. They tend to live in the South East, where most of the country’s wealth is concentrated, and are educated and employed by a “handful” of world-class British universities and companies.

The problem is that the UK’s economic growth has stalled. Brexit has played a part, reducing investment by 25% in the five years to 2021, according to the Bank of England, and distracting politicians “from the mundane work of fixing day-to-day economic problems”. The “noisy merry-go-round” of prime ministers in recent years hasn’t helped either, while the Tory Party increasingly relies on an “anti-growth coalition” of older homeowners. These voters are more like “Hobbits comfortable in their sandy burrows” than Margaret Thatcher’s “self-reliant entrepreneurs”, and routinely oppose the building of new houses and infrastructure that might spoil their views. We know how to get UK growth going – ease planning laws, upgrade vital infrastructure and “loosen the dead hand” of the penny-pinching Treasury. The problem is getting political support. Given that Labour relies on poorer, younger voters who have little stake in the status quo, it may be a future Keir Starmer government that has the best chance of “unblocking the system”.

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Jane Birkin with her eponymous bag. Jun Sato/Getty

The story of the ultra-exclusive Hermès Birkin bag – inspired by the late style icon Jane Birkin – isn’t as glamorous as you might imagine, says Vogue. Upgraded on a flight to London carrying only a shabby holdall, Birkin found herself sitting next to Hermès boss Jean-Louis Dumas, and when she went to put her bag in the overhead compartment, all her stuff fell out on to the floor. “The day Hermès makes [a bag] with pockets,” she told him, “I will have that.” When Dumas asked her what her ideal accessory would look like, she sketched her vision on a sick bag. He said: “I’ll make it for you” – and so the world’s most famous tote was born. 

The English phrase “a few sandwiches short of a picnic” has some colourful equivalents around the world, says writer Adam Sharp on Twitter. In Sweden, they say “the wheel is spinning, but the hamster is dead”. The French describe a dimwit as “not the most oxygenated trout in the river”, while in Germany, the very thick are “as bright as a tunnel”. Then there’s the Arabic idiom, “your brain is like two walnuts in a sack”; the Korean, “is your head a decoration?”; and the Hungarian, “mentally, you are a sock”.  

It’s the new edition of Furby, the popular children’s toy, which seems to have received several cosmetic enhancements. While the original model, released in 1998, had muted fur, the head of an owl and the beak of a chicken, the 2023 edition comes in bright, surreal colours, has a heart-shaped jewel on its head, and seems to be wearing false eyelashes. “I’m not a huge fan,” one former Furby owner tells The New York Times. “It’s like Furby’s hot grandchild.”

“What the world really needs is more love and less paperwork.” 

American actress Pearl Bailey

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