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17 November, 2023

Jeremy Hunt is looking at halving inheritance tax and cutting taxes for small business in his autumn statement next week, says The Times. The Treasury has been told there is an extra £20bn of “fiscal headroom” because of rising tax revenues and falling borrowing costs. Israeli troops raided the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank last night, exacerbating concerns about violence in the Israeli-occupied territory. More than 155 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by the Israeli army and Jewish settlers since Hamas’s October 7 attack, says Haaretz – the highest monthly figure since the Second Intifada 20 years ago. Sailors trying to stop orcas from attacking their boats have taken to blasting out heavy metal. One member of a sailing group on Facebook said “playing full-volume east European thrash metal” had been a “game-changer”.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz at the Ben Zion Synagogue earlier this month. John MacDougall/AFP/Getty

A “sinister turning point” for German Jews?

“Jews in Germany live in fear once more,” says Katja Hoyer in Engelsberg Ideas. The number of anti-Semitic incidents in the country has risen almost every year since 2015. But what’s happened since the October 7 massacre is “on a different scale” – 2,800 chargeable offences have been recorded in less than six weeks, more than in the whole of 2022. On 18 October, two Molotov cocktails were hurled at the Ben Zion Synagogue, which is part of a community centre that also houses a school and nursery. Almost exactly 85 years earlier, on 10 November 1938, the same synagogue was gutted and destroyed on Kristallnacht, when Nazi thugs were joined by ordinary Germans in a nationwide pogrom against the Jewish people. Today, once again, “Jewish places of worship and education aren’t safe for those attending them”.

What’s most troubling for German Jews is that they haven’t seen “a similar spike” in public outrage. Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews, has accused people of being in a kind of “hibernation” when it comes to anti-Semitism, willingly turning a blind eye to the growing threat to Jewish life. Schuster, whose grandparents were murdered in Auschwitz, says he doesn’t “recognise this country any more”. The big question now is whether 7 October will prove a “sinister turning point” for German Jews. Politicians are making “the right noises”, but many people feel let down “by society rather than politics”. It’s on all Germans to “prove that ‘Never again!’ is more than an empty phrase”.

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The Accidentally Wes Anderson Instagram account collates pictures that mimic the director’s iconic “pastel-coloured aesthetic”, says The Daily Telegraph, and an exhibition of the highlights is opening in South Kensington on 8 December. Subjects include the multi-coloured buildings and open skies of Curaçao; a bright-orange Slovenian railway carriage; the Hotel Opera in Prague; a steep cobbled street in Lisbon; and the Art Deco Eastern Columbia Building in Los Angeles. Book your tickets here.

American businessman Arjun Mahadevan asked 22 million people on Reddit for the “life hacks” they wished they had been given at the age of 20. Useful suggestions included: putting the website’s name as your middle name when you sign up to something online, so that when you receive spam you’ll know who sold your data; avoiding last-minute hotel cancellation fees by moving your reservation to a later date, then calling back after a few days to cancel that booking instead; and scrunching and un-scrunching tin foil before cooking things on it, so that the juices gather in the folds and your food doesn’t stick as much. Read more here. 

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Jim Caviezel as Jesus; Brad Pitt as Jesse James; Bruno Ganz as Hitler; Judi Dench as Elizabeth I; and Doris Day as Calamity Jane

Which historical figures are most frequently depicted on screen? To find out, says Daniel Parris in Stat Significant, I looked at IMDb film credit data on the top four leading roles in a variety of movies. Unsurprisingly, Jesus came out on top, with major parts in 22 titles. Wild West outlaw Jesse James came second (10 films), and Adolf Hitler, third (eight films). The best-represented woman, at six films, was an unlikely tie between Elizabeth I and American frontierswoman Calamity Jane.

Harris on the campaign trail in 2020. Nic Antaya/Getty 

Biden’s “uniquely unpopular” veep

Given the high possibility that 80-year-old Joe Biden won't make it through a whole second term, says Peggy Noonan in The Wall Street Journal, Americans know a vote for him next year will “really” be a vote for Kamala Harris. This is bad news for Democrats, as the kooky vice president is “uniquely unpopular”. Her extraordinary lack of success seems to come from the fact that she is surrounded by friends and lackeys who believe her “first-ever status” – first woman in the role, first black and Indian American – means she should “remake the position” to reflect her “special significance”. But you can’t effectively change a thing unless you understand it first.

Harris has sought to establish her place as a future president by “showing off her charm and ease”. But after three years in the spotlight, she has instead proved herself “insubstantial” – not seeming to understand issues in any depth; getting lost in discussing them; laughing at strange moments. This was fine during her climb up the Democratic Party, but at the level of the vice presidency it’s not enough. The job isn’t hard – veeps just have to get up every day and give boring speeches, sometimes abroad, while projecting a “grown-up sense that they know they’re the second banana”. You don’t take the job and shape it to your persona; you take your persona and fit it into the job. Biden’s main problem – that he seems too old for four more years in the White House – is “guaranteed to get worse each day”. He should get on with solving his second-biggest problem.

High drama: Paltrow during the trial

A musical inspired by Gwyneth Paltrow’s legal battle with a retired optometrist over a ski accident is opening in London next month, says The Guardian. Gwyneth Goes Skiing will depict the trial in which Terry Sanderson sued Paltrow for $300,000 earlier this year. The courtroom showdown “shared qualities with the most enthralling theatre”: there was “teary testimony”, an array of chic outfits, and even a devastating final line, whispered by Paltrow to the claimant after the jury ruled in her favour: “I wish you well.” Get tickets here.

Balenciaga has unveiled a £695 skirt that looks exactly like a bath towel, says The Cut. At that price, you might expect it to be made of something fancy, like cashmere. But no – it’s just plain old terry-cotton. Still, it does at least have two buttons inside the waistline, “so no worries about it falling”. If you’d like to give someone the “most expensive gag gift there ever was”, pre-order the skirt here.

It’s Auguste Toulmouche’s 1866 painting The Hesitant Fiancée, which has become a surprise hit on TikTok thanks to the “withering glare” of its subject, says The New York Times. Women have been reposting the artwork to “express their own moments of outrage or vindication”, by adding captions like “literally me when I’m right”, and using it as a punchline in response to phrases including “you’re overreacting” and “you really should smile more”.

“I was wise enough to never grow up while fooling people into believing I had.”

American anthropologist Margaret Mead

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