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England's ludicrous experiment in privatised water is coming to a messy end | Adam Almeida
If Thames Water collapses in the weeks ahead, there is only one smart, long-term response: public ownership
⢠Adam Almeida is a senior data analyst at the thinktank Common Wealth
The question mark over the future of Britainâs largest water supplier, Thames Water, has put its 16 million customers across London and south-east England â myself included â in an uncertain position. While water will still keep coming out of our taps, the price of these financial woes will probably be borne by customers and taxpayers. Meanwhile, Thames Waterâs shareholders have spent the last three decades benefiting from the companyâs massive financial gains. If ever we needed an example of the risks of selling essential infrastructure to investment firms, this is it.
Auditors warned in late 2023 that the debt-laden company could run out of money by April if shareholders did not inject it with much-needed cash. Now investors are saying they wonât provide Thames Water with ÂŁ500m of emergency funding, leading to speculation that the company will be temporarily renationalised.
Adam Almeida is a senior data analyst at the thinktank Common Wealth
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How can we save British nightlife from collapse? Look to Germany â and its football | Gilles Peterson
Small venues are the heart of our musical culture. Hereâs my two-pronged plan to keep that heart beating
Grassroots venues are the foundation upon which the mighty British music industry has been built, fuelling the phenomenal level of talent this small island has produced. Yet while successive governments have shouted about how they are a shining demonstration of the countryâs creativity, the very same people have cut funding and opened the cultural sector to the most brutal market logic. Alongside government neglect, small venues across the country also face rising trade costs, pressure on disposable incomes, greedy property developers, post-pandemic changes in attitudes to communal experiences and the continuing shift towards an increasingly screen-based lifestyle.
I cut my teeth DJing and dancing in small venues up and down the country, from my earliest experiences at Christieâs, in Sutton â when Iâd head home after Carl Cox finished up as I had to be at school the next day â to a 10-year weekly Monday residency at Bar Rumba in Soho and many formative nights at the Hare & Hounds in Birmingham. There are countless more â far too many to list them all. If it werenât for these backrooms, I would not be where I am today as a DJ. Nor would I have encountered (and still do!) those voices that push the culture forward and bring energy and positive momentum to our world.
Gilles Peterson is a DJ, broadcaster and founder of Brownswood Recordings
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Can a Garrick member chair an inquiry into police sexism fairly? I have my doubts | Alison
Sir John Mitting will rule on whether undercover officers broke the law by deceiving women like me. Yet heâs a member of a male-only club
Those of us involved in the so-called spy cops scandal have followed with interest the recent media coverage of the men-only Garrick Club and its membership list of high-profile individuals. It is not news to us that senior judges and powerful men in the security services have been members. Included among the elite was the chair of the public inquiry into undercover policing, John Mitting. Since his appointment as inquiry chair in 2017 we have been calling this out, as we believe it is an obvious conflict of interest â yet our concerns have predictably been ignored.
The inquiry had been established two years earlier by the then prime minister, Theresa May, as a direct result of investigations by women like me into the disappearances of our ex-partners, and the subsequent revelations of their true identities as Metropolitan police undercover officers. The abuse of women, and institutional sexism in the police, are fundamental to understanding the significance of this inquiry.
Alison is one of eight women who first took legal action against the Metropolitan police over the conduct of undercover officers and a founder member of Police Spies Out of Lives. A core participant in the public inquiry into undercover policing, she is one of the authors of Deep Deception â The Story of the Spycop Network by the Women who Uncovered the Shocking Truth
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Sam Bankman-Fried will grow old in jail. But donât forget those who basked in his orbit | Aditya Chakrabortty
If the high-rollers surrounding the disgraced FTX founder had any qualms about taking his money, they didnât show it
Later today, a man who has recently turned 32 will be hauled in front of a Manhattan judge. Already convicted of huge fraud, he knows heâs going to prison. The only question is for how long. If the US government gets its way, he will not emerge before his 80th birthday.
This is the final disgrace of Sam Bankman-Fried. The judge, politicians and the worldâs press will declare him one of the biggest swindlers in American history. They will note how within three years he built a marketplace for digital currencies, or crypto, that was worth around $32bn â and made himself the worldâs richest person under 30. Still it wasnât enough. He spent perhaps $8bn of his customersâ savings on luxury homes, risky investments and whatever else took his fancy.
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Living with my mum has been a blessing â but young adults should not be forced back into the family home | Jason Okundaye
Although there are significant financial and emotional benefits to returning to the nest, it should be a choice
The 2021 census already confirmed it: more adult children than ever are still living with their parents. But the Financial Times has recently revealed just how drastically the scales have tipped: about 40% of 18- to 34-year-olds now live with their parents, making it the most common domestic arrangement for this age group. Previously, it was living as a couple with children.
Itâs not just an epidemic of Young, Dumb and Living Off Mum â Iâve moved back home twice since graduating in 2018, and I know plenty of young well-to-do professionals who have felt obliged to do the same, or not moved out at all. There are also plenty of people who are unable to live in their family home due to distance and perhaps wish they could.
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Rightwing populists have many countries in their grip. Come to Poland: see how they can be pushed back | Anne McElvoy
Donald Tusk is working hard and fast on a great transformation, but travel the country and itâs clear what a difficult task that is
My formative journalistic years were spent reporting on the final freeze of the cold war â days of hard times and soft currencies. When I return to those countries now, I test myself on how well I guessed what would follow in the three decades since. On Poland in particular, I would have been hard pressed to predict the giddy zigzag of power still featuring a generation who marched to topple communism, but whose protagonists feud bitterly about how to govern the country in the 21st century.
We talk a lot about places that have recently bought a one-way ticket towards authoritarian politics â Russia and Turkey for the full-fat versions, and Hungaryâs democratic backsliding and stifling of independent institutions.
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âNeighbourhood restaurantsâ â really? These Instagrammable imposters are nothing of the sort | Lauren O'Neill
The term evokes cosiness, affordability and community. But itâs being used as a cynical marketing ploy
What makes a neighbourhood restaurant? The phrase itself is evocative, bringing to mind the types of local trattorias or ocakbaĹlarÄą or tavernas that punters return to regularly. The definition might vary from person to person, but surely a neighbourhood restaurant is defined by some combination of its longevity in the community, an accessible feel and affordable prices.
Over the past six months, though, I have seen the âneighbourhood restaurantâ label deployed constantly in PR emails previewing a very different sort of establishment. The aim, I imagine, is to evoke a sense of cosiness and community â but thereâs something off about it.
Lauren OâNeill is a culture writer
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Britain seems stuck in a doom loop of poverty. I have a plan to raise billions to address that | Gordon Brown
With will and ingenuity, communities, charities, companies and government could work together to rescue millions of people
An election year is the time to confront the paralysing gloom and declinist thinking besetting our country and, by rediscovering our moral compass, inaugurate a new age of hope.
The British people long to feel part of a shared national endeavour. But instead, near-zero growth is giving birth to a zero-sum mentality, a belief that you can only do better if at someone elseâs expense. Young people â historically the most optimistic about the future â yearn to believe in something bigger than themselves, yet this generation is fast losing faith in the very idea of progress. But the most devastating twist in this doom loop is the one created by rising poverty, the despair and divisions it causes, and the mounting public concern about its impact on our social cohesion. To break out of this downward spiral, Britain needs a reason for optimism â and a good starting point is a new partnership to end destitution and poverty that, by bringing charities, companies, communities and government together in a common national project, shows the United Kingdom can be united in more than just name.
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Itâs not unpatriotic to tell the whole truth about Britain and the end of slavery | Ella Sinclair
The mooted memorial to the navyâs West Africa Squadron seems to be an attempt to rewrite history in a more favourable light
Until very recently, most people in Britain would have said that this countryâs most significant involvement in the transatlantic slave trade was our heroic decision to abolish it. In the past few years, this culturally ingrained consensus has been challenged by a renewed attention to Britainâs long-lasting legacy of slavery â and to the many families and institutions that profited from the enslavement of Africans. In the ongoing struggle to determine the meaning of this history, individuals and institutions across Britainâs political spectrum are grappling with the same pivotal question: how do we remember our past?
For the campaigners seeking to build a new monument in Portsmouth commemorating Britainâs West Africa Squadron â the Royal Navy unit tasked with intercepting slave ships after Britain outlawed the trade in 1807 â the answer is simple.
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Iâm a Garrick member. The exclusion of women is the opposite of liberal. It is out of date and wrong | Simon Jenkins
I feel strongly that any association of citizens in a free society should be allowed to make its own rules. But this ban is absurd
Do clubs matter? Yes, to their members, and clearly to those they exclude. When Alexis de Tocqueville compared American democracy with British, he said Americaâs roots were in the mob and Britainâs in the club. Americans vote for a president who doesnât sit in Congress. Britons vote for a member of parliament, a tight-knit Westminster club.
The revived argument over Londonâs Garrick Club would have been music to De Tocquevilleâs ears. Here we go again, a gang of London elitists ruling the land from a Covent Garden palace untainted by plebs or women. And this in the 21st century. Give us a break.
Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist
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Synthetic opioids have arrived in Britain. As a former drug dealer, I know how the UK should respond | Niko Vorobyov
There are better ways of tackling addiction and overdoses than reverting to the tactics of a failed drugs war
Last week the home secretary, James Cleverly, announced that nitazenes are now being treated as class A drugs, his statement bookended with the usual stern rhetoric about the need to keep âthese vile drugs off our streetsâ. The maximum penalty for selling or supplying class As is life imprisonment.
Cleverlyâs decision follows the discovery that several victims of deadly drug poisonings had nitazenes in their system. Nitazenes are synthetic opioids, meaning they are similar to the heroin and morphine refined from opium poppies but made entirely in a lab. First developed as painkillers in the 1950s but never approved for medical use, they have been found mixed into heroin to give the low-grade variety of the drug that extra kick, as well as in bootleg Xanax and Valium pills sold on the dark web. Up to 500 times stronger than morphine, even a tiny amount can prove fatal.
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The collapse of Port Talbotâs steelworks is a death knell for industrial, working-class Britain | Keith Gildart
UK industrial towns offered not only well-paid jobs, but a whole culture. A radical alternative is desperately needed
Last week, Tata Steel in Port Talbot announced the immediate closure of its coke ovens. These ovens create the coke that ultimately powers the blast furnaces, which, as was announced in January, are due to be shut down. The decision by Tata to close the furnaces sent shock waves through the community. There are set to be 2,800 job losses â a huge blow for a small town that has already undergone significant cuts to its steel industry over the past decades. A final chapter in the decades-long deindustrialisation of the British economy appears to be coming to a close.
Plant closures are never only about the loss of work, but also the cultural and psychological effects on the people who are made unemployed, on families and communities. Steel provided well-paid, unionised and skilled employment, and created a working-class culture that gave the country Labour MPs, athletes, musicians, writers, artists and a sense of community and collective purpose. Port Talbot even gave the world the cinematic presence of Richard Burton and Anthony Hopkins.
Keith Gildart is a former coalminer, and now a professor of labour and social history at the University of Wolverhampton
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Our lack of affordable, safe housing is a national crisis. Here are three things Labour can do to fix it | Peter Apps
If it gets to No 10, the party should fund a social housing boom, tackle homelessness â and usher in a post-Grenfell era of safety
- Our writers and experts name the pledges Labour must include in its manifesto
The failures in housing policy over several generations are now all too obvious: rising homelessness, families and key workers priced out of cities and a generation unable to move out of their parentsâ homes. The next government needs to take radical action to change this picture, rather than make small tweaks to a failed system. These are some of the steps I would take to get there.
Peter Apps is the author of Show Me the Bodies: How We Let Grenfell Happen
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The poor need the money, the rich may not â but I say hands off the state pension triple lock | Owen Jones
The policy has its critics, but as Tories and Labour vow to keep it, I back its retention. It can be made fair, and a state should care for its people
A wealthy nation can afford to offer a comfortable and secure existence for all of its citizens. If it chooses not to do so, that is a political choice. If rationality reigned supreme, this would prove the starting point for all decisions about how society is organised. Bad news: it doesnât, and instead much of the vast riches generated by the graft of millions of workers ends up hoovered into the bank accounts â and offshore tax havens â of a tiny few. The result? Itâs easy to encourage the general population to believe that theyâre locked in trench warfare over ever-scarcer resources, with so little to go around that politics is merely the art of managing a zero-sum game.
Enter, then, the question of the triple lock on the state pension, which both Tories and Labour have confirmed will feature in their upcoming manifestos. First introduced by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition in 2010, it ensures that pensionersâ entitlements increase each April in line with whatever is highest: inflation, the average increase in wages, or a 2.5% minimum. That means more than ÂŁ100bn is now splashed on the state pension each year, by far the biggest single item of social security spending, while working-age benefits have fallen drastically behind. When you include other entitlements, well over half of the welfare state ends up in pensionersâ bank accounts. At the same time, more than 60% of older Britons own their home outright, sitting on golden eggs that have only appreciated in value.
Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist
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Buried under chicken wings and with cholesterol soaring, I knew Iâd had my fill of reviewing restaurants | Corin Hirsch
âWait,â people would say. âYou get paid to eat?â Yes, and dining out five times a day was joyful â for a while, at least
Could I eat another bite? I turned this over in my head as I scanned the passenger seat of my car, piled high with takeaway containers of chicken wings. Being overfull was a familiar feeling in my work as a food critic. That crisp October day, the question was also existential â I had simply reached the end of the road.
Iâd been thrilled to land my job nearly six years earlier at a newspaper covering the 3 million people and 10,000+ restaurants of New York Cityâs eastern suburbs. Iâd grown up on Long Island reading Newsday, an award-winning powerhouse in the 80s and 90s, and years later had returned home for a job I initially loved. Driving hundreds of miles a week, I sometimes ate out four or five times a day as I pursued stories. Ribeye, oysters, cumin lamb, birria tacos â much of it went on my corporate credit card. The hustle was constant but the reward was unearthing under-the-radar places, dishes and people. I also wrote about wine, beer, coffee, and cocktails, which meant rubbing elbows with talented brewers and bartenders.
Corin Hirsch is a writer who covers food, drink, and travel
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Iâm an Orthodox female rabbi, but Iâve had to leave my unwelcoming synagogue behind | Nomi Kaltmann
An outdated approach to women and children keeps me from my place of worship. Without more openness, it has no future
I vividly recall the moment I made the decision to stop attending synagogue. It happened in 2023, a few months after welcoming my fourth child.
My husband and I had managed to get our children dressed and out of the door that Saturday morning â a feat any parent with small children will recognise, and we arrived in time for the synagogueâs childrenâs service, a segment lasting about 30 minutes of the larger 2.5-hour service. But our plans were quickly derailed. The childrenâs programme concluded earlier than anticipated and the playroom was closed, under instructions from the management.
Nomi Kaltmann is an Orthodox female rabbi and the Australian correspondent at Tablet Magazine (NYC)
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How I stopped comparing my appearance to my identical twinâs â and healed our relationship | Lara Rodwell
Comments about our differences used to wound me. But then I was forced to confront my decades-long resentment
âWhy are you fat, and why is she thin,â a puzzled middle-aged man asked, as my identical twin Katy and I strolled into a restaurant in central Mumbai for a post-yoga samosa. It wasnât the first time we had been asked this question â but each time it hurt just as much, and stoked a decades-long resentment towards my sister, who was always being told she was better looking than me.
As children, we had relished in our identicalness and were joined at the hip. Physically, the only way people (even family members) could tell us apart was by our face shape. I had a slightly rounder face than Katy, with chubby cheeks that earned me the nickname Chipmunk growing up. Katy and I got the same grades, had the same interests, and on birthdays and Christmases got given identical gifts â but in different colours. We were inextricably âoneâ.
Lara Rodwell is a freelance journalist and author
In the UK, Beat can be contacted on 0808-801-0677. In the US, help is available at nationaleatingdisorders.org or by calling ANADâs eating disorders hotline at 800-375-7767. In Australia, the Butterfly Foundation is at 1800 33 4673. Other international helplines can be found at Eating Disorder Hope
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For years, I saw sex as a competitive sport. Then I realised how empty I felt | Cornelia Holzbauer
I am still a proud member of the anti-slut-shaming community, but I am happier since giving up casual encounters
Until recently, I used sexual encounters the same way others might a glass of wine after a long day, or some chocolate after a meal â before you know it, one glass can quickly turn into two or three, or a chocolate bar a day.
Having been single for almost five years, I found myself increasingly viewing sex as a competitive sport. It became a means to an end â an orgasm, a stress relief, a cure for boredom or loneliness. One time, I joked with my friends that I âmasturbated with his bodyâ, referring to my latest conquest.
Cornelia Holzbauer is a health and wellness journalist based in New York City
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Labour is the party of sound defence and hatred of tyranny. Now it must show that in Ukraine | Brian Brivati
Keir Starmerâs party created the architecture of postwar collective security. That history holds the key to his current policy challenges
Our era has more in common with the 1930s and 1940s than any other period of recent history: it is the second age of dictators of modern times. As in the first age of dictators, this generation of despots act with ever-increasing impunity. The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, invading Ukraine. Azerbaijanâs president, Ilham Aliyev, ethnically cleansing Nagorno-Karabakh. The Chinese president, Xi Jinping, committing genocide against Uyghurs. Iran sponsoring proxy wars.
Keir Starmerâs and John Healeyâs Christmas trip to a Nato base in Estonia to visit British troops, and the soundbites that followed, demonstrate how the defence of the realm has moved back up the political agenda. It is a good moment to reflect on Labourâs pedigree when it comes to defence and foreign policy, and the partyâs performance over the past two years in the face of tyranny.
Brian Brivati is visiting professor at Kingston School of Art, and the author of Losing Afghanistan: The Fall of Kabul and the End of Western Intervention
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Britain's record on aid has been badly tarnished. Here's how Labour can restore it | Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah
People are sceptical of Britainâs role as a force for good. But Keir Starmer can change that by pursuing equality, not saviourism
Creating an independent development ministry was a signature first move of the Blair government in 1997, generating much-needed momentum in the global fight against poverty that lasted for more than a decade. When David Cameronâs coalition became the first government in the world to legislate for 0.7% of gross national income to be spent on aid, Britain was seen by many as a âdevelopment superpowerâ.
Yet, after years of brutal aid cuts and the reckless maligning of development by politicians â among whom Boris Johnson is the most high profile â this status is badly tarnished. Keir Starmer and his shadow minister for international development, Lisa Nandy, will have their work cut out â not only to salvage Britainâs reputation on the world stage, but also to sell a vision of a compassionate, internationalist Britain to a sceptical domestic audience.
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Culture is not trivial, itâs about who we are. Thatâs why Labour needs a plan to save the arts | Charlotte Higgins
Music, theatre and art have been crushed by years of Tory cuts. They need to be nurtured again, with purpose and with pride
As the Conservatives clutch at political straws, the Labour party is readying itself for government. Some predict a general election as early as next spring. In Thangam Debbonaire â who started out as a professional cellist â there is the unusual prospect of a culture secretary who understands the arts from deep personal experience. Two months into her job shadowing the unimpressive incumbent, Lucy Frazer, she is in listening mode. The next step is to get herself a serious, ambitious plan for power.
As Labour culture secretary, she would almost certainly score easy points by just not being Tory. That means, to pick some random examples, by not being among the 12 Tories to hold the post in 13 years. By displaying less ignorance about the brief (Nadine Dorriesâs startling misapprehension, when culture secretary, that Channel 4 is publicly funded, stands out amid a strong field). By not relentlessly starving, punishing and criticising the BBC, the UKâs largest cultural organisation. By not dragging the arts into a cynical, divisive culture war. By not being part of a government that unleashes something as self-harming as an exit from the European Union. By not engaging in a zero-sum game in which London is pitted against the rest of the country in the name of levelling up.
Charlotte Higgins is the Guardianâs chief culture writer
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Keir Starmerâs got his work cut out to fix Britainâs housing crisis. This is my six-point plan | Phineas Harper
Top of the to-do list is ramping up the supply of new social homes. Next, ending the divisive Thatcher-era right to buy rules
The opposition leader, Keir Starmer, has rightly put solving the housing crisis at the top of his agenda, promising Labour will be âthe builders, not the blockersâ, pledging to construct new towns and to match the Toriesâ target of 300,000 new homes a year.
His work will certainly be cut out for him. If Labour wins the election, it will inherit a country running on fumes. Britainâs broken housing system is expensive and insecure; a creeping social and economic catastrophe pushing people into poverty and homelessness. Many Britons now shell out about half their post-tax income on rent while more than 1.2 million families are stranded on housing waiting lists, sometimes for decades. English homes are on average now not just the smallest, but in the worst condition, and among the least affordable in Europe.
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The Guardian view on the future of the BBC: uncertain but necessary and all to play for | Editorial
Hearts and minds must be won in the run-up to the renegotiation of a charter that will determine the next decade of public service broadcasting
With just three years to go until the renewal of its charter, after 14 years of political assaults and in a time of convulsive change, the BBC has to prove its fitness for the next 10 years of public service broadcasting. Hence a wide-ranging speech this week by its director general, Tim Davie, outlining the way forward. Opinions vary as to whether this was a timely show of mettle or a once great institution gasping its last. What was clear was that the path ahead will involve yet more swingeing cuts on top of the ÂŁ500m annual reduction already forced on the corporation by a two-year licence fee freeze â which ends next month â compounded by inflation.
The breadth of the challenge facing the corporation was underscored by a trio of core objectives designed to sprinkle reassurance in all political directions: the pursuit of truth with no agenda; an emphasis on British storytelling; and a mission to bring people together. All three may be admirable, but the latter two were somewhat undermined by a podcast interview with the showrunner of Doctor Who, for decades a standout example of British storytelling that brings people together. Talking about the value of a production partnership struck with Disney two years ago, Russell T Davies said that it was crucial to the showâs survival, because the end of the BBC was âundoubtedly on its way in some shape or formâ.
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The Guardian view on public spending: governments should invest in people as well as things | Editorial
Rules that favour spending on physical infrastructure over the public sector workforce should be overhauled
The UKâs public services are in a state of near-collapse. Increased spending on health, care and social security is desperately needed, as the latest shocking poverty figures make painfully obvious. But while the NHS regularly tops votersâ lists of concerns, and a majority of the public favours higher spending, most people do not pay much attention to the technical details of government accounting. In the run-up to an election and spending review, this should change. Rules as well as figures require scrutiny. Rachel Reevesâs commitment to the principle that a Labour government should borrow to invest â but not otherwise â should concern everyone who wants to see the NHS, and the public realm more generally, restored.
So should the Treasuryâs definition of investment. Traditionally, this refers to capital projects such as new transport links, hospital buildings or energy infrastructure. The point is that these are understood to provide long-term benefits that extend beyond service users to the wider economy. By contrast, and according to international accounting conventions, public money spent on salaries and other running costs comes under the heading of day-to-day (or current) expenditure. What this means, in practical terms, is that it is sometimes easier to get funding for a big scheme such as HS2 than for pay packets.
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The Guardian view on unpaid care: time to heed Kate and Derekâs story | Editorial
Let us hope Kate Garrawayâs films spark a national conversation and serious change. Society is nothing without care
It is an extraordinary story, it is an ordinary tragedy. Kate Garrawayâs documentaries about caring for her late husband, Derek Draper, have drawn huge publicity and millions of viewers. That is partly testimony to the celebrity of the couple â a TV presenter and a New Labour politico â but it is mostly due to the power of their story. Covid ravaged every organ in Mr Draperâs body so that, in the programme aired this week, viewers saw this vibrant, sharp-witted man confined to a bed, struggling to walk or to form sentences. âHis brain was his best friend,â Ms Garraway remarked at one point. âNow it is like his brain is his enemy.â Meanwhile, the work of caring for him pushed her to the edge financially, psychologically, even physically. The stress was so severe that she developed heart pains that forced her to attend hospital.
Even amid this intimate suffering, Ms Garraway knows there are millions of other households in similar situations â except without her profile, access to expertise or high salary. Among the programmeâs most moving sections are the testimonies from other carers about negotiating bureaucracy and trying to manage. They borrow money from friends and family, they go to food banks, they are âjust existingâ. The last census from 2021 found that 5 million people provide unpaid care to a loved one.
That is a sizable jump from a decade ago, and carersâ organisations believe the current total is higher still â perhaps 10 million â after Covid. Yet they are practically invisible in our political conversation. Ministers and economists note that nearly 3 million people are now long-term sick and worry about the impact on our labour force â but no one asks about the people looking after them.
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The Guardian view on Evan Gershkovichâs year behind bars: Moscow should free him now | Editorial
The Wall Street Journal correspondent is not a spy. He is a journalist, and should be released immediately from his Russian jail
Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter, has spent nearly a year in a Moscow prison, awaiting trial for a crime he did not commit. Mr Gershkovich was arrested last March in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg and jailed on espionage charges. He is not a spy. He is a journalist, and should be released immediately. Hostage diplomacy lies behind his incarceration. As the US ambassador to Russia, Lynne Tracy, said, Mr Gershkovichâs case âis not about evidence, due process, or rule of law. It is about using American citizens as pawns to achieve political endsâ.
Vladimir Putin indicated in February that a prisoner exchange could lead to the release of Mr Gershkovich. There have been high-profile prisoner swaps in the past. In December 2022, Moscow traded a US basketball star convicted of a drugs offence in Russia for a Russian arms trafficker. But a journalistâs detention to secure the release of a Russian hitman would underscore Russiaâs retreat into a Soviet past. In 1986 an American journalist, Nicholas Daniloff, was arrested and charged with espionage. He was let go after two weeks when the US released a Soviet diplomat accused of spying. Mr Gershkovich has been inside for nearly 12 months.
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The Zone of Interest is a portrait of guilt. No wonder it has divided opinion in Germany | Fatma Aydemir
Most Germans insist their ancestors werenât Nazis. Jonathan Glazerâs film pries away at the cracks in this narrative
There is something unsettling about sitting in a German theatre laughing at Nazis. How unsettling depends on the type of humour that prompts the laughter. Is it meant to set the audience apart from the stage action, or does the laughter stem from the discomfort of proximity? When I saw the satire Nachtland staged recently at Berlinâs prestigious SchaubĂźhne (a production also runs in an English translation at the Young Vic in London until 20 April), I perceived the ripples of laughter filling the room as a sort of embarrassed self-awareness. Like a tense moment of getting caught â a feeling that every storyteller ultimately longs to evoke.
In the play, which has a present-day setting, two siblings find a painting signed by âA. Hitlerâ in their dead fatherâs house. Once they realise that the kitschy artwork is worth more than âŹ100,000 if they can credibly authenticate the artist as Hitler, the siblings start recasting their entire family history in a different light. While the previous narrative had insisted that âour family had nothing to do with the Nazisâ (the dominant account in most German households), now suddenly the late grandmother is not only found to be a committed follower of Nazi ideology, but to have had a love affair with Hitlerâs secretary. As the new family history pragmatically, and profitably, unfolds, it becomes much more realistic, ironically, than the hitherto official version.
Fatma Aydemir is a Berlin-based Guardian Europe columnist
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Ben Jennings on why Rishi Sunak fears crossing the road â cartoon
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Ella Baron on record sewage discharges by Englandâs water companies â cartoon
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Rebecca Hendin on the trouble with Baby Bibi â cartoon
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If Tories who want to run the capital think London is in New York, shouldnât we be worried? | Marina Hyde
It was crazy to flag up UK crime using footage of the NY subway. But then, Susan Hall is the candidate: wisdomâs in short supply
So sad to see the Conservative party talking down Britain in its new attack ad for the London mayoral elections, which â among other deliberate and unethical lies â included footage of commuters fleeing false reports of gunfire in New Yorkâs Penn station in 2017. That bit has now been edited out, but what remains of the ad purports to be a 90-second portrait of life in the capital since London mayor Sadiq Khan âseized powerâ. Given that Khan has twice won the London mayoralty in free and fair votes, this feels somewhat punchy talk from a party led by an unelected man who himself âseized powerâ from the salad-vanquished political corpse of an unelected woman.
But look, whatâs the worst that can happen if political parties tell blatant untruths to people, debase campaigning standards and conduct knowing assaults on trust? If only there were places in the world to which we could point in order to answer that question.
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Does China spy on Britain? Of course. But we have more important things to discuss with them | Simon Jenkins
While diplomatic rows are inevitable, the priority is to keep channels open, and engage with Beijing about the climate crisis
Once upon a time Britain would have sent a gunboat up the Yangtze River. That would teach those Chinese a lesson. To hear some MPs talk about Beijingâs espionage activities, you would think gunboats were already on their way.
Of course, it is malicious and hurtful for a foreign state patently to hack into Britainâs Electoral Commission and target senior parliamentarians â as the government on Monday claimed China did in 2021. It is equally malicious to fabricate MPsâ emails and use a Commons researcher as an informant. No less evil is the culture of fear sown among Britainâs 150,000 Chinese students by agents of Beijing, albeit tolerated by British universities greedy for money.
Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist
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As brutal war rages and famine looms, look at pictures of Gaza and keep saying: âthis is not normalâ | Nesrine Malik
Of all the threats to those suffering, one of the most frightening is that we tire â and their plight becomes background noise
Cast your mind back to early 2022, more than two years ago now. Vladimir Putinâs invasion of Ukraine was such a shock, such a break with decades of political consensus, that it was treated as an act of aggression that could not for one moment be accepted or made peace with, only urgently rebuffed. Condemnations, lamentations and pledges of support, both for Ukraineâs military effort and its displaced people, all signified the same thing â this was an aberration that would not be allowed to pass.
But pass it did. Russia has since suffered heavy losses and the war is referred to now as a âquagmireâ for Putin, but pass it did. US arms support is dwindling, and a sizeable aid package has been stuck, blocked by partisan mischief, in the House of Representatives for months now. Just as striking is how the invasion has become relegated from high news and politics to another item jostling for attention, sympathy and outrage. An obscene banality of war is that if it goes on long enough, life will rearrange around it.
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Neglected, derided and exploited more than ever: why wonât the UK protect those who rent a home? | John Harris
Millions face a perfect storm of rising demand, limited supply and politicians who donât really care enough to ease their plight
Last week, a news story broke about the sheer impossibility of everyday living for millions of people all over the UK. According to the Office for National Statistics, the average monthly rent paid by private tenants rose by 9% in the year to February, which is the largest annual increase since records began nine years ago. The average monthly rent in England is now ÂŁ1,276 and ÂŁ944 in Scotland. If you are unfortunate enough to be renting from a landlord in London, your monthly outgoings may well appear hopelessly unrealistic: there, average monthly rents have risen by 10.6%, to a truly eye-watering ÂŁ2,035. Given that the median UK monthly wage currently sits at about ÂŁ2,200, the dire affordability crisis all this points to is glaringly clear.
Everything, moreover, is woven through with a very British sense of the marketâs base cruelty: late last year, an investigation by the Observer found that the rents paid by tenants in the wealthiest parts of Britain had gone up by an average of 29% since 2019, whereas for people living in the most deprived areas, the figure was a mind-boggling 52%.
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In defying Joe Biden, Benjamin Netanyahu is exposing the limits of US power | Jonathan Freedland
The Israeli PMâs refusal to heed US demands on food aid for Gaza is morally indefensible, hurting the president â and opening the door to Donald Trump
The pictures out of Gaza get more harrowing with each passing day. After months of witnessing civilians grieving for loved ones killed by bombs, now we see children desperate to eat â victims of what the aid agencies and experts are united in calling an imminent âman-madeâ famine. What matters most about these images is their depiction of a continuing horror inflicted on the people of Gaza. But they also reveal something that could have lasting implications for Israelis and Palestinians, for Americans and for the entire world. What they show, indeed what they advertise, is the weakness of the president of the United States.
Joe Biden and his most senior lieutenants have been urging Israel to increase the flow of food aid into Gaza for months, in ever more insistent terms. This week the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, cited the finding of a UN-backed agency that the threat of hunger now confronted â100% of the population of Gazaâ, adding that this was the first time that body had issued such a warning. Earlier this month, the vice-president, Kamala Harris, told Israel it needed to do whatever it took to get humanitarian aid into Gaza: âNo excuses.â The Biden administration is all but banging the table and demanding Israel act.
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The Labour party is in my blood. Hereâs why Iâve just cancelled my membership | Owen Jones
My ancestors had their own complex relationships with the party, but they could point to policies that transformed peopleâs lives. In 2024, I cannot say the same
Itâs difficult to disentangle Labour from my sense of self. Grew up in Stockport, looks a bit like Macaulay Culkin, bad dress sense ⌠the Labour party always seemed to fit in there somewhere. My great-grandfather, a railwayman who had his wages docked in the General Strike nearly a century ago, was a Labour councillor. So was my grandmother; her proudest achievement was stopping a family being evicted by a private landlord over Christmas. My parents met at an open-air Labour meeting outside Tooting Bec in the 1960s (romantic). My mother bought me a Labour membership as a 15th birthday present. Under every Labour leader in my 21 years of adult life, Iâve plumped for the partyâs candidates at local, national and European level, and campaigned for them to boot.
And yet, after a uniquely calamitous 14-year stretch of Tory rule, just as Labour looks set to reconquer No 10 by a landslide, Iâve just emailed the party cancelling my membership. My committed critics will understandably seek to link the two: Labour has shed its aversion to electability, and off sulks Home Aloneâs patron saint of unelectable ideas.
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Rachel Reeves is staking it all on economic growth. So where's her plan to achieve it? | Larry Elliott
Promising to reform the planning system, boost investment and improve skills is all very well, but the detail is missing
The pursuit of growth is an obsession for politicians the world over. Olaf Scholz thinks more growth would make him a more popular German chancellor. Xi Jinping sets growth targets in China and they are invariably met. Here in Britain, Rachel Reeves mentioned the word 58 times when she delivered the prestigious Mais lecture this week.
The almost fetishistic worship of gross domestic product as a measure of how well a country is doing is curious, because even the statisticians responsible for producing economic data accept it is an incomplete performance measure. GDP rises as a result of cleaning up after oil spills, but takes no account of the benefits of unpaid work. As a yardstick, it is clearly flawed.
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The left is smeared as the angry mob again and again. In reality, it is the target of political violence | Andy Beckett
These threats donât just seek to intimidate leftwing politicians, it makes them seem a risk to voters, too
In Britain and other supposedly calm democracies, the ascent of leftwing politicians can arouse unusual fears of violence. Many conservatives and centrists associate the left with mobs, intimidation and revolutionary struggle. For some on the right, leftwing politics of any sort is a kind of violence, with the upsetting of the traditional order that it promises.
Such fears are not always groundless. But more often they are exaggerated, sometimes deliberately, in order to smear the left as fanatical and dangerous. In reality, the left always contains plenty of pacifists and other principled opponents of the use of force â lifeâs âherbivoresâ, as the writer Michael Frayn called them in a perceptive 1963 essay.
Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
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A revolution in the way Britain does politics has begun in Devon. Tory MPs should be afraid | George Monbiot
Thereâs an urgent need for a fairer electoral system â and if politicians wonât make it happen, the people will
This is what democracy looks like: hundreds of people queueing in the rain, seeking to take back control of a political system that treats voters like an afterthought. Last weekend, a remarkable democratic experiment reached its first conclusion. A process that began here in South Devon and is now spreading to other constituencies has allowed voters to reclaim the initiative from centralised and self-interested political parties. It directly confronts our unfair electoral system.
Ours is one of many constituencies in the UK known as âprogressive tragediesâ: places in which most people vote for parties to the left of the Tories but which, thanks to our iniquitous first-past-the-post system, end up with Tory representatives. The Conservatives have ruled here since 1924, often without majority support.
George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist
Join George Monbiot for a Guardian Live online event on Wednesday 8 May 2024 at 8pm BST. He will be talking about his new book, The Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism. Book tickets here
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Loyalty was once the glue that held the Tories together. But now theyâve come unstuck | Simon Jenkins
Claims of a leadership bid are âbonkersâ, say Penny Mordauntâs allies. But so too is staying silent while the PM stumbles towards an election
There are many good reasons for Rishi Sunak to postpone a general election. All are about reducing his partyâs potential loss of seats. There is also an overwhelming reason for calling one now. It is in the national interest.
British government needs an act of cleansing. It needs renewal and a fresh start under a new regime. Every month that start is delayed has a cost in decisions postponed. The presumed next government of Labourâs Keir Starmer is waiting and ready to go. Its learning curve will be steep and its climb hard. There is not the remotest national advantage in another six months of bickering and squabbling.
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Britain is becoming a toxic chemical dumping ground â yet another benefit of Brexit | George Monbiot
Perhaps our government imagines bulldog spirit will protect us from the dangerous substances that Europe rules unsafe
Itâs a benefit of Brexit â but only if youâre a manufacturer or distributor of toxic chemicals. For the rest of us, itâs another load we have to carry on behalf of the shysters and corner-cutters who lobbied for the UK to leave the EU.
The government insisted on a separate regulatory system for chemicals. At first sight, itâs senseless: chemical regulation is extremely complicated and expensive. Why replicate an EU system that costs many millions of euros and employs a small army of scientists and administrators? Why not simply adopt as UK standards the decisions it makes? After all, common regulatory standards make trading with the rest of Europe easier. Well, now we know. A separate system allows the UK to become a dumping ground for the chemicals that Europe rules unsafe.
George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist
Join George Monbiot for a Guardian Live online event on Wednesday 8 May 2024 at 8pm BST. He will be talking about his new book, The Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism. Book tickets here
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Wishing John Crace and the NHS a good recovery | Letters
Readers respond to an article by the Guardianâs parliamentary sketch writer about his heart attack, and share similar stories of their own
Thank you to John Crace for this article (âIs this how I die?â John Crace on his terrifying heart attack, 21 March). It has allowed me to start the process of accepting that although my two heart attacks on Christmas Day 2022 were mild and sorted by some stents, they were still serious. Surrounded by men on my ward who were recovering from, or waiting for, various heart bypass procedures, I felt almost like a fraud â after all, a stent is at the lower end of the scale, or so I convinced myself.
I have laughed off the concern of loved ones and friends, and dined out on a good story that involved me thinking I had a bad chest infection on the day, accounting for my chest pains and breathlessness and symptoms that in general did not conform to my view of what a heart attack should be like.
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Dementia is not a living death â Iâm very much alive | Letter
Willy Gilder thinks the latest Alzheimerâs Society ad campaign is a mistake and would like to see it withdrawn
The chief executive of the Alzheimerâs Society has sought to justify its new ad campaign, The Long Goodbye, by saying that it âtells the unvarnished truth about the devastation caused by dementiaâ. It isnât a truth that I, as a person with Alzheimerâs disease, recognise. The ad shows a family mourning their mum, and saying that she died several times in advance of her actual death as she realised that she could no longer cook a family meal, or take part in social activities.
This idea of dementia being a âliving deathâ reinforces the most negative stereotypes of my condition, and contravenes guidance for journalists drawn up by the society itself six years ago. I share a dementia diagnosis with the star of Die Hard, Bruce Willis. I prefer to try to Live Well, or as well as I am able. It dismays me that the countryâs leading dementia charity seems to want to reinforce the stigma surrounding brain disease.
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Much has changed for the better in Britainâs boarding schools | Letter
William Rowsley responds to letters about âboarding school survivorsâ that followed discussion of Charles Spencerâs revelations about his own experiences of abuse
While the historic abuses committed at boarding schools are many and we are perhaps only now scratching the surface, much has changed (Letters, 22 March). I have had the privilege to work in two boarding schools for over a decade and, along with my colleagues, am proud to contribute to the warm and comprehensive pastoral care of the young people in our care. The health, happiness and confidence of our students is paramount and at the forefront of everything we do.
Most of our pupils are on generous bursaries of 80% or more of their boarding fees, with many being fully funded, so it is not the case that boarding is always the preserve of the wealthy, nor that it is for parents who wish to foist their children on others.
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Go eggless at Easter â and stay that way, for hensâ sake | Letter
Peta Foundation founder Ingrid Newkirk advises laying off chicken eggs for good
The name Easter comes from that of the Anglo-Saxon pagan goddess of fertility, Äostre, who is represented by hares and eggs â hence why we celebrate the holiday with eggs and the Easter bunny. But eating eggs is nothing to celebrate.
I remember being horrified as a child when I cracked open the boiled egg in my Beatrix Potter egg cup, only to find a tiny dead chick curled up inside. That couldnât happen today, because even âcage-freeâ eggs come from factory farms where hens will never see a rooster. Denied the opportunity to engage in natural behaviour, chickens exploited for eggs are crowded together by the many thousands, with no room to even stretch their wings.
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What my parents didnât do in the war | Brief letters
Bletchley Parkâs Fusion Room | Queenâs Park Rangers | A new Boat Race tradition | Thames Water | One-way ticket to Rwanda
My parents worked in the same team at Bletchley Park, in the Fusion Room (Letters, 25 March). When asked, my mother said she was a telephonist. The accepted stereotype dampened curiosity. My father warned off questioners by telling them he spent the war âpainting spots on rocking horsesâ. The Fusion Room, which barely figures in accounts of the Bletchley achievements, was full of talented women (Cambridge college unmasks alumnae who were Bletchley Park codebreakers, 17 March).
Prof Dame Helen Wallace
London
⢠Michael Goveâs visits to QPR matches are being treated as perks (Michael Gove guilty of standards breach for not registering VIP football tickets, 25 March)? If my husbandâs mood when he returns from QPRâs games is anything to go by, Gove should be rewarded for such selfless suffering.
Mary Foley
Wandsworth, London
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AI can help us find the right policies to fix the housing crisis | Letters
Dr Omar A Guerrero says technology could scrutinise policy proposals and formulate holistic solutions. Plus letters from a pensioner who was evicted after asking his landlord to fix damp problems, Daniel Carter and Martyn Williams
Nick Bano makes a compelling argument that discussions about increasing the housing supply are misguided if their aim is to fix the UK housing crisis (The end of landlords: the surprisingly simple solution to the UK housing crisis, 19 March). His data and succinct description of the historical context are consistent with qualitative and quantitative evidence provided by various UK housing scholars.
As part of my work as a computational economist, I try to understand the connections between housing wealth inequality and the set of incentives that are shaped by institutions such as the market and the government, ie âthe rules of the gameâ. For this purpose, I develop artificial intelligence models consisting of a computational representation of every household and property in the economy (with their most relevant characteristics and behaviours), and the rules of the game that incentivise them to engage in interactions such as purchasing and renting real estate.
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Right to buy is an abuse of public funds for political ends | Letters
The idea to sell off council houses was Tory bribery, writes Michael Meadowcroft, while Toby Wood laments the decline in state control over housing, and Dr Orest Mulka says Labour should offer private tenants the right to buy
Margaret Thatcherâs right-to-buy policy is even more sinister than the rightly critical article by Phineas Harper sets out (Councils now sell off more houses than they build. Thatcherâs legacy, right to buy, is a failure, 26 March). Putting it bluntly, it was a brilliant way for the Conservatives to bribe a large sector of mainly Labour voters to switch.
The significant discounts offered made buying oneâs council house a huge bargain. What is more, in terms of housing provision, it did not benefit the sitting tenants as much as giving a substantial gift to their children, who often provided the initial capital knowing that they would inherit the house and make a big gain on its sale or on its subsequent letting for profit.
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When a tenner bought you Biba and a shared bedroom | Brief letters
Biba secretary types in | Affordable festivals | Questionable internet searches | Who to vote for | Spurs fans spread out
I was that secretary who earned ÂŁ10 a week (Microminis, Twiggy and flamingos: the âfabulousâ story of Biba, 22 March). I bought those ÂŁ3 dresses and had just enough to pay my rent in a shared bedroom in, at that time, unfashionable Notting Hill Gate. The material was often thick and the armholes tight, so you could only wear the dresses a few times before buying another one. Dry cleaning was too expensive. IÂ still have a few Biba pieces.
Lynn Wiseman
Lewes, East Sussex
⢠Every year you do an excellent festival guide. But almost every year you miss out the countryâs most affordable, family-friendly, beautifully sited one. Purbeck Valley folk festival has dance, crafts, fancy dress, therapies, choir, storytelling, pyrotechnics and four days of the best music.
Moira Nunn
Bristol
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