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Time to embrace the nanny state
đ Whacky wineries | đ Icelandâs book nuts | đ Meta shares
In the headlines
The Kingâs cancer was âcaught earlyâ, Rishi Sunak revealed this morning, after the monarch began treatment yesterday for an undisclosed form of the disease. Buckingham Palace has said King Charles will pause his public engagements but continue to undertake state duties. Prince Harry is on his way back to the UK from California to visit his father. Volodymyr Zelensky is set to dismiss Ukraineâs âimmensely popularâ army chief as part of a wider shake-up of government officials, says The Times. Polls suggest that just 2% of Ukrainians would back the removal of General Valery Zaluzhny, who is by some margin the countryâs most trusted public figure. Parts of the UK could get a whole day of snow this week. The Met Office has issued a yellow weather warning for Thursday and Friday, covering a swathe of northern and central England and Wales.
Comment
Nanny knows best: Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins (1964)
Time to embrace the nanny state
The so-called ânanny stateâ is losing its political toxicity, says Adrian Wooldridge in Bloomberg. Keir Starmer says he wonât let âaccusations of nannyismâ stop his plan for childrenâs health, which includes âsupervised tooth brushing at schoolâ. Rishi Sunak is banning the sale of disposable vapes and wants to phase out smoking by 2050. Good thing, too: itâs time to embrace, ânay celebrateâ, the nanny state. Demonising it has only ever been used to âcrush common sense and block social progressâ. The phrase was coined by a Tory MP protesting the imposition of a 70mph speed limit in 1965 â a speed limit that has âsaved thousands of people from horrific death in a ball of fire and metalâ.
The idea that the nanny state is a bad thing rests on the belief that people are ârational entitiesâ who should be free to make their own choices. But thatâs nonsense: human beings are âsocial creatures who can be deceived about their own interestsâ. And if we have a state that provides (or tries to provide) benefits like education and healthcare, then âitâs only reasonableâ that the state takes an active interest in its citizensâ welfare. Someone who overeats, becomes obese and requires treatment on the NHS imposes a cost on the rest of us. Big corporations, with their huge advertising budgets and access to all our data, are a far greater threat to our freedom than a government âelected by the people and subject to all sorts of oversightâ. Done right, the nanny state gives us more freedom, not less.
Architecture
Dezeen has gathered a list of striking wineries that alternately âstand out from and seamlessly blend intoâ their surrounding landscapes, including the multi-coloured Vertical Panorama Pavilion in California; the grim, austere Pacherhof wine cellar in Italy; the grass-topped Gurdau Winery in the Czech Republic; the stone-terraced Liknon in Greece; and a surreal assemblage of shipping containers at the Brown Brothers winery in Tasmania. See the rest here.
Inside politics
Keir Starmer has âa Palestinian problemâ, says Jason Cowley in The Sunday Times. Many Labour MPs think their leader should be more âeven-handedâ in his response to the Gaza war, specifically by calling for an immediate ceasefire. And they think he is being âoutflankedâ on the issue by Foreign Secretary David Cameron, who has said the government is considering formally recognising a Palestinian state. Starmerâs rationale for standing firm is understandable: he is âtraumatisedâ by the anti-Semitism of Corbynism, and wants to make Labour a âsafe space again for Jewish membersâ. But while these tensions are âsubmerged for nowâ, if the polls narrow they âmay yet eruptâ.
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Books
Wiktor Szymanowicz/Anadolu/Getty
Iceland has âone of the largest per capita publishing industries in the worldâ, says Jonathan Margolis in Air Mail. About one in 10 Icelanders publishes a book in their lifetime, compared to one in 5,000 Americans, and the average Icelander reads more than two books a month. A blockbuster title can sell as many as 14,000 hardback copies, equivalent to nearly 4% of the 375,000-strong population buying it. One explanation is the countryâs âancient storytelling traditionâ, which goes back some 800 years to the Icelandic sagas. Another is needing something to do during those long 21-hour winter nights.
Comment
E Jean Carroll arriving at court for the defamation trial. Michael M Santiago/Getty
A ludicrous judgement against Trump
Iâm an unlikely defender of Donald Trump, says Lionel Shriver in The Spectator. âPolitically, heâs not my boy.â But last week I couldnât help agreeing with the former president that a jury awarding $83.3m of his assets to E Jean Carroll was âabsolutely ridiculousâ. The former Elle magazine advice columnist said in 2019 that Trump had raped her in a department store dressing room in the mid-1990s. A civil jury didnât buy the rape claim but did find Trump liable for sexual assault, which led her lawyers to demand a minimum of $10m in damages in a separate defamation case. After deliberating for less than three hours, a jury awarded her $83.3m.
What most people donât realise is how shaky this case is. Trump claims he has never met her. The alleged incident was so long ago it couldnât be pursued in a criminal court, where the burden of proof for a conviction is much higher. Carroll presented no corroborating evidence, couldnât pinpoint the year the assault was supposed to have happened, and had to ârejig her timelineâ when it was pointed out that the designer coat she remembered wearing hadnât yet been manufactured. The only reason the case could be heard at all is because of new laws hastily passed after the #MeToo movement. And the size of the payout â awarded by jurors in âdrastically Democraticâ New York â âreeks of politicsâ. But we shouldnât be surprised. Love him or hate him, itâs âdoubtful that Donald J Trump can get a genuinely fair trial anywhere in the countryâ.
On the way out
Perfect with a café au lait. Getty
Camembert might be âfacing extinctionâ in France, says Emma Beddington in The Guardian. Industrial production means that the fungus required to make the cheese â Penicillium camemberti â is âdangerously lacking in genetic diversityâ and losing the ability to reproduce. The news âlanded hardâ with my husband, whoâs from Normandy. âCamembert is a religion there: his grandparents ate it for breakfast, dipped in their morning coffee.â
On the money
The 20% jump in the stock price of Meta, Facebookâs parent company, on Friday added $197bn to the value of the firm, says Axios. Thatâs âthe biggest single-day gain in market historyâ. The tech giant also holds the record for the biggest single-day decline: just two years ago, its stock plummeted 26% in one trading session, âerasing $251bnâ.
Snapshot
Snapshot answer
Theyâre The Last Dinner Party, the indie rock band hailed as âthe heirs to everyone from Kate Bush to Sparks and Roxy Musicâ, says The Daily Telegraph. For a group that released its first single only 10 months ago, the London quintet has already done astonishingly well: they are signed to the worldâs biggest record label (Island), they have supported The Rolling Stones, and they recently won the Brits Rising Star Award. Last week saw the release of their highly anticipated debut album, Prelude to Ecstasy, and â âphewâ â itâs a âremarkably polishedâ effort that shows theyâre the âreal dealâ. Listen on Spotify here.
Quoted
âGovernment is just a form of bullying for weaklings. Politics is the art of achieving power and prestige without merit.â
PJ OâRourke