The Times - 06 May 2024

Monday May 6 2024 | thetimes.co.uk | No 74401 da i ly n e w s pa p e r o f t h e y e a r Britain is heading for a hung parliament, Rishi Sunak claimed as he urged Tory MPs to end their divisions and “come together” to take on Labour. In his first comments since the extent of the party’s local election losses became clear, the prime minister admitted that the results had been “bitterly disappointing” for the Conservatives. The party lost nearly 500 council seats and the West Midlands mayoralty. However, Sunak seized on a projection by the elections expert Michael Thrasher that suggested if Thursday’s results were replicated in a general election, Labour would fall short of enough seats to win power. Sunak conceded for the first time that the Tories could be on course to lose their majority but said voters would not want to see Labour “propped up” in Downing Street by smaller parties. He insisted his party was the only one with “a plan to deliver”, despite criticism earlier yesterday from Suella Braverman, who urged him to change course. The former home secretary, one of his fiercest critics, said it was too late for a change in leader because not even a “superman or superwoman” could restore Tory fortunes. “At this rate we will be lucky to have any Conservative MPs at the next election,” she warned. One cabinet minister described the mood among Tory MPs as “sullen” and said the election results showed that the Conservatives were “clearly as behind as the polls suggest”. Sunak insisted that the picture was Oliver Wright Policy Editor I N T H E N E W S Gender-neutral curb Bars, restaurants and offices will be barred from creating new premises with genderneutral lavatories under changes to the law to take effect this year. Lasers help seizures A “game-changing” laser therapy for epileptic patients will be introduced on the NHS in June. The treatment targets affected brain tissue to help reduce seizures. Gaza talks unravel Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, accused Hamas of blocking a Gaza ceasefire deal with “extreme” demands as negotiations unravelled yesterday. ‘Election denier’ links Political committees affiliated to some of Britain’s biggest companies with operations in the US have donated more than $1.1 million to Republican “election deniers”. Cricket safety fears Three out of four county players are worried about their personal safety because of the packed fixture schedule, a Professional Cricketers’ Association poll found. y(7HB7E2*OTSNLS( |||+=!}' £2.80 £2.00 to subscribers (based on a 7 Day Print and Digital Subscription) J K Rowling The story behind my Strike novels Best for football Times2 Phonephobia: 1 in 4 young adults never answer a call Ali Mitib UK heading for a hung parliament, says Sunak not as bleak as his critics made out and pointed to the analysis from Sky News, which put the Tories only nine points behind Labour in the share of votes cast on Thursday. If this were replicated in a general election, he suggested, Labour would fall 32 seats short of an absolute majority and could have to rely on smaller parties to form a government. “These results suggest we are heading for a hung parliament with Labour as the largest party,” he told The Times. “Keir Starmer propped up in Downing Street by the SNP, Liberal Democrats and the Greens would be a disaster for Britain. “The country doesn’t need more political horse trading, but action. We are the only party that has a plan to deliver on the priorities of the people.” Other polling experts dismissed the projection, pointing out that it was based solely on the way in which people voted in the local elections — in which they tended to back smaller parties and independents, skewing the overall result. They said it was also based on Labour winning only one seat in Scotland. Labour told Sky News that it was “not planning alliances” with the SNP “or anyone”. Sunak, who is due to formally respond to the results today, the 14th anniversary of the election that brought the Conservatives to power in 2010, said he understood voters’ frustration but still believed he could win another term. “I know the last few years have been tough, and I understand why PM warns Starmer would be ‘propped up’ in No 10 The actor Bernard Hill has died at the age of 79. Born in Manchester, he made his name playing Yosser Hughes in the 1980s TV drama Boys from the Blackstuff, above, and took the role of Captain Smith in the 1997 film Titanic, left. Page 3; obituary, page 39 Bernard Hill 1944 - 2024 thegame 16 pages of news and analysis For despairing parents who feel they have tried everything to get their teenager to put down their smartphone, there is an easy answer: call them. One quarter of people aged 18 to 34 confessed in a survey that they had never answered their phone. When asked what they did when their phone rang, they said they simply ignored it. Some said they googled the number or texted their friends and family back rather than calling them. Slightly more than half assumed that an unexpected call must mean bad news. Almost 70 per cent said they preferred a text to a call and 37 per cent would rather a voice note. Among those aged 35 to 54, only 1 per cent said they would prefer a voice note to a traditional phone call. Freya Mallard, 26, a comedian from north London, said she would not answer the phone unless she was expecting a call. “We just don’t do spontaneous calls any more — I prefer a voice note, there’s much less pressure,” she said. “My mum, on the other hand, loves an out-of-the-blue phone call.” Mallard, who is pregnant, dislikes calls so much she is planning to announce news of the birth on social media, rather than phoning loved ones. “I think it’s the best way to let everyone know without having to think about who to tell first and figure out what to actually say,” she said. Calum Godson, 20, a barman from Tring, Hertfordshire, said he had never used his phone for making a call and had only answered it when his mother rang. He said: “I don’t see the point of using the phone to call someone, it’s much easier to just message them.” The survey of 2,000 people across all ages was carried out by Uswitch, the price comparison website. Simrat Sharma, a mobile phone expert at the company, said that the “old-fashioned phone call” was becoming a rarity but “wasn’t quite dead”, adding: “We still really value personal calls to share big life moments. [However] Gen Z and younger millennials increasingly prefer ‘low pressure’ voice notes, which signal there is less urgency to respond.”

the times | Monday May 6 2024 S1 3 News Whether George Mallory and Sandy Irvine reached the summit of Everest in 1924 is one of the most enduring questions in mountaineering. The men were last seen alive at noon on June 8 on the northeast ridge, between 150 and 250 metres below the summit, before clouds obscured them. As mountaineers prepare to mark the centenary of their death, a relative of one of their fellow expeditioners will tell an audience at the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) that Mallory must have died before he reached the top. Graham Hoyland, 66, a broadcaster and author, has investigated records compiled by his cousin Howard Somervell, the expedition’s meteorologist. He found that Somervell’s notes, submitted too late for the official report, recorded a sudden drop in atmospheric pressure between June 8 and 9 — when Mallory and Irvine are thought to have perished. The notes were published in 1926 but The cold, hard truth? Mallory ‘couldn’t have made summit’ Jack Malvern have been largely overlooked. Lower pressure means fewer molecules of oxygen in the atmosphere and a greater chance of climbers suffering hypoxia, which can lead to confusion and death. In his forthcoming book First on Everest, to be published this year, Hoyland recalls that he was so surprised at the rapidity of the pressure drop that he checked it in the 1924 Everest expedition Camp III diary at the RGS archive. “As I carefully unwrapped it, I hesitated. There, 86 years later and in the middle of London, I got a strong whiff of smoke. Yak-dung smoke.” The handwritten diary contained readings of air pressure at Base Camp, from which the pressure at the summit was calculated. “In 1924 the summit barometric pressure fell from 341 millibars on June 6 [when Mallory and Irvine set of from Camp IV] to 331 millibars on June 9, equivalent to an increase of roughly 600ft (180m) in effective altitude.” Contrary to some claims that Mallory and Irvine had “unusually benign circumstances” during their summit attempt, the readings showed that they were climbing into an invisible death trap. “Because of the low pressure they effectively had a higher mountain to climb.” Even climbers who use oxygen cylinders, as Mallory and Irvine did, are affected because they are breathing a mixture of bottled gas and ambient air. Hoyland said that Mallory might have coped with the drop in pressure if it had not come on top of other factors. “I put together all the things I had researched and realised how much Mallory had against him. Irvine’s inexperience, the new route, heavy oxygen, insufficient clothing and finally the storm. Any one of these he could have overcome, but not the whole concatenation.” The dramatic effect of a sudden drop was shown in 1996 when a storm claimed the lives of eight climbers — the highest number to die during a single event near the summit. The disaster became the subject of Jon Krakauer’s book Into Thin Air. Those climbers were also caught out when pressure fell to 331 millibars, Hoyland writes. Hoyland, who has visited Everest nine times to look for clues about Mallory and Irvine’s fate, said the barometric readings had changed his long-held belief that they had reached the top. “Previously I believed in death and glory but I had to change my mind. When the facts change, if you’re honest with yourself, you change your mind.” Mallory’s body was discovered in 1999, 690 metres from the summit. There was no conclusive proof that he had reached the top. The location of Irvine’s body remains unknown. When Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the summit on May 29, 1953, they searched for evidence of Mallory and Irvine’s arrival but found none. Hoyland will discuss his findings at the Edmund Hillary Memorial Event on June 8 at the RGS, organised by Himalayan Trust UK. The last picture of Mallory and Irvine. Top, the 1924 team with Howard Somervell, front, second right; below, Everest in 1921 A girls’ under-ten football team that lost every game in their first season has made a remarkable comeback and gone on to win a cup in a local league of boys’ teams. Woodlanders FC, from Bradley in West Yorkshire, is the first girls’ team to win the Huddersfield Junior Football League Vase. In the final they won 3-2 against Howden Clough, a team five divisions above them, having previously beaten other boys’ teams. Their coach described it as a “massive achievement” and said that the girls had demonstrated that “they can play against boys and be more than a match for them”. The team faced a difficult start last season as a girls’ team in a league of more experienced boys’ teams, losing every game. They have since reversed their fortunes and are on a 28-match winning streak in the league. David Gilroy, the coach who is a parent of one of the players, said: “This season, as under-tens, we signed a few new players and the girls have all bonded. We have only lost one game this season and are currently on a 28-game winning streak. We have gone on a cup run and we have played a lot of good teams who have been above us in leagues. It’s a massive achievement for the kett in A Very Social Secretary, a satirical look at the former home secretary’s affair with a magazine publisher. “I’ve got no conscience about showing politicians in a bad light,” he said. “I’d bag them all if I could. They’re not worth shoe leather, any of them.” In his sixties he said that his secluded life in East Anglia meant big roles were hard to come by. “It’s all about ideal age and size, and I’m neither,” he said. “You’ve got to live in America if you want to be busy at my age.” Hill can still be seen in the second series of the BBC drama The Responder, which began last night. Filming took place in and around Liverpool last year. Lindsay Salt, the director of BBC Drama, said: “We feel truly honoured to have worked with Bernard at the BBC.” girls. It’s absolutely brilliant that they all stuck together through the hard times to go on and be promoted in the league and also win a cup. The girls are an amazing bunch and have had a fantastic season. They have shown football is for everyone.” Woodlanders play at Fartown in Huddersfield, which was previously home to the town’s rugby league team. Gary Kelly, the club chairman, said: “We are very proud of them.” Actor who found fame with ‘Gizza job’ plea dies aged 79 Debbie White After losing streak, girls beat boys in final Jessica Rawnsley Bernard Hill, the actor who made his name in the 1980s playing an unemployed Liverpudlian with a memorable catchphrase, has died aged 79. Hill also played Captain Edward Smith in the Oscar-winning 1997 film Titanic, featuring Kate Winslet, and starred as King Théoden in the second and third parts of Peter Jackson’s trilogy The Lord of the Rings. Lou Coulson, his agent, said Hill died yesterday in the early hours. Born in Manchester in 1944, Hill’s big break came in 1982 when he was cast as Yosser Hughes in the television drama Boys from the Blackstuff. His catchphrase “Gizza job, I can do that” helped launch his career as a character actor. In 2005 he appeared as David BlunWoodlanders under-tens won the final 3-2 against a boys’ team five divisions above them

4 Monday May 6 2024 | the times News The Conservatives will be lucky to have any MPs left after the next election unless Rishi Sunak cuts taxes, caps legal migration and pulls Britain out of the European Convention on Human Rights, Suella Braverman has warned. In another broadside against the prime minister after the local elections the former home secretary said she was in despair at the results and that she regretted backing Sunak to be prime minister. But she insisted that it was too late for the party to change leader and said that Sunak needed to “own” the result and “fix it”. “I love my country, I care about my party and I want us to win, and I am urging the prime minister to change course [and] reflect on what voters are telling us,” she told Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg on BBC1. “I think the problem is that our voters News Politics Braverman: Tax cuts and cap on Oliver Wright Policy Editor are on strike. They’re not coming out to support us. At this rate we will be lucky to have any Conservative MPs at the next election.” Braverman said that Sunak needed to show people that he “really cares about some of the things that he’s talked about”. She said this meant cutting taxes “in a way that people will feel”, putting a cap on legal migration and taking Britain out of the European Convention on Human Rights. She also criticised the government for bringing forward legislation to ban smoking and pedicabs rather than “meaningful healthcare reform or fixing social care or improving mental health care”. “We are not delivering for the people. We’re not delivering the policies that people want and it’s a disgrace that we are trailing up against Labour led by Keir Starmer, who has the charisma of a peanut,” she said. But amid signs that she is positioning herself for the leadership election after a likely Tory defeat, Braverman said that she did not think there was any point in replacing Sunak so close to a general election. “I just don’t think [changing leader] is a feasible prospect right now,” she said. “We don’t have enough time and it’s impossible for anyone new to come and change our fortunes, to be honest. There’s no superman or superwoman out there who can do it. Sunak needs to own this and therefore he needs to fix it.” Dame Andrea Jenkyns, a Conservative former minister who submitted a letter of no-confidence in Sunak in November, said that Boris Johnson should return to frontline politics to ease the party’s woes. She told Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips on Sky News: “I think now we’ve got to take the fight to Labour, I would like to see real commonsense conservatism, honouring our manifesto commitments. I would like to see the return of Boris on the front line of politics, whether that’s going for a seat in the next election and being front and centre of our election campaign.” Mark Harper, the transport secretary, insisted that the Conservatives were still in with a chance of winning the next general election, despite the poor results. “There is everything to fight for and the Conservative Party under the prime minister’s leadership is absolutely up for that fight,” he said. “These were disappointing results but the point is what they demonstrate from that scenario is that Labour is not on course for that majority, Keir Starmer hasn’t sealed the deal with the public. So that means there is a fight to be had. The prime minister is up for that fight, I am up for that fight and I know the Conservative Party is up for it. “We have to focus on delivering on people’s priorities, that is what the prime minister is doing, and then we have to get out there and sell that message, and then set out what we do after an election with a Conservative victory.” Harper refused to say whether the party should shift to the right or centre to win over voters after Andy Street, the defeated mayor of the West Midlands, urged Sunak not to heed calls from Tory rebels to shift to the right. Street said the message that everyone should take from his narrow loss that bucked the national trend was that “moderative, inclusive, tolerant conservatism” had come “within an ace of beating the Labour Party in what they considered to be their backyard”. Sir Keir Starmer with Richard Parker, the new Labour mayor of the West Midlands; Suella Braverman has urged Rishi Sunak What poll results mean for Tories and Labour (and everyone else) W ith more than a hundred councils, 11 regional mayors and 33 police and crime commissioners being fought over, last week’s elections were a key test for the main parties (Oliver Wright writes). Now almost all the results are in and it is possible to start drawing conclusions about what they mean for Rishi Sunak, Sir Keir Starmer, and the date of the forthcoming general election. rishi sunak The prime minister is safe but he leads a party that is demoralised and not much “up for a fight”. Before polling day rebel Tories set three tests for him to meet that would determine whether they challenged him. The first was to hold on in the Tees Valley mayoral contest, the second was not being pushed into third place by Reform in the Blackpool South byelection and the third was seeing off Labour in the West Midlands. In the end Sunak passed two out of three, failing only in the West Midlands and albeit by the narrowest of margins. Instead of arguing that the results were not as bad as predicted, all that could be said was that the party was in no worse state than a year ago. Downing Street pointed to an analysis by the poll expert Professor Michael Thrasher suggesting that on the basis of Thursday’s results Labour had not done well enough to win an overall majority and that a hung Parliament was still on the cards. Yet this analysis should be treated with caution — it does not include Scotland, and council elections are increasingly won by independents, something not replicated at general elections where turnout is higher. The problem for Sunak is that there is no strategy that anyone can think of to turn round Tory fortunes. Yesterday Suella Braverman said he should tack further to the right, pledging to leave the European Convention on Human Rights. Yet Andy Street, the ousted West Midlands mayor, warned that it was only his brand of “tolerant Analysis Profile I n many ways Richard Parker, the new Labour mayor of the West Midlands, shares many traits with his Tory predecessor, Andy Street (Oliver Wright writes). Although less exuberant than the former John Lewis boss, who won the seat against the odds when it was created in 2017, both are self-made men who are keener to project competent managerialism than ideological zeal. Both fought the election campaign less on national issues than on who would be more effective at securing investment into the region, building more homes and delivering effective skills training in the area. Parker, 60, is the son of a dock worker from Bristol. He left school aged 16 and went straight to work at a local port authority before getting an economics degree. After graduating, he worked for the accountancy firm PwC, where he gained his accountancy qualifications and became a partner leading the firm’s housing consultancy work. He left in 2016 and now runs a business providing support to small and medium-sized businesses, which he said had brought £1 billion worth of investment to the region. Parker emphasised his life story during the campaign as one of the reasons he was right for the job. He said the opportunities that were open to him to make something of his life “just aren’t there for young people today”. “I’ll fix that because people here can’t afford any more excuses,” he said. However, Parker faced criticism for running an underwhelming campaign as well as allegations, which police last week said they were assessing, that he was ineligible to stand because his family home was outside the area. Parker pledged to find the money to fund an additional 66,000 free school meals in the region. He will hope that if Sir Keir Starmer makes it to Downing Street it will be easier to receive funding from central government to deliver on his pledges. However, as Street found out, being a regional mayor from the governing party can be a curse as much as a blessing.

the times | Monday May 6 2024 5 News The Green Party faces a showdown with Lord Mann, the government’s independent adviser on antisemitism, over the conduct of councillors newly elected under its banner. One who shouted Allahu akbar (God is greatest) and described getting a seat on Leeds city council as a “win for the people of Gaza” had previously been involved in the harassment of a Jewish university chaplain. Two party members who won seats in Bristol had been involved in social media posts that led the city’s Labour Party to fear that the Greens were becoming a haven for antisemitism. A Green councillor in Peterborough has been shown by the Jewish press to have made insulting anti-Israel comments. Lord Mann is expected to explore the possibility of the Green Party suspending or withdrawing the whip from the elected councillors and improving its candidate selection and vetting. The new face of the Green Party, which has traditionally been involved in campaigning to save hedgerows and improve air quality, was a surprise for observers of last week’s local elections. Three of the four councillors whose activities have raised cause for concern were previously Labour supporters or activists, raising the likelihood that supporters of Jeremy Corbyn have been migrating to the Green Party and changing its culture. Mothin Ali, wearing a keffiyeh, the scarf symbolic of Palestinian resistance, celebrated his victory in Leeds by raising his arm in the air and saying: “We will not be silenced. We will raise the voice of Gaza. We will raise the voice of Palestine. Allahu akbar!” Ali was known for stirring up hostility to Rabbi Zecharia Deutsch, the Jewish chaplain at Leeds University, who was advised by police to go into hiding with his wife and two children after death and rape threats. Deutsch, a citizen of Israel, was called up as a reNews migration are Sunak’s only hope Greens could face suspensions after ‘Allahu akbar’ chant Dominic Kennedy servist with the Israel Defence Forces after the October 7 attack last year. Ali, a prolific YouTuber, said on social media: “This creep, that’s the only way I can describe him, is someone who went from Leeds to Israel to kill children and women and everyone else over there.” He told Leeds University: “You should be protecting students from this kind of animal, because if he’s willing to kill people there, how do you know he’s not going to kill your students here?” Ali’s social media response to October 7 had been to say that “Palestinians have the right to resist occupying forces” and viewers should “support the right of indigenous people to fight back”. A former Labour supporter, he has been photographed with Corbyn. Mann wrote to the Greens last month about social media activity by some of their candidates in Bristol. The Jewish Chronicle has reported concerns about two who went on to be elected. Abdul Malik appeared to share a video of Hamas defending October 7. The Greens said Malik was unwittingly tagged into an offensive post, and Malik has said he condemns the attack on Israel. Malik joined Labour in 2017 because he supported Corbyn. Mohamed Makawi, another Bristol councillor elected last week, shared posts with references to the “Zionist enemy police”, “Palestinian resistance” and the Hamas terror attack on Israel being an “American Zionist lie”. Makawi apologised and the Greens said they gave him social media training. The Bristol Labour Group said: “There must be no place for antisemitism in Bristol, but the Green Party seems to be creating a haven for some unconscionable behaviour.” Another Green councillor, Imtiaz Ali, elected in Peterborough, had previously described Zionists as “common thieves, willing to massacre thousands”. He was deselected by Labour after accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing and apartheid. to change course or risk a Tory wipeout; top right, the new Green councillor Mothin Ali celebrates his victory in Leeds conservatism” that had got the party to within “an ace” of fighting off Labour and urged Sunak against a “drift” to the right to counter the threat from Reform. In private most MPs say Sunak has little choice but to carry on making a priority of the economy and flights to Rwanda and — in the words of one — “hoping for something to turn up”. Most fear that these results simply confirm what they know from their own experience and what the polls tell them: the Conservatives are on track to lose the election, only the scale of the defeat is undetermined. the general election Before polling day, Downing Street aides advanced two scenarios in which Sunak might call a summer election. The first was a situation in which the results were so dire that they would prompt enough Tory MPs to force a leadership challenge. The second was one in which the Tories did better than expected, winning the West Midlands and Tees Valley comfortably and minimising their council losses. As it is Sunak looks safe, but the results provide little comfort that, if an election were called now, there would be much prospect of his regaining No 10. So, the logic at the moment says play it long. One cabinet minister said the “working assumption” now was that Sunak would call an election for mid-November, using the Tory conference in October to launch the campaign. Downing Street hopes that by then regular flights will be leaving for Rwanda and interest rates will be coming down. This, aides say, gives Sunak the best chance of running the campaign that he wants: to say he is a a prime minister who fulfils pledges against an untested Labour leader who inspires little enthusiasm. the labour party Results across the country certainly shows that Labour is making progress where it needs to win seats to have an overall majority. But there were warning signs too. The party won councils such as Hartlepool, Redditch in Worcestershire, and Rushmoor, in Hampshire, which the Conservatives had run for the past 24 years. Strategists pointed to the results in places such as Nuneaton, Milton Keynes and Thurrock, where the party had underperformed in recent years, to suggest that the party was now winning over Middle England, seen as a critical test for Starmer. Yet the party’s total share of the vote in England was significantly less than indicated by national polling and actually fell slightly compared with last year’s council results. There were also some areas, such as Harlow in Essex, where high hopes of winning came up short. Overall, while the Tories lost almost 500 councillors, Labour picked up only 186, with the Liberal Democrats taking 104. It was a solid result, not an enthusiastic one. There is also a worry over evidence that Starmer’s earlier stance on Gaza is depressing the Labour vote in areas with large Muslim populations. In the West Midlands, an independent candidate backed by George Galloway came third with 11 per cent of the vote. the liberal democrats The Liberal Democrats won more councillors than the Conservatives for the first time since 1996. But it was where they won those councillors that is more important. They took control of Dorset and Tunbridge Wells councils, both areas where at the last general election the Tories had large majorities but which now look vulnerable to challenge. They also consolidated their vote in parts of Oxfordshire, Winchester and Cheltenham, where the party hopes to win seats at the general election. The dilemma for the Lib Dems is that they do not have the financial resources of the Tories or Labour Party and they risk overconfidence and targeting too many seats. This is what happened in 2019 when, despite being confident of being able to capitalise on voters’ anger over Brexit, they won only 11 seats — one less than in 2017. Insiders fear that hubris could lead to the same mistake. reform uk Richard Tice’s party went into these elections hoping to cause a political earthquake. In the event it was more of a tremor — which may give Nigel Farage pause for thought about re-entering the political fray. Reform thought it could push the Conservatives into third place in the Blackpool South by-election, and it came within 117 votes of doing so, taking 17 per cent of the vote. This was still slightly less than Ukip got in the same constituency in the 2015 general election. Elsewhere, Reform performed solidly at about 15 per cent, but the party fielded only 316 candidates out of a possible 2,600 and did not win a single seat. This again contrasts unfavourably with Ukip, which took 4 per cent of available seats in the 2014 local elections. The results suggest Reform does pose a real threat to the Tories but is less potent than Ukip in its heyday.

6 S1 Monday May 6 2024 | the times News Epileptic patients will soon be treated with a “game-changing” laser beam therapy that targets affected brain tissue to help to reduce seizures. The fibre-optic laser therapy will be introduced on the NHS in June, and involves drilling a tiny hole in the skull to pass a 1.5mm-wide probe containing the laser into the brain. The laser then heats up and destroys the brain tissue that causes seizures. During the procedure, surgeons use MRI scans to guide the probe, helping them to avoid blood vessels and more critical brain regions. Patients can recover from the treatment in 24 to 48 hours, making the therapy far less invasive than equivalent surgery, from which it can take months to recover. James Palmer, a consultant neurosurgeon and NHS England’s medical The former boss of a hospital trust where police are investigating patient deaths has been advising the NHS through her consultancy business. Dame Marianne Griffiths, 63, retired as head of University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust in 2022 after 13 years. Police have been examining 105 cases of alleged medical negligence including 40 deaths. She is co-owner of a business which has been paid hundreds of thousands of Boss of scandal-hit hospital now paid to advise NHS pounds for helping the health service over the past couple of years. Griffiths was twice chosen as chief executive of the year by the health service journal HSJ and became the first chancellor of the University of Chichester. She was warned about serious patient safety concerns in 2017 and of concerns over “an increase in death rates” in surgery in 2020. Eden Health and Social Care, a company jointly owned by Griffiths and her husband, John Dixon, according to Companies House records, was paid £400,000 by University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundation Trust between June 2023 and January 2024. Dorset is introducing the Patient First Improvement System, a management programme championed by Griffiths in her previous role. She has been helping Dorset to assess its readiness. On top of that, NHS England paid her company £70,000 in professional fees in late 2022. These related to an independent review which she led into alleged failures of patient safety at the North East Ambulance Service. University Hospitals Dorset told the Sunday Telegraph, which first reported the consultancy payments, that it began working with Eden Health and Social Care after an open tender process. “We have seen a number of improvements across our performance and staff survey feedback,” the trust said. “However, we take any concerns seriously and will continue to review our progress to ensure effective use of our resources.” The Times has attempted to approach Griffiths for comment. Dominic Kennedy A A A B C C C D E E E H H I O O O P R R R S S S T T U V V W Z Z Solve all five concise clues using each letter underneath once only 1 Humming sound (4) 2 Apprehend (a criminal, eg) (5) 3 Christian symbol (5) 4 Functioning, in force (9) 5 Remonstrate (with) (4,5) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Quintagram® No 1934 Solutions see MindGames Cryptic clues see MindGames Breakfast: 6am to 10am Our free radio station has all the latest headlines, interviews and debates every morning Listen seven days a week On DAB, app, website and smart speaker ‘Game-changing’ laser therapy prevents seizures by epileptics director for specialised services, said: “This laser beam therapy is gamechanging for patients and will offer new hope on the NHS to those for whom standard drugs are not effective in controlling their seizures. Not only will this world-leading technology help replace invasive surgery for patients, which can have a huge impact and take months to recover from, but it will also allow clinicians to better target the parts of the brain causing the epilepsy, which dramatically reduces the risks and helps cut patients’ recovery time both in and out of hospital.” The treatment, known as laser interstitial thermal therapy (Litt), will be offered in specialist clinics at King’s College London and the Walton Centre in Leeds and will be available for patients whose epilepsy cannot be treated by anti-seizure medication. About 600,000 people are living with epilepsy in Britain and one in three have seizures that are not able to be controlled using drugs alone. Only those who have focal epilepsy, where seizures can be pinpointed to a specific part of the brain, will be eligible for the surgery. This means about 50 people each year will qualify for the treatment. Laura Diable, 39, from Birkenhead, was one of the first patients with epilepsy to have the treatment at the Walton Centre. She said: “Since having the procedure nearly a year ago, I’ve not had one seizure. It’s made a huge difference to my quality of life. Before, the seizures were incapacitating me, leaving black spots in my memory. Thanks to Litt I’ve been able to get on with my life.” Jibril Osman Farah, a consultant neurosurgeon and the lead clinician delivering treatment at the Walton Centre, said: “It’s fantastic to be able to offer [the treatment] to our patients. There is a very specific criteria to meet — we need to be able to see where in the brain the seizures are coming from, and that medication is ineffective in managing seizures.” Ley Sander, medical director at the Epilepsy Society and professor of neurology at University College London, said that the Epilepsy Society developed the technique of using MRI scans to navigate through the brain. “[The treatment] will make surgery safer and faster and dramatically cut the recovery period,” Sander said. “We are particularly proud that the sophisticated navigation system which guides this pioneering surgery was developed at the Epilepsy Society’s MRI unit. “This enables the surgical team to navigate safely to the exact area of the brain that is affected, avoiding blood vessels and critical structures. This is a great advance in epilepsy surgery as a treatment option for lesional epilepsy.” Poppy Koronka Health Correspondent Ex-PM’s wife recovering after surgery The wife of Gordon Brown, the former prime minister, has thanked the NHS after emergency surgery to remove her gallbladder. Sarah Brown, 60, was taken to hospital with abdominal pain while visiting friends in Bristol and Bath two weeks ago. A gallbladder infection was diagnosed. She is now recovering at home in Fife and said the experience had made her appreciate the work of NHS staff “stretched to the limit”. In a statement on social media, she said: “They got me to the Royal United Hospital Bath in a queue of 12 ambulances.” She was kept under observation for a number of days before doctors decided to operate. “I was taken in for surgery and two and a half hours later my wonderful Italian surgeon had relieved me of my gallbladder.” She added: “I am overawed by the professionalism and kindness of everyone I met during my stay. The NHS is an organisation like no other that can’t be replaced and should be nurtured and protected as it protects all of us. We risk so much cutting it back all the time.” Brown, a former PR executive who is a global campaigner on education and health, lost her baby daughter Jennifer at ten days old in 2002. She had been born seven weeks premature. She and her husband set up the Jennifer Brown Research Laboratory at Edinburgh University and the Theirworld Edinburgh Birth Cohort, two initiatives looking into the causes of babies being born early and finding better ways to care for them. The Browns, who were married in 2000, have two sons, John, 20, and Fraser, 17. Going with a bang The Queen Anne sets sail from Southampton for Lisbon on her maiden voyage, with Inger Klein Thorhauge, Cunard’s first female captain, at the helm

8 Monday May 6 2024 | the times News Britons are racing to book holidays in the sun as they seek to escape the weather at home, travel companies report. The washout spring prompted a surge in last-minute bookings for the two long weekends and the May half-term break. Advantage Travel Partnership, the country’s largest group of independent travel agents, said that a fifth of its business at the moment was for departures this month, far exceeding usual volumes for the time of year. Kelly Cookes, the group’s chief commercial officer, said: “We’ve had a mix of people who have been looking at the weather for this weekend and booking super last-minute as well as people who are planning something for later in the month. But across the board demand for May is really strong, up 10 per cent on last year.” Cookes said that the weather had played a “major role” in the rise in bookings for last-minute escapes. Met Office data shows that the UK has already had 96 per cent of the rainfall it would expect in spring. Normally by the end of April the figure would be 66 per cent. The UK had 111.4mm of rain last month, 155 per cent of the average for the month. The weather is expected to remain unsettled over the first bank holiday today, with airlines and holiday companies both expecting a bounce in bookings as a result. Rain had been forecast to dampen bank holiday spirits but Mark Sidaway, the deputy chief meteorologist at the Met Office, said: “There continues to be uncertainty around the track of a low-pressure system which is expected to cross the southern UK this weekend, Fourth day without water for thousands Will Humphries Last-minute holiday bookings up as Britons escape the soggy spring Ben Clatworthy Transport Correspondent meaning there is some uncertainty about some of the forecast details. While it will remain unsettled with further showers or longer spells of rain, all areas should see some drier conditions at some point and, in any sunshine, it should feel quite warm. But for the exact details for your area stay up to date with the forecast.” Despite a surge in last-minute sales, many holiday companies still report that some families are holding off booking amid high prices for trips. Richard Lowrey-Heywood, the brand manager at Seaside Travel, an agency, said: “Families are still waiting to book. Hopefully this weekend will be the start, with more people thinking about booking for the summer.” Research published last week found that air fares between the UK and Spain — Britons’ most popular holiday destination — have soared by up to 40 per cent this summer. Mabrian, a travel intelligence company, said that average budget airline fares for travel between June and September were now £156. On routes from Spain to the UK, the price has risen by 38 per cent. Johan Lundgren, the chief executive of easyJet, said: “We are well set up operationally for this summer season where we expect easyJet to be one of the fastest-growing major airlines in Europe and take more customers on easyJet holidays than ever before.” The RAC predicted that about 16 million extra leisure trips would be taken by car at the weekend, higher than average for the first May bank holiday. Motorists face paying more at the pumps compared with Easter after the cost of fuel surged. Average petrol and diesel prices have risen by 10p per litre so far this year, the motoring group said. It added that the average price of a litre of petrol increased by 3p to 150p in April alone. Simon Williams, a spokesman at the RAC, said: “Drivers are once again having to dig deep just to go about their daily lives. Some of this is down to the oil price and the pound-to-dollar exchange rate making wholesale petrol more expensive for retailers to buy. But unfortunately, it’s also very apparent that retailers are making massive margins on diesel.” It rained on Glastonbury Dragons May Fayre and Parade yesterday and forecasters predict more rain today but say that where the sun does come out it will be quite warm Root and branch review Hannah Houlding, on a work placement with the RHS, checks the apple blossom at RHS Rosemoor in Devon which is expected to produce a bumper crop of fruit. The recording of blossom starts when the first tree blooms; this year’s first was 21 days earlier than last year, giving the fruit longer to develop Thousands of seaside properties and businesses in Sussex remained without water yesterday after a burst pipe on Thursday stopped supplies. Residents in Hastings, St Leonardson-Sea and Westfield criticised Southern Water for failing to have back-up procedures, leaving people to collect water from the sea with buckets to flush their toilets. Local businesses had been preparing for the annual Jack in the Green festival over the bank holiday weekend, which draws thousands of visitors to Hastings, and a May Day event involving thousands of motorbikes and scooters descending on the seafront. The outage put pressure on reservoirs, adding to supply issues and pushing the number of households without water up by 1,500 yesterday to 32,500. The burst pipe was in isolated woodland so the water company had to remove 50 trees to access it. Tim McMahon, of Southern Water, told BBC Radio Sussex that homes should have started to receive water again from 10.30am yesterday and the final properties should have water again by nightfall, but that it would take time to replenish dry pipes and empty toilet tanks. Water supply may be “temperamental” over the next few days, he said. Southern Water said that compensation for affected businesses would go beyond statutory obligations. Four bottled water stations reopened with hour-long queues reported. Keith Leech, of the Jack in the Green event, said: “This year Southern Water have managed to close our beach because it was covered in sewage, flood our town centre because they couldn’t deal with the water that was coming through, and now they’ve managed to completely cut us off from water on the biggest weekend of the year.”

the times | Monday May 6 2024 9 News found Hitler’s apartment in Munich in April 1945 — the resulting photo of her in the dictator’s bath, right, became one of the iconic images of the final months of the war. The film, Lee, is scheduled for release in British cinemas in September A life in focus Kate Winslet stars as Lee Miller in a forthcoming biopic about the American model, who was a war correspondent for Vogue magazine in 1944-45. Miller, who died in 1977, was with US forces when they An alleged “sextortion” blackmailer is suspected of making up to £2 million by terrifying boys with threats to release embarrassing photographs and videos. Olamide Shanu, 33, will appear in court in London later this month after an extradition request from America. Shanu is accused of posing as a teenage girl online to persuade boys to send sexually explicit photographs of themselves. It is alleged that he then threatened to send the images to the victims’ family and friends and the media unless they paid him money. The blackmailer’s cryptocurrency account was said to have received over 6,000 payments in three years, suggesting there were hundreds of victims. Separately, the National Crime A man has been left with potentially life-changing injuries after he was nailed to a fence in a “sinister” attack in Northern Ireland in the early hours of yesterday. The man, in his 20s, was found shortly after midnight with a nail through each hand in Bushmills, Co Antrim. The man also had injuries to his nose and is being treated in hospital, where his condition is described as not lifethreatening. Two vans including one belonging to the injured man were found on fire in a public car park near Dundarave Park. The police said that paramilitary involvement was a key line of inquiry. Two crews from NI Fire and Rescue Service also attended and both vehicles were badly damaged. Graffiti found on the wall of public lavatories nearby was being linked to the assault and arson, the police said. Detective Inspector Lyttle said: “This was a sinister attack which has left this man with potentially life-changing injuries. Everyone has the right to live their life free from the threat of violence and this brutal attack by people who violate the human rights of others must be universally condemned. We live in a gone to lay flowers for condolences.” Detective Chief Inspector Zaheer Abbas said: “This is an absolutely tragic incident in which a young child has lost her life. Our thoughts are with her family at this time. “Our investigation with the fire service has deemed that the fire was not suspicious. The family are being supported by specially trained officers. A file will now be prepared for the coroner in due course.” A spokesman for the fire service said: “We were called to reports of a house fire at 1.05 this morning on Kingsdale Drive in Bradford. We sent three crews, two from Bradford and one from Shipley. Fire investigators are working with colleagues in West Yorkshire police to establish the circumstances.” ‘Blackmailer made £2m from boys’ David Brown Agency issued a warning last week that pupils were being targeted in so-called sextortion scams. The number of cases involving children has more than doubled in two years to 890 in 2022. At least three British children have killed themselves after such blackmail. Dinal De Alwis, 16, a private schoolboy from Sutton, south London, took his own life in October 2022 hours after receiving messages threatening to send two nude photographs to “all of his followers” if he did not send money. That threat was believed to have originated in Nigeria. It has emerged that Shanu, a Nigerian who is accused of being behind an international blackmail scam, was arrested in Surrey at the end of last year. He will appear next at Westminster magistrates’ court on May 28. Shanu is wanted in the US on charges including conspiracy to cyberstalk and interstate communications with intent to commit extortion. The US Secret Service, a federal agency that investigates financial crimes, alleges that Shanu and other conspirators used fake and stolen online accounts with profiles of attractive women to target boys on social media. The alleged victims say they were persuaded to send sexually explicit photographs and videos of themselves or to appear naked in “live chat” sessions while the blackmailer concealed their true identity with images of porn actresses. The boys were then blackmailed into making payments through gift cards or cryptocurrency. One American victim was contacted on Snapchat last May by a user with the name Chloe Walterz. The Snapchat account had been stolen from a 16- year-old girl. The boy handed over $1,000 before he blocked the account. Another stolen Snapchat account was then used to contact the victim, threatening to forward the images to his friends unless he paid $3,000. A second American boy was targeted by “Chloe” — who he thought was a young, white woman — on Instagram and they exchanged sexually explicit images on Snapchat. “Chloe” then threatened to distribute the images to 200 of his female friends. He paid $300 every Friday until he had paid $10,000. The boys’ payments were traced to an account at Binance, a popular cryptocurrency exchange, which was opened using an image of Shanu’s passport as proof of identity and a Lagos address. The account was emptied after it received $2.6 million over three years. Luke Lack, a Secret Service special agent, wrote in the criminal complaint that the account had received funds from victims of various frauds. Secret Service investigators allegedly uncovered messages showing Shanu’s involvement, including one with the name Chloe Walterz. They also identified two other alleged victims. Olamide Shanu, 33, is accused of sexually extorting boys by posing as a girl online Ten-year-old girl dies and four hurt in house blaze Debbie White Man nailed to fence in Northern Ireland democratic society where there is no justification for this. Those responsible brutalise their own communities and control others through intimidation and violence. “This happened in a residential area with a number of holiday lets which would be busy during this bank holiday weekend and we are asking anyone who noticed anything or who may have dashcam footage to contact us.” Speaking to BBC News yesterday afternoon, Bobby Singleton, an assistant chief constable, said that it was a “really shocking incident with levels of, almost, ultra violence”. He added: “We thought these kind of incidents were firmly in our past. It’s early days and we are keeping an open mind, but this incident bears all the hallmarks of what we would see as paramilitary-style attacks, so that will be one key line of inquiry.” Peter Chappell A ten-year-old girl died and a woman and three other children were taken to hospital after a house fire in Bradford. The girl was found inside the house and pronounced dead at the scene after emergency services were called to the blaze just after 1am yesterday, West Yorkshire police said. The 37-year-old woman and three children, aged 11, 6 and 3, had escaped and were taken to hospital. They are all expected to survive. Officers said that they were not treating the fire as suspicious. A neighbour said that they heard sirens at about 1.10am. “I saw smoke and the fire brigade coming up the street,” they said. “I didn’t know the family, but I’ve The scene of the attack, where a fire crew cut away two pieces of the fence

the times | Monday May 6 2024 11 News tasted loads,” added the officer, who is highly experienced and has served in Afghanistan. He noted that they come with little pots of Tabasco and can be consumed anywhere. He said the US had a different military doctrine that allowed them to have a different approach to operational rations. Alfie Usher, a former British paratrooper who is behind the popular social media account Fill Your Boots, said the “corn beef hash is the worst thing ever invented”. He also said “it had all gone downhill since they removed the Yorkies”, referring to the decision to stop supplying troops with Yorkie bars that read: “It’s not for civvies.” Aside from the main dishes, each pack has items such as mini cookies, cake, nuts and oat biscuits designed to be a quick energy source. Any new dishes go through a food tasting panel made up of representatives from the armed forces. They blindly evaluate ration samples and score them on smell, flavour, “mouthfeel” and overall satisfaction. Defending the British ration pack, a British Army source said the relatively expensive packs were designed to be “appropriate for high-intensity soldiering where you want to pack the highest amount of useful calories, vitamins and minerals in the smallest space possible”. “They are easily the best, and I’ve terworth joked: “That just makes you want to go like, ‘I was going to go to this Italian restaurant but then I saw the British pasta bolognese and I decided for this’. Said no one ever!” To conclude, he said none of the meals “blew him away” but noted the huge variety of items, including useful ones such as tissues and water purification tablets, which US troops do not get. Ration packs are used by the British armed forces during training and operations. The military spent £14.7 million on ration packs in ten months of the last financial year, according to the latest figures. The pack is available with ten different menus, which include vegetarian, halal, kosher and Sikh/Hindu versions. grace our MREs [meal, ready to eat]. Everyone uses them as cement for defence building or gifts them to this weird lieutenant we have that loves them.” As for the pasta bolognese meal, ButMillions of pounds a year are spent on British military ration packs for troops posted overseas, but one American soldier has been less than impressed with some of the products. Sergeant First Class Tyler Butterworth, a soldier with the Army National Guard in the US, has started a ration-pack tasting series on YouTube. His latest 30-minute video focuses on the British menus. He said the Indonesian-style spicy rice with pork and pasta bolognese meals “look like cat food”, and complained “I feel like I’m gonna hurt myself” while eating a sesame seed bar that was particularly tough on his teeth. “Why would you like this?” he added. Butterworth is known for his unique recruitment methods and has used TikTok and Instagram videos to persuade viewers to sign up to the armed forces. Some of his videos have been viewed millions of times. Explaining the rationale behind the videos, he once told Military Times: “My inspiration was to do less work. I very quickly realised that most kids we’re looking to recruit don’t even know their own phone number or have an email address. I figured the way to communicate [with them] best is the way they do with each other, and that’s through social media.” Like the British military and other western countries, the US military is struggling with recruitment. In the latest video series, Butterworth appeared to be generally impressed by the “smorgasbord” that menu 6 of the 24-hour British ration pack offered. Overall, he gave the menu a rating of 74 out of 100, saying it was “really neat”. When it came to eating a sesame bar, however, he quipped: “Ever since I saw this bird food right here, I’ve been dying to try it.” He said he believed the bar was “fit for human consumption”, but after chewing it he added: “I feel I’m gonna hurt myself.” One YouTube user agreed, commenting below the video: “The sesame bars are one of the single worst things to Britain’s pubs face many challenges, from extortionate energy bills to high staff costs, but arguably the greatest existential threat is that young people are just not drinking as much any more. So what do you do when 18-year-olds are more interested in Taylor Swift than tequilas? The simple solution: introduce karaoke. Some venues are even swapping out their kitchens for karaoke rooms to draw in new punters. The financial logic appears to speak for itself. A study last year by Aalto University in Finland found that venues that installed karaoke machines had an average 12 per cent rise in profit compared with those without. The Kenton, in Hackney, east London, is one of those that has switched. This year the landlord, Egil Johansen, decided to replace his kitchen space with a karaoke room. He explained that the pub’s energy bills had tripled and the extra costs of chefs and serving staff meant the kitchen was becoming too expensive to run. “I came up with the idea of a karaoke room because I used to live in Tokyo and always loved it. Also the thing with a karaoke room is that once it’s built, it has very low running costs,” he said. The room holds ten people and charges £59 an hour midweek and £89 an hour on Friday and Saturdays. Johansen, 48, said: “It’s been a success and a really, really needed source of income.” The Fox, a traditional East End corner pub, introduced a “karaoke den” to an underused room on the third floor late last year. The room had previously been let out as a meeting room for private events but was making only a few thousand pounds a year. When they turned it into a karaoke room, large groups started booking it for birthdays, events and party nights. Simon Yandell, of Glendola Leisure, which owns the pub, said, “The majority of bookings, especially on weekends, are from individuals specifically searching for karaoke rooms for special occasions.” Other venues are adding booths to bring in new customers. All Star Lanes ten-pin bowling, which has four venues, recently opened a karaoke room for 14 people in Holborn. Its Stratford site already has two karaoke rooms. Isaiah Fapuro, of the chain, said: “Having karaoke has had a significant impact on our business, and it now accounts for about 10 per cent of our covers.” The growth in pubs of karaoke is part of a wider trend in hospitality for “competitive socialising”, with the number of venues offering extras like mini-golf, virtual axe-throwing and table tennis growing by nearly 40 per cent since 2015. Despite karaoke booths being a modern success story for venues, customers still prefer to bang out the old classics. The top ten tracks selected are on average 31 years old. We will survive! Ailing pubs swap kitchens for karaoke Andrew Ellson Consumer Affairs Correspondent Mr Brightside The Killers (2003) Dancing Queen Abba (1976) Valerie Mark Ronson featuring Amy Winehouse (2007) I Want It That Way Backstreet Boys (1999) American Boy Estelle featuring Kanye West (2008) Teenage Dirtbag Wheatus (2000) Wonderwall Oasis (1995) Bohemian Rhapsody Queen (1975) Sweet Caroline Neil Diamond (1969) Man! I Feel Like a Woman! Shania Twain (1997) Source: Singa karaoke software Top ten picks Karaoke booths save on staff and energy compared with kitchens. Amy Winehouse’s song Valerie is a popular choice Friendly fire in a food review as US sergeant mocks our ‘cat food’ rations Larisa Brown Defence Editor United Kingdom The British Army offers ten types of ration packs, including cold climate and emergency survival rations Sample menu Raspberry toasted muesli with milk Steak, vegetables and dumplings Rice with beef burrito-flavour sauce Cinnamon cake Fortified energy drink powder apple flavour Grapefruit flavour drink powder Pear flavour drink powder Cola flavour drink powder Lemon flavour drink powder Hot chocolate-flavour drink powder Biscuits and sesame bar Chilli peanuts Jam: apricot/strawberry/plum/ raspberry United States American soldiers have a choice of 24 menus Sample menu Beef goulash Carbohydrate-enhanced apple sauce Chunky/crunchy peanut butter Strawberry preserves Wholewheat bread (mini-loaf) Patriotic cookies Fortified carbohydrate beverage powder/orange flavour Transatlantic tastes Sergeant First Class Tyler Butterworth has shared his reviews of rations from the UK, Canada and Norway on YouTube

12 Monday May 6 2024 | the times News The Archbishop of Canterbury has spoken about the “great personal challenges” faced by the King in the year since his coronation, praising his “openness” and “sense of duty”. A year ago today Charles was crowned by the Most Rev Justin Welby at Westminster Abbey. Referring to the King’s cancer diagnosis, which was revealed in February, Welby said: “The past year has presented the King with some great personal challenges. But I have been struck by his sense of duty, having recently returned to royal engagements following treatment. His openness in sharing his condition has been characteristic of his willingness to help and support others.” He said of the King and Queen that “we celebrate their service and give thanks for their contribution to the life of our nation”. Welby added: “It was the privilege of a lifetime to anoint and crown His Majesty, surrounded by so many of the charities and organisations he supports, as well as hundreds of people who are serving their communities. “The coronation weekend inspired millions up and down the country to volunteer, and I’m delighted that the Big Help Out is returning in June, for us to get together and make a difference.” The King said at his coronation that he “came not to be served but to serve”. Welby said: “I continue to pray for King Charles, Queen Camilla and the royal family. May God guide, comfort and strengthen them in their service to us.” In a separate video, Welby also said that the relationship between Anglican churches and the Vatican has changed over the past 50 years from “one of real Acancer patient who endured a multiple-organ transplant will have to go through the process again to beat the disease after it returned. Adam Alderson, 43, went through a pioneering operation in 2015 in which surgeons removed a tumour and transplanted six organs from a single donor, including his stomach, small and large intestines, spleen and appendix. At the time there were no known living survivors of the operation. Now surgeons will have to replace the same six organs and Alderson’s liver after doctors discovered that his cancer, a rare form called pseudomyxoma peritonei that usually starts with a small Patient to have six new organs . . . again growth in the appendix, had returned last month. The disease is more common in women than men. Alderson, who lives with his wife, Laura, in Preston-under-Scar in North Yorkshire, told The Mail on Sunday that he was first told he had irritable bowel syndrome before doctors discovered the rare cancer. By the time they tried to remove it, it had spread too far. “They disconnected my bowel, gave me a bag and a feeding tube and sent me home on palliative care with at best two years to live,” he said. During a cycle of chemotherapy, Alderson managed to convince a surgeon, Brendan Moran, to operate on him. When a donor was found, he had an 18- hour operation at Churchill Hospital in Oxford. Alderson said: “They will look at doing the transplant in the next 12 to 18 months. It’s a very slow growing cancer so it will definitely buy me more time. I feel very lucky to still be here. I have Mr Moran and the team to thank for that.” Moran, one of a team of 30 for the first operation, said: “Adam is amazingly resilient and he is young and fit, but it’s a very tough operation to go through.” Ali Mitib Welby praises King’s sense of duty after year of challenges antipathy to deep bonds of friendship”. For the first time, a meeting of Anglican archbishops from around the world was hosted in Rome last week, where the church leaders, known as primates, met Pope Francis. The Church of England split from Rome under Henry VIII in the 16th century. In 1896, Pope Leo XIII declared that all Anglican holy orders were “absolutely null and utterly void”, a judgment that technically remains the official position of the Vatican. But Welby and the Pope have developed a close working relationship and have collaborated on projects including a joint visit to Sudan last year. Welby said after the meeting: “This primates’ meeting has been wonderful and has become a moment in history where we have seen the closeness of our relationship with Rome at the pastoral, the missional, and the spiritual level. Which demonstrates the progress made over the last half century, from real antipathy to deep bonds.” The Anglican leaders spent more than an hour with the Pope. Welby said: “It was another remarkable example of what the Anglican Communion has recognised as the universal primacy of Peter, of the papacy. And it was a pastoral time of encouragement.” Kaya Burgess Religious Affairs Correspondent Adam Alderson, 43, needs a second operation for a rare cancer In the driving seat The Duchess of Edinburgh takes part in the Pol Roger Meet of the British Driving Society at the Royal Windsor Horse Show. The event, held over five days at Home Park, Windsor Castle, also featured jumping and dressage 6 A majority of Britons believe that the King is doing a good job and only a quarter want a republic, a poll suggests. The survey showed support for Charles at 56 per cent, a seven point rise compared with last year. The Prince and Princess of Wales were the most popular royals with 69 per cent approval ratings. A third of the 2,166 British adults surveyed by Ipsos doubted the accuracy of pictures by the royal family after the edited Mother’s Day photo.

the times | Monday May 6 2024 S1 13 News As Liz Truss gave interviews about her new book, Chelsea prepared to thrash Everton 6-0 and the wind speed hit 25mph from Cornwall to Cumbria, something once thought impossible happened. For an hour on April 15, Great Britain’s national grid ran virtually entirely free of fossil fuels. Between 12.30pm and 1.30pm, coal and gas power plants provided 2.4 per cent of the country’s electricity supply, a record low. Instead, homes and businesses were running almost entirely on wind turbines, solar panels, nuclear reactors, biomass and links to France and other countries. “If you went back five years, never mind ten years, a lot of people said it could never be done — [that] you will always need coal, you will always need gas,” said Craig Dyke, director of system operations at National Grid ESO, which runs the country’s electricity transmission network. For an electricity system first built on Old King Coal, the milestone shows how far Britain has come, from a system of centralised polluting power plants to one run on renewable energy and new technologies. “I think we’re just proving, no, you really can do it,” Dyke said. Last month’s record is the beginning of the end for fossil fuels in the electricity sector. The government wants a zero carbon electricity grid by 2035. Labour promises one by 2030. Extremely low shares of fossil-fuel generation are a new phenomenon. If you rewind 15 years, the lowest halfhour period was 53 per cent fossil fuel. Half an hour with less than 5 per cent fossil fuels didn’t happen until 2022. Last year it occurred 16 times. There have been 75 such spells this year, with eight months still to go. “Running the grid with hardly any fossil fuels for one hour might seem insignificant, but it’s an essential first step on the way to the government’s goal for a fully decarbonised electricity system,” said Dr Simon Evans, senior policy editor at Carbon Brief, the website that analysed the figures. How did we get here? Rapid growth in renewable energy, particularly skyscraper-high wind turbines off the coast, is a big reason. But Dyke said it had also been a “big engineering challenge” that National Grid had solved by encouraging business to develop new technologies. In a sign of how fast things have changed, in recent months the batteries of about 1,000 electric cars acted as a virtual power station, by deferring charging to reduce demand (in return, drivers got a cheaper tariff). The innovation was made possible by a £100 million upgrade to software at National Grid’s control room in an inconspicuous building in Berkshire. Lithium-ion batteries of the kind found in smartphones have helped too. Energy storage capacity grew by two thirds between 2022 and last year. Piled up in shipping containers around the country, batteries supply electricity for between 50 minutes and two hours so Dyke’s colleagues can match demand The (windy) hour national grid almost went without fossil fuel with supply. They are key to ensuring mains frequency stays close to 50Hz, the level UK appliances are designed for. “Just leading up to Christmas we had a fault on the system. The frequency fell quite sharply, and it was arrested because of batteries,” Dyke said. Machines known as synchronous condensers have also been employed to recreate the natural kinetic energy in the system — vital for keeping frequency stable — which used to come from big rotating turbines in fossil-fuel power stations. Electricity cables to a growing number of countries, from hydro plants on Norwegian lakes to Danish wind farms, are another tool. Still, getting beyond short spells with nearly no fossil fuel will mean alternatives to the gas plants needed at night and in low wind. “If you want to decarbonise quickly, it’s not about throwing up new wind farms. It’s what you do with gas. The challenge to a future government is to go really hard at decarbonising those gas-fired power stations,” said Chris Stark, chief executive of the Carbon Trust. He said carbon capture or hydrogen was probably the answer. National Grid set a target in 2019 of being able to cope with a zero carbon system by 2025. Dyke thinks the first zero per cent fossil fuel half hour will come within 12 to 18 months, most probably in spring or autumn next year. Adam Vaughan Environment Editor Jessica Sharkey Powering ahead on path to net zero Production breakdown of Britain's electricity on April 15 when fossil fuels dropped to 2.4% Share of GB electricity from fossil fuels Source: Electric Insights Source: Carbon Brief 40GW 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 90% 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 Wind Nuclear Hydro Solar Gas Coal Biomass 3am 6am 9am 12pm 3pm 6pm 9pm 12am Monthly average of half-hour daily periods 2012 231915 Bruce Springsteen and his E Street Band, with the squealing guitar of Steve Van Zandt, above, rattled through their repertoire of classics to prove that, even after his months off with peptic ulcer disease, he still has the energy to bring the house down mode for 1973’s R&B tinged Spirit in the Night, before leading a mass singalong of the old favourite Hungry Heart. A request for If I Was the Priest, an obscure Dylanesque rocker, led Springsteen to ask, “Can the E Street Band do it?” They had never played it live before, but they got it. This is an anomaly in the tightly honed world of stadium music: spontaneity. Springsteen had hymnal numbers galore for the second half: the heroic romance of Because The Night, the runaway anthem Badlands, the conflicted patriotism of Born In The USA, and needless to say Born to Run brought the house down. For some reason — it may be because he only has one meal a day, so he’s in a permanent state of hunger — Springsteen still seemed like he had so much to prove. It is what made this concert so joyous. Boucher Road Playing Fields, Belfast, May 9, then touring Rock Will Hodgkinson Bruce Springsteen Principality Stadium, Cardiff HHHHH The Boss is back — raw, hungry and passionate “Intimate” is not a word that usually comes to mind when sharing a stadium with 60,000 people on a rain-sodden Sunday night. Yet intimacy was evoked by Bruce Springsteen and his E Street Band as they ran through a career’s worth of classics as if their lives depended on it. Springsteen, 74, was returning after peptic ulcers derailed the second half of his 2023 tour. The illness could have derailed his very being as he ran the risk of no longer being able to sing. Yet here he was, reminding us how, when it comes to this kind of thing, no one does it better. “Cardiff, Wales!” he screamed, before going into an obscure rock’n’roller called So Young And In Love. With Jake (nephew of the original E Streeter Clarence) Clemons playing saxophone on one side and the guitarist Steve Van Zandt on the other, Springsteen sounded as passionate as ever, and had an ability to inject that passion not only into the crowd but to his 16-piece band as well. “I’ve been working real hard, trying to get my hands clean,” he sang on Prove it All Night, a favourite from his 1978 Darkness At The Edge of Town, and it summed up the working man’s spirit that launched him out of Asbury Park, New Jersey, 50 years ago and ensures that he keeps filling stadiums to this day. This was so raw and alive, from Springsteen’s sandpaper roar on Wrecking Ball to Van Zandt’s squealing guitar on Thunder Road, your throat and fingers hurt just thinking about it. A big part of it all is hope: Better Days, The Promised Land, getting over anything through the power of soulful rock’n’roll. It’s either that or loss: the melancholy of The River, his acoustic ode to departed friends Last Man Standing. “Can you feel the spirit?’ he asked, going into testifying gospel

14 Monday May 6 2024 | the times News Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7 and the ensuing war have provoked a “tsunami of hate” against Jewish people worldwide, according to a study. The Annual Antisemitism Worldwide report said that the number of antisemitic incidents in western countries last year rose by dozens of percentage points compared with 2022. In the first nine months of last year, before the war, there was an increase in the number of incidents in most countries with large Jewish minorities, including in the UK. The number of antisemitic incidents in Britain in January to September was Antisemitism on rise worldwide since October 7 1,404, up from 1,270 in the similar period in 2022. Overall incidents in the UK rose to 4,103 from 1,662 in 2022. Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), said: “The aftermath of Hamas’s horrific attack on Israel on October 7 was followed by a tsunami of hate against Jewish communities. Unprecedented levels of antisemitism have surged globally in the streets of London, New York, Paris, Santiago, Johannesburg and beyond.” He said the report documented unprecedented levels of antisemitism, and in the US the number of incidents was the highest ever recorded by the ADL. The 150-page report, published by Tel Aviv University and the ADL, said the events of October 7 helped “spread a fire that was already out of control”. In New York, the city with the largest Jewish population outside of Israel, police recorded 325 anti-Jewish hate crimes compared with 261 in 2022. The ADL recorded 7,523 incidents in the US last year compared with 3,697 in 2022. The number of assaults increased to 161 from 111 in 2022 and of vandalism to 2,106 from 1,288. Other countries also had big increases. In France incidents increased to 1,676 from 436 in 2022, in Germany to 3,614 from 2,639, and in Brazil to 1,774 from 432. The report featured figures from Britain, published in February by the Community Security Trust. The trust said that the number of incidents in the UK rose by almost 150 per cent to 4,103, the highest since it began logging cases 40 years ago. It said that the sharp increase in anti-Jewish incidents had been “inspired” by Hamas’s attack, with almost 2,700 occurring on or after October 7. The ADL report emphasised that most countries with large Jewish minorities experienced increases in the first nine months of last year, before the war in the Middle East flared up. In the US, the ADL data showed an increase to 3,547 incidents between January and September last year, a rise from from 2,697 in the same period of 2022. Uriya Shavit, a professor of Islamic studies at Tel Aviv University, said: “The year is not 1938, not even 1933, yet if current trends continue, the curtain will descend on the ability to lead Jewish lives in the West — to wear a star of David, attend synagogues ... or speak Hebrew. “With bomb threats against synagogues becoming a daily occurrence, Jewish existence in the West is forced to fortify itself. The more it does so, the more the sense of security and normalcy is undermined.” James Beal Social Affairs Editor British medic due to discuss Gaza is expelled by France Adam Sage Paris A British-Palestinian surgeon has accused France of seeking to “silence” him after he was refused entry to the country to tell a parliamentary meeting of his experience in Gaza’s hospitals. Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah, rector of Glasgow University, was detained at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris on Saturday and sent back to Britain. He had been due to give evidence on his volunteer work with Doctors Without Borders, the charity, in al-Shifa and al-Ahli Baptist hospitals after the outbreak of war following the Hamas attack on October 7 in which more than 1,200 Israelis were murdered. Ghassan, a plastic surgeon known for volunteering in conflict zones, had been invited to address a symposium in the Senate staged by The Ecologists, a left-wing party on “France and its responsibility in the application of international law in Gaza”. Raymonde Poncet Monge, the senator who organised the symposium, said the refusal to allow Ghassan to enter France was a disgrace. French officials said that their hands had been bound by a German decision to ban Ghassan from the EU’s Schengen border-free zone. He had been due to talk at a pro-Palestinian conference in Berlin last month but was refused entry to Germany after police halted the meeting, saying that another of the speakers had been banned from political activity for making “antisemitic or violence-glorifying public statements”. French officials said that Ghassan had been given a one-year ban by Germany on entering all Schengen countries. A source at the Élysée Palace said that there was “not much” French border police could do in such cases. “How can Germany decree a ban in the whole Schengen area?” said Poncet Monge. “It’s incredible. It’s a new stage in the repression of everything to do with Palestine.” Ghassan, who spent 43 days in Gaza, tweeted: “Fortress Europe silencing the witnesses to the genocide.” Proud parents Cheekaboo, a Colombian black spider monkey, gave birth two weeks ago at Colchester Zoo in Essex, which has released the first family photo. Keepers do not yet know whether the infant is male or female but said that “we will be looking out over the next month to see what name suits”

16 Monday May 6 2024 | the times News Cyclist who almost hit 30mph avoids charge after pensioner’s death James Beal Social Affairs Editor A cyclist involved in a fatal collision with a pensioner could not be prosecuted because speed limits do not apply to bicycles, a court heard. Brian Fitzgerald, a director vicepresident at Credit Suisse, was in a “fast group” doing timed laps of Regent’s Park, in London, when Hilda Griffiths, 81, crossed the road. Despite a 20mph speed limit, Fitzgerald, a member of the Muswell Hill Peloton cycling club, told a coroner that he was travelling at up to 29mph in an aerodynamic formation. He struck the retired nursery school teacher, who was walking her dog, and she died 59 days later in hospital. Fitzgerald said he had “zero reaction time,” adding that cyclists are not required to obey 20mph signs because “the legal speed limit doesn’t apply to cyclists [the same] as motorists.” Police concluded that there was “insufficient evidence for a real prospect of conviction” and the case was closed. Detective Sergeant Ropafadzo Bungo told Inner West London coroner’s court that there were “no specific” speed limit signs for cyclists. A police review found that “there were no criminal acts which would allow prosecution” for cyclists who exceed speed limits. Griffiths, from Marylebone, was hit shortly after 7am on a Saturday in June 2022. Her death was not recorded in official data as a pedestrian killed on a road after a collision with a cyclist because she died so long afterwards. Jean Harkin, the assistant coroner, recorded an “accidental cycling collision death” and rejected a call by the family’s barrister to issue a report on the prevention of future deaths because cyclists were not following the park speed limit. A solicitor who claims that he was pinned to the ground by court security staff has said: “I never thought I would be the one saying ‘I cannot breathe.’ ” After a clash at a magistrates’ court in east London, Adedayo Johnson, a defence solicitor, invoked the phrase that received worldwide attention when George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020. The solicitor, who was representing a juvenile client at Stratford magistrates’ court last week, claimed that he was forced to the ground by four security staff because he refused to take off his shoes after being subjected to a second search when attempting to reenter the building. “I have asthma, my chest was being pushed to the floor so now I am struggling to breathe,” Johnson told the Law Gazette website, which is published by the Law Society, the professional body for solicitors in England and Wales. “I never thought I would be Vigil for boy, 14, killed in sword attack Debbie White More than 300 people gathered at a vigil yesterday to pay tribute to Daniel Anjorin, the east London boy killed in a sword attack last week. Daniel, 14, was metres from his front door in Hainault at 7am on Tuesday when he was attacked from behind. Harris, 17, who did not disclose his surname, told the crowd at Hainault Underground station: “He was a kid that was not in any type of trouble. I’m not just saying that. He never did anything wrong. He focused on school, he got good grades, he [went] to church.” Arsenal Football Club led tributes to Daniel, a fan, at Saturday’s match against Bournemouth at the Emirates Stadium, with fans and players from both sides breaking into applause in the 14th minute. An online fundraiser set up by a friend of the family to help them with costs has raised more than £135,000. In a statement issued through the Metropolitan Police, Daniel’s parents — Dr Ebenezer Anjorin, 59, a Transport for London health and safety consultant, and Grace Anjorin, 49, a science teacher — said: “We as a family are devastated by the loss of our beloved son Daniel.” Marcus Arduini Monzo, 36, a dual Spanish-Brazilian citizen living in Newham, east London, appeared at Westminster magistrates’ court on Thursday charged with Daniel’s murder. He was remanded in custody to appear at the Flag signals Narrowboats decked with bunting take part in the 41st annual Canalway Cavalcade in Little Venice, northwest London, to celebrate the best of life afloat Old Bailey tomorrow. Guards ‘pinned lawyer to floor’ at court the one saying: I cannot breathe. I was just trying to do my job. It was my duty to be there.” The incident has fuelled controversy about the behaviour of security staff at the court. Even before the incident involving Johnson, lawyers who regularly appeared at the Stratford court had expressed concern about allegedly over-zealous and intimidating searches there. In response to Johnson’s allegations, the London Criminal Courts Solicitors’ Association has also written to national court bosses about security protocols at the court. In a letter to HM Courts and Tribunals Service, Edward Jones, the association’s chairman, said that his members were “seriously concerned and appalled at the alleged behaviour of the security officers involved”. He went on to say that “given the seriousness of the alleged incident and the already documented history of complaints against security staff … which are already the subject of an official complaint … we have no confidence at the moment that those tasked with ensuring the safety of our members and colleagues at this court are capable of doing so”. Jones said that the association, of which Johnson is a member, demanded “the immediate suspension from duty of all the security officers involved in the incident pending a full, independent investigation into the facts”. Johnson, who works for Lewis Nedas Law, which specialises in criminal defence work, said through intermediaries that he did not want to comment further. Speaking to the website, the solicitor, who qualified in 2015, said that he had arrived early for a hearing and was given a pat down by security staff before being allowed to enter the court. Johnson said that he later left the building for a cigarette and that when he returned to re-enter a security officer insisted on performing another check. The lawyer said that he agreed to a second pat down but when asked to take off his shoes, he refused. Security staff said that he would not be allowed to enter and Johnson asked to make a formal complaint, prompting the security team to forcibly remove the solicitor. Johnson said that he then received a phone call from a youth court client who was about to appear before magistrates. The lawyer reentered the court through a side door “to do my duty”. During that hearing, Johnson left the courtroom to discuss matters with other legal representatives and on return, he was stopped by a security officer. “He pushed me and … I tried to go through the other door,” said Johnson, adding: “Then somebody grabbed me by the neck, another person grabbed my arm.” He claimed that “four or five” security staff grabbed him. “I started swinging. I felt I was fighting for my life against five grown men to stop them holding me and grabbing me. Eventually they get me on the ground and it hurt a little bit. There were quite a few grown men on my back. Their knees were on my arms, legs, and my back.” Eventually the police were said to have intervened. A spokesman for the courts service said that officials were “urgently investigating” a series of complaints about security staff at the court. He added that “it would be inappropriate to comment further at this stage. Our security measures are designed to protect the safety of all court users within our premises and remain under constant review. They are put in place in consultation with judiciary and the police”. Jonathan Ames Legal Editor Adedayo Johnson, who has asthma, said that he fought for his life Hilda Griffiths was hit by cyclist Brian Fitzgerald, travelling at up to 29mph

Angry protests didn’t work in ’68 and don’t now Libby Purves Page 21 driven support for malign sectarian interests, such as George Galloway’s Workers Party. In the West Midlands such a candidate amassed some 70,000 votes. At the other end of the spectrum, the Reform party is hunting quietly for a base from which to grow. It is not beyond the imagination that Nigel Farage might coax the embers of Ukip into a flame in the East of England or the North West. There’s nothing wrong with that. Extreme points of view are often heard locally, bur rarely find expression at Westminster. Nationally, they are never really challenged. Their appeal grows in silence. Malign identity politics won’t be vanquished by the London elite snarking it out of existence. But a good mayor, known to be a local champion, can often be the bulwark against extreme views, as Tracy Brabin has shown in standing up against both far-right and Islamist influences in West Yorkshire. I’m willing to bet that once Brits know the people running the show get their lives and speak in their accents, they become less likely to be seduced by local blowhards who claim to be challenging the establishment. Mayors are the political disrupters we need Even Labour-run fiefdoms will pose awkward questions for Starmer as power shifts from the centre to the regions The energy in British politics is coming, not from widening the political choice horizontally into the extremes of left or the right but from the changing balance of power between the centre and the rest of the nation. These mayors have started to establish what on the face of it seems a contradiction in terms: democratic fiefdoms. There is, of course, a danger. The politics of place can all too easily fall prey to tribalism and ethnic rivalry, putting power in the hands of extreme factions. In Tower Hamlets, east London, the sitting Labour mayor was unseated by a breakaway from Labour — an almost exclusively Bangladeshi faction placed a man convicted of voterigging back in the mayoral office. Some Labour activists are fretting that the Israel/Gaza conflict has Ben Houchen made his victory speech without wearing a Conservative rosette Livingstone’s hands, demurred and created a stunted beast just powerful enough to create problems — politicising police, snarling up the roads, adding cost to travel — yet lacking the resources to solve them. But a quarter of century later the metro mayors are morphing into the most dynamic layer of our political life. They are going to cause trouble, no matter who occupies No 10 after the next election. I’m delighted by the prospect. The more disruption and diversity of leadership in our sleepy, shabby public realm the better. It may not matter to these leaders and their successors who sits in Downing Street. Burnham, who scored a crushing victory to win his third term, was explicit that he would not be a Starmer satrap, warning any incoming Labour government not to expect a compliant placeman. In his acceptance speech he promised to be a “place first, party second” mayor. Houchen, who conveniently forgot to wear his blue rosette on election night and was mysteriously unable to borrow any of the dozens visible on TV on the chests of his activists, plainly couldn’t wait to see the back of the prime minister after an awkward photocall. And he did not misspeak when he told reporters that he was ready to work with whoever wins the general election. I don’t think he much cares who is in No 10 as long as they treat his people with due respect and attention. Not all mayors are of this stamp. We have yet to see what Street’s replacement in the West Midlands is made of while the capital’s boss, Sadiq Khan, a more partisan political character, tends to attribute every sparrow that falls in his domain to the spite or bigotry of Tory ministers. But over time, I think there will be more Burnhams, Houchens, Brabins and Streets, and fewer of the rest. H e took it on the chin. Or more accurately, he took it like a John Lewis partner. Andy Street, the former boss of the department store chain, declined to blame the prime minister for his defeat after an agonisingly close contest for the mayoralty of the West Midlands. Just 20 minutes after the result was declared, still red-eyed, emotionally raw, and in his own word, “devastated”, he told my Sky News colleague Sophy Ridge: “It was my campaign totally ... I am not going to try to push responsibility anywhere else.” It was not the traditional politician’s reply. There was no attempt to shift the blame for defeat from his own slight frame, no effort to disguise his bitter disappointment and nothing but grace towards the victorious Labour candidate. “There will be no sloping shoulders from me,” he said. This is politics at its most adult. Part of this is just the character of the man. Having worked alongside Street at John Lewis for a short while, I would have expected nothing else. Loyalty is the Loch Ness monster of politics — a quality much spoken of but seldom spotted. Morally, Street is the anti-Truss Tory. The former prime minister’s account of her short reign, which contributed so fulsomely to the wrecking of Tory fortunes, holds that her only faults were to be too trusting of others of lesser intellect and resolve. By contrast, Street volunteers to carry the sins of his tribe on his own shoulders. Even now he refuses to acknowledge that what probably made defeat certain was the bungled curtailment of HS2 by a Conservative cabinet that didn’t even have the courtesy to warn him that he would be the target of the most calamitous blue-on-blue political attack of recent years. Like his counterparts in Greater Manchester, Tees Valley and West Yorkshire, the former West Midlands mayor is not your average politician. Andy Burnham, Ben Houchen, Tracy Brabin and Street all turned their backs on Westminster to become the biggest fish in the pools where they grew up. But the difference lies not just in the nature of the men and women who are shaping the leadership of our city regions. It is the role itself that is starting to transform politics. Power is draining away from the centre. That of course was always the intention. Full disclosure: as chair of the campaign to set up the first metro-mayoralty in London, I had in mind that City Hall would eventually run almost everything that mattered in the capital, including health and education, and that London would become the test bed for a radically devolved democracy, ripping power out of the dead hand of Whitehall. The then New Labour government, understandably nervous of putting power in Ken The more diversity of leadership in our sleepy public realm, the better Malign identity politics won’t be vanquished by the London elite Comment red box For the best analysis and commentary on the political landscape Trevor Phillips @trevorptweets Free UK P&P on online orders over £25. All orders placed by phone will incur a minimum £2.99 delivery charge. Special discount available for Times+ members, T&Cs apply. £12.99 The Sunday Times and political editor, Caroline Wheeler, have been reporting on this scandal for over two decades. 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the times | Monday May 6 2024 21 Comment Buy prints or signed copies of Times cartoons from our Print Gallery at timescartoons.co.uk or call 020 7711 7826 Angry protests didn’t work in ’68 and don’t now Change comes via long talks, compromise and concession not the political indignation and victimhood seen on campus Hitchens — were both heard at length and that the chair’s appeal to disruptors for “coherent individual comments” failed. I had entirely forgotten that student pomposity, but never the sight itself. I can still see it: a bald little man civilly trying to argue against a wall of brutally enjoyable ill will. And a noose. So half a century on, as political indignation on campus melds with identity victimhood, I can’t buy into it. When the Princeton lecturer Razia Iqbal says students are “conducting themselves with maturity and grace”, the rest of the world sees only chanting aggression, antisemitism, political Islamist infiltration and the grim, prim deadness of “no-platform”. When supporters praise demos as “new communities” defying the violence of capitalism, tell that to the weary lowpaid cleaners on the mass transit home after cleaning up their mess. Or ask why these heroes don’t mind that their cheap tents come from Chinese factories, possibly using Uighur slave labour. Or else ask any devout Muslim how they appreciate UCLA’s mass “pray-in” to Allah, in which few participants are likely to learn or obey the moral codes of Islam. Clearly in half a century I have made no progress towards directaction revolutionary theory: I still don’t believe it serves justice. The guest, Michael Stewart, was Harold Wilson’s foreign secretary, a soft-left peacemaker before the Vietnam war, visiting Moscow in 1965 to plead with Soviet authorities for the north and south to be “left in peace, assured they would not be attacked”. But because the UK government didn’t oppose Nixon and Kissinger’s invasion of Cambodia, he got shoved, threatened and shouted down with cries of “resign, you bum!” and “hang him!” A noose was dropped from the gallery (Christopher Hitchens later claimed that the perpetrator prospered at the BBC). I saw a slight, nervously determined man trying to argue against a wall of screaming and I knew, at 20, that such scenes get nobody anywhere. Maybe as a career diplomat’s daughter it was bred into me that change belongs to long, patient talks round tables, studied paperwork, compromise, concession. Delving into The Times archive to refresh my memory, I was startled by a letter from a firebrand friend. She loftily explained that rather than let Oxford give Stewart “apparently moral and intelligent support”, they had to silence him because he had a platform and they didn’t. Then to my greater surprise I found a short counter-letter from one Elizabeth Purves, Librarian to the Union, pointing out that Stewart’s opponents — Hugh Fraser MP and barrack Jewish students and professors as “Zionist scum”. So what do you do, highly-paid vicechancellor? Crack down hard and be called a fascist genocide-enabler? Or hover in a cloud of platitudes about free speech, and take in free burritos, like Harvard? They should remember that not only is there a difference between debate and disruption, but that most students don’t join in. The majority didn’t go to Grosvenor Square with smoke bombs or throw marbles under police horses, and were silently unimpressed by friends who did, starstruck by Tariq Ali. Yet basically we agreed with them: America was brutal in Vietnam and Cambodia, so is world hunger, capitalist greed and racism (Luther King was our hero too). There were innumerable Christian groups, charities, left-wing debates and plays, and even we non-demonstrators stood silently in the road with candles after Jan Palach immolated himself in the failed Prague Spring. But we didn’t take to the streets. My deepest moment of truth came in May 1970 at the Oxford Union. ‘Young people,” says one of them, “are the conscience of the nation and the world.” Student protest campers think so, and for all the horror at the bombing of Gaza (which we all share) they find “action” comforting. A Yale political science student writes: “We held hands, and sang, and chanted together ... screamed with each other and at each other.” Shocked at the arrests (though the police say they only handcuffed protesters keenly up for it) she wept in her dorm room; briefly about the destruction of Gaza’s universities, but majoring on her institution’s ethical failure and her own victimhood. “Yale will not disclose how many of those bombs I funded with my tuition dollars.” That pivot to personal disillusion was almost touching: a child’s “safety net had evaporated”. Meanwhile at Columbia, another protester attracted derision by saying a building’s illegal occupiers might starve or die of dehydration without “basic humanitarian aid”. As she spoke, campus dining was open if they cared to stroll over (John Jay Dining Hall, Fac Shack and JJ’s Place, apparently). As for the crassness of demanding “humanitarian aid” for children of privilege while people 6,000 miles away really are dying, it suggested less the grandeur of being the world’s conscience than the tunnel vision of youth. Nothing new about that. As tented encampments spring up at US and UK universities, history makes it easy to understand the handwringing hesitation of institutions. The generation now weighing responsibilities, compromises and duty of care remembers les événements of 1968 and after, either as participants or younger admirers. They sang We Shall Overcome and Masters of War, rejoiced in Bob Dylan telling parents “Don’t criticise what you don’t understand, your sons and your daughters are beyond your command”. Even if you didn’t join mass protests yourself, they were heady times and without the present day’s cloying claim of personal victimhood. After Vietnam, that baby-boom energy dissipated into philanthropy, feminism, socialism, ecology, arts or personal success. But the idea of change-making felt good. Now the generation remembering 1968 is eminent, heading universities beset by crowds in cosplay keffiyehs who The rest of the world sees only aggression and antisemitism Libby Purves @lib_thinks

24 Monday May 6 2024 | the times World Binyamin Netanyahu accused Hamas of blocking a Gaza ceasefire deal with “extreme” demands as negotiations unravelled yesterday. Appearing to heed warnings from his hardline coalition members against any deal that could end the war before Israel launches a controversial operation in the Gazan city of Rafah, the Israeli prime minister said the militant group was not serious about securing a peace deal. “Hamas remains entrenched in its extreme positions, first among them the demand to remove all our forces from the Gaza Strip, end the war, and leave Hamas in power,” he said. “Israel cannot accept that.” His comments were praised by Itamar Ben Gvir, his hardline national security minister, who has issued thinly veiled threats to leave Netanyahu’s coalition over what he called a “reckless deal” with Hamas. Yoav Gallant, the defence minister, backed the PM and warned of impending further military action. “We are observing worrying signs that Hamas does not intend to reach an agreement with us,” he said. “This means strong military action in Rafah will begin in the very near future, and in the rest of the Strip.” Hamas, which triggered the war on October 7 when its gunmen attacked Israel, massacring 1,200 people and carrying off more than 250 hostages — at least 130 of whom remain unaccounted for — insisted it wanted a ceasefire and blamed Netanyahu for stalling the talks. The group has said it Netanyahu blames Hamas as Gaza talks break down would agree to a deal only if Israel permanently ends the war. Its delegation left the negotiating table in Cairo last night after giving its response to the proposal. According to the Hamas-led Gaza health ministry, more than 34,600 Palestinians have been killed since October and more than 77,000 have been wounded. The Israeli bombardment and fighting between the two sides has devastated much of the coastal territory and caused a humanitarian crisis, amid warnings of a famine. Netanyahu remained defiant despite widespread protests on Saturday in Tel Aviv demanding that a deal be struck to allow Israeli hostages to be released. Mediators had claimed in the day that considerable progress had been made during the latest round of talks in Cairo. The talks, which have included William Burns, head of the CIA, may yet be salvaged, but mediators have failed in previous rounds to bridge the gaps between the two sides, despite growing international pressure on both to end the fighting. Burns travelled on to Qatar last night for an emergency meeting with its prime minister. The latest proposal, backed by Israel, was described earlier by the US and Britain as extremely generous, and the onus was on Hamas to accept it. The militant group’s political leaders face eviction from Qatar, which has hosted them for more than a decade. Under the deal, Hamas was to have released 33 of the hostages, comprising women, the elderly and the sick. If the talks collapse altogether Israel is expected to proceed with its operation in Rafah despite western warnings of a humanitarian catastrophe. American media have reported that Washington might delay weapons shipments to Israel if it embarks on the offensive without considering the fate of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians crammed into the city, many of them refugees from the fighting in northern Gaza. The UN has said there has been some improvement in allowing aid into the territory, but Cindy McCain, executive director of the World Food Programme, warned in an interview with NBC that parts of northern Gaza were experiencing “full-blown famine and it’s moving its way south”. The fighting has continued to take its toll on both sides. Israel closed Kerem Shalom, a border crossing with Gaza used for aid, yesterday after Hamas fired several mortars at the site, wounding several Israeli soldiers. In Jerusalem, police raided the offices of the Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera after the government issued a ban on its operations until the war ends, describing it as a national security threat. The broadcaster, which has a network of journalists in Gaza, has been seen as broadly sympathetic towards Hamas and critical of Israel. Ties between Israel and Qatar have been strained by the lack of progress in the talks, with Israel accusing it of not having done enough to pressure Hamas. The US has thanked Qatar for its role in the talks, but has asked that it expel Hamas’s leaders if they do not agree to the ceasefires. Officials in Doha said Qatar was considering the request; aware of growing criticism from American politicians. Qatar hosts the largest American base in the Middle East. Ferrari hometown fights Israel Samer Al-Atrush Middle East Correspondent It is the spiritual home of Italy’s motor industry, a land of fast cars where Ferrari and Maserati produce their most sought after models. Now, as President Xi arrives in Europe to face down claims Beijing is seeking to corner the market on electric vehicles, the town of Modena has declared war on China over alleged plans by one company to misappropriate its hallowed name. The row centres on the SU7, the debut electric car from the Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi that has made waves since its launch in March, gaining 50,000 orders in China in the first 27 minutes of sales. A curvaceous, low-lying four-seater that has drawn comparisons to cars by Porsche, the SU7 is $4,000 cheaper than Tesla’s Model 3, with prices starting at $30,000. Last month, Italian media reported that Xiaomi was on the verge of making the car available in Europe, where it would be sold under a new name: Modena. The town’s mayor criticised the plan on the eve of Paris trade talks between Xi and President Macron and Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission. “No one can think of seizing the Modena brand, even less so if there is no link with the territory,” Gian Carlo Muzzarelli, told an audience at the Motor Valley Fest, a carmanufacturing festival in Modena, on Thursday. The mayor said that renaming the car would confuse consumers and “distort” Modena’s image as a car-manufacturing superpower. He added that the kind of EU regulation protecting place names associated with the production of certain food products and wines – including Parma Italy James Imam Milan Deal hits the same roadblock Behind the story O n Saturday, there was “progress” but by yesterday ceasefire talks were at a “standstill” (Samer Al-Atrush writes). The mediators with the unenviable task of finding a truce between Hamas and Israel are used to convoluted talks, but now patience is wearing thin. There has been some progress in recent days in Cairo, but one source cautioned that there was nothing “concrete” yet. He spoke from bitter experience. Over the past few months, mediators thought several times that an agreement was at hand only for their hopes and many around the world to be dashed. Binyamin Netanyahu has stressed that Israel might be willing to pause the war for Hamas to release hostages, but not to end the conflict. For Israel’s prime minister, the goal remains to remove the rulers of Gaza — something that has eluded him these past seven months. Hamas, meanwhile, insists that the ceasefire must lead to an Israeli withdrawal. Recent optimism came after an Israeli-backed proposal — described by the US and Britain as “generous” — was presented to Hamas. Mindful that patience was ebbing, even among their Qatari hosts, the militants made a song and dance of studying it “in a positive spirit”. But the same chasm that has confronted the mediators in previous rounds was evident again. Israel does not want to end the war and Hamas does not want to provide respite to Gazans unless there is a lasting truce that leaves it in charge. The pressure is rising on both sides, however. Hamas faces eviction from Qatar, which hosts its political leadership, and an Israeli offensive in Rafah, southern Gaza, where its remaining battalions are based. Israel is growing more isolated and patience in the US is running out too. The latest proposal had some compromises, including tacit agreement on the number of hostages Hamas would release during a six-week ceasefire, and the possibility of negotiating further extensions. Hamas has softened its stance on a timeline for ending the war. That gave mediators hope but, as the Qatari lradership has said, it “cannot provide things that the parties themselves refrain from [offering]”. Act of faith President Putin marks Orthodox Easter at the Cathedral of Christ the

the times | Monday May 6 2024 25 Italian hospital never says no to the sickest children Page 28 Modi’s ally ‘flees to Germany amid hundreds of rape allegations’ Page 26 Arielle Boulin-Prat and her original co-presenters on Des chiffres et des lettres in the early 1980s Xi’s electric car invasion Ham, Parmigiano Reggiano and Balsamic Vinegar of Modena – should also be applied to cars. “We will not let them exploit our name for cars made on the other side of the world,” he said. In efforts to block Xiaomi, Adolfo Urso, the trade minister, said that Italy would scrutinise updated EU legislation that came into force in November, extending protected status to industrial products. A spokesman for Xiaomi said the company had not officially announced that the car would be rebranded as Modena but declined to comment on whether the SU7 would be marketed in Europe. Cars are expected to be a central issue at the summit in Paris, after von der Leyen announced an antisubsidy investigation into Chinese electric vehicles in November amid concerns about “artificially low” prices. Chinese companies exported nearly 350,000 electric vehicles to nine European countries in the first half of last year, more than in all of 2022, according to the China Passenger Car Association. On a three-day trip to China in April, Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, who is understood to have turned down an invitation to the Paris summit, warned manufacturers not to undercut European car producers by dumping cheaper models. “We want to obtain reciprocity of exchanges and have the elements of our economic security taken into account,” Macron said in an interview with the French newspaper La Tribune before Xi’s two-day visit, his first trip to the region in five years. “In Europe, we are not unanimous on the subject because certain players still see China as essentially a market of opportunities,” Macron said, without naming any countries. A Russian academic who urged President Putin to carry out a pre-emptive nuclear strike against Europe has been hired by the Kremlin to study ways to “deter the West”. Sergei Karaganov, 71, is a favoured foreign policy adviser of Putin and head of an influential Russian think tank. He is a prominent voice in Russia and cheerleader of the war in Ukraine, arguing that Putin is right to free the world from the “western yoke”. In a 2,000-word essay last year he said a nuclear strike on Europe was the best way of saving the world from a fullblown war, which could leave the planet in “radioactive ruins”. He said only a “madman” in the White House would sacrifice Boston for Poznan, referring to Poland’s fifthlargest city. “Both the US and Europe understand this perfectly well, though they prefer not to think about it.” Karaganov argued that Russian victory in Ukraine could only be achieved if the West was forced to “retreat strategically, or even surrender”. China would be unlikely to support a preemptive nuclear strike on Europe but would “rejoice at heart that a powerful blow has been dealt to the reputation and position of the United States”. He added: “Morally, this is a terrible choice as we will use God’s weapon, dooming ourselves to grave spiritual losses. But if we do not do this not only Russia can die, but most likely the entire human civilisation will cease to exist.” Karaganov, a senior academic at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, one of Russia’s most prestigious universities, has been hired to carry out further research into foreign policy for the Kremlin. An investigation by the Meduza opposition news website found that he has been commissioned to carry out eight studies by both Putin’s private office and the Russian government. The cost to the Russian taxpayer is Putin foreign policy guru urged nuclear strike against Europe unclear, but a source told Meduza it was “no less than ten million rubles” (about £850,000). Topics that Karaganov has been commissioned to write about include “the theory and practice of nuclear deterrence in current conditions with relation to Russian politics” and “a dialogue on developing a new concept of nuclear deterrence in the quadrilateral Russia-China-India-Pakistan format”. A source at the university told Meduza that Karaganov would not be able to manage so many research projects on his own, and speculated that he had been given the job as a sinecure. The source said: “There’s a feeling at the university that they’re making sure certain people are well fed.” Karaganov owns a two-storey apartment overlooking one of Venice’s central canals, according to an investigation by Proekt, an independent Russian media outlet. He also has an apartment in the fashionable district of Prenzlauer Berg in Berlin, according to Bild. Russia has the largest nuclear arsenal in the world and Putin has frequently invoked the threat of nuclear war for diplomatic leverage. He has sole command of Russia’s stockpile of about 5,580 warheads and has revoked the country’s ratification of the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. 6 Russia has launched a satellite in low-earth orbit that the US fears is a test bed for an orbiting nuclear weapon platform (Michael Evans writes). It appears to be part of a plan to deploy an anti-satellite nuclear device, according to Mallory Stewart, US assistant secretary of state for arms control. Russia George Grylls The end of France’s longest-running game show, a test of numeracy and literacy, has prompted a lament about the dumbing down of television. Des chiffres et des lettres began in 1972 and was copied in 17 countries, including Britain where Channel 4’s Countdown has been on air since 1982. France Télévisions, the state broadcaster, blamed falling ratings. Barbara Number’s up for French Countdown Boulin-Prat, 70, and Bertrand Renard, 69, were replaced by younger figures in an effort to attract new viewers. The move failed and the show is now watched by fewer than 700,000 people on the France 3 channel, the equivalent of BBC2. Stéphane Sitbon-Gomez, the broadcaster’s director of programmes, said the overhaul had “not been successful. After 50 years, this is an emblematic [programme]. The decision was difficult but we have chosen to [end it] ... There is a level below which you cannot maintain a programme.” The show often inspired teachers in France, who used its format to interest pupils in mathematics and French. Many, however, say it is too complicated for today’s schoolchildren. Its demise comes with President Macron’s government concerned about a general decline in literacy and numeracy teaching in schools. Laborde, a lecturer at the cinema and audiovisual department of the Sorbonne Nouvelle University in Paris, said the decision was not a surprise as contemporary viewers were drawn to game shows featuring “sport and physical action that tend towards reality television”. The show, in which contestants perform calculations to reach a target number and find the longest word from a random series of letters, ran daily until 2022 when it became weekend-only. The shift in scheduling came amid a public row after the two long-serving co-presenters, Arielle France Adam Sage Paris Sergei Karaganov said nuclear attack would prevent war Saviour, Moscow, and Metropolitan Vladimir sanctifies believers at Nasterea Domnului Cathedral in Chisinau, Moldova

26 S1V2 Monday May 6 2024 | the times World The scion of a political dynasty whose party is allied with India’s prime minister has left the country amid allegations that he sexually assaulted or raped as many as 400 women while filming himself in the act. Prajwal Revanna, 33, is also alleged to have blackmailed his victims with some 2,800 videos recording the assaults. The claims have embroiled Nerandra Modi in a damaging scandal in the thick of India’s six-week general election. Revanna, who is believed to be in Germany, is the grandson of HD Deve Gowda from Karnataka, south India, who was prime minister for nine months in 1996. His party, the Janata Dal (Secular) or JDS, is allied with Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Karnataka. Pick of the crop Rice field festivals in Indonesian vilages such as Badinga celebrate local culture with dancers in traditional dress. The crop is vital to the country which is the world’s fourth biggest producer Modi ‘knew of rape claims against ally’ Last week about 2,000 USB drives containing videos said to show the sexual abuse were left on bus and train seats and on park benches around Karnataka. An aide and driver to Revanna, known only as “Kartik”, is alleged to have leaked them after a falling out a year ago. The opposition Congress Party has seized on the chance to dent Modi’s campaign, pointing to his appearances alongside Revanna at rallies. The BJP’s alliance with the JDS has been used to gain a foothold in southern states where Modi’s Hindu nationalism has been unpopular. Before Revanna left for Germany, allegedly on a diplomatic passport, he had been campaigning for a seat in the city of Hassan, Karnataka. Rahul Gandhi, the Congress leader, alleged that Modi and his party officials had been aware of the videos before they were made public. “This is not a sex scandal but a mass rape,” Ganhi told a rally in Karnataka. “The prime minister has supported a mass rapist. All BJP leaders knew that Prajwal Revanna is a mass rapist and they still allied with him and fielded him in the polls.” One of the alleged victims, a former local councillor in Bangalore, told reporters that she had been assaulted over a period of three years. “He asked me to remove my clothes and I denied and said I would scream for help,” she said. “He then threatened me, saying that he was carrying a gun. He threatened to leak the video to the public if I revealed it to anyone. He used to video call me and ask me to strip. He also raped me several times.” Before Revanna left for Germany he filed a police complaint claiming the videos were “doctored” and were being circulated to “tarnish his image and poison voters’ minds”. A police complaint was filed against Revanna when a former maid in his home came forward to allege that he had repeatedly raped her. “It’s very terrible to watch those videos,” said Dr Nagalakshmi Chowdhary, head of the Karnataka Women’s Commission. “It makes your blood boil.” She said it was possible to “clearly make out” the person in the videos. Revanna’s father, HD Revanna, was arrested on Saturday after the maid alleged she had been assaulted by him at a farmhouse owned by his assistant. The JDS has suspended his son while an investigation by the state government continues. Priyanka Gandhi, the Congress general secretary, challenged Modi on the issue at a rally in Assam. “How is it possible for [Revanna] to leave the country and they don’t know about it?” The BJP has distanced itself from its former ally. “We have nothing to do with the videos and neither do we have any comments to make,” it said. India Amrit Dhillon Delhi Modi’s campaign has been hit by claims against Prajwal Revanna B eing the principal of South Africa’s most famous school is a fraught privilege. “Ours is a big name, everyone is watching us” said Sikheto Hlavangwani, of Morris Isaacson High School, which in 1976 led student protests against apartheid education. The bloody put-down of the Soweto Uprising, when police opened fire Soweto Uprising school still struggling to improve black lives killing at least 176 teenagers, drew international outrage and became a pivotal moment in the fight against minority white rule. This month’s general election, regarded as the most consequential since the first free vote 30 years ago, has revived interest in the school that made history. In the Seventies, the school was a centre of not only radicalism but of academic excellence in defiance of the apartheid regime’s Bantu education policy that black children should learn only to be “hewers of wood and drawers of water”. Volunteers taught the maths and sciences banned by a racist government that spent 16 times more on the education of a white child than a black one. “Our biggest protest was to get ourselves a far better education than the whites wanted,” said Seth Mazibuko, 63, who was arrested for helping to organise the 1976 protests and jailed for seven years on Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela spent a large part of his sentence. The uprising was provoked by the government’s insistence that black children should learn Afrikaans, the hated language of the oppressors. Soon, the protesters broadened their focus and boycotted classes to demand an end to white rule itself. After coming to power in 1994, the African National Congress government expanded access to learning but students have consistently ranked among the lowest in international tests and behind children in poorer parts of Africa. Recent final-year results from Morris Isaacson High — way short of the national average pass rate — are standard for a township. The gap in test scores between the top 20 per cent of schools, which compare well internationally, and the rest is wider than in almost every other country. “We have identified which students need help and there are a lot,” the principal said. His staff typically have 48 pupils per class in the lower grades before they are thinned out by pregnancy, drugs and drink. A lack of budget does not explain such poor results in South Africa, which allocates more to education as a percentage of GDP than the average of countries in the EU. Spend per pupil is the same for black and white, yet the worst-performing schools are in the poorest (non-white) areas which have the worst levels of unemployment and violent crime. It’s not because of an absence of potential at Morris Isaacson High, Lineo Lengolo, the head of African languages, said, but the lack of an idea they could have more. Most pupils in their final year have never left their bleak corner of Soweto. Their free school meal is often the only one they get. “How most of them are living, it’s really no life,” she said. The government claims gains in education, but for Mazibuko, who studied in jail to become a teacher, their activists’ slogan “liberation before education” stalled after freedom. He said: “For the majority of black children the education they are getting is as bad as it was under Bantu education, in some cases worse.” jane flanagan soweto From our correspondent

the times | Monday May 6 2024 27 World Donald Trump hosted a lavish fundraiser at his Mar-a-Lago home on Saturday that doubled as an audition for those hoping to be his vicepresidential running-mate in the race for the White House. The leading contenders to join him on the Republican ticket took the opportunity to mingle with donors and politicians in an effort to impress. After a months-long shadow campaign to catch the former president’s eye, JD Vance of Ohio, Marco Rubio of Florida and Tim Scott of South Carolina, all senators, have emerged as the favourites. They are followed by Elise Stefanik, a congresswoman for New York, and Byron Donalds, a representative of Florida, along with two governors, Doug Burgum of North Dakota and Kristi Noem of South Dakota. All seven attended the Mar-a-Lago event. Trump has indicated that he will announce his running-mate by July, before the Republican national conAn interior designer in West Palm Beach, near Donald Trump’s Mar-aLago estate, Todd Schlanger has invested more than $20,000 in the former president’s social media empire and admits that he became a little nervous when the share price initially plunged. The fluctuating fortunes of the company may have propelled Trump to his highest ranking in the Forbes World’s Billionaires List, but they are not for the faint-hearted. “I love the network, Truth Social, and of course Donald Trump is going to be our next president. So I think that it’s all going to be positive,” said Schlanger, 62, who saw the value of the shares plummet by 67 per cent in three weeks after their launch. Big gains last week have given Schlanger confidence that the shares will give him a comfortable retirement — and he plans to keep buying more every week. “It’s a new company and they have a lot of plans and the revenue is definitely going to be there.” Trump Media & Technology Group, the owner of the former president’s Truth Social site, which he sees as a rival to Twitter/X, has been on a wild ride since its stock market debut in March, leaving a trail of winners and losers in its wake. Much like Trump’s rollercoaster presidency, it is mired in legal battles and conspiracy theories, Todd Schlanger, a loyal Truth Social backer, met Donald Trump in 2019 Trump Media & Technology Group Share price Source: Yahoo Finance $70 20 March April 30 40 50 60 Kristi Noem and Marco Rubio are two of the seven jockeying for position Running-mates mingle at Mar-a-Lago vention, when he will be crowned as the party’s nominee for president. He addressed the audience and delighted in pitting the contenders against each other in the style of his reality show The Apprentice. “I’ve got 50 people calling me, begging me: ‘I’ll cut off my right arm, sir. Please, I want to be the vice-president.’ These are ambitious politicians,” he said. Vance, a venture capitalist and author of the bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy, is the favourite, despite denouncing Trump as “an idiot” and “America’s Hitler” in 2016. Vance rebuilt bridges to secure Trump’s endorsement for the 2022 Senate race and is now a staunch loyalist, regularly appearing on news shows to defend him throughout his legal troubles. Trump acknowledged on Saturday that the Ohio senator “wasn’t a supporter of mine” in the past, but praised his conversion and said that Vance had “turned out to be incredible”. Noem has campaigned aggressively for the vice-presidential slot, but her stock has fallen after revealing in a forthcoming book that she shot and killed her dog for misbehaving, and claiming — falsely — that she faced down Kim Jong-un during her time in Congress. She said yesterday that the Kim anecdote shouldn’t have been in the book”. Scott and Rubio are touted for their appeal to black and Latino voters respectively, as Trump makes inroads into President Biden’s support among these voters. Some urge Trump to pick a woman as the party struggles to define its position on abortion. United States Hugh Tomlinson Washington Trump’s rival to Twitter is rollercoaster ride of riches Investors in Truth Social need nerves of steel to hold on to an unusually volatile stock, writes David Charter counterprotesters are patriots. The advert, which was posted by Trump on his Truth Social platform, features a video of the incident but cuts off just before the student is seen making monkey gestures. Counterprotesters at the University of Mississippi make gestures at a proPalestinian demonstrator as an official intervenes but it has so far defied the expert consensus that its value would collapse when exposed to market forces. The company claims to have more than half a million small shareholders, many driven by their faith in Trump. The share price has hit $79.38 and dipped as low as $26.40, closing on Friday at $47.93 after it appealed to its loyal investors to fight back against allegations of manipulation by short sellers; investors who borrow shares to make a profit from falling value. Seasoned market watchers believe the company, listed on the Nasdaq exchange under Trump’s initials DJT, is overvalued at $6.55 billion. Based in Sarasota, Florida, with 36 employees, it reported a net loss of $58 million last year on revenue of just $4.1 million. Like many Trump fans, Schlanger believes the shares are being unfairly targeted by hedge funds and others to drive them down. “It is being manipulated but we’re fighting through it,” Schlanger said. He is part of a 10,000- strong support group on Truth Social. The returns have already been great for a handful of executives: the chief executive, Devin Nunes, a former Republican congressman, earned $750,000 last year and received a raise to $1 million this year, along with shares worth $5.5 million. He also received a $600,000 retention bonus last month. Trump himself has such a massive stake, worth $4.25 billion, that he is now the planet’s 359th richest person, at least on paper. However, he cannot sell any of his 64.9 per cent until six months after the March 26 launch unless he receives special permission from the board, which includes his son Don Jr. There is little hard evidence of the illegal short selling alleged by the company but its complaints to Nasdaq two weeks ago led to a rally that caught out many small investors betting against it. “The problem is that I went short on it at the time that it began to rocket off and so I’ve lost a lot of money on this,” said Manny Marotta, 26, a legal writer for an AI company from Ohio. “I’ve lost around $10,000 at this point. Probably the worst financial decision I’ve ever made is to go short on DJT.” Marotta watched in horror as his bet that the stock would fall from $30 to $20 went awry when numerous sizable purchases kept coming in. It is impossible to know who was behind the buying as only the volume and timing of the trades are revealed, fuelling rumours about possible political motivations behind moves to improve the share price. The big daily rises halted on Friday only when the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Trump Media’s auditor with fraud. The commission made no allegation of wrongdoing against Trump Media, but the stock was down 1.54 per cent. “Usually people don’t buy a stock after it’s run [risen] 120 per cent in two weeks, they like to wait,” Marotta said. “So the fact that people are still buying it at $49 a share at these volumes … who the heck is buying these shares?” T he University of Mississippi has opened an investigation after a student appeared to make monkey noises at a black woman protesting against the war in Gaza as tensions continue to rise on campuses across the United States (Hugh Tomlinson writes). Video of the incident shows a confrontation between pro-Palestinian demonstrators and a crowd of counterprotesters holding American flags and Donald Trump banners. As a black student approaches the baying crowd of young white men, the camera pans to show one imitating a monkey as the others jeer at her. Black student groups said it was “abhorrent”. The university has ordered an investigation into the “hostility and racist overtones” of the demonstration. Trump’s presidential campaign has released an advert claiming that the pro-Israel ‘Maga mob’ hurl racist abuse at war protester

28 Monday May 6 2024 | the times World The head of the Bambino Gesu children’s hospital in Rome sums up his approach to the toughest, apparently most hopeless cases with one phrase. “We cannot say no,” said Tiziano Onesti after his hospital again offered treatment to a chronically ill infant from Britain, despite doctors in the UK seeing no point pushing on with treatment. The latest case involved a monthold Italian boy with a serious heart condition flown last month by the Italian air force to Rome after the Bristol Royal Hospital for Children reportedly said treatment was not available. In Rome, Bambino Gesu’s sanitary director, Massimiliano Raponi, told The Times that the child’s heart was positioned in a way that blood flowed the wrong way through it. “The condition of the patient is very delicate, like a piece of crystal. We are evaluating operations to re-establish blood flow which will ensure the survival of the child,” he said. The case is just the latest to highlight a contrast in medical ethics between Italy and Britain the UK ‘We cannot say no’: Hospital that takes on hopeless cases which has now been exacerbated by the determination of Giorgia Meloni, the prime minister, to wade into the issue, driven by a Catholicisminspired drive to keep patients alive where UK doctors see an unnecessary prolonging of pain. Similar cases stretch back to 2017 when Bambino Gesu offered a place to a British baby boy, Charlie Gard, who was born with a rare genetic disorder and given little hope of survival by UK doctors before dying as his family fought a legal battle to keep his treatment going. A year later, the Rome hospital again offered in vain to assist Alfie Evans, the Liverpool toddler with a neurodegenerative disorder whose parents lost a legal battle to keep him alive in the UK. Vatican-owned for the past 100 years and perched on a hill above St Peter’s, Bambino Gesu offers treatment to 500 children from abroad every year, including two African Siamese twins whose joined heads were separated in a ground breaking operation in 2020. It now hosts Tafida Raqeeb, a brain-damaged British girl who was first flown to a Genoa hospital and then to Bambino Gesu after doctors at the Royal London Hospital said in 2020 that her condition would not improve and advised her life support be switched off. Last year, in the case of Indi Gregory, a critically ill eight-monthold British baby, the Rome hospital was ready with a bed as Meloni stepped in to grant the infant Italian citizenship, ultimately to no avail as judges called Italy’s intervention “wholly misconceived” and ordered the end of treatment. In Gregory’s case, Bambino Gesu was not set to offer life saving surgery but palliative care — meaning making life more comfortable for a patient with little chance of recovering. Palliative care, said Onesti, set his hospital apart from the UK approach. “There is a system of accompaniment which includes the family,” he said, adding: “We speak to the doctors, but also to the mother and father who tell us the child is dying but feel he or she senses them when they are close. They feel something the doctors cannot and they steer us.” “There is a difference in terms of cultural approach and sensibility — Catholicism has one approach and Protestantism another,” he said. Onesti added: “It is a difference in the approach to people, rather than in the research.” Italy Tom Kington Rome I n the golden age of duelling in France in the 16th and 17th centuries, hundreds of people died defending their honour every year (Adam Sage writes). Most duellists were noblemen, though there were some women too and, in the 18th century, a French transgender spy who defeated an opponent in London. Now the Army Museum at Les Invalides in Paris is staging an exhibition paying tribute to what Julia Bovet, the curator, calls a “veritable French passion”. Duels, L’art du Combat, which runs until August, will set the scene for the Paris Olympics this summer, when the fencing competition will take place a few hundred metres away in Le Grand Palais exhibition hall. France, which counts on the discipline to boost its medal haul, has long enjoyed sword fights, and never more so than when they ended in bloodshed. General Henry de France honours long history of duelling each culture developing its own rules and rituals. But she said duelling was particularly popular in France because of the country’s attachment to values such as “honour, heroism and courage”. Duels continued to be fought in France well into the 20th century, long after they had disappeared elsewhere in Europe. The last known example was in 1967 when Gaston Defferre, the left-wing mayor of Marseilles, challenged a right-wing MP who had called him an “idiot” in a parliamentary debate. Defferre’s opponent abandoned the fight after suffering a minor injury. “Although rare, there are several important feminine duels of honour throughout history,” the catalogue says. In the mid-19th century, for instance, two women fought a pistol duel in a forest near Bordeaux over a nobleman. Both survived. Two centuries earlier, Julie de Maupin, an aristocrat’s daughter who had dressed as a man in order to return alone to Paris after ditching her lover, got into an argument with a soldier in an inn. The dispute ended in a sword duel in which the soldier was seriously injured. It was only afterwards that he discovered his adversary had been a woman. Duelling, with sword or pistol, continued in France long after it died out elsewhere in Europe — occasionally between the unlikeliest of combatants Medlege, the museum’s director, said that even after Louis XIV, the Sun King, had issued an edict banning duelling in 1679, they continued to be “tolerated and even appreciated” in the army. The exhibition traces the history of duelling from Antiquity, when Homer’s Iliad described the combat between Hector and Achilles. Bovet said it was a global phenomenon, practised from India to Japan and Africa, with Creative writing masterclass IN ITALY Departure | September 1, 2024 Learn how to create, polish, perfect and sell your work with some of the most experienced professionals in the publishing industry. CALL TODAY ON 0808 256 3832 thetimes.co.uk/ tr-writingmasterclass QUOTE TIMES Scan the QR code with your camera app to view more details. OUR TRUSTED PARTNER *Terms and conditions apply. Price correct at the time of publishing. 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the times | Monday May 6 2024 29 Business Tom Saunders, Alex Ralph Political committees affiliated with some of Britain’s biggest companies with operations in the United States have donated more than $1.1 million since the Capitol riot to Republican “election deniers”, The Times has found. The political action committee (PAC) of BAE Systems, which briefly suspended donations after the violence on January 6, 2021, has since donated $289,000, almost a quarter of its total, to the campaigns of Republican members of Congress who voted against certifying Joe Biden’s election as president. The committee of Reynolds American, the US business of British American Tobacco, has donated $132,000 since then, or about 37 per cent of its total, analysis of Federal Election Commission data compiled by OpenSecrets, a non-profit organisation, has found. Experian, the credit rating group, which had also suspended donations, has spent $132,000 of its total. Other committees associated with prominent British companies operating in the US that have donated to those Republican members include Britain’s two big pharmaceutical groups, GSK and AstraZeneca, Rolls-Royce, the aerospace engineer, Serco, the outsourcer, and Barclays bank. After pressure from Donald Trump, then the president, 139 Republican members of Congress and eight members of the Senate voted against the certification of Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election on January 6, objecting to electoral results in either Ari12Apr 5 19 26 May 3 12Apr 5 19 26 May 3 12Apr 5 19 26 May 3 12Apr 5 19 26 May 3 12Apr 5 19 26 May 3 12Apr 5 19 26 May 3 1.400 1.300 1.200 1.100 1.300 1.200 1.100 1.000 commodities currencies $ FTSE 100 8,213.49 (+73.66) 8,500 8,000 7,500 7,000 world markets Brent crude (6pm) $83.19 (-6.16) $ £/$ $1.2548 (+0.0076) £/€ €1.1650 (-0.0020) ¤ (Friday’s close. Change on the week) 120 100 80 60 Dow Jones 38,675.68 (+436.02) 42,500 40,000 37,500 35,000 $ 2,600 2,400 2,200 2,000 Gold $2,297.37 (-38.36) The key cutter Timpson, the construction group Willmott Dixon and the charter airline Titan Airways are among 252 companies whose success has been recognised by the King. The second annual King’s Awards for Enterprise builds on the five-decade legacy of the late Queen to celebrate companies for their success in the UK and overseas, their innovation and susFrom key cutter to chocolate maker, businesses get royal approval Richard Tyler tainability, and their promotion of social mobility. Seventy-nine of the companies are based in London and the southeast of England, 31 per cent of the total. The east of England boasted 27, the next largest concentration of companies, followed by 26 in the northwest and 22 in the West Midlands. The winners will be given trophies by the King’s lord-lieutenants, receive an invitation to Buckingham Palace and allowed to display the King’s Awards emblem for five years. One of the youngest recipients is Mitchell Barnes, 27, who runs a 3D car parts printing company called RYSE 3D based in Warwick. He set up the business in 2017 after finishing his degree at Coventry University and it employs 14 people. He plans to increase that number to 25 by December when its annual sales should exceed £4 million. Barnes said: “It means a lot as it is validating all the effort, the sleeping under the desk for months on end, no holidays, stress, risk.” Another recipient is a chocolate maker from Ely, Cambridgeshire, called Harry Specters, which employs autistic staff across its business — from making and packaging the products to administration, design and photography. Founded in 2012 by Mona and Shaz Shah, whose son Ash, 26, has autism and works in the business, the social enterprise has supported more than 360 people with autism. A former police officer’s event security firm, Halo Solutions, is also recognised. Lloyd Major’s Newark-based team developed a rapid-response communications management system after the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing. It is designed to help venues to better respond to such incidents. Other names recognised include Political donations resumed after Capitol riot US ‘election deniers’ link to UK firms zona, Pennsylvania or both. The votes occurred hours after rioters supporting Trump had stormed the Capitol building in an effort to disrupt the certification process. The outrage led to a series of US businesses, including Walmart, American Express and Marriott, committing to suspending donations from affiliated committees. However, many have since resumed making donations and their payments have come under scrutiny in the US. The American subsidiary of BAE, the FTSE 100 defence manufacturer, had suspended all donations from its committee in response to the “deeply disturbing violence”, but its affiliated committee and those of other defence companies have since resumed donations. Experian also said at the time that it had paused making donations from its committee but resumed later that year. Among those congressmen who objected to Biden’s certification and received donations from UK-affiliated companies Richard Hudson, a Republican member of the House’s energy and commerce committee, received $56,000 — more than anyone else. Kevin McCarthy, the former Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives who also objected to Biden’s certification, received $38,500. The research comes before a probable rematch between Biden and Trump in November’s presidential election. The stakes remain high for multinational companies, with changes to regulations and public procurement in Washington having a Big day Umar Kamani, co-founder of the Pretty Little Thing fashion brand, and Nada Adelle at their wedding on the French Riviera last week. Kamani sold his stake to Boohoo, the company run by his father Mahmud Kamani, in 2020, for Boohoo shares and £161 million. Boohoo’s stock price has since fallen 80 per cent Results stress affects bosses’ mental health Lottie Hayton Referrals of chief executives for mental health problems triple around the time of deadlines for filing financial results, according to a clinic for wealthy individuals. Paracelsus Recovery, an addiction and psychological treatment centre based in Zurich and London, treats senior executives, royals and celebrities. It reported an average increase in referrals last month from 15 in other months of the year to 45. Jan Gerber, Paracelsus founder and chief executive, said: “If a company is struggling, c-suite executives and company owners tend to ‘face the hard facts’ in the run-up to the results filing deadline on April 30. Financial loss can trigger fear and self-loathing in all of us. However, the trait which enabled the kind of person who is capable of becoming a CEO to create success — an unrelenting focus on winning — is a quality that interferes most with their ability to adapt to failure. A poor financial result period essentially pulls the ‘mask’ off.” In 2021, when companies struggled with the extra financial pressures of the pandemic, the increase in the number of senior executives referred to Paracelsus was about 400 per cent compared with the previous year. A report from Bupa, the health insurance firm, in 2021 confirmed a link between financial stressors and the health of business leaders. It said that during the financial uncertainty created by Covid-19, 78 per cent of UK business leaders experienced symptoms such as fatigue, lack of motivation, mood swings and disturbed sleep. Gerber highlighted chief executive suicides between March and September, which he said indicated “mental health crises hit in springtime and then build towards autumn”. He added: “Mental health appears to be deteriorating but if we can help executives through their struggles they may come out the other side more empathetic and this trickles down, so their companies and wider society will benefit.”

30 Monday May 6 2024 | the times Business many and Spain. At Port Talbot, Associated British Ports (ABP), which owns and operates 21 ports in the UK, wants to change that. The company is investing £500 million to turn the port into a “manufacturing hub” of floating offshore wind. In so doing, it hopes to bring a new, green industry to a town beset by the decline of an old polluting one. Next to the harbour is Tata’s steelworks, the UK’s largest producer not only of steel but also of carbon emissions. The steelworks, one of the biggest in the world, has been under threat of closure since the 1980s. Huge mounds of coking coal are piled up around the site, ready to be shovelled into its last two remaining blast furnaces that will soon be closed, creating up to 2,800 redundancies. Workers at the plant, which has a workforce of about 4,000, recently backed strike action over the closures. Lumen Energy & Environment, a consultancy firm, has estimated that the launch of floating offshore wind in the Celtic Sea could create 5,300 jobs. The Crown Estate is tendering bids for the development of 4.5 gigawatts (GW) of floating wind in the Celtic Sea, and the government plans to develop a further 12GW. Combined, that’s more offshore wind than has so far been deployed in all the UK’s waters. By the early 2030s, turbines could be erected here at the rate of three a week, and Port Talbot, with its deep harbour, could be best placed to make that happen. “As offshore wind moves from fixed bottom to floating, there’s an opportu1 Britain’s pubs face many challenges, from extortionate energy bills to high staff costs, but arguably the greatest threat is that young people are just not drinking as much. Some venues have found a solution: they are swapping out their kitchens for karaoke rooms. A study in Finland found this could boost profits by 12 per cent. 2 For an hour on April 15, Great Britain’s national grid ran virtually entirely free of fossil fuels. Between 12.30pm and 1.30pm, coal and gas power plants provided 2.4 per cent of the country’s electricity supply, a record low. 3 As President Xi of China arrives in Europe for EU trade talks, Modena, the Italian town where Ferrari and Maserati produce their most sought-after models, has reacted furiously to alleged plans by Xiaomi, a Chinese smartphone maker, to sell its debut electric car under the name Modena. 4 Political committees affiliated to some of Britain’s biggest companies with operations in the United States have donated more than $1.1 million since the Capitol riot to Republican “election deniers”. The political action committee of BAE Systems has donated $289,000 to Republican members of Congress who voted against certifying Joe Biden’s election as president. The committee of Reynolds American, the US business of BAT, has donated $132,000. 5 Referrals of chief executives for mental health problems triple around the time of deadlines for filing financial results, according to Paracelsus Recovery, a clinic for wealthy individuals. 6 The key cutter Timpson, the construction group Willmott Dixon and the charter airline Titan Airways are among 252 companies in the line-up for the King’s Awards for Enterprise, which celebrates innovation and sustainability, and promotion of social mobility. 7 Andi Case, the boss of the shipping group Clarkson, is facing an eighth consecutive shareholder revolt over his pay this week, after receiving a £12 million packet last year. 8 UBS, one of the world’s biggest wealth management groups, is set to increase its clients’ exposure to UK equities after its chief investment officer upgraded his rating on Londonlisted stocks. 9 Warren Buffett heaped praise on Apple despite selling billions of dollars of its stock, saying the iPhone was possibly the greatest product of all time. He also revealed a cautious approach on markets, saying he was content to let his cash pile rise to $200 billion. 10The $120 trillion global fund management industry saw its costs rise more than 20 times faster than revenues last year, according to a report highlighting challenges for the sector. Need to know ‘Bonus share’ plan for NatWest investors Retail investors could receive a “bonus” share in NatWest if they hold on to the stock for at least a year in plans being drawn up by ministers for a populist Tell Sid-style privatisation of some of the government’s remaining shares in the bank. It plans a mass-market sale of NatWest shares, which Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, has said could “create a new generation of retail investors”. The Treasury has a stake in NatWest Group of about 28 per cent, worth an estimated £7 billion. The retail offer will be launched alongside an institutional placing, which together could result in the Treasury’s stake falling as low as 10 per cent, according to reports. Ministers are exploring plans that could award one bonus share for every ten bought by retail investors and held for at least a year, though this could still be amended by officials, Sky News reported. The Royal Mail share sale offered similar loyalty shares. Officials are also considering including a minimum investment of £250, as well as a possible ceiling of £10,000. In the past, government retail share offerings typically included a small discount on the prevailing price to encourage people to buy the stock. The offer could be launched as early as this month. The taxpayer became NatWest’s biggest shareholder when the government rescued the lender, then known as Royal Bank of Scotland, for £45.5 billion during the financial crisis of 2007-09. The government’s stake was once as high as 84 per cent but has been reduced by deals to sell large blocks of shares to institutional investors, as well as buybacks. All sales were below the 502p per share that the government paid during the crisis. The FTSE 100 bank became embroiled in a scandal last year over the decision by Coutts, its private banking arm, to drop Nigel Farage, the former leader of Ukip, as a customer. Farage said last month that the “debanking row is far from over” and “no member of the British public should put their money or invest in shares in the NatWest Group all the while they continue to hide the facts, the information, the truth, about me”. “Tell Sid” was the slogan of the marketing campaign for the British Gas flotation in 1986, a sale that caught the imagination of first-time investors. NatWest reported pre-tax operating profits of £6.2 billion last year, a fifth higher than the previous year and its biggest return since its state bailout. The Treasury said: “The government will make a decision about launching a retail offering of NatWest shares in due course. No final decisions have yet been taken.” NatWest said: “Any decisions on the timing or mechanics of a potential retail offer are a matter for the government.” Lauren Almeida continued from page 29 Businesses get King’s approval deVOL, a maker of high-end kitchens; Times Higher Education, the global universities specialist owned by the private equity firm Inflexion; Mindful Chef, the recipe box provider; and Firmdale Hotels, which owns 11 hotels and eight restaurants in London and New York. James Timpson, chief executive of Timpson Group, which provides dry cleaning, shoe repairs and photographic services as well as key cutting, said it had been recognised for being one of the UK’s largest employers of former offenders. “The work that we undertake in the Timpson Foundation enables us to provide prison leavers and other marginalised groups with a second chance, through the offer of employment,” he said. “By being such an inclusive employer, not only are we able to recruit some amazing people into our business, but we also help to reduce reoffending.” Applications for next year’s King’s Awards open today. How wind turbines floating at sea can re-energise Port Talbot The region could turn into a manufacturing hub for green energy that revives Tata Steel, writes Ben Cooke On the day The Times visits Port Talbot, a 40mph gale is blowing, whipping up white horses in the bay. If this were the North Sea, offshore wind turbines would be spinning furiously. Here, however, because the nearby waters of the Celtic Sea are too deep to attach turbines to the seabed, the energy is going unused. Plans are afoot to capture wind energy around Port Talbot in a different way. Rather than building them into the seabed, wind farm developers are planning to install hundreds of turbines on floating platforms, attaching them to the bottom only with anchors. It might conjure images of large, spindly turbines toppling into the waves but it’s a proven concept. Off Peterhead in Scotland, six floating turbines have been spinning away since 2017. That wind farm — Hywind Scotland — is expected to become the first of many, as developers seek to exploit the 80 per cent of wind resources worldwide that lie outside shallow waters. Although Hywind Scotland was a world first for Britain, the turbines were assembled in Norway before being towed across the North Sea. The UK has become a world leader in offshore wind, attracting foreign companies to put up turbines around its coasts, and now has more offshore turbines than any country except China. However, it has had less success in fostering a domestic wind industry. Only about half the money spent by energy companies on building wind farms in British waters has gone to companies operating in the UK. Many of the components and installation ships have come from Denmark, Gernity for the UK to grab more of the economic activity that we didn’t grasp previously,” Andy Reay, ABP’s head of offshore wind, says. “We’ve historically got away with relatively modest investments in ports to deliver fixed-bottom offshore wind, but floating offshore wind has very different port infrastructure requirements.” Whereas fixed-bottom turbines are pieced together out at sea, it is much harder to build a turbine atop a platform. ABP envisages that most floating turbines will be fully assembled in port and then tugged out to sea, giving manufacturers reason to base themselves nearby. That assembly process will require a lot of space. Quays will have to be broadened to support cranes that will build the turbines’ football pitch-sized How it works A floating wind turbine platform is made up of simple steel components that are manufactured off site and assembled on quayside before being towed out to sea Primary structure manufactured off site and delivered to assembly port Completed structure is towed to project site Steel components are assembled to form platform Platform launched and returned to quayside for assembly of wind turbine 1 2 3 4 5 Source: Marine Power Systems Platform is hooked up to tensioned moorings that have minimal seabed interaction, which reduces environmental impact The combination of heavy industry

the times | Monday May 6 2024 31 Business cally say that contributing to a member doesn’t equal an endorsement of all of that member’s actions.” Companies approached for comment said the committees were organised independently and that donations were non-partisan. Experian said that it had “always been deeply committed to our country’s democratic process and the Experian PAC has a long track record of supporting both the Democrat and Republican parties. Our PAC activity will continue to reflect this bipartisan approach. US PAC contributions are made with full transparency as required by US law.” BAE said: “We do not make corporate contributions or donations to political parties. Eligible employees in the US can choose to contribute to the BAE Systems political action committee, which must operate in full compliance with US federal laws and regulations.” Barclays said: “Barclays is a politically neutral organisation and does not engage in party-political campaigning or make party-political donations. The US PAC is not controlled by Barclays, it is funded and governed by employees and supports bipartisan candidates.” GSK said: “We can confirm that, like thousands of other companies operating in the US, we support an employeeoperated political action committee that facilitates voluntary political donations by eligible GSK employees. As a company, we do not make corporate political contributions anywhere around the world.” The boss of the shipping group Clarkson is facing an eighth consecutive shareholder revolt over his pay this week after receiving a £12 million packet last year. Andi Case, who has led the FTSE 250 group since 2008, received a bonus of £10.4 million last year, on top of a base salary of £550,000 and hundreds of thousands of pounds in other longterm incentives and benefits. It makes Case one of the most highly paid executives in London. Last year he was paid more than the chief executives of HSBC, Shell and BP, who received £10.6 million, £8 million and £8 million respectively. Four in ten shareholders voted against Clarkson’s director remuneration at its annual meeting last year. The company will host its next shareholder meeting this week, where a number of investors are again expected to rebel. platforms. Space must also be made for laying down the turbines’ fibreglass blades, which are as tall as the Elizabeth Tower. ABP intends to apply for planning permission for all this by June next year and to have finished upgrading the port by the end of the decade. BW Ideol, a French company that makes concrete platforms for wind turbines, and Swansea-based Marine Power Systems (MPS), which makes platforms out of steel, are competing to supply the project. Paul de la Guérivière, chief executive of BW Ideol, believes his company has the advantage because “there is absolutely no way to be cost-competitive manufacturing steel foundations in Europe. You would have to manufacture them in Asia then tow the structure to Europe.” Anthony Glick, MPS business development manager, says that it is working with Tata Steel to develop a foundation made from strip steel, which can be produced in the steelworks’ new electric arc furnaces, rather than the plate steel made in the soon-to-be closed blast furnaces. He adds: “It’s disappointing that so many people at the steelworks will sadly lose their jobs, but there’s still going to be steel produced in south Wales, and that’s a great positive.” Glick says that ports around Europe are competing to attract wind turbine manufacturers. “There are lots of ports in Europe that are having huge amounts of money spent on them to do exactly what Port Talbot wants to do. Lots of manufacturers are already based in Bilbao, for instance, and it’s feasible that either components or entire wind turbines could be produced UBS gives backing to British stocks with rating upgrade Helen Cahill UBS, one of the world’s biggest wealth management groups, is set to increase its clients’ exposure to UK equities after its chief investment officer upgraded his rating on London-listed stocks. The Swiss investment bank, which has assets under management of about $5.2 trillion, has radically upgraded its view of UK stocks as it predicts that energy and commodities companies will benefit from a revival in the global manufacturing sector. UBS has shifted its rating from “least” to “most” preferred even as its smaller rival, Coutts, announced plans to pull more than £2 billion of client money out of the London stock market. Coutts, which is owned by the taxpayer-backed NatWest bank, told clients last week that its exposure to the UK was “something of an anachronism” and that it wanted to take a “more global approach” to its investments. Dean Turner, chief eurozone and UK economist at UBS Global Wealth Management, said that UK equities had underperformed in recent years owing to a lack of technology stocks, but that the manufacturing sector was set for a rebound. He said: “The UK has been cheap for some time, but a lot of that has been due to the fact that the UK market has much lower exposure to the sectors that have led the market recovery, which has been mainly linked to AI and technology stocks, and for that reason we’ve seen the UK underperforming. “The UK is starting to look more attractive because it has a higher representation among stocks and sectors which will benefit from the initial stages of a broader recovery in the manufacturing sector globally, such as energy and commodities, and that comes against a backdrop of inexpensive valuations.” Mark Haefele, the bank’s chief investment officer, oversees the investment policy and strategy for its invested assets. His office makes recommendations that are ultimately reflected in the portfolios that are managed or advised by UBS. Last week, the chief investment office told clients of the decision to turn positive on the UK markets. Last month the global manufacturing sector recorded growth for the third consecutive month. JP Morgan’s global purchasing managers’ index, a closely watched measure of the sector, came in at 50.3, as output and new orders continued to expand. Any measure below 50 indicates contraction. In March, the index accelerated at its fastest rate since June 2022 and Chris Williamson, chief business economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence, said the data was “hinting at a nascent recovery from stagnation”. The sector had fallen into a prolonged recession owing to post-pandemic disruption in supply chains and the global energy crisis of 2022. London’s stocks are heavily weighted to oil and industrial metals, and the stock market has also benefited from an expectation that central banks will cut interest rates. The FTSE 100 index closed at a record of 8,213 on Friday as Shell beat profit expectations and revealed a share buyback programme of $3.5 billion. Coutts has informed clients that it will reduce its allocation of UK shares in six funds from 40 per cent to between 1.9 per cent and 3.5 per cent. Fahad Kamal, chief investment officer, said: “Currently, about 20 per cent of a standard balanced portfolio here is UK stocks, which is something of an anachronism. It would be closer to 3 or 4 per cent if it were more commensurate with the proportion of UK stocks in global stock markets. So this is a recalibration.” significant impact on their revenue and profits. Corporate political action committees, known as separate segregated funds, can seek to influence the election by raising money from employees and donating to federal candidates, including incumbents on influential Washington committees. With direct corporate contributions to candidates banned at the federal level, committees are the most common route to donate. Foreign companies with American subsidiaries can create committees that direct voluntary contributions from restricted personnel, such as American executives and their families, as long as there is no financing, direction or control from a foreign person or entity. Companies can encourage eligible employees to donate to a corporate PAC through incentive programmes such as raffles and matching contributions with charitable donations, and “tokens of appreciation” such as plaques and events, including parties. Andrew Mayersohn, committees researcher at OpenSecrets, said: “Some corporate PACs pledged not to give to members of Congress who objected to certifying the 2020 election results, but since most of the objectors remained in Congress, several in leadership positions, many of the pledgers resumed contributions before the 2022 election cycle had even ended. Companies typicontinued from page 29 UK firms’ link to ‘election deniers’ Shipping boss faces eighth pay revolt Two shareholder advisory groups, Pirc and Glass Lewis, have recommended investors reject the pay report. It would mark the eighth time in a row that Case has faced a revolt over his pay. The rebellion puts Clarkson on the so-called list of shame, a register run by the Investment Association trade body. It lists firms where more than 20 per cent of shareholders have voted against executive pay. It has previously included Pearson, AstraZeneca and Unilever. Leading City figures are arguing that one of the reasons international companies shun share listings in London is because executives can get larger pay deals in the United States. Michel Demaré, chairman of AstraZeneca, one of the FTSE 100’s biggest companies, criticised influential proxy advisory groups last month, writing in the Financial Times that they were causing “serious harm” to the competitiveness of big companies based in Britain because of their stance on executive pay. The pharmaceutical group overcame a shareholder revolt at its annual meeting last month against plans to pay its chief executive Sir Pascal Soriot up to about £18.5 million this year. Julia Hoggett, head of the London Stock Exchange, said last year that the City should be encouraging British companies to compete for global talent. “The alternative is we continue standing idly by as our biggest exports become skills, talent, tax revenue and the companies that generate it,” she said. Case joined Clarkson in 2006 and became chief executive in 2008. Tim Miller, a Clarkson director who leads its pay committee, said: “Clarkson’s shareholders have benefited from 18 years of sustained and strategic investment led by Andi Case, which has delivered the world’s leading shipping services business, a UK success story and an increase in value under Andi’s tenure of over 1,800 per cent, from £62 million to over £1.2 billion today.” Lauren Almeida there and then towed to the seas around Wales. We don’t want that. We want everything produced here.” Last month, Sir Keir Starmer pledged that Labour would deliver “the biggest investment in our ports in a generation”, spending £1.8 billion to make them ready for floating offshore wind. Glick says this money would be best spent “encouraging overseas businesses to locate in Port Talbot to build a supply chain here.” He says: “There is no reason why this could not be a significant manufacturing hub. Right now, there are lots of engineering graduates from Swansea who leave the area because there aren’t the jobs. This gives us an opportunity to retain those people in the Swansea and Port Talbot area, and it will be a wellpaid industry.” and the potential for offshore wind development makes Port Talbot an ideal site to drive green growth, advocates say Powering up Aspired high-case scenario (150GW*) Low-ambition scenario (100GW*) Business-as-usual scenario (75GW*) 35GW 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 2025 2030 2035 2040 *Offshore wind in 2050. Source: ORE Catapult, RHDHV – Deployment scenario document Floating offshore wind development predictions (cumulative capacity in GW)

32 Monday May 6 2024 | the times Business Labour has reiterated plans to force blue-chip companies and banks to align with UN climate goals. The policy would require Britain’s biggest companies to stick to the 2015 Paris climate deal, which aims to keep the rise in temperatures, compared with pre-industrial levels, below 1.5C. Under a Labour government it would “be a [legal] requirement for companies to have transition plans for how they’re going to comply with the 1.5C target,” Ed Miliband, the shadow climate Warren Buffett has heaped praise on Apple despite dumping billions of dollars of stock in the iPhone maker. The investor lauded the iPhone as potentially “the greatest product of all time”. The Berkshire Hathaway chief executive and chairman made the comments to an audience of about 10,000 shareholders who had arrived in Omaha, Nebraska, to hear the “Sage of Omaha” give his thoughts on the performance of the company’s portfolio, prospects for global stock markets and the health of the American economy at the company’s annual meeting. Hours earlier the company revealed that the value of its holding in Apple had shrunk to $135 billion, from $174 billion at the end of last year, indicating that Berskhire had sold about 13 per cent of its holding. Buffett, who normally stays away from the technology sector, started building a stake in Apple in 2016. The shares have slipped into negative territory since the start of the year amid concerns over weakening demand for the iPhone as the Chinese economy has faltered. However, first-quarter results last week beat downbeat analyst expectations. Buffett said that Apple was “an even better business” than two of Berkshire’s oldest and largest investments, American Express and Coca-Cola. He added that it would remain his company’s biggest stock investment at the end of the year, barring unforeseen events. Tim Cook, Apple chief executive, who attended the meeting, told CNBC, the broadcaster, that Buffett had informed him of the stock sales a day before the annual meeting. He said: “It’s a privilege to have them as a shareholder.” The stock sales pushed Berkshire’s cash pile to a record $189 billion, indicating that Buffett and his lieutenants were finding it hard to identify investment opportunities. Buffett said the position could grow to $200 billion this quarter, reflecting the risks from geopolitical turmoil and racy stock market valuations. “I don’t mind at all under current conditions building the cash position. When I look at the alternatives, what’s available in equity markets and the composition of what’s going on in the world, we find it quite attractive,” Buffett told shareholders. About three quarters of the value of the equity portfolio was concentrated in only five companies at the end of March: Apple, Bank of America, American Express, the Coca-Cola Company and Chevron. The value of its stocks totalled $336 billion, down from $356 billion. Net earnings fell to $12.8 billion during the first quarter, from $35.8 billion last year. Berkshire Hathaway’s share price has risen by almost 11 per cent since the start of the year, outpacing the 8 per The $120 trillion global fund management industry saw its costs rise more than 20 times faster than revenues last year, according to a report highlighting challenges for the sector, especially in the UK. Revenues across the world grew by 0.2 per cent, in spite of the recovery in markets, while costs rose by 4.3 per cent, according to Boston Consulting Group. British fund management houses appear to have suffered the most because of their heavier weighting to Fund managers’ costs rise 20 times faster than stalling revenues UK-listed stocks, which underperformed last year. Total assets under management for investors based in the UK, including pension funds and retail customers, grew by 2 per cent in the year, while assets for clients based in America surged by 16 per cent. The average growth globally was 12 per cent. Boston said that fund managers everywhere were under pressure, with worldwide profits falling 8 per cent, but the UK sector appears to have been particularly vulnerable because of its higher weighting to British markets. “The structural challenges facing the industry will only continue to grow,” said Dean Frankle, a managing director and partner at Boston and co-author of the report, adding that artificial intelligence offered a potential solution. The UK fund management industry, which is centred in London and Edinburgh, is the biggest in Europe and a major exporter. But it has been hit by the general malaise affecting the UK market as well as a continued push away from actively managed funds towards low-cost passive management. Shares in industry leaders, such as Schroders, have slumped by about 30 per cent in the past two years, while listed managers including Jupiter and Liontrust are under severe pressure from defecting customers. The move to passive, index-based investing and increased competition among active fund managers led to falling fees as a percentage of assets managed, while so-called fee compression was accelerating, Boston said. Clients paid an average of 0.26 per cent of assets in fees in 2010. That fell to 0.25 per cent in 2015 and 0.22 per cent last year. The entire industry has been overreliant on rising markets, which automatically push up fees because of the ad valorem basis on which they are based. Boston said almost 90 per cent of revenue growth since 2005 was because of markets, not from fund managers finding new clients or offering new products. The report pointed to a high failure rate of new products, saying that just 37 per cent of all mutual funds launched in 2013 still existed by 2023. “To remain competitive, asset managers will need to seize the opportunities offered by artificial intelligence and double down on investing in enhanced productivity, product personalisation and the opportunity of private markets,” Frankle said. Patrick Hosking Financial Editor Heineken to refresh pubs with £39m upgrades Tom Saunders Heineken is investing £39 million to reopen 62 long-closed pubs and upgrade more than 600 of the brewer’s existing venues in the UK. The refurbishments will take place in about a quarter of Heineken’s 2,400 pubs that make up its Star Pubs estate and will include installing new lighting, sound systems and furniture styles in an effort to broaden their appeal. Ninety-four pubs are set for makeovers costing an average of £200,000. The revamps, which come as pubgoers remain eager to go out despite the cost of living crisis, enable pubs to cater for numerous occasions and maximise events, Heineken said. Between the refurbishments and reopenings, Heineken UK expects to create about 1,075 jobs. Lawson Mountstevens, managing director of Star Pubs, said: “Time and again we see the value consumers place on having a good local and how important it is to communities.” Updates planned include overhauling cellars with state-of-the-art dispense equipment and launching energy-efficiency measures such as heating controls, insulation and lowenergy lighting. Heineken says these changes will cost about £12,500 per pub but reduce energy use by 15 per cent. Star is on track to have the lowest number of closed pubs since 2019. By the end of the year, it will have reopened 156 pubs since the start of last year. Heineken UK, the British subsidiary of the Dutch brewing giant Heineken, acquired the Star Pubs chain as a result of its joint purchase with Carlsberg of the Edinburgh-based brewing company Scottish & Newcastle in 2008. Scottish & Newcastle’s pubs were rebranded to Star Pubs & Bars in 2012, bringing an end to the brand that had existed in some form since 1749. The reopenings will signal good news for the pub sector, which has struggled to recover from the pandemic when venues were forced to close. Since then, a series of economic shocks including a cost of living crisis and high energy and grain costs as a result of the war in Ukraine have weighed on the industry. Data from the Night Time Industries Association, published last month, showed that about 3,000 pubs, bars and nightclubs had closed in London since the pandemic. Mountstevens said: “Well-invested pubs run by great licensees are here to stay, but like all locals, they need government support to reduce the enormous tax burden they shoulder.” Labour to legally enforce big firms’ climate goals change secretary, said. Miliband emphasised the plans in a speech last week, where he also said that FTSE 100 companies and financial institutions would be required to disclose their carbon footprints. The rules would apply not only to major carbon emitters such as BP and Shell, the global oil companies, but also to airlines — such as easyJet and International Airlines Group, which owns British Airways — and Tesco and J Sainsbury, the supermarket chains. The proposals had been influenced by advice from Mark Carney, the former Bank of England governor, and other leaders from the financial services and investment industries, the shadow secretary suggested. Miliband said: “People tend to comply with legal responsibilities. And if you talk to people like Mark Carney and others on our task force, they think it is incredibly important to build on Britain’s reputation for green finance and get finance flowing the right way.” Alongside the climate compliance and reporting rules, Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, has previously set out plans for a green taxonomy in the UK. The system would be aimed at determining whether an investment was sustainable or not by using thresholds and targets to decide if activities and assets meet objectives on greenhouse gas emissions and sustainability. Many major UK-listed companies and lenders already publish climate impact reports and have set out plans to reach net zero by 2050, in line with the government’s target. However, making climate disclosure and alignment a legal requirement would set a higher bar and could open up companies to legal action for failing to comply. Emma Powell Buffett lavishes praise on Apple hours after revealing share sale Emma Powell cent gain in the S&P 500. Buffett has transformed Berkshire Hathaway over almost six decades from a failing textile company to an investment beast spanning listed holdings, Geico, an American insurance provider and BNSF Railway, which operates one of the largest freight railroad networks in North America. It was the first time Buffett had taken to the stage since Charlie Munger, his longtime business partner, died at the age of 99 in November. About 10,000 shareholders headed to the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting in Nebraska to hear the “Sage of Omaha”

34 Monday May 6 2024 | the times Business also works in collaboration with fashion designers and licenses its designs to retailers including Next, the high street stalwart, and Williams Sonoma, in the United States. Standfast’s Lancashire factory produces all of Sanderson’s printed textiles and also manufactures for other designers, which accounts for two thirds of its business. About 30 per cent of its third-party manufacturing is for export, particularly to America, where customers value the fact that the fabric is stamped with “printed in England”, according to Lisa Montague, Sanderson’s chief executive. Manufacturing in the UK had been a benefit during the shipping delays from Asia in recent years, she said, and with the more complex import and export requirements in European trade since Brexit. “When I started in this role five years ago, everybody from employees to shareholders asked me, ‘Do you want to be a manufacturer or a retailer?’ ” Montague said. “I had previously worked in luxury leather goods, where the benefit of having your own manufacturing is well known. It gives you control of the whole process, not only quality but also innovation and design. There’s a real benefit to being flexible.” Montague previously worked for Emma Douglas, the commercial and The spirit of reinvention keeps textile factory alive O n a rare sunny spring morning, the Standfast & Barracks textile printing factory in Lancaster is in full swing. Deliveries of untreated fabric, called griege, are run through a series of huge machines to prepare them for printing, including burning the surface three times and soaking the cloth in enzymes so that the dye can penetrate. It is then washed, bleached and stretched to the right dimensions before going into one of three types of printing process: flatbed, the most traditional and labour-intensive; rotary; or digital. The last now accounts for 70 per cent of the textiles produced at the site. The factory is spread across a slightly ramshackle series of buildings. These range from lofty Victorian manufacturing halls that date back to 1864, when they were built as part of a wagon works; low buildings from the site’s time as an internment camp during the First World War; and the modern office blocks where Standfast’s design team works and an extensive archive of fabrics and prints is held. Yet the location of the site is far more important than its architecture. It is right next to the River Lune, essential for the waterintensive process of printing textiles. Fabric manufacturer Morton Sundour bought the factory in 1924 because of its access to the river and a century later Standfast still draws about 80 per cent of its water from the Lune. It is so close to the water that otters occasionally find their way into the factory. All the business’s water use and treatment is monitored by the Environment Agency. In 2015 the river that sustains it also threatened the factory’s existence, when it swelled to a record-breaking level in a matter of hours during Storm Desmond and flooded the site overnight. The factory produced nothing for five months until the first machine had been repaired and the site’s electricity had been restored. “We didn’t know if we would reopen,” said Martyn Nicol, 67, a printer at Standfast for 23 years. The experience was shattering — but it also changed the way the factory was operating, said his wife, Karen, 61, who works in customer services. “After the flood, everyone really came together. People from printing and sales were all working together and we had the design director on the factory floor in wellies, cleaning up.” The company was already moving away from mass manufacturing but the shutdown accelerated that change, Emma Douglas, the commercial and creative director at Standfast, said. She started working at the factory as a colourist when she left school 31 years ago, at which time Standfast was a massmarket textile printer producing up to 250,000m of cloth a week. Now it produces 35,000m and prints only to order. “We can’t compete with the Far East on price,” said Simon Palmer, the operations manager, who has worked at the factory for 35 years. When he joined as a school-leaver, the factory’s machines printed around the clock. “The biggest change has been that we’re design-led now.” The company is owned by Sanderson Design Group, the highend British fabric and wallpaper company whose brands include Morris & Co and Zoffany. Sanderson Business Times Enterprise Network T enterprise network manufacturing Since it started in 1924, Standfast & Barracks has survived war, flood and globalisation, writes Amy Wilson Terms and conditions: Promotion closes 20th May 2024 at 23:59 pm. Open to residents of the United Kingdom aged 18 or over only, except staff of the Promoter, its affiliated companies or promotional partners or their families. 1 entry per person. Winners will be selected at random from all correct entries. No cash alternative and prizes are non-transferable. Your information will only be used to administer this Promotion in accordance with our privacy policy. Promoter is Times Media Limited. 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the times | Monday May 6 2024 35 Business creative director, started when she left school 31 years ago. Below, a technician watches over the digital print process training employees in the new skills it needs, as well as offering management training, Palmer said. Eve Thomson, 25, joined the company after her A-levels and is now the senior colourist in the digital manufacturing division. Along with her colleagues, she assesses by eye whether runs of fabric match the colour standard agreed with customers and then adjusts follow-up runs where needed. Other roles also show the need for human skills alongside digital efficiency. Peter Elliston, the plant’s longest-serving employee, has been part of the “make-up” team for 50 years, doing quality control by eye and hand and packaging orders with any faults tagged so that the client can work around them. Standfast inspects every roll it sends out and adheres to the industry standard of no more than one fault per 10m. The company’s archives of designs, prints and dye chemistry were also partially destroyed by the flood and since then Douglas and her team have been building a new archive of vintage prints, sourced from around the world. Sixty per cent of new designs are sourced from prints in the on-site archive, where customers come to develop their ideas with Standfast’s team. During the pandemic, the company also started to digitise the archive of prints. Now Standfast still uses the digital archive to work with some customers in the US and Europe, but most prefer to come to the factory to touch and see the archive fabrics. “It’s a creative process and you really need to be sitting together,” Douglas said. of fabric) and ink, while the machines are operated by one person rather than two or three. Seventy per cent of the company’s printing is now digital, but Douglas said certain products would always be made traditionally because customers preferred the depth of colour they produced and the way the fabric looked. Although digital printing needs fewer staff, Standfast is committed to About TEN 6 See Times Enterprise Network online for daily news, insights and inspiration for entrepreneurs and business leaders 6 Sign up for the weekly TEN newsletter to receive the inside track on key issues facing growing businesses, delivered to your inbox every Wednesday morning thetimes.co.uk/ten Business It’s time to check if my goals are being achieved that can have a bigger impact on the trajectory of the business. We also had to let some people go and mutually agree to part ways with others. It’s a bittersweet feeling. Bitter, as I’ve worked with some of these people from the very early days, sharing battles, wins and losses and building a strong set of shared experiences; sweet, as injecting new energy, ideas and talent is a natural evolution of a growing business that comes with its own excitement. Goal: take my VO Max to the max. Status: red My VO Max, a measure of the amount of oxygen your body uses while exercising as hard as you can, is now 45. It is the single most important metric when it comes to cardiovascular health. For my age, 45 is “above average”, which is a step down from “high”. It was better last year, as high as 49.4, and in January it was 47.5. The decline is not the direction I want to be heading in. There are mitigating factors: I got the flu in January; for the first time, my left knee has been painful after working out or running; and I was travelling a bit. But these are excuses. There are two main reasons I missed that goal. First, that old foe complacency made its return. I stopped working with my specialist trainers and believed I could just achieve the same results by myself. Second, I told myself I could hit my other goals and still stay on top of my fitness regime. We have the results now and it’s clear that I can’t. It’s disappointing and easy to get disheartened and it’s a different feeling to missing a business goal. The key difference here is that there are no external factors like markets, customers, investors or geopolitics. It’s entirely down to you. However, I’ve been through these troughs before. I know the pattern and I’m confident I’ll bounce back. Goal: reduce existential health risks. Status: green I have had two MRIs since my last piece. First, I had my third cardiac MRI in three years, which showed that my heart health is now in a good place. I won’t need another one for another five years from now, which is comforting. I also had a full-body MRI that aims to detect any cancer early, thereby increasing the chances of treatment success. It’s not cheap and a little nerve-racking after you’ve done it, but it came back all clear. It’s something I intend to make part of my prevention strategy, albeit not an annual basis until the costs come down (the one I had ended up costing £3,000). So, a good start to the year. I’m testing some different approaches to a new routine and will share the results in my next piece. Sokratis Papafloratos is a serial entrepreneur and founder and chief executive of Numan, a men’s health company T he year is rushing past, as usual, and May is a time of reflection, when we correct course and double down on everything that’s worked well since the start of the year. A quick recap, especially for those who are new to this column. In 2021, I was diagnosed with early onset of atherosclerosis, followed up by a few atrial fibrillation (heart arrhythmia) episodes. It gave me a wake-up call to start prioritising my health a lot more and over the past couple of years I’ve been the strongest, fittest and healthiest I’ve ever felt. As a 45-year-old father of a young child and as the founder of Numan, a venture capital-backed health firm, it’s been a juggling act. But I’m lucky that I got the opportunity to understand the risk I was facing and take action on it early. At the start of the year, I set three goals around my health, business and personal life, and also committed to a stronger stance on reducing my risk of dying. Four months into the year, let’s see how I’m doing. Goal: to be better (father, husband, friend). Status: green. I’m starting with as it’s foundational to the other two. We recently had a big decision to make around our daughter’s primary school, which was further complicated by the challenges she faces with her vision. Given the complexities of the British early educational system, I had to take time to meet schools, figure out what’s most important to us as a family, and then (the toughest thing) make a choice. I share this with full realisation of how privileged we are to be facing these dilemmas and knowing that my daughter has already won the lottery in a number of ways: being born in London surrounded by her family, friends and support network. Nonetheless, school is such a massive part of daily life with a huge impact on her future. I am really glad that we have made a decision and am excited to see her grow into the person she will become. Goal: turbocharge the business. Status: green We have had our best-ever quarter, not only in numbers but also in the way we performed as a team. We beat the plan for the first quarter of the year and are heading into the remainder with a lot of momentum. The new recruits to key positions that we made are making a big difference, especially in taking on some of the heavy lifting and decision-making. It allows me to spend more time on strategic areas “ I have set three goals around my health, my business and my personal life Loewe, the Spanish luxury brand, and before that Mulberry and Aspinal. Sanderson’s revenue was £108.5 million in the year to the end of January, of which £35 million came from manufacturing, which includes wallpaper as well as the textiles printed by Standfast & Barracks. Standfast’s 100-year heritage is undoubtedly a source of pride, but the factory has survived the decline of the British textile industry not by clinging on to tradition but by innovating and accepting the need to change. Focusing on high-end fabrics and smaller print runs means fewer staff are needed. From about 450 people 35 years ago, Standfast now employs 150 or so, including 40 in its sales, design and customer services team. It still has strong historic ties to the city — “You can’t get into a cab in Lancaster without meeting a driver whose relative worked here,” Douglas said — and a big part of the company’s centenary celebrations this year will revolve around its links with the local community. Standfast has organised a design competition in schools, the winners of which will come and oversee their design being made up and printed in the factory. There also will be an exhibition in Lancaster Museum and the company is restoring its clock tower, a city landmark. The business is now focused on increasing the share of printing done digitally, rather than with its traditional rotary and flatbed printing machines. The Sanderson group aims to be carbon-neutral by 2030 and digital printing uses significantly less energy, water (80 litres less per metre Sokratis Papafloratos

the times | Monday May 6 2024 39 Register Artist known as the father of minimalism Frank Stella Page 40 lung to disease and his mother worked in the staff kitchen at ICI. As a child he shared a bed with them in their tiny flat. Both his grandmothers were Irish and childhood holidays were spent at a guesthouse in Colwyn Bay, north Wales. He recalled being so keen to start at St John Bosco primary school that he turned up a year early: “The priest with the register said, ‘No, you don’t come this year, Bernard’ and he sent me home.” Xaverian College, a Catholic grammar school in the city, proved an eye-opener on the world. “I had never come across the class system before. Kids came to school in cars,” he said. When the older boys stuck everyone’s head down the lavatories, he organised a group of new boys to stop them, a foretaste of his belief in trade unionism. “It worked until the second day, when they came for us and I got dunked twice.” Having mastered the art of waggling his eyebrows independently of each other, he left with five O-levels to become a quantity surveyor, studying through a day release scheme at Salford Technical College. He gave that up after meeting Mike Leigh and becoming infatuated with acting. Twice failing the entrance exam for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, he instead went to a Catholic teacher training college. That too did not work out and he left to take a theatre diploma at Manchester Polytechnic, where he was a contemporary of Richard Griffiths (obituary, March 30, 2013). “We would be in leotards watched by people on day Obituaries Bernard Hill Versatile actor known for his roles in Titanic, The Lord of the Rings and, albeit to his slight annoyance, Boys from the Blackstuff Hill in 2014; as Yosser Hughes in Boys from the Blackstuff, below, and as captain of the Titanic, right Blackstuff. He also had a minor role in Richard Attenborough’s epic biopic Gandhi (1982), staying on in India for a month to travel around the country with an Indirail pass and a backpack. Showing his contrary side, he declined to visit the Taj Mahal on the grounds that it was “too much of a cliché”. He was cast in Shanghai Surprise (1986) but had a disagreement with Sean Penn, the director, and was replaced by Paul Freeman on the Hong Kong set. The following year he had another Yosser Hughes-style role when he played Hiller, a man dogged by failure, in Bellman and True (1987), based on Desmond Lowden’s novel of the same name. He is sacked from his job as a computer engineer because of heavy drinking, his wife leaves him, he is left with her 13-year-old stepson and the pair are kidnapped by bank robbers wanting his computer genius to break bank security codes. Despite his own misgivings, Boys from the Blackstuff transformed Hill into something of an honorary Liverpudlian and he would slip effortlessly back into using his Scouse accent whenever visiting the city. After the 1989 Hillsborough tragedy he made a pilgrimage to Anfield to pay tribute to the fans killed on that day. “Liverpool played an important part in my life … I just stood outside the gates and looked at the flowers.” He is survived by his wife Marianna Schwarzkopf, an American actress (and cousin of General Norman Schwarzkopf) who appeared in westerns such as El Condor (1970) and High Plains Drifter (1973), and by their son, Gabriel, who followed his father into acting. He is also survived by a daughter, Jay, from a previous relationship with Sue Allen. Hill was living in London when he played Madgett, a coroner who covers up three deaths, in Peter Greenaway’s art film Drowning by Numbers (1988) starring Joan Plowright. It was filmed in Suffolk and he immediately fell in love with the area. “I moved up here permanently in 1995 and quickly became involved in the local community,” he recalled in 2006. Recently Hill was in Liverpool working on the police drama The Responder, in which he plays the father of Martin Freeman’s character Chris. During a break in filming he called into the Royal Court Theatre, where he was astonished to see that a stage version of Boys from the Blackstuff is playing there until May 11. “It’s 40 years from when I did Boys from the Blackstuff,” he told The Guide Liverpool a couple of days before his death. “And there I was back in Liverpool watching it on the stage.” Bernard Hill, actor, was born on December 17, 1944. He died of undisclosed causes on May 5, 2024, aged 79 release from the building trade yelling ‘You poofs’ … until we beat them at football,” he recalled. At college Hill was inspired by David Warner’s performance in Hamlet. “I just wanted to do what he was doing,” he said in an interview, recalling being overwhelmed after a chance encounter with his idol at a football match. “It was quite a meeting.” The pair later worked together on Titanic when Warner (obituary, July 25, 2022), who played the villainous Spicer Lovejoy, was one of the few to get on well with Cameron. Leigh cast Hill in the TV film Hard Labour (1973) for the BBC’s Play for Today series. However, he did not have an Equity card and to qualify for union membership he played a clown in the Library Theatre, Manchester. He then spent two years at the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool, where he was John Lennon in Willy Russell’s Beatles musical John, Paul, George, Ringo … and Bert, transferring with the award-winning show to the West End of London that summer. His early television work included I, Claudius, Crown Court and The Black Stuff, a precursor of Boys from the No other character so darkly epitomised mass unemployment’s despair Yosser Hughes, a headbutting, unemployed tarmac-layer from Liverpool, may have seemed an unlikely folk hero. But as played by Bernard Hill in Alan Bleasdale’s 1982 television series Boys from the Blackstuff, a folk hero he nevertheless became, with his hectoring catchphrase — “Gizza job. Go on, gizza job. I can do that” — entering the language. No other character so darkly epitomised the desperation of mass unemployment in parts of the country under Margaret Thatcher’s premiership in the early 1980s. Although each episode focused on a different one of the five Liverpool tarmac-layers, it was Hughes who drew public sympathy, losing his job and his wife and resorting to wandering around the city with three bedraggled children in tow, pleading for work, any work. He could not even succeed in ending his life, being dragged from a park lake by police officers. Hill, who was relatively unknown when he won a Bafta nomination for the role, told how the despair felt by many of the country’s three million unemployed was brought home to him one day. While filming on a dismal Liverpool housing estate, the cast and crew were approached by a group of soberly dressed youths who had just come from the funeral of a 17-year-old who had hanged himself because he could not find work. “That should be placed firmly at the feet of Thatcher, for murder,” he told The Daily Telegraph in 2009 with the contempt of one who never minced his words when discussing politics and politicians. A diffident but burly figure who would not have looked out of place in a road-repair gang, Hill told the director of the series that he wanted to play Hughes in either all-black or all-white clothes, because people would see the character in those terms. “They would either have great sympathy for him or they would hate him. In the series I played him in black.” Eventually Yosser and his “Gizza job” catchphrase became both a plinth and a millstone. “People saw me as that character, not as me. I was never that person,” he said. In fact, despite many serious roles, including much Shakespeare, Hill preferred comic roles such as the rockabilly bouncer that Bleasdale wrote for him in the comedy No Surrender (1985), about a New Year’s Eve function in Liverpool that goes wrong after the venue is double-booked by rival groups of Protestants and Catholics. For a time he refused to mention Yosser Hughes by name and even cited the show’s legacy when he considered quitting acting in the mid1990s. “I’m really bored with this. It’s as if I have done nothing else for ten years,” he told an interviewer who was unfortunate enough to raise the subject. Happily, he stuck with acting, going on to play several memorable roles including Captain Edward Smith, in charge of the doomed ocean liner in James Cameron’s Titanic (1997) starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, and Théoden in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), both of which won 11 Academy Awards. He also grew a beard and received a second Bafta nomination as David Blunkett, the blind, tough-talking home secretary and fool for love who was embroiled in an affair with his publisher Kimberly Quinn in the satirical television movie A Very Social Secretary (2005). Elsewhere, Hill played the Polish Solidarity leader Lech Walesa in Tom Stoppard’s television play Squaring the Circle (1984), Pauline Collins’s husband Joe waiting for her return from Greece in Shirley Valentine (1989) and the Duke of Norfolk in the BBC adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall (2015). Eventually he overcame his distaste at being typecast, telling The Sun that Boys from the Blackstuff should be repeated on television every six months, adding: “There’s a deep social message about the problems facing people on the dole.” Bernard Hill was born into a mining family in Blackley, north Manchester, in 1944. His father had served in the navy during the war but had lost a

40 Monday May 6 2024 | the times Register Frank Stella, a human dynamo of a man with a high reedy voice, an intense verbal delivery and a voraciously wideranging intellectual appetite, was one of the most influential artists of the postwar era. It helped that he had good timing. Fresh out of Princeton, where he read history but dabbled in art, he moved in 1958 to New York, where abstraction was all the rage. Things began to happen for him almost immediately. He started taking his art more seriously, producing a series of works known as his “black paintings’’ — mesmerising, geometric patterns of thin black lines, with unsettling titles such as Arbeit Macht Frei and Reichstag. He had his first show the following year and the paintings proved popular with the public and critics alike. One of the works was acquired by Alfred H Barr, founding director of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. Barr said later that he was quite baffled by some of Stella’s early work, but he could see there was a future in it. Stella was also picked up by the New York dealer Leo Castelli. The art critic Clement Greenberg became an early fan. Although Stella was painting his earliest work in the towering shadows of the great exponents of abstract expressionism — Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell and Jasper Johns — he was already doing things slightly differently. In those early paintings, his mark-making was steady, regular, unshowy and completely lacking in the nervy rhetorical flourishes of those great recent masters. The canvases looked plotted, the paint evenly laid down, the effects premeditated. He seemed committed to regularities dictated by the rules of geometry. The earliest paintings were rectangular in shape, but soon the forms became much more unpredictable: T-shapes, L-shapes, polygons. The spaces were shallow — there were no illusionistic depths. No part of the canvas mattered more than any other part. The interest of the onlooker was always evenly distributed across the entire surface. At times, it almost felt as if he was making work in a laboratory to judge its impact upon himself. The entire enterprise felt as much like a covert manifesto for a change of direction as a spontaneous outburst of creativity from one of the young. The kind of work that Stella was making came to be known and defined by the critics as a species of post-painterly abstraction. It had a careful, deadpan sobriety to it and its nature was defined in part by the choice of materials, which were often common house paints. Like his friend Carl Andre, he could be called a matterist. Stella was always careful to point out that his work had no added spiritual dimension, no underlying message — in spite of the fact that three of his touchstones as an artist were Malevich, Kandinsky and Mondrian. “What you see is what you see,” he famously quipped, and that continued to be the case. The young materialist had already begun to shape the art of his times. Amid the creative fever of New York, the young Princeton graduate had carved out a recognisable and distinctive niche for himself. His commitment to the possibilities of abstraction was unwavering and lifelong. He saw so much in it. Geometric abstraction was just a tiny part of that ever unfolding story. He believed that figuration, on the other hand, which had had an honourable run lasting thousands of years, should be let go of. It had already done the best that it could do. It was still there to be learnt from, of course — Stella was a huge admirer of the baroque, for example — but it should no longer be emulated. age of ten, he began to push paint around a canvas. When it came to college, young Frank was told by a stern father with high intellectual ambitions for his son that he would pay his fees only if he attended Harvard, Princeton or Yale. He did not disappoint and although at Princeton he majored in medieval history, he also took classes in art history and painting with two influential teachers, William C Seitz and Stephen Greene. That combination of disciplines was to prove quite telling. An artist with powerfully restless and wide-ranging intellectual ambition was already in the making. In 1961 he married Barbara Rose, an art historian. They divorced after eight years and she died in 2020. He is survived by his second wife, Harriet McGurk, a paediatrician he married in 1978. They lived in a three-storey house in Greenwich Village that was full of the art he collected. His other expensive tastes included breeding racehorses and driving sports cars. He had two children from his first marriage, Rachel and Michael, and two from his second, Patrick and Peter. A fifth, Laura, is from a relationship he had between his marriages. In 1989 one of the early “black paintings” that had taken the art world by storm in 1959 sold for $5 million. But that was his old work. By the 1990s, a decade dominated by video art, installation art and photography, he The things of the world did not exist to be slavishly imitated by the moderns. In 1970, he had simultaneous retrospectives in New York and London and the work itself began to change dramatically, in mood and manner. He was ambitious to move in the direction of imaginative elsewheres, though not all the critics appreciated this. The New Yorker’s Harold Rosenberg dismissed Stella’s cerebral approach as “chessboard aesthetics’’. His ambitions were undimmed, however, and they included a burning desire to realise his work on an ever larger scale. By the 1970s the works of the previous decade began to look relatively small and sober-suited beside some of the visual extravagances of the later years. Stella soon shifted away from the sober application of paint to canvas. Flatness was no longer enough. In spite of the fact that some of that early markmaking had been eye-catching — those curved or wheeling bands, for example — it also seemed to exemplify a kind of calculatedly plotted neutrality that came to satisfy its maker less and less, or so it began to appear. Building out from the wall, he began to create reliefs and then sculptural collages, works that hovered midway between painting and sculpture, before His creations became as punchy, inventive and wild as free-form jazz Email: [email protected] Stella at an exhibition in Hamburg in 1997; his sculpture Puffed Star at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro; and striking colour and shape in Harran II (1967), bottom Frank Stella Leading figure in postwar art who served as an elegant bridge between abstract expressionism and cool minimalism finally mutating into entire architectural environments. The materials became more diverse — he moved into wood, metal, plywood. Colour became ever more important to him. The works became more excitably shapely, the surfaces more visually energised. The man who had once wanted to remove evidence of personal rhetorical flourish from his work began to make artworks that were utterly and unmistakably his own. He also began to create objects — that’s how Stella, ever the empiricist, liked to think of them — in series, multi-part sculptural collages such as his homage to Moby Dick, on which he began to work in the 1980s, and continued for almost a decade. He made about 100 pieces in all. The sobriety of the early years was being superseded by works that looked as wild, punchy and inventive as freeform jazz and which often seemed to explode outwards from a wall — metaphors of growth, creation itself, the irrepressible human drive towards self-renewal. He was a great risk-taker from first to last, making work which almost didn’t cohere, but then leapt back from the abyss of incoherence at the very last moment. He would be forever seeking out new sources of influence, following his nose for the new and the unpredictable wherever it led him, jumping on a plane to Peru to follow up on some shape that had fired him, glimpsed in an image of some ancient piece of Peruvian ceramic. Born in 1936, the eldest of three children, Frank Philip Stella had emerged from the northeastern corner of the great melting pot of the US, in Malden, Massachusetts. His parents were immigrants from Sicily. His father, also called Frank, was a gynaecologist. His mother, Constance, was a housewife who had been to art school and soon passed on her “art fever’” to her eldest child. Young Frank’s early highschooling at the privileged Phillips Academy in Andover included art appreciation classes. From about the was falling out of favour. An entire decade passed without a gallery show. Despite this rejection, he continued to do what he had to do, and even scorned his fashionable detractors. There was no dark descent into cynicism though. Light-hearted dismissal was more his style. “The problem for me is that in video art they never take off their clothes fast enough, it’s always so boring,” he quipped in a 2003 interview. He took issue with other aspects of the fashionable world of the new art too — the fact that its practitioners no longer seemed to show much proof of a passionate, personal, hands-on engagement. “They depend on the machine to do the work. I don’t see it,” he remarked in that same interview. Stella was never at one remove from what he did. He was always right in the thick of things, keeping his head in the maelstrom. Above all, he was a unique combination of maker and thinker about the nature of making. His cerebral gifts were honoured in 1983 when he became the first abstract painter to deliver the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard University. He worked in two studios in his later years, one at 13th Street in New York City and another one, of immense size — it was more an aircraft hangar than a studio — in upstate New York. In 2021 one of his sculptures, Jasper’s Split Star, was displayed in the public plaza where the World Trade Center once stood. His studios, it seemed, were never too small for his ego as an artist. And yet alongside those raging ambitions went a pleasingly genuine modesty and humility. “I like doing what I do,” he once said. “I care about what it looks like to me. My goal has always been to do it a bit better.” Frank Stella, artist, was born on May 12, 1936. He died of cancer on May 4, 2024, aged 87

Hamilton Going: good to soft (soft in places) 2.05 (1m 5f 16yd) 1, Capital Theory (J Fanning, 11-4); 2, Euchen Glen (10-1); 3, Two Brothers (7-2). 6 ran. NR: Sir Chauvelin. 4 l, 4 l. C Johnston. 2.35 (5f 7yd) 1, Airman (D Nolan, 4-1); 2, Gaenari (5-4 fav); 3, Capo Vaticano (9-4). 7 ran. Nk, 1 l. R A Fahey. 3.10 (5f 7yd) 1, Giselles Izzy (A Mullen, 11-2); 2, Honour Your Dreams (10-3); 3, Son Of Sampers (3-1). 6 ran. Hd, ns. I Jardine. 3.50 (1m 3f 15yd) 1, My Little Queens (J Garritty, 6-4 fav); 2, Bulldog Spirit (9-1); 3, Jaminoz (10-1). 8 ran. 4 l, nk. R A Fahey. 4.23 (1m 68yd) 1, Arkenstaar (Connor Beasley, 2-1 fav); 2, Natzor (16-5); 3, Black Friday (17-2). 7 ran. NR: Detective. l, hd. M Dods. 4.58 (1m 68yd) 1, Good Morning Alex (P Mulrennan, 11-8 fav); 2, Emu War (11-1); 3, Naturalia (25-1). 8 ran. 5l, hd. T D Barron. 5.30 (6f 6yd) 1, Catherine Chroi (A Mullen, 5-4 fav); 2, Stormy Pearl (7-2); 3, Burj Malinka (3-1). 7 ran. NR: Conquest Of Power. 2l, nk. I Jardine. Placepot: £64.00. Quadpot: £10.30. Newmarket Going: good (good to firm in places) 1.50 (1m 2f) 1, Friendly Soul (K Shoemark, 10-1); 2, Kalpana (4-6 fav); 3, Kitteridge (22-1). 8 ran. 1 , 12l. J T Gosden. 2.25 (1m 1f) 1, Stay Alert (David Egan, 5-1); 2, Running Lion (6-4 fav); 3, Caernarfon (7-1). 6 ran. NR: Novus. 3 l, 5 l. H Morrison. 3.00 (1m 6f) 1, Bague D’or (M Barzalona, 6-1); 2, Vaguely Royal (16-1); 3, Intinso (11-2). 11 ran. NR: Torcello. 1 l, nk. J Ferguson. 3.40 (1m) 1, Elmalka (S De Sousa, 28-1); 2, Porta Fortuna (11-1); 3, Ramatuelle (9-2). 16 ran. Nk, sh hd. R Varian. 4.15 (5f) 1, Mountain Breeze (W Buick, 7-4 fav); 2, River Seine (11-2); 3, Miss Collada (14-1). 10 ran. 2 l, hd. C Appleby. 4.50 (5f) 1, The Actor (S M Levey, 11-4); 2, Tropical Storm (6-1); 3, Al Qudra (9-2). 7 ran. Nk, 1 l. R Hannon. 5.25 (1m 2f) 1, Black Run (Tom Marquand, 9-2); 2, Sun God (9-1); 3, Sea The Thunder (9-4 fav). 7 ran. l, 6l. P O Cole. Placepot: £61.10. Quadpot: £21.30. Salisbury Going: soft (heavy in places) 2.10 (6f 213yd) 1, Dakota Power (Miss Megan Jordan, 9-1); 2, Amaysmont (9-2); 3, Beau Jardine (6-1). 13 ran. NR: Inclement Weather. 2l, 2 l. R A Teal. 2.40 (5f) 1, Running Queen (Cieren Fallon, 10-3); 2, Betty Clover (5-2 jt-fav); 3, Convo (5-2 jt-fav). 7 ran. NR: Fondest Dream, Fregola. 1 l, 3 l. Ollie Sangster. 3.20 (5f) 1, Sub Thirteen (William Carson, 4-1); 2, Connie’s Rose (3-1); 3, Safari Dream (11-4 fav). 5 ran. ns, 2l. A W Carroll. 3.55 (6f 213yd) 1, Fast Society (Rob Hornby, 7-4 fav); 2, King’s Scholar (6-1); 3, Synthesize (10-1). 7 ran. NR: Ever Driven, Spartan Times. 2 l, 1 l. A M Balding. 4.30 (1m 1f 201yd) 1, Kotari (Jason Watson, 11-8 fav); 2, Hakuna Babe (13-8); 3, Mildyjama (12-1). 5 ran. NR: Pride Of Nepal. 10l, l. G J Moore. 5.05 (1m 4f 5yd) 1, Sam Hawkens (R Kingscote, 4-9 fav); 2, Marhaba Million (2-1); 3, Wahoo King (33-1). 4 ran. 4 l, 10l. R Hannon. 5.35 (1m 6f 44yd) 1, Warranty (T E Whelan, 7-1); 2, Young Merlin (9-2); 3, Basilette (2-1 fav). 9 ran. 3l, 2l. Miss S West. Placepot: £31.20. Quadpot: £4.60. Yesterday’s racing results Tadej Pogacar is seen as such a strong favourite to win the Giro d’Italia this year that, according to some judges, his rivals only have a chance if the Slovenian falls off his bike at some stage during the three-week race. Well, Pogacar suffered a puncture and fell off his bike during the second stage on Sunday — yet he still he emerged triumphant. After hitting the floor at the foot of the final 11.7km climb to Santuario di Oropa, Pogacar’s UAE Team Emirates colleagues marshalled him swiftly back to the peloton, enabling him to launch a brilliant solo break to the summit finish and reach the line 27 seconds clear of Daniel Martínez, of Bora-Hansgrohe. Having finished second in the opening stage on Saturday behind Jhonatan Narváez, Pogacar has now claimed the Pink Jersey and opened up a 45-second lead in the general classification. Geraint Thomas, of Ineos Grenadiers, was unable to stay with Pogacar, but finished third in the stage and now sits in second place in the overall standings, level with Martínez. The race is only two days old, with countless twists and turns to come, but Pogacar has already underlined his status as the clear favourite. “I just wanted a stage win today and some gap, to test the legs a little bit,” the 25-year-old said. “The dream was to take the Pink Jersey. Now I can relax a little bit over the next stages with the team and stay safe in the sprints.” Yet his brief brushes with danger were a reminder of the perils that can befall any grand tour contender, no matter how dominant their form. First his front tyre punctured, leading Pogacar to raise his arm to alert his team as he slipped away from the back of the peloton. Then the tyre came off the rim, causing him to fall to the floor. He was quickly back on his feet, a replacement bike arrived immediately and he was back on his way to rein in the leaders. With 10km remaining, he was more than 20 seconds behind a peloton that was led by Thomas’s Ineos Grenadiers. “I was quite calm,” Pogacar said. “I hit a hole and just had a super-fast flat tyre. I think I broke the wheel also. I crashed, but it was nothing serious. I was feeling good, and the team helped. They clawed me back to the front.” Pogacar’s team-mates played their part in guiding him back to the pack and with 4.5km remaining he was out of his saddle and making his move. Thomas and Ben O’Connor, of Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale, attempted to respond, but within 200 metres Pogacar had already opened a gap that would prove decisive. Riding his first Giro, the Slovenian has now completed stage wins in each of the three grand tours, along with the Tour de France, which he won in 2020 and 2021, and La Vuelta, where he finished third in his first grand tour five years ago. “That was one of my dreams after I won a stage in the Tour; I was just missing the Giro, so that was always in my mind,” he said. “To have all three stage wins is something that not many riders have and it’s a big thing in cycling.” Pogacar will now attempt to stay out of trouble over the next few stages, with flatter terrain over the next couple of days, followed by two hilly stages before the first individual time-trial over 40.6km to Perugia on Friday, which may give Thomas his next opportunity to claw back some time. “It’s still all to play for,” the Welsh rider said. “But Tadej, well, he’s Tadej.” Sport Pogacar gets a puncture – but wins by 27 seconds Giro d’Italia John Westerby Pogacar came off his bike at the foot of the steep 11km climb to Santuario di Oropa, inset, after suffering a puncture but he recovered to easily claim the Pink Jersey Giro d’Italia Stage 3 Today Novara to Fossano TV: Eurosport Coverage starts at 11.30am of the impact on players’ welfare and the quality of cricket. Joe Root, the former England Test captain, echoed those concerns. “It is apparent that the schedule needs to change for a host of reasons to see long-lasting benefits for English cricket,” he said. “I am fortunate to play a significant part of the season for Yorkshire this year and looking at the fixture list from a physical, wellbeing and high-performance angle does cause me concern. “Having space to recover, prepare and improve your game during the season is crucial, and the creation of minimum standards to protect travel windows and player welfare is non-negotiable. You are trying to find a way of getting county cricket as close as possTired players ‘can’t remember driving home’ ible to international cricket and there are a lot of players who don’t believe the way it is structured now is conducive to high-level performance.” Some 70 per cent of players believe there should be a minimum of three days between each first-class match. Although this happens in the first block of the season, it is not always the case once the white-ball competitions start and players switch between formats. The PCA wants the ECB and counties to agree on a three-day rest period between four-day matches and a one-day break between games in the T20 Blast. While the players are in broad agreement that the schedule needs to be eased, they lack a common voice when it comes to which competitions should be scaled back. Many counties rely on the income from having 14 Blast matches but most county members would not want a reduction in the number of Vitality County Championship matches, also 14 per team at present. Daryl Mitchell, the former Worcestershire captain and now chief operating officer for the PCA, said the calendar had become a more emotive subject, particularly after the release of the latest fixture schedule last year. “It is the county chairs who ultimately make the decisions about the schedule, but it needs a joined-up approach, and we need to have those conversations and come up with some solutions,” he said. “There are a lot of opinions even among the players about what can be done, what could be reduced or rejigged.” The Blast schedule is causing the most concern this year, with teams often having to travel home late at night after an evening game and then sometimes being required to play again the next day. In June, Warwickshire are playing against Lancashire at Emirates Old Trafford on a Friday night (6.30pm start) and then against Durham at Edgbaston at 3.30pm the next day. Although most counties provide a coach for their players to get to away games, they often do not return to their home ground until as late as 2am and then have to drive home. Players often live a fair distance from the ground and some anecdotal evidence was given to the PCA about cricketers barely being able to remember their drive home on some occasions. The PCA also highlighted a recent ECB study, which showed that in 2023, there was a 24 per cent rise in days lost due to injury compared with the five-year average. Bowlers workloads are up, with a 15 per cent increase in overs bowled last season set against the five-year norm. James Harris, the Glamorgan bowler and chairman of the PCA, said there was unlikely to be much, if any, change for the 2025 season because the priority remains the sale of Hundred teams from the ECB to private enterprises. However, Harris said that “now is a really good time to sit down with counties and the ECB to take out these crazy periods in the schedule”. He added: “For example, last year we had a four-day game at Chelmsford and then one day off to drive to Derby to start another four-day game. “When you look at how to get the best product and the best system to get players for England, this is not the best way to go about things.” continued from back the times | Monday May 6 2024 45

the times | Monday May 6 2024 47 Vitality County Championship Sport In the latest issue of The Cricketer, Ken McEwan, the South African who played for Essex, laments that the changes in the game are such that there will never again be a Geoffrey Boycott figure who will bat, as he puts it, for days and days. Perhaps only one other present-day batsman, another Yorkshireman, could look to do so, assuming he chose to score less quickly. That is Joe Root, who at Headingley made 156, a second hundred in successive games. Glamorgan were not fielding the strongest of attacks — Yorkshire declared with a 298-run first-innings lead — yet Root, as with Boycott, did not allow his concentration to waver. His innings included 21 fours and he put on 265 with Finlay Bean, who took his overnight century to 173, the left-handed opener’s highest score. The Yorkshire batsmen were espeCricket Vitality County Championship Division One Lancashire v Kent Old Trafford (third day of four): Kent, with nine second-innings wickets in hand, need 93 runs to beat Lancashire Kent: First Innings 261 (J D M Evison 71 not out) Second Innings Z Crawley lbw b Balderson 1 B G Compton not out 14 *D J Bell-Drummond not out 39 Extras (b 10, lb 5, nb 2) 17 Total (1 wkt, 24 overs) 71 Fall of wicket 1-5. Bowling Bailey 3-0-13-0; Balderson 5-1-17-1; Lyon 9-1-17-0; Williams 3-1-4-0; Hartley 4-2- 5-0. Lancashire: First Innings 92 (N N Gilchrist 6 for 24; W A Agar 4 for 35) Second Innings (overnight 119-4) G P Balderson c Bell-Drummond b Leaning48 T C Bruce b Agar 12 G J Bell c Finch b Agar 65 †M F Hurst c Bell-Drummond b Parkinson58 T W Hartley b Parkinson 35 T E Bailey lbw b Agar 1 N M Lyon not out 0 Extras (lb 6, w 1, nb 12) 19 Total (106.3 overs) 332 Fall of wickets 1-50, 2-101, 3-103, 4-104, 5-122, 6-197, 7-275, 8-329, 9-332. Bowling Stewart 13-2-48-0; Agar 21-4-65-3; Gilchrist 18-2-69-2; Evison 9-0-30-1; Parkinson 33.3-5-70-3; Leaning 7-1-21-1; Denly 5-1- 23-0. Umpires: P R Pollard and G D Lloyd Division Two Derbyshire v Sussex Derby (third day of four): Sussex (23pts) beat Derbyshire (2) by an innings and 124 runs Derbyshire: First Innings 246 (L M Reece 50) Second Innings *D L Lloyd lbw b Seales 26 L M Reece b Hudson-Prentice 15 †B D Guest b Lamb 17 W L Madsen lbw b Lamb 13 M J Lamb lbw b Seales 10 A H T Donald b Seales 1 A K Dal lbw b Seales 0 Z J Chappell c Haines b Carson 21 J P Morley b Seales 0 D M Dupavillion not out 3 Extras (lb 1nb 2) 3 Total (26 overs) 109 Fall of wickets 1-33, 2-49, 3-71, 4-76, 5-77, 6-77, 7-88, 8-88, 9-109. Bowling Robinson 6-1-18-0; Seales 8-0-29-5; Hudson-Prentice 4-0-31-1; Lamb 4-0-10-2; Coles 2-0-14-0; Carson 2-0-6-1. Sussex: First Innings (overnight 357-5) C A Pujara c Guest b Dupavillion 113 J J Carson c Guest b Dupavillion 37 F J Hudson-Prentice c Madsen b Morley 34 D J Lamb st Guest b Morley 37 O E Robinson c Donald b Morley 18 J N T Seales not out 4 Extras (b 6, lb 13, nb 16) 35 Total (109.4 overs) 479 Fall of wickets 1-18, 2-108, 3-176, 4-317, 5-335, 6-384, 7-393, 8-442, 9-462. Bowling Dupavillion 20-0-89-3; Chappell 16-3-74-0; Tickner 19-4-71-1; Dal 17-2-62-1; Morley 25.4-0-117-3; Reece 9-2-32-2; Lloyd 3-0-15-0. Umpires: N J Llong and T Lungley Middlesex v Leicestershire Lord’s (third day of four): Middlesex, with two-first-innings wickets in hand, are 101 runs ahead of Leicestershire Leicestershire: First Innings 306 (P S P Handscomb 109; E R Bamber 4 for 68) Middlesex: First Innings (overnight 64-1) S D Robson c Handscomb b Green 162 M D E Holden c Kimber b Currie 26 J L du Plooy c Cox b Currie 131 R F Higgins b Green 7 S S Eskinazi b Mike 25 N Fernandes c Currie b Ahmed 31 †J L B Davies not out 1 *T S Roland-Jones c Patel b Ahmed 9 H J H Brookes not out 1 Extras (lb 1, w 3, nb 2) 6 Total (8 wkts, 103 overs) 407 E R Bamber to bat. Fall of wickets 1-27, 2-64, 3-316, 4-329, 5-342, 6-392, 7-396, 8-406. Bowling Scriven 20-1-76-0; Mike 18-1-93-2; Green 23-4-81-2; Currie 20-3-66-2; Ahmed 20- 1-86-2; Kimber 2-0-4-0. Umpires: R A White and P K Baldwin Yorkshire v Glamorgan Headingley Carnegie (third day of four): Glamorgan, with seven second-innings wickets in hand, are 127 runs behind Yorkshire Glamorgan: First Innings 221 (W T Root 51; D T Moriarty 4 for 74; D M Bess 4 for 25) Second Innings E J Byrom c Coad b Bess 30 W T Root b Moriarty 35 *S A Northeast not out 46 K S Carlson run out 15 C A Ingram not out 43 Extras (nb 2) 2 Total (3 wkts, 60 overs) 171 Fall of wickets 1-56, 2-72, 3-93. Bowling Coad 5-0-29-0; Fisher 3-1-2-0; Moriarty 23-6-61-1; Bess 19-4-48-1; Root 7-1-16-0; Revis 3-0-15-0. Yorkshire: First Innings (overnight 295-2) F J Bean b Crane 173 J E Root lbw b Harris 156 H C Brook c sub b Crane 65 †J A Tattersall st Cooke b Crane 55 M L Revis b Crane 1 D M Bess not out 0 Extras (b 9, lb 6) 15 Total (7 wkts dec, 94.1 overs) 519 D T Moriarty, B O Coad and M D Fisher did not bat. Fall of wickets 1-26, 2-94, 3-359, 4-431, 5-510, 6-518, 7-519. Bowling Hamza 15-2-64-1; McIlroy 16-3-72-0; Harris 16-0-86-1; Carlson 14-1-66-0; Crane 23.1-1-152-5; Bevan 10-0-64-0. Umpires: M Newell and I D Blackwell Women’s T20 World Cup Qualifier 2024 Semi-final Ireland v Scotland Sheik Zayed Stadium (Ireland Women won toss): Scotland beat Ireland by eight wickets Ireland (balls) †A Hunter b K E Bryce 0 (2) G H Lewis c Lister b K E Bryce 0 (1) O P Prendergast run out 11 (8) *L K Delany b K E Bryce 2 (7) L Paul c Maqsood b Slater 45 (51) E A J Richardson c Maqsood b K E Bryce1 (8) R K Stokell st S J Bryce b Maqsood 8 (14) A N Kelly c Lister b Slater 35 (27) A Canning not out 1 (1) C Murray b Slater 0 (1) J A Maguire not out 2 (1) Extras (lb 1, w 3, nb 1) 5 Total (9 wkts, 20 overs) 110 Fall of wickets 1-0, 2-1, 3-12, 4-21, 5-25, 6-47, 7-107, 8-108, 9-108. Bowling Bryce 4-0-8-4; Slater 3-0-32-3; Chatterji 4-0-20-0; Rainey 4-0-18-0; Maqsood 3-0- 17-1; Fraser 2-0-14-0. Scotland (balls) S M Horley b Kelly 10 (18) M McColl b Kelly 50 (47) *K E Bryce not out 35 (29) †S J Bryce not out 5 (5) Extras (b 4, lb 4, w 3, nb 1) 12 Total (2 wkts, 16.2 overs) 112 A K Lister, P A Chatterji, L Jack, K J G Fraser, R E Slater, H Rainey and A M Maqsood did not bat. Fall of wickets 1-49, 2-98. Bowling Canning 3-0-12-0; Prendergast 2-0-15-0; Maguire 1-0-6-0; Richardson 2.2-0- 19-0; Kelly 4-0-28-2; Delany 3-0-18-0; Murray 1-0-6-0. Bangladesh v Zimbabwe, second T20i Zohur Ahmed Chowdhury Stadium (Bangladesh won toss and elected to bowl.): Bangladesh beat Zimbabwe by six wickets Zimbabwe (balls) †J Gumbie c Shanto b Saifuddin 17 (30) T R Marumani lbw b Ahmed 2 (4) C R Ervine c Das b Hasan 13 (16) *S R Butt c Das b Hossain 3 (8) C Madande c Tamim b Hossain 0 (2) B J Bennett not out 44 (29) J M R Campbell c Saifuddin b Islam 45 (24) L M Jongwe c Hridoy b Ahmed 2 (3) A Ndlovu not out 5 (4) Extras (lb 6, w 1) 7 Total (7 wkts, 20 overs) 138 B Muzarabani and R Ngarava did not bat. Fall of wickets 1-15, 2-30, 3-36, 4-36, 5-42, 6-115, 7-120. Bowling Islam 4-0-26-1; Hasan 4-0-18-1; Ahmed 4-0-18-2; Saifuddin 4-0-37-1; Hossain 4-0-33-2. Bangladesh (balls) L K Das c Campbell b Jongwe 23 (25) T H Tamim c Bennett b Ndlovu 18 (19) *N H Shanto c sub b Jongwe 16 (15) M T Hridoy not out 37 (25) †J A Anik b Ngarava 13 (12) M M Riyad not out 26 (16) Extras (w 8, nb 1) 9 Total (4 wkts, 18.3 overs) 142 M Saifuddin, M Hasan, T Ahmed, M S Islam and M R Hossain did not bat. Fall of wickets 1-41, 2-61, 3-62, 4-93. Bowling Ngarava 4-0-32-1; Muzarabani 3.3-0- 19-0; Ndlovu 3-0-25-1; Butt 4-0-31-0; Jongwe 4-0-35-2. Cycling Giro d’Italia Stage 2 (San Francesco al Campo-Santuario di Oropa, 161.0 km, medium-mountain stage) 1, T Pogacar (Slovenia, UAE Team Emirates) 3hr 54min 20sec; 2, D Martinez (Sp, BoraHansgrohe) at 27sec; 3, G Thomas (GB, Ineos Grenadiers); 4, L Fortunato (It, Astana Qazaqstan Team); 5, F Lipowitz (Ger, Bora-Hansgrohe) all same time. Overall leaders 1, Pogacar 7hr 08min 29sec; 2, Thomas at 45sec; 3, Martinez same time; 4, C Uijtdebroeks (Bel, Team Visma-Leasea Bike) at 54sec; 5. E Rubio (Col, Movistar Team) same time. Golf The CJ Cup Byron Nelson McKinney, Texas: Third round scores (US unless stated): 194 T Pendrith (Can) 64, 67, 63. 195 J Knapp 64, 64, 67. 196 B Kohles 65, 66, 65; M Wallace (Eng) 63, 66, 67. 198 K Kraft 64, 66, 68; A Noren (Swe) 64, 68, 66. 199 ByeongHun An (S Kor) 66, 67, 66; T Merritt 67, 62, 70; K Tway 69, 66, 64; V Whaley 70, 63, 66. 200 N Dunlap 66, 67, 67; B Griffin 69, 64, 67; S Jaeger (Ger) 66, 68, 66. Other results: 205 K Kim (Eng) 68, 67, 70. DP World Tour Volvo China Open Shenzhen: Final scores (China unless stated): 198 A Otaegui (Sp) 67, 66, 65. 199 G Migliozzi (It) 65, 67, 67. 200 S Soederberg (Swe) 63, 65, 72; P Waring (Eng) 66, 65, 69; J Girrbach (Switz) 66, 67, 67. 201 L Jefferson Go (Phi) 68, 66, 67. 202 B Stone (SA) 74, 64, 64. 203 J Veerman (US) 69, 68, 66; M Schwab (Aut) 67, 68, 68. 204 A Rozner (Fr) 68, 69, 67. 205 Y Paul (Ger) 67, 70, 68; F Schott (Ger) 67, 69, 69, 206 J Luiten (Neth) 69, 67, 70; D Law (Scot) 68, 71, 67; C Sordet (Fr) 66, 74, 66; F Lacroix (Fr) 70, 65, 71. Rugby league Betfred Championship Barrow 24 Batley 14; Featherstone 36 Halifax 16; Swinton 12 Bradford 38; Widnes 16 Doncaster 14; York 16 Whitehaven 36. Betfred League One Keighley 18 Hunslet 26; Oldham 74 Newcastle 0; Rochdale 56 Cornwall RLFC 24; Workington 16 Midlands Hurricanes 26. Rugby union Champions Cup semi-finals Toulouse 38 Harlequins 26 Toulouse: Tries: Lebel, Mauvaka, Flament, Dupont 2, Mallia. Cons: Kinghorn 3, Ramos. Harlequins: Tries: Smith, W Evans, Murley, T Green. Cons: Smith 3. HT: 31-12. Tennis Madrid Open Madrid: Men’s singles final A Rublev (Russ) bt F Auger-Aliassime (Can) 4-6, 7-5, 7-5. Scoreboards and results Many moons ago, on a bank holiday weekend of Roses action, Neville Cardus wrote that the crowd did not turn up in the north expecting to see a demonstration of “bright” cricket. Instead, he wrote, cricketers of Lancashire and Yorkshire batted slowly and put their noses to the grindstone not because they lacked ability, but “on principle”. Times have changed, thankfully, but the Pennines offered a clear dividing line yesterday. At Headingley, runs came quickly and in a torrent with rapid hundreds for Finlay Bean and Joe Root. At Old Trafford, the approach was determined not so much by “principle” but necessity, with Lancashire following on, still in deficit and in real danger before the start of the third day. It has been a troubling start to the season for Lancashire, a team under a new coaching structure, but there were signs of some fighting spirit at least, with half-centuries for two homeproduced cricketers, 20-year-old Matthew Hurst and 21-year-old George Bell. Whether it will be enough to withstand the advance from Kent remains to be seen as it was the visiting team who finished the day within striking distance of their first win of the Vitality County Championship season. Kent have looked the better, sharper team over three days. Having lost the toss, they engineered a significant firstinnings lead, enforced the follow-on enterprisingly and against fashion, and then bowled out Lancashire for 332 second time around shortly after tea, leaving them a target of 164 to win. Root takes the acclaim at Headingley after his typically fluent 156 off 165 balls put Yorkshire in charge against Glamorgan Bright talents lift dark clouds over Lancashire They ended the day on 71 for one. Zak Crawley was an early casualty, palpably leg-before after playing half-forward and around his front pad to George Balderson, but Ben Compton and Daniel Bell-Drummond settled nerves. The day finished with Lancashire’s international spinners, Nathan Lyon and Tom Hartley, bowling in tandem with men around the bat, but to no avail. It was always Keaton Jennings’s hope to have his spinners bowling on the last day, but preferably with a few more runs to play with. Lyon looked threatening at times in his nine overs before the close but found no way through. Should Kent complete their run-chase today, it will be their first win at Old Trafford in the championship since 1997. Lancashire began the day trailing by 50 and lost their overseas batsman, Tom Bruce, before they had wiped off the deficit. Bruce is following a long line of superlative overseas players at Old Trafford and, with a top score of 26 in four matches so far, has some way to go to live up to that lineage. Here, pushing forward defensively, he had his off stump flattened by Wes Agar. Then the fightback began: Balderson, first of all, added 75 with Bell before cutting Jack Leaning’s off spin to gully; then Bell and Hurst combined for 32 overs before the second new ball, and Agar, again, accounted for Bell, after which Hartley added 54 with Hurst. All the while, the slowness of the pitch nullified bowlers of every type, though Kent’s endeavour did not fade. So it was the type of day when a captain was happy to have a leg spinner in the ranks and it was Matt Parkinson, on his return to Old Trafford, who produced a key wicket after tea. He found the outside edge of Hurst’s bat with a leg spinner that drifted a touch and ended up in the hands of slip. Parkinson picked up the last wicket, too, when Hartley was bowled behind his legs. Emirates Old Trafford (third day of four): Kent, with nine second-innings wickets in hand, need 93 runs to beat Lancashire Mike Atherton Chief Cricket Correspondent Lancashire v Kent meticulous 162 with 13 fours and two sixes and Leus du Plooy struck 131 with 17 fours and a six. They put on 252, a record third-wicket stand for the county against Leicestershire. Sussex are top of Division Two after wrapping up a comprehensive victory against Derbyshire by an innings and 124 runs. When next he bowls for Sussex at Cardiff from Friday, Jayden Seales, the county’s overseas opening bowler, will be on a hat-trick after taking the eighth and ninth wickets of the home team’s second innings. Only because Sussex, with an infamously slow over rate through the past two seasons, were in danger of losing points was the 22-year old taken out of the attack, with career-best figures of five for 29. It would be a surprise if he fails to add to his ten Test caps when West Indies begin their three-match series against England in July. cially severe on Mason Crane, on a loan for the season from Hampshire, whose one Test appearance, in 2018, came under Root’s captaincy in Sydney. Who would want to bowl leg spin against the best batsman in England in the north of the country, damp pitches, dank weather and all in early May? Crane is at least playing first-class cricket, which he was hardly achieving on the south coast, and finished with five wickets, albeit at a cost of seven runs an over. Harry Brook and Jonathan Tattersall both made fifties, before Glamorgan lost three wickets — that of the other Root, Billy, among them. They will start the final day 127 runs behind. At Lord’s, Middlesex lead Leicestershire by 101 runs with two first-innings wickets remaining. Sam Robson, the former England opener returning to the game after a thumb injury, made a Crane suffers as Root scores another century Ivo Tennant

48 Monday May 6 2024 | the times Sport Sport in shadow of a war zone Rhythmic gymnasts Anastasia and Ira in the corridor of the elementary classes of School No 3 In a special gallery for The Times, the Ukrainian photographer Mykola Synelnykov showcases the sport thriving amid the wreckage of war with Russia Photographing sports in a war zone is different from photographing regular competitions in a gym or stadium. First of all, preference is given to small, universal lenses that are light enough to carry with you for several days without rest. In addition, the military and police (and civilians too) at the beginning of the Russian invasion were very suspicious of anyone with a camera, constantly creating obstacles for me and stopping me taking pictures. Surprisingly, even during the war, people continue to play sports and play their favourite games. It helps as a distraction, to relieve stress and stay in shape. Therefore, during the nine months of filming, I had no problems finding stories on the destroyed sites. Only in those places where the destruction was too dangerous was it necessary to negotiate in advance with local athletes. Having discovered in advance where basketball training takes place in Kharkov, I arrived at the destroyed School No 134 and saw the children with a coach, throwing the ball into the surviving hoop The stadium in Chernihiv during training for the children’s team of FC Desna. The club’s senior side have been forced to miss games in the Ukrainian Premier League because their stadium and training base have both been destroyed Boxing hall near the northern city of Chernihiv, damaged during the siege of the city. A Russian missile means you can get out immediately through a broken window or hole in the wall

the times | Monday May 6 2024 49 Athletics Sport within three seconds of El Guerrouj’s best. Ingebrigtsen is 0.60sec away, but his chances of closing the gap are hampered by the endurance training he does for his main event, the 5,000m. You could put the longevity down to El Guerrouj’s brilliance or the increasingly obsolete nature of the distance. There is also no neat time target to capture the imagination. Breaking 3:43 is not the sort of thing to attract Ineos millions. However, the “metric” explanation — that the mile is an old-fashioned measurement, rarely run — founders because nobody is getting close to El Guerrouj’s 1,500m world record either, and that has stood for even longer. Ingebrigtsen, the Olympic 1,500m champion, set his fastest time over that distance last year. In a championship event where small margins equate to giant leaps, he is still 1.14sec away from El Guerrouj. Other than the Norwegian, the only man to get within two seconds of the 1,500m record over the past decade is Asbel Kiprop, who was later banned for doping. As the best, El Guerrouj has had to endure whispering innuendo, but the O ne of the most impressive interviewees I have been lucky enough to meet is Sir Roger Bannister. It was not merely because breaking the four-minute mile barrier, 70 years ago today, was one of sport’s great staging posts. It was more the humility in never overblowing that achievement, the prized neurology award on the mantelpiece in his Oxford office, and his boundless curiosity. Bannister, who died in 2018, was a man of science rather than romance, but his most famous 3min 59.4sec have been re-run for decades. He steadfastly refused to fuel the hype and hullabaloo that swirled from the Iffley Road track down the ages, saying: “I rate Olympic gold medals higher than time-trials and records. If I’d won the 1952 Olympics I’d have retired and the irony is I’d be one of 20-odd gold medallists for the 1,500 metres and you wouldn’t be bothering to come to Oxford to see me.” He was right, of course. He also said that his great Australian rival, John Landy, would have dipped under four minutes first had he used Chris Brasher and Chris Chataway as pacemakers. Landy dismissed them as a contrivance and said he wanted to break the record in a “fair dinkum” fashion. He managed it 46 days later anyway. Bannister had more affection for the time he beat Landy over the mile distance at that year’s British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Vancouver. “For me the merit of the four-minute mile had vanished if I was not able to beat John Landy.” As we sat in his office in 2014, before the 60th anniversary, drinking in memories as well as tea, Bannister turned to the future and explained why he felt Mo Farah could break the mile record if he wanted to. The outdoor mark of 3:43.13, set by Morocco’s Hicham El Guerrouj in 1999, still stands a quarter of a century on. Bannister explained that Farah had run a 1,500m in 3:28.81 almost “by accident”. He needed to complete the extra 109 metres in 14.31. He felt that was within Farah’s reach, but his point was that nobody was trying to break the mile record any more. Back then, the sub twohour marathon was also a mirage on the horizon. Five years before Eliud Kipchoge managed it, Bannister told me: “It would be dead easy if they could choose the perfect day, on a straight track, with a prevailing westerly wind, with the temperature about 18 degrees. The thing is nobody is attacking it like we did with the four-minute mile.” That changed and the two-hour marathon soon became the modern four-minute mile. Kipchoge’s 2019 run was not ratified by World Athletics, but Kelvin Kiptum, the official world record holder who died in February, was only 35 seconds away from a legal first. In the meantime, the mile has become all but forgotten, and there will be little ceremony to mark the 25th anniversary of El Guerrouj’s record in July. But in the early 1980s the mile was integral to the Seb CoeSteve Ovett rivalry, and they broke the world record a combined five times in just over two years. Steve Cram took it on a significant notch in 1985, but then there was nothing for eight years until Noureddine Morceli scythed almost two seconds off Cram’s time. That lasted six years until El Guerrouj. Since then, nobody has come close. Where records have been tumbling in other events, only two men this century, Jakob Ingebrigtsen and Yared Nuguse, have come Today’s celebrations in Oxford are reminders of an important man of sport and medicine, but also the enduring thrill of sporting landmarks — Garfield Sobers’s six sixes in one over, Nadia Comineci’s perfect ten and Bannister’s blast from the past. Yet others are said to have beaten Bannister to his place in this pantheon of pioneeers. The New Zealander, Jack Lovelock, set the official mile record in 1933, but decades after he fell to his death in front of a New York subway train a doctor wrote to the British Medical Journal and said he had been the timekeeper in the 1930s when Lovelock had clocked 3:52 in a secret run in London. Go back to 1876 and US Army officers recorded a sub four-minute time for the Pawnee chief known as “Great Hawk”. Or rewind further to 1779, when fruit and veg salesman James Parrott was said to have done likewise for a five-guinea bet in Shoreditch. Truth or tall tale, there are records of similar wagers that show that 18th century gamblers thought a four-minute mile was worth a punt. Bannister told me the only reason he defeated his peers was that people told him what Landy and the American Wes Santee were doing. “You only get real progress when you have a rival,” he said. There are no such duels now and the mile is a low-priority anachronism destined to remain frozen in nostalgia. And yet there may just be one more fabulous milestone to be reached. The women’s mile record had not moved for 23 years until 2019. Then, last year, Kenya’s Faith Kipyegon scythed a huge four seconds off Sifan Hassan’s record when running 4:7.06. Since 1980, the women’s record has been improved by more than 13 seconds. A women’s sub four-minute mile? Sceptics might consider Bannister’s gently reprimanding words when this reporter questioned the seemingly fanciful two-hour marathon — “Does it sound impossible?” Why has mile become obsolete event? On 70th anniversary of Roger Bannister’s feat, Rick Broadbent says that the two-hour marathon has become the new four-minute mile Celebrations in Oxford Nearly 1,000 runners are expected to take part in a community mile along Oxford High Street today before a track meet to celebrate the 70th anniversary of Sir Roger Bannister breaking the four-minute mile barrier (Lewis Thompson writes). The track meet will begin around 2pm, with races getting progressively faster and at higher levels throughout the afternoon, culminating at 6pm — exactly 70 years from Bannister’s record. Speeches are expected from the Bannister family and Sylvia Barlag, a representative from World Athletics. Tom Barrett, 23, and Thomas Renshaw, 25, have organised the event alongside their studies as PhD students at Oxford University. There will be a special trial race of a mile steeplechase, a request specifically made by World Athletics as it explores new distances that could be introduced into athletics. Winners of all races will receive their medals on the Iffley Road Sports Centre track where Bannister ran his historic mile in 3min 59.4sec in 1954. Moroccan never failed a drug test and was consistent over a long period. And given Ingebrigtsen said he believes doping is worse now than it was ten years ago, you would have expected someone to mount an assault on the record — whether by fair or foul means. In his 2010 book The Perfection Point, John Brenkus predicted the ultimate time for the mile. Using equations devised by two academics in Canada, Francois Peronnet and Guy Thibault, to gauge average power output, he deduced that existing runners could clock 3:41.96, thus comfortably eclipsing El Guerrouj. By 2040 he estimated the 3:30 barrier would be broken. Using the same method, Perronet and Thibault predicted the first sub two-hour marathon would come no later than 2028, which now seems pretty accurate. Bannister crosses the line in 3min 59.4sec on May 6, 1954. The outdoor mark set by El Guerrouj, right, in 1999 still stands while Kipchoge, below, ran the first sub two-hour marathon

50 S1 Monday May 6 2024 | the times Sport Miami Grand Prix Lando Norris sat in the McLaren hospitality suite on Thursday, nibbling carrot sticks and hummus, admitting that this Miami circuit was not one of his favourites. This race may just have changed his mind. A perfectly timed safety car after a collision between Logan Sargeant and Kevin Magnussen gave Norris a crucial track position at the front of the race before the 24-year-old produced a mature, calm drive to register his first Formula 1 race victory at the 110th time of asking. The unwanted statistic of 15 podiums without a race win, the most in F1 history, has been following him around for months, but the British driver has been steadily improving while McLaren have given him a car genuinely capable of challenging Max Verstappen. Norris was attached to a lie detector this week by Sky Sports and asked if he believed he could win a race in the McLaren. He replied “yes”, but even he could not have dreamt of doing so quite this quickly. Carlos Sainz’s victory in Melbourne — the one race until now not won by Verstappen — came after the world champion’s retirement due to a mechanical issue. In Miami, Norris’s while the marshals took to the track to remove it. The leading teams had already gone past the pit entry point so could not take advantage of the quicker stop opportunity. They soon had the chance, though, as Magnussen ploughed into Sargeant, the American, at his home race, and eliminated them both, causing a full safety car. Magnussen was given a tensecond penalty for causing a collision. It was the stroke of good luck required to unseat Verstappen from the race lead. Norris had not made a pitstop after carefully protecting his medium tyres, while the rest of the leaders had, meaning the McLaren driver could in effect gain a free stop and come back request for Trump to visit them. After this result, perhaps he will be welcomed back again. This is a circuit that attracts plenty of characters — Ed Sheeran, Kendall Jenner and Tom Brady were among the stars who graced this race weekend — but it lacks the real character of a traditional F1 track. While the favoured one-stop strategy is not one of the most intriguing of the 24-race calendar, the combination of Pirelli’s tyres and the Miami heat has caused issues for all the teams. Accentuated by the soft tyres many used in qualifying, the problems have left drivers struggling to find the optimal window of performance. They have found huge variance in what they are able to do within only a few minutes of each other. Throughout the weekend, achieving consistency has proved to be near-impossible and being too aggressive at the start of the lap can compromise performance at the end. Such was the difficulty Verstappen was finding in controlling his car that he made an uncharacteristic mistake, hitting the bollard at turn 15, with bodywork flying from his front wing. The bollard emerged from the back of his Red Bull and rolled on to the racing line, causing a virtual safety car 110th time lucky as Norris has day in sun McLaren was simply quicker than the Red Bulls. Verstappen was wary of the start that Charles Leclerc had produced in the sprint race, squeezing him into turn 1, and did not make the same mistake twice, with a clean and comfortable getaway. The Ferraris continued in second and third but it was Sergio Pérez’s reckless move to take the inside line and brake late that backfired spectacularly, locking up his tyres and forcing the Mexican to cut across the cars alongside him — almost wiping out the world champion, his team-mate, in the process. Oscar Piastri in the McLaren was the biggest benefactor, sneaking past both Ferraris as they were forced to take evasive action. Pérez dropped to fifth, with Norris seemingly out of the hunt for victory in sixth. McLaren brought significant upgrades to this race, but only half of the parts are on Piastri’s car, while Norris had all of them. Ferrari’s struggles in getting past Piastri, and Norris’s frustrations behind Pérez, reflected a circuit that is suboptimal for overtaking despite its significant pomp. Chants of “U-S-A” filled the air as Donald Trump shook hands with Zak Brown, the McLaren chief executive, outside the team’s garage before being guarded by Secret Service officials on the grid. McLaren later released a statement clarifying that they were “a non-political organisation” but had accepted the Molly Hudson Motor Racing Reporter, Miami BANK HOLIDAY FOOTBALL YOU CAN BANK ON ON RADIO ONLINE ON THE APP LISTEN TO FREE LIVE COMMENTARIES TODAY BRING IT ON PALACE v MAN UTD 20:00 K.O CRAWLEY v MK DONS 15:00 K.O CREWE v DONCASTER 17:30 K.O

the times | Monday May 6 2024 S1 51 Sport Kris Kim, the 16-year-old Surrey schoolboy who put his GCSE studies on hold to make his PGA Tour debut, finished in a tie for 65th at the CJ Cup Byron Nelson in Texas last night. Kim, who chipped in for an eagle in his opening round on Thursday, finished on six under par after a closing round of 73. Meanwhile Brooks Koepka became the first golfer to record four victories on the LIV circuit after a two-stroke win in Singapore yesterday. Koepka carded a three-under-par round of 68 to finish the three days on 15 under, two shots clear of the Australians Cameron Smith and Marc Leishman at Sentosa Golf Club. The defending champion, Talor Gooch, finished three strokes behind Koepka, who will head into the year’s second major, the US PGA Championship at Valhalla Golf Club from May 16, with confidence as he attempts to defend the title he won at Oak Hill Country Club last year. Golf out as the leader. Verstappen had, until that point, navigated another weekend where his driving — a sprint race victory and pole position — had papered over off-track turbulence. Adrian Newey, the designer who has been at Red Bull for 19 years and is credited as a huge part of their success, has decided to depart at the end of the year, having become disillusioned at the team. His manager, Eddie Jordan, crucially negotiated an exit for Newey that means he can join a rival team, if he so wishes, from spring 2025. As The Times reported last week, the sporting director Jonathan Wheatley is also considering his future and harbours team principal ambitions that would not be possible if he stays at Red Bull. Both Newey and Wheatley were sitting to the left of Horner on the pitwall. Sources have told The Times that there are at least two teams on the grid considering the future of their own team principals, and Wheatley is understood to have sounded them out. Red Bull are said to be comfortable with Wheatley assessing his options, while in negotiations for a new contract, and could still remain at the team where he has overseen their impressive pitstops. Verstappen had complained of “terrible” balance in his car throughout the weekend and, after navigating the restart, Norris had quicker pace, Norris, flanked on the podium by Verstappen and Sainz, celebrates a maiden F1 win that owed much to a stroke of fortune after Magnussen caused a collision, inset. Trump, right, may be welcomed back by Brown after visiting the McLaren team Jak Jones, the 30-year-old Welshman, raised his hand for a fist bump when he won his first frame of his first World Championship final yesterday. The trouble was he had already lost seven, avoiding an afternoon whitewash but leaving himself with surely too much to do today. In a tournament low on centuries — 58 before the final, compared with last year’s 90 and a record 109 in 2022 — Kyren Wilson struck two in the afternoon, full-table clearances of 129 (in the opener) and 125, whereas Jones did not pass 100 cumulative points until the eighth frame. It is to Jones’s enormous credit that he edged the evening session and reached halfway 11-6 down. “It’s a miracle that I was still in it,” he said. “Absolutely shocking. I’m just knackered. Absolutely knackered. If I’d had a decent night’s sleep last night, I probably could have done something today.” An exhausted, overawed Jones was sinking in the sweat above his brow, no longer mopping up scraps as in his first four matches. Wilson was far from flawless but Jones was missing by huge distances. All the world No 44 could do was return to his chair, leaning forward, leaning back, rocked on the biggest day of his career. Wilson, the No 12 seed, was living snooker as intended: chess with a backache, not a headache. Adrenaline had brought Jones this far. In a run from the qualifiers filled with long frames, he had sealed his place in this match not long before 11pm on Saturday. The well-rested Wilson’s progress has been serene: never close to losing and needing less than 24 hours of table time to get here. Jones had been on the baize for almost 46 hours to reach the same stage. The afternoon ended in light relief. Wilson asked for the red to be cleaned and picked up the marker. The 32-yearold from Kettering knows what it is to be a frazzled footnote in a debut final. He was the victim of the most one-sided showpiece of recent years, beaten 18-8 by Ronnie O’Sullivan in 2020. Stephen Hendry and Steve Davis dished out the most robotic dismantlings of all: Davis bettered his 18-6 against Cliff Thorburn in 1983 with 18-3 ‘Knackered’ Jones has it all to do as Wilson dominates Snooker Elgan Alderman against John Parrott in 1989, after which Hendry carded 18-5 against Jimmy White in 1993. The ending 35 years ago “came as a merciful release for all concerned”, The Times wrote, and similar feelings permeated the Sheffield theatre as Wilson dominated proceedings. At least there was no danger of Jones losing by 45 frames like Clark McConachy in 1952, when finals lasted longer than geological eras. The World Championship is a slog and for a tired runner-up it can unravel in epic ways. On the occasion of Davis’s defenestration of Parrott, he led 13-3 overnight. “I played like a slow puncture,” Parrott said. “I started badly and got progressively worse. Even if I’d got into a couple of games in the last session I wouldn’t have known what to do, I’d have needed a diagram.’’ Yet matches can turn. Davis led Dennis Taylor 8-0 in 1985 but lost the final frame in ungodly hours. A rejuvenated Jones opened the evening session with a break of 75 and sunk a long red with his next act, making another half-century for his third frame in a row. It was now Wilson cueing every which way across the white — until he settled down with a 125 and led 9-3 at the break. Wilson knocked in a 122 to make it 10-4. He was on for another when he was unlucky to fall out of position and, after both wasted chances, Jones potted stunning long reds and made a 90 break. Wilson needed a snooker to prevent full deflation and three losses in a row, and he got it, before the first day ended with an eight-minute duel on the black, potted by the Englishman. “It’s not all about the scoreline, it’s about how the frame was won and there was obviously a lot of tension in there,” Wilson said. Terry Griffiths charmed in 1979 with the words: “I’m in the final, you know.” Jones eventually reminded all that he was in one too. To emulate Griffiths and Shaun Murphy and triumph as a qualifier would be an astonishing comeback. Wilson, a champion in waiting even if this year he was not expected to be the one, must keep calm to join the ranks of England’s best. “When you get ahead you are always thinking at the back of your mind, if you lose it from here it is going to be a killer,” O’Sullivan said after he beat Ali Carter 18-8 in 2008. Be “The Warrior”, not “The Worrier”. Wilson, left, and Jones, right, with referee Paul Collier before the opening frame steadily building a gap. “I can’t get the car to turn, it’s a disaster”, Verstappen complained on the team radio, in the unfamiliar position of having to chase the leader. Piastri also had pace but, in his exuberance to exploit it, clipped Sainz and damaged his front wing. He lost two positions to Pérez and Lewis Hamilton and had to pit to rectify the damage. In the Russian Grand Prix in 2021, rain denied Norris victory after he had led for most of the race. McLaren staff looked nervously at the many screens as the laps ticked down here and even warned Piastri in 17th to drive carefully to avoid a safety car. But this time there was nothing to stop Norris. Kim, 16, ends his dream week “Yeah, it’s all starting to come around,” Koepka, who spent a week off working hard with his coach, Claude Harmon III, said. “I thought that was very important, so to see it pay off here is huge.” Koepka, who turned 34 on Friday, had four birdies and one bogey in his final round to keep Smith and Leishman at bay. Elsewhere, the DP World Tour also hosted a 54-hole tournament — but this was down to the weather, rather than a sudden LIV-style change of playing conditions. Adrián Otaegui overturned a five-shot deficit to win the China Open, a fifth Tour title for the 31-year-old Spaniard. After Saturday’s round was cancelled because of thunder and lightning, the tournament at Hidden Grace Golf Club was curtailed. Otaegui carded a seven-under-par round of 65 yesterday to win by one shot from Guido Migliozzi, who finished runner-up with a 67. “I was starting five shots back and I tried not to look at the leaderboard,” Otaegui, the world No 143, said. GB claim European silver Gymnastics The defending champions Great Britain had to settle for silver in the team competition at the European Championships as the hosts Italy claimed gold in Rimini. The team of Becky Downie, Alice Kinsella, Abigail Martin, Ruby Evans and Georgia-Mae Fenton scored 162.16 points to finish two behind the Italians, with France claiming bronze. Kinsella achieved the team’s highest score (14.10) on their opening apparatus, the vault, with Downie scoring 14.63 on the uneven bars. Four relay slots for Games Athletics Great Britain have qualified for four of the five relay events at this summer’s Olympic Games after some impressive results at the World Athletics Relays in the Bahamas. The women’s 4x100m team won their heat, while the men’s 4x100m quartet plus both the 4x400m men’s and women’s teams all finished second in their heats to secure their slots. Britain’s mixed 4x400m team finished third but were due another chance at qualification last night. World Snooker Championship final Resumes today, 1pm Final session from 7pm, BBC 2 How they finished Overall standings Constructors 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 M Verstappen Red Bull S Pérez Red Bull C Leclerc Ferrari C Sainz Ferrari L Norris McLaren O Piastri McLaren G Russell Mercedes F Alonso Aston Martin L Hamilton Mercedes L Stroll Aston Martin 118pts 91 83 73 58 41 33 31 19 9 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Red Bull Ferrari McLaren Mercedes Aston Martin RB Haas Williams Kick Sauber Alpine 209pts 162 99 52 40 13 7 0 0 0 Fastest lap O Piastri 1:30.634 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 1 L Norris McLaren 1hr 30min 49.876sec C Sainz Ferrari G Russell Mercedes L Hamilton Mercedes O Piastri McLaren D Ricciardo RB Y Tsunoda RB F Alonso Aston Martin L Stroll Aston Martin E Ocon Alpine P Gasly Alpine L Sargeant Williams A Albon Williams V Bottas Kick Sauber Zhou Guanyu Kick Sauber K Magnussen Haas N Hülkenberg Haas C Leclerc Ferrari S Pérez Red Bull +7.612 +9.920 +11.407 +14.650 +16.585 +26.185 +34.789 +37.107 +39.746 +40.789 +44.958 +49.756 +49.979 +50.956 +52.356 +55.173 +1:04.683 +1.16.091 DNF M Verstappen Red Bull

52 Monday May 6 2024 | the times Sport Investec Champions Cup Scorers: Toulouse: Tries M Lebel (5min), P Mauvaka (19), T Flament (28), A Dupont (35, 38), J-C Mallia (69). Conversions B Kinghorn 3, T Ramos. Harlequins: Tries M Smith (15), W Evans (24), C Murley (47), T Green (53). Conversions M Smith 3. Toulouse B Kinghorn; J C Mallia, P Costes, (S Chocobares, 70), P Ahki, M Lebel (T Ramos, 54); R Ntamack, A Dupont; C Baille (R Neti, 61), P Mauvaka (J Marchand, 50), D Aldegheri (J Merkler, 61), T Flament, E Meafou (R Arnold, 57), F Cros, J Willis (M C Ferreira, 71), A Roumat. Harlequins T Green; L Lynagh (S Riley, 71), L Northmore (O Beard, 76), A Esterhuizen, C Murley; M Smith, D Care (W Porter, 63); F Baxter (J Marler, 50), J Walker, W Collier (S Kerrod, 63), I Herbst, S Lewies, C CunninghamSouth, W Evans (J Chisholm, 67), A Dombrandt. Referee: Andrew Brace (Ire). Attendance: 32,494. G loucester have got me thinking of a line from the Bob Dylan song Love Minus Zero/No Limit. Dylan’s lyrical love “knows there’s no success like failure and that failure’s no success at all”. George Skivington, the Gloucester director of rugby, is rewriting another disappointing season of Gallagher Premiership failure with a plotline Cup and are struggling in tenth place in the Top 14. At best the ninth-placed English team (out of ten) can claim consolatory rights if they win a final on English territory against one of the weaker South African teams. Even if Gloucester do prevail and add the Challenge Cup to the Premiership Cup, it does not compensate for their form in the Premiership proper. In the 2022-23 season the only team to finish beneath them were, again, Newcastle. In 2021-22 Gloucester had a successful season; finishing fifth was something of which their supporters could be proud. Look back to 2020-21 and it was an embarrassing 11th place with Worcester sparing them the indignity of the bottom spot. In their past ten years in the Premiership, only once have Gloucester made the play-off games, after finishing third in 2018-19. They have finished in the top six on a mere two occasions. And there was me thinking it was Bath who had the longest-suffering fans. based around success in one cup competition full of developmental English sides and the other against small, unfocused or failing clubs from France and the United Rugby Championship (URC). In Saturday’s Challenge Cup semifinal — with an inspiring display from Zach Mercer — they beat a Benetton team currently eighth in the 16-team URC. In the final they will face a Sharks team from Durban lying a lowly 13th. The South African franchise made the final by prevailing with a dramatic last-kick touchline conversion at the Stoop against Clermont, those legendary giants of the Champions Cup. Clermont failed to qualify for this season’s Champions Gloucester’s season is a failure – forget the cups Stuart Barnes Lightning does not strike twice. Toulouse were not stunned by Harlequins, however electric the visiting side were in passages. They kept thundering on, as they had in the quarter-final they nicked by a point from Bordeaux Bègles, but they could not quite repeat that extraordinary feat. Their semi-final defeat, like Northampton Saints’ 20-17 loss to Leinster on Saturday, comes with no disgrace. True to their word, Harlequins went for it and nearly pulled off the greatest heist in their history. However, Toulouse were just too much for them. The five-times champions had to score six tries to overcome Harlequins, and were only truly sure of victory in the final two minutes. The French, probably the greatest club side of all, advanced to another final, an anticipated epic encounter with Leinster at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on May 25 as they try to win an unprecedented sixth Investec Champions Cup crown. It felt impossible for Harlequins to win here but, unlike so many other teams, they at least had some positive history against Toulouse in France to lean on, having won 31-24 on the banks of the Garonne River in December 2011. But, operating with a salary bill worth half that of Toulouse’s, they knew they would need the hearts of lions to reach their first Champions Cup final in the city where their hosts have not lost for two years. Toulouse proved their heavy favourites tag was deserved by scoring within five minutes. Thibaud Flament rose to steal a Harlequins lineout in his own half, then the hooker Peato Mauvaka pulled a pass back from the gainline to Romain Ntamack, who flung the ball wide to send Matthis Lebel over. Blair Kinghorn missed his conversion, but we were off to the rampant start we expected. Harlequins fans came in numbers — 2,500 of them officially — and made a din in a pocket to the right side of the halfway line, just as they had watching the extraordinary 42-41 quarter-final win over Bordeaux last month. The theme from Harlequins for that game was to “swing the bat” in the Bazball style. It has quickly become a club mantra, so much so that two fans had the message printed on an oversized England flag. Yet it was patient strokeplay that brought their responding try. Harlequins built phases through the forwards before Marcus Smith danced in, giving his now-trademark fist-pump and toothy grimace after scoring and before converting. Les Toulousains gave every visiting player pantomime boos, particularly Smith for some reason, and bounced away all around, their thick red-andblack banners draping down from the back of the stand behind one of the goals; the “Red Kingdom” they call it. The Kingdom erupted when Mauvaka was next to score, spinning away from a rolling maul. Harlequins, kept playing and quickly responded with another try. From a lineout Louis 02 1 Toulouse Harlequins 38 26 Will Kelleher Deputy Rugby Correspondent, Toulouse Harlequins fall just short of Lynagh kicked a superb 50:22 — although local fans were convinced he was beyond halfway when he struck it — which set another lineout from which Will Evans scored. Then Toulouse broke the tit-for-tat by scoring three tries in 12 minutes before half-time which felt terminal to Harlequins’ chances of an upset. Two came from errors, one from an exceptional piece of French skill. The Toulouse pack disrupted Harlequins right by their line, making Danny Care fumble a pass to Chandler Cunningham-South, who dropped it into the path of Flament. Try. Next Jack Walker overshot a lineout and Paul Costes, the centre, broke and kicked long. Cadan Murley rolled over the ball chasing back with Kinghorn, and Antoine Dupont pounced to score. The great scrum half did the same short dab down again after a Mauvaka sidestep fooled the Quins defence to send him through a non-existent hole. Kinghorn only landed three of five conversions, and Smith missed one of his, but at 31-12 it looked a deficit too much even for this zany Harlequins side to recover from. The Harlequins captain, Stephan Lewies, rued Toulouse’s first-half surge that proved to be the difference in the end. “If you give Toulouse 28 points on a platter it’ll be tough,” he said. “If we could have taken away a few of those errors, then what might have been?” Just as in their Bordeaux win, the Harlequins props Fin Baxter and Will Collier won scrum penalties against more fabled opponents. The first, after half-time, set the position for an acrobatic try from Murley on the left wing, assisted by his former room-mate Smith. Murley and Smith were integral in the next score, as Murley surged through a broken Toulouse defence before Tyrone Green picked a mean line off Smith to sprint in. Smith converted and Harlequins were within five points with 25 minutes to play. Surely not again? All Harlequins desired was to still be in with a shot in the final 15 minutes, and they were. Then, though, came the killer blow in this pulsating semi-final. Walker came steaming through a ruck and hit Dupont’s head with his shoulder. A long TMO check had the home fans baying for red. A yellow only for Walker — a lucky boy. But, with 14 men, Harlequins were powerless to stop the try that sealed their fate. From the penalty, Toulouse kicked to touch, and spun the ball wide to Juan-Cruz Mallía from the lineout. The Argentinian scored the home side’s first try for half an hour, and Thomas Ramos, on for Lebel, converted to take the French side 12 points clear. For Harlequins, it was one storm too many, and one that they could not weather. 125 Metres made by Harlequins full back Tyrone Greene — no other player made more than 85 The final Leinster v Toulouse Saturday, May 25 Tottenham Hotspur Stadium Kick-off: 2.45pm TV: TNT Sports 37 Combined kicks from hand by Toulouse and Harlequins yesterday. Leinster alone made 38 against Northampton on Saturday Dupont, who scored two first-half tries, gets away from Smith, who had crossed early on for Harlequins. Murley went over

the times | Monday May 6 2024 53 Sport In the immediate aftermath of a hardfought victory in the Madrid Open final, Iga Swiatek’s thoughts were not centred on what it meant to her prospects of success at the upcoming French Open. In her position as a role model, the world No 1 was well aware that a thrilling three-set battle with Aryna Sabalenka provided a helpful shot in the arm for the women’s game. “Who’s going to say now that women’s tennis is boring?” Swiatek asked as she stood on court, still catching her breath from Saturday’s gruelling match, which lasted more than three hours. It sums up her level-headed maturity that she was able to acknowledge the wider impact of such a contest only a few minutes after it had concluded. No doubt the WTA Tour previously suffered some harm due to having barely any rivalries for fans to latch on to for several years. The retirements of the likes of Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova came at a time of widespread inconsistency, meaning that it was a challenge for the sport to build engaging and lasting storylines. Some critics took it too far, though, using it as a stick to put down the quality of the women’s game compared with their male counterparts. This was clearly in the mind of Swiatek, who was more entitled than most to feel aggrieved given her level of play over the past two years. Recently the 22-year-old celebrated her 100th week as the best player in the world. “Obviously if we would have to play against a man we would lose,” Swiatek said. “It’s not about that. It’s about how two players match up against each other, so I think we can play great matches. “I’m No 1 but I’m seeing these girls in the top ten and we can play such intense battles. I think it’s all about what emotions it brings in people. It’s not that you should compare the level of tennis, but you should compare what it gives you when you watch it. People can take a lot from watching women’s tennis, and it can be interesting and emoIt will take something quite special to beat Swiatek at Roland Garros, where she is already a threetimes champion. The faster conditions at altitude in Madrid were better suited to Sabalenka’s power, but still she could not get across the line ahead of Swiatek, who saved three championship points to win 7-5, 4-6, 7-6 (9-7). Of the 24 WTA finals that Swiatek has contested, she described this as the “most intense and crazy”. At one point when her back was up against the wall, she drew inspiration from the great Rafael Nadal Stuart Fraser Tennis Correspondent Swiatek’s rivalry with Sabalenka is what game needs and his ability to fight back from the brink of defeat. “One thing that came through my mind was that I think Rafa had a couple of matches like that,” Swiatek said. “I remember exactly when he was playing [Daniil] Medvedev in Australia [the 2022 final, when he won from two sets down] and it clicked for him. That kind of gave me hope that maybe it will click, even after two hours.” Even in defeat, Sabalenka, 26, could also acknowledge the wider benefits of such an encounter. Along with Swiatek and Elena Rybakina, an elite trio of female players is being established. “I really hope that we’ll be able to increase the level every year,” Sabalenka, the world No 2, said. “That’s amazing and I’m really happy to be one of the big three, which you call us. It’s really motivating me a lot to keep working and to keep improving myself, just so I stay there and get as many wins against them as I can.” It does seem as if the men’s and women’s games have swapped the way in which they are perceived during this European clay-court swing. There is much uncertainty on the ATP Tour heading towards Roland Garros, with the bookmakers finding it more difficult than usual to form the odds. Nadal, the 14-times champion, would be considered the favourite were it not for the 37-year-old’s recent physical issues, while Novak Djokovic, the 24-times grand-slam champion, has not won a trophy in the three tournaments he has played this year. Doubts are growing over the fitness of Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner after both pulled out of this week’s Italian Open. Alcaraz, 21, is resting his right forearm back in Spain, while Sinner, 22, told reporters in Rome on Sunday that he had to pull out of his home tournament because a hip problem was worse than initially thought. “We all thought it wasn’t a serious problem,” Sinner, the Australian Open champion, said. “I don’t want to say exactly what it is. If it wasn’t 100 per cent healed, I would be forced to stop playing for a long time. “We still have to decide a few things for Paris. The preparation will not be optimal. My team and I will do our best to get there with as high a percentage as possible to compete.” In the men’s final, Andrey Rublev prevailed after a hard-fought 4-6, 7-5, 7-5 victory over Felix Auger Aliassime, despite battling illness that the Russian world No 8 said left him feeling “almost dead every day”. Rublev had lost four consecutive matches before arriving in the Spanish capital but came from a set down to beat his Canadian opponent. The 26-year-old triumphed at the Hong Kong Open in January but had struggled since before turning around his form in Madrid, dropping only one set on the way to the final. “If you knew what I had been through in the past nine days you would not imagine that I would be able to win a title,” Rublev said. “I was almost dead every day, I was not sleeping at night.” . Swiatek looks to be in prime form for the French Open greatest heist yet the competitions. The Champions Cup is everything for all but the smaller, more financially stretched clubs. The best-placed French team in the Challenge Cup were Perpignan, currently seventh in the French league. They lost all four of their pool games, doing nothing bar fulfilling the fixtures. To succeed against relatively failing teams is, as Dylan wrote, no success at all. Some supporters may argue in favour of two trophy lifts. But would the canny Shed really prefer these developmental domestic and comparably lightweight European trophies at the expense of a Premiership future in which they may not yet be ready to win on the big day at Twickenham but can at least steadily reassert themselves among England’s elite? Gloucester may finish — they should finish — this campaign with two trophies and a lowly ninth place in the Premiership. But don’t be fooled, Shed Heads. For such a mighty rugby club, this is failure. Admittedly, in the past decade there were three Challenge Cup finals in four years, including one win against Edinburgh in 2015. But this batch of second-tier European finals did little in terms of rekindling one of England’s finest rugby clubs. Gloucester have a truly great set of supporters and it would be begrudging in the extreme not to hope they can celebrate at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on May 24. But enjoying a brief moment in the spotlight isn’t true success. The fact that Gloucester have won every match they have played in their cup runs is a smokescreen. Television reporters ask bemused players why they have not been able to translate cup success into regular Premiership form. Well, here is the answer. They haven’t had to beat anybody in cup matches. Relegate Gloucester to the Championship and they would win every league game. But that wouldn’t suggest success the next campaign. League and cups are incomparable. In the Premiership Cup, all the top sides use the tournament as a means of developing young talent. Worcester won it before their sad demise and, in all honesty, the Warriors would never, ever, have won a trophy against the big guns. Nor, right now, would this Gloucester squad. Not one of the leading six sides in the Premiership qualified for the Premiership Cup semi-finals. Exeter were the highest-placed team. They are currently in seventh. The final was against Leicester Tigers at Kingsholm. The Tigers are eighth. Everyone enjoys a trophy lift but the Premiership Cup proved little. In theory the European Challenge Cup is a much meatier affair. This season’s facts suggest otherwise. Of the 40 teams competing in Europe, 24 played at the pool stages of the Champions Cup. Four of them dropped down to the Challenge Cup. The tournaments are lopsided in the Champions Cup’s favour. There wasn’t a side in the leading quintet of the three respective leagues represented in the less glamorous of in the corner, inset, to give the English side hope of landing another famous win in France but they fell agonisingly short

Times Crossword 28,909 across down Prize solution 28,902 Check today’s answers by ringing 0905 757 0141 by midnight. Calls cost £1 per minute plus your telephone company’s network access charge. SP: Spoke 0333 202 3390. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 C O W P A T M A L D I V E S H H M M D E U E A M E R I C A N O M I L A N M E N R A G I B E L A B O U R I N G A W L E E R N N R E R E F U G E E G A E L I C S I G T A G A L L I E D C H I A N T I C T N U O S N R Y E G R E E N K E E P E R U R B D C A U M E T R O A L U M I N I U M B I W T R M N M S U P P L I E R A P A T H Y 1 Second option mostly involving ultimate academic (10) 7 Damp, but not the second source of damp (4) 9 Deduce computer network turned evil (8) 10 Crab, perhaps, unable to be cracked (6) 11 Main route all but fixed from here (6) 13 Island I leave to probe US city villainy (8) 14 Spoiled girl embracing grand feature of church (7,5) 17 Token of love in entirety, playing Wagner operas (8,4) 20 Extremely good, more than once, about British article in winter sports equipment (8) 21 In the past, you’d backed including place for second-in-command (6) 22 Play for which actor given licence (6) 23 Money received by office worker: good, attractive (8) 25 Horrific cut — may result in this (4) 26 European capital willing to consider form of change externally (10) 2 Court accommodating former King and old Emperor? (8) 3 Lines up one to head paper round (3) 4 Upset PA sees head of team leaving (5) 5 Significant narration (7) 6 Close friend cooked and brought in meat dish (9) 7 Imports business reduced by half reorganised in one-sided arrangement (6,5) 8 Welcome line in fried food (6) 12 A little attention around college regarding office work (5-6) 15 Not initially unbranded, about to become active (9) 16 Isn’t upset over a new church, for example (8) 18 No poles: circus tent continuing to move? (7) 19 Descriptive of stones or tablets? (6) 21 Energetic figure from cycling world in France (5) 24 Drop of salt water, not right for drink (3) The winners of Prize Crossword No 28,902 are Jonathan Hills, Godalming, Surrey Alex Newman, Ipswich, Suffolk Morgan Jamieson, Newton Mearns, Glasgow Stuart Kershaw, London NW7 Mark Ginn, Aghadowey, Northern Ireland Newspapers support recycling The recycled paper content of UK newspapers in 2020 was 67% Euros scare for Maguire Paul Hirst County players fear for safety Elizabeth Ammon Harry Maguire has given England a pre-Euro 2024 fitness scare after suffering an injury that will rule him out of the rest of the Premier League season. Maguire, 31, sustained the muscular problem while training in the lead-up to Manchester United’s game away to Crystal Palace tonight. His aim is to try to recover in time for the FA Cup final against Manchester City on May 25. Four days before that, Gareth Southgate is due to name his training squad for the Euros in Germany, although the 26-man squad for the tournament does not have to be finalised until a week before it starts on June 14. The injury means United have only one recognised central defender — the 36-year-old Jonny Evans — fit for tonight’s game at Selhurst Park. He is expected to line up alongside Casemiro. Three out of four county cricketers are worried about their personal safety as a result of the packed domestic schedule. In a survey conducted by the Professional Cricketers’ Association (PCA), 76 per cent of members said the fixture list causes them safety concerns regarding travelling — with some reporting that they could not remember how they had got home after late-night drives — while 81 per cent believe the calendar has a negative impact on their physical wellbeing. Nearly two thirds (66 per cent) said that too much cricket is played across the summer which, the players argue, is not conducive to high performance. The PCA has been raising concerns about the schedule for years but now believes that action is required because S1 Monday May 6 2024 | the times Sport Toulouse survive fightback to reach final after thriller The Game Harlequins heartbreak Top-class reports and analysis of all the weekend’s action Norris, 24, enjoyed a remarkable turn in fortunes in Miami, having been bumped out of the sprint race with only a few seconds on the clock earlier in the weekend Lando wins at last Molly Hudson Motor Racing Reporter, Miami Lando Norris secured his first Formula 1 victory at the 110th attempt with a stunning drive in the Miami Grand Prix last night. The 24-year-old Briton beat the world champion Max Verstappen into second place. Norris had registered 15 podium finishes, the most of any driver without claiming victory, until this race where he benefited from a perfectly timed safety car and got away from Verstappen with ease, winning by nearly eight seconds. I love you all,” Norris, who dedicated the victory to his grandmother, said over the team radio. “It has been a long time coming, but finally I’ve managed to do it. I’m so happy for my whole team, I finally delivered for them.” After 110 races and 15 podium finishes, McLaren’s British driver finally tastes victory

May 6 | 2024 Anxiety and ADHD are glamorised Britain’s mental health crisis, as seen by an NHS psychiatrist We’re so medicated we may as well put pills in vending machines Plus: JK Rowling on writing the Strike novels

2 Monday May 6 2024 | the times times2 Kevin Maher I t’s fast becoming one of the great “will they or won’t they?” dramas, up there with Lizzy and Darcy from Pride and Prejudice, Ron and Hermione from the Harry Potter books and Dawn and Tim from The Office. Yes, the players are Prince Harry and King Charles, the subject is familial tensions and the question is whether they are going to meet this week for a mollifying encounter while Harry is in the UK. The prince will be here on Wednesday to join a ceremony at St Paul’s Cathedral that’s marking ten years of his Invictus Games. At roughly the same time, and just round the corner (or a mere five stops on the District Line), the King will be attending the first Buckingham Palace garden party of the summer. Hmmm. If only there were some way to get two people in the same city at the same time and in approximately the same place to meet up? It’s almost as if there was something other than practicalities keeping them apart? Harry, of course, has been making coded overtures about royal reconciliation in the media. During an interview in February with the American breakfast TV pabulum Good Morning America, when discussing his father’s cancer diagnosis Harry acknowledged the “reunifying” impact that illness can have on relationships and how it can bolster “the strength of the family unit”. He added that he would see his family “as much as I can” when UK trips were scheduled. I’m not sure if King Charles watches Good Morning America, but sources at the Palace have said that “no meeting” with Harry has been pencilled into the monarch’s diary for this week. The all-powerful diary, it seems, is a contentious thing, and reflective of a king who is apparently keen to return to full engagements yet frustrated by the calendar curtailments that illness and recuperation are bringing. One of his friends told The Sunday Times: “He’s a bloody caged lion, driving everyone round the twist if he’s stuck at home.” Harry, meanwhile, hinted at the complexities in his own diary when asked by Good Morning America what exactly keeps him busy, you know, these days. “Everything,” came the vague reply. “Everything in the house and everything outside the house.” Beckham’s wine can’t be worth it David Beckham is in the news again. This time it’s because he was snapped leaving a snazzy meal in Valladolid, northern Spain, clutching a bottle of wine worth £922. Yeah, yeah, been there, done that, have the receipt. No, really. It was from a night I spent with a banker friend of a friend in a New York wine bar. He arrived late, ordered a bottle of red, out of which we both drank barely a full glass, then he paid and left with a smile. It was only after he’d gone that I spotted the receipt on the counter. $600! For a few sips! And the saddest part? It was very average wine. Like medium-grade Penfolds. I really hope Beckham’s was better. Leeds goes Ferrell: no touching It was only a matter of time. Deadpool has Wrexham. Black Panther’s Killmonger has Bournemouth. And now, Anchorman gets Leeds! Yep, emulating Hollywood’s footballing enthusiasts and UK club co-owners Ryan Reynolds and Michael B Jordan, the comedy A-lister Will Ferrell has apparently bought a “large stake” in Leeds United. An insider told the Mail on Sunday that Ferrell “loves soccer and has been particularly impressed by the passion of the English game”. This is nice, and great publicity for Leeds and Ferrell, although I’m not sure the 56-year-old star is the perfect branding match for the club. Reynolds made sense for Wrexham because his most famous character, Deadpool, is scrappy and fearless. Ditto for Jordan, whose Killmonger does everything possible to win the throne. Anchorman? His most famous line, uttered before a manly street brawl, is: “Rule number one: no touching of the hair or face.” Still, his second most famous line certainly works for any on-pitch dust-ups from “Dirty” Leeds. The quote? “Boy, that escalated quickly.” What? Like doing the bins? Rolling up the yoga mats? I haven’t met Harry or been given access to his inner sanctum, yet based on the indecently personal information and revealing psychological portrait that emerged from his autobiography and his sixpart Netflix whinge-athon, I have a loose idea of how his daily diary planner might look. “Wake up. Feed chickens. Do guided meditation with therapist on phone. Look in mirror. Feel great about new and improved me with all-important awareness of unconscious bias. Feel bad and guilty about feeling great about new and improved me with allimportant awareness of unconscious bias. Do more guided meditation with therapist on phone. Feed chickens again. Go into beige room. Receive orders from wife and A-list megastar Meghan. Do final guided meditation. Look in mirror. Feel great. Feel bad. Feel great. Feel bad. Blame media.” Point being, I suspect that Harry’s diary is roomier than the King’s, and if there were a gap in the father’s schedule, and the subsequent will to make it happen, surely the son could fill it? No, I suspect that, if it’s up to the King’s gatekeepers, Harry might have a better chance for a personal encounter at next week’s Buckingham Palace garden party. That one is celebrating “creativity”, and will be rammed, reportedly, with top-tier celebrities such as Kate Moss, Lionel Richie and Dominic West. Harry should probably slip into that one under the spouse’s plus-one rule. I can see him now, emerging from behind the strawberries and drily being introduced to King Charles by an exasperated courtier as “the husband of the A-list megastar Meghan Markle”. That would go down well. Oh the tension! Will the King and Harry finally enjoy a brief encounter? The madness His emergency mental healthcare confessions might frighten you, if Dr Benji Waterhouse wasn’t so funny. By Michael Odell I’m at the bottom of a cliff trying to patch people up — wishing there were more barriers W at the top hen they finally specialise, junior doctors get sent to do all kinds of fancy courses. However, prevention and management of violence and aggression, or PMVA, is a short course that only NHS psychiatrists undertake. They kick off their shoes and stand in a semicircle. Then a colleague goes for them in as dysfunctional a manner as possible. “With me it was a colleague shouting, ‘Oi, baldy, I’m gonna cut your head off and eat it!’” Dr Benji Waterhouse says. “I am losing my hair, but that still takes some getting used to. And if you can’t manage aggression verbally, they also teach you basic judo.” Welcome to the world of acute mental health in the NHS. Waterhouse is now a consultant psychiatrist working in London. Resources for emergency mental healthcare in the capital are so scarce that, travelling by bike, he can be responsible for emergencies at no fewer than three big London hospitals. “Some night shifts there are five psychiatrists responsible for three boroughs — that’s a million people,” he says. It’s a tough job, and getting tougher. In 1988 there were 67,000 psychiatric beds in the UK; now there are 18,000. “You have to be very unwell to get admitted. I was shocked when, as a junior, my supervisor said someone threatening to jump from a second floor didn’t qualify because the second floor was not high-risk enough.” Those who turn up at Waterhouse’s clinics again and again — his “frequent flyers” — can be suffering from schizophrenia and anorexia, and sometimes they are war veterans with PTSD. Less common are people like Sebastian, a City banker whom Waterhouse visited at home after a concerned GP’s referral. Sebastian was handsome and charming, with gold taps in his bathroom and an original Banksy on his living room wall. He tried to convince Waterhouse that there must have been a mix-up. It was only because Waterhouse spotted a noose and a stool ready for use as he was leaving that he saved the man’s life. “We managed to get the guy an emergency bed, though he had to travel from London to Durham for it,” Waterhouse says. He is a gentle, considered presence, but quite intense. Even though I’m supposed to be interviewing him, the way he listens, cocking his head with an analytical frown, makes me feel that I might be inadvertently presenting diagnosable issues. One might be passive aggression. After reading his memoir I should know that Waterhouse has a phobia of dogs, yet I brought along a Jack Russell. I just forgot. “She seems OK,” he says tentatively, eyeing her asleep under a table. This seriousness is slightly at odds with his book, You Don’t Have to Be Mad to Work Here — a fascinating, heartbreaking and hilarious account of doctors struggling to treat acute mental health. Clinical depression doesn’t show up on a blood test. You won’t hear a mind cracking up using a stethoscope. That makes Waterhouse’s attempts to diagnose unusual symptoms and behaviours according to the ICD-10 (International Classification of Disease, tenth edition) so compelling. Take his encounter at his first on-call clinic with Barbara, an American woman in her late fifties. She had just flown in from New York, claiming that she was due to marry the singer Harry Styles at St Paul’s Cathedral that afternoon. Disembarking from the “red-eye” in full wedding dress regalia, she had been detained by two policemen in central London after requesting directions. Using a Section 136, which allows the police to refer people for urgent psychiatric assessment, Charles and Harry in 2019 in London

the times | Monday May 6 2024 3 times2 Barbara was brought into Waterhouse’s clinic, where she presented him with a bouquet of “hospital issue” flowers. “You have to be careful, because we’d had a previous service user admitted and sedated after he claimed he was late for a meeting with Queen Elizabeth II,” Waterhouse says. “That is, until it transpired he really was due at Buckingham Palace to receive an MBE.” It was only after Barbara threatened to kill Taylor Swift, Styles’s girlfriend at the time, that she was diagnosed as “manic with erotomania”. She truly believed that Styles had been sending her secret romantic messages via the colour of the shirts he wore on stage. Waterhouse had her sectioned, but even now the experience makes him cautious about the power he wields. “People being assessed often shout at me, ‘How does a baby-faced twat like you have the power to keep me here against my will?’ and it’s a question I genuinely wrestle with,” he admits. Almost every page of his book illustrates just how fantastical acute psychic disturbance can be. There’s Femi, who identifies as a werewolf (before taking a dump on the clinic floor). And tiny, elderly Gladys, who won’t drink or eat because she is convinced that she is already dead and just wants to be buried. She is diagnosed with rare Cotard’s syndrome, aka walking corpse syndrome, and is Dr Benji Waterhouse of being a psychiatrist in the NHS disorder. “There are times I’d think, as a society we are more medicated than ever, yet society is more disabled than it ever was. If we aren’t going to address the core issues I don’t know why the NHS doesn’t just put pills in vending machines out in the corridor,” he says. Psychiatry has a high mortality rate among practitioners. Waterhouse learnt this one hot summer day in a meeting with his formidable supervisor, Dr Glick. He asked to open a window. Glick told him they don’t open so that people can’t jump. “What, even in the psychiatrist’s office?” he asked. “Especially in the psychiatrist’s office,” she replied. Waterhouse was soon referred for therapy, during which he unearthed the deeper reasons why he sought the “secret codes” to mental health in the first place. There is adverse mental health in his family, and the story of his parents is powerfully told. He grew up in rural Northumberland, and while there seems to have been deep tenderness and love in his family, his parents fought. He describes trying to stop them killing each other. “It was a long process, getting my family to sign off on this book,” he says. “My mum’s been on a journey from wanting to silence me and pretend everything’s fine to being very supportive. My dad is, like, ‘It’s all true, so we’ll just deal with it.’ I hope people will see this isn’t the story of an innocent angel and a terrible monster. Good people do bad things.” Waterhouse is unsparing about himself too. Shy and single, he was belittled by his therapist for not having a girlfriend. “You infantilise yourself,” the therapist told him. “Benji’s a nice little boy who doesn’t do adult things like f***ing.” Later he added the devastating conclusion: “You don’t have relationships because you fear you’ll be violent.” You’ll have to read the book to find out how he met the extraordinary-sounding Esther. I am very sad to hear that they have since broken up. “That’s the challenge, isn’t it?” Waterhouse says. “You can be with someone wonderful and spontaneous — all the things I’m not — but if you gain insights through therapy and see that you’re possibly going down an unhealthy road, then you ask yourself: is this good for either of us?” Waterhouse is equally clear-eyed about the NHS. He is scathing of mental health funding. Mental illness forms 28 per cent of the disease burden but receives 13 per cent of the budget. And he exposes the exploitative culture whereby junior doctors are encouraged not to moan about the long hours they work. At the same time he notes huge waste. Waterhouse describes eating “bin lunches” at work, taken from the 6,000 tonnes of food the NHS wastes annually. “Everyone knows the NHS is a massively noble idea, but it can always be improved,” he says. We are talking just as the government’s war on “sick note” culture is gathering steam. Mel Stride, the work and pensions secretary has claimed that the over-labelling of “milder” mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression means the cost of personal independence payments will rise by 52 per cent to £32.8 billion within five years. With a general election looming, this will surely be a battleground. Waterhouse is seething. “Often I feel I’m at the bottom of a cliff trying to patch people up, just wishing there were more barriers at the top to stop people falling in the first place ... It’s a great soundbite for the electorate to say, ‘Instead of cash, people will receive therapy,’ [one of the plans announced by Stride] but it’s fanciful when there are already too few staff to cope and two million people sitting on mental health waiting lists. Where is the PM going to magic this army of extra psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers from?” But Waterhouse distinguishes between milder mental health issues and serious ones in his book’s preface. He strongly suggests that the former get too much attention. “I’m liberal in my views, but it’s curious to me that people think it’s kind to tell people they have an illness they probably don’t have,” he says. “Especially when you know how flimsy these diagnoses really are. “I don’t dispute people’s pain, but it seems dishonest to say it fits into a diagnostic box. Things like anxiety and ADHD have become the milder, sought-after, glamorised conditions. But people struggling with schizophrenia, where a bit of cold-water swimming or colouring in won’t cut it, they rarely get a voice. Those are the guys who are actually disabled. And so when you get things like those terrible murders in Nottingham, everyone says: ‘How did that guy [the killer Valdo Calocane, who had previously been diagnosed with schizophrenia] fall through the cracks?’ Well, the answer is, for acute mental health the cracks are huge.” Waterhouse’s career trajectory mirrors that of Adam Kay, the author of This Is Going to Hurt. Both have served time in the NHS trenches. Both developed a sideline in stand-up comedy (Waterhouse performs as Benji Waterstones). However, there is one crucial difference. You Don’t Need to Be Mad … was the subject of a publishing bidding war, and Waterhouse has been commissioned to adapt it for television. He is writing a sequel (working title: Maddening) and could easily leave his gruelling job, but hasn’t. He spent yesterday on his bike, sectioning some of the most acute emergency cases in London. Kay left the NHS, and recently told the podcast Ask Me Anything that he has received hate mail and death threats from parents furious that his book has put their children off medical training. “I can only speak for myself,” Waterhouse says. “I won’t leave psychiatry because I already feel guilty enough about going part-time in order to write and to stay well. I guess I still hope I can change the system from the inside. You do have to be slightly mad to do my job, but the rewards when someone gets better are just incredible.” prescribed electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). Like Waterhouse, I thought ECT went out with One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, but no, it is still used — and in Gladys’s case it worked. “Her mind was rebooted like a faulty computer, and next morning she was downing a breakfast on the ward,” he relates. Waterhouse is 39. He decided to choose psychiatry as a speciality after attending a serious untoward incident with the police when he was a junior medic. A man had jumped 50ft from a railway bridge. He survived, but crawled to nearby train tracks, where he was hit by a train. His feet and hands were severed and his brain was exposed by a skull impact. Unbelievably, he survived that too: the heat of the train’s wheels cauterised his wounds, and without excess blood loss surgeons were able to reattach his limbs. “That was the start of me thinking: ‘What’s the point of putting him back together physically if we can’t also alleviate such terrible psychological pain?’” he says. “Of course, that is still a primary motivation, but as the job got more challenging I’ve uncovered other motivations too.” And herein lies the unexpected emotional power of his book. Waterhouse soon despairs of his job; he likens his diagnostic role to putting those little stickers on fruit, the different labels being schizophrenia, bipolar and unstable personality Everyone knows the NHS is a massively noble idea, but it can always be improved You Don’t Have to Be Mad to Work Here by Benji Waterhouse (Vintage £18.99). To order a copy go to timesbookshop.co.uk or call 020 3176 2935. Free UK standard P&P on online orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members

6 Monday May 6 2024 | the times life Q < st o ri es h re f= ”/ U se rs / m m ci n N I grew up in India, the daughter of educated, middle-class parents and had an arranged marriage to a medic practising in the UK in my early twenties. At first everything seemed normal. I admired his intelligence, but as the months passed I realised I had misjudged him. I was supposed to have no ambition other than looking beautiful, producing children and looking after the domestic realm. I was no more than a “trophy wife”. I sacrificed my career for a family life so his consultant journey could take flight. Slowly my faults and flaws came under the microscope. He was obsessed with his family, friends and social media while I longed for intimacy and empathy. I wanted equality in this relationship. I wanted to love and be loved. I was made to feel privileged, with a credit card and a lifestyle that was solely controlled by his whims. Serious conflicts arose when he was confronted. At first, I made a sensible decision not to bring a child into this tempestuous situation but he convinced me with a change of behaviour for a few months. Once I conceived, he reverted to his old ways. It was apparent that once you belong to him and have a child, he no longer needs to impress and that’s when he stops all his acts. Having a baby was like falling in love again and I was determined to give my child “roots”. It took me a few years to admit once again that I was dealing with an individual who placed his own needs ahead of mine or our child. After years of gaslighting and constant battles I was exhausted and could no longer find the once vivacious and dynamic “me”. Instead there was an anxious, vulnerable and frustrated “me”. I knocked on friends’ doors close to hysterics, praying that they might finally listen to me and believe me about all the abuse I had been subjected to. Instead, my desperate behaviour painted me as the unstable perpetrator in this unhealthy relationship. I was reprimanded for my unfair accusations and bad behaviour. The marriage existed for his benefit and convenience and finally he wanted a divorce to replace me with a new puppet. He was bored with me. My divorce has become high conflict, expensive and traumatic as he seeks to wear me down emotionally and financially. My main focus is healing. How best can I heal from all these years of his narcissistic manipulation and abuse? Mira A < st o ri es h re f= ”/ U se rs / N What you describe is difficult to read. You have clearly been trapped in an abusive relationship, which some one in four British women will experience in their lifetime. What strikes me most is how alone you have been with all the abuse for so many years. To read that your friends were not supportive and saw you as the “unstable perpetrator” is incredibly sad. Yet this is not uncommon as a narcissist is adept at manipulating people to their advantage. A narcissist lacks empathy, and is excessively interested in and admiring of themselves via an inflated sense of selfimportance. They present a dual persona: outwardly confident, charismatic, charming and successful (their “false self”), but in private, arrogant, manipulative, controlling and abusive (their “true self”). As you describe, serious conflicts arise when a narcissist is confronted, their response reflecting what is called a “narcissistic injury”, ie experiencing a deep wound to the very core of their sense of self. This leads to what is called a “narcissistic collapse”, where they lose control, lashing out to recover power. The narcissist’s false self means that the victims of their real self, like you, are often disbelieved when explaining the reality of living with them. They are convincing actors who can switch to whatever behaviour will achieve the outcome that benefits them. To the world, therefore, these people present as humble, caring, generous and selfless, adeptly masking their abusive, exploitative and selfish dark side. This creates what is called a social dissonance, in which others struggle to believe the victims. Narcissists will swing from charm to harm: between idealisation via praise, reward and love bombing, to devaluation via criticism, hating and punishing their victims. Because your husband wanted a child, he used his false self to manipulate you into conceding — this must have been very confusing although I am glad that the outcome for you has been to experience the depth of love that comes with being a parent. You are a victim of intimate partner abuse and with that often comes significant psychological consequences. The effective use of alternate praise and criticism, love and hate, reward and punishment means that it can be almost impossible for a victim to leave the relationship. This is because the cycling between true and false selves creates a cognitive dissonance in their victim, leaving them unable to reconcile the contradictory and inconsistent behaviours they experience. This is compounded by also consistently causing their victim to doubt their perception via gaslighting. One way to deal with a narcissist is to understand them for who they truly are: a deeply insecure person who disguises their fragility with arrogance. To heal, I suggest building your understanding of narcissism to depersonalise the behaviour directed at you, instead dispassionately observing and evaluating it. Create a checklist in your head, ticking off each narcissistic behaviour that you observe. The despair you experience belongs to your husband and he will be challenged by you not giving him the submissive reaction he needs. He cannot tolerate his fragility but if he can’t project it into you, the mask will slip — revealing his true self. Your mental health will have been compromised by living in a state of chronic stress that is continuing through the divorce, and your task is to rebuild. He isn’t right about you and what he made you feel reflects who he is. You will be very sensitive around others — your trust may be shattered — but don’t let the abuser continue their legacy. Surround yourself with people who value you and little by little learn to trust again. Learn to challenge negative beliefs about yourself that you have internalised during the relationship. Find healthy coping mechanisms, such as exercise, meditation, support groups. This is essential not just for you but also your child because they will thrive not only because of what you do for them but also what they see you do for yourself. The effects of narcissistic abuse on mental health can be profound, and restorative work may need to involve a therapist. Domestic abuse is the leading cause of depression in women in the UK. You might benefit from traumafocused therapy or eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing, to help you to overcome any PTSD caused by the narcissistic abuse. Support groups where you will be with others with similar lived experience are validating and affirming: call the National Domestic Abuse Helpline (0808 2000 247). Healing is a journey, and it’s essential to be patient and compassionate with yourself during this process. See: mind.org.uk. I also recommend Living with the Dominator by Pat Craven. I wish you well. Ask Professor Tanya Byron I have been the victim of my husband’s narcissistic manipulation and abuse for years If you would like Professor Tanya Byron’s help, email proftanyabyron@ thetimes.co.uk T&Cs apply. © Marc Brenner Celebrate Shrek the Musical with a weekend in London From July 19, for six weeks only Shrek the Musical returns to London, at the Eventim Apollo Theatre. As a Times+ member, there’s three chances to win a family trip to see the show, including an overnight stay at the Hilton London Metropole. Plus, three other members will each win tickets to the show. Visit mytimesplus.co.uk

the times | Monday May 6 2024 7 arts Why do epigraphs feature in the Strike novels? I love epigraphs in other people’s books if they’re well-chosen. I also like the fact that they set the tone; this is an old-fashioned whodunnit, not police procedural. They are really eclectic, which reflects my reading patterns. So we go relatively highbrow at times with The Faerie Queene, and then you’ve got Blue Öyster Cult lyrics in there. And I really enjoy that mix, and it sets the tone for each specific plot. Do you enjoy the TV adaptations of your books? For the Strike TV series I can honestly say it’s been one of my happiest collaborations. I’ve loved it from start to finish. You accept that TV requires something different. I’m executive producer, and [the screenplay writer] Tom Edge and I will talk about things, but I think Tom would agree that I pretty much let him have his way. Ninety-five per cent of the time I have no notes. I met with him yesterday and one of my tiny, tiny notes was Strike wouldn’t call Barclay Sam. He’s always going to call him Barclay. I always get asked, do you see the actors in your head? And no, I don’t. I have a very clear sense of what they look like, and I’m always thinking of them rather than Tom [Burke] and Holliday [Grainger] when I’m writing. But I’ve got no issue whatsoever if people are imagining Tom and Holliday when they’re reading the books, because I do think they do an amazing job. The most important thing is stopping the TV show doing things that I know are going to make it very difficult for us to get back on course later. Are any of your characters in the Strike novels inspired by real people? I could honestly say there are only two characters I’ve ever fully, properly based on real people. You know, there was one inspiration source. That’s it. Mostly it’s composite or you might take an aspect of someone’s appearance, or you might, which I’ve often done, I’ve seen someone on the Tube or something, and that gives you an idea. How have the Strike actors influenced your writing? I had a conversation with Tom Burke by text. So it was sort of the other way around because he’s telling me what the character is and I’m saying yes, you’re completely right, that’s what the character is. He said to me, “What about this guitar [in the TV show, there’s a sort of stylised guitar on the wall], would Strike want that?” I said, “No, no, no, no, he wouldn’t want that.” But it was too late [to remove the guitar] when we started filming. So we talked about why Strike’s in Denmark Street. And Tom said to me, “I don’t think he consciously went to Denmark Street for the music, but I think there was a sort of subliminal influence from his childhood.” And I said, “Bingo!” Holliday’s the same, Holliday really has a feel for what Robin would or wouldn’t do — when you’ve got actors like that, that’s a joy. But no, an actor has never given me an idea. The Running Grave by Robert Galbraith (Sphere £10.99) is out in paperback on June 20. To order go to timesbookshop.co.uk or call 020 3176 2935. Free UK standard P&P on online orders over £25. Special discount for Times+ members wealthy people living cheek by jowl with very deprived areas, and there are so many layers to London. I try to evoke the city from the seedy and the deprived all the way through to the very high-end and elite. How important is research for the Strike novels? Research is important to me. I do like to go to these places I’m writing about because although Google Maps is extraordinarily useful for a writer, I like to be able to actually smell it, and feel it, and hear accents and so on. It gives you a totally different feeling. How often do you speak to experts for your research? I have run things past Neil, my husband, who’s a doctor. My process is normally that I will research what I need for the plot. But then I’ll check. Is this correct? Have I got the wrong end of the stick on this drug or what this injury would do or what artery this knife would sever? I’m proud to say he’s mostly said this is OK, but I prefer to do it that way round because I know what I need for the plot. who you trust, whose opinion is valid. And I’ve worked with some amazing editors and I’ve listened to every single one of them. How do you plan the Strike novels? I think it will be a ten-book series. I have a very clear idea of how Strike and Robin’s relationship will go over those ten books. It sounds dull to think, well, in that book that emotional milestone will be reached and so on. But you do have to have those points of light along the way, because I think it gives it a satisfying rhythm. Why did you set the Strike series in London? I love London. Both my parents, although my mum had Scottish blood and French blood, were Londoners initially, so it’s a city I’ve known since childhood. I didn’t live here till I was an adult, but we were visiting London a lot, so it’s always been a really special place to me. And there’s such variety in London, that’s something that I really try and bring out in the Strike books. You have phenomenally JK Rowling: how Strike changed the way I write The author speaks about the liberation of writing under a pseudonym and the future of her hit series J K Rowling is often asked questions by fans and budding writers about her writing process: where she writes, how she writes, her inspiration and her research, how a book comes about, from the germ of an idea to the editing process and eventual publication. Here, for the first time, she answers questions about writing the Cormoran Strike crime fiction series under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. This Q&A is adapted from a recording in a London pub close to Strike and Robin’s fictional office. For the full interview, go to jkrowling.com. Did writing the first Strike novel under a pseudonym allow you more freedom as a writer? I was very aware that because the manuscript had my name on it, people would just publish it, however bad it was, and I wanted honest feedback. I wanted to know that someone believed in the book and I truly enjoyed getting unvarnished feedback through my agent. There was one editor who did not like Strike having a famous father and made that point. And obviously because I can’t break cover, I can’t say: “but I know how important this will be on book eight”. You can’t say that as a first-time writer, and I was ostensibly in this situation a first-time writer. You can’t say, now, look, I know a series and I know this backstory is going to work out brilliantly in book seven, eight and nine. Who the hell are you to say you’re going to get a seven, eight and nine-novel deal anyway? But it was really good to get that feedback. Did you enjoy the anonymity? It was amazing, and the first book won an award without anyone knowing it was me. I would have loved to have kept it going. I thought if I could get three books out … I wasn’t trying to fool anyone. It was bliss for me, for it just to be about the writing and the reader experience and to get honest reviews that weren’t reviewing me as a human being. By the end of Potter, they’re reviewing the phenomenon more than they’re reviewing the book. Again, not everyone, some people were reviewing the book, I’m grateful for that. Then, you know, we had the very unfortunate incident and it was leaked. I was devastated because it took away from me something that I had got back, something I’d long lost. And it was gone. It didn’t really change the writing, which was great. I was afraid it would. Are you ever influenced by your reviews? Let me be very honest. There’s been criticism in reviews through my career that was fair — in the sense that I would think, you’re right, that was weak and I can do better. But in terms of being influenced by certain things that reviewers would say, I would have to say, “whatever”. For example, with the Strike books, this is too long. Well, that’s how long it had to be to tell the story I wanted to tell. I’m not going to shave off 200 pages, because the book is as long as I want it to be, that’s how long it needs to be to tell the story I wanted to tell. If you don’t have faith in yourself as a writer — that is not the same as being so arrogant as to say, no one can edit this, no one’s allowed an opinion. But you have to decide who you’re going to listen to, JK Rowling. Top: Tom Burke and Holliday Grainger in Strike

Thinking space 11 Very black (4) 12 Accepted standard (4) 18 Largest living reptile (9,9) 19 Burial ground (8) 21 Enthusiastic public praise (7) 23 Precipitation (8) 27 Lasting only a short time (8) 28 Eg, fabric conditioner (8) 31 Long-sleeved pullover (7) 32 Polite (4-8) 34 Hades (11) 36 Air navigation device (11) 38 Very impressively (10) 40 Cheerful, full of energy (9) 42 Ultra, radical (9) 43 Greek form of Ulysses (8) 48 Last Greek letter (5) 50 West African country (5) 51 Halt (4) 52 Cab (4) Cryptic clues Across 1 Realised what could be said of Scotland — but not home town (11) 7 Doing fair by niece, one who will gain from will? (11) 13 Check uranium found in part of mine (5) 14 Persistent white tern always is around (7) 15 Boy I trick, say, over ending a race (9) 16 Away without money and not inclined to drink (9) 17 Disillusioned with meter debit out of control (10) 20 Invention of a cold snack (4,3) 22 American specialised soldier regularly leads (7) 24 Ineffective medicine’s rank smell (7) 25 Assess girl with stringed instrument keeping in key (8) 26 Feat of splashing cash with compliment (14) 28 Old piece of key found in Tube (5) 29 Did revolt spread beyond port? (6) 30 Toothpaste certified prepared without nitrogen (10) 33 I'm pleased nice hero is pious (5-5) 35 At first believe old butcher’s lamb tender (2-4) 37 Visitor from east sheltering in wind (5) 39 Where location of Portsmouth harbour entrance is irrelevant (6,3,5) 41 Diatribe’s answer resounded in tone (8) 44 One dug out new underground room (7) 45 Movement that’s annoyed feral cat taking time out (7) 46 Wide area of plant endlessly filling river (7) 47 Banning or backing me visiting pubs? (10) 49 I am receiving treatment for itching (9) 53 Conductor’s to study in Italy initially (9) 54 Country road Tim found in car with never an end (7) 55 Without protection Zunis and Utes stick together (5) 56 Harmonises decorations in a makeover (11) 57 Business listing has unnerved hotel workers (6,5) Down 1 Fruit nipper peeled, marked with spots (4,5) 2 What gets one over uninspiring Atlantic voyage? (10,8) 3 Time two notes to be played together (5) 4 Polygraph machine — electrode’s involved with it (3,8) 5 It seemed about the season to plant corn? (8) 6 Coat put on essential lifting device taking little energy and time (6,6) 7 Hungarian composer’s band accepting a piece of music very well (4,6) 8 What’s black chess piece (not king) (5) 9 Handle issue in characteristic style (11) 10 Track events repeated regularly and aptly hard (5,4) 11 Assistant dropping unknown from lead of Mozart opera (4) 12 I agree about large dog’s cry of pain (4) 18 Enticing green genie to work lifealtering change (7,11) 19 Most noble of connections garnered by elite regularly (8) 21 Birds in City of London street (7) 23 Exhausted and wiped out, broken by pressure (8) 27 Good ancient arable land fine for valuable cover (4,4) 28 One who works hard to reveal remains of cairn? (8) 31 What helps one see travelling dandy going round well-dressed (3,4) 32 Reportedly lamenting parrot eating grand Ipomoea (7,5) 34 Show Belgian port’s terminus perhaps exporting diamonds and sulphur (11) 36 Instrument’s power level is over quiet (6,5) 38 Obtained work that is having reduced tax and lose it (2,2,6) 40 Man Dr Dale treated for state of unconsciousness (9) 42 Chosen Republican regularly teases voter (9) 43 Hand in money in Brazil for pardoning (8) 48 Ground corn’s right stuffed into marrow (5) 50 Trick’s beginning with bottom card of winning suit (5) 51 Somewhat exotically having a shelllike nature? (4) 52 Very large centre in Toulouse city (4) Across 1 Beyond permitted limits (3-2-6) 7 Bestowal of a blessing (11) 13 Robert —, English physicist and chemist (5) 14 Farm vehicle (7) 15 Kitchen appliance (3,6) 16 Destruction; collapse (9) 17 Deceitful and evasive character (10) 20 Blow up (7) 22 Very attractive person or thing (7) 24 Make troubled (7) 25 Brussels administrator (8) 26 Common weed (8,6) 28 Father Christmas (5) 29 Pursue (6) 30 Skin lotion (10) 33 Seafood seller (10) 35 Fanatic (6) 37 Foe (5) 39 In a self-seeking manner (14) 41 Minute portion of matter (8) 44 Rave, gush (7) 45 Second stomach of a bird (7) 46 Deal with; classify (4,3) 47 Film or video technique (4,6) 49 Bird of northern regions (4,5) 53 To a certain extent (2,1,6) 54 Meeting of Welsh bards and druids (7) 55 Evidence one was elsewhere at the time of a crime (5) 56 Variety of butterfly (7,4) 57 Reduction in military force (11) Down 1 Alternatively (9) 2 Conceited (3,3,3,4,5) 3 Woman’s name (5) 4 Rugby player (7,4) 5 Proximity (8) 6 Contentment, gratification (12) 7 Polishing by rubbing (10) 8 Period of dark (5) 9 Untwist, unravel (11) 10 Bullets passing through an area from two or more sources (9) times2 clues Jumbo crossword No 1672 Bank holiday Jumbo crossword Crossword leaderboards and Forums at thetimes.co.uk/puzzleclub/crosswordclub The prize for each of the first correct solutions to the Cryptic and times2 Jumbo clues to be opened will be a collection of Times reference books — including The Times Reference Atlas of the World, Collins English Dictionary & Thesaurus, and Bradford’s Crossword Solver’s Dictionary published by HarperCollins. Entries should be marked “Cryptic” or “times2” and sent to: The Times Jumbo Crossword 1672, PO Box 2164, Colchester, Essex CO2 8LJ; or emailed to: [email protected], with “Cryptic 1672” or “times2 1672” in the subject line, to arrive by May 16. Open to 18+, UK & ROI residents only. The winners and the solutions will be published on May 18. Name......................................................................................................... Address..................................................................................................... ...................................................................................................................... ...................................................................................................................... ............................................................ Postcode..................................... Phone number...................................................................................... Prizes the times | Monday May 6 2024 9

10 Monday May 6 2024 | the times times2 Your weekday brain boost More puzzles Pages 14-16 TRAIN TRACKS CODEWORD FUTOSHIKI SUDOKU Thursday’s solutions SAMURAI KILLER SUKO Solutions in tomorrow’s Times2 Mini Sudoku Fill in the grid so that every column, every row and every 3x2 box contains the digits 1 to 6 Codeword Every letter in the crossword-style grid, right, is represented by a number from 1 to 26. Each letter of the alphabet appears in the grid at least once. Use the letters already provided to work out the identity of further letters. Enter letters in the main grid and the smaller reference grid until all 26 letters of the alphabet have been accounted for. Proper nouns are excluded. Suko Place the numbers 1 to 9 in the spaces so that the number in each circle is equal to the sum of the four surrounding spaces, and each colour total is correct Fill each grid so that every column, every row and every 3x3 box contains the digits 1 to 9. Where the puzzles overlap, the rows and columns do not go beyond their usual length. Every day, Monday to Thursday, a page of extra puzzles to give your brain an extended workout Samurai easy Sudoku super fiendish Fill the grid so that every column, every row and every 3x3 box contains the digits 1 to 9. Each set of cells joined by dotted lines must add up to the target number in its top-left corner. Within each set of cells joined by dotted lines, a digit cannot be repeated. Killer deadly Train Tracks Lay tracks to enable the train to travel from village A to village B. The numbers indicate how many sections of track go in each row and column. There are only straight sections and curved sections. The track cannot cross itself. Futoshiki Fill the blank squares so that every row and column contains each of the numbers 1 to 5 once only. The symbols between the squares indicate whether a number is larger (>) or smaller (<) than the number next to it. Solve Times puzzles interactively with same-day solutions at thetimes.co.uk MINI SUDOKU

06.05.24 Word watch Sudoku Easy No 14,889 Difficult No 14,890 Fiendish No 14,891 David Parfitt Nesselrode a A long narrow headland b A type of electrical contact c A pudding made with chestnuts Jargoon a An early ripening variety of pear b A brilliant form of zircon c A habitual user of buzz words Whigmaleery a A reformist politician b A frivolous ornament c A liquid measure of two drams Answers on page 15 The Times Quick Cryptic No 2668 by Trelawney Across 1 Manager’s fantastic eyeshade (10) 8 Take legal action to cover rubbish monument (6) 9 Slow song in party commercial (6) 10 I fled Middle Eastern country (4) 11 Feathery scarf and sign for University event (4,4) 12 Pull small coach (6) 14 Prisoner’s fashionable friend (6) 16 Reportedly consider drink, and more than a few! (8) 18 Young lady initially encounters strong wind (4) 20 Fashion heavenly food for the audience (6) 21 Pass by the Spanish part of church (6) 22 Extravagant way WW1 troops went (4-3-3) Down 2 Roof missing from club, say (5) 3 European state slipping into sea (7) 4 Struggle with voice regularly (3) 5 Man buries broken underwater vessel (9) 6 Sovereign in French street, bearing left then right (5) 7 Lucky charm from mother’s bed (6) 11 Emperor and baronet ordered to carry a piano (9) 13 Fixed cut on a bird (6) 15 Fighter jet with speed to move elsewhere (7) 17 Got an arrangement for Argentinian dance (5) 19 Rope for a cowboy in Dallas somewhere (5) 21 Consume starters of eel and tofu (3) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 Friday’s solution on page 15 15 Fill the grid so that every column, every row and every 3x3 box contains the digits 1 to 9. Place the numbers 1 to 9 in the spaces so that the number in each circle is equal to the sum of the four surrounding spaces, and each colour total is correct The Times Daily Quiz Olav Bjortomt Answers on page 15 1 Founded in 1924, which US battery company produced the Durabeam line of torches? 2 Which Caribbean capital city is named after the parliamentary army officer Sir Tobias Bridge? 3 “Bistecca al sangue” is Italian steak cooked how? 4 James MacMillan composed the choral work Who Shall Separate Us? for the 2022 funeral of which woman? 5 Mintaka is the westernmost of the three stars of which belt? 6 Which BBC show was hosted by Hugh Scully from 1981 to 2000? 7 Dark Fire (2004), Sovereign (2006) and Lamentation (2014) are novels in which mystery series by CJ Sansom? 8 BP began with the discovery of oil in which country in 1908? 9 Which 479BC land battle was the deciding encounter of the second Persian invasion of Greece? 10 What did Martin Luther King say “is the language of the unheard”? 11 Which Labour politician was MP for Oldham West and Royton, previously Oldham West, from 1970 to 2015? 12 Who composed the theme music and score for the TV show Succession? 13 Which Japanese Buddhist monk introduced the mantra Namu myoho renge kyo in 1253? 14 The Wheel Blacks is the national wheelchair rugby team of which country? 15 Which artist’s work The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman (2011) is this? Suko No 4108 For interactive puzzles visit thetimes.co.uk Jumbo Crosswords See page 9 Adrian Anderson Mortgage Maestro Kate Aitchison Tax Troubleshooter Tom Selby Pensions Pundit Rachel Winter Investment Investigator Anna Bowes Savings Specialist Martyn James Bills Buster Ask the experts is a brand new feature in our Money section. From mortgages to savings, tax to pensions, find answers to your financial dilemmas every week. Scan the QR code to read online or pick up a newspaper this weekend What will you ask our financial experts? MONEY

thegame All the action from the weekend PAGE 6 Brighton return to winning ways as Villa stumble in top-four race PAGE 16 Ian Hawkey: Is Girona fairytale tainted by City multi-club link? No toughness Moyes in dismay as his West Ham team are given another beating CHELSEA 5 WEST HAM 0, PAGES 4-5 MONDAY MAY 6 2024 No leadership No Rice

2 1GG Monday May 6 2024 | the times thegame season secured along with the Carabao Cup trophy, the prevailing sense was that the final fortnight of his reign should be savoured and the moment simply enjoyed. Just after the midpoint of the opening half, the crowd launched into a rendition of the ditty Jürgen Is A Red, knowing that he hates when it is sung before the result is a foregone conclusion. It lasted fully two minutes, the singing rhythmically repeated, and no one remotely cared if it annoyed him as it was about showing appreciation. It was no surprise that Mohamed Salah provided the breakthrough. Klopp had every right to be hurt by Salah’s touchline tantrum at West Ham United last weekend but what, when reflecting on that draw, will be the manager’s biggest takeaway now is the sight of the 31-year-old charging forward during his late cameo and slaloming past opponents like the player of before. He had not done that for weeks and if it took a little anger swelling inside of him as a result of being demoted to spark that response, then that is how football sometimes has to work. Restored to the starting side, he brought that same edge with him. Vicario had already denied Salah with his legs, with Romero blocking Elliott’s follow-up on the line, when Liverpool had reward for their intent. Salah prodded a pass to Wataru Endo and he switched play to the left to where Cody Gakpo cut inside Pedro Porro rather too easily. will probably understand why their foot came off the gas. On a billboard across from the Kop, there is a giant picture of Klopp with the accompanying slogan: “Some journeys live forever.” As the sun shone down and with Champions League football next Arsenal can forget title if Perhaps this is why Ange Postecoglou is not overly bothered by problems at corners. By the time the excellent Harvey Elliott curled a howitzer into the top corner for Liverpool’s fourth goal just before the hour mark, the immediate response from the Tottenham Hotspur manager was to stuff his hands deeper into his pockets and stare even more grumpily at his players. Flaky in defence, easy to play through in midfield and powderpuff in attack, it was difficult to correlate this capitulation with a team that had just been given a Champions League lifeline by Aston Villa’s defeat to Brighton & Hove Albion. Tottenham cannot even capitalise on the opportunities presented to them any more. The sight of Cristian Romero squabbling with Emerson Royal as the teams walked off at half-time with the visitors already two goals adrift showed how this campaign has fizzled out alarmingly with a run of four consecutive Premier League defeats. Guglielmo Vicario forcibly dragged Romero away from the left back, whose performance in comparison with Liverpool’s Andrew Robertson was abject in the extreme, and it was not as if the goalkeeper did not already have enough to do on an afternoon when shots rained down on him. Forget the late rally which brought two goals after the introduction of Richarlison when it was easy to play and Liverpool had lost control, a throwback to how Jürgen Klopp’s reign started nine years ago. That simply created an illusion, just as it had against Arsenal the previous weekend. Postecoglou, who has now overseen the club’s worst run of results since November 2004 at exactly the wrong time, will surely not fall for it. He delivered a preposterously upbeat assessment afterwards, a little sugar no doubt after his angry reaction to the tepid loss against Chelsea 72 hours earlier, and he referenced how “at least we tried to play”. That would have left Mikel Arteta grimacing, for if they try and play this way against Manchester City then the upset Arsenal need for the title destiny to swing back to them will be a non-starter. Klopp, who for the penultimate time at Anfield delivered his trademark fistpumps after the final whistle, would not have liked the final 20 minutes. “We were really, really, really good until we were really rubbish,” he said. Given that they had rather less to play for though, the Liverpool manager 4 2Richarlison 72, Son 77 Salah 16, Robertson 45, Gakpo 50, Elliott 59 RATINGS Liverpool (4-3-3): Alisson 7 — T AlexanderArnold 8, J Quansah 7, V Van Dijk 7, A Robertson 8 (J Gomez 64 7) — H Elliott 9 (D Szoboszlai 84), W Endo 6 (S Bajcetic 64 6), A Mac Allister 7 (R Gravenberch 75) — M Salah 8, C Gakpo 8, L Diaz 7 (D Nunez 75). Booked Alexander-Arnold. Tottenham Hotspur (4-3-3): G Vicario 7 — P Porro 5, C Romero 5, M Van de Ven 5, E Royal 4 (Richarlison 61 8) — P Sarr 5 (G Lo Celso 75), Y Bissouma 5, R Bentancur 5 (J Maddison 61 7) — D Kulusevski 5 (O Skipp 61 6), Son Heung-min 6, B Johnson 6. Booked Sarr, Royal, Van de Ven, Bissouma. Referee P Tierney. Liverpool Tottenham TOO LITTLE TOO LATE After a strong first five minutes, Tottenham posed almost no threat at all for the next 50 minutes or so,as this graphic of match momentum shows First half Second half Liverpool more threatening Tottenham more threatening 15 30 45 45 60 75 90 minutes 16’ 45’ 50’ 59’ 72’ 77’ PAUL JOYCE Northern Football Correspondent At Anfield

the times | Monday May 6 2024 1GG 3 thegame Above, Salah got back on the scoresheet with a first-half header having returned to the starting line-up after his row with Klopp against West Ham. Right, Gakpo scored the third after a cross from the excellent Elliott, main, who then rounded things off with a superb curling strike from outside the area Vicario, the Tottenham goalkeeper, intervenes to break up an argument between the defenders Romero, left, and Emerson as they were walking off at half-time HOW THEY STAND P W D L F A GDPts Arsenal..............36 26 5 5 88 28 60 83 Man City...........35 25 7 3 87 33 54 82 Liverpool..........36 23 9 4 81 38 43 78 Aston Villa.......3620 7 9 73 53 20 67 Tottenham.......35 18 6 11 69 58 11 60 Newcastle........35 17 5 13 78 56 22 56 Chelsea..............35 15 9 11 70 59 11 54 Man United.....34 16 6 12 52 51 1 54 West Ham........36 13 10 13 56 70 -14 49 Bournemouth 36 13 9 14 52 63 -11 48 Brighton............35 12 11 12 53 57 -4 47 Wolves...............36 13 7 16 49 60 -11 46 Fulham..............36 12 8 16 51 55 -4 44 C Palace............35 10 10 15 45 57 -12 40 **Everton.........36 12 9 15 38 49 -11 37 Brentford.........36 9 9 18 52 60 -8 36 *Nottm Forest 36 8 9 19 45 63 -18 29 Luton..................36 6 8 22 49 78 -29 26 Burnley.............36 5 9 22 39 74 -35 24 Sheff Utd (R)..36 3 7 26 35 100-65 16 deducted *4pts/**8pts for breaching financial rules first ten matches, Tottenham have garnered 34 from the next 25 and if, as seems likely, they will miss out on the top four, it should only be considered a disappointment. At least those pesky set pieces of recent assignments were not the cause of their downfall — just the sort of haphazard defending usually seen on Sundays at parks up and down the country. The second goal came when Trent Alexander-Arnold’s deep cross found Robertson, who teed up Salah. Vicario saved, but Robertson had continued his run and tapped home. Easy as you like. Gakpo headed home Elliott’s pinpoint cross just after the interval and when Elliott curled in the goal of the game Liverpool were rampant. What transpired thereafter, with the substitute Richarlison finally providing some bite, mattered little. The Brazil forward provided a clever finish from Johnson’s cross before teeing up Son Heung-min. Alisson then had to save from Richarlison and Joe Gomez hooked the ball away as Johnson closed in. It was a frantic finish as implausible as the dross Tottenham had served up before, given what had been at stake. A cross to the back post found Salah unmarked and able to dispatch his header into the net. The celebrations were muted, but soon after he was then helping Robertson in the full-back area to stop Brennan Johnson in his tracks. After collating 26 points from their After threatening to bring the “fire” that might have engulfed Liverpool nine days ago, Mohamed Salah instead provided the spark to spur Jürgen Klopp’s side to victory. Overall, the majesty of his performance against Tottenham Hotspur was another reminder of how a week is a long time in football. Salah’s angry exchange with Klopp, the Liverpool manager, as he prepared to come on in the 2-2 draw with West Ham United was quickly glossed over as he opened the scoring and had a hand in all of his side’s goals. The Egypt international had fuelled suggestions of a fallout with Klopp, having been dropped to the substitutes’ bench against West Ham, by stating after the match that if he spoke to reporters “there will be fire”. Here, his 25th goal of the season, and 18th in the Premier League, emphasised his continued importance to the cause. “Mo was outstanding,” Klopp said. “He played a really good game. His side [of the pitch] with Harvey [Elliott] was good. I was pleased for him. None of the boys want to play not great, why would they? Mo showed what he is capable of.” Salah’s back-post header broke the deadlock and Liverpool were outstanding as they raced into a 4-0 lead by the hour mark before Tottenham belatedly roused themselves with two late goals. “Did I expect us to be 4-0 up? No,” Klopp said. “Did I expect it to be 4-2 and Alisson has to make two worldclass saves? No. “But before the game they need flaky Spurs’ help Salah underlines why he’s still vital to Liverpool cause PAUL JOYCE Aston Villa lost which meant if Tottenham won they would be back in the race for the Champions League, while we are third. “We spoke before the game that for high-performance sports you need to be motivated and actually three [goals] should be enough but it is not always. “I loved the performance of the boys, but at 4-0 up we lost a bit of organisation and then you saw Tottenham being Tottenham. “When you lose momentum, the other team has it and that can lead to really strange situations. We were outstanding until we were not good.” The game was Klopp’s penultimate at Anfield before he stands down as manager and thoughts are turning to the final game of the season against Wolverhampton Wanderers, which will become a homage to one of the club’s greatest managers. “I didn’t think about these kinds of things,” he said. “I know for five million reasons the Wolves game will be really tricky and when it comes to talking about how I feel then will be tricky. But I don’t feel it at the moment. “This is a very, very special club. I didn’t make them believe, I reminded them that it helps when you believe. That is what I believe. Everybody was ready to push the train and that is what we did now for 8½ years.” CARL RECINE/REUTERS; TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER BRADLEY ORMESHER “He played really good. I was pleased. He showed what he is capable of”

4 1GG Monday May 6 2024 | the times thegame Neither of these managers look likely to still be in charge next season but only Mauricio Pochettino put some doubt in the minds of the decisionmakers. Qualifying for Europe is believed to be a key factor in whether the Argentinian stays but a second entertaining victory in a row has boosted their previously unlikely prospects to pose an intriguing dilemma for the Chelsea board. Chelsea rose to seventh place, their highest position this season and one that could earn them a European spot, subject to them meeting Uefa’s Financial Fair Play criteria. They led West Ham United 3-0 inside 36 minutes and added two more after the break but, this being Chelsea, they still managed to concede opportunities that led to Jarrod Bowen striking the crossbar three times and Emerson wasting another chance. It was no surprise that the alert Cole Palmer started the rout by being in the right position to finish cleanly. But the forward was eclipsed by Noni Madueke, who scored and claimed an assist in a selfless and energetic performance. As confident, vibrant and free-flowing as Chelsea were it should be tempered by the fact that their win came against a West Ham side who gave up the ghost. It was the latest chastening defeat for David Moyes and will make it even harder for him to argue why he should be given a new contract. Heavy beatings are not typical of a Moyes side and he was at a loss to explain how his side fell 5-2 to Crystal Palace, 5-0 to Fulham, 6-0 against Arsenal and 4-3 to Newcastle United when leading 3-1. West Ham supporters have been divided over whether Moyes should be replaced, in part because they are not overly sold on Julen Lopetegui as the favourite to replace him. A number of senior figures at the club want the boat pushed out for Rúben Amorim, who may cost up to £17 million in compensation if he can be persuaded to leave Sporting Lisbon. The mood and discussions about change at Chelsea are similar but slightly different. Pochettino has never really bonded with a section of supporters because of his lengthy time spent at rivals Tottenham Hotspur. Occasionally he showed a clenched fist to fans behind him in the technical area but he passed up savouring the midweek win over his former club. Those who think that Pochettino has begun to turn the corner and can finish strongly should also note the recent limp displays that included a 5-0 defeat by Arsenal and 2-2 draws with Burnley and Sheffield United. There are also other factors, such as the relationship Pochettino has with the Pochettino gets a glimmer of hope in battle of the doomed managers hierarchy, the merits of appointing a third permanent head coach since the club changed ownership in May 2022, and whether Chelsea are in a position to attract a better coach when they are competing with clubs who can offer Champions League football. That said, they have been considering other options, including Hansi Flick, who has been out of work since leaving his position as Germany manager. Mohammed Kudus had a brief sight of goal before West Ham collapsed, Palmer scoring first when he pounced on a loose ball after Nicolas Jackson’s attempted shot was blocked by Kurt Zouma. Palmer continues to excel. He has scored 16 home league goals, equalling Didier Drogba in 2006-07 and Frank Lampard in 2009-10, and has become only the third player to be involved in 30 or more goals in a season while aged 21 or younger after Robbie Fowler and Chris Sutton. West Ham tried to respond from Emerson’s corner as Bowen flashed a header against the crossbar. It was not long before they trailed 2-0, though, after Jackson had two efforts saved. Madueke’s attempted flick to Jackson rebounded off Zouma and looped invitingly to Conor Gallagher who volleyed home. Madueke was a handful and, released in space, he had a shot saved, then dribbled past two players and had another effort deflected just wide. Madueke eventually made it 3-0, converting after Thiago Silva’s header from a corner. Approaching the interval, Gallagher struck the bar and Bowen’s acrobatic volley also hit the woodwork. The contest was over three minutes after the restart when Trevoh Chalobah released Madueke but he passed up trying to shoot and squared for Jackson to tap home. It was a moment that Madueke and Pochettino felt reflected their changed ethic after the same two attacking players fought over taking a penalty kick against Everton. “Now we’re starting to put everything together, being unselfish and working as a collective,” Madueke said. “The assist from Madueke to Jackson showed that we are learning, we are smart,” Pochettino said. “The situation with the penalty against Everton, we received criticism, but a young team needs to make mistakes to improve. The problem in football is you don’t have a team but you expect to behave like a team. Like an engineer who needs to build a building.” Jackson finished at the near post to complete West Ham’s humiliation and move Moyes a step closer to the door. But perhaps Pochettino’s future has become less uncertain? “We needed time for everyone to trust in the process,” Pochettino said. Palmer, 15, Gallagher 5 0 30, Madueke, 36, Jackson 48, 80 RATINGS Chelsea (4-2-3-1): D Petrovic 7 — T Chalobah 7 (M Gusto 85min), T Silva 6 (A Disasi 82), B Badiashile 6, M Cucurella 7 — M Caicedo 7, C Gallagher — N Madueke 8 (C Casadei 76), C Palmer 7 (A Gilchrist 89), M Mudryk 6 (C Nkunku 76) — N Jackson 7. Booked Cucurella. West Ham (4-2-3-1): A Areola 5 — V Coufal 4, K Zouma 4, A Ogbonna 4, Emerson 4 — T Soucek 4, E Álvarez 4 (J Ward-Prowse 46, 5) — J Bowen 7, L Paquetá 6 (A Cresswell 76), M Kudus 5 — M Antonio 5 (D Ings 70). Booked Emerson, Ogbonna, Paquetá. Referee A Madley. Chelsea West Ham PALMER’S 30 GOAL INVOLVEMENTS 31 30 30 28 25 25 24 22 21 21 Goals Assists Total Ollie Watkins Erling Haaland Cole Palmer Mohamed Salah Son Heung-min Bukayo Saka Phil Foden Jarrod Bowen Alexander Isak Dominic Solanke 19 12 25 5 21 9 18 10 16 9 16 9 16 8 16 6 20 1 18 3 GARY JACOB At Stamford Bridge Palmer enjoys his 16th home league goal for Chelsea David Moyes cited Declan Rice’s departure as a reason for West Ham United’s numerous heavy defeats this season. His side’s 5-0 loss to Chelsea followed similar margins of defeat by Arsenal (6-0), Crystal Palace (5-2), Fulham (5-0) and Liverpool (6-0), which combined make it highly likely that he will depart as manager when his contract expires at the end of the season. Moyes’s players have lacked a physical and mental toughness since Rice’s £105 million sale to Arsenal last summer and the retirement of Mark Noble, also a midfielder, a year earlier. Asked to explain the heavy Moyes pins blame on GARY JACOB defeats, Moyes said there had been a “lack of protection” in midfield after Rice was replaced by Edson Álvarez and James Ward-Prowse. “Declan Rice,” Moyes said. “When you’ve got the best midfield player in the country protecting, probably limiting 50 per cent of their attacks, it makes you much a better defensive team. We’ve lacked protection in front of the back four, lacked good enough defending, not been good enough at those things in many games.” Moyes has been renowned for making his teams difficult to beat and disciplined. But he broke an unwanted record with West Ham by conceding 70 league goals this season, the highest of any of his sides in the Premier League, beating the 69

the times | Monday May 6 2024 1GG 5 thegame DAVID KLEIN/REUTERS Gregor Robertson visits ??????????????? hfdhfhfhf TONY CASCARINO Weekend talking points My colleague Matt Lawton’s revelation on Friday that Manchester United are looking seriously at Thomas Tuchel if they get rid of Erik ten Hag in the summer did not fill me with confidence for the club’s future. United’s problem under Ten Hag — and before his arrival as well — has been that barely any of the players have improved. All of the Premier League managers that we admire these days have the ability to make individuals better through coaching. Ten Hag has not been able to do that at United, and I’m not sure that Tuchel’s strength is in that area either. Tuchel has built his reputation setting teams up tactically to win matches, but I’ve not had the impression that many players find him inspirational to play for. I would like to see United be braver with their next manager, and look at someone who has proved they can improve players. I didn’t understand why Liverpool were not looking at Kieran McKenna, given what he has done with a League One squad at Ipswich, and I think he would be ideal for United. I actually think he may be a genius, and it would be ridiculous for United, where he worked under Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and José Mourinho, to fail to realise that. Thomas Frank at Brentford is another coach I thought should have been on Liverpool’s shortlist and should definitely be on United’s this summer. He has got nothing to be ashamed of tactically — his team change very smoothly between different formations — but he has that special quality United have lacked: he coaches players. TEAM OF THE WEEK D Raya Arsenal B White Arsenal T Silva Chelsea Gabriel Arsenal 4-4-2 E Haaland Man CIty N Jackson Chelsea A Robertson Liverpool N Madueke Chelsea B Guimarães Newcastle D Rice Arsenal C Hudson-Odoi N Forest Let’s scrap all penalties, not just the shoot-outs Forget Tuchel, McKenna is the man United need This is not the first time I’ve said this, but I believe we need to think about scrapping penalties. I don’t mean shoot-outs — we still need those — but the free shot from 12 yards for a foul in the area. I was at Arsenal on Saturday and Kai Havertz dived directly in front of where I was sitting to get a penalty. It drives me nuts, but players do it because the value of a penalty is huge. VAR has made things worse, because any sort of contact is reviewed. Premier League penalties this season are coming at a rate of 0.29 per game — the secondhighest for ten years — and so many games revolve around them. I don’t even think it’s worth players going to the gym any more because the idea of being strong in the tackle has gone; these days people want to be as weak as possible in the hope they get a cheap foul. Great to see play-off rules that make sense This week’s Football League play-offs will be some of the most tense matches the players involved experience. But at least the rules make sense. My Gillingam side were trying to get promotion from the old Third Division in 1987. In the semi-finals we beat Sunderland — they’d finished thirdfrom-bottom in the Second Division because that was how the play-offs worked back then. We beat them 3-2 at home (I scored two, thanks for asking) and then lost 4-3 up there (I got two more, thanks again) but we won on away goals. The final against Swindon was two legs, we won 1-0 at home and lost 2-1 away. But for some unknown reason there was no away goals rule in the final, so we had to play a third game at a neutral venue — Selhurst Park — and we lost 2-0. I joined Millwall soon afterwards. Flawed Postecoglou handed win to Klopp on a plate Ange Postecoglou’s Tottenham are the gift that keeps on giving. They made it a perfect game for Liverpool at Anfield yesterday and it showed with the sheer amount of chances the home side had in the first half. It was too easy for Liverpool down the right, with stand-in left back Emerson Royale left isolated to deal with Mohamed Salah and Trent Alexander-Arnold on so many occasions and he struggled to deal with them. Spurs were constantly exposed when they lost the ball with Liverpool’s players running into the space left in midfield. Postecoglou’s ideas in these matches seem a bit flawed to me. You can’t go to Anfield and expect to outscore Liverpool. You have to suffer a bit and offer a threat in moments. That’s what Crystal Palace did when they came away with a victory. For the way Spurs want to play in big games, they need players who can keep the ball and they don’t have enough of those. James Maddison is one of them and I was surprised he didn’t start, Spurs looked better when he came on. Jackson supplies his second and Chelsea’s fifth goal after Gallagher scores the second, left, and Madueke turns home the third from Thiago Silva’s header as Chelsea storm in front to leave Pochettino, inset, to enjoy his side’s second London derby victory in four days Rice exit for West Ham’s pastings shipped by Sunderland in 2016-17. Since Moyes was offered a new twoyear deal in January, West Ham have won four matches and kept only two clean sheets in 23 games across all competitions. The Scot said his team were disrupted by losing Ghana’s Mohammed Kudus and Morocco’s Nayef Aguerd to the Africa Cup of Nations at the turn of the year. He called on his players to show greater responsibility. “We were lacking toughness, leadership, and mental toughness,” he said. “We’ve now had two away games where we’ve conceded five. The manager will always take the responsibility but somewhere along the line the players have to take responsibility for doing their jobs, being hard to play against, being aggressive and competitive. I question if we were all that in the first half. It has happened several times this season, which I’ve certainly not enjoyed. I didn’t enjoy today at all. Players not in their positions, running out of position, opening up too easily. “I am livid. At the moment I am not sure what team will turn up after the 2-2 draw with Liverpool last week.” West Ham have been in the top ten for much of the season, chasing a fourth straight season in Europe, but might finish as low as 12th. Moyes said that he would talk to the club about his position after the final match away to Manchester City. “I am going to talk to the board at the end of the season,” he said. “I don’t think [it is a distraction] one bit.” The Stamford Bridge away section soon emptied as a brutal afternoon unfolded

1João Pedro 87 RATINGS Brighton & Hove Albion (4-2-2-2): B Verbruggen 6 — J Veltman 6, L Dunk 6, A Webster 6, Igor 6 — B Gilmour 6 (C Baleba 88min), P Gross 7 — F Buonanotte 5 (J Enciso 60), S Adingra 8 (V Barco 90+3) — D Welbeck 6 (J Moder 88), J Pedro 6. Booked Gross, Adingra. Aston Villa (4-4-2): R Olsen 8 — E Konsa 6 (À Moreno 90), D Carlos 6, P Torres 5, L Digne 5 (C Chambers 90) — M Diaby 4 (J Durán 73), D Luiz 5, J McGinn 6, M Rogers (M Cash 24, 5) — L Bailey 5, O Watkins 4. Booked Cash. Referee R Jones. Attendance 31,596. Brighton Aston Villa 0 6 1GG Monday May 6 2024 | the times thegame Ferrell will not be among the club’s decision-makers But for those moments — and some sharp work from Adingra — the first half was largely uneventful, as both sides accumulated only 12 penalty area touches: nine for Brighton and three for Villa. The second half was much snappier. Villa started brightly and attempted to advance, encamping in the Brighton defensive third. However, the space they left in behind created opportunities for the home side. The first came as Pau Torres was dispossessed near the halfway line, and only a stretching clearance stopped Danny Welbeck meeting Adingra’s subsequent cross. Adingra then created Brighton’s best chance of the second half as he supplied Pedro, but the Brazilian’s left-footed strike was saved superbly by Olsen’s fingertips. De Zerbi’s side refused to relent, and Welbeck’s header dropped wide of the post. But then Adingra, once more, provided the spark. He exchanged passes outside the area, darted inside and drew a foul from Ezri Konsa to earn a penalty. The decision looked soft, but the Villa players and Emery had few protests. Pedro’s effort was saved but he reacted quickest to nod in the rebound. “I’m proud because we played a great game against one of the best teams in the Premier League,” De Zerbi said. “They are fourth in the table and playing against the teams of Emery is still very, very tough. “We played a good game, we deserved to win. We could have scored more but, to be honest, Villa were not Villa today. Maybe they were tired. “I can understand that better than a lot of other people because they played Thursday evening and are competing in Europe and have a lot of injuries. For that I think they couldn’t be Aston Villa.” feast of footballing foreplay: there were plenty of delicate, tantalising touches and approach play around the penalty box, but by the end it was all rather frustrating for both sides, particularly Ollie Watkins, who was on the periphery. By the end of the match the Villa striker had managed only three touches in the penalty area, his fourth-lowest total of the season. Despite Brighton’s effectiveness in keeping the ball away from Villa’s forwards, De Zerbi appeared the more frustrated of the managers: he continuously waved his arms, instructing his players to increase the tempo of the match. A few yards to his right, Emery gestured with his arms downwards, asking his team to slow the game down and show patience. Towards the end of the half there were two genuine moments of excitement that teased what was to come. First, Adingra found space at the back post but shot straight at Olsen. Two minutes later, he cut inside and clipped a pass into the area for Gross. He timed a smart diagonal run from right to left, controlled the ball and struck towards goal, only for Olsen’s foot to block the effort. we won. Today we didn’t do it. We competed, but we didn’t deserve a result.” That Villa managed to keep the score level for so long owed much to the outstanding efforts of Olsen, their reserve goalkeeper. The 34-year-old, deputising for the injured Emiliano Martínez, could easily have beaten the impressive Simon Adingra to the man-of-thematch award. Olsen excelled in making key stops from Adingra, Pascal Gross and Pedro — including stopping the latter’s penalty, albeit not the rebound. “He was fantastic,” Emery said. Villa looked jaded and second best, particularly in the second half, as the toll of their midweek exertions became evident. They could produce only two shots on goal; hardly the momentumbuilding performance that Emery would have hoped for before his team travel to Athens in a bid to overturn a two-goal deficit, having lost 4-2 to Olympiacos at Villa Park. The first period was a Pressure can do strange things to people. Seven league positions and 23 points separated Brighton & Hove Albion from Aston Villa at kick-off but by full-time Roberto De Zerbi’s side looked convincingly superior, having added a smidgen of peril to Villa’s pursuit of Champions League football. This was Brighton’s first win in Pressure and fatigue start to tell on Villa seven league games and until João Pedro’s goal in the 87th minute — a headed rebound after his penalty was saved by Robin Olsen — Villa looked as if they would leave the Amex Stadium with a scarcely deserved point, having withstood Brighton’s second-half attacking barrage. Barring some calamitous and improbable results, Villa are still likely to finish in the top four, but the pressure of chasing a Champions League place, plus injuries and fatigue from trying to balance their domestic ambitions with a Europa Conference League run, seemed to catch up with them on the south coast. “It’s not an excuse for us,” Unai Emery, the Villa head coach, said of suggestions his players were tired three days after defeat in the first leg of their semi-final against Olympiacos. “Today we lost and didn’t deserve more. “We played Arsenal [three] weeks ago in the same circumstances [three days after a European game] and HAMZAH KHALIQUE-LOONAT Brighton won a penalty when Adingra went down after a challenge by Konsa, above left. Pedro’s spot kick was saved but he headed in the rebound, above JANE STOKES/PROSPORTS/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK BLUNT VILLA Villa's expected goals figure — the way statisticians measure the value of a team's goalscoring chances in a match — against Brighton was 0.06, the second-lowest by any team in any Premier League game this season Lowest xG in any PL match 2023-24 0.03 0.06 0.08 0.13 0.16 0.17 0.19 0.22 0.23 0.24 Sheffield United v Arsenal (A) Aston Villa v Brighton (A) Burnley v Crystal Palace (A) Everton v Liverpool (A) Newcastle v Arsenal (A) Wolves v Arsenal (H) Crystal Palace v Bournemouth (A) West Ham v Arsenal (H) Luton v Brentford (A) Sheffield United v Arsenal (H) (L 0-5) (L 0-1) (L 0-3) (L 0-2) (L 1-4) (L 0-2) L (0-1) (L 0-6) (L 1-3) (L 0-6) The film star Will Ferrell has acquired a minority stake in Leeds United, joining his fellow actor Russell Crowe and the golfers Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas as investors in the Sky Bet Championship club. The 56-year-old, who has starred in films such as Elf and Anchorman, has an estimated wealth of £127 million. Despite his investment, Ferrell will not be a decision-maker at the club. Hollywood star Ferrell is latest celebrity to invest in Leeds MARTIN HARDY Leeds are owned by 49ers Enterprises, which took full control in July 2023 when it bought the club for £170 million. Since then famous faces from the world of sport and entertainment have invested and taken what have been described as minority stakes. The club’s investment group, created by 49ers Enterprises, is split into two sections: general partners and limited partners. The Australian businessman Peter Lowy and Jed York, whose parents Marie Denise DeBartolo York and John York own 90 per cent of the San Francisco 49ers NFL team, are the general partners and regarded as the main players. The likes of Crowe, who said that he became a Leeds fan when watching Match of the Day as a child, Spieth and Thomas are limited partners. Spieth spoke of his investment last year: “Myself and Justin are involved in a very, very minority stake but within the bigger 49ers organisation that somehow figure out a way to beat my [Dallas] Cowboys every single year anyway. So if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.” The swimming champion Michael Phelps, who has won 28 Olympic medals, is also part of the group. Leeds lost in their final game of the Championship regular season at home to Southampton on Saturday but their hopes of automatic promotion became irrelevant after Ipswich’s 2-0 win against Huddersfield Town. Leeds now face a two-legged play-off semi-final against Norwich City. The play-off final, estimated to be the most valuable game in world football for the financial rewards that await the winners in the Premier League, will be played at Wembley on May 26.