The Times - 9November 2023

Suella Braverman accused the Metropolitan Police of “playing favourites” with protesters as she clashed with Britain’s most senior officer over his decision to let Saturday’s proPalestinian march go ahead. In an article in today’s Times, the home secretary also risked increasing tensions further by claiming that the weekly pro-Palestinian protests were being used by Islamic extremists as an attempt to dominate the streets of London. She compared these “hate marches” to sectarian rallies held in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. Braverman claimed that senior officers are biased in their policing of protests and employ a “double standard”, taking a softer approach with left-wing groups such as Black Lives Matter than with right-wing protests such as antilockdown demonstrations. Her intervention came after Sir Mark Rowley, the Met commissioner, said that the threshold of serious disorder needed to ban an Armistice Day protest had not been met. Met sources emphasised that the commissioner was focused on applying the law and overseeing operational activity ahead of a weekend of massive national significance. Braverman said there must not be soft-touch policing of this weekend’s protest in implicit criticism of the Met’s Matt Dathan Home Affairs Editor Fiona Hamilton Chief Reporter Blood tests for Alzheimer’s could be available on the NHS within five years, leading to faster, wider diagnoses and earlier treatment. The country’s two leading dementia charities are funding a £5 million study to bring already-developed blood tests “the final mile” into clinical use. Dr Blood test on NHS will bring faster diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Tom Whipple Science Editor Fiona Carragher, from the Alzheimer’s Society, said that this would tackle the heartbreaking struggles faced by families in getting a diagnosis, and help to prepare the way for new treatments, which rely on early detection. Most people are diagnosed with Alzheimer’s after experiencing memory difficulties and going to their GP. They are then referred to a memory clinic where cognitive tests are performed. For almost all of those who do receive a diagnosis, it will come through a patchwork of different assessments. Currently the only specialist tests are spinal lumbar punctures or PET scans, but they are expensive and difficult to implement. The UK has just one PET scanner for every two million people. Carragher said many cases were missed. Dementia affects 900,000 people in the UK but an estimated 250,000 go undiagnosed. “We hear stories day in day out of people waiting two, three, four years plus to get their diagnosis. That is heartbreaking for the individuals and families, not knowing what’s going on,” she added. There is an extra urgency because in the past two years drugs have passed clinical trials that for the first time can slow the progression of Alzheimer’s, provided it is caught early enough. Dr Susan Kohlhaas, from Alzheimer’s Research UK, said: “We need to get this right and we need to get this right as quickly as possible.” The drugs, which slow progression by around a third, are being assessed by Braverman brands Met biased over Gaza march management of the rallies over the past month. The public, she said, “expect to see an assertive and proactive approach to any displays of hate, breaches of conditions and general disorder”. Her comments come despite Rishi Sunak toning down his rhetoric after summoning Rowley to a meeting in Downing Street to explain his decision. The prime minister had said the Met chief would be held accountable if protests led to disruption of Remembrance commemorations. However, after the meeting Sunak said that Rowley had provided “reassurances that the police are taking every step necessary” to prevent such disruption. Sunak said: “It’s welcome that the police have confirmed that the march will be away from the Cenotaph and they will ensure that the timings do not conflict with any Remembrance events. There remains the risk of those who seek to divide society using this weekend as a platform to do so.” The organisers of Saturday’s protest rejected a request by the Met this week to cancel their fifth consecutive rally, stressing that it will start nearly two hours after the two minutes’ silence to remember the war dead and altering the route to ensure it avoids the Cenotaph on Whitehall. Rowley, who had to cancel a speech for the meeting, has not ruled out requesting a ban if intelligence changes about the nature of the protests. On People with bosses who micromanage them are at higher risk of heart attacks and strokes, according to research. For those employees most likely to develop heart problems, the risk fell to that of someone ten years younger after managers were trained to give them more control over their time and tasks. Researchers from Harvard and Penn State universities in America looked at 1,500 employees at an IT company and a care provider. Workers had their blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol checked. The findings were combined with data such as height, weight and tobacco use to calculate a “cardiometabolic risk score”. Managers completed a programme “designed to increase employee control over work time ... and reduce low-value work that leads to workers feeling overloaded”. They were also trained in ways to support a better work-life balance for staff. One participating boss said: “I’ve lightened up more and people can work from wherever just as long as they get the work done. We’ve learnt to be more flexible.” Results published in the American Journal of Public Health found that 12 months later the scores had improved among those participants at highest risk when the study began, especially among the over-45s. “Working conditions are important social determinants of health,” said Professor Lisa Berkman, co-lead author. “When stressful workplace conditions and work-family conflict were mitigated, we saw a reduction in the risk of cardiovascular disease among more vulnerable employees, without any negative impact on productivity. These findings could be particularly consequential for low and middle-wage workers who traditionally have less control over their schedules and job demands.” Work stress is linked to blood clotting and inflammation, potentially offering a biological explanation for the findings. Combat ready The Princess of Wales operating a drone in Dereham, Norfolk, where she took part in military drills with the Queen’s Dragoon Guards. A meddling boss really could be the death of you Police accused of being soft on left-wing protests Kat Lay Health Editor da i ly n e w s pa p e r o f t h e y e a r £2.80 £2.00 to subscribers (based on a 7 Day Print and Digital Subscription) I admit it, I’m a binge drinker Harriet Walker owns up Millennials like me have fallen for M&S Susannah Butter Thursday November 9 2023 | thetimes.co.uk | No 74249 INSIDE TIMES2

2 Thursday November 9 2023 | the times News clinical neurology at Queen Mary University of London, welcomed the trials. “We desperately need better ways to diagnose the diseases that cause dementia that can be used throughout the NHS,” he said. Rodda, consultant psychiatrist at Kent and Medway NHS and Social Care Partnership Trust, said that her expectation was for the tests to be used in her practice within five years. Charles Marshall, professor of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. If they are approved, the challenge will then be using them. “We expect that when those treatments become available there will be a surge in people coming forward for diagnosis. We know we don’t have the adequate infrastructure to cope with that demand,” Kohlhaas said. This is one reason why developing simple blood tests that can spot the toxic proteins that are a hallmark of Alzheimer’s has been a key goal of scientists. Another is that drug research itself would become far easier if there were quick ways to judge whether a treatment was working. At least 20 such tests from companies such as Roche and Lilly are now in a late stage of development and showing success in trials, able to tease out the subtle signals that indicate something might be wrong. The goal of the study, backed by the Alzheimer’s Society and Alzheimer’s Research UK, is to translate that research success into clinical practice on the NHS. The charities have not said yet which tests they would use, but it is possible they would assess a suite together to find the best combination. Initially, researchers expect that tests would be used in existing memory clinics, in conjunction with other measures such as cognitive tests. Dr Joanne Tuesday he said that the extremely high threshold to ban the march had simply not been met but that the option was a “last resort” should the situation change. He acknowledged then that some protesters supported proscribed terrorist organisations. The Met are keenly aware that any application for a ban will be subject to legal challenge. Rowley has said that many demonstrators are pacifists who have a right to protest against Israel’s mass bombing of Gaza. Braverman wrote: “I do not believe that these marches are merely a cry for help for Gaza. They are an assertion of primacy by certain groups — particularly Islamists — of the kind we are more used to seeing in Northern Ireland. Also disturbingly reminiscent of Ulster are the reports that some of Saturday’s march group organisers have links to terrorist groups, including There is “light at the end of the tunnel” in the dispute over railway workers’ pay, it has been announced, as the RMT and the train companies agreed a memorandum of understanding. The paper sets out a process for a “mutually agreed way forward” in which union members will be balloted on the proposed pay agreement, the RMT said. The deal with the Rail Delivery Group, which represents companies, includes a backdated pay rise for last year and job security guarantees. The 2022 offer is for a 5 per cent pay rise for all workers, or £1,750 for the lowest paid. There will be no compulsory redundancies until the end of next year. If approved by a ballot of members, it could prevent train strikes over Christmas and new year, as the RMT’s national mandate for strike action would be terminated. That would allow Light at end of tunnel as RMT and train companies agree deal Ben Clatworthy Transport Correspondent for negotiations on reforms to take place at local train operating company level, the union said. Members working at 14 train companies will now vote on the deal between now and November 30. Mick Lynch, the RMT’s general secretary, said: “This is a welcome development and our members will now decide in a referendum whether they want to accept this new offer.” The news was welcomed by ministers and passengers who have had 18 months of disruption. It does not, however, address the dispute with train drivers who are represented by Aslef. A spokesman for the Rail Delivery Group said discussions at a local level would be “aimed at addressing the companies’ proposals on the changing needs and expectations of passengers as well as unlocking further increases for staff, in order to help to secure a sustainable, long-term future for the railway and all those who work on it”. The move follows an agreement by ministers to shelve plans to close more than 870 railway ticket offices. The plans were rejected last week by Transport Focus and London TravelWatch, the watchdogs. It prompted Mark Harper, the transport secretary, to dictate that all proposals for closures should be scrapped. If the RMT dispute is settled, it will leave Aslef as the only striking union on the railways. It represents 98 per cent of train drivers affording them the power to close down the railways. A senior rail source said: “For the first time in a very long time there is light at the end of the tunnel. This could be a big breakthrough in a dispute that has caused misery to passengers’ lives since the summer of 2022.” The Department for Transport said: “We hope RMT members will . . . accept this offer and put an end to the RMT’s industrial action.” RMT members, including guards and ticket office staff, have taken part in national strikes since June last year. Behind the story W hy is it so hard to get diagnosed with Alzheimer’s? There has been an easy reply to this question (Tom Whipple writes). Why have a diagnosis for a disease you can’t do anything about? Actually, as dementia charities are keen to stress, that response is glib. Most people want a diagnosis. They want to prepare, to access help and understand what is happening to them. Today, even that simplistic answer doesn’t work. In the past two years, for the first time, drugs have passed clinical trials that can change the course of Alzheimer’s. Their effect is only moderate but it is hoped better drugs are on the way. Obviously, to use them you have to know you have Alzheimer’s — and know early. This is where blood tests come in. The tests will not do anything we can’t already do. We already have ways to detect Alzheimer’s using clinical biomarkers. We just don’t use them very much because, for instance, a PET scanner is hard to get booked on to, and very expensive. The development of blood tests is a reminder that while science can be about swishy technology and exciting biochemistry, public health is often more mundane. It is about logistics and costs. As the UK’s approval body, Nice, considers whether to recommend expensive Alzheimer’s drugs on the NHS, this is one of their considerations. It is a harder to approve a drug if the only way to find the patients who would benefit involves building a national PET scanner screening programme. We are a long way from a statin for Alzheimer’s. But if we do get there, it begins with a blood test. continued from page 1 Alzheimer’s blood test Last night the Met said that since October 7 it had made 188 arrests for alleged hate crimes and violence linked to protests in the capital. Of these, 98 were antisemitic, 21 were Islamophobic and 12 were believed to be other faith hate crimes. Fifty-seven were public order offences, many racially aggravated. Far-right groups have urged supporters to stage a counterprotest. Tommy Robinson, founder of the English Defence League, has called on “young English men” to travel to London, as has the Democratic Football Lads Alliance. Kemi Badenoch, the business secretary, said that it was “profoundly disgusting” to see pro-Palestinian activists tearing down images of Israeli hostages from walls after she met the mothers of children abducted by Hamas. Hamas.” She added: “Unfortunately, there is a perception that senior police officers play favourites when it comes to protesters. During Covid, why was it that lockdown objectors were given no quarter by public order police yet Black Lives Matter demonstrators were enabled, allowed to break rules and even greeted with officers taking the knee? “Right-wing and nationalist protesters who engage in aggression are rightly met with a stern response yet proPalestinian mobs displaying almost identical behaviour are largely ignored, even when clearly breaking the law? “I have spoken to serving and former police officers who have noted this double standard. Football fans are even more vocal about the tough way they are policed as compared to politically connected minority groups favoured by the left. It may be that senior officers are more concerned with how much flak they are likely to get than whether this perceived unfairness alienates the majority.” continued from page 1 Braverman brands Met biased Bright spells and showery outbreaks, heaviest in western Britain and Ireland. THE WEATHER 36 20 21 7 9 10 10 9 9 7 Today’s highlights 7am 11am 12pm 2pm 3.35pm Mark Harper, the transport secretary Do the allegations in Nadine Dorries’s new book The Plot stack up? Matt Chorley investigates Sadiq Khan, right, the London mayor Mariella Frostrup chats to Keith Allen about playing Scrooge in Mark Gatiss’s new production of A Christmas Carol The double Olympic champion Caster Semenya discusses her new memoir, The Race To Be Myself DAB RADIO l ONLINE l SMART SPEAKER l APP LETTERS 28 LEADING ARTICLES 29 WORLD 30 BUSINESS 33 REGISTER 49 LAW 52 SPORT 58 CROSSWORD 68 TV & RADIO TIMES2 FOLLOW US thetimes timesandsundaytimes thetimes OFFER Save up to 30% with a subscription to The Times and The Sunday Times THETIMES.CO.UK/SUBSCRIBE days since Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was detained in Russia #FreeEvan 225 T O D AY ’ S E D I T I O N ‘Sack Hancock to save lives’ Lord Sedwill, Britain’s most senior civil servant at the start of the Covid pandemic, joked that Boris Johnson should sack Matt Hancock to “save lives and protect the NHS” and described the prime minister’s aides as “brutal and useless”. Johnson takes swipe at Sunak Boris Johnson says the Tory party is “drifting to defeat”. In a series of interviews with Nadine Dorries, the former prime minister accused Rishi Sunak of failing to offer a positive vision for Britain and said he had given voters “nothing to rally behind”. Pressure on Israel mounts Israel’s “window of legitimacy” to prosecute its war in Gaza with US support appears to be closing, amid mounting international pressure over the civilian death toll and lack of an exit strategy or plans for Gaza’s future after the fighting is over. US voters back abortion rights The presidential ambitions of the Republican governor Glenn Youngkin have suffered a setback after voters in Virginia turned out in support of abortion rights and handed control of the legislature back to his Democrat rivals. EU pushes for Ukraine talks Brussels has given the green light, with conditions attached, to the opening of membership talks with Ukraine and Moldova next spring in a push for the biggest expansion of the EU for 20 years. Ursula von der Leyen hailed “a historic day”. Bank’s interest rates warning The governor of the Bank of England has warned that there are “upside risks” on interest rates as he doubled down on efforts to persuade financial markets that the central bank will keep policy restrictive for an “extended period”.

the times | Thursday November 9 2023 2GM 3 News It may not come with a manor, but it will guarantee a table at virtually any restaurant. The title of Lord of Walthamstow is coming to auction next month after his daughter decided the life of a lady was not for her. The present holder, Phillip Leigh, a retired property developer and estate agent, is selling the title to boost his pension. The English feudal title pre-dates the 1066 Norman conquest, and was listed in the Domesday Book. At the time the lord was the key person in the village, collecting rents and taxes and dispensing justice. Today, however, it often brings little more than bragging rights. “It’s very handy for . . . a good table at restaurants,” he said. “I’ve rung up restaurants first as plain old Phillip Leigh and it’s been, ‘I’m sorry, we’re full.’ Then I’ve called as the Lord of Walthamstow and it’s, ‘Yes, my lord, certainly — we’ve got a lovely table by the window.’” The title does not confer the right to attend the House of Lords, nor does it come with a country manor house, but it does have a coat of arms and can be used on documents such as passports. The titles are deemed property under English law and can be bought and sold, as they have been since medieval times. Sense of entitlement 6 Peter Norton, founder of the antivirus software Norton Utilities, paid a six-figure sum to become the lord of Shakespeare’s home town, Stratford-upon-Avon 6Ole Georg, a composer and actor known for his work in Reservoir Dogs and Boogie Nights, bought the lordship of Sheldowne in Sussex 6 The title of Baron of Newcastle was sold for $30,000 to Victor Podd, a US businessman, in 1996 6 The lordship of Henley-in-Arden sold for $180,000 in 1992 to Joseph Hardy, the chairman of a Pittsburgh lumber company lists three other lordships for sale for less than £10,000. The society said some titles came with certain rights, such as being able to hold a market. Tobin said: “Some lordships do carry the right to run a market or entitlement to a grass verge or such but I don’t think many get far when they try to exercise these rights.” The market traders of Walthamstow, the longest outdoor market in Europe, are safe as Leigh’s lordship confers no such rights there. Philip Waterfield of Strettons said: “We are expecting quite a bit of interest as these titles rarely come to auction. It is likely to be bought by a celebrity or someone successful from the area.” There are no age or nationality restrictions on buying titles but the winning bidder must style themselves Lord of the Manor of Walthamstow or Lord of Walthamstow — the “of” being vital to differentiate them from peers. Phillip Leigh has been the Lord of Walthamstow since buying the title in November 1989, but is now selling off the lordship to boost his pension — and because his daugher, Nicole, isn’t as interested in history and heritage as he is Struggling to book a table? Try buying a lordship Carol Lewis Property Editor The titles of lord and lady of the manor can also be passed down to children and grandchildren. However, Leigh said his daughter, Nicole, “isn’t as into history” as he and his wife, Ruth, are. Leigh was born in Walthamstow during the Second World War and lives in nearby Loughton. “I feel a real connection to the area so when it came up for sale 34 years ago, I went out of my way to buy [the title],” he said. “I’ve researched it at the Walthamstow museum and have all the documents. I feel very proud to be part of this heritage and to hold this lordship.” Ben Tobin, a consultant to Strettons, the auction house selling the title online on December 13, said: “It’s pretty rare these days to have these titles come to auction. I sold a few in the Eighties and Nineties when . . . they sold for between £10,000 and £30,000.” He said a reserve price would be set once the level of interest was known. “Those with a more recognisable name will be worth more,” he said. Leigh would not say how much he paid for the title on November 8, 1989, but said if its value were linked to inflation it would today cost £200,000. However, the Manorial Society of Great Britain, which says it counts 1,900 lords of the manor and feudal barons, peers and historians as members, Whole lotta looking ends rock mystery David Sanderson Arts Correspondent The thatcher who bestrode — in a slightly stooped manner — one of the seminal albums of the 1970s is finally thought to have been identified. The man on the cover of Led Zeppelin IVis believed to be Lot Long, a thatcher from Wiltshire who died in 1893. The cover art had previously been thought to be a photograph of a painting discovered by Robert Plant, the lead singer, in a Berkshire antique shop. However, an academic from the University of the West of England encountered the original photo, and not a painting, while curating an exhibition at a Wiltshire museum. Brian Edwards, also a Led Zeppelin fan, “instantly recognised the man with the sticks”. The picture was captioned “a Wiltshire thatcher” and the photo album entitled “Reminiscences of a visit to Shaftesbury. Whitsuntide 1892. A present to Auntie from Ernest.” Edwards compiled a list of photographers working in Wiltshire in the late 19th century and identified a Salisbury man, Robert Farmer, whose son, Ernest, became the head of the School of Photography at what is now the University of Westminster. A sample of Ernest’s writing matched the album inscription. Census records indicated there was only one thatcher working in the area then: Lot Long, who lived in Mere and died aged 69. Edwards persuaded the Wiltshire Museum in Devizes to buy the album at the auction for £500. It will feature in an exhibition next year. Led Zeppelin IV’s thatcher is said to be Lot Long, who died in 1893

4 Thursday November 9 2023 | the times News A A A B C E E G G H H H I I I K M M N N N O O P S S S S T T U V Solve all five concise clues using each letter underneath once only 1 Make a request (3) 2 Frenzied state of alarm (5) 3 Paradise (6) 4 Loud outspoken person (8) 5 Writers of short musical pieces (10) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Quintagram® No 1781 Solutions see T2 MindGames p15 Cryptic clues T2 MindGames p14 Britain’s most senior civil servant at the start of the Covid pandemic joked that Boris Johnson should sack Matt Hancock to “save lives and protect the NHS” and branded the prime minister’s aides “brutal and useless”. Giving evidence to the Covid inquiry Lord Sedwill, then cabinet secretary, accused Hancock, then health secretary, of lacking “truthfulness”. The inquiry was told that Sedwill had sent private messages to Simon Case, then permanent secretary in No 10, in which he said Hancock was “so far up BJ’s (Johnson’s) arse his ankles are brown.” Sedwill said that he did not formally advise Johnson to sack Hancock but the prime minister would have been “under no illusions” about his feelings. This included a “gallows humour” exchange with Case in which he said it was necessary to remove Hancock to “save lives and protect the NHS”. Hugo Keith KC, counsel for the inquiry, asked Sedwill “how damaging, how destructive this loss of confidence in Mr Hancock was” as the UK faced a pandemic? Sedwill replied: “Clearly, damaging.” The inquiry was read a section from Johnson’s witness statement in which the former prime minister said he did not “think” he had received any advice from Sedwill that Hancock “should be removed”. Sedwill responded: “I did not provide formal advice to the PM but he would have been under no illusion as to my view about what was best.” The inquiry was also told that Sedwill had also exchanged messages with Sticking with it Leilah Vyner, a willow weaver, puts the finishing touches to her festive and Narnia-themed sculptures at her workshop near Tadcaster, Yorkshire 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 Sack Hancock to save lives, cabinet chief joked Case in which they described Johnson and his aides as “feral”. Case wrote: “It is like taming wild animals. Nothing in my past experience has prepared me for this madness. The PM and the people he chooses to surround himself with are basically feral.” Sedwill replied: “I have the bite marks.” Keith also quoted an extract from Sir Patrick Vallance’s diary, from August 2020, where he quoted Sedwill as saying: “This administration is brutal and useless.” Sedwill said he did not remember making the comment, but did not doubt the accuracy of what Vallance said. Earlier in his evidence Sedwill had apologised to the victims of the pandemic for suggesting that the government should encourage “chickenpox-style” parties to help achieve herd immunity. He said that his comments, which had been made in private, must have appeared “heartless and thoughtless” when they became public. He insisted that the suggestion had been meant as an analogy to describe a mitigation strategy being examined by the government at the time, in early 2020. “At no point did I believe that coronavirus was only at the same seriousness of chickenpox. I knew it was a much more serious disease,” he said. “What I was trying to examine was, was there a way of managing that [the virus], given its highly differential impact that ensured that it spread through those for whom the disease was likely to be unpleasant rather than dangerous and that we could quarantine and shield those for whom it would be dangerous.” He added: “I understand that it must have come across that someone in my role was both heartless and thoughtless about this, and I am neither. But I do understand that distress that must have caused and I apologise.” Sedwill also said that Rishi Sunak, then chancellor, had pushed Johnson in opening up the economy after the first lockdown and said that he had needed to manage the “dynamics” of a meeting between the two men. The inquiry was shown an exchange between Sedwill and Case, the present cabinet secretary, in which Case praised his “genius” idea for excluding the chief medical and scientific officers from a meeting to discuss easing lockdown restrictions. Sedwill insisted to the inquiry that this had not been because he wanted to exclude medical advice but because he did not want Sunak to be “overwhelmed” by a “cohort of people” opposed to his wish to move faster in easing restrictions. Sedwill was also asked to address criticism of him by Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s chief adviser, that he was “off the pace” in the early days of Covid. Sedwill said this was not the case. He admitted that he should have “interrogated” assurances that plans were in place to deal with the pandemic earlier. Oliver Wright Policy Editor A man who suffered a brain injury after receiving the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine has launched a legal action against the drug company, alleging that it overstated its efficacy. Jamie Scott, a father of two, suffered a blood clot that appears to have left him with permanent brain damage and forced him to stop working after he was given the jab on April 23, 2021. His lawyers argue that Scott suffered “personal injuries and consequential losses arising out of his sustaining vaccine-induced immune thrombosis with thrombocytopenia (VITT)” – a very rare blood clot side effect that was linked to the vaccine, which was developed by AstraZeneca in partnership with the University of Oxford. On April 7, 2021 — 16 days before he was vaccinated — the Joint Committee on Immunisation and Vaccination, which advises the government, said that adults under 30 should be offered an alternative to the AstraZeneca jab because of the risk of clots. The following month this was amended to adults under 40. Scott was 44 when he received the inoculation. His lawyers have argued that no warning of the risk of VITT was included in the product information on the date of supply of the vaccine. They have also questioned how the efficacy of the vaccine was described by AstraZeneca. The company issued press releases following clinical trials saying that it was estimated to be about 70 per cent effective in preventing symptomatic Covid. This referred to a reduction in what is known as relative risk. The legal claim, which was first reported by The Telegraph, states: “In fact, the absolute risk reduction concerning Covid-19 prevention was only Father with brain injury sues Covid vaccine maker 1.2 per cent.” However, using relative risk is standard in medical trials, as it yields a number that is not affected by how much virus is circulating. The 1.2 per cent figure is an absolute figure and reflects the fact that very few people who volunteered for the trial were infected by Covid. An independent study published last year estimated that the AstraZeneca vaccine saved more than six million lives around the world in the 12 months to December 8, 2021 — more than any other Covid jab. The World Health Organisation said in the summer of 2022 that it was “safe and effective for all individuals aged 18 and above”. Figures obtained under information law suggest that at least 144 out of 148 £120,000 payouts made by the government under the vaccine damage payment scheme went to recipients of the AstraZeneca vaccine. It was reported that Scott had been forced to give up his job as a software developer because of his injury. His wife, Kate, said: “We have been lobbying the government for 18 months for fair compensation for the injury caused by the vaccine.” She added in an open letter: “Our legal case will seek to hold AstraZeneca to account but we need to build a significant fighting fund to get justice.” AstraZeneca said: “Patient safety is our highest priority and regulatory authorities have clear and stringent standards to ensure the safe use of all medicines, including vaccines. From the body of evidence in clinical trials and real-world data, the vaccine has continuously been shown to have an acceptable safety profile and regulators around the world consistently state that the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks of extremely rare potential side-effects.” Rhys Blakely, Tom Whipple Lord Sedwill was questioned at the Covid inquiry

the times | Thursday November 9 2023 5 News A police officer who inspected a bag of weapons found near where a woman was killed a month later told an inquest she thought they were theatre props. PC Jill Lee-Liggett, of Derbyshire police, became emotional as she gave evidence to an inquest into the death of Gracie Spinks, 23, a model, who is believed to have been stabbed by her colleague at an e-commerce firm, Michael Sellers, 35, while she tended to her horse at a Derbyshire farm in June 2021 — hours before he took his own life. Chesterfield coroner’s court heard that a brown rucksack, which conOfficer thought weapons near murder scene were theatre props tained knives, an axe, Viagra tablets, a handwritten note saying “do not lie” and a receipt that was later linked to the Sellers family, was discovered by Anna White, a member of the public, near the stables on May 6, 2021. After White took the bag home, she called police and Lee-Liggett and her colleague, PC Ashley Downing, attended her home. Lee-Liggett said she thought the contents of the bag were “bizarre” but was not “seriously concerned” they could be linked to a crime. She said she looked only at certain items and did not empty the contents of the bag, did not make notes nor save the body-worn camera footage from the visit. She did not consider visiting the farm track where the bag was found, which was five minutes away. When asked by Matthew Kewley, the coroner, if she considered the risk the bag and its contents could have posed to the community, Lee-Liggett said: “I did consider if they could be used as weapons or had been used as weapons, but the offences had not been made, so I didn’t have crimes to record. “When I unpacked the bag ... my mind went to woodwork, theatrics, props, not murderous intent.” When she was asked why she did not consider visiting the scene where the bag was found, she said she wanted to speak to Sergeant Lee Richards about what she should do because she had not encountered a situation like it before. She said: “I made a point to look for something to identify the owner ... but there was [only] the M&S receipt.” She said she thought of going to the M&S to ask to see CCTV. “I raised it with the sergeant and he said: ‘Jill, why would you?’ “I said ‘What do you think I should do with [the bag]?’ He advised me to book the property in for destruction.” The officer became emotional when Kewley asked her if she would deal with the bag in the same way now without the benefit of hindsight. Wiping away tears, she said: “The way I investigate is so different now ... I was guided by my sergeant, and I did as I was told.” Richards said he was “blindsided by previous experience” and assumed that the bag of weapons belonged to someone who had been chopping wood. The inquest continues. Ali Mitib Gracie Spinks was stabbed to death while tending to her horse at a farm Ivanka Trump repeatedly denied being involved in the financial statements at the heart of the allegations against her father as she returned to New York to testify in the $250 million fraud case. The former president’s daughter appeared in a Lower Manhattan court yesterday to testify in the trial that threatens to bring down his empire and strip him of the right to do business in the city. He denies the claims. Ivanka, 42, was initially named as a defendant in the case but an appeals court ruled in June that the claims against her were too old, partly because she had stepped away from the Trump Organisation in January, 2017. Her name has appeared regularly on emails shown to the court between members of the organisation and a banker at Deutsche Bank. The New York attorney-general’s office called her as a witness along with her father and her two brothers. Her lawyer had unsuccessfully resisted an order for her to appear. But Judge Arthur Engoron, a Democrat, insisted she give evidence in person. She was billed as the final witness after her father appeared. “The people call Ivanka Trump,” Louis Solomon, for the attorney-general’s office, bellowed. “Who is she?” Judge Engoron asked to laughter. Trump told the court she joined the family company after leaving university. She was focused on the Doral golf resort and the redevelopment of the Old Post Office in Washington DC, she said. To finance the Doral project she turned to Rosemary Vrablic at Deutsche Bank, she said, to whom she was introduced by her husband, Jared Kushner,in 2010 or 2011. Doral had fallen into bankruptcy when the Trump Organisation acquired it. “I got a call in, I believe it was the ninth month of pregnancy, with my now eldest child,” she said. “So Ivanka ‘was not involved in Trump finance claim’ Will Pavia New York Hugh Tomlinson over 12 years ago.” Solomon produced a series of emails between Trump and financial firms that might have been able to offer a loan. One from Vrablic to Trump on December 15, 2011, offered a much lower interest rate than other offers they had received but required a minimum net worth of $3 billion. “It doesn’t get any better than this,” she wrote to fellow executives at the Trump Organisation, in an email shown to the court. Trump said she could not recall writing this. She was also shown an email from Jason Greenblatt, the organisation’s chief legal officer, noting that the bank required a full guarantee from Trump himself and asking if he would be willing to do that. “The net worth covenants and DJT indebtness limitations would seem to be a problem?” he wrote. Solomon said a statement on June 30, 2011, put his net worth at $4.3 billion. He asked: “You were aware that Donald Trump had represented that his net worth was $4 billion?” She replied: “No.” He showed her a later email she sent to Vrablic with an attached set of terms that included a net worth requirement of only $2 billion. Solomon said: “You rejected the net worth element of $3 billion and proposed a net worth of $2 billion, correct?” She replied: “It appears so, yes.” Solomon asked her about the project to redevelop the Old Post Office building into a hotel. She said she had spent years working on the proposals but “had no recollection ... all these years later”. The hotel was sold last year. An email showed that of the $139 million in proceeds, $127 million went to the former president with a lesser share going to his children. Solomon asked the daughter: “Did you receive approximately $4 million?” She replied: “That’s consistent with my recollection, yes.” The case continues. The judge insisted that Ivanka Trump appear at the Manhattan hearing, where a court artist sketched her giving evidence I vanka Trump glided through the arched entrance to Courtroom 300, lit by camera flashes, a tall and slender figure in the midst of a squat entourage of court police officers. A stubby fellow named Louis Solomon, a lawyer for the state of New York, dressed in a grey suit and black-framed glasses, his large bald patch ringed by a ragged halo of grey hair, awaited her arrival. She towered over him as she went by in her high heels. “Are you familiar with Gaap, generally accepted accounting principles?” he asked. She nodded from the witness box. “You had asked me about this when we had met, a little over a year ago,” Will Pavia Sketch A towering performance, then lunch attractive prospect and Ivanka resisted invitations and then an order from Judge Engoron, a Democrat, to appear. Her lawyer maintained, unsuccessfully, that it would be an “undue hardship” for a mother of three to travel during the week, though this image of a housebound Ivanka was rather undercut, in court, by her account of negotiating a loan deal for a Florida golf course in the weeks before and after the birth of her first child, and taking a phone call about the project while in hospital. It was a poised performance. Solomon pressed her on her father’s financial statements, which he is accused of inflating to obtain better interest rates. “I wasn’t involved in his statements of financial condition,” she said, over and over again. Then the court took its break and it was fair to say that Ivanka was back, in the city of her birth, and being allowed to have lunch. she said. She was referring to the deposition she had given in the financial fraud case against her father, Donald Trump, though she made it sound as though they had bumped into each other during piña colada hour at Cipriani’s. Her blonde hair fell and coiled on the sharp edges of her shoulder pads as she looked over loan documents, most dating to before 2017, when she was still New York royalty. After her father’s term as president and particularly after his supporters stormed the US Capitol on January 6, it was said that she would never eat lunch in New York again. She and her family moved to a private island near Miami and vanished, more or less, from public life. But a few weeks ago, in an apparent sign of her readmission into the highest circles of American society, she was photographed at Kim Kardashian’s birthday party. A New York courtroom was a less

6 Thursday November 9 2023 | the times News Appealing to the red wall Akshata T he stakes for Sir Mark Rowley have increased dramatically. Yesterday, the head of the Metropolitan Police announced that he was resisting political pressure for an outright ban on Saturday’s proPalestinian march, asserting his operational independence (Steven Swinford, Matt Dathan and Fiona Hamilton write). In doing so, he now finds himself in direct conflict with the prime minister. Rishi Sunak has described the march as “provocative and disrespectful” and Suella Braverman, the home secretary, has gone even further, describing the plans for a rally on Armistice Day as a “hate march through London”. Rowley’s decision not to request a ban took No 10 and the Home Office by surprise. They believed his formal request to the organisers of the march to cancel it was “laying the groundwork” for asking the home secretary to grant an outright ban. Sunak felt so strongly that he Drifting Sunak is just a stooge, says Johnson Boris Johnson has warned that the Conservative Party is “drifting to defeat” under Rishi Sunak and said that the prime minister is just a “stooge” for Dominic Cummings. In a series of interviews with Nadine Dorries, a former cabinet minister, he accuses Sunak of failing to offer a positive vision for the country and says he has given voters “nothing to rally behind”. The former prime minister says that Sunak should be much more ambitious and that the government needs a “massive kick in the pants”, suggesting that the Tories should be cutting corporation tax. Sunak, he says, has failed to offer an agenda for change. Speaking to Dorries for her book, The Plot: The Political Assassination of Boris Johnson, he says that Sunak is a front for the interests of others, including Cummings, Johnson’s former special adviser, and compares Sunak with the protagonist in The Manchurian Candidate — a film about a US presidential candidate who is secretly a communist sleeper agent. “I heard that Cummings has said he started to plot to get rid of me in January 2020,” Johnson says. “The plot was always to get Rishi in. I just couldn’t see it at the time. It’s like this Manchurian candidate, their stooge.” He tells Dorries that voters are “drifting” back to Labour in red wall seats because of Sunak’s lack of vision but that he understands Sunak’s apparent belief that “the public maybe had too much of me”, are “fed up” and want a change. However, he insists: “You’ve got to have an agenda for change in the country. You know, people will feel hacked off. They voted for change in 2019 and they are drifting back to Labour in those Brexit seats because they’re not seeing a changed government. Nothing to rally behind, nothing. We are just drifting to defeat.” The interview is Johnson’s most cutting criticism of Sunak since he quit as an MP after being censured for misleading parliament over the Downing Street parties scandal. Johnson claims in the book that he is not bitter. “Never be bitter, no good can come from it.” He complains about a lack of action on energy supply, infrastructure, skills and gigabit broadband, saying that HS2 has “become a total joke”, social care reform has been “junked” and levelling up “all but forgotten”. He says: “There was a massive agenda we had as a government to transform the country, and it doesn’t seem to be happening in any form of articulated way.” He adds that he is “particularly concerned that there’s no grand economic strategy for growth”, attacking Sunak’s decision to raise business taxes from 19p to 25p. “Why the hell are we putting up corporation tax in this way?” he asks, suggesting that Sunak should cut corporation tax to 10 per cent to “outbid the Irish”, who charge 12.5 per cent. “It’s absolutely mad,” Johnson tells Dorries. “The whole thing needs a massive kick in the pants; I think it’s all drifting. I really, really think that unless we grip it the results of the local elections will be repeated at a general election and Starmer will be a complete disaster.” Johnson says he feels “a massive, massive sense of frustration” that his 80-seat majority and “fantastic agenda” has been wasted. He accuses the Treasury of blocking measures to make Britain more productive, saying that Britain has become a “nation of bludgers”, or scroungers. “They should be doing some really big things now, measures to shake up the economy and make us world leaders,” he says. Steven Swinford Political Editor Chris Smyth Nadine Dorries believes Johnson was “assassinated” Rowley risks backlash if Met fails to ensure calm Analysis News Politics

the times | Thursday November 9 2023 7 News Don’t cut taxes yet, economists urge Hunt Steven Swinford, Oliver Wright move home, boost economic growth while and appeal to middle-aged voters. The problem is the cost. Residential stamp duty payments raised £10.1 billion for the Treasury in 2021-22. Any move would run counter to the Bank’s strategy of using interest rates in the housing market to bring down inflation. inheritance tax No 10 has been working on plans to cut and then ultimately abolish inheritance tax as a “totemic” offering to voters. Abolishing inheritance tax would cost £7 billion a year. However, reducing it in the autumn statement would cost significantly less. Crucially, Treasury officials believe it is unlikely to be inflationary in the short term. permanent tax breaks for company investment Hunt is keen to extend the regime of tax relief on corporate investment, known as full expensing, but the downside is the £10 billion price tag put on the policy by the Office for Budget Responsibility. The political imperative for Hunt is to cut taxes for voters rather than companies. cut 2p off income tax Some Conservative MPs, including former cabinet ministers, are advocating a cut but it would cost £10 billion. It would also clearly be inflationary. The OBR says reducing income tax by only 1p would increase GDP by 0.36 per cent. Jeremy Hunt will risk fuelling inflation and prolonging higher interest rates if he cuts taxes in his autumn statement, economists have warned. The chancellor is under pressure from Conservative MPs to bring forward tax cuts planned for next year’s budget to close Labour’s poll lead. However, senior economists say it would result in the Bank of England keeping interest rates higher for longer and inflicting further pain on mortgage holders and other borrowers. They backed Hunt’s previous claim that the best tax cut that the government could deliver for now was to reduce inflation, despite pressure on the chancellor to change course. So what are the tax cuts that Hunt is looking at, how much would they cost and how inflationary would they be? stamp duty Senior Tories have discussed whether the government could either raise the stamp duty threshold or abolish it, arguing that it would make it cheaper to Murty, the wife of the prime minister Rishi Sunak, hosted a reception in the run-up to Armistice Day with a group of Chelsea Pensioners in Downing Street called Rowley to Downing Street for an emergency meeting, warning that the head of the Met would be held “accountable” for the march. “He [Rowley] has said that he can ensure that we safeguard Remembrance for the country this weekend as well as keep the public safe,” Sunak said. “Now, my job is to hold him accountable for that.” The calculation from Sunak, despite denials from No 10, is political. The prime minister believes that the public will share the government’s concerns about the potential disruption of a national moment. A recent YouGov poll found that nearly a third of voters believe that police have been too cautious in their policing of the protests, compared with 14 per cent who think they have been too harsh and 16 per cent who believe they have “got the balance about right”. Rowley has made his position clear: that the threshold to ban the march, requiring a threat of disorder so great that it could not be managed in any other way, has not been met. He has emphasised that he cannot ban protests just because they are unpalatable, and that it is the role of the police to manage protests and disruption rather than prevent them altogether. He is likely to put huge police resources along the protest route and surrounding Armistice Day commemorations. Nonetheless, Sunak’s comments mean that, should the protests mar Armistice Day, the backlash from the government is likely to be severe. I n this country we pride ourselves on our traditions of freedom of expression. These liberties consist not only of freedom of speech but freedom of assembly. The right to protest in public is a cornerstone of democracy. That is why peaceful marches are never banned and even controversial and disruptive ones are policed, rather than blocked. Only in the most exceptional circumstances do the authorities step in. The way the law works is clear: if a chief constable believes that there is a serious risk of disorder, which the police will struggle to contain, he or she can ask the home secretary to ban a march. There is a debate to be had about whether other considerations should play a part in such decisions. Are some public displays so offensive that they deserve to be banned? Is there a level of disruption to the life of a city that is too great to justify a protest? These issues have come into focus because of what happened on October 7: the worst massacre of Jews since the Nazi era. The ramifications of that event and all that has followed have been felt on the streets of the UK. There have been vigils in London, held by Britain’s Jewish community, Police must be even-handed with protests point. For now, the issue is how do we as a society police groups that insist that their agenda trumps any notion of the broader public good — as defined by the public, not by activists. The answer must be: evenhandedly. Unfortunately, there is a perception that senior police officers play favourites when it comes to protesters. During Covid, why was it that lockdown objectors were given no quarter by public order police yet Black Lives Matters demonstrators were enabled, allowed to break rules and even greeted with officers taking the knee? Right-wing and nationalist protesters who engage in aggression are rightly met with a stern response yet pro-Palestinian mobs displaying almost identical behaviour are largely ignored, even when clearly breaking the law. I have spoken to serving and former police officers who have noted this double standard. Football fans are even more vocal about the tough way they are policed compared with politically connected minority groups who are favoured by the left. It may be that senior officers are more concerned with how much flak they are likely to get than whether this perceived unfairness alienates the majority. If the march goes ahead this weekend the public will expect to see an assertive and proactive approach to any displays of hate, breaches of conditions and general disorder. but that is not what has tested our capacity to maintain public order. It is the pro-Palestinian movement that has mobilised tens of thousands of angry demonstrators and marched them through London. These events have been problematic, not just because of violence around the fringes but because of the highly offensive content of chants, posters and stickers. This is not a time for naivety. We have seen that terrorists have been valorised, Israel has been demonised as Nazis and Jews have been threatened with more massacres. Each weekend has been worse than the previous one. Last Saturday police were attacked with fireworks, train services were brought to a halt and poppy sellers were mobbed. Now, as we approach a significant weekend for our nation, the hate marchers — a phrase I do not resile from — intend to use Armistice Day to parade in yet another show of strength. Here we reach the heart of the matter. I do not believe that these marches are merely a cry for help for Gaza. They are an assertion of primacy by certain groups — particularly Islamists — of the kind we are more used to seeing in Northern Ireland. Also disturbingly reminiscent of Ulster are the reports that some of Saturday’s march group organisers have links to terrorist groups, including Hamas. There will be time for proper discussion about how we got to this Suella Braverman Comment News Episode 2 How to win an Electıon

the times | Thursday November 9 2023 9 News The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has been accused of risking public trust in the census after suggesting transgender migrants might be coming to the UK due to its civil rights. Experts at the ONS yesterday refused to admit that they may have overestimated the transgender population of the UK, recorded as 262,000 during the 2021 census. They did, however, acknowledge that some may have misunderstood a question about gender after those who spoke English poorly were found to be five times more likely to report that they were transgender. The ONS said it was “not possible to quantify any potential under or overestimate” of the transgender population and suggested there may be other “cultural factors” at play. This included the possibility “that trans migrants might have specifically chosen the UK because of its civil rights legislation”, the ONS said. Alice Sullivan, the head of research at the UCL Social Research Institute, said that the failure of the ONS to “hold Lloyd’s, said: “We’re deeply sorry for this period of our history and the enormous suffering caused to individuals and communities both then and today.” Kehinde Andrews, a professor of black studies at Birmingham City University, criticised Lloyd’s after it decided not to provide direct reparations to descendants of those who were enslaved. He said the company’s efforts amounted to “reparations washing”. He added: “This is PR, giving an apology, making some commitments, but this is not serious.” Junior Garba, co-founder of Equity, which provides recruitment and mentoring services for minority groups in the insurance sector, said: “There’s no way to compensate for the damage that has been done, too much has happened.” Garba said that Lloyd’s initiatives were “a good starting point”. In 2020 Lloyd’s apologised for its role in the slave trade and has admitted it was the “global centre for insuring that industry”. The Church of England has pledged £100 million to address the “shameful” wrong of its links to slavery. The United Nations has said countries should consider financial reparations among measures to compensate for the enslavement of people of African descent. Lloyd’s of London gives £52m to atone for role in slave trade James Hurley Lloyd’s of London will invest £52 million in causes promoting racial equality after research set out its “significant role” in the transatlantic slave trade. An 18-month review by Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, found Lloyd’s was “part of a sophisticated network of financial interests and activities” that made the slave trade possible between the 17th and 19th centuries. The world’s largest insurance market was found to have insured the largest slave shipowners in the early 1800s, to have campaigned against the end of the slave trade, and to have dealt in risk policies for uprisings by the enslaved while referring to people as “goods ... valued at £45 each”. A ledger from 1807 showed that one member of the market, Horatio Clagett, insured at least 59 slave voyages in the final year in which the trade was legal. Lloyd’s, which reported half-year profits of £3.9bn in September, said it would invest £40 million in communities and regions affected by the slave trade and provide £12 million for a programme supporting the recruitment and progression of black and other ethnic minority staff. Bruce Carnegie-Brown, chairman of T he Princess of Wales wore body armour, combat fatigues and helmet yesterday as she joined military drills with her regiment (Valentine Low writes). The princess was making her first visit to 1st The Queen’s Dragoon Guards in Norfolk since becoming the regiment’s colonelin-chief in August. She arrived at Dereham wearing a black blazer over a black polo neck and trousers — suggesting perhaps that she had taken the advice of Carine Roitfeld, the former editor of French Vogue, who told The Times she should wear more black. Before long, however, she was in uniform to watch drills and drive an armoured vehicle around the barracks. The princess met soldiers’ families and was briefed by senior officers before attending to the important duty of promoting the regimental mascot — Trooper “Longface” Emrys Jones, a bay Welsh mountain pony — from lance-corporal to corporal. The history of the guards spans 340 years but it was formed under the name in 1959 from the amalgamation of the two senior cavalry regiments, 1st King’s Dragoon Guards and the Queen’s Bays. The regiment specialises in armoured reconnaissance, a role it performed in southern Iraq at the start of the 2003 war. Since its formation the regiment, nicknamed the Welsh Cavalry, has been around the world. From 2021 to last year it was in Mali as part of a UN peacekeeping operation. In Norfolk, the princess drove an armoured vehicle, saw how the team communicated when deployed and how they used reconnaissance drones. She later awarded long service and good conduct medals to several personnel in the regiment. Her husband, meanwhile was in Singapore, where he said he wanted to help solve homelessness by building homes as part of his efforts to “go a step further” than the royal family had traditionally gone. The Prince of Wales was speaking to journalists on the last day of his visit for the Earthshot Prize awards. He has already indicated that he wants to use his Duchy of Cornwall land for social housing. He said he wanted to help build homes and deliver mental health support, education and work opportunities. “I want to build the homes,” William said. “I want to provide them with the mental support, the employment and education they might need.” Camouflaged Kate takes the wheel for day with regiment The Princess of Wales wore military fatigues to drive around the Norfolk barracks before promoting the regimental mascot, a bay pony Questions over accuracy of figures on trans migrants their hands up” risked eroding public trust in the census. She said: “How can the ONS acknowledge that people may have misunderstood the question . . . and yet dig their heels in and insist that this data is reliable? “It’s one thing to make a mistake — that’s forgivable — but to fail to acknowledge it is a real problem for public trust in census data. “They are acknowledging that there are surprising patterns in the data but they seem to be saying that it doesn’t prove that there’s something wrong. “But there’s very good evidence that these estimates are unreliable, which is consistent with people who did not understand the question giving a false positive response.” In January this year the ONS revealed that there were 262,000 people, or 0.5 per cent of the population over 16, who declared themselves transgender. The results were taken from answers to the 2021 census. After consultation with LGBT lobby groups, the ONS included a question on the census that asked: “Is the gender you identify with the same as your sex registered at birth?” Of the 262,000 people who said no, 118,000 did not provide further detail. Data released later by the ONS showed that those who speak English “not well” or “not well at all” were the most likely to be counted as transgender, at 2.2 per cent, compared with 0.4 per cent of those whose main language is English or Welsh, making those who spoke English poorly five times more likely to be transgender. Adults whose main language was not English made up only 10 per cent of the overall population, but according to the census they made up 29 per cent of the transgender population. Jen Woolford, the director of population statistics at the ONS, said yesterday that there was evidence “consistent with” some respondents not interpreting the question “as intended”. However, she added: “While these patterns may be unexpected, this does not necessarily mean they are wrong.” In a report on the issue the ONS said there were “clear patterns of trans identification being higher for people born outside the UK and people with lower proficiency in English”. James Beal Social Affairs Editor

10 2GM Thursday November 9 2023 | the times News Israel’s “window of legitimacy” to prosecute its war in Gaza with American support appears to be closing, amid growing international pressure over the civilian death toll and the lack of any exit strategy or plans for Gaza’s future when the fighting is over. Evidence of Washington’s fraying patience with Binyamin Netanyahu’s far-right government came last night in the form of a G7 statement that the US joined, calling for a humanitarian pause and condemning the rise in violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. One of the most pointed warnings came from one of Netanyahu’s predecessors, Ehud Barak, who said “we are heading towards friction with the Americans about the offensive … within the next two or three weeks, probably less”. The Rafah border crossing into Gaza was closed last night due to an unspecified “security circumstance”, according to the US State Department. Officials were working with Egypt and Israel to get it reopened to allow aid in and evacuees out, it added. Netanyahu, 74, gave a nod towards President Biden’s demands for a humanitarian pause in the conflict with an interview this week in which he conceded “tactical little pauses” to allow in aid could be permitted. But he immediately raised American hackles when he appeared to suggest Israel might have to “take security responsibility” for Gaza for “an indefinite period”, raising fears of a military reoccupation of the area. At a G7 meeting in Japan, Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, set out a vision of a post-war government for Gaza “unified with the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority” in a sharply different tone to Israel’s talk of US patience wears thin over Israel’s lack of exit plan Catherine Philp Tel Aviv Richard Lloyd Parry Tokyo taking military control. Separately, during a meeting with William Burns, the CIA director, President Sisi of Egypt rejected a proposal for his country to manage security in Gaza following Hamas’s defeat until the Palestinian Authority could take over, The Wall Street Journal reported. John Kirby, the White House national security spokesman, pointedly noted that Biden did not support the reoccupation of the territory that Israel left in 2005. “We’re having active discussions with our Israeli counterparts about what post-conflict Gaza looks like,” Kirby said. “The president maintains his position that reoccupation by Israeli forces is not the right thing to do. Israel and the United States are friends and we do not have to agree on every single word,” Kirby added. That friendship is evidently straining almost exactly a year before Biden plans to seek re-election, most likely in a race against the former president Donald Trump, an ally of Netanyahu. Speaking at the White House, Kirby declined to confirm reports that Biden had pressed Netanyahu for a three-day pause in the fighting, but added: “I can confirm that in almost every conversation we’re having ... we’re talking about the benefit of humanitarian pauses.” Changing public opinion on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as other demographic shifts, could leave Biden badly exposed on a contentious issue on which core Democratic voting groups, including college students and some minorities, have shifted sympathies towards the Palestinian side. As recently as October 18, the US used its veto to shield Israel from a United Nations resolution demanding a humanitarian pause in the conflict. Now that is one of Washington’s core demands, though it seems highly unlikely Biden would be prepared to hand that judgment over to the security council, effectively severing a decadeslong protocol under which the US has protected Israel from most UN censure. Hard-right radicals in Netanyahu’s own government have done much to undermine the special relationship between Israel and the US, which has contributed $130 billion in military aid since the state’s founding. Yesterday Yoav Kisch, the education minister, said he did not rule out a scenario under which Israel rebuilt settlements in the Gaza strip, saying: “There is no status quo and nothing is sacred.” Israel could “certainly bring back settlements and redraw the lines” and do whatever necessary so “it is clear that there is no threat against Israel from the Gaza Strip”, he told Army Radio. His comments came days after Israel’s heritage minister, Amihai Eliyahu, was suspended from the cabinet for suggesting that dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza was “one of the possibilities” since there were “no non-combatants” among its 2.3 million inhabitants. Itamar Ben-Gvir, Netanyahu’s minister for national security, was excluded from his five-member cabinet due to American concerns over his extremist views. That has not stopped him from handing out 10,000 assault rifles to security militias in West Bank settlements since the October 7 attacks. Violence has soared in the occupied Palestinian territories, where at least 167 Palestinians, 43 of them children, have been killed by Israeli security forces and settlers in the past month, with 2,100 people left injured. Violence had already begun surging in the West Bank since the election of Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition, with so-called “lone wolf” attacks on settlers by predominantly young male militants from places including Jenin and Nablus avenged by rampages through Palestinian villages by armed settlers. Surgery without anaesthetic lit by mobile phone torches Abbie Cheeseman Beirut Doctors in Gaza say they are carrying out operations using the torches on mobile phones and without anaesthetic or pain relief for their patients. Those hospitals that have remained open are struggling to run life-saving equipment and generators and are teetering on the edge of collapse under a ban on fuel by Israel. “The situation is catastrophic,” said Dr Husam Abu Safiya, the head of paediatrics at Kamal Adwan Hospital, in northern Gaza. All of the most critical cases in the hospital were put into one department running on a single generator, but even those who had a promising chance of survival could not be saved. After weeks of sleep deprivation and constant bombing, doctors described having to make decisions about who lived and who died on a daily basis. The Times spoke to doctors in hospitals across Gaza who spoke of having to make impossible choices based on who had the best chances of survival. “We are now in complete isolation from the outside world, as all of the streets leading to al-Quds Hospital have been closed,” said Dr Bashar Murad, director of emergency medical services at the Palestinian Red Crescent. Fuel for the hospital’s generators would run out in 24 hours, he added. The United Nations said that in the north people were struggling to find a bare minimum of food and water. The south was faring little better, aid agencies said. The supermarkets were empty and in one UN shelter 600 people had to share one lavatory. In al-Shifa Hospital, 60,000 to 80,000 people were sheltering in corridors, according to Doctors Without Borders (MSF). Faris Al-Jawad, a communications manager at MSF, said: “We’re having to do operations without anaesthesia.” Israel’s right-wing, religious coalition government has passed a landmark ruling to give equal rights to the samesex partners of dead soldiers. The Families of Fallen Soldiers Law was amended to allow the partners to be recognised for the first time as Israel Defence Forces (IDF) widows. This allows them access to benefits including pensions, financial and educational support for children, medical, funeral, wake and convalescence costs, as well as psychological support. The law previously defined an IDF widow as a woman who had been married, whether legally or through common law, to a male soldier killed in combat. The amount received is decided case by case but a widower with two children would get 3,256 Israeli shekels (£670) a month. The amendment, passed this week, is named after Sagi Golan, a member of the special forces counterterrorism unit who was murdered by Hamas at Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7. It is a milestone in Israel, which recognises same-sex marriages only when performed abroad. Golan, 30, was meant to marry his partner Omer Ohana, 28, six days after the Hamas invasion, the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. Instead of marrying Golan, Ohana was burying Death of gay soldier spurs law change him. “Hamas turned my wedding celebration to a funeral,” he told The Times. “We used the songs, the flowers we had, for his funeral.” Within 15 minutes of hearing that Israel was under attack, Golan was in his uniform, packing his bag and rallying his unit, ready for dispatch from the couple’s home in Herzliya, north of Tel Aviv. “I told him not to be a hero,” Ohana said. It was the last time he saw him. On Monday, the motion called Sagi’s Law was passed in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, with a two-thirds majority. It was proposed by Yorai Lahav Hertzanu, from the opposition Yesh Atid party.“This is the first step to full equality,” Lahav Hertzanu said. “It’s a historical milestone but it’s only the beginning.” He said that 83 members of the Knesset signing to support the new law provided a “quite rare” moment in the Israeli political sphere. Additionally, in light of the 241 hostages in Gaza, the new law means families of those missing will be treated to the same benefits as the fallen soldiers. Melanie Swan Omer Ohana, in glasses, buried Sagi Golan on the day they were to wed The Israel Defence Forces released a video of an explosion carried out during News Middle East crisis

the times | Thursday November 9 2023 2GM V2 11 News Thousands of civilians poured along an evacuation route from north to south Gaza yesterday as Israel’s military said ground forces had reached “the depths of Gaza City” where Hamas militants are fighting from a network of tunnels. More than 70 per cent of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have already left their homes but the pace has quickened since Israeli forces entered the city, raising the spectre of house-to-house combat after weeks of airstrikes. About 15,000 people fled northern Gaza on Tuesday, triple the number that left a day earlier, according to the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, using the main north-south road during a daily fourhour window announced by Israel. The UN said there were now no longer any bakeries functioning in northern Gaza due to the lack of fuel, water and flour, contributing to the exodus south. The UN said “desperate people” had broken into the last three remaining bakeries, taking 37 tonnes of wheat flour after running out of food. Eylon Levy, an Israeli government spokesman, said only 100,000 civilians remained in northern Gaza out of a population of 1.1 million. Israel said it extended the evacuation window by an hour in response to the rising number seeking to cross. Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, urged civilians to take the evacuation route. He said: “Complete the move to the south because Israel will not stop. There’s no entry of workers and there will be no ceasefire without our hostages being back home.” Those seen leaving northern Gaza on Wednesday included children, elderly people and some with disabilities, on foot and carrying only a few belongings. Those reaching the south spoke of seeing others arrested at Israeli checkpoints along the route, while others carried white flags or put their hands up as they passed Israeli tanks. Sources close to Hamas said talks were under way last night for the release of a dozen hostages, including six Americans, in return for “a threeday humanitarian pause” in Gaza. Egypt and Qatar said they were negotiating for a similar pause in hostilities to allow the release of hostages. A Hamas source told AFP that Qatar was leading the negotiations but said the deal was over a shorter “pause” of one to two days. Israel has said there will be no ceasefire until all hostages are released, but has come under more pressure from the families of hostages, many of them peace activists, to row back on military action. Netanyahu again rejected the prospect of a ceasefire. “I’d like to put to rest all kinds of false rumours we’re hearing from all kinds of directions, and reiterate one clear thing: There will be no ceasefire without the release of our hostages,” he said. António Guterres, the UN secretary general, said the number of civilians killed in Gaza showed that there was something “clearly wrong” with Israel’s military operations, after the death toll reported by the Hamas-run health ministry rose towards 11,000, with 2,300 missing presumed dead. “There are violations by Hamas when they have human shields. But when one looks at the number of civilians that were killed with the military operations, there is something that is clearly wrong,” he said. “It is also important to make Israel understand that it is against the interests of Israel to see every day the terrible image of the dramatic humanitarian needs of the Palestinian people.” Israel claimed to have destroyed 130 Hamas tunnels in the Gaza Strip since it began its ground operation, posting videos to social media of what it said were the results of the operation. Troops had discovered connections to water and oxygen supplies, suggesting Hamas had made preparations to stay in the tunnels for long periods of time. Last night the IDF said that Sergeant Jonathan Chazor, 22, of the air force’s elite Shaldag Unit, had been killed in fighting inside Gaza. The unit specialises in clandestine operations, suggesting that he could have been engaged in operation to locate top level Hamas figures or hostages. An American satellite image provider has apparently started restricting its pictures after the media used them to identify Israeli tank positions while covering the war in Gaza. Planet Labs and its competitors have become crucial sources of information during conflicts and natural disasters by providing detailed images that were previously accessible only to governments. Their value was highlighted in the early weeks of the war in Ukraine when the companies offered highdefinition snapshots that allowed journalists and the public to see how battle was unfolding. However, Planet Labs has started restricting its images after the American media used its satellite pictures to report on Israeli military movements, according to the website Semafor. American security officials are said to be concerned about commercial satellite coverage of the war, although it is unclear whether that is the reason for restricting images. Semafor reported that Planet Labs, which is based in San Francisco and was launched by former Nasa scientists in 2010, had obscured images over parts of Gaza for users including news organisations. It removed some images of Gaza that were available for download, according to Semafor, and told some subscribers that it might modify pubAbout 15,000 people fled Gaza City on the main north-south road on Tuesday Satellite company ‘blurs tank images’ Keiran Southern Los Angeles lished archive pictures during active conflict. Between October 30 and November 1 Planet Labs did not provide low or medium-resolution imagery of north Gaza, where there was high Israeli military activity, it was reported. Some subscribers said they had been denied access to its high-resolution images of Gaza since October 22. Planet Labs is said to be sharing medium-resolution images at infrequent intervals. Maxar Technologies, a competitor, has apparently distributed its images at a significant delay. Planet Labs said that while it could not comment on specific cases, it was “working through all of our crisis response processes to try to best support our customers and partners”. The company said that its satellite imagery “must pass all quality thresholds for publication in our catalogue” and these were “standard operating protocols for our product that are not in any way specific to this region or event”. Last night the company further clarified: “Planet does not modify, obscure, or manipulate images.” A Planet Labs image shows damage to northern Gaza on October 30 Thousands flee as ground troops ‘reach depths of Gaza City’ Catherine Philp Tel Aviv GAZA ISRAEL EGYPT Rafah Area of evacuation Wadi Gaza Khan Yunis Two miles Gaza City Beit Hanoun Rafah crossing Salah al-Din Main evacuation route to the south their offensive in Gaza. Binyamin Netanyahu said there will be “no ceasefire without our hostages being back home” News

12 2GM Thursday November 9 2023 | the times News A Labour MP who quit as a shadow minister to be able to “advocate” a ceasefire in Gaza was told he would have been sacked had he not resigned. The resignation prompted a warning to Sir Keir Starmer’s frontbenchers that party chiefs were paying “closer attention” to their words. Imran Hussain, the MP for Bradford East, stepped down from his post on Tuesday, saying it had “become clear that my view on the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza differs substantially” from Starmer’s. The Times understands frontbenchers have been told the whips, responsible for party discipline, will be paying “closer attention to what people are saying” now that Starmer has set out his position on the conflict. The leader is not expected to discipline shadow ministers who call for a ceasefire but Hussain, 45, was told signing a Commons motion backing one would have gone too far. A senior Labour source said: “It was obviously his choice to either sign and resign or sign and be sacked. That’s the choice he made.” Another source said Hussain was the only shadow minister to sign the motion. Last night four shadow ministers were said to be prepared to quit in the coming days and up to ten others were on “resignation watch”. One Labour frontbencher told The Guardian: “My position has always been [that] the way forward is a ceasefire. The pause [as advocated by Starmer] will not solve the problem. Someone needs to say enough is enough.” Another said: “I have over 600 emails on this which is more than any other subject ever, including Brexit and Covid … I don’t know a Labour MP who isn’t under pressure at the moment.” Lisa Nandy, the shadow international development minister, said yesterday that humanitarian pauses in Gaza were the “only viable prospect”. She added that Hamas would not honCover star Sir Keir Starmer talks about his upbringing and the issues he has faced leading Labour in the winter issue of Esquire, which goes on sale today Pressure on others in top team Analysis I t was almost inevitable that Imran Hussain, the Labour MP, would resign from Sir Keir Starmer’s front bench. The only question was when (Geraldine Scott writes). Having signed a Commons motion backing a ceasefire in the Israel and Gaza conflict — the only shadow minister to do so — Hussain spent a week at home in his Bradford East constituency, where the Muslim population over the age of 16 accounts for nearly half of the population. Labour MPs with large Muslim populations are coming under heavy pressure from their voters over the party’s position. Starmer refuses to back a full ceasefire and has instead called for “humanitarian pauses”. Protesters have targeted constituency offices, and one Muslim MP said they had been anxious about going to their home mosque. MPs have also been pushed to go further by local councillors, with Bradford Labour group the latest to do so publicly. Having been on the end of such intense lobbying, it is perhaps unsurprising that Hussain decided he needed to resign. The burning question will now be if any other shadow ministers follow. Starmer appears to have successfully taken the heat out of the debate — at least temporarily — before MPs returned to their constituencies. Eyes will now be on those with similarly large Muslim votes to see whether they have had the same level of representations. Naz Shah, the MP for Bradford West and a shadow minister, has the largest Muslim voting population in the country. However, a Labour insider points out that there is rarely a topic she and Hussain agree on. Birmingham Ladywood, the constituency of Shabana Mahmood, the shadow justice secretary, is another one to watch. However, sources close to Mahmood have said she is not resigning — she has instead been working internally to shift the dial. Still months out from a general election, some in Labour think the row is unlikely to hit the party at the ballot box, so believe others will hold firm. Yet if Starmer’s position does not change — and it is unlikely to unless the United States makes the shift — and Muslim voters are as angry as they are now as the country approaches polling day, the more difficult it will be for those MPs. News Middle East crisis Jewish media unite to denounce antisemitism across the globe Alex Farber Media Correspondent Jewish media outlets have warned in an open letter that their community “has not been this fearful in living memory”. The 1,200-word letter was initiated by the Jewish News in London and organised in partnership with The Jerusalem Post to highlight the impact of public protests against Israel and rising levels of antisemitic abuse after Hamas’s attack on Israel a month ago, and the ensuing conflict. Its co-signatories referenced the former British chief rabbi, Lord Sacks, in his description of antisemitism as “a constantly evolving virus”. “Some of those who propagate Labour MP in Gaza row faced sack if he didn’t quit our a ceasefire, which Israel had ruled out until the hostages were released. Bridget Phillipson, the shadow education secretary, said Hussain had “reached his own decision” and urged others to speak with care. She told Times Radio: “The difficulty with calls for a ceasefire is that it risks freezing the conflict in time ... I would urge colleagues to always carefully choose their words.” A quirk which means early day motions expire when a parliamentary session ends meant Richard Burgon, the left-wing Labour MP, had to resubmit his call for a ceasefire, which has been backed by more than 90 MPs. It provided a “natural reset” for frontbenchers to fall into line, with the party believing Starmer had set out his position clearly on why he would not back a ceasefire. Hussain was the only shadow frontbencher to have signed the old motion but if any other shadow ministers were to sign the new one they would face the same choice. Those stating they simply wanted to see a ceasefire appeared to be safe. Afzal Khan, the shadow exports minister, did so yesterday, as did Paula Barker, the shadow levelling-up minister. Several left-wing MPs met for an online event last night organised by the Labour & Palestine group to “build on the growing pressure” for the party’s leadership to join calls for a ceasefire. A Labour Party spokesman said the party understood calls for a ceasefire. “Everybody wants to see an end to the shocking images ... in Gaza,” he said. “We need to see all hostages released and aid getting to those most in need. Labour is calling for humanitarian pauses in the fighting.” Geraldine Scott Senior Political Correspondent hatred, concealing their prejudice under the veneer of being ‘anti-Israel’, no longer find it necessary to obscure their malice,” the letter said. “We’re witnessing raw hatred against Jews in cities across the globe.” The letter has drawn support from 30 outlets in seven countries including The Australian Jewish News, South African Jewish Report and the American titles Washington Jewish Week, Baltimore Jewish Times and Hadassah Magazine. Justin Cohen, news editor at the Jewish News, said the situation had united Jews across borders and political views. “The fact so many media outlets have been able to come together for the first time in Jewish history is yet another expression of the unprecedented times we find ourselves in, as Jews are targeted globally,” Cohen said. The letter is also intended as an opportunity to thank “politicians, civic leaders, a small number of celebrities and people of all faiths and none” who had stood with the Jewish people in recent weeks, he added. Zvika Klein, deputy editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post,said that he hoped the “moving” display of unity among journalists would make the world realise that the persecution of Jews could “never again” happen. “As an Israeli news group, telling the story of Israel to the Jewish world and of the Jewish world to Israelis, we are worried about the two fronts threatening the Jewish people,” Klein said. Amid a growing number of pro-Palestinian protests, the letter acknowledged that not all of those marching under the Palestinian flag wanted to see the death of Jews and the destruction of Israel. “Please try to understand that whether it’s one person, 100 people or 10,000, the chilling impact of seeing so many people echo and excuse hateful chants is profound,” it said. “Why are so many good people still silent when cheerleaders for terrorists decide the worst massacre of our co-religionists since the Holocaust is a good moment to open up a second, global front targeting Jews on campus, at work and at home?” The authors warned that the heightened level of anxiety did not mean that Jews were losing their nerve. “Please don’t mistake this growing fear for a lack of determination to fight our corner as citizens deserving of support and protection in our home nations, or doubt our solidarity as a people numbering just 16 million,” it said. “In fact, we’ve never been so determined, so united and so proud. The unity has been a light in the darkness. “We call on the world to listen and treat us as you would want to be treated. It shouldn’t be too much to ask.” 6 One of the organisers of this Saturday’s pro-Palestinian demonstrations worked for the Labour Party until this week. Ben Soffa, the secretary of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, was employed as Labour’s head of digital organising on a salary of £61,000, according to the Sun. The group is one of several behind the march that will coincide with Armistice Day.

the times | Thursday November 9 2023 13 News Adam Vaughan Environment Editor A third of the bosses of England and Wales’s largest water companies have accepted bonuses despite widespread public anger over sewage pollution. Ofwat, the regulator, has confirmed that chief executives at five water companies took a bonus for the financial year 2022-23. Last year there were more than 300,000 sewage spills into rivers and seas. Amid rising political and public concern over discharges from storm overflows, some of the most highprofile figures in the industry waived their bonuses. Those included Sarah Bentley, the former chief executive of Thames Water, who resigned over the summer. Altogether, six bosses waived An Oxfordshire village ditch and a brook near Stansted Airport have suffered more than 20 hours of sewage spills a day since Storm Ciaran struck last week. A Times analysis of Thames Water’s real-time map of sewage discharges reveals that the heavy rainfall brought by the storm has triggered more than 1,400 hours of spills across its region since last Thursday. The two worst hit 1 in 3 water firm bosses took a bonus despite sewage crisis their bonuses for the year, collectively giving up millions of pounds that they could have taken. However, analysis released by Ofwat of the 16 largest water companies in England and Wales shows that the heads of Anglian Water, United Utilities, Northumbrian Water, Wessex Water and Severn Trent took their bonuses. Severn Trent was ranked the best environmental performer in the sector by regulators. Anglian and Wessex were rated just two out of four stars for their environmental record, while United Utilities had more sewage spills than any other company last year. The firm, which serves northwest England, was behind a fifth of all discharges of raw sewage. The chief executive of South East Water, which left hundreds of people in Sussex without water this summer and blamed a hosepipe ban on people working from home, also took a bonus. The analysis from Ofwat highlighted five companies whose bosses took bonuses. Steve Mogford, who resigned as United Utilities chief executive at the end of March, was entitled to a bonus of up to £426,000. He was followed by Severn Trent’s Liv Garfield at up to £359,000, Northumbrian Water’s Heidi Mottram at up to £215,000 and Anglian Water’s Peter Simpson at up to £302,000. Colin Skellett of Wessex Water was entitled to up to £302,000. Ofwat said that the policies of how bonuses were linked to environmental and customer performance at three companies — South West Water, Severn Trent and Portsmouth Water — did not meet its expectations. The trio said they would address the regulator’s concerns. Ofwat looked at the 16 largest water companies in England and Wales, but only ten handle sewage. The companies that did pay out bonuses funded them via shareholders rather than customer bills, which are set to increase significantly this decade to pay for new infrastructure. David Black, the chief executive of Ofwat, said: “We are determined to drive up standards of governance in the water industry by taking action on executive pay and company dividends, as well as pushing the sector to improve its environmental performance.” The Liberal Democrats reiterated their call for a ban on bonuses for water executives. Tim Farron, the party’s spokesman for environment, food and rural affairs, said: “The British public will be reading this and screaming at regulators to just get on with banning these insulting bonuses.” A Defra spokesperson said: “This government takes oversight of the water industry very seriously – which is why we have given Ofwat new powers allowing them to toughen up rules on dividends. Storm-hit sites suffer 20 hours of raw discharge a day sites in the company’s region were Marsh Lane West Ditch at Clanfield in Oxfordshire and Pincey Brook at Hatfield Heath in Essex. The two waterways had raw sewage spilt into them for 104 hours each between November 2 and November 6, the snapshot of the company’s data shows. Matthew Norton, a 23-year old outdoor activity instructor who lives in Clanfield, said he had gone for a run on Monday past the village’s sewage works and found that the area “stank of raw sewage”. He said: “I know of at least three people in the last three years who have been sick due to falling in the rivers.” Clanfield has a history of significant releases of raw sewage. Environment Agency figures show that in 2021, the treatment works there spilt for 3,500 hours, the second worst in the whole Thames Water area. The Times Clean it Up campaign has been calling for more transparency on sewage pollution by water companies. In response, the water industry has promised that all companies will offer a real-time map of sewage discharges by the end of the year. However, Thames Water remains the only company to have fully done so. “We have published plans to upgrade over 250 of our sewage treatment works and sewers across London and the Thames Valley, including our sites in Clanfield and Hatfield Heath,” a spokeswoman said. Adam Vaughan, Thomas Saunders Designer genome is made in lab Rhys Blakely Science Correspondent Scientists are poised to create the most advanced “synthetic” organism ever made, a single-cell life form designed on a computer that may mark a new era in genetic engineering. For 15 years researchers have been working on a type of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, brewer’s yeast, controlled by manmade genetic instructions. They have now produced all of the DNA code, which differs dramatically from any seen in nature. Within a year they expect to have living cells that rely on this new “designer genome”. The work takes scientists a step closer to being able to design and create complex organisms with characteristics that would never have evolved in the wild. Researchers are already looking at whether the same techniques could be used to redraft portions of the human genome, to understand better how it works and to battle disease. Professor Patrick Yizhi Cai, of the University of Manchester, said he and his colleagues had progressed from being able to “tinker with a handful of genes” to being able to “construct entire genomes” — sets of genetic instructions — from the ground up. By creating a “neochromosome” consisting only of transfer RNA genes, they hope to make the yeast more useful. For decades, engineered yeast cells have been used to make proteins such as insulin. The new synthetic strain makes the biological machinery more accessible, so it should be easier to modify it to produce more exotic and complicated pharmaceuticals. The work was described in Cell, Molecular Cell and Cell Genomics. Clean it up water campaign water campaign A wildlife charity has bought a former pub in the Norfolk Broads to entice drinkers and diners to get closer to nature and connect with the national park (Will Humphries writes). Norfolk Wildlife Trust said it paid “the market rate” for the Pleasure Boat Inn in Hickling, which sits on the water’s edge of Hickling Broad, a national nature reserve. King Charles III stayed in the pub as a child during a visit to the East Anglian region with his father. Eliot Lyne, the trust’s chief executive, said he believed it was the first nature charity to invest in a pub and it hoped the venue could attract people who “might not normally go to a nature reserve”. The charity plans to offer boat rides on the Broads from the pub and will hire experienced managers to run the inn. A refurbishment will be carried out before it opens in 2024. Lyne said the charity had toyed with the idea of buying the pub for a while. He described the Pleasure Boat as the “missing link”, since the trust already owned Hickling Broad. “We know that nature is really struggling and if people really value nature, they will want to do something about it,” he said. “In addition to taking care of this unique and vital landscape for wildlife, we aim to create facilities that will provide new opportunities for everyone to experience Hickling’s fantastic wildlife in an area where nature, the community and the local economy are all thriving.” The trust said it was looking for a business partner with the same vision and values to run the pub on its behalf. Lyne added that the charity had a range of investments to enable it to carry out its conservation work and said the pub fitted in with its “charitable purpose”. This summer the trust celebrated the sight of fledgling spoonbills at Hickling Broad, the first known breeding success in the Norfolk Broads for about 400 years. The species is of European conservation concern and a very rare breeding bird in the UK. It is believed that there are just eight breeding sites in the whole of England. Robert Smith, senior reserves assistant for Broads North, said: “Watching the fledgling flying around the reserve and hearing its trilling begging call as it pesters its parents for food is a truly wonderful sight and sound. “It shows that our work to enhance the habitats on our reserves and across Norfolk is hugely important to the survival of our wildlife, including visitors such as the spoonbill.” Nature trust splashes out to lure inn crowd The charity is now looking for a partner to run the Pleasure Boat Inn near Hickling Broad

the times | Thursday November 9 2023 2GM 15 News arrested on suspicion of murder was released without charge. Alfie’s mother, Heather Lane, 44, fell to her knees and sobbed yesterday at a bench that has become an impromptu memorial to her son. Her older son, Antony, said Alfie had a “heart of gold”. The family said in a statement that they did not have the words “to describe how devastated we all are”. They added: “Alfie you were one in a million, so funny and an all-round entertainer with your rapping and dancing feet. You had the biggest heart and took care of everybody around you. You will never know just how much you are loved by family and friends.” Alfie was stabbed near St Margaret’s primary school and Horsforth secondary school shortly before 3pm. Detective Chief Inspector Stacey Atkinson, of West Yorkshire police, said extensive inquiries were being carried out to determine “what led to this needless loss of a young man’s life”. The death was the 16th fatal stabbing Sunak pledge after pupil stabbing in West Yorkshire this year, with six of the victims being teenagers. Alfie left Horsforth secondary school last year after struggling with mainstream education. He was a pupil at the Pennington Centre, which predominantly serves young people with challenging behaviour. Maisie Tattersall, 14, a pupil at Horsforth secondary school and a close friend of Alfie, said he made everyone laugh. “Some people were jealous of Alfie which caused arguments,” she added. “They were jealous of the large number of people who adored him.” An online fundraising campaign launched by her father, Matt Healy, 40, a chef, has already raised almost double its £5,000 target to help Alfie’s family. Healy, a runner-up in MasterChef: The Professionals in 2016, wrote: “Alfie was a kind and thoughtful boy. He was everything a 15-year-old child should be and his life was senselessly taken from him before he had the chance to grow into it.” Paul Bell, the head teacher of Horsforth secondary school, said the community would rally together “during this very sad and difficult time”. Stuart Andrew, the minister for equalities and MP for Horsforth, said his heartfelt sympathy went to the grieving family. The Rev Nigel Sinclair, who led a special service at St Margaret’s Church, Horsforth, said knife crime was everywhere. “You hear about it in other places,” he added, “but you never quite expect it on your own doorstep.” David Brown Tom Daley’s husband cleared of ‘grab’ assault David Woode Crime Correspondent The Oscar-winning husband of Tom Daley, the Olympic diver, has been cleared of assault after a judge said a BBC presenter “lied” about an alleged bust-up in a bar. Dustin Lance Black, 49, was accused of grabbing the hand of Teddy Edwardes and causing her to spill her drink at Freedom Bar in Soho, central London, in August last year. After the drink hit the floor, Edwardes punched Black in the back of the head. Black called the police and Edwardes later accepted a caution for assault. Black, a US-born film-maker who won the best original screenplay for Milk at the Academy Awards in 2009, had denied assault. Louisa Ciecióra, a district judge at Westminster magistrates’ court, dismissed the charge due to inconsistencies in the prosecution’s case. It came one month after Helena Duong, Black’s lawyer, applied to throw out the case after the Metropolitan Police lost Edwardes’s police interview tapes “in the post”. A statement from a member of bar staff also went missing, while an officer failed to save body-worn footage of Edwardes’s account at the scene. Black spoke of his relief after Ciecióra said that “grabbing a glass causing a drink to fall on the floor would not in this case amount to assault”. He said: “As the evidence has proven, and I have always maintained, I am completely innocent, and in fact was the victim in this case of a serious assault. I am relieved this unfortunate matter is now over.” The one-day trial is believed to have cost taxpayers at least £10,000. The court heard Black was with Daley, 29, while Edwardes was with her former partner Amber Gill, winner of the 2019 series of ITV’s Love Island, at the time of the alleged incident. Edwardes, the host of BBC Three’s Big Proud Party Agency, said she had “two or three drinks” before offering to buy one for Daley, and the couple, who wed in 2017, sat down in Edwardes’s and Gill’s booth. Tempers were said to have flared before Edwardes’s glass was spilt. Ciecióra said she found it “odd” when Edwardes told the court she could not clearly recall her wrist being grabbed. The judge said: “She then said she was sure it did happen and that was an obvious contradiction. I noted she gave different accounts; she said that Mr Black threw an entire drink over her, then she said he threw a drink in her face. Those accounts were simply not true.” Ciecióra added: “She claims she is not confrontational, the CCTV ... showed otherwise.” The judge concluded: “The prosecution evidence taken at its highest is such that I could not properly convict Mr Black of the charge.” A London paramedic on a “life and death” emergency call begged police to make way for an ambulance as Just Stop Oil protesters blocked Waterloo Bridge (Peter Chappell writes). Activists for the environmental group were doing a slow march, causing police to close the bridge in both directions yesterday morning. The ambulance arrived with blue lights and sirens but was held up in traffic for ten minutes. The driver said: “I am responding to a lifeand-death emergency — I am going to pick up a team from Guy’s hospital to save someone’s life at another hospital but can’t get through.” The paramedic, part of Guy’s and St Thomas’ ECMO retrieval team, which helps people whose lungs have stopped working, pleaded with officers to let him pass. Police said they were working to help him get by as activists lay on the road. A spokesman for Just Stop Oil said its “blue lights” policy meant protesters would always move out of the way of emergency vehicles with their sirens going. “The London Ambulance Service has confirmed ... there has been no significant disruption to ambulances as a result of Just Stop Oil actions,” he added. “In this case, Just Stop Oil supporters were on the other side of the road, and had never blocked the side of the road the ambulance was on. “The picture shared by the Metropolitan Police indicates that it’s only their officers who are blocking the road ... Nevertheless, we accept our actions do cause disruption.” One of those on the road yesterday, Geraldine Swift, 57, an NHS consultant psychiatrist, said she believed in the rule of law but “this cannot be an absolute ... We are in a climate and health emergency.” The London Ambulance Service said: “The ambulance crew was able to divert to a different hospital. We would ask any protesters to allow our crews to pass.” The Metropolitan Police shared a photo of Waterloo Bridge at 9.45am and said: “One of the vehicles is an ambulance on blue lights which is not able to get past. Officers are continually telling the activists to move out of the road so it can pass.” Fifty-five protesters were arrested under the Public Order Act. The Met said it had no further comment. Ambulance held up by Just Stop Oil protest Just Stop Oil said its ‘blue lights’ policy meant it would always make way for emergency vehicles and blamed the police making arrests for blocking an ambulance on Waterloo Bridge Dustin Lance Black, who has two sons with Tom Daley, said he was relieved Police have begun a murder investigation after a 16-year-old boy who was shot in central Birmingham died from his injuries. The teenager was found at an address in Ladywood on Sunday afternoon. He was taken to hospital but died on Tuesday, West Midlands police said. Specialist officers are supporting his family. A 17-year-old boy was arrested and remains in custody. Forensics officers were at the scene of the shooting yesterday, near the city’s Main Line Canal, close to the Brindley Place area. Walkers near the Utilita Arena, formerly known as the National Indoor Arena, were turned away by Boy, 16, dies in city shooting Peter Chappell police and told to find alternative routes. Chief Inspector Sara Beech said the victim, who has not been named, “should have had his life ahead of him”. She added: “This is the tragic death of a young man ... Our thoughts are with all his family and friends at what is an incredibly painful time. “We understand this dreadful news will naturally cause concern and upset within the community, but we need people to remain calm so we can fully investigate, get answers and convict whoever was responsible.” Officers said they had increased patrols in the area to offer reassurance to residents. Rishi Sunak pledged to “clamp down” on knife crime as a 14-year-old boy was questioned yesterday on suspicion of murdering Alfie Lewis, 15. Alfie, described by his family as “one in a million”, was stabbed in the chest near his former primary school in Horsforth, Leeds. Teachers were reported to have tried to save him. He died less than two months after Elianne Andam, also 15, was stabbed to death on her way to school in south London. A 17-year-old has been charged with her murder. The prime minister said during a visit to another school: “My heart goes out to the family and friends of the young person who was tragically killed. “We’re doing everything we can to clamp down ... on knife crime as it impacts young people. I want to make sure that in all communities across the country, we’ve got police officers that are giving people the reassurance they need that their communities are safe.” Soon after the knifing on Tuesday a boy was arrested on suspicion of murder. He remained in custody yesterday. A 16-year-old boy who was also Alfie Lewis was adored by many people, one of his friends said

the times | Thursday November 9 2023 V2 17 News Carol Vorderman has been forced out of her BBC Radio Wales show because she is “not prepared to lose” her voice after the broadcaster introduced new social media guidelines. The presenter, 62, said that she had decided to “continue to criticise the UK government” on social media in contravention of rules introduced in September after an impartiality row involving Gary Lineker. The former Countdown star has hosted a weekly Saturday morning show on the station for five years. “I was brought up to fight for what I Vorderman’s conundrum over BBC Twitter rules believe in, and I will carry on,” Vorderman said. “Despite my show being light-hearted with no political content it was explained to me that, as it is a weekly show in my name, the new guidelines would apply to all and any content that I post all year round. “Since those non-negotiable changes to my radio contract were made, I’ve ... found that I’m not prepared to lose my voice on social media, change who I am, or lose the ability to express the strong beliefs I hold about the political turmoil this country finds itself in.” She said her stance had put her at odds with BBC management. “My decision has been to continue to criticise the current UK government for what it has done to the country which I love — and I’m not prepared to stop,” she said. “Consequently I have now breached the new guidelines and BBC Wales management have decided I must leave. “We each must make our decisions.” The BBC’s updated social media guidelines rule that all staff must avoid bringing the BBC into disrepute and respect civility in public discourse. Additional responsibilities were identified for the presenters of its biggest programmes including Match of the Day, The Apprentice and Dragons’ Den. Vorderman has been a vocal critic of the government on Twitter/X and Instagram, where she has more than 1.3 million followers. In June, she accused Rishi Sunak of “hiding more information than even Boris Johnson” and said “blatant inequality and corruption” made her “sick”. “I’ve tried to be on holiday for a few days but the Tory manifestation of a robbing, inept, gaslighting chaotic government keeps raising its head,” she wrote. She has also been critical of Johnny Mercer’s performance as veterans’ affairs minister on a number of occasions, causing him to describe her as a “deeply unpleasant person”. In March Vorderman called on Maria Caulfield to resign as women’s minister, claiming that the Tory could not “be bothered to turn up” to a committee hearing on the menopause. Alex Farber Media Correspondent T he gardener Monty Don has said he hopes the next host of Gardeners’ World will not be another middle-class man who went to an elite university (Peter Chappell writes). Don, 68, said the programme was a “remorseless treadmill”. He advised the BBC to think “ten times” before picking another Oxbridgeeducated, middleaged man as its lead presenter. “I come from a middleclass, Oxbridge background,” he told Times Radio. “Every door is open to me and has been all my life. It’s an incredibly privileged class. But if you’d asked me at any stage of my life if I was privileged I would say of course not. I’m like anybody else ... And that’s just not true.” Don, who has presented the show for a total of 17 years, said he was tired of the constant “scrabble” involved in its production. He added that he did not wish to give up writing books or travelling for it. “The serious point is I will be 70 in two years,” he said. “I want to go on. I like making television programmes. I like writing books. “To have the energy to do that and not scrabble ... I have to give something up. The logical thing to give up is Gardeners’ World.” Don told The Guardian recently that he expected to leave the show in “the next five years”. He told Fi Glover and Jane Garvey, the Times Radio hosts, that while it was important the BBC hired the “best person” to replace him, the show needed more diversity. “In a truly just and fair society, we wouldn’t care what someone’s colour or race or creed or sex was,” he said. “But the truth is that it’s much more delicate.” Don, who has three adult children with his wife Sarah, was speaking on the publication of his new work, The Gardening Book, aimed at beginners and those with limited space. Branch out with next host, urges Monty Don Monty Don, 68, the host of Gardeners’ World for a total of 17 years, says producing the longrunning show is a “remorseless treadmill” Carol Vorderman has heavily criticised the government

18 Thursday November 9 2023 | the times News British workers are on course to miss out on £17,000 from lost growth in real pay by the end of this year, economists are forecasting. A sharp slowdown in real income growth, following a squeeze lasting 17 years, is poised to leave living standards where they were in 2006, according to analysis by PwC, a consultancy. The research reinforced a report by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research this week that estimated the real incomes of the UK’s poorest will take until the end of 2026 to recover to their pre-pandemic level. The UK economy has suffered a severe slowdown after being hit by a series of sharp shocks in quick succession, starting with the 2008 global financial crisis. Productivity improvement — which Hundreds of thousands of patients face treatment delays as NHS England scales back waiting-list targets, after its £1 billion bailout request was rejected. About £500 million is being diverted from existing budgets to cover the cost of doctors’ strikes, with efforts to modernise outdated computer systems and fix dilapidated buildings expected to suffer along with routine care. HospiWorkers lose £17,000 in real pay is integral to better living standards — public and private investment and skills expansion have been on a weaker path, keeping earnings subdued. Nominal pay growth has raced ahead this year to about 8 per cent, the highest level on record. However, most of the benefit of the extra cash has been eroded by the surge in inflation. PwC is forecasting that inflation will decline to 4.6 per cent by the end of the year, meaning that Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, would hit his target of halving the rate in 2023. However, inflation will not return to the Bank of England’s 2 per cent target until the end of 2025, the consultancy added. Much like the Bank, PwC set out a muted path for UK economic growth, forecasting that GDP will rise 0.5 per cent this year and again next year, a slight rise on the consultancy’s previous forecast of 0.1 per cent growth in 2023. Jake Finney, an economist at PwC, said: “The UK is currently experiencing a counterbalance of both positive and negative factors which ultimately means that, despite encouraging progress this year, growth has virtually flatlined, with real GDP up just 0.4 per cent since December 2022.” Homeowners who remortgage next year will be hit by an average annual increase to their loan repayments of £3,000 thanks to higher interest rates. Barret Kupelian, the chief economist at PwC UK, said: “The UK economy has felt around half of the impact of the Bank of England’s policy tightening. “In the coming few months we expect to see large swathes of the economy [having] to adapt to the impact of tighter monetary policy.” Financial markets think that the Bank of England will leave interest rates at their current level of 5.25 per cent, a 15-year high, until August or September next year. Jack Barnett Economics Correspondent NHS backtracks on waiting-list targets Chris Smyth Whitehall Editor tals have been told to prioritise balanced budgets, emergency care, cancer and the longest waits for treatment, in a “reprioritisation” that puts those waiting for routine appointments and operations at the back of the queue. Health chiefs had warned of a “profound financial crisis” as they struggled to pay inflated overtime rates to cover shifts during months of doctors’ strikes, and The Times revealed that they had asked the Treasury for “compensation”. However, the Treasury has rejected the demand for more than £1 billion amid frustration at “weak” plans for productivity improvements. Some extra cash may be given at the autumn statement, but NHS bosses expect it to be far less than they need, with estimates of about £100 million. One source said absorbing the costs of strikes into current budgets would mean “reductions on capital, IT investment and speed of elective recovery”. Freedom pass Sir Trevor Phillips, the broadcaster and Times columnist, was joined by his wife, Helen Veale, as he received the freedom of the City of London for his services to the Barbican Centre and commitment to equality and inclusion

the times | Thursday November 9 2023 19 News TMS [email protected] | @timesdiary Barking mad at low billing Never work with animals, the showbiz saying goes, but a job’s a job and Michael Simkins was happy to take the risk to be in Backstairs Billy, the hit new West End comedy about the former Queen Mother and her manservant. He knew, though, that he would be upstaged by Pumpkin and Tring, two delightful Pembroke Welsh corgis. “They get an entrance round each time they set a paw onstage, their own dressing room, chaperoned walks between performances and meals on demand,” Simkins said. He suspects they might be on more money too. Most gallingly, Pumpkin and Tring are heavily featured on Tube posters and in newspaper ads, something Simkins is still awaiting. His place in the pecking order reminds Simkins of a story about a broken-down old thesp hitching a lift between venues on a canal barge carrying animal fertiliser. At each stop the bargee announces loudly to the lock-keeper that he’s carrying “four tons of manure and an actor”. Eventually the thesp approaches his host and says: “I wonder if we could have a word about the billing.” keeping it in the family Labour’s recent success in Mid Beds meant a family reunion for one Tory: Alistair Strathern is Theresa May’s first cousin once removed. “I am not sure whether that connection will do more damage to his career or mine,” the former prime minister said. It is an eclectic family tree. One relative was a communist and another was a Lib Dem leader of Brighton and Hove city council. “We cover all bases,” May said. a trip down memory lane Igor Judge, the former lord chief justice and owner of the aptest name in the legal system since Inspector Crook was at Lewisham police station, has died at 82. He had a formidable memory, as mentioned at his High Court valedictory in 2013. Lord Dyson, then Master of the Rolls (he ordered the buffet), said Judge could recall the names of everyone he met, as well as those of their partners, children and dogs. “I find this most annoying,” the Brötchenmeister said. “I can’t even remember the names of colleagues who I see day in, day out.” It’s good to hear that Sir Robert Buckland has found something constructive to do since leaving the cabinet last year. “I’ve finally finished building my Lego Concorde,” bragged the former lord chancellor, tweeting a photo. Buckland is a huge fan of the bricks: he has a large Lego version of his KBE insignia on his bookshelves and is working on a 7,541-piece Millennium Falcon. And they say little has been achieved this parliament. step in the right direction I’m not saying that expectation of MPs is low but the long-legged Alex Chalk drew high praise for walking backwards down three steps without falling over at the state opening. Few modern lord chancellors have dared (Buckland said he would in 2019 but chickened out). Jack Straw did it but, as his spokeswoman told the press in 2007, “he can easily walk backwards, even wearing a cape”. What a hero. It terrified Charlie Falconer, who said he practised it “55,000 times” on the steps to the toilets near the chamber. Colleagues must have worried he’d eaten something dodgy. patrick kidd The race is on to set a new land speed record — and the team hoping to break 800mph in the fastest car in the world is searching for a new driver to make it happen. The existing world land speed record of 763mph was set in 1997 by a British team including driver Andy Green, a former RAF pilot who is also part of the present Bloodhound LSR project. Advances in technology have convinced the Bloodhound engineers that they can smash that record with speeds over 800mph. This time, the feat would also be net zero, as the team intends to fuel the car without fossil fuels. However, there is a catch — the successful driver not only has to drive at supersonic speeds but must also bring the remaining funding. Bloodhound has said that the total required funding is approximately £12 million, but did not disclose how close it was to that target. The team admitted that raising the funds had proved challenging, especially with the pandemic. The driver job is billed as a Race is on to find a record-breaker for land speed attempt Seren Hughes “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” for a “passionate and skilled” individual “ready to push the boundaries of speed and become part of history”. Stuart Edmondson, team leader and a former RAF officer consulted by the military on decarbonising planes, told the BBC: “I need a particular mind to sit in Bloodhound. It’s all about discipline in a challenging environment.” Green will also mentor the new driver. Since achieving 628mph at a trial on the mudflats of Hakskeenpan, South Africa in 2019, the Bloodhound has been sitting in the Coventry Transport Museum with its EJ200 Eurofighter jet engine in safe storage. Edmondson told the BBC the team aimed to run at speed in June or July 2025. A full-scale replica of the Bloodhound car has embarked on a tour around the country with destinations including the British Motor Museum, Silverstone and the RAF Museum. On Saturday, the roadshow will pass through central London before a wider tour of the capital and M25 the next day. Bloodhound has hit 628mph at Hakskeenpan

20 2GM Thursday November 9 2023 | the times News Allowing assisted dying on Jersey would be “ethically appropriate” for terminally ill residents but it should be wary of becoming a suicide destination, a review of its plans has said. In 2021 the States Assembly became the first parliament in the British Isles to decide in principle that assisted dying should be permitted. An ethical review, led by Richard Huxtable, professor of medical law and ethics at Bristol University, was then held to consider, among other things, who could be allowed to end their lives. It concluded assisted dying was ethically appropriate only for adults with a life expectancy of 12 months for neurodegenerative conditions or six months for all other conditions, and who were suffering or would face suffering. They would also have to have lived on the island for at least a year. The authors said it was not appropriate for people Jersey may allow assisted dying but only for residents with only “unbearable suffering” as it was too vague a term. They said “the intolerability of suffering can change over time and be influenced by social and psychological factors” and allowing assisted dying as a response to unbearable suffering “may lead to the expansion of assisted dying in terms of numbers and scope”. Age eligibility was also considered, with the review concluding assisted dying should be restricted to adults. The panel said healthcare professionals “should have the right to conscientiously object to direct participation in assisted dying, not least because it is a controversial practice, which does not serve the usual aims of medicine”. The States Assembly is expected to debate assisted dying by the end of next summer. Last week Tynwald, the Isle of Man’s parliament, voted through a bill which may allow assisted dying for adults with six months or less to live who have been on the island for at least a year.. Will Humphries Southwest Correspondent New code aims to make social media safer for children Social media face an overhaul to protect children under a new code unveiled by Ofcom, as the regulator warned suicide and terrorism sites that they will be blocked in Britain. Children’s presence on the biggest social media will be reduced to protect them from predators under the code, which will bring into effect the Online Safety Act, given royal assent last month. Ofcom has been given new powers to regulate tech companies. It has now set out a draft code of practice to tackle illegal material online, such as terrorism, child abuse, grooming, assisting suicide and fraud. The regulator will be able to fine and block firms that do not cooperate and senior managers could face criminal proceedings. Dame Melanie Dawes, chief executive of Ofcom, said the regulator was prepared to do what was needed “to achieve some change”. She sent a warning to “companies that pose a major risk to the public and are not complying with their duties”. Dawes said 100,000 companies were in the act’s scope. Her initial focus was on the biggest social media and search services, she added. Ofcom hopes to begin enforcing its first codes of practice by the end of next year. “It’s a proper blueprint for what the social media and tech firms need to do,” she said. “It’s about making sure that children can’t be contacted by random adults they don’t know. A third of them have had contact like that in the last month, one in six have been sent halfdressed or naked images. We’re calling on the industry to get moving now.” Ofcom wants all social media sites to ensure that children are protected from grooming. Under its plans, users younger than 18 will not appear in other viewers’ lists of suggested friends and will not be visible in other users’ connection lists. They will have their connection lists hidden and strangers will be unable to contact them on direct message or see their location. TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram have started to introduce elements similar to these but Ofcom’s proposals go much further. A Meta whistleblower told the US Senate this week that the company was aware of harassment and other harm facing teenagers on its platforms but had failed to address them. Arturo Bejar, a former director for Facebook’s protect and care team, sent an email in 2021 to Mark Zuckerberg, the Meta chief executive, with internal data showing 51 per cent of Instagram users had reported having a bad experience on the platform in the past week. Among that group, 24.4 per cent of the children aged 13 to 15 had reported receiving unwanted sexual advances. Bejar said executives at Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, had decided “time and time again to not tackle this issue”. Meta said it had introduced measures to protect children. Ofcom said sites would also have to block accounts run by proscribed terrorist organisations. This puts the regulator on a collision course with Telegram, the app that has resisted attempts to remove channels from Hamas and other terror groups. Dawes also praised The Times for its “fantastic” investigation into Kenneth Law, the Canadian chef linked to 88 deaths in the UK. He was supplying a lethal poison to people directed to him through a suicide forum. She said Ofcom had “been in touch with that site”. Dawes said she was working with international regulators to block the forum, which is based outside the UK. Sir Peter Wanless, chief executive of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, said: “We look forward to working with Ofcom.” Michelle Donelan, the technology secretary, said the act marked a “crucial” step in making the UK “the safest place in the world to be online”. Matt Navarra, a social media expert, said the proposals seemed “sensible” but there was a risk of increasing social isolation among children. He added that age verification on platforms had to be improved. Mark Sellman Technology Correspondent Rolling on Michael Mainelli, the incoming lord mayor of London, takes part in a rehearsal for the Lord Mayor’s Show in the early morning City streets yesterday. The procession, which dates from the 13th century, takes place on Saturday

the times | Thursday November 9 2023 21 News A former teacher at Eton College has been charged with 14 sexual offences against a pupil under the age of 16. Jacob Leland, 35, is accused of having engaged in sexual activity and sexual assault on a boy pupil while teaching at the independent school. The alleged offences are said to have occurred between 2010 and 2012. Leland appeared briefly at Reading magistrates’ court yesterday, where he denied all the allegations. The charges include five counts of engaging in non-penetrative sexual activity with a boy aged under 16, four counts of engaging in penetrative sexual activity with a boy under 16, three counts of causing or inciting a boy under 16 to engage in sexual activity and two counts of sexual assault on a male. Magistrates sent the case to Reading crown court where Leland will appear on December 4. He was granted bail. Thames Valley police said Leland, who lives in Camden, north London, had been charged after an investigation into the incidents alleged to have occurred in the Eton area. In a statement after Leland’s court appearance, a spokesman for Eton in the plot. Lyttleton was executed for treason, and his home was refaced 200 years later before becoming a care home. Now it stands empty and is a site of concern for the local community. Historic England and Dudley council are discussing its future. The Church of St Mary T he Great White Horse Hotel, in Ipswich played host to Nelson, George II and the Beatles, but is most famous for having Charles Dickens as a regular guest and is mentioned in The Pickwick Papers. Its place in literary history is assured, but its future is under threat (Jack Blackburn writes). The hotel is among the historic sites included in this year’s Heritage at Risk Register, which has 159 new additions, including the house where the last Gunpowder Plotters were killed and a church painted by John Constable. However, 203 places, including the home of the long-running BBC sitcom Last of the Summer Wine, have been removed from the list. The Great White Horse Hotel’s Dickens room now has dry rot, the plaster is crumbling throughout the building and the windows, gutters and drainpipes are in poor condition. Talks are taking place with the local authority, the tenant and landlord to see what can be done to reverse its decline. Further north and west, Holbeche House in Dudley is where the Gunpowder Plot ended. The remaining plotters were besieged there and some, including Robert Catesby, the ringleader, were killed in a final fight. Holbeche House is grade II* listed and in the early 17th century, was owned by Stephen Lyttelton, a conspirator Hotel that inspired Dickens at risk, says Historic England Yorkshire, the home of Foggy, Compo and Clegg in Last of the Summer Wine, suffered economic decline and was put on the list in 2009. It has been revived by the local community and now boasts a rich cultural programme of festivals throughout the year. A Dorset chapel with connections to the Tolpuddle Martyrs and a rare Victorian electricity substation in Wimbledon are among other saved sites. in Stoke-by-Nayland, in Suffolk, which was painted by Constable, joins Upminster Tithe Barn, in east London, and Polegate Windmill, in East Sussex, on the risk register. The conservation area in Holmfirth, West The Great White Horse Hotel in Ipswich hosted Charles Dickens. Also at risk is Oldway Mansion in Paignton, Devon, left, but Capernwray Hall in Carnforth, Lancashire, has been removed from the list Former teacher at Eton charged with pupil sex offences Seren Hughes said: “We can confirm that, following a police investigation with which Eton College has co-operated fully, a former member of the teaching staff, Mr Jacob Leland, has been charged with 14 counts of abuse contrary to the Sexual Offences Act 2003. “Mr Leland taught at Eton from September 2010 until August 2012 and the charges, which are extremely serious, relate to his time working at the school. Given the ongoing criminal process, we cannot comment further at this stage. “Eton stands firmly beside those former pupils directly involved, who have acted with great courage and dignity throughout. “The welfare and wellbeing of our pupils is Eton’s top priority. When safeguarding concerns arise they are dealt with in accordance with our established processes and we always work closely with the relevant authorities where appropriate, as we have in this case.” Among Eton’s alumni are the princes William and Harry; Boris Johnson and David Cameron, the former prime ministers; Ian Fleming, the James Bond author; Hugh Laurie, the actor; John Maynard Keynes, the economist; and George Orwell, the writer. A man convicted of harassing Maria Miller, the Conservative MP, breached a restraining order by calling her a “pervert with Nazi attitudes” and asking if she “genuinely” thought he would murder her, Salisbury crown court heard. Michael Bedford, 59, sent the “sinister” email to the former cabinet minister in April this year as part of a personal “vendetta” against the MP. In September last year he was given a restraining order and banned from contacting Miller, who served as culture secretary under David Cameron, on matters outside constituency business. Less than seven months later he allegedly breached the order by sending her an email accusing her of lying in the harassment case against him. “Did you genuinely think that you couldn’t be home alone in case I attacked or murdered you?” he asked. “You must be livid with the police for taking no action after they arrested me three times for calling you a ‘pervert with Nazi attitudes’.” Bedford sent the email on April 11 this year and was arrested that day. During his police interview he insisted that he did not think his behaviour “was at all threatening”. Bedford denies one charge of acting in breach of a restraining order. The trial continues. Female Tory MP ‘called a Nazi pervert’ Kieran Gair

22 Thursday November 9 2023 | the times News Door-to-door fundraising has generated more complaints than any other method for the first time, as charities have targeted people working from home since the pandemic. Complaints to the Fundraising Regulator about charities going door to door made up more than 15 per cent of all complaints, or 60 out of 399, from April last year to March this year. The total number of complaints about door-to-door fundraising more than doubled, from 1,936 to 4,056, compared with 2021-22. More than one in five complaints reDoor-to-door charity calls cause most anger ceived by a sample of 58 of the country’s largest fundraising charities concerned door-to-door fundraisers. The regulator’s annual complaints report said there could be various causes for increased numbers of complaints about door-to-door fundraising, including more people working from home and an increase in the method since the pandemic. It also cited poor behaviour from fundraisers, particularly third parties and subcontractors. Jenny Williams, chairwoman of the complaints and investigations committee of the regulator, said it was the first time that “door-to-door fundraising generated more complaints than any other method”. She added: “While door-to-door fundraising remains an effective method for charities, both in terms of securing donations and increasing awareness, the marked increase in complaints does indicate that there are higher risks involved in this activity and that it is increasingly disliked by members of the public. “It is therefore important for charities to remain vigilant and ensure sufficient care is taken to make sure all fundraising, particularly methods that engage directly with the public, especially those who are potentially vulnerable, is fully compliant with the Code of Fundraising Practice.” The regulator found that the increase in door-to-door complaints was evenly spread across its sample charities. It also said it was “in keeping with the pattern of complaints about this method increasing” in the past three years. The most common complaints after door-to-door fundraising remained consistent with previous years. Charity bags sent to homes, which had been the method most complained about the previous year, came next, followed by clothing banks, addressed mail and digital marketing. Online appeals drew the second highest number of complaints made directly to the sample charities, followed by addressed mail then challenge and sponsorship events. The regulator’s report is split into two parts, the first examining complaints escalated to the regulator over the past year. The watchdog investigates complaints that have not been resolved by the organisations concerned. The second part of the report examines the complaints received by a sample of 58 of the UK’s largest fundraising charities. They are asked to report, via a voluntary survey, the number of complaints and, where possible, the reason for complaints, for a range of fundraising methods. James Beal Social Affairs Editor More people are dying from mouth cancer, raising fears that trouble accessing NHS dentists may be to blame. More than 3,000 people in Britain died from the disease in 2021, up 46 per cent from 2,075 a decade ago, the Oral Health Foundation said. The British Dental Association (BDA) said that nine in ten people would survive oral cancer when it was caught early but the figure dropped to five in ten with later diagnosis. The foundation said that access to dentistry was in “tatters”. Nigel Carter, its chief executive, said that dental checkups were “a key place for identifying the early stages of mouth cancer”. Patient watchdogs say that lack of access to dentistry is one of the most common reasons for complaints. Some areas of England have been described as “dental deserts” with next to no NHS care available. A Care Quality Commission report last month said that people were resorting to DIY dentistry and going into debt to pay for private care. Eddie Crouch, the BDA chairman, called on the government to restore NHS dentistry. He said: “This condition causes more deaths than car accidents. Mouldy walls and a hole in the roof . . . yours for £695k David Byers Deputy Property Editor Lack of dentists blamed for surge in oral cancer With rates surging we need more than radio silence from Westminster.” The BDA said that while high-risk patients such as older smokers and heavy drinkers could be targeted, there was a significant increase in cases caused by human papillomavirus, generally among younger non-smokers who drank little to no alcohol. Louise Ansari, chief executive at Healthwatch England, said: “Dentistry continues to be one of the top issues people report to us across the country, with great swathes of the population unable to get help for urgent painful symptoms.” Asked about the rise on BBC Breakfast, Steve Barclay, the health secretary, referred to the smoke-free legislation set out in the King’s Speech on Tuesday, which will stop children who are 14 or younger from ever legally being sold cigarettes in England. “The answer is to stop people smoking rather than try and treat the consequence of cancers as a result of people smoking. It’s far better to prevent the cancer, than focus on how we better treat it,” he said. He added that the government was increasing the number of dentists and looking at improving their contracts. Kat Lay Health Editor On a honeymoon in the Serengeti, say, taking a shower or bath under the stars could be considered a romantic luxury. A spiritual experience, even. In soggy Wimbledon in November, however, it would not be. And yet, that has not stopped the southwest London estate agent SW19 from putting a three-bedroom terrace house in a mind-boggling state of disrepair on the market for £695,000. For this price, which might buy you a pretty exclusive (and fully formed) property in many parts of the country, you get a semi-derelict house in Wimbledon with a bathroom that looks like it might have been the subject of a rather thorough bombing raid. Moving on, there is a filthy and disused kitchen with a comprehensively broken cupboard, a nondescript woodpanelled room full of junk that looks like it might be used as a medieval torture chamber, and an upstairs bathroom with a sink that looks ready to fall off the wall. And yet, despite everything, estate agents are never found wanting when searching for the right words to describe any property, even one that a wild animal might think twice about living in. “SW19 presents this exciting opportunity to acquire a complete blank canvas to create your dream family home,” it says. “This house features three bedrooms, two reception rooms, and a 53ft rear garden. In its current condition, the property would not be eligible for a mortgage, strictly cash buyers only.” Well, property experts always say you should buy the worst property in the best street. The agent talks of a blank canvas

the times | Thursday November 9 2023 23 News A mother whose son helped to ransack a £1.2 million grade II listed home, told a court yesterday that she was trying to teach her boy “right from wrong”. The youngster, who was 12 at the time of the incident, was one of seven children who destroyed the home of Joanna and Matthew Pittard while they were away for a month from their Isle of Wight property. The court was told that the vandals caused more than £200,000 in damage during the weeks-long spree, using chainsaws, axes and sledgehammers to Nations have flags, anthems and their defining sweets, but not even nostalgia could save Caramac, which was launched in 1959. Nestlé, the world’s biggest food company, blamed falling sales for its decision to end production of the bar. It was originally produced at Mackintosh’s factory in Norwich but that closed in 1996 and production moved to Fawdon, Newcastle. Caramac has come to a sticky end Kieran Gair He’s changed, says house vandal’s mother leave the house “uninhabitable” and looking like “a war zone”. They wrecked a wrought-iron chandelier, flipped over antique furniture, chopped down a palm tree, ruined lights and bathroom taps, smashed 22 windows and squirted ketchup, bleach and paint throughout the property. The vandals, some as old as 16, cannot be named for legal reasons. They have admitted criminal damage to the six-bedroom property in a hearing at Isle of Wight magistrates court. They heard they would each be fined £1,500. The schoolboy, who is now 13, said during a sentencing hearing yesterday that he was “really sorry”. His mother added that he had made “changes to his life”. Andrew Hext, the presiding magistrate, asked whether he was still “hanging out” with the other boys involved. The teenager shook his head. His mother said: “He’s made changes to his life. We are devastated as a family. We are just going to keep trying and putting him on the right track. “I have given up work to support [him] through some of the other stuff going on in our family. We already had challenges as a family so I spend my time with my children, teaching them right from wrong.” Mrs Pittard said in a statement read to the court that, while clearing the “whirlwind” of destruction, she found “soiled toilet paper” stuck to the walls. She added that a child’s toy was left with stab marks and her daughters found graffiti marks across the house. The court was told that the couple had spent more than £35,000 on repairs but it was still “absolutely nowhere near finished”. An estate agent said damage to the property had “seriously reduced” its market value by £250,000 to £300,000. Oscar Vincent said in mitigation that the boy admitted being at the property twice in June last year when he smashed a window with a hammer. Vincent said he had been “encouraged by the older boys” and by the time he had arrived “much of the damage had already been done”. Hext told the boy that all involved in the damage were equally liable. “I have no words to adequately describe the horrendous damage to the house and the life-changing impact it has on the Pittard family. You can move on,” he told the teenager, “I’m not sure they ever will.” The boy received the same sentence as the other six perpetrators — a 12-month referral order while his parents were ordered to pay £1,500 compensation. Will Humphries Southwest Correspondent Hit factory I Should Be So Lucky, the musical based on songs of the producers Stock Aitken Waterman, has opened in Manchester. It goes on tour later this month Its name derives from caramel and Mackintosh’s, who made it in Norwich It is not a chocolate bar because it does not contain cocoa, but is made from sweetened condensed milk, butter, flavourings and sugar. Its name, a portmanteau of caramel and Mackintosh’s, was chosen in a competition won by Barbara Herne. Last year Nestlé said it planned to close the Newcastle site, resulting in the loss of 474 staff, and cut 98 jobs in York. Nestlé started withdrawing Caramac single bars in September. Multipacks will be on sale until the end of the year.

24 2GM Thursday November 9 2023 | the times News I N T H E T I M E S T O M O R R O W PROPERTY CRASH? What property crash? PULLOUT BRICKS&MORTAR ARTS SPORT “NOT ANOTHER HORRIBLE MATRIARCH!” Harriet Walter in her latest role PULLOUT FAREWELL TO A TRAILBLAZER Matt Dickson on Rapinoe’s legacy MAIN BOOK A husband and wife who stole £117,000 from his elderly parents, leaving them with just 28p in their bank account, were jailed yesterday. Gary Mansell, 61, and his wife, Diane, 58, abused the power of attorney over the financial affairs of his parents, Fred and Enid, “pillaging” their savings, a judge said, before he sentenced them to six years in prison. The couple undersold his parents’ home by about £100,000 privately so they could pay for an extension to their kitchen, while the pensioners lived an isolated life in an annexe. Mansell’s parents were given ready meals, while he and his wife spent £7,900 on a 14-day holiday in Jamaica, £25,000 on the kitchen extension and £4,000 on a holiday in Cape Verde, Liverpool crown court heard. Mansell’s wife spent £9,000 on The Menin Road by Paul Nash is on display with Ronald Searle’s slouch hat Blavatnik Art, Film and Photography Galleries Imperial War Museum, SE1 HHHHH Recruits line up with old warhorses at new galleries When the illustrator Ronald Searle, later of Molesworth and St Trinian’s fame, became a prisoner of war in Singapore in 1942 he was sent first to Changi Prison and then to work on the Thailand-Burma track known as the Death Railway. Searle secretly sketched camp life, hiding his drawings under the beds of dying friends. He sold some for cigarettes which he bartered for pencils and paper. Drawing, he said, was his “mental life belt’’. His sketchbook, painting tin, pencil box and slouch hat are under glass at the new Blavatnik Art, Film and Photography Galleries at the Imperial War Museum (IWM) in Lambeth, south London. The IWM has a vast collection of war art but previously much was stored unseen in the archive or seeded through the main galleries. Among more than 500 works are old warhorses (John Singer Sargent’s Gassed, Paul Nash’s The Menin Road, Stanley Spencer’s Travoys Arriving with Wounded, Henry Moore’s shelter drawings) alongside new recruits. I’d never come across Leslie Cole, an official war artist, whose oil painting Malta Convoy: Basutos Deal with the Overflow Mail on the Causeway, the Palace, Valetta turns this scene into a whorl of chaos. The Basutos were among the 20,000 men from the colony of Basutoland, Lesotho, who served with the British Army in the Second World War. The galleries create space for artists and sitters of colour and female artists. There’s a photo of Ethel Gabain painting a bombsite. Amid the blasted doors she is neat in a skirt suit, stockings and shoes with a low and ladylike heel. The hang starts chronologically but turns thematic. This leads to some abrupt visual jump-cuts — from Wyndham Lewis’s A Battery Shelled (1919) to photos of soldiers in Belfast during the Troubles. It’s disorientating but that’s war. If you are taking children, consider a recce. A week later, I can’t stop seeing the shrunken souls in Roll Call — Belsen, 1944 by Edith Birkin, an expressionist artist born to a Jewish family in Prague who was among the survivors when Bergen-Belsen was liberated. The Blavatnik Art, Film and Photography Galleries open tomorrow (iwm.org.uk) Visual arts Laura Freeman Couple left parents with 28p cosmetic dental work and bought four designer bags, and her husband bought her a £3,800 diamond ring. In contrast, during the three and a half years that the elderly couple lived with them, they had a single holiday of two days to Llandudno. David Swinnerton, the judge, said the couple had carried out “the most despicable display of greed, vanity and selfishness” in order to live well beyond their means. The fraud began in 2017 when Fred Mansell, then 77, suffered a fall and went into a rehabilitation unit. As Enid, then 75, showed signs of dementia, they moved in with their son and his wife in Woolton, Liverpool. The pensioners gave them power of attorney and moved into their detached home, selling their £255,000 property and cars. In total the couple took £218,138 from Mansell’s parents but, after food and other costs were deducted, the fraud was valued at £117,000. His parents were put in emergency care home accommodation by social workers in 2021. Enid died before the court case could be resolved and Fred said the last few months of her life were “horrible and traumatic”. Mansell and his wife enjoyed a comfortable life before taking advantage of his parents. He had earned £95,000 a year as a manager at the Jaguar Land Rover plant and retired in 2019 with a £189,000 lump sum. In messages in 2016, seen by the court, it appeared that the couple dreamt of becoming millionaires. They were convicted of fraud by abuse of position and money laundering after a trial last month. The judge said that the case showed how a family “could be destroyed by vanity and greed”. Tom Saunders

Marches show UK multiculturalism has failed Iain Martin Page 27 New modelling army is leading us astray Be it policy for lockdown, net zero or immigration, it must be ministers and not scientists or analysts who lead the way Comment ignores emissions driven offshore) have driven us to adopt a completely unworkable set of energy policies that have loaded up costs while having no material effect on global emissions. In immigration policy, economic models that focus on labour costs, productivity and wage growth have eclipsed qualitative arguments about social cohesion, values and cultural change. Never mind, say the models, if veterans can no longer sell poppies for Remembrance Sunday without being harassed. Just think of the marginal productivity gains. It’s easy to see why politicians have surrendered to models. Most are not experts in the fields in which they are making decisions. Expert modellers have invested years in honing and promoting their methods and bear no responsibility for the decisions made. If ignored or defied, critics hungry for ammunition to use against ministers will deploy them with relish. For ministers, there is little to gain and everything to lose by trusting their instincts or moral compass above the conclusions of an apparently sophisticated model. But in the end such models are fickle friends. They might be useful tools with which to consider scenarios, devise specific strategies or test one’s beliefs, but they cannot take the place of judgment calls and values. They cannot decide what is right or wrong or give us a true measure of the human soul. For that purpose, God help us, we elect leaders. And when they fail to lead, we eject them, models be damned. it was not easy to model the effect of locking down a generation of young people on their future prospects, mental health or, for those in abusive homes, their safety. Any wise, considered and holistic assessment would surely have revealed that a healthy, strong society should never sacrifice its young to protect its ailing and elderly. It was the duty of our leaders to give voice to that truth, to defend it and to put “the science” in its rightful place. But this would mean breaking with that asinine mantra to “follow the science”. It would mean following our gut. This is a problem beyond pandemic management. It is rife across government. Treasury economic and fiscal models have systematically starved our economy of investment. Highly speculative climate models and net zero accounting (which Prof Neil Ferguson predicted 500,000 deaths if herd immunity was foilowed trade-offs of herd immunity — how to explain and defend it to the population, how to ration or increase health capacity, whether to shield the vulnerable, what economic stimulus was appropriate — the government panicked. It adopted a new strategy, one we might call “political herd immunity”: do what most other governments were doing and work through the consequences later. Given our lack of preparation and knowledge, I believe a lockdown of most activity (except schools) was the right thing to do in March 2020. Unfortunately, it set the habit for the second and third waves, even after the personal behaviour of Ferguson, Matt Hancock and Downing Street staffers showed they knew the risk to the vast majority of people was low. Nonetheless, flawed data, targets and models filled the gap where judgment belonged. A fixation on testing and hospital beds had led to the catastrophe of discharging Covid patients into care homes. A maniacal focus on the virus reproduction rate set the precedent of disastrous school closures. Economic data then fuelled the reopening of pubs before schools. Models, rules-of-thumb, guidance, traffic-light systems, lockdown tiers — all came and went, attempts to show government was “following the science” rather than succumbing to headlines as crisis followed crisis. The problem with “follow the science” and similarly technocratic approaches to governing is that they prioritise whatever is seen to be measurable at that moment. The problem is made worse by overreliance on highly speculative models that turn flawed data into even more flawed forecasts. So, for example, it was possible to model the effect of children attending school or students attending university on the infection rate. But O n some unknown date in early 2020, the notes record that Boris Johnson floated a novel idea to calm public anxiety about the new coronavirus. He would go on TV and be injected with the virus. It was, thankfully, a passing fancy. As we know, the prime minister soon caught the virus in the usual way and nearly died. “It was a moment in time,” grunted Lord Udny-Lister at the Covid inquiry this week by way of explanation. Around that “moment in time”, which lasted rather longer than it should have, the scientists agreed there was no point trying to contain the virus. Following Britain’s long-standing pandemic plan, they argued for pursuing natural herd immunity — letting people catch the virus to become immune quickly. But in March 2020, the meeting minutes show this consensus evaporated. The scientists flipped and began advising ministers to suppress the virus at all costs. After maybe a week, ministers did as they were told. What caused this dramatic reversal? The official explanation is that the epidemiological modelling was refined by new data and began to show that the virus would quickly overwhelm the health service and kill many more people than previously thought. In mid-March, Neil Ferguson’s team at Imperial College London produced its “500,000 deaths” paper, a prediction of the toll if herd immunity was followed. Armed with this new information, policy shifted and we entered lockdown. That is one version of events. But here’s another. During February and March 2020, as the virus spread from Asia to Italy, policymakers were given a hard lesson in political reality. At first, they each stuck to their positions. Health bureaucrats had for years touted Britain’s “world-class” pandemic plan, based on a policy of naturally acquiring herd immunity, and were not about to admit they had failed to learn from repeated actual epidemics in east Asia. Johnson was still riding the wave of election triumph and had always summarised his political outlook by praising the mayor in Jaws, who keeps the beaches open after dismissing alarmist reports of a preternaturally large killer shark in the waters. But as Covid came closer, untested assumptions crumbled. Footage from Italy showing gasping patients turned away from overwhelmed hospitals struck terror into punters and politicians. Data about death rates and speed of spread fluctuated wildly, providing no comfort. Lockdowns spread across Europe. Seeming facts — that governments couldn’t just shut down society — became fictions. If decision-makers had thought through the natural herd immunity plan the idea of 500,000 deaths could never have been a bombshell piece of “data” revealed by a model, but an obvious possibility. But they hadn’t. They were, like the rest of us, psychologically unprepared. So, rather than managing the risks and As Covid spread the government adopted a ‘political herd’ strategy red box For the best analysis and commentary on the political landscape Juliet Samuel @citysamuel the times | Thursday November 9 2023 25

26 Thursday November 9 2023 | the times Comment for real Londoners. Running late, I’ve considered taking one then worried about the optics of arriving for an interview in a carriage feathered in marabou. If pedicabs do need licensing, surely this is small print matter unworthy of royal recitation. If the PM is desperate for ideas he could always ask the public to submit their own bugbears. Parking apps, dim restaurant lighting, extendable dog leads, poor swimming lane discipline, leaf blowers … then the King’s Speech could end with a quickfire round: “There Should be a Law Against That.” Paul had it all I’m watching (belatedly) The Last Movie Stars, a sixpart documentary about the lives of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. Based on many hours of interviews with the two stars and everyone who ever knew them for a biography that was never published, it is a fascinating account of old Hollywood. But I confess, I’m watching because Paul Newman was simply the most beautiful man who ever walked the earth. All the old footage merely confirms that. Here’s Newman making James Dean look ratty and plain, or beside Marlon Brando, who briefly shared his carnal glow but quickly turned bloated and bald. Newman kept his looks and a smile like a thousand Kliegs until the very end. Spark still sparkles D o people still read Muriel Spark’s novels? I guess her tales of 1930s fascist schoolteachers and the seedy goings-on in 1950s rooming houses are out of fashion. But having read Spark as a student, I’m now rediscovering her on audiobook. I’d forgotten how funny, smart, scathing and subversive she is, creating whole moral universes in the slimmest of volumes. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is read by Miriam Margolyes, who I spotted at a book launch last week and had to restrain myself from running up to thank her for the myriad accents and making every syllable Technicolor. A Far Cry from Kensington (read by Juliet Stevenson) is a W hat a strange King’s Speech, written as if Rishi Sunak was listening to Radio 4 consumer show You and Yours while shouting over to his wife: quick, tell me what else really annoys you about modern life. Yes, booking a flight on a budget airline website is an ordeal. All those pop-up ads screaming “do you want a car?”, “where will you stay?” and “15 other people are viewing these seats” as you strain to focus on not screwing up the date. But many travellers are happy to pack just one change of pants or sit between two strangers to save a few quid. We don’t need legislation against “drip pricing”, which will only bump up basic fares. As for the menace of pedicabs, those electric-cycle rickshaws full of hen-night drunks that swing around Oxford Street blaring Single Ladies, they are — like Madame Tussauds or dining at the top of the Shard — not Only fools doubt the genius of Shakespeare Barbs at the Bard are mere insecurity that a man 400 years ago could teach us about being human if we don’t have all the answers? I suspect Bankman-Fried and Hanania, the products of a culture dedicated to the worship of science and technology, are offended by the fact that the greatest genius of our species is a writer. A humanities guy! Clearly, if Shakespeare really was as brilliant as everyone says, he would have invented NFTs or founded a cryptocurrency exchange. Because civilisation attained its all-time apogee in the tech-fuelled capitalism of the San Francisco Bay Area in the early 2020s. It is only another version of the small-mindedness that afflicts those mortally offended by Shakespeare’s problematic treatment of race and gender. If he flunks the all-important moral tests of the 21st century, then obviously he should be removed from literature courses. What other factors could possibly be relevant? Of course, the marvellous, extravagant fluke of Shakespeare’s genius only reveals our smallness, not his. Shakespeare’s multifariousness, his eerie habit of knowing everything about human beings and from every angle confounds the short-sighted certainties of modern moralists and technologists. The only way to approach Shakespeare is with humility and curiosity — to be open to the disturbing knowledge that a man from 400 years ago might have something strange and interesting to teach us about being human. Those who barge in with an insecure determination to come off better from the confrontation are doomed to reveal themselves as fools. One consolation, at least: for the rest of us the spectacle is hilarious. as Dr Johnson felt it necessary to make excuses for Shakespeare as the product of an age “yet struggling to emerge from barbarity”. Later, the infamous Thomas Bowdler edited an uber-polite The Family Shakespeare (1807), which helpfully cut all the lines (and there were lots) that offended the genteel sensibilities of the 19th-century bourgeoisie. Perhaps no era has been as smugly convinced of its moral and intellectual superiority as our own. Bowdler is doubtless smiling up at his modern inheritors who upbraid a 16th-century glove-maker’s son for failing to anticipate the racial and gender politics of today. An actor friend was once solemnly informed of the potentially problematic nature of the line, “black Macbeth/ Will seem as pure as snow”. A recent production of Romeo and Juliet at the Globe featured a trigger warning for its “depictions of suicide, moments of violence and references to drug use”. To those unable to see beyond the self-satisfied pre-occupations of the present, the mere fact that Shakespeare lived 400 years ago is disturbing. Hanania writes that “demystifying Shakespeare should be part of a larger project to emphasise how much worse the past was on nearly every dimension”. He cites a paper which purports to demonstrate that the quality of “cultural products” increases in line with improving “living standards”. No California tech bro wishes to feel like a benighted Anglo Saxon wandering through the ruins of a Roman temple, pondering the unrepeatable achievements of the past. It would prompt a thought too disturbing to contemplate: what T his week marks the 400th anniversary of what is plausibly the greatest book ever published. There is no volume denser with genius than Shakespeare’s First Folio. His collected plays contain the greatest poetry and prose in the English language. Probably any language. They are also our greatest treatise on the operation of power, our subtlest account of human character, our most profound work on death and our best philosophy of love. If you follow the critic Harold Bloom in crediting Shakespeare with the “invention of the human” — and I’m willing to go at least some of the way with him — then the First Folio is the founding document of modern consciousness. Shakespeare’s pre-eminence has always inspired envious hostility. The novelist Leo Tolstoy (who suffered the unique frustration of being a near-Shakespearean genius) professed to find only “repulsion, weariness and bewilderment” in the plays. Shakespeare’s reputation survived. But in the 21st century the great man cuts a beleaguered figure. He is increasingly absent from our universities. English literature degrees are haemorrhaging students. Those that remain are less likely than ever to read Shakespeare — for the first time no American Ivy League literature course requires its students to study his works. The playwright himself is damned as the ultimate symbol of the pale, male and stale past. Claims for his universal genius are alleged to represent the worst of western cultural hubris. The greatest recent indignity was the revelation that the cryptocurrency fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried believed that Shakespeare couldn’t be literature’s greatest genius on the unimprovably asinine grounds that “the Bayesian priors are not very favourable”. Statistically, Bankman-Fried explained, our best writer should have emerged at a time of high literacy, high population and high average wealth — ie right about now. Perhaps the next Shakespeare is already here: the American essayist Richard Hanania speculated that he could write to a Shakespearean standard given a year’s intensive practice. Shakespeare’s strange and unclassifiable genius has always offended small-minded know-alls, especially believers in the inevitable and total superiority of the present. The urbane critics of the 18th century patronised Shakespeare as promising but not quite civilised — an untutored talent who lacked the sheen of sophistication he would doubtless have acquired had he been fortunate enough to live through the Enlightenment. As intelligent a man No era has been as convinced of its moral superiority as our own feminist classic. The narrator is a war widow working in publishing who is fat, a condition she reflects makes her stand out so everyone knows her name. Once thin, she is a nobody. Grudge match T he athlete Caster Semenya was everywhere this week, including the BBC’s Woman’s Hour, and listening confirmed my impressions on reviewing her autobiography: she has not a warm word to say about anyone. No gratitude for her coaches, no affection for her family or even her wife. Grudges are settled aplenty: with Seb Coe and every female athlete who ever crossed her path. There is only one person Caster praises, except Caster herself: Oscar Pistorius. “We were linked by something that went beyond running,” she writes. “We were drawn to each other and found comfort in each other’s presence. Maybe it was because of the way the world looked at us — our difference written on our bodies.” Perhaps so, you think, until she continues: “Each of us would come to be seen as both heroes and villains, admired and scorned by the world.” An extraordinary way to describe a man who murdered his girlfriend, not that Semenya even notes Reeva Steenkamp’s name. Janice Turner Notebook Crackdown on pedicabs is scraping the barrel @victoriapeckham Bonuses for water bosses are rewards for dirty failure Jawad Iqbal I t is nothing short of scandalous that the bosses of some of the largest water companies in England and Wales have been given a total of almost £10 million in performance bonuses despite mounting public outrage over sewage pollution. According to Ofwat, the industry regulator, those receiving bonuses included the chief executives of Anglian Water, Wessex Water, Northumbrian Water and United Utilities. So too the chief executive of Severn Trent, ranked the best environmental performer. But Anglian and Wessex were given a risible two out of four stars for their environmental record. United Utilities, which serves the northwest, discharged the most sewage last year. The boss of South East Water, which left hundreds of homes without water this summer, also took home a bonus. This amounts to rewarding failure. Last year there were more than 300,000 sewage spills into rivers and coastal areas across England: equivalent to 824 spills a day. Ofwat recently revealed that Southern Water had missed all but one of its performance targets. Thames Water, Britain’s biggest water company, repaid a record £101 million to customers for falling short on several measures. The water companies have repeatedly apologised for raw sewage being dumped into rivers and seas, and are now promising to invest £10 billion by 2030 to tackle future spills. After decades of chronic underinvestment and broken promises, this is far too little, too late. On top of that, it is customers who are expected to shoulder the bulk of the costs for the proposed modernisation of the sewage network — on behalf of an industry that paid out £1.4 billion in dividends last year. The government expects this to add £12 to the average household bill between 2025 and 2030. Other analysts have suggested that it could be up to £30. This is not fair at a time when households are struggling to afford their bills. The water companies have had plenty of opportunities to put things right and repeatedly failed. This has been made worse by an industry regulator that comes across as lacking teeth and financially underresourced. Ofwat must be given powers to hand out much stiffer punishments for every illegal sewage dump. It should ban any future bonuses for executives who fail in their duty to meet environmental standards — and water bosses should be held personally accountable and, if necessary, prosecuted for any breaches of the law. It is unacceptable that they are pocketing huge bonuses while despoiling the environment and leaving customers to pick up the bill for cleaning up the mess they have created. James Marriott @j_amesmarriott

the times | Thursday November 9 2023 27 Comment Buy the Peter Brookes 2024 Calendar from our Print Gallery at timescartoons.co.uk or call 020 7711 7826 Marches show UK multiculturalism has failed Armistice Day protests betray a fundamental disrespect for our history that wouldn’t be tolerated in melting pot America and where we ended up. That’s fine, so multiculturalism must be groovy, especially in London, surely? I wonder, though, if discomfort about any criticism of multiculturalism is based on a confusion about terminology. Britain is one of the most successful multiethnic, multi-national states, a fusion of four countries with a multiplicity of races. This is hugely positive but multiculturalism, as a set of ideas developed by philosophers and sociologists since the 1960s (and experimented with in Canada and Australia before becoming the European norm) is quite distinct from that. It rests on the idea that allegiance to the nation or national identity is suspect. It promotes all cultural positions as terrific, even anti-western Islamism. In this way it divides. It is fundamentally unsociable. Intentionally or not it sets up constant needling conflict and grievance-mongering rather than emphasising the potential for harmony and respectful disagreement under a common culture. As a Zionist, Zangwill ended up disappointed. He died in Midhurst, Sussex, in 1926, having helped found the “territorialist” movement, which wanted a Jewish homeland, but not located in Palestine, to avoid conflict. Still, The Melting Pot had given a name to one of America’s most potent ideas from which we can still learn. US says he is stunned by these marches in London: “Where I’m from, if you disrespect the flag and the nation’s military you’re in trouble. If you don’t like it here why are you even here? You should, as you Brits say, clear off.” That is very much not where we are in contemporary Britain. Decades of immersion in the relativist mantras of multiculturalism (prioritise group differences over integration — and don’t dare offend anyone) and an insistence on the inviolable right to protest mean that the poor police officers on the ground are being left, by their confused bosses and terrified politicians, to deal with agitators who hate this country. I understand the reluctance to accept both that multiculturalism is partly to blame for this and that, as a concept, it has failed. To reasonable people multiculturalism is a selfevidently nice idea. It sounds as though it should work. How dare anyone criticise the idea that all cultures can live side by side just getting along? Most of us have multiple cultural allegiances, to our home city, the country of our birth, became, by the mid-20th century, the dominant ethos. Irish-Americans could keep their identity. So too Italian-Americans. Jewish-Americans could retain their traditions. As long as their allegiance was to America, its flag, and institutions. Disagree about everything else, but respect the elementary building blocks of nationhood. Martin Luther King spoke in terms of patriotism, dignity, equal opportunity and blindness to colour. There is a unifying force tying it all together. The imperfect answers America came up with in the early 20th century endured and help explain the country’s extraordinary success since. Few occasions are sacred to the British but Remembrance weekend comes close. So when several hundred thousand Britons decide that the time we set aside for respecting our war dead is a good time to descend on the capital with genocidal chants, it is clear Britain has lost its way. Even accounting for America’s current political problems, anything on a similar scale overshadowing memorial day in the US, or veterans day this Sunday, would be regarded as an unforgivable incursion, a rejection of the things that bind the nation. The Americans rightly would not stand for it. This runs across the political spectrum. A moderate, Democrat-leaning friend from the I n October 1908 an important play by a British literary celebrity premiered in Washington in front of an audience that included the president of the United States. The Melting Pot, written by the Zionist Israel Zangwill, tells of the aftermath of a pogrom in Russia in which the entire family of the protagonist has been murdered. He flees to America and composes a symphony, idealistically hymning the virtues of a post-ethnic society in which all differences would be set aside. Zangwill was an optimist about integration. The play has a happy ending and, according to lore, Teddy Roosevelt cheered his approval when the curtain fell. Looking at the row in this country over protest marches taking place disrespectfully on Remembrance weekend, seeing a war memorial in Rochdale daubed “Free Palestine”, and listening to the terrified debate in Europe as the realisation spreads that multiculturalism has failed, the US experience looks like a useful aid to thinking about integration. The Melting Pot premiered at the height of the Progressive Era and encapsulated the public debate during a period in which America wrestled with social change, industrial unrest and an argument about how best to incorporate the vast numbers of immigrants pouring into the country in search of economic opportunity. Between 1870 and 1900 nearly 12 million arrived. Between 1900 and 1915 another 15 million came, adding 20 per cent to the population. There was a long-running and angst-ridden debate about how to respond. Although the surge was obvious evidence of economic dynamism, those already in the US, descended themselves from previous waves of migrants, asked who the new arrivals were and whether or not they could become truly American. America got plenty wrong in that period, to put it politely. Integration was notoriously incomplete. Formal racial segregation still existed in the south for many decades and didn’t end in the US military until the 1950s. Nonetheless, the melting pot model that evolved in the northern states and then on the West Coast Remembrance events are close to sacred for many British citizens Promoting all cultural positions as wonderful only leads to division Iain Martin @iainmartin1

28 Thursday November 9 2023 | the times Letters to the Editor Letters to the Editor should be sent to [email protected] or by post to 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF have Hamas undertones. The police have indicated that they will not ban the march, and it will be interesting to see what show of force is present and whether officers will arrest violent marchers. To date arrests have been minimal in similar protests. Roy Ritchie Troon, Ayrshire Sir, During the Vietnam War I took part in the anti-war demonstrations in London and was one of the tens of thousands of people who marched towards the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square. When we arrived we faced a cavalry charge of mounted police with batons — a terrifying sight when they are charging towards you. After them came policemen with truncheons and boots. It was mayhem. We all left bruised and battered. The police won the day, with no ill feeling on our part. By contrast, today’s demonstrators appear to be “looked after” by the police. How times have changed. Ed Shore Former chairman, West Midlands Police Authority Sir, We can be proud that in Britain politicians and the police find it difficult to ban a march or demonstration. Wouldn’t it be nice if pro-Palestinian supporters would decide not to join any demonstrations this weekend out of consideration for those who wish to solemnly pay their respects on Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday? Richard Tweed Croydon Sir, I am pleased to see that Sir Mark Rowley has resisted the calls to ban the so-called hate march on Saturday. It seems to me that the only clear signs of hate are from our own home secretary, not the protesters. Colin Stroud Bridgwater, Somerset Sir, I am always puzzled that when there is any conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, within days there are large anti-Israel demonstrations on our streets. This is in contrast to the seeming lack of interest in the sufferings of Muslims such as the Rohingyas in Myanmar (more than a million refugees) and the persecution of the Uighur Muslims by the Chinese government. David Chandler Marlborough, Wilts Airline ‘extras’ ban Sir, You suggest that air passengers could face increased flight prices as a result of government plans to tackle drip pricing (“Airline ‘extras’ ban could push up fares by £80”, Nov 8). Drip pricing is an underhand way for airlines to mask the final price, making it hard for a customer to compare prices between carriers. Which? research found that a lack of transparency has been exploited by some airlines to significantly raise the price of extras, such as the cost of a seat with extra legroom or taking carry-on luggage, by as much as 70 per cent. New laws will not mean travellers paying more but they will give muchneeded clarity about the amount passengers will actually pay and should encourage competition between airlines over the true price of a flight. Rocio Concha Director of policy, Which? Study in contempt Sir, Donald Trump’s behaviour at his trial in New York is as bizarre as it is inexcusable (“This isn’t a political rally, judge tells raging Trump in fraud trial”, Nov 7) The insults he has been hurling at the judge, both inside and outside the courtroom, and his persistent refusal to answer questions or to comply with judicial direction, would in this country almost certainly have seen him jailed for contempt of court. That offence so perfectly describes his behaviour that law students everywhere should hereafter study the transcript of this case to learn what is meant by it and why its enforcement matters. James Badenoch KC 1 Crown Office Row, Temple Tango stricture Sir, While I was pleased to see Jeremy Hunt turn to Argentine tango (as everyone should), I was disappointed to read the TMS diarist (Nov 7) describe tango as “strutting with a rose between the teeth”. Let me assure your readers that there has never been a rose, or any flower, in the teeth of a tango dancer. That image is a misplaced myth. David Thomas UK Argentine Tango Association Crystal clear Sir, Nicky Haslam regards crystal coffee sugar as “common” (Times2, Nov 7; letters, Nov 8). I don’t think my great-grandmother, Lady Blythswood, would have agreed. In the 1950s she lived in a Welsh castle, and, as a special treat, used to give my brother and me (silver) spoonfuls of coffee sugar crystals from the (silver) sugar bowl brought to her on her coffee tray by her butler. The challenge was to see how many crystals you could pile up on one small coffee spoon. Joanna Martin Sudbourne, Suffolk Corrections and clarifications The Times takes complaints about editorial content seriously. We are committed to abiding by the Independent Press Standards Organisation rules and regulations and the Editors’ Code of Practice that IPSO enforces. Requests for corrections should be sent to [email protected] Sir, Those Tory MPs urging Jeremy Hunt to bring forward tax cuts so as to close the poll gap with Labour appear to be demonstrating why they do not deserve to remain in government, as their sole aim appears to be self-interest (“Be bold on tax, Tories urge Hunt”, Nov 8). There are many ways that the money the chancellor has discovered could be spent to benefit the nation and not simply the Tory party. One would be to increase the defence budget to secure our defence industries and to send more equipment and munitions to Ukraine, to support the war being fought on our behalf. Eric Johns Swanage, Dorset Sir, The government is right to award North Sea oil and gas licences on an annual basis up to and beyond 2050 (reports, Nov 8). The wind does not always blow nor the sun always shine, but the capacity of wind turbines and solar is beside the point. We need oil and gas, preferably with carbon capture and storage, to back up these renewables. The caveat that Policing of the pro-Palestinian protest march Sir, You report that Sir Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan Police commissioner, has said he cannot ban the pro-Palestinian march in London on Armistice Day (“Police resist calls to ban march”, Nov 8). While this point can be argued, police have the power to ban face masks that are, for the most part, unnecessarily worn and are an obvious impediment to police officers being able to identify any protesters who exhibit criminal behaviour. British police have recently been shown being surrounded by pro-Palestinian protesters when trying to make an arrest, so this sensible prohibition would give officers a chance to use facial recognition technology and identify those they need to question. Nigel Tobias Executive director, British-Israel Chamber of Commerce Sir, It is not clear if the organisers of the pro-Palestinian protest march understand what the meaning of Armistice Day is and what it represents to the vast majority of people in the UK. I have no problem with any protest march that starts and ends peacefully. The trouble with the march on Saturday is that it will Conservative plans using the North Sea in preference to imports should only apply if emissions are lower is sensible. It should be cheaper too. Tim Ambler Senior Fellow, Adam Smith Institute Sir, The absence of any specific reference to social care in the King’s Speech is fresh proof of how this issue has slipped further down the government’s agenda. Michael Claughton Folkestone, Kent Covid conclusion Sir, Professor Hugh Pennington (letter, Nov 7) is too modest to draw the obvious conclusion that putting the Covid inquiry in the hands of a judge in criminal law and a small army of KCs was bound to lead to unedifying exchanges, and that it should really be in the hands of a top scientist, who would address the real issues and be somewhat cheaper to employ. It is not strictly comparable but the Rogers commission into the 1986 space shuttle disaster comes to mind. The summation by the great physicist Richard Feynman remains a masterpiece of concision and informed insight: “Reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.” Stephen Bryan Brancaster, Norfolk Sir, Professor Sir Ian Gilmore (Nov 6) makes a good point about the need for an up-to-date alcohol policy at No 10. My NHS hospital banned staff from bringing in alcohol in 1991; I recall a hospital porter, the worse for alcohol, being fired for swearing at a nurse using milder words than some of those heard at the Covid inquiry. Dr David Whitaker Manchester from the times november 9, 1923 LUDENDORFF COUP IN MUNICH Unused medicines Sir, Carola Chataway (letter, Nov 7) says unused medicines in France can be given to Médecins Sans Frontières, which works across the world. If unused medicines are thought to be safe to be sent abroad, why are they deemed unsuitable to be reused here? The wastage from in-date, unused medicines costs the NHS £300 million a year. We need to consider how to safely recycle unused medicines rather than disposing of them. Dr David Jeffrey Senior lecturer, Three Counties Medical School, Worcester thetimes.co.uk/archive In-flight ordeal Sir, Further to Matthew Parris’s Notebook (“Big problem”, Nov 8), on a flight home from New York a very large lady came and sat beside me. She brought a triple cheeseburger and can of drink on to the plane with her. She was unable to lower her tray so simply placed them on mine. I didn’t use the facilities during the flight as I just couldn’t face asking her to get out of her seat. Beryl Whyatt Welwyn Garden City Mind the gap Sir, Only one London Underground station (“Test Tube”, letter, Nov 8) has six consonants consecutively in its name: Knightsbridge. Robert Purdie Faringdon, Oxon Sir, If I were quizmaster, I would not accept Alan Hadfield’s answer. The station is South Ealing, not Ealing South. Chris Bushill London N14 Yesterday was the fifth anniversary of the establishment of the German Republic, and the Nationalist threat to celebrate the day with a “Putsch” was carried out in Munich. A directory of five, headed by Herr Hitler and General Ludendorff has assumed power and claims to rule not only Bavaria, but the whole of Germany. From our special correspondent, Berlin: Reports received here early this morning state that Herr von Kahr addressed a crowded meeting in the Burger Keller last night. At the end of his speech Herr Hitler, accompanied by a guard of National Socialists, entered the hall. An uproar followed. After mounting the platform Herr Hitler announced that the Bavarian Government had been deposed, and that a new Government had been formed. The guard greeted the announcement with a volley fired into the ground. Herr Hitler went on to say that Herr von Kahr and Herr Pohner had been appointed Governors of Bavaria, and that he himself would take over the political leadership of Germany. Herr von Knilling (the State Premier) and Herr Schweyer (Minister of the Interior), who were present at the meeting, were immediately arrested. General Ludendorff is stated to have assumed command of the German Army, and General von Lossow to have been appointed Reichswehr Minister for the whole of Germany. A large number of ex-officers were present at the meeting, and, when asked by Herr Hitler whether they approved of these appointments they gave their assent with deafening applause. Both General Ludendorff and Herr von Pohner at once declared their readiness to assume their new offices. Herr Hitler declared that the day for which he had waited with such longing for five years had arrived. He would make of Germany a glorious State. Soldiers and members of the military organisations are marching through the streets of Munich with banners flying and bands playing. The head telegraph office at Munich was occupied by the police at 11pm. All communication between Berlin and Munich has ceased. The Reich Cabinet had been summoned to meet by Herr Stresemann, the Chancellor, at half-past 11 tonight. A proclamation to the German people is to be issued during the night. revel in this elegant book showing times readers at their most whimsical and droll Pick of the week Listen to The Times letters editor read out the best of the week’s correspondence just after 8.20am today DAB radio, online, smart speaker and app Plight of homeless Sir, I am a consultant psychiatrist working with people sleeping rough. Most of my patients have “repeatedly refused offers of help” (leading article, Nov 7) at the point they are referred to us. The reasons are complex: some are terrified by the persecutory delusions that have led them to flee their homes, others have suffered such profound trauma that they do not trust any authority. Our team works hard to unpick these reasons and support them back into accommodation. I fail to see how Suella Braverman can differentiate between those homeless people she deems worthy of the small sanctuary of a tent while this work goes on, and those whom she feels should be left entirely exposed to the ravages of life on the streets. Dr Jenny Drife London SW9

the times | Thursday November 9 2023 29 Leading articles show of respect for Britain’s fallen servicemen and women. The prime minister is right in principle to make this appeal. The events in Gaza are a live issue but those who would demonstrate should pause and consider the respect they owe to those who fought for this country’s freedom. Would it be asking too much for one weekend to be reserved for honouring them alone? Demonstrations are expressions of freedom but they can affect the freedom of others, like those who fear they will be used as covers for extremist activity. So far the Gaza demonstrations have passed off peacefully but there is a toxic element hiding in the midst of those with honourable intentions — an element that has glorified the slaughter and kidnap of Israeli men, women and children. And the policing of these marches inevitably distracts from the fight against crime. The organisers and marchers should remember that they can protest in Britain and Israelis can protest in Israel but Palestinians cannot demonstrate against Hamas. Their like would not for a moment have been tolerated in pre-war Gaza. But the commissioner’s reasonable request to the organisers of the protests to reconsider Saturday’s event has fallen on deaf ears. So far, Sir Mark is minded to let the protest go ahead. Mr Sunak has warned that the commissioner will be “accountable” for the consequences. Suella Braverman, the home secretary, prefers more incendiary language. She has labelled the demonstrations, which have attracted thousands of people, “hate marches”. This is unhelpful. It could be seen as a green light for right-wing extremists to stage counter-demonstrations. Sir Mark is clearly under considerable political pressure. Fortunately, Britain’s most senior police officer has a cool head. It is his job to ensure that the right to protest is balanced with the right of others not to be intimidated or subjected to mob violence. Causing offence is insufficient grounds for a ban, however hurtful an event may seem. Yesterday, Sir Mark made his case for allowing the march to proceed. There was no absolute power to ban protest, therefore the protest would go ahead unless intelligence suggested serious disorder. No such intelligence had been received. He can do more than follow the law and take precautions. The agreed route will in any case avoid the Cenotaph and not coincide with the two minutes’ silence. If Mr Sunak objects, he should pass an emergency law banning such demonstrations. Sir Mark is a policeman, not a politician. He should be allowed to get on with his job. treatment owing to fear of charges. Creeping privatisation of the dental sector, with corporations buying up practices, has created so-called “dental deserts”, areas largely devoid of NHS practices. Often, practices deregister patients if they fail to attend an appointment or have failed to consult a dentist within a set timeframe. Even in NHS practices the cheap check-up with scale and polish that was the standard in bygone years has transmuted into separate dentist and hygienist appointments costing £100 or more. To this commercialisation is added a shortage of dentists. There are supposedly 43,000 practitioners on the UK register. But, according to the British Dental Association, the professional body, nearly half of its practising members reduced their NHS workload following the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. The association blamed stress and burnout for increasing disillusionment with the profession. There was also widespread dissatisfaction with the NHS dental contract. The system, it said, funded a little over half the population in reality, and restoring funding to the 2010 level would require an additional £880 million per year. The decline in oral health was further highlighted in July when the Commons health and social care committee warned of a “crisis of access” to dentistry. It described as “totally unacceptable” the pain and distress visited upon people for lack of NHS care, not least children. Members called for a radical overhaul of the dentist contract to encourage the taking on of new patients, and those with greater dental need in particular. Britain is thought to spend a lower share of its health budget on dentistry than any European country. The government’s response is a promise to train thousands more dentists and redesign the contract to incentivise practitoners to spend a minimum proportion of their time treating NHS patients. The health department claims progress is being made, citing figures that 1.7 million more adults received NHS dental care between June 2021 and June 2023, compared with the period June 2020 to June 2022. There is, however, much to do. Regular dental treatment is one of the foundations of a functioning health system. It should be a government priority not an optional extra. freed-up workers live longer. That is not because they are taking advantage of relaxed rules to bunk off: productivity among the liberated participants in the Harvard study did not decrease. These findings chime with cultural changes across the developed world. The workforce of today is better educated, less deferential and more sophisticated than it was, say, 50 years ago. People expect, and are equipped to handle, more latitude in performing their tasks. Those jobs, meanwhile, are far more likely to prize creative skills than was once the case. Such skills are not best displayed with the boss peeking over your shoulder. Smart employers already recognise, especially in an era of labour shortages, that attracting talent increasingly means allowing that talent greater autonomy. Everyone benefits. Many studies have shown that executives working long hours under considerable pressure experience less stress and enjoy better health than many of their more junior employees. The crucial difference is that those lower on the ladder lack choice and control, even over the fine details of their job. Successful organisations of the future will be those that find ways of extending the personal sovereignty enjoyed by those at the top to include everyone else. Balancing Act The Metropolitan Police are right to be cautious in curbing the right to demonstrate. But marchers opposing Israel’s actions in Gaza should respect remembrance events These are uncomfortable times for Sir Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan Police commissioner. The prime minister, no less, is breathing down his neck, egged on by a home secretary who glories in lurid hyperbole. The issue is the proposed march on Saturday of people protesting about Israel’s military campaign against Hamas in Gaza. It will be the fifth such demonstration since the outbreak of hostilities after the massacre of 1,400 Israelis and the taking of some 240 hostages by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad on October 7. And it will clash with Armistice Day, what should be a moment for quiet reflection on the sacrifices of Britain’s war dead. Protesters are calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, where the death toll among the Palestinian population is said by the Hamas-controlled health ministry to exceed 10,000. Critics of the demonstrations argue that they are now an embedded part of life in the centre of London at the weekend and deprive those who feel threatened by them, specifically British Jews, of their right to walk the capital’s streets free from intimidation. That debate has been given a sharper edge by the fact that Saturday’s march collides with the remembrance events, culminating in Remembrance Sunday. Rishi Sunak has called upon the organisers to refrain from marching in a Open Wide A rise in oral cancer is another worrying symptom of the decline in NHS dentistry Visiting the dentist can be a life saver. A check-up can detect early signs of oral cancer, a disease that killed more than 3,000 people in Britain in 2021. The condition is on the rise, with cases increasing by almost 50 per cent in the past decade. And according to the Oral Health Foundation, a charity, the poor survival rate for mouth cancers is directly attributable to late diagnosis, much of the problem being due to the decline of NHS dentistry. People have simply stopped having check-ups because of the expense or difficulty involved in booking appointments. This should be a matter of great concern to ministers who have for too long regarded dentistry as a Cinderella component of the NHS that can be safely neglected. When it comes to teeth, the principle of universal healthcare free at the point of delivery has ceased to apply for many, a situation that would not be tolerated in other areas of healthcare. That cost is a factor in deterring people from seeking treatment for themselves and their children is clear. Earlier this year a YouGov poll found that almost a quarter of adults canvassed either delayed appointments or simply went without Free Enterprise A Harvard University study shows micromanagers are bad for employees’ health We hear a lot about the pitfalls of getting involved in matters “above your pay grade.” Now new research from Harvard demonstrates that those over-zealous bosses who meddle in tasks below their supposed status pose problems too. Such micromanaging has more serious consequences than merely upsetting an established hierarchy: the study suggests that it can endanger the actual physical health of the more junior worker. Conversely, when staff are afforded more control over their duties and flexibility as to how, when and where they perform them, their “cardiometabolic risk score” improves. Put simply, UK: King’s Speech debate on clean energy; quarterly figures on mortgage and landlord repossession orders; AstraZeneca plc results; Europa League football. Though we’re deep into the autumn, the tansy is in bloom on the lane. Tansy’s fern-like foliage grows in thick clumps. Its robust, reddish stalks bear clusters of buttonlike, yellow flowers. The name tansy comes from the botanical Latin for immortality: Tanacetum. This might have been a reference to the long-flowering period of the plant, or to the fact that it was once placed in the winding sheets of the dead. Tansy’s astringent smell was said to keep vermin from the corpse. Some people compare the scent to camphor. The plant was also long used as a herbal remedy; tansy tea was drunk to expel internal parasites such as worms. jonathan tulloch In 1961 the music entrepreneur Brian Epstein met the Beatles for the first time, when the band was performing a lunchtime concert at the Cavern Club, Liverpool. Dame Marina Warner, pictured, writer and critic, The Lost Father (1988), 77; Bille August, film director, Pelle the Conqueror (1987), 75; Sébastien Bazin, chairman and chief executive, AccorHotels, 62; Sir Victor Blank, businessman, vice-president, Jewish Leadership Council, chairman, Lloyds Banking Group plc (2006-09), 81; Paule Constable, award-winning lighting designer, War Horse (2011), 57; David Constant, cricket umpire (1971-2001), 82; Lord (Bryan) Davies of Oldham, deputy chief whip, House of Lords (2003-10), 84; David Duval, golfer, the Open champion (2001), 52; Karen Dotrice, actress, Mary Poppins (1964), 68; Lou Ferrigno, actor, The Incredible Hulk (1977-82), 72; Sir John Goldring, deputy investigatory powers commissioner, lord justice of appeal (2008-14), 79; Daphne Guinness, fashion designer, model, film producer and artist, 56; Baroness (Dido) Harding of Winscombe, chairwoman, NHS Test and Trace programme (for Covid-19, 2020-21), NHS Improvement (2017-21), chief executive, TalkTalk Group (2010-17), 56; Prof Sir John Hardy, human geneticist and molecular biologist, chairman of the molecular biology of neurological disease, University College London, 69; Nigel Hirst, president, Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE), 69; Sir George Iacobescu, chairman, Canary Wharf Group, 78; Jackie Kay, poet and playwright, makar (the poet laureate of Scotland, 2016-21), 62; Lord (Roy) Kennedy of Southwark, shadow chief whip (Lords), director of finance, Labour Party (2005-10), 61; Andy Kershaw, broadcaster, 64; Roger McGough, poet, As Far As I Know (2012), Joinedupwriting (2019), Safety in Numbers (2021), 86; Gareth Malone, choirmaster, 48; Ryan Murphy, screenwriter, director and producer, Dahmer — Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story (2022), 58; Tony Slattery, actor, panellist, Whose Line Is It Anyway? (1988-1995), 64; Daniel Zeichner, Labour MP for Cambridge, shadow minister for food, 67. “A minute’s success pays the failure of years.” Robert Browning, English poet, Apollo and the Fates (1887) Nature notes Birthdays today On this day The last word Daily Universal Register

30 2GM Thursday November 9 2023 | the times World Republicans issued a subpoena to Hunter Biden in their most aggressive step so far in the impeachment investigation targeting the White House. James Comer, the Republican chairman of the House oversight committee, which has led the year-long corruption probe into President Biden, said his son Hunter and brother James had been summoned to testify to the inquiry. Comer said the investigation had uncovered a trail of “influence peddling” by the family, which traded on Biden’s name to win contracts overseas. Since regaining the majority in the House in January, Republicans have stepped up the investigation, trying to tie the president to his son’s foreign business dealings. The presidential ambitions of Glenn Youngkin, governor of Virginia, have suffered a significant setback after voters in the southern state turned out in support of abortion rights and handed control of the legislature back to his Democratic rivals. More than a year after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, a string of victories for pro-choice campaigners in state elections on Tuesday night underscored the fact that the issue remains a driving force among voters. In the biggest upset, Youngkin, 56, a rising star touted as a potential late entry in the Republican race for the White House, had pledged to pass a 15-week abortion ban if the party took full control of the state legislature. Instead the Democrats held on to the state senate and flipped the Republican majority in the house of delegates. Virginia is one of the few southern states not to have tightened its abortion restrictions since Roe v Wade — which gave federal protection to a right to abortion — was overturned, and Youngkin had made his plan to pass a 15- week ban central to the campaign. The state is seen as a bellwether for presidential races: at the four most recent state polls held a year before a presidential election, the party that took control of Virginia’s state senate went on to win the White House. The results echoed those in last year’s midterm elections, when Republican hopes were dashed by a backlash from Voters reject star Republican’s hard line on abortion voters over the Supreme Court’s ruling, which has been followed by 24 states, most of them Republican-held, imposing sweeping bans on abortion. Results on Tuesday suggested that the issue continues to mobilise voters, even in staunchly Republican states, despite efforts to rebrand the party’s push for a federal ban if it regains control of Congress next year. Jesse Ferguson, a Democratic strategist, told NBC News that Republicans were still “retooling their message or finding a new slogan . . . to sell people on something that people don’t want.” Ohio In a Republican-leaning state that Trump won by eight points in 2020, voters overwhelmingly backed Issue 1, a ballot initiative to restore the protections of Roe v Wade to the state constitution. Ohio was the seventh state to hold a referendum on abortion rights since Roe was overturned and the seventh victory for pro-choice campaigners. Anti-abortion activists had poured tens of millions of dollars into the Ohio campaign in an attempt to reverse their run of defeats. But just as in Kansas, Kentucky and Montana, other deepred states, Ohio rejected the move. Kentucky Andy Beshear, the Democratic governor, secured a second term in office with a convincing victory in the deep-red state. He won by only 6,000 votes in 2019, but extended his margin of victory to more than 67,000 this time. Although Trump won Kentucky by 25 points in 2020, Beshear, 45, has won plaudits for his handling of a string of crises during his first term, including deadly tornadoes, flooding, a mass shooting and the pandemic. His re-election campaign was founded on preserving abortion rights, painting his Republican challenger Daniel Cameron, the state attorney-general, as an extremist on the issue. Cameron’s campaign had sought to tie Beshear to President Biden, who remains deeply unpopular. The governor kept the White House at a distance, however, focusing on local issues, and his victory could offer a template for other Democrats running in Republican strongholds next year. Pennsylvania The Democrat Dan McCaffery won an open seat on the Pennsylvania supreme court after another campaign that emphasised abortion rights, maintaining a strong Democratic majority on the bench in the key battleground state. Pennsylvania is expected to be one of the handful of swing states that will decide the election next year, and Tuesday’s result was another boost to Democrats heading into the 2024 race. The state’s supreme court is also at the centre of debates over abortion and gun rights and was critical to rejecting Trump’s attempt to overturn his defeat in Pennsylvania in 2020. Mississippi In the other’s governor’s race, the Republican incumbent Tate Reeves held off a strong challenge from Brandon Presley, a distant cousin of Elvis Presley. Reeves, 49, backed by Trump, defeated Presley by five points to hold the deep-red state, which has not had a Democratic governor in 20 years. Brussels paves way for Ukraine to join European Union United States Hugh Tomlinson Washington Brussels has given the green light, with conditions attached, to the opening of membership talks with Ukraine and Moldova next spring in a push for the biggest expansion of the European Union for 20 years. The European Commission’s recommendation will also mark the start of parallel and difficult negotiations between existing member states to reform EU decision-making institutions and budgets to cope with enlargement. “Today is a historic day,” Ursula von der Leyen, the commission president, said. “Completing our union is the call of history.” President Zelensky welcomed the recommendation with personal thanks to Von der Leyen, whose enthusiasm European Union Bruno Waterfield Brussels T wo environmental campaigners blocking a road near Panama City were shot dead at point-blank range, allegedly by a retired university professor enraged at being unable to steer his car through the crowds (Stephen Gibbs writes). The shooting happened on the Pan-American Highway, in the Chame district, about 50 miles southwest of the capital. Video captured by news photographers who were covering the protest shows the suspect walking towards the group of demonstrators and appearing to ask them to move. After a few seconds he takes a pistol out of his trouser pocket and starts to clear the barricade on the motorway, while still arguing with the demonstrators. One can be heard saying: “Why don’t you shoot?” Moments later, he opens fire. The first victim falls to the ground immediately. A second can be seen holding his shoulder, grimacing in pain. The man then continues to clear the road while the crowd shouts at him. He was eventually arrested by the police without resistance. Two protesters shot dead in stand-off with motorist 1 2 Glenn Youngkin’s push for a 15-week abortion ban failed Impeachment inquiry calls Biden’s son Months of investigation have uncovered evidence that during Barack Obama’s presidency, Biden’s son traded on his name to get lucrative deals in China and Ukraine. But the inquiry has yet to show that Biden profited from his son’s affairs. In September, Republicans opened an inquiry into the president in a prelude to bringing full impeachment charges, claiming they had uncovered a “culture of corruption”. Comer said the committee had “built a record of evidence revealing how Joe Biden knew, was involved and benefited from his family’s influence peddling schemes”. He added: “Unlike the many lies President Biden told the American people about his family’s business schemes, bank records don’t lie. These records reveal how the Bidens sold Joe Biden around to the world to benefit the Biden family, including Joe Biden.” The committee has summoned Rob Walker, the son’s former business associate. In a 2020 Walker told the FBI that the president was “never … part of anything we were doing”. He said attempts to tie him to his son’s business affairs were “wishful thinking”. Abbe Lowell, a lawyer for Biden’s son, said the investigation was full of “false, baseless or debunked claims.” The White House has dismissed the investigation as a “baseless stunt” and an attempt to divert attention from Donald Trump’s mounting legal troubles. The former president and frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination faces four criminal cases as he tries to return to the White House. Hugh Tomlinson

the times | Thursday November 9 2023 2GM 31 for Ukraine’s membership has alarmed some European capitals. “This is a strong and historic step that paves the way to a stronger EU with Ukraine as its member,” he said. “This is a pure positive . . . Ukraine must be in the EU.” Ukrainian membership of the bloc is seen across Europe and the United States as an essential step to checking Russia after its invasion last year, but many European countries have reservations about rushing the process. “Ukraine continues to face tremendous hardship and tragedy provoked by Russia’s war of aggression, and yet the Ukrainians are deeply reforming their country,” Von der Leyen said. Kyiv must satisfy the EU that it is addressing concerns about corruption and the rights of Hungarian and Polish minorities before a review at the end of March to formally begin negotiations. The commission has asked Ukraine for extra measures to show it is “fighthave reversed past EU hostility to expansion, in order to shore up the West against Russian influence. However, the new political climate brings an array of problems, including corruption in membership hopefuls, as well as the need for the EU to reform its institutional structures and budgets. Charles Michel, president of the European Council, which brings together the leaders of member states, has set 2030 as the date by which Europe must be ready for enlargement. He will begin talks in “small groups” of EU leaders at dinners in Paris, Berlin, Copenhagen and Zagreb on streamlining European decision-making. As well as limiting national vetoes, Michel wants to tackle the sensitive question of the number of votes allotted to each country when decisions are taken, as well as overhauling EU funding for farmers or poor regions. “We need to reflect on the EU’s capacity to ing corruption, reducing the influence of oligarchs on lawmakers [and ensuring] protection of national minorities” as conditions to ensure that EU leaders sign off on beginning talks at a summit in Brussels next month. Moldova, too, must provide further proof of meeting membership criteria and the European Commission withheld a clear, unconditional approval for Georgia and Bosnia to be given candidate status until both countries took further steps on reform. The plan to bring Ukraine and Moldova into the EU alongside countries from the western Balkans heralds the bloc’s largest enlargement since 2004. After being stalled since Croatia joined in 2013, and amid a backlash over migration as well as the need to contain Russia, the EU has pushed enlargement back on to the agenda. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its backing for coup attempts in Moldova Eye of Meloni turns on Tolkien exhibition Page 32 act and to achieve its objectives,” he said in a letter to EU leaders yesterday. From Margaret Thatcher’s failed efforts to overhaul the common agricultural policy in the 1980s to Europe’s failure to police its borders over the past decade, the bloc’s record on reform is poor and the political will to reform the EU is going to be the real test in capitals such as Berlin, Paris, Rome and Warsaw. Engjellushe Morina, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank, said: “Despite the broad consensus that the EU should expand, most EU member states are not yet engaged in advanced thinking about how to make it happen.” 6 Ukraine accused Russia of striking a civilian grain ship with a missile, hours after the Kremlin foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said the Black Sea grain deal could not be revived. One person was reported to have been killed and another four injured in the attack. Germany’s homeless population rises by half seekers from other countries has posed a formidable challenge to Germany’s immigration system. A straw poll by Der Spiegel magazine found that about 40 per cent of the 125 local authorities in the “safe haven towns” alliance had reached their limit or were close to it. This week the national and state governments struck a deal to try and reduce the “pull” factors for prospective asylum seekers through measures such as replacing cash payments with prepaid grocery cards and lengthening the period they have to wait before they gain full access to public healthcare. Officials will also examine the possibility of sending asylum seekers to a processing centre outside Europe. The problem is compounded by an acute shortage of housing, with the housebuilding sector set to complete fewer than 200,000 homes by the year end, half the government’s target. The number of homeless people in Germany has risen by more than 50 per cent in 12 months, according to a report that found the increase was almost entirely due to a doubling in the number of refugees with no fixed place to stay. Soaring rents, a sharp rise in the broader cost of living and an acute shortage of social housing have compounded the difficulties of finding space for about a million Ukrainians fleeing the invasion of their homeland and the 148,000 non-Ukrainians who applied for asylum in 2022. Many local authorities say they have been stretched to the limits of their capacity and can no longer absorb any more irregular immigrants, with the number of people expected to seek asylum in Germany over the course of 2023 expected to surpass 300,000. Last year about 607,000 people were at least temporarily without a home compared with 383,000 in 2021, the Federal Association for Aid to the Homeless (Bag W), an umbrella group for social services and homeless shelters, estimated. This was the highest level since 2018 and included 411,000 refugees (71 per cent of the total), up from 194,500 in the previous year. Overall, about 50,000 people were forced to sleep on the streets. “Inflation, elevated costs and rising rents are bearing down heavily,” said Werena Rosenke, Bag W’s director. “This leads to poverty, rent arrears and people losing their homes.” The combination of Ukrainian war refugees and a steep rise in asylum Germany Oliver Moody Berlin Growing problem Number of homeless people in Germany, by nationality Source: Federal Association for Aid to the Homeless German Non-German 2021 2022 188,500 194,500 196,000 411,000 Police confirmed that one of the victims, Abdiel Díaz, a teacher, died at the scene. The other, Iván Rodríguez, died shortly afterwards in hospital. President Cortizo expressed his condolences “to the families of the two citizens who lost their lives”. Local media have named the suspect as Kenneth Darlington, 77, a retired lawyer and university professor with joint Panamanian and American nationality. He has a previous conviction for illegal possession of firearms. The motorway demonstration was one of several to have swept Panama in recent weeks. Organised by a powerful construction union alongside teachers’ unions, the protests began last month after the government fast-tracked a contract to the local subsidiary of a Canadian mining company to operate an open-pit copper mine in a richly biodiverse jungle west of the capital. Panama is the 14th largest copper-producing country. Demand for the metal, a key component of electric vehicles, is soaring worldwide. The contract stated the area could be mined for the next 20 years, or 40 if the site remained productive. The government had initially defended the deal, saying it would earn the country $375 million a year. But last week, responding to the protests, Panama’s parliament set a moratorium on new metal mining contracts. The law imposes an indefinite suspension on the mining of metals nationwide. It was reported last week that another demonstrator had been run over and killed in a separate incident. PANAMA 10 miles Pan-American Highway Panama City Chame district Cobre Mine Panama Canal Video captured by news teams who were on the scene to record the ecological protest showed the suspect, identified by local media as a former lawyer, approaching activists, (1 and 2). The suspect then opens fire (3), leaving one dead at the scene (4). Another died in hospital 3 4

32 2GM Thursday November 9 2023 | the times World A woman dubbed the “tenant from hell” has moved out of a luxury Airbnb property in Los Angeles after allegedly refusing to pay rent for 570 days. Elizabeth Hirschhorn was supposed to stay at the guesthouse for six months but became involved in a standoff with the landlord. She requested a $100,000 relocation ‘Tenant from hell’ who avoided rent for year and a half finally leaves United States Keiran Southern Los Angeles fee to move out of the property in the upmarket district of Brentwood, according to the Los Angeles Times, but Sascha Jovanovic, the landlord, baulked at the offer, and he and Hirschhorn sued each other. The Los Angeles Police Department attended the property as she packed her belongings on Friday. Hirschhorn later denied that she had been escorted off the premises by police. Jovanovic, 61, a periodontist, said he was relieved to have his guesthouse back. “I’m a little overwhelmed, but I finally have my home back,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “I had such a peaceful weekend once she left.” Hirschhorn, 55, a Harvard University graduate, moved into Jovanovic’s guesthouse, which features a pool, rooftop tennis court and private patios with views of Los Angeles, in September 2021. Her long-term Airbnb stay was supposed to end the following April but, according to Jovanovic, who lives in the main property, she refused to move out. A judge in Los Angeles, citing the city’s eviction protection laws, said he could not force her to leave. Hirschhorn’s lawyers alleged that the landlord had not obtained the required occupancy licence for the guesthouse, so she did not have to pay rent. Jovanovic was at the house on Friday filming a documentary about his battle with Hirschhorn when three movers arrived. Once they left, leaving the guesthouse empty, he quickly had the locks changed. The saga may not be over: Hirschhorn’s lawyers said Jovanovic may have “jumped the gun” in changing the locks. However, Jovanovic’s lawyers told the Daily Mail that Hirschhorn’s legal team had been told she was not allowed back “and the burden is now on her to go to court to regain possession”. Giorgia Meloni has backed an exhibition in Rome devoted to her literary hero JRR Tolkien, whom she credits with shaping her world view and forging her political identity. The culture ministry spent €250,000 setting up the exhibition about the British author of The Lord of the Rings, a guiding light for the prime minister’s hard-right government. “She liked the idea,” Gennaro Sangiuliano, the culture minister, said yesterday. The exhibition opens at the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome before touring Italy. Meloni, who once liked to dress as a Eye of Meloni turns on Tolkien exhibition hobbit, has described the 1950s trilogy as the most “extraordinary” literary work she has read, claiming it is “full of grand, timeless lessons”. The Lord of the Rings sold 150 million copies and spawned an Oscar-winning series of films between 2001 and 2003. In Italy in the 1970s it was required reading for youth members of the MSI, a party established by former fascists after the Second World War which gave Meloni her start in politics. Readings were held at “Camp Hobbits” for youth members where a rock band called Compagnia dell’Anello (the Fellowship of the Ring) played. Tolkien’s depictions of battles between warring species inspired the militants’ belief in defending national identity, and the author’s line “deep roots are not reached by the frost” became a catchphrase. Suspicion of multiculturalism and globalisation later became a cornerstone of Meloni’s politics when she founded her own party, the Brothers of Italy, an evolution of the MSI. “He raised many of us with his stories packed with values and meaning, teaching us to believe and to dream,” Meloni has said of Tolkien. Sangiuliano denied the exhibition was a pet project of Meloni, claiming he had come up with the idea and the prime minister had also shown support for a show on the 20th-century Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci. Asked if Tolkien was an emblematic figure for the far right, he argued that the writer was an “authentic and sincere conservative” who had battled to “conserve human values”. Tolkien’s defence of those values was more important now than ever as society tried to “reduce people to barcodes”, he said. His words echoed statements made by Meloni about her fears that multinational companies are stripping Italians of their national identity and turning them into unthinking consumers. “Without that identity, we are only numbers, unconscious numbers, tools in the hands of those who want to use us,” she told a conference in Hungary in September. Giuseppe Pezzini, an Italian professor of Latin at Oxford University who helped to set up the exhibition in Rome, said he disagreed with Sangiuliano’s view of Tolkien’s politics. “He was not a conservative, he was more of an anarchist. It is a coincidence Tolkien was adopted by the right in Italy, since hippies were reading him in the United States. There is nothing political about this exhibition,” he said. Italy Tom Kington Rome Giorgia Meloni has long been a fan of Tolkien 189 decaying bodies in funeral home Keiran Southern The owner of a Colorado funeral home and his wife have been arrested after police investigating reports of an “abhorrent smell” discovered the decaying remains of at least 189 bodies. Jon Hallford owns the Return to Nature Funeral Home, 100 miles south of Denver, specialising in environmentally friendly burials. Last month police swooped on the company’s decrepit building in the small town of Penrose after complaints of a foul smell. Investigators initially estimated there were 115 bodies inside but later revised that number to 189. Hallford and his wife, Carrie, were arrested in Wagoner, Oklahoma, on suspicion of abuse of a corpse, money laundering and forgery. The Fremont County sheriff’s office said that it found the bodies stored in a space of about 2,500 sq ft and that they were in such poor condition that identification through DNA could take months. Investigators brought in the FBI and teams that usually deal with airline crashes. “Without providing too much detail to avoid further victimising these families, the area of the funeral home where the bodies were improperly stored was horrific,” Sheriff Allen Cooper said. Hallford acknowledged a “problem” at the building and claimed he practised taxidermy there, officials said. The company was founded in 2017 and offered cremations and “green” burials without embalming fluids, which it claimed was “a natural way of caring for your loved one with minimal environmental impact”. The business was facing financial problems and had missed tax payments, was evicted from one of its properties and was sued for unpaid bills by a crematorium, it was reported. The French Court of Accounts, tasked with ensuring public money is put to good use, is said to have spent €10,000 reprinting its annual report because its president did not like his photograph. Pierre Moscovici, 66, a former economy minister and EU commissioner, is now first president of the court, which issues dozens of reports a year advising public institutions from ministries to the Palace of Versailles on how to spend taxpayers’ money and often admonishing them for perceived waste. Now critics accuse it of throwing away 3,000 copies of its annual report and replacing them unnecessarily. The news website Mediapart said the only difference between the two versions was the photographs of Moscovici, appointed by President Macron in 2020. The initial version had two images of Moscovici, one behind a desk, the other on a Parisian rooftop by the Eiffel Tower. His jacket is unbuttoned and he looks casual. These images were removed in the second version. Detractors said the modification exemplified the high-handed approach of the Parisian elite to taxpayers’ money. Antton Rouget, a journalist at Mediapart, described it as a “€10,000 whim”. Moscovici denied this. “If the question is whether I had a whim about my personal image to the detriment of public funds, the answer is no,” he said. He described the modification as a “simple managerial decision on a public relations tool as in all institutions in contact with the public [and] concerned with the quality of their productions.” The financial stakes were “not massive”, he added. Maia Wirgin, the court’s general secretary, said the wrong version had been sent to the printers. Watchdog ‘wastes cash on reprint’ France Adam Sage Paris Eats shoots and leaves Xiao Qi Ji spent its final day on show at the National Zoo in Washington before returning to China. The zoo’s three pandas will all go home this year in a move that is widely seen as a reflection of strained diplomatic relations

the times | Thursday November 9 2023 33 Business Jack Barnett Economics Correspondent Andrew Bailey has warned that there are “upside risks” on interest rates as he doubled down on efforts to persuade financial markets that the Bank of England would keep policy restrictive for an “extended period”. The governor, speaking at an event hosted by the Central Bank of Ireland, said that the Bank of England was “not talking about” loosening monetary policy. He said that the battle against inflation had moved into a “second half” in which tighter interest rates would “have to do the work”. The annual rate of inflation is forecast to have fallen sharply to 4.8 per cent in October, from 6.7 per cent in September, mainly thanks to a favourable comparison with the energy price surge in the same month last year. Bailey’s comments cut across remarks made by Huw Pill, the Bank of England’s chief economist, this week in which he opened the door to lowering interest rates later next year. Pill said that kicking off the monetary loosening cycle in the second half of 2024 “doesn’t seem totally unreasonable, at least to me”. Those remarks prompted traders to pile into UK government bonds, pushing the yield on the twoyear gilt to its lowest point since June. Bailey said it was “really too early to be talking about cutting rates”, adding that “the market will of course reach a view … we are saying policy is going to have to be restrictive for an extended period”. The Bank of England is trying to shape financial market expectations Oct 11 18 25 Nov 1 8 Oct 11 18 25 Nov 1 8 Oct 11 18 25 Nov 1 8 Oct 11 18 25 Nov 1 8 Oct 11 18 25 Nov 1 8 Oct 11 18 25 Nov 1 8 1.400 1.300 1.200 1.100 1.300 1.200 1.100 1.000 commodities currencies $ $ 2,200 2,000 1,800 1,600 FTSE 100 7,401.72 (-8.32) 8,500 8,000 7,500 7,000 world markets Brent crude (6pm) $79.31 (-2.82) Dow Jones 34,112.27 (-40.33) $ £/$ $1.2300 (+0.0006) £/€ €1.1479 (-0.0025) ¤ (Change on the day) 120 100 80 60 Gold $1,954.06 (-12.92) 37,500 35,000 32,500 30,000 The UK’s biggest semiconductor manufacturer has been acquired by an American rival after the government forced its owner to sell the business over its links to China. Vishay agreed to buy Newport Wafer Fab (NWF) from Nexperia for $177 million in cash yesterday, bringing to an end a year of uncertainty about American rival buys chip maker after UK forces Chinese owner to sell Katie Prescott Technology Business Editor the future of the facility and its 500 staff. The US semiconductor company, which is based in Seattle and listed on the New York stock exchange, has pledged to invest in the south Wales company and grow the workforce. Nexperia, a Dutch microchip business, acquired the 86 per cent of NWF it did not already own in 2021 for £63 million. A year later, the government retrospectively reviewed the deal under new national security legislation because its parent company is the Chinese technology business Wingtech. After a drawn-out process, Grant Shapps, then business secretary, ruled last November that Nexperia would have to dispose of its majority stake in NWF. The government said that UK capabilities could be “undermined” if sophisticated microchips were to be produced by NWF. It also outlined a risk that other companies in south Wales, which is renowned for its semiconductor research, could be prevented from “being engaged in future projects relevant to national security”. Nexperia attempted to challenge the decision, hiring Lord Pannick KC to take the case, but the sale proceeded. Vaughan Gething, the Welsh economy minister, welcomed the news that jobs would be protected by the Vishay deal. “Global demand for semiconductors is set to explode in the coming years and Newport is perfectly placed to turn that growth into more longterm, quality careers,” he said. Joel Smejkal, president and chief executive of Vishay, said: “With its solid balance sheet and ample liquidity, Vishay will immediately bring stability and its reliable cash-flow generation to ensure the facility becomes a fully operational and profitable fab.” The transaction will automatically be reviewed by the government under the National Security Act. Max Kendix The estimated cost of Britain’s largest private sector infrastructure project to build a fertiliser mine in Yorkshire has tripled in seven years. Anglo American’s Woodsmith project involves extracting polyhalite, a nutrient-rich fertiliser, from a mile beneath the North York Moors National Park, near Whitby, and transporting it on a conveyor belt through a 23-mile tunnel to Teesside for processing. Tom McCulley, head of Anglo American’s crop nutrients division, said estimates of $9 billion costs to construct the mine were “not too far off”. In 2017 Sirius Minerals, the previous owner of the mine, estimated a $2.9 billion cost, with production to start in 2021 and an increase to ten million tonnes a year by next year. Since Anglo acquired Sirius in 2020 for £405 million, it has distanced itself from previous cost estimates. In February it delayed the start of production until 2027 and booked a write-down of $1.7 billion, citing an “extended project and ramp-up schedule”. Richard Hatch, an analyst at Berenberg, the bank, said: “It’s not a surprise that the [capital expenditure] numbers Sirius put out ... were a bit optimistic. Anglo has come in and given it goldplated treatment.” McCulley said he would not commit to a final cost of the project until 2025. The FTSE 100 mining giant says it will spend $800 million this year, and $1 billion each following year until production begins. It aims to produce five million tonnes of polyhalite a year by 2030, before increasing to 13 million tonnes a year. The costs are focused on the sinking of two shafts to the deepest level in Europe, at one mile, and completing the tunnel to the processing plant and port near Redcar. There will be a further cost to develop the infrastructure to safely and efficiently extract the polyhalite. Interest rates likely to stay higher for longer Too early to talk of cuts, says Bailey about when it will begin cutting interest rates. Last week the monetary policy committee (MPC) said the UK base rate would need to remain high for some time in order to reduce inflation, which the group forecast would not reach the 2 per cent target until the end of 2025. At that meeting last Thursday, the nine-strong MPC held the base rate at 5.25 per cent for the second meeting in a row, raising hopes that the Bank had concluded its tightening cycle, the most aggressive since the 1980s. The Federal Reserve, the American central bank, is also wrestling with traders’ interest rate expectations. Last week Jerome Powell, chairman of the Fed, said he was “not confident” that US interest rates were restrictive enough to curb price growth and he left the door open to further tightening at the latest federal open market committee gathering. Markets think US rates have peaked and that they will start to be lowered as early as May. Stagnant economic growth in the UK over the next 12 months and a gradual fall in inflation would increase the chances of the Bank cutting interest rates in the second half of next year. Financial markets have priced in the first cut in either August or September. Bailey, 64, said that Brexit had eroded ties with key trading partners, weighing on the UK economy’s potential. Brexit “has led to a reduction in the openness of the UK economy, though over time new trading relationships around the world should, and I expect will, be established”, he added. Woodsmith mine a money pit for Anglo as costs triple Stepping out Ralph Lauren, worn by the actress Lily James, beat Wall Street estimates for second-quarter results as US shoppers bought its pricey clothes and Chinese demand recovered. Net revenue rose more than 3 per cent to $1.63 billion

34 Thursday November 9 2023 | the times Business It reported a net loss of $509 million in the quarter, driven by employee stock compensation costs. The company said its flotation generated a large one-time expense for previously granted shares and that future employee estimates of $767.84 million. For Arm’s second quarter to September 30, revenue rose by 28 per cent to $806 million from $630 million in the same three months a year ago and ahead of an average estimate of $744.31 million. 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400p May 5, 2017 Names Archie Norman, the retail veteran, chairman of M&S Feb 27, 2019 Agrees £750m Ocado food delivery joint venture Nov 6, 2019 Norman rules out break up of the clothing and food retailer Nov 4, 2020 Slumps to first loss in its history as a public company amid increased costs and redundancies during pandemic May 26, 2021 Signs of turnaround emerge after boosting profit forecasts Mar 10, 2022 Appoints Stuart Machin as chief executive alongside Katie Bickerstaffe, replacing Steve Rowe after six years in the job May 24, 2023 Annual profits beat City expectations Aug 15, 2023 Forecasts “significant improvement” in first half in unscheduled trading update Aug 30, 2023 Return to FTSE 100 index confirmed Sep 23, 2019 Demoted from the FTSE 100 premier index for first time 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 Norman’s wisdom M&S share price stock compensation costs were expected to be between $150 million and $200 million per quarter. Arm is backed by many of its major clients that signed up as cornerstone investors in the initial public offering, including Apple, Nvidia, Alphabet, Advanced Micro Devices, Intel and Samsung Electronics. Arm was founded in 1990 as a joint venture between Acorn, Apple and VLSI Technology. It has 5,963 employees, 2,785 of them based in the UK. It creates the blueprints for microchips and licences and claims that 70 per cent of the world’s population uses Armbased products. Arm shares were $3.79, or 7 per cent, lower at $50.61 in after-hours trading on Wall Street. Arm Holdings, the UK chip designer, marked its maiden results as a New York-listed public company last night by forecasting full-year sales ahead of expectations, powered by a wave of companies designing new chips amid a boom in artificial intelligence applications. The technology company, which floated on the Nasdaq exchange in September at $51 a share, said it expected annual revenue for the 2024 financial year to be in a range with a midpoint of $3.02 billion, above analysts’ expectations of $2.95 billion. For the present third quarter, Arm expects a revenue range with a midpoint of $760 million, below analysts’ 1 People with bosses who micromanage are at higher risk of heart attacks and strokes. For employees likely to develop heart problems, the risk fell to that of someone ten years younger after managers gave them control over their time and tasks. 2 UK workers will miss out on £17,000 from lost growth in real pay by the end of this year, economists say. A sharp slowdown in real income growth, after a 17-year squeeze, will leave living standards where they were in 2006, according to analysis by PwC. 3 Andrew Bailey, governor of the Bank of England, has warned that there are “upside risks” on interest rates as he doubled down on efforts to persuade financial markets that the central bank would keep monetary policy restrictive for an “extended period”. 4 The UK’s biggest semiconductor manufacturer has been acquired by a US rival after the government forced its owner to sell the business over its links to China. Vishay agreed to buy Newport Wafer Fab from Nexperia for $177 million in cash yesterday. 5 The cost of Britain’s largest private sector infrastructure project, a Yorkshire fertiliser mine, has tripled in seven years to $9 billion. Anglo American’s Woodsmith project involves extracting polyhalite, a fertiliser, from beneath the North York Moors National Park. 6 The lengthy turnaround of Marks & Spencer has begun to pay dividends with the retailer confirming its first payout in almost four years. The chain posted adjusted pre-tax profits of £360.2 million for the six months to the end of September, up from £205.5 million a year earlier. 7 SoftBank had to pay another $1.5 billion related to its backing of WeWork days before the office-sharing company filed for bankruptcy. The payment was made to banks including Goldman Sachs after it offered guarantees that helped WeWork secure a “letter of credit” in 2019. 8 Inquiries from would-be buyers, agreed sales and property prices are all still falling and estate agents are not optimistic that the housing market will pick up any time soon. In the latest poll from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, the majority recorded another decline. 9 ITV is cutting back spending on new productions as it braces for a sharp downturn in advertising over the festive season. The broadcaster expects advertising income to drop by 10 to 15 per cent in November and December compared with last year, when revenue was buoyed by the World Cup. 10Partner pay at BDO has fallen for the second year in a row as Britain’s fifthlargest accountancy firm opted to pump millions into its audit business, which has come in for criticism from regulators. Need to know Shareholders tuck in after M&S recovery pays dividends The lengthy turnaround of Marks & Spencer has begun to pay dividends with the retailer confirming its first shareholder payout in almost four years alongside a “massive beat” in its firsthalf profits. The 139-year-old chain, which returned to the FTSE 100 premier share index in September, posted adjusted pre-tax profits of £360.2 million for the six months to the end of that month, up from £205.5 million a year earlier. The profits were well ahead of City forecasts of about £276 million and revenues rose to £6.1 billion from £5.5 billion a year ago. Marks & Spencer, which had raised forecasts in a trading update in August when it guided to a “significant improvement”, said yesterday that “surprisingly resilient” consumer demand and the closure of shops by rival retailers had bolstered trading during the first six months of the financial year. Both customer numbers and market share increased in its food and clothing and home businesses, it said. Volume growth and reduced promotions helped like-for-like food sales rise 11.7 per cent, while higher-thanexpected full-price sales, “improvements in style perceptions” and strong holiday wear and denim demand lifted clothing and home sales by 5.5 per cent. Stuart Machin, 53, who was promoted to chief executive in May last year by the chairman Archie Norman, 69, said “in many ways it was just the beginning”. With City analysts scrambling to raise full-year consensus forecasts to £640 million from £570 million, shares in the retailer, which had already rallied 77 per cent this year, climbed another 19p, or 8.4 per cent, to 244p, their highest since January last year on the London Stock Exchange. It scrapped dividends in March 2020 as the pandemic hit but yesterday confirmed plans to reintroduce the shareholder payout as its turnaround gathered pace. It has declared a “modest” interim dividend of 1p per share. Despite a wet October, which had led to concerns about dampened sales, it said the “momentum” in trading had been maintained through the month, with customers responding positively to its Christmas ranges. Machin said Christmas food to order was already up 25 per cent on last year. However, it said “there will be challenges and headwinds in the year ahead and progress won’t be linear”. It said it was “not relying on the favourable recent market conditions persisting”, amid the highest interest rates in 20 years, deflation, geopolitical events and “erratic weather”. It expects profits to be weighted towards the first half. The company has been striving to turn itself around after years of concerns that it had lost its way and after it fell out of the FTSE 100 in 2019. It has been closing dozens of larger shops and refurbishing others and stocking thirdparty brands, most recently Estée Lauder fragrances in September, as part of a campaign to refresh its offering without alienating its core customers, who are aged 50 to 60, by targeting a younger audience. Machin, who is co-chief executive alongside Katie Bickerstaffe, said: “If we serve our customers well, we serve our shareholders well and our unrelenting focus on trusted value is matched by disciplined capital allocation. We have further strengthened our balance sheet and net debt position, with an interim dividend payment being made to shareholders for the first time in four years.” Analysts at Jefferies said the retailer was benefiting from the “same trends as Next on the clothing and home side and Tesco and Sainsbury’s on food”. Clive Black, an analyst at Shore Capital, Marks & Spencer’s joint house broker, said the retailer had “confirmed the completion of a quite staggeringly successful first half”. Peel Hunt said Marks & Spencer was “making strong steps towards a full recovery”. It added: “The food offer is as good as it has ever been and the clothing and homeware ranges are improving but not quite there yet.” Alex Ralph Chief Business Correspondent Ocado tie-up ‘will not bear fruit for years’ It will take more than three years for Marks & Spencer’s underperforming grocery joint venture with Ocado to reach its potential, the group’s chief executive has said. Marks & Spencer posted a loss of £23.4 million yesterday for its share of the partnership in the first half of the year, up from a £700,000 loss a year ago, and it remains one of the main challenges in the turnaround of the food-to-clothing retail group. The £750 million 50-50 venture, called Ocado Retail, was struck four years ago after Ocado’s partnership with Waitrose ended, and was designed to catapult the 139-year-old retailer’s online grocery business. Trading boomed during the pandemic but growth has slowed and Archie Norman, chairman of Marks & Spencer, told investors at the annual meeting in the summer that he was “not happy” with its performance. Analysts say that it is the “thorn in the side” of M&S’s Robert Miller Alex Ralph AI boom helps Arm to lift sales above expectations Instacart delivers healthy earnings Instacart forecast fourth-quarter core profit above analysts’ estimates in its first earnings report since floating on the Nasdaq in September, boosted by higher transaction and advertisement fees. The grocery delivery firm also announced a $500 million share repurchase programme. It expects presentquarter adjusted earnings of $165 million to $175 million. Analysts expected $155.6 million. The company posted a net loss of $2 billion in the third quarter. Total revenue rose 14 per cent to $764 million; analysts expected $736.9 million. Shares were up $1.16, or 4.3 per cent, at $28.32.

the times | Thursday November 9 2023 2GM 35 Business It’s cream cake and sequins at Marks Q uite remarksable. Another set of figures from Marks & Spencer and the shares go up again. What is going on at Britain’s knickers-tonoodles emporium? Much more of this and Sir Philip “Effing” Green will turn up with a bid. True, M&S is still well adrift of 2004, when a former chief could indulge in a punch-up over a £4-ashare takeover tilt. Even if the retailer has just “blown the bloody doors off”, as Clive Black of the broker Shore Capital put it, coming over all Michael Caine, the half-year results still left the shares at only 244.1p — despite an 8 per cent leap. But no one can miss the progress, driven home by the first dividend after four years: a token 1p. Under the “positively dissatisfied” mantra of the chief executive, Stuart Machin, the shares have doubled in a year: a move broadly justified by the prettier figures. Profit before one-offs, totalling £34.6 million, leapt 75 per cent to £360 million pre-tax, way ahead of Shore’s estimate of £287 million: a gap big enough to make you wonder if the investor relations wing had been lowballing guidance to produce a nice surprise. Both sides of the business look in their best shape for years. On the food front, M&S has always played the quality card. However, as well as upgrades to 500 products, it’s also becoming better value: a £30 million spend on lowering prices across 200 products and locking them in on 150 more. The result? Market share gains, helped by a lacklustre Waitrose, and underlying sales up 11.7 per cent — even if Machin is doing his bit for heart-attack Britain with his cream cake refurb “so there is more cream than cake”. As for the togs, he’s particularly taken with his “Sequin Round Neck Midi Bodycon” frock: a sparkly number ideal for all executives, with 5,000 sold last week. Like-for-like sales across the clobber rails rose 5.5 per cent, with Machin thrilled with women’s denim and “casual bottoms”. Operating margins rose from 9.8 per cent to 12.1 per cent, with the M&S chief also benefiting from the efforts of his predecessor, Steve Rowe, to wean the group off promotions. Full-price sales were 82 per cent of the mix. Indeed, Machin has inherited several of Rowe’s nuts-and-bolts fixes, even if the Ocado joint venture is no great gift yet. But the chap in charge since May last year has also upped the pace, not least over the store estate. M&S says it’s “been constrained by its historic failure to modernise a legacy store base”. And Machin is set on having 180 “full line” stores, down from 244, and 400 foodies by 2028. New or revamped stores are trading ahead of plan. What could go wrong? Well, M&S warned of an “uncertain” outlook. And the chairman, Archie Norman, noted that, despite five successive sets of upbeat figures, it lucked out in the last half from togs rivals going bust and food ones investing less. Yet he also said: “We are in the foothills of what we can achieve.” M&S can flatter to deceive. But Shore lifted full-year estimates by 12 per cent to £646 million, where the shares trade on 11 times forecast earnings. Not remarksable value, maybe, but hardly pricey. Easy pickings A nother day, another “brand thief” — at least in the imagination of Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, the Monaco-based billionaire with a humour bypass who thinks he invented the word “easy”. This time it’s the Whitbreadowned Premier Inn. The easyJet founder has spotted that, since 2021, its purple sign has been adorned with the tagline “Rest easy”. And what better red rag to an orange man than that? Stelios has recalled that he also has something to do with hotels, or at least lossmaking ones, and has run off to the High Court — again. Over “nearly three decades”, he says, he’s “built a substantial reputation in the hotel business”, what with his brand being planted on easyHotel and the airline even putting people up in hotels. And look at this, along comes the robber Premier Inn to “unfairly take advantage” of his “efforts”. Where does anyone sane begin? As Premier Inn says in its defence, it has 840 hotels in Britain versus easyHotel’s 18: ones that delivered £492 million of adjusted pre-tax profits last year versus easyHotel’s £2.3 million pre-tax losses and £4 million net loss. On top, “the phrase ‘rest easy’ is a common English one that means both to ‘sleep easy’ and ‘not to worry’ ”. So, why has Stelios “any right to prevent use of this ordinary English phrase?” Besides, why would Premier Inn want to be associated with easyHotel? Here are the top reviews on Tripadvisor for easyHotel’s London Victoria lodgings: “This is the most horrendous hotel experience I’ve ever had”; “Horrific to the point that all you could do is laugh … boarding kennels are £30 a night and you’d have better facilities and more room”; “Absolutely disgusting”; “What’s this? A cell for inmates?” You get the picture. Stelios should rest easy. Premier Inn really isn’t trying to copy his reputation in the hotel business. At this rate M ore mixed messages from the Bank of England. It’s only a week ago that its nine ratesetters published a 105- page “monetary policy report” — a considered view, you’d hope, given its length. So why, days after holding rates at 5.25 per cent, did one of them, the chief economist, Huw Pill, feel compelled to freewheel about a rate cut in the second half of next year not seeming “totally unreasonable” — so provoking the guv’nor, Andrew Bailey, into warning that it’s “too early … to be talking about cutting rates”? The members of the monetary policy committee aren’t big on credibility, but they’d have a little more if they issued their reports and shut up. [email protected] business commentary Alistair Osborne Anglian sees window of opportunity at Safestyle The owner of Anglian Windows has acquired the order book of Safestyle UK, the window and door manufacturer that collapsed last week. Administrators said that while the deal for the orders and other assets was finalised, Anglian would fulfil orders for Safestyle customers via a temporary subcontractor arrangement. The arrangement includes those customers who were midway through the installation process, as well as those who had booked an installation. Safestyle, a listed business with sales of £154.3 million last year, fell into administration last week and 680 of its 755 staff were immediately made redundant. Orders have been left unfulfilled, with other jobs half done. Peter Mottershead, executive chairman of Anglian Home Improvements, the owner of Anglian Windows, said: “We hope that this will go some way towards alleviating the concern and burden on those Safestyle customers who have been impacted. “Our customer service teams will be making contact with customers to arrange completion of orders, prioritising those who were partway through the installation process. “I can also confirm that Anglian will honour the terms of the contract, including the price, that had previously been agreed.” Customers had feared they would be left to arrange for jobs to be completed at their own expense. Rick Harrison, joint administrator of Safestyle, said the arrangement would give customers “the certainty and peace of mind that their home improvement projects can now be completed”. On Friday Safestyle, one of the UK’s largest window and door makers, said it was poised to move into liquidation. The company was founded in 1992 and listed on Aim in 2013. It had 42 branches and depots in the UK. Management blamed a difficult economic environment and weakening consumer demand for the collapse but there are questions over whether they could have acted more quickly to arrest its decline. Grant Thornton, its auditor, is also facing scrutiny for signing off its accounts seven months ago without a “going concern” warning. Interpath, the administrators, did not say which other assets Anglian would buy, nor the value of the transaction. James Hurley turnaround and has yet to establish itself as bosses had envisaged. Stuart Machin, chief executive of Marks & Spencer, said the recovery strategy at Ocado Retail was showing signs of progress, with active customers up, lifted by a price-drop campaign and an increase in the M&S range available on Ocado’s website. Service improvements had been made, with “on time and in full” orders up 6 per cent since January and a new robotic warehouse had opened in Luton and operations in Hatfield ended. However, losses increased partly due to the costs from new and excess capacity. Machin said: “We have to be very objective. Hannah [Gibson, Ocado Retail’s chief executive] always says to me, ‘It’d be great if you could talk positively about Ocado’. The fact is when we’ve just had a half-year loss of £23 million and you see the opportunity we’re positively dissatisfied. We’re very positive about the potential of Ocado ... I think that potential is going to be realised in three-plus years ... The long-term plan for Ocado is exciting. It’s a brilliant opportunity for our food business. In the short term, the reset is critically important.” It remains unclear whether M&S will make a final instalment payment of £190.7 million as part of the tie-up signed in 2019. SoftBank lost $1.5bn as WeWork sank SoftBankhad to pay another $1.5 billion related to its backing of WeWork days before the office-sharing company filed for bankruptcy. The payment was made to banks including Goldman Sachs after SoftBank offered guarantees that helped WeWork secure a “letter of credit” from the lenders in 2019, bankruptcy filings show. It takes the Japanese technology investor’s commitments to WeWork to more than $16 billion since 2017, according to the Financial Times. WeWork filed for bankruptcy protection in the United States this week as part of a restructuring plan designed to free the group from most of its debts and from onerous leases that resulted in it racking up huge losses in recent years. Debts will be converted into equity in the group, wiping out most of its existing shareholders. SoftBank, which backed WeWork with a combination of debt and equity, may be able to recoup some of its money as a shareholder in the restructured firm if the turnaround plan succeeds. WeWork was founded in 2010 by Adam Neumann, 44, and his wife, Rebekah, 45, offering shared working spaces that are popular with freelancers, startups and small businesses. SoftBank was founded more than four decades ago by Masayoshi Son, 66, and is known for making billion-dollar bets on technology companies, with a varied track record. Arm, the semiconductor architect, has been one of its biggest successes, and high-profile failures include Theranos, Greensill Capital and FTX. Son first supported WeWork with $4 billion in 2017 after a 12-minute tour of one of its New York sites. WeWork was valued at $47 billion in 2019 but was forced to abandon a planned initial public offering that year. Neumann was ousted and SoftBank agreed to inject billions more through a rescue package that included the letter of credit agreement with the Goldmanled banks. WeWork eventually listed with a $9 billion valuation in 2021. SoftBank paid the banks $1.5 billion on October 31 after WeWork failed to meet interest and rent payments, the bankruptcy filings show. Emily Gosden

36 Thursday November 9 2023 | the times Business Average sales per branch in past quarter Average stock per agent 40 30 20 10 0 100 80 60 40 20 0 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 Harbour doubts Source: RICS Estate agents remain gloomy as buyer inquiries continue to fall Inquiries from would-be buyers, agreed sales and property prices are all still falling and estate agents are not optimistic that the housing market will pick up any time soon. For each of the past 18 months, agents have reported a fall in the number of people contacting them to buy a property. In the latest poll from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics), the majority recorded another decline, although at a net 28 per cent the reading was the least negative since May. The continuing drop-off in interest from prospective buyers was affecting agents and surveyors across “virtually all parts of the UK”, Rics said. Demand for houses was weakest in Wales, where the market boomed during the pandemic, with a “much flatter picture” in parts of the northwest of England and Northern Ireland. The rapid rise in mortgage rates over the past year or so, coupled with expectations that prices have some way further to fall, has slowed the market. A net 25 per cent of estate agents surveyed said they had agreed fewer sales in October than they had in the previous month. Most expected that downward trend to continue over the coming months and were not predicting much of a recovery next year: come next October the expectation was that they would agree the same number of sales as they had this time around. The general absence of forced sellers, a reflection of still-strong employment across the UK, meant few people were putting their houses up for sale and were instead waiting until the market improved, adding to the stasis. For the fifth month in a row, the consensus among estate agents and surveyors in the Rics survey was that the number of new homes coming to the market fell again in October. The number of valuations they were called out to also slipped again, suggesting that supply was unlikely to pick up soon. Some economists have suggested that the relative resilience of property prices was because of the dearth of homes available to buy, skewing the balance between demand and supply. However, the feeling on the ground is that prices are falling a bit faster than suggested by the monthly house price reports. The organisation’s headline house price metric “remains deeply negative”, with a net 63 per cent of those polled reporting another drop in prices last month. Agents and surveyors expect prices to be lower in three months’ time and lower still a year from now. Prices are under most pressure across the Midlands and Yorkshire and the Humber, with agents in Scotland and Northern Ireland less downbeat than most of their peers elsewhere across the UK. “Plenty of caution remains evident with respect to both buyer and seller activity across the UK housing market, albeit the latest survey feedback points to a slightly less negative picture than that reported over the previous few months,” Tarrant Parsons, senior economist at Rics, said. “Although base interest rates have now been kept on hold at each of the past two MPC [monetary policy committee] meetings, the Bank of England was keen to emphasise that monetary policy is set to stay at a restrictive setting for quite some time yet. “As such, mortgage affordability will remain stretched over the near term, leaving little prospect of a strong rebound in residential sales volumes, even if expectations have now moved away from cyclical lows.” In the rental market, the number of properties available to let continued to decline while letting agents reported another rise in demand last month. Reflecting that, the vast majority of respondents said that rents, which were already at record highs, were likely to rise again over the next few months. Tom Howard Ministers consider regulating ESG ratings sector Agencies that rate the environmental, social and governance performance of businesses face government regulation amid concerns that poor-quality benchmarks risk distorting markets. Proposals for rules designed to improve standards in the ESG ratings industry are expected to be issued early next year. Tens of trillions of dollars worth of investment are monitored via measures of companies’ sustainability credentials. However, there have been complaints that ESG ratings and indexes arise from inconsistent standards and measures, making it difficult for investors, fund managers and customers to base fair assessments upon them. “Greenwashing” is thought to have been another consequence, whereby businesses exaggerate their environmental credentials in order to secure a better rating and therefore access “sustainable” funds. The Financial Conduct Authority has told the ESG industry that the way “data and ratings are incorporated into benchmark methodologies could increase the risk of poor disclosures” and that the overall quality of ESG benchmarks was poor. The Treasury is examining whether regulating ESG agencies would require new legislation or could be achieved under existing laws, the Financial Times reported. This follows an industry consultation. Citing unnamed sources, the newspaper reported that although a standalone regulator had not been ruled out, expanding the remit of the City regulator was more likely. The European Commission has proposed rules for ESG ratings providers, including greater disclosure of their methodologies. Last year, The Economist published a report which concluded that ESG was an “unholy mess that needs to be ruthlessly streamlined”. The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, an industry group in the United States, has said that inconsistencies among ratings providers would “inevitably lead to a mispricing of stocks, bonds and funds”. In September, Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, said that companies in the defence industry were being “excluded from access to debt and equity capital” on ESG grounds. He said that companies providing ESG ratings “should be clearer on their methodology and more prompt to correct errors”. In April, MSCI, a financial research firm that provides sustainability evaluations, made changes to its ratings methodology, which meant 31,000 funds suffered a one-off downgrade. The Treasury was approached for comment. James Hurley Standard Chartered to face trial over Iran sanctions Standard Chartered, the London-listed emerging markets bank, has failed in an attempt to have allegations that it breached American sanctions on Iran on an “industrial scale” stripped from a High Court lawsuit. The FTSE 100 lender is being sued by a group of more than 200 investors over claims that the bank misled them about the extent of its violations. Standard Chartered has already paid out more than $1.7 billion in penalties to British and US authorities in 2012 and 2019 for breaching sanctions on Iran and other countries. But the investors claim that the bank’s non-compliance was worse than it admitted four years ago and that its violations were “more widespread and systematic”. The lender had sought to have these allegations, which it denies, removed from the lawsuit but yesterday a judge ruled that they should go to trial. The bank said it acknowledged the decision but that Standard Chartered had “fully complied with its reporting and disclosure obligations throughout the relevant period”. A spokesman for the bank said: “We regard this claim as being without merit and will continue to vigorously defend the allegations as the claim proceeds to trial.” While based in London, Standard Chartered’s operations are focused overseas in the fast-growing emerging markets of Asia, Africa and the Middle East. The group was created in 1969, when Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China merged with Standard Bank of British South Africa. The lender is led by Bill Winters, group chief executive since 2015 and a former senior investment banker at JP Morgan Chase. Winters said in 2019, when the group agreed to pay $1.1 billion to authorities in the US and UK for sanctions violations, that the circumstances of the breaches had been “completely unacceptable”. The bank also agreed a $667 million settlement with the American authorities in 2012 over similar charges and entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the US Justice Department. A trial on the investors’ lawsuit is expected in 2026. Shares in Standard Chartered slipped by 2½p, or 0.4 per cent, to close at 619¾p in London yesterday, leaving the bank valued at more than £16 billion by the stock market. Ben Martin Banking Editor Enterprise Network News, inspiration and advice for business leaders on how to run and grow their companies Sign up now for the weekly newsletter for tips and insight from entrepreneurs thetimes.co.uk/ten

the times | Thursday November 9 2023 37 Comment Business Defined benefit pension scheme to put Clara superfund to the test Former staff at Miss Selfridge are guinea pigs in a pensions trial A m I alone in finding the Bank of England’s inflation narrative rather confusing? The monetary policy committee (MPC) recently voted 6-3 to keep the Bank rate at 5.25 per cent and continue quantitative tightening. Monetarists had warned that broad money, the amount of money circulating in the economy, had contracted this year, suggesting policy was too tight and could deliver a recession and belowtarget inflation within 18 months. Yet the MPC stood firm, viewing a tight-money spending squeeze as essential to reduce inflation from 6.7 per cent to its 2 per cent target. Peruse the Bank’s website, however, and a section titled “What caused high inflation in the UK?” offers a different perspective. High inflation was caused by the pandemic, the war in Ukraine and workers leaving the labour market, it suggests. These “three shocks” raised energy and food prices, as well as wages, pushing up other prices. There’s no mention of any Bank missteps on money playing a role. The idea that the Bank did not create inflation but is crucial to fighting it seems self-serving. The pandemic and Ukraine war undoubtedly harmed our economy’s capacity, raising prices. But if supply shocks alone caused high inflation, this impact would have been very short-lived. Andrew Bailey, the governor, might have reasonably argued against tightening policy at all, deeming it unnecessary and potentially damaging. He quickly abandoned that line because the Bank’s initial Shaggy defence (“it wasn’t me”) was simply not credible. Nominal, or money, GDP was 4.8 per cent over its pre-pandemic trend by the middle of this year, clear evidence that a large chunk of the inflation we’ve seen came from too much stimulus pushing up economy-wide spending. An honest account of this is critical because some analysts are overcomplicating what needs to happen to get inflation back down. There’s been talk, for example, of reviving a 1982 policy idea by the economists Richard Jackman and Richard Layard for a tax on wage increases, echoing 1970s income policies. Championed by Sushil Wadhwani, a former MPC member who is on the chancellor’s council of economic advisers, the government would set a baseline of a 3 per cent rise in hourly earnings per year, above which any further increase would be taxed at 100 per cent. If an employer wanted to raise a worker’s pay by 5 per cent it would cost them the equivalent to a 7 per cent increase. He suggests this penalty would cool expectations of inflation, helping deliver the Bank’s target without triggering more unemployment. This tax — less of a wage ceiling, more a “canopy” — ignores that wages often rise not solely because of inflation but due to changes in job markets and employee performance. Firms rewarding rising productivity or trying to attract or retain staff through raising pay would be hit with a hefty tax, creating huge labour market distortions. To remain competitive while avoiding the tax, affected firms would jack up non-wage benefits or shift work to “self-employed” contractors. Policing evasion would necessitate a large government bureaucracy, with compliance a thankless task in a world with individual contracts rather than collective bargaining. That’s before we address other complexities: would there be tax rebates for earnings increases below 3 per cent? What about bonuses? Promotions? The policy’s critical flaw, of course, is that it targets an inflation symptom — wage growth — rather than the real culprit: excess money. If you want to lower inflation expectations credibly, you ultimately have to set a monetary policy consistent with getting the expectations you want. You can fiddle with price controls and taxes all you like, but that doesn’t solve the underlying issue if there’s been excess money; it merely suppresses monetary inflation from being seen in prices until the tax is removed. One would like to think, observing the Bank’s newfound inflationfighting toughness, the government wouldn’t seriously consider such a proposal. However, given the Bank and government continue to downplay money’s role in driving the inflation, can we be confident such a policy is off the table? Ryan Bourne Imagine a financial services business that somehow has to get by with just a few hundred customers. It has no ability to win new ones and knows that even those it does look after will dwindle over time. It has to run its own board, dedicated staff and a costly roster of outside accountants, lawyers and consultants. Oh, and it is highly regulated. Welcome to the quaint world of defined benefit (DB) pension schemes. Today there are more than 5,000 of these beasts, of which more than 4,000 have fewer than 1,000 members each. In an industry where scale is normally seen as indispensable — banks and insurers count their customers in the millions — these schemes can look insanely subscale and inefficient. So it was good to see the nation’s only active “superfund”, a consolidation vehicle for DB schemes, nail its first deal this week. ClaraPensions is taking on the £600 million Sears Retail Pension Scheme, absorbing the first of what it hopes will be dozens of unwanted schemes. Almost 10,000 former workers in Miss Selfridge, Wallis, Warehouse and other formerly Sears-owned shops are the first guinea pigs in an experiment to see whether scale economies and greater expertise can be harnessed to deliver higher investment returns and greater retirement certainty. Superfunds have had a bumpy and prolonged gestation. Clara, founded in 2017, expected to have £5 billion of deals under its belt by now. Its only rival, Pension SuperFund, has been mothballed. The Bank of England dislikes the whole concept, concerned that members could be disadvantaged and financial stability threatened. But the Treasury has overruled these worries and has become a cheerleader for this trailblazing company. “Economies of scale from superfunds can do wonders for pensions — making people’s retirement more secure while enabling a broader range of investments in productive finance,” declared Andrew Griffiths, the City minister, after the deal was announced on Monday. The prize is huge, in theory. DB schemes, which guarantee a pension regardless of longevity or stock market shocks, are a throwback to a more paternalistic era for most employers, which closed them to new accrual years ago. Outside the public sector, just 960,000 people are still clocking up benefits in DB schemes, out of a total membership of 9.6 million. Yet they remain, for now, hugely influential, owning most of the country’s £1.67 trillion of retirement assets. Defined contribution schemes, the kinds of retirement plan most of us now save in, have only around £600 billion in assets. Smaller schemes can incur costs as high as 2 per cent of the assets managed, while even the giants of the DB sector cost 0.25 or 0.5 per cent. When the pie is £1.67 trillion though, every basis point (1/100th of 1 per cent) shaved from costs or added to returns is worth £167 million. But don’t expect too much enthusiasm for change from the fund managers, actuaries and consultants who feast on the industry and rather like the existing set-up. DB schemes can’t be truly merged, of course. They have different liabilities and funding levels and it would be next to impossible to come up with a marriage that wouldn’t be seen as disadvantageous to one set of members. But their assets can in effect be combined in larger low-cost pooled investment vehicles. And the administrative costs can be shared. The Sears scheme will be held within a ringfenced part of Clara’s pension trust. Other schemes, if Clara manages to win them, will sit alongside it. It is talking to about a dozen other contenders with total assets of £4 billion and has a target of gaining £2 billion of assets by the end of next year. While many employers with unwanted legacy schemes are able to contemplate handing them immediately to an insurer via a socalled buyout deal, others are still a long way shy of that happy funding level. For them Clara’s “bridge to buyout” offer could be attractive. Clara is injecting a non-refundable £30 million of its own capital into the Sears scheme to get the deal over the line. That will have been pretty persuasive in winning over the Sears trustees. Clara cannot remove anything from the ringfenced account until the scheme is sold to an insurer in a buyout deal. Only at that point does Clara, which is owned by the US investment house Sixth Street, scoop the profits, if profits there are. In the worst case, Clara goes bust and the Sears scheme and any other schemes it has absorbed are, if necessary, picked up by the Pension Protection Fund, the industry lifeboat. However you look at it, the Sears scheme members are unlikely to be any worse off than had it soldiered on independently. The Pensions Regulator has put every detail of this pioneering deal under the microscope and wouldn’t have given it the green light without being certain of that. But the Sears scheme is unusual. It has no sponsor. The link with its sponsoring employers was severed 24 years ago at a time when it was fully funded and the underlying businesses that supported it were allowed to be sold off. That won’t normally be the case with future schemes Clara tries to absorb. Most DB schemes have sponsoring employers who are on the hook in perpetuity for any shortfall. Trustees will have to be assured that whatever extra capital Clara injects into their schemes will more than compensate for sacrificing this claim on the employer. Severing this umbilical link will be a big moment for any trustee. The real test for Clara, and for the appeal of superfunds generally, is still to come. ‘‘ ’’ Patrick Hosking is Financial Editor of The Times Ryan Bourne is R Evan Scharf Chair for the Public Understanding of Economics at the Cato Institute Talk of a tax on wage rises echoes muddled thinking at the Bank Patrick Hosking

38 Thursday November 9 2023 | the times Business overall decrease of 7 per cent in group advertising income to £1.45 billion. McCall, 62, remained confident that the growth of the studios and digital business was “helping ITV to offset the current headwinds and we remain confident in delivering our 2026 targets, when we expect two thirds of revenue to come from these growth drivers”. ITV expects ITV Studios to deliver total organic revenue growth of at least 5 per cent per annum on average until 2026, well ahead of the market, and said it was on track to deliver £15 million of cost savings in 2023 as part of a previously announced £50 million costsaving target between 2023 and 2026. Advertising slump forces ITV to cut back spending ITV is cutting back spending on new productions as it braces for an expected sharp downturn in advertising over the traditionally “golden” festive season. The UK’s biggest commercial broadcaster expects total advertising income to drop by between 10 per cent and 15 per cent in November and December compared with last year, when revenue was buoyed by the winter World Cup. For 2023 as a whole, bosses estimate that advertising revenue will be about 8 per cent lower than the £1.93 billion it generated last year, the second-highest total in ITV’s history. City analysts knew advertising revenue would fall this year, although they had anticipated a drop of about 6.5 per cent. As they reduced their annual forecasts, ITV shares slipped 4p, or 6 per cent, to 61¾p yesterday, and have now lost a fifth of their value this year. Carolyn McCall, the chief executive, blamed the “challenging macro environment” for the larger-than-expected fall in advertising revenue. While airlines and travel companies are pushing ahead with big advertising campaigns, ITV has seen a drop-off in spending among businesses in the leisure and entertainment industries given the pressure on household budgets. Second-hand car dealers have also cut their marketing budgets. ITV is Britain’s biggest free-to-air broadcaster and is a member of the FTSE 250 with a stock market value of about £2.5 billion. As well as broadcasting shows, ITV is a major producer of content which it sells to rivals. But given that its free-to-air peers are also struggling with advertising income, ITV has seen lower demand for the programmes it makes. The Hollywood writers’ and actors’ strike has also slowed the flow of new material. As a result, ITV is to delay some of its upcoming productions which means its content spend for 2023 will be about £1.29 billion — £10 million less than it had originally anticipated. Paolo Pescatore, a media industry analyst, said ITV had been trying to grow its production business to reduce the reliance on advertising income. “However, paramount to this strategy will be ongoing investment in commissioning content,” he added. “Worryingly, the writers’ strike and ongoing challenges in the ad landscape will further impact the company as it plans to spend less on content.” ITV has trimmed back its annual forecasts this year for ITV Studios, which makes and sells programmes including Love Island, This Morning and Coronation Street. That division is now expected to deliver revenue growth of about 3 per cent in 2023, below the midsingle-digits previously guided. The “challenging” conditions overshadowed a 1 per cent rise in total group revenue across the nine months to the end of September, to £2.96 billion. This was largely driven by 9 per cent growth in ITV Studios’ revenue to £1.52 billion. ITVX, its streaming platform, recorded a 27 per cent rise in streaming hours, contributing to 23 per cent growth in digital revenue to £283 million. That was not enough, however, to offset an Tom Howard, Simon Freeman four pubs were sold and six surrendered to landlords. The sales jump was driven by a 10.7 per cent rise in bar sales and a 10 per cent rise in revenues from slot machines. Food sales were up by 8.2 per cent and room sales up by 6.2 per cent. Last month Wetherspoon said that like-for-like sales in the first nine weeks of its financial year had risen by 9.9 per cent and Martin said the company “expects an outcome for the financial year in line with market expectations”. Analysts said its growth was outperforming the market. Wetherspoon said like-for-like sales for September had risen by 9.4 per cent compared with 5.9 per cent on average for pub and restaurant chains. It has now outperformed the tracker for 13 months. Wetherspoon said it was raising investment in its pubs to £70 million this year, from £47 million last year. The shares rose 1p, or 0.15 per cent, to 677p yesterday. Wetherspoon toasts rising sales despite energy fears Sales at JD Wetherspoon have continued to rise as the discount pub chain outpaces the wider market. Wetherspoon said that like-for-like sales jumped by 9.5 per cent in the 14 weeks to November 5, compared with the same period last year. Tim Martin, the chairman, said sales had “continued the pattern of gradual improvement which has followed the ending of lockdowns and restrictions”. He said that inflationary pressures had “eased”, although “energy costs, in particular, remain at far higher levels than pre-pandemic, putting pressure on suppliers and the wider economy”. Wetherspoon, which has more than 800 pubs around Britain, reported pre-tax profits of £42.6 million in the year to July 30 as it returned to profit for the first time since the pandemic. It has opened one new pub so far this financial year, at Heathrow airport, and Emily Gosden Yazmin Belo and Rochelle Neil in ITV’s

the times | Thursday November 9 2023 39 Business Three Little Birds. ITV, led by Carolyn McCall, is to delay some productions and its spend for 2023 will be about £1.29 billion Partner pay at BDO has fallen for the second year in a row as Britain’s fifth-largest accountancy firm instead opted to pump millions into its audit business, which has come in for criticism from regulators. Last year, the firm was admonished by the Financial Reporting Council for essentially having “grown too fast” and, although noting some improvement, this summer the watchdog expressed its unhappiness at recurring issues found during its checks. BDO’s response has been to invest heavily in its audit team, adding 300 staff over the past 12 months. “These are high-quality people,” Paul Eagland, managing partner at BDO, said. “We’ve recruited people with very deep technical skills from some of our competitors and brought them in as partners or senior directors. There are more people to lighten the load.” BDO now has fewer audit clients than it did two years ago, although the division has grown because its average fee has increased. Eagland, 58, said that he wanted to have fewer but better-paying clients as that would “help support the wellbeing of our staff”. “We are focusing on controlled growth,” he added. “As part of that, we’ve declined to pitch on over £100 million of new audit opportunities just in the past 12 months because we want to focus on working for new clients that we know we’ve got the capacity and the quality to deliver for.” Audit accounted for a big chunk of a £120 million investment that BDO made into its business last year — the biggest additional annual investment it has made in its century-long history. The money also went towards the hiring of 61 partners and 3,000 promotions. Like its larger rivals, BDO has also invested in technology, including the use of artificial intelligence. The record investment, coupled with the fact that, at 441, there are now more partners than ever before, dented partPartner pay falls at BDO as audit team reinforced ner pay for the second consecutive year. On average, profit per equity partner declined 6 per cent to £609,000. For context, KPMG is the lowest-paying of the Big Four accountants, with its partners having received, on average, £757,000 last year. “Are they happy? I wouldn’t use that word,” Eagland said. “But do they strategically understand why we are building the business in the way we are? Yes, they do.” Although partners took another pay cut, BDO’s revenue jumped 16 per cent to a record of £935 million in the year to the end of June. Operating profits rose 5 per cent to £198 million. The growth was driven by the auditors, who raked in fees of £400 million, 24 per cent more than in 2022. Much of that came from BDO lifting its fees by about 15 per cent on average last year and it will probably increase its prices again over the coming 12 months. “There is definitely a capacity issue in the market,” Eagland said. “There are not enough auditors, which means prices are going up and will continue to go up for the next two or three years.” In addition to the fee increases, BDO also won a number of new clients, including the British Heart Foundation. It now audits 3,750 businesses and is the largest auditor of companies listed on Aim, London’s junior market. BDO’s tax practice grew revenues by 13 per cent to £225 million, while advisory revenues were up only 8 per cent to £310 million. Rival firms have also reported that clients are reining in their spending on consultants given the uncertain economic outlook and Eagland agreed that clients had become “more discerning” with their spending. Tom Howard Adidas halts sales of Kanye West shoes Adidas will not sell any more Yeezy trainers this year after making €750 million in the first nine months from selling the products of its defunct collaboration with Kanye West. The German sportswear group was left with £1.1 billion worth of unsold shoes and a class action lawsuit from investors when it severed ties with the musician over his antisemitic comments last year. It had in stock more than €1 billion of unsold Yeezy shoes he had designed. In May Adidas decided to start selling some of the Yeezy stockpile and donate “a significant amount” of the proceeds to organisations fighting antisemitism and racism, such as the Anti-Defamation League and the Philonise & Keeta Floyd Institute for Social Change run by the brother of George Floyd, whose death at the hands of US police prompted the Black Lives Matter movement. Yesterday the group announced that sales of Yeezy products this year had amounted to €750 million in the first nine months, lower than the Yeezy revenue of €1.2 billion during the same period of 2022. Bjorn Gulden, chief executive of Adidas, said the group would not sell any more Yeezy stock this year. He added that Adidas would evaluate the market in the next couple of months before committing to Yeezy sales in 2024. Overall, Gulden described Adidas’s third-quarter results as “trending in the right direction” but still “not good enough” as the brand tried to recover from the abrupt end of the Yeezy partnership. The group raised its expectations for the full year to a loss of €100 million, an improvement from the €700 million loss it warned of in February. Currency-neutral revenue rose 1 per cent with growth in all regions except North America, where elevated inventory and high discounting remained barriers to growth. Adidas said it expected currency-neutral revenues to decline at a low-single-digit rate in 2023, citing persisting “macroeconomic challenges and geopolitical tensions”. Gulden, who joined in January, said the team were showing the right attitude and constantly speeding up decision-making processes. He said Adidas’s Terrace range, which includes the lifestyle shoes Samba, Gazelle and Handball Spezial, was performing well and also noted the success of the Adizero Adios Pro Evo 1 shoe, which Tigst Assefa wore to set a marathon world record in Berlin in September. Gulden said Adidas had experienced “visibly higher interest from retailers” for its autumn-winter range and looked forward to the launch of AE 1 trainers, in collaboration with the NBA star Anthony Edwards, in the fourth quarter. He added that the Fear of God collection would be launched in the next few weeks, as would the new ball for the finals of the Uefa Euro 2024 tournament in Germany. Lara Wildenberg Co-op Bank looking for buyer amid profits slide A potential sale of the Co-operative Bank has taken a twist after the lender revealed that its profits had been hit by rising costs. The bank, owned by a group of hedge funds and private equity firms, confirmed for the first time yesterday that a deal was on the cards by disclosing in its third-quarter results that it was “exploring potential strategic opportunities”. It follows speculation about the future of the bank after it emerged in April that its owners were considering a sale. Yesterday the bank reported a 21 per cent fall in its pre-tax profits for the first nine months of the year to £81.1 million. Profits were weighed down by a 17 per cent rise in operating expenditure to £316.2 million, which Co-op Bank blamed on “strategic investment in our mortgage and savings transformation programme” as well as costs associated with a decision to bring in-house its mortgage services operations that had been outsourced to Capita. This has resulted in 400 people joining the bank. The lender was previously part of the Co-operative Group but two bailouts, in 2013 and 2017, severed its ties with the mutual and resulted in US hedge funds and private equity taking control. Nick Slape, chief executive for the past three years, has driven a turnaround which in 2021 returned it to profitability after a decade of losses. “Following the bank’s strong recovery and growth in the past three years, the bank is exploring potential strategic opportunities, the assessment of which is currently at a preliminary stage,” the lender said. “There is no guarantee that such discussions will result in any eventual transaction.” Shawbrook, a specialist lender, is understood to have made a bid for Co-op Bank. The sale process is being run by investment bankers at PJT Partners and Fenchurch Advisory. Ben Martin Banking Editor The owner of the Daily Mirror, the Daily Express and OK! Magazine has announced plans to cut its workforce by 10 per cent or 450 jobs next year in the latest round of cost-cutting. Reach, which counts national titles as well as regional papers such as the Manchester Evening News and the Liverpool Echo and websites such as MyLondon in its stable, said in July that the cost of printing newspapers had jumped by 60 per cent due to high energy prices. Yesterday the publisher said high inflation would continue into 2024 and it would need to cut operating costs by 5 per cent to 6 per cent on top of the 5 per cent to 6 per cent it was on track to cut this year. Reach, which employs 4,500 people, said the proposed job cuts would be across the board in editorial and commercial roles and would come on top of the 330 redundancies made so far this year. Jim Mullen, chief executive of Reach, said: “These plans are about reducing costs against the backdrop of continuing pressures ... from the economic environment ... Just as importantly, though, they’re about recognising that, even with the digital strength and scale we’ve built over the years, we’re in a fight to get our journalism in front of as many people as possible.” Shares in Reach fell by ¼p, or 0.2 per cent, to 77¾p. Daily Mirror owner Reach to axe 450 jobs Lottie Hayton £935m Record revenue for year to the end of June, up 16 per cent

40 2GM Thursday November 9 2023 | the times Business Passing through the North York Moors, you would be forgiven for not noticing you are on the site of Britain’s largest private infrastructure project. Hundreds of metres below the grazAnglo digs deep for its share of Beneath the North York Moors, the mining giant is creating Britain’s first deep mine in 40 years, Max Kendix writes ing sheep on the rolling grassland lies a tunnel that already stretches 16 miles from the mouth of the River Tees to within eight miles of Woodsmith mine. Inside, a train trundles along on its two-and-a-half-hour journey to supply the tunnel-boring machine, which pushes forward at a rate of 25m a day. Carriages are stacked with concrete segments, made in Teesside with British steel frames, to hold the inside of the tunnel, and rails to lay the next portion of track. Ten minutes down the road from Whitby stand seemingly innocuous barns, designed to be obstructed from view by surrounding trees, and small mounds of earth. They are the site of the entrance to two shafts, which will be the deepest in Europe. Soon to be a mile deep, the shafts are dug, not with traditional explosives, but with giant machines that cut one slice after another and suck up the rock cuttings, which are hoisted to the surface. Their target is a thick layer of polyhalite, the fertiliser that Anglo American is convinced will take the mining giant into the next decade. The epic undertaking is not Anglo’s brainchild but that of Sirius Minerals, which defied critics in 2015 by overcoming 98 environmental regulations to gain planning permission to put Britain’s first deep mine in more than 40 years in the middle of a national park. The Scarborough-based firm has made impressive progress, considering that the capital expenditure, initially predicted at $2.9 billion, was far larger than its market capitalisation. By 2020 it was within weeks of entering administration when Anglo swooped in and acquired it for £400 million. The costs have ballooned since early estimates and Anglo is expected to spend about $9 billion building the mine, which will start production in 2027. It is a big bet with a substantial reward — once up to production of 13 million tonnes a year, Anglo hopes for an average of $2.5 billion in annual revenue, with a pre-tax profit margin of close to 50 per cent. If Anglo’s studies are correct, the product is truly remarkable. A single granule provides many of the core minerals required for fertiliser, including potassium, magnesium and calcium. It is a mineral that avoids almost all of the issues posed by its closest cousins. Muriate of potash, or MOP, requires high levels of chloride, which harms the soil, while sulphate of potash, or SOP, needs a high degree of chemical processing to extract. Polyhalite, which means “many salts”, improves soil health and requires no chemicals. Once Anglo turns the rock into more consistent, 2-4mm white spherical granules, which it calls Poly4, it estimates farmers will enjoy a 3 to 5 per cent yield improvement on their crops. The mineral seam is up to 70m thick, which means the life of the mine could be more than 50 years. The expense of the tunnel to transport the polyhalite to port could be a blessing and a curse. Philadelphia-born Tom McCulley, 54, the restless and resolute chief executive of Anglo’s crop nutrients division, speaks about the project in the first person, as if planning his week ahead. He was brought in to “clean up” a cumbersome operation, in line with his previous on-time and on-budget success at Anglo’s large Quellaveco mine in Peru. He said: “At first, I thought I would just get 1,000 trucks a day to carry this stuff to port instead of the tunnel — but Business Email briefing Inflation may be starting to come down but the UK economy is still struggling to grow. Despite the latest decision to hold interest rates, markets remain wary of further increases and are questioning whether the cost of borrowing will stay higher for longer. Access to the latest news and analysis has never been more important. Get our latest economics and business coverage at 8am and 12.30pm each weekday, direct by email from the Business Editor Richard Fletcher and the Business News Editor Martin Strydom. Sign up at home.thetimes.co.uk/myNews

the times | Thursday November 9 2023 V2 41 Business it massively reduces cost down the line. There is a structural advantage over competitors. There are no piles of tailings; no inland routes of thousands of kilometres of rail. We control the logistics from pit to port. It’s as close as you can get to going straight from the ground to the farm.” At the moment, the port is nothing more than abandoned grassland on the south bank of the mouth of the river, with Hartlepool nuclear power station opposite. The neighbouring port terminal, which previously supplied Redcar steelworks, will be used for the first few Polyhalite layer Mining Wilton Processing and port 1,600m 23-mile underground conveyor, average depth 250m Service shaft Whitby North York Moors 5 miles Wilton Redcar Scarborough Possible polyhalite deposit Mine Underground transport system Production shaft the eco fertiliser market million tonnes of polyhalite until the port is built. The real hold-up will come when Anglo hits a thick, hard layer of sandstone next year. The present equipment is designed for softer rock and the pace of digging could be halved while several contingency plans are put into action. However, with the financial weight of Anglo behind it, whether Woodsmith will be completed — the key question with its previous owners — is less of an issue. The real issues lie in creating a market where none exists. The entire global market for polyhalite, considered a specialist mineral, is one million tonnes a year — a fifth of what Anglo hopes to pump out by 2030. Richard Hatch, an analyst at Berenberg, the bank, said: “The shaft sinking and the tunnelling is not a particularly high-risk element of the project in our view. We think the key risk of the project is the market — whether they can sell that amount of tonnes at the price they are targeting. It’s a bit of a leap of faith, especially for the middlemarket agricultural brokers.” Alex Schmitt, a German with a background in strategy consulting, is in charge of marketing. He is on a mythbusting mission after years of market rumblings about the quality and capital expenditure required for the project. He said: “You might have heard certain rumours; we will dispel them.” Anglo has secured binding supply and distribution agreements with partners in the Americas, Europe and Asia, including the world’s largest, the Indian Farm Forestry Development Cooperative (IFFCO). The distributors are perched, building their businesses around Poly4 coming on stream and retrofitting stores to begin the rollout. Anglo insists the mine can bring good work back to a region that is still reeling from the demise of its time as an industrial heartland. At Woodsmith, John Purseglove, 57, descends 340m into the foreshaft in a small yellow steel container, marking the start of his 11-hour shift. “When the last coalmine closed, I thought I’d lost my legs; it’s all I’d ever done,” he says, wading through the mudstone as groundwater drips on to his steel toe-capped boots. “Every mine I worked in I was told it was a job for life. Who knows with the way the world is … I hope it works out, for the sake of the lads and their kids.” Hiscox plays down risks from war in Middle East One of the oldest members of the Lloyd’s of London insurance market has reassured investors that it faces minimal risks from the war between Israel and Hamas. Hiscox said yesterday that it had only “limited net exposure” to the conflict that started a month ago in the Middle East and that it was also “well protected by reinsurance”. It also said its ultimate net loss from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine remained “largely unchanged”, having previously told investors it expected a net hit of $48 million. The update comes as Hiscox and the wider insurance industry wrestle with rising geopolitical turmoil around the world, which has increased the risk of losses for insurers. The war in Ukraine, which started in February last year and has resulted in claims for everything from damaged buildings to planes stranded in Russia, has been a particular blow. Lloyd’s of London said in March that its insurance market had set aside about £1.4 billion for expected claims from the Ukraine conflict. Members of the Lloyd’s market underwrite complex risks covering everything from cyberattacks to satellite launches. Hiscox, which is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 index, is behind one of the oldest and biggest syndicates operating at Lloyd’s. The insurer said that overall gross premiums written in the nine months to the end of September had risen by 6.8 per cent on a constant currency basis to $3.76 billion. Although it was an “active” third quarter for natural disasters, including wildfires in Canada and Hawaii and the recent earthquake in Morocco, Hiscox said that aggregate losses from catastrophes so far this year were within its budget. Aki Hussain, Hiscox’s former finance chief who became its boss at the start of last year, said: “I am pleased we have continued to deliver disciplined profitable growth across the group.” Shares in the insurer rose by 7½p, or 0.8 per cent, to 979p. Ben Martin Banking Editor The cost of the Woodsmith mine has ballooned, with Anglo expected to spend $9 billion

42 Thursday November 9 2023 | the times Business The Times unit trust information service Sell Buy +/­ Yld Sell Buy +/­ % Yld Sell Buy +/­ % Yld Sell Buy +/­ % Yld Sell Buy +/­ % Yld % Sell Buy +/­ Yld % British funds Data as shown is for information purposes only. No offer is made by Morningstar or this publication This is a paid for information service. For further details on a particular fund, readers should contact their fund manager.

the times | Thursday November 9 2023 43 Business This cabin in Lac-Beauport, Quebec, is available on Airbnb for €357 a night Brian Chesky, co-founder, is a host in San Francisco Airbnb is trying to persuade customers that its listings are as reliable as hotels by introducing more transparent reviews and advice to hosts on how to improve the way they display their homes. Its launch of a range of features shows that the platform is punching back against one of its most complained-about issues — the complexity of managing its listings — in what Brian Chesky, co-founder and chief executive, said represented a “turning point” for the company. It will label properties with a 4.9-star average rating as “guest favourites”, which will include two million out of the seven million homes on the site, and give guests a photo tour of the place they are renting, using an artificial intelligence tool. The technology was developed inhouse, with the listings tab “one of the best things we’ve ever designed”, according to Chesky, who revealed the changes at an event in New York. He described the 16-year-old company as coming through its growing pains, akin to “when you were a teenager and you had the body of an adult, but you weren’t yet an adult — I think it was a little bit like that for us”. He said: “We weren’t very focused. We were doing lots of different things. We had a travel magazine; we had all these different services, then the pandemic occurred and we had to cut back on our expenses but we also had to focus and it was a really good clarifying moment for us, a reminder that what’s most important was this original idea we invented. So we needed to make sure we built as perfect a service as possible.” The business has started a series of improvements, which it dubs “releases”, of which there have been more than 350 in the past two years. Yesterday’s announcement revealed that the AI, trained on data from images, can tell which part of a house a photo is from, allowing hosts to create a gallery of images quickly and easily. Airbnb “has no plans” to sell the tool as an enterprise service. “You live in a world of trade-offs,” Chesky said. “If you spend your energy doing that, it gets taken away from improving your core service.” Instead, he would like to develop the company as a platform so others can integrate their businesses into it. Airbnb upgrades its room service with the help of AI For example, as part of its latest winter update, and available only in the United States and Canada early next year, the business has partnered with automated lock companies in order to give renters bespoke lock codes for their stay. Reviews from customers are now more detailed, with information about who they travelled with and how long for, allowing the website’s destinations to be ranked more clearly. Chesky said Airbnb was “scratching the surface” of the technology, which he expected to become “the ultimate travel agent” in the next five years. “Imagine our customer service agents having an assistant that can speak every single language, read thousands of pages of policies and every time a customer calls look through a billion and a half guest arrivals? No front-desk agent at a hotel could ever provide service like that,” he said. Based in San Francisco, Airbnb is one of the world’s largest travel businesses. Founded as Air Bed and Breakfast, the platform initially let people rent rooms to travellers, before expanding to allow whole properties in 2009. It was floated on New York’s Nasdaq exchange in 2020 and has a stock market valuation of $77 billion. Chesky, 42, started hosting guests again in his San Francisco home last year, which he said had opened his eyes to some of the issues on the site. Airbnb’s most recent results showed revenue of $3.4 billion, up 18 per cent year on year, with bookings up 14 per cent to 113 million, but its guidance was “moderated” by economic headwinds and global conflicts. Although Chesky believed it was “too early to say” what impact the war in the Middle East would have on travel, he said: “This does feel like a more uncertain time, from a macroeconomic and geopolitical standpoint, than almost any other time since we started the company.” A focus on pricing has dominated the company’s recent actions as the cost of living bites, and Chesky said this remained a concern for the business. He argued that costs had risen far less than at hotels in the past year. Airbnb has introduced a “pricing tool” so hosts can compare their prices to listings nearby and monitor trends throughout the year. Disputes with local regulators continue to be a headache for the company, most notably in New York, where its services were de facto banned in September, which Chesky said was a disappointment. “It’s not easy to start a business which is actually in people’s neighbourhoods and communities,” he said. “I do want people to know we want to be good for communities. I do want them to also know when we need to make adjustments we do. We built a city portal so that a hundred cities around the world can plug in and see the activity and we’ve collected $9 billion in hotel taxes. “I’m most disappointed by the impact this will have on tens of thousands of hosts. I wish [the politicians who advocate for restrictions] could meet many of our hosts and learn their stories and started to realise, ‘wow, many of these people are my voters, my constituents ... And that maybe there are things I’m concerned about ... but it doesn’t mean we just stop every part of it, it just means we need to shape it’.” At 16 years old, the company sees itself as like a teenager coming through growing pains, Katie Prescott writes

44 Thursday November 9 2023 | the times Business Markets news in brief Libor appeal date set Tom Hayes’s attempt to have his conviction for Libor-rigging quashed will be heard by the Court of Appeal in March. The former trader, 44, became the face of the scandal in 2015 when he was the first person to be convicted of rigging the financial benchmark Libor for profit and was jailed for 14 years, reduced to 11 on appeal. He has long fought to have his conviction overturned and in July the Criminal Cases Review Commission, which examines possible miscarriages of justice, referred his case back to the Court of Appeal. Mortgage rates cut The cheapest two-year mortgage rates have fallen below 5 per cent for the first time since the middle of June as hopes grow that the worst of the mortgage crisis is over. Nationwide Building Society will today introduce a 4.99 per cent two-year fix for homebuyers as it cut dozens of mortgage rates by up to 0.38 percentage points. The average two-year fix has fallen from a peak of 6.94 per cent in June to 6.24 per cent, according to the financial data firm Moneyfacts. Used electric car boom Nearly twice as many used electric cars are being sold in the UK as a year ago, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders. The trade body said 34,021 pure-battery electric cars changed hands between July and September. This was 99.9 per cent more than the same period a year ago, while pure-battery electrics took a record quarterly market share of 1.8 per cent. Overall sales of used cars rose 5.5 per cent year on year to 1.9 million. Airbus raises its target Airbus raised a production goal for wide-body A350 jets and reaffirmed financial and delivery targets for 2023 as it posted higher underlying third-quarter profit. The world’s largest aircraft maker said it was aiming to return to pre-Covid levels of ten A350 jets a month in 2026, up from a previous goal of nine a month by end-2025. Adjusted operating earnings rose 21 per cent to €1 billion in the third quarter. Revenues were up 12 per cent to €14.9 billion. Commodities PRICES Major indices London Financial Futures © 2021 Tradeweb Markets LLC. All rights reserved. The Tradeweb FTSE Gilt Closing Prices information contained herein is proprietary to Tradeweb; may not be copied or re-distributed; is not warranted to be accurate, complete or timely; and does not constitute investment advice. Tradeweb is not responsible for any loss or damage that might result from the use of this information. ITV is pushing out its own content spend. The broadcaster will move some dramas, which had been due to air this and next month, to the start of next year. Part of the fee is paid to the production company when content is commissioned, another part when it is broadcast. The move will save about £10 million in content costs this year. A target to save £50 million in costs by 2026 is intact, which includes making gains from suppliers and its property footprint. A deteriorating picture on profits has been matched by a weaker valuation. The shares trade at just seven times forward earnings, a wellgrowth that it had anticipated. It follows a 9 per cent rise in revenue in the first nine months of the year. Free-to-air broadcasters face their own pressures on revenue as advertisers cut back on spending, and in turn have decommissioned shows or delayed decisions. Advertising, which still accounted for more than 40 per cent of revenue, even in a falling market, declined 7 per cent. This year total advertising revenue is expected to be down 8 per cent. The group is still heavily reliant on linear advertising. Digital advertising was up a quarter in the first nine months of the year but only accounts for a fifth of total group revenue. I TV has been attempting to tune a better picture. The media group is trying to prove that making programmes and capturing the shift to digital advertising via its streaming platform are enough to counter the challenges faced by advertisements on television. However, the studio business does not run counter to fluctuations in the broader economy. ITV has cut the revenue growth outlook for the business to 3 per cent, below the mid-single revenue Emma Powell Tempus Buy, sell or hold: today’s best share tips M&S profit rise is food for thought M arks & Spencer is no stranger to false dawns, so caution from the management is understandable. Better food sales and stronger margins across both sides of the business propelled adjusted pre-tax profits to £360 million, a way ahead of the £275 million analysts had forecast for the first six months of the year. Profits of that magnitude are not expected to repeat in the second half. Stuart Machin, its chief executive, is “quietly confident” about Christmas and says momentum in October has been sustained. However, how sales fare next year is far less certain. Interest rates are the highest they have been in two decades and there is the chance that geopolitical turmoil will have a knock-on effect on the macroeconomic picture. Annual sales comparatives were also easier in the first six months of the year and it has already banked £100 million of the £150 million in cost savings targeted for the year. Yet the consensus forecast for adjusted pre-tax profit this year is still likely to shift from £575 million to £640 million, management thinks. Another upgrade has added a tenth to the share price and narrowed the valuation gap between Marks & Spencer and Next, its more successful high street rival. The shares now trade at more than 11 times forecast earnings, versus under 13 for the latter. There are tangible signs of progress. The food business grew sales volumes ahead of the market in each of the six months to September, coming in at 8 per cent in the final month of the period versus just 1 per cent for the broader grocery sector. Taking cost out of the business, including rationalising the number of suppliers and reducing the headcount at head office, has also helped lift margins. For the food business, the adjusted operating margin rose to 4.2 per cent, ahead of a 4 per cent target, and 12.1 per cent for clothing and home, in front of a 10 per cent goal. The proportion of clothing and home sales, a weak spot for the retailer, has stood north of 80 per cent for the past three years, up from between 65 and 70 per cent in 2019 and 2020. Cash generation is stronger and net debt has reduced to £320 million, excluding lease liabilities, at the end of September. That is half the figure Tuck in Share price return Source: FactSet Marks & Spencer Like-for-like sales growth Food Clothing & home Q1 2022/23 3.4% 17.6% Q2 2.5% 10.2% Q3 6.3% 8.6% Q4 9.2% 9.6% Q1 2023/24 12.5% 7.2% Q2 11% 3.8% 2020 2021 2022 2023 -60 -50 -40 -30 -20 -10 0 10 20% Marks & Spencer Next at the same point last year. As expected, the dividend has been restored, even if only to 1p a share, for the first time since before the pandemic. A recovery in the shares this year is justified but it leaves the retailer valued closely to its long-running average. To bet that there is more upside to come, it needs to demonstrate that the group can pull off a more enduring improvement in its profitability and balance sheet. There are still areas to attack. Detail on how clothing and home sales volume have performed is scarce. Like-for-like sales were 5.5 per cent higher but non-food inflation has been running at between 6 and 7 per cent over the past six months, according to the Office for National Statistics. In shops, which account for about two thirds of the total clothing and home sales, the average basket value was up just more than 6 per cent but weekly transactions were down almost 2 per cent. The Ocado joint venture is a dead weight, with a loss of £23 million in the first six months of the year. Only 75 per cent of capacity is being used, which has accentuated the drag from a high level of fixed costs within the online delivery operation. The strategy is sensible. In particular, to cut down on clothing product lines and reduce “full line” shops, in favour of more food-only and modern stores with less surplus space. Now it needs to show more proof that shifting its estate will translate to better clothing volumes. ADVICE Buy WHY The balance sheet is stronger and margins are improving founded discount to the historical average. Analysts at Shore Capital cut their profit forecasts for the next three years, including almost 10 per cent to the profit it expects for 2025. In that year the brokerage forecasts adjusted pre-tax profit of £573 million, which would equate to a 10 per cent slide against last year. Potential catalysts for the shares are hard to see. ADVICE Avoid WHY Weak sales justify a cheap valuation marks & spencer Market cap £4.44 billion Half-year revenue £6.13bn itv Revenue growth 1 per cent Dividend yield 8.1 per cent

the times | Thursday November 9 2023 45 Markets Business T he box office smash Barbie helped Warner Bros Discovery to beat core quarterly profit estimates but the effects of two Hollywood strikes and a weak advertising market could hamper earnings into next year, the entertainment company has warned. Although Hollywood’s film and television writers ratified a new threeyear contract in September, ending a 148-day strike, members of the SagAftra actors’ union have been on strike since July, disturbing the industry’s 2024 film slate. The stock fell sharply after the results and closed down $2.21, or 19 per cent, at $9.40 last night, the worst oneday performance since August last year. Gunnar Wiedenfels, chief financial officer, said there was a risk the effect of the strike would linger into 2024 as Warner Bros posted a $417 million net loss in the three months to September 30 compared with a $2.3 billion net loss a Investors also sold some of their shares in Hargreaves Lansdown as UBS urged its clients to sell. The shares, down more than 10 per cent in the past year, would continue to underperform, the bank argued, as its analysts saw material downside to consensus net interest income expectations. The shares fell 17p, or 2.3 per cent, to 710¾p. Elsewhere, disappointing sales from Anglo American’s De Beers pulled shares in the FTSE 100 miner down 44p, or 2.1 per cent, to £20.95½. Among the tiddlers, shares in Tern tumbled ½p, or 10.5 per cent, to 4¼p as it confirmed that it would not invest any further in its portfolio company InVMA, which trades as Konektio. Dealers ditched their shares in First Property Group after bosses at the property fund manager and investor, which has operations in the UK and Europe, flagged that they expected the company to report an overall loss in the first half of the year. The shares fell ½p, or 2.9 per cent, to 17p. Entain bosses take £2.2m punt on gambling group Jessica Newman Market report H eavy boardroom buying at Entain signalled a strong show of confidence in the gambling company behind Ladbrokes and Sportingbet. Entain moved towards the top of the FTSE 100 risers’ board after it was disclosed that Barry Gibson, the chairman, had snapped up £869,000 worth of shares on Tuesday and Jette Nygaard-Andersen, the chief executive, had more than doubled her holding through buying £324,000 worth of shares. Stella Davis, a senior independent non-executive director, acquired nearly £900,000 worth of shares, while Gibson’s wife, Brenda, bought £145,000 worth. The company had rattled the City last week as it tempered its online profit margin forecast after suffering a £45 million hit on its earnings in October as a number of key sports results went the way of the punter. The board’s attempt to restore confidence succeeded as the shares rose 17p, or 1.8 per cent, to 958p. Having yo-yoed in and out of positive territory for most of the session, the FTSE 100 closed 8.32 points, or 0.1 per cent, lower at 7,401.72. The more domestically focused FTSE 250 rose 84.55 points, or 0.5 per cent, to 17,846.26. It was another jolly day for the retailers. This time it was Marks and Spencer in the spotlight, climbing 19p, or 8.4 per cent, to 244¼p as the company’s half-year profits comfortably beat City forecasts. The Primark-owner Associated British Foods, whose announcement of a special dividend and a £500 million share buyback impressed the market this week, extended its gains by 57p, or 2.5 per cent, to £23.07. B&M European Value Retail, which is due to report its interim results today, was up 5½p, or 1 per cent, to 537¾p. Investors piled into Rolls-Royce on advice from Morgan Stanley analysts, who upgraded their recommendation on the engine maker to “overweight”, arguing that scope for cash generation was “underestimated and mispriced”. The shares, which have more than doubled in value in the past year, rose 6½p, or 2.8 per cent, to 232½p. Diageo’s shares fizzed 32½p, or 1 per cent, up to £32.20½ as investors liked what they read into the secondquarter results of United Spirits, the maker of Smirnoff vodka that is owned by the FTSE 100 spirits group. A bleak trading update from the German energy group E.ON, which warned of a “significant” hit to finalquarter profits in its retail unit, had a knock-on effect on British utilities. Centrica fell 2p, or 1.4 per cent, to 148¾p, while SSE lost 34p, or 2.1 per cent, to £16.27½ and National Grid fell 20½p, or 2.1 per cent, to 969¾p. Serco secures tagging contract SERVICES T he Ministry of Justice has awarded Serco a multimillionpound contract to supply electronic monitoring services for prisoners in England and Wales. The FTSE 250 outsourcing company will introduce a “dataled, technology-based approach” and be responsible for delivering field services, as well as contact centre and administrative monitoring services, in the installation and removal of electronic monitoring devices. Serco said the contract had a value of about £200 million over a six-year term and could be worth £275 million if options to extend it for two additional one-year terms were exercised. The contract will begin in May next year. Serco said the deal marked an extension of its support of the ministry’s efforts to “reduce reoffending through an expansion of the use of electronic monitoring enabled by highquality data capture”. In the first six months of its financial year Serco’s pre-tax profits jump 55 per cent to £167.7 million, thanks to high demand for its immigration services from the government, offsetting a decline in its revenues from the Asia Pacific region. Shares in Serco closed up 3½p, or 2.4 per cent, to 147¾p. The Ministry of Justice and Serco aim to lower the level of reoffending Wall Street report While the S&P 500 and Nasdaq continued their longest winning streak in two years, boosted again by big technology stocks, the Dow Jones industrial average took a breather and closed down 40.33 points, or 0.1 per cent, at 34,112.27. The day’s biggest movers year ago. “Much like 2023, 2024 will have its share of complexity, particularly as it relates to the possibility of continued sluggish advertising trends,” he said. The company, created by the merger of WarnerMedia and Discovery, posted third-quarter adjusted core earnings of $2.97 billion, above estimates of $2.92 billion. Overall revenue rose 2 per cent to $9.98 billion in line with estimates. Barbie was the highestgrossing film in Warner Bros’ history, generating nearly $1.5 billion in global box office takings. Barbie effect struck down by ad torpor Dollar rates Exchange rates Other Sterling Data as shown is for information purposes only. No offer is made by Morningstar or this publication Gold/Precious metals European money deposits % Because of a technical issue, the gold fix prices are from Tuesday. Money rates % Sterling spot and forward rates

46 Thursday November 9 2023 | the times Business Equity prices 12 month Price High Low Company (p) +/- Yld% P/E v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v Health v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v Construction & property v v v v v v v v v 12 month Price High Low Company (p) +/- Yld% P/E v v Consumer goods v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v Engineering v v v v v v v 12 month Price High Low Company (p) +/- Yld% P/E v v v v v v v v 12 month Price High Low Company (p) +/- Yld% P/E v v v v v v v v v v v v v 12 month Price High Low Company (p) +/- Yld% P/E Automobiles & parts Banking & finance v v v v v v v v v 12 month Price High Low Company (p) +/- Yld% P/E v v v v v v v v v Investment companies 12 month Price Yld Dis(-) High Low Company (p) +/- % or Pm v 12 month Price Yld Dis(-) High Low Company (p) +/- % or Pm v Dividend yields Please note that the information in the dividend yields column has been suspended due to technical problems at Morningstar, the provider. 12-month high and low High/low prices for UK equities are based on closing prices. Investment trust high and low prices are based on intra-day figures.

the times | Thursday November 9 2023 47 Equity prices Business Data as shown is for information purposes only. No offer is made by Morningstar or this publication u s t 12 month Price High Low Company (p) +/- Yld% P/E v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v Telecoms v v v v Transport v v Utilities v v 12 month Price High Low Company (p) +/- Yld% P/E v v v v v v v v v v v Real estate Retailing v v v v v Technology v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v 12 month Price High Low Company (p) +/- Yld% P/E v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v Professional & support services v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v 12 month Price High Low Company (p) +/- Yld% P/E v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v 12 month Price High Low Company (p) +/- Yld% P/E v v v v v v v v v v v v Industrials v v v v v v v v v v Leisure v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v Media v v v 12 month Price High Low Company (p) +/- Yld% P/E v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v Natural resources v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v

the times | Thursday November 9 2023 49 Register Pioneering researcher into obesity Professor Philip James page 50 When MS Swaminathan saw people starving to death during the Bengal famine of 1943, he decided to devote the rest of his life to boosting food production in India. In 1947 India secured liberation from colonial rule that Swaminathan’s family had campaigned for under the banner of Mahatma Gandhi’s campaigns. Yet, in the decade and a half that followed, the country was blighted by a droughts that led to food price inflation along with heavy reliance on US wheat imports and foreign aid. With the country’s population growing by about 20 million people a year, some had even predicted mass starvation on a biblical scale, but the young plant geneticist developed strains of wheat and rice grains that would ultimately increase Indian grain production tenfold and arguably save millions of lives. By the early Sixties, India was still not producing enough grain because its soils lacked critical nutrients. And because its indigenous wheat and rice plants were tall, much of the crop was ruined because of the bending or breaking of stems. Longer-stemmed plants could not yield enough to feed the masses, especially since they would only produce one crop a year. Setting out to defy Malthusian economists who warned that India would never be able to square the circle of its rapidly growing population and the need to feed it, Swaminathan sought out the American plant scientist Norman Borlaug, who would later win the Nobel peace prize for increasing global food supply. In 1963 Swaminathan obtained high-yielding, shortstalked wheat and rice specimens, native to Japan, that Borlaug had been developing in Mexico. Swaminathan crossed them with Indian varieties to produce crops that were suited to the subcontinent’s soils and weather conditions and responsive to fertilisers and irrigation. He improved these specimens further in his “gamma garden”, where he used radiation to generate random mutations in crops that would be more robust for mass cultivation. He also elucidated the structure of the chromatid (one half of the duplicated chromosome) to understand the splitting and duplication of cells. The result, in 1967, was his “miracle grain” — the dwarf wheat variety Sharbati Sonora — with its characteristic amber colour. Staying true to the vision of his hero Gandhi, he wanted the poorest farmers to partake of his “green revolution”. Swaminathan communicated the “good news” of his dwarf wheat and rice varieties by showcasing them to producers at some 2,000 model farms across the country. Seeing the evidence with their own eyes, farmers took up the gauntlet. Between 1963 and 1970 India doubled its wheat production to 20 million tonnes per annum and, as yields continued to grow, he turned India from the world’s largest importer of food grains to a net exporter. Swaminathan lamented the fact that children were still starving in parts of the Indian countryside. “We have the paradox of being one of the very dynamic agricultural countries in the world,” he said in 2004. “At the same high school and later at the Roman Catholic Little Flower High School in Kumbakonam. Obedient to his mother’s wishes, he studied zoology at University College, Thiruvananthapuram, in the state of Kerala, but the famine in Bengal, which would kill some three million people, convinced him to switch to agricultural science at the Coimbatore Agricultural College (now Tamil Nadu Agricultural University). In 1947 he became a postgraduate student in genetics and plant breeding at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute in Delhi. At the behest of his mother he passed the Indian government’s civil service examinations and was on the point of joining the police in a management role when he was offered a Unesco fellowship to continue his agricultural science education overseas. He studied plant genetics at the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands and completed his doctorate at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, in 1952, writing his thesis on the genetic structures of certain potato species. Many of Swaminathan’s admirers questioned the college’s decision not to award him an honorary fellowship until 2014. While in Cambridge Swaminathan met a fellow student, Mina Bhoothalingam, whom he would marry in 1955. A teacher, she died last year and he is survived by their three daughters, Soumya, Madhura and Nitya. time, we have the unenviable reputation of having the largest number of undernourished children, women and men.” Yet if starvation was still a fact of life on the subcontinent, it was not because the country was not growing enough food. Last year India produced a record 330 million tonnes of grain. Monkombu Sambasivan Swaminathan was born into a Tamil family of the high-ranking Brahmin caste in Kumbakonam, Madras State (now Tamil Nadu) in 1925. He was the second of four children to MK Sambasivan and his wife Parvati Thangammal Sambasivan. Among his earliest memories were his father’s trenchant support for Mahatma Gandhi and his non-violent campaign to force the British to quit India. His father, a surgeon, made it clear to Monkombu from an early age that he would study medicine. However, after his father’s early death, the 11-year-old Monkombu was taken in hand by an uncle who became a father figure. The child developed a fascination for the crops on his uncle’s farm, watching mangos ripen and coconuts grow. Swaminathan was educated at a local Inspired by Gandhi, he wanted the poorest to partake in his revolution Obituaries MS Swaminathan Celebrated plant scientist who developed ‘miracle grains’ in the 1960s that enabled India to become self-sufficient in food production Swaminathan outside and inside his genetics institute in Chennai in 2001 Swaminathan carried out post-doctoral research at the University of Wisconsin, where he developed hybrid species of potato. He returned to India in 1954 and was soon working at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute in New Delhi, where he was appointed chief cytogeneticist in 1956, head of the botany division in 1961 and director of the division in 1966. From 1972 to 1979 he was directorgeneral of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, negotiating directly with the Labour governments of Harold Wilson and James Callaghan on expanding research co-operation with India on agriculture. “He was always calm and mild-mannered, but he could be very firm,” Alan Jackson, who liaised with him at the Indian High Commission in Delhi, said. Indira Gandhi, the Indian prime minister from 1966 to 1977, had always admired him and put government resources at his disposal to effectively give him free rein to reform India’s agricultural sector. When she returned as prime minister in 1980 she appointed him to India’s Planning Commission. He advised the cabinet on science and technology, set up a biotechnology board and served on committees tackling issues from leprosy to conservation and biodiversity. In 1982 Swaminathan took on a more global role as director-general of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) based in the Philippines. Here he led a programme to develop copies of traditional rice seeds in Cambodia from the gene bank that had been lost during the country’s bloody civil war, leaving it at risk of famine as it tried to recover from the genocidal regime of Pol Pot. When he was awarded the first World Food prize in 1987 he used the money to start the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF), which studies nutrition and climate change. Much of his later research focused on developing crops more resistant to fluctuations in the weather, especially because by the new millennium nearly 40 per cent of India’s vast rural population of more than one billion had no land or livestock and were dependent on the increasingly capricious weather for their daily wages. Some questioned Swaminathan’s legacy, claiming that he had promoted a crop monoculture that had led to India losing about 100,000 indigenous varieties. Yet he had warned as early as 1968 about India becoming overreliant on just a few wheat varieties. Much of his work in the Seventies had focused on developing a “genetic gold mine” of thousands of prolific rice strains. He was also an early champion of organic farming to maintain the integrity of the soil in the longer term, warning that overuse of pesticides, fertiliser, fungicides and herbicides would lead to degradation of large tracts of land. In the 1990s, Swaminathan secured financial backing from the Rockefeller Foundation to research genetically modified varieties of rice and other crops that would be more tolerant of salt water and require less use of fertiliser and pesticides. He considered commercial GM technology, developed by the likes of Monsanto, distasteful and argued that governments should make GM farming techniques freely available to poorer and smallerscale producers. Perhaps the greatest compliment for Swaminathan was when Time magazine bracketed him with Gandhi on its list of the 20 most influential Asian people of the 20th century. Yet on receiving the first World Food Prize in 1987, he reminded the audience that there was still much work to be done. “As we depart for dinner this evening, what could be a more satisfying and joyful feeling than knowing that every other member of the human family will also go to bed after a nourishing meal? Until such a wholly attainable world becomes a reality, our task remains unfinished.” MS Swaminathan, plant geneticist, agricultural scientist and agronomist, was born on August 7, 1925. He died on September 28, 2023, aged 98

50 Thursday November 9 2023 | the times Register As recently as 2016 James demanded a revolution in how food was marketed Despite being responsible for tackling the nation’s growing obesity problem, Philip James listed one of his recreations in Who’s Who as “eating, preferably in France”. When he started, obesity was a little-known issue that was being tackled by only a handful of scientists around the world; today it is understood as an international epidemic. “The $2 trillion cost of obesity is the cost of all warfare and terrorism and armed conflict anywhere in the world,” he explained. James, who traced the surge in obesity to the early 1980s, was involved in developing the modern body mass index (BMI), a tool that identifies a healthy ratio of height to weight. He was director of the Rowett Research Institute at the University of Aberdeen, which looks at food and nutrition, and spent many years voicing concern about the correct level of sugar in a healthy diet, arguing against the dominance of the fast-food and soft-drink industries, especially in children’s diets. “[They] have enormous vested interests, which we need to confront,” he frequently said of those industries. “If we don’t, the epidemic of childhood obesity is going to rip through Europe so fast, with Britain being in the worst category, that we will have clinics of diabetic children of 13, where the evidence is clear that they will have major problems of blindness by the time they get into their thirties.” In 2001 James was involved in establishing the Food Standards Agency, insisting that health, nutrition and dietary advice should fall within its remit. “Everyone is concerned quite properly about 10 or 20 people who die of poisoning,” he said. “But there are hundreds of thousands of people dying prematurely from diet-related disease.” It was needed, he said, because since the 1980s the way in which we buy and produce food had changed. “People are going into a shop instead of getting Granny to cook local produce, when they would know if the produce from one farm was bad,” he said. “Now they are relying totally on central governadministrator, also kept a record of every meal she served to their international guests, ensuring that none ate the same menu twice. She survives him with their children: Claire has her own coaching company; Mark is in the music business. James had a “gruelling introduction” to medical practice, surviving on four hours of sleep and “making life-determining decisions on my own”. An easier time followed at Whittington Hospital, where he trained in paediatrics and cardiovascular and respiratory medicine. He was asked by the Medical Research Council in 1965 to study malnutrition in Jamaica. Although it was a subject about which he “knew nothing”, his development of treatments for children with severe malnutrition and diarrhoea have helped to save the lives of millions. From then on, he concentrated on nutrition and diet. After a year each at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, and the MRC Gastroenterology Unit, London, James was appointed senior lecturer at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, developing an understanding of why excess fat tissue contributes to metabolic diseases such as type 2 diabetes. On one occasion he was dispatched to report on children’s nutritional problems on the volcanic island of Montserrat, where he made the fundamental public health distinction between stunting (chronic undernutrition) and wasting (inadequate nutrition over a shorter period). Back in Britain he joined the Dunn Nutrition Unit at Cambridge, quietly commandeering an unused ward at Addenbrooke’s Hospital for his obesity studies. During this time he developed and narrated a primetime BBC television series, the first about healthy eating since the war, which proved popular with viewers. “Supermarkets ran out of the items that we had shown for only seconds, and millers and bakers ran out of brown flour,” he recalled. On his arrival at the Rowett Institute in 1982 James was shocked to discover that only two out of 80 independent scientists were women. He ensured that half of new recruits were female, even agreeing to a crèche, the first in a government-sponsored organisation, though with the proviso that the mothers must run it themselves. He built the institute’s international reputation with research for the World Health Organisation (WHO) that specified vegetable and fruit intakes. The US was unhappy with his recommended maximum sugar intake, an objection that he suggested might have resulted from soft drinks industry lobbying. Pressing to get obesity on to the political agenda, he founded the International Obesity Task Force (IOTF). During the 1992-95 Bosnian war he set up a unit to determine the correct amount and nutritional quality of food needed by the civilian population in besieged Sarajevo. In retirement he continued to rail against the power of the food industry. “We’re in an extraordinary position where the politicians, of any hue, think it’s all your responsibility,” he said in 2016, demanding nothing less than a revolution in the way food is marketed and sold. Professor Philip James CBE, public health researcher, was born on June 27, 1938. He died on October 5, 2023, aged 85 This largesse flowed from the day he picked up a Financial Times in the college common room and became hooked on investment. His first pick was the furniture firm Parker Knoll, after trying one of its chairs at a friend’s house. In the London office of the US investment bank Morgan Stanley International he developed a value-based stock selection style modelled on the approach of the highly successful Anthony Bolton of Fidelity International, who became known in the 1980s for always visiting a company before buying its shares. ment and supermarkets to guarantee that everything is safe. Therefore, they quite properly become paranoid when they fail to protect them.” William Philip Trehearne James was born in Bala, a Welsh-speaking village in Snowdonia, in 1938, the second of four children of Jenkin James, a headmaster and Quaker who as a conscientious objector was jailed during the First World War, and his wife Lilian (née Shaw), also a teacher. As a child James suffered from pneumonia, subsequently identified as bronchiectasis, and was told he might not live beyond his forties. However, he recalled plenty of exercise including playing football in the car-free streets. “Since then everyone’s taken on cars,” he said. He was seven when his father died and he was sent to board at Ackworth School, a co-educational Quaker school in Pontefract, West Yorkshire. His acceptance to study medicine at University College Medical School in London was “accidental”. Because of an administrative error he turned up on the wrong day and was interviewed by three Nobel prizewinners. “They were intrigued that I had rewired a burnt-out Rolls-Royce while other pupils created a small bus-like structure on the original chassis,” he said. The rebuilt bus and its Rolls-Royce engine later carried James and his friends through the bomb-damaged cities of Germany. As a student he bought a 1927 London taxi, perfecting his driving on the roads around Trafalgar Square. One evening in 1958 he and four former school friends decided to sample the coffee-bar craze sweeping London. By chance they met Jean Moorhouse, an Ackworth alumnus, on a similar mission. They were married in 1961 and she helped with many of his studies. Jean, a bilingual secretary and college ‘There are enormous vested interests that we need to confront’ Professor Philip James Pioneering researcher into obesity who developed the modern body mass index and helped set up the Food Standards Agency Michael Cowan Shrewd investor, fund manager and philanthropist who, despite being deaf, made a crucial donation to Grange Park Opera Michael Cowan bristled with contradictions. He was a quiet man who loved making speeches, a frugal millionaire who did not wear a watch but was always punctual, and did not let deafness stop him giving a fortune to an opera house, or even belting out karaoke. In the Surrey Advertiser he saw a planning application for Grange Park Opera, which was moving from Hampshire to West Horsley, Sussex, six miles from his home. Within ten days he had agreed to give £1 million. Cowan overcame a difficult childhood to build an outstanding investment career that gave him the wherewithal to become a philanthropist. He supported the Yehudi Menuhin School, one of the UK’s elite centres of musical education, the charity Medical Detection Dogs and his alma mater, Churchill College, Cambridge. Unlike some big donors, he was not overwhelmed by a desire for anonymity. A condition of the Grange Park gift was that it created the Michael and Hilary Cowan Vestibule, named after himself and his wife. He parted with £5 million to build Cowan Court, a 68- bedroom student block at Churchill. In 2020 he became the first Winston Churchill fellow, in recognition of his support for the college and its Churchill Archives Centre. In 1994 Cowan and several colleagues at Morgan Stanley started their own fund management business, Silchester International Investors, which manages £35 billion for foundations, pension funds and private family offices. “Michael loved to spend his time poring over reports and balance sheets in search of undervalued companies,” said Stephen Butt, a co-founder. Cowan also enjoyed bargaining, a skill that proved critical in 2021 when two American private equity funds fought over Morrisons, the UK supermarket chain, in which Silchester held a key 15 per cent stake. With his help, Morrisons raised the winning bid by £700 million. “He still felt we could have squeezed out a bit more,” a colleague said. He also took delight in scouring the globe for institutions to recruit as clients, on several occasions flying from London to Australia for a single meeting and straight back on the next plane. “It took us a long time to persuade Michael to upgrade from economy to business class,” Butt said, “although his deafness was a great advantage when he was put next to a garrulous passenger and wanted to work.” Michael John Julian Cowan was born in 1952 in Hillingdon, west London, son of Kenneth and Flora (née Stewart). Kenneth was works manager of the family’s colour and dyestuffs firm, Cowan Brothers, in Stratford, east London, which in the Second World War produced grey paint for Royal Navy ships. Flora worked for the Inland Revenue (now HMRC) until she married. Michael was the youngest of three. Kenneth, blinded by diabetes, died when Michael was three, leaving the family penniless. Flora sold their house in Northwood, Middlesex, to raise money and moved the family to Midhurst, West Sussex. There she married Fred Taulbut, a chartered mechanical engineer. But money was still tight. Michael suffered hearing problems from catching measles aged eight. His deafness was not picked up until he was in primary school, when a teacher complained about “that naughty boy who never comes when called”. He then had to wear an old-fashioned hearing aid in each ear, connected with a band over the top of his head and a battery in his pocket. He underwent a series of surgeries into his forties, but still had to lipread. At home he helped with gardening and housework, and had a paper round. He attended Midhurst Grammar School, which became a comprehensive during his time there. In 1970 Cowan unusually won both a scholarship and an exhibition to study engineering at Churchill College. After graduating, he won a traineeship with the merchant bank NM Rothschild, where he met Butt. In 1979 he became an investment director at Lazard Brothers, moving to Morgan Stanley in 1987. By then Cowan had met Hilary Slade, a legal secretary who needed help moving house. They married in 1981. He is survived by their three children: Eleanor lives privately, Philippa has worked in sports science and Christopher is a photographer. Cowan enjoyed tennis, golf and the occasional karaoke performance, especially Gangnam Style, the rapper Psy’s 2012 hit. His engineering background, combined with his frugality, meant he loved repairing windows and roofs around his house, a Victorian listed building with its own cricket pitch. Michael Cowan, investor and philanthropist, was born on June 24, 1952. He died of complications arising from a stroke on October 1, 2023, aged 71 Cowan donated to several ventures Email: [email protected]