
From Adolescence to Code of Silence, there was no end of curveball victories at this year’s TV awards – plus a stunningly daring speech. May wonders never cease
Although it remains a modern masterpiece in terms of intention, execution and impact, Adolescence has been ruinous for those of us who have to write about awards show surprises. Because, ever since it first hit screens, it has won everything in sight. And because Adolescence is very good, that isn’t a surprise, and where’s the fun in that?
However, at last night’s television Baftas, the impossible happened: Adolescence actually managed to surprise me. Not purely because it keeps winning things a full 14 months after it debuted, but because of who won what.
Continue reading...London mayor talks up coalition-building, highlights his environmental record, and worries national Labour party is on the wrong track
When Sadiq Khan was first elected as mayor of London 10 years ago, Barack Obama was US president, the UK was still in the European Union and Leicester City had just been crowned the unlikely champions of the English Premier League.
In the intervening decade, Donald Trump has gone from reality TV star to two-time US president, the UK has had six different prime ministers, and Brexit has convulsed the country. London has been rocked by tragedies ranging from terror attacks to the Grenfell Tower fire.
Continue reading...While women continue to toil with the coil, fewer men are prepared to get snipped. The answer why may lie in the rumours and fear that spread online
There I was, lying on the operating table in just my socks and a Steely Dan T-shirt. I had taken the train back to my seaside home town in Essex to have a vasectomy after being on the NHS waiting list for almost two years, since our third child, Sylvia, was born. Three was our magic number. Any more and the car would become a wagon and dinner would turn into feeding time. And now, finally, the contraceptive burden would fall on me. After Hayley’s years of toil with a coil, and the pain of childbirth, I was due a little discomfort.
A vasectomy, as the pre-op letter explained, “is designed to make you sterile”. (You’d hope so.) It would involve “removing a segment of a tube called the vas deferens from each side so that sperm cannot pass through”. There would be an “injection of local anaesthetic to the skin of the scrotum” before “a tiny incision through the painless area of the scrotum, first on one side and then the other”.
Tim Burrows is an author and journalist
Continue reading...A new divide is emerging: between workers who use AI at work and those who are managed by it
The real danger that artificial intelligence poses to work is not just job loss – it is the growing divide between people who use AI to extend their skills and those whose working lives are increasingly shaped by opaque, AI-powered systems of surveillance and control.
The debate about artificial intelligence and how it will affect workers is stuck in the wrong place. On one side are warnings that machines are coming for millions of jobs. On the other are claims that AI will turbocharge productivity. Both stories miss what is already happening in workplaces across the world, from Britain to Kenya to the United States.
Continue reading...She has suddenly become one of the world’s most successful comedians, with a hit Netflix special, an Emmy-nominated role in Hacks and another opposite Steve Carell. But many of her jokes raise hackles. Is she a genius – or an edgelord?
‘Once in a while, you get to see a legend at the absolute top of their game,” booms a voice at the beginning of Robby Hoffman’s Netflix special, Wake Up, welcoming her to the stage. High praise indeed – especially since the voice is that of the leading US comedian John Mulaney, who directed the special, and who clearly thinks this 36-year-old New Yorker is one of the hottest talents around.
He’s not the only one. Over the last year, Hoffman’s star has risen at a stunning pace. She is currently on TV in Rooster, a college campus comedy starring Steve Carell, as well as the fifth season of the critically acclaimed sitcom Hacks. This is only her second season as talent agency assistant Randi, but last year the role earned her an Emmy nomination.
Continue reading...Up to 150 passengers and crew from hantavirus-hit MV Hondius start flying home aboard military and government planes from Spain’s Canary Islands
The complex operation to repatriate passengers and crew of the hantavirus-hit cruise ship, the MV Hondius, is almost complete.
Up to 150 people have started flying home aboard military and government planes from Spain’s Canary Islands, and the World Health Organization has recommended, but not mandated, a 42-day quarantine once they have landed.
Continue reading...Backbench MP calls prime minister’s speech ‘too little, too late’ but stops short of moving to stand against him herself
Catherine West, the Labour MP who announced a challenge to Keir Starmer’s leadership, has changed course to say she instead wants the prime minister to set a timetable of September for his departure.
West, the MP for Hornsey and Friern Barnet and a former Foreign Office minister, announced on Saturday that she would seek to gather the 81 Labour MPs’ names needed to formally challenge Starmer, saying this was just a device to tempt others to stand and that she did not wish to take over.
Continue reading...US president calls Iranian response ‘totally unacceptable’ while Tehran says it will retaliate against any new US strikes or foreign warships in strait of Hormuz
Turkey’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, will visit Qatar later today for talks on the war, its impact on the region and efforts to ensure navigational safety in the strait of Hormuz is resumed, a Turkish diplomatic source told the Reuters news agency.
Turkey, which neighbours Iran, has been in close contact with the US, Iran and mediator Pakistan since the start of the conflict. It condemnded the US and Israel for launching the war, widely seen to have been done illegally, but also criticised Iran’s counter strikes on Gulf states.
Continue reading...Influential IPPR proposes capping rents at whichever is lower of consumer price inflation or wage growth
One of the thinktanks closest to the Labour government is urging ministers to introduce private sector rent controls in England, as the chancellor weighs up how to ease a surge in living costs caused by the Iran war.
The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) has published a paper calling for a rent “double lock”, which would link rent increases to either wages or inflation, depending on which was lower.
Continue reading...Twenty-two people from MV Hondius cruise spend first day isolating in self-contained flats in Merseyside
Passengers evacuated to the UK from a cruise ship hit by a hantavirus outbreak are spending their first day at an isolation facility after being repatriated from Tenerife.
A chartered Titan Airways flight transported the MV Hondius passengers from the Canary Islands to Manchester airport on Sunday evening. The evacuation of passengers of all nationalities will be completed on Monday, with flights arriving from Australia and the Netherlands, Spain’s health minister has said.
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