On a sleepy Tuesday night, beneath an arts and crafts store in the heart of Sydney, there are battles raging. Long white tables stretch out under bright lights to the back of the room. Chairs on each side are occupied by hoodies, smart work shirts and pop culture tees as players – mostly men – … Read more
I hate to sound like a prepper, but I feel bound to confess that over the past month I’ve been stockpiling food. I think, if you can, you should do the same. I’ve put aside 25kg of rice, 15kg of dried chickpeas, 15kg of bread flour, 7kg of chapati flour, 5kg of oats, six litres … Read more
Why would Thames Water invite TV cameras into its operations for a fly-on-the-wall documentary? “Nobody comes to work to put shit in rivers,” says the company’s communications director near the start of Thames Water: Inside the Crisis (BBC Two). “At the end of day, it is about helping people not to totally hate us.” Are … Read more
“The assessment process itself is awful”. Carol Vickers receives the personal independence payment (Pip), the disability support benefit whose spiralling cost the government is determined to cut back. She has a debilitating condition called Ehlers-Danlos syndrome that affects her connective tissues, and means she needs an assistance dog. I spoke to her this week, to … Read more
Ask me what a Labour prime minister should feel a moral obligation to deliver and I’d put reducing child poverty at the top of the list. Sorting out our broken social care system would be up there too. One thing that wouldn’t feature: cutting disability benefits. Yet last week Keir Starmer attempted to frame cutting … Read more
Major high street chains and restaurants, including Gail’s bakery, Itsu and Zizzi, are being challenged by campaigners over their refusal to accept cash after a jump in consumers turning to notes and coins for daily spending. Following a steady decline in cash payments over the last decade, consumer groups says the cost of living crisis … Read more
This week, the world’s most influential fossil-fuels conference, which has been dubbed the “Coachella of oil”, featured an industry displaying outward glee but barely managing to conceal its anxiety. As recently as last year, sustainability was a major focus at the annual Houston convention, known as CeraWeek, with fossil-fuel companies touting climate plans. But in … Read more
In Los Angeles, a strawberry – yes, one individual berry – is selling for $19.99. The berries are flown in from Japan, and Erewhon, a luxury grocery store, claims they’re so popular it’s hard to keep them in stock. The $20 strawberry, which has been labeled “dystopian” and a “social experiment”, went viral after a … Read more
Ministers have left the door open to a humiliating U-turn on their highly contentious plans to cut benefits for disabled people, amid mounting uproar over the proposals across the Labour party. Both Downing Street and the Department for Work and Pensions did not deny they were about to backtrack on plans to impose a real-terms … Read more
There’s nothing more satisfying than watching a corporate giant make a stupid mistake. The behemoth in question is Meta, and when Careless People, a whistleblowing book by a former senior employee, Sarah Wynn-Williams, came out last week, its panic-stricken lawyers immediately tried to have it suppressed by the Emergency International Arbitral Tribunal. This strange institution … Read more