Tony Blair is right about Britain – but can’t own up to his mistakes
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Over the course of their lives, Americans have an average carbon footprint of 1,200 tonnes of CO2. Paris Ortiz-Wines, a young woman from San Francisco, has already cancelled hers out. She could hop on a flight every week for the rest of her life, eat ribeyes at every meal and sip almond milk all day long, and still be in the clear. Back in 2021, Ortiz-Wines played a key role in the campaign that stopped the closure of California’s only nuclear power plant, Diablo Canyon. This has already saved more than 30 million tonnes of CO2 emissions. Ortiz-Wines is part of a new generation of women advocating for nuclear energy, even though surveys show most women are sceptics. Call them the Nuclear Power Rangers.
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The Hormuz crisis is about to cause huge economic turmoil
In the last few days, the government has performed two extraordinary about-turns. On Tuesday, it was revealed that the Treasury is covertly pressuring supermarkets to freeze prices on essential goods. This was odd: when Rishi Sunak floated a similar idea as prime minister, the Labour opposition accused him of acting like Ted Heath. On Wednesday, we woke up to even stranger news: Keir Starmer would be lifting some sanctions on Russian oil to ease our supply problems. This is a prime minister who has spent the past year telling anyone who will listen that Nigel Farage is in league with Vladimir Putin; a prime minister who loves nothing more than being pictured with Volodymyr Zelensky on the steps of No. 10. So how do you explain these two politically painful manoeuvres?
In the last few days, the government has performed two extraordinary about-turns. On Tuesday, it was revealed that the Treasury is covertly pressuring supermarkets to freeze prices on essential goods. This was odd: when Rishi Sunak floated a similar idea as prime minister, the Labour opposition accused him of acting like Ted Heath. On Wednesday, we woke up to even stranger news: Keir Starmer would be lifting some sanctions on Russian oil to ease our supply problems. This is a prime minister who has spent the past year telling anyone who will listen that Nigel Farage is in league with Vladimir Putin; a prime minister who loves nothing more than being pictured with Volodymyr Zelensky on the steps of No. 10. So how do you explain these two politically painful manoeuvres?
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Lucian Freud almost had a second career in the cinema. He acted as an extra in a couple of films during the early 1940s; the only one in which he made the final cut was a farce starring the ukulele-playing comedian George Formby in which his 19-year-old face can be seen peering out of the background in one scene. Years later, Lucian claimed, John Huston asked him if he’d like to play the part of his grandfather Sigmund in a biographical screen drama from 1962 entitled Freud: The Secret Passion (which had, at one point, a script by Jean-Paul Sartre). Eventually Montgomery Clift was cast instead, which was just as well because Freud was definitely an observer rather than a performer.