Starbucks

Sunday

Christopher Sandford

A progressive mayor puts Seattle to sleep

From our US edition

Back in April 1971, a large billboard appeared by a freeway near the Seattle-Tacoma airport. “Will The Last Person Leaving Seattle Turn Out The Lights?” A reference to the Boeing company’s decision to lay off 40,000 local employees, and the ensuing rapid downturn in the area’s economy. Among other problems, the aircraft manufacturer had suffered a crippling blow when the US Senate rejected further funding for its proposed SST supersonic jet, Boeing’s would-be competitor to Concorde. I was reminded of the 1971 slogan just last month, when Seattle’s newly-elected mayor Katie Wilson told a university audience that she was “really, really excited” about the recent passage of a 9.

Wilson

Tuesday

Zak Asgard

High street cafés have gone to pot

It is 2089. My grandson tugs at the hem of my musty corduroy trousers. ‘Pop-pop,’ he says. ‘Were you alive during the Great Pret Pickle Shortage of 2026?’ There is an almighty crash of thunder. A gust of wind throws open a window. A scream can be heard from outside. I look down at my hands, which are visibly shaking, and compose myself. ‘I was there,’ I whisper. ‘I was there when Pret lost the jambon beurre. Man and sandwich were never the same again.’ I’m being facetious, of course. I couldn’t care less about Pret A Manger’s ham, pickle and butter roll going MIA. The coffee giant claims the sandwich has gone missing due to a temporary cornichon (pickle) shortage – much to the dismay, we’re told, of its loyal, city banker target market.

Thursday

Martin Vander Weyer

My time on Hinge

Back to work, back to school, back to politics: the French call it la rentrée and my own summer idyll in their country must end soon too. Back to the miserabilism of Starmerland – where all news, especially good news, must be seen as bad. What good news is that? I mean that shop prices fell this month by 0.3 per cent, after heavy discounting of non-food goods, for the first time since 2021; overall UK inflation having fallen close to the Bank of England’s 2 per cent target. Which makes autumn interest-rate cuts all the more likely, improving the outlook for mortgage borrowers and increasing the chance that the last two quarters’ strong growth will be sustained. In short, the Tories left a recovering economy for Labour to derail.

Tuesday

Bill McMorris

Was 2023 the year of the labor union?

From our US edition

It is only fitting that the low point of the American labor movement occurred in 2009, the Year of the Rat. The Great Recession may have started with Wall Street speculation in the housing market, but your average American had most likely never heard of Henry Lehman or his siblings until the day Dick Fuld drove the 150-year-old bank bearing their name into the ditch. But General Motors, Chrysler? Cars, even more than Hollywood, jazz and the semi-automatic rifle, are the quintessential American business. How could those get driven into the ground? As soon as freshly evicted homeowners finished packing the remains of their subprime split-levels into the backseats of their battered Tahoes, they went looking for culprits. They settled on the United Auto Workers.

labor

Wednesday

Cockburn

Combatting the cucked coffee conglomerates

From our US edition

Cockburn is always looking for a good roast to accompany his morning swig of Bailey’s. Luckily, if you’re a card-toting member of the Grand Old Party, own at least one gun, and supported the Iraq War when it was in vogue, you have a plethora of options. On his search to find a coffee that can’t be cucked, Cockburn initially found Black Rifle Coffee Company, which might bring with it a connotation of Ben Shapiro or National Review to any attuned Republican ear. Veteran-owned with blends named “AK-47” and “Coffee, or Die,” the company has poised itself to become any patriot’s official blend, even recently becoming the official coffee of the Dallas Cowboys. Of course, this is not without controversy, on both left and right.

Saturday

Chadwick Moore

Goodbye Bill de Blasio, New York-hating communist

From our US edition

At the stroke of midnight on January 1, Bill de Blasio — New York’s bumbling, mildly sinister but profoundly incompetent mayor — got laughed out of office as his second term came to an end. Don’t let the door hit ya, the city collectively sneered...despite voting for the man twice. The new administration couldn’t even wait until morning to flip the official @NYCMayor Twitter account. One minute after midnight, it changed all its pictures over to ones of Eric Adams, before the man had even been officially sworn in. An image of the smiling new mayor loomed over de Blasio’s final message: a photo of he and his wife walking in shadow down a long hallway with their backs turned on a city they abandoned long ago.

bill de blasio

Friday

Jarvis Dupont

Fortnite should be banned, I agree with Prince Harry

From our US edition

This week, Prince Harry called for the popular game Fortnite to be banned, saying: ‘That game shouldn't be allowed. Where is the benefit of having it in your household? It’s created to addict, an addiction to keep you in front of a computer for as long as possible. It’s so irresponsible.’ I could not agree with him more. These days children spend far too much time indoors, playing on their video games consoles and other electronic what-have-yous. Very often, I hear the argument ‘But many kids come from backgrounds where the internet and video games are the most easily-accessible way for them to socially engage with other like-minded young people.’ What utter rot!

prince harry fortnite

Sunday

Freddy Gray

The rise and rise of the daddy big bucks candidate

From our US edition

We live in a time of hatred of elites, yet all these billionaires keep running for president. Howard Schultz, the ex-Starbucks CEO, has declared he is considering a run as an independent because he, like many others, is fed up with the current president and politics in general. Funnily enough, that is why the current billionaire president ran three years. That, plus ego. ‘This president is not qualified to be the president,’ says Schultz. That’s also what Michael Bloomberg (net worth: $44 billion) says, and the whispers that he is about to announce his candidacy are stronger than usual in this pre-election cycle. Bloomberg calls Trump a ‘pretend CEO’, and his would-be voters thrill at the thought that he is considerably richer than the Donald.

howard schultz billionaire