Judgment finds systems designed to protect against inhuman and degrading treatment ‘unlawfully’ failing for years
The Home Office has failed to protect vulnerable migrants it locks up in detention centres, a high court judge has ruled.
Mrs Justice Jefford found an unlawful failure of the “systems” designed to protect immigration detainees from inhuman and degrading treatment under article 3 of the European convention on human rights and that these failings have been going on for years. The judgment could affect thousands of migrants who are at risk behind bars.
Critics fear country will be drawn into Trump’s pressure campaign against Maduro after radar installed in Tobago
The government of Trinidad and Tobago has announced that it will allow the US military access to its airports in coming weeks as tensions build between the US and Venezuela.
The announcement follows the recent installation of a radar system at the airport in Tobago. The Caribbean country’s government has said the radar is being used to fight local crime, and that the small nation would not be used as a launchpad to attack any other country.
Bryony Worthington says the media should not be pushing a western attitude to climate strategies to the detriment of African nations. Plus letters from Prof Hugh Hunt, Dr Portia Adade Williams and Angela Churie Kallhauge
Your editorial (8 December) says that it is “hard to disagree” with calls to ban research into climate interventions or geoengineering solutions, citing well-worn tropes about a “termination shock” scenario and a dislike of private-sector involvement in the field. The pretext for forming this opinion – and claiming it represents all of Africa – appears to be the brief reference in a joint statement earlier this year from the African environmental ministers.
I can’t help feeling that the Guardian is being played. Every advance in human technology elicits cries from a vocal few that a line must be drawn that cannot be crossed. Usually seeded in the corridors of western NGOs, legitimate concerns are whipped up into fearmongering and luddism, with the goal of holding back scientific inquiry.
Guardian readers respond to a report by the homelessness charity Crisis and our editorial
Your editorial (The Guardian view on England’s social housing system: failing the very people it was built for, 10 December) claims that “social homes were supposed to be for those who couldn’t afford private rents”. That’s not so. Most council estates, such as Becontree and Harold Hill, were built following the first and second world wars to house ordinary working families when decent housing was in dire straits. Privately rented properties were often of poor quality and devoid of basic amenities.
The governments then believed it imperative to house ordinary families in good-quality modern housing. Relying on private landlords and precarious tenancies was seen practically as an insult to the nation’s people, and even financially well-off council tenants could rest assured that their tenancy was not going to be terminated.
We shouldn’t be surprised that teenagers are turning to tools such as ChatGPT in this way. NHS waiting lists are rising, and one in five young people are living with a mental health condition. It is unacceptable that young people who require support for their mental health are unable to access the services they need, before they reach crisis point.
William Schabas on the conviction of two officers of a German submarine of ‘an offence against the law of nations’ during the first world war
Sidney Blumenthal referred to a 1945 war crimes judgment on the killing of seamen who had survived an attack at sea during the second world war (Does Pete Hegseth even believe that war crimes exist?, 8 December). There is an even earlier case. In a trial held by a German court pursuant to the treaty of Versailles (1919), two officers of U-86 were convicted of “an offence against the law of nations” for attacking survivors after the sinking of a Canadian hospital ship, the Llandovery Castle, off the coast of Ireland in the final months of the first world war. The judges said the rule against such attacks was “simple” and “universally known”. They rejected the defence argument that the officers were following orders of the submarine’s captain. They said such an order was manifestly unlawful. The precedent is still cited today and is codified in the Rome statute of the international criminal court. William Schabas Professor of international law, Middlesex University
Prime minister reiterates support for Kyiv as it comes under mounting US pressure to sign up to Trump-backed plan
A peace deal between Russia and Ukraine will fail unless it is backed up by “robust” security guarantees from western powers, the UK prime minister has said.
Keir Starmer, speaking ahead of talks with European leaders in Berlin, told MPs on Monday he was opposed to any agreement that did not include sufficient military guarantees for Ukraine, as Kyiv comes under mounting US pressure to sign up to a Trump-backed plan.
Nick Reiner has been arrested on suspicion of murder following the deaths of his parents, actor-director Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner, according to the Los Angeles police chief, Jim McDonnell.
Nick, 32, was taken into custody Sunday night, and his bail was set $4m, jail records show.
There is a hint of feudalism about the way the unelected body has treated those who love the track like its serfs
It has taken the better part of a decade but the Jockey Club, the private, self-appointed body that has wielded immense power in racing for nearly 300 years, seems poised to realise its long-standing ambition to see one of the sport’s most historic racecourses bulldozed for housing. If the King George VI Chase at Kempton on Boxing Day is on your racing bucket list, next week’s renewal might be one of the final chances to tick it off.
That, sadly, is the only conclusion to be drawn from what was almost a throwaway comment by Jim Mullen, the Jockey Club’s new chief executive, to the Racing Post’s industry editor, Bill Barber, over the weekend.
Ofqual issues fines over English proficiency test that some candidates sat at home, A-level Chinese and GCSE English
One of the world’s biggest providers of educational services has been fined more than £2m for a range of serious breaches related to examination standards that could have affected tens of thousands of students.
Pearson, a FTSE 100-listed company, was hit by financial penalties of £750,000 for each of two cases and £505,000 for a third by Ofqual, the exams regulator. The cases concerned GCSE English language exams, A-level spoken Chinese and an online English proficiency test.
Menzies apologises saying ‘it was the wrong thing to do’
Cameron Menzies saw red and punched the table in frustration following his 3-2 defeat by Charlie Manby in the first round of the World Darts Championship.
Scot Menzies led twice in the game as he took the opening set before going 2-1 up, but the 20-year-old from Huddersfield fought back to take it into a deciding set before he finally pinned double four, after both players missed several darts at double.
Will the employment rights bill be passed by Christmas? Well, the chances are slightly improved after six leading business groups published a temperature-lowering letter on Monday that said parliament, which in this instance means the blockers in the House of Lords, should get on with it.
The employers, note, are still unhappy about the issue that triggered the most recent revolt by Conservative peers and a few cross-benchers: the removal of a cap on compensation claims for unfair dismissal. But they’re more worried that further delays would jeopardise their negotiating victory last month, namely the government’s U-turn on rights guaranteeing workers protection against unfair dismissal from day one of employment. A six-month qualifying period was adopted instead, with the blessing of the TUC, which was similarly motivated by trying to get the bill over the line quickly.
Bus and train initiative comes as government struggles to survive corruption and sexual harassment allegations
Spain’s socialist-led government is to launch a national public transport pass that will allow people to travel anywhere in the country by bus or train for a flat monthly fee of €60 (£52.70).
The prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, unveiled the initiative on Monday, saying it would come into effect in the second half of January and was intended “to change the way Spaniards understand and use public transport for ever”.
Ian Murray says he has still not been given an explanation for his demotion to technology minister
The former Scottish secretary Ian Murray has hit out at the prime minister for his “humiliating” sacking, despite deciding to remain a minister in the government.
In a candid interview Murray said he had felt underappreciated in his cabinet role, and that he had been in two minds whether to accept his current position as technology minister.
We can still call off this week’s strike – if the health secretary meaningfully addresses job shortages, real-terms pay cuts and the ongoing exodus
Dr Jack Fletcher is chair of the British Medical Association’s UK resident doctors committee
Resident doctors in England have voted overwhelmingly to go ahead with this week’s planned strike, because the government’s latest offer fails to address the medical jobs crisis and does nothing to stem the exodus of medics from this country.
Despite the government spin, this offer will not lead to more doctors in our NHS. It makes a start, but the proposed increase of specialty training posts over the next three years, from the 1,000 extra announced in the 10-year health plan to 4,000, simply repurposes “locally employed doctors”, rather than increasing capacity. It will not mean more doctors on the shop floor of our A&E departments – it’s just shuffling the deck chairs on a sinking ship.
Dr Jack Fletcher is an acute medicine doctor working in the north-east of England and chair of the British Medical Association’s UK resident doctors committee
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Reflecting on chaos of early pandemic, former chancellor said it was ‘acutely stressful’ to see rising interest bill on government bonds
Rishi Sunak was concerned about the UK’s ability to fund itself in March 2020 after the government announced rescue measures costing tens of billions of pounds to prevent mass redundancies, the Covid-19 pandemic inquiry has heard.
The former prime minister, who was chancellor when the first UK lockdown was announced, said he feared foreign investors had become more concerned about Britain’s ability to pay its way than other countries in a similar situation.
FBI director said his agency helped detain ‘person of interest’ in Brown shooting – who was released hours later
Kash Patel, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigations, is once again facing criticism for rushing to social media to tout his agency’s work on tracking down a person of interest in a shooting prematurely.
After a shooter killed two and injured nine at Brown University on Saturday, Patel, a lawyer and rightwing commentator before his job in the administration, posted on X that his agency had helped detain a “person of interest in a hotel room” in Coventry, Rhode Island, acting off a lead from the Providence police.
The Salt Path author has rejected new accusations from a niece alleging she took money from relatives, describing the claims as part of a ‘false narrative’ about her life
Raynor Winn, the author of The Salt Path, has denied fresh allegations that she stole money from members of her family, describing the claims as part of a “false narrative” about her life.
The writer responded after her niece alleged that Winn had written a letter more than a decade ago setting out details of taking money from her mother and from her parents-in-law. Winn has strongly denied the allegations and said she did not write the letter.
Some potential first-time buyer groups ‘could be better served’, regulator says in review
Freelancers and gig economy workers could enjoy more flexibility over how and when they pay their mortgage under plans designed to help more people get on the property ladder.
A shake-up of the rules so people whose income is “variable or irregular” could be freed up from having to make monthly mortgage payments is one of a number of changes being considered by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) that could make it easier for millions of “underserved” UK consumers to get a home loan.
How do you sell turkey and all the luxury trimmings when the world’s in chaos and the cost of living crisis continues? It’s no surprise that this year’s adverts are a complicated lot
There can’t be anyone skirting closer to burnout, more deserving of our sympathy and complicated respect, than the people who conceive Christmas ads. The goal is straightforward: make people feel good about Christmas so that they spend more than they otherwise might. Amp up the love and affection of the season; play down the labour (emotional and otherwise); make everyone feel a bit hungrier and thirstier – job done.
This must be at least the fifth year, though, that the world looks so perilous, so fraught and vexed, so sad and chaotic, that what’s an honest supermarket to do? The retailers weathered the first Covid Christmas, when demand for nut multipacks and pigs in blankets was poignantly low; then they weathered Christmas 2021, when restrictions came back so unexpectedly that it wasn’t unusual for a household to have 14 times as much turkey as they could possibly eat.
In keeping with pretty much everything else you’ve read, seen or heard about the Scottish League Cup final, you’d be forgiven for presuming today’s Football Daily will almost entirely be devoted to the fact Celtic is run by an incompetent bunch of cheapskates who appear to consider their paying customers an entitled rabble of insubordinate plebs, with only a cursory mention of plucky little St Mirren’s actual triumph at the end. Except that’s not how this daily football email rolls and by sneering at everyone else’s coverage of the Buddies’ not-entirely-surprising Hampden Park triumph, we’ve now mentioned their win twice already, which means we can exclusively devote what remains of this section to going in two-footed with our views on the Scottish champions.
Is anybody else looking back with fondness to a time when Sepp Blatter was Fifa’s chief suit?” – Gary McGuinness.
As a compatriot of Tyler T (Friday’s Football Daily letters), may I add a preemptive global apology for anything Alexi Lalas says? There’s really no excuse. As a people, we should have long ago endeavoured to make sure he never actually speaks into a live microphone. And I’m sorry to Tyler as well for bandwagoning his letter” – Daniel Stauss.
Re: rival fans being nice (Football Daily letters passim) – my friend, a lifelong Coventry fan, asked me to join him at the Spurs v Coventry FA Cup final in 1987. Unfortunately he could only get tickets in the middle of a Tottenham section. Notwithstanding this he wore his Coventry scarf and we both were on our feet cheering when Coventry equalised, without any adverse reaction from the Spurs fans. Not only that, after Coventry won the match – and the Cup – the Spurs fans remained in their seats and clapped the Coventry team when they came round celebrating their win. Those were the days” – Danny Sullivan.
Glaciers in the European Alps are likely to reach their peak rate of extinction in only eight years, according to a study, with more than 100 due to melt away permanently by 2033. Glaciers in the western US and Canada are forecast to reach their peak year of loss less than a decade later, with more than 800 disappearing each year by then.
The melting of glaciers driven by human-caused global heating is one of the clearest signs of the climate crisis. Communities around the world have already held funeral ceremonies for lost glaciers, and a Global Glacier Casualty List records the names and histories of those that have vanished.
Arguably the poster-boy for Bazball, England’s vice-captain is in dire need of an innings of substance in Adelaide
“They were shocking shots. I’ll admit that every day of the week. Especially the one in Perth. It was nearly a bouncer and I’ve tried to drive it. It was just bad batting. The one in Brisbane I’ve tried to hit it for six. That’s what I mean when I say I need to rein it in a bit.”
Oh yes, Harry. This is real transgression. Inject that mild good sense into my throbbing veins. Trash talk binned. Mind games deactivated. Tell me about reining it in again. Shock me with your filthy, filthy conservatism. Talk sensible to me baby.
Tottenham Hotspur, Thomas Frank said after Sunday’s 3-0 defeat to Nottingham Forest, are “not a quick fix”. That’s been true for probably 40 years, since they lurched into financial crisis amid boardroom shenanigans in the 1980s, becoming the first soccer club to list on the stock exchange and embarking on a disastrous programme of diversification (the highlight perhaps being becoming Hummel’s distributor in the UK, a role they performed so badly that Southampton took a page of their own programme to blame Spurs for the fact that their shirts were not being delivered).
Right now, Spurs would probably settle for even a little bit of a fix, a slow hint of progress, a flicker of hope, anything to break them out of the current grim spiral. They have won just one of their last seven league games. When they beat Everton on 26 October, they were third, five points behind the leaders. Sunday’s defeat leaves them 11th, 14 points behind Arsenal. Given that Spurs finished 17th last season, perhaps that is not so unexpected – and the compacted nature of the table means they are only four points off fifth and probable Champions League qualification. But, equally, 22 points represents their lowest Premier League tally after 16 games since 2008.
Opposition leader and Nobel peace prize laureate’s injury was reportedly sustained during high-risk sea crossing
Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel peace prize laureate María Corina Machado suffered a vertebra fracture during her secret journey from Venezuela to Norway last week, her spokesperson has confirmed.
Machado previously said she feared for her life during the perilous voyage to receive her award in Oslo.
Paul Thomas Anderson’s counter-culture thriller scores nine nods, ahead of Hamnet and Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, with Leonardo DiCaprio in contention for actor of the year
One Battle After Another, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, has consolidated its place as the awards-season leader in emerging with the most nominations from the London Critics’ Circle film awards.
One Battle After Another, a counter-culture thriller loosely based on Thomas Pynchon’s novel Vineland, picked up nine nominations, including film of the year, director and screenwriter of the year for Anderson, and actor of the year for DiCaprio. Co-stars Teyana Taylor, Benicio del Toro and Sean Penn were nominated in the supporting categories while Chase Infiniti was nominated for breakthrough performer.
Al Pacino and Robert De Niro’s dueling performances add an extra punch to the 1995 masterpiece which is both action-heavy and deeply tragic
Consider the hype leading into Heat when it hit theatres 30 years ago today. Here was Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, two legends the movie’s trailers flexed by their rhyming last names only, both masters of their craft who, much like their characters, had been watching each other from a distance (maybe competitively, maybe with respect and admiration), sharing the screen for the very first time. The pent-up anticipation was built right into the narrative, which patiently delays the onscreen face-off between Pacino’s dogged homicide detective Vincent Hanna and De Niro’s career criminal Neil McCauley for almost 90 textured and intense minutes.
Imagine the surprise then, and the comic relief, when the moment finally arrives, and these two opposing forces collide (as the trailers would say) … for a warm and exceptionally civil cup of coffee.
Not to sound too Scrooge-ish, but it can sometimes feel like Christmas is the season of overconsumption and overindulgence. Whether it’s wasted food, unwanted presents or single-use crackers, trees and wrapping paper – once we’ve finished decking the halls, a lot of it ends up decking landfill.
Our handy guide to cutting Christmas waste has lots of useful ideas, but we also asked you for your tips and tricks. From alternative trees to an ingenious way to use up leftovers, here are your top hacks for a more sustainable festive season.
City’s small shops are reaching tipping point amid higher business rates, staff costs and big chains eager to move in
It’s lunchtime at Dormitory, an independent bedlinen store on Gloucester Road in Brighton, and proprietors Sue Graham and Cathy Marriott are peering across the street at the Brighton Sausage Co. They can tell when shoppers have stayed indoors by the number of sausage rolls left in the window. It’s a Tuesday before Christmas – supposedly the busiest time of the year. But there’s still a big pile remaining.
“In 10 years’ time, we’re all going to be going, ‘We need shops. Where have they all gone?’,” Marriott says. Her warning echoes widespread fears for Brighton’s plentiful independent shops, which have given the Sussex city international renown.
‘We had 2,000 people outside our hotel room in Buenos Aires singing our songs all night. David Coulthard later told me that all the Formula One drivers were staying there and were annoyed because they couldn’t sleep’
In my early 20s, I was in the biggest band in Sweden. But after Gyllene Tider [Golden Times] collapsed, I was depressed for two years. At first, Roxette only got together when Marie Fredriksson, our singer, wasn’t busy with solo stuff. To keep her in the band, I needed to make it successful, so I was very motivated.
AI Mode is mangling recipes by merging instructions from multiple creators – and causing them huge dips in ad traffic
This past March, when Google began rolling out its AI Mode search capability, it began offering AI-generated recipes. The recipes were not all that intelligent. The AI had taken elements of similar recipes from multiple creators and Frankensteined them into something barely recognizable. In one memorable case, the Google AI failed to distinguish the satirical website the Onion from legitimate recipe sites and advised users to cook with non-toxic glue.
Over the past few years, bloggers who have not secured their sites behind a paywall have seen their carefully developed and tested recipes show up, often without attribution and in a bastardized form, in ChatGPT replies. They have seen dumbed-down versions of their recipes in AI-assembled cookbooks available for digital downloads on Etsy or on AI-built websites that bear a superficial resemblance to an old-school human-written blog. Their photos and videos, meanwhile, are repurposed in Facebook posts and Pinterest pins that link back to this digital slop.
A new documentary explores how Astrid Lindgren’s beloved children’s books about the pigtailed free spirit were written in response to the darkest days of the second world war
She’s the mischievous little red-haired Swedish girl with the pigtails. Since 1945, this waif with no mother or father has rarely been out of the bestseller lists and continues to inspire musicals and movies. Heyday Films, the outfit behind Paddington and James Bond, is now developing an English-language adaptation of her stories.
What isn’t generally known outside her native Sweden are the circumstances in which author Astrid Lindgren created Pippi during the darkest period of the second world war, under the shadow of Hitler and Stalin.
Australia suffered one of the deadliest massacres in its modern history on Sunday when two gunmen opened fire on a Jewish celebration at Bondi in Sydney. At least 16 people died, including one of the alleged gunmen, with more than 40 left wounded. The victims include a 10-year-old child, a Holocaust survivor and a London-born rabbi. The alleged gunmen behind the attack are a father-son duo, suspected of using legally obtained firearms to commit the massacre. Naveed Akram, 24, was known to New South Wales police and security agencies and had been linked with an Islamic State cell. The Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, is facing questions about gun law reform and security failings as Australians reel from the attack. Lucy Hough talks to the Guardian Australia senior reporter Ben Doherty
Benjamin Lewis pleads guilty to harassing Christians by dumping dead deer and lambs in New Forest
A 47-year-old man has admitted harassing Christians by dumping animal carcasses outside churches in and around an English forest.
Benjamin Lewis admitted seven offences relating to incidents in which dead deer and lambs were left at churches in the New Forest in Hampshire earlier this year.
Paul Doyle, 54, is due to be sentenced on Tuesday after admitting 31 offences against 21 adults and eight children
A former Royal Marine was a “man in a rage” as he mowed down dozens of Liverpool football club fans at a victory parade in what many feared was a terrorist attack, a court has heard.
Victims of Paul Doyle wept as dashcam footage showed bodies spinning through the air as he accelerated into crowds while screaming: “Fucking hell, move!”
The chances of the European trucking industry hitting zero emissions targets are “dire”, an industry body has warned, as it emerged that only a tiny amount of lorries delivering goods in the EU are electric.
Speaking as the European Commission prepares to water down electric car targets, the boss of the association for commercial vehicles called on the commission to commit to an urgent review of the sector, tackling problems including a lack of public charging points, a lack of tax breaks for trucks and high energy costs.
On her sixth album, pop’s queen of the dramatic reinvention did something more shocking than meat dresses and humanoid motorbikes: Lady Gaga looked back.
Unlike the smooth tech-house flavour of its predecessor Chromatica, and diametrically opposed to the dinner jazz of her work with Tony Bennett, on Mayhem she returned to the operatic electroclash that powered her first two albums. There are synths that sound like a Dyson on its last legs. There are the kind of trashy guitars that contractually can only be played by someone sporting a lime mohawk, low-riding leather trousers and nothing else. There is the baby talk of her biggest hit Bad Romance, only where that was “Ro-ma, ro-ma-ma / Gaga, ooh la la” it’s now “Ama ooh na-na / Abracadabra, mutta ooh Gaga”. You can see the difference, right?
Fifty years on Aitor Aguirre and Sergio Manzanera still share a connection after their protest against executions in Spain in 1975
Amid the clatter of studs and the shouts of encouragement, the players of Racing Santander filed out of the home dressing room and into the tunnel to face their opponents. All of them, that was, except two. The broad-shouldered centre-forward Aitor Aguirre and the winger Sergio Manzanera lingered furtively.
“We said that if we could do something to damage this military regime, we should,” recalls Aguirre on the terrace of the restaurant he ran for many years after his retirement. “But it had to be subtle, or they wouldn’t let us out on the field. So, we slipped into the toilets with a pair of bootlaces. I tied one onto Sergio, and he tied one onto me, so they looked like armbands.”
AA sounds out buyers, and owners of fellow roadside assistance provider prefer IPO of similar value
The private equity owners of the AA, Britain’s biggest roadside recovery business, are looking for a potential £5bn sale or stock market flotation, while the owners of the rival RAC are targeting a London listing with a similar valuation.
The AA, which provides roadside assistance as well as insurance and driving lessons, is owned by a consortium including TowerBrook Capital Partners, Warburg Pincus and Stonepeak, and has been sounding out buyers, in news first reported by the Financial Times.
The AA’s owners are understood to value it at £5bn or more. They are also considering floating it on the London stock market – a decade on from its flotation by previous private equity owners. The plans are still in the early stages.
Australia is in mourning after gunmen opened fire on Bondi beach on Sunday, killing at least 15 people in an attack on the Jewish community during its Hanukah celebrations. One of the alleged gunmen was also killed during the incident
Kruger rejected the suggestion and said ‘polling remains very, very positive for Reform’
In his Q&A, Danny Kruger was also asked whether he was concerned whether the Guardian reports about people at school with Nigel Farage saying they recall him being racist as a pupil, which have been widely followed up, and the party’s response to them, which has alternated between outright denial and suggestions that any comments were banter, or taken out of context, or misremembered, have damaged the party’s poll ratings. Support for the party has flatlined, or fallen, since the stories started appearing.
In response, Kruger rejected suggestions this was a problem. He explained:
The polling remains very, very positive for Reform. We are clearly well ahead of every other party. And that is sustained and consistent in every single poll that you see.
And I’m confident that that will continue.
Reform % was down across most polls last week. What is driving it? Farage school comments, Gill & Russia, Mahmood asylum reform? I suspect answer is simpler: Reform do best when its issues are in focus (migration,crime,lack of faith in politics) & less so when it’s the economy
Ukraine’s Nato ambitions, the future of the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and elections were also discussed
Separately, the commission’s deputy chief spokesperson Olof Gill has just confirmed that commission president Ursula von der Leyen will attend the Berlin talks this evening.
Not a surprise at all, but good to have it formally confirmed.
Former chancellor and PM faces questions on the economic response to the pandemic
Sunak said speed was “paramount” as “one thing that was crystal clear that this was happening very quickly” and was to have an “extraordinary impact” on millions of people across the country.
A damning official report on the handling of the pandemic found the UK’s response to Covid was “too little, too late”. It said the introduction of a lockdown even a week earlier than happened could have saved more than 20,000 lives.
As it turned out, that was really the one of the easier things I had to do, given what then unfolded over the next few days, weeks, months, and at that moment things were moving very quickly. So even during the budget preparations, it was clear that what was happening with the pandemic was escalating.
Reiner’s own films reshaped modern comedy and drama with their intelligence, empathy and range. But through his company, Castle Rock, he paved the way for Seinfeld, Sorkin and many more
As a film-maker, Rob Reiner championed humour, civility and intelligence – qualities you suppose would be out of step with the Hollywood of the 1980s where he made his name, and in the 1990s where he scored a series of extraordinary, far-reaching successes. Reiner had a family interest in the workings of on-screen comedy: his father Carl had played a key role on Sid Caesar’s TV shows, which themselves were revolutionary, and helped birth a new generation of screen comics by directing Steve Martin’s film debut The Jerk. Rob had become a household name as Meathead, the liberal foil to Carroll O’Connor’s bigoted Archie Bunker in 70s sitcom All in the Family (the equivalent to Mike Rawlins v Warren Mitchell in the British original, Till Death Us Do Part). But it was as a director and producer that he really made his impact felt.
In 1984, Reiner released This Is Spinal Tap, a “mockumentary” about a fictitious heavy metal band from the UK that rewrote the rules on what comedy could do. It sent up rock’n’roll behaviour and codified its cliches (with Reiner himself doing a hilarious parody of Martin Scorsese’s hosting role in The Last Waltz) and gave us zingers that haven’t lost their comedy power more than 30 years on: “The numbers all go to 11”, “it’s such a fine line between stupid, and er … clever.” Its deployment of improvised comedy was revolutionary for a Hollywood feature, and while Reiner wasn’t the first to use the fake-documentary techniques for comedic purposes (that goes back at least to Woody Allen’s Take the Money and Run), it hugely popularised the mockumentary style; subsequent efforts include Bob Roberts, Fear of a Black Hat, Drop Dead Gorgeous and Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. All these owe Tap a huge debt – as well as the microgenre of star Christopher Guest’s improv-mockumentaries: Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show and A Mighty Wind. Almost incidentally, Spinal Tap became a sort-of-real band, with tours, record releases and a follow-up feature (Spinal Tap II: The End Continues), in which the presence of music industry titans Paul McCartney and Elton John demonstrated the high regard in which the original was held.
Martin O’Neill says patience needed with Wilfried Nancy
Brendan Rodgers is in talks over a managerial return at Saudi Arabian side Al-Qadsiah.
Rodgers resigned from Celtic in October, a move that proved the trigger for a stinging attack from the club’s main shareholder Dermot Desmond. The 52-year-old is yet to address Desmond’s sentiment but is known to have been attractive to Saudi clubs for some time. He turned down a move to the kingdom after leaving Leicester in 2023.
An estimated 6,000 nurses left in 2024 for roles in countries including the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. Three nurses explain what made them decide to leave or stay
When Bright Ansah, a nursing officer in Accra, goes searching for colleagues who have failed to show up for a shift at the overstretched hospital where he works, he knows where to look. “When you see ‘In God we trust’ on their WhatsApp status, that’s when you know they’re already in the US,” he says.
The motto of the US has been co-opted by Ghanaian medical professionals who are leaving the west African nation in droves. Many believe their faith has finally been rewarded when, after years of planning, they reach the promised land of the well-equipped, well-resourced hospitals of the US.
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