The Week

The roofs of bus shelters across the UK are to be turned into miniature gardens to support bees and butterflies. Grass-topped bus stops were first erected in the Netherlands, and have since become a familiar sight in Nordic countries; in the UK, Leicester is leading the charge, with 30 installed since 2021. Clear Channel, the company that manages 30,000 shelters for local councils, says it plans to convert at least 1,000 of its bus stops into insect havens over the coming years. A British woman has set a world record by shearing 370 sheep in eight hours. Marie Prebble, 34, whose family has worked land in Kent for centuries, sheared one strong wool lamb every 90 seconds, equivalent to more than 46 an hour, to claim her title. No woman had…

What happened The Bank of England launched an emergency bond-buying programme on Wednesday, after the Government’s tax-cutting plans sent sterling to a record low against the dollar and caused a sharp rise in borrowing costs. Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s “mini-Budget” last Friday, had unveiled the biggest raft of tax cuts in 50 years, worth some £45bn, funded by higher borrowing. The scale of the cuts, which were announced alongside an energy support package that is expected to cost £60bn over the next six months, spooked investors and prompted a rebuke from the International Monetary Fund. The ensuing volatility led mortgage lenders to suspend hundreds of deals, amid predictions that the Bank of England’s base rate could rise to more than 5.5% by next summer. Among the measures in Kwarteng’s mini-Budget was a cut…

What happened Italy has elected its most right-wing government since the Second World War, headed by a party with roots in the country’s fascist past. The coalition led by the hard-line Brothers of Italy won a clear majority in both houses of parliament; and the party itself, which was founded only ten years ago, took 26% of the vote, more than five times its share at the last election in 2018. Its leader, Giorgia Meloni, 45, is set to become Italy’s first female prime minister. Her campaign had emphasised traditional family values, tax cuts, euroscepticism and hostility to immigration. The party’s main rival on the right, the League, led by Matteo Salvini, saw its vote almost halved. It will now be a junior member of Meloni’s coalition, with Forza Italia, led by…

Leading the Opposition is the “toughest gig in Westminster”, said Rafael Behr in The Guardian. You struggle to get noticed until you make a mistake, then everyone jumps on you. “If you attack the Government without a better offer, you are carping from the sidelines. When you come up with a better plan, the Government nicks it.” But Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng have contrived to make Keir Starmer’s job easy. Their mini-Budget managed to “destroy what is left of Conservative claims to be serious stewards of the economy, while advertising the party as a factory of favours for the super-rich”. And in his speech at the Labour conference this week, Starmer revelled in it. The Tories have trashed the economy and “crashed the pound”, he told us. “And for…

The Government laid out plans last week to set the economy on a course of 2.5% yearly growth. It pledged, among other things, to reform childcare to make it more affordable; and to speed up the construction of new housing and infrastructure by cutting bureaucracy, and reforming or abolishing the protections for rare species known as habitat regulations. The Government plans to create “Investment Zones”, where planning rules would be liberalised yet further, and businesses would have tax benefits. This week it denied reports that it was thinking of scrapping the Environment Land Management Schemes, which were designed to incentivise farmers to conserve wildlife.…

Leaders of a village in southwest India have imposed a nightly “digital detox” on local residents. At 7pm every night, a siren is set off from a nearby temple, to mark the moment when all phones and other screens should be turned off for 90 minutes. “All that ambient noise from Bollywood videos stops,” said one of the organisers of the detox. “It’s as though everyone just breathes and focuses.” Stressed-out workers are increasingly venting their anger in specially designed “rage rooms”. In Norwich, a firm that rents out rooms full of “smashables” – objects that can be clubbed to pieces – says it has never been busier. “People have a real reason to come in,” noted manager Gemma Whiddett. “It’s not just fun anymore.”…