Lots of chat from the Australians being picked up on the stump mic as King continues to turn the screws in her spell. Rawal manages to find a single and brings up her 50 – she’s has been fantastic for India so far. Once Rana gets on strike, she has a clear plan and gets down low and sweeps the ball to the boundary for four. King’s next ball is a beauty and she comes so close to hitting the stumps.
I’m somewhat in love with this weird, bold, silly restaurant
Trillium, the latest Birmingham restaurant by Glyn Purnell, is absolutely not one of those po-faced, sedate, mumbly kind of places where some Ludovico Einaudi is piped plinky-plonkily throughout the dining room while guests stiffly eat six teensy courses. In fact, it’s quite the opposite, even if Purnell, via the likes of Purnell’s and Plates, is pretty much synonymous throughout the Midlands with fancy, special-occasion, Michelin star-winning refinement. Yet on a recent Saturday night, in this brand new, glass-fronted, multicoloured mock birdcage, the talk is loud, the music is roaring and the plates of battered potato scallop with soured cream are appearing thick and fast.
Trillium is a genuine attempt by a Michelin-starred restaurateur to translate some of their best bits into a semi-rowdier yet still upmarket stage. It’s been attempted many times by other chefs (see Corenucopia and Bar Valette for details), but, miraculously, Purnell seems to have pulled it off. There’s a general feeling of people – gasp! – actually enjoying life. Naturally, you can, if you feel like splashing out, add some Sturia oscietra caviar to that spud scallop for an extra £25, but, as with most plates at Trillium and as I quickly find out, that potato is designed to feel luxuriously hedonistic anyway.
Exclusive: Campaigners urge Keir Starmer to back ‘Philomena’s Law’ to protect payments for up to 13,000 survivors living in Britain
Survivors of Ireland’s mother and baby homes have started to have benefits cut in Britain because they accepted compensation from the Irish government.
The cuts to the means-tested benefits of survivors in Britain come as campaigners including the actors Siobhán McSweeney and Steve Coogan called on Keir Starmer to back a bill known as Philomena’s Law, which would ringfence survivors’ benefits.
Pessimism can be a form of self-protection, so it might be helpful to reflect on where this pattern started
I am a 38-year-old woman with three kids and a husband. I often find myself expecting people to disappoint me, and make appointments anticipating that they will back out at the last minute. I then start to play the role of the victim, the friend who has been let down, and this whole narrative begins in my head.
I may invite a friend to something, but then come up with all the reasons why the thing is stupid and they wouldn’t want to come. I downplay it, saying: “Oh, it’s nothing fun”, and “Don’t worry if you can’t come”, even though I know I would have a great time.
It’s a grim time to be in your 20s, no doubt, but don’t blame it all on older people: being chopped up into ever smaller rivalries only serves the market
Intergenerational relations, or lack of them, is a subject I’ve been thinking about, on and off, since the financial crisis. I’ve read up on it, too – things such as the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ report on intergenerational earnings mobility, which is wonky but full of fascinating information which needs some parsing. (Example: “While the educational attainment of ethnic minorities growing up in families eligible for free school meals is often higher than that of their white majority peers, their earnings outcomes show no such advantage.” Why not?) Another good source of data is the Office for Budgetary Responsibility’s (OBR) report on intergenerational fairness – which, interestingly, is about the bluntest statement of fiscal unfairness that you can find. The OBR makes the point that “a current new-born baby would make an average net discounted contribution to the exchequer of £68,400 over its life-time, whilst future generations would have to contribute £159,700”. In plain English, people’s lifetime contribution to the state is going to double. That number is from 2011, and will definitely have got worse. In 2019, the House of Lords published a report on “Tackling intergenerational unfairness”, which doesn’t even bother pretending that the problem doesn’t exist. Mind you, not everyone agrees. A 2023 report from Imperial College Business School argues “there is more solidarity between generations than the ‘Millennials versus Boomers’ narrative would suggest”.
So this is definitely a question you can address through data – though there is a risk that you can use numbers to cherrypick your way to a conclusion you already held in advance. The other way of thinking about it is through lived experience. Not necessarily just your own. I often find myself thinking about the range of experiences and expectations in my own family, going no further than one generation back and one generation forward. I’m on the cusp between boomers and generation X. My children, both in their 20s, are firmly in generation Z. My parents were born in the 20s, in the west of Ireland and in South Africa. Between us, it’s a wildly different set of life stories, and chucking it into the capacious carpet bag labelled “generational differences” seems to me to be a violent oversimplification.
While there are similarities with the wars against Iraq, the Iran conflict may prove to be the most dangerous and consequential yet
This is the third Gulf war and umpteenth outbreak of conflict since the United States took over as the dominant power and influence in the Middle East at the end of the cold war. And it is arguably the most dangerous, consequential and confused of them all.
The destruction and chaos spreading across the region confirms the Middle East’s status as the world’s pre-eminent crisis factory, but it also raises questions as to how US presidents so often declare they are ending US interference in the region, only to be lured back in.
The partisan debate since the Gorton and Denton byelection risks blinding us to the truth. People are rejecting wholesale the way our politics has developed
As the days pass since the earthquake that was the Gorton and Denton byelection, the result is being parsed in the usual ways. A mid-cycle protest vote and frustration with the pace of “delivery”. Some have even blamed the electorate itself. More reflective voices have called for a “reset” or a reaffirmation of “Labour values” – often shorthand for an internal recalibration.
All of those contain fragments of truth. But none explains the scale of what now confronts Labour – and the country.
Artefacts include souvenirs from 1972 ‘Match of the Century’ between Boris Spassky and Bobby Fischer
A vast collection of chess memorabilia, including souvenirs from the 1972 “Match of the Century” and considered to be the largest and most important of its kind in private hands, is to be auctioned at Sotheby’s in London next month.
The collection belonged to the German grandmaster Lothar Schmid, whose passion for the sport extended way beyond the board.
Families of those onboard urge Malaysian government to extend contract with deep-sea exploration firm
Families of those aboard Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 on Sunday urged the Malaysian government to extend a contract it signed with deep-sea exploration firm Ocean Infinity to continue a search for the aircraft that disappeared 12 years ago.
The Boeing 777 was carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew when it vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on 8 March, 2014, becoming one of the world’s enduring aviation mysteries.
Russell claims victory ahead of Mercedes teammate Kimi Antonelli
Home town hopeful Oscar Piastri crashes out in formation lap
George Russell has won the Australian Grand Prix with a commanding drive from the front of the grid and with his Mercedes teammate Kimi Antonelli in second, securing a strong one-two for the team.
He was ultimately in complete control in the first round of the new Formula One season in Melbourne on Sunday but only after Ferrari had brought a thrilling and feisty scrap to the opening stages, with Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton finishing third and fourth for the Scuderia.
Flood-affected residents in the Northern Territory have been warned not to swim in crocodile-filled waters, as tropical lows continue to bring major flood warnings and heavy rains to the Top End and Queensland.
Hundreds of people were evacuated over the weekend, with the entire town of Nauiyu/Daly River in the NT evacuated as of Sunday afternoon, the NT chief minister, Lia Finocchiaro, said.
Exclusive: MoD-contracted workers assisting Ukrainians in a way ‘no other nation has been willing to do’, says minister
In an unmarked and undisclosed location in western Ukraine, British and Ukrainian engineers work side by side to fix damaged military hardware, crawling under the chassis of artillery systems and pulling apart the insides of British-donated howitzers.
Until now, the existence of this facility, along with three other similar sites inside Ukraine, has been kept quiet, buried in neutral language to avoid drawing too much attention to the sites, given the sensitivities of all military-linked work inside Ukraine.
With political activism off-limits, residents of St. Petersburg are finding purpose and community in the “politics of small deeds,” repairing and cleaning architectural treasures.
Balendra Shah, center, during his campaign to become the next prime minister of Nepal last Saturday. To his right is Rabi Lamichhane, the Rastriya Swatantra Party president.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s word-salad answer on what he stands for politically in a podcast interview with comedian Adam Friedland offered a window into the complicated mind of an expected presidential candidate who may be too "slick."
https://youtu.be/T_nVJhQKHFk A UFC fight at the White House has officially been announced to take place on June 14th, coinciding with Donald Trump’s 80th birthday. But that’s just scratching the surface of the wild plans in store for the unprecedented event and how it will run. From fighters walking out of the oval office, to weigh-ins...