It took less than four weeks for a firm worth more than half a billion pounds to fall apart.
On 8 March, Conviviality – not a household name, but a big firm with more than 4,000 staff – had a stock market value of more than £550m. Fast-forward less than a month and its finances have fallen apart, its bankers have balked at rescue plans and shares then worth 300p are now worth nothing. It will be remembered as one of the quickest corporate collapses ever seen in the UK.
On Wednesday the firm went into administration; the best parts of the operation were immediately sold to new operators and 2,000 workers suddenly have a new employer. For the other staff, the outlook is far less certain.
Conviviality was a big player in the drinks business. It was the wine and spirits supplier to JD Wetherspoon’s 900 pubs, to chains including Slug & Lettuce and Yates, and to Hilton’s UK hotels. It ran the bars at major outdoor events including the Isle of Wight festival and the Henley regatta. Conviviality also owned the Wine Rack and Bargain Booze chains and a handful of upmarket wine merchants, including Bibendum and the royal warrant holder Walker & Wodehouse.
It expanded rapidly via a dizzying sequence of acquisitions, which delivered impressive growth and transformed the company from a little-known, downmarket drinks chain into a darling of the stock market.
That strategy, it now seems, is where it all went so badly wrong. Industry observers say that Conviviality’s acquisitions, while delivering stunning revenue growth that looked impressive, ended up exposing underlying weaknesses in its management.
Now, as the hangover kicks in, the recriminations are beginning. Former investors in Conviviality are considering a lawsuit, while the chair of the work and pensions committee, MP Frank Field, has questioned the role of the auditor KPMG, which also ran the rule over the books of the government contractor Carillion before it failed.
Conviviality’s chairman, David Adams, who on Thursday cited the company’s collapse as he resigned from the board of mixer-drinks firm Fever-Tree, can add another name to the list of ill-fated directorships on his CV: Jessops (bust), JJB Sports (bust) and HMV (also bust).
As administrators from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) start to pick through the remains, they are understood to be severely hampered by poor record-keeping – in line with the chaotic picture of Conviviality that has emerged during its decline.
For nearly 33 years, Samar Baltaji was the one-legged mother in the photo, holding the hand of her maimed daughter, Nisrine, as they walked through a landscape of Beirut at war.
In a simple skirt and blouse and with a transistor radio on her hip, she stared straight into the camera of a young photographer, Maher Attar, who was covering clashes near the Sabra Shatila Palestinian refugee camp. His photo made the front of the New York Times, capturing Lebanon’s disintegration like few other images in the 15-year conflict and launched his career.
In the decades since, the stillness of mother and daughter under a stark summer light remained a defining image of the civil war – one of simple dignity in the face of carnage and prevailing against formidable odds.
Last week, the photographer and his subject came face to face again. Maher was going to a gym in Beirut’s Verdun district. Samar was begging nearby. Now a double amputee – her second leg was lost to bone disease 12 years ago – the pair said they instinctively knew each other. “I said ‘I’ll give you a clue – smile,” Attar said. “And she replied straight away: ‘Maher’”.
Samer remembers that moment in time, 2 June 1985, as a rare ceasefire after days of fighting between Palestinian factions and the Shia militia group Amal. “They caught Maher and beat him up,” she said. “He was taking pictures from the car window and he dropped his camera. I gave it back to him.”
Samar slowly forgot about the brief encounter. She had a young family to raise in a city that was not functioning. The threat of another rocket, like the one that took her leg in her living room, remained very real. Her health steadily disintegrated until she lost her second leg. With four children to feed, and with little state support for her or any of Lebanon’s estimated 150,000 civilians wounded by war, she took to the streets.
“My husband died. My son is working but our rent is $400 per month and I figured out that if I begged I could make enough money to ensure we did not have to touch the rent money,” she said this week. “No NGO or charity has helped me. Just the streets and the people.”
Family life has also been challenging for Samar. Her husband, Ziad, was electrocuted eight years ago and a feud with her daughter saw her leave home. “I gave up my leg to save hers in 1982 – they needed cartilage from mine – and after her father died she kicked me out.”
Now, her face leathered by sun, and her tiny frame barely rising above the back of her wheelchair, she says she regrets little about her 58 years. “Sometimes I sit on the balcony and think and I begin to cry. And then I think I’m lucky to be alive and I go back to being patient.”
Maher says the chance meeting has left him with a “personal duty” to help Samar. “Maybe it’s my age, maybe it’s the fact that I’m made, but I need to do something,” he says.
The pair had been briefly reunited once before when a TV show went looking for icons of the war in 2005. “But it was short and I was told she was being looked after,” Maher said. “Now I know she needs help.”
On Wednesday, Samar and Maher went back to the spot in the Sabra Shatila camp where their encounter took place. They moved past two cemeteries, where some of the war’s dead are buried, looking for the precise location. “It’s here!” shouted Samar, stopping near a building pockmarked by bullets.
“It’s 50 metres further,” said Maher. In the end, both were wrong – they were facing the wrong way. When the site was finally settled on, or close enough to it, the now 55-year-old photographer and the once young mum both seemed their age. And both seemed content. He called her “auntie”. She called him “brother”.
“I swear I’m better for knowing you,” said Samar. The feeling was clearly mutual.
Before they parted, Samar was asked to reveal the song playing on the radio as she hobbled through the war zone.
It was a love song called They Ask Me, by Warda, an Algerian singer. On that day, it was a vignette to a lull in the chaos. Now, it has become a soundtrack to a life of loss and dignity. Hearing it again made her cry.
Both R&B loverman and hip-hop thug, Toronto homeboy and global magpie, Drake’s universal appeal has made him the definitive pop star of his generation. How did he get to the top – and how long can he stay there?
Lots of weird things have happened at the top of the UK charts: Musical Youth informing the nation which way to pass a joint, one-hit wonders Brian and Michael appraising the work of Mancunian painter LS Lowry, and pop’s forgotten couple Eamon and Frankee spending seven weeks of spring 2004 literally telling each other to fuck off. But the fact that God’s Planby Drake just spent nine weeks at No 1 in the UK – and is still top of the charts in the US – is easily one of the weirdest
It’s a song that features two notes, a chorus that is just one line long, and lazy lyrical iterations of oft-visited topics for Drake: how much reputational shine he has given to his home city of Toronto, how non-specific haters wish non-specific ill upon him, and how he is pathologically unable to open himself up emotionally to a woman he has had sex with. Yes, it’s catchy, but he has done all this before with markedly more charisma, not least in 2016’s One Dance – another song that shacked up at No 1 for weeks on end.
These are just his most successful chart moments; Drake’s last major release, 2017’s “playlist” More Life, saw each of its 22 tracks hit the UK top 75. In the interim, the commercial fortunes of tracks that he guested on, such as Blocboy JB’s Look Alive, NERD’s Lemon, and Migos’ Walk It Talk It, have all been boosted by his presence. We have now reached the point where even the B-grade solo material of God’s Plan is a shoo-in for No 1. Why?
Drake has, of course, amassed huge star quality via a decade of often excellent music, but there are also more prosaic reasons: his gossip-mag visibility from relationships with Rihanna, Serena Williams and Jennifer Lopez, and his swaggering self-confidence in describing himself as “last name ever, first name greatest” before his debut album had even come out. Crucially, his identity and upbringing have also been key.
Aubrey Drake Graham was born in Toronto in 1986 to Dennis Graham, an African-American session musician whose power-moustache currently lights up his vibrant social media feed, and Sandi Graham, a white Ashkenazi Jewish teacher. His parents split up when he was five, his father moving away to Memphis. The family home was in the working-class west side of the city, before the Grahams moved to the more affluent Forest Hill in what Drake has claimed were still relatively straitened circumstances: “I went to school with kids that were flying private jets. I never fit in. I was never accepted.”
If questions around identity ever felt awkward during his teenage years, they became key to Drake’s success later on, allowing him to be all things to all people: black and white; Jewish and non-religious; a singer and a rapper; a hard-scrabble working-class hustler; an aspirational middle-class professional; a superstar. His peculiar handsomeness – feminine eyes and lips, coupled with a thick beard and strong forehead – is both soft and hard. In a world where streaming services mean tastes have broadened, and where ethnic and musical diversity is championed among the millennials that make up the majority of his fanbase, he sits in the middle of a cultural and stylistic Venn diagram.
In short, everyone likes Drake. “There’s no demographic with him,” says Dirty South Joe, a Philadelphia DJ who hosts a monthly party that plays exclusively Drake tracks to 3,000 people at a time. “There’s no makeup to the crowd – it’s literally everyone. Because who he is, as a person, is a little bit of everybody.”
Drake’s biggest success has been to manoeuvre two musical identities so that they sit in equilibrium, and then blend them into one. He is sold as both an R&B loverman and a hip-hop thug, and much like a painter adding detail after detail to his own self-portrait, Drake constantly perfects this image. He offset Over, the braggadocious first single from his debut album, with Find Your Love, a sweet, dancehall-leaning R&B track; on his second album, Take Care, the melancholy title track dovetailed against the pumped-up party of Headlines; on album three, the flexing on Started From the Bottom was met by the crooning of Hold On, We’re Going Home. In the 90s, sex and relationships were often reduced to pornography in mainstream rap, while R&B, framed by billowing satin drapes, explored them in more depth: Drake unified the two styles. “There were a few years there where you took a lot of shit for being a Drake fan,” Joe says. “The inner monologue of humanity, of vulnerability and doubt – it’s never been a hip-hop trope. But he eventually made it OK.” The Weeknd, Bryson Tiller and Tory Lanez have all clearly been influenced by his approach.
The unrelenting solipsism and passive-aggressive relationships in Drake’s lyrics seem to chime perfectly with an emotionally hyperarticulate Tinder generation and have spawned countless memes. Indeed, no other MC generates more internet content than Drake: “He has a strong team around him, who understand memes, and the importance of always being ahead of that too,” says Joe. “And there’s a willingness to be the punchline that others don’t have. It’s not a dominance of music with him – it’s a dominance of popular culture.”
But perhaps still wary of emasculation in the eyes of male rap fans, thanks to his soft R&B tracks – one blogger amusingly dubbed him “Young Garnier Fructis” – Drake indulges a performative masculinity: bulking up his physique and his bro squad, flagging up his obsession with videogames and the Toronto Raptors basketball team. His most alpha move of all, though, was in taking on the rapper Meek Mill in 2015, after Mill accused Drake of employing a ghostwriter for his songs. As the genre demanded, Drake released diss track Back to Back. He stated “you’re getting bodied by a singing nigga” – an extraordinary line that acknowledged Drake’s perceived emasculation for being a singer-rapper rather than a pure MC, and then flipped it by using it as a weapon against Meek. In that single lyric, Drake declared the might of his hybrid musical identity, and in the court of public opinion – ie the internet – he was crowned the victor. Drake had, until that point, mostly avoided the world of freestyles and battle rhymes, but his hip-hop credentials were now brilliantly burnished with the victory.
His huge success, then, has come from ruling both the R&B and rap kingdoms as a sort of smooth-tongued, brandy-quaffing autocrat – no wonder the “get you a man who can do both” meme began with him. But that isn’t enough for Drake, whose other hybrid identities – ethnic, religious, and social class – ensure he appeals to every possible demographic. Take the video for HYFR, where he is “re-bar mitzvah’d” in a boozy celebration, sending up the fact that his Jewishness will be viewed, however patronisingly, as exotic and quirky.
Drake also represents one of the major foundational legends of hip-hop, which is that, counter to the famous Rakim line, where you’re from is where you’re at. Civic pride is at the core of the modern rapper: think of Kendrick Lamar’s Compton, Chance the Rapper’s Chicago, or Gucci Mane’s Atlanta; Drake was fortunate that no major rapper had hailed from Toronto, and he set about making it his own, inventing a mythic camaraderie with an entire city to make himself more authentically hip-hop. References to “the six” – the six cities Toronto was combined from in 1998 – abound in his tracks; his album Views had him Photoshopped on to the top of the city’s CN Tower.
In his major hit Started From the Bottom, he used a tale of his Toronto youth to invoke another trope at the heart of hip-hop and North American culture: the Horatio Alger-style libertarian fable of the kid who hauls himself up by his bootstraps and reaches the top of his industry. There was scoffing in some quarters – could anyone who starred in the teen soap Degrassi Junior High reasonably be described as starting from the bottom? – but the sheer brilliance of the track helped listeners swallow the message. He had successfully given himself the hustler-to-mogul arc that Jay-Z, Notorious BIG and others had made so central to hip-hop, all without having to deal a gram of crack.
After exploring and leveraging all these sides of his identity to the fullest, Drake embarked on a riskier strategy – allying himself with different cultures. Just as Kanye West kept a longstanding relationship with producer Mike Dean while flirting with avant-garde beatmakers such as Arca, Drake stayed sonically ahead of the curve by pairing a long-time production head, Noah “40” Shebib, with hipster tyros such as James Blake and Majid Jordan; he was soon riffing between New Orleans bounce (Child’s Play), UK funky (One Dance) and dancehall (Controlla).
He became a permanent fixture in bottle-service clubs by appearing on party tracks by seemingly every significant US rapper, from French Montana to A$AP Rocky, Nicki Minaj, and an entire album with Future. But he also started guesting with much less-expected figures – outsider rapper ILoveMakonnen, Nigerian pop singer Wizkid, South African house producer Black Coffee, Jamaican dancehall MC Beenie Man, Puerto Rican trap star Bad Bunny – to expand his global empire, and become the definitive pop star of his generation. Most significantly for his UK success was an enthusiastic embrace of grime and British rap: he has appeared on stage with Section Boyz, and on record with Giggs, Dave, Jorja Smith and Skepta, complete with heaps of British slang. He has an ongoing fanboy obsession with urban TV drama Top Boy, wears Stone Island, has sampled Bristol dubstep producer Peverelist for an unreleased new track, and even tattooed himself with the letters BBK, after the British grime crew. For every person who cringed at Drake saying “on road” or “wasteman”, there were many more who loved his genuine adoration of British mic culture. After the titanic second wave of grime, black British music has splintered into its own hybrid forms, partly thanks to diasporic links being strengthened via the internet, taking in Jamaican dancehall, African pop, US trap and more – and Drake’s enthusiastic cultural exchange has helped catalyse and legitimise that shift. From Hardy Caprio to Yxng Bane, Stefflon Don to Not3s, he has become part of the DNA of new British MCs.
Drake is now gearing up to release his eighth full-length project, or as he put it on Instagram this week: “You can see the album hours under my eyes.” That it will reach No 1 on both sides of the Atlantic is an absolute certainty, but is there anything left for him to mine from the zeitgeist to stay relevant? Could this jack of all trades end up a master of none? The lyrics still cleave to victory-lap descriptions of his charmed life, menaced occasionally by nebulous antagonists – he might need a bit of Kendrick-style social commentary or psychological self-probing like Kanye to stave off boredom. But for now, Drake’s cultural dominance is a little like his beard: strong, clear and expertly, obsessively tailored.
Dirty South Joe appears on Diplo & Friends on Radio 1, Saturday 7 April; his Drake party So Far Gone is on Friday 6 April at the Fillmore, Philadelphia.
Not even a Jordan Spieth charge could spare the blushes of Sergio Gárcia. What Augusta giveth, Augusta taketh away. Masters drama arrives in the most varying of forms.
Gárcia, the defending champion and an individual for whom nothing could apparently douse an upbeat Masters mood, was front and centre of an extraordinary scene on the return to the course which yielded his greatest triumph. The Spaniard has entered the record books after taking 13 strokes at the par-five 15th. It was the joint highest score ever on a single Masters hole and the biggest tally – by two – on that hole. Amateur golfers the world over nodded in quiet appreciation of what Gárcia encountered.
In golfing context the detail is almost too gruesome to revisit. Gárcia, who was two-over par at the time, attempted to find the putting surface in two with a six iron. He found water, just as was the case the four subsequent times he played with only a wedge in hand.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” said a shellshocked Gárcia. “It’s one of those things. I feel like it’s the first time in my career where I made a 13 without missing a shot. Simple as that. I felt like I hit a lot of good shots and unfortunately the ball just didn’t want to stop.”
Gárcia did little to hide his disdain for the pin-placement which caused him so much trauma. “Well, you saw it, I don’t think I need to describe it,” he added. “It’s not the first time it’s been there, so it’s not new, but with the firmness of the greens and everything, I felt like the ball was going to stop and unfortunately for whatever reason it didn’t want to.
“I had 206 yards [the first time]. I had six iron. I thought it was perfect, straight at the flag. If it carries two more feet, it’s probably good. And if it carries a foot less, it probably doesn’t go off the green and stays on the fringe. Then I kept hitting good shots with the sand wedge and unfortunately I don’t know why, the ball just wouldn’t stop.”
That point, however, was undermined by the 15th playing as the second easiest hole of this Masters round. Nobody else came close to matching Gárcia’s tale of woe. Doc Redman, an American amateur who was in Gárcia’s group, was almost bashful about what he had witnessed. “It was tough, you don’t want to see anyone go through that,” said the 20-year-old. “It was very difficult and you wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”
Gárcia recently named his baby daughter Azalea after the 13th hole here and which was so crucial to his maiden major victory. Suffice to say Firethorn – the 15th’s label – won’t be on the shortlist when number two arrives. In cold reflection, the Spaniard at least has that Masters win as consolation. Lesser players would be defined by their unlucky 13.
Gárcia responded after his debacle admirably and produced a birdie two at the 16th. The glass-half-full reporter who asked the 38-year-old whether he took anything from the playing of Augusta National’s three closing holes in minus one was met with a short shrift. “Not really,” said the Spaniard. The 81 was the highest opening round by a defending champion in Masters history, triggering a Friday battle just to survive the halfway cut.
Spieth played the opening seven holes in level par, with no hint whatsoever of what was to come. That is if one ignores the Texan’s record at Augusta. Spieth, by this stage two under, birdied the 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th and 17th in racing to the top of the leaderboard. His 66 – Spieth dropped a shot at the last – means a two-stroke lead after 18 holes. In 2015 he became only the fifth wire-to-wire champion in Masters history and appears of a mind to do precisely the same again.
Rory McIlroy had not posted a sub-70 opening round here since the 65 which took Augusta by storm in 2011. That changed in the 82nd edition of the Masters, with the Northern Irishman’s 69 hinting strongly at better things to come. McIlroy missed chances to improve on that score, albeit he saved par smartly from 13ft at the penultimate hole having found a greenside bunker with his approach shot and even more impressively at the last having pulled his second shot into the galleries.
“Everything worked well today, I’m really pleased with that start,” said McIlroy. “The greens were so much firmer and faster today than what we had been practising on so that was a bit of an adjustment. There have been a few good scores out there but nobody is going ridiculously low.”
Tony Finau’s participation was in serious doubt after an Alan Shearer-esque celebration of a hole in one during Wednesday’s par-three competition went wrong. The American suffered a dislocated ankle which he immediately remedied but still had checked by way of an x-ray and an MRI scan. With both clear, Finau proved the adage of beware the injured golfer as he signed for a 68. Matt Kuchar lies alongside Finau at four under.
“It’s nothing short of a miracle, if you ask me,” Finau said. “I could barely put any pressure on it, I could barely walk, but obviously after the MRI we knew there was no real damage. So at that point, I knew I was going to play.”
Tiger Woods rightly reflected on an “up and down” 73 where he was “sloppy” on the par fives, which he played in an aggregate of even par. It remains a stretch of the imagination to believe Woods can win here. Tommy Fleetwood, who partnered the 14-times major champion, outscored Woods by a shot. Marc Leishman, the third player in the morning marquee group, is another stroke better off.
Justin Rose finished late in the day on level par, the world No 1, Dustin Johnson, was one over and Paul Casey compiled a 74 for two over. Henrik Stenson’s 69 hinted at a belated upturn in his Masters fortunes. Haotong Li, the first ever professional from China to earn a Masters spot through automatic qualification by virtue of his third place in the Open, matched Stenson’s score. Nonetheless, this was to prove a day when the highest number grabbed the greatest attention.
South Korea’s former president, Park Geun-hye, has been sentenced to 24 years in prison for abuse of power and corruption, in a scandal that exposed webs of double-dealing between political leaders and the country’s conglomerates, and the power of a Rasputin-like figure at the top of government.
The 66-year-old was not present for the ruling on Friday, citing sickness, and has boycotted the proceedings since October. Park has one week to appeal the litany of charges against her that range from corruption to maintaining a blacklist of artists.
Prosecutors had sought a 30-year jail sentence and an £80m fine on charges that also included bribery and coercion. In a rare move, the court in Seoul decided to broadcast her trial live, a move Park objected to.
The court found that Park, had colluded with her long-time friend Choi Soon-sil to solicit bribes from South Korean conglomerates including Samsung and retail giant Lotte in exchange for policy favours. Prosecutors charged Park with 18 separate crimes and accused her of working with Choi in taking bribes of at least £25m and pressuring companies to fund nonprofits run by Choi’s family. She was also accused of leaking classified information.
The scandal exposed what has long been widely suspected in South Korea: the entangled web of government and sprawling business conglomerates that dominate the country’s economy. Park’s rise to the presidency in 2013 was seen as a personal redemption 30 years after her father, then the country’s dictator, was assassinated. But while personally damaging to South Korea’s first female leader, the corruption scandal has also resulted in a major blow to conservatives in the following election.
Choi was jailed for 20 years in February for using her influence to gain favour and enrich herself, and the heads of Samsung and Lotte were both given shorter prison sentences.
Park denied all the charges against her, although she did apologise for allowing Choi to influence her, the closest she has come to an admission. Park has been held at a detention centre near Seoul since her arrest in March 2017.
Park was South Korea’s first democratically elected leader to be removed from office outside the electoral process, her downfall last year coming after weeks of street protestsknown as the Candlelight Revolution, a parliamentary impeachment and finally an order from the country’s constitutional court.
Despite the scandal, Park still commands a loyal following in South Koreaespecially among the elderly. They supported her hawkish line on North Korea and fondly remember her father who ruled for 18 years from 1961, and lifted the country out of postwar poverty.
Over 1,000 supporters gathered outside the court in a boisterous but orderly rally on Friday, singing the national anthem, waving Korean and American flags and chanting slogans calling for Park to be freed. Protesters began screaming loudly when news of the sentence was released, with some marching in the street and blocking traffic.
“She should be released today, but instead she effectively gets a death sentence,” said Alex Fisherman, a Korean adoptee raised in Chicago who traveled to Seoul for the protest. “Because of her age she’ll likely die in prison, it’s a very sad story.”
Others were dismayed over the recent rapprochement with North Korea under Park’s successor, President Moon Jae-in, and advocate more hardline policies toward their neighbour.
“We’re here to defend our country against North Korea,” said Kim Hyong-jun, holding a banner with a photo of Park. “We need to fight against Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in since their actions threaten democracy and the safety of the Korean peninsula.”
Park’s predecessor, Lee Myung-bak, is also facing corruption charges and is accused of a host of crimes ranging from bribery to abuse of power to embezzlement and tax evasion. Two previous leaders were convicted of treason, mutiny and corruption in 1996, with one receiving a death sentence, but both were later pardoned.
Facebook is shutting down a feature that allowed “data brokers” such as Experian and Oracle to use their own reams of consumer information to target social network users, the company has announced.
The feature, known as “Partner Categories”, will be “winding down over the next six months”, Facebook announced in a terse blogpost. The company says the move “will help improve people’s privacy on Facebook.”
Previously, data brokers were able to target specific sets of Facebook users, letting them bring their wider ad-targeting metrics on to Facebook. Now, they will either have to use Facebook’s own targeting tools, or a much more specific form of targeting known as “custom audiences”, which broadly requires companies to have a prior relationship with the users they’re targeting.
Facebook is also closing down a data flow in the opposite direction, preventing the same data brokers from receiving anonymised information about how their ad campaigns have been received.
The moves come after weeks of bad press for Facebook, sparked by reporting in the Observer and the Guardian that revealed Facebook’s lax oversight of data received by third parties. Brian Wieser, senior research analyst at Pivotal Research Group, described the move as “an attempt to generate positive press on the privacy front without directly causing a meaningful negative revenue impact.
“On the margins,” he said, Facebook’s claim that the change would improve people’s privacy “is probably true, but if privacy in the use of data on the platform were the goal, the change has relatively limited impact”.
Instead, the move could be an attempt to outflank competitors like Google, Wieser speculated. “We can imagine that Facebook may want to try to make Google and others look worse by comparison to the extent that the use of third party data for targeting is a widespread and highly conventional activity in digital advertising.”
The Information Commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, welcomed the news that the feature was shutting down. “I have been examining this service in the context of my wider investigation into the use of personal data for political purposes and had raised it with Facebook as a significant area of concern,” she said. “The use of third party sources of data will be covered in more detail in the report my office will publish soon.”
On Wednesday, Facebook announced a raft of changes to its platform that were aimed at making it easier for users to alter their privacy settings, and ensure compliance with the forthcoming European data protection regulation, GDPR. “We’ve heard loud and clear that privacy settings and other important tools are too hard to find, and that we must do more to keep people informed,” two Facebook executives wrote in a blogpost.
Hard to believe but the Premier League season is almost over. Where has the time gone? Feels like only yesterday José Mourinho was happy.
Anyway, with the home stretch in sight, I’ve picked a Premier League XI of the season so far. My choices are sure to cause shock, horror and outrage but before the frothing commences let me make something clear: the team below are not made up of the 11 best players in their respective positions. Some are but others are players who have performed notably above expectation – individually or within a partnership/unit – and therefore are worthy of recognition. This also means there is a whacking great omission, one bordering on a national scandal, but I don’t care – I stand by my choices.
Goalkeeper: Ederson (Manchester City)
David de Gea has kept the most clean sheets. David de Gea has made the most eye-catching saves. David de Gea is the best goalkeeper in the Premier League, if not the world. But David de Gea doesn’t make this team because, across town, a 24-year-old Brazilian has made an incredible impact. Not much was known about Ederson when he arrived at Manchester City in June but he has gone on to impress with his shot stopping, decision making and unreal distribution. And anyone who says it is easy being City’s goalkeeper, I have two words for you: Claudio Bravo.
Right back: Kyle Walker (Manchester City)
There’s no escaping it: £53m is a jaw-dropping amount to pay for a full-back. Equally, there’s no doubt Walker has proven to be a worthwhile acquisition for City, providing the width and penetration Pep Guardiola demands from his wide defenders, as well as being better defensively than his critics suggest. He is England’s best right-back and probably the Premier League’s too.
Centre back: James Tarkowski (Burnley)
Patience is a virtue and, in some cases, the way you break into the England squada few months before the World Cup. This time last year no one would have predicted Tarkowski would be in Gareth Southgate’s plans this close to the finals but that is where the 25-year-old finds himself having bided his time at Burnley and, following Michael Keane’s move to Everton, taken his chance, impressing with his distribution and defensive capabilities. Yes, Tarkowski performed nervously for England in midweek, and gave away the penalty that led to Italy’s equaliser, but it was his debut and at club level he has been consistently excellent. His inclusion in this team should also be viewed within the context of the person he is deployed alongside …
Centre-back: Ben Mee (Burnley)
Only three players have made more clearances this season than Mee and, at Burnley, only one player has completed more minutes. The 28-year-old has been a model of consistent excellence and, alongside Tarkowski, the bedrock of a side who have conceded a measly 26 goals in 30 games. As a centre-back partnership, Tarkowski and Mee are hard to beat and the latter’s presence also provides the giggling joy of hearing commentators say things like: “Great header by Mee.”
Left-back: Andrew Robertson (Liverpool)
Any Liverpool supporter who says they weren’t underwhelmed by the club’s £8m purchase of Robertson from Hull City in July is a liar. Fast forward eight months and most of them are singing his praises as well as his name. Robertson has been a revelation since stepping in for the injured Alberto Moreno in December, catching the eye with his crossing ability as well as with his work rate and defensive skills. The 24-year-old has been one of the bargains of the season and ended Liverpool’s decades-long problems at left-back.
Defensive midfield: Abdoulaye Doucouré (Watford)
If you haven’t seen Doucouré play in the flesh, you should. He’s excellent. A marauding, hard-working and clever presence in central midfield who is the main reason Watford have avoided sliding into relegation trouble. Oh, and he is also their top scorer with seven goals. The Frenchman is the full package and, aged 25, young enough to get even better. Watford supporters won’t want to hear it but Doucouré is unlikely to remain at Vicarage Road for much longer; sooner rather than later the big boys will come calling.
Centre midfield: Kevin De Bruyne (Manchester City)
No player has provided more assists this season and when City wrap up the title it will be De Bruyne who, Guardiola aside, receives the most individual recognition for the success. Quite rightly too: the Belgian has been supreme, featuring in every one of City’s 30 fixtures so far and, in practically every one, bamboozling the opposition with skill, strength and imagination. The 26-year-old is a Ballon d’Or winner in the making.
Central midfield: David Silva (Manchester City)
Alongside De Bruyne, Silva has formed an irresistible inside-forward partnership that has regularly left defences flummoxed. One minute they’re there, the next they’re not; one minute they’re passing the ball side to side, the next they’re threading it into the heart of danger. Nobody had been able to tame the City duo and while De Bruyne has grabbed more headlines it is arguably Silva who has drawn more appreciation. Aged 32 and in his eight season at City, the Spaniard remains a gorgeous blend of composure and devastation. We’ll miss him when he’s gone.
Right-sided forward: Mohamed Salah (Liverpool)
Never has spending £36.9m on a footballer looked such good business. Frankly it’s peanuts when you consider what Salah has achieved at Anfield since arriving from Roma in June – 28 goals and 10 assists in 30 games, with some of his best moments breathtaking. The goals against Everton and Manchester City at home, the volley at Stoke and, most recently, the four-goal demolition of Watford that Miguel Britos may never recover from. Salah is not just the signing of the season; he is the player of the season, too.
Left-sided forward: Son Heung-min (Tottenham)
This selection came down to a straight fight between Leroy Sané and Son – and Son won because, quite simply, I love him. That smile, that chuckle, that positive style of play – it’s all there and, having scored 12 goals and provided four assists in 29 appearances, the South Korean is arguably the most improved player in the Premier League. It say much that Son’s place in Tottenham’s starting lineup is pretty much nailed-on and in this tightest of battles for a top-four place, he could well end up making the difference.
Centre forward: Roberto Firmino (Liverpool)
Cue the fury, especially around Wembley Way. No Tottenham fans, I haven’t forgotten about Harry Kane, and with 24 goals in 29 appearances he is an obvious candidate for the centre-forward role. But here’s the thing; the best frontline in the Premier League this season has been Liverpool’s – in term of goals, combination and spectacle – and fundamental to that has been Firmino. The Brazilian is redefining the No9 position with his combination of movement, work rate, link play, assists and goals, and he would be an undoubted asset to this side. He’d also get the best out of Salah, and Son would enjoy playing alongside him, too.
SCL, Cambridge Analytica’s predecessor, had access to secret UK information and was singled out for praise by the UK Ministry of Defence for the training it provided to a psychological operations warfare group, according to documents newly released by MPs.
An endorsement from an official at the 15 UK Psychological Operations Group dated January 2012 concluded that they would “have no hesitation in inviting SCL to tender for further contracts of this nature”.
The document also noted that SCL – which was subsequently rebranded as Cambridge Analytica by Steve Bannon – was a company that was permitted to have “routine access to secret information” and delivered a training programme that included a “classified case study from current operations in Helmand” in Afghanistan.
The official British note of approval was one of over 100 pages of documents handed over to the digital, media, culture and sport select committee by Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie earlier this week, following a oral hearing that lasted nearly four hours.
Another of the documents released by the MPs is a confidential legal memo dated July 2014, which says it was sent to Bannon, the former Trump adviser and Breitbart CEO, and Rebekah Mercer, the daughter of Trump-backer and hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer. It was also sent to Alexander Nix, the CEO of Cambridge Analytica.
The author’s name and firm is redacted, but the memo discusses how far could Cambridge Analytica, a British company, could participate in US elections, given that donations and contributions by foreign nationals are banned. The documents say that the US arm of the company, formed in June 2014, could participate as a vendor of technology as long as Nix, a Briton, was “recused from the substantive management of any such clients involved in US elections”.
At the parliamentary hearing on Tuesday, Wylie noted that Vote Leave had spent £2.7m with a digital marketing firm called AggregateIQ, and said it had previously undisclosed links to Cambridge Analytica/SCL. Cambridge Analytica has been accused of benefiting from harvesting the data of 50 million Americans from Facebook via a series of personality quizzes.
The documents released appear to support that, including:
• A brochure promising to create US election campaign tools in 2014 that was “prepared for SCL elections by AggregateIQ Data Services” at a cost of over $500,000 using “modelling data” to target 100 million or more Americans from SCL.
• A services agreement between AggregateIQ and SCL to support that work, listing a schedule of monthly payments, although the document released is not signed.
• A separate contract for work dated November 2013, in which AggregateIQ agrees to work for SCL Elections UK, and which is signed by company AggregateIQ’s chief executive, Zack Massingham, and its chief technology officer Jeff Silvester, to work on a political campaign in Trinidad and Tobago.
Wylie had told MPs it was striking that Vote Leave and three other pro-Brexit groups – BeLeave, which targeted students; Veterans for Britain, and Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist party – all used the services of AggregateIQ to help target voters online. He accused the Leave campaign of “cheating” to win the referendum because Vote Leave donated £625,000 to BeLeave, which in turn spent the money on AggregateIQ. The donation allowed Vote Leave to stay within its £7m legal limit.
AggregateIQ has denied it is linked to Cambridge Analytica. Silvester told the Times Colonist, that “AggregateIQ has never been, and is not a part of, Cambridge Analytica or [its parent firm] SCL. AggregateIQ has never entered into a contract with Cambridge Analytica.”
However, Wylie told MPs on Tuesday that the corporate structures were designed to be confusing and ensure that regulators could not always keep up with what was going on.
France has honoured its heroic gendarme Arnaud Beltrame, who died saving hostages’ lives at a supermarket siege last week, with all the respect, gratitude and emotion the grieving country could muster.
In a state ceremony that conveyed France’s pride and profound sadness, President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute on Wednesday to the officer who he said had the “gratitude, admiration and affection of the whole country”.
It was the first time Macron had been called upon to deliver a state funeral homage since his election in May 2017. He stood grim-faced as the Marseillaise was played. His speech made reference to Joan of Arc, members of the French resistance and others who had died for the country.
Before hundreds of people, including former presidents, government ministers, military officers and members of the public, Beltrame’s coffin was carried into the cour d’honneur at Les Invalides by 10 gendarmes who had known him. Hundreds more gathered outside.
Beltrame’s képi, the gendarmerie’s headgear, in which he kept a photograph of himself with his wife, Marielle, and his decorations were carried by two officers. He was posthumously promoted to colonel and made a commander of the Légion d’Honneur.
Lakdim hijacked a car, gunning down a passenger, then stormed a busy supermarket in the town of Trèbes near Carcassonne, killing a member of staff and a customer and declaring his allegiance to Islamic State. He was holding a 40-year-old woman hostage as police and special forces surrounded the building.
Beltrame gave up his weapon and offered to take the place of the woman, named only as Julie, the mother of a two-year-old girl who worked on the checkout.
After a three-hour siege, the gendarme was stabbed several times as he tried to disarm Lakdim. The gravely injured officer was flown by helicopter to hospital where he died a few hours later, his wife at his bedside.
Macron spoke of the long minutes that passed as Beltrame’s colleagues watched as he “put down his weapon and walked alone to join the terrorist”.
“With all his experience … he surely knew he had a rendezvous with death,” the president said. “He took this decision which was not just a sacrifice but was first of all being true to himself, true to his values and true to what he was and what he wanted to be.
“He would not have allowed anyone to take his place, because he knew the example has to be set from the top… the light he has lit in us has not gone out.”
Wednesday’s ceremony also honoured the terrorist’s three other victims: Christian Medvès, 50, who worked as a butcher at the Super-U in Trèbes; Hervé Sosna, 65, who was shopping when Lakdim shot him, and Jean Mazières, 61, a passenger in the hijacked car. The driver of the vehicle, Renato Silva, 26, was shot in the head and is in a critical condition in hospital.
The funeral procession crossed Paris, stopping outside the Panthéon. The words engraved on the facade of the 18th-century former church where France’s great and good are buried had never seemed more appropriate: “To great men, a grateful country.”
Beltrame and his wife were married in a civil ceremony in 2016 and were due to redeclare their vows in a church ceremony in June. The priest who was to have officiated at the wedding was called to Beltrame’s bedside where Marielle was keeping vigil on Friday evening to give him the last rites.
Afterwards, his widow, a veterinarian, told La Vie newspaper he was an “ideal husband” and a devoted gendarme.
“Arnaud was profoundly attached to what he called the ‘gendarmerie family’ for which he didn’t count the hours, or his engagement. He knew how to unite his men, to give them their momentum, to enable them to give the best of themselves.
“He was motivated by very high moral values, the values of service, generosity, giving oneself, abnegation,” she said.
t’s getting to the point where buying a plastic bottle of still water marks you out as some kind of environmental vandal. But sparkling water? Somehow that’s different. That says you have good taste and care about “clean” drinking. Sparkling water in a can? You’re obviously health-conscious, fashionable and environmentally aware.
The sparkling water wars are upon us, or are at least kicking off in the US and could be heading our way. Last month, PepsiCo launched Bubly, a range of flavoured sparkling waters, packaged in cute, brightly coloured cans. It is going up against the market leader, a brand called La Croix, which has become a hit despite eschewing traditional advertising.
Both are yet to reach the UK, and although canned sparkling water isn’t a new innovation – Perrier has been doing it for many years – there are signs we will be seeing more of it. Ugly launched in the UK in 2016 with a range of calorie-free flavoured sparkling water in cans, and is about to launch in the US. Dash Water is another brand, this one with a waste-reducing ethos. It is flavoured with “wonky” produce such as cucumbers and lemons that might otherwise go to waste. Sold in cans and “crafted” (their words) in the UK, it launched last year and is stocked mainly in London, in stores such as Selfridges and Whole Foods. It costs about £1.50 a can.
“It’s a lifestyle brand,” says co-founder Jack Scott. “We wanted to create a drink that was a credible alternative to the normal soft drinks that are [full of] either sugar or artificial sweeteners. It’s something that is tasty, but has none of the bad stuff.” Both founders are in their 20s, and have an eye on the power of social media. “We’ve tried to create something that’s desirable, that people want to have and also share on Instagram.”
Another brand, CanO Water, launched in 2016, as a response to growing concerns about plastic pollution. “Still water is always going to sell more, but we have noticed people have been ordering more sparkling water than they did last year,” says co-founder Ariel Booker. “For us, it seems to be an older demographic, over-35 and leaning towards women.” Like much of the growth, it appears to be driven by people moving away from sugary fizzy drinks. “They may be a bit bored with plain water and looking for something else. [Fizzy water] is an alternative to something that has lots of sugar in it, but it still feels like you’re drinking something other than water.”
The retail analysts Mintel estimated that sales in the UK of sparkling water were £204m in 2016, up 11% on the year before, with growth in both flavoured and unflavoured fizzy water. “Water has received a lot of benefit from the focus on sugar in soft drinks,” says analyst Alice Baker. “Forty-eight per cent of bottled-water drinkers reported that concerns over sugar had prompted them to switch.” Even some of the flavoured brands, which might have added sugar, benefit from the healthy association with water.
Baker says she sees potential for sparkling water. It may weather the backlash against plastic pollution better than still water because “it’s offering something a bit different. It’s not one that can be easily replicated at home. But I still think it’s going to [see] some effect from the concerns about plastic.” She is also seeing it being promoted in new ways. She was struck by one brand’s advertising over Christmas that was pushing its sparkling water as a mixer for cocktails.
Sparkling water appears to be a younger person’s drink. Overall, according to Mintel, a third of British people have drunk flavoured sparkling water in the past three months, but this rises to 50% of those aged 16 to 24 and 49% of those aged 25 to 34. It’s a similar story for unflavoured sparkling water.
In the US, LaCroix (pronounced La-Croy) is the millennials’ brand of choice, with its 80s-style packaging – featuring unusual flavours such as peach-pear and blackberry with cucumber – appearing all over Instagram. Wired called it the “the darling of the internet, where health-conscious food bloggers and Instagrammers have formed an army of free advertising”. It has inspired parodies: illustrator Kate Bingaman-Burt created a series of prints of fake LaCroix flavours. She had posted her first drawing to Instagram and “people were really drawn to it and started requesting other flavours”, she says. “I made a series of rejected flavours that included male tears, Taco Bell, pennies and other nonsensical flavours that make about as much sense as some of the real ones.”
Sparkling-water fans can go beyond talking mere flavours. Unflavoured mineral waters have differing tastes according to their mineral makeup, claims water sommelier Martin Riese. “The higher the mineral content, the stronger the flavour,” he says. Riese works at a US restaurant group, where his menu includes more than 26 waters (“I can pair every single water to every single dish”) and he has a podcast on the subject. He knows, he says, “which water fits perfectly to your pizza, which fits with Mexican food. Some waters have a totally different impact on the food. You don’t have to be an expert [to taste the difference]. My palate is now trained to detect the nuances of water, but when I give guests the water menu and we taste, for instance, a Hildon from Great Britain versus [Spanish brand] Vichy Catalan, a very heavy mineral water, everybody can taste the difference.”
Hildon’s version, he says, “has very tiny bubbles, it’s gently sparkling. It’s almost like champagne bubbles. The mineral content is not too high [329mg a litre]. This water is very smooth on your palate with a hint of acidic notes towards the end because the carbonation makes it slightly acidic.” Compare that with Vichy Catalan, he says, which has a TDS (total dissolved solids) of almost 3,000mg a litre. “It has very bold bubbles, it’s very strong, heavy, aggressive on your palate.”
Europeans, he points out, have always loved sparkling water, but the drink is taking off in the US where “people have switched from sodas to sparkling water for health benefits. For people who were always on soda, it’s easier to drink sparkling water because it has the same mouthfeel. To convince them to drink still water is tough because it’s so different.”
So, is sparkling water harmless? Not exactly. “It’s great in terms of trying to get your sugar intake down, but people also need to think about their dental health,” says Helen Bond, spokesperson for the British Dietetic Association. “[Sparkling water] is quite acidic. It’s not as acidic as fizzy soft drinks, but it is still acidic because of the amount of CO2, which creates carbonic acid. It gives that refreshing taste, but it’s not good news for your teeth, especially if you are sipping at it throughout the day. It [causes] dental erosion rather than the dental decay you get from carbohydrates and sugar.” She says it is better to drink it at mealtimes. “Plain tap water is always best – it doesn’t have sugars and it is less damaging in terms of dental erosion.” It just doesn’t look as pretty on Instagram.
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