20/08/2022
20 Aug 2022

Prima donna

20 Aug 2022

Prima donna

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Features
Nicholas FarrellNicholas Farrell
Is Giorgia Meloni the most dangerous woman in Europe?

Rome Giorgia Meloni’s spacious office, on the top floor of Palazzo Montecitorio – Italy’s House of Commons – has large French windows that adjoin its own huge rooftop terrace with spectacular views of the Eternal City. You could hold the party of the century up there if you were so minded. Perhaps she will, if she wins. The polls suggest that Meloni, 45, is on the verge of becoming Italy’s new prime minister in next month’s snap election, which follows the collapse of Mario Draghi’s unelected national unity government.

Is Giorgia Meloni the most dangerous woman in Europe?
Tim Rice
Why I still love the Edinburgh Fringe

When I was in my twenties, exactly 50 Edinburgh Festivals ago, Frank Dunlop directed the first professional production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat which Andrew Lloyd Webber and I had written for a primary school concert in 1968. In the first four years of the work’s existence, it began to burrow its way into educational musical syllabi at a modest pace. This we appreciated, but in 1970 we stumbled into overnight success with our double album of Jesus Christ Superstar, and we did not thereafter give our earlier piece the attention it perhaps deserved.

Why I still love the Edinburgh Fringe
Jonathan Sumption
The hidden harms in the Online Safety Bill

Weighing in at 218 pages, with 197 sections and 15 schedules, the Online Safety Bill is a clunking attempt to regulate content on the internet. Its internal contradictions and exceptions, its complex paper chase of definitions, its weasel language suggesting more than it says, all positively invite misunderstanding. Parts of it are so obscure that its promoters and critics cannot even agree on what it does. Nadine Dorries, the Culture Secretary, says that it is all about protecting children and vulnerable adults.

The hidden harms in the Online Safety Bill
Ross Clark
My holiday from the news

We are all supposed to remember where we were when we heard that Mrs Thatcher had resigned (my mother rang me while I was having a late breakfast). But I will always have a much more vivid memory of where I was when I heard Boris Johnson had called it a day. I was at a mountain refuge in Andorra when a Dutch hiker told me: ‘I’ve just spoken to my wife and she tells me your Boris Johnson has resigned.’ It turned out to be four days after the actual event.

My holiday from the news
Max Pemberton
The petty cruelty of the GMC

Doctors make mistakes. We mess up, have lapses in judgment, do stupid or downright wrong things. Some break the law, some violate trust. Patients place their wellbeing, and sometimes their lives, in our hands. So it’s only right that we are held to account. All good doctors want scrutiny. Our regulator, the General Medical Council (GMC), is supposed to be there to uphold the standards of the medical profession. It’s meant to help maintain the trust that the public places in us.

The petty cruelty of the GMC
Matthew Lynn
Is crypto back?

This time it was surely all over. As inflation started to rise towards a 40-year high, as central banks started raising interest rates for the first time in more than a decade, and as the monetary printing presses finally stopped running, the crypto-currencies crashed. What a crash it was. Bitcoin, the best-known crypto, fell all the way from $61,000 last November to less than $19,000 in June, a spectacular drop of more than two thirds.

Is crypto back?
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