The good denim guide — the best jeans under £100, jackets and dresses to buy now
Has there ever been a time when we’ve needed a good pair of jeans more? It’s now almost a year since we entered these strange times and the way we dress has evolved and fluctuated along the way. So step forward, denim. It’s not an all-time classic for no reason: dress it up with a shirt and heels if you are in work mode, go casual with a jumper and trainers if not. The right pair of jeans will flatter while being comfortable, anSponsored
Source:The Times
January 17, 2021 00:07 UTC
Biden looks to the angels for recovery
On Wednesday, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr will become the 46th President of the United States, a testimonial to the enduring strength of America’s democracy, its resistance to assaults from without and within. His immediate priority is to persuade Congress to pass his American Rescue Plan, a $1.9 trillion relief bill that will add $1,400 to the $600 every American household has received, beef up state unemployment benefits, raise minimum wage to $15 an hour, and more. The spending, paid for with borrowed money, puts flesh on the bones of an economic theory that holds that with interest rates close to zero, it is virtually costless for the government to borrow money that will speed the transition from a pandemic-crippled economy to one that will lead
Source:The Times
January 17, 2021 00:07 UTC
Am I mean for not wanting to spend £400 on Covid tests?
We haven’t seen my mother-in-law for six months, and I miss her. When we’re all allowed to, we’re planning on travelling to Bristol — me, my husband and two kids — to spend the weekend together at her home. My mother-in-law, who is in her early 60s, has said that assuming she hasn’t been vaccinated at this point she would like us to get tested for Covid. My husband agreed we would do this, but the cost to test a family of four privately will be about £350 to £400, and, should it come back negative, we will only know for sure that we didn’t have Covid on the day we took the test. I’m close to my mother-in-law, she’s lonely, and we’re all desperateSponsored
Source:The Times
January 17, 2021 00:07 UTC
Dr Rachel Clarke’s Covid ward journal: ‘The air reeks of invisible danger’
And though intubation is the emblematic procedure of the pandemic, this moment, this patient, his pair of wide and roving eyes, is the hospital’s first time. Four people loom around his bed, swathed in blue plastic, masked and gowned, disguised behind thick Perspex visors. Normally in an ICU it is the patient who becomes dehumanised. Punctured and crisscrossed by a cat’s cradle of wires and tubes, alive thanks only to the bedside machinery that hums and chugs and sucks and blows, a Frankenstein version of a body. Veiled behind their protective equipment, they hover like ghosts at the bedside, preparing nervously to act.
Source:The Times
January 17, 2021 00:07 UTC
Fred Turner, Curative’s boy wonder, suffers negative result
The rise of Fred Turner, a 25-year-old British wunderkind and Oxford dropout, was head-spinning. A year ago the Yorkshire transplant had just launched Curative, a Silicon Valley start-up developing diagnostic tests for sepsis. When the pandemic struck, he and his nine-person team switched gears. By the time summer rolled around the company had become one of the biggest testers in America, having carried out more than 11 million from coast to coast. Curative picked up contracts with some of America’s biggest cities
Source:The Times
January 17, 2021 00:07 UTC
Ten things to do now to prepare your garden for spring
Midwinter is bleak at the best of times, but take a look in the garden and there are the joyous, spirit-raising signs that plants are gearing up for spring, with shoots already pushing through the frosty soil. Even though the weather may mean that we don’t want to linger for too long outdoors, there’s still plenty of planning, preparation and planting to give us something positive to focus on. Fortunately garden centres are still open, but if you can’t get to one there are plenty of mail-order and online companies that will deliver everything you need to kick-start the gardening year (see the bottom of this article). Spring displaysDon’t worry if you didn’t get around to planting any bulbs last autumn because garden centres
Source:The Times
January 17, 2021 00:07 UTC
Deliveroo snacks on $180m fundraising
Deliveroo plans to expand into a further 100 towns and cities in the UKTakeaway giant Deliveroo has raised $180m at a valuation of more than $7bn (£5bn) as it prepares for a bumper stock market listing. Deliveroo has 140,000 restaurants on its platform and last week said it would expand into a further 100 towns and cities in the UK. It plans to use the cash to roll out its network of dark kitchens — set up for delivery only — and grow its online grocery business. SponsoredThe app, founded in 2013 by Will Shu, a former investment banker, had already raised $1.5bn from investors. Deliveroo and its rivals have
Source:The Times
January 17, 2021 00:07 UTC
You say: readers’ views on The Seaside Hotel, Traces and more
Send your comments to telly@sunday-times.co.ukWalter Presents lifted our lockdown depression with not a slew of Nordic misery, but a sunlit dose of Danske hygge in the shape of Seaside Hotel. Sean PurcellSponsoredIt is one of the best things from Walter Presents. Dick PriceThe Bidding Room (BBC One) is just not a credible programme. Who would travel the length of the country, sometimes with very large items, just to sell them for £100 or so? Colin VibertIf you want a half hour of pure switch-off and relax TV (ie forget about Covid), then I can strongly recommend Bob Ross and The Joy Of Painting Winter Specials (BBC Four).
Source:The Times
January 17, 2021 00:07 UTC
Hitchhiking through Namibia; and a royal wedding in the Amazon rainforest
✉ Chris Haslam’s article (“Namibia at its most deserted”, last week) reminded me of when I was a student back in 1995 and, armed only with naive confidence, I hitchhiked with a friend from Cape Town to Windhoek, then via Swakopmund to Etosha and the Caprivi Strip. We dodged huge herds of elephants and traversed sandy, potholed roads and spent a couple of magical nights in the Okavango Delta. We got stuck at the Zimbabwean border — as you could not cross on foot — but, thankfully, a lovely Italian family drove us over and dropped us at Victoria Falls, just in time for a cold beer. Beatrice Woodgarth, via thetimes.co.uk✉ Namibia is amazing. I’ve been lucky enough to go more than
Source:The Times
January 17, 2021 00:07 UTC
How to Japandi your home — and eight more trends and names to know
It’s a thing! Sexy vampire energyBreaking news: Gen Z has discovered Twilight. One of the TikTok trends of last year was teens posting videos making fun of the corny film saga — the lip biting, the intense stares, the awkward silences … ah, the memories. And where Gen Z goes, pop culture follows. Coming to Netflix soon is First Kill, a YA vampire series produced by Emma Roberts, and out in March is the Marvel film Morbius, an update on the classic vampire tale starring Jared Leto as a
Source:The Times
January 17, 2021 00:07 UTC
Extradition or no, Mike Lynch has questions to answer over Autonomy
Mike Lynch tried to strike a cautiously upbeat note in a round-robin new year email to his contacts. The founder of former FTSE 100 software giant Autonomy remarked that with Brexit done, the government would be looking to forge a new identity for Britain as a “scientific and technological superpower”. He said the landscape for entrepreneurs was “very different now from where I started — it is much easier to found and grow a company to multimillion-pound valuations”. He welcomed Lord (Jonathan) Hill’s review into stock market listing rules, which could encourage promising start-ups to stay in Britain rather than go abroad. SponsoredIt was only after this preamble that Lynch, 55, addressed the elephants in the room: he is facing extradition to America on 14
Source:The Times
January 17, 2021 00:07 UTC
Jeremy Clarkson: Where’s our Dunkirk spirit? Indoors, moaning that the sea’s a bit choppy and the boat smells
In the late spring of 1940, more than a third of a million lantern-jawed soldiers of the British Expeditionary Force were lined up on the border between France and Belgium, each with a pocketful of Woodbines and a plan. They’d give Jerry a whiff of Sten and then they’d go home for tea and medals. Instead, they did quite a lot of fleeing and panicking, and when they reached Dunkirk, still fleeing and panicking, it really did look as though virtually the entire British Army would be captured before the war had even got going. SponsoredThese were grim times, so Winston Churchill sanctioned something called Operation Dynamo, which called for anyone with a boat to sail over the Channel and pick up as many soldiers
Source:The Times
January 17, 2021 00:07 UTC
Till death do us part was fine, darling. Lockdown’s another story
First Covid-19 came for the old and the sick; then it came for the holidays and the restaurants. Even if yours is solid, being trapped at home with your spouse is high risk. When I married Giles in 2010, I knew we would be together a lot because we both worked from home. For us there have never been full days at an office or any other reliable escape. You think 10 months is a long time to WFH with your spouse?
Source:The Times
January 17, 2021 00:07 UTC
Bitcoin boom widens divide between junkies and the sceptics
Bitcoin has attracted fans like influencer Chantel Jeffries, left, and critics such as ECB president Christine LagardeChantel Jeffries and Christine Lagarde epitomise two increasingly polarised camps when it comes to bitcoin: the cryptojunkies and the cryptosceptics. Jeffries is a Californian YouTuber, DJ, model and musician who delights her 4.7 million Instagram followers with swimwear selfies. Last week’s crash was an “opportunity to buy so much more”. She tweeted a link to online exchange Coinbase so her followers could trade in cryptocurrencies. Meanwhile, Lagarde, 65, president of the European Central Bank, is fast becoming one of the most influential voices among the cryptosceptics.
Source:The Times
January 17, 2021 00:07 UTC
Rafferty Law: Dad told me to stay calm, stay confident and have fun
As someone who once followed Jude Law through the back streets of Primrose Hill some time in the mid-Noughties, I can attest that, even at the remove of a Zoom call, the resemblance between Rafferty Law, 24, and his actor father is disarming. He is affable, likeable and open, even if the black screen gives nothing away about the south London flat from which he is zooming. Their film debuts are not dissimilar, either. Where Jude’s breakout role was as a joyrider in 1994’s Shopping, Rafferty’s is as a criminal in Twist, a modern-day retelling of the Charles Dickens classic Oliver Twist, in which he plays Oliver to Michael Caine’s Fagin. Like Shopping, Twist is an action-packed, adrenaline-fuelled, British-produced crime drama
Source:The Times
January 17, 2021 00:07 UTC