We’ve not got anymore coming above the line, but we encourage you all to discuss below the line. I will be logging off at about 5pm, so let’s keep chatting until then.
My scoop: LSE foreign academics told they will not be asked to advise UK on Brexit
It began with a tweet from Sara Hagemann, a high-flying Danish academic at the London School of Economics and one of the top EU political scientists in the country, and ended, 48 hours later, with a story that has now been read more than 800,000 times and attracted 12,000 comments.
Coming after a Conservative party conference criticised for what was seen as an excess of anti-foreigner sentiment, news that the UK Foreign Office had told the LSE that its non-British staff would not be asked to advise the government on Brexit-related matters caused widespread outcry.
More than six hours after the story was first published (and followed up by almost all major news outlets), the Foreign Office responded to a request for comment, denying there had been any change in policy, insisting the British government would continue to consult foreign experts, and saying the LSE had “misunderstood”.
But that only deepened the mystery, because senior figures at the LSE (who, it is safe to say, are not stupid), apparently backed up by their internal emails and memos, stood equally fiercely by their story that they had been told by a senior FCO official that only British passport-holders need apply.
So what did the official tell the LSE, exactly? Did they mis-speak, were they misinterpreted – or was this indeed a premature outing of something that was then rapidly withdrawn?
Sadly, it’s unlikely we’ll ever know. But for anyone who’s really very interested in the question, there are interesting blog posts to be found here (by lawyer and Brexit blogger David Allen Green) and here (by EU law professor Steve Peers).
A couple of your comments on Martin’s post at 15:46
People in clown maskks running after you waving knives, clubs and chainsaws are a subset of the group "people running after waving knives, clibs and chainsaws"
So if you find the larger group scary you should logically find all subgroups scary, whatever you are wearing.
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[Brexit – sorry] quiz time!
The debate around Brexit has heated up since Conservative party conference, during which Theresa May confirmed she will trigger article 50 before the end of March 2017 and signalled that her government would lean towards a “hard Brexit”.
In a week that has seen widespread concerns about the UK government’s negotiation stance and its potential impact on the economy, see if you can match the quotes to the politicians who said them.
Let us know your scores below
Whatever you call them I would hope this would be the end of all "it's just a storm in a teacup" articles by Tim Dowling who advised people not to run if someone dressed as a clown runs at you with a knife.The knife attack reported in Sweden on Friday, and this incident described in the Evening Standard suggest that might not hold true for ever though.
We suspect you might be right ...
Question of the week: can we avoid reporting on 'clown incidents'?
Clowns. I want to talk about the clown thing. We had a style guide edict this week not to refer to “scary clowns” as “killer clowns”, on the grounds that they hadn’t killed anybody yet. The knife attack reported in Sweden on Friday, and this incident described in the Evening Standard suggest that might not hold true for ever though.
One presumes that bored teenagers inspired by media and social media stories are the main culprits here. I wondered if you below-the-line have a view on our responsibility in this? Should we be reporting the phenomena, or just ignoring it on the grounds that it will go away? If other people are talking about it – including apparently the police issuing warnings and letters being sent to parents with advice for children – can we avoid reporting it?
Still, one very important thing. Will the Guardian homepage ever be graced by such an astonishing byline as this?
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Sticking with football (see Paul Campbell’s post at 15:21) here is a trailer for the latest in the Guardian’s documentary strand, Desert fire and the World Cup of rebels.
You can watch the full documentary here:
More thoughts on that Uber debate here
The case also raises questions for consumers – do you consider workers’ rights when you book an Uber or order your dinner on Deliveroo?
A question to which the answer is self evidently , no . If you did you wouldn't.
Based upon my limited experience of Uber, nobody should use them.
After I registered, including giving them my bank details, phone no., email, and address, every time they quoted me, I got a fare quote which was more than the local licensed taxi company, and then I got charged for a fare for a journey I never took.
Trying to get hold of anyone is impossible.
It must work in the US, otherwise how could they stay in business, but I wouldn't touch it with yours ever again.
You don't know who the driver is, how safe the car is, whether it is insured, and chances are you wont save any money either. Does that sound like a good deal?
Stick to licensed taxi's!
San Marino, Norway, England and the unexpected
Here’s a football quiz question for you for a Friday afternoon: what happened to England in 1993 and to Norway this week that has only happened to five other countries in the intervening 23 years?
To their great embarrassment, on Tuesday night Norway joined a select list of nations who have conceded a goal to the San Marino football team in a World Cup qualifier.
You’d think that conceding a goal is no big deal – Norway went on to win the game 4-1, after all – but this San Marino: a country with a population the size of Morecambe’s. To put it another way, Norway have hosted more people in their national stadium, the Ullevaal Stadion (which would be one of the smallest in the Premier League) than San Marino have citizens.
Hence this reaction from a group of Norwegian pundits who were watching the game. “Down with everything, we’re going home. There is nothing to report here,” they said as they switched off the lights and hung their heads in shame:
Needless to say, the Sammarineses loved it. Their reaction to the goal was probably best summed up by this tweet:
WE FUCKING SCORED AN AWAY GOAL. STEFANELLI YOU FUCKING LEGEND!
— San Marino (@soccersanmarino) October 11, 2016
After 26 years of playing competitive matches and never winning any of them, they deserved their moment. These little sparks of job don’t come around very often for a team ranked 201st in Fifa’s list of the 211 teams in world football (which doesn’t say much for the 10 teams below them).
The low point for San Marino was possibly their 13-0 defeat to Germany in 2006 or maybe the day they fielded two twin brothers and both of them scored own goals. So they should cherish the good times. Which reminds me, did I mention that they once scored against England? Here’s that old film in all its glory. Concentrate or you will miss it...
Discussion of Bob Dylan’s Nobel prize continues below the line, with a historical strand developing
I've always thought that the point of the Nobel in Literature should partly be to celebrate writers who've created great bodies of work which might not be known to an international audience. Literature's a very local thing, but there is literature good enough that it deserves to be celebrated and brought to a wider audience.
Past winners like Kenzaburo Oe, Haldor Laxness, Rabindranath Tagore, etc., sort of exemplify that.
My issue with giving it to Dylan is less whether it is deserved or not, and more about what the point of giving it to him is? Dylan was already hugely famous, well-known, and internationally venerated.
Seems to me the snobbery against Dylan is a bit ridiculous. All "literature" was originally oral. For example The Odyssey, Beowulf and The Mahabharata were sung to illiterate audiences by bards with highly trained memories....writing wasn’t invented until 3000 BC. Dylan's had an impact on contemporary culture at least as great as Homer, I reckon. The effect is most obvious among other songwriters. But he has left an indelible mark on even the highest brow forms of art which is so pervasive that we can't see it clearly any longer. From my own limited reading I would argue Salman Rushdie, Thomas Pynchon, E. Annie Proulx, Martin Amis, David Foster Wallace and Cormac McCarthy all bear his stamp - just as the sponge-like Dylan has received and transmitted things from them. Someone today said imagine a gathering of survivors after McCarty's nuclear holocaust where all paper and electronic devices had gone up in smoke - they suggested people would find it easier to reconstruct Dylan songs from their memories than the output any star of contemporary "literary" London!
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An extract from Mariella Frostrup: put down the porn and explore real sex with erotica!
This week I commissioned an article from UK-based journalist and television presenter Mariella Frostrup on the resurgence of erotic writing. Here’s an extract from her piece:
Erotica is so different from pornography, which is almost exclusively designed to cater to men. Any relationship that existed between men and erotica dates back to the Victorian era when it was one of the few ways to access the sexy stuff. Now the tsunami of pornography has all but obliterated any particular interest the majority of men might have had in reading erotica. For women, sex is part of a whole sensory experience and I think that is less true of men. If you look at the pornography that has been designed to appeal to male viewers, particularly in the 21st century, it is very much about the physical act and very little else. That is why it is less satisfying for a lot of women.
There’s a huge difference between the perfunctory plots sometimes used in pornography and the experience of immersing yourself in a story, characters and a considered environment – all those elements of the intellectual exchange involved in reading. In pornography, the literal act is simply placed right before your eyes. It is skin deep and, increasingly in the modern world, what you’re watching is the poor, dispossessed and desperate trying to earn a crust in whatever way they can. How many people who participate in porn do so because that’s what they grew up wanting to do? The sex industry as a whole is a bit like the drug industry. It’s an end product that involves an awful lot of misery for an awful lot of people along the way.
What do you think? Share your views
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The Uber living wage debate: do drivers need to be paid more?
Should the people who ferry you around in an Uber be paid the national living wage? That’s one of the questions that will be answered by an employment tribunal that reconvened this week.
A group of Uber drivers are arguing they should be recognised as employees of the company rather than self-employed workers. The outcome could have a huge impact on the employment rights of tens of thousands of self-employed workers in the UK.
The case also raises questions for consumers – do you consider workers’ rights when you book an Uber or order your dinner on Deliveroo? And what are you willing to pay or sacrifice for the convenience?
We do like it when the themes intermingle here
Personally I'd prefer it if they gave the Nobel to Trump and made Dylan president.
On the award as it is, I rate Dylan as far and away the finest and most poetic of all songwriters (comparing Cohen with him is like placing Ben Johnson on a par with Shakespeare); but he wouldn't have been my choice - even if it was restricted to septuagenarian North Americans: Atwood, anyone?
Hmm, as regards to 'fussy eating' if I had tried 'But Mum, I can't eat that, it's my genes!' as a child, I'm pretty sure her response would have been, 'tough shit, if you're hungry enough, you'll eat it'
From elsewhere on site this morning ... a reminder not to ever go diving with sharks ever. Ever.
As far as we know sharks aren’t fussy eaters ...
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Are you a fussy eater? Maybe it's in the genes ...
I will eat pretty much anything but raw okra and barbecue sauce. Not together, obviously – never tried that ...
Do you have food distastes? An article I was interested in this morning suggests that – in children at least – picky eating and a refusal to try new foods are heavily influenced by genetic makeup.
How about in adulthood? Do you have issues with certain foods that you can’t quite explain? Have you had children who were fussy eaters, or indeed do you remember “growing out” of certain dislikes? Here are a couple of views so far ...
It's interesting to hear people dismiss 'fussy eating'. I would caution people to hold their judgment as there are children who display severe difficulties
My daughter would be what lots of people would call a fussy eater. I link a lot of this is due to her prematurity (born 1kg, 50 days in neonatal unit) and subsequent reflux until 9 months. So please be aware of when dismissing families
As a pub owner, I am driven to distraction by the number of adults who can't/won't eat all sorts of food including onions and tomatoes in a salad, because they think they are allergic to it, there are an increasing number of people that have to have their baked beans in a separate bowl, because they cannot bear the thought of them touching the rest of their breakfast on their plate.
I can't eat fish or any kind of seafood. I never could and to be honest I wish I could I know it's very healthy food but the smell of it and the sensation of it in my mouth, makes me want to vomit.
It's always been this way and as a child no amount of encouragement or threats of no dinner could persuade me. At my school we didn't get a choice, you got what you were given and I often had to put with bullying dinner ladies. I went home hungry.
Is it a genetic thing? I don't know, all I know is I can't be around the aroma of seafood.
On Bob Dylan, quite like this sentiment below the line
I rather liked that the Nobel went to Dylan, hopefully it will encourage modern songwriters to aspire to better things ...
Your reactions to Bob Dylan's Nobel prize – deserved?
Away from US politics now ...
For me, and many readers it seemed, it felt nice to have an opportunity to join in (almost universal) praise of a living legend when Bob Dylan was awarded his Nobel prize in Literature on Thursday. So often we’re used to eulogising after the premature death of influential public figures.
One of our favourite quotes from a reader in celebration of Dylan’s work was this from softlysoftly: “His genius lies in putting very good ideas to music without compromising the poetry.”
As well as publishing a roundup of some readers’ views, we asked our moderators for some of their favourite comments from the threads as the news was announced.
Great news, and well deserved!
It may be surprising to some, but not to any Dylan fan.
The best singer/songwriters pen lyrics than can stand on their own as poetry, with the music serving to emphasise and energise the words.
Dylan's poetry has conveyed more meaning and understanding to me than any I have read.
i love bob. i've got over three hundred of his albums, many of then bootlegs, many of them live performances where he reinvents his songs over and over, changing tempos and rhythms, altering the meanings of the lyrics by his delivery. i think that some of his lyrics are great and many are patchy but good.
but the nobel prize. no. no no. he's completely outclassed by many great novelists and poets and playwrights. ridiculous award.
It's a smart choice. Though the Swedish Academy still thinks that American literature is insular and narrowminded, now they might have deflected some of the criticism by awarding the prize to a excellent mass cultural poet. Hopefully real writers can win in the next couple of years.
Dylan is one of the 20th century's leading songwriters, but the award of the Nobel for Literature cannot help but appear a deliberately eccentric and crowd-pleasing move. Such essentially tactical decisions are usually taken in over-enthusiastic haste and repented at leisure... Remember the music critics who trod all over each other to proclaim that the Beatles were "every bit as good as Mozart"?
What do you think? Tell us in the comments.
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Just one more view – an interesting perspective on the next few years ...
Perhaps 2016 will lead to a 'reset' of the US political spectrum before 2020.
Trump's candidacy has clarified that between his bigotry, xenophobia, selfishness (and the Tea Party influence), registered Republican supporters have taken a big lurch to the right since 2004. Issues of reduced freedoms, such as gun control, have however shifted some Democrat voters towards the GOP.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, we saw Bernie Sanders mobilising a whole new cohort of politically engaged, often younger people with a more left-wing, caring (or less selfish) message.
How will this play out for 2020? Will the Democrats have moved to the left to embrace more of the Sanders philosophy? Will they risk introducing a level of gun control and drive some of their supporters to the right? Will the Republicans manage to drag themselves away from the antediluvian attitudes and fantasy land economics that have characterised this campaign, or will their registered supporters continue to support Trump-like candidates who live in an alternative and highly selfish reality?
It's time there was some sort of realignment and a new definition of the 'centre' of USA politics, but when you have only two truly national political parties 'breaking the mould' will not be easy.
One of the final updates we’ll post on Trump here for today is this film exploring Trump and his promised to “coal country” in West Virginia. Paul Lewis meets the voters ...
Have you watched the piece? What did you think?
Our colleague Martin Belam highlights something an audience wider than regular media law watchers might have enjoyed
Guardian staff By far my favourite Trump-related thing this week has been the letter the New York Times' lawyers sent to his lawyers:
The women quoted in our story spoke out on an issue of national importance -- indeed, an issue that Mr. Trump himself discussed with the whole nation watching during Sunday night's presidential debate. Our reporters diligently worked to confirm the women's accounts. They provided readers with Mr. Trump's response, including his forceful denial of the women's reports. It would have been a disservice not just to our readers but to democracy itself to silence their voices. We did what the law allows: We published newsworthy information about a subject of deep public concern. If Mr. Trump disagrees, if he believes that American citizens had no right to hear what these women had to say and that the law of this country forces us and those who would dare to criticize him to stand silent or be punished, we welcome the opportunity to have a court set him straight.
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Another view on Trump from below the line here
They can but they'll need to change a lot.
Reince Priebus has already talked about rejigging the GOP's primary system, and nothing demonstrates that it's in dire need of it more than this does. Trotting out the crazies at a crucial point for media coverage (and in this case letting one win) is very problematic when there are plenty of more electable people in the party, for them at least.
Doing something about the primaries will become even more important as the USA's demographics grow increasingly out of step with the core GOP voter base too, lest a completely unrepresentative group of people select a candidate speaking directly to them and nobody else.
Which is what's kind of happened with Trump.
On the subject of Trump – some readers have been enjoying this fact-checking series – published every Friday by our US office:
A couple of early responses to the question of whether the Republican party can survive Trump, posed below.
Unfortunately it's a yes.
Hillary should of tied trump to the GOP from the very beginning but she was trying to poach Republican voters so she held off branding the GOP as the party of trump.
If she had pushed GOP=trump then he would of hung round their necks like a burning tyre and killed the party come Nov 9th.
The GOP is going to be damaged but they will do what they always do, blame the candidate and carry on as usual
Trump isn't the problem. He's a symptom of the problem.
The GOP have been pushing extreme, far right, white nationalist politics, for decades. Trump has just done a really good job exposing how toxic it really is.
banning abortion? Tax cuts for the super wealthy? Anti-gun-regulation? Anti-BLM? Islamaphobia? Mysoginy?
These aren't Trump policies. They go right through the party.
A week of Mr Trump: will he burn the Republican house down?
The Guardian’s Washington correspondent reviews Donald Trump’s week and his performance in the second US presidential debate.
Donald Trump had stopped the bleeding. This was a common verdict on his performance in the second US presidential debate last Sunday night. Some Republicans who had disavowed him after the release of a video in which he bragged about groping women came back into the fold. “Donald Trump did what he absolutely had to do,” said Darryl Glenn, the party’s nominee for Senate in Colorado. “I think he reset this campaign.”
But in a New York Times column, Ross Douthat argues that collaborators with Trump’s offensive candidacy, who sold their souls for a taste of power, have created a “Republican inferno”. If, as every poll indicates, Hillary Clinton is bound for the White House, will Trump burn the entire Republican house down? Where does the bitterly divided party of Abraham Lincoln go from here?
Hello everyone, and welcome to our weekly social. Every Friday we gather from noon to 4.30pm with our readers to discuss the most thought-provoking news and comment stories of the week, with journalists talking about their best commissions and favourite articles above the line.
This is a community space for our readers and we want your ideas on the format and how it should develop, as well as what we should talk about.
Look forward to getting started, lots of great stuff lined up.
I suppose "killer clowns" is used because of the alliteration, but scary is more accurate. "Creepy clowns" retains both alliteration and accuracy. I would describe each clown based on the particular incident, thus only a clown who kills is a killer clown. But some of the clowns, such as the one riding a mobility scooter, have amused me. Whether this was their intent or not I don't know.
I tend to enjoy pranks that don't involve weapons but do cause a bit of fright.