Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Call me a middle-class ‘bobo’, but inspired street art has nothing in common with sprayed-on assertions of ‘me, me, me’ Among the layers of life in Paris that energise me, I might list: peeling back the city’s music scene all the way to figuring out where, and when, the musicians go to jam together; the unassuming flair of even a basic brasserie; the way one can pivot, in the span of a week, from an art gallery opening to a friend’s concert to another friend’s restaurant to discover his Corsican-influenced menu, and end it by lingering on a terrace, “remaking the world” with others who challenge you – calmly – to see something a different way. Among the things about this city that exhaust me are the people who cram their way into the Métro without letting you step out first (seriously, what neurons are misfiring in the heads of these people?), and the sheer prevalence of tags. It’s when you leave Paris for a bit and come back that you realise how many tags there are. How swaths of a city that is otherwise arrestingly beautiful look as if a giant toddler high on methamphetamines stumbled through them, scribbling on everything in sight with a giant Sharpie. Continue reading...

Sanctions, including for Thames Water CEO, announced as part of new government powers under Water Act Bonuses for 10 water company executives in England, including the boss of Thames Water, will be banned with immediate effect over serious sewage pollution, as part of new powers brought in by the Labour government. The top executives of six water companies who have overseen the most serious pollution events will not receive performance rewards this year, the environment secretary, Steve Reed, said. Continue reading...

Parliament backs scheme for relatives of 123 men who died in worst disaster in Norway’s waters since second world war Forty-five years after the Alexander L Kielland oil rig capsized in the North Sea, Norway’s parliament has voted to set up a compensation scheme for relatives of the 123 men who died in the worst disaster in Norwegian waters since the second world war. “This is a historic day, the end of more than four decades of fighting for justice,” said Mímir Kristjánsson, an MP from the leftwing Red party. The chair of the victims’ committee, Anders Helliksen, said the state had “finally accepted its responsibility”. Continue reading...

I envy people with strong opinions about this flower or that. They seem to know what they’re doing in life, what any of it means Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email I’ve moved from the city to Melbourne’s outer east, where everybody knows how to garden. Blundstoned parents swagger in for school pickup with secateurs in their belts and parsnips the size of your arm. They have wood chippers and chainsaws and trailers filled with enough mulch to cover a national park, which until yesterday I believed was pronounced mulsh. For the first time in my life I’m in charge of a garden. It has a lawn and some flowerbeds which require weeding every now and then. I envy women with strong opinions about this flower or that. They seem to know what they’re doing in life, which direction to take, what any of it means. I hope to someday have the confidence to make sweeping, ludicrous statements like Madonna’s “I absolutely loathe hydrangeas”. Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning Continue reading...