| Unlock all of our journalism for less than 50p per week, only in our Spring Sale. | | Rachel Capitina, 12 (pictured here with her mother Christina) is among County Wicklow’s smartphone-free young people | Just over a week ago in a Los Angeles courtroom, a jury found in favour of a 20-year-old woman who sued Meta and YouTube over her childhood addiction to social media. The woman was awarded £4.5m in damages after the court ruled Meta, which owns Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, and Google, the owner of YouTube, intentionally built addictive social media platforms that harmed the 20-year-old’s mental health. Unsurprisingly, the tech giants plan to appeal.
Should we even try to mount a stand against the way tech titans cynically monetise children? Judith Woods takes us to Greystones, a seaside town in County Wicklow, which is at the forefront of the debate. Three years ago, when 70 per cent of the town’s parents agreed not to buy their children a smart device before secondary school as part of the It Takes a Village initiative, it was an outlier. Mindful of the need for “real-life” activities, the town laid on phone-free beach parties.
Today, their mission to preserve childhood by banning smartphones for pre-teens is gaining momentum. It’s hard to imagine it emulated in a city, but in Greystones, parents have drawn a line in the sand. It takes a village to raise a child, and countless more to raise a generation.
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Continue reading ➤ | | St Michael de Rupe on Dartmoor is England’s highest working church, sitting 1,110 feet above sea level | With some 10,000 country churches in England to choose from, it’s not easy to pick favourites, but Christopher Winn is in a better position than most to do so. He spent many years visiting some of the finest examples while compiling his book: I Never Knew That About England’s Country Churches.
For him, every church has something special about it. It may be the beauty of the architecture, the setting, a particular treasure contained within, the stories or people associated with the church, or something surprising and perhaps unexpected.
Here he explores the incredible variety on offer in England’s counties, including Saxon towers, Rococo beauties, a Gothic church described by Elizabeth I as “the fairest in England” and the only church in the world with a complete set of Chagall windows. | St Mary Redcliffe was described by Elizabeth I as ‘the fairest in England’ | One of the most intriguing is St Michael de Rupe, which is set dramatically atop Brent Tor on Dartmoor – 1,110ft up – and is the country’s highest working church. Should you ever decide to pay a visit, you will be rewarded with sensational views and a peaceful haven from the elements within the thick 13th-century walls. A heavenly vantage point, indeed.
See Christopher’s list here ➤ | | Daniel Hannan Criticising one faith for public prayers while welcoming Diwali lights and Palm Sunday processions reveals prejudice, not principle Continue reading ➤ Janet Daley Britons and Americans will never understand each other Continue reading ➤ Wes Streeting The BMA must get real. Many NHS workers are never paid as much as a day-one doctor Continue reading ➤ | | To make sure you don’t miss our newsletters when they land in your inbox, click here. | | The aftermath of an Israeli strike in Tyre, Lebanon, on Saturday | | An American airman who went missing after Iran shot down his F-15 fighter jet has been rescued after a “heavy firefight”. Donald Trump confirmed US forces had retrieved the injured weapons officer, posting on social media: “WE GOT HIM!” The president hailed “one of the most daring Search and Rescue Operations in U.S. History”.
Yesterday, Trump vowed to unleash “all hell” on Iran if the regime does not immediately end the war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. In response, Iran has threatened to turn the whole of the Middle East into a “swamp” that the US “will sink in”.
Continue reading ➤
Plus, why a way for oil to bypass the Strait of Hormuz isn’t just a pipe dream | |  | | An oil tanker burns after being hit by an Iranian strike | | The most visible effect of the Iran crisis so far has been rising petrol and diesel prices caused by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Today, it’s a manageable nuisance, but that is about to change. From cancelled summer holidays to rising grocery prices, consumers face the prospect of major disruption – with the consequences only getting worse the longer the conflict drags on.
Read on to see how it could all unfold ➤
Meanwhile, beneath Britain’s oceans lies a wealth of unexploited energy assets that could power the country well into the future. So why have they gone largely untouched? It’s not geology-related, but an issue wrapped up in politics and taxes, with Ed Miliband the primary culprit.
Continue reading ➤ | | | | | Tiger Woods’s arrest last week has been recorded in great detail by Florida police | | Tiger Woods is the ultimate paradox. Universally known, but ultimately unknowable. In awe of his late father Earl, but unwilling to arrange even a simple headstone for his grave. A supreme athlete, but today so dependent on heavy-duty painkillers that his face looks drawn and bloated. In the end, not even a stable relationship with Vanessa Trump could save him from a fourth shaming episode in 17 years behind the wheel of a car, with Florida police arresting him once more for driving under the influence of prescription drugs. How did it come to this? Oliver Brown explores how the sportsman of a generation developed a seemingly unlimited capacity for self-destruction. Continue reading ➤ | | | | | The great writer Michael Frayn, 92, has given a rare audience to our Chief Theatre Critic Dominic Cavendish, who met him in his garden in a bucolic corner of south-west London to talk ageing, the return of his play Copenhagen and why he’s turned down a knighthood – twice. Continue reading ➤ | | | Natasha Archer pictured with the Princess of Wales in 2014 | | Natasha Archer was, perhaps fittingly, one of the most prepared people I have ever interviewed, writes Caroline Leaper, our Deputy Fashion Director. As the former private executive assistant to the Prince and Princess of Wales, it was her job to ensure that her charges were ready for every eventuality. This included assisting the Princess with her wardrobe requirements. Natasha told me about leaving the Firm behind after 15 years of service and launching her own fashion advisory business, offering styling services to clients from around the world. Continue reading ➤ | | | Trish Cheatham before and after her weight-loss journey | When I was younger, I found it easy to stay in shape, writes Trish Cheatham. I thought I would stay comfortable in my body forever, but life had other plans – divorce, children and my career. I was burning the candle at both ends, starting the day with a frappuccino and ending it with a heavy restaurant meal. I told myself I “deserved it” when in reality, my body was under stress. After I was told that I was at risk of having a stroke at any moment, I knew I needed to change. I lost six stone, and have kept it up. Here’s how.
Continue reading ➤ | ‘Dishwashers are useless’ Every week, one of our writers takes an unfashionable position, either defending a subject that’s been unfairly maligned or criticising something that most people love.  | Gareth Davies Editor, Flagship Newsletters | More than half of us use dishwashers to clean our crockery and cutlery. It might surprise you, because it surprised me, but the official figure for households owning one is between 49 per cent and 50 per cent (up from 19 per cent in 1994), which feels incredibly low. How the other half live, eh? I can only look at those free of the world’s most useless invention with envy.
One would think that something literally called a dishwasher would live up to its name and wash the dishes. No, no, no: don’t be silly.
Let’s take this morning as an example. I went to unload the dishwasher, and of the 36 items I’d put on an “intense” 70C cycle last night, 14 were still filthy, the rest were clean-ish, albeit with the rancid citrus scent only a dishwasher can spew up. So into the sink they went, where I had to... wash the dishes.
Thanks, dishwasher.
Before you say it, it’s no Rolls-Royce of an appliance, but the salt and fluid levels were adequate, the filter was clean and the plates and bowls were perfectly spread out, located in their designated berths.
Apparently, though, the remnants of my son’s Coco Pops, watery tomato sauce left over from some baked beans and four grains of rice were too much for my hopeless excuse of a machine to handle. Even mugs that had once held tea and coffee came out dirtier than they went in.
“You’ve got to make sure you rinse everything off before you put them in there,” my Mam likes to tell me. Well, I might as well wash them up myself, considering I’m already doing 99 per cent of the work, and don’t get me started on anything plastic ending up the wrong way round.
If the microwave didn’t warm your food, if your kettle poured out ice-cold water, if your toaster only slightly warmed your bread to turn it floppy, you’d be pretty cross and you'd throw the appliance away if this behaviour continued. This is what dishwashers are doing to us every day, but we just sit there, accept it, and blame ourselves. It must be something I did. Dishwashers are gaslighting us.
Boy, I’ve worked with some dishwashers too. My first job at 16 was a kitchen porter at the Oystercatcher in Penarth, South Wales. At £12,000, the Winterhalter GS industrial was a different beast, getting through a full cycle in less than a minute, but even she would struggle with a lasagne dish. I’m sorry to admit to Hungry Horse bosses that if a plate passed through two cycles and still wasn’t clean, it went in the bin.
So, as I stand here, with my new kitchen in boxes waiting to be fitted, the plans surely don’t include space for an integrated dishwasher, right? Right? Wrong. What is this to my left in a cellophane-wrapped, polystyrene-protected cardboard box? A brand new, expensive, useless dishwasher.
I’ve given up convincing myself it’ll be different this time, so here’s to a new horrible relationship between a desolate man and a machine that refuses to do its job. I’m so pathetic.
Do you agree with Gareth? Send your replies here, and the best of the bunch will feature in a future edition of From the Editor PM, for which you can sign up here.
Please confirm in your reply that you are happy to be featured and that we have your permission to use your name. | | Glen Baxter, who has died aged 82, was best known in the UK as a very funny exponent of the upmarket greetings card, but in France and elsewhere his oddly scholarly cowboys and other surreal characters saw him hailed as a serious artist, writes Andrew M Brown, our Obituaries Editor.
His work was a comic pastiche of pictures in old Boy’s Own annuals and cowboy comics. The laughs come from the absurdity of the deadpan captions, written in his distinctive capitals. For example, a group of cricketers in unfamiliar territory: “One or two of the grounds were not quite up to Test match standard”.  | The drawings could be equally surreal. One featured a man sawing off his own leg in front of two children, with the caption: “Uncle Frank would keep us amused for hours”. Baxter also relished subverting Wild West clichés, with two Stetson-clad cowpokes barging through a doorway, captioned: “There was always an unseemly rush for seats at the crochet seminar.”
In the 1980s, greetings cards featuring Baxter’s work sold in huge numbers, but some critics thought him sadly underrated. The Telegraph’s John McEwen urged readers to see him in an exhibition, because “the originals differ from the reproductions as much as live fish from dead ones”.
Read his obituary in full here ➤ | | Find as many words as you can in today’s Panagram, including the nine-letter solution. Visit Telegraph Puzzles to play a range of head-scratching games, including The 1% Club, Cogs, and Quick, Mini or Cryptic Crosswords.
Yesterday’s Panagram was COMBATING. Come back tomorrow for the solution to today’s puzzle. | | Thank you for reading. Allister Heath, Sunday Telegraph Editor
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