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Gulf Today
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Gulf Today
Oasis, Adolescence: How the UK finally got cool again
Helen Coffey, The Independent If you're Gen Z or younger, you probably can't remember the last time the UK was cool. It was before your time, I'm afraid – a Nineties heyday embodied by Britpop bands such as Oasis and Blur, Richard Curtis romcoms, YBAs (Young British Artists) headed up by Damien Hirst and his provocative animals in formaldehyde, and Tony Blair's Labour Party finally booting the Tories out of power in 1997 after an 18-year stronghold. It marked a period of genuine optimism — a feeling epitomised by sexy smackhead Mark Renton (Ewan McGregor) 'choosing life' at the end of Danny Boyle's Nineties masterpiece, Trainspotting – when British fashion, music and culture were the envy of all. A time when the country felt progressive, thriving and relevant. A time when, in fact, one might feel the tiniest bit justified in being 'proud to be British'. Ginger Spice was even able to wear a union jack mini-dress to the 1997 Brit Awards without the merest hint that she was making some kind of anti-immigration political statement. That same year, Katrina and the Waves won the Eurovision Song Contest on behalf of the United Kingdom with their uplifting ballad 'Love Shine a Light'. Since that golden era of Cool Britannia petered out, we've been sorely lacking in the trendy department. The Tories wrested power back from Labour again in 2010, introduced the chokehold of austerity, and clung on for the next 14 years. The flame of excitement prompted by the success of the 2012 London Olympics was comprehensively doused by the damp squib that was the Brexit referendum — and ensuing economic downturn — in 2016. Our street cred was further dented by dodgy Covid contracts and a succession of cringe-making leaders who ran the gamut from robotic to corrupt. Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak: it's practically a four-way tie in the 'which of our prime ministers was the most embarrassing' race to the bottom. No, for a nigh-on a quarter of a century, 'cool' was not a word one could feasibly use to describe the British Isles – not without a knowing flicker of irony, at any rate. But now, all of a sudden, we might just be on the cusp of Cool Britannia Mark II. Now, for the first time in decades, might it be — whisper it — cool to be British again? Of course, the country has long continued to hold a certain charm for anglophiles the world over, but it was previously always our past, rather than our present, that captivated foreigners. Jane Austen adaptations of varying quality may have flown off the shelves; Downton Abbey may have garnered such global popularity that endless series continued to be made, regardless of the increasing 'jump the shark' implausibility that the Crawley family were barely ageing through the decades. But modern Britain, with its deflated economy and mortifying politicians, its littering and its rioting and its binge drinking, was an understandably unappealing prospect for all but the country's staunchest defenders. People wanted the Britain of bonnets and smouldering heroes in the mould of Pride and Prejudice's Mr Darcy or a topless Aidan Turner as Poldark. They did not want the Britain of The Only Way Is Essex. Yet it seems the tide might finally have turned. The signs that the UK's cultural cachet was about to experience an unexpected surge were already there, of course. No, Keir Starmer's thrashing of the Tories last year was far from the jubilant landslide of Labour in the late Nineties, but it at least represented some kind of hope after years in exile for those on the Left. The official trend and soundtrack for that summer – Brat summer – was orchestrated by unabashedly hip British musician Charli XCX, whose album emboldened a generation of young people to sack off curating a perfect Insta grid and stay out raving all night in yesterday's makeup. Even Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris got in on the action after Charli declared 'kamala IS brat' on social media. Now, 2025 seems to be the year when everything has coalesced – and people are once again loving the UK for her grittiness, rather than her prettiness. The Gallagher brothers, pivotal in Cool Britannia's previous iteration, have kick-started a frenzy of Britpop nostalgia single-handed with their reunion tour. Guy Ritchie's latest gangster series, MobLand, with its hard-as-nails London crime scene juxtaposed by picturesque Cotswolds manor houses, was an instant success for Paramount. Adolescence, a dark mini-series set in Yorkshire about a 13-year-old boy who murders a classmate after becoming radicalised online, is Netflix's most-watched show of the year and its second most-watched English-language series of all time. The show's standout performances earned Emmy nominations for Stephen Graham, Erin Doherty and Ashley Walters, as well as 15-year-old Owen Cooper, who made history by becoming the youngest ever nominee in the limited series supporting actor category. And then there are the celebrity endorsements that keep rolling in. 'Everything here is just better,' comedian and talk show host Ellen DeGeneres recently said of the UK after moving here with wife Portia de Rossi following Donald Trump's re-election. 'The way animals are treated, people are polite. I just love it here.'
Gulf Today
19-07-2025
- Business
- Gulf Today
Here's how to not lose your mind when applying for jobs
Helen Coffey, The Independent That is what I wish to offer our beleaguered Gen Zs in this, their time of need. The culture wars often seek to divide my kind (millennials) from yours (genuine young people), but we shall be divided no longer. For now, finally, we really do have common ground that binds us: getting the fuzzy end of the lollipop when it comes to finding gainful employment. In 2008, I proudly graduated from university with a first-class degree — admittedly in drama — and big dreams, ready to take my bite out of the big, wide world. Finding a job would be child's play, I assumed; I had an exemplary academic record, a 'can-do' attitude and a CV filled with real-world work experience thanks to an assortment of term-time and holiday jobs. I was young, I was hungry, I was an asset. Wasn't I? Alas, 2008, if you remember that fateful year, coincided with the global financial crash. It was not a good time to be an unskilled 21-year-old looking for a job, to put it mildly. Between 2008 and 2009, UK unemployment skyrocketed by the steepest jump in any 12-month period of the last 30 years, leaping from 5.71 to 7.63 per cent. The rate rose for the following two years, reaching a high of just over 8 per cent in 2011. This was borne out by my futile job hunt, during which I was forced to move home with my mother, sign on to jobseekers allowance and spend every tedious, drudge of a day for the next four months submitting my CV for entry-level roles that had already attracted thousands of applications. It was like the Hunger Games of job seeking – and the odds were never in my favour. They were never in anyone's favour. Cut to 2025, and Gen Z are facing their own job drought. The numbers may not be quite so dire as those during that extra spicy Noughties recession, but they paint a picture that is, nevertheless, hauntingly familiar in its bleakness. According to newly released official numbers from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), UK unemployment has risen to its highest rate in four years, 4.7 per cent. The data also shows that the number of job vacancies fell to 727,000 for the April to June period. That is the lowest it's been for a decade — including during pandemic lockdown periods when businesses were forced to implement literal hiring freezes. Of course, the demographic usually most affected by any downturn in prospects is young people – those just starting out in their careers, attempting to get full-time work straight out of school, college or university. In June, The Guardian reported that graduates are facing the toughest UK job market since 2018. What's exacerbated the situation for this cohort is AI; since the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, the number of entry-level jobs has fallen by almost a third (31.9 per cent). It's in part thought to be because junior roles, such as data entry and tedious form filling, could easily be mopped up by artificial intelligence programmes. The big cheeses aren't even denying it. Dario Amodei, the chief executive of AI firm Anthropic, recently claimed that AI could wipe out up to half all entry-level jobs in as little as five years, and argued that UK unemployment could rise to 10 or 20 per cent in that time; another AI company's viral advertising campaign recently got people's backs up with punchy slogans such as 'Stop hiring humans'. And there are already real-world consequences: BT announced in 2023 that it expects 10,000 jobs to be lost to artificial intelligence by the end of this decade. Then there are rising labour costs, with employers squeezed even more by increased national insurance contributions and a higher minimum wage. Slashing headcounts is clearly the quickest and easiest way to ride out such rises. In fact, the ONS data reveals that the number of people on PAYE payroll has fallen in seven of the eight months since Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, announced the NICs rise. But behind all the stats are those affected by them, real people who are more than just numbers or faceless 'candidates'. I've already seen numerous personal stories of young people frantically scrambling to find work to no avail, up against hundreds of rival candidates, with little hope that their CV will be glanced at, let alone bag them an interview. Caitlin Morgan, a 23-year-old finance and accounting graduate from Swansea University, recently told the BBC about her nightmarish job hunt. She'd spent 18 months applying for more than 600 posts before she finally got hired. 'I see you, Caitlin Morgan!' I wanted to tell her upon reading the story. 'I know your pain...' In fact, I see all you poor, exhausted, desperate Gen Z job hunters out there, wondering if you'll ever win the 'lottery' — because that's what it feels like — of merely securing full-time work. I see you because that was my origin story, too. So here's my advice, woefully out-of-date and toothless as it may be 17 years down the track: remember, it's not you. It's the economy.
Yahoo
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Does Tinder's new height filter spell doom for 'short kings'?
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. "I'm a feminist, but as women we don't always help our cause – especially when it comes to the realm of romance and relationships," said Helen Coffey in The Independent. Scratch beneath the surface and our "blatant" heightism has always been a problem. Now, though, Tinder's trial of a new feature that allows paying members to screen potential matches based on "how tall they are" has brought the debate "kicking and screaming back into the light". As part of the trial, users who subscribe to Tinder Platinum can sort potential matches depending on a list of options including height, minimum number of photos and whether or not they have a bio. "Technically, these are 'preferences', rather than outright filters", said Shivali Best on the Mail Online. While potential matches won't be ruled out altogether based on their height, preferences will influence the recommendations made by the app. Tinder's vice president says the platform is "always listening to what matters most" to users, and it seems height really does matter to "many singles on the digital prowl", said Scottie Andrew on CNN. Research has shown that men prefer to date shorter women, while heterosexual women tend to seek out taller men. But Liesel Sharabi, an associate professor at Arizona State University who studies the impact of online dating on modern love, points out that by enabling its users to filter by height, Tinder is "telling you what you should be prioritising". And the narrower your idea of a "perfect match" becomes, the harder it is to forge real-life connections, she told the broadcaster. Tinder is hardly "breaking new ground" here, said Maia Davies on the BBC. Other apps such as Hinge have allowed users to filter matches according to their height, education level, religion and whether a potential match takes drugs, while paying Grindr members can filter by body type. But as Tinder is the planet's biggest dating app, the trial is "significant". Following the "life-affirming 'Short King' Spring of 2022, I genuinely thought we'd reached a place where women weren't going to be quite so shallow about height any more", said Coffey in The Independent. However, this "golden era was short-lived (pardon the pun)" and last year saw the arrival of the viral "man in finance, 6'5", blue eyes" TikTok that sparked thousands of memes. Any man who has used a dating app will know that "most of us are only there to make up the numbers", said Simon Bourke in the Irish Independent. In the online "world of swiping", only the most "attractive" and "determined" men will succeed. And now, women will be able to "eliminate all those undersized halflings", leaving just the men who meet the "universally accepted 'sexy height' of six foot". Because, if you're a man, you'll know that, for many women, meeting this criteria is non-negotiable. "Those are the rules of engagement. Nobody said it was fair." Of course, the new filter has sparked outrage in the "short king community", with some "haughtily requesting a weight filter to even the score". Unfortunately this is the "default response" for a group of men who choose to feel "attacked" and lash out at what they perceive as yet another barrier to finding love. Dating apps certainly "incentivise pickiness", said Andrew on CNN. "But singles who want to improve their chances of finding someone kind, who makes them laugh and shares their interests, might consider putting a little less emphasis on how tall that person is". For Natasha Burns, who is six inches taller than her husband, who she met on Tinder, it's possible that if they had been able to use the new height filter, the pair "would have written each other off based on measurements alone". "I've never been afraid to date a short guy", agreed Elle Hunt in Vogue. While you can't blame people for making use of the technology available to find a potential partner, the rigid criteria risks "ruling out people who would actually make us happy".
Gulf Today
05-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Gulf Today
Katie Piper's right, ageing as a woman is like a bereavement
Helen Coffey, The Independent 'Age is just a number,' goes the old adage. The new version should perhaps come with an addendum: 'Age is just a number — but one that your face and body should never reflect.' It was the recent words of presenter and activist Katie Piper that prompted this musing on our collective endeavour to erase the visible passage of time. 'Ageing can be compared to a bereavement,' the Loose Womenpanellist said at this year's Hay Festival while promoting her new book, Still Beautiful: On Age, Beauty and Owning Your Space. 'Sometimes we know we're losing somebody or something, and it's slow, it's gradual — and when it's ageing, we look down at our hands, we see they look different. We catch ourselves in the shop window, and everything's changed.' The 41-year-old's sentiments hit a nerve. I'm 38, a mere slip of a girl, surely, and yet I've already started having those out-of-body experiences — suddenly seeing a photo of myself taken from an unexpected angle and thinking, 'Who's she? That middle-aged woman with the chins and the deeply etched eye bags?' Or catching a glimpse in the mirror, brought up short by the marching silver threads that can never be beaten back no matter how often I dye my hair, because there's always more, more, more — a never-ending onslaught of grey to remind me that I'm getting older by the day. Piper, who has had to endure multiple surgeries to repair her face and eyesight ever since she was the victim of an acid attack orchestrated by an ex-boyfriend in 2008, has a very different relationship with her appearance compared to most of us. 'Women age out of the male gaze,' she said frankly. 'I was ripped from the male gaze at 24. I didn't just become invisible. I became a target for people saying derogatory things.' The reality is, everywhere you look, women are point-blank refusing to engage with the 'bereavement' of ageing; instead, they're locked into a relentless quest to freeze time and, increasingly, reverse it. This endeavour is nothing new. Though the modern iteration of 'anti-ageing products' can have been said to start in the first half of the 20th century, with the likes of Elizabeth Arden and Holly Rubinstein creating a mass market for their 'rejuvenation' treatments, go back a few centuries and you'll find Elizabethan women putting raw meat on their faces to turn back the clock. Travel further, to the first century BC, and Cleopatra was famously taking daily donkey milk baths for the same purpose. Hankering after youth and beauty is clearly hardwired into the human experience, the physical manifestation of our innate fear of death. But what has changed is the advancement of the technology to facilitate this age-old pursuit, and the extreme makeovers that are now being positioned by female celebrities as the gold standard towards which we should all be secretly striving. Or should that be 'make-unders' — as in, make this 60-year-old look underage, please? The most recent example to send shockwaves around the aesthetics world is Kris Jenner and her time-defying facelift. The woman is 69, but you'd never know that from her brand new £100,000 face. Rumoured to be her fifth surgery, and also rumoured to be a 'deep plane facelift' – because God forbid one of these women ever actually admit to what they're having done – the op has left her plump-cheeked, smooth-skinned and, ultimately, looking like an uncanny valley version of her daughter, Kim Kardashian. It's utterly mesmerising, the intricate artistry of someone who's arguably more wizard than plastic surgeon. Though Jenner is on one end of the spectrum – and perhaps feels like such measures are a prerequisite for being the matriarch of the nip-and-tuck-happy Kardashian dynasty – you don't have to look very far to see examples of Benjamin Buttons everywhere. Demi Moore, who has denied having various cosmetic procedures in the past, has fewer wrinkles at 62 than she did 20 years ago. Nicole Kidman has a face so taut it doesn't seem humanly possible that it's seen 57 trips around the sun.
The Independent
13-05-2025
- Health
- The Independent
A ‘Longevity Doctor' tells me how old I REALLY am
The Independent 's Features Writer Helen Coffey visits a so-called ' longevity doctor' to find out how old her body really is – and whether it's possible to slow down, or even reverse, the aging process. Longevity medicine, once associated with billionaire biohackers like Bryan Johnson, is gaining traction as a more mainstream approach to personalised healthcare. From blood tests to bone scans and a fitness stress test, Coffey undergoes a full-body MOT to reveal her 'biological age' – and explores whether anti-ageing science is really just hype, or the future of wellbeing.
