7 days ago
One thing is certain: Ursula von der Leyen won't lose her lid
Watching the European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen's press conference with Donald Trump, I couldn't help but fixate on the still life of objects between them. There was a three-legged table bearing an anodyne bouquet of flowers. Next to Trump, there was nothing else. But on Von der Leyen's side, there was a neat, blue plastic folder, half hanging off, a glasses case placed demurely on top and, on the spotless new carpet of the showy ballroom, a plastic water bottle.
What an image, I thought, my eyes returning again and again to the three objects. Here is a woman, it said, who cannot move confidently through the corridors of power without her little sword-and-shield of personal effects: the briefing, to make sure she gets everything just right; the spectacles, lest she need to delve quickly into her notes; and the requisite hydration. Thank God, at least, that in accordance with EU regulations, the single-use plastic bottle lid would remain firmly attached to the bottle to reduce pollution. Europe just can't stop winning.
• Tariffs, net zero, Russia: no wonder Von der Leyen sleeps at work
'Delays possible until 2028,' said the sign on the A9, the only major road to run through the Scottish Highlands. 2028?! What are they building? The Olympics?
It is, it turns out, the project to make part of the A9 between Perth and Inverness a dual carriageway, which is expected to cause drivers headaches for the next three years — a process that involves a bit of landscaping but very little housing demolition or purchase, and would probably take China three months.
The A9 is a notoriously annoying road to drive, though it is far better than it was when I was a child. Furious queues of vans, Fords and Range Rovers would accumulate behind caravans and lorries for a hundred miles in the days when it was just a single lane each way, with no dualled sections. In my grandfather's time it was just a single-track road with the odd passing place.
I know a proper widening of the highway is long overdue, and obviously locals want a functional road network. But I also can't help imagining the Highlands when they were bisected by nothing but a quiet lane, when birdsong sounded louder than the throaty hiss of incessant traffic. How long before we get another lane, and another? Or will population decline arrive before the inexhaustible fleets of caravans and cyclists?
On the topic of Caledonian nostalgia, on annual holidays since I was young I've seen vast tracts of moorland transformed into pine forest. I'm not against reforestation, and much of it has been allowed to expand naturally after a little head start from the planters, but all too many acres have been seeded in soulless rows and even divided into perfect, green squares by pin-straight, treeless rides. OK, machine-planting might be cheaper but for the next generation or so these woodlands are going to feel more like industrial plantations than the regrowth of ancient forests.
Europe's forests used to be oceanic in scale, large enough to lose armies or to hide strange witches in gingerbread bungalows. When you replant with a singular focus on acres covered per hour or wild claims about carbon stored per hectare, you're doing little to restore our lost heritage. Unless, of course, what you want is to cover the moors in an arboreal version of the hotel in The Shining.
I was struck, leafing through The Times recently, by an image of a rural Ukrainian road that had been 'drone-proofed'. What high-tech, AI-powered device, you might wonder, had been invented by those resourceful Cossacks? The defensive method consisted of covering roads in a vast tunnel of plastic netting held up by wooden poles.
• US aid lets Ukraine upgrade cheap drones into precision weapons
The little drones cobbled together from Chinese consumer electronics and Blu-Tack that have become ubiquitous in the skies of Ukraine, apparently struggle with a good old length of garden mesh. Presumably, they bump into it and detonate their payload early, or else simply can't reach the target. It would be funny if it weren't so sinister.
