A street in Liverpool has been left without post for nearly six months after Royal Mail suspended deliveries because one of its workers was bitten by a dog. Deliveries to the Ash Vale cul-de-sac’s 26 properties were put on hold after a postman was chased and bitten by a dog in September, noted the Liverpool Echo. Royal Mail said that the animal remained at the address, meaning that it was unsafe, but residents said this caused them to miss important letters, including cancer test results and hospital appointment messages.

Japan has 7,000 more islands than thought

Japan has discovered it has 7,000 more islands than it previously realised. The Geospatial Information Authority of Japan used digital mapping to recount the islands and found there to be 14,125 islands in Japanese territory, more than double the figure of 6,852 that has been in official use since 1987. The technology used previously was “not able to distinguish between small clusters of islands and larger individual islands”, explained Gizmodo, “meaning thousands of these islands were counted as one”.

Woman eats scones at every National Trust site

A widow has completed her challenge to sample a scone at every National Trust location that offered them, in tribute to her late husband. Sarah Merker, 49, began her tour in 2013, and has enjoyed 244 scones around England, Wales and Northern Ireland. She completed the challenge this week at the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland. “It’s all very emotional,” she told The Times. “It’s been a weird experience. I don’t know what I’d call it — it’s more than a hobby.”

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1. Azeem Rafiq might have lost a career to racism, but his crucial legacy is playing out in real time

George Dobell for The Cricketer

on a turning point for the game

Anyone who saw Azeem Rafiq representing Yorkshire a decade or so ago “might well have presumed he had a great future in the game”, writes George Dobell in The Cricketer. But sadly, “it wasn’t to be”. Now, at 30, “when he should probably be somewhere near his peak as a cricketer”, Rafiq “runs a fish and chip shop”. Perhaps, continues Dobell, he “lost his way as a player” precisely because he suffered racist abuse. Either way, “it seems his real legacy is being played out before us at present”. Early evidence suggests that Rafiq’s story “is the tip of a very large, very ugly iceberg”, says Dobell. “It is becoming increasingly clear, from dozens of calls from other former players, that non-white players have largely suffered in silence for years.” We can’t forget, concludes Dobell, the toll this process has taken on Rafiq. “He is exhausted. He has felt excluded. He is grieving both a lost child and a lost career.” But his intervention “really could prove to be a turning point for our game”. If we don’t make cricket more inclusive as a result, “we will have missed a golden opportunity”, says Dobell. “All of us who love cricket – even those who just value inclusivity – may well look back on this episode and conclude we have much to thank him for.”

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2. In politics apologies just make things worse

Daniel Finkelstein for The Times

on insincere sorries

When, a couple of weeks ago, the Royal Court Theatre issued an apology for giving the Jewish-sounding name Hershel Fink to “a money-grabbing, power-hungry billionaire” in one of its plays, Daniel Finkelstein watched “with interest”. “At the very same time, people were calling for Boris Johnson to apologise to MPs for his misjudgment in the Owen Paterson affair,” he writes in The Times. Comparing the two “reinforced” Finkelstein’s reaction: “that of course Johnson should be sorry but it is not at all clear he should say so”. Why? “Because the majority of political apologies don’t work,” he continues. “If Johnson publicly apologised for his mistake over Paterson would anyone believe he was truly sorry? That he really meant it? No.” He continues: “Would they feel irritated that he expected them to forgive him now he had apologised? Absolutely. Would it reduce his support, even among those currently inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt? It would. And would it make the issue go away? Certainly not.”

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3. Britain is plagued by organisations that hate their most loyal supporters

Madeline Grant for The Daily Telegraph

on ‘making a mountain out of a dog stool’

The National Trust has a “novel solution” in the face of a “proverbial problem”, writes Madeline Grant in The Daily Telegraph. After the bins at a popular beauty spot in East Hampshire started regularly overflowing “due to a recent influx of dog-walkers”, the Trust took what Grant describes “a somewhat counter-intuitive step”: removing dog-waste bins altogether. “Ingenious” solutions to the problem – which the Trust “apparently failed to consider” – include “adding more bins, or emptying them more regularly”, she continues “Perhaps I’m making a mountain out of a dog stool here, but the Trust’s petty, anti-people (and anti-dog) response to this problem is the latest in a series of baffling decisions which could have been designed to provoke its core supporters,” says Grant. In fact, the “entire country seems in the grip of organisations that give every impression of disliking those whose interests they claim to represent”, she continues. This includes the British Medical Association, Church of England, the Labour and Conservative parties, the BBC, Stonewall and “even the Girl Guides”. “The question is, are there any organisations left that don’t hate their own members?”

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4. Trans inclusivity in sexual violence services is perfectly achievable – these organisations are leading by example

Jeevan Ravindran for gal-dem

on safe spaces for trans people

Over the last few years, we’ve seen “a tidal wave of transphobia sweep the UK”, writes Jeevan Ravindran for gal-dem, a magazine that shares perspectives from people of colour of marginalised genders. Among the “most high-profile debates” has been “the question of whether trans people – particularly trans women and transfeminine people – should be allowed to access single-sex spaces for survivors of sexual violence”. The “hypervisibility” of the gender-critical movement “would make it all too easy to believe that there are no longer any safe spaces for trans people in the [violence against women and girls – VAWG] sector”, continues Ravindran, but “thankfully that’s not the case”. “Many sexual violence services have been quietly trans-inclusive for years, or even since their inception.” Trans-inclusive VAWG organisations include Brighton-based Survivors’ Network and Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre, says Ravindran. “Organisations are recognising the lack of safety for trans people in many spaces across the VAWG sector,” she continues, “and are actively trying to highlight the visibility of the places where trans people can go to heal.”

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5. Adele’s divorce from Simon Konecki reminded me that the secret to a happy marriage is a very unromantic one

Esther Walker for the i news site

on putting up with irritating habits

This week, there’s been “a lot of talk” about marriage and divorce, writes Esther Walker for the i news site. First, 24-year-old Malala Yousafzai revealed she has married the Pakistani cricket board executive Asser Malik. Then, when speaking to Oprah, Adele shared “some truths about the breakup of her marriage to Simon Konecki”. “Adele’s comments about her marriage are interesting,” continues Walker. She called Konecki “stable”, adding that he “probably saved my life”. So why did their relationship end? It “seems likely” that there’s a “straightforward and common” explanation, writes Walker: “that they found each other annoying or boring or both, in ways that didn’t quite fit”. “If my diagnosis is correct,” she continues, “then it’s a miracle that my husband and I haven’t divorced each other six times over already”. But in Walker’s “limited experience”, the key to staying married is “less about finding someone with the right good qualities, and more about identifying someone whose irritating habits – because we all have them – you can just about put up with”.

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God help the National Trust, said The Guardian. Ever since it published a “sober” academic report last year, detailing its properties’ links to slavery and colonialism, it has become a battleground in a vicious “culture war”. The Trust’s critics believe it has become too “woke”, and should stick to looking after Britain’s historic homes and gardens. Restore Trust, a rebel alliance of 6,000 current and former National Trust members, has been formed, and is seeking to take six vacant seats on the charity’s council at its annual general meeting next week. The group, backed by right-wing Tory MPs and including one fundamentalist Christian lobbyist, claims that it wants to return the Trust to its founding principles. It is vital to see this for what it is: a small group of unrepresentative obsessives trying to “push a reactionary agenda”.

Actually, said Clare Foges in The Times, Restore Trust has a point. Many members have been irritated that volunteers have been told to wear lanyards to celebrate gay pride, and to complete diversity training, lest they be “inadvertently sexist while explaining the provenance of a Chippendale dresser”; and that school-children have been sent into Trust properties to “reverse-mentor” septuagenarian volunteers. Last year’s sloppy report was the last straw. It casually indicted various much-loved places of historical crimes: Wordsworth’s house, because his brother captained an East India Company ship; Winston Churchill’s home, Chartwell, for his opposition to Indian independence. The rebels were right to call this out.

The Trust has to move with “changing tastes and opinions”, said Simon Jenkins in The Guardian. There was no way it “could stand aloof from the debate over how to present controversial periods in British history”. Some of its houses, such as Speke Hall, were built on the proceeds of slavery. But it addressed the debate clumsily, giving the job to “a group of partisan academics talking a private language”. This needlessly provoked the anti-woke brigade. Nevertheless, with members now nearing six million, the Trust is in sound health. “It will get over this latest dust-up – and learn.”

1. Stately homes are a refuge not a battlefield

Clare Foges in The Times

on disputed history

“The good old National Trust has been a tonic for millions of souls,” writes Clare Foges in The Times, but the 126-year-old organisation “now faces a battle for its own”. Ahead of a vote to elect its council, the charity has a “de-pinned grenade whistling towards it” in the form of a group of “heritage traditionalists” called Restore Trust, who present themselves as members “disgruntled at the trust’s capitulation to wokeness”, Foges writes. While many paint Restore Trust as being “old bigots beating against the tide of progress”, their “central charge”, that “the National Trust is in danger of losing sight of what it was created for” is “right”, she continues. The National Trust is intended to be “a custodian” of country houses, preserved for members of the public who have no country home, “not a campaigning organisation”. “Large organisations such as the National Trust talk often about changing their offer lest they look fusty and out of touch, but a lot of us are attracted to the trust experience precisely because it changes little,” writes Foges. “We do not want the trust to reflect the modern world but to be a refuge from it.”

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2. We shouldn’t let a few bad statues spoil our taste for public art

Jane Shilling in The Telegraph

on merit in mediocrity

Described as “dreadful” and “an insult” by critics, a new statue of “Greek diva” Maria Callas unveiled in Athens last week “was not met with universal acclaim”, writes Jane Shilling in The Telegraph. While the “monumental sculptors of the Renaissance or classical Greece and Rome may have felt that theirs was an honoured calling”, to be a public artist today “is to run a gauntlet of cruel scrutiny from the armchair critics of social media”, Shilling writes. But “the intention of public art is generally virtuous; the fact that so much of it is mediocre is not a reason to give up”, she continues. And while “an encounter with a meretricious artwork can sour your day as reliably as a badly cooked meal” one finds that “in art, as in cooking, the memory of the good tends to efface the bad”.

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3. For Uber and Lyft, the rideshare bubble bursts

Greg Bensinger in The New York Times

on falling unicorns

“Piece by piece, the mythology around ridesharing is falling apart,” writes Greg Bensinger in The New York Times. “Uber and Lyft promised ubiquitous self-driving cars as soon as this year,” he writes. “Heck, they even promised flying cars,” amid a litany of other pledges. “Well, none of that has gone as promised” and “now a new study is punching a hole in another of Uber and Lyft’s promised benefits: curtailing pollution”. While it might be “tempting” to “chalk up” many of these broken promises “to marketing and typical corporate chest thumping”, these companies have “skirted laws for years to help drive growth and along the way have made drivers pawns in their race to the bottom”. While it may be true that they offer a “useful service” in some aspects, such as “access to transportation in underserved areas”, it’s clear that “after years of bluster, it’s hard to believe them about much else”.

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4. The gap between reckless Brexit promises and reality will soon be too big to ignore

John Harris in The Guardian

on ‘a cruel deceit’

“What must it be like to be in the inner circles of this government, watching the economy bounce from crisis to crisis?” writes John Harris in The Guardian. “I wonder: in cabinet meetings and ministerial get-togethers, do they laugh at the apparent absurdity of it all, or anxiously exchange estimates of when the roof might finally start to fall in? After all, the central political fact of life in the UK could not be more stark,” Harris continues. “In England and Wales, the contrast between the realities of life outside the EU and what we were promised seems like some cruel deceit at the heart of a family or marriage: silently acknowledged and understood, but so far largely unspoken,” he writes. “Looking to the future, one big political question surely demands to be asked: what happens when some watershed point is reached, and the fact that people were conned becomes inescapable?”

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5. Treating viruses like atomic bombs would help prevent pandemics

Tom Tugendhat in the Financial Times

on valuable lessons

“The first atomic explosion revealed a power that transformed our world,” writes Tom Tugendhat in the Financial Times. “Covid-19 has exposed a similar shared risk – and the gaps in our defences,” says the Conservative MP, who is also the chair of the foreign affairs committee. “We need new global public health powers that can access sites around the world, perhaps modelled on the nuclear sector,” Tugendhat writes. We can learn “valuable lessons” from the atomic industry, he continues. “Scrutiny, peer pressure and the sharing of safety standards are the best protections we have.” While the pandemic “could have been worse”, the “alarm could not have been louder”, says the MP. “We need greater transparency if we are to prevent the local outbreaks of the future from becoming something deadlier.”

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A South African pastor who breaks wind on the heads of his congregation has claimed that he is merely demonstrating “God’s power”. Pastor Christ Penelope of the SevenFold Holy Spirit Ministries in the South African province of Limpopo says his windy ritual helps his flock become wealthy. According to reports, some of his followers wait for months for their chance to be farted upon.

Chocolate bar from Queen Victoria found

A 121-year-old chocolate bar with regal links has been found in the attic of a National Trust property. The bar, which was part of a batch commissioned by Queen Victoria for British troops during the Boer War, was discovered in its tin in a Boer War-era helmet case at Oxburgh Hall in Norfolk. A National Trust spokesperson said: “It no longer looks appetising and is well past its use-by date - you wouldn’t want it as your Easter treat.”

Woman cannot pronounce husband’s name

A woman has confessed that even after several years of marriage, she still can’t correctly say her husband’s name and has instead just been calling him “baby” for the last three years. In a TikTok video posted by @maybebrea, she says: “Okay, so I’ve been calling my husband baby for the last three years because I don’t know how to pronounce his Swedish name.” The video has been watched more than 13 million times.

At least 93 properties under the management of the National Trust (NT) have links to slavery and colonialism, the conservation charity has revealed.

The full “list of shame” has been published in a new report on the findings of a review launched in June amid Black Lives Matter protests across the world.

Dr Corinne Fowler, who led the project, says that visitors to NT sites “will be increasingly confronted with uncomfortable truths at Britain’s historic properties”, while “staff and volunteers will be urged to educate the public about the imperial exploitation which has propped up many heritage sites”.

Sites on the list include Quarry Bank Mill in Cheshire, which was “built using family wealth related to slavery”, and Bath Assembly Rooms, which was “connected to the wider colonial and slavery economies of the 18th century”, the BBC reports.

Powis Castle in Wales, the former home of Robert Clive - aka Clive of India - also features. Clive helped establish British rule in India and “was a vicious asset-stripper”, according to historian and author William Dalrymple.

Winston Churchill’s Chartwell residence in Kent is included too, owing to the former prime minister’s “role in the Bengal famine and his opposition to Indian independence”, says The Telegraph.

Among the other properties on the list are Bateman’s, the former home of writer Rudyard Kipling, who was an “influential apologist for imperialism”, adds Reuters.

NT members have “threatened to cancel their membership” in response to the list, adding that historians have accused the trust of being “unfair”, reports the Daily Mail.

“Critics have accused the ‘out of touch’ trust of ‘woke virtue signalling’ and ‘alienating’ fee-paying members who say the organisation is simply jumping on the Black Lives Matter bandwagon,” the newspaper adds.

The National Trust is urging locked-down Britons to reconnect with nature by taking part in a new springtime tradition based on a Japanese custom.

The conservation charity is encouraging anyone who sees a tree in bloom - whether from their home or during the once daily trip out to exercise permitted under coronavirus containment restrictions - to share the experience on social media using #BlossomWatch.

So what is the #BlossomWatch campaign?

The National Trust wants to encourage people of all ages to “take a moment to pause, actively notice and enjoy the fleeting beauty of blossom”, and to “share our blossom images on social media, using #BlossomWatch, for those who can’t see it for themselves”, says Country Living magazine.

Andy Beer, a nature expert at the charity, said: “It’s really easy to take this moment in nature for granted. Celebrating blossom is a pivotal, seasonal moment that can often be all too fleeting and we want to do all we can to help people and families at home to enjoy and take stock of a special moment in the calendar.

“At a time when people are being asked not to travel, blossom trees can be seen on city streets, in gardens and in public parks. There are many spectacular orchards across the nation, including those owned by the National Trust, but the awesome spectacle of blossom is on display in the neighbourhoods of many lucky people.”

People nationwide can “share the joy” by posting pictures online of the blossom that they spot, says Beer.

“With the southwest of the country typically a bit warmer than the north, we are likely to see wave after wave of the different types of fruit blossom sweeping across the country over the next three months,” he added.

The National Trust is also asking #BlossomWatch participants to tag their location, so that the charity can launch a blossom map next year.

The #BlossomWatch initiative is part of the National Trust’s “Everyone Needs Nature” campaign to help people become more connected with the outdoors.

Research commissioned by the organisation has found that only a small proportion of Britons – just 7% of children and 6% of adults – often celebrate key events in nature’s calendar such as the first day of spring, the solstice or harvest.

Where does the blossom-spotting idea originate?

The National Trust’s new initiative is inspired by hanami, “the Japanese custom of relishing the fleeting sight and scent of blossom”, says The Guardian.

A big event in the Japanese calendar, hanami celebrates the arrival of spring and springtime blossom, and centres around flowering cherry trees, or sakura, which reach peak blossom in late March and early April.

“Hanami can be just a stroll in the park, but it traditionally also involves a picnic party under the blooming trees,” says Japan-guide.com. “Hanami parties have been held in Japan for many centuries, and today are held in public and private gardens and parks across the country.”

The National Trust has come under fire for covering up artwork featuring men inside a Northumberland country house hosting an installation highlighting the lives of 19th century women.

Busts and paintings depicting male subjects were draped in sheets at Cragside, near Rothbury, formerly the home of Victorian industrialist Lord William Armstrong, as part of an art project called the Great Cragside Cover-up.

The installation, the work of Newcastle artist Kate Stobbart and art PhD students Rob Blazey and Harriet Sutcliffe, was intended to focus on the life of his wife, Lady Margaret Armstrong, as well as other female relatives and women employed at the house.

Sutcliffe said before the opening that “by concealing some of the male objects and artefacts within the house, it might shift the lens slightly so these women would have the space for three weeks to shine”.

A notice duly informed visitors that artworks featuring men had been veiled to “draw attention to the lack of representation of women at Cragside”, says the Northumberland Gazette.

However, the Trust was “inundated by complaints from visitors to the house, which has a large collection of works including celebrated pieces from the 17th and 18th centuries”, The Times reports.

One disappointed visitor, who paid £49.50 for a family ticket, said he was baffled by the decision to cover up artwork featuring men and that “an extra exhibition recognising the achievements of women would be more constructive”, the Daily Express reports.

However, the National Trust said the nature of the exhibition “was well publicised and visitors should have been aware prior to entry”, says The Guardian. The organisation also denied that the decision was the result of “political correctness”.

“This temporary student exhibition at Cragside was not about censoring art or being politically correct, but to encourage people to look at the collection differently and stimulate debate,” the Trust said in a statement.

However, a spokesman acknowledged that the installation had been met with “a mix of positive and negative comments” and that the organisation would take visitor feedback into account.

The three-week exhibition, which ended on Sunday, was funded by part of a £114,748 government grant awarded to the Trust to promote its Women and Industry project.

The National Trust has been accused of being "insensitive" for charging visitors to park near the site of the Levant Mine disaster in Cornwall after the BBC's Poldark boosted the location's popularity.

A new ticket machine will be fitted at the mine after a group of vandals pulled the first one out of the ground.

However, locals say the National Trust is profiting from the growing numbers visiting the site, where 31 men were killed in 1919, and have called the move "insensitive", says the Daily Telegraph.

In an open letter on Facebook, resident Ian Cooke says: "We don't want Levant Mine to be treated as a Poldark attraction.

"The National Trust have still not taken on board public feelings about the new charges as applicable to Levant, but hope they eventually see sense and abandon this policy as it applies to the very special case of Levant due largely to the disaster of 1919 when 31 local miners were killed in a shaft less than 100 metres from the car park."

The National Trust said the parking fees would help maintain the site.

A spokesman said: "A terrible tragedy happened in 1919, where 31 men lost their lives there.

"We know people still come to pay their respects, those that descend from the miners that lost their lives, and we don't want to prevent that from happening in any way.

"Those people are able to park for free and while they're with us we want to hear their stories and hear their memories of the place."

Visitor figures have risen by 50 per cent since the new version of Poldark first aired in 2015, says the conservation charity. Around 100,000 people have gone to the site in the past two years.

Poldark, which is based on novels by Winston Graham, tells the story of Ross Poldark's efforts to make his family's Cornish copper mines work.

The National Trust offers Poldark Walks, which take visitors past sites used in the series as well as areas "rich in mining and Cornish history".

One of the art world's longest-running arguments has finally been settled with confirmation that a Rembrandt self-portrait was indeed painted by the Old Master.

For nearly 50 years there has been doubt over the 1635 painting, which depicts a young Rembrandt wearing a black cloak and a feathered bonnet. At the time he was a 29-year-old artist living in Amsterdam, gradually acquiring the reputation that would later see him hailed as one of the greatest painters in history.

Though the portrait bears Rembrandt's signature, the Daily Telegraph reports that in 1968 Rembrandt specialist Horst Gerson argued that "areas of the painting were not accomplished enough to be the work of the Dutch painter".

Despite the accusations that the work was not genuine, and more likely to be by of one of Rembrant's pupils, the National Trust acquired the painting in 2010 when it was bequeathed them by the estate of Lady Samuel of Wych Cross.

The NT decided to subject the painting to scientific analysis, a £20,000 project funded by the National Lottery, in the hope it would be authenticated as an original Rembrandt. Now, reports the Telegraph, after months of analysis at the Hamilton Kerr Institute in Cambridgeshire, which included "visual examination under magnification, infra-red reflectography, X-rays, raking light photography and pigment and medium analysis", the painting has been verified a self-portrait. It will now form part of the Rembrandt Revealed exhibition, at Buckland Abbey in Devon later this month.

Painting conservator Christine Slottvedd Kimbriel explained that analysts removed layers of aged and yellowed varnish to examine the painting's pigments. This revealed that colours such as blue mineral azurite and blue cobalt were consistent with those used by Rembrandt. But it was the signature that provided the biggest clue.

"The signature and date of 1635... had been considered problematic in previous assessments as it was thought that the style and composition was much more akin to the artist's style slightly later in his career," said Kimbriel. "[But] the cross-section analysis left no reason to doubt that the inscription was added at the time of execution of the painting."

Prof Van de Wetering, the world's leading Rembrandt expert, declared himself "satisfied" that is authentic.