Why railway ticket offices are here to stay
Ross Clark for The Spectator
The government has made the "right decision" in U-turning on the closure of England's railway station ticket offices, partly because "the technology employed by rail companies seems to be increasingly defective", says Ross Clark in The Spectator. "Twice in recent months I have arrived at ticket barriers with a perfectly valid ticket only to find it refusing to let me through," says Clark. "To have stations which have ticket barriers but which are entirely unstaffed will deliver us into a dystopian world where we are at the mercy of faltering machines."
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The Times view on the Covid inquiry: Best Disinfectant
The Times editorial board
"Monday’s hearing of the Covid-19 inquiry cannot have been easy viewing for Boris Johnson," says The Times leader as the former PM has a "keen sense of history and his place in it". Unfortunately for Johnson, the evidence produced so far in the official investigation "suggests that a favourable write-up in future histories" of his performance during the pandemic "appears increasingly remote".
Labour calling for a ceasefire would achieve nothing. So why should it tear itself apart over this?
Polly Toynbee for The Guardian
For Keir Starmer, calling for a "ceasefire" in the Israel-Hamas war "would have been his easier option", says Polly Toynbee in The Guardian. But as someone who expects to be prime minister next year, "breaking ranks with all Britain's allies would be frivolous for the brief gain of posturing for something unachievable". Indeed, Toynbee says, "most Britons want the UK to take a mediator's neutrality" over the conflict.
The one where Chandler Bing's impenetrable job defined a generation
Emma Jacobs for the Financial Times
"The aspirations and frustrations of the white-collar worker have been depicted by great fictional characters in novels and on the screen," says Emma Jacobs in The Financial Times. But to that "pantheon of office drones must surely be added Friends’ sardonic Chandler Bing". Compared to the other characters, Chandler's office-worker profession "seemed void of purpose", yet he approached it with a "stoicism" that "more broadly reflects Gen X's tacit acceptance of their lot".
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Book reviews: ‘We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution’ and ‘Will There Ever Be Another You’Feature The many attempts to amend the U.S. Constitution and Patricia Lockwood’s struggle with long Covid
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Your Party: a Pythonesque shamblesTalking Point Comical disagreements within Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana's group highlight their precarious position
