by | Apr 3, 2025 | The Guardian
I bought it to be part of a greener future, but that was before Musk proved so awful. I’d sell it now, but prices have dropped
After our children left home, my wife and I decided to treat ourselves and buy a new car for a driving holiday in Europe. We’d been driving a family estate car for years, loading it up with kids and making trips to and from universities, but we wanted something for ourselves.
As a surprise, she booked a test drive for the Tesla Model S for my birthday. It was unlike any car I’d been in before. I thought “Wow, this is amazing.” It felt like the future: a computer on wheels that was constantly updating with new features. I can’t say I feel that way now – and many people seem to share that view. Tesla sales figures
. Others feel even more uneasy:
outside company facilities around the world to protest against Elon Musk and the wrecking ball he has taken to the federal government.
by | Apr 3, 2025 | The Guardian
The country’s so-called political centre has licensed a new era of authoritarianism – to the AfD’s delight
A crackdown on political dissent is well under way in Germany. Over the past two years, institutions and authorities have cancelled events, exhibitions and awards over statements about Palestine or Israel. There are many examples: the Frankfurt book fair
an award ceremony for Adania Shibli; the Heinrich Böll Foundation
from Masha Gessen; the University of Cologne
for Nancy Fraser; the No Other Land directors Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham
by German ministers. And, most recently, the philosopher Omri Boehm
from speaking at this month’s anniversary of the liberation of Buchenwald.
In nearly all of these cases, accusations of antisemitism loom large – even though Jews are often among those being targeted. More often than not, it is liberals driving or tacitly accepting these cancellations, while conservatives and the far right lean back and cheer them on. While vigilance against rising antisemitism is no doubt warranted – especially in Germany – that concern is increasingly weaponised as a political tool to silence the left.
Hanno Hauenstein is a Berlin-based journalist and author. He worked as a senior editor in Berliner Zeitung’s culture department, specialising in contemporary art and politics
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by | Apr 3, 2025 | The Guardian
This vital drama has British actors, a British writer, but Netflix funding. Here’s why that’s a huge problem
Everyone is talking about
, the television drama focused on toxic masculinity that has triggered a continuing social and political debate. But only a handful of people are talking about what the hit drama says about the real-time crisis unfolding in the British television industry – and that needs discussion too.
Adolescence is everything public service broadcasting should be: hard-hitting programming featuring the kind of people often ignored in TV drama – in this case, white working-class families in the north – discussed at the school gate and
After its British writer, Jack Thorne, met Keir Starmer in Downing Street, it was revealed that Adolescence was to be rolled out for free
.
by | Apr 3, 2025 | The Guardian
Leftwing policies have mass appeal – what’s needed is a figurehead who can bring back alienated voters and dodge culture wars
Tony Blair’s devotees always had a stock response for their leftwing critics, and it went like this: your desire for political purity will render Labour unelectable, and the poorest will pay the price. A Labour party led by “sensible moderates” may not be your first choice, but it is the only hope for the most vulnerable.
As Labour imposes poverty on at least 250,000 people through cuts to disability benefits,
by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, this argument is submerged under a tidal wave of misery. The government has already robbed many pensioners of their winter fuel payments, and not only voted to keep a Tory two-child benefit cap that
, but
. A Labour party that knowingly imposes hardship on disabled people, pensioners and children has filed for moral and political bankruptcy.
Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist
by | Apr 2, 2025 | The Guardian
While the president has identified the need to do things differently, his strategy risks a slump, hitting the very Americans he claims to champion
It would be “liberation day” in the US, the White House announced. Well, we shall see. Yet even if one puts the noise and nastiness that accompany a Donald Trump announcement to one side – in this case tonight’s pronouncement that there will be an executive order announcing “reciprocal tariffs on countries throughout the world”, a 10% tariff on the UK and 20% on the EU – the significance of the theatre is hard to miss. Whether they presage the US’s liberation, or instead the disintegration of the
, Trump’s tariffs add up to an attempt to transform a badly broken economic model. And that is something that affects us all.
Trump’s announcement was awash with insult and rambling nonsense. The rest of the world had looted, raped and pillaged, had scavenged and ransacked America – shocking claims if they had come from any other US president, yet water off a duck’s back today. But the hard core was there all the same: tariffs on the whole of the rest of the world. The shutters were up.
Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist
