Image of the week: Riot-ready city
The sign on the other side of the boards read “we’re open”. Inside, customers got their daytime caffeine fixes without the benefit of daylight. Was this a war zone? Well, not quite. This was Peet’s coffee shop in downtown Washington DC, and “Tinderbox America”, as the Daily Mail’s front page had it.
On Monday, businesses across the city, from McDonald’s and CVS Pharmacy to humble sandwich shops, boarded up their premises to protect their glass storefronts from possible violence on Tuesday, the day of the US presidential election, or in its immediate aftermath – a totally normal thing to have to do in a democracy.
Scarred by the events of January 6th, and cognisant of Donald Trump’s – unnecessary, as it turns out – pre-emptive claims that the election would be stolen by the Democrats, the precautionary move was born of expectations that Trump would lose and his supporters would then feel compelled to turn to a bout of insurrection.
As it transpired, the only thing Trump fans and far-right groups keen for a Capitol reunion were obliged to do was stand down and cheer along to YMCA. Their mob skills were not required on this occasion. He won, Kamala Harris conceded and the golden age of Donald Trump dawned. Suddenly, it was a free and fair election. All they had left to do was wait for the peaceful transfer of power. What to be angry about now?
In numbers: Royal pennies
£125,000
Sum that the Duchy of Lancaster, the private estate of Britain’s King Charles, has made over the past five years from rent paid by a portable toilet supplier in Derbyshire named ExcLOOsive.
£60
Sum that the Duchy of Cornwall, the private estate of Prince William, earns a year from a public toilet in the Isles of Scilly. This was among the findings of a joint investigation by the Sunday Times and Channel 4′s Dispatches programme into how the two royals make money from their landholdings.
30p
Thanks to an ancient “right of oversail”, the king’s estate collects at least this much every time a crane lifts a container that crosses an imaginary boundary in the air at a new cargo port in Liverpool.
Getting to know: Spying air fryers
It was a week of many questions. “Do you have children?” was the one Stormy Daniels asked Boris Johnson on Channel 4′s election coverage. “Is America collapsing like ancient Rome?” was the title of The Gray Area podcast. But a new study by consumer group Which? sparked another one: is your air fryer spying on you?
Smart devices including air fryers, smartwatches and televisions make “excessive” requests for access to user data, it found. Among them are air fryers made by the Chinese companies Xiaomi, Aigostar and Cosori, each of which know their customers’ precise location and request permission to record audio on users’ phones for some reason. The Xiaomi air fryer uses a connected app that links to trackers from Facebook, TikTok for Business advertising network Pangle and, in some cases, the Chinese tech giant Tencent, while both the Aigostar and Xiaomi air fryers send personal data to Chinese servers, although this is flagged.
Something else to worry about the next time you’re peckish for chips.
The list: Christmas optimists
Christmas is coming. It can’t be stopped. But who has joined Big Poinsettia in looking forward to a season of many profitable returns?
1. Sainsbury’s: The British grocery chain is confident that it’ll have a “strong” Christmas, after a recent acceleration in sales, partly thanks to an improved performance from Argos. Ah, remember Argos?
2. Marks & Spencer: It doesn’t just expect a “strong” Christmas”, it anticipates a “really strong” Christmas, with its shoppers expected to spend more this year than last. The margin on panettone alone must leave it feeling festive.
3. Netflix: The streamer expects a big influx of subscribers for its two Christmas Day NFL games, which it promises/threatens to “Netflix-ify”.
4. Taylor Swift: Not only will the singer finally get to put her feet up after her Eras global tour wraps, she will release The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology, the extended version of her April album, in physical formats just in time for gift-buying season.
5. Primark: Penneys (as it is known in Ireland) already has its toasty red “fam jams” – for the uninitiated that’s matching pyjamas for parent and child – in its shop windows. “We think that Christmas is going to be good,” said George Weston, boss of parent company AB Foods. It’s a controversial view, but we’ll allow it.
