Society

It is hardly surprising that the people of Britain, by which I mean the people of England, Scotland and Wales, are baffled by the key part in the Brexit drama being played out in Northern Ireland. After all, they have been treated to statements of breathtaking ignorance by Westminster politicians in recent months. Consider this sample about the Irish border by leading Tory Brexiteers. Jacob Rees-Mogg: “It’s not a border that everyone has to go through every day.” Boris Johnson: “It’s so small, and there are so few firms that actually use that border regularly.” David Davis: the border problem can be solved by “a whole load of new technology”. In fact, because the border has existed in name only for the past 20 years, it is crossed and recrossed by many thousands of cars and lorries on a daily basis. There are 208 crossing points, and technological monitoring appears unfeasible even in the highly unlikely event that people opposed to the … [Read more...] about Brexit is a menace to society in Northern Ireland. Here’s why

Tucked away among cornfields in the midwestern United States, a military-grade chainlink fence surrounds a verdant berm on an otherwise empty plot of land. It is guarded by a camouflaged lookout with an assault rifle. Underneath this unassuming hill is a 15-storey inverted luxury tower block called the Survival Condo – and it could be a portend of future private underground developments in cities the world over. Stretching 60 metres below the surface, the Kansas silo was one of 72 “hardened” missile structures built during the cold war to protect a ballistic missile with a nuclear payload one hundred times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. It was bought in 2008 by Larry Hall, an ex-government contractor, property developer and doomsday prepper who, like millions of others, is actively attempting to adapt for what he sees as probable future conditions of wide-scale calamity. Preppers anticipate war, pandemics, climate chaos, nuclear disaster, runaway … [Read more...] about A cinema, a pool, a bar: inside the post-apocalyptic underground future

Jesse Eisenberg has a reputation for not suffering fools, for witheringly knocking down any stupid questions that are put to him. In the 12 years since his breakout role as a callow, Kafka-referencing teen in Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale, he has made his name with characters who are – or at least believe they are – the smartest person in the room: the snarky theme-park attendant in Adventureland; the college kid bon-moting his way through the apocalypse in Zombieland; and, of course, his sociopathically still performance as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, for which he received an Oscar nomination for best actor. In person, speaking at the Toronto international film festival, the 34-year-old is disarmingly alert – quick to answer a question with a question – but never difficult or obtuse. There is a fine seam of comic self-doubt running through his patter and today he is mostly just buzzing with ideas. He is fascinated and appalled by the … [Read more...] about Jesse Eisenberg on Woody Allen, anxiety and fatherhood: ‘Now I get to worry about something visible’

From the outside, the house that stands at 121 Mortimer Road in Hackney, east London, looks no different to the thousands of other decrepit old buildings scattered across the country. The roof has caved in. Three of the windows are boarded up and cracked paint peels from the wrinkled walls. But this is no ordinary house. Since the early 1960s, the man who owns and lives inside the £1m Victorian property has been digging. No one knows how far the the network of burrows underneath 75-year-old William Lyttle's house stretch. But according to the council, which used ultrasound scanners to ascertain the extent of the problem, almost half a century of nibbling dirt with a shovel and homemade pulley has hollowed out a web of tunnels and caverns, some 8m (26ft) deep, spreading up to 20m in every direction from his house. Their surveyors estimate that the resident known locally as the Mole Man has scooped 100 cubic metres of earth from beneath the roads and houses that surround his 20-room … [Read more...] about After 40 years’ burrowing, Mole Man of Hackney is ordered to stop

Email By consumer affairs reporter Amy Bainbridge Updated September 18, 2013 12:42:57 Sorry, this video has expired Video: No hope for families who lost $4m from respite home (7pm TV News VIC) Related Story: Elderly residents' families stand to lose thousands over nursing home collapse Map: Mentone 3194 Families of dozens of residents at an aged care centre in Melbourne's south east have been told there is little hope of recovering $4 million in bonds paid to the facility.The previous owners of Mentone Gardens collected bonds from some families, some as large as $400,000.The families also signed documents believing the fees were going into a trust and would not be touched while their relative resided at the home. Mentone Gardens went into administration in June and its sale was confirmed late Monday. The new owners are not taking on the debt.At the third creditors meeting at the Sandringham Yacht Club, administrator Mathew Gollant asked the 50 people present to … [Read more...] about Families of residents at Mentone Gardens aged care facility have lost more than $4m in bond money