Liz Truss is unashamed about a plan that will hit even the middle classes hard. But her party’s drift away from them began long ago
As Liz Truss stumbled through last week’s disastrous round of interviews with local radio stations, Basingstoke’s United Reformed church was giving away bread. Loaves donated by local supermarkets were arranged on a set of metal shelves covered by a tarpaulin. Every so often, someone would gingerly walk up and help themselves, before turning their attention to the hot food that was also available: soup, risotto and stew, cooked by a group of spirited volunteers. They told me that the town’s levels of need were suddenly increasing fast, and they were now feeding whole families.
A few yards away, I met Peter. Now retired, he had worked for the telecoms giant Motorola, a once-sizeable local employer that closed its Basingstoke operation in 2017. Rocketing bills, he told me, meant he was now limiting himself to two hours of TV a night, rationing lighting, keeping his heating off, and wearing sweaters and fleeces whenever he was indoors. Among the items in his shopping bag was a baguette he had got from the church.
In 2016, he had supported leaving the EU – hoping, he said, that the billions the Brexiteers said we gave to the EU would now be spent at home. Three years later, he enthusiastically voted Conservative, thanks to Boris Johnson.: “He seemed young to me – like he had ideas, and he was going to do something.” Now, the few words he uttered about politics were full of a weary cynicism. When I mentioned Truss and the chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, his face crumpled into a grimace. At the next election, he told me, he wouldn’t vote.
Basingstoke, in the built-up corner of Hampshire that sits next to the M3, looks like a solid chunk of Conservative England. The sitting Tory MP, Maria Miller, has a majority of 14,000. The borough the town dominates voted for Brexit by the same narrow majority as the country as a whole. Outwardly, it seems comfortably off, but the town centre is full of vacant shops and charity outlets, and there are a striking number of huge office buildings that now lie empty. All told, Basingstoke embodies a malaise I have seen before in other southern towns and suburbs: a sense that the dynamism and aspiration that arrived in the 1980s peaked well before the crash of 2008, and have been slowly fading ever since.
Beyond the spectacular fumblings of Truss and Kwarteng, these are the long-term roots of the Tories’ sudden political crisis. For a long time, millions of people in supposed Conservative heartlands have been managing to just about maintain their material comforts while their surroundings have felt increasingly shabby and fragile. First came austerity, then the pandemic, and the effects of the latter soon blurred into the economic fallout from Brexit and the war in Ukraine. Now, amid hugely increased living costs and the prospect of big jumps in mortgage payments, it feels as if the disruption and decay that has so drastically affected people’s immediate environment is threatening to consume the most basic foundations of their lives.
For a very long time, Tory electoral success has been based on a time-honoured trick: persuading the social middle that it has nothing in common with the bottom, and indeed kicking poor people around just to reinforce the point, something that the Truss government’s approach to “welfare” looks set to resume. But the crisis we are in is blurring those distinctions. Over the past few months, I have met plenty of people – in Basingstoke, Birmingham, suburban Merseyside and Milton Keynes – who are becoming acquainted with a new reality of cancelled holidays, self-rationed petrol and basics food brands. There is a palpable fear among many of them about where they might be heading: beyond the discount supermarket, might the next stop be the food bank?
In that context, a mini-budget that focused its tax cuts on a tiny minority of top earners and lifted the cap on City bonuses was an act of complete political stupidity. As long as Conservatism could successfully present itself as the voice of homeowners, car drivers, commuters and small businesspeople, the suggestion that it was primarily about the interests of the very wealthy could easily be neutralised. Now, many people who habitually voted Tory seem to sense that they are being left behind: suddenly, only the rich are credited with the powers to restart growth, and the party millions once voted for as a matter of habit seems to be treating them with a high-handed indifference.
There is another element of this political neglect. Over the past six years, Conservatives should have been focusing on the threadbare state of even outwardly affluent towns and cities, the increasingly precarious lives of their party’s voters, and such basic issues as housing and public transport. Instead, they were either getting lost in Brexit’s endless complexities or extolling a utopian “global Britain” that quickly collided with reality. Now, what ministers call “Brexit opportunities” seem to only be open to a tiny number of very privileged people, like the hedge fund managers Kwarteng reportedly shared champagne with only hours after his big announcements. Would you believe it: a revolution sold to the public as the very essence of anti-elitism turns out to be the most elitist project modern British politics has ever seen.
The latest Tory prime minister, as we know, fancies herself as the heir to Margaret Thatcher. But as Truss’s latest encounter with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg once again proved, the comparison is completely laughable. Thatcher was always confident, fluent and on top of her brief; Truss is hesitant, stilted and prone to blurting out borderline nonsense (“I’m, I believe in outcomes rather than inputs,” she said, which is not exactly a line to settle people’s nerves). And another difference says even more about the contrast between Conservatism then and now.
Thatcher hugely helped the rich, but thanks partly to her beginnings in that Lincolnshire grocer’s shop, her deepest affinity was with a swathe of the electorate that included both a chunk of middle England and newly confident elements of the working class. But Truss, a child of left-liberal parents and a relatively late convert to Conservatism, seems to have no core constituency at all. The haughty arrogance of her Etonian chancellor hardly helps; neither does a cold, theoretical set of ideas that is shredding Tory ideas rather than promoting them. There is one particularly glaring example: as the banks withdraw mortgage products and interest rates jump up, what will be the fate of the age-old belief in a property-owning democracy?
And so to one last rather overlooked point. As our economic troubles pile up, there is talk of renewed austerity: in her interview with Kuenssberg, Truss pointedly declined to rule out public spending cuts. She and her colleagues ought to bear in mind the words of the writer and academic Ross McKibbin, written in 1999 but every bit as relevant to 2022: “The middle classes make more use of the NHS, public transport, public libraries, local swimming pools, public parks and their right to state welfare than anyone else.” Therein we see one key aspect of the Tories’ snowballing crisis, and further proof of this surreal period’s defining political fact: that if Conservatives only seem able to bring to their own heartlands worry and despair, the game is surely up.
John Harris is a Guardian columnist. To listen to his podcast Politics Weekly UK, search “Politics Weekly UK” on Apple, Spotify, Acast or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday

source

Tits Out Under the Verrazzano  The New Yorker
source

Is Your Fitness Tracker Making You Sick? Study Says Fitness Trackers are ‘Hotbeds’ for Harmful Bacteria  Yahoo Eurosport UK
source

You gotta love an alliterative dating trend, but what exactly is workout wooing? A somewhat new trend, workout wooing is a form of dating that involves having a first date centered on exercise, as opposed to something more traditional, like dinner and a movie. This could mean meeting at a gym, going for an outdoor run, or doing a fitness class together.
While this may be a bit unorthodox or even uncomfortable for some, it’s becoming more common for singles who exercise regularly. After all, many of them are already working out in gyms or fitness centers, so if they meet a potential love interest there, deciding to exercise together later becomes a logical transition.
Almost half of the single millennials involved in a study conducted by the dating app Bumble and fitness brand Gymshark admitted that they would actually prefer to meet someone while working out than at a club (via Women’s Health). So could your perfect match be at your local gym? It’s certainly possible, based on a few surveys, the sheer number of gyms around, and the existence of social media groups. And thanks to fitness dating apps, the odds of meeting your “person” are higher today than they were in the past.

Gym chains have been around in the United States since the 1960s, according to ClubReady, but there weren’t very many of them around back then. Plus, there weren’t as many women exercising in public in the ’60s as there are today (with the exception of aerobic studios). Needless to say, a gym wasn’t a popular place for someone to meet a potential love interest 60 years ago. Today, with the prevalence of boutique fitness studios, 24-hour gyms, health centers, and other fitness centers, the odds have improved.
In 2020, Muscle & Fitness published an article that featured eight couples, all of whom met at the gym. Later in 2022, BuzzFeed conducted a study and asked the BuzzFeed Community the “how did you meet” question. One woman said she met her husband at a boxing club. And in 2023, Zola shared its list of top places where couples met. “At the gym” ranked in at the ninth most popular place.
Social media has helped improve the odds of meeting a potential partner at a gym or fitness studio. Today, you can find Facebook groups like Orange Theory Singles and Planet Fitness Dating, where you can post about a workout and privately message someone who piques your interest.

Dating websites and mobile apps like Tinder, Bumble, and eHarmony have quickly become some of the most popular ways to find a romantic relationship. Among the long list of dating apps geared toward singles who love to exercise are Datefit and Fitafy. Both apps claim to be a community for people who love to exercise, value health and fitness, and hope to meet others who share their goals and interests.
One of the latest fitness dating apps available, Lunge, launched in January of 2023. It gives members the opportunity to meet someone at their local gym. “Our research shows that individuals who attend the same gym or exercise class are very compatible,” app founder Steve Cole said (via GlobeNewsire).
It’s really a no brainer when you think about it. Two people, in the same place (a gym), doing the same thing (exercising) on a regular basis are likely to have similar goals and interests (being active and healthy). The same can be said for people who practice their hobbies in public, like disc golf or bingo. 
So if you want to increase your chances of meeting your perfect match at your gym, a fitness dating app or a Facebook group for your fitness center can help.

source

PARIS, FRANCE – AUGUST 17: A general view as athletes swim in the Seine river in front of the Eiffel … [+] Tower during the Women World Triathlon on August 17, 2023 in Paris, France. (Photo by Aurelien Meunier/Getty Images)
One of the most anticipated aspects of the Paris 2024 Games is the fact that open-water swimming events are set to be held in the Seine river.
However, given that the city has been trying to make the Seine swimmable for more than 30 years—former Parisian Mayor Jacques Chirac vowed as much in 1990—holding Olympic events in the iconic waterway is proving to be one of the greatest challenges facing organizers.
Last week, World Triathlon events were held to serve as a test ahead of the Games next summer. Though the women’s and men’s triathlons on Thursday and Friday were held as planned, on Saturday, “high levels of E.coli bacteria were detected in the river water,” as reported by Agence France-Presse. A paratriathlon event was canceled as a result, as was a mixed relay set to be held on Sunday.
And at the beginning of August, the Open Water Swimming World Cup event was also canceled due to water quality being below acceptable standards, per the French Swimming Federation.
France has already invested 1.4 billion euros (about $1.5 billion) in its Seine clean-up project. Not only is its success crucial to the Olympics swimming events going off—organizers said there is “no Plan B”—but it will open the river, which has been a lifeline of the city since the Middle Ages, to the city’s inhabitants for bathing and recreation.
“There is no solution to move the event; the triathlon and open water swimming will be held in the Seine next year,” said lead organizer Tony Estanguet, via Deutsche Welle.
The project hinges on containing rainwater in an enormous undeground reservoir so that it can be treated. When Paris experiences heavy rains, its sewer system overflows, sending excess wastewater into the river. France’s massive investment has already made some progress in preventing wastewater from flowing into the river.
Los Angeles water and sanitation officials have also been to Paris to observe the work surrounding the clean-up of the Seine as the city prepares to host the 2028 Games.
When Paris hosted its first Olympics in 1900, a 200-meter freestyle and a 200-meter obstacle race were held in the Seine, one of the last times Olympic swimming events have been held in open water. Eight years later, at the London Games, swimming events were moved to pools.

source