Back to work, back to school, back to politics: the French call it the pension and my own summer idyll in their country must soon end too. Back to the miserabilism of Starmerland – where all news, especially good news, must be seen as bad.
What good news is that? I mean that shop prices fell 0.3 percent this month for the first time since 2021 following heavy discounts on non-food items; headline inflation in the UK has fallen close to the Bank of England’s 2 percent target. That makes interest rate cuts in the autumn all the more likely, improving the outlook for mortgage borrowers and increasing the chance that the strong growth of the past two quarters will continue.
In short, the Tories have left the recovering economy to Labour. And that’s exactly what’s going to happen, thanks to a public sector pay spiral, onerous employment legislation and tax raids in the October budget. When the Prime Minister says “things will get worse before they get better”, what he really means is that – shackled by his election promises and his union paymasters – he knows he’s about to make things worse, but he’s hoping voters will swallow the blatant lie that it’s all the fault of his predecessors. “Boring but honest” was the campaign spin on Starmer. “Depressingly dishonest” turns out to be a more accurate summary.
Wisdom of youth
At the pool, I chat with people in their twenties and thirties, some of whom I have known all their lives, about their career choices and priorities. This year, two words keep cropping up, sometimes together: “sustainability” and “consultant.”
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The latter used to mean Harley Street specialist or senior McKinsey consultant. Today it is a term for B2B (business-to-business) roles of all kinds. When it comes to “sustainability,” older people hate to be lectured on it, but it is a serious subject that has become the lodestar of the young in professions ranging from agribusiness to sports sponsorship and luxury brands. One consultant in the latter field delivered a blistering diatribe against Shein – the Singapore-based “fast fashion” retailer reportedly courting a London listing – over the alleged sins of its outsourced supply chain in China, including recent cases of child labor, as well as its heavy use of air freight.
At a gathering of grey-haired people elsewhere, an unnamed knight of the realm delivered an equally impassioned sermon about his belief in a committed young generation that will take on global problems that seem insurmountable to their elders. Perhaps it was the wine, but I was moved to agree with him.
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Another topic my young friends talk about a lot is internet dating. Many 25- to 34-year-olds now look for partners on an app called Hinge – its global user base quadrupled between 2019 and 2023, reaching 28 million (3 million in the UK) and saw revenue grow 39 percent last year. Is it worth a try for investors? Maybe: Shares in US parent company Match Group – which also owns Tinder for casual flirting – have fallen 75 percent since their pandemic peak, and some online experts are sensing a recovery. But never mind, said one happy Hinge couple, why not just join in? Why not? So I started answering the app’s questions until, shockingly, it told me that there were 2,307 women waiting to meet me and asked for my name – at which point, to use an old journalist cliche, I made up an excuse and left.
Bad coffee
Speaking of sustainability, I missed the job posting for Starbucks CEO, but since I have refused to enter one of the company’s stores for 15 years in protest of its tax practices and undrinkable coffee, I doubt I would have been offered an interview. That’s a shame, because there are reports that the successful candidate, Brian Niccol, could earn $100 million in his first year by turning around the chain’s flagging performance, which has suffered from hostility from pro-Palestinian consumers (though the company denies any pro-Israel bias). Now climate activists are also furious after it was revealed that Niccol was not forced to move, but was offered a private jet to regularly fly him from his home in Newport Beach, California, to Starbucks’ headquarters in Seattle, more than a thousand miles away; he can also use the jet for personal travel. For a company that boasts of “giving more than it takes from the planet”, it is as offensive to the youth as it is to me and campaign groups like the Fair Tax Foundation that it uses royalties and license payments to offshore companies to reduce its UK corporation tax bill to £7.2 million, despite making gross profits of £149 million last year. Come on, kids, join my boycott.
Back to basics
Top restaurants are doing without ostentatious tasting menus, says the telegraphbecause many guests cannot afford them and others simply do not want them; also, I suspect, because they need too many sous-chefs with exploding wages. In the meantime, says the Financial TimesModeration has gone mainstream as young consumers are driving declining alcohol sales by switching to non-alcoholic beverages for cost and health reasons; many are also presumably too busy using Hinge. And Michel Guérard, the chef who creates exquisite multi-course New kitchen in his restaurant in Eugénie-les-Bains, has died at the age of 91. A new era of austerity – let’s call it Starmertime – has begun.
I can remember Guérard’s mushroom and truffle ravioli and foie gras 30 years ago, but these days I’m more of a back-to-basics kind of guy myself. Which is lucky, because that’s where French hospitality seems to be heading too: friendly local restaurants like L’Annexe in Daglan or Le Chien Vert in Besse serve fish and chips, not fancy sauces. But my top pick for this summer, lost in a rural loop of the Lot, is reminiscent of Guérard with artful dishes made mostly from their own sustainable ingredients. vegetable garden. Les Jardins in Parnac, €45 for five delicious courses.
