There have been penalties for those who looked the other way when Epstein was convicted of child sex offences and decided to maintain relationships with the financier — but not for the British ambassador to Washington, reveals SOLOMON HUGHES
What to water first in your garden
Much of a gardener’s time in August, especially one as hot as this, is spent watering — but how much of that time is useful and how much is wasted? MAT COWARD has the answers
Raised bed of lettuce, tomatoes, six different types of basil, marigolds, zinnias, garlic chives, zucchini
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Labour’s new Treasury unit will ‘challenge unnecessary regulation’ by forcing nominally independent bodies like Ofwat to bend to business demands — exactly what Iain Anderson’s corporate clients wanted, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
DR DYLAN MURPHY looks at a Big Brother Watch report which exposes the government as an enabler of DWP secret spying on benefit claimants
The EU faces a critical choice: will it remain in the shadow of an increasingly unreliable US ally, or will it forge its own path in a multilateral world where co-operation with China is essential, asks MARC VANDEPITTE as leaders meet for the EU-China Summit
A lot of discussion about how the left should currently organise – including debate on whether the Green Party is a useful vehicle for advance – runs the risk of refusing to engage with or learn from the reasons the left was defeated previously, argues KEVIN OVENDEN
For Egypt trade trumps the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians, but how long can the country’s ‘misleaders’ – and others in the region – continue their indifference against the popular will of their own people, asks ROGER McKENZIE
NOT MANY of us have the leisure to water an entire allotment every day, and — given years of systemic underinvestment by shareholder-owned water companies — we’re all likely to see restrictions on use before the end of the summer. As Nye Bevan said, priorities are the religion of socialism, and the same applies in gardening.
A general hierarchy of need would have perennial plants at the bottom and anything grown in containers, or in a greenhouse, at the top. That’s not to say that a perennial plant won’t benefit from watering, but rather that an annual may die without it. And if the edible part of a plant is very juicy, like a radish, tomato or cucumber, it stands to reason that, as a rule of thumb, that plant needs more water.
Pots and other containers which have dried out completely need rehydrating from above and below. Stand them in a few inches of water (a kids’ paddling pool is perfect) for a couple of hours and water the surface of the compost using a watering can with the rose on it.
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