In the U.K., a Disaster No One Wants to Talk About

Andy Rain/EPA, via Shutterstock
OPINION : MICHELLE GOLDBERG
THE NEW YORK TIMES: There’s a growing understanding in Britain that the country’s vote to quit the European Union, a decisive moment in the international rise of reactionary populism, was a grave error.

Just as critics predicted, Brexit has led to inflation, labor shortages, business closures and travel snafus. It has created supply chain problems that put the future of British car manufacturing in danger. Brexit has, in many cases, turned travel between Europe and the U.K. into a punishing ordeal, as I learned recently, spending hours in a chaotic passport control line when taking the train from Paris to London. British musicians are finding it hard to tour in Europe because of the costs and red tape associated with moving both people and equipment across borders, which Elton John called “crucifying.”

According to the U.K.’s Office for Budget and Responsibility, leaving the E.U. has shaved 4 percent off Britain’s gross domestic product. The damage to Britain’s economy, the O.B.R.’s chairman has said, is of the same “magnitude” as that from the Covid pandemic.

All this pain and hassle has created an anti-Brexit majority in Britain. According to a YouGov poll released this week, 57 percent of Britons say the country was wrong to vote to leave the E.U., and a slight majority wants to rejoin it. Even Nigel Farage, the former leader of the far-right U.K. Independence Party sometimes known as “Mr. Brexit,” told the BBC in May, “Brexit has failed.” » | Michelle Goldberg, Opinion Columnist | Friday, July 21, 2023

France: Teen Shot by Police Given Private Funeral as Crisis Grips Government

THE GUARDIAN: President Macron cancels visit to Germany amid France’s worst violence for 18 years

The 17-year-old boy shot dead by a police officer was buried on Saturday as the French government braced for further protests after the worst violence for 18 years.

Friends and family attended a private funeral at Nanterre, where Nahel Merzouk was killed on Tuesday after being stopped by two motorcycle patrol police.

A large crowd gathered outside the local mosque and followed the coffin to the cemetery, many chanting “Justice for Nahel”. Lawyers for relatives had asked journalists to stay away from the ceremony, saying it was “a day for Nahel’s family” to mourn “with discretion”.

A 38-year-old police officer has been officially put under investigation – the equivalent in France of being charged – for voluntary homicide.

President Emmanuel Macron, who is facing the biggest challenge of his centrist government’s authority, cancelled a planned two-day visit to Germany on Sunday. The decision came after Macron faced criticism for attending an Elton John concert in Paris on Wednesday while the country burned. » | Kim Willsher in Paris and Montreuil | Saturday, July 1, 2023

Emeutes après la mort de Nahel M., en direct : 45 000 policiers et gendarmes déployés samedi soir, vives tensions à Marseille : Gérald Darmanin a annoncé des effectifs renforcés à Lyon et Marseille, théâtres de violences dans la nuit de vendredi à samedi. »

Elton John : Something about the Way You Look Tonight

Sep 1, 2010 | "Directed by Tim Royes, the music video for The Big Picture’s first single features supermodels Alek Wek, Kate Moss, and Sophie Dahl. 'Something About The Way You Look Tonight' peaked at #1 in over 20 countries as the double-A side single with 'Candle In The Wind 1997'".

Elton John : Something about the Way You Look Tonight

Sep 1, 2010 | Views on YouTube: 27,234,559

Confronting Homophobia | Stephen Fry - Out There | LGBTQIA+ | Pride Central | Reupload

Dec 3, 2022 | Episode 1 sees Stephen reflecting back on how much has improved for gay people in his lifetime and he meets Elton John and David Furnish who’ve inspired many, including Stephen, to be open about their sexuality. He also travels to Uganda where the government is proposing a new law that would put gay people to death and sees up close the impact this is having on the lives of gay men and women there. Stephen also travels to the USA to explore the workings of Reparative Therapy, a therapy that claims to cure people of a gay sexuality. And he also has time to see how Hollywood deals with the gay issue these days by meeting Neil Patrick Harris who continues to land leading man roles even though he’s openly gay.

Elton John : Something about the Way You Look Tonight

Views on YouTube: 26m

Elton John : Circle of Life | From The Lion King | Official Video

Nov 4, 2017 “Circle of Life” is performed and composed by Elton John, with lyrics by Tim Rice. The song features in the iconic opening sequence of Walt Disney’s The Lion King and this music video features alternative lyrics from the soundtrack version. It was also nominated for Best Song at the 1994 Academy Awards. | Views on YouTube: 14,792,941

Elton John : I Guess That's Why They Call It the Blues | Remastered

Oct 30, 2018 • Provided to YouTube by Universal Music Group

Evgeny Lebedev May Be No Secret Agent: But Would Boris Johnson Notice If He Was?

THE GUARDIAN: Wild parties in Tuscany and a peerage for the Russian newspaper owner are hardly signs of a precautionary approach

Evgeny Lebedev and Boris Johnson pictured in 2015 as they slept outside in central London as part of a campaign against homelessness. Photograph: Nigel Howard
On the night Boris Johnson finally threw his lot in with the Brexiters, naturally only his nearest and dearest were privy to his thoughts.

His then wife, Marina Wheeler, was there, plus the leading leaver Michael Gove and his then wife, Sarah Vine. The odd one out over a supper of slow-roasted lamb at Johnson and Wheeler’s Islington home, meanwhile, was Evgeny Lebedev. The millionaire son of a former Russian KGB officer apparently hung out with the wives making “polite conversation in stage whispers” while Johnson and Gove talked by speakerphone to a fellow cabinet minister who was trying vainly to persuade them to back remain. Vine did not explain, in her subsequent newspaper column describing the evening, why Lebedev was playing gooseberry on such a momentous and sensitive night for the nation’s future. If the presence of the Evening Standard and Independent proprietor surprised her, however, she didn’t say so.

For a famously shy man, Lebedev certainly gets around. Here he is with Dame Judi Dench and Sir Ian McKellen, photographed for the annual Evening Standard theatre awards (at which, the Guardian’s veteran awards-coverer Hadley Freeman points out, winners would invariably thank “darling Evgeny” and mention his “beautiful house in Tuscany”). Here he is handing the Standard editorship to George Osborne, an ousted chancellor in need of a job but not noticeably a journalist. Here he is photographed with Prince William, with Peter Mandelson, with Tony Blair, with Elton John. And here he is hosting what Johnson’s biographer, Tom Bower, called bacchanalian weekends in his castle in Italy every summer, where Johnson could apparently behave “like a naughty schoolboy”. There are no photographs of those, of course; just reports of an unkempt Johnson the morning after one of them looking (according to a fellow passenger at the airport) like he’d slept in his clothes. Johnson was foreign secretary at the time. » | Gaby Hinsliff | Monday, March 14, 2022

Multiple links apropos of Evgeny Lebedev.

Can this prime minister really be trusted? – Mark

For the Trump Family, LGBTQ+ People Are Nothing but a Joke

Like his grandmother and father, Donald Trump Jr. uses LGBTQ in a disparaging way. |Via Shutterstock
ADVOCATE: During one of my conversations with Mary Trump, she relayed a story about how her grandmother made crude jokes about Elton John singing at the funeral of Princess Diana. She used a vulgar term to describe the gay music legend.

Mary’s cousin Eric Trump isn’t known for his smarts. (My grandfather would say about him, “The lights are on, but there’s nobody home.”) He famously once said that he was part of the LGBTQ community, “I’m telling you, I see it every day, the LGBT community, they are incredible and you should see how they’ve come out in full force for my father every single day. I’m part of that community, and we love the man and thank you for protecting our neighborhoods and thank you for protecting our cities.” Is he really that obtuse, or was he joking?

He later said he had been trying to explain what LGBTQ+ Trump supporters have told him.

Donald Trump once joked that Mike Pence "wants to hang" gay people, according to a story in The New Yorker in October of 2017. » | John Casey | Friday, November 19, 2021

Elton John - Nikita

Featuring George Michael on backing vocals at song’s end, “Nikita” was one of Elton’s most popular singles of the 1980s. The video shoot starred actress and model Anya Major and a Bentley Continental Convertible automobile that belonged to Elton at the time. | Views on YouTube: 95,314,084

Elton John - Sad Songs (Say So Much)

“Sad Songs (Say So Much)" is the first single from Elton's 1984 album Breaking Hearts. The video was filmed at Rushcutters Bay in Sydney, Australia and directed by Russell Mulcahy with choreography by David Atkins. | Views on YouTube: 25,850,492

Billie Jean King Reveals She’s Gotten Married in Private after Hesitating for Years

LGBTQ NATION: "Years from now, I never want anyone to question how much I was committed to you," King said about her life-long partner Ilana Kloss, she reveals in her upcoming memoir.

Ilana Kloss (left) and Billie Jean King (right) at the "Battle of the Sexes" Premiere at the Village Theater on September 16, 2017 in Westwood, CA | Photo: Kathy Hutchins / Shutterstock
Although she helped to advance LGBTQ rights for decades and fought for marriage equality for years, Billie Jean King resisted marriage herself. She turned down an offer from Elton John to sing at the wedding. She didn’t do it after John McEnroe’s pushed her to do it in Las Vegas.

But King is now revealing that eventually, she did in fact decide to get married. In fact, she and her partner of 42 years, Ilana Kloss, did it about three years ago. No one knew about it — other than the former mayor of New York that officiated it, his wife, an “aide” that witnessed it, and the city employee who issued their license.

King tied the knot with Kloss on October 18, 2018, but she’s only revealing it publicly now in her memoir, All-In, and with an interview in People Magazine. Family and friends only found out when they received advanced copies of All-In, which goes on sale on August 17. » | Juwan J. Holmes | Sunday, August 15, 2021

George Michael, Elton John - Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me (Live)

Views on YouTube: 116,518,043

Elton John - Something About the Way You Look Tonight

Sep 1, 2010 • "Directed by Tim Royes, the music video for The Big Picture’s first single features supermodels Alek Wek, Kate Moss, and Sophie Dahl. 'Something About The Way You Look Tonight' peaked at #1 in over 20 countries as the double-A side single with 'Candle In The Wind 1997'". | Views on YouTube: 23,106,734

Elton John - Something About The Way You Look Tonight

"Directed by Tim Royes, the music video for The Big Picture’s first single features supermodels Alek Wek, Kate Moss, and Sophie Dahl. 'Something About The Way You Look Tonight' peaked at #1 in over 20 countries as the double-A side single with 'Candle In The Wind 1997'".

Mary Trump: The President's Anti-LGBTQ Policies Are Not Surprising

After growing up in the Trump family, Mary Trump says Donald Trump's discrimination against LGBTQ people is not shocking. In her new book "Too Much and Never Enough," she recounts many instances of bigotry she witnessed, including from her grandmother, who once referred to Elton John using a gay slur. Mary Trump says the remark stopped her from coming out to her family. "I wasn’t happy about it, certainly, that my grandmother had those attitudes, but it didn’t exactly surprise me in a household that was so racist, anti-Semitic and misogynistic," she says.

Elton John: 'I Am a European – Not a Stupid, Imperialist English Idiot'

THE GUARDIAN: The singer says Brexit has made him ashamed to be British, while performing in Verona during his final world tour

Elton John has said he is ashamed of the UK over its voting for and handling of Brexit.

While performing on Wednesday in Verona on his last ever world tour, Farewell Yellow Brick Road, he said: “I’m ashamed of my country for what it has done. It’s torn people apart … I am sick to death of politicians, especially British politicians. I am sick to death of Brexit. I am a European. I am not a stupid, colonial, imperialist English idiot.” » | Ben Beaumont-Thomas | Friday, May 31, 2019

Hear! Hear! – Mark

Brunei Says It Will Not Enforce Gay Sex Death Penalty after Backlash

THE GUARDIAN: Sultan extends moratorium to death by stoning law in rare response to global criticism

Brunei’s Sultan, Hassanal Bolkiah, has extended a moratorium on the death penalty to incoming legislation on punishments for gay sex, after a global backlash led by celebrities such as George Clooney and Elton John.

The country provoked an outcry when it rolled out its interpretation of Islamic laws, or sharia, on 3 April, punishing sodomy, adultery and rape with death, including by stoning.

Brunei has consistently defended its right to implement the laws, elements of which were first adopted in 2014 and which have been rolled out in phases since then.

However, in a rare response to criticism aimed at the oil-rich state, the sultan said on Sunday that the death penalty would not be enforced in the implementation of the sharia penal code order (SPCO). » | Reuters | Sunday, May 5, 2019

Companies Abandon Brunei's Dorchester Hotel over Gay Sex Law

THE GUARDIAN: Businesses including Financial Times cancel events at London landmark as backlash grows

High-profile events and awards shows have been cancelled at the Dorchester in London in protest at the decision of Brunei, the hotel’s ultimate owner, to make gay sex and adultery punishable by stoning to death.

The boycott against businesses owned by the Brunei state has continued to grow in recent days, following an outcry from LGBT campaigners including Sir Elton John over the introduction of the new rules, ordered by the sultan of Brunei, Hassanal Bolkiah.

With other celebrities including the actor George Clooney giving their support to the boycott campaign, a string of companies confirmed on Friday that they would no longer be using the five-star hotel’s facilities. The TV Choice awards, several major property companies and the Financial Times were among those that said they would be cancelling events. » | Jim Waterson, Media editor | Friday, April 5, 2019