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‘A nasty little song, really rather evil’: how Every Breath You Take tore Sting and the Police apart

‘A nasty little song, really rather evil’: how Every Breath You Take tore Sting and the Police apart

Sting and his former bandmates go to the high court over a royalties dispute this week – the latest chapter in the song’s remarkably fractious story This week’s high court hearings between Sting and his former bandmates in the Police, Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers, are the latest chapter in the life of a song whose negative energy seems to have seeped out into real life. Every Breath You Take is the subject of a lawsuit filed by Copeland and Summers against Sting, alleging that he owes them royalties linked to their contributions to the hugely popular song, particularly from streaming earnings, estimated at $2m (£1.5m) in total. Sting’s legal team have countered that previous agreements between him and his bandmates regarding their royalties from the song do not include streaming revenue – and argued in pre-trial documents that the pair may have been “substantially overpaid”. In the hearing’s opening day, it was revealed that since the lawsuit was filed, Sting has paid them $870,000 (£647,000) to redress what his lawyer called “certain admitted historic underpayments”. But there are still plenty of future potential earnings up for debate. Continue reading...

Mark Hix’s recipe for baked scallops with a herb crust

Mark Hix’s recipe for baked scallops with a herb crust

Sustainable fresh scallops are best treated simply, and this herby, garlicky breadcrumb topping ticks all the right boxes As a kid growing up in West Bay, Dorset, I used to sit on the harbour wall and watch the small trawlers coming in with their catch. My friend Mark’s dad’s boat, along with all the others, would be stacked high with sacks of queenies that they’d dredged up only hours before, and Mark’s mum would pack us off to school with a tub each of queen scallop meat doused in Sarson’s vinegar and white pepper, to eat later as a playground snack. At the time, I thought nothing of it, but, looking back now, I realise quite what a luxurious schoolday treat this was. These days, however, our local scallop fishermen don’t fish for queenies much any more, because the time it takes to shuck and clean them is more or less the same as that for larger king scallops, so they’re no longer financially viable; also, instead of all those trawlers that Lyme Bay had in the past, it’s now mostly divers who fish more sustainably for king scallops , without demolishing the sea bed in the process. There are two main dive boats that fish out of Lyme Regis nowadays, operated by Jon Shuker and Ali Day, and they’ve pretty much cornered the local market. They recently started experimenting with so-called “disco scallops”, which are caught in pots fitted with flashing lights that lure them in, which is much more efficient, crew-wise, than diving, because a boat with one diver is legally required to have a crew of four, comprising the working diver, a standby diver, a supervisor and a driver. Crazy, eh? Continue reading...

The U-turns keep coming – but Starmer’s allies insist they’re his best hope of revival

The U-turns keep coming – but Starmer’s allies insist they’re his best hope of revival

Prime minister wants cabinet ministers to move on from policies that have tanked with voters Before the 2015 UK election, the Australian political expert Lynton Crosby devised a strategy for the Tories that became known as “scraping the barnacles off the boat” – shedding unpopular policies that hindered the party’s electoral appeal. Instead, the party focused on core issues it believed would help win over floating voters: the economy, welfare, the strength of David Cameron (and weakness of Ed Miliband) and immigration. Everything else was deprioritised and the Conservatives stuck to their messages rigidly. It worked. Continue reading...

Six-yearly count to track diverging fortunes of UK and Ireland’s wintering swans

Six-yearly count to track diverging fortunes of UK and Ireland’s wintering swans

The international swan census takes place this weekend, with volunteers helping count whooper and Bewick’s swans Volunteer birders across the UK and Ireland will be among those taking part in the six-yearly international swan census this weekend, counting numbers of the countries’ two wintering species, whooper and Bewick’s swans. The survey, which last took place in January 2020, aims to track changes in the populations of these charismatic wildfowl in the UK and Ireland. The whoopers have mainly travelled from Iceland and the Bewick’s from Siberia. Continue reading...

The world of today looks bad, but take hope: we’ve been here before and got through it – and we will again | Martin Kettle

The world of today looks bad, but take hope: we’ve been here before and got through it – and we will again | Martin Kettle

As I write my last regular column for the Guardian, my thoughts turn to the lessons and hope we can take from history From Greenland’s icy mountains, from India’s coral strand, as the old hymn has it , we seem to inhabit a world that is more seriously troubled in more places than many can ever remember. In the UK, national morale feels all but shot. Politics commands little faith. Ditto the media. The idea that, as a country, we still have enough in common to carry us through – the idea embedded in Britain’s once potent Churchillian myth – feels increasingly threadbare. Welcome, in short, to the Britain of the mid-1980s. That Britain often felt like a broken nation in a broken world, very much as Britain often does in the mid-2020s. The breakages were of course very different. And on one important level, misery is the river of the world. But, for those who can still recall them, the 1980s moods of crisis and uncertainty have things in common with those of today. Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...