
When did care homes come to be seen as recession-proof investments? And who pays the price?
On a spring morning in 1987, a 30-year-old man named Robert Kilgour pulled up beside a row of foamy cherry trees in the town of Kirkcaldy, on Scotland’s east coast, to visit an old hotel. The building was four storeys of blackened Victorian sandstone. Kilgour was a big man, a voluble Scot with a knack for storytelling. He already owned a hotel in Edinburgh but wanted to branch into property development and was planning to turn this old place, Station Court, into apartments. A few months after he completed the purchase, however, the Scottish government scrapped a grant for developers that he had been counting on. He had just sunk most of his personal savings into a useless building in a sodden, post-industrial town. He urgently needed a new idea.
Care homes weren’t so different from hotels, Kilgour thought. And the beauty was, their elderly residents were unlikely to get drunk, steal the soap dispensers or invite sex workers back to their rooms. Turning Station Court into a care home seemed like the best way out of a bad situation. Kilgour arranged a bank loan and in June 1989 he launched Four Seasons Health Care, taking the name from a restaurant in Midtown Manhattan where he had once dined.
Continue reading...It’s unclear what happened in São Paulo. But our obsessive culture has created a fraught dance between stars and their fans
Last week, the former Chelsea footballer Jorginho made a post on social media claiming that, after his daughter walked past the singer Chappell Roan’s table at a restaurant and smiled at her, a security guard accosted the girl. The security guard apparently spoke “in an extremely aggressive manner”, causing her to be “extremely shaken and [cry] a lot”.
If the story is true, it doesn’t look good for Roan. This wasn’t creepy paparazzi or red carpet hecklers; it was a child. Roan has apologized, adding that the man involved in the incident in São Paulo was not her personal security, and that she didn’t see the girl.
Tayo Bero is a Guardian US columnist
Continue reading...With an egg-cellent roster on offer, which chocolate treats are the most moreish and which aren’t worth shelling out on?
• The best novelty hot cross buns
At the age of 45, my Easter egg hunt is about seeking out quality, transparency and flavour, rather than just finding the most eggs. Then again, I haven’t been on one for about 35 years, and my tastes have since changed, as has the market. Beyond those foil-wrapped novelties of yesteryear, there’s now a genuinely impressive selection of thoughtfully made, handcrafted chocolate eggs aimed at those with a more mature palate.
As with all chocolate, certifications matter: Fairtrade guarantees a minimum price, fairer working rights and investment in climate resilience, while the Rainforest Alliance focuses on environmental standards and farm sustainability. The quality and processing of the chocolate is also important. Most eggs contain the likes of invert sugar syrup, soya lecithin and E471, so rather than highlight every additive, I’ve instead flagged products with minimal processing, as well as those that use palm oil. I haven’t marked down for high sugar content – it is Easter, after all – but I have included the percentage of sugar.
Continue reading...Experts say paid participants are using automated tools to generate unreliable survey responses at scale
If you had been keeping tabs on the news about church attendance in Britain lately, you would be forgiven for thinking the country was in the midst of a Christian revival.
Stories of swelling congregations, filled with young people returning to the flock, spurred on by everything from social media to a rise in bible sales appeared to be confirmed by a 2024 report from the Bible Society.
Continue reading...As a child, Brown was underestimated, infantilised and dismissed by specialists and teachers. Now 28, he has written an acclaimed debut novel set in an adult day care centre that gives people like him a voice
‘May I say that I’m very glad to meet you,” Woody Brown taps on his word board. Brown is formal, funny and strikingly eloquent. He has a formidable ability to tell stories that reach into the mind of his characters and express what they are thinking, and what they think others are thinking about them. Brown is also autistic and non-speaking.
His first novel, Upward Bound, tells the story of everyday life at the eponymous adult day care centre in southern California. The title is ironic – the young adults, referred to as clients, are anything but upward bound. By and large, they are stifled, patronised, unheard and unseen. Despite their shortcomings, the staff are portrayed with a surprising tenderness.
Continue reading...Ruling that Meta and YouTube deliberately designed addictive products marks possible watershed moment for social media
The young woman at the heart of what has been called the tech industry’s “big tobacco” moment was on YouTube at six and Instagram by nine. More than a decade later, she says, she still can’t live without the social media she became addicted to.
“I can’t, it’s too hard to be without it,” Kaley, now 20, told a jury at Los Angeles’ superior court. This week, five men and seven women handed down a verdict on the design of two of the world’s most popular apps that vindicated Kaley’s position.
Continue reading...Escalation represents dangerous spread of war and brings threat of even more damage to the global economy
The US-Israeli war with Iran has expanded with the entry of Houthi forces in Yemen, representing a dangerous spread of the conflict and bringing with it the threat of more damage to the global economy.
Pakistan has said it would host a meeting of Middle Eastern powers on Monday in an effort to find a regional approach to ending the conflict. But the talks, which bring together the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt, did not appear to include any of the warring parties, casting further doubt on persistent US claims of diplomatic progress.
Continue reading...Reuters report contradicts Trump’s claims that Tehran’s arsenal has been largely wiped out
The US has only destroyed about a third of Iran’s missile and drone arsenal after a month of its war against Iran which aimed to degrade the country’s ballistic missile capabilities, according to a report by Reuters.
About a third of Tehran’s missiles have been destroyed, and another third was likely to be damaged or buried in underground tunnels and bunkers, the report suggested. A similar assessment was made about the country’s drone arsenal.
Continue reading...Hours before the world learned that a US missile had hit Shajareh Tayyebeh school, parents were already searching the rubble for their sons and daughters. In this exclusive report, four families describe the events of 28 February
When Marzieh heard the first bang, an almighty crash that rattled the room, her first thought went to her youngest son, Mohammad. He must have got out on to the balcony and discovered a new game, she thought: using all of his small might to smash its sliding doors closed. Marzieh stood up from where she was working at her sewing machine, and shouted for him to stop.
Continue reading...Organisers claim half a million people are marching through central London, protesting against the rise of the far right
Some protesters have spoken to PA earmarking opposition to Reform UK, support for Palestine and anti-racism as drivers for their attendance.
Paige Horsford, 34, a media and English teacher from New Romney, Kent, said she joined the Together march because she has witnessed racist incidents at her school.
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