The Leisure Review: World of Leisure

Wednesday 1 May
Workers around the world commemorate May Day by taking to the streets and, er, not working. The English National Opera is hoping that a new season’s programmes, which include a new opera based on Sophocles’ Oedipus trilogy, will clear its £800,000 debt. Meanwhile, the Charity Commission is investigating tax avoidance among charities; anyone worried? And who knew that if one dies intestate within the Duchy of Cornwall the lord of the manor, a certain Charles Windsor, is the recipient of one’s estate; Prince Charles has been using such bequests to support his own charities. It seems that the “Fifty Shades phenomenon” has helped the UK book trade, with a 66% rise in digital book sales, offsetting a 1% decline in print sales. FIFA says that that this time it is going to get really tough in its new anti-racism initiative.

Thursday 2 May
Viva Forever!, the critically derided Spice Girls musical, is to close owing to poor ticket sales. DJ Natalie Coleman wins MasterChef. The national children’s literature centre, Seven Stories in Newcastle, is to host an Enid Blyton exhibition, while the Royal Academy, in that London, is to stage a major exhibition of Australian art. In St Petersburg the new Marinsky theatre, built at a cost of some £450 million, opens and carries with it the hopes of Russians wanting to re-establish their nation’s cultural credentials. Stuart Hall pleads guilty to 14 offences of sexual assault.

Friday 3 May
Local elections around the UK send a message to national politicians but no one is quite sure what it is, although Nigel Farage has, as ever, the broad smile of a man in a pub on a Wednesday afternoon who has just found twenty quid under the table. The oak processionary moth and its larvae have been discovered in some areas of southern England, which is bad news for oak trees. It seems that injury rather than age is forcing a record number of rugby union professional players into retirement. Rafael Nadal has spoken out against the Spanish court’s decision to destroy the blood bags held as evidence from the Operation Puerto investigation; dopers are going to get away with it, he says in Spanish.

Saturday/Sunday 4/5 May
Some sanity comes to the world at last: massively expensive tickets for the Rolling Stones latest farewell tour in the US are not selling. Hull is among the cities bidding for the post of the UK’s capital of culture. Author Harper Lee is having to sue her agent, claiming that he tricked her into signing over her copyright on To Kill a Mockingbird. The Giro d’Italia rolls out with a win for Cav in the first stage but talk is still of the Tour de France and who will be British Cycling’s team-leader. Stephanie Dalley of Oxford University thinks that the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were actually located in Ninevah, in what is now northern Iraq.

Monday 6 May
A report by the Centre for Economics and Business Research finds that while the arts budget accounts for 0.1% of public spending but 0.4% of GDP. The BBC is to hold an inquiry into Stuart Hall’s abusive behaviour separate to that regarding Jimmy Savile; meanwhile, anyone and everyone who appeared on the telly in the 1970s, no matter how briefly, waits nervously for a knock on the door. Dave Brailsford says that Chris Froome is to be the team’s leader in the Tour, clearing everything up once and for all; nevertheless, World of Leisure is starting the clock just in case.

Tuesday 7 May
In Stockholm, after ten years of planning, the Abba museum is open for business. In Edinburgh the arrival of a pair of pandas in 2011 has brought about a 51% rise in visitor numbers to the Royal Zoological Society of Edinburgh, with an accompanying £5 leap in revenue, taking income to £15 million last year. Twickenham is to host a world rugby sevens tournament this summer, aiming to build upon the growing interest in the game. Film-maker and animator extraordinaire Ray Harryhausen dies at the age of 92.

Wednesday 8 May
Sir Alex Ferguson says he has officially had enough of being Planet Football’s most successful manager; he is going to retire this summer. Boris Johnson wants the London Assembly to have tax-raising powers (it won’t), while Coca-Cola says it is going to drive the battle against obesity (it won’t). The Queen’s speech reveals that the coalition government really has no idea what to do with the time left to it, while the National Portrait Gallery says it has bought an exquisite miniature of Elizabeth I for £329,000. Among the grants announced by the Heritage Lottery Fund is £9.1 million for a heritage centre at Silverstone and BT Sport says it is going to tackle Sky in the fight for television sports rights.

Thursday 9 May
To the surprise of no one outside HMRC there is additional evidence that hundreds of the UK’s most wealthy individuals are hiding billions in offshore tax havens; what do they think has been happening in these places called “tax havens”? In Düsseldorf the presentation of Wagner’s opera Tannhauser with a modernist Nazi setting prompts walk-outs and boos from the audience. Back home, female authors are getting a bit irritated by having ‘girly’ covers foisted upon their novels, designs that apparently serve warn off many male readers. Poldark is to be remade by the BBC and a huge collection of material amassed by the author Joseph Conrad, said to be the greatest single-author hoard uncovered, is to be sold in the summer. Clare Balding says that the England women’s football team will win the World Cup before the men. Cav wins his second stage of the Giro d’Italia and high jumper Robbie Grabarz says that he has spent too long “talking to drunk businessmen” since London 2012. David Moyes is to be the new Alex Ferguson, or so Manchester Utd’s owners hope.

Friday 10 May
Arrests continue in the investigation of abuse at Manchester music schools. Campaigners trying to prevent the skaters and BMX-ers being moved on from their home at the Southbank are to try to register the concrete undercroft as a village green. Having been convicted of doping offences by a Spanish court, Dr Fuentes says he will finally spill the beans – or rather bags – on doping in major sports if the price is right; several media outlets are thinking it over. Olympic yachtsman Andrew Simpson, 36, is killed during training for the America’s Cup.

Saturday/Sunday 11/12 May
Lord Young, former cabinet minister and now a government enterprise adviser, tells the coalition government that a recession is a good time for companies to boost profits at the expense of workers’ terms and conditions (any questions from those members of the electorate still wondering?). It seems that in the Marathon of the North in Sunderland only the winner ran the correct distance; a marshalling error shaved off 200-odd metres for everyone else. In the Giro British riders – Alex Dowsett and Bradley Wiggins – come first and second in the first time trial. Fergie says goodbye to Old Trafford with the Premier League trophy in his hands. Another report shows that the government’s austerity measures are hitting the most vulnerable the hardest and widening the gender gap.

Monday 13 May
Dan Brown’s back and his new novel is going to sell like proverbial hot cakes; or is that what the Pope wants you to think? Tate Britain has had a rehang, putting everything on the wall in chronological order, and the general response is positive. Michael Gove, the Con-Dem government’s answer to a malevolent Tintin, is apparently making education policy based on PR surveys done on behalf of Premier Inn and UKTV Gold. Laura Robson beats Venus Williams in straight sets at the Rome Open.

Tuesday 14 May
There’s a crisis of masculinity affecting British men, according to Diane Abbott MP. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) says that the UK government’s austerity policies are hitting the poor and the young hardest while widening inequality; but apart from that it’s all going well. The Venice Biennale is to include a pavilion hosted by the Vatican, the contents of which have been inspired by the book of Genesis (insert your own Phil Collins joke here). Neil Black, new performance director at UK Athletics, says that British athletics will be “back with a vengeance” this year. HMRC has decided that football coaches are the the latest people to target for unpaid taxes.

Wednesday 15 May
Anish Kapoor observes that the German attitude to art and artists is “rather healthy” and in marked contrast to that in Britain; British policy on the arts, the second largest economic sector after finance but with only 0.1% of government spending, is, he suggests, “completely scuzzy”. HS2, the proposed high-speed rail link, is £3.3 billion short says the National Audit Office; it is expected to cost £33 billion. It’s the middle of May so it’s snowing and a series of botanical lithographs by Salvador Dali are to be sold at auction. In the Giro d’Italia there is positive drugs test, prompting a swift arrividerci from French rider Sylvain Georges. The process of UK Athletics coming “back with a vengeance” will have to be done with a new head coach, its third in a year, after Peter Eriksson says he is going home to Canada for “family reasons”.

Thursday 16 May
David Beckham announces his retirement from football, having given up running around a couple of seasons ago. The British Medical Association, that noted hotbed of lefties and revolutionaries, says that the government’s policies threaten to drive families into poverty and are having a profoundly damaging impact on the lives of children. In other news of profoundly unsurprising events, three players involved in the Indian Twenty20 cricket competition have been arrested on charges of match-fixing. The British library is holding an exhibition of propaganda posters. It seems that the driver of a speedboat involved in a fatal accident in Cornwall was not wearing a cord designed to cut the engine in the event of the driver falling overboard.

Friday 17 May
It seems that the prime minister has been persuaded to drop plans to require plain packaging on all cigarettes on sale. Chinese tourists are warned by the Chinese authorities to behave while they are overseas to protect the national image of their nation. Jimmy Anderson becomes the fourth England bowler to take 300 Test wickets. Mark Cavendish wins his fourth stage of this year’s Giro d’Italia, while Bradley Wiggins departs the peloton after struggling through the rain and snow of an Italian summer with a chest infection.

Saturday/Sunday 18/19 May
It seems some people are prepared to pay touts £500 for a £12 seat at the Proms. There is another Eurovision, which the favourite won, and shop vacancies in the UK are now at record levels, according to the British Retail Consortium. In France politician Marine Le Pen fractures vertebrae after falling into an empty swimming pool at her home and Westminster Abbey hangs Ralph Heimans’ portrait of the Queen but you’ll have to pay the entrance fee to see it.

Monday 20 May
So Apple seems to have been paying a tax rate of around 0.05% on a four-year turnover of $74 billion. The Chelsea flower show opens with, at long last, a welcome to garden gnomes. In Granada, Spain the Plaza de Joe Strummer is officially unveiled. At Battersea power station some 800 flats planned for the site have already been sold, raising £675 million straight off the bat. Having been in charge of Real Madrid for three years, Jose Mourinho is the longest-serving manager in the Spanish first division.

Tuesday 21 May
At the Cannes film festival the biopic of Liberace is getting rave reviews but it will only be shown in the US on TV, having been deemed “too gay” for American film audiences by the major studios. Meanwhile, it seems that HMRC is responsible for a £5 billion hole in UK public finances, having failed to implement the promised anti-fraud and tax evasion policies as assiduously as it might have done. Who knew that Christine Lagarde, head of the IMF, was a former synchronised swimming champion? The England and Wales Cricket Board reveals its plans to increase attendances at county venues and increase participation. Eddie Braben, the writer behind Eric and Ernie’s best material, dies aged 82. Ray Manzarek, keyboard player and co-founder of The Doors, dies aged 74.

Wednesday 22 May
It’s Wagner’s 200th birthday and he is still dividing opinion across the musical world. Lydia Davis wins the Man Booker International prize for literature, while on Everest it is prime climbing conditions and there are up to 100 people waiting at the Hillary Step to reach the summit. Ai Weiwei is releasing a single, saying that music production helped him overcome the trauma of incarceration. There has been three nights of rioting in Stockholm, while Sergio Garcia is quick to make repeated, abject apologies for using racist-inflected language in his ongoing spat with Tiger Woods.

Thursday 23 May
Tate has acquired Constable’s Salisbury Cathedral from the Water Meadows for £23.1 million, saving it from export. Golf’s race row refuses to die down, which is hardly surprising when George O’Grady, head of the European tour, tries to defuse the situation by assuring the press that some of Sergio Garcia’s best friends are “coloured”. Wrestler Mick McManus dies at the age of 93.

Friday 24 May
David Hockney says that he nearly gave up painting after the death of his assistant, Dominic Elliott, earlier this year. Half of Germany begins to arrive in London for the Champions League final tomorrow. The BBC decides that its vast scheme to digitise its entire archive, much of it currently on video tape, is not going to work and therefore the £100 million already spent must be written off. An exhibition of old master drawings opens at the Ashmolean in Oxford. The Giro d’Italia is facing rerouting of a number of stages owing to snow and sub-zero temperatures, while Italian rider Danilo Di Luca tests positive for EPO and now faces a life ban. A zoo worker at the South Lakes Wild Animal Park in the Lake District dies after being mauled by a tiger.

Saturday/Sunday 25/26 May
Bayern Munich beat Borussia Dortmund in the Champions League final. The Expedition Operators Association, based in Nepal, says that it is considering putting a ladder up Everest’s Hillary Step to ease congestion. An open-water charity swimming event off the Suffolk coast narrowly avoids disaster after dozens of participants are rescued by emergency services from rough seas in bad weather. Mark Cavendish wins his fifth stage of the Giro d’Italia and takes the points jersey, becoming only the fifth rider to win the points prize in all three Grand Tours and hence ensuring his position among the greatest names in professional cycling. Arsenal win the FA Women’s Cup Final.

Monday 27 May
David Tennant will be giving us his Richard II at Stratford and we’ll all be able to see it as it is beamed round the world. Financial genius George Osborne seems to have a £3 billion hole in the private finance initiative that was going to fund a big “infrastructure” (ie roads) investment. Crystal Palace will be playing in the Premier League next season.

Tuesday 28 May
Now Mr Osborne is to bring together a ‘star chamber’ of ministers to find £11.5 billion of cuts to public spending for 2015-16, even as every economic organisation in the world tells him this is a spectacularly stupid idea. The University of Reading has found a drawing by Peter Paul Rubens in the back of a cupboard and the Campaign for Better Transport says that young people are being systematically disadvantaged by government spending cuts, particularly as young people rely on bus transport more than any other group. A fair question on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of Norgay and Hillary reaching – and returning from – the summit of Everest: why did Tenzing Norgay not get a knighthood when Edmund Hillary did?

Wednesday 29 May
At the Theatre des Champs-Elysee they recreate the first performance of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring which, on the same night in 1913, ended in a riot between an audience divided into two factions by the extraordinary impact of the music. If you’re gay and French you can now get married; cue outrage from a small number of non-gay French people. Sam Mendes might yet direct the next Bond movie while workers at museums and galleries across the UK are preparing to go on strike over pay and pensions. The Caffe San Marco in Trieste, a centre of literary slurping for, among others, James Joyce, is under threat from international coffee chains. Nick Bitel says that he applied for the Sport England job and got it so he doesn’t see what the fuss is about.

Thursday 30 May
The BBC says that this year’s Glastonbury will be the “first truly digital Glastonbury experience”. Ai Weiwei is displaying three large works at the Venice Biennale inspired by his incarceration. In Spain the government is facing pressure from an American casino company to reverse its smoking ban as it plans to open ‘EuroVegas’ near Madrid. The British Olympic Association says that it has received an additional £5.3 million from the London 2012 organisers, who have finalised their accounts with a £30 million surplus.

Friday 31 May
Frankie Dettori makes his return to racing after his doping ban. The collection of art and antiques acquired by Valerie and TS Eliot, largely on the royalties of the musical Cats and thought to be worth some £5 million, is going under the hammer. The Queen Elizabeth Hall on the Southbank is hosting the Beanotown exhibition, featuring Dennis the Menace et al. The 2013-14 Clipper round the world race will start and finish in London, in September 2013 and July 2014 respectively. The papal pavilion at the Venice Biennale opens with Genesis as a starting point and no sign of a fresco. A study by the University of British Columbia suggests that the value of sharks might lie in their tourism value rather than their value as a catch. Wiggo is out of the Tour thanks to a chest infection and a dodgy knee, while Italian rider Danilo Di Luca is caught taking drugs once again, suggesting that the end may well be nigh for his career.

Saturday/Sunday 1/2 June
Who would have thought it: the number of British taxpayers earning more than £1 million a year has nearly doubled. The Women’s Institute is to campaign for the preservation of local shops. Could Sir Bradley be staring down the face of retirement? Some think he could. Jeeves and Wooster are coming to the West End stage in the shape of Matthew Macfadyen (as Jeeves) and Stephen Mangan (Wooster). Westminster Abbey has a new stained glass window, marking the 60th anniversary of the coronation of Her Madge.

Monday 3 June
It seems MPs have stumbled upon a charity using its charitable status as a means to avoid tax. There has been a remarkable find of bronze-age boats in the Fens, while Brent’s new civic centre is acclaimed as the most environmentally responsible public building in Britain. Another study says that the nation’s poorest are paying the biggest price for the government’s determination to impose austerity. Baileys is to replace Orange as the sponsor for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and in Marseille the Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilisations opens after long delays and the small matter of €200 million. In west London the Special One returns to the Stamford Bridge fold, to the delight of Chelsea supporters and headline writers alike.

Tuesday 4 June
The prime minister is talking tough about the numerous British overseas territories that serve as international tax havens. Malorie Blackman is named children’s laureate and wastes no time to dismiss Michael Gove’s plans for the teaching of history. Artist Graham Ovenden, recently convicted of sexual offences against children, is freed by a judge. The new Serpentine Gallery pavilion, designed by Sou Fujimoto, is opened to the world, while the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow wins the Art Fund Prize for Museum of the Year. Brian Cookson, president of British Cycling, says he is to stand for the presidency of the UCI, cycling’s international governing body.

Wednesday 5 June
The Royal Academy of Art’s summer exhibition opens on Piccadilly in London. In Egypt artists gather to oppose what they term the government’s “assault on culture”.

Thursday 6 June
The Bilderberg group, self-appointed kings (with the occasional queen) of the world, fetch up in, er, Watford as they plot their plots and scheme their schemes. The V&A has a new Tintoretto after analysis and reattribution of The Embarkation of St Helena to the Holy Land, while Oslo is to get a new Munch museum. Stuart Pearce, England’s U21 coach, tells the FA that England will never win an international tournament unless they radically change their approach to such competitions. Novelist Tom Sharpe dies aged 85. Esther Williams, champion swimmer and aquatic performer, dies aged 91.

Friday 7 June
For the second year in a row Vodafone UK has a corporate tax bill with only zeros at the bottom. The Dreamland Trust may be on the verge of being able to start a £10-million refurbishment of Margate’s derelict amusement park, while in Morecambe it seems that the revamped Midland hotel is leading something of a revival in the town’s fortunes. Meanwhile, in Sicily they are enjoying a burst of British visitors inspired by Inspector Montelbano. The Institute of Fiscal Studies reckons that the next two general elections will be contested on the fields of austerity. The campaign to save the Southbank’s skatepark continues with a photographic exhibition featuring the site’s regular users. In Berlin the Berggruen Museum reopens to visitors with one of the world’s best Picasso collections and plenty of other works by Matisse, Klee and Giacometti.