The Critical Commentator

  I am an instinctive sceptic of what we have been taught to call "the experience economy". The 21st-century, business analysts inform us, has witnessed an important shift in middle-class spending, from the material to the intangible. Instead of watches and sofas, we prefer to spend our money on concerts, festivals, immersive theatre and - here I struggle to suppress a shudder - novelty dining experiences... "Experience" - heady, hedonistic, living on eternally in memory - is the precious, effervescent, quicksilver stuff of which a well lived life is made... In London, the Evening Standard reports there has been  "a huge surge in ultra-expensive restaurants" charging £150 or more per head for a meal. The demand comes not only from the wealthy but from the aspirational middle class, from whom a dinner is no longer merely a meal but another opportunity for memorable experience. Hence 12-course tasting menus and viral social media chefs ostentatiously garnish...

 Sir Keith Starmer is not the first Labour leader to hanker after a closer relationship between Britain and Germany. Jim Callaghan snuggled up to the chancellor Helmut Schmidt in the 1970s, and ever since there  has been a sense among the social democratic left in the UK that there is much to be learned from Germany's biggest economy. The Germans, it has been said repeatedly down the decades, have a superior model of capitalism: based on good design and skilled workmanship; stable, long-term funding arrangements between businesses and the banks; a more consensual system of industrial relations; a network of medium sized companies,  many of them family owned; a top notch system of vocational and technical training that ensures a steady supply of skilled, productive workers. Street Scene in Frankfurt, Germany George Jones (1786-1869) Photo Credit:Nottingham City Museums & Galleries [CC BY-NC] There is a reason Germans work fewer hours and enjoy higher living standards t...

  ... The Assembly was a Q & A session in which he took questions from a group of  young neurodiverse people. Sheen didn't have a clue what would be asked, and no subject was off limits. It made for life-affirming telly. The 55-year-old Welsh actor was so natural, warm and encouraging as he answered a series of nosy, surprising and inspired questions... "The Assembly's had more response than anything else I've ever done," Sheen tells me. "Almost every day someone will come up to me  and mention it, particularly people who have children with autism... I had a fantastic time." He replays some of his favourite moments: the young man who took an age to start talking and then delivered the most beautifully phrased questions about the influence of Dylan Thomas on Sheen's life... Arenig, North Wales James Dickson Innes (1887-1914) Photo Credit:Tate  [CC  BY-NC-ND]  Six years ago he swapped life in Los Angeles for Port Talbot, the steel town where he gre...