On 14 December 2012, an armed man entered Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. He shot and killed 20 children aged between six and seven and six members of staff.

It is impossible to imagine a worse thing, isn’t it? The massacre of children and those trying to protect them. And yet it did get worse, thanks to a rightwing bloviator with merch to sell. The Truth vs Alex Jones maps, in painful, unsensationalist detail, the additional suffering the bereaved families were caused when Jones began to call the shooting a hoax. This, he told viewers of his “alt-right” internet show Infowars, was the “false-flag operation” he had been warning them about – a fake shooting orchestrated by gun control advocates to give the left the leverage it needed to come for patriots’ weapons. Conspiracy theorists took everything he said and ran with it.

And he said a lot. Although most of us will be aware of the bare bones of the story – and appalled by even those – it is still shocking to see him spout his viciousness. It is so viscerally wrong that you want to reach through the screen and stop his mouth by force. He builds a world in which the nervous smile of a stricken parent, Robbie Parker, before he speaks to the press about the death of his six-year-old daughter Emilie, becomes proof that the parents are all “crisis actors”. A world in which the absence of helicopters landing on the school lawns proves that there was no shooting and in which a technical glitch in an interview by the US journalist Anderson Cooper with the mother of another dead child is evidence that they did the whole thing in front of a green screen. The madness of it, and the knowledge that Jones’s rants are giving a certain rabid demographic exactly what they want, the dizzying sense of unreality and the multiplying questions as you watch – about how and why any of this can possibly be – fries your circuits even at this remove of time and space.

What it was like for the families is described by a handful of them. They speak plainly and – unlike Jones, who must whip his audience into an unthinking frenzy – without histrionics about the death and rape threats they have endured, the years of terrible harassment and the simple horror of knowing that a large number of Americans – 24% according to one estimate – doubts that their children lived or died or that their grief is real. Six-year-old Dylan Hockley’s mother Nicole remembers being told only to touch his hands because “you won’t like what you feel” elsewhere – such is the impact of close-range bullets on a little boy’s body. Scarlett Lewis recalls holding her dead son Jesse’s hand until it got warm again and noting that he still had dirt under his fingernails.

The final third of the film deals with the various court actions the families eventually brought against Jones that ultimately resulted in various default judgments against him, after he failed to comply with court procedures. The juries awarded the plaintiffs damages totalling $1.5bn. The suit brought in Connecticut sees Scarlett take the stand and deliver the most beautiful, compelling, heartfelt speech directly to Jones. It is astonishing. Even if the film had no other merits, it would be worth watching for this alone. It is to see every piece of humanity that is missing in him and his followers embodied in one woman.

To date, Jones has paid nothing. And he continues to broadcast, untrammelled. Since the film was made he has been ordered to liquidate his assets to pay at least some of what he owes but, the world and the internet being what it is, even this is unlikely to put a spoke in his wheels for long.

The trials point to money as Jones’s motivation, adducing evidence that every time he ranted about the “giant hoax” in which “no one died”, his audience numbers and revenue (from the dietary supplements and other products that Infowars shills) spiked. But it does not – and perhaps no one can, though there should be film-makers who try – fathom an answer to the question of why people are so willing, so thirsty to believe lies. All the punitive damages in the world won’t remake society into a place where Alex Jones and his ilk can’t flourish. We live in a world built on shifting sands. We live in terrifying times.

Angela Rayner and Penny Mordaunt have clashed again in a second seven-way TV debate, one which also featured representatives from smaller parties turning their attacks on Labour as they seem set for government.

Labour’s deputy leader repeatedly had her answers on subjects including public services and the economy interrupted as Mordaunt, the leader of the Commons, accused Labour of wanting to raise taxes, while also saying the party had no economic plans.

“You’ve had 14 years to come up with some ideas,” Mordaunt said at one point. Rayner, prompting laughter from the ITV audience, replied: “You’ve had 14 years in government.”

In an identical lineup to the first seven-way debate on BBC One, the pair debated alongside: Daisy Cooper, deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats; Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader; Stephen Flynn, the Westminster leader of the Scottish National party; Carla Denyer, co-leader of the Greens; and Rhun ap Iorwerth, the Plaid Cymru leader.

Much like the earlier debate, just under a week ago, the sheer number of participants often made events a bit chaotic, as the panellists talked over each other and jostled for airtime.

But some themes emerged, including a tendency for Labour to take a degree of criticism from a range of parties, while Farage focused his aim on the Conservatives.

An initial question on healthcare and other public services saw Flynn say £18bn of public sector cuts were “baked into a future Labour government”.

He also attacked Labour for planning to use surplus private health provision to try to cut waiting lists, as did ap Iorwerth.

After explaining the Greens’ plans to raise money via wealth taxes and other levies on wealthier people, Denyer asked Rayner why Labour would not do the same. “Why so timid?” she asked the Labour deputy leader.

“I’ve never been called timid in my life,” Rayner replied, to laughter.

In a section of the debate in which all seven participants could ask a question of one other panellist, Mordaunt, Denyer, Flynn and ap Iorwerth directed their queries at Rayner.

Farage targeted Mordaunt, as did Cooper – whose party is targeting dozens of Tory seats – and Rayner. The Labour deputy leader asked Mordaunt if she would welcome Farage into the Conservative party, to which she gave a noncommittal answer.

There were repeated exchanges between Mordaunt and Rayner over tax and spending plans, with the Conservative minister repeatedly citing the much-criticised claim that Labour’s spending plans would cost families about £2,000 in extra taxes.

There was, Mordaunt insisted, a fiscal gap in the Labour plans that needed filling.

“The only way they are going to be able to do that is to raise taxes,” she claimed. “They’ve only declared about a quarter of the taxes they are going to put up. They are going to have to put up a lot more.”

Rayner disputed the idea and, at a couple of points when Mordaunt repeatedly tried to raise the subject of tax, some of the audience laughed.

In another slightly awkward moment for the Tory representative, a comment that English schools were “world-class” also prompted laughter.

In another sign of seemingly waning support for the Tories, Flynn won audible audience support by responding to Mordaunt saying people “cannot afford” a Labour government, saying: “What people can’t afford any longer, Penny, is one single day more of a Conservative government which is completely out of touch with reality.”

Farage, for his part, began the debate by citing a new YouGov poll showing Reform UK inching above the Conservatives, saying: “We are now the opposition to Labour.”

He repeatedly sought to bring questions about public services back to immigration, saying: “All of our public services are under pressure because the population has increased by 6 million since the Conservatives came to power. It’s impossible to keep up.”

He also blamed what he termed “an exploding population” for increasing school class sizes. Rayner responded by noting that many school rolls are actually dropping.

Flynn condemned what he called “the Westminster status quo” when a show of hands asked for by the host, Julie Etchingham, resulted in Rayner, Mordaunt, Cooper and Farage agreeing that they wanted migration to fall.

He also said that rather than blaming migrants for making Britons poorer, Farage should take responsibility for damage to the economy caused by his “pet project” of Brexit.

Tesla shareholders have approved a $45bn pay deal for CEO Elon Musk, following a fiercely contested referendum on his leadership.

The result, announced on Thursday, comes as the billionaire tycoon fights to retain the largest-ever compensation package granted to an executive at a US-listed company.

“I just want to start off by saying, hot damn, I love you guys!” a gleeful Musk said as he appeared on stage following the vote.

The vote took place after a Delaware judge nullified Musk’s payment – then worth around $56bn – in January, on the grounds that Tesla’s board could not be considered independent from Musk’s influence and reached that dollar figure through an illegitimate process.

The result is a victory for Musk and the Tesla board after they ardently campaigned for shareholders to approve the deal. It could serve as a rebuttal to the judge’s ruling that struck down the award – making it easier for Tesla’s board to argue that shareholders were properly informed about the payment package, and the board members’ ties to Musk, before casting their votes.

Tesla’s board warned Musk could turn away from the company if the package wasn’t approved, while Musk claimed on Wednesday evening that he had wide support of investors.

Prominent shareholders such as Norway’s sovereign wealth fund and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System announced they would vote against the payment in the lead-up to the vote, while proxy advisory firms Glass Lewis and Institutional Shareholder Services also opposed the award.

The vote does not automatically mean that Musk will receive the money, however, and there are likely to be further disputes. There are still numerous legal arguments around whether the board can be considered independent, and whether the package can be considered fair after the judge ruled otherwise.

It is also possible new lawsuits may arise over the vote, potentially bringing the case back in front of a judge and raising the prospect of a protracted legal battle. Shareholders also approved a measure to move Tesla’s legal home from Delaware to Texas, potentially further complicating any challenges.

Tesla originally devised Musk’s payment package in 2017, setting conditions for the CEO to receive 12 different tranches of stock options depending on whether the company hit certain revenue and market targets. Shareholders approved that package by a wide margin in 2018, but one investor filed a suit claiming that the board had been misleading and the package was unfair.

Judge Kathaleen McCormick, who oversees Delaware’s court of chancery, ruled that Tesla’s board conducted a “deeply flawed” process to determine Musk’s payment. McCormick found that the board was rife with personal conflicts and stacked with Musk’s close allies, such as his former divorce attorney.

Tesla’s board, which is likely to appeal McCormick’s ruling, sought to remedy her decision with a shareholder vote. Despite McCormick’s criticism of the pay package, the board put forth the same deal that the judge rejected – albeit now worth less money due to a fall in Tesla’s share price.

An American man has died after being electrocuted in a jacuzzi at a resort in Mexico, local officials have confirmed.

The 43-year-old man, identified by police as Jorge N, died after being electrocuted in a jacuzzi he was sharing with a woman. The woman, identified by police as Lizeth N, was taken to the US for medical treatment for her life-threatening injuries.

The incident happened at a complex of private condominiums at the resort city of Puerto Peñasco, in the Mexican state of Sonora.

The death of the man and the injuries suffered by the woman were “due to a possible electric discharge when both were inside the jacuzzi”, according to a social media post from the general prosecutor’s office of justice for the state of Sonora on Wednesday.

State officials said they were working to identify the cause of the shock. Video taken of the incident shows onlookers screaming in panic as they crowd around the jacuzzi, which is located near a beach. Someone is shown doing chest compressions on a person lying on the ground in the video.

The general prosecutor’s office of justice, known as La Fiscalía General de Justicia del Estado de Sonora (FGJES) in Mexico, is actively investigating the incident.

In a GoFundMe page set up by friends of Jorge, they wrote: “Our best friends have experienced a horrible accident. Jorge had a heart of gold and was always there for family and friends. The love they shared was one for ages. We are asking for your help to bring him home & help with medical expenses for her.”

The US Consumer Product Safety Commission has reported 33 fatalities involving electrocutions in swimming pools and spas since 2002. If you think someone in the water is experiencing an electrical shock, the commission recommends immediately turning off all power and calling 911.

The American Red Cross recommends “using a fiberglass Shepherd’s crook/rescue hook, extend your reach to the victim and then follow these steps: Brace yourself on the pool deck and extend the Shepherd’s crook/rescue hook toward the victim. If the victim cannot grasp the Shepherd’s crook/rescue hook, use the loop to encircle the victim’s body and pull the victim, face-up, to the edge. Carefully remove the victim from the water”.

How often should you wash your clothes? Doctors don’t really know, but the decision is more cultural than medical, anyway. Worried about leaving the house in sweaty shirts or stained shorts, people often chuck clean clothes in the laundry basket after wearing them just once.

But the urge to avoid whiffy garments carries a climate cost that has largely been ignored. New research shows that feelings of disgust and shame encourage excessive clothes washing even among those who care about their carbon footprint.

Swedish scientists surveyed a representative sample of 2,000 people and found that when asked, in effect, to air their dirty laundry, their fear of being seen as unclean overpowered environmental identities.

When it comes to behaviours, “disgust simply wins out”, said Erik Klint, a researcher at Chalmers University of Technology, in Gothenburg, Sweden, and lead author of the study. “The study shows that the higher our sensitivity to disgust, the more we wash, regardless of whether we value our environmental identity highly.”

Klint and his colleague knew from previous research that many people do not link their laundry to the environment, despite washing machines draining energy and water. After seeing that studies to alter habits had mostly failed, the researchers decided to explore the societal dimensions that make people overwash clothes.

They found a high sensitivity to disgust, shame or violations of cleanliness norms was associated with frequent use of washing machines. They found no such effect for environmental beliefs.

The dilemma, the scientists concluded, is that the risk of societal pushback takes priority over abstract intentions such as reducing emissions.

Klint said disgust was an evolutionary trait used as a proxy for potential pathogens. “In practice this means that people intuitively must weigh an evolutionarily rooted driving force against a moral standpoint.”

Fast fashion has long been under fire from sustainably minded shoppers, but wasteful washing practices have so far escaped much attention. The average European household does four to five loads of laundry a week, and though the frequency of washing has stayed steady for 20 years, the size of the machines’ drums has grown. The share of devices that could hold 6kg rose from 2% of sales in 2004 to 64% in 2015, according to a report commissioned by the French environment agency.

While there are no hard rules about how often clothes should be washed, clothing manufacturers and fashion blogs generally recommend doing it less frequently – even if just to make the clothes last longer.

About 70% of clothes enter the washing machine with no visible stains, according to a survey commissioned by Unilever as part of a campaign to market a detergent suited to 15-minute wash cycles.

The extreme end of the no-wash movement – such as wearing the same pair of underpants for a week – is unlikely to pass the sniff test for most doctors. But other garments get the go-ahead. Wool jumpers and denim jeans top the list of items that last a long time before warranting a place in the laundry basket. (“Spot cleaning” – gently pressing a slightly soapy cloth on to a stain – can help spare an otherwise clean piece of clothing an unnecessary spin cycle.)

In one of the only studies that managed to change people’s behaviour, said Klint, researchers gave participants “excuse strategies” that addressed their initial fear of social exclusion. But when they stopped washing their clothes so often, they realised nobody noticed. “There’s a general consensus that people, at least in western countries, tend to wash clothes that others perceive as clean,” said Klint.

The environmental benefits of washing clothes less often are sizeable. A single laundry load of polyester clothes can discharge 700,000 microplastic fibres, according to a report from the European parliament’s research service.

Levi’s has estimated that consumers are responsible for more than a third of the lifetime climate impact of one pair of its 501 jeans. Washing the jeans after every 10 wears, instead of just a couple as is the norm in the US and UK, cut total water use by three-quarters.

Ian Walker, the head of the psychology school at Swansea University, who was not involved in the Swedish study, said it looked like “a solid piece of research [with] good methods” but added that self-reported data on habitual behaviours, such as washing machine use, was “notoriously problematic”.

He said the study provided a useful insight into the conflict between the environmental desire to run washing machines less often and feelings of disgust at rewearing clothes. “At a practical level, the study might help … people find ways better to reconcile these contrary desires, perhaps through messaging about how normal it is to rewear things, or about how little dirt or germs clothes typically pick up.”

Time seems to have stood still at Dennis Severs’ House. Its four-poster bed has been left unmade, half-empty glasses of wine sit on the table and breakfast has been only partly eaten. It’s as if its 18th-century residents have only just departed. Yet, astonishingly, these interiors were created in the 1980s, by an American with a vision of history drawn largely from watching British costume dramas on TV. The house, in the Spitalfields area of London, remains one of the city’s sublime eccentric gems – and it is about to evolve once more, with a new tour that tells the story of Severs himself and of the glorious queer lives of those who lived with him.

Severs was a blond Californian surfer boy fresh out of college when he arrived in London in 1967. It was there that he found the freedom to live openly as a gay man. With an inborn sense of theatricality and a well-tailored coachman’s outfit, Severs was a natural showman who hosted tours around London in an open carriage. After he spied the opportunity in 1979 to buy the then decrepit house for just £18,000, he moved in with little more than a bedroll, a candlestick and a chamber pot – then swiftly embarked upon a camp, do-it-yourself aesthetic, conjuring the interiors as his fantasia on historical themes.

From the moment he acquired his house, Severs opened it for tours. It did not matter that it was of no special historical significance because he just made stories up as he went along. He shepherded groups around by candlelight for up to three and a half hours while he grew more extravagant in his flights of fancy, seeking to evoke what he called “atmospheres”.

His improvised tales centred around the heteronormative fictional tale of the Jervis family – Huguenot silk weavers who, he explained, had lived there through three generations. He had no patience with participants who were less than rapturous: they were ejected on to the pavement and their money thrown into the street after them. Severs was an innovator, breaking new ground in employing poetic means to evoke the past. He acquired a cult following among creatives, including David Hockney and Derek Jarman, and high-status celebrities including Princess Margaret and Lady Bird Johnson.


The reputation of Dennis Severs’ House was forged by these tours, hosted from 1979 until 1999. Yet that was only one aspect of Severs’ life. He would host his heritage tours by day, then cruise leather bars and sex clubs by night. His house, then, served another function: as a steam-punk seduction machine. Anecdotes are still recounted of his legendary sex parties, including how he once entertained the entire male chorus of a famous ballet company.

Severs succumbed to Aids in 1999. No tours took place after that for more than 20 years. Then, when the house reopened after lockdown, I was commissioned to reimagine them and start again.

It was a formidable act to follow. The challenge was how to remain true to the spirit of Severs’ original tours but speak to an audience today. We live in a very different world now, and promenade or “immersive” theatre has evolved too. Drawing on some fragmentary sound recordings of Severs – and my personal experience of writing and directing plays at the Royal Court and National Theatre in the 80s and 90s – I devised a play script of 90 minutes entitled Dennis Severs’ Tour, which followed the same fictional narrative, only reinvented for our time.

Working at first with actor Joel Saxon, and then with two others, Lisa D’Agostino and Beko Wood, we explored what theatrical performers could bring to the experience. We soon discovered that not only could they embody the spirits of each of the fictional residents of the house that Severs invented, they also brought their own skills, in particular a sophisticated linguistic dexterity which allowed the performance to become a virtuoso endeavour. Audiences are limited to seven and we perform at night by candlelight, following in the footsteps of Severs through the 10 rooms of the house and through 300 years. These performances have been running six times a week for over three years now, and I must confess we have not had occasion to throw anyone out yet.

Emboldened by this success, we have now turned the idea on its head for Simon’s Story, which explores the lives of Severs and the small circle of men who lived with him and created the house as we know it. For them it was a place of refuge, consolation and personal freedom, at a time when HIV and Aids was inducing existential terror in a generation of gay men.

This is a parallel story to Severs’ fiction yet it is certainly no less dramatic. In Simon’s Story we portray Severs through his relationship with Simon Pettet, as told by Patrick Handscombe who lived in the house at the time. Pettet was an 18-year-old art student when he was picked up by Severs outside the club Heaven under the Charing Cross arches in 1983 and moved in with him shortly after. “How long have you been gay?” Severs asked Pettet that night. “About five minutes, since I got in this taxi,” Pettet replied.

Just as Severs set up the rooms and furniture in his house to illustrate the tale of the Jervis family, in our performance we are able to reveal their use in the actual domestic drama that took place here – the kitchen chairs where Severs and Pettet sat to eat, the four poster bed in the 18th-century bedroom where they slept together, and the “Poor Room” under the eaves, set up to evoke the lives of 19th-century paupers, where Pettet kept his things and where they remain to this day. In Simon’s Story, the role of Handscombe is performed by an actor leading an audience of eight through these rooms, recounting the love story and revisiting the events of that time.

It was a contradictory and conflicted relationship. Severs was Pettet’s first love. He also inducted Pettet into London’s hedonistic gay scene and Pettet embraced it enthusiastically, even if he would have preferred a monogamous partnership with Severs.

When Severs created his house to tell a story, he never expected to become part of that story himself. Yet this is precisely what has happened because the rooms take on an intimate, deeper meaning when you understand the real drama that was played out there. Severs is described by Handscombe as “the most promiscuous man in London”, yet he came to realise that his relationship with Pettet was the most significant of his life. Pettet was a talented ceramicist and, over the 10 years he was involved with Severs, he made all the delftware – fireplaces, tiles, dishes and tulipieres – that enliven the house today.

In 1984 Pettet and Severs were both diagnosed HIV+, making them two of the earliest cases in Britain. Pettet died at the age of just 28 in 1993 and Severs at 51 in 1999. Today, their story is as much a part of the meaning of the house as the fictional tales that Severs told.

Think sun, sea, Skye – and seaweed. It’s early summer off the west coast of Scotland, and Alex Glasgow is landing a long string of orangey-black seaweed on to the barge of his water farm. It emerges on what looks like a washing line heavy with dirty rags, hoicked up from the depths. And yet, this slippery, shiny, salty substance might, just might, be going to save the planet.

When it comes to sustainability, seaweed is about as shipshape as it gets. Minimal damage to the environment, check. No use of pesticides, check. Diversifies ocean life, check. Uses no land, check. And, in the case of Skye’s seaweed farm, spoils no one’s view, check.

Dublin TV viewers watching news coverage on Wednesday night of a hotel fire were surprised to find themselves tuning in to an interview with a Hollywood legend.

RTÉ News dispatched a camera crew to the Shelbourne hotel in the city centre, only to discover that one of the guests who had been evacuated was the Happy Days star Henry Winkler.

“When I heard the fire alarm, I thought it was the clock radio – I thought somebody had set the alarm before we got there, like another guest,” he told reporters, before putting on a comedy voice to explain how a member of staff cleared up the misunderstanding. “The woman said in a very calm voice: ‘Yes, we’re all evacuating, you must evacuate right now!’”

Six fire engines attended the scene after a witness saw smoke coming from one of the upper bedroom windows. The actor, known for high-profile roles in comedy series such as Arrested Development, Parks & Recreation and Barry, was captured thanking the fire brigade effusively.

“You know what? How wonderful! Firemen are some of my favourite human beings – firemen and firewomen. They run in when other people are running out. I think they deserve to be shook [by the hand].”

Winkler later posted a selfie with firefighters on X (formerly Twitter), with other users replying to thank him for lifting their spirits during the evacuation.

“It was an amazing adventure right here in Dublin. I cannot wait to see the rest of Dublin,” said Winkler, who was in the city to promote his autobiography, Being Henry.

It isn’t the first time Winkler has stumbled into a TV news interview. In 2013, he was stopped on a street in south-west London by BBC News and asked for his thoughts on the construction of a third runway at Heathrow.

“Hello! I was going to ask you a question … are you a voter?” asked the interviewer, before realising that he was talking to the Fonz himself. “Do you have a view on … the plan to potentially expand Heathrow?”

“Richmond is a lovely place. I watch the planes go every day, I hear nothing,” offered Winkler, who was appearing as Captain Hook in a local pantomime.

“Im not a resident. I’m [living here temporarily]. It’s hard to commute when you’re doing two shows a day.”

It was the summer I graduated from secondary school, when Germans openly displayed their patriotism for the first time in decades. I had survived Germany’s inherently racist education system, passed the final exams with acceptable grades, become the first in my working-class immigrant family to qualify for university. In short: I was ready to celebrate.

That summer of 2006 was surprisingly summery for Germany, so my classmates and I spent June organising outdoor parties, the last before we moved away to pursue our studies in other cities. But it was also the summer when Germany hosted the football World Cup and it quickly seemed to infect almost everyone around me with an enthusiasm for the alleged greatness of the reunified country. Like zombies, my white classmates transformed into aggressively drunk nationalists and our graduation parties turned into occasions for them to celebrate their Germanness together.

Overt patriotism had been taboo in German society for decades – for good reason. But in 2006 it felt as if an invisible chain had broken. Never before had I seen so many black-red-gold flags waving from windows, hanging in cars, painted on cheeks. All the symbolism and pride in being German that had been reserved primarily for neo-Nazis who had been busy beating up and killing immigrants throughout the 1990s had suddenly become mainstream.

The World Cup gave Germany permission for a positive expression of nationalism, a moment that many Germans may have yearned for since 1945, according to the millennial German Jewish writer Max Czollek, who describes this collective feeling of relief as “perpetrator solidarity”.

Being German was finally cool again, without needing to be weighed down by guilt over Nazi crimes. But this so-called “summer fairytale” – the kitschy marketing concept of the World Cup 2006 – was unfortunately not restricted to four weeks of football matches; it had a deep impact on the German self-image. In his book De-Integrate, Czollek even draws a direct connection between the 2006 World Cup and the far-right Alternative für Deutschland’s election into the Bundestag in 2017: “The former signified the normalisation of nationalism and national symbols, the latter demanded that corresponding concepts return to the front row of the political arena.”

When Germany won the World Cup in 2014, the national team were welcomed with a public victory celebration in the heart of Berlin, sponsored by major German brands and broadcast live by state channels. A journalist colleague rightly criticised this “warrior-like self-aggrandisement” of the national team and its ludicrous mocking of the defeated Argentinian players as “loser gauchos”. This caused a a social media furore. Proud German football fans didn’t want their fun spoiled, especially not by some lefty female journalist.

The presence of players from dual-heritage families on the German football team doesn’t really change the racist dynamic attached to this national fan culture. When the German team unexpectedly went out in the early group stage of the 2018 World Cup, Mesut Özil, a player of Turkish descent, quit the national team with the words: “I am German when we win but I am an immigrant when we lose.” Özil said he never wanted to wear the German national shirt again after an outcry over his meeting with the Turkish president and autocrat, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Of course, it was appropriate to criticise Özil’s endorsement of a political figure known for human rights violations and curbs on media freedom, but did it make his barb about not feeling accepted as a German any less valid? Moreover, given the corruption scandals around the 2006 World Cup, it’s hard to see the German football federation as a moral authority

Almost two decades after my graduation, a new “summer fairytale” of unbridled xenophobia and racism is the big fear among minorities and anti-fascists as Germany prepares to host the 2024 Uefa European Football Championship. We are not paranoid. Nobody should be surprised if the Euros unleash a wave of the most aggressive nationalism in Germany since the one we saw in 2006.

The current mood is a perfect breeding ground. Rightwing extremists have had secret meetings to discuss how to “remigrate” immigrants, their descendants and allies, once they are in power. The AfD overtook all the governing parties in last weekend’s European elections, and it is especially east Germans and young people who seem more and more attracted to the party’s extremist positions.

This was evident in a video that went viral recently. Filmed on Sylt, an elite German party island, the footage shows revellers chanting the unlawful Nazi slogan “Foreigners out – Germany for the Germans” to Gigi D’Agostino’s hit L’amour toujours while drinking champagne, dancing and making the illegal Nazi salute. Their terribly conventional dress and rosy faces confirmed what many already suspected: there is a new generation of wealthy, young and powerful Germans who don’t care about the guilt of the country’s Nazi past, let alone feel it. It is not a topic of shame for them. Instead, it appears to be a history to celebrate when they are among their peers. I call them the rich toddlers of 2006.

Luckily, some faces from the video were identified, and some are reported to have lost their jobs as a result of the ensuing outrage. But new videos of different people at other parties chanting the same song have also appeared, with faces blurred. You can already guess what the unofficial anthem of the European Cup will be, when the German flags are out once again.

Multiculturalism is a positive trait only when the football tournament is won. In the run-up to the Euros, a new survey found that 21% of Germans agreed that there should be more white players in the national football team. I can’t decide what is scarier: this answer, or the question being asked in this survey?

I, for one, will be doing what I have done since 2006: hoping that the German football team – again one of the favourites – lose their opening matches and get kicked out of the tournament as quickly as possible. It might be the only way to limit the ugly party mood.

• Fatma Aydemir is a Berlin-based author, novelist, playwright and a Guardian Europe columnist

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We have only been waiting in the grey Atlantic swell a few moments when the first flash of metallic blue appears in the water. A blue shark, a few miles from the coast of Penzance in Cornwall, emerges from the depths. It is time to get in the water – but part of my brain rebels.

“It’s not what you think it will be like … not that ingrained fear that everyone has about sharks. But until you get in the water with them, that fear will remain,” the guide says to the group.

Slipping off the boat, covered head to toe in dark wetsuits, we are instructed not to shout if we see one but to raise a hand, wave and point. We wait, peering through the gloom at the mackerel lure below us. But the shark does not return, and we heave ourselves back on board.

Three hours go by, and finally a flash of silver reappears, sending us scrambling into the sea. I peer into the water and wait. Metres away, others raise their hands, but I see nothing.

Then, a blue shark glides below, black eyes holding ours until it disappears into the gloom. Those lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the predator return to the boat beaming.

The shark-diving industry in Britain is still tiny, with a few providers on the south-west coast in England and Wales, but the idea has attracted increasing interest since the pandemic, spurred by footage of encounters on social media.

“People are travelling from all over the country to come and do it. They’ve got a love of sharks or certainly a curiosity around it,” says Richard Rees, the director of Celtic Deep, which operates off the coast of Pembrokeshire. “We’re very keen to always say that sharks are not sort of like harmless puppy dogs. They should be respected for what they are: apex predators in the ocean,” he says.

Blue sharks, which can grow nearly 4 metres long, are at risk of extinction, according to the IUCN red list. They are threatened by finning and harmful fishing practices that claim the lives of about 20 million a year. They feed on squid and small fish, and are not a danger to humans, with only a handful of recorded bites since 1580 – 10 according to International Shark Attack File.

It is a sign of how rare shark attacks are in the UK that some statistics include a bite that took place in a pub in the West Midlands, more than 50 miles from the sea. The chef was reportedly attacked by a black-tipped reef shark in a restaurant aquarium while feeding the animals prawns in 2000.

But the growing UK sector was rattled in 2022, shortly after my own dive, when a woman on a blue shark tour was bitten on the leg, in an incredibly rare example of an “unprovoked” attack in British waters.

The bitten woman, who walked off the boat, issued a statement through the company saying she was scared but fine: “Despite how the trip ended, it was amazing to see such majestic creatures in the wild and I don’t for a second want this freak event to tarnish the reputation of an already persecuted species.”

The bite was a blow to the tour operators. Two years on, however, the sector has not seen a drop-off in bookings for experiences with blue sharks.

“The incident in Penzance in 2022 was an unfortunate occasion. Blue sharks feed on fish and squid mostly, so going after something big like a human is super rare – in fact, this was the first incident with a blue shark in-water ever reported,” says Gonzalo Araujo, the director of Marine Research and Conservation Foundation, who works with tour operators to study blue sharks in the UK. “It is unlikely to happen again.”

As the number of UK shark swimming operations grows, many are teaming up to develop a common set of standards to keep people and sharks safe. Alongside wearing dark wetsuits and not displaying jewellery, there’s a ban on handfeeding the inquisitive fish.

Operators say they have been busy with bookings for the summer ahead. From June to October, the creature is one of more than 30 shark species thought to be in British waters. The animals visit the UK’s south-west coast in the summer, travelling thousands of miles from the Azores to the Caribbean and back to Britain and Ireland in their north Atlantic territory.

Some tours are working with university researchers to aid the survival of the species, testing magnets to repel the sharks in the hope that they can one day be used on long-line trawlers to stop them being caught as bycatch. But for many operators, it is about showing people a different side of the UK.

“When we can get people in the water out in the Celtic deep, where the water is clear, warm, really blue and they can have these encounters with amazing animals – not just the sharks, but other animals, too – it might just paint a different picture of the marine wildlife here,” Rees says.