• The UK’s unequal unbanking scandal.

I always find this month poignant if not a little weepy. I remember a stunningly beautiful Tuesday morning when I was the News Director of Time magazine and still living in America. I was on a staycation in Manhattan when I got a call from one of the reporters I worked with telling me to turn on the television. “Boss, there seems to have been an accident downtown,” he said. I switched on the set and saw the second plane slam into the World Trade Center. “This is not an accident,” I said to myself and immediately dashed to the subway to get to the office — only to discover it wasn’t running. So I ran: two miles into midtown Manhattan, arriving to hear that the Pentagon had been attacked as well. I’d spend the rest of Sept. 11, 2001, in the Time-Life Building and almost all of Sept. 12 before wandering as far downtown as I was allowed to see the devastation. It’s so many crises ago. But I’ve kept the shoes I ran to work with on that day.

Here in London, a pair of deaths — 25 years apart — share the month. The first was that of Princess Diana Spencer, who was killed in a car crash in Paris at the very end of August 1997 and whose astonishingly momentous funeral was held on Sept. 6. The other is of her ex-mother-in-law, Queen Elizabeth II, who died on Sept. 8 last year. I’ve written about both women, for Time and for Bloomberg, and how their public and private lives became a screen on which non-royal families everywhere could project their own plebeian joys and discontents. I find it especially touching that Diana’s son and Elizabeth’s grandson Harry is in Dusseldorf, Germany, this weekend to open the Invictus Games for injured military veterans. He is the ruddiest of black sheep, and I’d wish him a happily ever after, even though that seems to be far from his story now. Indeed, it never seems to be the fate of the Windsors.

Except maybe for one. The death of Elizabeth meant the accession of her son Charles to the throne. Today is that anniversary too. “What has astonished his subjects, and maybe disappointed royal-watching bloggers around the world, is how pleasantly uneventful and indeed dull Charles III’s reign has turned out to be,” says Max Hastings in his latest column. As heir, Charles was often inordinately critical (architecture, ecology) or just odd. But, a year into his monarchy, he is refreshingly boring and uncontroversial. Furthermore, says Max, “Camilla has proved the big success story of the new reign, to the surprise of those of us who doubted the wisdom of crowning the King’s longtime mistress.”

Still, says Max, “None of the hard questions are being much asked, especially about the royal finances. They remained shrouded in secrecy, while Charles showed no sign of shedding any of his array of houses and palaces, other than a small farmhouse in Wales. With Britain’s economy in the doldrums, it seems extraordinary that nobody is making a fuss about the self-indulgence of the royal lifestyle, which we expected to be curtailed after the Queen’s death.” Maybe that’s why he’s behaving.

Xi’s Raining on Modi’s Parade

The annual get-together of the Group of 20 starts Saturday in New Delhi, but China’s President Xi Jinping found a way of disrupting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s star turn on the global stage. Xi chose not to show up, sending Prime Minister Li Qiang instead. China also threw an apple of discord into the party: a map. As Karishma Vaswani says, “Instead of a nine-dash line, which Beijing for many years has used to assert sovereignty over the entire South China Sea, an extra dash was added to represent China’s claims over Taiwan.” The expansive cartography also puts key pieces of Indian territory within China’s frontiers. Xi’s pique is also jealousy. Says Karishma: “Through a combination of overtures and economic incentives — albeit nowhere near the amount that its neighbor has been able to offer — New Delhi is extending its influence.”

Speaking of pique, the Global Times — an unofficial mouthpiece of Beijing — went into an impressively overwritten fit of editorializing over Japan’s decision to release radiated but treated water from the damaged Fukushima reactors into the ocean, including a reference to H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu. Gearoid Reidy attempts an “X”-temporaneous interpretation: 

I never imagined Xi as a Lovecraft fan.

“From China to the European Union and the US, investors worry how much debt is too much, and when a full-blown financial meltdown will arrive. In Indonesia, on the other hand, household debt accounts for only 9% of GDP — in fact, less than 60% of its young population of 274 million have a bank account … This balance-sheet landscape presents a great opportunity for tech entrepreneurs who want to be more than passive investors and dabble in fintech and financial inclusion.” — From Shuli Ren in “Why Would Americans Want an Indonesian Golden Visa.” 

“Prime Minister Narendra Modi chose as his theme for its Group of 20 presidency a term from Sanskrit scripture, “vasudhaiva kutumbakam” emphasizing sustainability and global unity. At his speech commencing India’s leadership of the group last December, he named climate change, alongside terrorism and pandemics, as one of the greatest challenges the world faces. With the G-20 leaders’ summit due to begin in New Delhi Saturday, it’s notable how quiet that green rhetoric has gotten.” — From David Fickling in “ Modi’s Climate Ambitions for India Are Slipping.”

The chip wars get serious. Who’s winning? — Dave Lee

You don’t really want to be in Skyfall IRL. — Chris Bryant

That’s the way the schoolhouse crumbles. — Matthew Brooker

Burning planet meet Burning Man. — Lara Williams

Airbnboom goes Airbnbust. — Lionel Laurent

Watches of Switzerland should watch its back. — Andrea Felsted 

Walk of the Town: Copenhagen edition

To reach Klovermarken, the huge field of football pitches on the eastern end of Copenhagen, Google Maps took me through Christiana, the weed-infused, graffiti- and macrame-decorated mini-city of counterculture. As drug havens go, it was disciplined and clean. After all, it’s in Denmark (where I was on holiday). The soccer match I was headed for, however, turned out to be a hard-fought, fast-paced, sweaty, red-carded 1-0 thriller. It was a contest for athletic bragging rights between Alchemist, the flashy molecular kid on the culinary block, and Noma, the veteran but vigorous pioneer that turned the Danish capital into one of the primary foodie destinations in the world. 

Chefdom  in Denmark is polite — though everyone tosses around American four-letter words as is the fashion in the best kitchens. What I mean is everyone says perfectly nice things about their rivals. But you can sense the depth of competition in the coolness of the kindness. As it is, new places by some of the best chefs in Denmark (and thus the world) are getting underway. Kristian Baumann’s Koan is serving up beautiful nouvelle Korean in a stunning room not far from the statue of the little mermaid; Bo Bech, who shut the innovative Geist in 2021, is opening Bobe in November. Even Rene Redzepi, whose announcement that Noma would close at the end of 2024 brought on global consternation, is rumored to be toying with ways to cook for diners beyond that deadline. There’s a lot percolating as everyone strategizes how to attract the foodies willing and able to pay the high prices for their creations.

For now though, some contests can only be settled on the playing field. For the record, Noma won the game. Redzepi exclaimed shortly after the victory: “It felt better than winning three Michelin stars!” But he made it clear he felt that only for a moment. 

Thank you for sticking with me to the end. Here’s another bit of wistfulness.

Notes: Please send love notes and feedback to Howard Chua-Eoan at hchuaeoan@bloomberg.net.

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Howard Chua-Eoan is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion covering culture and business. He previously served as Bloomberg Opinion’s international editor and is a former news director at Time magazine. 

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