The Monocle Minute

The timing of the attack in London on Saturday night – just five days before the UK general election – was always going to lead to swift recriminations. Prime minister Theresa May hit out at internet companies, which she claimed afford terrorists “safe spaces” online. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn called on May herself to resign for the cuts to the police force she has overseen for the past seven years (before becoming prime minister she was home secretary for six). Neither politician was inherently wrong but the chilling truth is that attacks of this nature are almost impossible to predict and prevent. Whoever wins the election on Thursday will need quickly to put the finger-pointing aside and examine the root causes of why the country has seen three terrorist atrocities in as many months. The UK badly needs thoughtful policy, not bluster. Sadly, it won’t get it during the campaign.

That Qatar has long turned a blind eye to people in the country lending support to nefarious groups across the Middle East was an uncomfortable yet widely known secret in the Gulf. Still, the decision to shove Doha into the diplomatic cold by six regional powers – including the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain – was both abrupt and damning. Qataris were given 48 hours to leave the UAE and Qatar Airways flights were banned from Saudi airspace, leaving a question mark over a country that used its vast wealth to push influence overseas in the past decade. Qatar has spent big on soft power, from Al Jazeera to the 2022 Fifa World Cup, but that will all count for little unless it finds a way to make friends with its neighbours once more.

More than 500 people from around the world have descended on Bolzano, Italy, to discuss an industry on the up: cable cars. Every six years the International Organization for Transportation by Rope (OITAF) holds a world congress and much has evolved in the industry since the event’s first edition in 1957. Martin Leitner, president of OITAF and board member of the South Tyrol-based Leitner Group, says that in addition to use in ski resorts and as tourist attractions, “Places such as Colombia are finding that cable cars are solving traffic problems in very significant ways – so the industry is becoming more important”. With sessions devoted to overcoming challenges in European cities and operating in all types of weather, the four-day congress will concentrate on seeing the cable car soar even further.

For a growing hospitality business, how to expand without undermining the venture’s founding principles is often a complicated question. Toronto’s Drake properties, one of the city’s most recognisable hospitality brands, hopes to answer it this week when its latest venture, the Drake Commissary, opens in the city’s formerly industrial west end. The food-production facility will serve its three hotel and restaurant locations: the Drake Hotel, Drake One Fifty and the Drake Devonshire. The ambition, according to Sarah Lyons, the Drake’s food-and-beverage director, is to demonstrate that a large-scale kitchen facility does not need to be in an anonymous industrial corner of a city and that the produce itself can still be made by hand. “We wanted to have a more interactive space, a front-of-house space, where you can see into the kitchen,” she says. “Commissary kitchens are usually in a big warehouse space. We felt that there was a great energy to the area and we’re really excited to join in.”

Marcus Samuelsson has just released a cookbook and opened a new Red Rooster restaurant in London. Having become one of America’s best-loved chefs, he explains why understanding the value of the local community is so important.