Flamboyant singer helped point his city’s music scene towards punk, before a successful solo career and eye-catching acting roles

David Johansen, the swaggering, peacocking frontman with glam rock band New York Dolls, has died aged 75.

Last month he had announced he was living with cancer, and recently suffered a broken back. “David Johansen passed away peacefully at home, holding the hands of his wife Mara Hennessey and daughter Leah, in the sunlight surrounded by music and flowers,” reads a statement on a website created to raise funds for his medical care.

Peer argues that national ‘trickledown’ approach will fail to benefit those in most need

Keir Starmer’s government must strictly target the delivery of its core “missions” at areas of maximum deprivation or lose huge numbers of votes to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, an independent commission led by a former Labour cabinet minister will suggest this week.

The Independent Commission on Neighbourhoods (ICON), chaired by Labour peer Hilary Armstrong, a former party chief whip and housing minister, will say the government risks “wasting billions of pounds in higher public spending while failing to transform the places that need it most” unless it adopts the targeted approach.

Fredi Reviro was attacked in Islington on Thursday night, and died in hospital the following day

Three teenage girls, aged 14, 16 and 17, have been charged with manslaughter after a 75-year-old man died in north London.

The Metropolitan police said the man, named as Fredi Reviro, was attacked on Seven Sisters Road in Islington at about 11.35pm on Thursday, and died in hospital the following day.

Drop the pretence: instead of parading a love of highbrow literature, just enjoy the books you want to read

Toughen up. It’s the end of the line for soft, middle-class authors. Lefty-baiting headteacher Katharine Birbalsingh has declared that “gentle parenting” advice books by middle-class writers are sabotaging families by insisting adults become friends with their children.

She’s probably got a point – most mums and dads have watched with a cocked eyebrow as a Boden-clad parent has tranquilly informed little Johnny that punching another child in the face while playing in the sandpit “might not be what they like” – but I say Birbalsingh is not going far enough. Why stop with the parenting books? Why not fillet the whole damn bookcase of toxically middle-class ideas? Visionaries such as Chairman Mao have tried it before – with, admittedly, mixed results – but this time we’ll do it right.

Tebay, Cumbria: We’re a small farm, and our margins are so tight that the recent mess with government grants left us close to selling some of our livestock

I turn my back to the wind and watch the cows grazing. Despite the cold, they look happy and healthy, without a care in the world. Elsewhere on the farm it has been a stressful time. For better or worse, farms our size depend a lot on government grants to get by, but we’ve had compounding problems on this front recently. There was the announcement that the basic payment scheme wasn’t just being cut, but being phased out far quicker than expected.

Another grant, our Environmental Stewardship agreement, ended at the end of 2024, and is mainly replaced by the Sustainable Farming Incentive scheme. I submitted an SFI application on 4 September, well ahead of the start of the agreement on 1 January, but it wasn’t confirmed until mid-February (and even then it was half the expected amount). Added to that, our final ES payment – paid annually, but usually in December – didn’t come through until February.