EC has 'serious concerns', but codpiece returns

Slow times for newspapers of course as all the journos are on holiday, or, if they are modern zero-hours stringers, working in Waitrose behind the avocado counter. So understandably, old themes are recycled:

The European commission president said she had “serious concern” over the limited time available for the negotiations and emphasised the need to keep all options open....Should there not be a deal in place on trade, for example, the UK would face major disruption to its economy, with tariffs and quantity restrictions being immediately applied to goods being sold into the EU market.

More bad news in the monthly update on the economic effects of Brexit. They include:

Sterling surges on Johnson’s election landslide

Stock markets rally on Brexit hopes and US-China trade deal

Inflation stays low despite rising cost of chocolate

Wage growth slows despite falling unemployment

House prices fall at fastest rate since April

However, the GRaun always delivers some insights into worlds you never knew existed:

 'Codpiece envy': fashion reinvents 16th century accessory 

Among other startling revelations:

The American designer Thom Browne also featured them in his spring/summer 2020 show, which nodded to deconstructed sportswear...“The codpiece is a whimsical representation of masculinity,” he said....

 There are actual books on this topic:

Victoria Bartels, author of What Goes Up Must Come Down: A Brief History Of The Codpiece...Michael Glover ...Thrust: A Spasmodic Pictorial History Of The Codpiece In Art.

The authors say that:

[the codpiece contributed] to a fabricated, fictionalised version of the male body....signalling masculine power in the absence of real substance...something that Shakespeare also picked up on....Glover said: Shakespeare was the great, instinctive etymologist. He knew how words tricked with their double and triple meanings: ‘cod’ as scrotum, ‘to cod’ meaning to cheat.”

 Explaining fashion’s obsession with the era, the designer Gareth Pugh said: “The Tudors were the first power dressers.”