“I’m going to have an LA fantasy worthy of the movies,” narrates Sally, a young fresh-faced brunette. Roller skating through Venice Beach, she soon collides with Harri, they get talking, hang out on the boardwalk for an afternoon, and then… seven minutes into this 18-minute porn film, they’re undressing on the sofa in Harri’s house.
This is just one example of how feminist porn director Erika Lust pushes for the genre’s ethical new future by making it old school again. It’s a cinematically shot story containing a meet-cute, a narrative arc, and characters with… well… character.
Lust has been producing porn under Erika Lust Films for more than 20 years. Born Erika Hallqvist in 1977 and raised in Malmö, Sweden, in a household where – contrary to stereotypes about buoyant Swedes going at it in saunas – sex just wasn’t discussed.
The Thunderbirds-inspired house that has sold for £375,000
A house in Berkshire inspired by , featuring an extensive network of tunnels, rooms and a railway – all more than 50 feet underground – has sold at auction for £375,000.
Age-old inspiration
Located on Long Lane in the village of Tilehurst, on the outskirts of Reading, the property was inspired by Tracy Island, the secret headquarters featured in popular 1960s TV series .
The site boasts a swimming pool and garden with a model space rocket measuring around 23 feet tall, as well as a 2,500 square foot workshop and a hand-built underground railway, with the subterranean network spanning four levels.
Future plans
The tunnels were the passion-project of civil engineer Tony Deane, the late owner of the property, who started on them over two decades ago. Now, there are plans to convert the spacious workshop – which spans three floors – into a three-bedroom house.
Other features
- Deane, the previous owner, first built underground changing rooms for the property’s swimming pool in the 1960s.
- The entrance was behind the existing model rocket.
- Construction on the tunnels took place in the 80s and 90s, carried out by Deane and his family.
It represents a really unique opportunity for somebody to either develop it or to live there and enjoy it. To say it’s a workshop is doing it down a little bit, it’s constructed better than 95% of houses, to be honest.
Richard Worrall, auctioneer and consultant at BTG Eddisons Property Auctions
How to lower your council tax band – and the deadline for £100 energy payment
The Government has seen a surge in council tax enquiries following Chancellor John Healey’s maiden Budget. Here’s why.
What to know
On Wednesday, the Chancellor revealed that the more than 20 million households in council tax bands A-D in England will get a £100 payment sent straight to their bank accounts, to give people “breathing space” to offset rising energy bills. The Welsh Government confirmed it will deliver the same £100 payment, and funding has been allocated to Scotland and Northern Ireland to set up equivalent schemes.
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Checking your council tax band
How it works
Each residential property in England, Scotland and Wales is assigned a council tax band, from A to H.
Who pays what?
Tax is cheapest for those in Band A, with each band after that more expensive.
Check online
There is a government website for people to check what band they are in based on their home address.
Could your band be wrong?
However, many people may be sitting in the wrong council tax bands because of incorrect valuations that were made in 1991, as time-pressured assessors often drove through streets and looked at houses from the outside to determine their value.
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What to do before challenging
The Valuation Office Agency (VOA) experienced “high demand” for council tax services after the Budget, including challenges to bands. Before going down that road, though, you should check a few things:
- You can’t ask for your band to be lowered, only revalued, meaning you or your neighbour’s bands could also go up.
- So, check if you are in a different band to your neighbours in similar or identical properties.
- You also need to know your property’s worth in 1991, so enter the price and date of sale into a free website like Zoopla.
- Then, find a house that is similar to yours on your street that sold recently and note down the price and date.
- Input this information into a home valuation calculator and compare it to the council tax band you are in today.
How to challenge
- One way to challenge your banding is to make a proposal if you’ve been paying council tax on your property for less than six months or changed your band in the past six months. The VOA must review your band by law.
- If you think you are in the wrong band and you have been paying council tax for more than six months, you can request a band review. However, the onus is on you to provide strong evidence that you are in the wrong band after reviewing your “property attributable data”, which the VOA can provide online or over the phone.
Cut off date
- There will be a cut-off date when people will need to have their council tax band reviewed by to be eligible for the £100 payment.
- This date, which is yet to be announced, will be part of guidance to local authorities with details on eligibility criteria for the payment.
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Could you be eligible for the new Your First Home scheme?
Further details of the support being made available for aspiring first-time buyers were outlined in the Budget this week.
What to know
70,000
The new £4.7bn scheme aims to help around 70,000 households in England to take their first step on to the property ladder.
20% equity
The scheme will provide 20 per cent equity loans to first-time buyers, accessible with a five-year interest-free period.
The deposit requirement will be 2.5 per cent, with a maximum deposit of 15 per cent.
Cost caps
Income caps for the scheme will be set at £110,000 per household outside London and £140,000 inside London.
Budget documents said price caps for properties will be set based on local authority median prices to ensure support is targeted at those who need it, with inner and outer London caps of £650,000 and £500,000, respectively.
When does it start?
The scheme will open for pre-registration by the end of December 2026 and full applications from February 2027, with the first loans issued from April 2027.
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Pope Leo becomes first pontiff to vote in US election
Pope Leo XIV has become the first pontiff to vote in a US election, the Vatican confirmed on Friday.
Pope Leo, who was born Robert Francis Prevost in Chicago, Illinois, submitted a mail-in ballot in his home state ahead of the midterm elections on 3 November.
The Pope, who has lived in Vatican City since his election last May, “expresses his belief in the right and the duty of citizens to participate in democratic processes”, a statement from the Vatican said.
Influence from abroad
The Pope “has exercised his right to vote as a US citizen…whenever he was eligible to do so”.
Dedicated voter
He also voted while living in Peru as a missionary priest and bishop for over 20 years.
Pope’s hometown
The pontiff is yet to return to the US since his election but is registered to an address in New Lenox, a south-west Chicago suburb.
What’s on the ballot
- Pope Leo had requested a mail-in voting ballot from the Will County Clerk’s office this month.
- Illinois voters are deciding whether to elect Illinois Governor JB Pritzker to his third term.
- They are also filling an open US Senate seat after longtime Catholic Democrat Dick Durbin’s retirement.
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Voting history
He did not vote in the Illinois primary in March.
American citizens who are based overseas can vote in US elections by mail if they choose to as per the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act.
Clashes with Trump
The upcoming midterms are seen as something of a referendum on the increasingly unpopular Donald Trump, and come after clashes between the US President and the Pope on issues such as conflicts in the Middle East and immigration.
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go deper on this topic
The small town in Ohio that shows why Trump is in trouble
Director of the Marie Colvin Center for International Reporting
Welcome to Ohio, where the dirtiest campaign of the midterm elections is unfolding. I’ve come to this state because its mix of farmland and factories has made it a bellwether for the nation.
How to be more grateful for daily life in five easy steps
The world feels like a difficult place at the moment, and it can feel very hard sometimes to find things to be thankful for; when we are overwhelmed, we have less capacity to notice and reflect on the good things. Yet, ironically, proactively cultivating gratitude is one of the things that can actually help us feel less stressed.
NHS GP dR RADHA
The science
Research has shown that feeling or expressing thanks can actually alter our brain.
- The balance of neurotransmitters change; more serotonin and dopamine (feel good chemicals) are produced.
- This can be long lasting if we make gratitude a regular habit.
- We also get a decrease in our cortisol (stress hormone) levels which helps lower anxiety.
- Being grateful can strengthen the nerve pathways which triggers positive emotion.
How can we build gratitude?
Change your words
Instead of seeing something as a problem, try to see the opportunities within it.
Our brains are very receptive and what we read or write can alter our emotional system.
Express it
This will not only make you feel good, but you will also get a positive response from others.
How can we build gratitude?
Notice more
Throughout your day, try to notice all the things that are going well; has someone opened a door for you, or smiled?
The basics
By being thankful for the small things every day, we are far more likely to be and stay healthy so that we can enjoy them.
What to do
Gratitude can lead to feelings of optimism, lower our blood pressure, and improve sleep quality.
- Write down what potential good aspects there are to the things you don’t feel like doing, or even what could be worse about it.
- Spend a few minutes writing down three things that you are looking forward to that day, or the good things that have happened to you that day.
- Say thank you to yourself for the things you have achieved, or managed to get through and changed that day.
Sales of battery
electric vehicles hit a record high last year.
Starts at £22,995 for the smaller battery
Available with either a 40kWh battery or a larger 52kWh pack, that offers almost 255 miles, the latest, retro-inspired Renault 5 is both a joy to behold and a hoot to drive.
The interior has been lavished with a level of detail that’s typically reserved for more expensive cars.
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A champion of EV efficiency
It offers a remarkable 491 mile range on a single charge from the 85kWh battery.
It is a technological masterclass inside with the ability to option screens that span the entire width of the dashboard, including an optional display for the front passenger.
Priced from £37,400
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It’s a lot of money to part with, but this is arguably all the car you will ever need.
The £89,000 Macan is a premium SUV that somehow manages to blend Porsche’s reputation for dynamics and sporty driving with everyday practicality.
The 95kWh batteries can go from 10 to 80 per cent in as little as 21 minutes from the fastest public charging outlets.
With the business class-style six seat configuration costing a staggering £76,995, it is by far the most expensive Kia ever made, but it backs up its financial demands with a suite of genuinely useful and impressive onboard technology.
It’s fast, goes a long way between stops and charges relatively quickly but the interior is bland, the onboard technology is infuriating and the experience is devoid of emotion.
All of its gadgetry can’t disguise the fact that performance is weak, even for a typically zippy EV, the ride is fussy at slower speeds and it’s not in the least bit enjoyable to drive on a country road.
- While good value (prices start at £17,935) for the 200-mile max range, there are more interesting options from Hyundai, Citroen and Renault for similar money.
- It attempts to wow with tech, much of which hinders, rather than helps.
- There’s no tangible benefit over mounting your phone to the dash.
- Simply an average driving experience, adequate range and slow charging speeds.
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The kitchen gadgets under £25
Victorinox paring knife
It’s comfortable to hold, with a point sharp enough for scoring pastry.
ProCook cast iron pan
For unbeatable searing and heat-retention, cast iron is the top choice.
Tesco chopping board
Priced at just £22, I’ve yet to find another board that matches it for sheer value and quality.
The kitchen gadgets under £25
Pyrex jug
It is the perfect vessel for blending smooth sauces, melting butter, or warming stock. It won’t stain like plastic and the red measurements never fade.
Salter scales
“I’ve had my slim little set of Salter Disc Scales for over a decade, and I’m delighted to see they are still made to exactly the same reliable design today.”
Microplane grater
It uses photo-etched stainless steel teeth that stay razor-sharp for a decade, something the lookalike copycats simply can’t match.
Braun hand-held blender
It’s an essential for everything from making velvety soup to getting the lumps out of white sauce.
Bodum cafetiere
As well as delivering great results, cafetieres are easy to clean and there’s no ongoing filter paper costs or pod recycling to deal with.
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The kitchen gadgets under £25
Oxo peeler
What truly sets it apart is the chunky, rubberised handle that absorbs pressure and stays completely non-slip, even if your hands are wet. It is inexpensive and incredibly durable.
Falcon pie dish
Made by fusing porcelain onto heavy-gauge steel for smooth durability, it is dishwasher, freezer, hob, air-fryer and oven-safe.
The golden rules for a happy, secure relationship
Psychiatrist and neuroscientist Dr Amir Levine, author of bestselling book , explains why we behave the way we do in love.
Golden rules for happy relationships
Start with your own behaviours
The foundation of a secure, connected life is being what I call CARRP: that means being consistent, available, responsive, reliable and predictable. All of these qualities can be enacted in small gestures every day.
Express your needs
People need consistency and connection to feel safe. This is not, ‘You hurt my feelings by never replying to me’, it’s more ‘this is the kind of contact that helps me feel secure’.
Golden rules for happy relationships
The appendix ‘inflammation’ rule
If a relationship repeatedly inflames your nervous system, you need to disengage and deprioritise it.
Lean on community
You don’t need hundreds of friends. You need people and places that regularly remind you that you belong.
Stop blaming childhood
Humans are much more complicated than: ‘this happened to you, therefore you are doomed to be anxious’.
Reach for a
secure script
When something unsettles you in a relationship, your first reaction is not always the most accurate one.
If you’re anxious, your brain may jump very quickly to: ‘this is the beginning of the end’. If you’re avoidant, your brain may say: ‘this person wants too much from me, I need to get away’. So one very practical thing you can always do is pause and ask: ‘What would a secure person do here?’
Loneliness elsewhere
When people talk about loneliness, they often assume it means you don’t have enough people in your life. But you can be surrounded by people and still feel lonely if those relationships leave you feeling excluded, ignored or disconnected.
What to do
- Build a community that works for your temperament and gives you regular, reliable moments of connection.
- You can still be kind to people while not treating them as someone who belongs in your inner circle.
- Explain what you need. Sometimes people simply don’t realise how you are experiencing them.
- Check in with people: does this person actually feel that I’m reliable? Do they experience me as predictable? That’s the only way that you can start to become more secure.
She describes a “sexually repressed upbringing that I know more of us have gone through than haven’t” in her new book, , part-memoir of her own sexual awakening, part reflection on making porn in a patriarchy.
All that repression unravelled when she moved to Barcelona in her early twenties to study filmmaking. Rent was cheap, socialising was key, and she found “liberation”. Over video call, she explains how this was all before mobile phones, giving her “that feeling of not being watched that I think helped me to find myself”. She discovered a “sense of self, my creativity and my self-belief”. All requisite tools for swimming upstream against the deluge of male-directed “dick-centric” porn proliferating the internet.
To me, the most outrageous part of her story isn’t the gangbangs she’s directed, or the fact her first supposedly feminist porn shoot featured a man ejaculating on a woman’s face. It’s that she barely saw any porn growing up. The first time was when she was 12 at a slumber party. The next time, she was at college. Her exposure was, she writes “nothing like what kids meet on the internet now” , but I explain to her that even I, aged 38, saw porn weekly as a teen.
“For me, porn was exciting,” she replies. “I didn’t have access to special images in that sense, so when I found them, I was fascinated by them. At the same time, I had that conflict going on – I felt that my body was turned on but I didn’t like what I was looking at.”
Years later, that feeling returned, and this time she could do something about it. Working as a film location manager, she’d rented her apartment to a porn shoot and was aghast at the “chaos” unfolding. In response, she shot , a porn film about a sexually reserved woman who seduces a pizza delivery man. It features introspective narration, humour and sensuality, but none of California’s porn behemoths wanted it. Lust instead uploaded it to her blog, and within weeks it had been downloaded millions of times. Two decades on and more than 100 films later, Lust says her work is about bridging “the shame gap” that women feel between “what we actually want and desire and what actually fulfils us”.
“I think we all have two relationships to pornography: a private relationship that we don’t talk to anyone else about, and then what we are actually watching online,” she says. “Then, when we do talk to others, there’s this desire to appear morally superior – ‘Porn is horrible, no I don’t watch it’.”
Many activists have decried porn’s harms. A recent report from charity The Naked Truth, titled “Pornography is causing a public health crisis”, details the effects of early exposure to porn and its links to mental health issues, including addictive behaviours, increased sexual risk-taking, and erectile dysfunction.
Last month, ErikaLust.com received 1.6 million visits, whereas Pornhub received 3.4 billion visits, according to internet traffic analyst Semrush. Lust is certainly “a bit worried… that the activist part of me is preaching to my own choir all the time. If I want my work to have a bigger effect I need to reach guys… I need them to click on it and come and watch it and be exposed to the way we show relatable pleasure for women”.
According to a 2020 analysis of over 4,000 freeTube porn videos by Indiana University-Bloomington’s Media School and School of Informatics, 45 per cent of Pornhub scenes and 35 per cent of Xvideos scenes included at least one act of physical aggression, and women were the target 97 per cent of the time. That same year, a literature review from the Johnson government found that “there is evidence to show an association between pornography usage and harmful attitudes and behaviours towards women and girls”.
I meet Lust shortly after the Government has announced a ban on porn depicting incest, child roleplay and choking. A group of schoolgirls, fed up with sexual harassment, are campaigning for porn to stop featuring school uniforms.
Lust says these are “complex subjects that we need to take time to think about”, but wonders: “How would you even prohibit school uniforms? How do we define a school uniform?”
Besides, she adds: “The sexualisation of young girls has happened before porn.”
As for incest? She points out that “even in this kind of ‘smart’ world” of erotic fiction that is storming the self-published book charts, “lots of people of all different genders are really fantasising about it, and there is a huge difference between a fantasy world and real world”.
I point out that according to official UK data, girls aged 16-19 report higher rates of domestic abuse than any other age group. Could free online porn have played a part in radicalising boys and young men to loathe women and girls? “We talk more about it now, but hasn’t it always been there?”
I mean, I don’t remember a time where all teenage boys respected all teenage girls, no. But on reflection, I find her attitudes towards porn’s problematic content oddly defeatist – historical precedent is no justification for grim things to continue. See: polio.
For what it’s worth, Lust’s work does not feature these tropes, and she wants to improve porn, subverting a genre that tends to only depict scenes “where women are passive and men are aggressive”. She painstakingly plans out her porn films, applying her feminism to “how we produce it, how we distribute it, how we label it, how we put it out there in the world”.
Lust says the issue with porn is not necessarily its content, but its form. She laments that in the 1960s and 70s, “porn was cinema: it had cinematic language and storytelling, and characters, and narrative and a vision”.
In contrast, now “porn is shot on very easy cameras. It is still being made by companies and producers, but it started to look so real that people didn’t separate it from fantasy anymore. A lot of people are becoming aware that they’re not feeling healthy when looking at these free tube sites. It clashes with their values”.
It’s also delivered in, as she writes in her memoir, “short, decontextualised snippets designed to grab attention for a few seconds at a time… cutting out everything that is interesting”.
She is similarly disparaging of AI porn, despite entirely generative content (i.e. not deepfakes) offering the assurance that no human will be harmed in its making: “[Porn producers are] not using [AI] in any interesting way, they’re just augmenting the breasts and the penises. It’s not getting any closer to intimacy or a story of desire.”
She compares all of this short-form content, not unreasonably, with “junk food” in the book, and tells me: “Porn is definitely not separate from the times we’re living in, and we’re living in a time where technology has taken over our lives. So many people are stuck with their screens.”
To my mind, the apex of this screen-forward culture is in Bonnie Blue’s work. The Derbyshire pornographer has become notorious – and rich – from short-form rage-bait and sex stunts – including sleeping with more than 1,000 men in a day. What does Lust think of her? “I understand why she wanted to do it – she found a way of getting the money she wanted to earn – but I would not be proud of putting those kinds of values into the world.
“These stunts show she’s a gladiator of our times, like an adult clown. The shock of it makes people go, ‘Whoa! What is this?’ But it’s not about sex, it’s not about having a good time.”
To Lust, a good time – like Sally’s fantasy worthy of the movies – rests on the simple notions of women’s pleasure and formats that allow for it to be accurately depicted: “I really believe that sex can be transformational and give a life force. And I think that if women have access to pleasure, that is a tool against patriarchy. It’s a tool for liberating ourselves.”
‘’ by Erika Lust is published by Ithaka at £16.99 on 5th November