Raft houses, known as ‘splavs’, became synonymous with the hedonistic nightclub scene in Serbia’s capital. Now they are being cleared from the river to make way for luxury flats, bars and shops

For 20 years, the raft bar Zappa Barka sat on a bend of the River Danube in central Belgrade. Revellers walked a gangplank to board the boat, then danced to live music and DJs on wooden floors, or stayed on deck all night to see the sun rise over the water. But in June 2024 the raft’s electricity supply was suddenly cut, and the barge was towed to a new destination far from the city centre.

Zappa’s existence was always unstable, but there was a sense of exception in Belgrade. That’s because this boat bar was one of Belgrade’s “splavs”, raft houses that have been built on Belgrade’s two rivers, the Danube and the Sava, since the 1960s. Locals use them in summer as waterside retreats, gathering with friends for barbecues when temperatures can hit 38C. Families buy their moorings for 99 years and can renovate their raft house within certain parameters.

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Sites currently only tested for dangerous pollution during ‘bathing season’ from May to September

Bathing waters in England and Wales could be tested all year round in a government shake-up to water pollution rules.

At the moment, designated bathing sites are only tested for dangerous pollution that could make swimmers sick during the “bathing season”, which runs from May to September.

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Trump’s shock election win has the government feeling nervous. It must remember: bold, fair policies are exactly what the public wants

Those panic alarms in MPs’ welcome-to-Westminster packs may have been eyed nervously by some on the Labour benches in the past week. The shock of Donald Trump’s victory makes many uneasier about the next election, even if they are not exactly panicking. It’s five years before voters pass judgment on Labour’s successes and failures, but talk of a 10-year programme of renewal suddenly feels to them a tad hubristic.

Thundering great damnations against social democrats of the Joe Biden/Kamala Harris type have rained down from all sides. Predictably, the right caricatures them as virtue-signalling liberal elites who lost touch with working-class values, preoccupied as they were with incomprehensible woke identities, sneering at uneducated fools who were tricked by the demagogue Trump. There’s never any shortage of unhelpful blame within Labour’s palisades echoing the charge that it’s out of touch with ordinary people, as Reform threatens many seats. But hey, Labour just won a huge majority with its most working-class frontbench ever. Fascinating though the US election was, there are limited lessons from that alien country. Why trash Harris’s not-bad campaign, or wrongly assume that social-democratic Bidenomics must have been an electoral loser?

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

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Storyville profiles Gena Marvin, who is challenging anti-gay and pro-war sentiment. Plus: Bake Off goes 1970s. Here’s what to watch this evening

10pm, BBC Four

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It is estimated that Trump played hundreds of rounds of golf during his first term as president of the United States

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol is practising golf – for the first time in eight years – in preparation for future meetings with US president-elect Donald Trump, Yoon’s office has confirmed.

South Korean media said Yoon had visited a golf course on Saturday for a sport his office said he had last played in 2016.

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England has long adopted the version of events informed by the Victorians’ biases and neuroses. But what is behind the flood of 21st-century retellings, including the new TV series The Mirror and the Light?

The TV adaptation of the third of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall novels – The Mirror and the Light – arrived on Sunday on BBC One to rave reviews. “Six hours of magic” was the Guardian’s verdict . The series had been eagerly awaited, but nothing like as eagerly as the book itself. Mantel’s legions of fans waited eight years from the publication of Bring Up the Bodies for the finale to arrive in 2020.

There was a rumour at the time that Mantel had had writer’s block – specifically, that she had been unable to bring herself to tackle (500-year-old spoiler alert!) Thomas Cromwell’s death scene. She denied this, but an atmosphere of truth clung to it. By the time she had finished with this unlikely hero – “a modern, rational, state-planning bureaucrat in the midst of all these over-ambitious nobles” is how the Oxford history professor Steven Gunn puts it, which is cool, but hardly Indiana Jones – Mantel had brought Cromwell so vividly to life that it made sense that she couldn’t bear to kill him.

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Exclusive: Study finds evidence of major gaps in government oversight of foreign workers in care sector

Nearly 200 care providers have been given government licences to bring foreign nurses to the UK despite having previously violated labour laws, according to a study that highlights widespread employment problems in the social care sector.

The report by the Work Rights Centre shows 177 companies in England have been given licences to sponsor carers, even while publicly available information shows them to have violated workers’ protections in the past.

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PM says Britain can ‘win the race’ as Trump’s election casts doubt on global efforts to tackle climate change

Britain has a “huge opportunity” to get ahead of other countries in the race for green investment after the election of Donald Trump as US president, Keir Starmer has said, as he arrives in Azerbaijan for the Cop29 summit.

Trump’s election victory last week has cast doubt on global efforts to tackle climate change, which the president-elect has called a “hoax”. But as the most senior world leader attending the summit in Baku, Starmer said the global political turmoil could benefit the UK economy.

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Funny guy Phil Wang joins Grace this week for another helping of Comfort Eating. Phil has a textbook comedy career: president of Footlights at Cambridge University, graduating with agents sniffing at his heels; sell-out Edinburgh shows; and now purveyor of two Netflix comedy specials. Phil and Grace talk about how to supermarket shop with crocodiles in the aisles, how garlic sauce pervaded his student days and his justice campaign for reheating rice.

If you liked this episode then have a listen to Grace’s conversations with Jayde Adams , David Baddiel and Jamie Demetriou

New episodes of Comfort Eating with Grace Dent will be released every Tuesday

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