With Bio-Waste Spreader: “At a Downing Street reception in late September, Andy Burham thanked those who helped fight the wildfires that raged across approximately 20,000 hectares of the UK’s uplands this summer. But did the PM’s list of invitees – and especially non-invitees – reveal a political bias over the debate about what is causing the increased intensity of wildfires on Britain’s moorlands? Few would deny that climate change underlies the growing frequency of upland wildfires…”
With MD: “Chancellor John Healey’s big budget ideas for the NHS are to ringfence ‘prevention spending’ (‘to address problems before they escalate’), a further £190m to ease winter pressures in England, and to ask another expert to do another efficiency review. This time it’s Mark Bailie, CEO of price comparison website Compare the Market and a non-executive director of NHS England. Last year it was former Bank of England chief economist Andy Haldane, and in 2022 Jeremy Townsend…”
With Dr B Ching: “The government’s announcement of a ‘new station for Bradford’ suggests it still takes northerners for gullible fools, despite Andy Burnham’s leadership. Bradford’s problem is its two terminus stations, separated by an 800-yard gap. A line between them is long-mooted (World War I thwarted a tunnel authorised in 1911), yet the government’s press release last month failed to mention it. Nor did it explain the cost and budget for tarting up or rebuilding Bradford Interchange terminus…”
With Lady Liberty: “Who is the biggest loser of the midterm elections? In purely cash terms, the answer must be Tom Steyer, a hedge funder who sank $200m of his own money into trying to become California governor. Unfortunately, he finished third, behind both the leading Democrat, Xavier Becerra, and Republican Steve Hilton. Yes, that Steve Hilton, the one who padded, shoeless, around Whitehall when he worked for David Cameron…”
With Remote Controller: “Whatever the song claims, in TV drama, what go together like a horse and carriage are divorce and marriage. Infidelity, incriminating Instas and the dividing and hiding of financial assets are inherently more entertaining than heart emojis pinging between lovebirds. And, with heartwarming irony, a pair of broken- marriage shows are slugging it out for publicity and viewers…”
With Old Sparky: “When Andy Burnham took office in July there was a concerted effort to dissuade him from allowing development of the Jackdaw gas field, including Labour MP Clive Lewis commenting that the party risked adding ‘the stain of the climate crisis’ to its record on, er, Gaza. Despite this, Burnham breezily observed we’ll need the gas anyway. Producing gas locally results in far lower emissions of greenhouse gases than imports...”
With Lunchtime O’Boulez: “The closure of Nottingham University’s music department, announced a few weeks ago (see last Eye), has been denounced as a ‘colossal blow’ to cultural life across the East Midlands by the matriarch of Britain’s most fêted musical family, Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason – mother to cellist Sheku, pianist Isata, and an orchestra of other concertising siblings who, as it happens, grew up in Nottingham…”
Letter from Paris
From Our Own Correspondent: “Chapeau to our irrepressible anarchist and ultra-leftist agitators for boosting Marine Le Pen’s chances of becoming the first politician from the extreme right to run France since the Nazi occupation! It’s probably not what they intended, but that is what they have achieved by hijacking the largely peaceful student protests over underfunded schools and by unleashing the orgy of violence and looting that shocked our benighted country…”
With Gold Digger: “Manchester City is far from the only football club to have faced penalties over dodgy finances and auditing (see last Eye). Take Chelsea FC, whose new owner reported multiple unauthorised payments to football agents that had been approved by senior executives but had not gone through the club’s official books in the period 2009-2022. The 74 rule breaches found by the Football Association last year didn’t stop the new owner…”