With MD: "The threat of redundancy can be as bad for your health as redundancy itself, and senior managers at NHS England (NHSE) and the integrated care boards (ICBs) have been living with the threat since March. The Treasury initially refused extra funding for the departures over the NHS's current settlement, meaning the estimated £1bn redundancy costs would have had to be taken from money meant for services. But it has now allowed the NHS to overspend this year…"
With Dr B Ching: "The government is determined to sideline ‘blockers' that stand in the way of new housing developments – but one of these ‘blockers' is, er, itself. It takes way too long to build new stations on the government-owned rail network. At least 3,000 homes are planned on brownfield land at Beam Park in east London. In 2015 the Greater London Authority and Barking & Dagenham council earmarked £10m for a station on the adjacent railway…"
With Remote Controller: "The annual edition live from Blackpool of Strictly Come Dancing, seen as the point at which the likeliest finalists among the am-pro couples have emerged, started this year with a performance by the stars of the UK touring production of Here & Now: The Steps Musical. With BBC Editorial Policy on high alert at the moment, someone perhaps should have noted that the Steps medley included the band's 1998 Bee Gees cover version, "Tragedy"…"
With Old Sparky: "Minuscule energy supplier Tomato Energy went bust this month, propelled into administration by a £1.5m fine from regulator Ofgem for being inadequately capitalised. Along with fellow tiddler Rebel Energy (which ceased trading in April), it caps three years of relative market stability, following a chaotic period in which more than 50 small suppliers and a couple of large ones, notably Bulb, collapsed..."
With Lunchtime O'Boulez: "There was a time when changing jobs from running English National Opera to running the Roundhouse in Camden Town would have looked like a retrograde move. Jenny Mollica has just announced her intention to do just that, which says a lot about ENO's sadly reduced circumstances. Mollica has had the top job at the Coliseum for the past two years, during which time the company has enjoyed the odd moment of glory…"
Letter from Rio de Janeiro
From Our Own Correspondent: "While the hot air produced by world experts was contributing to rising temperatures at the Amazonian climate conference in Belém, our president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was getting heat for the deadliest police raid in Brazil's history. The massacre, which left 121 dead including four police, was the work of Rio's specialist urban combat squad, BOPE – whose logo is a skull with a dagger plunged into it…"
With Gold Digger: "Announcing the latest sanctions against Russia last month ("a huge blow for Putin's war machine"), chancellor Rachel Reeves also promised: "We will ban imports of oil products refined in third countries from Russian-origin crude oil." But this is likely to prove easier said than done given that Russian oil can be sent via countries which don't sanction it, then sent on in a different form. And those who source oil from questionable origins are nothing if not persistent..."