With Bio-Waste Spreader: "National Farmers' Union president Tom Bradshaw has warned that food prices in the UK could ‘lead the way for domestic inflation' due to the near doubling in the price of oil. But is Bradshaw just trying to make agriculture sound important to policy makers, or is there any truth in it? He's certainly correct to suggest the cost of growing foods like tomatoes and cucumbers is likely to increase, and this will soon feed through into increased hot-house salad produce prices. But…"
With MD: "‘Under-performing NHS bosses are being quietly moved on rather than being named and shamed,' health secretary Wes Streeting told Radio 4's Today programme last week. ‘I'm not in the business of humiliating people to try and look tough politically. What I am in the business of doing is quietly, effectively and efficiently moving on poor-performing senior leaders where they are not delivering the improvement that's needed.' Streeting then named the five trusts ‘where we've had stubborn under-performance'…"
With Dr B Ching: "The Labour government's plan to launch HS2 with slower trains sounds barmy but is a sensible response to the mess it inherited from the Tories. However, it's taking too long to decide where HS2 trains to the north will join the 19th-century west-coast mainline. Testing the new trains at the previously planned 224mph top speed would delay the launch of HS2 services even more, but for 186mph max they could be tested on HS1 (the London-Folkestone high-speed line) before HS2's track opens…"
With Remote Controller: "Before transmission of Power: The Downfall of Huw Edwards, two high-level former BBC journalists argued publicly that 5's feature-length docudrama should not have been made. One was former BBC News boss Roger Mosey, arguing that drama risked falsifying the story and the better genre would have been documentary. The other was Edwards himself, railing to the Mail in a statement that the makers of the film had not approached him for his side of the story…"
With Old Sparky: "The energy crisis of 2021-22 precipitated the demise of around 30 energy suppliers. In most cases the underlying reason was under-capitalisation, which in times of turbulence can have fatal consequences. It's not just that firms with weak balance sheets are vulnerable to disruptive market conditions; poor credit ratings also mean they can't transact the long-term financial hedges a commodity-trading firm needs to iron out fluctuating market prices…"
With Lunchtime O'Boulez: "When Baroness (Margaret) Hodge appeared before parliament's culture committee the other week to discuss her independent review of Arts Council England, it was clear she was not going to let Nadine Dorries off the hook for launching the chain of events that reduced English National Opera (ENO) to its present sorry state. It was Dorries who, during her brief reign as culture secretary, instructed the council to divert money from London to the provinces…"
Letter from Tbilisi
From Our Own Correspondent: "Bad news for homophobes and conspiracy theorists in Georgia: the UK has sanctioned two of our government's propaganda television channels, Imedi TV and POSTV. Both are now subject to asset freezes and other sanctions for pushing Russian disinformation about Ukraine. And there's double bad news for our gang of anti-liberal, pro-Russian knuckle-draggers. They should be the toast of the town in Trump circles, but there's a fly in the ointment…"
With Gold Digger: "For all the harrumphing about what images should go on banknotes and whether Winston Churchill should be replaced by a beaver (Kemi Badenoch: ‘erasing our history'), perhaps a better question would be why we need so many banknotes in the first place. The number of payments made using cash, according to figures from industry group UK Finance, has fallen roughly 70 percent from around 17bn in 2015 to fewer than 5bn, or less than 10 percent of all transactions, last year…"