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With Bio-Waste Spreader: "Proving that the government is making up post-Brexit farm policy on the hoof, environment secretary Michael Gove has only just made his first public utterance on likely tariffs on UK food imports after 29 March. That he left it so late to reveal that he intends to maintain EU-level import tariffs on most foods has shocked many. Gove may not have wanted to discuss tariffs publicly or with ministerial colleagues before now because he knows how controversial protectionist tariffs that raise food prices are within Tory ranks. Brexiteer ultras like Jacob Rees-Mogg and Owen Paterson have repeatedly referred to ‘cheap food’ as being one of the main rewards of Brexit...”
With M.D.: "Why hasn’t there been a public inquiry into the Gosport War Memorial Hospital scandal? Last year, an independent panel found a ‘disregard for human life and a culture of shortening the lives of a large number of patients’ between 1998 and 2000; but it didn’t take oral evidence and couldn’t compel those involved to publicly explain their actions. When patients are harmed by healthcare, the first question is whether the harm was avoidable. If so, was it down to human error or was it (far more rarely) deliberate? In all cases of serious harm, there should be a prompt, thorough, independent investigation that is published in full. Covering up such harm should be a criminal offence…”
With Dr B Ching: "Regulation of fares has kept some off-peak ticket prices ‘artificially low’, according to the rail industry. After years of above-inflation rises in regulated fares, that will be news to passengers. So how does the industry calibrate fares’ natural level? Has it benchmarked them against average incomes over recent years? Er, no. It says some regulated fares are too cheap because they’re below what ‘the market can sustain’…”
With Remote Controller: "A difficult time in UK politics is inevitably also complex for the country’s political broadcasters – especially for the BBC, at a time when Scottish nationalist viewers speak the first word of British Broadcasting Corporation with a knowing vibrato, while Brexiteer English viewers sarcastically substitute ‘European’. Such suspicious scrutiny has led to a remit-future-proofing shake-up of the BBC’s ‘offer’, including the launch of BBC Scotland, a new channel aiming to give Anglophone Scots an equivalent of the Gaelic-language BBC Alba…
[reviews of BBC Scotland, Question Time (BBC1) and This Week (BBC1)].”
With Old Sparky: "In the last Eye we told how a developer in Wales is pressing regulator Ofgem for subsidies for a windfarm that by rights hasn’t remotely qualified by the relevant deadline but is seemingly confident it will prevail. Now a strangely similar story emerges of another cocksure but wildly implausible Welsh subsidy bid: a ‘renewable’ incinerator designed to generate electricity from tens of thousands of tonnes of waste wood at Barry Docks each year. Ofgem is actively entertaining its claim for a bung that is even more far-fetched than the windfarm’s…”
With Lunchtime O’Boulez: "The last Eye reported that Wolverhampton council had destroyed the historically important organ at Wolverhampton’s Civic Hall, and dumped the 6,000-plus pipes in a landfill site. Having decided to get rid of the organ because it took up too much space, the council was conveniently advised the pipes were contaminated with asbestos dust, and that it would be too expensive to clean them at an alleged cost of £250 per pipe. So instead it paid contractors £48,000 plus VAT to dismantle and dump the lot…”
With Slicker: "Accountancy firm KPMG is understood to have resigned as auditor to the family companies that are the focus of the fraternal punch-up between Tory MP Andrew Bridgen and his younger brother Paul… KPMG has been auditor since 2015 to the AB Produce/Bridgen Investments group of private companies, in which the Bridgen brothers are the major shareholders… KPMG provided a rare ‘disclaimer of opinion’ regarding the delayed 2017 accounts for the food and property companies, after allegations made by Andrew Bridgen about their management and the use of company assets. The MP asked Leicestershire police to investigate last year…”
Letter from Singapore
From Our Own Correspondent: "It is a constant source of bewilderment to many in our city-state paradise to witness the enthusiasm with which some of your politicians insist that post-Brexit Britain could become like Singapore. Free Britain from the shackles of the EU and the curse of free movement if you will – but this, a country built on the backs of migrant workers, is a very particular sort of model…”