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With Bio-Waste Spreader: "Farmers in Great Britain (ie the UK excluding Northern Ireland) are still reeling from the implications of the planned ‘free trade’ deal with Australia. On the table is a proposal to phase out all tariffs on food imports from Australia, and a similar deal is predicted with Canada. So how should farmers plan ahead? If Westminster is serious about allowing food imports into Great Britain without tariffs or quotas, much domestic food production will quickly become uneconomic…”
With Dr B Ching: "The Williams-Shapps Plan for Rail took three years to produce, but its authors were so vague before MPs on 26 May that it seems like barely three weeks’ work. The plan describes some of the flaws – obvious for decades – of fragmenting the rail system and says the future Great British Railways will incorporate Network Rail and control timetables, fares and branding. It leaves hundreds of questions unanswered, some of which the Commons transport committee asked transport secretary Grant Shapps and rail-review leader Keith Williams…”
With Remote Controller: "Billed as ‘only the second time’ since the end of the NBC sitcom that the six actors ‘have been in the same room’, Friends: The Reunion had you, within a minute, wondering what the other time was; and, after two, wishing they’d filmed that instead. During weeks of hysterical previews across mainstream media and socials, many seemed to believe, presumably from the level of fuss, that this was a new episode of Friends. In fact, the ‘non-scripted special’ featured Jennifer Aniston, Lisa Kudrow, Matthew Perry, Matt LeBlanc, David Schwimmer and Courteney Cox meeting on the reconstructed sets of their living room and the Central Perk coffee shop…”
With Old Sparky: "A BBC2 documentary series on EDF’s Hinkley Point C nuclear power station project got off to an extraordinary start last week with a chaplain performing a blessing on, er, concrete-pouring. But then concrete, steel and tunnelling are about all EDF has to show for its protracted nuke-building efforts in the UK. Of the reactors there is no sign: they won’t be built for quite a while yet, if ever. Back in 2008, EDF told us that if Hinkley wasn’t up and running by 2017 there’d be no Christmas turkey as we’d be all out of electricity…”
With Lunchtime O’Boulez: "After the relaxations of 17 May, everyone assumed choral singing could get back to business. Alas, no. With the British public free to meet in large numbers and scream at the top of its collective voice in pubs and sporting events, without warning it emerged that the orderly, Covid-conscious gathering of amateur choirs would remain banned. This is despite the absence of any meaningful data to explain the decision. Culture secretary Oliver Dowden is now under blistering attack to change his policy…”
With Slicker: "Once again, money rules when it comes to the City and the lure of Moscow gold. Despite worsening relations with Russia – which was accused last week of ‘aggressive behaviour’ by foreign secretary Dominic Raab, not to mention the odd poisoning or hacking – London’s bankers, lawyers, accountants and even regulators are still open for Russian business. Leading Russian gold miner Nord Gold has confirmed a $5bn flotation in London which will produce a potential $1.25bn for the family interests of one of Russia’s richest men and most important industrialists…”
Letter from Tripoli
From Our Own Correspondent: "Ah, Britain! When you weren’t partitioning up odd bits of empire in the 20th century, you were stitching other places together. Tripolitania and Cyrenaica were occupied by the Desert Rats after victory at Tobruk and united as Libya for independence in 1951. The results have been on the catastrophic side of disappointing. The two ancient Roman provinces have never really fitted together. We tried feudal federalism under a king. We tried oil-fuelled corruption, chaos and a police state under Gaddafi…”