With Bio-Waste Spreader: "National Farmers' Union (NFU) president Tom Bradshaw has decided to wind down the union's protests about the imposition of 20 percent inheritance tax (IHT) on farmland. Instead, it will concentrate on cautioning the government that its current policies towards agriculture risk undermining UK food production. Why the change of tack? The obvious answer is that the protests simply weren't working…"
With M.D.: "The NHS Counter Fraud Authority (NHS CFA) is examining billing irregularities in the private cataract market, which has grown by 400 percent since 2019, the Sunday Times reports. The NHS pays for 650,000 operations a year. Across England, 131 private clinics have opened since 2019, with costs for the NHS doubling. The Eye has previously reported on concerns that mass outsourcing to the private sector of easier cataract operations could destabilise NHS eye units…"
With Dr B Ching: "The stupidity of the government's policy of raising peak intercity fares annually has been exposed in new research from... the government! Since the pandemic, Westminster has controlled the fares of English ex-franchisees, including 'anytime' fares for peak intercity journeys. Labour's 4.6 percent fare rise in March took the full-price Manchester-London return (standard class) to £386, although relentless annual rises have not boosted revenue per passenger mile or per journey…"
With Remote Controller: "TV having created the oxymoron of the live funeral, the British model for a papal requiem is a monarch's rites, although with the differences that the successor is unknown and the ceremony has a strong supernatural future tense – the late head of state's acceptance into heaven – that is more discreet in Anglican royal obsequies. Because Benedict XVI resigned nine years before he died, the funeral of Pope Francis marked the first obsequies of an incumbent Pope for 20 years…"
With Lunchtime O'Boulez: "The Performing Right Society, aka PRS for Music, collects royalty payments on behalf of its members, many of them composers with modest incomes. The system works on trust. But members are now saying that trust has broken down – a claim that will be tested in two legal actions being brought by PRS members. One action complains that lower-earning members are being made to subsidise higher earners by paying disproportionately high administration fees…"
With Slicker: "The Serious Farce Office (SFO) last week relaunched deferred prosecution agreements as its weapon of choice to fight corporate crime – almost 10 years after they were first deployed. Ironically the move came just as the US Department of Justice (DoJ), which initiated this approach, was at Donald Trump's directive retreating from prosecuting foreign bribery cases, where the tactic has been most effective. Deferred prosecution agreements (DPAs) have been a cash cow for the SFO and the Treasury…"
Letter from Kinshasa
From Our Own Correspondent: "Taking his cue from Washington and Moscow that authoritarian former presidents can and sometimes do make it back to power – usually madder and more vengeful than ever – our former president Joseph Kabila kicked off a tentative bid to do just that in Goma, in the war-torn east of our troubled land. Goma, along with a large chunk of eastern, less-than-Democratic Republic of the Congo, is in the hands of the M23…"