With Bio-Waste Spreader: "In an attempt to limit food price rises in shops due to the Iran war, the Treasury asked supermarkets to put a voluntary price cap on essential grocery items. The supermarkets pushed back, with the boss of Marks and Spencer calling it "completely preposterous". The government backed down after just 24 hours and has instead now proposed reduced import tariffs on biscuits, chocolate and dried fruit. Are these trivial measures symptomatic of a government that has lost the plot…"
With MD: "Wes Streeting was a below average health secretary, lasting 677 days when the career average in post is 820 days. He inherited a health and social care service in a dire post-pandemic state which had suffered a succession of even more temporary Tory health secretaries (Thérèse Coffey, 49 days; Steve Barclay part 1, 63 days; Victoria Atkins, 234 days; Sajid Javid, 374 days; Steve Barclay part 2, 384 days). Andy Burnham was also below average, managing just 340 days as health secretary at the fag-end of New Labour, but…"
With Dr B Ching: "If Andy Burnham does win the Makerfield by-election and later become prime minister, the first test of whether he goes native in Whitehall or sticks to his northern principles awaits not in Manchester but in West Yorkshire, in the shape of trams as part of an integrated transport service. His main achievement as Greater Manchester's mayor since 2017 is in transport. Manchester's ‘Bee Network' is the first publicly controlled bus system to replace Margaret Thatcher's deregulated free-for-all…"
With Remote Controller: "Can there be an odder couple than the latest dramas from Channel 4 and Disney+? Although by coincidence set in factual and fictional versions of Gloucestershire and dealing with intense relationships, one – by deliberate and publicised decision of TV's busiest writer, Jack Thorne – contains no sex scenes at all, while the other is more or less all shagging tableaux, courtesy of its begetting novelist, the late Dame Jilly Cooper…"
With Old Sparky: "If fossil fuels are on the way out, why has Centrica, aka British Gas, just spent £370m to buy the big gas-fired Severn power station in Newport, south Wales? Easy. It knows more about gas than anyone – certainly more than previous owner Calon Energy – and it thinks that, paradoxically, plants like Severn will thrive under energy secretary Ed Miliband's ‘zero carbon' plans by, well, keeping the lights on. Calon has a chequered history as a portfolio of three power stations…"
With Lunchtime O'Boulez: "The Southbank Centre has been underperforming for a while, so the row in the press about its chair, Misan Harriman, with calls for him to be dismissed, is no surprise. Harriman's appointment in 2021 was never promising. A photographer who positions himself as a spokesman for the marginalised, he is also the privately educated son of a Nigerian billionaire and much of his work is fashion shoots for glossy magazines. His engagement with and interest in serious music is tenuous…"
Letter from Maputo
From Our Own Correspondent: "Why would a poor country, and a government with terrible reputation for corruption, decide to pay off in full a zero-interest $700m IMF loan three years early, when it is still paying up to 20 percent interest on $14bn of other debts? Mozambicans are scratching their heads at this latest eccentricity from ‘A Girafa', our two-metre-plus tall president, Daniel Chapo. It's not as if there is no poverty to alleviate or crumbling infrastructure to repair…"
With Gold Digger: "Action announced in this month's King's Speech to tackle the scourge of late payments to small businesses barely qualifies as the ‘incrementalism' from which Keir Starmer is supposedly keen to move on. The government's business department estimates that late payments cost the economy £11bn each year and lead to the closure of around 14,000 small businesses. In response to this, Peter Kyle's business department will impose maximum payment terms…"