With Bio-Waste Spreader: "News that a wild beaver has been spotted in Norfolk for the first time in 500 years has been greeted with approval by wildlife organisations – but also with anxiety by farmers in the region, many of whose farms rely on efficient modern drainage systems to stop them from flooding. Can beavers, famous for raising water levels by damming rivers and for burrowing through riverbanks, be accommodated in England's low-lying arable farming heartland?…"
With MD: "How many inquiries into NHS maternity failures do we need before we make the service safer for mothers and babies (Eyes passim)? Nearly 750 recommendations relating to maternity and neonatal care have been made over the past decade, and yet avoidable harm keeps happening. The latest national review, led by Baroness (Valerie) Amos, is not a public inquiry and there is no formal evaluation or assessment of any individual trust's performance or those of individual staff members…"
With Dr B Ching: "Ministers are conning the public by boasting they are ‘freezing rail fares for the first time in 30 years' (Rachel Reeves, 26 November), will ‘freeze rail fares' (transport secretary Heidi Alexander, 9 December) and are ‘freezing rail fares for the whole of next year' (Keir Starmer, 24 November). They omit to say they've only decided to freeze ‘regulated' fares (Eye 1663). Season tickets will be frozen but cover just 13 percent of journeys, down from 34 percent in 2019-20…"
With Remote Controller: "In 1975, when the BBC's big Christmas Day offering was Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em, no viewer could have predicted that, 50 Christmases later, slapstick sitcom's star Michael Crawford would receive a Kennedy Center lifetime achievement award; still less that it would come from someone who was then a little-known New York realtor, honouring Crawford because he was good, so good in The Phantom of the Opera. Most shows in that 1975 schedule have since vanished…"
With Old Sparky: "Last month the prime minister issued his ‘strategic steer to the nuclear sector' – a short, belligerent document demanding that all nuclear projects be developed "at pace" (repeated seven times). Breaking with a very long tradition of being coy on the matter, Keir Starmer makes it abundantly clear (14 times) that the urgent national nuclear programme he's ordering includes military nukes and submarines as well as power stations. Presumably the intended readership for this bellicosity is presidents Putin and Trump..."
With Lunchtime O'Boulez: "Bangor Cathedral has just sacked its director of music after months of accumulating scandal that brought down not only its dean but the Archbishop of Wales. Earlier this year reports emerged of heavy drinking, lewd behaviour and the misuse of diocesan funds for choir trips (Eye 1652). Claims of broad financial mismanagement have left the cathedral with a £300,000 deficit and close to bankruptcy…"
Letter from Manila
From Our Own Correspondent: "It's the season to be angry in south-east Asia. Young people have been rioting and protesting over corruption and impunity in Indonesia and Malaysia; now too in the Philippines. Here in Manila, billions of dollars have been siphoned from flood control projects into the pockets of contractors and bureaucrats. Eight senior members of the Department of Public Works and Highways were arrested in late November – but only because of an unprecedented public outcry…"
With Gold Digger: "Upmarket wine has long been an enticing investment for some, more alluring than stocks and shares and with the fall-back option of drinking the asset. But it has also long been targeted by some dubious operators, leaving punters with empty glasses. The latest outfit to disappoint, to put it mildly, is Milton Keynes-based Oeno Group, owned and run in recent years by one Michael Doerr. According to the company, he has been ‘passionate about luxury assets and wine from a very early age'..."