With Bio-Waste Spreader: "Farmers in tractors are sporadically blockading supermarket distribution centres as they accuse the big food retailers of, among other things, responsibility for driving down farmgate milk prices. But are they right to blame Lidl, Tesco et al for the collapse in the price of milk? Restlessness among dairy farmers is not surprising. The average milk price has plunged recently to about 38p/litre, which is 11p/litre below the average cost of production…"
With MD: "The Health Service Journal reports that senior managers at an unnamed acute London trust met after the last round of resident (formerly junior) doctors' strikes and ‘resolved to dismiss their entire resident doctor workforce, hire back a third of them and reconfigure pathways to give consultants and non-medical clinicians a greater role'. In addition, ‘many in the service's leadership believe the government will be making a big mistake if it settles the resident doctors' strike…"
With Dr B Ching: "A recent letter from the Office of Rail and Road regulator to MPs about the Manchester-London ‘ghost train' debacle late last year should be compulsory reading for critics of the government's overhaul of timetable planning. Rail fragmentation makes updating the national timetable ludicrously complicated – witness the 2018 timetable fiasco and the years it took to amend the east coast mainline timetable to exploit £4bn of investment (Eyes passim). The ORR can order Network Rail's timetable planners to include or exclude specific trains…"
With Remote Controller: "It's neat that the first series of Château DIY: Win the Dream coincides with the 20th of The Apprentice. Confirming that there will ultimately be a TV elimination contest show for every sector of society, the newcomer is to middle-class wannabe painters, plasterers and carpenters what the veteran has long been to young, spivvish business chancers. Château DIY: Win the Dream spins off from Château DIY, a long-running C4 makeover following Brits renovating French properties…"
With Old Sparky: "One reason tree-burning electricity company Drax last March settled the humiliating employment case brought by whistleblower Rowaa Ahmar (Eye 1646) was to avoid publication of embarrassing documents. The judge has finally ruled on what Drax must make public, and this does not include the documents Drax most wanted to withhold (Eye 1662): text messages, and transcripts of three key interviews conducted during an internal inquiry…"
With Lunchtime O'Boulez: "Good, if startling, news: the Department for Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) is handing £1.5bn to ailing UK arts organisations and venues to ‘restore national pride' in our cultural life. Whence this bounty? The small print reveals that some is from promises a year ago, and that it will arrive slowly – between now and 2030. Meanwhile, a recent National Audit Office report shows the DCMS had underspent its budgets over five years, amassing large sums…"
Letter from Kampala
From Our Own Correspondent: "There was never much doubt our octogenarian president Yoweri Museveni would get the seventh term that takes his rule over Uganda beyond 40 years in our ‘elections' on 15 January. The writing was on the wall when Kizza Besigye, leader of the opposition Forum for Democratic Change, was kidnapped in November by security officers in suburban Nairobi, capital of neighbouring Kenya. Several days later, Besigye, once Museveni's personal physician and a minister in his first government, turned up in front of a military court…"
With Gold Digger: "The wheels of justice turn slowly, especially when it comes to those rare prosecutions of something the Eye has long covered: foreign elites enjoying allegedly illicit wealth in the UK. Former Nigerian oil minister Diezani Alison-Madueke went on trial at Southwark Crown Court last week accused of taking bribes, in the form of large financial advantages in the UK, from oil industry bosses looking to obtain concessions..."