With Bio-Waste Spreader: “A significant minority of those who voted to leave in the Brexit referendum in June 2016 regarded the UK’s opportunity to control its own agricultural and food trade policies as a deciding factor. A decade later, how have these policies changed, and what has been the impact of those changes on consumers, taxpayers and farmers? For consumers, the impact on food prices from leaving the EU and its Common Agricultural Policy has so far been limited…”
With MD: “Doctors’ strikes planned for last week were called off after the British Medical Association’s (BMA) resident doctors’ committee agreed to put a government offer to its members. If accepted, pay will increase, on average, 6.6 percent across all grades by April 2027. There will also be between 4,000 and 4,500 additional specialty training posts to start to tackle the 2025-26 bottleneck, when nearly 50,000 doctors (including those from abroad) applied for 13,000 spaces…”
With Dr B Ching: “The government cites its target of 75 percent more rail freight to assuage jitters as its railways bill passes through parliament – but last year fewer goods trains ran than ever before. Stats published this month show a 7 percent year-on-year drop in the number of freight trains in 2025-26, when the total was ‘lower than any previous year’. Tonnage loaded on to trains fell 5 percent. Britain’s biggest freight-train firm is planning redundancies…”
With Lady Liberty: “Call it good cop, bad cop – or maybe spineless cop, insane cop. As he met Iran’s negotiators in Switzerland, vice-president JD Vance said he hoped to ‘turn over a new leaf’ with their country, while Donald Trump reportedly threatened to ‘bomb the shit’ out of Iran and ensure they personally didn’t make it home. Not a classic diplomatic strategy, but then Trump has been refreshingly open about his approach to the Iran peace deal…”
With Remote Controller: “Romantic drama depends on placing obstacles between would-be lovers: class, race, faith, cash, sexuality, location, jail. In a culture that has removed most taboos, though, it’s increasingly hard to find reasons why Jack and Jane, Jack and Jack, Jane and Jane or any throuple or foursome within should not be together. Religion can still be a useful unglue…”
With Old Sparky: “After nine months of investigation into whether tree-burning power company Drax made culpably misleading statements to investors, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has concluded that it didn’t. In a short press release, the FCA emphasised that its self-imposed remit was narrow – looking at three specific annual reports – and apparently ‘there’s nothing to see here, move along’. So that’s all right, then. Doubtless the FCA was able to reconcile Drax’s statements to shareholders…”
With Lunchtime O’Boulez: “The 2026 Proms season is likely to open next month to the usual complaints from the BBC: that more than a fifth of the Albert Hall’s 5,000 or so seats are unavailable for it to sell because they’re privately owned. Private owners face no effective scrutiny for flogging seats in competition with the BBC (‘ticket touting for posh people’, as some have put it in parliament). The hall is a charity, run by a council of trustees…”
Letter from Lima
From Our Own Correspondent: “Machu Picchu, the stunning jungle mountaintop Inca city discovered in 1911, is these days fairly easily reached from Cuzco. The problem is getting an entry ticket. The ruins have been sequestered lock and stock by locals of a scrubby adobe-shack village deep in a neighbouring quebrada, still swept by landslides. Top up your life insurance if you go in the rainy season…”