With Bio-Waste Spreader: "In its latest report on the UK farmland market, land agent Savills reports that land prices in Great Britain fell by an average of less than 1 percent in 2025, meaning the price of farmland has still risen by 26 percent since 2020, to £8,250 per acre. Farmland prices remain at three times the level of those in, for example, France, where it's still possible for new entrants to make a start in the industry. Can anything be done to make GB farmland more affordable?…"
With MD: "Baroness Amos, appointed to investigate the nation's maternity services by health secretary Wes Streeting last June, has published her interim report. As with the multitudinous previous maternity reports, it makes an accurate diagnosis (NHS maternity and neonatal units can't safely cope with the demands placed on them) without much hope it will be fixed. As Amos observes: ‘Women are now giving birth at older ages: in 2024, 61 percent of live births were to women aged 30 or older…"
With Dr B Ching: "Ashington to Newcastle trains have been a roaring success since Northern started the service in December 2024, even before the fifth of the six new stations opened last week. Upgrading the Ashington line, for passenger trains to connect deprived communities to jobs and facilities in Newcastle, was delayed by the industry's byzantine development processes (Eye 1518). In 2019 consultants predicted 518,000 passenger trips a year; in fact there were almost 1m in the first year…"
With Remote Controller: "Was it good luck or bad luck for ITV to have a drama about the former Duchess of York transmitting soon after she became the second most notorious living member of that royal house? An overnight rating of 1.9m for the opening episode of The Lady (more than double BBC1's Lord of the Flies on the same Sunday night) suggested bad publicity had boosted interest. But almost half of those had left by the second part…"
With Old Sparky: "A report by the CBI and an energy sector trade association bemoans industrial electricity prices, the UK's being among the very highest in the developed world and the biggest single risk to business and investment, according to companies surveyed. It is ‘essential to secure predictable, cheaper energy prices for businesses', it says. The ‘predictable' bit is easy: energy suppliers offer fixed-price agreements to businesses, as they do to residential customers. ‘Cheaper' will be harder…"
With Lunchtime O'Boulez: "London's Barbican Centre last week announced the sudden departure of its director of arts, Devyani Saltzman, after just 19 months – a tenure of record brevity even by the standard of her predecessor Will Gompertz, who managed two years. In times past, things were fairly stable at the Barbican, with John Tusa presiding for 12 years and then Nicholas Kenyon clocking up 14. But then Barbican staff took to throwing around accusations of ‘institutional racism'…"
Letter from Baku
From Our Own Correspondent: "Our dear president Ilham Aliyev was among the assorted actual and wannabe dictators who sought to polish their reputations at the inaugural meeting of Donald Trump's ‘Board of Peace' in Washington DC in February – a trip that included Aliyev's bodyguards being filmed attacking protesters. But America isn't the only country offering to help Aliyev launder his reputation as a serial oppressor of civil society, and, latterly, an ethnic cleanser…"