With Bio-Waste Spreader: "English farmers are reeling at the overnight closure of the Westminster government's flagship agri-environment scheme, the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI), there being no certainty it will ever reopen. With farms minister Daniel Zeichner saying farmers ‘are not going to be supported by the public purse for ever', is National Farmers' Union president Tom Bradshaw right to tell his members to prepare for a future without subsidies?…"
With M.D.: "Health secretary Wes Streeting will certainly have more power when NHS England is abolished, but will he have any more control? Despite claiming to be a national body, there is still huge variability in practice and outcome across the NHS, along with thousands of disconnected hierarchies that are nearly impossible to control. Before being elected, David Cameron and Keir Starmer both promised to avoid top-down reorganisations…"
With Dr B Ching: "Ashford station's ‘international' section – built at hefty taxpayer expense – was a convenient place for many south-east citizens to board Eurostar trains to France and Belgium. Since the pandemic, those trains no longer stop at Ashford and whizz past (Eye 1596), and Eurostar isn't about to serve Ashford again. It told the BBC last month that only 1.4 percent of its passengers travelled from Ashford in 2019…"
With Remote Controller: "The BBC's This City Is Ours premiered after enthusing previews and a Radio Times front cover, but the start of transmission coincided with Netflix's Adolescence becoming the first streamer show to top the UK weekly ratings and even getting a mention at prime minister's questions. Although an extreme example, this illustrates the difficulty of BBC dramas in getting made and heard against the financial and programming might of foreign digital giants…"
With Old Sparky: "Insiders at power company Drax say the company is in permanent crisis mode, following the last Eye's revelations of the tree-burner's flaky positions on many fronts. Freedom of information requests and whistleblower reports are pouring into Ofgem and other government agencies; ministers refuse to meet Drax suits; and energy secretary Ed Miliband's decision on Drax's urgent demand for more ‘renewables' bungs has been bounced off the government ‘grid' into the long grass…"
With Lunchtime O'Boulez: "An up-and-down week for London's concert venues, starting with the good news that Wigmore Hall is doing so well financially it can carry out a longstanding threat and put two fingers up at Arts Council England, turning down regular support. Voluntarily abandoning £345,000 a year in grants is brave. But Wigmore boss John Gilhooly thinks it a price worth paying…"
With Slicker: "With the threatened Trump tariffs a new obstacle to Labour's hopes for growth to avoid more spending cuts or higher taxes, the City deregulation chorus is expected to grow louder. But what is the evidence that less regulation of financial services means more economic growth? A Treasury policy paper last month suggested ‘red tape' could cost 3-4 percent of GDP (or around £70bn) across the whole economy…"
Letter from New Delhi
From Our Own Correspondent: "Senior members of Indian prime minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its ultra-right-wing affiliates know what they like: a constant ‘revenge assault' on the sub-continent's communal history. Plans to demolish the tomb of Aurangzeb, a 17th-century despotic Mughal ruler, is the latest move by the BJP to avenge what it says were centuries of Hindu persecution under Muslim rule…"