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With M.D.: "Underperforming NHS hospitals will be shamed in league tables and persistently failing health bosses will be sacked, promises health secretary Wes Streeting. It's a bold move and when Blair's Labour tried this, managers fiddled the figures and gamed targets to nudge themselves up the table and save their jobs. Others felt aggrieved they were being named, shamed and blamed for, say, working in areas of high deprivation…"
With Bio-Waste Spreader: "Controversy rumbles on following Rachel Reeves's budget, in which the chancellor abolished agricultural property relief (APR), so making farmland subject to inheritance tax (IHT). In addition to a demonstration in London, ‘direct action' is contemplated by farmers. But is the anger justified? For a historic precedent there's David Lloyd George's 1909 budget as chancellor of Herbert Asquith's Liberal government…"
With Dr B Ching: "Keir Starmer's COP29 pledge of faster cuts to UK carbon emissions might have been more believable had his chancellor made different transport choices in her budget. Rachel Reeves' decision to continue the 5p cut in road vehicle fuel duty next year, and not even raise duty with inflation, makes it even harder to get significantly more people and freight switching to rail, which has a lower carbon footprint than road…"
With Remote Controller: "In a past heaven for political journalists, overnight election shows were either not recorded in full or, once technology made that possible, were confined to a video library to be watched only by historians or TV documentary researchers choosing clips carefully cropped to remove confident predictions of victory for the eventual loser. Now, in the digital hell, it's all preserved for eternity…"
With Old Sparky: "Following the Eye's recent revelations on the credibility crisis at tree-burning power company Drax, questions are now being asked in parliament… In the wake of allegations made in a 2022 Panorama exposé, an investigation by auditor KPMG and work by its own staff revealed Drax's failures when reporting data to the authorities on the sustainability or otherwise of its wood-pellet fuel. …"
With Lunchtime O'Boulez: "While slapping VAT on private school fees, chancellor Rachel Reeves ignored the fact that not all private schools are for the rich. Specialist music schools like Chethams, the Purcell School and Yehudi Menuhin School support super-gifted children, around 90 percent of whom receive a bursary, with 61 of the 98 pupils at the Yehudi Menuhin School on means-tested state-funding. The school now faces an annual VAT bill of £650,000…"
With Slicker: "The history of Labour politicians and City regulation is not a happy one. Chancellor Gordon Brown and his Treasury ministers lavished praise on City bankers and the financial services sector's ‘golden goose' role in the British economy while introducing the infamous ‘light touch' regulation which helped fuel the 2008 global financial crisis. Now Rachel Reeves, ironically employed by HBOS when it needed a taxpayer-funded rescue, seems determined to pursue a similar path..."
Letter from São Paulo
From Our Own Correspondent: "Brazil's endemic violence lost its shock value long ago. Signs in Rio de Janeiro often blandly flash up traffic information warnings of a "shootout ahead" as motorists yawn into their steering wheels. But there was no time for the arrivals board in Terminal 2 of São Paulo's international airport to give passengers a similar warning on 8 November…"