Easyjet

Wednesday

Martin Vander Weyer

Farming today: field fires and food price hikes ahead

From our UK edition

I report from FTSE boardrooms and City bars, but I also spend time – mostly in Yorkshire, currently in France – among farmers who often feel ignored by the rest of the business media. This week, with three-quarters of England officially in drought and produce imports afflicted by fierce heat across Europe, agriculture is for once top of the agenda. So what has this freakish summer really done to our fields? My northern arable correspondent has never seen an earlier harvest, with ‘barley less than average, oilseed rape excellent, wheat OK on heavy clay but very poor on lighter soils. Slight rises in crop prices won’t compensate for yield reductions, we’ve lost the safety net of direct acreage subsidies – and a single spark from a combine or baler can set whole fields alight.

Wednesday

Catriona Olding

Trapped with the plane passengers from Hell

Provence Under late June’s ferocious heat dome, during what turned out to be an almost eight-hour drive to join Martin Vander Weyer and his guests for three nights in the Dordogne, my car was telling me it wouldn’t start due to a recurring AdBlue emissions fault. And my old phone was pegging out. At home I hadn’t had hot water – or cold – for five days because the boiler was broken. There was also a leak. I had to turn the water on and off at the mains when I needed it. Life was turning out to be more troglodyte than I bargained for. Although the water, when it ran, was chilly, my brain was overheating even before the temperature hit 44°C in the Dordogne. Like the UK, I don’t have enough income or savings to cover all my bills.

Martin Vander Weyer

Count Binface has shown Burnham how to make a manifesto

From our UK edition

Count Binface’s manifesto, made for Makerfield and tweaked for Clacton, is a rare point of light in today’s Stygian political landscape. Could there be a more concise satirical takedown than ‘I will cut your taxes and raise everyone else’s’ or a sharper transport policy than ‘Wifi on trains that works; also trains that work’? This weekend offers a last chance for mischief-makers to suggest a matching agenda for Andy Burnham, before the real ragbag of inner-Labour compromise is unveiled over the coming weeks. Here’s my four-point contribution. First, don’t nationalise anything, not even Thames Water.

Tuesday

Christa D’Souza

London can’t lose easyJet

From our UK edition

Of all the disturbing news out there at the moment, up there is some American company's possible takeover of easyJet. Last week we learned that the budget airline had agreed in principle to a £5.7 billion takeover offer from US asset management firm Apollo – days after accepting a bid from rival firm Castlelake. What? Good old sleazyJet exiting the London market? Just when it was becoming really, really good? Alright, I may be exaggerating slightly here – budget airlines never get really, really good (that is why they are called budget, dear). But there is budget and then there is budget. Who can forget when Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary floated the idea of standing seats on flights and a £1 ‘pay-per-pee’ fee to use the lavatory in 2010?

Wednesday

Martin Vander Weyer

For true Brits, air con is as foreign as a bidet

From our UK edition

A quartet of news stories all point in the same troubling direction. First, easyJet is about to become the latest notable name to leave the London Stock Exchange, following last month’s takeover of Tate & Lyle by a US buyer. The FTSE 250-listed low-cost airline is keen to accept a £5.5 billion offer from Castlelake, a private equity firm that’s also – you’ve guessed it – from the US. Inherent volatility in the aviation business combined with the presence of founder Stelios Haji-Ioannou as a minority shareholder has made easyJet a turbulent long-haul flight for investors. The shares have rocketed since Castlelake came into the picture, so cashing out looks rational – but the predation of our public market by foreign bargain-hunters goes on and on.

Thursday

Martin Vander Weyer

Our theatres are dark – and in danger

From our UK edition

Car showrooms are open again: some dealerships, with a hint of forgivable hyperbole, report a surge of pent-up demand. And after building only 197 new cars this April, compared with 71,000 in April 2019, car factories are returning to production — even if under new safety rules that will slash productivity for the duration and accelerate the shift to job-eliminating robotics for the longer term. But still the Daily Telegraph offers an uplifting glimpse of Land Rover’s Solihull plant emerging from hibernation: ‘At 5 a.m., as the first shift came in, every production manager was out in the car park to greet returning staff.

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Unemployment up, bathers banned and Corbyn’s brother arrested

From our UK edition

Home The United Kingdom seemed reluctant to come out of its lockdown. ‘We are likely to face a severe recession, the likes of which we haven’t seen,’ said Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Unemployment rose by 856,500 in April to 2.1 million. More than two million claims had been made for the grant scheme for self-employed people. The government was estimated to be paying ten million of the UK’s 27.5 million private-sector workers. At quiet railway stations, wardens supposedly trained in crowd control stood around talking to each other. Police in England and Wales issued 14,444 fixed penalty notices for breach of the coronavirus regulations up to 11 May; one person was fined nine times.

Saturday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Coronavirus hits cabinet, EasyJet grounded and postman soldiers on

From our UK edition

Home Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, contracted the coronavirus disease Covid-19, as did Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary. The Prince of Wales had earlier been tested in Scotland and isolated himself with the disease for a week. Chris Whitty, the government’s chief medical adviser, also isolated himself after suffering symptoms, as did Dominic Cummings, the Prime Minister’s chief strategist. By Sunday 29 March, 1,228 people in the United Kingdom had died of the disease, compared with a total of 281 a week before. Two days later the total was 1,789. Two more temporary hospitals, in Birmingham and Manchester, in addition to the Nightingale Hospital in the London docks, were being built. Restrictions might last six months.