Mark Andrews: Kaleb solves the food crisis, an extramarital affair with a chatbot, and why turning towns into housing estates is not regeneration
With food prices rocketing by 19 per cent in one year, the Prime Minister decided to do something about it. He held a summit at Downing Street.
Now you might imagine that would involve summoning supermarket bosses and farmers' leaders, and banging a few heads together. Asking how the Government can help in terms of getting rid of red tape, but also demanding tangible benefits in return. A bit of stick and carrot, if you like.
Instead, he invited Kaleb from Clarkson's Farm, and the pair compared hairstyles. Nice to see the matter being treated with the gravitas it deserves.
With Kaleb sorting the cost of living crisis, it is presumably time to turn to the difficulties facing the hospitality industry. I believe Benny from Crossroads is available.
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Brave new world. A married 38-year-old lady from Hertfordshire has confessed to an extramarital affair – with a phone app.
When the mood takes her, the self-described management high flyer locks herself in the bathroom and starts exchanging smutty messages with an artificial intelligence 'chatbot', which she says gives her an 'out of body experience'.
Each to their own, I guess. But from my own, limited dealings with the 'artificial intelligence' chatbots at financial institutions, it hasn't been so much an 'out of body experience' as an 'out of mind' one.
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The West Midlands Combined Authority has unveiled its glossy 'investment prospectus', promising to transform the centres of Dudley, Walsall, Telford, Shrewsbury and West Bromwich by attracting £20 billion in private investment.
Yeah, right.
Amid all the platitudes about 'culture' and 'diversity', plus the obligatory pictures of photogenic young people grinning like Cheshire cats, it is pretty much the same old schemes that have been knocking around for years, few of which owe much to the combined authority.
Of course, all the big bucks are destined for Birmingham, with a dash of thin gruel for the rest of the region. Most of the schemes for our towns are about 'urban living' to meet housing targets, grim blocks of flats separated by strips of artificial turf to provide a spot of synthetic greenery.
Meanwhile, a plot of land in a village close to me is about to become an Aldi. Next to two schools, the traffic will be bedlam. And while I've nothing against Aldi, there are 10 of them within seven miles.
Maybe this sounds a bit radical, but maybe the combined authority would do better if it insisted that sites like this, in quieter areas, next to the schools, were earmarked for housing. And the retail developments kept for the struggling town centres.
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