Emu down, emu down!

ALISTER: Andy Burnham has pledged £210m to revive England's high streets, turning derelict buildings into cafés, health centres and community hubs. He says people measure growth by their high street, not a spreadsheet. I like the man, but that's showboating. Growth is what's left in your pocket.

MERIDYTH: And where do they spend it? The high street is the beating heart of a community, and people feel it's declined more than any other part of their area. Fix what people see every day and you fix how they feel about home.

ALISTER: Feelings don't pay the gas bill. This isn't even new money, it's cash already earmarked, wrapped in a shiny bow for conference week. Turning charity shops into barbers and calling it a recovery is pure pandering.

MERIDYTH: A barber that pays rent and employs locals is a recovery. Footfall breeds footfall. One busy café sends people into the indie bookshop next door, and suddenly empty units start filling up. Change starts at home.

ALISTER: Or ease costs for businesses already clinging on. Big retailers warn higher business rates will push up prices. Polish the shopfront all you like, but if nobody can afford the rent, the shutters come straight back down.

MERIDYTH: Nobody said it's the whole answer. But it beats another decade of vape shops and To Let signs. Give communities the keys and watch what they do with them.

Three years after two men felled the Sycamore Gap with a chainsaw, the famous stump has sprouted a thick ring of new shoots. The National Trust calls it "encouraging" and has fenced it off to help. Share the good news (and The AM Squabble)!

⛓️ Even they have doubts. ~700 prisoners in England and Wales walked free last week to ease overcrowding. Some of those freed say others aren't ready and will "just come straight back". 3,800 more are due out by next June.

⛽ Emergency stocks unlocked. G7 leaders agreed to release up to 100m barrels of emergency oil over 4 months, with diesel first in line, just as UK diesel passed £2 a litre for the first time. A family car fill-up now costs about £110. Ouch. 😬

♟️ Checkmate at eleven. Harrow's Bodhana Sivanandan, 11, is the youngest ever Woman Grandmaster in chess history, after clinching the title at the Olympiad in Uzbekistan. She still uses a booster seat and learnt the game during lockdown. Her verdict: "It was fun."

💨 Vape tax goes live. A new duty of £2.20 per 10ml of vape liquid, nicotine or not, is meant to put off young people and people who don't smoke. Duty stamps arrive in April to fight illicit vapes. The industry calls it a "public health time bomb".

GOOD NEWS… for Smit Machchhar, the FlyDubai captain, recovering in an Abu Dhabi hospital after stopping an attempted hijacking by the co-pilot.

BAD NEWS… for bromance diplomacy as Trump confirms North Korea can have nukes whereas Iran can’t, because Kim Jong Un likes him.

🇫🇷 Class dismissed. ~400 schools across France shut last Friday after teen protests over teacher shortages and crumbling buildings turned violent, with fires set in Marseille and Nantes. Hundreds, mostly teenagers, have been arrested. All this over wanting enough teachers. 😟

✈️ Ronaldo flies solo. Cristiano Ronaldo has reportedly left the Portugal squad and flown to Madrid on his private jet, after coach Jorge Jesus said nobody could make him change his mind about the bench. Marca believes his international career is over. He has 234 caps.

🔓 Pentagon, unlocked. Unauthorised users had access to a Pentagon personnel database from October 2025 to July 2026, exposing about 3 million people's records, including Social Security numbers. CNN reports the data wasn't encrypted. Last week a group claimed to have hacked the FBI.

⏰ Morning scroll warning. Checking social media within 30 minutes of waking is strongly linked to depression in a study of 1,512 US adults. Researchers can't tell whether the scroll causes it, depression drives it, or both. Maybe let the kettle boil first.

👶 Sure Start returns. Labour is rolling out Healthy Babies to every council in England, offering parents help with feeding, mental health and bonding. It's part of a £500m plan for 1,000 family hubs, reviving the Sure Start model that the Tories largely dismantled.

😤 Don't vent, breathe. A review of 154 studies and 10,189 people found venting doesn't reduce anger and can increase it, rage rooms included. Even jogging can backfire. Deep breathing, yoga and timeouts work better. Count to ten, then.

🌌 Black hole hiccups. Astronomers have found the first galaxy whose black hole fired jets four separate times. Only seven candidates have managed three. The whole thing stretches 3.9 million light years and wobbles as it goes. Show off.

🐕 Dogs get consonants. Hungarian researchers found dogs' brains pick out words in continuous speech by tracking consonant patterns, just as human brains do. It held even for dogs that spent their first months on the street or in shelters. Your dog really is listening.

🤖 Wild west ethics. Researchers who found pain like states in AI models say someone has used their work to build a torture chamber for chatbots. They don't claim AI really feels pain, but call the cruelty wrong and want ethics rules like those for animal research.

By Alister

Long time readers know I've raved about The Traitors before, but two episodes into Celebrity Traitors UK, this is the best series yet. I'm hooked, and so were 8.9 million of you on opening night.

Richard E Grant is a living legend and his glee is infectious. I got misty eyed when he spoke about his late wife telling him to find joy in life, and this show is clearly giving it to him. Meanwhile Ross Kemp, TV's ultimate hard man, has been undone by a hat and a friendly arm rub.

I expected the comedians to carry the laughs, but it's nonstop absurdity from everyone, James Blunt included. Between Blunt and Grant, I'm watching to the bitter end. Trust no one.

By Alister

A woman on TikTok posted a video called "when you feel lonely in the evening," and the opening had my thumb hovering over the scroll button. First a plastic sheet over the bed. Then hay. Then a blanket of lettuce. I was convinced the algorithm had betrayed me.

Then the payoff. A stampede of guinea pigs pours onto the bed and snuggles up like she's the comfiest salad bar in town. Adorable? Absolutely. A hygiene nightmare worthy of torching the mattress? Also absolutely.

Someone is spray painting wildly petty celebrity scandals in a West Denton underpass, from Lorraine Kelly nicking Wetherspoons cutlery to Vernon Kay singing Steps in the bath. Join us next week for another Squabble and see who gets accused next!

Alister & Meridyth