Granny's gaming, Don't disturb

ALISTER: Ten years since the Brexit Referendum and now, more than half of Britons want to rejoin the EU. Funny that. We spent decades in that club shaping its rules, drafting legislation. Then we walked out and spent a decade standing outside in the rain.

MERIDYTH: Agreed, standing in the rain is miserable. But getting back in isn't free. We're no longer members paying a net £9bn/year with Thatcher's rebate cushioning the blow. Rejoining likely means worse terms and a bigger bill, maybe 3 times more! That's not pocket change when the NHS is already suffering.

ALISTER: Some say Brexit has cost this country up to 8% of GDP. Conservatively, that could run into the hundreds of billions. You're worried about the membership fee while we're haemorrhaging thousands of pounds per household. It’s like refusing a gym membership because of the joining fee while paying for a weekly ambulance.

MERIDYTH: Cute analogy, but we're the patient in that ambulance right now. You don't donate blood while you're still bleeding out. There might be long-term economic gains. But that doesn't pay today's bills or rebuild the public services already on life support.

ALISTER: Then let's go further and faster. Polls show 83% of Labour voters want full membership. Labour's strategy of silence is handing votes to the Lib Dems and Greens. The public are miles ahead of the politicians on this one.

MERIDYTH: So the answer to financial strain is to hand over sovereignty and rejoin on worse terms than we left, with less clout than before? I never thought Brexit was right either, Alister. But "surrender faster" isn't exactly the rallying cry I was hoping for.

A Parisian walked away with a $1 million Picasso for a €100 ticket in a charity raffle. One Picasso. Just sitting in his living room now, presumably making the IKEA prints look a bit awkward. Share the AM Squabble to someone who needs a bit of that energy this Monday morning.

🚇 Brace for the commuting woes. London’s RMT Tube drivers walk out Tues-Fri in a row over TfL's plan to squeeze the working week into longer shifts with no extra pay. Meanwhile TfL's boss has ruled out driverless trains as costing billions for negligible benefit. 🤔 The Elizabeth line will be rammed. You've been warned.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Corbyn's party, Scottish edition. Your Party has spectacularly collapsed in Scotland just months after launching, with all 12 Scottish leaders resigning en masse. The charge? London withheld funding, ignored Scotland's sole rep, and blocked them from the Holyrood election.

🚽 3,000 reasons to be furious. Britain's water companies broke their environmental permits 3,000 times last year. With 96 criminal investigations now launched. They've been spilling sewage into rivers and beaches for years. Execs could actually face jail.

📉 Jobs giveth and taketh away. Anthropic is expanding its London office to 800 people. OpenAI announced its own 544-seat hub in King's Cross. The city is quietly becoming the world's second AI capital, but less so for media & entertainment. The BBC is cutting up to 2,000 jobs. With 300,000 households abandoning TV licences last year, there’s a massive £500m gap to fill.

🎓 Erasmus is back. The UK has legally agreed to rejoin Erasmus+ in 2027, with over 100k people expected to benefit in year one. Students, apprentices, and school groups will once again be able to study and work across Europe. (Meridyth: See, this is what we should look to do in the short-term, instead of overpaying to rejoin the EU.)

GOOD NEWS… for not relying on oil, after Chinese manufacturers captured a whopping 78% of global wind power. BAD NEWS… for relying on oil, after Europe announced potential jet fuel shortages at the end of May due to the Iran war. Brace yourself for potential summer travel disruptions. 🥺

✝️ Trump v Pope. POTUS threw down against Pope Leo XIV, calling him "weak on crime" after the Pope criticised the President's stance on Iran. With Catholic conversions currently surging across the U.S., this holy war could turn the upcoming midterms into a literal leap of faith.

🚁 Ukraine becomes Europe's drone factory. In a single day, Ukraine signed deals to produce drones on Norwegian soil and clinched what could be Europe's largest drone production agreement with Germany. The country being invaded has become so advanced at drone warfare that its allies are queuing up to learn from it.

🔋 The battery that gives twice. Japan has achieved 90% lithium recovery from dead EV batteries, nearly doubling the previous recovery rate and cutting carbon by 40%. A country that imports almost all its lithium just found a way to mine its own rubbish. The snag: only 14% of old batteries reach recyclers.

🇩🇪 Merz makes history, badly. Germany's new chancellor has achieved a record no leader wants, highest disapproval rating at 76%. He's less popular than Trump (57% disapproval), less popular than Macron (75%), and less popular than his predecessor Olaf Scholz. Pollsters say it's "solely the person of Merz himself." Ouch.

🎶 The teenage soundtrack. Those fave songs at 15yo feel more powerful because they were encoded while your identity was still forming. It isn’t just nostalgia. That music is structurally integrated into your autobiographical memory. Essentially, your teen brain was a permanent storage drive for pop hits.

🥦 Eat plants, save your brain. Starting a healthy plant diet in your late 50s still cuts dementia risk by 11%. But there’s a catch. Ultraprocessed "plant-based" junk food raises it by 25%. So that vegan frozen waffle habit isn’t quite the loophole you were hoping for.

🍽️ Last orders for nuggets. England's biggest school food shake-up in a generation will ban all deep-fried food from 2027, including nuggets and battered fish. Puddings must now be 50% fruit, which effectively kills off steamed sponge and jam roly-poly. The dinner lady isn’t happy.

🤖 AI agents need a login now. Microsoft wants your AI agents to buy its own software licence, just like an employee. Cut your workforce in half, deploy five bots per person, and you could end up paying for more seats than before. A neat solution to AI eating into subscription revenues. You have to admire the audacity.

⚤ The gender gap, quantified. A new poll finds only 1/3 of young British women hold a positive view of men, with 18 to 25-year-olds now the most progressive demographic in the UK by far. They're more pessimistic than young men about their futures, and the most privileged women are the most pessimistic of all.

🏡 A village worth having. A £3m village for homeless people in Scotland is hoping that by giving them actual front doors and community support might help them feel like actual people… with both independence and a safety net. ❤️

By Alister

Meridyth made me watch Chef & My Fridge on Netflix and I genuinely cannot stop. It's Korean, subtitled, and completely unhinged.

Think Ready Steady Cook crossed with Takeshi's Castle if everyone was also doing a stand-up set. Celebrity guests open their fridges, top chefs roast them mercilessly, then somehow produce stunning food in 15 minutes flat.

Pure, beautiful chaos. Watch it immediately.

By Alister

After 16 years of Viktor Orbán, Hungary finally booted its strongman in a landslide, and the internet only cares about one man's moves on the victory stage.

Zsolt Hegedüs, tipped to be Hungary's next health minister, went fully unhinged with joy.

See Meridyth? This is what being a full EU member state feels like.

Next Monday we'll be back just as Stratford-upon-Avon celebrates Shakespeare's 462nd birthday with a parade. The man gave us "all that glitters is not gold" and yet here we are, still buying crypto. Join us next week for another Squabble.

Alister & Meridyth