Read more about the suggestive statue.
Each Monday, Alister and Meridyth deliver quick news and interesting stories from the past week to prepare you for the “water cooler” banter. They’ll also squabble over a current issue.
Alister is your classic Labour champion, while Meridyth (an American expat) brings a transatlantic, moderate view.
ALISTER: I told my fan it’s doing a good job in the heatwave. MERIDYTH: You’re talking to inanimate objects now? ALISTER: Inanimate? It was blown away! MERIDYTH: 🙄
Gif by news on Giphy
ALISTER: So ministers get to decide which news is 'trusted' and bolt it to the top of your feed on TikTok, YouTube, and Facebook? Trouble is, the consultation they've just published hasn't actually defined the word. 'Whatever Whitehall fancies' isn't reassuring.
MERIDYTH: Fair, the word needs pinning down. But it's hardly a blank cheque. Look at the BBC, which has answer to a regulator, runs corrections, and can be fined a quarter of a million for getting it wrong. Social media algorithms only answer to engagement.
ALISTER: But this is the same BBC that gave a platform to climate deniers as part of 'balanced' reporting until it admitted not checking the facts. And now Reform has a quarter of its bulletins. Trusted by whose yardstick?
MERIDYTH: Fair, the false-balance habit is real. But a newsroom that corrects itself still beats an algorithm optimised for rage bait. One has guidelines held to account. AI slop about scary food chemicals has none.
ALISTER: I'll grant you that. But the fix for a rigged ranking isn't one rigged by the state. Today it's the Beeb on top. Once the govt changes parties, who will it be then?
MERIDYTH: I hear the precedent worry. But if someone's choosing, I'd rather it favour professionally trained journalists than some hacker in Russia.
Southern England had 29k lightning strikes in a night, causing flash flooding, house fires, and 400 calls to the London Fire Brigade. The Met Office has since issued a rare red alert! Share this fact and the AM Squabble with anyone struggling with the heat.
🏛️ 2-months till kissing hands. Britain probably knows its next PM, it just has to wait for him. Since Starmer resigned, Andy Burnham (Manchester's ex-mayor) is the only declared candidate. Nominations open 9 July, but no one else has raised their hand so far.
💷 Tax, but optional. King Charles revealed a £12.9m tax bill for 2024/25, a first for a monarch, which he isn't legally obliged to pay as part of a voluntary deal with the govt since 1993. In similar news… 👑 Richer than dad. Turns out, Prince William is officially a billionaire with a net worth of $1.6bn, overtaking the King who stands at a mere $846m. William plans to invest some of it in affordable housing.
🍄 Mould gets pricey. Councils in England can fine landlords up to £7k for serious hazards like severe damp, freezing rooms, and dodgy electrics. Whether that's a deterrent or just the cost of doing business rather depends on the size of your portfolio.
💩 Perfect timing. Thames Water shut its £4.6bn super sewer for maintenance just as E. coli levels in the Thames hit 58 times the safe swimming limit following heavy rain. Warm water turned the discharge into what campaigners called "a soup of toxic waste." Thames Water is "undertaking a detailed review."
🧒 Minor tweak, massive cheek. Under pressure from UK regulators, Ryanair has stopped charging parents to sit next to their own children. O'Leary said the change was made "reluctantly" and accused the CMA of "stifling innovation"… innovation being charging families to sit together??? 🤨
⚽️ GOOD NEWS… for England, who beat Panama 2-0 to top their group and breeze into the World Cup knockout round. BAD NEWS… for Iran, South Korea, Scotland, and Uruguay, after these four team were knocked out after failing to be within the top 8 of the 3rd place finishers in their groups. More teams, weird maths rules.
🌈 After Orbán. Over 10,000 people marched in Budapest's first Pride since Viktor Orbán lost April's election, walking under rainbow and EU flags in record heat. He'd tried to ban it last year. One 18-year-old summed up the mood, "everyone is just so much more uplifted."
📺 The BBC bites back. Trump sued the BBC for $10bn over a documentary that spliced his 6 January speech. The BBC's response? 47 subpoenas for his records around the Capitol riot, which his lawyers call a fishing expedition. A separate judge reminded him that presidents still have to follow the rules.
🛰️ Lost in the briefing. Former Kremlin officials say Putin's being fed a rosy version of the war as Russia's advance stalls. Asked about a homegrown Starlink rival, he assured soldiers it exists and is superior. Russia has 16 satellites up. Starlink has 10,200.
🔥 The new normal. Europe's current heatwave is the worst on record and impossible without climate change, scientists say. In 1976 it would have been 3.5C cooler. Today's sweltering nights are 100x more likely than in 2003.
🤖 Doctor AI will see you now… in the US. An OpenAI model out-diagnosed experienced US physicians, and hospitals are adopting AI fast. 81% of US doctors admit to using it in some form. The small print hasn't changed. "AI can make mistakes." Off you go, then.
🫁 The safer lie. Vaping was sold as the harmless swap for cigarettes. A study of Vaping is 19% more likely to lead to heart failure, regardless of age, sex, or prior smoking history. The aerosol is not just flavoured water. It contains formaldehyde.
🚶 Up you get. 5 min of walking every hour can lift mood and cut fatigue, without disrupting your work output. Staff performance even ticked up a little. So much for your excuses!
🚀 UK to Oz. Five engineers from the defunct Reaction Engines have joined forces to build Invictus, a Mach 5 spaceplane backed by the European Space Agency. If it works, it could cut London to Sydney from 22 hours to 3 hrs, potentially by 2031.
🎲 The house always fakes. Polymarket (crypto betting site) paid influencers to fake winning streaks, even building near-identical close sites so the trades looked real. One video celebrates a $100k win betting Trump would say "McDonald's." Trump never did, the bet actually lost.
🚐 Follow that suspect. When armed police in Margate, Kent couldn't keep pace with a suspect fleeing on foot, a passing van driver pulled over and told the officer to hop in. Overtaking the runner, the officer leapt out and made the arrest. The driver called it "quite exhilarating."
By Meridyth
I try to practice responsible sustainability. I rinse the jars, flatten cardboard, and haul my soft plastics to the supermarket bins. Which is why the new global reuse symbol frustrates me. I'm exactly the person it's built for, and yet I can't see the point of it.
We can't even manage one symbol ♻️. 82% of us still bin the wrong thing with contamination climbing. A single spoiled load gets burned, not recycled.
Instead of another badge, let’s focus on education… what really goes in the bin and why rinsing matters, before piling on a system that means more effort and another bin in an already cramped kitchen.
Whew, you made it!
Bulgarian artist Dian Kostov brings an immersive peace exhibition to Manchester Cathedral from 3 July: a globe lit by 59 candles for each active armed conflict, a cross made from charred beams of a Ukrainian church, and 72 war photographs. We'll be back next Monday with another Squabble, and hopefully more uplifting news.
Alister & Meridyth