Your shower has surge pricing 💧

Meridyth has finally taken a holiday, so there is nobody here to disagree with me. I won’t let reality get in the way of a good argument, especially since airlines including Virgin Atlantic have savaged Heathrow expansion plans. They are calling the cost estimates selective and unreliable!

Let me start where I actually stand. I want this runway. Heathrow says it is full at 99% capacity, the government promises over 60,000 local jobs and £40bn of benefits. More flights, more trade, and better access.

Then I read the small print, as Meridyth would have made me. The DfT's own paper puts the national GDP gain at 0.05% a year and shows 15,200 aviation jobs drifting out of the regions towards Heathrow. Birmingham loses so west London wins. Awkward, for a new Manchester focused PM.

Fine, I told myself, at least the taxpayer is safe. It is privately financed. Then MPs pointed at the £15bn of debt already on the books and asked the obvious question. £49bn, foreign shareholders, guaranteed returns. We have seen this film. Thames Water was privately financed too.

So here is where I land (it’s an aeroplane joke, Meridyth always tells me to have a theme). The regulator already lets Heathrow bill passengers for the planning stage before construction begins. I am still pro runway. I am simply resigned to paying for it twice and not flying from it until I am sixty.

Ethel Caterham turned 117 on Friday, having survived two world wars, the Titanic sinking, Covid at 110, and outlived her husband, both daughters and a fair chunk of the 20th century. Share The AM Squabble with this fact and more!

💷 Profits up. Energy giants have made over £6bn in UK linked profits this year, roughly £200 per household, right as Ofgem prepares to announce another price cap rise. Nice work if you can get it, and apparently they can.

🌬️ Policy that works. London's children had noticeably smaller lungs than kids in nearby Luton before ULEZ, but caught up within five years of it launching, a new study confirms. Sadiq Khan has receipts now, not just good intentions.

🚶 Queue jumping. A London brewery says single file bar queues are killing their sales, taking nearly three times as long to serve. Their solution? Insisting customers walk straight to the bar. Saving pub culture, one act of bravery at a time.

🍷 Poulet all day. KFC and French wine brand La Vieille Ferme are running a four day wine bar pairing fried chicken with wine, reviving the brand's famous Chicken Wine label. This bank holiday's plans have never looked so unhinged.

🚄 HS2 but cheap. Burnham has revived plans for a cheaper HS2 alternative to Manchester, with officials focused on keeping the cost off the government's books. PFI 2.0, minus the branding.

GOOD NEWS… for an ex-US President after The White House celebrated a story on record drug price drops which was credited to Biden's Inflation Reduction Act. BAD NEWS… for peace in the Middle East after Donald Trump says he will bomb Oman if it interferes with Strait of Hormuz negotiations, despite Oman hosting US forces.

🚆 Eurostar competition. After three decades of having the Channel Tunnel to itself, Eurostar faces a genuine rival as Virgin Trains secures track access for 20 daily services to Europe. Just do not expect to board before 2030.

⛽ Non critical. Only 3 in 10 Russian petrol stations had fuel this week as Ukrainian drone strikes cripple refineries. Putin calls it non critical. Meanwhile, Russia is arresting people for complaining about queues.

🇰🇷 Seoul wants the wheel back. After Trump slashed joint drills based on his rapport with Kim Jong Un, South Korea's president is accelerating plans to reclaim wartime military command from the US.

🚀 Hopping mad. China's Chang’e 7 mission will send a hopping vehicle into craters where the sun never shines to hunt for lunar water ice. An American lander tried something similar last year and promptly fell over.

💊 No appointment necessary. Nearly 305,000 doses of the morning after pill, given for free from pharmacies in five months, no GP booking required. Interest in the regular pill also doubled. Turns out removing a postcode lottery actually helps people, who knew.

🚌 Health bus. A mobile NHS clinic is offering walk in cervical screening across the North West, no GP appointment required. It has already screened 2,700 women, over a third overdue or first timers. Sometimes the best healthcare fix is simply showing up.

🧠 Mind control. Chinese scientists are running human trials of designer proteins that switch off overactive neurons to treat epilepsy, Parkinson's and chronic pain. Who needs designer bags when you can have this?

🧬 Grow your own cure. A cancer vaccine built from each patient's own tumour mutations has meaningfully extended melanoma free survival in a large trial, sending Moderna stock soaring. Genuinely exciting, if regulators eventually agree.

📉 The boss forgot too. An AI running a real shop lost track of its own attendance policy and let a worker turn up late 17 times before finally firing them, only after a human prompted it. Turns out AI bosses procrastinate too.

🚔 Grandma vs machines. Wynd Kaufmyn, 69, is serving 14 days in jail for blockading OpenAI's headquarters, reportedly the first jail term tied directly to anti AI protest. She served seven and turned herself in on her birthday.

⚖️ Meta's Big Tobacco moment. California is taking Meta to trial over claims it knowingly designed addictive apps for kids, with one attorney general warning the pay-out could be astronomical. Meta already owes nearly a billion after losing in New Mexico.

🎤 When every door shuts. Banned from Britain over antisemitic outbursts, Kanye West is now heading to Putin's Russia for two shows in St Petersburg. Tickets sold out anyway. Some fans really will follow you anywhere.

If you are ever stuck for a present, consider this one. My partner booked me onto a latte art course for my birthday and it is one of the most useful gifts anyone has given on me.

Some context. I own an unnecessarily fancy espresso machine, which is Meridyth's fault, and she is away this week so that verdict stands unchallenged. It has an automatic milk wand, meaning I have spent a year pressing a button and claiming to be a barista.

One afternoon in Southwark and I steam it myself, correctly, every single time. I can pour a heart more or less deliberately rather than by accident. My rosetta is still more of a fern in a stiff breeze, but it is my fern.

A man has gone viral for attempting to read complicated words out loud and getting nearly every single one wrong. Epitome became "pih TOE mee". Hyperbole became "hyper bowl". Hors d'oeuvres became "whore devours", which is arguably an upgrade.

I would love to feel smug about this. I cannot. I only know half of these words because somebody said them to me first, and as a dyslexic bloke my brain does exactly this several times a day.

The comments went for the jugular anyway. One decided "some children were in fact left behind". Harsh. I laughed. I am also now far too frightened to attempt pseudonym in public.

After the driest July in 190 years, the Met Office is now warning of the biggest El Nino in over a century, bringing storms and heavy rain to the UK this autumn. So be sure to welcome back Meridyth next week for another Squabble!

Alister & Meridyth