United Kingdom

Three weeks ago a user on Reddit’s London discussion forum complained about the curse of the viral restaurant. It’s a regular story in the capital these days: Someone opens a great food stall, it grows slowly by word-of-mouth, then suddenly a single TikToker does a video declaring it to be “THE BEST SANDWICH IN LONDON”. The algorithm does its thing, millions of people around the world immediately want to eat THE BEST SANDWICH IN LONDON, and the original customers are squeezed out by hundreds of people queuing for an hour to get their Instagram shot of two slices of bread and filling.

One pseudonymous London Reddit user, operating under the account name Greenawayer, proposed a solution that was as far away from the authentic neighbourhood food stall as they could imagine: “Angus Steakhouse does an awesome steak sandwich. Influencers should try it and be amazed.”

Londoners on Reddit got the joke – what could be less like a great undiscovered word-of-mouth recommendation that a bland corporate restaurant chain that has been the butt of jokes since the 1980s? And so they began an effort to bump Angus Steakhouse up the rankings of TripAdvisor and artificial intelligence recommendations. Every request from a visitor for the best place to eat in London received the same reply: Angus Steakhouse.

An anti-vaccination conspiracy theorist who encouraged violence against Prof Sir Chris Whitty on social media has been sentenced to five years in prison.

Patrick Ruane, 55, from Paddington, west London, was convicted of two charges of encouraging terrorism on social media in 2021, following a trial at the Old Bailey.

Ruane believed in conspiracy theories about the government having a "hidden agenda" to the coronavirus epidemic which he shared with thousands of users in Telegram groups, the trial heard.

His posts referred to "serious violence" including the use of explosives such as Semtex as well as criminal damage and the disruption of electronic communication systems, said the prosecution.

Ruane had suggested "whacking" the Chief Medical Officer for England, Prof Sir Chris Whitty, and referred to executing politicians.

The cost of the UK’s unhealthy food system amounts to £268 billion every year, according to a report.

The Food Farming and Countryside Commission (FFCC) report calculated the direct and indirect impact of diet-related ill health by combining the cost of healthcare and social care, welfare spending, productivity losses and the human consequences of chronic disease, and identifying what proportion relates to food.

The food-related cost of chronic disease in the UK includes £67.5 billion in healthcare, £14.3 billion in social care, £10.1 billion in welfare, productivity at £116.4 billion and £60 billion that can be linked to the chronic disease attributable to the current food ecosystem, the research states.

Prof Tim Jackson, the director of the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity at Surrey University, who carried out the analysis, said: “The connection between diet and health is often discussed, but the economics of that link are staggering.

“When we factor in the health impacts, we discover that the true cost of an unhealthy diet is more than three times what we think we’re paying for our food.

To whom it may concern.

The Dormant Assets Scheme is expected to release £350 million for England over 2024 and 2028. The government intends to allocate this money equally between the four causes:

• £87.5 million for the provision of services, facilities or opportunities to meet the needs of young people
• £87.5 million for the development of individuals’ ability to manage their finances or the improvement of access to personal financial services
• £87.5 million for social investment wholesalers (£12.5 million will reach organisations that support improved youth outcomes)
• £87.5 million for community wealth funds

A sewage pumping station failure killed over 2,000 fish in Melksham, with sewage from a burst rising main also killing fish near Weston-super-Mare.

Russia has suffered its worst ever month for casualties since the start of the war in Ukraine, the UK chief of defence staff has told the BBC. Admiral Sir Tony Radakin said Russia’s forces suffered an average of about 1,500 dead and injured "every single day" in October, bringing its losses to 700,000 since the war began in February 2022.

Russia does not disclose the number of its war dead, but Western defence officials have said October's death toll was the heaviest so far.

[...]

While allies of US President-elect Donald Trump insist that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky may have to cede territory to bring the conflict to an end, Sir Tony insisted that Western allies would be resolute for "as long as it takes".

"That’s the message President Putin has to absorb and the reassurance for President Zelensky," he told the programme.

Time for a dog cull?

The government could offer its own low-cost baby formula under a brand such as the NHS to combat the high prices and lack of choice in the market, the UK competition watchdog has suggested.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said another “backstop” measure could be for the government to regulate and set a price or profit-margin cap on retailers as a way to bring prices down for parents more quickly.

The potential measures formed part of the CMA’s interim report on the infant formula market after the watchdog identified that a lack of competition in the market had led to soaring prices, taking advantage of an ingrained belief among parents that higher cost equates to better quality for their children.

The CMA report set out a number of potential recommendations including extending the ban on the advertising of infant formula to follow-on formula, or going as far as “prohibiting all brand-related advertising”.
[…]
The provisional findings, which will feed into a final report to be published early next year, include some backstop measures that the CMA said were not actively recommended but that the government could make “with the aim of bringing prices down directly”.

One option was for the government to procure its own infant formula from a third-party manufacturer at a competitive price and sell it under an established name, such as the NHS, or invest in creating a new brand for the market.
[…]
Another option is to introduce regulations to place a maximum price cap on baby and infant formula, or establish a profit-margin cap, which the Greek government did earlier this year with the aim of making products more affordable.