Mark Andrews: British Steel - the next chapter, philistines at Toby Carvery, and the latest brainwave from the human-rights lobby
Mark Andrews takes a wry look at the week's news
Here's my hunch about how the Government's plan to rescue British Steel will pan out.
1. Billions of pounds of taxpayers' money will be pumped into the company until in, say, three years' time it is just about breaking even and maybe making a modest profit.
2. Ministers will speak gushingly about how the investment has turned British Steel into a 'leaner and fitter' company, and will sell it to a firm of venture capitalists for £1 who will promise to provide the investment needed to take it into an exciting new era.
3. Two or three years down the line, its new owners will say the plant is no longer viable, the Government will pour billions into a rescue package, and the venture capitalists will emerge considerably wealthier.
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Sorry if I sound pessimistic, and in truth the Government has probably made the best of an impossible job in preserving what is an essential, if unprofitable, industry. But given that British Steel has struggled to turn a profit for the best part of 50 years, it is hard to see how it is going to fare much better in a time of soaring energy prices and the Chinese flooding the market with cheap metal.
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The owner of Toby Carvery has now apologised for hacking down a 500-year-old oak tree in Enfield, exhibiting breathtaking understatement with the admission: 'we need to tighten our protocols'.
This probably won't come as a surprise to people in the Black Country, who remember what this chain did to the Roman Mosaic at Burnt Tree.
For decades, the traffic island which formed the main gateway to Dudley, was occupied by a neo-Roman tile works, adorned by a stunning mosaic of the ancient city, made entirely from the company's products. And then, in 1999, it was acquired by Toby Carvery, when this incredible piece of art was covered over with mock-Tudor rendering and fake wood beams.
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No great surprise, either, that the boss of the UK's Equality and Human Rights Commission has come out fighting following the Supreme Court ruling that biological males should do not have an automatic right to use ladies' toilets or changing rooms.
While most sensible people were surely hoping this would be the end of the matter, Baroness Falkner suggests the trans lobby should 'be using their powers of advocacy to ask for third spaces'.
That's just great, isn't it? Before you know it, the single-issue zealots will be campaigning for new laws requiring every struggling small business to either provide a room that nobody uses, or carry out a costly and bureaucratic 'risk assessment' to justify why not. And presumably, to deal with this imaginary problem, public sector organisations such as the NHS would end up wasting desperately needed funds to provide these 'third spaces'.
Do these people have any idea how much expense and trouble their daft ideas cause? Let's hope Baroness Falkner's proposal is recognised for the idiocy it is.
