Monday

Every cloud and all that. Brexit uncertainty may not be doing much for most businesses, but it’s paying off for the big pharmaceutical companies. A report by academics from King’s College London and Harvard University, published in the British Medical Journal, has declared Brexit-induced depression to be a genuine psychiatric illness. Since the EU referendum in June 2016, prescriptions for antidepressants have risen 13.4% faster than those for drugs unlikely to be influenced by uncertainty and depression.

Quite how researchers managed to weed out anxiety and depressive conditions brought on by climate change, increased austerity, Donald Trump, excessive exposure to Jacob Rees-Mogg and his ageing collection of European Research Group golf-club cronies – weeping into their gin afizzes, ice-and-a-slice while singing Vera Lynn songs – and the repeated delays to Spurs moving into their new stadium is not clear.

While not the usual definition of good news, the findings have made me feel just a little better about myself, as my own prescriptions have remained entirely unchanged over the past two years. Which either means there is nothing much else the mental health professionals feel they can do for me and I’m on my own from here on in, or I am bearing up rather better than most. My default positions of despair and futility have finally come into their own.

Tuesday

The film crew on David Attenborough’s latest wildlife documentary have been criticised by purists for trying to save a group of penguins that had been blown into a ravine, by building a snow ramp so they could climb out. Shouting out warnings to several million wildebeest that they would be better advised to make a detour around the Maasai Mara in order to avoid the waiting prides of hungry lions, or shooting a whale that’s using a seal for football practice, are generally considered a no-no. Non intervention is the watchword – an article of faith – for wildlife film-makers.

The feeling is that tragedy is an everyday occurrence in the natural world and nothing should be done to disrupt the ecosystem. So sayonara, penguins. Personally, though, I can’t see the problem with helping a few penguins who got into a bit of bother while casually minding their own business; their life is tough enough in the subzero conditions of the Antarctic and it’s certainly a lot less disruptive than hoicking them into a cage to be taken off to a zoo. Besides, why not do for a penguin what you would do for a human? I can’t imagine news crews would stand by and let Syrian refugees drown in the Mediterranean if there were a chance of saving them.

Wednesday

Boris Johnson has just picked up £95,000 for a two-hour speech to a finance company in New York. On top of the £23,000 he earns each month for writing virtually the same column in the Daily Telegraph every Monday. Nice work if you can get it. The subject of Boris’s speech ought to have been “do as I say, not as I do”, for if the former foreign secretary is stuck for ways of spending his newfound wealth, he might care to repay Londoners for all the money he wasted as mayor.

It was announced this week that the three secondhand water cannon he bought for £300,000, which were never used, have been sold for their scrap value of £11,000. Then there’s his vanity garden bridge project, which will never be built, on which he spent £40m of taxpayers’ money. The list goes on. The cable car over the Thames commissioned on the basis that it was a vital commuter link – despite going between two points no commuters required – and is only used by three people a day. All of whom are presumably lost. And finally the overpriced £350,000 a piece Routemaster buses that have had to be scrapped because they are inefficient and overheat. A description that could be used for Boris.

Thursday

The much-coveted trophy for the most useless junior minister – Chris Grayling has successfully fought off two Brexit secretaries to claim the cabinet prize – had looked to be in the bag for Caroline Nokes. Weeks ago, the Home Office minister’s credibility was destroyed by the home affairs select committee after it became clear she had no idea of the government’s proposed immigration policies, and on Wednesday, she was again under the cosh for claiming the information her department had already obtained was unobtainable.

But Nokes now has a late challenger in the form of the work and pensions minister, Justin Tomlinson, who has told a select committee that families affected by the benefit cap could take in a lodger to help make ends meet. Tomlinson appeared to believe he had solved poverty at a stroke. Among the many details he had failed to grasp – poorer people not having several spare bedrooms to rent out on Airbnb being one of them – was that he was inciting people to break the law. Any extra income earned by someone on benefits has to be declared to the council, which will reduce their payments accordingly. Failure to do so results in a prosecution for fraud. A charge someone could make against Tomlinson for impersonating intelligent life.

Friday

Wrong time, right place. Last weekend, I was in Gibraltar for the literary festival, and after my event, most people were keen to know what I thought about the future of the Rock after Brexit. I had to admit I didn’t really know, as it wasn’t a subject that appeared to be uppermost in the minds of the UK negotiating team. All I’d heard was a vague communique from Downing Street saying everything was pretty much agreed and there was no need to worry. Yes, said the Gibraltarians, that’s all they had heard too, before reeling off a whole list of things, including the future of the runway and freedom of movement across the border – the local economies of Gibraltar and the nearby town of La Línea de Concepción in Spain are interdependent – which they believed to be still unresolved.

Had I been more on the ball, I could have asked Gibraltar’s chief minister, Fabian Picardo, for his view, as he was one of the guests at the festival dinner on the Saturday night. But it felt rude to interrupt the conversation on his table and I reckoned he and I could do with a night off Brexit. Now I am rather regretting this, as the day after I got home, Spain chose to make Gibraltar a major issue in the negotiations, and it turns out the Gibraltarians were right to worry that the UK had taken its eye off the ball. No one knows how this will play out. Spain can’t singlehandedly veto the withdrawal agreement, but it can vote down any future trade deal. Prepare to hear a great deal more about Gibraltar in the coming months. And years.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Donald Trump to the turkey: ‘And you can get stuffed too.’ Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters



Digested week, digested: Deal or no deal?