 2 November, 2021 In the headlines World leaders have promised to end and start reversing deforestation by 2030, pledging £14bn to help. China and Brazil are on board, but whether Brazil will follow through is another matter: deforestation there is at its highest level since 2012. "The satellites don't lie," environmental analyst Carlos Rittl tells The Guardian. Emmanuel Macron has backed down on threats to put new checks on British goods. This fishing spat is "time wasting", says writer Ben Judah on Twitter: British and French grandees need to get together and revive the Entente Cordiale of 1904. Arizona computer company Meta PCs, which trademarked "Meta" last year, says it won't take less than $20m if Mark Zuckerberg wants the name.
Comment of the day  Christopher Furlong/Getty Images Our bungling NHS needs radical surgery "Picture the distant future of healthcare," says Sherelle Jacobs in The Daily Telegraph. Your great-grandson uses his genomic sequencer to check his spinach and eggs for E. coli. His wife is making a full recovery from cancer because her smart watch detected it early. He's a medical engineer ("they used to call them doctors") overseeing nanobots at the local intensive-care trailer park, which "never gets overwhelmed". What a world it will be. Or rather, what a world it could be – were it not for the NHS's "retrograde failure to embrace new technology". We all know the horror stories: from Tony Blair's disastrous effort to digitise the NHS from the top down to the "surreal defeat" of efforts to wean the health service off fax machines. Forty per cent of primary care admin could "probably be automated tomorrow". But politicians are terrified of trying to improve our "sacred NHS". And thanks to all-powerful unions and self-interested executives, even minor reforms are "met with street protests". The reality is that technological change is the only affordable way to provide adequate healthcare for our rapidly ageing population. When, finally, this is recognised, the "creaky, tax-sucking public sector leviathan" will be shown for what it is: a health service that has "trapped the country in an insane hell of cyclical problems". Until then the NHS will go on holding us to ransom "every Covid/flu season, bungling flu jabs and then struggling to treat the resultant cases in understaffed ICUs". Why it matters
 Blame the media, not Facebook, for our toxic age The hypocrisy of the media's "moral outrage" over Facebook is something to behold, says Matt Taibbi in his Substack newsletter. Whistleblower Frances Haugen has been drip-feeding supposedly bombshell documents to more than 17 news outlets. (The Slack channel journalists created to co-ordinate stories on the leak is sardonically titled "Apparently we're a consortium now".) Every one of those outlets is taking the same line: "That Facebook is choosing, gasp, to make money off 'divisive' and 'sensationalist' content." Sound familiar? Facebook is simply doing what all media companies are doing, "only better". For six years now, The New York Times, CNN et al have been treating audiences "like roulette addicts", keeping them at the table with dire warnings of "existential threats" and constitutional crises. Readers and viewers "wake up knowing nothing", and by noon they're demanding "the biggest available policy weapon be fired" at problems they've literally only just heard about. Then, just as quickly, they move on, "trying on new terrors like shoes". The news outlets that pump out all this toxic stuff – raking in cash as they do so – are the "real architects" of our new "panic era". Not Facebook.
Love etc  Women who regularly wear 2in heels are more likely to have happy sex lives, according to a study by Chinese researchers. Shoes with a low heel work the pelvic floor muscles, and a stronger pelvic floor increases the chance of having an orgasm.
Noted  California condors are capable of virgin births. Researchers in San Diego made the discovery by chance while tracking the endangered birds – only 500 remain in the wild. Routine DNA tests revealed that two condors had hatched from unfertilised eggs. Parthenogenesis also occurs in poultry, including 16.9% of Beltsville Small White turkeys.
On the way back Black cabs – business is booming for cabbies "after nearly a decade of Uber-induced gloom", says James Tapper in The Observer. Uber prices are up by a third this year and the black-cab app Gett is seeing 40% more traditional taxi rides every day than it did in the first quarter of 2020.
On the money A delivery of 45 tons of Afghan pine nuts is on its way from Kabul to China, the first shipment since the Taliban seized power. This "pine nut air corridor" is worth about $700m a year – money that the Taliban, frozen out of Afghan central-bank reserves held in the US, sorely needs. In return, Beijing gets strategic influence in the region and a tasty snack. "The little pine nuts bring happiness to Afghan people and good taste to Chinese people," tweeted Wang Yu, China's ambassador to Afghanistan.
Snapshot 
Zeitgeist The statue of Edward Colston that protesters unceremoniously dumped in Bristol Harbour last year is now on display in a local museum. "I didn't expect it to be so electrifying," says Carol Midgley in The Times. There he lies, prostrate on two wooden boxes, the word "prick" sprayed on his right leg and his hands "blood-red". Tourists like me queued up to see it, then "gazed rapt as if at the Mona Lisa". Almost nobody knew who Colston was two years ago; now we all do. This is the "protesters' great triumph: vandalism as education".
Snapshot answer It's Heinz's "Christmas dinner in a can", a festive tin of soup containing chunks of turkey, pigs in blankets, roast potatoes, sprouts and balls of stuffing. The limited-edition cans were available yesterday for £1.50 a pop, and sold out within hours.
Quoted "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you annoy the French for a lifetime." That's it. You're done. Been forwarded this newsletter? Sign up to receive it every day and get free access to up to six articles a month Subscribe for a free three-month trial with full access to our app and website. Download our app from the App Store or Google Play
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November 02, 2021
Our bungling NHS needs radical surgery
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