• The country’s most visible leader shared his thoughts in a televised interview
• Saudi investment into the sports industry has become increasingly prevelent
• Listen to the latest episode of Mail Sport’s podcast ‘It’s All Kicking Off!’

By Tamara Prenn For Mailonline

Published: 09:38 EDT, 21 September 2023 | Updated: 09:38 EDT, 21 September 2023

• 85,000 patients call 111 each month with dental issues, 42 per cent up from 2018

By Ethan Ennals

Published: 18:25 EDT, 9 September 2023 | Updated: 18:30 EDT, 9 September 2023

More than 30 cases of the Pirola Covid variant have been spotted in the UK, health chiefs revealed today.

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) confirmed that 36 cases of the strain, scientifically known as BA.2.86, have been spotted, up from just three a week ago. 

Two are in Scotland while 34 are in England. 

Of the cases in England, 28 came from a single outbreak in a care home in Norfolk, which infected 87 per cent of residents and left one hospitalised.

Health chiefs said this signals a ‘high attack rate’ and could be an early indicator that the strain spreads easily indoors. 

In total, five people with confirmed Pirola infections have so far required hospitalisation, though UKHSA analysts said no deaths have been recorded.

Experts told MailOnline the data suggests that the Omicron sub-variant is more transmissible than its predecessors but that it is no more severe.

UKHSA said it was notified about the care home outbreak on August 21.

All residents and staff took PCR Covid tests which were sent to labs for analysis.

Results showed that 87 per cent of residents were infected, whilst 12 staff also tested positive. 

One resident was hospitalised and four remain unwell. 

Health chiefs are spooked over the variant’s high number of mutations.

These signal that the variant could potentially be more infectious or be different genetically enough from previous variants that the protection offered by jabs or prior infection is significantly reduced. 

But the UKHSA said it will be ‘some time’ before it knows how quickly the variant is spreading, how effective it is at making people ill and how good it is at dodging immunity from jabs or previous infections. 

Dr Renu Bindra, UKHSA incident director, said the agency is working with scientists around the globe to study the strain.

The agency is advising Norfolk County Council on its outbreak to curb the spread of the infection, she said.

Dr Bindra urged people to come forward for Covid vaccine drive, which was recently accelerated to launch on Monday due to fears surrounding Pirola. 

‘It remains vital that all those eligible come forward to receive their autumn vaccine as soon as it is offered to them,’ she said.

Reacting to the UKHSA report Professor Ian Jones, a virologist at the University of Reading, said: ‘It does indicate that the general trend we have seen since variants arose, towards transmissibility rather than pathology, is holding and that we can reasonably expect the same to be true of the variants to come.’ 

Professor Paul Hunter, a respected infectious disease specialist at the University of East Anglia, also told MailOnline that while ‘early days’ the fact only one person in the care home outbreak required hospitalisation ‘doesn’t raise any red flags’.

Apart from the care home outbreak, all the other Pirola cases are unlinked, suggesting Pirola is spreading in the community, the UKHSA said.

The agency’s Pirola cases only reflect a fraction of the true toll. 

Brits are no longer testing en masse like they were earlier in the pandemic — with community mass testing ending in May 2022.

Therefor it is unclear how many Brits are infected with Covid and how many of those have Pirola.  

While only two cases have been confirmed in Scotland, more are suspected. Traces of the variant being found in wastewater analysis by Scottish authorities. 

No Pirola cases have been detected in Wales or Northern Ireland. 

While the prevalence of the virus is unclear, data from the ZOE Covid study, which tracks self-reported infections, suggests there were 100,516 new cases of symptomatic infection on September 6 — double the 50,000 it reported at the start of August.

The study, which is based on data from millions of users of the ZOE app, estimates around 1.2million in the UK are currently infected, roughly one in 57 people. 

The figure is the highest for five months but it is still far lower than the estimated toll during earlier peaks, with it reporting that 3.8million people were infected in April 2022.

Experts predict Covid cases will continue to rise as the UK heads into the autumn, as people mix more indoors.

This could exacerbate NHS pressures, with the season traditionally a busier period for the health service than summer. 

The UKHSA’s report today also included an analysis of the Pirola cases which have undergone genetic trusting.

Results suggests several slightly different Pirola strains have entered Britain multiple times from overseas, rather than in one singular superspreader case.

Tests include whether the closely related ‘Kraken’ variant — which arrived in the UK in the first half of 2023 — offers some protection from Pirola.

They are also analysing how accurate the current generation of lateral-flow-tests are at detecting a Pirola infection.

UKHSA is also working with other British scientists on determining how fast Priola could spread and how effective the current batch of Covid jabs are against the heavily mutated variant. 

Globally, the variant has been spotted in more than dozen countries, including the US, Denmark, South Africa, Portugal, Sweden, Canada, France and Switzerland.

The variant’s meteoric rise on the global stage and its host of over 35 mutations has sparked alarm among scientists.

Such concerns prompted the Department of Health and Social Care to accelerate the autumn Covid and flu jab drive.

Annual vaccinations for care home residents and vulnerable adults, who are at most risk of a severe infection, were due to start in October.

However, they will now start from Monday in a bid to boost protection earlier in the year amid fears that Pirola could trigger a fresh wave.

Ministers said they had made the decision to reduce pressure on the health service while scientists rush to learn more about the variant.

But virologists have warned it is too early to pinpoint whether BA.2.86 triggers more severe illness than earlier versions of the virus, as scientists are still analysing recently discovered cases.

Professor Francois Balloux, an infectious disease expert based at University College London told MailOnline: ‘Based on the tiny number of BA.2.86 cases diagnosed to date there is no evidence for, but also no reason to expect, a significant shift in symptoms.’

Professor Lawrence Young, a virologist at Warwick University, said that a combination of immunity induced by previous infections, Covid vaccinations and ‘a combination of changes in the virus’ has seen Covid symptoms alter over the last three years. 

‘It’s much more like a cold now than when we first experienced Covid,’ he said.

Early results from a US lab earlier this week suggested Pirola may not be as dangerous as initially feared.

The research, published by the Dan Barouch Lab, part of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Harvard University School of Medicine, analysed how well the immune system of the 66 participants fought-off 10 Omicron subvariants, including BA.2.86. 

They found that antibodies — proteins that protect against infection — were less effective against Pirola than its ancestor BA.2.

However, when compared to other Omicron variants currently circulating, the results were similar, suggesting Pirola is no better at dodging immunity.

While this won’t stop people from catching the virus, it suggests the UK’s wall of immunity — built up from waves of infection and vaccine rollouts — should help prevent a dramatic spike in people from becoming severely ill.

Most women going through menopause are not being given proper treatment, leaving millions to suffer in silence, a major review suggests.

Just 15 percent of women get effective drugs or therapies, and misinformation leads many to go down the route of unproven natural remedies, according to the review, which analyzed over 200 studies going back 70 years.

While only around a third of middle-aged women suffer noticeable menopause, the review said that many more go through silent changes in the body, such as loss of bone density that leaves them vulnerable to chronic disease down the line.

The study, conducted by researchers in the US, Italy, and Australia, found popular treatments like acupuncture and herbal supplements either just slightly improved menopause symptoms or didn’t work at all. 

And antidepressants, which are commonly prescribed for hallmark symptoms like hot flashes, may alleviate symptoms but come with a host of side effects that may add to women’s misery, including nausea, sexual dysfunction, and high blood pressure. 

‘The road to menopause is not difficult for all, but for some, symptoms may be severe or even disabling and disruptive to work and family,’ the study authors wrote. 

‘Recognition that menopause, for most women, is a natural biological event, does not exempt the use of interventions to alleviate symptoms.

‘Despite decades of research pertaining to menopause, more work is needed.’

Without effective, evidence-based treatment, the researchers cautioned menopausal women are left vulnerable to long-term ‘silent’ health consequences like bone loss, diabetes, and heart disease.

The review looked at more than 200 sources spanning 71 years to collect data on current menopause knowledge. 

They examined the effects of prescription drugs and homeopathic remedies, such as herbal treatments and acupuncture, on common side effects like hot flashes and night sweats.

They found ‘acupuncture appears no more effective than placebo,’ and herbal treatments only resulted in improvements in small, uncontrolled studies, so the evidence there is inconclusive.

However, cognitive-behavioral therapy did lead to some small improvements and boosted sleep and mood.  

Additionally, the study, published Wednesday in the journal Cell, evaluated the effects of several selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), which are typically used to treat depression, on reducing hot flashes and night sweats. 

The researchers found SSRIs like citalopram, fluoxetine, and paroxetine reduced these symptoms by 25 to 70 percent.

However, patients who took these medications experienced a host of uncomfortable side effects, including nausea, insomnia, dry mouth, sexual dysfunction, headache, high blood pressure, constipation, and dizziness. 

Based on their findings, the team called for more individualized treatment approaches rather than recommending the same treatments to every woman.

‘Women with bothersome menopausal symptoms should be counseled on treatment options and offered evidence-based therapies,’ researchers wrote.

‘Therapy should be individualized depending on age and health risks, recognizing that health risks may increase with age.’

Menopause is a normal part of aging that occurs because the ovaries stop producing eggs. As a result, levels of the hormones that ovaries produce drop.

A hallmark sign of menopause is that affected women stop getting their period.  

Nearly nine in 10 women experience symptoms of menopause, including hot flashes, night sweats, changes in mood, sleep disturbances and cognitive difficulties, such as anxiety and low self-esteem, as well as memory or concentration problems.

Other signs include sexual issues, bladder problems and dryness of the vagina.

Symptoms usually arise before menopause officially begins, during a period called perimenopause. During this time, women’s periods become irregular, hot flashes start, and fertility decreases.

For some, this only lasts a few months, but it can stretch as long as four to eight years. 

The average age of onset for menopause in the US is 51. Those who undergo it between the ages of 40 and 45 have what doctors call ‘early menopause.’ 

After menopause, women enter post-menopause. This is when a woman hasn’t had a period in over a year, and symptoms like hot flashes, vaginal dryness, and changes in sex drive continue. 

This lasts for the rest of a woman’s life.  

The researchers noted doctors should focus on preventing and treating the ‘silent’ health consequences menopausal women are prone to, including osteoporosis, diabetes, and heart disease.

‘Comprehensive care of postmenopausal women involves lifestyle optimization,’ they wrote.

‘This includes optimizing nutrition, avoiding being sedentary and increasing physical activity, adding strength and resistance exercise or training, getting adequate sleep, reducing stress, decreasing alcohol consumption, and avoiding smoking.’ 

They also suggested menopause be characterized by ovarian function stopping rather than no longer having a menstrual cycle. 

This is because many women who are not menopausal stop having a menstrual cycle due to certain birth control or procedures like a hysterectomy. 

These approaches, the team argued, could help improve women’s long-term health.

Researchers added: ‘Optimizing health at menopause is the gateway to healthy aging for women.’

The Housemates  

By Teun Toebes (September Publishing £12.99, 256pp)

Here’s an ineradicably strange book that adds something interesting and possibly even important to dementia literature, the huge and burgeoning new genre that is never read by anyone suffering from the disease, only by their poor benighted friends and relatives.

Teun Toebes is a young Dutch nursing student in his early 20s who, finding himself short of money and without anywhere to live, took the opportunity to move into a nursing home and experience the daily life of its elderly residents.

He wouldn’t be a nurse or a carer, he made absolutely clear to the people running the home — he would be a housemate, approaching his fellow inmates as an equal, albeit a 21-year-old equal who could leave the establishment any time he chose, which they obviously could not.

He’s an odd one, Teun: long-haired, not very masculine, but very empathetic, and obviously as well suited to a nursing career as anyone can hope to be.

And while his course rattles along in the background, we soon realise that he is learning as much about his future vocation through his unusual living arrangements as though his lectures and essays. His book tells us what we, those of us who are not of this age yet, need to know.

One of his first, most pertinent points is that care homes are not sufficiently ‘homes’ for anyone: they are bland, institutional and sterile. They are prisons for the afflicted, who, let’s remember, have committed no crime and do not need to be punished. 

Why, he asks, are so many of these ‘homes’ run for staff and shareholders rather than the inmates? ‘I don’t want everything in my life to be managed by other people,’ one oldster tells him.

In the context of the care home, this sounds like dangerous rabble-rousing, rather than just a completely valid request for a little respect.

Teun makes friends. He learns that just because people have dementia, doesn’t mean they lose their capacity for feeling things just as strongly as they did before, or that they’re gaga all the time, or that they haven’t noticed that they have been shipped in from their comfortable homes to this high-security prison, always positioned on a roundabout or in a bleak business park.

(Why are care homes often positioned in the most grim, inhospitable places? Because those places are cheaper, of course. The bottom line is everything.)

Teun starts to get angry. Why can’t he change the awful institutional curtains in his room? 

Because only one supplier of curtains is permitted. Their designs are awful, and they charge an arm and a leg because they have the monopoly and that’s all they care about. 

Why can’t more items from the oldsters’ former homes be brought into the care home? Because of health and safety, usually. Health and safety — which scarcely matters in the outside world — trumps all other considerations in the care home.

Why is the TV on all the time? Because no one cares if anyone is watching it or not, and it’s deemed to keep the oldsters quiet, if not happy. Teun rapidly comes to the conclusion that we have to completely rethink these places and their priorities, as soon as humanly possible.

I know of three or four oldies currently banged up in HM Prison Carehome, and the one thing they all have in common, other than being very unhappy, is that they keep asking their relatives when they can return to their real homes. Is this what anyone wants for their end of life? Is it what we want for the end of ours?

Teun finds an ally in Niels, one of the nicest (and thus most popular) members of staff. ‘We both agree on the need for change, because we wouldn’t want to grow old in a nursing home like this.

So what exactly needs to happen?… We almost always conclude that we want to be treated normally, in an environment that’s as normal as possible. We want to be able to go out, have a cosy, cluttered room and eat leftovers whenever we fancy. No gates, locked doors, sterile floors or temperature-controlled food.’

Teun’s book is written throughout with a puppyish lightness of touch: it’s a young man’s book, for sure, so when he gets polemical, you genuinely sit up and take notice.

What effect it will have, if any, is hard to gauge, but it has been widely translated and become a bestseller across Europe. There’s nothing here that we didn’t know in our hearts, but sometimes it is good to be told. We can now consider that we have been told.

Vice President Kamala Harris refused to address speculation about the 2024 presidential ticket, telling NBC News that she couldn’t care less about ‘high class gossip.’

She insisted she and President Joe Biden are ‘thinking about today’ but her dismissal comes amid speculation the West Wing is frustrated with her, endangering her heir apparent status, and talk that Biden, who is 79, may not run again because of his age. 

‘I’m sorry, we are thinking about today,’ she told NBC’s Craig Melvin in an interview that aired Thursday on the Today Show. ‘I mean, honestly I know why you’re asking the question – because this is part of the punditry and the gossip around places like Washington, DC. Let me just tell you something. We’re focused on the things in front of us. We’re focused on what we need to do to address issues like affordable childcare.’

When he pressed her again about whether she’d be on the 2024 Democratic ticket, Harris refused to go there. 

‘The American people sent us here to do a job. And right now there’s a lot of work to be done. And that’s my focus. Sincerely,’ she said.

Melvin also asked about an op-ed written by Thomas Friedman in the New York Times on Tuesday, suggesting Biden team up with Republican Rep. Liz Cheney for a bipartisan ticket in 2024. 

Harris said she hasn’t read the opinion piece. Friedman is one of Biden’s favorite columnists and the president is a regular reader. 

‘I really could care less about the high class gossip on these issues,’ the vice president said.

Cheney, a Republican congresswoman from Wyoming, has become one of the most outspoken critics of Donald Trump, who has not ruled out running for the White House again in 2024.

She earned Trump’s ire when she voted to impeach him for his role in encouraging the January 6th riot and when she joined the special committee investigating the insurrection at the Capitol. The former president has endorsed her opponent in the state’s GOP primary this summer. House Republicans voted her off their leadership team after she joined the panel.

Friedman said putting her on the ticket would send a powerful message. 

‘This is the democratic way of defeating a threat to democracy. Not doing it is how democracies die. I am quite aware that it is highly unlikely,’ Friedman wrote. ‘Yet, I still think it is worth raising. There is no precedent for how close we’re coming to an unraveling of our democracy, either.’

Friedman’s op-ed was published the same day as a Wall Street Journal editorial suggesting Hillary Clinton could make her political comeback in 2024. 

‘Several circumstances – President Biden’s low approval rating, doubts over his capacity to run for re-election at 82, Vice President Kamala Harris’s unpopularity, and the absence of another strong Democrat to lead the ticket in 2024 – have created a leadership vacuum in the party, which Mrs. Clinton viably could fill,’ Democratic strategists Douglas E. Schoen and Andrew Stein wrote in the Journal.

Biden and Harris are both suffering from low approval ratings.  A recent USA Today poll found that just 40 percent of voters approved of Biden’s job in the White House. Harris’ approval rating sat at 32 percent.

Voters have given Biden low marks for his handling of the economy. Inflation hit a 40-year high of 7 per cent this week. Meanwhile COVID cases continue to rise due to the Omicron variant.

Americans are facing empty grocery shelves, high prices at the gas pump and a shortage of services as businesses close due to staff contracting COVID.  

Biden, 79, has said both publicly and privately he will run again in 2024. He is the nation’s oldest president. 

Clinton – who won the popular vote in 2016 but lost the electoral college to Trump – would be 77 years old if she ran and won in November 2024, taking office in January 2025. 

Harris, too, has suffered criticism. Biden gave his vice president – the first woman and black American in the job – a high-profile portfolio but she has failed to deliver major progress on stopping the root causes of migration, which is causing a serge in immigrants at the border, and on advancing voting rights.

Her heir-apparent status appeared in danger amid reports of frustration among West Wing staff with her and her team while her allies insist she is being under utilized and has been given the most difficult tasks of the administration.

She joined Biden in Atlanta on Tuesday for his speech on voting rights, where he called for the Senate to kill the filibuster. Harris traveled separately to the city but she climbed aboard Air Force One after Biden landed. They were pictured walking off the plane together.

She danced, she twerked and she sang. She changed from a figure-hugging sparkling silver bodysuit into a slinky red peekaboo cut-out dress slit to the thigh, then to a Playboy bunny outfit with push-up bustier and floppy rabbit ears.

As she celebrated her 50th birthday last week, Kate Beckinsale proved that she can look and act like a woman half her age – a priceless talent for an actress in Hollywood where turning 30 can be career suicide.

‘What a party – full of love and glitter and the best people,’ the Oxford-educated actress wrote on Instagram.

Ms Beckinsale is one of the most successful British actresses in Hollywood, yet it has been 11 years since she last appeared in a film that earned more than $100 million (£78 million): the remake of Total Recall.

She won Best Actress honours two years running in Britain’s National Film Awards, but neither movie was a box office success: 2021 racial drama Farming earned only £70,000 worldwide, and Jolt took £187,000 last year.

Yet Ms Beckinsale has achieved the formidable tightrope act of enduring as a Hollywood star despite never cracking the A-list.

She lives in a £4.4 million modernist mansion in the Hollywood Hills and is worth a reported £19.5 million and earns at least £1.5 million a year. Paid an estimated £7.8 million for the fifth film in her vampires-vs-werewolves Underworld franchise in 2016, Ms Beckinsale says she is open to appearing in a sixth.

Meanwhile, with 5.6 million Instagram followers, social media is her financial anchor; experts say she could easily command £30,000 a post for brand endorsements.

Her Instagram following dwarfs that of most other British actresses. Mission: Impossible star Hayley Atwell has 1.8 million followers; Kate Winslet 1.4 million; Sienna Miller 1.3 million; and Dame Helen Mirren 1.1 million.

London-born Ms Beckinsale has appeared in commercials for Gap denim, Diet Coke and Lux shampoo, advertised Absolut vodka and Nestle, was the first US brand ambassador for home appliance maker Russell Hobbs, and since 2021 has been the face of MRVL Skin Solutions, a skincare line.

On Instagram she has given shout-outs to places and products including the Castle Elvira luxury hotel in Puglia, Italy; Julia Clancey clothing; Jane Doe Latex dresses; Candy Ice Jewellery; Les Girls Les Boys clothing; and Carversteak at Resorts World in Las Vegas.

Her red carpet appearances at fashion shows, including Chanel, Elie Saab and Bulgari jewellery, may also have been lucrative.

‘Her story serves as a reminder that success in the entertainment industry isn’t always a straightforward path,’ says Los Angeles talent manager Wendy Alane Wright.

‘Throughout her career she has worked and collaborated with incredible co-stars on ambitious projects, even if they didn’t achieve the desired level of success.’

Talent manager Chris Wright says: ‘She’s a better actress than she gets the credit for. She’s been unfortunate that some of the films that were supposed to make a difference in her career didn’t do so. Yet even her not-so-good movies are ones that everyone remembers, such as Pearl Harbor.’

The daughter of Porridge star Richard Beckinsale, who died in 1979 at the age of 31 when Kate was only five, she made her film debut in Kenneth Branagh’s 1993 Shakespeare comedy Much Ado About Nothing. 

The 2001 blockbuster Pearl Harbor, where she appeared alongside Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett, was expected to launch a stellar screen career.

‘Pearl Harbor was a costly missed opportunity,’ says Wendy Wright. ‘Critics panned the film and audiences were left unimpressed.’

Ms Beckinsale next starred in romantic comedy Serendipity but, says Wendy Wright, it ‘failed to make a lasting impression’.

She then turned to action adventure with the 2003 hit Underworld, falling in love with its director, Len Wiseman. Previously she had been in a long relationship with Welsh actor Michael Sheen, with whom she has a 24-year-old daughter.

Underworld spawned four lucrative sequels, but though the vampire saga developed a cult following, it struggled to resonate with a broader audience, says Wendy Wright. 

‘Kate’s connection to the series’ director, whom she was married to at the time, kept her tied to the project for more years than she may have otherwise chosen.’ Ms Beckinsale and Wiseman married but divorced after 15 years in 2019.

Hollywood’s increasing focus on big-budget blockbusters also limited Ms Beckinsale’s opportunities. ‘Kate Beckinsale has appeared at her best in small indie films,’ says another Hollywood talent manager.

Yet her evergreen popularity makes her highly marketable beyond Hollywood. ‘The magic of celebrity influencer marketing is no passing trend, and there’s no better example than Kate Beckinsale,’ says Stacy Jones, chief executive officer of leading pop culture marketing agency Hollywood Branded.

‘What makes Kate’s online presence a goldmine for marketers is not just her massive follower count. Based predominantly in the US but extending across the UK, Brazil, Mexico, and India, her followers provide a vast, engaged and demographically diverse market.’

Ms Beckinsale credits her age-defying beauty to genetics and occasional ‘facials with platelet-rich plasma’. She insists: ‘No thread lift, no Botox, no laser, no nose job, no filler.’

Stacy Jones adds: ‘What sets Kate Beckinsale apart is the trust and personal connection she fosters with her followers. That trust is marketing gold.’

Talent manager Chris Wright is optimistic about her future. ‘There are still roles for her that encompass danger, beauty, sexuality, and her obvious sense of humour.’

But until that call comes, Kate Beckinsale will remain in the money – grabbing attention on social media in skintight bunny costumes and bejewelled bodysuits.

Britain’s capacity to reach for a panic button at the first smell of consumer cordite knows no bounds.

Doubtless for the homeowners who have a two-year fix that expires in the coming months and face paying 6 per cent for their repriced mortgages this may feel like a ticking time-bomb.

Moreover, 4.2m property owners who have experienced a £1,500 increase in repayment levels since the Bank of England belatedly changed its stand on interest rates in November 2021 will be feeling an income shock.

The speed of the rise in borrowing costs is a blow. But since the financial crisis, when interest rates sank to their lowest level in history, house buyers have never had it so good. 

The tougher affordability tests imposed in 2014, which explored every aspect of discretionary spending down to yoga classes, should have helped create wiggle room for residential owners, even though they were inexplicably eased in 2022.

The naysayers are out there demanding a rescue. The LibDems want a £3billion bailout fund. Michael Gove supports the idea of longer-term mortgage deals of up to 25 years, as in North America. 

A longer-term mortgages market already exist in the UK, but there has been notorious mispricing.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is rightly holding firm. No new government subsidies. The flexible British model does involve borrowers making a financial judgment, which can be destabilising.

But in a world where housing costs swallow a big chunk of spending for buyers (and renters), mortgage rates are an important tool for constraining consumption or encouraging spending in austerity.

As difficult as it maybe for those facing a steep jump in housing costs, we shouldn’t forget that most home owners are far from the neediest population in the country. Many sit on capital gains unlikely to be wiped out unless there is a wholesale crash in prices.

Less well-off homeowners on universal credit can access support. The US may look to have a better system to even out the bumps. 

The ‘New Deal’ intermediaries, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, seek to effectively guarantee more stable loan rates. 

They were caught out horribly in the run-up to the great financial crisis. Adventures in derivatives, fat-cat executives and feeble supervision put them front, back and centre of the events which came close to dethroning capitalism.

In September 2008, the US government placed them into ‘conservatorship’ at a cost of $187billion (£151billion) to the taxpayer in a disguised nationalisation. 

Fannie and Freddie did nothing to make the proliferation of sub-prime mortgages safe for people who had no chance of paying them back.

Higher mortgage payments are stressful. But if there are repayment problems, rapacious High Street banks have considerable firepower to tackle the problem by extending loan terms or offering mortgage rate holidays. 

They could use the £44billion of extra revenue they are thought to have amassed from surging interest rate margins.

Lenders should skip the share buybacks and bonuses and make sure customers are looked after through rocky times.

Stress fracture

Activist fund Elliott Associates has a history of battling in the courts. A long tangle in Argentina over the country’s refusal to honour distressed sovereign-backed bonds ended in victory. 

The London Metal Exchange faces a hard grind in the Royal Courts of Justice over its sudden suspension of the nickel contract in the aftermath of the outbreak of Russia’s war on Ukraine, placing $7billion of contracts in jeopardy.

The LME’s handling of the nickel contract is not a sideshow. It is regarded by regulators, including the Bank of England, as a serious market disruption. 

It illustrates how financial transactions, outside the perimeter of banking regulation, can spin out of control.

The case is a test for Elliott, LME-owners the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and for metal trading in the City.

Exit ramp

Founded in 1908 at the birth of British motoring, car dealer Lookers has a chequered recent history. 

Nodding-dog directors have once again chosen to surrender to an overseas buyer, Canada-based Alpha Auto, removing one of the last national UK car dealers from a London listing. 

The share price premium at 42 per cent to the recent trading price may look alluring.

But it vanishes in a cloud of exhaust fumes when measured against the 40 per cent discount of FTSE stocks to North American rivals.