If you've got moss taking over a patch of your lawn, stop buying stuff to kill it. Moss isn't the problem. Moss doesn't kill grass and it doesn't choke anything out. It just moves into spots where the grass was already losing: deep shade, packed soil, poor drainage, or chronically damp conditions. Those are all things grass struggles with and moss tolerates just fine. So the moss isn't attacking your lawn, it's telling you the grass was never thriving there in the first place. Which is why moss-killer is usually a losing battle. You can rake the moss out or spray iron on it, but unless you fix the shade, drainage, or compaction underneath, it usually comes right back. Stop fighting the one thing that actually wants to grow there. That little patch of moss holds water, protects the soil, shelters tiny creatures, and never asks you to mow it. Let it have the corner.

Here’s a spot of good news: in a survey of 125,000 kids aged 8 to 18 in 479 UK schools, 36.1% say they like reading in their spare time — up from 32.7% last year. According to the National Literacy Trust, 20.3% say they read every day. Last year’s figure was 18.7%.

I used to work in the ambulance service. . It cannot be fixed. It actively recruited yes men over my 12 year period. It took on too much. It went from accident and emergency plus serious medical refer transfers to a catch all for every social problem in the country. It started with every out of hours GP request. So from 5pm to 9am we took on most those calls. The service then open up the 999 call handling centre to cheaper unqualified staff who followed crib sheets. Previously, older experienced paramedics went into call centres as they got too old to be hauling 25 stone men and women up and down stairs. So more ambulance were sent to "non jobs". Then there was a benefits boom. I had a call to a girl on benefits who didn't have the money to get a taxi to the GP who was 1 mile from where she lived. She didn't want to walk with the push chair. Her child had the sniffles. It was the beginning of the state dependent generation. I had a female with a missing tampon after sex, she lived 400 yards from the local hospital. I drove 20 miles across the county on blues before getting the real story. It was not the reported haemorrhage. Then we started getting everything, Pissed up at the weekend and cut yourself in your beer bottle, call an ambulance to get your pissed up arse 20 miles to the nearest hospital for stitches Having a pissed up mental health crisis at 2am, call an ambulance. Flown in from America for recently diagnosed af, get an ambulance, Need out of hours cancer care, call an ambulance. Every other NHS department closed is doors at 6pm and everything went to the ambulance service. Granny got d&v, call an ambulance. Having your 5th child so you can get a bigger house on benefits, you get an ambulance to take you to hospital. When I started, we used to get 2 to 3 real calls per 12 hr shift. 5 was busy. You worked within an area. When I left there was no such thing as a 12 hr shift. 14 hr became norm, you drive over 3 counties and never stopped. When I started the training was free, in-house and you could qualify within 2.5 years. Now it's A 4 year expensive degree. Plus extra driving licence upgrade costs. No-one I worked with remained within the ambulance service. Everyone has left. The crap you're sent to is astonishing whilst the really sick people die on the streets. All the good staff and managers left. Only the yes men stayed and the decline continues. I'm out of touch now but it doesn't sound like things improved. There aren't more ambulance stations, there are fewer. There were fewer ambulances in my time also. There was always plenty of money for courses in diversity, bed sores, the patients rights when they are attacking you etc. Human resource departments and tick box departments certainly grew more than the front line staff department, in line with every other NHS department. The culture of state dependency is also irreversibly high Everyone feels they are entitled to an ambulance, because we've encouraged everyone that their truth is valid. In the meantime, those that really need it, go without. The population continues to rise, the aging population rises but the amount of ambulances doesn't. For those who think illegal immigrants don't use the NHS , you need to realise they are the first to use it. If you think illegal economic migrant numbers are ok, just wait till you here about the illegal health care migrants. Even before we opened our borders to 3rd worlders, when the EU first opened up to Poland and then Bulgaria, the health care migration was astonishing. I previously had no idea about the mismatch We took in thousands that didn't have access to mental health centres or even deaf support. But that's a story for another day. We're in the mess we put ourselves with prime in charge incapable of turning it around. My advice. If you can get yourself to hospital, do it. You could die waiting for that ambulance to save you.

We need to get out of this mindset that wars are won by soldiers alone. They're won by supply chains, factories and the country behind them. That's the conversation we need to have.

UK has intercepted Russian shadow fleet oil tanker attempting to go through English Channel, says PM Keir Starmer bbc.in/4vsOgc5