The A318 is the smallest of the Airbus A320 families - fortunately it hasn’t sold well so there’s a good chance you’ll never see the horror.

TriStar (which I agree was a lovely looking plane - the DC-10's third engine always looked like an afterthought) and DC-10 fought over a market that couldn’t really support two planes. The 747 took the big end of the market (though Boeing looked at a three engine version of the 747) and the 737 took the lower end.

WSJ is reporting that a potential fix for the bug that affected the Lion Air crash was delayed because of the US government shut down. The FAA is denying this is the case. Since the WSJ is paywalled, CNN has a summary:

Reports are that Lion Air (who lost the first 737 MAX-8) might be about to cancel their remaining 195 orders for MAX in favour of Airbus.

Pretty much all of modern aircraft design and crash investigation has its roots in the Comet investigations, so the answer to the question is - everything.

Christ we have a bunch of copper-bottomed, stain-resistant, oceangoing, all-weather twats on both sides of Commons.

Snopes has an explainer about the Patrick Moore tweet.

‘Airplanes are becoming far too complex to fly.’

So far, that’s China, Indonesia, Brasil, Mexico, Oman, South Korea, Australia, Singapore, the UK, Norway, South Africa and Turkey that grounded 737 MAX aircraft. The UK’s CAA put out a statement today:

Sam Bee and Amy Hoggart are here to help:

According to several journalists, the Whips are going round Westminster offering billions in bribes (sorry - additional spending) for pet projects if MPs vote for May’s deal.

Travel insurance - buy it as soon as you make your booking even if it eats into the coverage period. You’ll have more protection if your holiday company, airline or any other part of your trip goes under, if the trip is cancelled by the provider, or you cannot go on the trip.

If you’re going to a country where you don’t speak the main languages and where you can be sure people don’t speak English, get yourself a visual dictionary that lets you ‘converse’ with people by pointing at pictures in a book. They cost a few quid and can be put in your carry-on.

John Lithgow is a complete delight on the show; but Russell Brand describing his showstopper to Paul, Pro and Sandi has to be the television highlight of the year.

It must be karma for what the UK has done to Ireland over the centuries.

Apparently this is what is known as ‘a mature democracy’.

BTW. If anyone is confused by Brexit (in addition to 60 million+ Brits) - Sam Bee and Amy Hoggart have an explainer here:

Today was an equal opportunity fuck-up day. On a live radio broadcast discussing abuse and online trolling of female politicians; Work and Pensions Minister, Amber Rudd said:

Not sure of the cause of the limitation for Dragon, but Soyuz’s 200-day lifespan as a lifeboat for the ISS is limited by the hydrogen peroxide in the attitude thrusters. Peroxide spontaneously decomposes to water and oxygen which means the thrusters would gradually lose power. So the limit is set well before too much…

The good news is that there aren’t any radioactive power sources on this probe. The bus was powered by solar panels and the lander itself relied on batteries as the surface of Venus is quite dim because of the scattering and reflection of light by high-altitude clouds.