Driller’s cold feet on start in ‘chilly’ Utah

A DELVE into the world of AIM doesn’t take long to yield something curious. Last week driller TomCo Energy, listed on the junior market, said it had raised £532,350 from investors to conduct field tests at its project in Utah. Then, just a few days later, the £3.4 million company said the testing had been delayed until next year because of “colder than expected temperatures at site”. A glance at the weather forecasts reveals the dry state’s conditions are pretty much the same as temperate London’s: hardly Arctic, then. The company declines to comment.

FORMER Treasury permanent secretary Baron Macpherson of Earl’s Court, who helped steer the UK through the financial crisis, has a gloomy message for anybody looking forward to life after Brexit. The Old Etonian tweets: “If PM secures agreement to deal, this is just the end of the beginning. If she doesn’t, we are back to square one. Either way the heavy lifting lies ahead. Brexit uncertainty will be with us into the mid-2020s and beyond. #getusedtoit.”

THE Royal Institute of British Architects last night hosted the Baillie Gifford prize for non-fiction, awarded to a history of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

Presenting the prize, Baillie partner Charles Plowden, said: “This kind of considered objective research with a long-term global perspective is our stock in trade. In a world of partisan hype and fake news the search for truth is increasingly important. The financial world needs it more than most. I like to think the gulf between Twitter and long-form non-fiction we’re talking about is comparable to that between the day traders who seem to hog the TV timeline and ourselves.” Very highbrow.