Celebrate the season today at the 30th Autumn Festival and Apple Pressing event, which takes place at the Sharpham Estate (01803 732542; sharphamtrust.org; free) between 11am and 4pm. The 18th-century Palladian villa overlooking the River Dart at Ashprington provides a fine setting for this celebration of the apple harvest. But, thanks to the poor weather, the organisers need a little help this year, so take your own windfalls for turning into juice to help boost the estate's slim pickings. There'll also be an Apple Olympics and live music.

In August 2007, when foot-and-mouth disease returned to Britain's door, Gordon Brown cut short his Dorset holiday after just four hours to return to No 10 and convene a Cobra emergency meeting.

In 2001 10 million farm animals, including 700,000 cattle, were slaughtered at a cost of about £8bn

The outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the United Kingdom in the spring and summer of 2001 led to around seven million sheep and cattle being culled in an attempt to halt the disease.

The Government failed to plan for a possible volcanic eruption in Iceland that paralysed air traffic in the UK and caused hundreds of millions of pounds worth of disruption despite being warned of the threat, an official investigation into national emergencies has found.

Hundreds of Buddhists offered prayers yesterday for more than 1.93 million cows, pigs and other animals slaughtered in South Korea's worst outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease.

South Korea, already battling a serious outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in livestock, yesterday confirmed an outbreak of bird flu at poultry farms.

The coalition is to give more details this week on how spending cuts will hit services including police, roads and the coastguard. A series of announcements by ministers will flesh out the impact of settlements from this autumn's Spending Review.

What on Earth is going on? The Government appears to think nothing is wrong with giving you fake medicine at the taxpayers' expense. They said it is fine for doctors to give you pills that contain nothing whatsoever and charge them to the NHS. Homeopathy really is that simple. Most of the pills contain nothing apart from some sugar. A homeopathic pharmacy may have 3000 or so bottles, all identical, with no trace of the ingredient on the label. If it were not for special loopholes in the law, that would be as illegal as selling whisky with no alcohol. It isn't as though MPs aren't aware of this. The then Health Minister, Mike O'Brien – when asked by the Parliamentary Science and technology Committee if he had ". . . any credible evidence that homeopathy works beyond the placebo effect?", answered: ". . . the straight answer is no".

Whatever the cost to the taxpayer of immunising people against swine flu turns out be, it will almost certainly be money well spent if it helps slow the spread of the disease and minimises the gigantic damage to the economy it is likely to inflict in terms of days off sick and lost output.