Last month in England was the driest July since records began almost two centuries ago. How concerned should we be?

Half of England and all of Wales are officially in drought. But what does this mean and could the UK’s taps eventually run dry?

The time-honoured tradition of standing up with a drink, gossiping and putting the world to rights is under threat. If councillors ban it, we’ll all lose out

It is unbelievable: unconscionable. Westminster Council is moving against “vertical drinking” in pubs, starting with Soho. It claims drinking standing up is noisy and disruptive. It makes pubs, the council says, boisterous places where customers crowd round bars, get drunk and become pains in the neck in the street outside.

Westminster’s new draft licences would require pubs to be only for seating, to have “table service in place of open bar space”. Pub users should, presumably, sit down, shut up and wait to be served, like decent Westminster people who use wine bars.

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist

Felicity Cloake is the writer of the Guardian’s How to cook the perfect … and Masterclass cookery columns. If you’ve eaten it … she’s cooked it. Discuss her work or ask her a question below the line now. She’ll be online at 3pm BST to answer them

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Join us at 3pm (BST) on Friday 7 August, as Guardian food writer Felicity Cloake answers your questions.

Felicity is the author of five cookbooks, two food travelogues and writer of the Guardian’s How to cook the perfect … and Masterclass cookery columns. She’s tried thousands of recipes by the world’s top chefs and food writers, to create the ultimate version - delicious and failsafe, every time.

After his breakthrough in The Holdovers in 2023, Sessa has gone back to the 70s again for Tony, the biopic of bad-boy chef and Kitchen Confidential author Bourdain. And, he says, a big part of him would like to stay there

Despite being just 23, Dominic Sessa is perhaps as intimately acquainted with the 1970s as those who grew up then. Although the New Jersey-born actor has only starred in five films, two of them are marinated in the fashions, sounds and mores of the decade. In his new movie, Tony, he plays the 19-year-old Anthony Bourdain, future bad-boy celebrity chef, bestselling author of Kitchen Confidential and host of its hit TV spin-off. Tony restricts itself to one summer in 1975, when Bourdain bummed around the coastal resort of Provincetown, Massachusetts, falling in love, scrubbing pans in a seafood joint and catching the cooking bug. “For a rootless young man with sensualist inclinations,” he wrote, “it was the perfect getaway.”

A 70s retro vibe also hung over Sessa’s debut film. In Alexander Payne’s Oscar-winning 2023 comedy-drama The Holdovers, he played Angus Tully, a surly student forced to board at school over Christmas with only his classics teacher and the cook for company. That picture wasn’t merely set in 1970; it seemed, with its faded palette and fake crackles on the print, to have been made then.

There are glimmers of potential in this comedy about a potty-mouthed feline gang. But not even the great voice cast or a cute kitten can save it from being lazy, crude and boring

I suppose the question is really: what do you do after redefining comedy for your era? After The Office, that exquisitely observed, agonising, heartbreaking, hilarious examination of the human condition co-created with Stephen Merchant, Ricky Gervais managed Extras – off-peak but still great – and then continued a downward trajectory that his latest offering, Alley Cats, does nothing to arrest.

You can see what the six-episode animated series about a gang of homeless cats wants to be. It wants to be an exquisitely observed, agonising, heartbreaking, hilarious examination of the human condition. But it can’t be bothered. Easier by far, especially as it’s on Netflix and unshackled from mainstream broadcasters’ rules about swearing, to call everyone a C-word and sigh at the inevitability/sweet release of death every five minutes. Nihilism – gotcha! So dark, man, so edgy!

Alley Cats is on Netflix

With the debate over prison overcrowding and what to do about it raging, one initiative offers an alternative solution

As the prison overcrowding crisis shows no sign of abating and the debate rages over early releases, an initiative in the West Midlands offers an alternative to custodial sentences.

The Guardian was offered rare access to the project, under which, instead of being sent to prison, convicted offenders work on the improvement of waterways and green spaces around Smethwick. It is a small part of the community payback scheme, which in total clocked up an estimated 5m hours across England and Wales in the last year.

Stephen Akinsanya says being mistaken for defendant shows lack of progress on racism within legal system

A black barrister has said a security guard told him he could not park in a court’s car park in London because “it’s not for defendants”.

Stephen Akinsanya, who in June was awarded an OBE for raising awareness of youth knife crime and its prevention, said the incident, at an east London court about four weeks ago, illustrated the lack of progress on racism within the criminal justice system.

Exclusive: Neet crisis review to call for teachers to be asked to spot those at risk of leaving education jobless at 16

• What can Dublin teach us? Milburn goes on quest to learn

Primary schools in England should be required to identify children at risk of leaving education at 16 without finding a job, a government review is to recommend.

Alan Milburn, who is leading a review into Britain’s crisis in youth worklessness, said he would call for sweeping changes in education policy alongside a shake-up of the benefits system to address the problem.

More than double number of arrests made since 2024 compared with previous two-year period

Home office minister Anna Turley has responded to a report that Andy Burnham is “too blokey” on social media because of his references to football and downing pints at the pub.

The Times reported that a No 10 team had advised the prime minister to tone down his “blokeish” videos online that attempts to appeal to a wider audience.

Trade unions say UK prime minister must begin by revoking permission for US to use RAF bases for airstrikes in Gulf

Trade unions have called on Andy Burnham to tackle the cost of living crisis at its source by pressuring Donald Trump to bring the conflict in the Middle East swiftly to an end.

Leaders from 10 unions, including Unison, the UK’s largest, urged the prime minister to oppose further fighting in the Gulf to help bring down energy and fuel costs.