Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host, Jason Palmer.

Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

Thanks to wider broadcast deals and streaming sites, sports fans of the world over can catch

up on the best of global games such as football. But here's the paradox. All that choice

means viewers have dwindling attention spans. And that is driving change in the sports themselves.

And the designation of halal usually has to do with foods. But in Indonesia, the world's most

populous Muslim nation, lots of manufacturers are angling for halal status, a marketing friendly

blessing for products ranging from pianos to sex toys.

First up though.

Britain's parliament begins its work this week with distinct feelings of deja vu and anti-climax

clinging to the House of Commons. Over the weekend, Prime Minister Boris Johnson had hoped to

persuade members of parliament to vote for his fresh Brexit divorce deal with the European Union.

He told members it was high time to get Brexit done.

The House will need no reminding that this is the second deal and the fourth vote,

a three and a half years after the nation voted for Brexit. And during those years,

friendships have been strained families divided and the attention of this House consumed by a

single issue that has at times felt incapable of resolution. But one recently ejected member

of Mr. Johnson's Conservative Party had other ideas. Sir Oliver Lettwin worried that if the House

passed the motion to approve Mr. Johnson's deal, all the other necessary legislation might not get

through in time for Britain's current deadline to get out of the EU in ten days.

The Prime Minister has a strategy. I fully accept that and I accept that it is rational in its own

terms. It is that he wants to be able to say to any waveress, it's my deal or no deal, vote for

...