Category Archives: UK news

‘Vigilantes’ on a mission to reunite owners with their stolen bikes

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Britain’s cyclists take matters into their own hands as criminals cash in on post-lockdown popularity of cycling

It’s the buzz he gets from reuniting the cyclists of Cambridge with their stolen bikes that has turned Omar Terywall into a self-proclaimed “vigilante”. He said: “You get really hooked on it when you start seeing major progress – and, well, it’s just nice helping people really, isn’t it?”

Like others across the country, from Portsmouth to Glasgow, Terywall runs a local Facebook group where Cambridge cyclists share details of their stolen bikes in the hope they will be spotted. Well-regarded by local police, Terywall happily spends hours each day hunting down stolen bikes via online advertisements and local tip-offs.

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More Afghan interpreters eligible to move to UK under new rules

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Government expands scheme for linguists who risked lives for British troops

Dozens more Afghan interpreters who risked their lives for British troops will be able to apply to settle in the UK following the government decision to expand a relocation scheme.

Former interpreters and servicemen have welcomed the move, which could mean about 100 linguists and their families will be made eligible to apply for resettlement – but said more must be done for the hundreds still at risk of reprisals in Afghanistan.

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Dominic Raab bodyguard suspended after gun reportedly left on plane

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Police protection officer had been returning from US trip with foreign secretary

A police protection officer who was travelling with Dominic Raab has been suspended from duty after reportedly leaving his gun on a plane.

The officer had travelled with the foreign secretary on a visit to the US when he allegedly left his gun on a plane at Heathrow airport on Friday.

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Foreign offices: the Britons who work from home – abroad

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Covid has forced many people out of workplaces. Some have saved money by moving overseas

When the coronavirus lockdown forced Mason Palmer, 26, to start working from home, the digital content creator had a rethink about where that home was and in July he moved from Bristol to Milan. “I’ve always loved travelling to Italy,” he says. “I was always going over there; it was like an expensive hobby.”

He did not expect his boss to necessarily be on board with his plans and suggested that he move to working for the company, Working Word, on a freelance basis. But the firm was open to the idea and his boss kept him on staff. “Now I’m like the unofficial Milan branch,” he laughs.

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New lockdown measures for London ‘increasingly likely’, says Sadiq Khan

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Mayor says that action is needed before a second Covid-19 wave hits London

It is “increasingly likely” that lockdown restrictions will soon be needed to slow the spread of coronavirus in London, the capital’s mayor has warned.

London mayor Sadiq Khan said he was of the “firm view” that action should be taken before the virus spirals out of control, and leaders were considering measures already imposed in other parts of the UK.

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UK coronavirus live: R number increases to between 1.1 and 1.4 as 4,322 new cases recorded

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New infections grow by up to 7% daily; UK cases surge; Welsh leader slams ‘vacancy at heart of UK’; Scotland given ‘advance notice of hard decisions’

Coronavirus cases in England almost doubled in the space of a week, with infections becoming more widespread across all ages, leading one expert to say a second wave had begun.

Almost 60,000 people are thought to have had the virus from 4 to 10 September 2020 – one in every 900 people – with about 6,000 new cases per day, according to the ONS survey of randomly selected people in the community.

Related: England Covid cases almost doubled within a week, according to ONS

A further 4,322 people have tested positive for coronavirus in the UK, an increase of nearly 1,000 cases from the following day.

Overall, 385,936 people have tested positive for coronavirus since the pandemic began.

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Banksy’s Monet tribute to go on sale for up to £5m

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Tribute that adds abandoned shopping trollies to the impressionist image of water lilies to be sold at Sotheby’s auction

Street artist Banksy’s version of Claude Monet’s impressionist masterpiece will go on sale at Sotheby’s London gallery for an estimated £3-5m.

The painting, called Show me the Monet, was created in 2005. It is framed around Monet’s famous water lilies picture but is filled with jarring images of upside-down shopping trolleys and a traffic cone bobbing in the water.

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Amal Clooney quits UK envoy role over ‘lamentable’ Brexit bill

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Exclusive: prominent human rights lawyer writes to foreign secretary with stinging denunciation

Amal Clooney, the high-profile human rights lawyer, has resigned from her position as the UK’s special envoy on media freedom in protest at the government’s intention to breach international law through the internal market bill.

In a stinging denunciation of Boris Johnson’s threat to override Britain’s international treaty obligations in the EU withdrawal agreement, the barrister described the government’s actions as “lamentable”.

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QAnon conspiracy theory gaining ground in UK, analysis shows

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Followers believe that Donald Trump is waging secret war against ritual child abusers

A conspiracy theory that Donald Trump is waging a secret war against an elite who engage in ritual child abuse is growing across UK social media, Guardian analysis has found.

The QAnon conspiracy theory is propelled by an unlikely coalition of spirituality and wellness groups, vigilante “paedophile hunter” networks, pre-existing conspiracy forums, local news pages, pro-Brexit campaigners and the far right.

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‘Times have changed’: Barbadians in Reading welcome republic plans

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Caribbean island intends to remove Queen as head of state, 54 years after gaining independence

An old saying Peter Small learned from his father growing up on Barbados sprang to his mind this week as the Caribbean island declared its intention to remove the Queen as head of state: “Don’t give me a fish. Teach me how to fish.”

Fifity-four years after independence, Barbados stands ready to cast off the final vestige of its colonial past having learned much from its British overlords, Small believes. “The time is right. And the people are ready,” added the grandfather, 75, who lives at the heart of a close community of Barbadians in Reading, home to one of the largest diasporas outside of Barbados.

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Brexit: consortium of companies led by Fujitsu wins £200m Irish Sea contract

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Deal is the first concrete implementation of the special arrangements for Northern Ireland

A £200m contract to implement Brexit checks on goods in the Irish Sea has been won by a consortium of companies led by Japanese company Fujistu.

HMRC announced on Friday that a two-year contract for the new trader support service (TSS) had been awarded to a consortium led by the tech company and its partners, the Customs Clearance Consortium, an organisation run by customs expert Robert Hardy and the Institute of Export and International Trade.

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UK government faces legal action over ‘moonshot’ Covid testing project

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Good Law Project says plans ignore scientific evidence and break value-for-money rules

The UK government is facing legal action over Boris Johnson’s “moonshot” project, which could involve up to £100bn being spent on an attempt to increase Covid-19 testing capacity to 10m per day.

The health secretary, Matt Hancock, and the minister for the Cabinet Office, Michael Gove, are named in a case that alleges the project, as described in leaked papers, is unlawful because it ignores scientific evidence, involves potentially huge private contracts that may not have been tendered and breaks the government’s own value-for-money rules.

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London New Year’s Eve fireworks cancelled owing to Covid risk, says mayor – video

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The London mayor, Sadiq Khan, has confirmed that the annual firework display on New Year's Eve will not go ahead because of concerns about large numbers of people gathering in the capital's centre. 'We simply can't afford to have [those] numbers of people congregating,' Khan told LBC's James O'Brien. About 100,000 people usually attend the display 

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Lord Sugar tweets about flight to Sydney, angering Australians unable to enter country

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UK billionaire praises Emirates for flight as thousands remain stranded by policy to ease pressure on hotel quarantine

A tweet by Lord Sugar about his recent flight into Sydney has angered scores of Australians stranded around the world who themselves are unable to enter the country.

Australia’s federal opposition seized on the tweet on Friday amid accusations a controversial policy to ease pressure on Australia’s mandatory hotel quarantine system was unfairly penalising economy travellers stuck overseas.

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Covid test and trace: how does UK compare with other countries?

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Successful schemes in South Korea and Germany show speed and targeting are key

As chaos continues to engulf Britain’s test and trace system, attention has focused on how successful other countries have been in using testing and contact-tracing to suppress coronavirus transmission.

While many have embraced test/trace regimes, comparing the relative successes – and failures – is complicated by the fact that different countries count things even as basic as the number of daily tests using different methods.

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Coronavirus live news: Iran in grip of ‘third wave’ of pandemic; Covid-related deaths in France on the rise

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New infections in Iran pass more than 3,000 a day again; deaths in France related to Covid-19 trend upwards for first time since lockdown

The US biotech company Moderna has announced that it expects to produce 20million doses of its experimental coronavirus vaccine by the end of the year, Reuters reports.

The announcement, made in a filing with US securities regulators, comes after Moderna’s chief executive, Stephane Bancel, told Reuters on Thursday that the company plans to seek emergency authorisation for the vaccine’s use in high-risk groups if it proves even just 70% effective.

Mark Rutte, the prime minister of the Netherlands, has said his government is preparing “regional” measures to combat the coronavirus outbreak, after the country registered 1,972 cases in the past 24 hours, Reuters reports.

Rutte said the Dutch situation was “worrying” after the country registered a record number of cases for the fourth consecutive day, with particular rises in major cities in the west of the country, including Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague.

At this rate, the number of infections would double every week and we absolutely cannot have that.

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Covid-19: UK test and trace ‘barely functional’ as 11 million face lockdown

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With local lockdowns set to spread, report shows 90% of tests failing to hit turnaround target

The coronavirus test and trace system was condemned as “barely functional” today as its tsar admitted that demand was up to four times capacity, while 90% of tests were failing to hit the 24-hour turnaround target.

The Guardian has seen documents showing tracers taking up to two weeks to contact friends, relatives and workmates of people diagnosed with Covid-19 – the entire length of the self-isolation period.

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Asylum seekers and lessons from history | Letters

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Paul Secher on the refugees housed in an army barracks on the outskirts of Sandwich in 1939, Rachel A Elliott on the judge who stopped the expulsion of 20 asylum seekers on a charter flight, and David Edwards Hulme on the origins of the boat name Speedwell

There is an interesting parallel to the proposal to house 400 asylum seekers in a disused army barracks in Folkestone, about which the local Conservative MP, Damian Collins, and district councillors have registered their protest with the home secretary (Former Kent barracks to house asylum seekers who arrived by boat, 15 September).

In the summer of 1939, some 4,000 refugees, also mainly men in their 20s and 30s (including my father and uncle), were housed in the derelict Kitchener Camp army barracks on the outskirts of nearby Sandwich. Similar objections were raised by some local politicians to the imminent arrival of so many foreigners, mainly from Germany and Austria. While the influx could have overwhelmed the small Kentish town with a population of just 3,500, they were largely welcomed – to the benefit of both the refugees and the local community.
Paul Secher
London

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Syrian teenage refugee homeless on Lesbos – despite having right to live in UK

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Labour urges Home Office to ‘right this wrong’ as Syrian teenager remains stranded in Greece despite legal right to join family

“When I saw the smoke coming I didn’t have the chance to get my backpack, I just ran. The fire was very close, I couldn’t save anything, I lost all my documents. I just escaped through the forest.”

Ahmed looks nervously around as he talks about the catastrophe he has just lived through: the fire that destroyed the Moria refugee camp in Lesbos. Around him people are going about their daily lives in the island capital Mytilene, drinking coffee and chatting in the sunshine. But today the Syrian teenager is focused on the basics of survival. “Do you know where I can buy clothes?” he asks. It has been a week since the fire and he only has what he is wearing.

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‘The battle is not over’: Hancock announces new Covid restrictions in north-east England – video

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Nearly 2 million people in north-east England will be banned from mixing with other families, under the strictest measures imposed since the country eased out of nationwide lockdown. The restrictions include a 10pm curfew on nightlife.

The health secretary, Matt Hancock, announced the measures following a sharp rise in coronavirus cases in the north-east and amid growing concern about a UK-wide rise in cases. 'With winter on the horizon, we must prepare, bolster our defences and come together once again against this common foe,' he said. 

The rules will apply to people in Newcastle, Northumberland, North Tyneside, South Tyneside, Gateshead, County Durham and Sunderland

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