Charles Ehikioya, who has served for 22 years, says he was racially profiled
A black police inspector has complained to the Metropolitan police about racial harassment after two white officers stopped him while he was driving.
Insp Charles Ehikioya recorded the incident, which happened as he returned from work in south London on 23 May, the BBC reported.
Continue reading...French child, aged six when attacked in London, is able to walk a little and has started trying to sing
A French boy who was thrown from the Tate Modern viewing platform in London while on holiday has been able to enjoy a weekend at home away from medical care, his parents have said.
The boy was aged six when Jonty Bravery threw him from the visitor attraction gantry last August.
Continue reading...The Windrush scandal brought the cruelty of Britain’s deportation policies to light, but the practice continues to this day – and shockingly, it is made possible by UK aid money. By Luke de Noronha
Sitting in the computer room of Open Arms drop-in centre, a homeless shelter in Kingston, Jamaica, I turned on my recorder and asked Jason to tell me about his life there. In his distinct east London accent, he described arguments and fights with other residents – about chores, use of the showers, missing possessions. Then, checking no one was around, he complained about the management, claiming that they spoke to him like a child and had threatened to kick him out. Nor did he feel safe when he left the shelter. “People are trying to kill me down here. I need to get back to England,” he said. But having been deported from the UK, and finding himself destitute in Jamaica, he had few options. Jason had been exiled home.
Jason was born in 1984 in Kingston. When he was about five, his mother and grandmother moved to the UK, and so for most of his childhood he was raised by his aunties in Kingston. He had a good childhood in Jamaica. For his wider family, though, the option to move to the UK was viewed as “the dream ticket”, and so, in August 2000, when he was 15, Jason and his 13-year-old brother were put on a flight to London to join their mother. (The official story was that they were just planning to visit their grandmother for a few weeks.) This was the first time Jason had ever been on a plane, and it remains the only commercial flight he has taken.
Continue reading...As the government made excuses for not providing adequate equipment, Josiane refused to stop caring for the Covid-19 patients who needed her. Soon she was admitted to the ICU, too
After a busy night shift at the hospital, there was nothing the nurse Josiane Ekoli liked to do more than come home and wake up her sleeping children. Her 22-year-old son, Kenan, a finance worker, got the worst of it, because his bedroom was the closest to the front door. “Oh my days,” Kenan groans. “Every day, I’m hearing my name, without a doubt. She’s screaming my name. Kenan! Kenan! She knew I hated being woken up.”
On Saturday mornings, when Josiane had not come off a night shift, she had a routine: at about 9am, she would blast gospel music through the house. If that did not get her children up – she had five, but two of her sons had moved out – she would go into their rooms and start talking to them. At them, really. “Sometimes, she woke me up just to talk,” says Kenan. “I’d say: ‘Mum, couldn’t you wait until I was awake to have this conversation?’”
Continue reading...Education secretary forced into humiliating reversal on A-level and GCSE grades in England
Gavin Williamson has tried to lay the blame for the exams fiasco at the door of the regulator Ofqual after a humiliating climbdown that overturned up to 2.3m grades but left thousands of pupils in limbo.
Two days after saying there would be “no U-turn, no change”, the education secretary apologised and ordered a complete reversal whereby pupils in England will be able to revert to the A-level grades recommended by their teachers, if those are higher.
Continue reading...Exams regulator Ofqual announces all A-levels and GCSEs in England will now be graded according to teacher assessment following similar moves in Wales, NI and Scotland
One of the groups that had been planning to take the UK government to court over exam grades has said it is dropping its legal action, following the U-turn. Jo Maugham QC, the director of the Good Law Project, tweeted:
Statement on Government A Level U-turn pic.twitter.com/wEWYElgCil
Mary Curnock Cook, the former chief executive of Ucas, said the government must announce immediately that the cap on university admissions will be lifted to accommodate the new grading system.
Many universities will have already filled their courses based on the grades published last Thursday. Speaking on BBC News, she said:
Decisions have already been made by universities about who they accept, who they don’t accept, who goes into clearing and so on. This change will mean that universities have to rethink completely.
Continue reading...Anders Tegnell appears to have asked if higher death rate among older people acceptable if faster herd immunity achieved
Sweden’s light-touch approach to Covid-19 has come under renewed criticism after emails show the country’s chief epidemiologist appearing to ask whether a higher death rate among older people might be acceptable if it led to faster herd immunity.
Speculation about the views of Sweden’s leading public health officials was further fanned after it also emerged that Anders Tegnell, the architect of the country’s no-lockdown strategy, had deleted some of his emails.
Continue reading...Victims from town of Calne died after their vehicle hit a house and caught fire on A4
Floral tributes have been left to four young men who died after their car crashed into a house and caught fire.
The incident happened at 3am on Sunday on the A4 in Derry Hill, near Calne, Wiltshire. Police said the occupants of the house immediately called 999 and were evacuated while the fire service extinguished the blaze.
Continue reading...Victims from town of Calne died after their vehicle hit a house and caught fire on A4
Floral tributes have been left to four young men who died after their car crashed into a house and caught fire.
The incident happened at 3am on Sunday on the A4 in Derry Hill, near Calne, Wiltshire. Police said the occupants of the house immediately called 999 and were evacuated while the fire service extinguished the blaze.
Continue reading...Testing people after seven days could also ‘increase compliance from public’, says one researcher
People arriving in Britain should be tested to cut quarantine time, scientists have urged, as speculation mounts that more holiday destinations will be axed from the air bridges list.
A growing number of countries are being added to the UK’s quarantine lists, with many Britons holidaying in France forced to make a frantic dash back before 4am on Saturday morning to avoid a 14-day period of isolation.
Continue reading...90,000 Africans fought the Japanese in Myanmar on behalf of Britain in the second world war. Feelings are mixed in the few remaining survivors about being sent by a colonial power to fight a battle that wasn’t theirs
Continue reading...Eight Fijian-born soldiers went public five months ago and have yet to receive positive response
Eight Fijian-born soldiers who served with the British army in Iraq and Afghanistan are seeking a judicial review against the Ministry of Defence and Home Office, saying bureaucratic errors have made them illegal immigrants in the country for which they once served.
The group of Commonwealth veterans have been forced to go to court five months after first going public because neither Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, nor Priti Patel, the home secretary, have yet responded positively to their initial complaint or properly reviewed their cases.
Continue reading...Interview given by MI6 officer in 1980s was discovered in research for new documentary
A first-hand account of Britain’s role in the 1953 coup that overthrew the elected prime minister of Iran and restored the shah to power has been published for the first time.
The account by the MI6 officer who ran the operation describes how it took British intelligence years to persuade the US to take part in the coup. Meanwhile, MI6 recruited agents and bribed members of Iran’s parliament with banknotes transported in biscuit tins.
Continue reading...Police say woman in her 40s was known to the child, who was found at address in Acton
A woman has been arrested on suspicion of murder after a boy, 10, was found dead in a west London flat.
The woman, in her 40s, attended a police station and spoke to officers at about 2.30am on Sunday. Officers and paramedics attended a residential address in Cumberland Park, Acton, where they found the body of a 10-year-old boy.
Continue reading...Asylum seekers give accounts of injuries, as Priti Patel says many refugees feel France is racist
Asylum seekers in the UK and France have described injuries they have received at the hands of French police, as Priti Patel said many were making the perilous journey across the Channel because they believe France is racist.
The home secretary made her comments in a conference call with Conservative MPs concerned about the recent surge in numbers attempting the voyage in small boats.
Continue reading...Critics say PHE is being scapegoated for government’s failings during pandemic
Senior doctors, hospital bosses and public health experts have accused ministers of scapegoating Public Health England for their own failings over Covid-19 by planning to axe the agency.
The government’s decision to scrap PHE and merge it into a new body charged with preventing future outbreaks of infectious diseases produced a chorus of criticism on Sunday.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Andrew George calls for urgent reform of system that views black people as ‘criminals or drug dealers’
The police stop of the Labour MP Dawn Butler was rooted in systemic racism that is damaging the legitimacy of policing, the leader of black police officers has said.
Inspector Andrew George, the new interim president of the National Black Police Association, also called for urgent reform of “a biased system that views black people as criminals or drug dealers”.
Continue reading...Nations from New Zealand to Cuba closed borders promptly with strict quarantine rules, but the UK won’t admit its ‘serious mistake’
Island nations have an advantage when it comes to stopping travellers importing disease, be it Covid or other infections.
Seas are usually harder to cross than land, and beaches are easier to police. There are no cross-border towns, and fewer ways to sneak over frontiers.
Continue reading...Despite medical intervention, officer died at scene following incident off coast of Pwllheli
An off-duty police officer has died after falling from a jetski. The alarm was raised shortly after 4.30pm on Saturday following the incident off the coast of Pwllheli, north Wales.
Emergency services, including the Coastguard and RNLI, attended and the officer was retrieved from the water. Despite extensive medical intervention, he died at the scene. His next of kin have been informed, said North Wales police.
Continue reading...The competence embodied in Merkel provokes loathing from the US president
Donald Trump has declared war on Germany. In a manner of speaking. Europe’s most important country, potentially America’s most valuable partner, has in the mind of the president become an adversary. Of all Trump’s many foreign policy disasters, this is perhaps his most significant.
In late July, it was announced that retired army colonel Douglas Macgregor, a decorated combat veteran, would become the next ambassador to Berlin. Macgregor is a regular contributor to Trump’s favourite channel of information, Fox News. He has variously suggested that the US border guard should shoot people if they tried to enter illegally from Mexico; described eastern Ukrainians as “Russians”; defended Serbia’s actions against a “Muslim drug mafia” in Kosovo; and criticised Germany for giving “millions of unwanted Muslim invaders” welfare benefits rather than providing more funding for its armed services.
Continue reading...