Category Archives: UK news

Supertrawlers ramp up activity in UK protected waters during lockdown

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Fishing time in first half of 2020 almost double that in whole of last year, Greenpeace says

Supertrawlers vastly stepped up their fishing in the UK’s protected waters during the coronavirus lockdown earlier this year, while most of the UK’s smaller vessels were confined to port.

The amount of time supertrawlers spent fishing in marine protected areas in the first half of this year was nearly double that spent in the waters in the whole of last year, according to a Greenpeace investigation. There were 23 supertrawlers catching fish in UK protected areas in the period, none of them UK-owned.

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Large blue butterfly flutters in Cotswolds for first time in 150 years

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Painstaking conservation effort to accommodate insect’s complex lifecycle pays off

The biggest reintroduction to date of the large blue has led to the rare butterfly flying on a Cotswold hillside where it has not been seen for 150 years.

About 750 butterflies emerged on to Rodborough Common in Gloucestershire this summer after 1,100 larvae were released last autumn following five years of innovative grassland management to create optimum habitat.

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If Britain looked anew, it could learn so much about the arts from Africa | Afua Hirsch

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The UK cultural sector, so obsessed with being ‘world leading’, is standing on the brink. It needs to broaden its gaze

It’s a painful time to tell stories about the arts. This week, hundreds of venues across the UK were lit up in red – not in an inspired display of creativity, but as a cry for help as arts venues find themselves on the brink of collapse.

The protest culminated in the iconic chimney at London’s Tate Modern art gallery being made bright red, and illuminated with the words “Throw Us a Line” – a reference to the 1m jobs at risk in the live events sector following the Covid-19 pandemic and shutdown. A report from the digital, culture, media and sport select committee warned last month that the UK now faces the prospect of becoming a “cultural wasteland”.

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Office pods may be the answer to working safely post-Covid-19

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Entrepreneur Xu Weiping is risking a fortune to build 2,000 3-metre square workspaces in east London

Welcome to cube city. Xu Weiping, a Chinese multimillionaire, has a vision for the future of office work in the post-Covid-19 pandemic world: thousands of office pods where each person works in their own self-contained 3m x 3m cube.

Xu reckons the coronavirus pandemic will have such a fundamental impact on the way people work that he is converting 20 newly constructed office buildings in east London into 2,000 of the individual cube offices.

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Asylum seeker removal flight takes off despite last-minute court actions

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Home Office says 14 people were flown out, while 19 of those due to be removed had their tickets deferred

A charter flight to remove asylum seekers who recently arrived in the UK on small boats took off on Wednesday morning carrying 14 people, the Home Office said, despite last-minute high court actions and other interventions just hours before takeoff.

Nineteen people due to fly did not board the plane. The Home Office said 14 people were placed on the charter flight destined for France and Germany.

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Stonehaven tragedy highlights threat to rail from climate crisis

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Fatal derailment after heavy rains exposes growing danger posed by extreme weather

The derailment of a ScotRail train in rural Aberdeenshire with the loss of three lives adds Stonehaven to a grim roll call of names, instantly identifiable with tragedy to those associated with the UK railway: the likes of Potters Bar, Hatfield and Grayrigg. It will be no consolation at all to those grieving lost colleagues, spouses and parents to know just how far apart such tragic events have lately become.

The last time a passenger died in a train crash in the UK was the Grayrigg derailment in 2007, when a Virgin high-speed train went down an embankment in Cumbria, miraculously with just one casualty. Before Wednesday, the last time a driver had been killed in a crash was in 2004; and the last disaster with multiple fatalities, Potters Bar, was as far back as 2002.

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Stonehaven: serious injuries reported after train derails in Aberdeenshire

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Smoke seen billowing from track near flood-hit town amid reports of an engine fire

Emergency services have been called to a major train derailment near Stonehaven in Aberdeenshire, where smoke could be seen billowing from the track amid reports of an engine fire and serious injuries.

Four passenger carriages came off the track at Carmont, just west of Stonehaven, as a Scotrail high-speed train travelled from Aberdeen to Glasgow Queen Street.

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Coronavirus live news: Auckland back in lockdown; Paris marathon cancelled as cases rise

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France cancels marathon as cases pick up; WHO warns displacement of people in Beirut risks accelerating spread; four new cases in Auckland

Jordan will close its only land trade border crossing with Syria for a week after a spike in Covid-19 cases coming from its northern neighbour, officials said.

They said the interior minister’s decision to close the main Jaber border crossing would come into effect on Thursday morning.

Britain’s NatWest is cutting at least 500 jobs across its retail business and closing one of its remaining offices in London as banks press on with cost-cutting in the face of a wave of expected loan losses due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The state-backed bank is finalising a voluntary redundancy round targeting cutting 550 full-time equivalent roles across its branches and ‘premier banking’ premium service, union Unite told Reuters.

Tens of thousands of people working for banks have risen to the challenge that the pandemic created. The banks’ response should not be a repeat of the austerity measures that we saw after the financial crisis.

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Covid-19: UK economy plunges into deepest recession since records began

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GDP falls 20.4% – the worst of any G7 nation in the three months to June

Britain has entered the deepest recession since records began as official figures on Wednesday showed the economy shrank by more than any other major nation during the coronavirus outbreak in the three months to June.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said gross domestic product (GDP), the broadest measure of economic prosperity, fell in the second quarter by 20.4% compared with the previous three months – the biggest quarterly decline since comparable records began in 1955.

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Covid live news: Lebanon hits record daily cases after blast; Russian vaccine must follow safety procedure, says WHO

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Coronavirus updates: New Zealand records first new local cases in 102 days; global deaths likely to pass 750,000 this week, says WHO

As we reported earlier, the Dutch health minister said he plans to introduce mandatory home quarantine for people identified by local authorities as having been in close contact with somebody infected with coronavirus, and for travellers returning from high-risk countries.

Health minister Hugo de Jonge said in a letter to lawmakers that mandatory quarantine could be imposed if people refuse to isolate voluntarily.

Germany has extended a partial travel warning for Spain to the capital of Madrid and the Basque region due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the foreign ministry said on Tuesday.

The foreign ministry said it was warning against any unnecessary tourist trips to both regions because of a rising number of new infections and local restrictions put in place to contain the spread of coronavirus.

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Met closure of Stephen Lawrence case will deny his family justice

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Convicting all the suspects would also have offered the police a measure of redemption

​Convicting all of the suspects in the racist gang of five or six people that killed Stephen Lawrence would have delivered justice for his family, and some measure of redemption for the Metropolitan police. Scotland Yard’s decision to close the case means neither will get what they longed for.

For Doreen and Neville Lawrence the loss of their first child, Stephen, was a personal catastrophe that over the years turned into a symbolic case for the nation, and remains so.

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England’s contact-tracing saga is at the heart of the government’s failures

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Move to include local authorities in test and trace could allow politicians to pass blame in a Covid second wave

The saga of the attempts to set up an English test-and-trace system is perhaps the central story of the government’s Covid-19 failure.

At the heart of the tale is a prime minister who promised NHS test and trace would be a “world beating” operation. Next to him sits Matt Hancock, the health secretary whose record is now indelibly associated with the smartphone app that was meant to be integral to controlling the virus, but has yet to materialise. Other key actors include Serco, the multinational outsourcing company that has previously been contracted to run everything from prisons to air traffic control – and, at a cost of £108m, was recently put in charge of recruiting and training thousands of call centre workers to establish contact with infected people and ensure that anyone they had been close to went into self-isolation.

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BBC and Sky accused of ‘voyeurism’ in coverage of migrant boats

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Live footage of people crossing Channel to UK is like ‘grotesque reality TV’, says MP

Britain’s television news broadcasters have been criticised by opposition MPs and campaigners over their coverage of migrants crossing the Channel, with claims that some of their reports dehumanise those taking the risk to make the journey.

Footage of Sky News and BBC Breakfast teams approaching and filming small boats trying to navigate the busy waters of the Dover strait was widely condemned on social media. The Labour MP Zarah Sultana said: “We should ensure people don’t drown crossing the Channel, not film them as if it were some grotesque reality TV show.”

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Fantasy Premier League winner disqualified over ‘player comments’

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Aleksandar Antonov made remarks about footballer believed to be Raheem Sterling in private group chat

With millions of players around the world, the Fantasy Premier League is meant to recreate the competitive excitement and experience of managing a football team in England’s top division.

Instead, it has triggered an off-pitch row after this year’s champion was disqualified for allegedly offensive comments made “in a moment of frustration” about a Premier League player, understood to be the Manchester City striker Raheem Sterling.

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Powerhouses: nanotechnology turns bricks into batteries

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Research could pave way for cheap supercapacitor storage of renewable energy

The humble house brick has been turned into a battery that can store electricity, raising the possibility that buildings could one day become literal powerhouses.

The new technology exploits the porous nature of fired red bricks by filling the pores with tiny nanofibres of a conducting plastic that can store charge. The first bricks store enough electricity to power small lights. But if their capacity can be increased, they may become a low-cost alternative to the lithium-ion batteries currently used.

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Ardern changes Auckland Covid-19 rules as New Zealand records first local cases in 102 days – video

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Auckland has been swiftly put under a three-day lockdown after four cases of coronavirus were confirmed in one family in the city.

The prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, made the announcement at a late-night press conference after 102 days without any community transmission in New Zealand. The family had not travelled overseas and the source of the infection was unknown

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Five ‘safe and legal’ asylum alternatives to cut Channel crossings

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Experts offer other options as UK government seeks to reduce numbers crossing in boats

The government insists the way to reduce the number of people crossing the Channel in small boats is to prevent the vessels from leaving France in the first place or by intercepting the boats and returning those attempting to make a crossing.

But humanitarian groups and refugee and asylum experts argue the way to reduce the number of attempted crossings is to offer alternative “safe and legal” routes to the UK to claim asylum.

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Letters reveal British objections to plot of Bridge on the River Kwai

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War Office feared war movie would ‘not go down well with British public’

The adventure war film The Bridge on the River Kwai may have swept the board of awards and attracted acclaim as one best films of the 20th century, but the War Office was very nervous “it would not go down well with the British public”, documents reveal.

Letters between the Hollywood producer Sam Spiegel and the UK War Office, from whom he was seeking permission for RAF cooperation in making the 1957 film, show tensions over how its plot depicted the conduct of British officers.

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UK and France working ‘at pace’ on plan to halt migrant Channel crossings

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Home Office minister says measures being considered to make route ‘unviable’

The UK and France are working “at pace” on a new plan to put an end to people attempting to cross the Channel in small boats, a Home Office minister has said, as tensions rise over the British government’s approach to the unfolding crisis.

Following talks with officials in Paris, Chris Philp, minister for immigration compliance, conceded the French were doing a “great deal of work” and had intercepted more than 1,000 people attempting to reach England this year after days of loaded statements from the two nations.

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I’m a shielder who’s been out for the first time. How do I stay safe? | Pippa Kent

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Shielding rules were relaxed in England on 1 August, but I’m not rushing to the shops or beach any time soon

I am one of those people who were told that from 1 August we no longer needed to shield to protect ourselves from the coronavirus.

While you might assume that, having been trapped inside our homes for the past 18 weeks, we would embrace our newfound freedom with enthusiasm, the reality remains far from it.

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