Exhibition at Bonn’s House of History documents ‘unrequited love’ of all things British
The strategy that Germany’s diplomatic corps proposed to keep Britain in the European community was unconventional and bold.
In November 1974, the then German chancellor Helmut Schmidt was desperately searching for the right words to convince British Eurosceptics to vote to remain a member of the European Economic Community.
Continue reading...Northern England will face most severe weather conditions and up to 70mm of rain could fall at highest areas
Parts of England and Wales are bracing for further heavy rain with forecasters warning up to 70mm could fall in some areas.
Northern England is set to see the heaviest rain, with weather conditions so severe, Sunday’s Cycling World Championship route from Leeds to Harrogate was shortened from 284.5km to 261km. Riders were taking a shortcut from near Aysgarth to Leyburn to avoid dangerous roads.
Continue reading...Charlotte Edwardes alleges the then Spectator editor touched her leg ‘high up’ at 1999 lunch
Boris Johnson’s first day at Conservative party conference as prime minister was overshadowed by allegations of sexual misbehaviour, as Downing Street was forced to deny allegations that he had groped a female journalist.
After days of revelations about his relationship with American tech entrepreneur Jennifer Arcuri, whose company received a public grant, Johnson was accused of grabbing the thighs of two women at a lunch while he was editor of the Spectator magazine.
Continue reading...Rolling coverage of Tory conference in Manchester, as PM defends use of the term ‘surrender act’ and says ‘nothing to declare’ over Jennifer Arcuri
And this is what Boris Johnson said about the allegations about his relationship with Jennifer Arcuri.
There was no interest to declare.
I tell you what I really think is going on. I really think that people can feel this country is approaching an important moment of choice, and we have to get on and we have to deliver Brexit, and I think that there is a large constituency, in parliament and elsewhere, who do want to frustrate that objective. And, rightly or wrongly, they see me as the person most likely to deliver that objective. And I’m going to get on and do it.
I think you’ve got to be realistic if you’re in my position. You’ve got to expect a lot of shot and shell.
Here is a summary of what Boris Johnson said about his use of language in the interview.
The sort of language I’m afraid we’ve seen more and more of coming out from Number 10 does incite violence ... The casual approach to safety of MPs and their staff is immoral.
I think you will find that the speeches of most politicians for centuries have been studded with the use of military metaphor.
I certainly think everybody should calm down.
I think I’ve been a model of restraint.
Continue reading...Who was the mastermind? Who were the ones who got away? And why do we still want to know? Nearly 60 years after the Great Train Robbery, fresh claims are being made about who planned it and who were the robbers who were never caught. Never mind whodunnits; there’s now a genre of whoreallydunnits.
A book published this week, written by a former British Transport police detective with the help of one of the robbers, will claim that the mastermind of the heist was the late gangster Billy Hill, and that one of the team who got away with it was a relative of an Arsenal and England football player. It will also suggest that the person named recently as the “real” inside man was, in fact, a blameless postman. Already some of the new claims are being challenged by relatives of the men named.
Continue reading...Far from being admired as an extraordinary genius, Leonardo da Vinci was repeatedly lampooned and teased about his unusual red hair and his unconventional sexuality by other leading artists of his day. Although the work of the great Italian was popular in his time, an extensive new study of the artist to be published this week has outlined evidence that he was the butt of gossipy jokes in Renaissance Milan.
Author Simon Hewitt has unearthed a little-studied image held in Germany, a “comic strip” design made in 1495 to illustrate a poem, that showed how Leonardo was once ridiculed. In one of its colourful images, An Allegory of Justice, a ginger-haired clerk, or court lawyer, is shown seated at a desk, mesmerised by other young men, and represents Leonardo da Vinci. “The identity of Leonardo as the red-headed scribe is totally new,” Hewitt told the Observer ahead of the publication of Leonardo da Vinci and the Book of Doom.
Continue reading...He is a master of blending fact and fiction but, as Philip Pullman says, today’s politicians are on another level
I meet Philip Pullman 24 hours after he has got into trouble for idly musing on Twitter that he would like to hang Boris Johnson. “It was a silly joke,” he admits, looking slightly embarrassed as he enters his sitting room with a plate of biscuits for us, perching them on teetering stacks of books beneath which there is said to be a coffee table. He says his publishers were a bit miffed: threatening to murder the prime minister was clearly not how they had agreed to start the publicity campaign for his forthcoming children’s novel, The Secret Commonwealth, and Pullman had to publicly retract his words after there were complaints. “But,” the 72-year-old author adds, his tone brightening, while one of his dogs clambers on to his lap and the other maintains a vigil beside the biscuits, “the upshot was I gained 2,000 followers on Twitter!”
Pullman creates magical realms in his award-winning fiction, writing it in his 16th-century farmhouse in a village outside Oxford, where he lives with his wife and his ukuleles and cockapoos and overflowing shelves. But if I expected to meet someone otherworldly, I was wrong. Pullman, who has two sons and several grandchildren, is very much of this world, and can talk in detail about the shadowy machinations of Dominic Cummings as well as the designs of Victoria Beckham and the woodworking videos he sometimes gets hooked watching on YouTube. His observation of the government is not one-sided: he tells me that Michael Gove, as education secretary, once invited him to discuss literacy. Pullman told him that “the basics” weren’t grammar and spelling, as Gove believed, “because everybody who’s got a word processor knows you correct those at the last minute,” but rather nursery rhymes, songs, a love of language itself. Nothing came of it, “but I’ll give him credit: he was very courteous and he listened, and there was a civil servant making notes. And Gove cracked a joke about me being ‘at the heart of the Magisterium now’, so he had plainly read my books.”
Continue reading...Boris Johnson is deliberately whipping up fears of riots and deaths so he can try to invoke emergency powers and avoid extending the UK’s EU membership beyond 31 October, Labour’s Brexit spokesman, Keir Starmer, claimed on Saturday.
After a week in which the prime minister was accused by MPs from all the main parties, including senior Tories, of inciting violence by accusing Remainers of Brexit “surrender” and “betrayal”, Starmer said it was part of an orchestrated plan to stoke a sense of outrage among Leave voters and create civil unrest, so an extension might be avoided.
Continue reading...The prime minister and his poisonous sidekick react to accusations of ‘dangerous language’
•You can buy your own print of this cartoon
Continue reading...The pair, both believed to be in their 20s, were found at an address in Ilford
Two men are in a critical condition following a shooting incident in east London.
Police were called to reports of shots fired in Courtland Avenue, in Ilford, at 12.06am on Saturday. Armed officers and ambulance crews found two men suffering from gunshot injuries, Scotland Yard said.
Continue reading...Staff from Thomas Cook are to hold protests at this week’s Tory party conference in Manchester and later at Downing Street over the government’s decision not to step in and save the company from liquidation.
Staff were due to get their monthly salaries on 30 September but are instead among Thomas Cook’s creditors, and it is now unclear when they will be paid. Some 150,000 UK holidaymakers are being repatriated at taxpayers’ expense following the demise of the world’s oldest tour operator. On 28 September, a further 16,700 customers were set to be flown home.
Continue reading...Report estimates up to £20bn a year in investment needed to build net-zero carbon economy
The UK will need investment worth billions of pounds every year to remove enough greenhouse gases from the air to meet its 2050 climate targets, according to a report commissioned by the government.
The report, by analysts at Vivid Economics, estimated that the UK would need as much as £20bn a year to remove up to 130m tonnes of carbon dioxide from the air.
Continue reading...Case involves possible conflict of interest when Boris Johnson was mayor of London
Boris Johnson has been formally referred for potential investigation into whether he committed the criminal offence of misconduct in public office, over allegations about a conflict of interest with a US businesswoman while he was mayor of London.
An official from the Greater London Authority, the city’s devolved government, has written to the prime minister noting claims he had “on more than one occasion” used his position as mayor to “benefit and reward” Jennifer Arcuri, a tech entrepreneur.
Continue reading...Labour MP received tweet as MPs urged Boris Johnson to tone down his language
The army and police are investigating after a soldier sent a death threat to the shadow education secretary, Angela Rayner, defence officials have said.
The commander of the British field army, Lt Gen Ivan Jones, and the defence secretary, Ben Wallace, denounced the message, which was posted on Twitter on Wednesday, as MPs pleaded with the prime minister to tone down his Brexit rhetoric, saying they feared it would incite violence against them.
Continue reading...Scotland’s first minister says compromise is essential in order to force Brexit extension
Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, has said she is open-minded about Jeremy Corbyn becoming an interim prime minister as her representative in Westminster said the Scottish National party is now “desperate” for an election.
Sturgeon said she was not personally pushing for Corbyn to lead the country as a unity figure, but he could be an interim prime minister to secure an extension to Brexit and then call a general election.
Continue reading...Increase comes despite clampdown on scheme after Skripal novichok poisoning
The number of wealthy foreigners investing at least £2m in the UK in exchange for a “golden visa” has risen to a five-year high, despite a clampdown on the scheme in the aftermath of the Skripal novichok poisoning attack.
The Home Office granted 255 people tier-1 investor visas in the first half of 2019, allowing them to live and work in the UK for five years. This was the most in a six-month period since 2014, according to the department’s data.
Continue reading...Tour giant’s collapse leaves big hotel debts and staff fearing for jobs just before winter season
Under a late September sun that blisters white northern European skin with ease, Playa de las Américas offers its visitors a bounteous blend of the familiar and the exotic.
On the palm-lined main thoroughfare of the Tenerife resort town, tourists have an array of choice, from buying a pint for €1.50 (£1.33) to watching football matches, taking jetski trips and even Harley-Davidson tours of the island.
Continue reading...Sarah Barrass told to expect a life sentence after admitting killing Tristan, 13, and Blake, 14
A mother has been told she could be jailed for the rest of her life after she admitted murdering two of her children as well as conspiring to murder four more.
Sarah Barrass, 34, broke down at Sheffield crown court as she pleaded guilty to murdering Tristan, 13, and 14-year-old Blake Barrass.
Continue reading...Former minister was ‘disappointed and stunned’ by Boris Johnson’s comments about Jo Cox
Boris Johnson’s aggressive Brexit rhetoric could incite violence against opponents, the former minister Amber Rudd has warned.
Rudd, who quit the government and resigned the Conservative whip earlier this month in protest at the prime minister’s policies, also told the Evening Standard that she might stand in London as an “independent Conservative” at the next general election.
Continue reading...Corporation accused of racial discrimination after presenter reprimanded for Trump remarks
More than 40 prominent broadcasters, celebrities and actors of colour have condemned the BBC, demanding it reconsider a decision partially upholding a complaint against the presenter Naga Munchetty, calling it “deeply flawed, illegal and contrary to the spirit and purpose of public broadcasting”.
In a letter published in the Guardian, the actors Lenny Henry, Adrian Lester and David Harewood, and presenters Krishnan Guru-Murthy and Gillian Joseph are among signatories describing the decision as “racially discriminatory treatment”.
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