Category Archives: UK news

Bill Drummond to lead Irish border poll and hand out hot cross buns

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The KLF founder will ask citizens if they agree with a clause he proposes adding to the Good Friday agreement

His best-known actions include burning £1m, firing blanks at the 1992 Brit awards and dropping a dead sheep on the red carpet of a luxury hotel as a member of the KLF. But Bill Drummond’s latest public display is more sedate: on Good Friday, he will stand on the Irish border, handing out homemade hot cross buns and conducting an informal referendum.

Between 10am and 12pm on 19 April, Drummond will ask the first 40 people who cross the border between Derry and Donegal whether they agree or disagree with adding a clause of his creation to the Good Friday agreement:

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British diver who helped rescue Thai cave boys gets trapped in cave

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Josh Bratchley spent more than 24 hours in a cave in Tennessee before he was rescued by expert divers

A British diver who helped save a junior football team from a cave in Thailand has himself been rescued from a flooded tunnel in the US after more than a day underground.

Josh Bratchley failed to return to the surface with the rest of a party after they emerged from a cave in Jackson County, Tennessee, at around 3pm on Tuesday.

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Trainspotting 2 actor Bradley Welsh shot dead – reports

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Edinburgh police say man was found in city’s West End with gunshot wound and died at the scene

Trainspotting 2 actor Bradley Welsh has been shot dead in Scotland, according to reports.

Welsh was reportedly killed in Edinburgh on Wednesday. Police said they were called to Chester Street in the West End of the city at around 8pm and found a man with serious injuries who died at the scene.

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Half of England is owned by less than 1% of the population

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Research by author reveals corporations and aristocrats are the biggest landowners

Half of England is owned by less than 1% of its population, according to new data shared with the Guardian that seeks to penetrate the secrecy that has traditionally surrounded land ownership.

The findings, described as “astonishingly unequal”, suggest that about 25,000 landowners – typically members of the aristocracy and corporations – have control of half of the country.

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High court suspends Home Office policy limiting support for slavery victims

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Judge rules that stopping access to safe housing, counselling and financial assistance after 45 days risks ‘irreparable harm’

A high court judge has suspended a Home Office policy that cuts off after six weeks all statutory support to slavery victims in the UK, ruling that it risks causing “irreparable harm to very vulnerable individuals”.

The Home Office must now immediately extend assistance to all slavery and trafficking victims requiring support in the UK, estimated to be about 600 people, over the next few months.

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Yorkshire tourism chief set to quit after criticism of expenses scandal response

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Ron McMillan has come under fire over handling of former chief executive’s departure

The chair of Yorkshire’s tourism body is expected to resign after an expenses scandal surrounding its former chief executive Sir Gary Verity.

Welcome to Yorkshire’s Ron McMillan will reportedly tender his resignation at a board meeting on Friday.

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Mark Carney tells global banks they cannot ignore climate change dangers

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Financial sector warned it risks losses from extreme weather and its stakes in polluting firms

The global financial system faces an existential threat from climate change and must take urgent steps to reform, the governors of the Bank of England and France’s central bank have warned, writing in the Guardian.

In an article published in the Guardian on Wednesday aimed at the international financial community, Mark Carney, the Bank’s governor, and François Villeroy de Galhau, the governor of the Banque de France, said financial regulators, banks and insurers around the world had to “raise the bar” to avoid catastrophe.

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Even moderate intake of red meat raises cancer risk, study finds

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People more or less keeping to NHS guidelines at higher risk than those who eat little

Eating even the moderate amounts of red and processed meat sanctioned by government guidelines increases the likelihood of developing bowel cancer, according to the largest UK study of the risks ever conducted.

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) suggests anyone who eats more than 90g of red or processed meat per day should try to cut down to 70g or less, because of the known link with bowel cancer. The NHS describes 90g of red meat as “equivalent to around three thinly cut slices of beef, lamb or pork, where each slice is about the size of half a piece of sliced bread”.

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Bureaucratic glitch: UK suspends visa enrolment for American citizens

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Americans applying for work, study or settlement visas have been turned away because of a ‘technical issue’, Home Office says

Biometric enrolment for American citizens seeking to move to the UK has been suspended for more than two weeks because the British government missed a payment to the Department of Homeland Security, according to sources familiar with the bureaucratic glitch.

Americans applying for work, study or settlement visas have been turned away from application support centres in the US which take the necessary fingerprints and photographs because of the suspension in service. Foreign nationals applying from the US were also affected.

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Extinction Rebellion set to disrupt London rail and tube lines

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Climate protesters warn they will escalate action after blockading capital’s landmarks

Climate change protesters, who police say have caused “serious disruption” affecting half a million people in London over the past two days, have said they are planning to escalate their protests to disrupt rail and tube lines.

Thousands or people have taken part in the civil disobedience protests, blockading four landmarks in the capital in an attempt to force the government to take action on the escalating climate crisis.

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Trump wrote off novichok attack of defector as ‘spy games’ – report

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Trump reportedly wrote off Skripal poisoning as business as usual among spies and was at first reluctant to expel 60 Russians

Donald Trump was reluctant to expel suspected Russian spies after the novichok chemical weapons attack in Salisbury, viewing the poisoning of a defector as “part of legitimate spy games”, according to a new report.

According to the New York Times, Trump reacted sceptically to a British request in March 2018 for a strong punitive response to the use of the nerve agent against the former spy, Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia. A local resident, Dawn Sturgess, was killed three months later when she came in contact with the chemical.

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Mastercard ruling: almost every UK adult could receive payout

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Lawsuit could benefit 46 million people even if they have never owned the credit card

Almost every adult in the UK could receive a payout of up to £300 from Mastercard after a court ruling paved the way for a £14bn class action lawsuit.

The legal action taken by former financial ombudsman Walter Merricks claims that 46 million UK consumers paid higher prices in shops over a 16-year period because of allegedly excessive transaction fees charged by Mastercard.

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Tory deregulation agenda stalling Brexit talks, says Corbyn

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Labour leader says there is no agreement yet on customs union or workers’ rights

Jeremy Corbyn has said Brexit talks with the government are stalling because of a Tory desire for post-withdrawal deregulation, including as part of a US trade deal.

Corbyn said Labour had been putting forward a robust case for a customs union during the talks over the past week but suggested he feared the two sides would not find common ground.

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Historic lost garden in Kent to be opened to the public

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Walmer Castle’s overgrown glen, dating from the 19th century, has been revived

An abandoned chalk pit, which has been an impenetrably dense jungle of bramble, gorse and fallen trees for more than a century will this month be revealed as an extraordinary lost garden created by two former prime ministers.

The lost garden of Walmer Castle in Kent was laid out in the early 19th century by William Pitt the Younger and completed by Lord Liverpool.

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How Scotland erased Guyana from its past

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The portrayal of Scots as abolitionists and liberal champions has hidden a long history of profiting from slavery in the Caribbean.

The mangrove-fringed coast of Guyana, at the north-eastern tip of South America, does not immediately bring to mind the Highlands of Scotland, in the northernmost part of Great Britain. Guyana’s mudflats and silty brown coastal water have little in common with the lush green mountains and glens of the Highlands. If these landscapes share anything, it is their remoteness – one on the edge of a former empire burnished by the relentless equatorial sun and one on the edge of Europe whipped mercilessly by the Atlantic winds.

But look closer and the links are there: Alness, Ankerville, Belladrum, Borlum, Cromarty, Culcairn, Dingwall, Dunrobin, Fyrish, Glastullich, Inverness, Kintail, Kintyre, Rosehall, Tain, Tarlogie, a join-the-dots list of placenames (30 in all) south of Guyana’s capital Georgetown that hint of a hidden association with the Scottish Highlands some 5,000 miles away.

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Letters support claim Assange would not face death penalty

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UK foreign secretaries wrote to assure Ecuador president over WikiLeaks founder’s extradition

Ecuador’s president, Lenín Moreno, was assured by two British foreign secretaries that Julian Assange would not be extradited to a country where he could face the death penalty, according to letters seen by the Guardian.

Letters signed by the foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, and his predecessor Boris Johnson, dated 7 March 2018 and 10 August 2018 respectively, confirm a person cannot be extradited if they could face the death penalty, according to British legislation.

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Downing Street under pressure to close down Labour talks on Brexit

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No 10 scrambles to explore options before possible heavy losses in EU elections

No 10 is feeling the pressure to pull the plug on Brexit talks with Labour and move to an alternative plan, amid warnings that the opposition is in no hurry for a deal before the European elections.

With talks deadlocked and no sign that the government moving on its red lines, neither the Conservatives or Labour want to appear responsible for the breakdown in discussions.

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Thousands block roads in Extinction Rebellion protests across London

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Climate group occupies major landmarks in campaign that could last several days

Thousands of people have blocked well-known landmarks including Waterloo Bridge in central London, bringing widespread disruption to the capital in a “climate rebellion” that organisers say could last several days.

Parents and their children joined scientists, teachers, long-term environmentalists and other protesters both young and old to occupy major junctions and demand urgent action over the escalating ecological crisis.

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Easter weather: parts of UK to be hotter than Corfu and Mallorca

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Temperatures forecast to exceed 20C on dry and settled bank holiday weekend

Parts of the UK will be hotter than some of Europe’s top holiday destinations over the Easter weekend, with temperatures exceeding 20C (68F).

As sunseekers plan to go away over the coming weeks, the UK could be hotter than St Tropez in southern France, the Greek island of Corfu, Bodrum in southern Turkey and the Spanish island of Mallorca, which is forecast to be cloudy on Saturday and Sunday.

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Isle of Wight vehicle crash: one dead and 19 taken to hospital

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Major incident declared after two cars and bus collide on Forest Road in Newport

A woman in her 60s was killed and 22 others were injured in a crash between a double-decker bus and two cars on the Isle of Wight, authorities said.

Nineteen people were taken to hospital, including four who were airlifted, after the collision on Forest Road in Newport on Sunday afternoon sparked a major incident. Hampshire police said three other people travelling in a red Fiat Bravo with the woman who died at the scene were taken to hospital in a serious condition.

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