Category Archives: UK news

Savings passbooks popular as Britain turns to cash amid cost of living crisis

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While some banks and building societies scrap system, others report increase in usage by customers

While some banks are scrapping passbook savings accounts amid suggestions they are past their sell-by date, other providers have reported an increase in their usage as people turn to cash to help them manage the cost of living.

Newcastle building society said that in 2023 it issued about three times as many passbooks as it did in 2021, and that it is getting new customers on the back of decisions by rivals to axe them.

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‘We can’t engineer our way out of this’: how to protect flood-hit Severn Valley

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Tens of millions have been spent on human-made defences over the years, but the impact of the climate crisis means flooding is inevitable

When Jo Bloom saw the monitoring station on the River Severn above Shrewsbury register water levels of 6.5 metres as Storm Henk struck in early January, she began preparing for the worst. Bloom, who runs the Bewdley Flood Group, a local initiative to disseminate information to the community, was crouched over her computer checking Environment Agency alerts on river levels as the storm battered southern and central Britain, bringing with it heavy rain on to already saturated ground.

“We have had one peak, we are all watching Crew Green gauge above Shrewsbury, which is 10cm off its 2000 record level,” she told the flood group.

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Abortion investigations causing women ‘life-changing harm’, says UK expert

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Women losing ‘everything’ after being accused of illegal abortion in England and Wales, even if not charged, says Dr Jonathan Lord

Women in England and Wales accused of having illegal abortions have been held in custody after pregnancy loss, had their children taken into care and been saddled with debt, an expert has said.

Dr Jonathan Lord, a co-chair of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) abortion taskforce, said he was aware of up to 30 “deeply traumatic” cases where women had been investigated by the police, with some suffering “life-changing harm”.

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US planning to station nuclear weapons in UK amid threat from Russia – report

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Missiles could be placed at RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk in case of potential war between Nato and Russia

The US is planning to station nuclear weapons in the UK for the first time in 15 years amid a growing threat from Russia, according to a report. Warheads three times as strong as the Hiroshima bomb would be located at RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk under the proposals, the Telegraph reported.

The US previously placed nuclear missiles at RAF Lakenheath and removed them in 2008 after the cold war threat from Moscow receded. Pentagon documents seen by the newspaper reveal procurement contracts for a new facility at the airbase.

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Labour vows to reform ministerial severance pay after Tories handed £1m last year

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Individuals deemed unfit for office still walked away with payments from taxpayers, says shadow Cabinet Office minister

Labour has pledged to reform the rules surrounding ministerial redundancy payments after it emerged that the high turnover of cabinet ministers under the past three prime ministers generated a severance bill worth more than £930,000 in the last financial year.

Since 1991, sacked ministers under the age of 65 have been able to claim thousands of pounds in redundancy pay as long as they have been out of a ministerial post for at least three weeks. The receive the payments irrespective of how long they have stayed in their latest post, or the circumstances under which they left.

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French Holocaust denier found in Fife loses extradition fight

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Vincent Reynouard discovered living double life in Scottish village where he worked as a tutor, reports say

A Holocaust denier who was arrested in a Scottish fishing village will be extradited back to France after spending two years on the run from the authorities.

Vincent Reynouard lost his extradition battle after his arrest in November 2022. He had been discovered living a double life in Anstruther, Fife, where he worked as a private tutor, according to reports.

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‘I’m victim of failing system,’ Mia Janin’s father says after inquest into girl’s death

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Coroner concluded 14-year-old girl took her life after prolonged and sustained bullying in person and online

The father of a 14-year-old girl who killed herself after being bullied has said his family are victims of a “failing system” after an inquest into her death.

Mia Janin, a year 10 pupil at the Jewish free school in Kenton, north-west London, was found dead at her family home in Harrow on 12 March 2021.

In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

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Man who stole Duke of Westminster’s watches given suspended sentence

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Decorator Matthew Turner stole three watches worth more than £30,000 from Hugh Grosvenor’s bedroom

A decorator who stole three watches worth more than £30,000 from the Duke of Westminster’s home has been told he “escaped prison by the skin of your teeth”.

Matthew Turner, 24, was given a 20-month sentence, suspended for two years, at Chester crown court after admitting the burglary of three watches from Hugh Grosvenor’s bedroom while he was doing renovation work at Eaton Hall in August 2022.

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Telegraph takeover decision put back by fresh inquiry into Barclay family’s UAE-backed deal

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Regulators’ reports on public interest risk now due on 11 March after late change in consortium’s structure prompts further review

A second investigation has been launched into the Barclay family’s deal to transfer control of the Telegraph newspaper group, pushing the deadline for regulators’ reports on the public interest threat it poses by more than six weeks.

The UK government moved swiftly to order the second watchdog inquiry after the Barclays’ UAE-backed consortium partner revealed a last-minute corporate structure change.

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Vodafone should spin off sensitive work after UAE deal, say UK officials

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National security concerns focus on arm of Vodafone that provides sensitive tech to government departments and agencies

Vodafone should be forced to spin off its most sensitive activities in order to quash national security concerns raised by a United Arab Emirates-backed telecoms group swooping on its shares, government officials have told the Guardian.

The deputy prime minister, Oliver Dowden, announced on Wednesday that the deal involving Emirates Telecommunications Group building a 14.6% stake in Vodafone presented a “national security risk” to the UK due to Vodafone’s role “as a strategic supplier of services” to government departments, including those “which are in support of national security”.

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Alfie Steele: more than 60 calls made to police and social services before boy’s murder

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Nine-year-old had been recorded as ‘safe and well’ in months before he was killed, review finds

A nine-year-old boy who was tortured to death by his mother and stepfather had been recorded as “safe and well” after visits by police and social services in the months before he was killed, a review has found.

Family and neighbours of Alfie Steele from Droitwich, Worcestershire, made more than 60 calls about his welfare in the period leading up to his murder in February 2021, including a call saying it sounded as if he was “being hit and held under the water”.

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Tory donors deny funding poll for group working to oust Sunak

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Donors close to Boris Johnson and hedge fund boss behind GB News say they had no involvement in polling

Conservative donors have been rushing to deny funding polling for a group working to oust Rishi Sunak, as David Frost was warned he could lose the whip if rival party backers were involved.

Senior Tory figures are scrambling to figure out the mystery donors behind the Conservative Britain Alliance, which funded a £40,000 poll, fronted by Lord Frost in the Telegraph, that predicted a Labour landslide.

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Indonesian fruit picker landed in debt bondage challenges Home Office

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Exclusive: Test case likely against UK’s seasonal worker scheme as charity alleges breach of right to be protected from labour exploitation

When Ismael found himself sleeping rough at York station in the late October cold he struggled to understand how an opportunity to pick berries 7,000 miles from his home had so quickly ended there.

He had left Indonesia less than four months earlier, in July 2022. He was 18 and ready for six months of hard work on a British farm to save for a science degree. “I thought the UK was the best place to work because I could save up a little money and help my parents,” he said.

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Spot the punk rockers: hope for waxwing boost in annual UK bird count

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People encouraged to record sightings of mohican-sporting birds in RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch this weekend

The scale of this waxwing winter will be revealed this weekend when people are encouraged to spend an hour recording the birds they see in their gardens, balconies, parks and school grounds.

The spectacular migratory, mohican-sporting birds have been spotted across Britain during the colder weather and will be recorded alongside more familiar sparrows, blackbirds and robins in the RSPB’s annual Big Garden Birdwatch.

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‘It was so worrying’: EU motorist tells of £11,000 run-in with London Ulez rules

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Driver was unaware he had to register French hire car with TfL’s collection agent even though it was emissions compliant

Christian Ducarre received three fines totalling nearly £11,000 after driving his French hire car to London to attend his son’s wedding. The car, which was fully compliant with ultra-low emission zone emissions rules, was mistakenly classed as a heavy goods vehicle and deemed to be in breach of the separate low emissions zone (Lez) and well as Ulez. Lez covers lorries, vans, buses and coaches, and fines are between £500 and £2,000 a day depending on the vehicle’s weight.

“I had checked that the car’s emissions standard was Euro 06 and so was not liable for the Ulez charge,” he said.

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Hundreds of thousands of EU citizens ‘wrongly fined for driving in London Ulez’

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Exclusive: EU states accuse TfL of huge data breach over clean air zone penalties, with many given to compliant vehicles

Hundreds of thousands of EU citizens were wrongly fined for driving in London’s Ulez clean air zone, according to European governments, in what has been described as “possibly one of the largest data breaches in EU history”.

The Guardian can reveal Transport for London (TfL) has been accused by five EU countries of illegally obtaining the names and addresses of their citizens in order to issue the fines, with more than 320,000 penalties, some totalling thousands of euros, sent out since 2021.

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Chagos islanders stunned as David Cameron rules out return

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Statement from British foreign secretary comes just months after his predecessor confirmed resettlement was part of talks with Mauritius

Britain’s foreign secretary, David Cameron, has provoked fury by abruptly ruling out the resettlement of former inhabitants of the Chagos Islands, months after his predecessor revealed that the UK was discussing their potential return.

The former prime minister suggested that a return to the islands was now “not possible” for Chagossians who were forcibly displaced by the British government in the 1960s and 1970s.

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Michelle Mone and the PPE Medpro investigation – podcast

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After the peer admitted to lying about her involvement in lucrative government PPE deals during the Covid crisis, the fate of her high-profile lingerie company raises further questions. David Conn reports

When Michelle Mone sat down for an interview with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg last month it was against the backdrop of serious allegations that she had been facing since 2020. Mone and her husband, the Isle of Man-based businessman Doug Barrowman, are the subjects of a long-running National Crime Agency investigation into allegations of bribery and fraud in their securing of £200m in government contracts for a company, PPE Medpro.

She admitted to Kuenssberg that she had lied for years when denying her involvement in the lucrative PPE deals, emphasising in the interview that she was a ‘very successful individual businesswoman’.

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‘Old smokers’: astronomers discover giant ancient stars in Milky Way

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Stars sat fading quietly for years before suddenly puffing out vast clouds of smoke

Astronomers have discovered a mysterious group of giant elderly stars at the heart of the Milky Way that are emitting solar system-sized clouds of dust and gas.

The stars, which have been named “old smokers”, sat quietly for many years, fading almost to invisibility, before suddenly puffing out vast clouds of smoke. The discovery was made during the monitoring of almost a billion stars in infrared light during a 10-year survey of the night sky.

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Private rents in Great Britain hit record high, data shows

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Rightmove says average advertised price outside London is up 9.2% on a year ago despite fall in some regions

Average private rents in Great Britain have climbed to new record highs, though in some regions there has been a small fall in the amount new tenants are being asked to pay, data shows.

The typical advertised private rent outside London for new properties coming on to the market rose to a record £1,280 a calendar month in the final quarter of 2023, according to the property website Rightmove. That is £2 higher than the £1,278 figure recorded in the third quarter – a sign that rental growth is slowing.

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