Category Archives: UK news

Floods, explosions and asbestos: Thames Water faces potential problems on all fronts

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Exclusive: Senior managers say they are forced to press ahead with orders for vital items without approval

When Sarah Bentley and Sarah Albon met at Beckton sewage treatment works in east London, the choice of location was designed to underline Thames Water’s predicament.

The site is Europe’s largest sewage treatment operation, with Grade II-listed parts of the site dating to the 1860s. It is now connected with the new Thames Tideway super-sewer, but insiders say several parts of the site are simply crumbling. The site is also riddled with asbestos.

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Muslims face ‘bleak and dystopian’ climate in UK, says head of thinktank

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Shabna Begum says racist riots will return if Islamophobia continues to be ‘an acceptable currency’ in politics

Islamophobia has become “brutally divisive” in the UK and failure to challenge its root causes will lead to more racist riots, the head of the UK’s leading race equality thinktank has said.

Shabna Begum, who became the chief executive of the Runnymede Trust earlier this year, said the country was entering a new phase in how it talks about Muslims.

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Thames Water supply ‘on knife-edge’ with £23bn repairs needed

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Exclusive: Company has failed to tackle serious safety concerns or upgrade vital IT systems, Guardian investigation reveals

Thames Water has £23bn of assets that are in urgent need of repair and the supply of water to its 16 million customers is “on a knife-edge”, a Guardian investigation can reveal.

Britain’s biggest water company has failed to tackle adequately serious safety concerns, has not upgraded essential IT systems and has tolerated a culture of intimidation among staff, according to insiders and an analysis of documents.

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More than 5,000 investors now suing Hargreaves Lansdown

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Claims management company expects claims over collapsed Neil Woodford fund to exceed £200m

More than 5,000 people who invested in Neil Woodford’s collapsed equity fund are suing Hargreaves Lansdown, claiming that the investment platform was still promoting the fund even when it was aware of its problems.

The number of people suing Hargreaves Lansdown, the UK’s largest investment site, has almost doubled in the past two years, according to the claims management firm RGL Management. Two years ago the number of people taking part stood at 2,750.

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Essex police defend their investigation of Allison Pearson tweet

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Force says Telegraph writer accused of inciting racial hatred, rather than committing a non-crime hate incident as she had claimed

Essex police have defended their decision to investigate the Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson over a social media post, saying she is accused of “inciting racial hatred” not of committing a “non-crime hate incident”, as she had claimed.

The row over Pearson’s tweet has been splashed across the front pages of the Times, Telegraph and Mail this week. Leading figures on the right, including the new leader of the Conservative party, Kemi Badenoch, and the former prime minister Boris Johnson, have leapt to her defence.

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Revealed: ‘Grassroots’ campaigns opposed to assisted dying financed by conservative Christian pressure groups

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Religious lobbyists are secretly coordinating and funding bodies that claim to be led by disabled people and health workers

Campaigns against assisted dying that claim to be led by healthcare workers and disabled people are being secretly coordinated and paid for by conservative Christian pressure groups, an Observer investigation has found.

The “grassroots” campaigns have been central to the debate on legalising assisted dying in England and Wales before a landmark vote by MPs this month.

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Tory Foreign Office minister used official visit to Azerbaijan to promote party donor’s business

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Leo Docherty posed on one of Lord Bamford’s JCB diggers in Baku when the company wanted to ‘raise their profile’ in the country

A Conservative minister in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office used an official visit to Azerbaijan to promote the interests of a billionaire party donor.

Leo Docherty, the Tory MP for Aldershot until 30 May, visited a showroom for JCB machinery in February 2023 and climbed behind the wheel of one the company’s diggers to “help promote UK products in Azerbaijan”. He later posted a photo on X of the visit, tagging the company’s official account.

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Murder investigation launched after body found in car boot in east London

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Police said unnamed woman, believed to be from Corby, could have been victim of ‘targeted incident’

Police have launched a murder investigation after a woman’s body was discovered in a car boot in east London.

The woman, who has not been named but is understood to be from Corby, Northamptonshire, could be the victim of a “targeted incident”, police said.

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Saoirse Ronan ‘absolutely right’ about women’s safety fears, says Gladiator combat trainer

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Paul Biddiss, who trained Paul Mescal and Day of the Jackal star Eddie Redmayne, says streetwise women are more aware of surveillance and harder to follow

He has trained would-be assassins and marshalled invading hordes, Napoleonic forces and Roman regiments, but movie military adviser Paul Biddiss found himself in the midst of his biggest Hollywood skirmish last month when the actor Saoirse Ronan made a powerful intervention about women’s personal safety.

Ronan, a guest on Graham Norton’s BBC chatshow sofa, sparked a nationwide debate about women’s security fears when she interrupted fellow actors as they discussed techniques that Biddiss had taught the casts of both Gladiator II and the new drama series The Day of the Jackal.

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United Utilities refuses to hand over data on sewage discharges into Windermere

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Water company claims information is not in the public interest despite widespread pollution of UK waters

• ‘It’s a national disgrace’: fury at sewage-filled Windermere over toxic algae and dead fish

One of the UK’s biggest water companies is fighting a legal battle to block public access to data on treated sewage it is discharging into Windermere in the Lake District.

United Utilities initially claimed that data from phosphorus monitors at sewage treatment works at the lake “was not environmental information”. It later claimed the information on phosphorus – which can pollute watercourses when at high levels – was “internal communication” and exempt from disclosure.

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Church of England ‘directly responsible’ for John Smyth abuse in Zimbabwe, victim says

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Rocky Leanders, then 15, was beaten with wooden paddle by Smyth at camp where boys were made to swim naked

When John Smyth gave a presentation at their school about his Christian holiday camps in 1993, Rocky Leanders and his school friends were “blown away”.

“This is Zimbabwe in the early 90s; the technology wasn’t great. These guys set up a projector with colour videos of speed boats … abseiling, golf, tennis, paddle boarding, swimming pools, diving boards,” recalled Leanders, who was 15 at the time. “We insisted we needed to go.”

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Space travel should not be just ‘for the elites’, says new British astronaut

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Rosemary Coogan, European Space Agency’s second UK recruit, will be deployed to ISS for six months

She beat a field of more than 22,000 candidates and has a PhD in astrophysics and a background as a Royal Navy reserve, but the newly qualified British astronaut Rosemary Coogan believes that in future space travel should not be restricted to elites.

Coogan, 33, from Belfast, who is the European Space Agency’s (Esa) second British recruit, believes we are entering a revolutionary period of space exploration that will lead not only to the return of humans to the moon but also journeys to Mars and beyond.

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Tech firm Palantir spoke with MoJ about calculating prisoners’ ‘reoffending risks’

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Exclusive: Rights group expresses concerns as it emerges US spy tech company has been lobbying UK ministers

The US spy tech company Palantir has been in talks with the Ministry of Justice about using its technology to calculate prisoners’ “reoffending risks”, it has emerged.

The proposals emerged in correspondence released under the Freedom of Information Act which showed how the company has also been lobbying new UK government ministers, including the chancellor, Rachel Reeves.

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Tesco’s £25 champagne beats Moët & Chandon in festive taste test

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Supermarket fizz bursts the prestigious French label’s bubble in blind tastings by consumer group Which?

Champagne at prosecco prices? Every little helps. Tesco’s Finest champagne has triumphed over the prestigious French label Moët & Chandon in a festive quaff test.

The Tesco Finest premier cru brut champagne received the top score of 82% in a blind taste test conducted by the consumer group Which?. The £25-a-bottle bubbly was hailed by judges for its “nutty aroma and fresh, fruity flavours”. The supermarket fizz beat Moët & Chandon, which scored 77% and at £44 is almost twice as expensive.

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Houses in national parks in England and Wales sell for 25% more, study finds

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Nationwide says New Forest is most expensive national park with an average property price of £576,000

Buying a home in a national park comes at a 25% price premium, with the New Forest the most expensive of the 13 parks in England and Wales, according to Britain’s biggest building society.

Nationwide said properties in a national park enjoy a valuation almost £67,000 more than a similar property elsewhere, based on the average UK house price of £266,640.

New Forest – £576,000

South Downs – £400,000

Peak District – £375,000

Yorkshire Dales – £353,000

Lake District – £333,000

Dartmoor – £310,000

Bannau Brycheiniog (Brecon Beacons) – £274,000

Eryri (Snowdonia) – £173,000

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Pregnant cow rescued after getting stuck in swimming pool in Rutland

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The 600kg animal was in the deep end and it took Leicestershire firefighters three hours to get her out safely

A pregnant cow has had to be rescued by firefighters after she got stuck in a small swimming pool.

The 590kg (93-stone) cow was found in the deep end of the pool in two to three feet of water at a house in Ketton, Rutland.

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With the Tories beaten, Labour’s next threat comes from even further right

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Reform may well be Labour’s new main opponent, and the next battleground may not be where anyone expected

Two key rules of politics are to always look ahead, and to understand your opponent. And so it is that just months after crushing the Conservatives in a general election, many Labour MPs are bracing for fresh challenges and a new foe – Reform UK.

Nigel Farage’s party is in parliamentary terms a minnow, its five MPs giving it little more than 1% of the Commons strength enjoyed by Keir Starmer. But many within Labour believe that by the time of the next election, things could be very different.

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Reeves tells City regulator to encourage more risk-taking in financial sector

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New remit given to FCA by chancellor raises fears of a weakening of rules meant to avert another financial crisis

The financial regulator has been ordered to encourage more risk-taking across the City, raising concerns that the Labour government is in danger of watering down rules meant to avoid another financial crisis.

In an official “remit” letter addressed to Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) boss, Nikhil Rathi, the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, said regulations meant to protect consumers should not stand in the way of “sensible risk-taking” by investors and the wider financial sector, which includes banks, asset managers and insurers.

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The Gruffalo’s illustrator launches book to help UK pupils learn German

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Axel Scheffler says he hopes Wuschel auf der Erde will encourage more children to learn his first language

Axel Scheffler, the illustrator behind the international children’s bestseller The Gruffalo, has launched a book to help primary school pupils learn German.

Wuschel auf der Erde: A New Adventure in Learning German tells the story of a friendly alien called Wuschel arriving on Earth from a distant planet with a mission to learn German. Through Scheffler’s distinctive illustrations, children are introduced to their first German words, such as die Maus (mouse) and der Spielplatz (playground), in a fun and interactive way.

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Schools in England could be judged on scale of colours in Ofsted proposals

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Inspectorate aims to replace single headline grade such as outstanding with assessment of 10 key areas

Schools could be judged on a five-step scale of colours or descriptions across 10 separate areas, such as inclusion and belonging, according to proposals by England’s schools inspectorate.

The proposals by Ofsted aim to replace inspection reports that culminate in a single headline grade such as outstanding, which Labour pledged to scrap after a coroner’s report said Ofsted’s inspection had contributed to the death of headteacher Ruth Perry last year.

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