PM reaffirms stance after George Osborne suggests snub to Greek counterpart was result of ‘petulance’
Rishi Sunak has denied having a “hissy fit” over the Parthenon marbles row and has said they cannot be returned to Greece “as a matter of law”.
The prime minister this week accused his Greek counterpart of using a trip to London to “grandstand” over the issue of the ancient Greek sculptures.
Continue reading...Beijing’s strained relations with the west are less easily mollified by loans of cuddly endangered bears
As the UK’s only giant pandas leave Edinburgh zoo , returning to their native country after a 12-year sojourn away from China, the era of panda diplomacy also looks to be coming to an end.
Tian Tian and Yang Guang will board the panda express back to Sichuan less than a month after three giant pandas left the Smithsonian national zoo in Washington DC, ending the zoo’s five-decade panda programme.
Continue reading...Centrist Tories urge PM not to abandon UK’s human rights commitments, but Sunak said his patience ‘worn thin’ by delays
Rishi Sunak has promised not to allow foreign courts to stop Britain sending asylum seekers to Rwanda, even as a group of more centrist Conservative MPs urges him not to abandon Britain’s international human rights commitments.
The prime minister said on Friday his patience was being “worn thin” by delays to the Rwanda plan, which was ruled illegal under domestic and international law by the supreme court last month.
Continue reading...Health secretary during pandemic returns to inquiry after saying tens of thousands of lives could have been saved if UK had locked down earlier
Gordon Brown has said political briefings against Alistair Darling in 2008 were “completely unfair”, as he paid tribute to his former chancellor following his death aged 70.
In an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, the former prime minister said Darling was a “compassionate politician who wanted to get things done” but was “always very quiet in the way he did it”.
Continue reading...Nationwide says average property price was £258,557 in November, £5,231 down on same month last year
UK house prices rose for a third consecutive month in November as the market responded to hopes that mortgage rate costs had peaked.
Nationwide, the UK’s biggest building society, said prices rose 0.2% month on month in November, after a 0.9% rise in October and a 0.1% rise in September. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast a 0.4% fall in prices in November.
Continue reading...Yellow weather warning for snow and ice across eastern coast and amber cold health alerts issued in five regions
Parts of the UK could have 5cm of snow on Friday with temperatures expected to drop as low as -10C in some areas.
A yellow weather warning for snow and ice remains in place for the eastern coast of the UK, stretching from Scotland to East Anglia. Ice warnings remain in place for Northern Ireland and south-west England.
Continue reading...Derbyshire woman who bought item said she felt uneasy at find that raises concerns over possible prison labour
An ID card that appears to belong to a Chinese prisoner was found inside the lining of a coat from the British brand Regatta, raising concerns that the clothing was manufactured using prison labour.
The waterproof women’s coat was bought online by a woman in Derbyshire in the Black Friday sale. When it arrived on 22 November, she could feel a hard rectangular item in the right sleeve, which restricted the movement of her elbow.
Continue reading...Rishi Sunak’s attendance comes after he scaled back pledges to help the UK reach net zero by 2050
King Charles will give a “call to arms” in his Cop28 climate summit opening statement, Rishi Sunak has said, expressing delight over the monarch’s record championing the issue.
Sunak said it was a “proud moment” for him to witness Charles deliver his speech on Friday, which “speaks volumes about our type of leadership as a country”.
Continue reading...Richard Walker calls for price cap on infant formula as competition watchdog finds evidence of greedflation
The boss of Iceland has hit out at “exploitation” of new parents and joined calls for a price cap on baby formula after the competition watchdog found evidence of greedflation by leading manufacturers.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) on Wednesday revealed manufacturers had increased prices by more than their costs during the inflation crisis, fattening profit margins and imposing an average 25% increase on shoppers in two years. It warned competition could be hampered because the market is dominated by two companies, Danone and Nestlé, which between them account for 85% of sales.
Continue reading...Institution’s chair, George Osborne, says the row opened Rishi Sunak up to a ‘devastating line of attack’ from Labour
Rishi Sunak opened up a “devastating line of attack” from Labour by snubbing his Greek counterpart this week, according to the British Museum’s chair George Osborne, who said the row had encouraged the institution to press ahead with talks over loaning the Parthenon marbles to Athens.
Osborne said: “That is, I think, something worth exploring. And we can go on doing it whether or not Rishi Sunak meets the Greek prime minister or not. In fact, if anything, things have been rather clarified by this week. We obviously know we’re not going to get any particular support from the Conservative government.”
Continue reading...Industry takings top £15bn as government considers curbs on online slots due to association with addiction
Gambling firms are raking in more money than ever from UK punters, fuelled by a surge in the use of online slot machines, which the government is considering curbing due to their association with heavy losses and addiction.
The betting and gaming industry’s revenues reached £15.1bn in the year to March 2023, or £10.95bn excluding the National Lottery, figures from the Gambling Commission released on Thursday show.
Continue reading...Jury hears woman’s 999 call and sees CCTV footage showing teenagers walking home
The teenagers accused of murdering Brianna Ghey, 16, were pictured on CCTV walking home together after the attack, after being disturbed at the scene by a couple walking their dogs.
The two 16-year-olds, a girl and a boy, who cannot be named, ran away from Culcheth Linear Park in Warrington shortly after Brianna was stabbed 28 times on 11 February this year, Manchester crown court heard.
Continue reading...Ex-health secretary has described Boris Johnson’s Downing Street as undermined by ‘culture of fear’
Tens of thousands of lives could have been saved if the UK had locked down three weeks earlier, Matt Hancock has told the Covid inquiry, as he described the operation of Boris Johnson’s Downing Street as undermined by a “culture of fear”.
The former health secretary said his staff were abused by Dominic Cummings and that Johnson’s then chief adviser attempted to exclude ministers and even Johnson himself from key decisions at the start of the pandemic, hampering the government’s response.
Continue reading...Hongchi Xiao accused of manslaughter by gross negligence of Danielle Carr-Gomm, 71, who was seeking help for diabetes
A man has been charged with manslaughter by gross negligence after a 71-year-old woman died during “slapping therapy” at a country hotel.
Danielle Carr-Gomm died while taking part in the session at Cleeve House in Seend, Wiltshire, on 20 October 2016.
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Hancock is now deploying the defence previewed in the Observer on Sunday. (See 9.58am.)
He says from the middle of January the DHSC was “trying to effectively raise the alarm”. He says:
We were trying to wake up Whitehall to the scale of the problem and this wasn’t a problem that couldn’t be addressed only from the health department. Non-pharmaceutical interventions cannot be put in place by a health department. A health department can’t shut schools. It should have been grasped and led from the centre of government earlier. And you’ve seen evidence that repeatedly the department and I tried to make this happen.
And we were on occasions blocked, and at other times our concerns were not taken as seriously as they should have been until the very end of February.
Continue reading...Michael D Higgins compares Pogues frontman’s songs with ‘perfectly crafted poems’
The Irish president, Michael D Higgins, has led Ireland’s tributes to Shane MacGowan, describing the Pogues frontman as one of “music’s greatest lyricists”.
After the singer’s death at the age of 65, Higgins compared MacGowan’s songs with “perfectly crafted poems” that captured “the measure of our dreams”.
Continue reading...Ursula von der Leyen hopes young people can drive a rapprochement but polls show they have other things on their minds
“We goofed it up, you have to fix it,” the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said on Tuesday in a message to the younger generation about Brexit.
Fixing it would be “the direction of travel” with regard to the UK rejoining the EU, she told an audience in Brussels. But as the fourth anniversary of Brexit approaches, is it likely that Britain’s millennials and generation Z will demand a rapprochement?
Continue reading...Matthew Hedges, tortured in UAE in 2018, tells reporters and activists to take clean phones and watch who they deal with
Journalists and campaigners attending the Cop28 climate conference in Dubai should “not be naive” and take steps to protect their physical and digital security, a British academic who was tortured in the summit’s host country has warned.
Matthew Hedges, who was detained in the United Arab Emirates for seven months in 2018, advised reporters and activists to take new, clean phones, think carefully about who they deal with and how and where they protest.
Continue reading...Anthony Hurndall, whose son was shot by the IDF in 2003, has called on governments to challenge Israeli claims about deaths of women and children
Western governments are “actively encourag[ing] the killing of women and children” in Gaza, because they are not willing to challenge Israeli accounts of the war there, the father of a British peace activist killed by an Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) sniper has warned.
Anthony Hurndall’s son, Tom Hurndall, was shot in the head in April 2003 in Rafah, while he was helping Palestinian children.
Continue reading...Family of Paul Rusesabagina, who campaigned to have him freed from jail, say country’s justice system is a ‘tool to oppress people’
The Rwandan legal system is incapable of protecting refugees sent from the UK, according to the daughters of Paul Rusesabagina, the man who inspired the Oscar-nominated movie Hotel Rwanda.
Carine and Anaïse Kanimba campaigned for more than two years to secure the release of their father, who was freed from a Kigali jail after three years of incarceration earlier this year, and they have detailed first-hand knowledge of the true nature of the Rwandan legal system.
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