Photography space that inspired Billy Elliot writer Lee Hall launches fundraising campaign with aim of reopening in 2024
A small and much-loved photography gallery that has punched well above its size for more than 45 years will close this weekend because of funding cuts and cost-of-living pressures.
The Side Gallery, near the Tyne Bridge in Newcastle, was opened in 1977 by a collective championing positive images of working-class life.
Continue reading...New pouches for beef are said to be ‘too compressed’ and ‘like I’ve bought someone’s kidney’
Sainsbury’s has said it is determined to make more “bold moves” to cut plastic and defended itself against criticism of new packaging for mince which shoppers have criticised as “very medical”, “too compressed” and “vile”.
The supermarket said last month it was the first UK retailer to vacuum pack all its beef mince, part of the retailer’s efforts to halve its use of plastic packaging on its own-label products by 2025.
Continue reading...Kashif Anwar, 29, pushed Fawziyah Javed, 31, off Edinburgh hill, leading to death of wife and unborn child
A man has been found guilty of murdering his pregnant wife by pushing her off the edge of Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh.
Kashif Anwar, 29, was found guilty by a jury at the high court in Edinburgh of murdering Fawziyah Javed, 31, in September 2021 by pushing her from the hill, causing her multiple blunt-force injuries and ultimately her death, and that of her unborn child.
Continue reading...Competition watchdog calls for evidence deal could give online retailer dominance in smart home market
Amazon’s $1.7bn takeover of the owner of the Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner is being examined by the UK’s competition watchdog.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has called for evidence on whether the deal could lead to “a substantial lessening of competition within any market or markets in the United Kingdom for goods or services” and so would require a full investigation.
Continue reading...Eligible children between six months and four years old will be offered jab from June
Children aged between six months and four years old who are deemed clinically vulnerable will be offered two doses of a Covid vaccine, public health bodies in the UK have announced.
The move, revealed by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) after approval by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), comes after the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine was approved for children of this age by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) in December. Children who are not clinically vulnerable are not included in the UK-wide offer.
Continue reading...News of invitation follows announcement that US president will visit Ireland and Northern Ireland next week
Joe Biden has accepted an invitation from King Charles III for a state visit, a White House spokesperson has said.
The invitation was made during a “friendly” 25 to 30 minute phone call in which Biden congratulated the king on his upcoming coronation, which the US president will not attend.
Continue reading...Shadow minister submits bill to curb spills as Environment Agency reveals sewage was dumped for almost 1m hours last year
Ministers have treated coastal communities as if they are “open sewers”, Labour has said, after a damaging analysis of Environment Agency (EA) data revealed sewage was dumped for almost a million hours last year.
In total, the data – which was analysed by the party – shows 141,777 sewage-dumping events occurred across 137 constituencies on the coasts of England and Wales in 2022.
Continue reading...Leaders of Drax, Siemens and others call for green growth to be a priority and ‘regional disparities’ to be closed
Business leaders in the north of England have written to the prime minister, chancellor and energy secretary asking for help to reach net zero.
Big names including Drax, Siemens, Peel, Manchester airport, the CBI and all 11 local enterprise partnerships (LEPs) in the north signed a letter urging the government to prioritise green growth in the north.
Continue reading...The London police commissioner faces a battle to clean up a force where the same cultures tackled by his predecessor ‘are alive and well’
The Britain of today shares some similarities with the country of the 1970s: then the country was debating its relationship with Europe, flares were in and frequent strikes disrupted everyday life. And then, as now, standards in policing in the capital were so dire that a new broom had to be brought in to clean up the Metropolitan police.
Sir Robert Mark, the legendary reforming commissioner of the Met from 1972, said this about the force he battled to reform: “I had served in provincial forces for 30 years, and though I had known wrongdoing, I had never experienced institutionalised wrongdoing, blindness, arrogance and prejudice on anything like the scale accepted as routine in the Met.”
Continue reading...About 170 organisations warn ministers not to put people in military bases, barges and ferries around the country
Ministers have been warned of a “humanitarian catastrophe” if asylum seekers arriving in the UK are accommodated in camps on military bases and on barges.
Approximately 171 organisations – including the Refugee Council, Choose Love, faith groups, city of sanctuary representatives and law centres – have written to Rishi Sunak urging him to “listen to common sense” and scrap plans for asylum camps at former RAF bases at Scampton in Lincolnshire, Wethersfield in Essex and Catterick in North Yorkshire and the site of a former prison in Bexhill in East Sussex, along with proposals to use ferries and barges.
Continue reading...Sir Mark Rowley vows to ‘lift the stone’ – but says rooting out every unfit police officer could take years
Scotland Yard is battling its biggest corruption crisis since the 1970s, its commissioner has warned, as new evidence emerged of the widespread bungling of sexual and domestic abuse claims against officers.
The review of past allegations was triggered by the David Carrick scandal, where the force missed repeated clues that the Metropolitan police firearms officer was a threat to women, while he attacked at least 12 victims over a 20-year period, committing 85 serious crimes.
Checks on 10,000 of the Met’s 50,000 officers and staff against police databases showed 38 cases of possible misconduct and 55 cases of a potential association with a criminal, all of which will be investigated further.
Gross misconduct investigations, which can lead to sackings have risen 62% to 431, with such hearings taking less time to be held.
A total of 144 officers were suspended from duty, double that from September 2022, with 701 on restricted duties.
There has been a 70% increase in those dismissed – or leaving before they could be sacked – in the last six months.
Continue reading...Foreign Office figures show aid to Africa fell to £1.1bn in 2022, compared with £3.7bn of budget spent on refugees in UK
The UK spent more than three times its overseas aid budget on housing refugees in Britain than on helping to alleviate poverty in Africa in 2022, figures from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office show.
The official provisional figures for 2022 show that spending on refugees increased from £597m in 2020 to £1bn in 2021 and reached £3.7bn in 2022. No other major country in the world is cutting its mainstream aid budget to cover the cost of housing refugees in this way, said the aid campaign group Bond.
Continue reading...Metal used for west African artworks was acquired from manilla bracelets, the grim currency of the slave trade
Scientists have discovered that some of the Benin bronzes were made with brass mined thousands of miles away in the German Rhineland.
The Edo people in the Kingdom of Benin, modern Nigeria, created their extraordinary sculptures with melted down brass manilla bracelets, the grim currency of the transatlantic slave trade between the 16th and 19th centuries.
Continue reading...NEU survey also finds one in five teachers aged 29 or under have taken on a second job as pay fails to keep up with cost of living
One in three young teachers in England are skipping meals and spending less on food because their pay has failed to keep up with the rising cost of living, while others are taking second jobs, a survey has found.
More than 8,000 state school teachers in England contacted by the National Education Union revealed that 34% of teachers aged 29 or younger said they have been forced to skip meals to make ends meet, with one in five saying they have taken on a second job in addition to teaching full-time.
Continue reading...Marine Conservation Society calls for better regulation of how north-east Atlantic mackerel is caught as stocks decline
Mackerel populations are declining because of overfishing and the fish no longer a sustainable food choice, the Marine Conservation Society has said in its new UK guide to sustainable seafood.
North-east Atlantic mackerel has been considered an environmentally-friendly choice for consumers since before 2011, but the species has become increasingly scarce and now experts are calling for more regulation over how its caught.
Continue reading...People on small island of Portland say scheme would be bad for them and bad for those on the vessel
Politicians, businesspeople and residents have said housing asylum seekers on a barge off a Dorset island will be inhumane, put pressure on creaking local services, create a security risk and could lead to demonstrations by rightwing campaigners.
A string of people on Portland, which is linked to the mainland by the sweep of Chesil beach, argued that anchoring the barge in an area that has some of the poorest neighbourhoods in the south of England would be terrible for those assigned to the vessel and bad for residents.
Continue reading...Stephen Smith says he hopes to make regular visits to the WikiLeaks founder, who is in Belmarsh prison and faces espionage charges in the US
Julian Assange’s supporters have welcomed the “very positive and significant” prison visit by Australia’s new high commissioner to the United Kingdom, Stephen Smith.
The Wikileaks cofounder remains in Belmarsh prison in London as he fights a US attempt to extradite him to face charges in connection with the publication of hundreds of thousands of leaked documents about the Afghanistan and Iraq wars as well as diplomatic cables.
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Continue reading...The death of headteacher Ruth Perry after a devastating report from schools watchdog Ofsted has prompted a growing backlash. Michelle Sheehy, headteacher of Millfield primary school in the West Midlands, explains why
When Ofsted inspectors visited Ruth Perry’s primary school in Reading last year, they told her it would be downgraded to the lowest ranking because of gaps they found in the school’s safeguarding administration. Perry’s death last month has led to an outpouring of anger.
Her sister Julia Waters said her family were in no doubt she had taken her life in January as a “direct result” of the pressure put on her by the Ofsted inspection.
Continue reading...Move to deny Moscow’s children’s commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova a platform comes as she tells parents to write to her ‘to find’ their missing children
Britain has blocked the UN webcast of an informal security council meeting on Ukraine on Wednesday at which Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights – wanted by the international criminal court on war crimes charges – is due to speak.
The meeting this week will focus on “evacuating children from conflict zone” and Russia said on Tuesday that commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova would feature virtually. Such meetings are not held in the security council chamber and all 15 council members have to agree to allow it to be webcast by the United Nations.
Continue reading...Average cost of property in Devon town reached £1,244,025 last year, driven by second home owners
“Don’t hate me,” said Theo Spink of the view from her office on Tuesday afternoon, “but the sun is shining, there’s a gentle breeze, people are arriving for Easter, eating ice-cream. It’s all rather charming.”
If the town of Salcombe, situated on the neck of a narrow estuary in south Devon, sounds idyllic, that is because “it really, really is”, she said. “When the sun shines, you could be in the Mediterranean. It is that beautiful.”
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