Category Archives: UK news

Ministers must end ‘barking mad’ restraints on civil service pay, union leader warns

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Exclusive: Prospect boss Mike Clancy cites problems retaining technical and digital experts

Ministers must end “barking mad” restraints on civil service pay or risk being unable to recruit the technical and digital specialists it needs to keep pace, a union leader has warned.

Mike Clancy, the Prospect general secretary, said the government should end the “rightwing trope” that restrained the pay of highly skilled civil servants and left government unable to compete with the private sector. He said it should be realistic for senior specialists in competitive fields to be paid more than the prime minister.

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Councils in England call for ‘radical’ means testing of Send school transport

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Demand is rising at unsustainable rate and could cost £3.4bn by 2030-31, local authorities warn

Families who have children with special educational needs and disabilities (Send) should be means tested for school transport, according to councils in England, who say demand is rising “at an unsustainable rate”.

Local authorities are urging the government to be “radical” in its Send reforms, which are expected imminently, warning that annual costs on home-to-school transport for children with Send could rise to £3.4bn by 2030-31, up from £2bn last year.

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Retailers in UK plan to cut staff hours and jobs amid rising employment costs

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BRC survey finds finance bosses expect technology to improve productivity, with 69% pessimistic about the economy

UK retailers are planning to cut staff hours and jobs amid rising employment costs and pessimism about the economy.

Almost two-thirds (61%) of finance bosses at retail companies said they planned to reduce working hours or cut overtime, according to the latest survey from the British Retail Consortium (BRC), the trade body that represents most big retailers. More than half (55%) said they would cut head office jobs and 42% said they would reduce jobs in stores.

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Man dies and boy in critical condition after stabbing at skate park in Northampton

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Police arrest four after incident in the Briar Hill area that left a man in his 20s dead

A man is dead and a teenage boy is in a critical condition in hospital after they were stabbed at a Northampton skate park.

Northamptonshire police launched a murder investigation after emergency services were called to the park in Ringway in the Briar Hill area on Wednesday following reports that two people had been stabbed “during an altercation”.

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Starmer says Reform’s pledge to restore two-child benefit cap in full is ‘shameful’ – UK politics live

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Reform UK’s Robert Jenrick has announced party’s plans to cut welfare spending

Robert Jenrick, Reform UK’s Treasury spokesperson, is giving his speech now.

He has announced, or confirmed, three measures to cut welfare spending.

The number claiming disability benefits for an attention disorder has more than doubled since Covid. We all know a significant number of these claims are spurious …

We will stop those with mild anxiety, depression, and similar conditions from claiming disability benefits and instead encourage them into the dignity of work.

We will end the abuse of the Motability scheme, where expensive cars are handed out for conditions like tennis elbow, and paid for by working people who can’t afford them themselves.

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Britons living in Europe face repayment hikes amid Reeves student loans row

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Exclusive: UK graduates in Germany, Belgium and possibly other countries informed of rises as salary threshold is cut

Britons living in some European countries face a huge rise in their student loan repayments later this year, the Guardian can reveal, in a move that threatens to trigger a fresh backlash for Rachel Reeves.

UK graduates working in Germany and Belgium – and possibly other countries – have been told that their monthly repayments will increase from April, the Guardian can reveal.

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‘Bored by all the sex and violins’: readers on Wuthering Heights film

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Reaction to Emerald Fennell’s movie adaptation of Emily Brontë’s novel starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi

My group of six English teachers – aged from 30 to 54 – saw the film on Friday. We are still processing our thoughts in a group chat. We agreed that the visuals were often delightfully shocking. We talked about the contrasts between the lavish costumes and the moor landscape, which we thought Fennell got right. We talked about the Charlie XCX music and how well it evoked the landscape and the spirit of the book.

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Household energy bills in Great Britain forecast to fall by £117 a year

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Consultancy’s prediction comes after Rachel Reeves said green subsidy costs would be removed from domestic bills

Household energy costs in Great Britain are expected to tumble by an average of £117 a year from April after Rachel Reeves announced in November’s budget that the cost of green subsidies would be removed from domestic bills.

The government’s quarterly cap on energy bills is forecast to fall after the chancellor’s decision to shift the levies used to support renewable energy projects into general taxation, and scrap a bill payer-funded energy efficiency scheme, according to Cornwall Insight, a leading energy consultancy.

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Boost to British Steel as Turkey places high-speed rail order

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‘Eight-figure agreement’ made to supply new line between Ankara and İzmir – but questions over plant’s future remain

British Steel has secured an order worth tens of millions of pounds to supply rail for a high-speed electric railway in Turkey, amid continuing uncertainty over the long-term future of the government-controlled steelworks in Scunthorpe.

The site will supply 36,000 tonnes of rail to ERG International Group, the company announced, in what it called an “eight-figure agreement”.

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Police assessing records of private flights at Stansted after publication of Epstein files

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Move comes after Gordon Brown’s claim that files show sex offender used airport in Essex to ‘fly in girls’

Police are assessing information about private flights to and from Stansted airport following the publication of files relating to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

It comes after former prime minister Gordon Brown claimed the documents showed in “graphic detail” how Epstein was able to use the Essex-based hub to “fly in girls from Latvia, Lithuania and Russia”.

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Police arresting 1,000 paedophile suspects a month across UK

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National Crime Agency says rise in child sexual abuse being driven by technology and online forums

Child sexual abuse in the UK is soaring, police have said, with 1,000 paedophile suspects being arrested each month and the number of children being rescued from harm rising by 50% in the last five years.

The National Crime Agency said the growth in offending across the UK was driven by technology and linked to the radicalisation of offenders in online forums, encouraging people to view images of child sexual abuse by reassuring them it was normal.

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Four Chagossians return to islands in attempt to stop British transfer to Mauritius

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Group says they intend to establish permanent settlement but Mauritius’s attorney general calls their move a ‘publicity stunt’

Four Chagos Islanders have landed on one of the archipelago’s atolls to establish what they say will be a permanent settlement, in an attempt to complicate a British plan to transfer the territory to Mauritius.

The Mauritius attorney general said the move was a publicity stunt designed to create conflict over a 2025 agreement with Britain on handing over sovereignty of the British Indian Ocean Territory, which is opposed by some Chagossians who accuse Mauritius of decades of neglect. Mauritius has denied the accusations.

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Medics in UK and US say they have been barred from Gaza after speaking out

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Israel accused of denying doctors re-entry into territory after they gave first-hand testimony on conflict

Medics in the UK and US believe they have been denied re-entry to Gaza after speaking out on the conflict.

Following reports of rising refusal rates, medical workers and organisationswho have provided humanitarian aid in Gaza have described what they see as arbitrary denials.

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Police ‘determined’ to target abusers who drive women to suicide but say they lack of resources

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NPCC lead for domestic abuse says officers dealing with huge caseloads, made worse by justice system backlogs

Police are “determined to do more” to hold to account domestic abusers who drive victims to kill themselves, the National Police Chiefs’ Council has said.

Assistant Commissioner Louisa Rolfe, the NPCC lead for domestic abuse, has said that “more posthumous investigations are taking place”, but that officers struggle with a lack of resources, adding that 20% of all crime relates to domestic abuse in most forces.

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Met deploys drones and ebikes to help catch adolescent phone thieves

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London police say criminal gangs are using Snapchat to offer cash rewards of up to £380 for stolen iPhones

Gangs are recruiting children to go out to steal smartphones before they head to school, using Snapchat to offer rewards of up to £380 for the latest Apple iPhones, police have revealed.

The Metropolitan police said they were deploying new resources including drones and Surron ebikes to chase suspects as they step up their fight against phone snatching.

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Fertility patients win high court battle to save embryos after consent error

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Judge says people should not lose chance of parenthood ‘by the ticking of a clock’ after 10-year deadline missed

More than a dozen fertility patients have won a high court battle to save their embryos, eggs and sperm from destruction after errors meant they did not renew consent to store them within the 10-year window required by law.

Ruling that the material could be kept, the judge said they should not “have the possibility of parenthood … removed by the ticking of a clock”.

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British Museum removes word ‘Palestine’ from some displays

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Museum revises labelling on maps and panels, saying term used inaccurately and no longer historically neutral

The British Museum has removed the word “Palestine” from some of its displays, saying the term was used inaccurately and is no longer historically neutral.

Maps and information panels in the museum’s ancient Middle East galleries had referred to the eastern Mediterranean coast as Palestine, with some people described as being “of Palestinian descent”.

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Key aide to Nigel Farage was frontman for Premier League billionaire’s betting syndicate, lawsuit claims

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Exclusive: George Cottrell ‘gave control’ of gambling accounts to syndicate headed by Tony Bloom, the owner of Brighton & Hove Albion FC

George Cottrell, a close associate of Nigel Farage and a key figure in Reform UK’s inner circle, acted as a front for a major gambling syndicate that was “given control” of his betting accounts, a high court document alleges.

Cottrell acted as a stalking horse for a syndicate involving one of the world’s most successful gamblers, Tony Bloom, it is claimed in the public documents, filed at the high court.

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UK government delays decision on China’s super-embassy until January

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New date to approve site near Tower Bridge in London aligns with Keir Starmer’s planned visit to Beijing

The government has delayed its decision on whether to approve China’s super-embassy in London until January, when Keir Starmer is expected to visit Beijing.

Ministers are expected to greenlight the controversial plans after formal submissions by the Home Office and Foreign Office raised no objections on security grounds.

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Quarter of police forces missing basic policies on sexual offences, says Sarah Everard report

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Official report says forces in England and Wales yet to implement recommendations for investigations

A quarter of police forces in England and Wales are yet to implement “basic policies for investigating sexual offences”, an official report has found, with women still being failed despite promises of change after the murder of Sarah Everard four years ago.

The report by Dame Elish Angiolini follows an inquiry set up after Everard was murdered by a serving police officer, Wayne Couzens, in March 2021. She was abducted off a London street while walking home.

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