Supermarket’s rise to £13.18 on 1 February puts hourly minimum rate 20% ahead of January 2022
Aldi is increasing pay for UK warehouse workers for the third time in a year – with the hourly minimum rate now 20% ahead of last January.
The German-owned discounter, which is the UK’s fourth-largest supermarket chain, said pay would rise to £13.18 on 1 February, up 4% on the current minimum of £12.66, which was introduced in September.
Continue reading...Remarks at odds with government claims that new minimum service law has ‘international seal of approval’
The UN agency for workers’ rights and the US labour secretary have distanced themselves from the UK government’s claims that its strikes bill has the “international seal of approval”.
The prime minister, Rishi Sunak, and the business secretary, Grant Shapps, have repeatedly justified rolling out the anti-strike legislation claiming the International Labour Organization (ILO) backs minimum service levels being provided during stoppages by workers, a key plank of the proposed new measures.
Continue reading...Bank of England must proceed with caution as households are still cutting back and business confidence is weak
There is hope for households across Britain that inflation, finally, has peaked. After hitting a 41-year high of more than 11% in October as energy bills soared, the fall in the annual inflation rate in December for a second consecutive month will come as a relief.
However, prices remain high and are still rising fast. Lower inflation rates do not mean prices are falling for consumers; it is just that they are not rising quite as fast as a month ago. The cost of living crisis may be fading but it is very far from over.
Continue reading...After a fatal crowd crush at the London venue in December, the BBC has spoken to a guard who says hundreds were let in for cash
A security guard at London’s O2 Academy Brixton, which has been closed since a fatal crowd crush occurred at the venue in mid-December, has alleged in a BBC report that other guards regularly took bribes to let people in without tickets.
Rebecca Ikumelo, 33, and security guard Gaby Hutchinson, 23, both died after a show by Afrobeats star Asake on 15 December, with several more injured.
Continue reading...Nicola Sturgeon says her government will be ‘vigorously defending’ democracy as well as the bill passed in Scotland
I am sorry the comments are closed at the moment. There has been an update this morning that has created a glitch with the system, but the developers are trying to fix it as quickly as possible.
Labour has been anxious to avoid taking sides on the Scottish gender recognition reform bill. Although Keir Starmer has criticised aspects of the bill, and argued it might have an impact on UK equality laws, he has accused both the UK and Scottish governments of politicising the issues and implied that Labour would adopt a more consensual approach.
Continue reading...Rosalind Franklin laboratory in Leamington Spa no longer to be part of laboratory network processing Covid tests
England’s PCR testing network for Covid is to be scaled back due to a fall in demand, public health officials have said.
The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) said that the Rosalind Franklin laboratory in Leamington Spa – which at its peak was processing about 75,000 Covid PCR tests a day – will cease to operate as part of the processing network.
Continue reading...Investment will sustain its work in London for another year after ENO was removed from ACE’s national portfolio
The English National Opera (ENO) has announced it will receive an £11.46m investment from Arts Council England (ACE) to sustain its work in London for another year.
The ENO is one of a number of organisations that have been removed from ACE’s national portfolio, losing its £12.8m annual grant and told it must move outside London if it wants to qualify for future grants. ENO chiefs have said the 100% funding cut would decimate the 100-year old company, while many big names across the arts world called the decision a “simplistic move”.
Continue reading...Britain’s car industry relies on petrol or diesel vehicles – and every failure to be part of the electric revolution makes it more exposed
The battery startup Britishvolt eyed a big opportunity. With the looming UK ban on sales of internal combustion engine cars after 2035, big demand for batteries was guaranteed. The problem was actually building the batteries.
The company’s efforts have now come to nothing. It collapsed into administration on Tuesday after funding talks failed, leaving a string of disappointed backers ranging from the FTSE 100 companies Glencore and Ashtead to the property investor Tritax, owned by investment group abrdn, which had committed to fund a battery “gigafactory” in Northumberland.
Continue reading...Latest government U-turn on policy comes amid row over Scotland’s gender recognition bill
The government’s plans for a ban on so-called conversion practices will now also include transgender people, the culture secretary has confirmed.
The policy, which has been proposed several times by successive Conservative governments since 2018 when Theresa May was prime minister, will outlaw attempts to change someone’s sexuality or gender identity in England and Wales.
Continue reading...Airline to continue aggressive post-Covid expansion, offering 10% more seats in the UK this summer compared with 2022
Ryanair took record numbers of bookings in January, the budget airline has announced, passing 2m sales in a weekend for the first time.
Its chief executive, Michael O’Leary, said there was no sign of a slowdown in demand despite the economic uncertainty.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Charities and activists call on PM to follow through on pledge to allow families to resettle in UK
More than 100 charities and activists are calling on the prime minister to facilitate the resettlement of family members of thousands of Afghans who came to the UK under a government scheme.
The government pledged to resettle family members in the UK but at the moment there is no mechanism for them to do this. Campaigners have accused the government of abandoning Afghans in danger who were promised the right to reunite with family members in the UK.
Continue reading...Census data analysis shows growth of ‘rainbow’ towns and cities, as more people live with neighbours of different backgrounds
Ethnic segregation in England and Wales is on the wane as more people live alongside neighbours of different backgrounds, creating “rainbow” towns and cities, research reveals.
Neighbourhood diversity more than doubled nationally between 2001 and 2021, with huge transformations in some places. There was close to a tenfold increase in diversity in Boston, Lincolnshire, albeit from a low base; Barking and Dagenham recorded a ninefold increase, while diversity in Watford and Reading increased fourfold.
Continue reading...UK medicines watchdog advises GPs to ‘taper’ doses for patients who want to stop taking the drugs
GPs whose patients want to stop taking antidepressants should reduce the dose of their medication in stages to lower the risk and severity of withdrawal symptoms, the medicines watchdog has said.
About one in six (16%) adult Britons experience moderate to severe depression, according to the Office for National Statistics. In England alone, 21.4m antidepressant drugs were prescribed between July and September 2022, according to the NHS Business Services Authority.
Continue reading...Charities and non-profit bodies urge Jeremy Hunt to introduce discount tariff from April 2024
Jeremy Hunt is facing calls for a “social energy tariff” providing cheaper gas and electricity for low income households to be introduced when government support ends next year.
In an open letter to the chancellor, 95 charities and non-profit organisations have urged the government to move quickly to legislate for a change in energy bills for “those in greatest need to ensure they are able to live in their homes comfortably”.
Continue reading...Almost half of the children surveyed by Oxford University Press chose ‘Queen’ as their top word, with ‘happy’ and ‘chaos’ in second and third place
“Queen” has been chosen by young people as the Oxford children’s word of the year for 2022.
Almost half of children surveyed by Oxford University Press (OUP) chose “Queen” as their word of the year. In second place was “happy”, chosen by 36% of children, with “chaos” coming in third with 14% of the vote.
Continue reading...Rebel Tories drop amendment after ministers agree to make managers criminally liable for persistent breaches of duty of care
Tech executives whose platforms persistently fail to protect children from online harm will face criminal charges after ministers reached a deal with Conservative backbenchers.
Rishi Sunak was facing the prospect of defeat in a Commons vote on Tuesday after a rebel amendment to the online safety bill won opposition support. However, supporters have now withdrawn the amendment after the government agreed to change the legislation.
Continue reading...Angela Rayner claims people in certain job categories could lose the right to withdraw their labour under Tory plans
Rishi Sunak’s new anti-strike laws would prevent certain job holders from ever being able to take industrial action, Labour’s deputy leader said during fiery exchanges in the House of Commons.
Angela Rayner promised on Monday that Labour would repeal the government’s anti-strikes bill, saying it was one of the most “indefensible and foolish pieces of legislation to come before this House in modern times”.
Continue reading...More than 20 injured in incident involving a truck, after 40 died in two-bus collision in Kaffrine region
A collision between a truck and a bus in northern Senegal has killed 22 people, firefighters have said, a week after a crash between two buses left 40 people dead.
More than 20 people were injured in the latest accident, which occurred on Monday near Sakal in the Louga region, Papa Ange Michel Diatta, a colonel with the national firefighting service, told AFP. Amadou Ba, the country’s prime minister, visited the site, pledging to enforce new rules of the road.
Continue reading...Ben Wallace wants Berlin to allow its Leopard 2 tanks to be re-exported from Nato countries to join British heavy armour
Britain’s defence secretary has called on Germany to release Leopard 2 tanks for Ukraine after he confirmed that the UK would send 14 of its own Challenger 2 tanks, the first time a western nation has given its own heavy armour to Kyiv.
Ben Wallace said the UK would allow Ukrainians to start training with the tanks immediately as part of a fresh package of British military aid, unveiled before a western defence ministers’ conference in Ramstein, Germany, on Friday.
Continue reading...Alireza Akbari’s sister and daughter went to cemetery to collect his remains but were told he had already been interred
The Tehran-based family of the executed British-Iranian dual national Alireza Akbari have been prevented from seeing his body or burying him in the grave in which he had asked to be laid to rest in Shiraz, his birthplace, family members have told the Guardian.
Akbari was executed for spying for M16, charges he vehemently denied and for which there is no substantive evidence, save a confession extracted under torture.
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