Restructuring includes departure of Sam White, as party leader seeks to capitalise on slump in Tory support
Keir Starmer has announced a major shake-up of his political team, including the departure of his chief of staff, Sam White, saying Labour was being put on an immediate election footing.
Boosted by turmoil in the Conservative party and a string of hefty leads in opinion polls, Starmer said the party needed to move into the next phase of election readiness.
Continue reading...Sandwich shop chain to increase pay by 5% for most cafe workers, with higher rates for baristas
Pret a Manger is investing £10m in raising pay, announcing its third rise in 13 months to a minimum of £10.30 an hour, as hospitality and retail businesses compete to attract workers during the busy run-up to Christmas.
The sandwich shop chain, which has more than 400 outlets in the UK, said it was increasing pay by 5% or 50p an hour for most cafe workers from 1 December. Pay for skilled baristas, who are particularly in short supply, will rise from a minimum of £10.30 to £10.85 – an extra 5p.
Continue reading...Archaeologists find remnants of medieval priory under former Ocky White store in Haverfordwest
The remains of more than 240 people, including about 100 children, have been discovered beneath a former department store in Pembrokeshire among the ruins of a medieval priory.
Archaeologists believe they have discovered the remnants of St Saviour’s Priory underneath the former Ocky White store in Haverfordwest, which closed in 2013.
Continue reading...Hepworth prize winner’s works have been shown around the world and now arrive in Llandudno
His twisty neon installations and glittering towers of light are frequently shown in some of the world’s most exclusive galleries in New York, Mexico City, Tokyo and Shanghai.
For his first major solo show in his home country of Wales, Cerith Wyn Evans’ work is on display in the traditional surroundings of a gallery built in Edwardian times in the resort of Llandudno, best known for its old-fashioned pier and seafront – and the bold goats that descended on the town during the first lockdown.
The exhibition runs until 5 February 2023.
Continue reading...UK’s highest court asked to allow Scottish parliament to resolve ‘festering issue’ without Westminster approval
The UK’s highest court has been told the question of Scotland’s independence is a “live and significant one”, and has been urged to authorise a fresh referendum next year.
Dorothy Bain KC, the lord advocate and Scotland’s top law officer, told the supreme court on Tuesday morning that Scottish voters had consistently elected MPs and MSPs who backed independence.
Continue reading...UK spy chief says Kremlin does not appear to be engaged in preliminary steps despite Putin’s threats
The head of GCHQ has said the UK spy agency has not seen any indicators that Russia is preparing to use a tactical nuclear weapon in or around Ukraine despite recent bellicose statements from Vladimir Putin.
Jeremy Fleming, speaking on Tuesday morning, said it was one of GCHQ’s tasks to monitor whether the Kremlin was taking any of the preliminary steps needed before a tactical weapon was being made ready.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Meetings while in Saudi Arabia undisclosed due to ‘administrative oversight’, says business department
The chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, held undisclosed meetings with senior executives of Saudi Arabian firms when he was the business secretary, documents acquired by the Guardian show.
The meetings occurred in January, when Kwarteng visited the kingdom for a two-day trip under his previous ministerial role.
Continue reading...Veteran official gets permanent secretary role instead of reformer as fiscal plan is brought forward by three weeks
Liz Truss has overruled Kwasi Kwarteng’s top appointment at the Treasury and handed the role to a veteran Treasury official, one of a series of moves designed to calm markets and backbenchers.
It was also announced that the chancellor will set out plans to shore up the public finances three weeks earlier than planned and publish long-awaited forecasts by the Office for Budget Responsibility at the same time.
Continue reading...Files on Russian intelligence officer and ‘lady-killer’ Eugene Ivanov littered with reports of drunkenness
Eugene Ivanov, the Russian spy at the centre of the 1963 Profumo scandal, was a philandering alcoholic whose weakness for women and drink M15 hoped to exploit to get him to defect, but who ended up toppling the Macmillan government by chance, according to newly released intelligence files.
He arrived at the Russian embassy in London as assistant naval attache in 1960 but M15 suspected he was an intelligence officer, partly because he didn’t seem to know much about ships and also he carried an umbrella.
Continue reading...Analysis of budgets finds rich nations, including UK, ‘exacerbated explosion of economic inequality’
Many of the world’s poorest countries have cut health spending during the last two years, sometimes to make debt repayments to rich creditors, according to a report by Oxfam that shows inequality between rich and poor nations worsening during the coronavirus pandemic.
Analysis of national budgets across 161 nations found that despite the biggest global health emergency in a century, half of low- and lower-middle-income countries cut health spending, while almost half cut their welfare budgets and almost three-quarters cut education spending.
Continue reading...Boss says bank is putting aside more money for potential defaults linked to cost of living crisis
The boss of Santander UK says the bank is putting aside more money for potential defaults linked to the cost of living crisis after seeing a pickup in customers falling behind on mortgage and loan payments.
Mike Regnier told the Guardian that he was keeping a close eye on the “strain and pressure” facing customers as a result of the cost of living crisis, which has made it harder for some households to keep up with rising food and energy bills and financial commitments such as home loans.
Continue reading...IFS says Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget will leave ministers making serious reductions in public services
Kwasi Kwarteng will need to find £60bn of savings by 2026 to fill the gap left by unfunded tax cuts and the costs of extra borrowing triggered by a panicked reaction on international money markets to the chancellor’s “mini-budget”, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
The UK will also struggle to hit the chancellor’s 2.5% growth target, with economic forecasts by the investment bank Citigroup that the IFS uses to underpin its analysis showing the UK will struggle to grow at more than 0.8% on average over the next five years.
Continue reading...Experts say loss of 50,000 workers exposes ‘absolute crisis’ facing system still reeling from impact of Covid and Brexit
The social care workforce has shrunk for the first time in almost a decade despite rising demand and bed congestion in hospitals fuelled by a lack of care places.
England is projected to need close to 500,000 more care staff by the middle of the next decade, but last year there was a net fall in the workforce of 50,000 people, leaving about 165,000 jobs vacant, according to new figures from Skills for Care.
Continue reading...British spy agency director to say in rare public address that Ukraine is ‘turning the tide’ against Russia
Vladimir Putin has made strategic errors in his pursuit of the war in Ukraine partly because there are so few restraints on his leadership, the head of the British spy agency GCHQ will say in a speech on Tuesday.
Russia’s soldiers are running out of supplies and munitions and initial gains made by Moscow are being reversed, Jeremy Fleming is expected to add in a rare public address.
Continue reading...Britain is no longer the key humanitarian player and ‘great ally’ it once was, says envoy trying to get support for Somalia’s drought
The UK has lost its leadership role in the world and is letting down its allies, a senior official in the Somali government has said.
Abdirahman Abdishakur Warsame, the presidential envoy for Somalia’s drought response, said Britain used to be second only to the US as a key player in international forums and advocacy, but has since slipped, saying that countries such as Somalia were being left without support to face “the new climate reality”.
Continue reading...A 3% pay rise for team managers amid 10% inflation comes after a string of wage rises for hourly staff
Thousands of Tesco staff have been forced to take a large real-terms pay cut as the supermarket puts a squeeze on store managers while offering bigger wage rises for lower-paid workers.
In the latest pay battle amid the cost of living crisis, the retailer’s team managers, who earn about £30,000 a year, say they have received as little as a 3% pay rise. The official rate of inflation is close to 10%, and expected to hit 11% this month.
Continue reading...Guardian analysis of hundreds of documents also finds complaints of rodents, bed bugs, overcrowding and fire safety issues
Raw sewage leaking into a living room, rodents, bed bug and mite infestations, overcrowding and fire safety issues make up just some of the complaints levelled at rogue landlords in tribunal filings in the past year.
The findings come after the Guardian analysed hundreds of documents from the first-tier property tribunal involving tenants renting house-shares of five or more people (or three or more in parts of London) sharing kitchen and bathroom facilities, known as houses of multiple occupation or HMOs.
Raw sewage leaking from a toilet and seeping through the living room ceiling, which had to be collected in plastic containers.
Multiple properties that had no fire detection system or smoke alarm; lacked an adequate central heating system; had infestations of rodents, bed bugs and pigeon mites, which were not adequately dealt with.
A London landlord renting out a property through a company the tribunal found did not exist.
A converted church rented to students was inadequately secured after a burglary and the burglar was later found to be living in the attic. At the same property, a fire took place when smoke alarms were not working.
Continue reading...Ciolac, 35, died in hospital after officer reportedly fired three shots at man armed with knife
A man who was shot dead by armed officers in the car park of a police station in Derby has been named as Marius Ciolac.
Armed officers were called at 9.55am on Friday after officers reported seeing a man armed with a knife in the secure car park of Ascot Drive police station.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Tory MPs warn PM she would lose vote on increasing benefits only in line with earnings rather than inflation
Liz Truss is teetering on the edge of performing another big U-turn as Tory MPs warned she would lose a vote on delivering a real-terms cut to benefits while new research showed the move could push an extra 450,000 people into poverty.
Despite desperate pleas for party unity from senior ministers after weeks of bitter infighting, the row over welfare threatened to overshadow the prime minister’s attempt to reassert her authority when the Commons returns from recess on Tuesday.
Continue reading...Brian Glendinning’s case highlights peril for football fans travelling to the Gulf nation this year, experts warn
A British engineer is in jail in Iraq and facing extradition to Qatar over missed repayments on a small bank loan, in a case said to highlight the perils facing those travelling to the Gulf state for the World Cup.
Brian Glendinning, 43, who had been contracted to work on a BP refinery in Iraq, was arrested on an Interpol “red notice” at Baghdad airport on 12 September and has been in a police cell since awaiting an extradition hearing.
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