Category Archives: UK news

Rishi Sunak says as PM he would cap number of refugees UK accepts

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Tory leadership candidate’s pledge follows favourite Liz Truss’s claim she would extend Rwanda scheme

Rishi Sunak, who is battling with Liz Truss to win the backing of the Conservative grassroots in his attempt to replace Boris Johnson, has announced plans for an annual cap on the number of refugees the UK accepts.

The former chancellor, who trails Truss by 24%, according to a YouGov poll of Conservative members earlier this week, will on Sunday promise to tackle illegal migration and regain control of the UK’s borders if he becomes the next Conservative leader and prime minister.

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Deborah James cancer podcast You, Me and the Big C wins top award

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Champion prize at the British Podcast Awards given to series co-hosted by bowel cancer campaigner who died in June

Dame Deborah James’ podcast You, Me and the Big C, has been honoured at the British Podcast Awards winning the champion prize.

James, who hosted the podcast alongside Rachael Bland and Lauren Mahon, died last month aged 40 after receiving end of life care for bowel cancer at home. Bland died in September 2018 aged 40, nearly two years after being diagnosed with breast cancer.

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Travel chaos is ‘the new normal’ after Brexit, British tourists are warned

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Anger over lack of cash for Dover upgrade as Tory candidates vie to blame France for delays

Long summer queues at the border risk becoming the “new normal” after Brexit, holidaymakers have been warned, as a fierce diplomatic row erupted with France over the lengthy tailbacks affecting Dover.

Both Tory leadership candidates rushed to blame a shortage of French border staff for delays that saw some travellers waiting for hours. Former chancellor Rishi Sunak said the French “need to stop blaming Brexit and start getting the staff required to match demand”. Foreign secretary Liz Truss said she was in touch with her French counterparts, blaming a “lack of resources at the border”.

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Thatcher ministers turn on Liz Truss over tax cut plans

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Chris Patten, Norman Lamont and Malcolm Rifkind warn former PM would never have approved borrowing to fund £30bn cuts

Tory grandees who served in Margaret Thatcher’s final cabinet have warned that the former prime minister would never have approved of Liz Truss’s plan to slash £30bn off taxes funded by borrowing, as Rishi Sunak denounced his opponent’s plans as “immoral”.

With a bitter row over tax emerging as the defining issue in the race to succeed Boris Johnson, three members of Thatcher’s cabinet told the Observer that she would have taken a dim view of slashing taxes at a time of high inflation.This follows repeated claims that Truss has attempted to model herself on Thatcher in her attempt to win the leadership, which she has denied.

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France rejects blame for Dover gridlock, saying it is ‘not responsible for Brexit’

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Travellers told to allow three to four hours to pass through security and French border checks at port

French authorities have hit back at claims by the Port of Dover that French border control staff were to blame for a second day of hours-long delays, saying: “France is not responsible for Brexit.”

It came after the port blamed delays on insufficient border staff at police aux frontières.

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France says it is ‘not responsible for Brexit’ amid row over Dover travel chaos – as it happened

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French transport minister hits back at Liz Truss’s suggestion that France needed to fix the ‘avoidable and unacceptable’ situation

Authorities in Kent have declared a “major incident” due to traffic jams in and around Dover, with officials saying the disruption could be worse than on Friday.

There are currently 3,000 lorries parked on the M20 and traffic is building at the port.

We are operating in a post-Brexit environment which does mean that passports need to be checked, they need to be stamped and indeed the capable people that do man the booths – police aux frontieres – they’re doing their job that they need to do now.

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Final whistle for the ‘pink ’un’: British football’s last-surviving matchday newspaper closes

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After 119 years, Portsmouth’s Saturday evening Sports Mail has printed its last issue. A dedicated reader bids this singular British institution a fond farewell

It’s been the slowest of deaths, but yesterday the “Saturday final” edition of a singular British institution will be just that. While in the last 20 years beloved pink ’uns and green ’uns (and the occasional blue ’un and buff ’un) have disappeared from towns and cities across the country, Portsmouth’s Saturday evening Sports Mail, 119 years old, held out as the last remaining dedicated matchday newspaper. It was first closed down in 2012 but quickly resurrected at the impassioned demand of fans of Pompey, the island city’s club. This time, the obituary is to be believed.

With it goes a century of a particular collective memory: that Saturday evening ritual of heading up to the local newsagent at 5.30 or 5.45 to await the mundane miracle of a stack of fat papers slung from the back of a van reporting from all across the city what had ended only an hour before, ink still smudgeable on banner headlines.

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How England Lionesses’ coach Sarina Wiegman developed a ruthless, winning formula

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Wiegman has transformed the fortunes of the women’s football team and got them to the Euro semi-finals – with no fear of making tough calls along the way

For any of the 7.6 million BBC One viewers who tuned in to watch England’s dramatic extra-time defeat of Spain in the quarter-finals of the Euros on Wednesday night, the sight of an animated blond Dutch woman on the touchline will not have gone unnoticed.

Sarina Wiegman, England’s manager, is fast becoming a talking point. Less for her antics – although watching her being lifted aloft in a bear-hug from centre-back Millie Bright after the full-time whistle was a treat – and more for the 11-month transformation of the Lionesses from disjointed and confidence-drained to contenders on the biggest of stages.

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Child vaping risks becoming ‘public health catastrophe’ in UK, experts warn

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There are fears that the e-cigarette boom has the potential to create a generation of young people hooked on nicotine

Lindsey Smith’s son was 14 when he bought his first vape. Engrossed in videos of YouTubers making “ghost puffs” with the vapour, he decided he wanted to try it for himself.

At first he would spend hours trying to copy the strangers online – sitting in his bedroom and practising exhalation techniques to create the ghost-shaped clouds he was seeing on his screen.

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Low winds stopped what might have been new ‘great fire of London’, says expert

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More than 40 houses were destroyed by fires on Britain’s hottest day. Now there are calls for an urgent rethink on building safety laws

Fires that burned in several parts of the UK last week spread in the same way as those that led to the great fire of London and would have been far worse with stronger winds, a fire expert has said.

Fires in Wennington, Uxbridge and Erith destroyed 41 properties last Tuesday, when temperatures went above 40C to make it the hottest day on record in the UK, and fire services had their busiest day since the second world war.

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Body found after man went missing in sea near Clacton pier

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Emergency services discover body in Jaywick following disappearance of 21-year-old on UK’s hottest ever day

The body of a man has been found on the Essex coast two miles from where a 21-year-old went missing in the sea on Tuesday.

Five people were pulled from the water near Clacton pier and taken to hospital on Britain’s hottest recorded day, but one man remained unaccounted for. The search was scaled down after more than 24 hours.

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Parole changes in England and Wales present ‘clear danger to the public’, unions tell Raab

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Under new rules, panels will rarely receive psychologists’ and probation officers’ recommendations

Dominic Raab has been accused of a “catastrophic” decision that experts say profoundly undermines public safety by allowing prisoners to abscond and others to commit serious offences while on parole.

In a strongly worded letter to the justice secretary, three unions castigate a “momentous and dangerous” move by Raab to ban psychologists, prison staff and probation officers from informing the Parole Board whether they believe prisoners should be released.

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Rishi Sunak says he is underdog in PM race as ‘forces that be’ want Truss

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Former chancellor suggests Tory party powers hope leadership contest will be ‘a coronation’ for his rival

Rishi Sunak has positioned himself as the underdog in the Conservative leadership race, claiming the “forces that be” want Liz Truss to be the next prime minister.

Addressing a crowd in Grantham on Saturday, the Lincolnshire home town of Margaret Thatcher, Sunak declared “have no doubt, I am the underdog” and suggested that Conservative party powers want the race to be “a coronation” for Truss.

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Australian activist Drew Pavlou arrested in London but denies sending Chinese embassy bomb threat

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Pavlou says the emailed threat was intended to frame him after he staged a peaceful protest carrying a Uyghur flag outside the embassy

Australian activist Drew Pavlou has been arrested in the UK over a false “bomb threat” delivered to the Chinese embassy in London that he claims came from a fake email address designed to frame him.

Pavlou said the “absurd” email claimed he would blow up the embassy over Beijing’s oppression of its Uyghur Muslim minority, but that it was confected by the embassy in order to have him arrested.

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Man who killed his wife in ‘act of love’ calls for assisted dying law

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Graham Mansfield, sentenced this week for killing terminally ill Dyanne, says if he had to do the ‘horrible act’ again, he would

A man who cut his terminally ill wife’s throat in an “act of love” said he would do the same again to give her peace, as he called for a change in the law to allow assisted dying.

Graham Mansfield, 73, was cleared of murder by a jury this week. They found the retired baggage handler guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter after hearing how he and his wife, Dyanne, 71, agreed to die together after the pain of her terminal cancer became too much to bear.

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Rail strike of more than 40,000 workers across Britain to go ahead on 27 July

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Members of RMT union will strike next week after talks over pay, jobs and conditions broke down

A planned strike of over 40,000 workers at Network Rail and more than a dozen train companies will go ahead next week, after the latest talks broke down.

Members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT) at 14 train operating companies and Network Rail will go on strike on Wednesday 27 July in a dispute about pay, jobs and conditions.

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Warning Dover port chaos could spill into weekend as queues last six hours

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Kent port apologises for delays and blames French border control as summer getaway kicks off

Holidaymakers have been warned chaos that triggered six-hour queues at Dover could spill into the weekend, after the port declared a “critical incident” that it blamed on “woefully inadequate” French border control staffing.

The Kent port apologised to travellers facing long waits to cross the Channel on an extremely busy day for travel across the UK, as schools across England and Wales break up for the holidays.

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Rishi Sunak camp says debates against Truss will change Tory members’ minds

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‘Truss is mental and will be found out,’ says supporter of former chancellor as he launches fightback in Grantham

Rishi Sunak will launch his fightback in the Conservative leadership race from Margaret Thatcher’s birthplace this weekend, with his supporters urging party members to delay voting until they have seen him take on Liz Truss in more debates.

Sunak’s campaign team is drawing up plans to try to reverse what one called a “worrying trend” after Truss pulled ahead by 24 percentage points in polling of party members.

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‘Park in sky’ to open in former Grade II-listed Manchester viaduct

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National Trust garden at Castlefield Viaduct is inspired by New York public park and features 3,000 plant species

A “park in the sky” at a former viaduct in Manchester is to open at the end of the month, the National Trust has announced.

Situated along the Grade II-listed Castlefield Viaduct, the 330-metre temporary park is inspired by New York’s High Line public park, and features 3,000 plant species in gardens created by architects and community groups.

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Prices fall as UK heatwave produces glut of soft fruit

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Yields of cherries, strawberries and blueberries could more than double on the same time last year

The UK heatwave has produced a glut in strawberry, cherry and blueberry harvests prompting a wave of discounts in stores and lower prices for British farmers.

Strawberry farmers said they were picking as much as 30% more fruit than usual, and blueberry growers at least 50% more this week as temperatures topped 40C on Tuesday in some parts of England. Yields are expected to be double that of the same week last year in the week ahead. Blackberry harvests are expected to be up 80% on the same time last year this week according to the British Berry Growers association.

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