Category Archives: UK news

UK food price rises could hit 15% over summer, report says

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Ukraine war, China lockdowns and Brexit help push up inflation, with products that rely on wheat worst hit

Food price rises in the UK could hit 15% this summer – the highest level in more than 20 years – with inflation lasting into the middle of next year, according to a report.

Meat, cereals, dairy, fruit and vegetables are likely to be the worst affected as the war in Ukraine combines with production lockdowns in China and export bans on key food stuffs such as palm oil from Indonesia and wheat from India, the grocery trade body IGD warns.

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Britons not bitterly polarised over trans equality, research finds

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Study reveals majority agree schools should talk about trans issues and one in four knows trans person

The British public are not bitterly polarised over trans equality, according to new research, which found a majority agreed schools should talk to pupils about transgender issues and that one in four knows a trans person personally.

Thought to be the most in-depth UK study to date of public attitudes to what has become a notoriously toxic discourse in politics and on social media, the report from More in Common identifies a radically different attitude among ordinary people, who approach issues of gender identity from a position of compassion and fairness, often informed by their own relationships with trans people.

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Lil Wayne will not perform at UK festival after Home Office refused entry

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Grammy-award winning US rapper will no longer headline Strawberries & Creem festival in Cambridge

Lil Wayne will no longer headline at Strawberries & Creem festival in Cambridge after he was banned from entering the UK at the last minute, event organisers have said.

The Grammy-award winning American rapper, 39, will not perform on Saturday in what was believed to be his first UK show in 14 years after he had his visa application refused.

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Doctors warn against over-medicalising menopause after UK criticism

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Seeing natural event as hormone deficiency requiring treatment could increase women’s anxiety, say medics

Doctors have hit back at critics saying they are failing menopausal women, and said that treating menopause as a hormone deficiency that requires medical treatment could fuel negative expectations and make matters worse.

Writing in the British Medical Journal they said there was an urgent need for a more realistic and balanced narrative which actively challenges the idea that menopause is synonymous with an inevitable decline in women’s health and wellbeing, and called for continued efforts to improve awareness about the symptoms and how to deal with them.

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Labour launches review of business funding to support startups

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Rachel Reeves says Labour wants to make Britain the best place in the world to start and grow a business

Labour has launched a review of business startup funding driven by a group of industry leaders including the former Goldman Sachs chief economist and Conservative Treasury minister Jim O’Neill as it attempts to improve its credentials with business.

Announcing the review amid concern over the strength of the British economy, Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, said Labour wanted to make Britain the best place in the world to start and grow a business.

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‘I’d be scared to be deported’: refugees in Rwanda respond to UK plans

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Asylum seekers at Gashora transit centre say they fear reaching UK and ending up where they started after torturous journey

Many have attempted perilous crossings across the Mediterranean to reach the UK in the past. But asylum seekers at Rwanda’s Gashora transit centre say they are now too scared to try again for fear of ending up back where they started.

Zemen Fesaha, 26, from Eritrea, arrived at the sprawling complex of accommodation and leisure facilities in July. The refugee camp, an hour and a half’s drive from Rwanda’s capital, Kigali, houses 249 men, 125 women, and 83 children, who were evacuated from squalid detention centres in Libya.

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Why is the ECB still fiddling over a potential eurozone crisis? | Nils Pratley

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Christine Lagarde is failing to heed the lesson of last decade’s crisis: act quickly and act clearly

Perhaps the European Central Bank was feeling left out as the financial world turned its attention to the US Federal Reserve’s interest rate hike. But emergency meetings of major central banks are supposed to produce more substance than the weak offering that emerged from Frankfurt after a morning of contemplation: a plan to accelerate work on a “new anti-fragmentation instrument”.

The fragmentation in question is the widening of bond yields between eurozone countries. In short, as interest rate rises have come into view, weaker economies are having to pay meaningfully greater rates to borrow than the likes of Germany – about 2.4 percentage points more in the case of Italy.

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Eighteenth-century cockroach found in slave-trading ship ledger

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Insect’s journey probably began in west Africa on vessel that sailed from La Rochelle in 1743 to Guinea

An 18th-century cockroach named Peri, discovered in the ledger of a French slave-trading vessel, has become a surprise addition to the National Archives after the book was opened for the first time in more than two centuries.

The insect’s journey began onboard the slave-trading vessel that sailed from La Rochelle in 1743 for the Guinea coast. The crew later boarded a different vessel in modern-day Haiti bound for France, taking the ledger with them. But that ship was seized by British privateers during the war of the Austrian succession and sent into Plymouth.

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No 10 revives prospect of UK leaving European convention on human rights after Labour calls Rwanda plans ‘a shambles’ – live

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Downing Street refuses to rule out withdrawing from European convention on human rights after Yvette Cooper challenges Priti Patel over Rwanda

This is what Šefčovič said about the UK bill in his opening statement.

Let there be no doubt: there is no legal nor political justification whatsoever for unilaterally changing an international agreement.

Opening the door to unilaterally changing an international agreement is a breach of international law as well.

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Owner of UK chip designer Arm may float some of firm’s shares in London

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Japan’s SoftBank still likely to conduct IPO in New York but could secure secondary listing

The Japanese owner of the British chip designer Arm is reportedly planning to float some of the company’s shares in London, in a sign the government’s efforts to lobby for a UK listing of the Cambridge-based company may have succeeded.

SoftBank, which bought the chip company for $32bn in 2016, is said to be reconsidering earlier plans to only list shares on the US market.

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‘Deep concern’ over fate of Dom Phillips in Brazil, says Boris Johnson

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Prime minister says UK government will provide any support needed after journalist’s disappearance in Amazon

Boris Johnson has said the UK government is “deeply concerned” about the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of the British journalist Dom Phillips, after Theresa May called on the prime minister to make the case “a diplomatic priority”.

May raised Phillips’s case during prime minister’s questions, citing correspondence with Phillips’ niece Dominique Davis, one of her constituents. Johnson said the UK had offered to provide support to Brazilian search teams looking for Phillips and his travelling partner, Bruno Pereira, an Indigenous expert.

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Boris Johnson using Jedi mind trick on country over economy, says Starmer

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Labour leader says PM is spouting nonsense, telling people ‘they’ve never had it so good’, in bad-tempered PMQs

Keir Starmer has accused Boris Johnson of trying to fool the public with “nonsense” about a booming economy, as an often bad-tempered prime minister’s questions saw the pair square up over stagnant growth and tax rises.

In an extended Star Wars-referencing section, Starmer said Johnson was trying to “perform Jedi mind tricks on the country” by insisting the economy was buoyant, also mocking the PM by saying his backbenchers compared him to Jeremy Corbyn.

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Missguided will not refund customers, administrators confirm

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Shoppers air frustration at UK fast-fashion retailer’s failure to honour refunds after falling into insolvency

Customers of the collapsed fast fashion retailer Missguided will not receive refunds for returns, administrators of the business have confirmed.

It comes after the Manchester-based company fell into insolvency last month after racking up millions of pounds in outstanding payments to creditors.

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‘No real hope’ of avoiding biggest rail strike in 30 years, says Network Rail

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Passengers in Great Britain told not to attempt to travel on 21, 23 and 25 June unless necessary

Network Rail said there was “no real hope” of avoiding the biggest railway strike in 30 years next week, as it told passengers to plan ahead and only travel if necessary.

The full timetable will be published on Friday but operators including Southern, Northern, TransPennine and Transport for Wales have already told passengers not to attempt to travel on strike days.

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Is UK at start of new Covid wave driven by BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants?

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Virus may be evolving to refavour infecting lung tissue. We assess what this could mean for the course of the pandemic

If you thought Covid-19 was dead and gone, think again. Early signs indicate that the UK may be at the start of a new wave of Covid infections driven by BA.4 and BA.5 – while new data suggests these variants may have evolved to refavour infecting lung tissue, which could make them more dangerous.

So what can we expect in the coming weeks and months?

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Man arrested at Gatwick airport on suspicion of spying for Russia

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Arrest follows joint operation by Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorism command and British security services

Security officials trying to thwart Russian spying in Britain have arrested a man at Gatwick airport as he was trying to board a flight to leave the UK.

The arrest followed a joint intelligence-led operation by Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorism command – which deals with arrests for espionage matters – and the British security services.

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UK to challenge court ruling that halted Rwanda deportations, says minister

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Thérèse Coffey says she is sure government will go back to European court of human rights over decision

The UK is likely to challenge the European court of human rights ruling that stopped the deportation to Rwanda of people seeking asylum and is already preparing for the next flight, a cabinet minister has said.

Thérèse Coffey, the work and pensions secretary, played down the idea that the UK could withdraw from the European convention on human rights in response to the court’s decision, which halted the flight on Tuesday night.

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New Hong Kong textbooks ‘will claim city never was a British colony’

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School books will reportedly say China never recognised the treaties that ceded it to colonial powers during opium wars

New Hong Kong textbooks will teach students that the city was never a British colony, after an overhaul of a school subject that authorities have blamed for driving the pro-democracy protests.

According to local reports, the new texts will teach students that the Chinese government didn’t recognise the treaties that ceded the city to Britain after the opium wars. They ended in 1997 when Britain returned Hong Kong to Chinese control, and therefore the texts claim Hong Kong was never a British colony.

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‘Justice’ for Ukraine overshadowed by cost of living concerns, polling shows

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Survey across 10 European countries and UK shows respondents favouring an end to the conflict rather than holding Russia accountable

Europe’s unity over the war in Ukraine is at risk as public attention increasingly shifts from the battlefield to cost of living concerns, polling across 10 European countries suggests, with the divide deepening between voters who want a swift end to the conflict and those who want Russia punished.

The survey in nine EU member states – Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain and Sweden – plus the UK found support for Ukraine remained high, but that preoccupations have shifted to the conflict’s wider impacts.

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RHS garden with burnt-out cottage ‘shows Ukraine’s spirit cannot be erased’

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Victoria and Oleksiy Manoylo, who were in Milan when Russia invaded, have poured their trauma into garden

A burnt-out cottage decorated with embroidered cloths and surrounded by swaying barley, designed by a Ukrainian couple unable to return to their war-ravaged village, is set to be one of the unexpected highlights of the RHS’s largest flower show.

Victoria and Oleksiy Manoylo, landscape designers who were at a garden festival in Milan, Italy, when Russian troops invaded their village near Bucha and destroyed their home, have poured their trauma and defiance into the garden, which will feature at the RHS Hampton Court Palace garden festival next month.

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