The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical concepts
Which British monarchs would have survived their illness or wounding if today’s medical knowledge had existed then? (Bonus question: which monarchs would we have had but for illnesses that are now easily preventable?) Jane Shaw
Send new questions to nq@theguardian.com.
Continue reading...Speaking on Sky's Trevor Phillips on Sunday programme, the health secretary said the government's measures, including compulsory masks on public transport and in shops, were 'proportionate and balanced'
Continue reading...Children’s Society criticises practice of placing unaccompanied minors in hotels with limited care
Record numbers of unaccompanied child asylum seekers who arrived in the UK on small boats are being accommodated in four hotels along England’s south coast, a situation that the Children’s Society has described as “shocking”.
About 250 unaccompanied children who arrived in small boats are thought to be accommodated in hotels, which Ofsted said was an unacceptable practice.
Continue reading...UN agency’s comments follow South Africa’s call to reverse flight bans; G7 health ministers to hold urgent meeting on Omicron variant; large contact tracing operation in Westminster
China could face more than 630,000 Covid-19 infections a day if it dropped its zero-tolerance policies by lifting travel curbs, according to a study by Peking University mathematicians, Reuters reports.
In the report by the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, the mathematicians said China could not afford to lift travel restrictions without more efficient vaccinations or specific treatments.
Continue reading...Most of the people who reach the UK after risking their lives in small boats have their claims for asylum approved
Last week’s tragedy in the Channel has reopened the debate on how to stop people making dangerous crossings, with the solutions presented by the government focused on how to police the waters.
Less has been said about where those people come from, with most fleeing conflicts and persecution. About two-thirds of people arriving on small boats between January 2020 and May 2021 were from Iran, Iraq, Sudan and Syria. Many also came from Eritrea, from where 80% of asylum applications were approved.
Continue reading...The artist insisted he did not paint Standing Male Nude, but three specialists have concluded it is his work
Almost 25 years ago, a Swiss art collector bought a Lucian Freud painting – a full-length male nude – at auction. He then received a call from the British artist, asking to buy it from him. The two men did not know each other, and the collector politely refused, as he liked the picture.
Three days later, he claims he received another call from a now furious Freud who told him that, unless he sold it to him, he would deny having painted it.
Continue reading...British beekeepers call for stricter labelling on supermarket blends to identify the countries of origin
British beekeepers are calling for a requirement on supermarkets and other retailers to label cheap honey imports from China and other nations with the country of origin after claims that part of the global supply is bulked out with sugar syrup.
The UK is the world’s biggest importer of Chinese honey, which can be one sixth of the price of the honey produced by bees in Britain. Supermarket own-label honey from China can be bought for as little as 69p a jar. Supermarkets say every jar of honey is “100% pure” and can be traced back to the beekeeper, but there is no requirement to identify the countries of origin of honey blended from more than one country. The European Union is now considering new rules to improve consumer information for honey and ensure the country of origin is clearly identified on the jar.
Continue reading...Elias Djelloul was arrested in east London on Friday and will appear in court on Monday
A 19-year-old man will appear in court next week accused of sharing extremist material.
Elias Djelloul was arrested at an address in east London on Friday, the Metropolitan police’s counter-terrorism command said.
Continue reading...Among the makeshift tents near the French beaches, we ask what drives people to make the perilous journey in small boats and what could prevent more deaths
There was a time when, if you googled the phrase “Dunkirk, small boats”, reports of one of Britain’s finest hours would stack up in the results. Not last week. The beaches near Dunkirk have now become synonymous not with the embarkation point of dramatic rescue but of despairing tragedy.
Details of the 27 people, among them seven women and three children, who drowned in the Channel on Wednesday have been very slow to emerge, their anonymity itself an indication of their desperation. The first to be named was a Kurdish woman from northern Iraq, Maryam Nuri Mohamed Amin, a newly engaged student, who was WhatsApp messaging her fiance, who lives in the UK, when the group’s dinghy started deflating. The 24-year-old had travelled through Germany and France to join Mohammed Karzan in the UK, paying people smugglers thousands of euros to get across the Channel in the absence of other possible routes. Karzan said that he had been in continuous contact with his fiancee and was tracking her GPS coordinates. “After four hours and 18 minutes from the moment she went into that boat,” he said, “then I lost her.”
Continue reading...So often in debates about asylum, statistics are used out of context to back up a politically motivated point, or as fuel in the government’s culture war against asylum seekers. Here are the key statistics about the UK’s asylum system in context
13,210. The number of people the UK granted protection to via asylum or resettlement routes in the year to September 2021 This is significantly lower than before the pandemic hit in March 2020.
64%. The proportion of initial asylum applications that were successful in the year ending September 2021. This rate has increased in recent years. In addition, almost half of unsuccessful applications are granted on appeal.
17th. The UK’s ranking against EU countries in terms of the number of asylum applications it gets, adjusted for population. The UK’s asylum application per capita rate is almost half the EU average. Germany received 122,015 asylum applications in the year ending March 2021; France, 93,475.
37,562. The number of asylum applications in the UK in the year ending September 2021. This is 18% higher than last year, which saw a dip as a result of the pandemic, and less than half the peak of 84,312 that was seen in the early 2000s.
25,700. The number of people who have arrived in the UK so far this year after making the dangerous Channel crossing in small boats. This is three times the total number who arrived via this route in 2020.
83,733. The number of people awaiting an initial decision on their asylum application at the end of September 2021. Delays in the asylum system have increased rapidly since 2018: this is 41% higher than a year ago.
86%. The proportion of refugees worldwide who live in low-income countries neighbouring their country of origin. A very small proportion choose to travel to Europe. The UK is home to just 1% of the 26.4 million refugees who have been forcibly displaced from their home country across the world. Around half of the world’s refugees are under the age of 18.
£39.63. The amount that people seeking asylum get per week to subsist on in the UK. In France, it’s £42.84, and in Germany £65.63. In Germany, they are allowed to work 3 months from making their applications, in France it’s 6 months. In the UK they’re not allowed to work at all regardless of how long it takes for their application to be processed.
Continue reading...Travellers to UK must take PCR tests and masks to be made mandatory in shops and on public transport
Boris Johnson has announced fresh measures to curb the spread of coronavirus including mandatory masks in shops and PCR tests for travellers entering England after two cases of the Omicron variant were detected in the country.
Amid mounting global concern over Omicron, named a “variant of concern” by the World Health Organization on Friday, the prime minister set out a series of steps the UK is taking to maximise its defence against Covid-19.
Continue reading...Analysis: The UK government’s own experts say many journeys are actually organised directly by desperate families
The government repeatedly insists that sophisticated criminal networks are driving the Channel crossings by people seeking asylum in Britain. Of all the contested claims advanced by the home secretary on the issue, it remains among the most pervasive.
True to form, in the aftermath of Wednesday’s drownings, Priti Patel wasted little time reiterating her determination to “smash the criminal gangs” behind such crossings.
Continue reading...A documentary-maker has accused the Cabinet Office of defying the 30-year rule in withholding details of the MI5 exposé
The Cabinet Office has been accused of “delay and deception” over its blocking of the release of files dating back more than three decades that reveal the inside story of the intelligence agent Peter Wright and the Spycatcher affair.
Wright revealed an inside account of how MI5 “bugged and burgled” its way across London in his 1987 autobiography Spycatcher. He died aged 78 in 1995.
Continue reading...The first cases of the new B.1.1.529 Covid variant have been identified in the UK. Two people found to be infected with the Omicron variant are self-isolating, according to the health secretary, Sajid Javid
Continue reading...When Cousin Greg was disinherited by his grandfather in favour of the environmental group, inquiries about such legacies soared
In one bewildering and painful scene in the hit TV drama Succession, Cousin Greg sees his future of ease and wealth turn to dust. His grandfather, Ewan, announces he is giving away his entire fortune to Greenpeace, depriving Greg of his inheritance.
Now Greenpeace is hoping to benefit in real life as well as in the fictional world of the media conglomerate Waystar Royco. Thousands of people have looked into leaving money to the environmental group since the darkly comic storyline about Cousin Greg losing his inheritance and then threatening to sue the organisation was broadcast. More than 22,000 people have accessed online advice about making donations in their wills to Greenpeace. The group’s legacy webpage has also seen a tenfold surge in traffic since the episode was first broadcast earlier this month.
Continue reading...Maryam Nuri Mohamed Amin from northern Iraq was messaging her fiancé when dinghy started sinking
A Kurdish woman from northern Iraq has become the first victim of this week’s mass drowning in the Channel to be named.
Maryam Nuri Mohamed Amin was messaging her fiance, who lives in the UK, when the group’s dinghy started deflating on Wednesday.
Continue reading...Scoring his first big hit with West Side Story at 27, the US composer and lyricist raised the art form’s status with moving and funny masterpieces including Follies and Company
‘His songs are like a fabulous steak’: an all-star toast to Sondheim
Stephen Sondheim, the master craftsman of the American musical, has died at the age of 91. His death, at his home in Roxbury, Connecticut, on Friday has prompted tributes throughout the entertainment industry and beyond. Andrew Lloyd Webber called him “the musical theatre giant of our times, an inspiration not just to two but to three generations [whose] contribution to theatre will never be equalled”. Cameron Mackintosh said: “The theatre has lost one of its greatest geniuses and the world has lost one of its greatest and most original writers. Sadly, there is now a giant in the sky. But the brilliance of Stephen Sondheim will still be here as his legendary songs and shows will be performed for evermore.”
Over the course of a celebrated career spanning more than 60 years, Sondheim co-created Broadway theatre classics such as West Side Story, Gypsy, Sweeney Todd and Into the Woods, all of which also became hit movies. His intricate and dazzlingly clever songs pushed the boundaries of the art form and he made moving and funny masterpieces from unlikely subject matters, including a murderous barber (Sweeney Todd), the Roman comedies of Plautus (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum) and a pointillist painting by Georges Seurat (Sunday in the Park With George).
Continue reading...Experts stress importance of delaying import of new Covid variant to UK to avoid Christmas mixing
As an alarming new Covid variant spread to Europe on Friday, scientists warned that it would inevitably reach Britain, while ministers faced calls to urgently speed up the vaccination programme.
Thousands of travellers were left stranded or with their plans in disarray after flight bans were introduced targeting countries across southern Africa, where the variant was discovered. Hotel quarantine and enhanced testing would be brought in across the UK, the health secretary, Sajid Javid, said.
Continue reading...British socialite is accused of grooming girls as young as 14 to have sex with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein
Before opening arguments in Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial for allegedly aiding the late financier Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse of minor girls, the Briton’s brother protested over what he called “the most over-hyped trial of the century”.
A family member would be in court at all times from Monday to show support, Ian Maxwell told the Associated Press. A woman who identified herself to court staff as a family member has attended all recent proceedings.
Continue reading...Latest updates: Macron slams Boris Johnson for trying to negotiate with him via Twitter as it cancels talks with UK officials over Channel crossings
The French government has accused Boris Johnson of “double speak”. In a briefing, the French government spokesperson, Gabriel Attal, said that the proposal in Johnson’s letter to Emmanuel Macron for France to take back people who successfully cross the Channel on small boats was “clearly not what we need to solve this problem”.
According to PA Media, Attal also said that the letter doesn’t correspond at all” with the discussions Johnson and Macron had when they spoke on Wednesday. Atta went on: “We are sick of double speak.”
What would be completely unacceptable, a stain on our country and a scandal would be to see in future those whose parents have died being placed in inappropriate institutions, in elderly care homes or mental health institutions.
That would be something that I think would bring shame to our country as well as an utterly inappropriate lifestyle for those to whom we should be giving the best possible care.
This is not a bill about a condition, it is not about dealing with Down’s syndrome, it is about people who deserve the same ability to demand the best health, education and care as the rest of our society.
It is not on our part an act of charity, it is an act of empowerment and the recognition that all members of our society must have a right to respect, independence and dignity. That is why I brought this bill forward.
Continue reading...