Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
The UK government is preparing to drop a recently introduced tax on global technology companies such as Facebook, Google and Amazon, due to fears that the so-called “Facebook tax” could jeopardise a post-Brexit trade deal.
Rishi Sunak is reportedly planning to ditch the digital services tax which was expected to generate about £500m to help pay towards the huge cost of the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Fear of what lies behind drives people against desperate odds. Turning them away won’t stop them, and risks more deaths
The dangerous waters of the Channel have seen a rise in the number of people trying to cross to the UK in desperately unsuitable and overcrowded dinghies. The British government has called for the use of defence forces to stop them.
Fears of “outsiders” bringing danger are exacerbated in the strange times of the coronavirus pandemic, when most of us face unprecedented restrictions on movement, making it a fertile climate to propagate anti-migrant messaging.
Brussels’ chief negotiator says talks often go backwards as UK fails to grasp EU red lines
Michel Barnier has accused the British government of “wasting valuable time” and warned that a post-Brexit deal between the EU and the UK looks “unlikely”.
With two months to go until the EU-imposed deadline of October, the EU’s chief negotiator said: “Frankly I am disappointed and I am worried.” Barnier said he was “a little surprised” because Boris Johnson had told EU leaders earlier this summer he wanted an outline deal by July.
My colleagues Pamela Duncan and Tobi Thomas from the Guardian’s data unit report discrepancies in today’s GCSE results:
A rising tide lifts all boats and this year’s algorithm-to-teacher-graded-U-turn has resulted in an increase in top grades across every subject. However, some subjects’ boats were lifted higher than others.
After all the uncertainty of the exams fiasco, head teachers across the country are celebrating their pupils’ GCSE success, but they say recent experiences have damaged relations with the Department for Education (DfE).
Jules White, head teacher of Tanbridge House secondary school in Horsham, West Sussex and leader of the Worth Less? education funding campaign, was with pupils this morning, watching with delight as they found out their grades.
Repairs body says it will not review idea of temporary move as decision is for MPs and peers
Boris Johnson’s suggestion of moving parliament to York while a multibillion-pound restoration of the Palace of Westminster takes place will not be considered by a body reviewing the plans.
Here’s a roundup of this afternoon’s key UK coronavirus developments:
Pizza Express has confirmed plans to close 73 of its restaurants, impacting 1,100 members of staff, as part of a major business rescue plan.
The chain has formally launched a proposal to reduce its restaurant estate and rental cost base through a Company Voluntary Arrangement (CVA).
Today we have confirmed that 73 of our pizzerias are proposed to close permanently.
“In most cases, there is another Pizza Express nearby, either already open or reopening soon, to welcome our customers. Our focus is on our people whose jobs are impacted and we will be doing everything we can either to redeploy them or to support them in finding roles elsewhere.
Gavin Williamson has tried to lay the blame for the exams fiasco at the door of the regulator Ofqual after a humiliating climbdown that overturned up to 2.3m grades but left thousands of pupils in limbo.
Two days after saying there would be “no U-turn, no change”, the education secretary apologised and ordered a complete reversal whereby pupils in England will be able to revert to the A-level grades recommended by their teachers, if those are higher.
Exams regulator Ofqual announces all A-levels and GCSEs in England will now be graded according to teacher assessment following similar moves in Wales, NI and Scotland
One of the groups that had been planning to take the UK government to court over exam grades has said it is dropping its legal action, following the U-turn. Jo Maugham QC, the director of the Good Law Project, tweeted:
Mary Curnock Cook, the former chief executive of Ucas, said the government must announce immediately that the cap on university admissions will be lifted to accommodate the new grading system.
Many universities will have already filled their courses based on the grades published last Thursday. Speaking on BBC News, she said:
Decisions have already been made by universities about who they accept, who they don’t accept, who goes into clearing and so on. This change will mean that universities have to rethink completely.
Eight Fijian-born soldiers who served with the British army in Iraq and Afghanistan are seeking a judicial review against the Ministry of Defence and Home Office, saying bureaucratic errors have made them illegal immigrants in the country for which they once served.
The group of Commonwealth veterans have been forced to go to court five months after first going public because neither Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, nor Priti Patel, the home secretary, have yet responded positively to their initial complaint or properly reviewed their cases.
Asylum seekers give accounts of injuries, as Priti Patel says many refugees feel France is racist
Asylum seekers in the UK and France have described injuries they have received at the hands of French police, as Priti Patel said many were making the perilous journey across the Channel because they believe France is racist.
The home secretary made her comments in a conference call with Conservative MPs concerned about the recent surge in numbers attempting the voyage in small boats.
Senior doctors, hospital bosses and public health experts have accused ministers of scapegoating Public Health England for their own failings over Covid-19 by planning to axe the agency.
The government’s decision to scrap PHE and merge it into a new body charged with preventing future outbreaks of infectious diseases produced a chorus of criticism on Sunday.
Priti Patel risks replicating Home Office failings that led to scandal, victims and human rights campaigners warn
Survivors of the Windrush scandal have attacked the home secretary, saying her approach to the Channel migrant crossings is creating “the same set of conditions” that led to the government victimising the children of Commonwealth immigrants.
A letter to Priti Patel from 100 prominent refugee and human rights campaigners, including members of the Windrush generation, warns that the “pattern of ignoring expert advice, failing to engage with civil society and branding migrants as criminal” replicates Home Office failings that caused the 2018 Windrush scandal.
Russia is not the only country pursuing domestic politics over global cooperation in the fight against coronavirus, writes Stephen Buranyi.
The WHO last week warned against “vaccine nationalism”, noting that unless countries cooperate, an actually successful vaccine could touch off a worldwide frenzy.
Similar to the scramble for PPE gear and testing reagents when governments seized exports, and the US reportedly tried to intercept other nation’s shipments at global ports, demand for vaccine supplies could result in another pitched battle for limited resources – with the added complication that no one knows which project will succeed, so no one is even sure what they’re trying to source yet.
Rule-breaking pub landlords are facing a police crackdown for failing to properly record customers’ details as concerns grow about a rising Covid infection rate in Birmingham.
The latest data showed the second city had a rate of 23.6 cases per 100,000 people in the seven days to 10 August with the trend increasing, according to the NHS Digital progression dashboard.
It looks as though it’s a combination of people socialising and not maintaining social distancing and perhaps hospitality settings or other gatherings of people and this may be the underlying problem.
We are very keen to be working very closely with the police over coming weeks because what we’re noticing across the West Midlands is that as weeks go by the rigour in which pubs in particular are recording names and addresses of customers is dropping off in some locations.
We’d like to encourage the police to re-emphasise to the pubs that they do need to be recording that information.
Pubs and clubs - they also have a very clear responsibility to ensure they’re following the guidelines, that they are getting information on those individuals who attend.
We will work closely with the licensing authorities to crack down on those premises that don’t follow rules and are breaking rules.
Man who was granted injunction due to risk of suicide says he sustained an injury during attempted removal
An asylum seeker who crossed the Channel to the UK on a small boat claims he was forced out of his cell in a detention centre by officers who wanted to put him on a flight even though a judge had halted his removal hours earlier, the Guardian has learned.
He was restrained and sustained an injury during the attempted removal in the early hours of Wednesday morning by officers unaware of the high court decision.
Transport secretary causes confusion on Thursday night when he gives the wrong date for the start of Covid-19 quarantine measures for arrivals from France. During a TV interview Shapps initially, and correctly, says people will have to self-isolate for 14 days from 4am on Saturday, then later incorrectly says the restrictions come in from Sunday
£6.85m programme places emphasis on benefit to businesses rather than protecting workers in the developing world, say critics
A newly announced aid programme that promises to help workers in the developing world supplying goods to British high street chains like Marks & Spencer, Primark and Morrisons has been condemned for using taxpayers’ money to “pick up the bill” for improving workforce conditions.
The £6.85m scheme, announced on Thursday by international development secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan, is being promoted explicitly as benefitting British consumers to ensure they “can continue to buy affordable, high quality goods from around the world”.
The government has quietly removed 1.3m coronavirus tests from its data because of double counting, raising fresh questions about the accuracy of the testing figures.
Children’s groups call for meal provision to extend to families barred from UK state support
Thousands of children from migrant families are at risk of hunger when schools reopen in the UK unless the free meal provision is extended, according to a group of 60 organisations.
The Children’s Society, Action for Children, Project 17 and Unison are among the organisations that have written to the education secretary, Gavin Williamson, calling on him to extend free school meals to pupils from low-income migrant families classed as having “no recourse to public funds”.
The UK cultural sector, so obsessed with being ‘world leading’, is standing on the brink. It needs to broaden its gaze
It’s a painful time to tell stories about the arts. This week, hundreds of venues across the UK were lit up in red – not in an inspired display of creativity, but as a cry for help as arts venues find themselves on the brink of collapse.
The protest culminated in the iconic chimney at London’s Tate Modern art gallery being made bright red, and illuminated with the words “Throw Us a Line” – a reference to the 1m jobs at risk in the live events sector following the Covid-19 pandemic and shutdown. A report from the digital, culture, media and sport select committee warned last month that the UK now faces the prospect of becoming a “cultural wasteland”.
Britain has entered the deepest recession since records began as official figures on Wednesday showed the economy shrank by more than any other major nation during the coronavirus outbreak in the three months to June.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said gross domestic product (GDP), the broadest measure of economic prosperity, fell in the second quarter by 20.4% compared with the previous three months – the biggest quarterly decline since comparable records began in 1955.