Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Plan to drop dedicated fund while defence spending rises dismissed as false economy
The European commission has been accused of seeking to cut EU funding for the continent’s poorest people by 50% to secure post-Brexit cost savings and extra funds for defence projects.
Jacques Vandenschrik, the president of the European Food Banks Federation, said the EU executive’s proposed spending plans for the next seven years posed a risk not only to the most vulnerable but to the stability of wider society.
Musician recognised alongside stars of sport, politicians and hundreds of ordinary people
Sir Elton John has received the highest acknowledgement in a new year honours list in which hundreds of ordinary people were recognised alongside household names from sport, the arts, entertainment and politics.
The singer and songwriter was awarded the Companion of Honour for a remarkable career spanning more than five decades, in which he has sold more than 300m records worldwide, and used his fame to promote the work of 23 charities, including his own Aids foundation. He becomes one of only 64 people apart from the monarch who can hold the honour at any one time.
Ursula von der Leyen airs concerns about PM’s refusal to extend negotiations past 2020
Boris Johnson should reconsider his refusal to extend the 11-month timeframe available for agreeing a deal on the UK’s future relationship with the EU after Brexit, Ursula von der Leyen has suggested.
The European commission president said she had “serious concern” about the limited time available for the negotiations and emphasised the need to keep all options open.
Plus, an update on the trans man who gave birth, the woman deported to Grenada, and more
Last March, Margaret Simons wrote about the abandoned children of British sex tourists in the Philippines. Brigette Sicat, now 12, was unable to go to school because of ill health, and was living in a leaky shack with a dirt floor and no toilet. Today, thanks partly to the generosity of Guardian readers, Brigette and her family live in decent accommodation, she is a regular attendee at school and her grades are outstanding. The turnaround has been even more dramatic for twins Melanie and Madeline delos Santos – now 19. Reading of Madeline’s ambition to be an architect, a reader is supporting her through university in Angeles City. Human rights law firms in Britain, Griffin Law and Dawson Cornwell, are in the process of confirming the twins’ right to British citizenship; they are also exploring the use of DNA technology to help other children establish parentage, and their rights to child support. Simons and photographer, Dave Tacon plan to visit the children again next May. Their report won a Foreign Press Award last month for best travel and tourism story of the year.
In April, Simon Hattenstone interviewed Freddy McConnell about his quest to conceive and carry his own baby. The film of McConnell’s story, Seahorse, was screened widely. In September, the high court ruled that McConnell cannot be registered as his son’s father. He is appealing the decision and the hearing is expected next year. His young son is thriving.
Charity decries government’s ‘foolhardy’ decision to reduce anti-smoking budget by 24%
The government has been accused of undermining its ambition to make England smoke free after an anti-smoking campaign was cancelled following a 24% cut to the public health marketing budget.
Health Harms, a Public Health England (PHE) scheme, has previously sought to harness new year resolutions in January to encourage the 6 million tobacco smokers in the country to quit through vaping and visualising how cancer-causing chemicals and tar are inhaled.
Total monthly applications exceeded 100,000 in January, March, April and May
Almost a million Irish passports were issued in 2019, the country’s government has announced.
The figure is a new record and represents a 7% increase on 2018. Simon Coveney, Ireland’s foreign affairs minister, said: “2019 was another bumper year for the Passport Service. The award-winning Passport Online [service] expanded in 2019 to include first-time applicants in Ireland, Northern Ireland, Great Britain and Europe. Irish citizens including children can also renew their passports online 24/7, from anywhere in the world.”
Local people must ask Underbelly if they want more than six passes to their houses
Edinburgh residents have vented their anger at having to apply to a private company for access to their own homes during this year’s Hogmanay celebrations amid growing concern that the council’s hunger to attract tourism is reducing the Scottish capital to a “theme park”.
People living in some parts of the city centre will also face potential restrictions on the number of guests they can invite if they wish to have parties of their own on New Year’s Eve, when the entertainment giant Underbelly will be running an event expected to attract more than 70,000 people.
Irish PM says UK must pay for any bridge between Northern Ireland and Scotland
Ireland’s prime minister has said he will not dismiss the idea of building a bridge between Northern Ireland and Scotland, but insisted the UK must pay for it.
Boris Johnson and the Democratic Unionist party have spoken in favour of the idea.
European commission’s VP writes ‘love letter’ to Britons, saying UK unnecessarily damaged by Brexit
Britain has been unnecessarily damaged by Brexit and “more will follow”, the vice-president of the European commission has written in a “love letter” to the British people in which he promises a warm welcome back should attitudes change.
Frans Timmermans, who is Ursula von der Leyen’s deputy in her role as European commission president, writes that British scepticism of the EU had been an asset to the bloc as he expresses his own feelings of rejection ahead of the country’s impending departure on 31 January, likening himself to a jilted “old lover”.
Bishop of Dover, Rose Hudson-Wilkin, says damaging rhetoric has harmed society as a whole
The Church of England’s first black female bishop has said the debate around Brexit damaged society and contributed to the death of the MP Jo Cox.
Rose Hudson-Wilkin, the former chaplain to the Speaker of the House of Commons, said the arguments around Brexit had had a harmful effect both on parliamentarians and on society as a whole.
Location for talks to be split with Brussels in symbolic shift marking UK’s non-EU status
London is expected to co-host the next stage of post-Brexit negotiations with Brussels in a symbolic shift marking the UK’s position outside the EU after 31 January.
The most likely location for the talks involving teams led by Michel Barnier for the EU and a yet-to-be-identified minister for the British government is the Cabinet Office in Whitehall.
The election was bad, but the aftermath is worse for a divided party
Labour leadership contests are normally traumatic events held in very unhappy times for the party. The election of Ed Miliband in 2010 followed a general election defeat that ended 13 years of Labour government. Five years later Jeremy Corbyn was installed after Miliband failed to return the party to power. Then in the summer of 2016 a revolt against Corbyn by his own MPs sparked another contest, which saw the incumbent win again and take revenge on the mutinous parliamentary party.
Inevitably these contests cause internal ruptures as rival candidates set out opposing visions and their supporters divide into camps. The 2010 campaign had its tragic aspects too, as the Miliband brothers, Ed and David, fell out while fighting each other for the right to succeed Gordon Brown.
Founding family criticises approval of £4bn deal despite national security concerns
The government has been accused of handing control away after it approved a US private equity firm’s £4bn takeover of the UK defence company Cobham despite national security concerns.
The deal had been delayed since mid-2019 after fears were raised that Advent International’s acquisition could undermine the country’s security.
Britain has taken a pivotal step towards leaving the European Union as Boris Johnson was rewarded for the Conservatives’ thumping general election victory with a majority of 124 for his Brexit deal in the House of Commons.
Addressing MPs on Friday morning, the prime minister sought to draw a line under three years of bitter parliamentary conflict, urging his colleagues to “discard the old labels of leave and remain”.
Brexit secretary Steve Barclay said the general election had delivered a clear instruction to parliament to leave the EU and so MP should respect that decision and back the bill.
This bill is not a victory for one side over the other. The time has come to discard the old labels to move from the past divisions and to come together as one United Kingdom.
Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary who is predicted to run for the Labour leadership, warned Conservative MPs to “be careful”. “Doing things because the government has a majority doesn’t mean those things are right,” he said.
He said that the move to water down commitments to child refugees is an example of that. “That is a moral disgrace,” he said.
I turn to my own benches. We may have lost the general election, but we have not lost our values and our beliefs and we must fight for them – day in, day out – in this parliament and we will.
That doesn’t mean that the deal negotiated by the prime minister is a good deal. It isn’t. It was a bad deal in October when it was signed. It was a bad deal when it was first debated in this House in October. It was a bad deal last Thursday and it’s a bad deal today.
Boris Johnson has set out his vision for the Tories to govern for the next decade as he published a Queen’s speech that points the way towards a harder Brexit and sweeping constitutional reforms.
The prime minister claimed that he wanted his programme for government to last for more than one parliament, describing it as a “blueprint for the future of Britain”.
Rishi Sunak highlights £34bn health spending, but appears to water down social care pledge
Boris Johnson will try to use the Queen’s speech to refocus attention away from Brexit and on to the NHS, the government has confirmed.
The prime minister intends to put the health service at the centre of the legislative programme, according to the chief secretary to the Treasury, Rishi Sunak.
Charities caution that ‘UK aid risks becoming a vehicle for UK foreign policy’ if post-Brexit merger comes to fruition
A coalition of aid groups including the British Red Cross, Cafod and Oxfam GB has warned Boris Johnson that to abolish the Department for International Development would suggest Britain is “turning our backs on the world’s poorest people”.
One climate diplomacy expert said it would be “political suicide” to merge DfID with the Foreign Office in 2020, the same year the UK is hosting the UN climate summit, since the move would tie up senior civil servants when they were most needed to tackle the response to the climate crisis.
Corbyn aides Seumas Milne and Karie Murphy moved to permanent contracts, unlike others
Labour party staff who are angry that they face losing their jobs while senior aides to Jeremy Corbyn remain on the payroll have been called in to meetings to discuss possible redundancies.
A leaked email sent on Wednesday shows that workers and advisers from the offices of the Labour leader and shadow ministers have been invited to meetings with their line managers following Thursday’s catastrophic election result.