Johnny Mercer says food bank use not an accurate measure of poverty after reports of some military personnel relying on them
The use of food banks is a personal decision for some people and not an accurate measure of levels of poverty across the UK, the veterans minister has said.
Johnny Mercer argued that food banks remained a lifeline for “some dire cases” but that it was “not correct” to say people used them only when they had no choice.
Continue reading...Scene shows map of China’s controversial ‘nine-dash line’ – repudiated in international ruling
Vietnam has banned Warner Bros’s Barbie film from domestic distribution over a scene featuring a map that shows China’s unilaterally claimed territory in the South China Sea, state media have reported.
The U-shaped “nine-dash line” is used on Chinese maps to illustrate its claims over vast areas of the South China Sea, including swathes of what Vietnam considers its continental shelf, where it has awarded oil concessions.
Continue reading...Promotion is designed to help parents who are struggling to afford clothes amid cost of living crisis
Families are being offered money off children’s clothes in Marks & Spencer if they donate school uniform hand-me-downs, as part of a push designed to help parents struggling to afford them amid the cost of living crisis.
The second-hand uniform collected will be sold via Oxfam’s high street chain as well as via a new “back-to-school” eBay shop. The tie-up is an extension of M&S’s existing “shwopping” partnership with Oxfam, in which customers drop off old clothing in exchange for loyalty card perks.
Continue reading...Good Jobs Project from ReGenerate aims to help ex-prisoners, neurodivergent people, asylum seekers and other groups into work
Unemployed ex-offenders are being overlooked for jobs and could help fill the 1.1 million vacancies in the UK job market, a report has claimed.
Britain is “facing one of the worst labour shortages in its history”, the year-long study said, arguing that the vast numbers of people commonly overlooked for jobs should be targeted.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Ranem Elkhalidi meeting Foreign Office officials this week as she continues fight to bring her son home
A woman whose seven-year-old son was kidnapped by his father and taken to Saudi Arabia has said lawyers in the country are too afraid to get involved with her case, as she prepares for a meeting with the Foreign Office this week.
Ranem Elkhalidi has vowed to keep fighting for the safe return of her Cheshire-born son Ibrahim, who was taken from his primary school six months ago by her estranged husband, Hamzah Faraj, a Saudi national, in breach of a court order.
Continue reading...With a lower carbon footprint than gas-fired cremation, the process is described as ‘gentler on the body and kinder on the environment’
For anyone uneasy at the thought of their body being consumed by flames or interred in an insect-teeming grave, a new funeral choice is about to become available: water cremation.
The process of dissolving a body in a bag in 160C water treated with an alkali will become available in the UK from this week – the first new legal method of disposing of cadavers since the Cremation Act of 1902. It has been described as a “boil in the bag” funeral.
Continue reading...Bernie Wagenblast’s voice is known to millions of passengers on the AirTrain service. Now, at 66, she’s happy with a new life
One of the first voices millions of commuting New Yorkers hear each morning is the measured tone of former traffic reporter Bernie Wagenblast reminding them to stand away from the platform edge. Wagenblast, AKA “the voice of New York”, reminds AirTrain passengers at JFK or Newark that the doors are closing, and hosts a podcast about infrastructure, including episodes on Ohio’s bridges and wildlife crossings in Oregon. But that neutrally pan-American male voice, honed by years of practice to impart clarity and authority but not alarm, is changing.
Earlier this year, Wagenblast, 66, went on the radio to present herself publicly as a transgender woman, and has this month been participating in US Pride celebrations with gusto, including the march at Asbury Park on the Jersey shore. Wagenblast is still Bernie, but that’s now derived from Bernadette, not Bernard.
Continue reading...Health service shown to be under some of worst pressure in its history in week Rishi Sunak launched plan to retain and recruit workforce
• ‘You start thinking you will crack’: former NHS tell their stories
Nearly 170,000 workers left their jobs in the NHS in England last year, in a record exodus of staff struggling to cope with some of the worst pressures ever seen in the country’s health system, the Observer can reveal.
More than 41,000 nurses were among those who left their jobs in NHS hospitals and community health services, with the highest leaving rate for at least a decade. The number of staff leaving overall rose by more than a quarter in 2022, compared to 2019.
Continue reading...In 2021 Emmanuel Macron promised victims of the city’s drug crime he would help. Grieving residents tell how he failed them
Inside, Emmanuel Macron was sharing a typically polished vision of a rejuvenated, safer Marseille. Yet it was outside the spruced-up gym in the impoverished Busserine district - tensions building on the hottest day of the year – where the real story was playing out.
Little more than 12 hours before the police killing of a 17-year-old boy 500 miles north in Nanterre would convulse the country, scores of officers clutching assault rifles and bulletproof riot shields clashed with teenagers of north African descent, trading insults as officers profiled potential troublemakers.
Continue reading...LGA says services being put at risk by huge cost and calls way Whitehall funds scheme not fit for purpose
Councils in England are being hit by a “completely unsustainable” annual bill of more than £450m to prop up the free bus pass scheme, according to an analysis.
The Local Government Association (LGA), which calculated the figure, said the enormous cost was putting services at risk.
Continue reading...Which? finds some Starbucks, Costa Coffee and Caffè Nero coffees contain more sugar than recommended daily allowance
An iced coffee is a cool pick-me-up on a hot day, but it might not be the caffeine boosting your mood as many of the blends sold by well-known high street coffee chains contain more sugar than a Mars bar or can of Coke.
The consumer group Which? looked at the sugar load in frappés and Frappuccinos being served up this summer by three of the biggest coffee chains, Starbucks, Costa Coffee and Caffè Nero, and found many “regular” size drinks contained more than an adult’s recommended daily allowance.
Continue reading...The Sun will have to print a front-page statement explaining that its columnist was found to have discriminated against the duchess
Jeremy Clarkson discriminated against the Duchess of Sussex when he used an article in the Sun to describe his “hatred” of her with a series of sexist tropes, a press regulator has ruled.
Clarkson used his national newspaper column to describe how he hated Meghan on a “cellular level” and suggested she had used “vivid bedroom promises” to transform Prince Harry into a “warrior of woke”.
Continue reading...Health bosses will welcome tens of thousands of new recruits, but the plan has little to say on how to change the culture to keep them
It was on 8 November 2017 that Jeremy Hunt, the then health secretary, first promised that the government would bring forward a long-term, comprehensive plan to end the NHS’s lack of staff.
It would, he said, be the “first proper NHS workforce plan that we have had since 2000”. And the plan would emerge quickly, he added, reflecting the urgency of tackling what has become the most debilitating of the NHS’s many problems – shortages of staff, everywhere.
Continue reading...Unions say government proposals to cut training by a year and introduce apprenticeships could dilute skills
Plans to shorten medical training could dilute the calibre of doctors entering the NHS in England and damage the quality of care patients receive, doctors’ leaders have warned.
Government proposals to cut doctors’ time in medical school from five to four years, and to introduce medical apprenticeships, could “water down” training for health service staff, they said.
Continue reading...Advisory committee on business appointments says it has seen ‘no evidence’ that Gray’s decision-making was affected despite ex-PM’s claim
NHS England has just published its 150-page long-term workforce plan. It’s here.
The government is keen to present it as an NHS plan, not a government plan, and at the moment you cannot find it prominently on the No 10 or Department of Health and Social Care websites.
This is our longer-term, strategic approach to workforce planning. In a nutshell we will:
1. Train more staff
Continue reading...Society of Radiographers members reject offer, pushing for deal they say could help cut waiting lists
Thousands of radiographers in England have voted to go on strike for the first time in the increasingly bitter healthcare pay dispute.
The Society of Radiographers (SoR) secured sufficient turnout and votes in 43 NHS trusts to go on strike in a ballot that closed on 28 June. More than 150 trusts had a majority in favour of action but not all met the turnout threshold.
Continue reading...Another man aged 28 has stab wound not thought to be life-threatening after incident in Archway
A 15-year-old boy and a 23-year-old man have been stabbed to death in north London.
The teenager died at the scene in Elthorne Road, Archway, after the stabbing at 11.30pm on Thursday, while the man was taken to hospital where he was later pronounced dead. A 28-year-old man was found with a stab wound that was not life-threatening.
Continue reading...Committee says ministers do not have credible strategy to tackle digital exclusion
The government is failing millions of digitally excluded citizens who do not have the means, money or ability to go online, a House of Lords committee has said.
Ministers do not have a credible strategy to tackle digital exclusion and are allowing “millions of citizens to fall behind”, according to a report by the Lords communications and digital committee.
Continue reading...Hope Street scheme in Southampton aims to keep women in criminal justice system out of jail and with their children
It all started when Edwina Grosvenor spent an hour with two heroin addicts at a drug rehabilitation centre in Liverpool, almost 30 years ago.
Her parents – Natalia and Gerald Grosvenor, who was one the richest men in the UK and the sixth Duke of Westminster – decided to take her to the centre at the age of 12 or 13 to show her that there was a world beyond her privileged bubble. “At that moment I learned about empathy,” Lady Grosvenor said.
Continue reading...The move is a major policy shift in country’s male-dominated parliament and brings Japan into line with more than 90 other countries
Japan is to permit the sale of emergency contraceptives without prescription on a trial basis, weeks after it approved the abortion pill.
The move, reported by media on Tuesday, will bring Japan into line with dozens of other countries where the morning-after pill is already available over the counter.
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