Boris Johnson was hit by a growing revolt over his strategy for easing the Covid-19 lockdown last night as council leaders across the north of England joined unions in vowing to resist plans to reopen schools on 1 June.
Related: Are we all in this together? It doesn't look like it from the regions
Continue reading...While campuses are shut by Covid-19, students are still being forced to pay for unused accommodation
Notttingham Trent University students Eleanora Brown and her boyfriend Nizar Ruiz are in lockdown at home in Norwich, with no prospect of returning to campus any time soon. The teaching buildings are closed and the university has released all of its tenants from paying rent this term. Yet their hall of residence, run by Collegiate, a private developer, is demanding £1,700 from each of its residents to cover the summer term.
While students at most university-owned accommodation do not have to pay rent for the third term, Brown and Ruiz are among thousands of students trapped in expensive contracts with private hall operators.
Continue reading...Problems with internet and phone service were once just an inconvenience. Now they can prove to be catastrophic
Cut off by telecoms company, pensioner missed call as partner died of Covid-19
Barbara Parry* arranged to switch her phone and broadband account from Sky to Now TV in March, a week before lockdown. Instead, she was left incommunicado as her line was cancelled and her phone number reallocated.
During the following four weeks, as she pleaded in vain to be reconnected, her partner contracted Covid-19. He died four days later in hospital. Due to the blunders by Now TV, he was unable to call Parry from his deathbed and she was unable to say goodbye. The news was broken by a relative as the hospital could not get through on her cancelled number.
Continue reading...There will be no going back to ‘normal’. Our cherished concept of work is increasingly meaningless – the future belongs to those who understand the arts of life
The infantilising of the people by our leaders is horribly revealing of the English psyche. “Jam tomorrow and jam yesterday – but never jam today.” Only it is not jam in this case, it is life-saving personal protective equipment. I specify “English” because Nicola Sturgeon addresses her nation as grownups and Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel pay their people the same respect. Now, armed with the knowledge that our prime minister bunked off Cobra meetings as this crisis unfolded, we are being told nothing can really be decided until he comes back from his convalescence. So we are stuck with ministers in supply teacher mode.
Everything has changed and we need to prepare for the new normal. Lockdown isn’t ending any time soon. There is no simple choice between saving lives and saving the economy; the two are intertwined. There is no going back to BC: before corona. Some of us knew this from day one, others are still in denial. There is the unmistakable feeling that a monumental shift in how we live is coming, one way or another, a shift that has long been latent. Those of us in rich countries have been intent on pushing the climate emergency into the future, but now our money won’t save us. Our vulnerability just might. But this requires humility. The idea that Boris Johnson will “bounce back” into his job is as ludicrous as thinking the economy will “bounce back”.
Continue reading...Chris Lewis is staying on usually uninhabited Hildasay until charity challenge can resume
A former paratrooper is isolating on a usually uninhabited Shetland island after lockdown measures were introduced when he was on a fundraising challenge to walk the UK coastline.
Chris Lewis, 39, has walked 12,000 miles since setting off from Llangennith beach on the Gower peninsula near his home city of Swansea, south Wales, in August 2017.
Continue reading...New charges for reCaptcha spur web security firm Cloudflare to develop its own identity-checking software
The days of clicking on traffic lights to prove you are not a robot could be ending after Google’s decision to charge for the tool prompted one of the web’s biggest infrastructure firms to ditch it for a competitor.
“Captcha” – an awkward acronym for “completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart” – is used by sites to fight automated abuses of their services. For years, Google’s version of the test, branded reCaptcha, has dominated, after it acquired the company that developed it in 2009 and offered the technology for free worldwide.
Continue reading...Move will reduce risk of infection for drivers during pandemic, says Unite
Cash payments on all UK buses should be abolished for the duration of the coronavirus crisis to reduce the risk of driver infection, the union representing bus workers has demanded.
Unite called on Wednesday for an end to cash payments on all the bus systems still operating across the UK to help drive down infection rates, particularly as the country enters the predicted peak period of the outbreak over Easter and beyond.
Continue reading...Stock market crash strips billionaire status from 267 of world’s richest people in the annual list
Donald Trump lost an estimated $1bn of his paper fortune in the past month as the coronavirus lockdown forced the closure of offices, shopping centres, hotels and golf courses he owns.
The US president’s fortune has fallen from an estimated $3.1bn (£2.5bn) on 1 March to $2.1bn on 18 March (at the height of stock market panic caused by the coronavirus pandemic) according to Forbes magazine’s annual billionaires list.
Continue reading...From hanging pictures to resealing the bath, now is the time to tackle the jobs you have been ignoring – many of them much simpler than you think
While you have been stuck at home staring at the four walls and everything inside them, you may have noticed that some of what you see is broken. Small problems that may not have bothered you when you spent all day at work – a wonky curtain, a creaky door – suddenly demand your attention. But how do you fix things without professional help, armed only with limited tools and even more limited competence? We asked the experts for advice on the 10 simplest DIY tasks you can tackle right now.
Continue reading...Times of upheaval are always times of radical change. Some believe the pandemic is a once-in-a-generation chance to remake society and build a better future. Others fear it may only make existing injustices worse. By Peter C Baker
Everything feels new, unbelievable, overwhelming. At the same time, it feels as if we’ve walked into an old recurring dream. In a way, we have. We’ve seen it before, on TV and in blockbusters. We knew roughly what it would be like, and somehow this makes the encounter not less strange, but more so.
Every day brings news of developments that, as recently as February, would have felt impossible – the work of years, not mere days. We refresh the news not because of a civic sense that following the news is important, but because so much may have happened since the last refresh. These developments are coming so fast that it’s hard to remember just how radical they are.
Continue reading...Aviation consultancy warns that international industry could collapse within months
Major airlines including British Airways, Ryanair, easyJet and Virgin Atlantic announced a dramatic scaling-back of their operations on Monday, including plans to cancel the majority of their flights and ground thousands of planes, with experts and industry executives calling for government bailouts to avoid bankruptcies.
The moves came as an aviation consultancy warned that the international airline industry will collapse within months, with the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs, unless states worldwide inject billions of dollars of emergency funding to see it through the coronavirus “catastrophe”.
Continue reading...No scientific evidence that technology poses threat to human health, say experts
5G is safe, according to the international body in charge of setting limits on exposure to radiation, which has updated its advisory guidelines for the first time in more than 20 years.
The International Commission on Non‐Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP), the Germany-based scientific body that assesses the health risks of radio broadcasts, called for new guidelines for millimetre-wave 5G, the most high-frequency version of the telecommunications standard.
Continue reading...The 5% rate on sanitary products will end. Rishi Sunak also plans to ensure banks keep circulating cash
The chancellor will announce the abolition of the “tampon tax” in next week’s budget, marking the successful conclusion to a 20-year campaign by women’s rights activists.
Tampons and other women’s sanitary products currently have 5% VAT added to their price, but this will be scrapped, saving the average woman £40 over her lifetime. The tax will end when Britain leaves the EU at the end of December.
Continue reading...IATA warns Covid-19 will cost airlines up to $113bn in revenue this year, as regional airline Flybe collapses, and experts fear others will follow
HSBC has confirmed that an employee has tested positive for the coronavirus, and that some colleagues from its research department have been sent home while the office is deep-cleaned.
A spokesperson says:
We have been informed that one of our employees at 8 Canada Square has been diagnosed with COVID-19. This colleague is under medical supervision and has self-isolated. We are working closely with the health authorities.
We are deep-cleaning the floor where our colleague worked and shared areas of the building. Colleagues on that floor, and others who came into contact with him, have been advised to work at home. Based on medical and official advice the building remains open and operates as normal.
Back at the British Chambers of Commerce annual meeting today, health secretary Matt Hancock said he was working with the Department for Work and Pensions on a way to extend sickness benefit to all workers.
That could including contract workers and the self employed, my colleague Phillip Inman reports.
“It is vital that the same approach applies to all workers,”
Related: PM: workers with coronavirus will get sick pay from day one
Continue reading...Calls for sachets to be included in UK and European legislation banning other single-use items
The government must act urgently to stamp out the “curse” of single-use plastic sachets, billions of which are helping to fuel the global plastics crisis, campaigners are warning.
A coalition of more than 50 business leaders, politicians and campaigners is demanding that the plastic sachets – used for everything from ketchup to shampoo – be included in European and UK legislation outlawing other “throwaway” items such as plastic straws and cotton buds.
Continue reading...Key event in European automotive calendar could be under threat as crisis deepens
Carmakers are monitoring the development of the coronavirus outbreak in Europe amid concerns that a key motor show in Geneva could be affected.
The spread of the disease has forced the cancellation of the Mobile World Congress, a tech trade fair in Barcelona that had been expected to host more than 100,000 delegates from about 200 countries.
Continue reading...Patrick McLarry sentenced to five years for defrauding scheme of more than £250,000
The former head of a charity has been jailed for five years after he admitted defrauding a pension scheme for workers with disabilities and using the money to buy houses in England and France.
Patrick McLarry took more than £250,000 from the pension scheme of Yateley Industries for the Disabled and used it to buy homes for himself and his wife and pay off a debt for a pub lease.
Continue reading...Which passport should my children use? Will I pay home or EU student fees? Your questions answered
There is continuing confusion about citizens’ rights after Brexit. We asked you about your concerns, and many wrote in with questions about pension and healthcare rights.
You raised other issues too: can I still sail around Europe? Will I pay home fees if I start university in the Netherlands this year? What will happen about my pet’s passport? There is much unfinished Brexit business, as you will see from our answers below, composed with the help of experts and government departments.
Continue reading...Currently, married woman can only discuss her taxes with government if spouse says so
If you’re a married woman in Jersey and you want to discuss your tax affairs with the government, better ask your husband’s permission first.
No, this is not an excerpt from a 1950s guide to managing finances but the current reality on the self-governing island. But this could finally be about to change.
Continue reading...Study also shows global unemployment due to rise for the first time in a decade
Nearly half a billion people around the world are struggling to find adequate paid work, trapping individuals in poverty and fuelling heightened levels of inequality, according to a UN report.
In a study published as world leaders fly into the Swiss ski resort of Davos to voice concerns over inequality and the climate crisis, the UN’s International Labour Organization (ILO) said more than 473 million people around the world lacked the employment opportunities to meet their needs.
Continue reading...