MoD has apologised for delays by outsourced firms awarded repair contracts worth £650m six months agoA scandal over the state of military accommodation has deepened as it emerged that nearly a third of homes require repair, despite firms being awarded maintenance contracts worth £650m six months ago.Among 47,900 service family accommodation (SFA) properties made available by the Ministry of Defence (MoD), a total of 13,900 are awaiting works. Continue reading...
Government guidance would empower consumers, helping them save on bills, says thinktankA public information campaign to encourage consumers to cut their gas usage this winter could save households nearly £400 and the Treasury £9bn, a study has shown.An analysis by the cross-party thinktank the Social Market Foundation found that households could save between £250 and £400 a year if a UK campaign similar to Germany’s national energy-awareness drive were launched. Continue reading...
Comedian will kick off with shows in Manchester later this year as tickets go on sale on 12 NovemberPeter Kay has announced his first live standup tour in 12 years.Tickets will go on sale for the UK gigs at 10am on 12 November from his website, following an announcement on the comedian’s Twitter account. Continue reading...
by Jessica Elgot Deputy political editor on (#65H1P)
PM said to have been informed of the complaint against Williamson before giving him a cabinet roleRishi Sunak is facing further questions over his political judgment after it emerged he was made aware of a complaint by the former chief whip against his political ally Gavin Williamson before appointing him.The Guardian understands some cabinet ministers and ex-ministers were aware of hostile messages to Wendy Morton. The texts were revealed over the weekend to include angry remonstrations about not being invited to the Queen’s funeral and warnings that “there is a price for everything”. Continue reading...
Heathrow centre finally emptied on Sunday despite minister expecting everyone to be evacuated by Saturday eveningDozens of immigration detainees were finally removed on Sunday from a Heathrow immigration centre where a disturbance broke out on Saturday after a power cut, despite a government minister saying he expected everyone to be evacuated by Saturday evening.Robert Jenrick issued a statement undertaking to empty the centre of detainees by the end of Saturday. Continue reading...
by Lorenzo Tondo in Palermo and agencies on (#65H6X)
Children and the sick were allowed off when boat run by German organisation SOS Humanity docked in SicilyIn the first test of its immigration policy, Italy’s new far-right government has prevented 35 asylum seekers from disembarking from their boat, claiming they did not qualify for asylum.On Saturday night, Rome allowed the ship Humanity 1, run by the German search-and-rescue organisation SOS Humanity and carrying 179 people, to enter the port of Catania, in Sicily, and begin disembarking only children and sick or “vulnerable” people. Continue reading...
by Nadeem Badshah (now), Alexandra Topping and Adam F on (#65GYR)
Residents warned they must prepare for having no electricity, water or heating as temperatures drop below freezingRussia appointed a new acting commander of the Central Military District on 3 November, the UK’s Ministry of Defence has said.Major General Alexander Linkov replaces Colonel General Alexander Lapin who was purportedly removed from office at the end of October 2022.If confirmed, this follows a series of dismissals of senior Russian military commanders since the onset of the invasion in February 2022. The Commanders of the Eastern, Southern, and Western Military Districts were replaced earlier this year.Lapin has been widely criticised for poor performance on the battlefield in Ukraine by both Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov and Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin. Continue reading...
Oliver Dowden says Department of Health has ‘well-oiled contingencies’ to manage impact of actionThe government has said it has contingency plans for dealing with a strike by nurses amid the growing threat of industrial action in the NHS.The Observer revealed on Sunday that the biggest nursing strike in NHS history could take place before Christmas after “large swathes of the country” voted for nationwide industrial action. The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) is due to announce the results of its ballot in the next few days. Continue reading...
Police Scotland call disorder in Edinburgh ‘disgraceful’ after Molotov cocktail thrown at police vehiclePolice across the UK had a busy bonfire night dealing with violence and antisocial behaviour, with disorder in Edinburgh branded “disgraceful”.Police Scotland said specialist officers had been deployed to the Niddrie area of the Scottish capital on Saturday night, with a Molotov cocktail thrown at a police vehicle. Continue reading...
by Peter Walker Political correspondent on (#65H85)
PM has chance to set out exactly where he stands on green issues, but don’t expect him to give too much awayRishi Sunak’s whistle-stop visit to the Cop27 climate summit in Egypt is the overseas debut for a prime minister still largely untested in diplomatic matters. But at the same time it is a trip primarily shaped by domestic concerns.If it always seemed possible that Sunak would U-turn on his much-criticised initial decision to entirely skip the Sharm el-Sheikh gathering, news that Boris Johnson planned to go presumably sealed the decision. Continue reading...
About 500 jobs expected to be lost and thousands of customers nervously await refundsThe online furniture retailer Made.com’s dream of becoming the “new Ikea” will die tomorrow when administrators are appointed, triggering about 500 job losses and leaving thousands of customers in the lurch.It will complete a fall from grace for the London-based company which was valued at almost £800m when it listed on the stock exchange in summer 2021 and was vaunted as the future of furniture retail. Continue reading...
Precision Air plane with 43 people onboard came down in bad weather on its approach to Bukoba airportAt least 19 people have died after a plane plunged into Lake Victoria in Tanzania during bad weather shortly before it was due to land in the north-west city of Bukoba, according to the state-owned Tanzania Broadcasting Corporation.“There was an accident involving a Precision Air plane which … crashed into water about 100 metres from the airport,” the regional police commander William Mwampaghale told reporters at Bukoba airport. Continue reading...
New report says increase in work time by 30 hours a week due to raising SPA will lead to a drop in care time of 6.3 hours a weekThe increase in women’s state pension age could force mothers and daughters to withdraw the free, informal care they give the UK’s rapidly ageing population, a paper has warned.The report, entitled Should I Care or Should I Work? The Impact of Work on Informal Care, says this family care must be urgently replaced by significant increases in state spending otherwise families will have to exhaust their savings buying care privately. For families who cannot find or afford to buy in care, however, older relatives’ lives will be put in danger, the authors say. Continue reading...
by Nadia Khomami Arts and culture correspondent on (#65H6T)
Death of 34-year-old former child star and brother of Backstreet Boys’ Nick Carter being investigatedTributes have been paid to Aaron Carter, the former child star who was found dead at his home in southern California at the age of 34 on Saturday.Carter, brother of Backstreet Boys member Nick Carter, began performing at the age of seven and released his self-titled debut album in 1997 when he was nine. He had two UK top 10 hits with Crush On You and Crazy Little Party Girl. Continue reading...
by Jessica Elgot Deputy political editor on (#65H44)
Hunger striker’s sister welcomes news but warns he may die before end of summitRishi Sunak has said he will raise the issue of imprisoned writer Alaa Abd El-Fattah in Egypt at the Cop27 summit, but the writer’s sister has warned her brother’s hunger and water strike may mean he will die before the end of the summit.Sunak wrote to the family of the British Egyptian writer saying he would raise his imprisonment with the Egyptian government and reply again by the end of the climate summit. Continue reading...
Rarely have so many major political decisions been reversed. Here are Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak’s changes of heartSuch has been the political chaos over the last two months that it has felt as if there hasn’t been a single week without a major government U-turn. There is a good reason for that – there hasn’t been. Since the start of September, the Truss and Sunak administrations have so far averaged well over one significant U-turn a week. Here are some of the most notable reversals: Continue reading...
Teaching unions revamp site with official data on every school in England and Wales to show education fundingTens of millions of parents will, from April next year, be able to see the precise level of budget cuts hitting the state schools their children attend, thanks to an information campaign by teaching unions.The planned cuts to be imposed on every school in England and Wales – with figures detailing what this amounts to per pupil – will be available on a revamped version of the school cuts website, run by the unions and to be unveiled this week. Continue reading...
Report shows failures by government, financial services and retailers to protect people with dementia from scammersPeople living with dementia are “sitting ducks for financial abuse” because of failures by the government, financial services and retailers, according to a report.The report, Retail Therapy by the International Longevity Centre and independent abrdn Financial Fairness Trust, highlights multiple examples of those living with dementia setting up subscriptions or direct debits after being subjected to repeated doorstep cold calls, scam letters and incessant phone calls in which they were asked to share personal financial information. Continue reading...
by Nadia Khomami Arts and culture correspondent on (#65H48)
Online sale lasts twice as long as usual as See Tickets website repeatedly crashesTickets for next year’s Glastonbury festival took more than an hour to sell out after the site experienced a “technical problem”.The second release of tickets was made available from 9am on Sunday and sold out by 10.03am – longer than the typical 30 minutes it takes for the festival. Continue reading...
People struggling with higher mortgage costs after disastrous Tory mini-budget should get help, he says, just as banks helped in 2008Homeowners struggling to pay their mortgages in the wake of Liz Truss’s “disastrous budget” should be helped out with grants of up to £300 a month, Lib Dem leader Ed Davey has told the Observer.In a bid to improve his party’s fortunes in “blue wall” seats where Tory voters have shown a willingness to switch parties, Davey said there was now a “mortgage penalty” on some householders after the mini-budget. He said there are people now “worried sick about how they will get by or even afford to stay in their homes”. Continue reading...
by Alexandra Villarreal in Eagle Pass, Texas on (#65H2Q)
Despite the fact that the border is barely open, more than 800 people have lost their livesAlong the US-Mexico border, overwhelmed mortuaries in Eagle Pass, Texas have been forced to stockpile a “backlog of bodies” in a city-owned refrigerated truck.The local government bought but never used the makeshift morgue amid the Covid-19 pandemic, when such desperate sights were not unheard of in various parts of the US, including Texas. Continue reading...
DWP campaign to encourage pension credit results in flood of claims and backlogPoorer pensioners are waiting months for their benefit applications to be approved after the Department for Work and Pensions was overwhelmed by rising demand stimulated by its own publicity drive.In early April, the DWP launched a campaign to encourage pensioners to apply for pension credit – the benefit paid to people on low incomes who are over the state pension age – to handle rising living costs. Continue reading...
in Braemar, Aberdeenshire, people are used to low temperatures but there is anxiety about the soaring costs of staying warmOn the first day of November in Braemar, Aberdeenshire, there is a bitter chill in the air and the temperature hovers around 6C. This is balmy autumn weather for the village, nestled at the foot of the Cairngorm mountains and holder of the unenviable title of Britain’s coldest place, having recorded record low temperatures of -27.2C twice in the past 40 years. Just last year, the village experienced Britain’s coldest night since 1995, when temperatures dropped to -23C in February.Braemar’s temperatures are thought to reach such extremes because of its geography, with the encircling mountains essentially turning the village into a “bowl” in which cold air blows down from the mountaintops and becomes trapped. In the coming months, residents can expect temperatures in the -20s accompanied by heavy snowfall, ice and storms. But while people in Braemar are well prepared for the weather, little can shield them from energy prices surging here as across the country. Continue reading...
Architects’ society forced to defend scheme to remodel entrance from ‘unjustified’ criticismCarbuncles usually take only a few weeks to heal, but the architectural row over the National Gallery has been going for nearly 40 years.The latest eruption came last week, when the president of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) took aim at eight of his predecessors over their objections to plans to overhaul the gallery’s Sainsbury Wing. Continue reading...
Decades after the star’s death, safety on set for cast and crew is not the priority it should be, says the award-winning actor Rory KinnearMore than 30 years ago the actor Roy Kinnear died after being thrown from a horse while filming The Return of the Musketeers in Spain. He had dreaded shooting that particular scene because it involved having to “thunder” at speed across a cobbled bridge, despite the danger and his lack of horsemanship.His tragic death seemed to shock the industry into realising the need for health and safety changes, but his son Rory Kinnear, who followed his father into acting, has told the Observer that lives are still being put at risk, with corners cut due to the pressures of time and budgets – “all for the sake of a thrilling shot”. Continue reading...
The department has been found responsible for an ‘unacceptable’ breach of data protection lawsThe Department for Education (DfE) has been found responsible for an “unacceptable” breach of data protection laws over betting firms using children’s information on a student database for age-verification checks.The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) said there was “prolonged misuse” of pupil information on a database that holds the details of up to 28 million students. The department failed to prevent “unauthorised access to children’s data” from September 2018 to January 2020. The UK information commissioner, John Edwards, said: “A database of pupils’ learning records being used to help gambling companies is unacceptable. Our investigation found that the processes put in place by the DfE were woeful.” Continue reading...
Higher interest rates will plunge borrowers into debt as they seek to plug gap between income and outgoings, charities warnGrowing numbers of households are likely to turn to credit cards and loans “to plug the gap between their income and outgoings”, as winter sets in and energy bills increase, a leading debt charity has warned.Higher mortgage payments and rent increases, as well as the rising cost of food and energy bills, could also force householders who have never been in debt before to borrow to make ends meet. Continue reading...
If the ex-PM had lost the leadership contest, his value stood to drop by half, according to the entertainment industryBoris Johnson would have forfeited earnings of at least £10m a year from speeches and sales of his memoirs if he had fought a leadership battle against Rishi Sunak and lost, according to informed sources in the entertainment industry, who believe financial considerations played a part in his decision to pull out.Since he resigned in July, Johnson is known to have been in talks with entertainment and talent agencies including Endeavour, run by US businessman Ari Emanuel, and the Harry Walker Agency (HWA), one of its subsidiaries. Continue reading...
Ali, who has been trapped in a hotel for nearly 500 days, tells of his frustration and his desire to contribute to societyLife in room 221 of the Berkshire hotel Ali has called home for the past 487 days is a drab affair, with an in-built guarantee that every day will be the same as the one before.The food is repetitive, his fellow guests never leave, the streets of Reading rarely change. “There is nothing to do. Nothing happens. All I want is an actual book to read but there are none here and there is no way I can afford them.” Continue reading...
MP Theresa Villiers says proposal to axe thousands of laws is unworkable and unnecessaryOne of the Tory party’s leading Brexit supporters has raised concerns about plans to scrap 2,400 EU laws by the end of next year – as fears grow that the policy will overwhelm the civil service and bring government to a virtual standstill.Former environment secretary Theresa Villiers, who backed Brexit in 2016, told the Observer that the proposals would take up vast amounts of civil service time and would involve undoing legislation that, in many cases, was broadly popular and good for the country. Continue reading...
Refugees and support workers say Home Office-funded service is ‘torment’, with some callers left on hold for up to three hoursThe government’s round-the-clock helpline for asylum seekers has been rated inadequate after callers faced “unacceptable” delays, official documents have revealed.Run for the Home Office by the charity Migrant Help, the helpline is the main point of contact for asylum seekers needing support with housing, money and access to healthcare. Continue reading...
by Vanessa Thorpe Arts and media correspondent on (#65GXZ)
The actor, whose wife died last year, talks to Desert Island Discs about his relationship with his parents growing up in AfricaFive days after marking the anniversary of his wedding to his late wife, a grieving Richard E Grant will talk candidly about surviving an upsetting childhood in Eswatini (then called Swaziland) before finding sanctuary in his 38-year marriage.The Oscar-nominated film star, who appears as the guest on Desert Island Discs on Sunday morning, met his wife – the renowned dialect expert Joan Washington – when, as an aspiring young actor, he hired her as a voice coach. Grant details the shock of Washington’s diagnosis with lung cancer in 2020 and tells how they prioritised time together in the months before her death in September last year. Continue reading...
Ebrahim Raisi declares streets ‘safe and sound’ while shopkeepers strike and student demonstrations sparked by Mahsa Amini’s death reach 50th dayIranian students protested and shopkeepers went on strike despite a widening crackdown, according to reports on social media, as demonstrations that flared over Mahsa Amini’s death continued for a 50th day.Saturday’s protests came as President Ebrahim Raisi said Iran’s cities were “safe and sound” after earlier dismissing a pledge from the US president, Joe Biden, to “free Iran”. Continue reading...
by Nadeem Badshah, Harry Taylor and staff on (#65GTN)
Russian troops looting Kherson city amid alleged searches in province for residents refusing to evacuate; pro-Russia judge in serious condition after assassination bid
Extra bank holiday will follow king’s coronation two days earlier on Saturday 6 MayThe government has announced an additional bank holiday to mark the coronation of King Charles III next year.Downing Street said the UK-wide holiday will fall on Monday 8 May after the coronation at Westminster Abbey two days earlier. Continue reading...
Sitdown protests are part of a day of demonstrations in and around Schiphol airportDutch border police arrested hundreds of climate activists who stormed Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport and sat in front of the wheels of aircraft to prevent them from leaving.More than 100 protesters, wearing white suits, entered an area where private jets are kept on Saturday as part of a day of demonstrations in and around the airport organised by environmental groups. Continue reading...
Angry at not being invited to the Queen’s funeral, minister sent string of abusive textsGavin Williamson is facing an investigation over a series of abusive and threatening messages sent to the then Tory chief whip complaining he had been excluded from the Queen’s funeral.The cabinet minister, who was a backbencher at the time, accused Wendy Morton of using the death of the monarch to “punish” senior MPs who were out of favour with Liz Truss’s government. Continue reading...
Exclusive: walkout over pay due to take place before ChristmasThe biggest nursing strike in NHS history is set to take place before Christmas after union officials said that “large swathes of the country” had voted for industrial action.Patients who are already facing record waiting lists are now likely to see operations and appointments delayed or cancelled. This is set to be the first national strike in the history of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN). Continue reading...
by Nadeem Badshah (now); Harry Taylor, Adam Fulton ,S on (#65G56)
Russian troops taking vehicles, art and even religious artefacts from Kherson; UK says Russia struggling to train new recruits. This blog is now closed
Social media firm sets deadline for workers to name person to represent them at job consultations amid layoffsTwitter staff who face losing their jobs in the UK have been given three days to nominate a representative for a formal consultation about their employment.An email sent to staff from Twitter’s HR department on Saturday said they had until 9am on Tuesday to nominate any current employee. Staff can nominate themselves. Continue reading...
‘Total destruction’ and dozens of people still unaccounted for in Texas town while Arkansas and Oklahoma also hit by tornadoesAt least one person has died and dozens more are injured after tornadoes ravaged parts of Texas, Arkansas and Oklahoma.Several twisters caused property damage and physical injury across the various states on Friday. Tornado warnings had still been in effect as of late Friday in parts of Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Missouri.Ramon Antonio Vargas contributed reporting. Continue reading...
Alexander Nikulin, who sentenced two captured Britons to death in June, had attempt made on his life in eastern DonetskA judge in a Ukrainian town controlled by Moscow is in a “serious” condition after surviving an assassination attempt, a separatist leader in Donetsk said.Alexander Nikulin was on a judicial panel that in June sentenced to death two Britons, Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner, and a Moroccan, Brahim Saadoune, who were fighting on the Ukrainian side. Continue reading...
Party vice-president Michelle O’Neill says government must find a way to make post-Brexit arrangements workThe Sinn Féin leader in Northern Ireland, Michelle O’Neill, has said the UK government needs to “step up to the plate” and find a way to make the Northern Ireland protocol work.On Friday, the Northern Ireland secretary, Chris Heaton-Harris, said there will not be a Stormont election in December. Continue reading...
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