UK - England, Wales, N.Ireland, Scotland

[Uninformed]

“New legal duty promised over sewage as Lords forces issue”:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-59052995

“The government says it will force water companies to make a "progressive reduction" in the sewage it dumps in rivers, amid pressure from the Lords.
Peers proposed a change to the Environment Bill last week in an attempt to cut the pollution, but it did not win enough support from MPs.
It led to a backlash on social media, and Lords promising to try again.
But Environment Secretary George Eustice has now promised to bolster measures by making them a legal duty.”

The House of Lords is occasionally useful - bit the measures to be enacted are yet to be seen.

[MsDaisy]

when our customers don't need carboard for packing produce we sell them Potemkin Village displays

Sainsbury's in Dorset uses cardboard images to hide empty shelves amid food shortage

By Ellie Maslin

A SAINSBURY'S supermarket in Dorset has been criticised for using cardboard images to 'disguise' empty shelves amid the current national food shortage.

Shoppers have taken to social media to share photographs of supermarket giants Tesco and Sainsbury's apparent attempts to improve the appearance of bare shelves as a shortage of lorry drivers continues to affect supply chains.

And Sainsbury's in Sherborne has been spotted using the tactic.

In response to a viral Twitter thread where social media users across the UK have been sharing snaps of cardboard replacements on bare shelves, one woman, Sharon Dale, shared this photograph depicting a cardboard display on the pasta aisle in the Dorset branch with the caption: "Sainsbury’s aren’t even trying to make it look genuine."



https://www.dorsetecho.co.uk/news/19669 ... -shortage/

They should have put little cardboard cutouts of dinosaurs devouring the stock LOL!

If you ever go to Lyme Regis you can even feed the dinosaurs

IMG_3073.jpg (134.53 KiB) Viewed 1611 times

[tek]

daughter says "these people have clearly never been to Disney World"

[RTH10260]

the post-Brexit economy must be booming

Budget 2021: Middle earners will be ‘worse off’ next year after Sunak’s spending spree
Britain faces its highest tax burden since the 1950s

Oliver Wright, Policy Editor | Chris Smyth, Whitehall Editor | Henry Zeffman, Chief Political Correspondent
Thursday October 28 2021, 1.15pm BST, The Times

Middle earners are likely to be worse off next year as a result of tax rises and high inflation after Rishi Sunak prioritised public services and the low paid, according to an influential analysis.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) described yesterday’s budget as a “once in a decade event” that gave the chancellor scope for £7 billion of pre-election tax cuts.

But the think tank warned that there would be little “feel-good factor”, adding that the choice to funnel cash into health rather than education would undermine Boris Johnson’s levelling-up plans.

A separate analysis by the Resolution Foundation think tank found the average household would pay £3,000 more in taxes as a result of the budget.





paywall https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/budg ... -xb0sv50j3

[RTH10260]

while the government blocks foreign workers, EU or others

‘It is with a heavy heart that I leave’ – why the unrelieved pressure is pushing GPs to quit
An overburdened workforce has little hope the Tory pledge of 6,000 extra UK family doctors will happen any time soon

Denis Campbell Health policy editor
Thu 14 Oct 2021 19.27 BST

Concern has been growing for years that GPs are burning out, and sometimes dropping out, in the face of increasingly heavy and complex workloads that many have described as being already unsustainable, if not impossible.

In a tweet in September, Dr Laura Mount, a GP in Warrington, offered an insight into just how relentlessly busy family doctors were day in, day out, in a way that few other staff in the public or private sector experienced.

Mount, who stressed that she “loved seeing patients”, related how in her first hour at work she saw three patients face to face, booked to see another one at 7am the day after, talked to two more patients in person with a trainee doctor present, dealt with 16 queries, 30 prescriptions, 34 emails and five referral letters from hospitals, each containing instructions about what they needed to do – all in 60 minutes. “Nine more hours to go. Also my daughter’s first day at high school,” she added.

In May another GP, Dr Danielle Eaton, tweeted about leaving. “I handed my notice in Friday. I am a GP and love the NHS and what it stands for, both patients and professionals. However, primary care is unsustainable currently. It is with a heavy heart that I leave.” She was moving to a job that involved less pressure and a better work/life balance, she said.

Jeremy Hunt, the UK health secretary between 2012 and 2018, said on Thursday that despite success in increasing the number of trainee GPs in England to record levels, the overall number of full-timers continued to drop “because experienced GPs were retiring/going part-time faster than new trainees arrived”.


https://www.theguardian.com/society/202 ... ps-to-quit

[RTH10260]

major for Boris

Clash With Corruption Watchdog Has Boris Johnson Retreating, Again
Britain’s prime minister intervened in the case of a Conservative Party lawmaker who faced suspension. A ferocious blowback caused him to retreat, a now familiar path.

By Stephen Castle
Published Nov. 4, 2021 Updated Nov. 5, 2021, 6:07 a.m. ET

Since taking power in 2019, Britain’s prime minister, Boris Johnson, has often reversed course, changing his mind on everything from lockdown rules and school examinations to free meals for children and coronavirus restrictions at Christmas.

This week, Mr. Johnson finds himself retreating again.

On Wednesday he intervened to stop the suspension from Parliament of Owen Paterson, a fellow Conservative Party lawmaker found to have broken rules on political lobbying. The government also pushed through contentious plans to change the system that investigated Mr. Paterson.

By Thursday that effort had collapsed and Mr. Paterson resigned following a backlash from politicians, news organizations and even the former head of the intelligences services.

The furor risks denting Mr. Johnson’s authority, but it has also raised fresh questions about the ethical stance of a prime minister whose Conservative Party has faced a string of other allegations of influence-peddling, conflict of interest and profiteering.

“This has been an unbelievable 24 hours, even by this government’s chaotic standards,” said the opposition leader, Keir Starmer, in a statement on Thursday, adding that an effort to “rip up the rules on standards in public life” was a “truly damning indictment of this prime minister and the corrupt government he leads.”




https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/04/worl ... erson.html

[RTH10260]

‘Like a clown’: what other countries thought of Boris Johnson at Cop26
PM could not resist wheeling out the usual jokes and antics at crucial summit, but the laughs never came

Luke Harding and Peter Walker
Fri 5 Nov 2021 13.46 GMT

It was one of the defining images from Cop26.

Seated next to Boris Johnson on Monday and wearing a mask was 95-year-old David Attenborough. The prime minister, however, was maskless. At one point, Johnson seemed to have nodded off.

On stage and in front of 120 world leaders, the contrast between the two men was striking. The naturalist was sombre and serious. There was a “desperate hope” we might still avoid disaster, Attenborough said in Glasgow, in the most memorable phrase of the week. Joe Biden was among those to give him a standing ovation.

Johnson sought to strike a similarly elevated tone. There were serious moments in his speech: he mentioned a responsibility to future generations, for example, and to “children not yet born”.

But overall the prime minister appeared to rely on the jokes and verbal antics that have served him well in the past. With the world watching on the most urgent issue of the age, he sought to mix it up – part statesman, part standup.




https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... sion-cop26

[RTH10260]

Johnson will not declare Spanish holiday in MPs’ register, says No 10
Decision means he does not have to detail value of gift relating to stay at Goldsmith family villa

Peter Walker Political correspondent
Fri 5 Nov 2021 13.46 GMT

Boris Johnson will not declare a free luxury holiday he received at the Spanish villa belonging to the Goldsmith family in the register of MPs’ interests, Downing Street has said, meaning he does not have to detail the value of the gift.

Johnson listed the near week-long stay in the Marbella property in October in the register of ministerial interests. It confirmed the holiday was provided free of charge by the family of Zac Goldsmith, the former Conservative MP who is now a peer and an environment minister.

However, this register does not detail monetary values. The separate register of MPs’ interests does but on Friday Johnson’s spokesman said the prime minister had no plans to list it there.



https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... says-no-10

[RTH10260]

Piles of unused PPE costing £1million a day to store in 'grotesque waste of public money'
The Department for Health paid contractor Uniserve £124million for 'storage costs' of unused PPE in the last four months - the Good Law Project said it was a 'grotesque waste of public money'

Nick Sommerlad Investigations Editor Louie Smith News Reporter Russell Scott
18:45, 5 Nov 2021

Huge stockpiles of excess PPE are costing the Government £1million a day to store, the Mirror can reveal today.

It includes thousands of shipping containers piled high beside the UK’s largest commercial port.

Over the last four months, the Department for Health paid contractor Uniserve £124m for “storage costs”.

The Good Law Project’s Gemma Abbott has hit out at the “grotesque waste of public money”.

She said: “Not only did the Government squander billions on over-priced PPE that can’t be used but it turns out their mistakes are still costing taxpayers millions.”

The Good Law Project is also challenging No10’s Covid contracts.

The Mirror can now reveal the Department of Health spent £7m this summer buying shipping containers to slash storage costs for tens of billions of items of PPE.55




https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/ ... n-25391211

[RTH10260]

also too, a small number of cab drivers were from the EU

Why is there a shortage taxi drivers? Experts fear for safety of women
The UK has lost thousands of taxi drivers as public behaviour worsens during Covid-19 pandemic.

Robbie Purves
11:12, 5 NOV 2021

In a recent report, the Licensed Private Car Hire Association (LPCHA) estimates the industry is short of 160,000 drivers having previously boasted 300,000.

The shortage has sparked public safety fears, with night-time revellers waiting hours for a taxi to take them home.

Glasgow nightclub DJ, Rosie Shannon, told the BBC : "I am waiting for a taxi for up to two hours when I leave work at the club," Rosie, 29, said.

"It is freezing cold, sometimes it is raining. I am being approached by random men on the street. It is getting to the point I am having to walk home on unlit, dangerous streets. It is extremely scary."

"It is only a matter of time before something really bad happens to a woman on the street. I am not only fearing for my safety…but also my friends."

The real solution to this is the education of men and overhaul of their behaviour towards women, but the shortage of taxi drivers has exasperated fears women have at night.

Why is there a shortage taxi drivers?

When demand for taxis plummeted at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, many cabbies left the profession.

Remaining drivers are now complaining of increased abuse as things open up in the UK. Many have reported being spat at, punched and verbally abused.

Taxi company directors have said this is the worst they have known it, with customers increasingly 'angry and violent'.

Instead of taking this horrific treatment, thousands of cabbies have chosen to seek alternative employment.

For those looking to get into taxi driving, bureaucratic obstacles are stopping the shortage from being eased.

There is a backlog of expensive licensing and registration of vehicles, this is on top of lengthy criminal and medical background checks.

The LPCHA have called this a 'perfect-storm' to create a staffing crisis.

"This is a real national problem that affects everywhere," said Steve Wright, chairman of the LPCHA.

[RTH10260]

The supply chain crash - but it's those IT guys this time - no bonus for you this year!

Walkers crisps shortage could last until end of month after IT glitch
Production is ‘at a reduced scale’ because of system upgrade disruption

Jasper Jolly
Sun 7 Nov 2021 15.21 GMT

British shoppers may face shortages of some of their favourite crisps until the end of the month after a botched computer upgrade disrupted the world’s biggest crisp factory.

Walkers has been forced to prioritise its most popular varieties – including cheese and onion, ready salted and salt and vinegar, as well as Quavers and Wotsits – after the glitch forced it to slow production. A spokesperson said “more niche” varieties had been slowed.

“A recent IT system upgrade has disrupted the supply of some of our products. Our sites are still making crisps and snacks but at a reduced scale,” a Walkers spokesperson said. “We’re doing everything we can to increase production and get people’s favourites back on shelves. We’re very sorry for the inconvenience caused.”

The IT issue has added to the problems faced by the British food industry – along with most other manufacturers – during months of delays and disruption caused by the pandemic.




https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... -it-glitch

[RTH10260]

Recent History

A British betrayal: the secret deportations of Chinese merchant sailors

During the second world war, Chinese sailors served alongside their British allies in the merchant navy, heroically keeping supply lines open to the UK. But after the war hundreds of them who had settled in Liverpool suddenly disappeared. Now their children are piecing together the truth

Presented by Nosheen Iqbal with Dan Hancox and Yvonne Foley; produced by Joshua Kelly and Axel Kacoutié; executive producers Phil Maynard and Archie Bland
Thu 11 Nov 2021 03.00 GMT

Liverpool is home to the longest-established Chinese community in Europe having built sea links with Shanghai from the 19th century onwards. A thriving Chinatown is among the city’s present day inheritance of the era. But there is a darker side to the story of Liverpool’s Chinese community.

During the second world war, Chinese men served alongside their British comrades in merchant vessels that kept supply lines of food and other essentials flowing into the UK. It was incredibly dangerous work as the enormous cargo ships were ready targets for German U-boats and many of the seamen perished. After the war, many of the Chinese sailors settled in Liverpool with some starting families. But from 1946 onwards many started to go missing from the city.

On a day that Britain remembers the sacrifices of its war dead, writer Dan Hancox tells Nosheen Iqbal how he began investigating what had happened to the missing Chinese sailors and found a story of betrayal that is largely unknown in the UK. In the months following the war, the Home Office carried out thousands of secret deportations of Chinese seamen leaving their wives and children to believe they had been abandoned.




https://www.theguardian.com/news/audio/ ... rs-podcast

[Volkonski]

[Dave from down under]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-15/ ... /100620272

Terror arrests after man dies in car explosion outside Women's Hospital in English city of Liverpool
Posted 3h ago3 hours ago, updated 1h ago

UK counter-terrorism officers have arrested three people after a man was killed in a car explosion outside the Women's Hospital in the north-western city of Liverpool.

Key points:
Three men have been arrested under the UK's Terror Act
Police say a taxi exploded shortly after it pulled up outside the hospital
Counter-terrorism police are conducting an investigation, but a terror incident has not been declared
Police said a man who was a passenger in the car was declared dead at the scene, while another man who was driving was injured and was in hospital in a stable condition.

Three men — aged 29, 26, and 21 — were detained in the Kensington area of the city and arrested under the Terrorism Act, the police said in a statement.

Police believe the car was a taxi that pulled up at the hospital shortly before the explosion occurred just before 11:00am local time on Sunday.

[RTH10260]

Didn't see any further developments, my guess is gang related, most likely drugs. But I am curious why three potential attackers would have remained near the crime scene.

[keith]

Didn't see any further developments, my guess is gang related, most likely drugs. But I am curious why three potential attackers would have remained near the crime scene.

Maybe the bomb went off prematurely?

[Dave from down under]

That’s what I was thinking.

Timer for 11, delayed by traffic

[Dave from down under]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-16/ ... /100622794

A taxi driver has been hailed a hero after helping avert a major terrorist incident in the English city of Liverpool on Sunday.

Key points:
One person was killed when a taxi exploded outside Liverpool Women and Children's Hospital just before 11am on Remembrance Sunday
Police have declared it a terrorism incident and said the passenger of the cab had brought an explosive device into the vehicle
Four men aged in their 20s have been arrested at two separate addresses in Liverpool
The driver, named as David Perry, was injured when the cab he was driving exploded outside Liverpool Women's Hospital just before 11am on Remembrance Sunday.

The explosion, which police have confirmed as a terrorism incident, has seen the UK's threat level raised to severe.

Police have identified the passenger who was killed in the blast as Emad Al Swealmeen, 32.

Police said Al Swealmeen brought an explosive device into the taxi and had asked to be driven to the hospital.

CCTV from the hospital shows the station wagon approaching the hospital car park drop-off section at speed before the explosion occurs.

[RTH10260]

I am curious to learn why the target would be a womens hospital on Remembrance Day. The taxi driver was released from the hospital soon after, his injuries must have been light. I infer that he observed something was afoul and run from the car, after which his passenger detonated the bomb. From the damage observed the bomb builders were bloody amateurs, likely never even made a test blast in the countryside. The blast was entirely limited to the car itself, detonated outside the reach may have been worse. Also bloody amateurs by obviously ordering a taxi to their home address. I was wondering how police made their arrests within hours. Two guys at the first location that lead them to a second location. At that place the police seem to have found the bomb building lab, the neighbourhood was evacuated.

[Dave from down under]

I am happy for bomb makers to be amateurs and when they are hoist on their own petard..

[RTH10260]

World - get ready for all those British products you never wanted to buy

U.K. to Set 1 Trillion Pound Post-Brexit Export Target, FT Says
Yueqi Yang, Bloomberg News
Nov 14, 2021

(Bloomberg) -- The U.K. will announce a new export target this week of 1 trillion pounds ($1.3 trillion) per year by 2030 as part of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s move to overhaul its export strategy to show the benefits of leaving the European Union, the Financial Times reported.

A new “made in U.K., sold to the world” campaign will also be launched, as well as initiatives to boost overseas trade by providing export-linked loans and access to expertise and advice, the newspaper said. The strategy will be unveiled during international trade and investment week in London, the paper reported, citing unnamed executives involved in the preparation of the event.

U.K. Export Finance, the government’s export credit agency, will be allowed to back larger loans for foreign or domestic companies that want to start shipping from the U.K., the newspaper said, in a bid to attract foreign investment to the country.

Previous Conservative governments in the U.K. failed to achieve the same export target by 2020, and the country only increased overseas sales to 689 billion pounds by 2019 before the pandemic hit, the newspaper said.


https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/u-k-to-set- ... -1.1681793

[Dave from down under]

If Boris was in the 1st shipping container the UK would be a lot better off.

[tek]

The world awaits.

d-1.jpg (40.46 KiB) Viewed 1022 times

[Sam the Centipede]

If Boris was in the 1st shipping container the UK would be a lot better off.

There would be room for his ass-grabbing father too. Carrie Johnson (Mrs. Boris) could sort out a rattan theme for furnishing the container financed by a £3M gift from a future lord (I believe that's the going rate).

Would Oz like to welcome them? I'm sure they'd fit in with some of your politicians!

[Dave from down under]

Thanks, but no thanks…

Ours are bad enough as is..

Scomo lies about lying..