UK News and Discussions

[Time_Traveller]

Boris Johnson warns of ‘wage-price spiral’ if workers demand higher pay

Thu 9 Jun 2022

Boris Johnson has raised the spectre of a 1970s-style “wage-price spiral” that could force the Bank of England to push up interest rates dramatically, if workers demand to be compensated for rocketing prices.

The prime minister vowed to tackle low growth and the cost of living crisis but said the government would put a new focus on the cost of housing, including extending the right to buy and a comprehensive overview of mortgage products aiming to radically increase the number of 95% mortgages on offer.

As rail workers prepare to go on strike later this month, and with inflation running at 9%, Johnson claimed that if wages continued to chase prices upwards it could unleash an economic crisis.

“When a wage-price spiral begins, there is only one cure and that is to slam the brakes on rising prices with higher interest rates,” he said, speaking at a college in Blackpool.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... higher-pay

[Time_Traveller]

A Labour government would axe laws that override Northern Ireland Protocol, Keir Starmer vows

Friday 10 June 2022

A Labour government would axe laws designed to unilaterally override aspects of Brexit’s Northern Ireland Protocol, Sir Keir Starmer has vowed.

The Labour leader made the pledge on a visit to Belfast where he met with political leaders on Friday (10 June).

During the trip, he also said Labour would oppose the UK Government immunity legislation to address the legacy of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Sir Keir's trip to the island of Ireland, which also involved meetings with Irish government ministers in Dublin, came amid the deepening row over the post-Brexit Irish Sea trading arrangements.

The Government has confirmed it will table legislation at Westminster on Monday that will give ministers powers to scrap parts of the protocol.

https://www.itv.com/news/utv/2022-06-10 ... armer-vows

[Time_Traveller]

Lidl becomes first major supermarket to launch label to help those who can't afford food

9 JUN 2022

Lidl has become the first major supermarket in the UK to introduce a new label in stores that will help those who are struggling to pay for their food.

In an industry first, the supermarket has launched the 'Good To Give' trustmark which aims to diversify the donations to UK food banks.

Starting from today, shoppers looking to donate to food banks can find the labelled food on shelves across all Lidl stores in the UK.

The signage will feature on 30 products across all Lidl GB stores, including tinned fruit, noodles and veg - and it will help those who rely on food banks to get the balanced diet they need.

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/lifestyle ... t-27186731

[Time_Traveller]

Five asylum seekers will not be sent to Rwanda, Home Office says, as hearing challenging plan begins

Friday 10 June 2022

Five asylum seekers fighting their deportation from the UK to Rwanda will not be sent to the African country, the Home Office has said.

The news came as part of submissions by Home Office lawyers to the High Court on Friday as a bid began to block a deportation flight under the government's controversial new asylum seeker removal policy.

Five people due to be deported next week have now had their removal directions cancelled.

Two campaign groups - Detention Action and Care4Calais - joined the PCS Union and four individual asylum seekers bringing legal action against the Home Office after it announced the first group of people would be sent to Rwanda on Tuesday.

https://news.sky.com/story/five-asylum- ... n-12631249

[Time_Traveller]

Five asylum seekers will not be sent to Rwanda, Home Office says, as hearing challenging plan begins

Friday 10 June 2022

Five asylum seekers fighting their deportation from the UK to Rwanda will not be sent to the African country, the Home Office has said.

The news came as part of submissions by Home Office lawyers to the High Court on Friday as a bid began to block a deportation flight under the government's controversial new asylum seeker removal policy.

Five people due to be deported next week have now had their removal directions cancelled.

Two campaign groups - Detention Action and Care4Calais - joined the PCS Union and four individual asylum seekers bringing legal action against the Home Office after it announced the first group of people would be sent to Rwanda on Tuesday.

https://news.sky.com/story/five-asylum- ... n-12631249

Update: -

UK deportation flight to Rwanda can go ahead, high court judge rules

Fri 10 Jun 2022

A high court judge has ruled that a controversial deportation flight to Rwanda that was due to take off early next week can go ahead.

Mr Justice Swift refused to grant interim relief – urgent action in response to an injunction application made by four asylum seekers facing offshoring to Rwanda.

Lawyers acting for the asylum seekers and the groups had argued the policy was unlawful and sought the urgent injunction to stop next week’s planned flight and any other such flights ahead of a full hearing of the case later in the year.

The decision will not stop individual refugees from further legal challenges to their removal to Rwanda, or a judicial review of the policy, which Mr Justice Swift said could take six weeks.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... udge-rules

[Time_Traveller]

Bank of England set to raise rates again as inflation heads for 10%

7 hours ago (Jun 10, 2022 12:33)

LONDON (Reuters) - The Bank of England looks set to raise interest rates next week for the fifth time since December, its steepest run of rate hikes in 25 years, and is likely to keep going in the coming months as inflation heads for double digits.

While Britain is forecast to have the weakest economy in 2023 among the world's big, rich nations, investors and most economists are predicting a quarter-point rate hike by the BoE next Thursday.

That would take Bank Rate to 1.25%, its highest level since January 2009, when Britain's economy was holed by the global financial crisis.

While historically low, expectations for British borrowing costs over the next couple of years have risen sharply recently and they jumped again this week when the European Central Bank flagged rate hikes at its next two meetings, including a possible half percentage-point rise in September

https://uk.investing.com/news/economy/b ... 10-2666674

[Time_Traveller]

Four-day week could be within reach for British workers

Fri 10 Jun 2022

Five days on, two days off has been the defining pulse of British labour for more than 80 years. But as 70 UK companies embark on the largest trial yet of a four-day week, the working calendar may finally be changing.

Campaigners are seizing on the way Covid shook up working lives to push back the boundaries of the weekend for the first time since the postwar years when the whole of Saturday became a day off for most. One advocate predicts a four-day week could be available to the majority in Britain within five years, and Stephen Fry this week gave his voice to an increasingly confident four-day week campaign, which argues shorter hours boosts productivity, cuts carbon emissions and improves family life – all without cutting pay.

In the campaign, Fry suggests the seven-day week should no longer be considered “a brute fact” because it is “not real the way a day is real, a single spin of our planet, or the way a year is real, one lap of the Earth round the sun … the week was invented by us.”

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... sh-workers

i am intrigued how this will work in the retail sector which i am currently in.

[weatheriscool]

Five asylum seekers will not be sent to Rwanda, Home Office says, as hearing challenging plan begins

Friday 10 June 2022

Five asylum seekers fighting their deportation from the UK to Rwanda will not be sent to the African country, the Home Office has said.

The news came as part of submissions by Home Office lawyers to the High Court on Friday as a bid began to block a deportation flight under the government's controversial new asylum seeker removal policy.

Five people due to be deported next week have now had their removal directions cancelled.

Two campaign groups - Detention Action and Care4Calais - joined the PCS Union and four individual asylum seekers bringing legal action against the Home Office after it announced the first group of people would be sent to Rwanda on Tuesday.

https://news.sky.com/story/five-asylum- ... n-12631249

Update: -

UK deportation flight to Rwanda can go ahead, high court judge rules

Fri 10 Jun 2022

A high court judge has ruled that a controversial deportation flight to Rwanda that was due to take off early next week can go ahead.

Mr Justice Swift refused to grant interim relief – urgent action in response to an injunction application made by four asylum seekers facing offshoring to Rwanda.

Lawyers acting for the asylum seekers and the groups had argued the policy was unlawful and sought the urgent injunction to stop next week’s planned flight and any other such flights ahead of a full hearing of the case later in the year.

The decision will not stop individual refugees from further legal challenges to their removal to Rwanda, or a judicial review of the policy, which Mr Justice Swift said could take six weeks.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... udge-rules

If it is safe in Rwanda then it sounds good to me.

[Time_Traveller]

Arron Banks loses libel action against reporter Carole Cadwalladr

Mon 13 Jun 2022

The multimillionaire Brexit backer Arron Banks has lost his libel action against the Observer and Guardian journalist Carole Cadwalladr, in a significant decision for public interest journalism.

Banks, who funded the pro-Brexit Leave.EU campaign group, sued Cadwalladr personally over two instances in which she said the businessman was lying about his relationship with the Russian state – one in a Ted Talk and the other in a tweet.

In a written judgment handed down on Monday, Mrs Justice Steyn ruled the threshold for serious harm had only been met in the Ted Talk but that Cadwalladr initially had successfully established a public interest defence under section 4 of the Defamation Act.

The defence fell away after the Electoral Commission found no evidence of law-breaking by Banks with respect to donations but by that time – 29 April 2020 – the court was not satisfied that the continuing publication of the TED Talk caused or was likely to cause serious harm to his reputation.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... xit-russia

[Time_Traveller]

Keir Starmer faces inquiry over alleged breaches of MPs’ code of conduct

Mon 13 Jun 2022

Keir Starmer is being investigated by parliament’s standards commissioner over alleged breaches of the rules on declaring financial interests.

The inquiry into the claim against the Labour leader was opened last week, and relates to earnings and gifts, benefits or hospitality from UK sources.

Starmer has insisted he is confident he has not broken the MPs’ code of conduct, saying “there’s no problem here”.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... of-conduct

[Time_Traveller]

UK economy shrinks as cost of living crisis bites

Mon 13 Jun 2022

The UK economy unexpectedly shrank in April as soaring energy costs and supply chain disruption dragged down manufacturing amid the cost of living crisis, while the winding-down of the NHS test-and-trace service dragged on growth.

In figures highlighting the growing risk of recession, the Office for National Statistics said gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 0.3% on the month, after a 0.1% decline in March as consumers reined in their spending amid soaring household energy bills.

The scaling-back of the government’s Covid vaccination programme and pandemic test-and-trace was the biggest contributor to the monthly fall. Excluding this effect the economy probably grew, although analysts warned there were signs of weakness elsewhere as shortages of key materials and surging costs weigh on activity.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... -inflation

[Time_Traveller]

Plan to scrap Natural England will disrupt net zero targets, experts say

Mon 13 Jun 2022



Discussions about dismantling Natural England have sparked anxiety, with experts fearing this would further damage efforts to protect wildlife and reach net zero.

Campaigners have raised the alarm after spotting the proposal buried in a recent government consultation on nature recovery, which was sent to stakeholders.

Craig Bennett, the chief executive of the Wildlife Trusts, said that “various ministers are a bit obsessed” with absorbing the conservation watchdog into the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), in effect destroying it.

A government spokesperson confirmed that this was being considered, though no firm decisions had been made.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... xperts-say

[wjfox]

Wagwan? Street slang to be Britain’s main dialect

Multicultural London English, which has roots in the capital's migrant communities, could be the future of British English, say experts

13 June 2022 • 9:00pm

Multicultural London English (MLE) could become Britain’s dominant dialect within 100 years, academics have said, as inner-city slang goes mainstream.

The dialect known for terms like “peng” and using “man” as a pronoun emerged among the children of immigrants in the UK’s capital, but the argot of the urban youth could be the future of British English.

MLE is likely to become mainstream in the next 100 years, academics have said, with social media platforms and grime music helping to spread the “multiethnolect” across the UK.

Prof Matt Gardner, a linguistics lecturer at the University of Oxford, said: “Language always changes. We don’t speak in the same way people did in the time of Shakespeare or Chaucer. London, being the economic and cultural centre, drives these changes. We have seen that across the last hundred years, and we will see that across the next 100 years. What we will likely see is this multiethnolect spread geographically close to London, in the south-east, but also in other major cities, and then outwards from those cultural centres.”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/0 ... n-dialect/

[Time_Traveller]

Sturgeon plots alternative route to Scottish independence vote next year

Tue 14 Jun 2022

Nicola Sturgeon plans to stage a fresh Scottish independence vote late next year without authority from Boris Johnson’s government, in a move likely to provoke lengthy legal battles.

The first minister said on Tuesday she would update Holyrood on her plans “very soon indeed” as she released a report claiming Scotland should aspire to match the prosperity rates of small European countries such as Denmark and Ireland after independence.

Sturgeon said she had an electoral mandate to deliver a referendum with or without Westminster’s agreement, and claimed her government had devised a legally secure alternative route to holding one regardless of that approval.

The legislation that set up the Scottish parliament stipulates that Westminster has to authorise any referendum affecting the UK constitution, under a so-called section 30 order.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... -next-year

[Time_Traveller]

UK 'committed' to Rwanda deportations and could exit human rights convention to force them through

Wednesday 15 June 2022

The home secretary has said she is "committed" to a policy of sending asylum seekers more than 4,000 miles away to Rwanda, after an 11th hour decision in the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) blocked last night's planned deportation flight.

Priti Patel said she welcomed decisions made in the UK's domestic courts to remove migrants from the flight, but said it was "disappointing and surprising" to learn of the ECHR's intervention.

Downing Street said the government will do "whatever it takes" to ensure deportation flights to Rwanda go ahead and "all options are on the table" - including leaving the European Convention on Human Rights.

The Rwanda flight - which had up to seven people on board by Tuesday evening - had been due to take off at around 10.30pm from a military airport in Wiltshire but last minute decisions by the ECHR meant all passengers had their tickets cancelled.

https://www.itv.com/news/2022-06-15/uk- ... portations

[Time_Traveller]

Boris Johnson's ethics adviser, Lord Geidt, resigns 'with regret'

Wed, 15 June 2022

Boris Johnson's ethics adviser Lord Geidt has resigned following controversy over whether the Prime Minister broke ministerial code.

Lord Geidt tendered his resignation to the Prime Minister in a short statement on Wednesday.

The brief announcement was published on the UK Government’s website.

“With regret, I feel that it is right that I am resigning from my post as independent adviser on ministers’ interests,” it read.

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/boris-johnson ... 44004.html

[Ozzie guy]

Piers Morgan now has a job in Australian tv talking about Australian political news. I hate that UK celebrity export lol, I don't know if I hate him in a meme sense or for real.

[wjfox]

Piers Morgan now has a job in Australian tv talking about Australian political news. I hate that UK celebrity export lol, I don't know if I hate him in a meme sense or for real.

He's a truly awful human being. Sorry he's dumped himself on your country.

[Time_Traveller]

People arriving in UK on small boats to be electronically tagged

Sat 18 Jun 2022

Some people arriving in the UK in small boats or the back of lorries will be electronically tagged under a 12-month pilot scheme run by the Home Office.

The 12-month pilot, which began on Wednesday, has been launched to test whether electronic monitoring is an effective way to give immigration bail to those who arrive in the country using “unnecessary and dangerous” routes.

The BBC reported the first to be tagged under the bail programme were likely to be those who had avoided being removed to Rwanda.

Enver Solomon, the chief executive of the Refugee Council, said: “It’s appalling that this government is intent on treating men, women and children who have fled war, bloodshed and persecution as criminals.

“This draconian and punitive approach not only shows no compassion for very vulnerable people; it will also do nothing to deter those who are desperately seeking safety in the UK.”

The European court of human rights (ECHR) on Tuesday granted an injunction that resulted in a chartered aircraft to Kigali being unable to depart Wiltshire.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... lly-tagged

[weatheriscool]

Refugees to be electronically tagged and prosecuted if they don't comply (from the UK)
Source: The Independent

Refugees who cross the Channel in small boats to reach the UK are set to be electronically tagged - and prosecuted if they fail to comply - under Home Office plans.

Campaigners and experts have accused ministers of adopting a "draconian and punitive" approach that will see people who have fled conflict and danger treated as "criminals", and of pushing through the plan despite having "no concrete evidence" that it will improve levels of compliance.

A 12-month pilot will see some of those who travel to Britain via what the government terms "unnecessary and dangerous routes" fitted with tags, potentially including those recognised as victims of torture and trafficking, according to new Home Office guidance.

If tagging conditions are breached, asylum seekers may be considered for detention and removal, subject to administrative arrest, or prosecuted, the document states.

Earlier this week, the government was criticised over its controversial Rwanda deportation plan, with a flight scheduled to deport asylum seekers to central Africa being grounded at the last minute after European judges intervened on human rights grounds.

It is understood that some of the 130 asylum seekers who were detained for removal on the flight will be among the first to be fitted with electronic tags, if and when they are released from detention.

Read more: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/h ... 03622.html

Good. The UK needs to control its borders and people don't have a right to break its laws.