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Gemma McSherry
Workers in Scotland have received a new offer to try to end the ongoing strike.
Scottish council cleaning staff across much of the country are on strike over pay disputes with local authorities.
A strike in Edinburgh has left litter, including food waste, piling up on the streets during the Edinburgh Festival Strip, the city’s busiest time of year, and is due to end on Wednesday while staff from the Scottish authorities took action over the weekend with a further stretch planned for next week.
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has faced backlash after attending a series of events and public appearances while Scottish residents have been in what Scottish Labour’s business manager Neil Bibby describe as “streets full of rubbish”.
“The First Minister must properly fund councils and ensure fair treatment for council workers and put an end to this chaos, as well as use the powers she has to help Scots struggling with rising bills,” added Bibby .
Sturgeon traveled to Copenhagen on Friday to officially open the Scottish government’s Nordic office and made several appearances at festivals in Edinburgh.
Peter Walker
Ministers must act immediately on rising energy prices to prevent people being hit with a “lethal cocktail” of high inflation and recession, said Alistair Darling, the Labor chancellor during the collapse banking of 2008.
With Liz Truss, Boris Johnson’s expected successor, still refusing to set out what extra help she might give families to pay the bills, Darling said a key lesson from the 2008 crash was that action it had to be fast and radical.
“You need something big and substantial and you need it now, because people’s bills will start coming in in a few weeks,” Darling, who served as chancellor under Gordon Brown, told BBC Radio 4’s Today program .
“If you don’t, you have the risks I’ve been describing, that the economy will fall into recession, with all that entails. And when you have that on top of the fact that you already have inflation at very, very high levels that we haven’t seen since the 1970s, that’s a lethal cocktail, so it needs bold action from the government. now, not playing around with small measures that frankly won’t make any difference.”
The Home Office pays £2m to pick up people trying to cross the Channel
Rob Davies
The Home Office is paying a private company £2m over six months to hire boats and crew to pick up people trying to cross the Channel, amid tension with the Royal Navy over its role in the Priti plans Patel to deter asylum seekers.
Contract disclosures published on a government portal show Aeolian Offshore, which is based on the Isle of Wight and normally serves the offshore wind industry, has provided three vessels.
Details of the outsourcing plan were published as the number of people crossing the channel in small boats hit a new record, despite the government’s controversial plan to deter them with a deal with Rwanda to deport them alone ·asylum seekers in the central African state.
According to the contract with Aeolian, its three vessels will work in 12-hour shifts, departing from Ramsgate, Kent, and sailing to “reported sightings of migrant vessels, to pick up migrants found”.
The boats, which usually have space for 12 passengers and three crew, must be able to accommodate a “minimum of 100 migrants” on deck, he says, as well as tow any boat that the people they pick up have used to cross the Channel.
Updated at 12.44pm BST
Andrew Gregory
In a TV studio in Stoke-on-Trent last month, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak traded blows about everything from the credit card economy to Channel migrants and accessories chain Claire’s. The list of problems the couple faced was dizzyingly long.
There was one glaring omission, however. In the hour-long debate, there was not a single mention of the NHS, despite being embroiled in its biggest crisis yet. The NHS now shares the same traits as many of those who rely on it to keep them alive and well: it is large, has multiple co-morbidities and needs urgent emergency care. The summer has left him on his knees. Worse is expected this winter.
“The new prime minister will inherit an NHS in the worst state in living memory,” says Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, which represents the health system in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. “There is no escaping the fact that the NHS is in a state of crisis.”
The facts, he says, speak for themselves. “There are 105,000 vacancies. A&Es are full of people. Around one in seven hospital beds are occupied by patients who cannot be discharged. Some patients have had to wait more than 40 hours for an ambulance. Care is put at risk by abandoned buildings due to underinvestment. And then there are the waiting lists, which run into the millions across elective care, mental health and community care.”
Jeremy Hunt, the chairman of the health and social care committee, is equally worried. “The new Prime Minister will inherit an NHS that is facing the worst crisis in its history,” he warns. “Health services, ambulances, general practice and social care are at serious risk across the country.”
The overarching problem for the new Downing Street incumbent is that, while in previous years problems in the NHS were focused on specific areas, today the whole house is on fire.
Outgoing Prime Minister Boris Johnson is to ask his successor not to forgo investment in green energy in favor of quick fixes to the spiraling cost of living crisis, according to the Daily Telegraph.
Johnson is understood to argue in a farewell message that Britain can deal with future energy crises as it pursues its net zero targets while supporting those struggling to pay for their heating.
The Telegraph reports:
His comments will be seen as a warning to Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak to maintain their ambition to build a new nuclear reactor every year and ensure a fivefold increase in offshore wind power by 2030, accounting for almost half of consumption total UK electricity.
It will be particularly relevant for Ms. Truss, who has pledged to suspend green fees on energy bills and insisted that while he supports the current target of reaching net zero by 2050, it must be done “in a way that it does not harm”. companies or consumers”.
Mrs Truss, the favorite to become Prime Minister on Tuesday week, is also considering a possible five per cent cut in VAT and increasing personal income tax allowances to help offsetting cost of living pressures on families.
Updated at 12.41pm BST
Conservative leader Liz Truss will declare China an official “threat” to UK national security for the first time, according to a report published in The Times this morning.
He is planning a tougher approach to Beijing and, according to the foreign secretary’s allies, would elevate China to a similar status to Russia, which is currently defined as an “acute threat”.
The foreign secretary has pledged to reshape foreign policy if she becomes prime minister, The Times reported, adding that she has pledged to reopen an integrated review, published last year, which set out the British priorities in diplomacy and defense over the next decade.
Aubrey Allegretti
Boris Johnson is “hoping to do a Berlusconi” and make a “populist comeback” in Downing Street after being ousted by his own MPs, according to a former Tory cabinet minister.
In an interview with The Guardian, Rory Stewart said people needed to be reminded that Johnson was forced to step down, over a series of scandals, because some supporters wanted Johnson to “come back”.
Several of Johnson’s allies believe his detractors will regret ousting him from office when his successor takes over, and will write off the poor polls as midterm blues.
But some Tory MPs have privately expressed concern that the party could be on the verge of losing the next general election, partly because of the damage done by Johnson, evidenced by a series of by-election losses and his failure to hold the leadership of the surveys from December 2021.
Stewart, who is standing against Johnson in the 2019 Tory leadership election, called Johnson “dangerous” and said “there are people who want him back”.
He added: “I think we need to remind people why he left. He should have gone much, much earlier. What he did was deeply, deeply shameful and dangerous.”
Meanwhile, Alistair Darling has argued that the government must take bold action to tackle spiraling energy prices to avoid a “lethal cocktail” of recession and high inflation.
The former Labor chancellor told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:
You need something big and substantial and you need it now, because people’s bills will start coming in in a few weeks. If you don’t, you have the risks I’ve been describing, that the economy will fall into recession with all that that entails.
And when you have that on top of the fact that you already have inflation at very, very high levels that we haven’t seen since the 1970s, that’s a lethal cocktail, so it needs bold action from the government. now, not playing around with little measures that frankly won’t make any difference.
Darling said the lesson he learned from the 2008 financial crisis was that the government needed to do “more than people expect” as he called for more action to tackle rising oil prices. energy
Added:
One lesson I learned from what happened in 2008 is that you have to do more than people expect and you have to do it faster than people expect if it’s going to work.
It will cost money. When I announced the package in 2008, when the banking crisis happened, it totaled around £500…