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Study finds older adults could face harmful heat stress at just 1.5C of warming above preindustrial levels People aged 60 and over face dangers to their health from exposure to heat at much lower temperatures than previously thought, research has found. Older adults will bear the brunt of increasingly frequent sustained spells of extreme heat globally as the world continues to warm up, according…
Party wants to cut £50bn from UK welfare bill but charity says proposals would cause ‘horrific levels of destitution’ Hundreds of thousands of children would be tipped into poverty and destitution under plans unveiled by Reform UK to slash £50bn a year from the UK benefits bill, campaigners have warned. The warnings came after Reform published plans to drastically reduce disability payments, ban…
Exclusive: Research also finds stark ethnic disparities, and 40% of deaths among group classed as avoidable People living with severe intellectual disabilities are dying 24 years younger on average than the wider population, a study has found, with 40% of such deaths being avoidable. The study also found that within this group, people from minority ethnic backgrounds were dying 14 years younger…
Government concedes ‘significant opposition’ requires new approach on quotas for medium-sized development sites Ministers have dropped plans to relax affordable housing rules for developers in England after a backlash from housing experts who warned it could drastically cut the number of cheaper homes available in rural areas. The government said on Monday it would not go ahead with proposals to…
Roger Cornwell says under government plans, councils will lose some planning powers, and Alan Knight says reducing high-street betting fuels illegal online gambling. Plus a letter from Katrina Kerr In your report ( Burnham to give councils more powers to block vape and betting shops, 10 August ) Angela Rayner is quoted as saying: “We’re giving local leaders the power to say no to what doesn’t…
Grant cancellations at leading research institutions appear to target study of impacts of racism on brain health A new round of scientific grant cancellations has hit brain health and Alzheimer’s disease research at two leading research institutions, Emory University and the University of Pittsburgh. The latest cancellations are the Trump administration ’s most recent effort to remove disfavored…
Parents of Michaela Hall, whose partner killed her after he left prison in 2021, say Probation Service cannot cope with mass release More women will die if ministers include domestic abusers in the early prison release scheme, the parents of a woman murdered by her partner shortly after he was freed have warned. Michaela Hall, a 49-year-old charity worker, was killed in her home in Cornwall, by…
It’s vital that Yvette Cooper’s taskforce acts on the Amos and Ockenden reports – and puts the needs of women and families at the heart of maternity services It is hard to find the words to describe the agony for those who have experienced preventable baby loss, injury or maternal death. Understandably, families who have been through this have campaigned relentlessly for local and national…
Exclusive: With no appointment needed and a relaxed environment, bus clinic encourages more women to be checked It’s 10am on one of the main pedestrian shopping streets in Warrington, and already there’s a queue of women outside a small bus the size of a supermarket delivery van. While some look calm, others are visibly nervous. This is no mobile library, post office or coffee truck – but one…
Angela Rayner to launch guidance for ‘default yes’ on developments near transport hubs, including on green belt sites Thousands more homes could be built within 10 minutes of transport hubs, including on green belt sites, under a loosening of planning policy announced by Angela Rayner on Monday. The housing secretary will set out changes to national planning guidance for England that will include…
James Ellis Ford talks about being diagnosed with leukaemia and how making music helped him through one of the hardest periods of his life He has been described as the music industry’s secret weapon; a producer loved by artists such as Arctic Monkeys, Pulp and Jessie Ware. In 2024, James Ellis Ford was at the height of his career, working with a variety of artists that included some of the world’s…
Robert Jenrick takes aim at disabled people and foreign nationals after saying UK guilty of ‘suicidal empathy’ Reform UK has been accused of excluding the most vulnerable from society and punishing non-Britons living in the UK as it prepared to outline £50bn of cuts to benefits for disabled people and foreign nationals. Robert Jenrick, Reform’s finance spokesperson, will detail the plans for £20bn…
The provision of homes needs to be thought of as a service, not a commodity to be traded. It is vital economic infrastructure, so let’s make it affordable for all London’s city centre has long been a place where rich and poor live side by side, while so many other metropolitan equivalents – Paris, New York, San Francisco – remain the preserve of the rich. It maintains its mix today: in many inner…
Readers reflect on how hospital closures are putting pregnant women’s lives at risk The situation facing pregnant women in Devon and Cornwall following the closure of North Devon district hospital is not unique ( ‘Babies will be born in laybys’: maternity cuts leave women with stark choices in Devon, 10 August ). Many rural areas have already seen the distances travelled in labour increase due to…
Hazel Davis responds to a letter about the regulation and ethics of surrogacy I wish to respond to Lexi Ellingsworth’s letter ( Regulation cannot eliminate surrogacy risks, 23 July ). I gave birth to a baby for my friends in January. While the baby is living with its parents, my husband and I are the legal parents. We are waiting for our family court date in September to recognise the baby’s…
Exclusive: Government review led by former minister to recommend huge expansion of onsite schemes for those who need support Specialist internships designed to secure work for young people with special educational needs should be put on “turbocharge” to help tackle the growing youth jobs crisis, a government review is to propose. Alan Milburn who is leading a review of young people and work, said…
Housing secretary says developers will have to prove there is no way to save pub, as she prepares planning shake-up All pubs will get protection from being turned into housing or offices under a shake-up of planning laws in England to be presented by Angela Rayner this week. The housing secretary will publish a new national planning policy framework aimed at loosening planning laws even further to…
New rules could affect nine in 10 rental properties in duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster and at Sandringham King Charles and Prince William could be forced to spend up to £10m upgrading hundreds of rental properties on their private estates to meet planned energy-efficiency rules. The government has announced that landlords will need to ensure their properties have energy performance certificate…
With questions over Farage’s finances and a new face in No 10, could Barnsley council be a bellwether for changing Labour fortunes? Labour marked its worst performance in more than 50 years when voters went to the polls in Barnsley in May, but 100 days on from those seismic local elections, the political landscape has shifted drastically. Could the South Yorkshire town, where Reform UK reaped the…
Summerhall, Edinburgh Every comment sparks suspicion in Oisín Kearney’s bold play about a meeting between a mother and a social worker If you book a seat for Good With Faces you might only use the edge of it. This is a hugely assured psychological thriller, performed with just the right precision and edge. It is written and directed by Oisín Kearney, whose collaborations with Michael Patrick…
Conservative authority says site is not safe for vulnerable people charity serves or general public Westminster council is making it “impossible” for soup kitchens to operate by complaining about the “crowds of vulnerable people” who turn up to be fed, a charity has said. Steven Stuart, who founded Friends of Essex & London Homeless (FOELH) with his wife, Cheryl, a decade ago, said constant…
Anna Bird reflects on Matilda Davis’s story and says families need support early – before exhaustion becomes a crisis Matilda Davis’s story should force us to confront an uncomfortable truth and something that parent carers tell us every day: for too many families raising disabled children, the care system fails to care ( Matilda in pieces: what one mother’s suicide reveals about the carers broken…
'I know my age group has called the young lazy, entitled snowflakes,' says Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee, who has been writing for the Guardian for nearly 50 years. 'But I know whose side I’m on and it’s not my own generation’s.' Polly believes that the social contract between younger and older generations has been broken, with gen Z and millennials set to be worse off than their parents in the…
The Reform UK leader resigned as the MP for Clacton at the start of July and forced a byelection The number of patients in England being cared for in hospital corridors or makeshift areas has remained above 3,000 a day for the second month in a row, as the NHS experiences a “summer surge” , the Press Association reports. This was happening as A&E attendance numbers reached 2.5m in July – higher…
When he saw a messy yard being criticised on social media, Stephen Jalland grabbed his trimmer and decided to help. An overgrown garden, he discovered, often hides an overwhelmed owner Anita Thursby had been dreading the gas engineer coming to service her boiler. They would have needed to enter her kitchen, where the window looked into the jungle of swirling, 2-metre-high brambles that made up her…
A spokesperson for the human rights group likened the proposal to ‘financial brutality with British taxpayers’ money’ Farage and Yusuf are now taking questions. Q: [From Jack Fenwick from the BBC] Are there other countries where you might send foreign offenders? And how much would this cost? We have to admit that there might not be too many colour TVs. It’s not going to be a summer camp. It’s not…
My friend Richard Poole, who has died aged 81, worked for humanitarian aid organisations, most notably International Voluntary Services, American Refugee Committee and Trócaire of Ireland, between 1970 and 2015, progressing through the ranks to hold country and regional director posts and international consultancies in his later years. As a result he lived and worked in many troubled zones,…
Black people are more prominent than ever in the UK’s politics and culture. But are they overwhelmingly from the middle class, as Brown argues in his new book? And if so, why isn’t anyone talking about it? Symeon Brown and David Lammy went to the same primary school in Tottenham, north London. One went on to a selective secondary school, and became the second black person to hold one of Britain’s…
Alan Milburn has outlined a generation cut adrift by austerity. We must grasp the nettle and rebuild a preventive state Most people think Britain is not working as it should. For young people, the situation is at its most acute: only one in four believe that everyone in society has a fair crack . Most think the game is rigged. It is clear why the generation who grew up during the post-2008 crash…
Serious failings by one academic, and his bosses at the University of Cambridge, should not be allowed to undermine wider progressive goals Jason Arday’s resignation from the University of Cambridge on Wednesday marked a full stop of sorts, but not an end to the furore surrounding his promotion to a professorship at the age of 37. Academic colleagues have demanded, with justification, that an…
Official action by regulator for England and Wales comes after formal complaint made by Labour MP about the funds An official investigation has been launched into charities in England and Wales donating funds to illegal Israeli settlements in Palestine. The Charity Commission will aim to establish the amount of charitable funds going to illegal settlements, whether the spending was in furtherance…
I am hanging on to a product that makes people I loathe more super-rich while they trash the world There is so much talk of all the lonely people in the world right now that the pervasive state of loneliness is being called an epidemic. I don’t think that is an overstatement. I see loneliness around me all of the time. Everywhere. Not just in the faces of rough sleepers who look up at passers-by…
