Jacob Rees-Mogg’s Tory fantasy of a post-Brexit bonfire of regulations is coming true. Our bodies and ecosystems will pay the price
It’s what the extreme right of the Tory party wanted from Brexit: to tear down crucial public protections, including those that defend us from the most brutal and dangerous forms of capital. The Conservatives lost office before they were able to do their worst. But never mind, because Labour has now picked up the baton.
A month ago, so quietly that most of us missed it, the government published a consultation on deregulating chemicals. While most consultations last for 12 weeks, this one runs for eight, half of which cover the holiday period – it closes on 18 August. The intention is set out at the beginning: to reduce “costs to business”. This, as repeated statements by Keir Starmer make clear, means tearing up the rules.
Home Office orders diversion from usual landing place to Ramsgate to avoid clashes with far right
Charities have warned of the increasing danger to asylum seekers posed by far-right protesters after small boat arrivals were moved from their usual landing place in Dover to further along the coast to avoid clashes.
The Guardian understands that Home Office officials received intelligence that some of those participating in what was billed the Great British National Protest in Dover on Saturday afternoon could have been planning to target Kent Intake Unit, where small boat arrivals are initially processed after being escorted to shore in Dover by the Border Force.
Forty people who have been offered scholarships unable to travel without biometric data they have no way of getting
Pressure is mounting on ministers to intervene on behalf of 40 students in Gaza who have been offered full scholarships to study at UK universities, but are unable to take up their places this September because of government red tape.
A high-level meeting is understood to have taken place at the Home Office on Tuesday after MPs and campaigners highlighted the students’ plight, calling on ministers to take action to help secure their safe passage to the UK. Some students are reported to have been killed while waiting, while others are said to be in constant danger.
Operator says if rivals are allowed to squeeze into existing facilities it could jeopardise its investment
Eurostar has urged the UK government to choose a “credible long-term strategy” for international rail or risk “falling behind” the rest of Europe, before a crucial decision by the regulator that could end its cross-Channel monopoly.
The high-speed train operator warned that a “premature” ruling from the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) to allow competitors to squeeze trains into existing facilities could jeopardise its planned investment and expansion.
Turn this summer favourite into a savoury lunchtime tart or a warm spiced bake
Summer courgettes seem to multiply faster than we can cook them, and demand a little more of our love from June through to August. But despite their unruliness as a crop, they are mild-mannered in flavour, a culinary chameleon that partners with a wide range of tastes. From the umami punch of parmesan to the fragrant cut-through of citrus, and from the warmth of cinnamon to the char of the barbecue, these green gourds can be used in myriad ways, shining in sweet and savoury contexts alike.
Palau, a country of just 18,000, is considering a draft agreement to resettle ‘third country nationals’ from the US
The Trump administration has requested that the small Pacific nation of Palau accept asylum seekers currently residing in the US, amid a wider push from the US to deport migrants to countries they are not from.
Palau, a country of about 18,000 that lies just east of the Philippines, is considering a draft agreement to resettle “third country nationals” from the US who “may seek protection and against return to their home country”. The draft agreement does not detail how many individuals may be sent to Palau, nor what the Pacific nation would receive in return.
Petrostates and well-funded lobbyists at UN-hosted talks are derailing a deal to cut plastic production and protect people and the planet
Being surrounded and yelled at about “misrepresenting reality” is not how serious United Nations-hosted negotiations are meant to proceed. But that is what happened to Prof Bethanie Carney Almroth during talks about a global treaty to slash plastic pollution in Ottawa, Canada. The employees of a large US chemicals company “formed a ring” around her, she says.
At another event in Ottawa, Carney Almroth was “harassed and intimidated” by a plastic packaging representative, who barged into the room and shouted that she was fearmongering and pushing misinformation. That meeting was an official event organised by the UN. “So I filed the harassment reports with the UN,” said Carney Almroth. “The guy had to apologise, and then he left the meeting. He was at the next meeting.”
She was Saturday Night Live’s oldest hire, then faced a torrent of abuse after her role in the Ghostbusters reboot. She talks about the deaths of her mum, dad and brother – and why she’s given up dating men
It’s early evening in a photography studio in west London, and the American comedian Leslie Jones is capering about, dressed in a full-length gold lamé ballgown and smoking. “Make me look skinny,” she says to the photographer’s departing back.
“I’m 6ft tall – I can’t cut my feet off,” she says, later. “I can’t stop being a scary motherfucker. This is who I am – let me work with who I am.” Yet, she is the opposite of scary. Statuesque, no question, but whatever she’s doing, whether peering into a bag of fish and chips as if it’s alive, or telling her assistant to read The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho’s trust-the-universe novel, for the 100th time, there is always somebody laughing. She brings an air of deliberate chaos, which you just have to surrender to, wherever the conversation leads, until you find yourself nodding along with the most crackpot conclusion. (The birthrate is low because men spend too much time in hot tubs, and their sperm has become lazy and complacent? “It’s funny, but it’s true. Go look that shit up – I’m not saying something that’s not factual. I hope.”)
Britain’s car and whisky industries set for boost while India gets visa concessions, but some sensitive issues unresolved
India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, is visiting London to sign a landmark free trade agreement between his country and the UK, a pact viewed as a political and economic prize amid global trade tensions unleashed by the US president, Donald Trump.
For Britain, eager to score a post-Brexit win, the deal is its most economically significant trade agreement since leaving the EU. For India, it marks its first major free trade pact outside Asia. For both, analysts say, the agreement signals a long-term economic partnership.
Atrocious dialogue, ludicrous plot, nausea-inducing love scenes: this adaptation of Esi Edugyan’s novel about the era of transatlantic slavery is highly wobbly. Luckily, it’s also highly watchable
Esi Edugyan’s 2018 novel Washington Black is an unorthodox, steampunk-infused account of the era when transatlantic slavery cast a dark shadow over much of the world. Its hero is George Washington Black – or Wash for short – a Black boy of 11, growing up on a Barbados plantation. He becomes the protege of a well-meaning white scientist, Titch (who happens to be the brother of Wash’s merciless master, Erasmus). Together they work on crafting the “Cloud Cutter”, an experimental airship that offers them an escape from the plantation when Wash is accused of murder – but which crashes over the Atlantic during a storm. Spoiler alert: the pair make it out of that episode alive, with Wash fleeing to Virginia, and later Canada.
A Guardian review described scenes from the novel as “[unfolding] with a Tarantino-esque savagery”, and the book doesn’t shy away from graphic depictions of violence and suicide, nor frequent use of the N-word. It is also described as having a “fairytale atmosphere” – something the Disney-owned Hulu homed in on above all else. As a TV series, Washington Black feels less like a grownup drama and more like the sort of quasi-historical show that teachers play to their pupils as an end-of-term treat.
Archaeologists and volunteers identify Sanday timbers as from 18th-century Royal Navy frigate turned whaler
When a schoolboy running on a beach on the island of Sanday in Orkney last year came across the timbers of a shipwreck that had been exposed after a storm, local people knew the ship might have an intriguing history.
Residents of the tiny island at the edge of the Scottish archipelago are familiar with ships that have come to grief in stormy seas, hundreds of shipwrecks having been recorded there over the centuries.
Standup has become an escape for many as the conflict drags on, and comics see dark humour as part of their mission to ‘stop people going crazy’
Anton Tymoshenko is exhausted. Ukraine’s most famous standup comedian – Volodymyr Zelenskyy doesn’t count, since he is the president – has just returned from a gruelling European tour, involving 36 shows in 50 days. He played in Berlin, Paris and London. And Birmingham, where Tymoshenko tried unsuccessfully to buy Peaky Blinders merchandise.
His audiences were made up of Ukrainians living abroad, many refugees. The tour raised nearly half a million dollars, all of which will go to Ukraine’s armed forces.
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