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China
Express
Britain risks “taking for granted” its historic relationship with the Commonwealth while China is making a deliberate effort to replace us, Rishi Sunak has been warned.
MP Daniel Kawczynski, one of the Prime Minister’s trade envoys, wants the UK to agree major deals with Caribbean nations to prevent them reducing links.
He sees this as urgent with a number of countries where King Charles is head of state considering becoming republics – following the lead of Barbados in 2021.
Its Prime Minister, Mia Amor Mottley, met with China’s Premier Li Qiang in Beijing in June as the nation turns away from its traditional ties.
Mr Kawczynski, who chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Group on St Kitts and Nevis, said: “This is a shot across the bows of how we can no longer afford to take these Caribbean nations for granted, or underestimate the increasing effect from China.”
In a memo to the Foreign Office, the Shrewsbury and Atcham MP said: “We are in a race with China over political and economic influence across the Caribbean, and we need to demonstrate to nations that we understand their priorities and are working towards incorporating them in a new bilateral trading partnership.”
It comes after the UK agreed in July to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, an Asia-Pacific trade bloc made up of 11 other countries including Commonwealth nations Australia and New Zealand.
NHS
Express
Rishi Sunak has been warned the NHS is “at huge risk” of an attack by terrorists plotting to use cutting edge technology as the “ultimate weapon” to inflict damage Britain’s health service.
The Prime Minister has demonstrated his awareness of the seriousness of the issue by announcing plans to host the world’s first summit on artificial intelligence (AI) later this year.
But Steven Mooney, CEO of online investment platform FundMyPitch, believes Britain is already lagging behind when it comes to AI investment – and may reap the whirlwind unless the Government ups its game.
Mr Mooney told Express.co.uk: “Britain is a falling way behind when it comes to investment in AI.
“Our country is home to hundreds of up-and-coming companies, yet the majority of them are being starved of investment and struggling to get the financial support they need to grow.
“We need a complete overhaul of the way we approach tech investment, recognising that the skills of these entrepreneurs is key not only to the future of our economy, but protecting critical national infrastructure like the NHS.”
Concrete
Guardian
England’s growing buildings crisis could expand beyond schools to other public buildings such as hospitals and courts, experts have said.
More than 100 schools were forced to partially or fully close this week after a dramatic escalation of the government’s approach towards crumbling concrete.
Labour has demanded an urgent audit of the government’s handling of longstanding concerns about reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac).
The Labour MP Meg Hillier, who chairs the public accounts committee, said Raac was “the tip of the iceberg” of maintenance issues within the school estate.
Writing for the Times, she said the state of some public buildings was “jaw-dropping”.
She questioned why the situation had been “left to deteriorate for so long”, telling Times Radio: “In both schools and hospitals, there hasn’t been enough money going into buildings and equipment.”
She said the costs of working around the problems – using props to support existing structures and conducting surveys on affected areas – were “eye-watering and wasteful when you think about the problems in the NHS at the moment”.
Mirror
Up to 7,000 at-risk schools have yet to be checked for crumbling concrete as ministers scrambled to get a grip on the crisis.
And this newspaper understands that on Monday an army of structural engineers will be dispatched to inspect hundreds of schools built between the 1950s and 1990s, which may have used reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) in their construction.
It comes after 104 schools and colleges were told by the Department for Education (DfE) to partially or fully shut buildings just as pupils prepare to return after the summer holidays – with many more expected to follow. But the Department for Education had still last night failed to publish the list of schools that had closed, or give a figure for those at risk.
ITV News
Parliament will return on Monday with the lightweight concrete crisis preventing pupils heading back to their classrooms high on their agenda.
The Department for Education (DfE) said Education Secretary Gillian Keegan is due to inform Parliament “of the plan to keep parents and the public updated on the issue”.
Labour is planning to force a vote to compel the Government to reveal the extent to which reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac) is affecting public buildings.
The Government has said it will publish a list of schools “in due course”, but Labour said it plans to put forward a humble address – an arcane parliamentary mechanism which can be used to demand papers from government departments – to force the publication of a list of affected schools.
Sun
GILLIAN Keegan has promised parents there will be no “return to the dark days of school lockdowns” because of the dodgy concrete crisis.
Families have seen the start of term thrown into chaos after dangerous building material was discovered in 156 schools across England.
Kids face a return to zoom lessons at home, being moved into other schools or taught in marquees in playgrounds while the crisis is dealt with.
The Education Secretary said disrupting the opening of schools was the “very last thing I wanted to do” – but she had no choice.
Writing exclusively in The Sun on Sunday, she said: “I understand how important the start of each new school year is for families across this country
“So no one should be under any illusions over how carefully we took the decision to close even a small number of classrooms.
“The simple fact is we had no choice.
“As Secretary of State for Education my first duty is to protect the safety of pupils, teachers and school workers across this country.
“But I want to reassure families that this is not a return to the dark days of school lockdowns.”
Independent
The scandal over schools built with crumbling concrete escalated overnight amid fears that asbestos could be exposed in some of the sites affected.
Asbestos and reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) often exist in the same building and at least 80 per cent of schools have asbestos present, according to The Sunday Times.
“Asbestos in schools presents a significant complicating factor in remediating issues relating to RAAC. Asbestos, once disturbed, is a serious hazard,” John Wallace, managing director of Ridgemont, a specialist estate law firm in London, told the paper.
Concerns about RAAC were raised years ago and a whistleblower, a former civil servant in the Department for Education, has accused ministers of being “dangerously complacent” on school safety.
Observer
A senior civil service whistleblower has told the Observer that Tory ministers and their political advisers were “dangerously complacent” about crumbling school buildings constructed with aerated concrete, and that they were more concerned with saving money than improving safety.
The source, who worked in the private office of Nadhim Zahawi, the then education secretary, saw regular alerts crossing his desk. He said ministers and special advisers were “trying to get away with spending as little as they could” and hoping to “make do” rather than treating the problem with the urgency it required.
The insider, who no longer works in the Department for Education, said he had seen four or five detailed “submissions” from other civil servants to ministers and advisers on the specific issue of “reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete” Raac, in the space of a few months in early 2022.
Raac is a lightweight, bubbly form of concrete, usually found in roofs and occasionally walls and floors, and was used in many schools that were built from the 1950s to the 1990s. It looks like standard concrete but is weaker and less durable than the traditional reinforced material.
Mail
Thousands of more schools could be at risk from crumbly concrete with safety checks yet to be carried out, it has been revealed.
It comes as fears continue to mount that children could be forced to return to lockdown style learning, while others warned that asbestos could be exposed in schools affected by the issue.
Asbestos exposure – which kills 5,000 people in the UK every year – could force schools to shut for months on end, experts have warned, with some even having to be demolished early.
With the new school year starting this week, more than 100 have been told by the Department of Education they will need to remain partially closed after being built with the aerated concrete, known as RAAC. As many as 24 could close entirely.
Meanwhile, hundreds of engineers are set to scramble to schools tomorrow to inspect risky sites. It is thought up to 7,000 pose a threat.
The timing of the catastrophe – and the suggestion the Government has known about the true scale of the crisis for years – has infuriated parents with some pupils facing a return to Covid-style online lessons on Monday.
Mosque
Mail
Bungling civil servants had to urgently freeze a £2 million grant they gave to an infamous mosque that has a decades-long history of alleged extremism and hate speech, The Mail on Sunday has been told.
The Green Lane Mosque in Birmingham was awarded the money to build a youth centre, despite its imams being filmed giving sermons on how to stone a woman ‘correctly’ for adultery and delivering speeches that appear to incite murder of homosexuals.
The mosque was once featured in a Channel 4 documentary where one firebrand imam was filmed preaching violent jihad against ‘the kuffar’, a derogatory term for unbelievers.
Officials had transferred £77,000 to the mosque before an anti-extremism group called Focus on Western Islamism (FWI) raised the alarm. The rest of the award was halted when FWI appeared to present evidence showing how the mosque’s clerics promoted hate speech.
The £2.2 million grant was offered by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), from a £300 million pot set up to fund youth centres across Britain.
Missing votes
Guardian
British democracy is being “warped” by an unfair system for drawing constituency boundaries that ignores millions of “missing voters” and hugely benefits the Tories, according to a new study of official data.
Analysis by the political commentator and pollster Peter Kellner shows that if constituencies were determined according to the size of their populations rather than the number of registered voters – as happens in most other advanced democracies – then the number of extra Labour seats created would cut the Tories’ Commons majority by 22.
Using the latest population figures and demographic data released last month by the House of Commons and the latest data for registered voters, Kellner concludes that Labour suffers in a way that clearly damages its chances of election success.
“A 22-seat variation in a close election could well be decisive. Indeed, the bias in the present system helped the Tories over the line in three of the last four general elections.” Explaining his findings to the Observer, he said: “We have known for years that millions of eligible adults are omitted from the electoral register.
“The new data show how this distorts election results. The missing voters are concentrated in the most ethnically diverse areas with large numbers of young voters and those who rent their homes. These are the areas that overwhelmingly elect Labour MPs. This means that Labour MPs represent on average 114,000 residents, while Conservative MPs represent just 97,000.
Police
Mail
Home Secretary Suella Braverman has announced a crackdown on ‘woke’ policing – ordering a watchdog to review ‘political activism and impartiality’ within forces across the country.
Ms Braverman has told His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue services (HMICFRS) to probe what she describes as an ‘unacceptable rise in police partisanship’ – amid images of officers taking the knee and wearing badges in support of ‘social justice’ causes.
Speaking to the Telegraph, she claimed that public confidence in the police was being ‘eroded and needlessly damaged’ by ‘politicised’ officers, and that the review would examine whether activism was affecting their ability to police effectively.
But the demand comes just months after a damning report into the UK’s biggest police force, the Metropolitan Police, which found the force was ‘institutionally racist, sexist and homophobic‘.
Policing unions and opposition parties have also hit out at Ms Braverman – known for her outspoken ‘anti-woke’ views – accusing her of using the police as a ‘political football’.
ULEZ
Mail
A fleet of Ulez camera vans have been deployed in a fresh bid to catch charge dodgers.
Drivers whose vehicles don’t meet the emissions standards who refuse to pay the £12.50 could now be caught out by cameras mounted on vans.
Mobile units have been spotted on the approach to Heathrow, hidden next to a sign near the Western Perimeter Roundabout checking vehicles as they come off the M25.
The west London airport is now within the Ulez zone following the Mayor’s expansion of the scheme which took effect on Tuesday.
It comes amid a large wave of attacks on CCTV units, with over 500 of the 2,700 ANPR cameras reported to have been destroyed or disconnected by anti-Ulez vigilantes.
According to TfL’s data protection impact assessment, the new mobile units can be move between boroughs on any given day, so can be deployed to high non-compliance spots – such as outside Britain’s busiest airport.
Although they can’t catch number plates while moving, they detect vehicles which haven’t complied with the rules from the roadside.
The vans are marked with a camera symbol on the rear doors along with the blue TfL roundel.
Telegraph
Sadiq Khan’s ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) will not help to reach his goal of achieving net zero by 2030, leading independent experts have warned.
They argued that the number of non-compliant cars is likely to fall only by a relatively “small number” and would likely have happened anyway because of new industry standards.
Using Ulez to achieve net zero would take “more than a century”, said one of the experts, who have produced a new report at Oxford Economics, the world’s foremost independent economic advisory firm.
On Tuesday, the Mayor of London introduced the controversial scheme, with motorists in Greater London paying £12.50 a day if their vehicles do not meet strict emissions standards.
It is part of his plans to improve the health of those living in the capital and achieve his 2030 net zero target.
Speaking to The Telegraph, Richard Holt, the director of global cities research at Oxford Economics, said of the future fall in the number of non-compliant cars in London: “I think it would have happened anyway.
“It’s going to cut the number of high polluting vehicles by about 120,000 or less, out of three million vehicles in London, so it’s a small part of the overall story.
Mail
Thousands of ‘illegal’ Ulez signs could spark court challenges by drivers caught in the clean air scheme, lawyers have warned.
Drivers entering the Ultra Low Emission Zone, which last week was expanded to cover all of London’s 32 boroughs, must pay a daily charge of £12.50 if their vehicles do not comply.
But experts say the green and white signs marking the beginning of the Ulez area are legally non-compliant as they do not explicitly warn drivers of the charge.
Road traffic lawyer Nick Freeman said: ‘The signs tell you that you are entering a Ulez zone, but they do not tell you what the consequences are.
‘They don’t tell you that you are going to be charged for it.’
Mr Freeman said the signs did not comply with the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 and the Traffic Signs and Regulations and General Directions Act 2016.
The legislation states that traffic signs must warn motorists they are entering a charging area and provide them with the times of this charge, like those used for the London Congestion Charge.
He added: ‘The Congestion Charge zone signs are unambiguous.
‘They tell you that you are entering a charging zone.
‘But the Ulez signs tell you that you are entering a zone, which is not sufficient.’
A previous case involving Noel Wilcox, a scaffolder who was fined £11,500 for not paying seven Low Emission Zone (Lez) tickets, could now cause a huge legal setback for Sadiq Khan.
Mr Wilcox’s fines were cancelled after he successfully argued in court that Transport for London’s (TfL) Lez signs – which are identical to those used for Ulez – did not warn motorists they were entering a charge zone or that it was applicable 24 hours a day.
Submarines
Mail
Every British nuclear attack submarine is in port – leaving this country unprotected from Russian vessels loitering off the UK.
The Mail on Sunday can reveal that not one of the six available Royal Navy attack boats is at sea, with most docked awaiting repairs.
Fixing the submarines is taking longer due to shortages of naval engineers and dry dock facilities.
The shocking situation has emerged as military novice Grant Shapps, who has no Armed Forces experience or expertise, was chosen to become Defence Secretary.
The alarming capability gap, which effectively offers the Kremlin’s submarines the freedom of the North Atlantic, is one of many maritime issues which Mr Shapps must confront. The Royal Navy also has a chronic shortage of destroyers and frigates – with only ’11 or 12′ available for operations, according to the Chief of the Defence Staff, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin.
The five Astute-class submarines unavailable are HMS Astute, Ambush, Artful, Audacious and Anson. The unavailable Trafalgar-class boat is HMS Triumph.
Heroes
Mail
Downing Street is drawing fresh battle lines in the woke wars by passing laws to stop British heroes being removed from street names.
It comes as the Labour administration in Wales plans to rename roads and buildings honouring Winston Churchill and Horatio Nelson.
An ‘anti-racist Wales action plan’ published by First Minister Mark Drakeford, which pledges to ‘review and decolonise our public spaces’, has raised the possibility of changing addresses such as Caerphilly’s Churchill Park and Nelson Street in Chepstow.
An ‘audit of commemoration’, part of the anti-racism plan, identified 204 ‘persons of interest’, 57 monuments, 93 public buildings and 442 street names with ‘red-amber-green colour-coding’ for ‘distinctions of certainty and/or culpability’.
Grant Schapps a novice. No, we would never have guessed that would we. Has someone only just realised that the majority of our government ministers are novices in every sense of the word, and have no experience at all in the departments which they supposedly run. I have absolutely no time whatsoever for Grant Schapps at all as he comes across as a bumbling idiot at the best of times, but he has only just been in post for a few days, so how anyone can shoulder the blame on him for having our entire Nuclear submarine fleet in port because of repairs. I have no faith in him sorting that particular problem out because he is the sort of politician that nobody takes seriously and makes one want to laugh at everything that comes out of his mouth, literally. However, what has Ben Wallace been doing in post to sort this problem out I would ask, and what indeed has the man at the very top of government been been doing about this issue and the multitude of other important issues that are presently going haywire in our midst. Lets us be brutally frank about the Conservative Party and its governments over the years shall we. They have embarked on a concerted programme of dismantling our armed forces whether it be the Army, Navy or the Airforce by starving those services of monies and men, they have largely dismantled our police service to the point where it no longer serves the public and it has dismantled our Border Force which used to be called HM Immigration Service to the point where illegal migrants can waltz into the country unchallenged, and where it takes ages to decide an asylum claim because effectively they are working out of a disused BT phone box, or so it seems. Still, our prime minister has got his priorities right hasn’t he. Whilst the metaphorical ‘Rome’ burns he is passing the time of day at Balmoral being wined and dined and attending the local church with King Charles. This Conservative government are the absolute pits, but we’ve known this for some time now, but in all seriousness we need to be rid of it sooner rather than later, and really cannot wait for this occur until the next general election.
From https://www.cross-safety.org/uk/safety-information/cross-safety-report/aerated-concrete-slabs-55
In about 1970, a reporter was responsible for a fairly large steel framed portal shed type building with 175mm thick proprietary precast autoclaved aerated concrete slabs spanning 4.5m between rafters. The joints between units had a small keyway filled with fine concrete and a short continuity bar (about 8mm diameter) over supports. During the erection process, some of the slabs failed whilst being walked on and two men fell and were severely injured.
Ronan Points if he had a finger.
As Viv wrote, this is nothing new, but does make a Squirrel distraction.
Look around you folks our world is crumbling away in every respect, yet we can fund Nazi’s, you know where.
Back in the 1970s a high alumina cement had been used on many buildings. A student working away in an empty lecture room – Leicester Uni had a ceiling fall around her. Luckily no harm.
This cmt was the wonder material – first used in approx 1895. I have used it and it is a pain. In you stop pumping for say ten mins – a regular occurrence in such operations, it can set up monster fast in the pumping pipework. – then scrap! Like the aero bar cmt that is causing problems today it was great. But noone had looked at the long term strength. Same ole story, cheapness. Never mind the quvality, feel the width.
ULEZ
Time to rid ourselves of this useless and unnecessary Khanism along with those behind it.
So much to say and so few words available! The last item was the rod that broke the camel’s back. That creature should crawl under the stone where he came from. How much money was spent researching that utter pointless and vexatious drivel.