Commuters share their views at the junction with the highest number of cycling accidents
It’s 8am in Clapham, the area of south-west London where young professionals and well-off homeowners are crammed into 2 sq miles of buzzy high streets, a leafy common and rows of terraced houses.
The popularity of the neighbourhood lies in its proximity to the city centre. A 4-mile hop to central London makes for an easy journey to work, especially for one kind of commuter: cyclists.
Continue reading...Avian invaders have coastal communities in Britain and beyond in a flap – but people are learning how to live with them
Continue reading...If you’re not familiar with Tattle Life, congratulations. It’s a site that subjects women to relentless scrutiny, and lo and behold it’s run by a spineless man
With as much as two weeks to kill before nuclear winter sets in, many of you will be looking to road-test your new fallout suits. In which case: can I interest you in the sensational unmasking of the founder of Tattle Life? It turns out the guy who operates the radioactively toxic gossip forum is a “vegan influencer” – I think it’s one of those new types of job, dear – and his name is Sebastian Bond. From that professional description, Sebastian would never hurt a living creature – unless it’s a mummy blogger, in which case he would gut her like a pig. Metaphorically, of course! Sorry, but that is simply the price you pay for not declaring the nappies you’re unboxing on Instagram are actually sponsored.
But I’m racing ahead. If you’re not familiar with Tattle Life, it’s an online forum that claims to be “a commentary website on public business social media accounts” – much in the way the torpedoing of the Lusitania was a commentary on the commercial cruise business. At one point Tattle Life was said to have 12 million monthly visitors. Which, to put it into context, is more than the Times and Sunday Times website gets, and considerably surpasses the visitor numbers of something like GB News. The other thing Tattle Life says about itself on its homepage is: “We have a zero-tolerance policy to any content that is abusive, hateful or harmful.” This is a little bit like the Racing Post saying it has a zero-tolerance policy for stories about horses, greyhounds or sports betting.
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
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Continue reading...You’d have to utterly hate the TV host to resist this tale of his woo woo life as a New Zealand pub landlord. Brace yourself for copious talk of ‘body energy systems’
He’s the same! He’s the same! Noel Edmonds is the same! Even if he wasn’t quite your cup of tea back in the day, I promise you’ll be happy to see him. Fixed points in a universe changing unstoppably for the worse have that effect on you.
Edmonds bestrode the world of 80s and 90s light entertainment like a Tiggerish colossus, presenting everything from Top of the Pops to Multi-Coloured Swap Shop to Telly Addicts – oh, how well I remember watching the latter as a woman proposed to her boyfriend and how beautifully Noel covered the deafening silence where the horrified man’s acceptance was supposed to go – to Noel’s House Party (let us hope Mr Blobby is ageing as well as his mentor), and more, including his last big hit Deal Or No Deal. He became a bit of a laughing stock when he tried to share with the world his discovery, via his reflexologist, of cosmic ordering (an iteration of positive thinking woowoo) but never – I think at this point uniquely among his peers – coming a vilely scandalous cropper at any stage.
Continue reading...This historic day comes too late for many who supported my bill, but I will never forget their courage and selflessness
Kim Leadbeater is Labour MP for Spen Valley
I am relieved and overjoyed by the historic vote on assisted dying in England and Wales in the House of Commons today. The road has been long and hard, and I am very aware that many others have been on that journey since long before I even became an MP. The question of whether to offer choice to people at the end of their lives was first raised in parliament in 1936 – almost a century ago.
Since then, terminally ill people have pleaded repeatedly with MPs to heed their simple wish to have control and autonomy at the end of their lives. A courageous few have taken their cases to the courts, even while they confronted the prospect of their own imminent and inevitable deaths. The judges said it was for parliament to decide. Now, at last, the House of Commons has responded, and responded decisively to recognise the justice of their cause.
Kim Leadbeater is Labour MP for Spen Valley
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
Continue reading...Terminally ill people with less than six months to live will have right to choose procedure after approval from doctors and panel
Terminally ill people in England and Wales are to be given the right to an assisted death in a historic societal shift that will transform end-of-life care.
After months of argument, MPs narrowly voted in favour of a private member’s bill introduced by Labour’s Kim Leadbeater, which could become law within four years.
Continue reading...Surge in deaths would not be occurring without human-caused global heating, scientists say as analysis published
Almost 600 people are expected to die early in the heatwave roasting England and Wales, a rapid analysis has found.
The surge in deaths would not be occurring without human-caused global heating, the scientists said, with temperatures boosted by 2C-4C by the pollution from fossil fuels.
Continue reading...A deal freezing frontlines would be unacceptable for Serhiy Serdiuk, who was taken to Georgia in handcuffs with his family after refusing to teach the Russian curriculum
Earlier this year, Serhiy Serdiuk was deported from Russia, along with his wife and daughter. He was given a 40-year ban from re-entering the country.
Serdiuk’s home town of Komysh-Zoria, in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, was part of the territory occupied in the first weeks of Russia’s full-scale invasion in spring 2022. According to Moscow, it is now part of Russia. And because Serdiuk, the headteacher of a local school, refused to work for the new authorities, they decided he had no place living there.
Continue reading...Israel’s foreign minister says its strikes have delayed Iran’s potential to develop a nuclear weapon by ‘at least two or three years’
Iran and Israel exchanged fresh strikes early on Saturday, after Tehran said it would not negotiate over its nuclear programme while under threat and Israel claimed its attacks had delayed Iran’s potential to develop a nuclear weapon by “at least two or three years”.
Shortly after 2.30am the Israeli military warned of an incoming missile barrage from Iran, triggering air raid sirens across parts of central Israel, including Tel Aviv, as well as in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Continue reading...Health organisations have written to Keir Starmer urging him to force drinks producers to include warnings
Cans and bottles of beer, wine and spirits should explicitly warn drinkers that alcohol causes cancer, an unprecedented alliance of doctors, charities and public experts have said.
Warning labels would tackle “shockingly low” public awareness in the UK that alcohol is proven to cause seven forms of cancer and 17,000 cases a year of the disease, they claim.
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