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Government halts council reorganisation decisions following new legal advice
The UK government has withdrawn decisions on flagship local government reorganisation schemes and launched a review of its plans after receiving new legal advice. The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said the pause is intended to ensure the process is robust and lawful, and comes amid growing resistance from councils, at least eight…
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Germany’s far-right AfD says ‘democracy demands’ parties work with them after state election win
Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has claimed a historic win in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt and is now pushing other parties to co-operate with it, arguing that “democracy demands” they do so. Preliminary results give the AfD 43.8% of the vote, leaving it three seats short of an outright majority, and it is…
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Williams and Sheehan join Bellamy’s Wales staff
Wales manager Craig Bellamy has strengthened his backroom staff by appointing former captain Ashley Williams and ex-Swansea City boss Alan Sheehan as assistant coaches ahead of the team’s Nations League campaign. It marks a first senior coaching role for Williams, while Sheehan brings recent head coaching experience following his departure from Swansea. The moves come…
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Government by-election reshuffle, murder arrests over baby’s death, China’s £40bn bank rescue
Polanski rules out moving to Holborn and St Pancras if he wins its by-election; four arrested after a baby died camping in Staffordshire; China pumps billions into state banks; Mathspace hack hits a million Australians; Raya, Swinney and the Emmys feature in sport and showbiz.
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More Labour councils chaos as Angela Rayner halts controversial shake-up of local authorities amid legal challenges
Angela Rayner, in her new role as Communities Secretary, has halted Labour’s contentious reorganisation of English local councils, throwing the process into fresh disarray after several authorities launched or threatened legal challenges. The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said it was withdrawing decisions already made in some areas and pausing others while it…
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Pretending to be gay, false domestic abuse claims and faking relationships with their prime minister’s daughter: The ‘scripts’ migrants are using to claim asylum in Britain
A former Home Office whistleblower has claimed that only one in 100 asylum seekers in Britain has a genuine case, alleging that many applications follow repeated “scripts” designed to game the system. These include hundreds of Iraqi Kurds allegedly claiming relationships with the same daughter of the Kurdish prime minister, Pakistani men submitting matching accounts…
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Queen of the Civil Service: Andy Burnham ‘to give top official Antonia Romeo new powers to overrule Whitehall departments’
Andy Burnham is reportedly set to grant his Cabinet Secretary, Dame Antonia Romeo, expanded legal powers to direct permanent secretaries across Whitehall departments, according to a report in The Times. The move would mark a significant centralisation of authority in the civil service, addressing long-standing complaints from prime ministers about their limited ability to push…
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Nitter lives to proxy another day after taking legal advice
The Nitter project, a free open-source front end for reading X (formerly Twitter) posts, is resuming operation after taking legal advice, following a cease-and-desist campaign by X Corp that had forced it offline. XCancel, a popular public instance built on Nitter’s code, is back online as of 7 September, though the main nitter.net instance has…
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Festival Leaders Confront Growing Political Pressure at Lumiere Summit: ‘We Don’t Judge Artists by Their Passport’
Festival directors from around the world gathered at the Lumière Summit in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France, for a panel on Monday addressing mounting political pressure on their events. Séries Mania’s Laurence Herszberg led calls for programming independence, insisting that artists should be judged by their work rather than their nationality, while other leaders echoed concerns that festivals…
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The Last Bath review – self-mortifying nun struggles with profoundly uneasy sexual awakening
The Guardian reviews The Last Bath, a Portuguese drama making its belated UK debut on digital platforms, more than five years after it first screened at festivals in 2020. The film centres on a devout nun, Josefina, whose settled, self-denying existence is disrupted when she is called back to her childhood village to care for…