Three new prisons to be built starting this year, UK justice secretary announces
Three new prisons will be built, starting this year, as part of a 'record prison expansion', the justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has announced.
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Telegraph
22 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Diane Abbott is pushing the Left's biggest myth about immigration
The Labour Left were always bound to loathe Sir Keir Starmer's recent speech about the downsides of mass immigration. All the same, one of their objections to it strikes me as somewhat peculiar. At a rally on Saturday, the veteran Labour MP Diane Abbott thundered that Sir Keir's speech was 'nonsense' – because, as she stoutly reminded her audience, 'immigrants built this land'. Stirring stuff. I can see only one small problem. It's not strictly true, is it? Clearly Ms Abbott disagrees. Indeed, she proudly declared that her own parents 'helped to build this country'. As she herself acknowledged, though, they only arrived here from Jamaica in the 1950s. What precisely does Ms Abbott think Britain looked like, before her parents' ship pulled in? A barren, primitive, uncivilised wilderness, whose humble natives dwelt in bushes and subsisted on nettles and raw shrew? Did her parents look around, sigh, and then patiently set about erecting St Paul's Cathedral and Blenheim Palace? I'm not convinced that they did. In fact, I'm reasonably sure that most of this country was built a fair bit earlier, largely by people who were born in it. This is because, until quite recently, only a very small percentage of the population was born abroad. Between 1951 and 2001, the average annual net immigration figure was 7,800. In 2023, by contrast, it was 906,000. It doesn't take a mathematician of Ms Abbott's stature to recognise that this is quite a sharp increase. Still, I don't mean to pick on her. She's far from alone. In recent years, any number of Left-wing politicians and pundits have taken to pushing the line that 'immigrants built Britain'. On last week's edition of the BBC's Question Time, for example, the retired trade union leader Mark Serwotka informed viewers that Britain is only 'the great country it is because of centuries of immigration'. From the Left's point of view, I suppose I can see this tactic's advantages. Any time a voter dares suggest that net immigration of almost a million a year is a touch on the high side, and possibly not entirely sustainable in the longer term, shut them up by telling them that a) it's always been like this, and b) they should be grateful. The risk, though, is that some voters might feel a tiny bit insulted. Because the claim that 'immigrants built Britain' implies that the natives were so ignorant, lazy and useless, they achieved nothing until their superiors arrived from abroad to lift them out of savagery. Come to think of it, I'm reasonably sure that the Left used to have a word for that type of attitude. It was 'colonialism'. If you want a picture of the present... It was a bright cold day in June, and Winston Smith had just sat down at his desk in the Ministry of Truth. This morning he had an important job to do. A dangerous book urgently needed to be memory-holed. It was entitled Nineteen Eighty-Four. For decades, Nineteen Eighty-Four had been acclaimed as a landmark work of literature. Suddenly, however, it had been found to contain the most sickening thoughtcrime. The person who had made this shocking discovery was an American novelist named Dolen Perkins-Valdez. In a foreword she'd been commissioned to write for the book's latest edition, she declared that its main character exhibited attitudes towards women that were appallingly 'problematic'. Not only that, but the book didn't feature any characters who were black. 'A sliver of connection can be difficult for someone like me to find,' she wrote, 'in a novel that does not speak much to race and ethnicity.' Privately, Winston suspected that the reason the book did not speak much to race and ethnicity was that it had been written on a Scottish island by an Edwardian Englishman in the late 1940s. That was probably also the reason why none of its characters identified as genderqueer or pansexual, and why none of them had glued their buttocks to the M25 in support of puberty blockers for Palestine. But it was not Winston's place to make excuses for crimethink. In any case, he was used to such tasks. Not long ago he had been presented with the complete works of a children's author named Roald Dahl, and ordered to replace the entire text of each book with the endlessly repeated phrase 'BE KIND'. Had it been up to him, Winston would have been perfectly willing to rectify the text of Nineteen Eighty-Four, until all traces of crimethink had been eliminated. He could have ensured that it contained the correct number of characters who were 2SLGBTQIA+, neurodivergent or of Colour, and that they all expressed the officially mandated opinions about Islamophobia and net zero. The Ministry, however, had decided that there was no time. Better just to drop the offending object down the memory hole, and move swiftly on to his next task. This one was going to be tough. According to reports, there was a new TV adaptation of Harry Potter on the way, and the cast had completely failed to denounce JK Rowling. Winston had a lot of unpersoning to do.
BBC News
25 minutes ago
- BBC News
Earley MP Yuan Yang praises school's money-saving solar panels
A school will have more money to spend on education thanks to government-funded solar panels, an MP has government announced in March that it was investing £180m installing solar panels in schools and hospitals across the first 11 schools have now had them put in - including Whiteknights Primary School in Reading, which is expected to save around £4,500 a year as a result."Overall that means less money spent on energy and heating bills [and] more money to for the school to actually spend on students' education," said MP for Earley and Woodley Yuan Yang. The Labour MP visited the school on Monday, alongside climate minister Kerry McCarthy. She said she spoke to schoolchildren about climate change and how it should be tackled. "They wanted to talk about all sorts of things, from saving energy to transport," she said."It's often the children who asked the most incitive questions about climate change and the future."Climate minister Kerry McCarthy said the fact schools could save money on their bills was proof that the transition to green power could directly benefit communitiesGreat British Energy is a new publicly owned company set up by the Labour Yang said the solar panels, which would continue generating electricity throughout the weekends and school holidays to be sold back to the national grid, were "a really key investment"."All of this together is part of a diverse energy mix and the more different sources of renewable generation then the more robust - the more secure - an energy system is," she said. You can follow BBC Berkshire on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram.
BBC News
25 minutes ago
- BBC News
Case of true love for Aylesbury partners in crimefighting
Working for the police takes a certain kind of personal strength, resilience and dedication - much like marriage, some might say. But one couple from Buckinghamshire are proving the two institutions can go hand in hand successfully, together clocking up a combined 83 years' service for Thames Valley and Ed Ryan, both 69 and from Aylesbury, met and fell in love as young police officers on the beat in Chesham in the late partnership has endured long work shifts, career moves and departures to raise a growing family, and the two now work as civilians within the same police investigation team. Mrs Ryan joined the force in 1978 as a WPC and met Mr Ryan when she was 24 and he was 23, when they were both stationed at Chesham. She left the force to start their family but re-joined in 2000 as a Ryan, who signed up for service aged 19 in 1975, made the move from officer to civilian with the force in 2008. Mrs Ryan recalled that when she first met her husband, she could only see the back of his head. "He was nice, he was very kind and funny, but I also thought he was a little bit of a prat," she said."It wasn't until we had a party at my living accommodation in Amersham, that I got to know him." Mr Ryan said: "It did take some time, we just got to know each other like all good stories, and then we started to go out and meet after duty."Fifteen months later, in 1980, the couple married. No one knew of their relationship at the beginning as officers could not work together if they were partners, Mrs Ryan said."When we got engaged, I had to move," she revealed. "I did question it, I said 'hang on, is it because I'm a female, why isn't he moving', and that didn't go down very well. "I was then told, you can have his breakfast ready when he comes home."Despite having to navigate the misogyny of the time, Mrs Ryan said it was a job she loved and it was her "passion"."I liked the uniform, you had to wear a skirt, people saw the uniform first, I think it was smart and you could have a bit of command," she said. Mrs Ryan said: "When we started a family, it was a case of I couldn't continue working shifts, so I had to leave," she said. But she did return. After having two boys and two girls, Mrs Ryan rejoined the force in 2000, working part-time."It still drives me," she Ryan stayed with the force and his career progressed, leading to a move into left the force as an officer but also rejoined as a civilian in 2008. "I've always liked locking up the person who committed the crime and solving the crime", he said. Thames Valley Police also paid tribute to their commitment, saying: "It is often said that policing is a family, Ed and Madge take this a little more literally."Their adaptability, resilience, and dedication to public service has been a constant throughout their professional and personal lives, and they epitomise pride in TVP."We are equally proud that they are still part of that family after so many years." Follow Beds, Herts and Bucks news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
