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A gong for our times, meet Dame WFH (but will she leave home to get it?) Controversial mandarin and border chief who oversaw 129,000 small-boat arrivals among list to scoop top honours

A gong for our times, meet Dame WFH (but will she leave home to get it?) Controversial mandarin and border chief who oversaw 129,000 small-boat arrivals among list to scoop top honours

Daily Mail​a day ago

A Mandarin who became notorious for her love of working from home has been made a dame.
Sarah Healey infamously boasted that Covid-era lockdowns meant she could see more of her children as well as giving her longer to ride her expensive exercise bike.
'I have a Peloton and I can just get on my bike whenever I have a teeny bit of time. That has been a huge benefit to my well-being – the lack of travelling time eating into my day,' the then permanent secretary for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport told a conference in 2021.
Her comments prompted Tory ministers to tell civil servants they 'need to get off their Pelotons and get back to their desks', as she became synonymous with the working from home culture that took hold in the public sector during the pandemic years.
But Ms Healey's career was unaffected as she became Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government in 2023, where she is now paid over £180,000 a year.
And in today's King's Birthday Honours list she becomes a Dame Commander of the Order of the Bath.
Another controversial Whitehall recipient of a gong is a borders chief on whose watch the Channel migrant crisis has exploded.
Phil Douglas, Director General of Border Force, is made Companion of the Order of the Bath 'for services to Border Security and Public Service'.
But since his appointment in November 2021, at least 129,000 immigrants have arrived in Britain illegally via dinghies.
Last night a Reform UK source told the Mail: 'Once again we are seeing the Government reward utter failure.
'Productivity has taken a hammering thanks to these mandarins allowing a lazy work from home culture. A Reform government is going to trim the fat and get the civil service working again.'
And a Tory source said: 'Keir Starmer doesn't run a meritocracy – he runs a mediocrity.
'Dishing out gongs for incompetence and shirking from home sends the signal loud and clear that mediocre middle managers are in charge now.'
Former minister Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, who led the drive to get civil servants back to their desks, told the Mail: 'It is much more honest to say these awards are automatic and not pretend it's discretionary, when they get given to people who don't turn up to work.
'They are part of the patronage system used by ministers to oil the wheels of government.'
Political figures named in the honours list include former Tory minister Penny Mordaunt, famed for her role carrying a sword at the King's Coronation, who is made a dame.
She said: 'It is lovely to be appreciated in this way, and I'm very conscious that everything I have ever got done has been with the help and efforts of others.'
Serving Labour MP Chi Onwurah also becomes a dame, while party whip Mark Tami receives a knighthood. And Peter Hyman, a former adviser to both Sir Tony Blair and Sir Keir Starmer, is awarded a CBE.

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We're in a ‘global fertility crisis'. Does this woman have a solution?
We're in a ‘global fertility crisis'. Does this woman have a solution?

Times

time31 minutes ago

  • Times

We're in a ‘global fertility crisis'. Does this woman have a solution?

Worrying about the decline in fertility used to be a fringe issue: the reserve of religious leaders, tweedy conservatives and cranky pronatalists. No longer. Last week the United Nations issued a report declaring a 'global fertility crisis'. According to Natalia Kanem, head of the UN Population Fund, which published the report, the world has 'begun an unprecedented decline in fertility rates'. The figures are stark, the consequences potentially grave. In 1950s Britain, for example, the average woman had 2.2 children. Now that figure is 1.44. We are not replacing ourselves. The question is why? The will to procreate is our most primal evolutionary urge, but something is dulling it. What's going on? • Britain needs babies! And PM should find the right words to say so The UN report cites many of the usual suspects: lack of childcare and job security, housing costs, fears about the future. One in five people surveyed in 14 countries said fears about climate change, war and pandemics held them back from reproducing. Thirty-nine per cent pointed to financial constraints. But what if there is something else going on too? One woman with a different answer is Alice Evans, a senior lecturer in the social science of development at King's College London. Evans, a brusque yet charming 38-year-old from Sevenoaks, Kent, has spent much of her professional life travelling round the world, speaking to people from Zambia to the Americas about children: why they want them, why they don't, and what is stopping them from having the family they might want. Evans acknowledges that the factors highlighted by the UN all play a role in the fertility crisis. Yet, she argues, none fully explain why this is happening everywhere, all at once — in countries with vastly different living standards, gender norms, parental leave policies and working practices. Could it be, Evans suggests, that we are spending so much time on the internet that we've stopped falling in love, stopped reproducing? Are we entertaining ourselves into oblivion? At first, this might seem outlandish. But dig into the data and it becomes surprisingly persuasive. 'Looking around the world, we see one really big change which coincides with the fall in fertility,' Evans says. Over the past 15 years or so, smartphones have become ubiquitous, and we have seen the rise of an astonishing array of online entertainment — from online sports gambling to pornography to television streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu. 'It's really only some parts of sub-Saharan Africa that have replacement fertility, which means that each woman would have over two kids in her lifetime,' Evans explains. 'In every other population in the world, we'd expect a contraction of the young working-age population.' What's so different about sub-Saharan Africa? Few people have smartphones. Evans fears that 'hyperengaging media' may be outcompeting the real-world interactions that lead to babies. We spend more time on screens and consequently more time alone. 'Young men in their twenties in the UK are spending as much time alone as men in their sixties and seventies,' she says. In today's Deliveroo and Netflix economy, we socialise less, meet fewer people, and are less likely to find the person with whom we want to have children. Dating apps are struggling to fill the gap. 'Looking both at marriage and cohabiting,' Evans says, 'both of those indicators are down. They are plummeting in Hong Kong, South Korea, across Southeast Asia, across South America.' She's just returned from Costa Rica, where the average age of marriage is 38 for men and 35 for women. In America, up to 55 per cent of under-34s have been estimated to be single. 'We know that half aren't even in a rush to get into a relationship, they aren't bothered about it,' she says. ● The nation's birthrate has plummeted. How did we get here? That fewer people feel rushed into relationships can, of course, be seen as a good thing: a sign of empowerment and freedom, particularly for women. But it's also the case that across the developed world, about a third of men say they are lonely. There is something of a vicious cycle at play too. As we socialise less, we become less charming, less interesting, less confident. 'If I spend every night scrolling or watching Bridgerton, then I'm not necessarily finessing my social skills,' Evans says. 'Maybe I don't have the confidence to just go up to a group of guys, or maybe I don't have a ready group of people to go out with.' Men and women also experience the internet in different ways. Social media algorithms show them different news, different opinions, amplifying the gender divide. It means that across many western countries, the political and cultural gap between young women (who tend to be on the left) and young men (on the right) is growing. Data from Gallup last year showed that American women are 30 percentage points more liberal than American men. In this country, many point to the exorbitant cost of childcare as an inhibiting factor for starting a family. Yet Sweden, with its abundant parental leave and universal childcare, has a birthrate very slightly lower than the UK's. Housing is expensive in many places, yes. But if housing was the major friction, Evans argues, 'we might expect young people to do the cheaper thing and live communally. Across Europe we've seen a massive increase in young men living by themselves.' Evans argues that declining fertility is a threat to our way of life. Without massive migration or some sort of boost from technology such as artificial intelligence, our working-age population will go into decline, our tax base will shrink, our welfare bill will balloon and our towns and villages will begin to resemble parts of rural Italy or Spain, which have begun to empty out. 'If you want to maintain our current standard of living and if you want to maintain economic growth, this is something we should take extremely seriously,' she says. It may also change our political leanings, with religious conservatives having more children than liberal progressives. Even the steps required to tackle climate change will be difficult without a large working population to pay the bill. So what can we do about it? There is no fix-all cure, Evans says. She herself has no children. She was born with Rokitansky syndrome, which means that she has no womb and only one ovary. For a small group of women, including her, improvements in IVF and other fertility technologies could be very important. • How do we get our babies back? More broadly, Evans suggests that if we want to see birthrates increase, and maintain our current standards of living, the government might consider providing serious tax incentives for those who have children. More youth clubs and more community groups might help, she suggests, as would making our culture more family-friendly. Evans would love to see more (and better) rom coms made, with plots celebrating finding love and having a family. She also suggests that we need a serious conversation about tech, and how we make it work for us. 'We need to tackle all these issues at once,' she says. 'No one policy, no one sledgehammer is going to fix everything.' In the midst of all this worrying news, however, there is one thing to celebrate. On Friday Evans married her partner, Usama Polani, a macroeconomist. Now, it's over to the rest of us to pair off.

Tehran threatens UK as Starmer scrambles RAF: Prime Minister sends jets to the Middle East as war rages between Iran and Israel - and refuses to rule out further British action
Tehran threatens UK as Starmer scrambles RAF: Prime Minister sends jets to the Middle East as war rages between Iran and Israel - and refuses to rule out further British action

Daily Mail​

time38 minutes ago

  • Daily Mail​

Tehran threatens UK as Starmer scrambles RAF: Prime Minister sends jets to the Middle East as war rages between Iran and Israel - and refuses to rule out further British action

Britain last night ordered military reinforcements to be sent to the Middle East as war raged between Iran and Israel – despite bloodcurdling warnings from Tehran not to meddle in the conflict. Sir Keir Starmer ordered the deployment of fast jets and refuelling aircraft from UK bases to bolster UK forces just hours after Iran's state-owned Mehr news agency had warned: 'Any country that participates in repelling Iranian attacks on Israel will be subject to Iranian forces targeting all regional bases of the complicit government'. But Israel, in turn, vowed that unless Iran's missile blitz was halted: 'Tehran will burn'. Speaking to reporters en route to the G7 summit in Canada, the Prime Minister refused to rule out taking further steps in a 'fast-moving' and 'intense' security situation. He said: 'I will always make the right decisions for the UK and our allies. We are moving assets to the region, including jets, and that is for contingency support in the region. I will be clear-eyed in relation to our duties and obligations and my duties as Prime Minister.' Asked if the UK would help Israel stop the attacks, he replied: 'These are obviously operational decisions and the situation is ongoing and developing'. Britain already has fighter jets in the Middle East as part of an operation to counter threats in Iraq and Syria. Sir Keir's announcement came as Iran and Israel continued to trade missiles and airstrikes yesterday, a day after Benjamin Netanyahu ordered a devastating air offensive aimed at smashing Tehran's nuclear weapons programme. Israeli hit more than 400 targets in the past 24 hours as part of Operation Rising Lion, including dozens of missile sites and air defence systems in Tehran. They killed more than 20 army and Revolutionary Guards commanders, including armed forces chief Mohammad Bagheri amd and intelligence chief Gholamreza Mehrabi. Tel Aviv also claimed nine nuclear scientists were among the dead. And around 60 people, including 20 children, were reportedly killed in an attack on a housing complex in Tehran, according to Iranian state TV. Meanwhile, Russian leader Vladimir Putin and US president Donald Trump discussed the hostilities in a 50-minute phone call, with Putin condemning the Israeli attacks. Mr Netanyahu said the strikes had set back Iran's nuclear programme by years but he rejected international calls for restraint, saying attacks would intensify. 'We will hit every site and every target of the Ayatollahs' regime, and what they have felt so far is nothing compared with what they will be handed in the coming days,' said the Israeli Prime Minister. 'We have paved a path to Tehran. In the very near future, you will see Israeli planes, the Israeli air force, our pilots, over the skies of Tehran.' Last night, it was also reported that Ali Shamkhani, Iran's top adviser to its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, died in hospital a day after being wounded in the first night of Israeli airstrikes. Shamkhani had previously served as Iran's top national security official for a decade and was seen as a rising star of Iranian diplomacy, having represented Iran in talks which sealed a landmark agreement to restore diplomatic ties with Saudi Arabia. In a statement, Israel's military said: 'Since the beginning of the operation [on Friday], over 20 commanders in the Iranian regime's security apparatus have been eliminated.' The targets also included Iran's Isfahan and Natanz nuclear sites, where Israel claimed nine senior scientists were killed. An Israeli official said it would take more than a few weeks for Iran to repair the damage at the two sites. Iran later responded by saying only three of its scientists had been killed. They were named by Tasnim, the semi-official news agency, as Ali Bakaei Karimi, Mansour Asgari and Saeid Borji. Across Israel, air raid sirens sent residents into shelters as waves of missiles streaked across the sky and interceptors rose to meet them. At least three people were killed overnight. An Israeli official said Iran had fired around 200 ballistic missiles in four waves. The wounded included Croatia's consul in Israel and his wife, who suffered only minor injuries. Defence minister Israel Katz warned: 'The Iranian dictator [Ayatollah Khamenei] is taking the citizens of Iran hostage, bringing about a reality in which they, and especially Tehran's residents, will pay a heavy price for the flagrant harm inflicted upon Israel's citizens. If Khamenei continues to fire missiles at the Israeli home front, Tehran will burn'. Mr Trump applauded Israel's strikes and warned that much worse was to come unless Iran quickly accepted the sharp downgrading of its nuclear programme. Mr Netanyahu sent effusive 79th birthday wishes to Mr Trump, saying: 'You've been an extraordinary leader, decisive, courageous, with a clear vision and clear action. You have done great things for Israel.' He added that Israel was striking a blow for the free world, saying: 'Our enemy is your enemy and what we're doing, we're dealing with something that will threaten all of us sooner or later. Our victory will be your victory.' Gulf Arab states that have long mistrusted Iran but fear coming under attack in any wider conflict have urged calm. Meanwhile, worries about disruption to the region's crucial oil exports caused the price of crude oil to soar. Those fears intensified yesterday when Iranian general Esmail Kosari said Iran was reviewing whether to close the Strait of Hormuz, the exit point for oil shipped from the Gulf. Tehran insists its nuclear programme is entirely civilian in line with its obligations under a nuclear non-proliferation treaty and that it does not seek an atomic bomb. But, it has repeatedly hidden some parts from international inspectors, and on Thursday it was judged to be in violation of the treaty. Sir Keir Starmer told reporters there would be 'intense discussions' about the Middle Eastern conflict at the annual G7 gathering of world leaders this said he had had a 'good and constructive discussion' with Mr Netanyahu on Friday over the 'safety and security of Israel, as you would expect, between two allies'. Meanwhile Foreign Secretary David Lammy has spoken to his Iranian counterpart to urge calm. Sir Keir said: 'We do have long-standing concerns about the nuclear programme Iran has. 'We do recognise Israel's right to self-defence, but I'm absolutely clear that this needs to de-escalate. That's the primary focus.' Shipping blockade will hit petrol prices By Calum Muirhead The conflict between Israel and Iran could push petrol prices up for British drivers if the Islamic Republic acts on its threats to block a key global shipping lane. Iran is considering closing the 30-mile-wide Strait of Hormuz, which links the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea, in retaliation against Israel's attacks, according to Iranian parliamentarian Esmail Kosari. The strait, which is jointly controlled by Iran and Oman, is a vital artery for the world's fossil fuels. A fifth of all oil shipments pass through it, as well as a third of all liquified natural gas. Closing it or disrupting the flow of ships, as Iran has threatened in the past, would strangle the supply of oil and gas on global markets, increasing the price of fuel. A blockade would also put pressure on the British economy and people's wallets as consumers and firms absorb higher energy costs. While it would be hard for Iran to close the strait entirely, it could disrupt oil shipments by attempting to seize tankers that strayed into its waters. Shipping firms are already reluctant to pass through. Frontline, the world's fourth-largest oil tanker firm, is refusing contracts that use the strait. Brent crude, an international oil benchmark, surged to around $74 a barrel after Israel's attacks on Friday – the highest price in more than two months. But this could go up further if Iran closes the strait.

Taxman begins fraud investigation into HS2
Taxman begins fraud investigation into HS2

Times

time40 minutes ago

  • Times

Taxman begins fraud investigation into HS2

A fraud investigation into HS2 has been started by the taxman over allegations of 'large-scale' financial impropriety. The company responsible for building the high-speed rail line has referred itself to HM Revenue & Customs after completing an internal review into a whistleblower's claim that a subcontractor may have been committing tax fraud. Last month it was revealed that HS2 Ltd was investigating whether a subcontractor working on the project had falsely declared self-employed workers as directly employed staff and charged inflated rates. It was alleged that 'fake payslips' had been submitted to mislead auditors. A firm has been suspended. The investigation is said to focus on two companies that provided employees to Balfour Beatty Vinci, one of HS2's main contractors and a joint venture whose history can be traced back to the construction of the Channel Tunnel more than 30 years ago. A spokesman for the joint venture declined to comment. HS2 has been rocked by long delays, mammoth cost overruns and allegations of chronic mismanagement. This week, the transport secretary, Heidi Alexander, will present the initial findings of an internal review by Mark Wild, who was parachuted in last December as chief executive of HS2 Ltd to try to get the project back on track. The Labour government is overseeing a major 'reset' of the high-speed rail line after its northern leg was scrapped in 2023 by the Conservatives. It is understood that Wild has told Alexander that plans to open the HS2 phase one leg from London to Birmingham by 2033 will not be achieved without a shake-up of the phasing of construction. Wild has not put a date on when he thinks it is feasible to open the line, preferring instead to offer the government a series of options once he has completed a more detailed review. Wild has also not confirmed an updated cost estimate to the transport secretary, sources insisted, despite reports that the bill for finishing the work between Birmingham and Old Oak Common on the outskirts of London had ballooned to £100 billion. Construction at Old Oak Common station BEN WHITLEY A spokesman for HS2 Ltd said: 'We treat all whistleblower allegations seriously and are continuing to conduct our own investigation. Furthermore, HS2 Ltd has formally reported the allegations to HMRC, and we encourage anyone who believes they may have relevant information, which could support our inquiries, to report it in confidence.' 'Mark Wild, our chief executive, has been clear that HS2 faces serious cost and schedule challenges. He is now undertaking a comprehensive review which will report to the government in due course and lead to a full reset of the company and project. This work is yet to be concluded and, given the scale and complexity of HS2, it is vital that Mark is given the time to carry it out properly.' A senior Whitehall source said: 'He [Wild] is looking under the bonnet and is not liking what he is finding,' said a source, adding that Alexander would point to 'ministerial mismanagement', a 'lack of ministerial oversight' and an organisation 'not fit for purpose'.

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