Calls for air control boss to resign after airports chaos
Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander held an urgent meeting with NATS boss Martin Rolfe, stating the incident was an "isolated event" with "no evidence of malign activity" after the talks.
Ryanair immediately called for Martin Rolfe's resignation, citing his "continued mismanagement" and linking the failure to a previous system outage in August 2023, with EasyJet also expressing disappointment.
The disruption affected major UK airports including Heathrow and Gatwick, with Ryanair highlighting Rolfe's £1.5m pay from NATS, which is 49 per cent government-owned.
While government sources indicated Rolfe would not be asked to resign, the Liberal Democrats called for an urgent investigation into NATS to ensure the system's fitness for purpose.
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Daily Mail
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BBC News
4 hours ago
- BBC News
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Vance acknowledged the two men come from "different political spectrums" but said Lammy had been "kind enough to make time on a visit to [Washington] DC, we got to know each other a little bit then".Since that first meeting, when Lammy was in opposition and Vance had just been elected to the US Senate, they have met regularly including at the new Pope's inauguration in May. Last week, Lammy told the Guardian he, Vance and Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner bonded over drinks in the Villa Taverna, the US ambassador's residence in Rome. "I had this great sense that JD completely relates to me and he completely relates to Angela. So it was a wonderful hour and a half," he said. "I was probably the shyest of the three."He said that, like Vance, Rayner and himself were "not just working-class politicians, but people with dysfunctional childhoods".Lammy's parents split up during his teens. His father went to the US and Lammy never saw him again. Vance told the story of his own upbringing - including an absent father and a mother with a drug addiction - in his bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy. Despite their trickier starts in life, both ended up at prestigious US colleges. Lammy studied at Harvard, where he met and befriended Barack Obama. Vance went to Harvard's rival Yale - "not quite as good," Lammy joked at Chevening. The two men have also bonded over their Christian faith. Vance converted to Catholicism as an adult and took mass with Lammy when he visited Washington DC earlier this year. The pair have something else in common, although neither want to to draw attention to it: their previous less-than-flattering comments about Donald Trump. JD Vance's past verdict - "reprehensible", "an idiot", "I never liked him".And Lammy's? "A tyrant" and "a woman-hating, neo Nazi sympathising sociopath". Be it political expediency or a genuine change of heart, both have since revised their opinions. 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However, if Lammy thinks his friendship with Vance is exclusive he may be vice president is also meeting Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch and Reform UK's Nigel Farage has hinted that he may be as well. In between meeting UK politicians, Vance will be squeezing in a trip to the Cotswolds - something that may infuriate those Americans, such as TV chat show host Ellen DeGeneres, who fled to the area specifically to escape Trump and his acolytes. There have also been reports that singer-rapper couple Beyonce and Jay-Z have been house-hunting in the area. Explaining the appeal of the region to wealthy Americans, writer Plum Sykes told the BBC's PM programme it combines the desire for countryside with the need for glamour. "Americans can't go to Wales and survive in the same way they can in the Cotswolds where you can get a matcha latte and go to a gyrotonics class. "The business of the private jet people at Cotswolds airport has gone through the roof." Vance is reported to be staying in a house, very close to Diddly Squat - the farm and pub belonging to broadcaster Jeremy sets up the possibility of an awkward encounter between the two. Clarkson has previously lambasted Vance, with "a bearded god-botherer" being among his more printable insults. But a friendship might still flower, after all forming unlikely relationships seems to be as fashionable as the Cotswolds at the moment.
