Seal campaigners welcome voluntary flying ring ban in Cornwall
As the ban is voluntary, shopkeepers and beachgoers will not face fines or other penalties for breaking it.However, Moore said areas such as Swansea that had implemented similar voluntary bans had seen a "really positive uptake".She said people were "really horrified" when they found out about the dangers of flying rings to animals if they got caught in them. She said: "No-one really wants to see animal in pain or hurt of suffering."
Moore said seals often became trapped in the toy rings, sometimes around their necks, which cut into their skin and could cause fatal infections.She said seals, as well as dolphins, manatees and other marine animals, saw rings as toys, but "once it's down their neck, it's like a deadly trap".She said seals elongated their necks to feed, so, when they retracted their necks back, the pressure of the water forced the ring "solid on seal's neck".The injuries were fatal for most seals, she said, but even when they could be saved rehabilitating them could cost up to £15,000 each.
Moore said the next steps after the vote would include contacting local businesses to ask them to discontinue offering the products, as well as putting posters on beaches to educate tourists.She said she hoped the Cornish ban would put pressure on the government to introduce nationwide measures.An online petition to ban the rings, launched in May, has gathered more than 42,000 signatures.Sue Sayer MBE, Seal Research Trust founder, said Cornwall Council had "always been pioneers for the environment because our seascapes are Cornwall's greatest asset".She said safer alternatives, such as wildlife-safe solid disc toys, were available, adding: "We are not spoiling people's fun or taking away trade from retailers, quite the opposite."A spokesperson from the Cornish Seal Sanctuary said it "strongly supported" the voluntary ban.They said: "Over the years, our animal care team has witnessed first-hand the devastating consequences these toys can have on seals."Despite our efforts to treat and rehabilitate injured seals, prevention is always better than cure."
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The Guardian
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Neolithic long cairn in Yorkshire given extra protection after walkers remove stones
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The Guardian
3 hours ago
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‘The delivery man arrived with the ashes in a gift bag' – why are so many people opting out of traditional funerals?
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Writing in the Spectator, Ysenda Maxtone Graham, in a piece that described the process as 'a lonely end for one's mother or father, or indeed oneself – and actually quite expensive for what happens, which is basically waste disposal', said: 'You can see how – as with assisted dying – the elderly could be pressurised into going for this option by the death-averse, non-religious and hard-up young.' But looked at another way, direct cremation has demystified an industry that has long been accused of overcharging grieving families. The 'cost of dying' in the UK, including professional fees for administering the estate, a simple funeral service, and all optional extras like the party or wake, has this year hit a record high of £9,797, according to Sun Life's annual study, while 6% of funerals are now crowdfunded. In February 2025, Farewill was sold to Dignity, one of the largest funeral companies in the UK, which operates 45 crematoria. In the office of Dignity's Bentley crematorium, just outside Brentwood, Essex, manager Ian Best says he still calls direct cremations 'unattended cremations' out of habit. It is a hangover from the days when the only cremations without family or friends were 'pauper's funerals', paid for by the council if there were no relatives to cover the cost (thanks to the cost of living crisis, the number of such funerals, now known as public health funerals, has risen by 47% in England in the last seven years). Before the pandemic, Best says, unattended cremations only happened at Bentley every three or four months. Now, they count for roughly a third of all cremations that take place there. 'It's definitely changed the industry massively, and I think we're learning as we go,' says Best. 'It's uncharted territory for us.' The biggest change, he says, 'is just the fact that people aren't here. 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Pure Cremation is one of the country's biggest direct cremation providers, with an enormous crematorium in Andover, Hampshire, and a multimillion-pound TV advertising spend, with commercials shown primarily during daytime hours to catch the retired demographic most likely to buy funeral plans. Their adverts are all over social media, too. I saw one advert promising a free afternoon tea, up to the value of £50, when buying a direct cremation through the company ('Offer ends 31 August'). The rise of direct cremation, as well as the backlash, goes some way to addressing a fundamental question about death: what, or who, are funerals for? 'Funerals have always been for the living,' says Martin Stibbards, whose family funeral directors in Essex offer everything from a full horse-drawn funeral cortege that harks back to their Victorian roots to their own direct cremation service. 'You don't know you're at your funeral, but your relatives do.' Stibbards says that the genius of the new direct cremation companies is that they have flipped the decision from the family to the living, directing their advertising towards those making their own funeral plans. 'Grief is difficult. You might think it's all very good when you're sitting in your living room and you're not dying and thinking: 'Yeah, I'll just sign up, this is going to be great for my family.' But when the reality happens and you're whisked off somewhere without anybody knowing where you are … grief can be very complex.' At Bentley, Best ushers me behind a curtain to see the cremation chamber. Coffins from unattended and attended services wait to be cremated. It feels inadequate, somehow – but not because of the cremation process itself. Rather any attempt to mark the end of a life feels unsatisfactory. And nothing – direct cremation, a princely burial after a multi-vehicle cortege, or lighting up the sky with fireworks like Hunter S Thompson – can change that.
Times
4 hours ago
- Times
Is this a good time to buy shares in National Grid?
T his month's official report into the power cut at Heathrow airport in March made uncomfortable reading for National Grid. The company presents itself as the careful custodian of the high-voltage electricity network across England and Wales — yet the report by the National Energy System Operator gives the impression that it has been asleep on the job. The blaze in a transformer at National Grid's North Hyde substation that triggered the chaos was most likely to have been caused, Neso found, by moisture entering equipment known as a bushing, causing a short circuit and the ignition of oil within it. Moisture had been detected in oil samples in July 2018, indicating an 'imminent fault' that needed fixing — yet National Grid failed to do so for seven years. It deferred basic maintenance at the substation and failed to fix a fire suppression system that was found in 2022 to be 'inoperable'. Some 108 of National Grid's 805 transformers nationally are overdue maintenance, the report found, a proportion that's within the company's own limits but raises obvious questions about what risks may be going unaddressed.
