Rail minister admits using phone while driving vintage bus in London
The rail minister has admitted using his mobile phone while driving a vintage double-decker bus through London at rush hour.Lord Peter Hendy was behind the wheel of the old Routemaster for a charity event when he was spotted texting a friend, as first reported by the Sunday Times.A spokesperson for Lord Hendy said: "Last month Peter Hendy used his phone while driving. He has apologised in full for this error of judgement and has contacted the police."A source close to Lord Hendy said he would accept the sanction, which is likely to be six points on his licence and a fine.
The incident took place on 28 March during the evening rush hour. Lord Hendy was texting a friend about a prostate cancer test.He had been giving a tour in the bus, which he owns, as part of a fundraiser for the charity Railway Benefit Fund, of which he is patron. The charity works to support railway workers and their families.But he was reported to police just days later by one of the passengers.In a statement, the organisers of the Railway Family Fundraiser said: "None of us would advocate or condone unsafe practices. However, we reiterate that we are not aware of the whole situation, and affirm our hope that any investigation is able to be conducted fairly."The organisers regret that a positive and enjoyable event ended in this way and would once again like to express our thanks to Lord Hendy for his support for our event and fundraising."It is not the first time a government minister has been caught using his phone while driving.The then security minister and Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat was banned from driving for six months in 2022 after he was caught using his device while behind the wheel.He received six points on his licence for the offence, added to the six he already had for two previous driving offences. He was also ordered to pay a £1,000 fine, a surcharge of £100 and costs of £110.The BBC has contacted the Metropolitan Police for comment.
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North Wales Chronicle
32 minutes ago
- North Wales Chronicle
Government facing ‘walk of shame' over Chinese embassy decision
Sir Iain Duncan Smith said response by the Government to the proposed embassy near the the capital's financial district had become 'Project Kowtow', as he criticised the Government for 'one denial after another (and) one betrayal after another'. Sir Iain referred to the warnings reportedly issued by the White House and Dutch government to Downing Street over the plans, which is set to be scrutinised by ministers. The worries stem from the close proximity of the proposed embassy's Royal Mint Court site to data centres and communication cables. The Sunday Times said the US was 'deeply concerned' about the plans, quoting a senior US official. In response, planning minister Matthew Pennycook said he could not give a full response as the matter was still to come before the department for a decision, and any verdict could be challenged by the courts. Sir Iain said: 'Beijing has a recent history of cutting cables and confirmed infrastructure hacks, including embedding malware capable of disabling all that infrastructure. 'Minister Peter Kyle yesterday on television said surprisingly that this was in the planning process and could be managed. Will the minister correct this record? The planning inquiry has concluded, no changes can be made to the Chinese planning application at all. 'I'll remind him the application contains nothing about cabling. Indeed to the inquiry, the Chinese have rejected only two requests, which he referred to actually, made by the Government in the letter from the foreign and home secretaries, despite ministers regularly saying that this letter, and I quote, should give those concerned, 'comfort'.' The Conservative MP said rerouting the cables would cost millions of pounds, and asked Mr Pennycook why the Government had denied the existence of cables until the White House confirmed it. He asked Mr Pennycook to deny reports by Chinese state media, saying the UK had given the Chinese assurances that it would allow a development 'no matter what'. He added: 'I see this as Project Kowtow, one denial after another, one betrayal after another. No wonder our allies believe that this Chinese mega embassy is now becoming a walk of shame for the Government.' Mr Pennycook replied because of the 'quasi-judicial nature' of his role, he could not comment on details of the application. He also said it would not be 'appropriate' for him to comment on the cabling or national security issues. He said he did not 'recognise the characterisation' by the Sunday Times of the embassy being raised in talks between the UK and China on trade. 'It is important to also emphasise that only material planning considerations can be taken into account in determining this case,' he said. 'But, as I say, I cannot comment in any detail on a case and it is not yet before the department.' Tory shadow communities secretary Kevin Hollinrake said Parliament had been treated with disdain by the Government. Mr Hollinrake said: 'Question after question, letter after letter, the Government has consistently treated Parliament with complete disregard on this matter. Stonewalling legitimate inquiries about national security, about ministerial discussions, and warnings about security bodies.' He added: 'Why won't the Government follow the examples of the US, Australian, and Irish governments which veto similar embassies that threaten their national security? 'The Government is on the verge of making a decision that will lead to huge risk, that will persist for decades. Will they change course before it is too late?' Mr Pennycook replied: 'No decision has been made on this case. No application is yet before the department.' Marie Rimmer, Labour MP for St Helens South and Whiston, said: 'China has a track record of aggressive state-backed espionage, and surely this country cannot afford to make a massive underestimation of what risk if this would go ahead?' She added: 'We cannot not say anything in this House. We must comment on what we see, and please understand that we must do so.' Meanwhile, former security minister, Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat, asked whether the Government believed the Chinese would treat a similar application in the same way. He said: 'Do you honestly believe that thr minister thinks that the Chinese would look at this proposal in the same way? 'Do we actually in this House believe that our economic security being threatened, as highlighted by the Americans and the Dutch, would go through a bureaucratic planning process with no ability to vary it because, frankly, them's the orders? 'I don't think that's the way China would do it, and it's certainly not the way we should.' Mr Pennycook replied: 'I'm very glad that we have a different and more robust planning system than the People's Republic of China.' Later in the session, Conservative MP Lincoln Jopp (Spelthorne) asked if the officer considering the case is 'cleared to receive top secret information'. Mr Pennycook replied: 'A planning inspector is assessing the case as part of a public inquiry. 'And I'm afraid, while I recognise why (Mr Jopp) has asked the question, it would not be appropriate for me to comment on national security matters.'
The National
2 hours ago
- The National
Labour are still in deep trouble despite by-election win
FOR a man whose party had just won a by-election, it was widely expected to lose, Anas Sarwar is not at all a happy bunny. His aggressive and angrily needy behaviour while being interviewed by Martin Geissler on the BBC Scotland Sunday Show will remind fans of RuPaul's Drag Race of the iconic droll comment made by contestant Trixie Mattell when a competitor had a very public and furious temper tantrum after being put through to the next round by the judges but failing to make the top three: "I think that's a lot of emotion for safe." For those not familiar with the show, the comment was a pointed reference to the fact that although the contestant in question had survived that particular episode, the temper tantrum was due to their awareness that they were not on track to win the contest, and as it transpired, they were eliminated not long afterwards. Likewise, the anger displayed by Anas Sarwar was due to his awareness that despite this by-election win, his party remains in deep, deep, trouble, and that trouble is largely of Labour's own creation. Whatever you might think of the SNP's decision to focus its attacks on Reform UK during the by election campaign - and spoiler alert I think it was tactically a disaster - it's pretty rich of Anas Sarwar to go on the BBC, of all media platforms, and accuse John Swinney of running a "dishonest and disgraceful" campaign which pushed voters to Reform UK. Rarely has psychological projection been so manifest in a political interview. READ MORE: Scotland's top doctor warns of climate and pollution public health emergency It doesn't push voters to Reform when you do as the SNP has done and complain loudly that Reform is running an overtly racist campaign. What pushes voters to Reform is when you do what the Labour party and the BBC have been doing, which is to ape Reform's policies, thus legitimising and mainstreaming them, and to give Reform's leader a platform out of all proportion to his political success. The rise of Reform has nothing to do with the SNP, and everything to do with the Labour and Conservative parties and the anti-independence British media, above all the BBC. Of course, Anas Sarwar knows that, he's not a stupid man. He is, however, a politically dishonest man. The very last thing he can do in public is to admit the responsibility of his own party or that of a publicly owned broadcaster to which his party is linked by an umbilical cord in facilitating , encouraging and normalising racist far-right Anglo-British nationalism. Blaming far-right Anglo-British nationalism on the SNP is a new low, even by the base standards of the Labour Party in Scotland. Talking of pandering to the far right, the BBC has revealed that it has drawn up plans to "regain the trust" of Reform UK voters. The plans reportedly include changing news and drama content in order to make the broadcaster's output more appealing to the kind of people who have no problem at all with Doctor Who being a shape shifting near immortal alien who can cross time and space while fighting all sorts of trans-dimensional alien threats and sentient dinosaurs, but who complain it becomes unbelievable when the Doctor regenerates into a woman or a gay black Scotsman. Minutes of a meeting of the BBC's Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee in March, which has been seen by Byline Times, show that BBC News CEO Deborah Turness gave a presentation in which she discussed plans to alter 'story selection' and 'other types of output, such as drama' in order to win back the trust of Reform voters. One of the key members of the BBC's Editorial Guidelines Committee is former GB News executive Robbie Gibb, an arch-Brextremist who was appointed to the board by Boris Johnson in 2021. In 2022, former BBC presenter Emily Maitlis described Gibb as an 'active agent of the Conservative party.' Gibb was Theresa May's Downing Street Director of Communications between 2017 and 2019. (Image: House of Lords) Expect more news reports on immigration and greater prominence given to uncritical coverage of Reform UK politicians. They should just go the whole hog and rebrand BBC Question Time as 'An Evening with Nigel Farage'. Gibb was also previously the director of The Jewish Chronicle. Gibb fronted a consortium of worthies who 'rescued' the paper in 2020, but who claim either not to know, or are not saying, who put up the cash. In his November 2023 BBC Declaration of Personal Interests, Gibb stated that he was the 100 per cent owner of the Jewish Chronicle. After Gibbs' departure in August 2024, the newspaper was forced to apologise for publishing a series of fabricated pro-Israeli stories about the Gaza war. In drama, you can now look forward to cosy murders set in English country villages where everyone is white and heterosexual, and period dramas about a plucky colonial doctor, who repeatedly references how Scottish he is despite his upper class English accent, serving in one of the British Empire's African possessions, where over the course of a six episode story arc he rescues the benighted natives from their pagan superstitions and Arab slave raiders and eventually succeeds in winning the heart of a beautiful English rose, the daughter of a wealthy duke who heads a household of forelock tugging salt of the earth servants. I should stop here in case the BBC thinks this is a story pitch. Compare and contrast, surveys have shown that the BBC has lost most public trust in Scotland, in no small measure due to the Corporation's blatantly one-sided coverage of Scotland's constitutional debate, but the BBC shows no interest in trying to win back the trust of Scotland's independence-supporting viewers and listeners. The reason for that is that, despite his constant claims to be 'anti-elite,' Farage and his ilk pose no threat at all to the British establishment, they are merely the latest iteration of that establishment's attempts to subvert and control impulses to push back against it.
The National
2 hours ago
- The National
Expert gives verdict as BBC bosses plan to win over Reform UK voters
THE BBC is 'taking its cue from Donald Trump' by proposing to alter its drama output in a bid to win the trust of Reform UK voters, an expert on mainstreaming the far-right has said. BBC bosses including director-general Tim Davie have reportedly drawn up plans to win over Reform voters due to a belief their news and drama output is creating 'low trust issues' with supporters of Nigel Farage. Minutes from a meeting of the broadcaster's editorial guidelines and standards committee from March, revealed by The Byline Times, show that BBC News CEO Deborah Turness gave a presentation in which she discussed plans to alter "story selection" and "other types of output, such as drama" to win the trust of Reform voters. Professor Aurelien Mondon, an expert at the University of Bath on the mainstreaming of the far right, said he is concerned the BBC are 'caving in' to a backlash against equality and diversity with these plans, largely spearheaded by US President Trump. READ MORE: LBC spark fury with pro-Israel report on seizure of Madleen Gaza ship Asked about proposals to alter drama output specifically, Mondon told The National: 'This is the most concerning element to me. 'I think what we are seeing here is a pushback against equality and diversity and inclusion and it seems to me the BBC is taking its cue from Donald Trump, quite directly. 'It seems they are caving to this backlash against equality, diversity and inclusion. 'My worry is that they are jumping the gun and we're seeing that not just in the media, we're seeing it in universities as well, we're seeing a pushback in businesses. 'I think people are accepting a new world order without even pushing back. My worry is that this is what this is about, the changing [of] drama programmes.' Farage has repeatedly attacked the BBC, having called it a 'political actor' last year while appearing on GB News. He threatened to boycott the corporation following a Question Time appearance in which he was taken to task by members of the public over repeated instances of Reform candidates being involved in allegations of racism and homophobia. Following the broadcast, Farage said the audience was rigged and that they 'were not ordinary members of the public'. He threatened to not appear on the BBC until the broadcaster apologised. A YouGov poll last September showed less than 20% of Reform UK voters trusted the BBC to tell the truth. However, the same poll also showed more than 50% of people in the UK overall do not trust the BBC to tell the truth. (Image: University of Bath) In revealing plans to alter its coverage to try and win the trust of Reform voters, Mondon said the BBC is misunderstanding its role as a public broadcaster and how popular the party actually is. 'I think they misunderstand their role as a public broadcaster whose mission should be the defence of democracy,' he said. "It should platform a diversity of views, but that does not mean that it should give uncritical space to ideas which are contrary to democratic principle or a threat to some communities. This is deeply counterproductive as the case of the US has shown. 'The other thing I think they wilfully misunderstand is the level of support for Reform. In a way, they've bought into their own hype. 'Much of the media has been hyping the popularity of Reform in the last few months which I think is very problematic. I don't want to downplay the recent opinion polls that have shown Reform could be the most popular party, for example, but I think we need to take this with a grain of salt. "We've seen that in many other democracies the far right rising not because they are popular but because the mainstream parties are failing and losing support mostly to abstention. We have witnessed countless times now that giving uncritical platforms to the far right or disproportionate attention, it only ends up benefitting them." READ MORE: Richard Murphy: What to expect from Rachel Reeves's spending review The BBC has repeatedly been criticised for the extent to which it has platformed Farage and radical right or far right figures in recent years. The Question Time episode criticised by Farage was hastily arranged by the BBC so he could appear after not being involved in a previous edition, while a Panorama interview with Nick Robinson was also rescheduled last year after Farage pulled out at the last minute. Tom Mills, a sociology expert who wrote The BBC: The Myth of a Public Service, said last July said BBC had been 'really bad' at robustly questioning Farage throughout the election because, he claimed, it is more comfortable with an anti-establishment figure on the right than the left. The BBC was also found to have been disproportionately platforming people from right-wing media outlets on Question Time over the past decade by researchers at Cardiff University. They analysed a total of 352 programmes with 1734 guest slots, which were filled by 661 different people. However, while they found that the BBC had 'broadly balanced' appearances from representatives of the UK's main political parties, when it came to members of the media a right-wing bias became evident. The BBC was additionally called out on air in April by former presenter Matthew Stadlen for platforming anti-Muslim 'extremist' Douglas Murray, after he was given an eight-minute interview on Newsnight. The committee which discussed the plans to appeal more to Reform voters in March, included former GB News executive Robbie Gibb, who is also a former director of communications at Number 10 and an outspoken Brexiteer. Mondon has warned the BBC that continuing to hand a platform to Reform UK and far-right figures is a serious threat to democracy that the broadcaster should be seeking to protect. 'You don't need Reform in power to have far right politics in place,' Mondon went on. 'What we're seeing with a Labour government is that a lot of the discourse Reform was pushing is becoming increasingly normalised. The more they are given airtime on legitimate news sources, the worse things are going to get for democracy. 'We should be talking about the climate, education, housing, pensions and the cost of living and all we end up talking about is immigration in ways that are completely disproportionate. 'This is not what most people in the UK care about. This is what our media, our mainstream politicians, have placed high on the agenda to divert attention from the real crises they have no answers to.' The BBC has been approached for comment.
