Jersey tech scheme to offer year-round funding for ideas
Digital Jersey chief executive Tony Moretta said: "This new programme is about helping to turn good ideas – large and small - into real outcomes that can benefit Jersey's people, economy and environment."The project is being delivered through Impact Jersey.
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The Sun
9 minutes ago
- The Sun
See if someone is spying on your exact location & watching every move with little-known phone setting
Sean Keach, Head of Technology and Science Published: Invalid Date, MILLIONS of iPhones have a must-know feature that can expose and block anyone spying on your location. It's built into your iPhone as standard but it's tucked away in the Settings app – so it's easy to miss. You can use it to review who your location is being shared with, including specific people or apps. The feature is called Safety Check and it's on any iPhone running iOS 16 software or later. You can check if you've got that by going to Settings > General > Software Update. Then you can dive into Safety Check to see if you're being snooped on. HOW DOES LOCATION SPYING WORK? Your location can be accessed in two main ways on an iPhone. The first is with location sharing through Find My. That's when your exact location is being shared with another person in real-time – viewable as a dot on a map. There are two ways this might be happening without your knowledge. One is that you set it up for someone years ago – maybe an ex partner – and simply forgot to switch it off. The other is that someone with access to your iPhone set it up without your knowledge. The second way your location can be shared on an iPhone is with an app. iPhone 16e review – I've secretly tested Apple's cheapest mobile and I love the new button but that's not the best bit Loads of apps will be making good use of your location. Think Uber for taxis, Google Maps for driving, or WhatsApp for sharing your location on the way to an event. But some apps might use your location for nefarious means. If you've ever downloaded a dodgy app by accident, it could be a ploy by crooks to track you. So if you've installed an obscure calculator app that never seemed to work properly, always seems to "crash", and has constant access to your location, that's a red flag. 4 On top of that, someone else with access to your phone might have installed a location-spying app. So if there's an app that you don't recognise with access to your location, that's also a very worrying sign. Similarly, you'll also want to make sure that your app accounts are locked down. If someone else has access to an app that can track your location, they might also be able to find out where you are. WHAT CAN SAFETY CHECK LIMIT? You can switch off access to the following... Bluetooth Calendars Camera Contacts Files and Folders Health Local Network Location Services Media and Apple Music Microphone Motion & Fitness Photos Reminders Research Speech Recognition Picture Credit: Apple / The Sun HOW TO USE SAFETY CHECK Safety Check is a way to quickly check up on all of your location sharing, and then shut it off if you like. Just go into Settings > Privacy & Security > Safety Check. You'll be guided through a process that shows you all of the ways that you're sharing your location (and other important info, like photos) with people. And you'll be given the option to deny access – to both people and apps. 4 There's also a more extreme Emergency Reset option that immediately stops sharing all info. And if you're trying to do all of this quietly, there's a Quick Exit button in the corner. That immediately saves your progress and closes the Settings app. Then you can pick it up again later when you're able to. 4
The Guardian
20 minutes ago
- The Guardian
How can England possibly be running out of water?
During the drought of 2022, London came perilously close to running out of water. Water companies and the government prayed desperately for rain as reservoirs ran low and the groundwater was slowly drained off. Contingency plans were drafted to ban businesses from using water; hotel swimming pools would have been drained, ponds allowed to dry up, offices to go uncleaned. If the lack of rainfall had continued for another year, it was possible that taps could have run dry. That, however, was just a taster of what could come down the line. On Tuesday, the government announced a 'nationally significant' water shortage in England, which means the whole country is at risk of running out if the dry weather continues. People across England are already banned from using hosepipes, with more restrictions probable over coming months. The UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (UKCEH), an independent research institute, has warned of exceptionally low river flows. Reservoirs are also at extremely low levels and groundwater is dwindling. Droughts are generally two-year events. A year of dry weather means water supplies are running out – that is what is happening now. Things really come to a head if the following year does not bring above average rainfall. That is when the shortages start to bite, with farmers unable to irrigate and households and businesses hit with sweeping restrictions. With reservoirs at record lows and stream flows exceptionally low, England is desperate for rain. Forecasts indicate that by 2055 England's public water supply could be short by 5bn litres a day without urgent action to future-proof resources, the equivalent to more than a third of the supplies available today. The effect on the economy will be profoundly negative. The thinktank Public First has estimated that the economic cost of water scarcity could be £8.5bn over this parliament. So how on earth did famously rainswept England, notorious the world over for being green and wet with our national symbol pretty much a furled umbrella, come to this? Britain's geology and climate means there should be plenty of water. Underground in the south of England the rock is made of chalk, which is very soft and porous. These layers of rock filter rainwater into some of the cleanest water in the world, collecting in huge aquifers that have been tapped by local residents for centuries. Water companies now use those aquifers to provide the majority of the drinking water in some parts of the south. Further north, the rock underfoot is harder; sandstone and limestone, so lacking the benefits of the chalk aquifer. But it tends to receive more rainfall than the south, so there has generally been plentiful water from the skies to fill the reservoirs on which the northern water companies rely. There are also the rivers that crisscross the country, which (when clean) include gin-clear chalk streams buzzing with mayflies and thronging with salmon and other fish. The UK is one of the rainier places in Europe. Some areas are wetter than others. In England, the Lake District generally receives an average of 2,000mm of rainfall a year, while in parts of the south-east it is as low as 700mm. Perhaps it is because the country has always had such rich resources, that they have been taken for granted. Running out of water has never really been in question. But with population growth and climate breakdown, this is starting to look like folly. It was in the 17th century that the New River Company began piping water into London's homes from the springs in nearby Hertfordshire for the very rich. Slowly the technology began to spread and grow in popularity. Over the next decades, England's population would rise dramatically and the water systems of its rapidly growing cities would come under increasing stress. When the Great Stink hit London in 1858 during a heatwave, the civil engineer Joseph Bazalgette had already been commissioned to draw up plans to urgently update the city's sewage system. Known for his tirelessness, Bazalgette checked every connection himself, making thousands upon thousands of notes, and saved many lives as the system diverted sewage away from the city and into the Thames estuary. Later, treatment centres were added to purify the water. Today, consumers are used to having water coming out of a tap and they want to use a lot of it. Future generations, who will be dealing with long, dry summers, would probably be shocked at the profligate way clean tap water was used to flush toilets, water gardens and run washing machines. UK households use more water, mostly on showering and bathing, than other comparable European countries, at about 150 litres a day per capita. For France the average is 128, Germany 122 and Spain 120 (although in Italy its 243 litres a day). And the waste starts long before it gets to people's taps. Water companies in England and Wales lose about 1tn litres of water through leaky pipes each year. The industry has said that about 20% of all treated water is lost to leaks. The water firms have pledged to halve leakages by 2050. Meanwhile, the annual pipe replacement rate is 0.05% a year across all water companies: much of the sewage system in London, for example, has not been significantly updated since Bazalgette and his colleagues installed it in the 19th century. No new reservoir has been built in 30 years despite significant population growth and climate breakdown meaning longer, drier summers during which the country desperately needs to store water. The reservoirs England does have are at their lowest levels in at least a decade, just 67.7% full on average. According to Dr Wilson Chan, a hydroclimatologist at UKCEH, 'above average rainfall over several months is needed to ease pressures on water resources'. Was it the privatisation of the water and sewerage industry in 1989 that has led to this situation? England's water system has been widely criticised, and privatisation has been blamed for a lack of investment in infrastructure. Some say this is owing to the water companies paying out dividends rather than using the money raised by customer bills solely for investment in infrastructure; others blame a privatised regulated monopoly system that has prioritised low customer bills over investment. Experts have also pointed to the regulatory system. Water company drought plans compel firms to follow a series of steps before they can increase abstraction, taking more water from reservoirs, rivers and the ground to supply customers, beginning with reducing consumption (a hosepipe ban). 'Water companies must now take action to follow their drought plans – I will hold them to account if they delay,' says the water minister, Emma Hardy. 'We face a growing water shortage in the next decade.' But water companies believe that people hate being told to reduce their water consumption, so avoid hosepipe bans as much as possible. It does not help that bans may also lead to customers giving low satisfaction marks for their company, which are then taken into account by the regulator. The end result of these incentives; unsustainably high levels of abstraction from the natural environment, most of which will not be replaced by rain on the same timescale. Stores of water such as fossil aquifers and chalk streams recharge over centuries. The Environment Agency (EA) assess that 15% of surface water bodies and 27% of groundwater bodies in England have unsustainable levels of abstraction. 'We are calling on everyone to play their part and help reduce the pressure on our water environment,' says Helen Wakeham, the EA's director of water and chair of the National Drought Group. 'Water companies must continue to quickly fix leaks and lead the way in saving water.' This is not just a management problem. As climate breakdown accelerates, rainfall patterns are changing fast, and water will increasingly become less available at certain times of year. As Sir David King, a former UK chief scientific adviser who chairs the Climate Crisis Advisory Group, says: 'Drought in England is no longer a warning. It is a clear signal that climate collapse is unravelling our water, food and natural systems right now. 'This crisis demands a fundamental shift that places real value on our planet and environment, invests in nature, restores water cycles and transforms how we use every drop. If we rise to this moment we can turn crisis into opportunity, delivering economic resilience, ecological renewal and climate leadership.' The UK is not the only country that is already struggling to deal with changing weather patterns. Almost half of Europe is in drought, with wildfires tearing across the continent and farmers struggling to grow crops. Many of the economies of Southern Europe are dependent on sunny weather that has historically made the region the perfect place to grow vegetables for export. Scientists are concerned that farming in certain southern European countries will become less and less viable. More than 90 million people in eastern and southern Africa are facing extreme hunger after record-breaking drought across many areas has led to widespread crop failures and the death of livestock. As the impacts of the climate crisis unfurl around the world, is the UK government awake to the scale of the problem? Nine new reservoirs are in the pipeline to be built before 2050, while there are consultations on reducing demand for water. But this may be too little, too late; many housing developments are on pause because of water scarcity. The first new reservoir planned for Abingdon in Oxfordshire is sited in the same place as the government's new datacentre zone, leading to fears the water will be used to cool servers rather than serve customers in one of the most water-stressed areas of the UK. Green homes experts have said government building codes for new housing should include rainwater harvesting for internal use such as in lavatories and washing machines. People with gardens could use a water butt in summer, so that clean tap water is not being pumped through a hose into garden plants. Reducing time in the shower by a minute can save water, says Waterwise, while green building groups recommend the use of water-saving shower heads. A recent government commissioned report recommends smart water meters ate installed nationally, so households who use sprinklers and fill swimming pools are charged more than those who are more frugal with their use. More broadly, farmers could build reservoirs on their land to reduce the need for irrigation. Nature-based solutions could be used too, such as releasing beavers that create dams and hold water in the system, or restoring wetlands. 'We need to build more resilience into our rivers and their catchment areas with nature-based solutions at scale, such as healthy soils that allow water to filter into the ground and not rush off taking the soil with it; riverside tree planting to provide shade and further slow the flow of water; wetlands to store and slowly release water, and rewiggling streams to raise the water table and purify pollutants,' says Mark Lloyd, the chief executive of the Rivers Trust. 'We also need to finally implement the use of rainwater rather than drinking water where we can, such as car washing, gardening, washing pets, filling paddling pools and flushing the loo. Other water-stressed countries have used this approach for decades and we need to join that party.'
The Guardian
39 minutes ago
- The Guardian
A UK headline wealth tax? It may be simpler to put up existing taxes
Pressure to go further on wealth taxes – by creating new modes of clawing at hoards of hard-to-reach cash – is mounting. For starters, the fiscal picture is looking fairly bleak, with economists estimating that Rachel Reeves must raise £20bn – or even as much as £50bn – to meet her goal of balancing day-to-day spending against the revenue raised from taxation. On the government backbenches, meanwhile, MPs want the chancellor to squeeze the richest in society harder. They even put forward an early day motion last month calling for a 2% annual tax on individual assets over £10m. Yet introducing these kinds of taxes is often not straightforward, with the behaviour of the wealthy being hard to monitor and harder still to predict. The first significant problem is working out where the assets are and who holds them. That has always been difficult and has become even more challenging after one of the most important economic surveys, the household wealth data series, was suspended by the Office for National Statistics because of its low quality. The upshot is that HMRC simply does not know how many millionaires or billionaires there are in the UK. Without reliable figures, it is extremely hard to write policies, cost them and administer them. There is also a battle to be had with an 'old guard with set views' in Whitehall. Whitehall sources paint a picture of a Treasury led by figures influenced by economists whose thinking was prominent at Oxford University in the 1980s and 90s – such as James Mirrlees, Christophe Chamley and Tony Atkinson – leading to something of an orthodox view. In a nutshell, that position is that if you tax capital too much, it will stop investment and hamper growth. Or, in Chamley's words: 'Tax rate on capital income tends to zero in the long run.'. Since this era, the debate within economics has become more nuanced. A growing body of research suggests that some taxation on capital, even at relatively high rates, could lead to greater investment. As it becomes less attractive to hoard wealth because of taxation, risk appetites would then increase in pursuit of higher returns. You might be less tempted to keep your money in a vanilla savings account that can be taxed hard and easily if you can get a much better rate of return – even with a bit more risk – elsewhere. Treasury insiders argue that Reeves has followed the more modern logic, having already taken steps to widen the scope of inheritance and capital gains tax (IHT and CGT). They posit that her reluctance to pursue a headline wealth tax does not mean she has pulled her punches when it comes to taxing wealth. Hostile backbenchers, on the other hand, suggest she follows the old orthodoxy too closely. They often cite her decision to go for relatively small changes in the amounts of tax paid via CGT, rather than bring it more closely in line with income tax at the last budget, which also upset more senior political colleagues. What the debate about how to handle changes to IHT (which have been fiercely opposed by farmers) or CGT illustrates is that if the government really wants to tax wealth more effectively then it has all kinds of ways to do so before opting for a politically – and potentially economically – sensitive route with a headline wealth tax. Yet even changing existing mechanisms might not be easy, when the UK already has one of the highest rates of tax on property and wealth among developed economies, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Sign up to Business Today Get set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning after newsletter promotion Political pressure may make it harder to maintain a more gradualist approach, however. Figures on the left of the Labour parliamentary party are attracted to totemic wealth taxes of the kind introduced in Spain – its so-called solidarity tax – and Switzerland. They see it as part of showing a commitment to rebalancing the economy. Reeves is critical of international examples, saying that Switzerland does not have IHT, and that Spain's wealth tax is so riddled with exemptions that it raises too little money. Some developed economies that had comparable wealth taxes have dropped them, too. 'We have inheritance tax. We have capital gains. We've just got rid of the non-dom tax status that doesn't exist anymore in our tax system. So we do have taxes that tax the wealthy,' Reeves said in a recent interview with LBC. Other measures that go further are not yet proven to work, she claims, saying that those who 'come up with simple solutions' must do more to 'explain exactly how it would work, whether it's an ongoing tax, what it would do to tax avoidance, what it would do about people moving or changing the way that their wealth is stored'. Economists argue that the government should focus its energies on raising existing taxes, such as equalising CGT with income tax, for example, or changing gifting rules around IHT first, rather than introduce a novel wealth tax. The Treasury is already examining gifting rules among other possible IHT changes. Yet while Reeves might agree with some of these arguments, it's less clear whether her cabinet colleagues will tolerate a slow and steady approach, particularly if the fiscal picture sours.
