Sandi Toksvig joins Cambridge University chancellor nominations
The elected chancellor will become the university's formal and ceremonial head. They have no executive responsibilities, but will be a vital part of public-facing activities, fundraising, and advising senior members of the university.Lord Sainsbury of Turville, who replaced the Duke of Edinburgh in the position, announced he intended to step down from the role last year.The Cambridge University student newspaper, Varsity, first reported a list of the current candidates vying for the position.It included Cambridge astrophysicist Wyn Evans, former BP chief executive Lord Browne, business owner and activist Gina Miller, education professor Tony Booth and Queens' College president Mohamed El-Erian.In person voting will take place in person either 12 July or 16 July with online votes being cast on 9 July and 18 July.
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Spectator
an hour ago
- Spectator
Kill the single state pension age
When William Beveridge designed the welfare state in the 1940s, the state pension age was 65 for men and 60 for women. Life expectancy for a man was around 66, and around 71 for a woman. The pension was not designed to fund decades of leisure: it was a modest provision for the last couple of years of life, one that not everyone would receive. Today, life expectancy for a man aged 66 (the current state pension age) is around 85, and a woman aged 66 can expect to live until she is 88. The average person now spends close to a fifth of their life in retirement. What was once a short post-script has become a major chapter – and an increasingly expensive one. This is the backdrop for the latest statutory review of the state pension age (SPA), led this year by Dr Suzy Morrissey. Her terms of reference are technical: consider sustainability, intergenerational fairness, life expectancy, international practice. Behind the dry language sits a political question no one rushes to answer: when should people stop working, and who pays for the years they do not? You know the script here. Britain is ageing. The ratio of workers to pensioners is shrinking. Every review concludes that the SPA must rise. Every opposition grumbles about the cruelty of doing so. Every government, when in office, quietly nudges the age upwards. Nothing fundamental changes. What almost never gets challenged is the model itself: a single age at which everyone, regardless of class, health or occupation, is deemed equally ready for retirement. This is tidy for Whitehall. It is also daft. The Office for National Statistics reports that male life expectancy for a retirement age man in Surrey is 86 years; in Blackpool, it is 81. Healthy life expectancy – the years lived without major illness – shows still sharper divides. Yet we persist in pretending that the 66-year-old accountant in Guildford and the 66-year-old ex-dockworker in Hull should both cross the same finish line. That is unjust, and unsustainable. It loads the cost of longer-lived, healthier retirees onto taxpayers who may not live long enough to see much retirement at all. Here I can almost hear some readers reaching for outrage about contributions. Shouldn't a person's pension entitlement reflect their national insurance contributions? So a Surrey stockbroker who pays more NI than a Sunderland scaffolder has earned the right to draw the state pension for longer? This takes me to the biggest and most persistent misunderstanding in British politics: the state pension isn't really a pension. It's a benefit. And it's funded not from some pot of money patiently built up from each recipient's contributions, but from the taxes of today's workers. National Insurance is just a tax, and one that long ago lost any hypothecated link to the pension system. That means pension policy cannot be treated as a personal contract between citizen and state. It is a collective transfer between generations. Pretending otherwise, with talk of 'I've paid in, I deserve it back', hides the real choices – about fairness between regions, between classes, and between young and old. Other countries are at least edging away from the one-size-fits-all fiction. Denmark and the Netherlands now link their pension ages directly to life expectancy. Countries including Norway and Portugal offer some scope to offer earlier pensions to those who have done physically demanding work. None has yet built a fully 'variable' pension age, but the recognition is spreading: a uniform pension age does not match demographic reality. Britain should be bolder. One approach is to tie entitlement not to age but to years of contributions, recognising that someone who started work at 18 has done their share by 65, while the graduate entering at 25 has not. Another is to give more flexibility to those in arduous jobs: that Sunderland scaffolder is likely to be physically knackered in a way that his stockbroking compatriot is not. More radical still is to abandon the cliff-edge retirement model altogether. Instead of full-time one day and nothing the next, policy should support tapering – part-time, flexible work in the sixties and seventies, subsidised and encouraged so people can scale down, not drop out. This would help individuals, who gain income and purpose. It helps employers, who retain skills and experience. It helps the state, which saves on pensions and collects more tax. Above all, it acknowledges reality: ageing is a spectrum, not a binary switch from 'young' to 'old'. This is politically difficult, to put it mildly. I am recommending electoral hemlock, because it entails higher pension ages for some (who will be angry) and different treatment for some (ditto). No sane politician attempts major change to the state pension. The fury of the Waspi women still haunts ministers. Even tinkering with winter fuel allowances causes uproar. You'd be mad to do it, minister. But it must still be done. The fiscal maths is brutal. By 2075, pensioners will make up more than a quarter of the adult population. The cost of the state pension is projected to rise from around 5 per cent of GDP today to nearly 8 per cent. Absent reform, the money has to come from somewhere: higher taxes on a shrinking workforce, or cuts to other services. Intergenerational politics are already sour. Younger voters see themselves funding entitlements for older cohorts who enjoyed cheaper houses and more generous occupational pensions. A rigid single SPA deepens that resentment. That is the real political danger: not the fury of today's pensioners, but the alienation of tomorrow's workers who simply refuse to pay for the pensions of others. Dr Morrissey's review is framed as technical, but it is inescapably political. She has licence to say what ministers will not: that one pension age for all is outdated, unfair and unaffordable. A braver politics would seize that truth, and act on it. None of this is easy. None of it is popular. But it is necessary. The single state pension age should end.
Daily Mirror
an hour ago
- Daily Mirror
Donald Trump says UK will put troops in Ukraine and reveals if Americans will join them
In a wide-ranging interview, Donald Trump stated firmly that Ukraine would 'not be a part of NATO' but insisted European troops, including British forces, would be sent to deter any future Russian aggression. Donald Trump has said Britain will put troops on the ground in Ukraine, less than 24 hours after suggesting American soldiers could also be deployed. In a wide-ranging interview with Fox News today, the US president stated firmly that Ukraine would 'not going to be a part of NATO' but insisted European troops, including British forces, would be sent to deter any future Russian aggression. '(Ukraine) are not going to be a part of NATO but we've got the European nations, so they'll front-load it and they'll have – some of them, France and Germany, a couple of them, the UK – they are going to have boots on the ground,' he said. 'I don't think it's going to be a problem, to be honest. I think Putin is tired of it, I think they are all tired of it, but you never know. We are going to find out about President Putin in the next couple of weeks, that I can tell you.' Trump also conceded that a peace deal might not be achievable, saying: 'It's possible he doesn't want to make a deal.' The comments marked a dramatic shift in tone. Just a day earlier, the president, in front of Volodmyr Zelesnky, had floated the possibility that US troops could eventually be involved in Ukraine. When asked if the US will have boots on the ground as part of a security guarantee for Ukraine, as he had indicated on Monday, Trump categorically denied that. "You have my assurance, and I am president," he said. His subsequent assertion that only European allies would send soldiers appeared designed to calm domestic concern over American military entanglement while shifting responsibility for Ukraine's defence squarely onto Europe. During the Fox News appearance, which came just hours after European leaders, including the Prime Minister, left the White House, Trump said he had already discussed Washington's stance with US allies, as well as Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission. He described conversations in which he suggested Europe should prepare for a different approach once he leaves office. Asked if he had raised the issue of future security guarantees, Trump replied: 'We talked about it. You know, it is what it is. I could say the same thing about them. 'Supposing you got a terrible leader in UK or France or, you know, we had Ursula (von der Leyen) there who runs the whole gamut, you know, we just made the biggest trade deal in the world with. She's in charge of the Commission, the European Commission. And she's the boss. She was there too.' The president claimed his guests at the White House had praised his economic record, contrasting the current state of the US with what he described as national decline a year earlier. 'Our country has gone from a dead country one year ago. We're the hottest country in the world, and every one of those people said it yesterday. They said, 'in six months, you've made this the hottest country in the world,'' he said. His comment came amid heightened anxiety in European capitals about Washington's reliability as an ally. NATO members have already increased defence spending and pledged long-term support for Kyiv, but Trump's insistence that Ukraine will not join the alliance while encouraging European troop deployments underscores the fragile balance between deterrence and escalation. His repeated suggestion that President Putin is 'tired of it' was received with scepticism in diplomatic circles, given Russia 's sustained military campaign and reluctance to agree to a ceasefire. Critics argue that such comments risk emboldening the Kremlin while unnerving Western partners. By explicitly ruling out NATO membership for Ukraine and promising that Britain, France and Germany would provide troops instead of the US, Trump once again threw established alliance policy into confusion. It came as Keir Starmer said European and US leaders are drawing up "robust" plans to defend Ukraine if a peace deal is reached. The Prime Minister today headed a meeting of the 'Coalition of the Willing', with members agreeing to look at more sanctions on Putin's Russia. A No10 spokesman said after today's meeting: 'The Prime Minister co-chaired a virtual meeting of the Coalition of the Willing this morning with over 30 international leaders to update on the talks in Washington last night. 'The Prime Minister began by reflecting on the constructive meeting, saying it was clear there was a real sense of unity and shared goal of securing a just and lasting peace for Ukraine. Turning to next steps, the Prime Minister outlined that Coalition of the Willing planning teams would meet with their US counterparts in the coming days to further strengthen plans to deliver robust security guarantees and prepare for the deployment of a reassurance force if the hostilities ended. 'The leaders also discussed how further pressure – including through sanctions – could be placed on Putin until he showed he was ready to take serious action to end his illegal invasion. The Prime Minister said he looked forward to updating the group again soon, as further work progressed in the coming days and weeks.'
The Sun
an hour ago
- The Sun
Three-quarters of punters say betting is key to British culture amid new tax threat
NEARLY three-quarters of regular punters say betting is a key part of British life - just as the Government plans a new tax hit on bookies. A YouGov poll for the Betting and Gaming Council (BGC) shows 74 per cent of regular gamblers believe betting is a unique part of UK culture, underlining the role that regulated betting and gaming play in the social and economic fabric of the UK. 1 But the survey comes as the Treasury looks at big changes to how online betting is taxed, raising fears that higher costs could hurt the industry and push more people to risky black market sites. Around 1.5 million Brits already use these unregulated sites, gambling up to £4.3 billion a year without the safety rules that legal firms follow. Meanwhile, horse racing has delayed a series of fixtures next month in protest at the proposals, without consulting BGC members, whose funding for the sport is mission critical. Betting and Gaming Council CEO Grainne Hurst, said: 'Punters are clear, betting is not just a leisure activity, but a valued and long-standing part of Britain's cultural and sporting landscape. From casinos to bingo, horseracing, football, rugby league, darts, and snooker, millions of adults enjoy betting safely and responsibly each month. 'BGC members are proud to support jobs on the high street, invest in local communities and grassroots sport, and contribute billions in taxes to fund essential public services. 'However, these significant cultural and economic contributions are now at risk. Any further increase in taxation on regulated betting and gaming operators will hurt punters and drive even more towards the illegal, online black market, which pays no tax, supports no jobs, contributes nothing to British sport, and offers no safer gambling protections. 'We want to work with racing and the Government constructively to get the balance right and prevent further tax rises, which will only undermine racing's revenues and threaten investment in the sport, already a more expensive and less profitable product for operators. 'Only balanced regulations and a stable tax regime can safeguard consumers, secure jobs, and ensure betting and gaming continues to be a responsible, growing sector, and a proud part of Britain's cultural heritage.' BGC members support 109,000 jobs, generate £6.8bn for the economy while raising £4bn in taxes. They also help fund horseracing to the tune of £350m a year through sponsorship, media rights, and the Levy, while contributing £40m to the English Football League and its clubs, plus millions more for rugby league, darts, and snooker. Each month in Britain, around 22.5 million adults have a bet, and the most recent NHS Health Survey for England estimated that 0.4 per cent of the adult population are problem gamblers. Remember to gamble responsibly For help with a gambling problem, call the National Gambling Helpline on 0808 8020 133 or go to to be excluded from all UK-regulated gambling websites.
