My birth trauma: ‘Lying in blood, I thought I was going to die'
'I thought I was going to die, I was never going to see my daughter, and my husband would be a single dad,' Theo Clarke says, her nails gripping the sofa. 'I was lying in blood and faeces, rushed by trolley into theatre and operated on without any general anaesthetic. The pain was excruciating. I went into the hospital with fairy lights and a playlist — I came out with a third-degree tear and incontinent, but I had my baby.'
Sitting in her immaculate terraced home in Ealing, west London, surrounded by her daughter Arabella's toys, the former Tory MP for Stafford looks like the archetypal no-nonsense, jolly hockey sticks woman. A one-time charity CEO, and the niece of Jacob Rees-Mogg, she always prided herself
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The Herald Scotland
15 minutes ago
- The Herald Scotland
UN urges UK to negotiate new Chagos deal that allows islanders to return
But a panel of experts appointed by the UN Human Rights Council said retaining the base and continuing to bar Chagossians from Diego Garcia 'appears to be at variance with the Chagossians' right to return'. The Chagossians were expelled from the islands between 1965 and 1973 to make way for the joint UK-US base and have not been allowed to return. Although the UK-Mauritius deal includes a £40 million trust fund for the benefit of the Chagossians, the UN experts expressed concern that this would not provide an 'effective remedy' for the islanders. They also criticised an apparent lack of consultation of the islanders prior to the deal, saying: 'We are gravely concerned about the lack of meaningful participation of Chagossians in processes that have led to the agreement.' The experts added: 'In light of these significant concerns, we call for the ratification of the agreement to be suspended and for a new agreement to be negotiated that fully guarantees the rights of the Chagossian people to return to all islands of the Chagos Archipelago, including Diego Garcia.' Conservative shadow foreign secretary Dame Priti Patel urged the Government to 'do the right thing (and) stop this'. She said: 'We have been warning from the start that this deal is bad for British taxpayers and bad for the Chagossian people. 'Now even the United Nations is saying the very same. 'Labour has completely ignored this community from the get-go, and failed to consult with them at every step of the way. 'It is why I have introduced a Bill in Parliament that would block the (agreement) and force the Government to speak to the people at the heart of their surrender plans.' The deal follows a 2019 advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice saying the islands should be handed over to Mauritius. As well as the fund for Chagossians, the UK has agreed to pay at least £120 million a year for 99 years in order to lease back the Diego Garcia base – a total cost of at least £13 billion in cash terms. The deal also includes provisions preventing development on the rest of the archipelago without the UK's consent, which the Government has argued will prevent countries such as China setting up their own facilities. The agreement has also been backed by the United States. The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office has been contacted for comment.
Telegraph
40 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Miliband has got his nuclear plans wrong. Here's what we should do
Yesterday, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband announced a new 'golden age ' of nuclear energy. But with the wrong technology, unfit regulation and no real delivery plan, his golden age already looks tarnished. He's pinning his hopes on an already out-dated large-scale nuclear technology that has been plagued by construction problems in Finland, France and the UK and whose developer EDF is already moving on to a newer version. And while his commitment to small modular reactors (SMRs) is commendable, they are at best a decade away with no examples in existence in the West. While it is tempting to think you could simply hoist a submarine reactor onto a dock and call it a power station, this is unrealistic. Military reactors are designed for stealth, speed and war, not for civilian safety, grid connectivity or cost-efficiency. So Rolls Royce has had to develop an entirely new concept. In fact the current market leaders in Western SMR-design are GE-Hitachi whose small boiling water reactors recently began construction in Canada. However, given the imminent retirement of all but one of our existing large nuclear reactors, bigger is better for the nuclear ambition, and in this, Miliband's plan is woefully inadequate. Luckily, there is a solution ready and waiting: the Korean APR1400 design which has been successfully completed in both South Korea and UAE with eight units now in operation, built in an average of 8.5 years, at an average cost of $5-6 billion. Far cheaper than the £40 billion some analysts expect Sizewell C to cost. Around £6 billion is thought to have been spent already. The Korean design has been approved by both US and European regulators and should be a no-brainer for the UK: build what works. But to do this we need to take an axe to our overgrown thicket of nuclear regulation. The Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) bizarrely reports to the Department for Work and Pensions, not the Energy Secretary, and sits beyond any meaningful strategic oversight. This well-intentioned separation has resulted in a regulatory regime akin to requiring 57 seat belts in your car – technically thorough, but practically unhinged. One requirement is that each new reactor design must expose workers to even less radiation than its predecessor. That might sound like progress, until you realise that radiation levels inside a modern nuclear plant are already so low they're hard to detect at all. The plant manager at one of our old Advanced Gas Cooled reactors (AGRs) once told me that the only time his radiation detector registered anything other than zero was when he left it on his desk and the sun shone on it. Nuclear workers are typically exposed to more radiation on the street than inside the plant. At this point, further exposure reductions offer no safety benefit. They just add cost, complexity and delay. The environmental regulators are as bad. The Sizewell C design is exactly the same as Hinkley Point C and the site is almost identical to Sizewell A and B. So why on earth were 40,000 pages of environmental statements required? This regulatory excess is expensive and draws out the process of approving new reactors beyond what is remotely reasonable. Britain risks running out of electricity. We had a near miss blackout event in January that was likely a factor in the renewal of the controversial biomass subsidies. We are also likely to see further small extensions to our ageing AGRs which are nearing the ends of their lives. But with a third of our fleet of gas power stations dating back to the 1990s and expected to retire in the next five years, Britain can ill afford delays to new nuclear plants. Particularly not the sort of avoidable delays our overzealous regulators have created. If Miliband is serious both about his golden age of nuclear, and more particularly, keeping the lights on in a decarbonised world, he needs to be far more ambitious. A truly serious plan would involve a programme of 5-6 large-scale reactors, and since the Koreans have the best track record, we should sign them up. He needs to get tough on the regulators. Abolishing ONR altogether and creating a new regulator, as part of the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, with staff who are experts in risk management as well as nuclear safety, and severely curtailing the power of environmental regulators. One of the biggest benefits of nuclear power is its high energy density: it uses very little land to create a lot of energy. That should be taken into account, with regulators forced to look at the national picture rather than taking a strictly site by site approach. And he needs to stop wasting time with incentives for investors. They are not interested in the risk of our shambolic regulatory landscape. He should face this reality, and commit public money for the construction of the first two new reactors, re-financing once construction is completed. This would be a profitable strategy: the Government can borrow more cheaply than the private sector, the Korean design (with suitable regulatory restraint) can be built faster than the Hinkley design, meaning lower financing costs, and nuclear reactors are very profitable to run so investors will be very interested once the risky construction phase is over. He could even offer shares to the public in a 21st Century version of 'Just tell Sid' which remains the most successful public share subscription in UK history, and would perfectly align with Chancellor Rachel Reeves' ambition for UK savers to deploy their capital in the interests of national infrastructure.
Sky News
41 minutes ago
- Sky News
Who are the two Israeli ministers who have been sanctioned by the UK?
The UK government has sanctioned two prominent Israeli ministers for "inciting violence against Palestinians in the West Bank". Britain has been joined by Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Norway in imposing sanctions on Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich - who are opposed to Palestinian statehood and are on the far right of Israeli politics. The ministers are being sanctioned in their personal capacities and are now subject to a freeze on UK assets and director disqualifications, as well as a ban on entering the country. Here we take a look at who they are and why they have been sanctioned. Itamar Ben-Gvir Mr Ben-Gvir is Israel's security minister and the leader of the Jewish Power (Otzma Yehudit) party - one of the members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's ruling coalition. The 49-year-old has previously been convicted of supporting a Jewish terrorist organisation and has supported the removal of Palestinians from their lands - including calling for Gaza's people to be resettled from the territory. The minister has also called for the al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem to be replaced with a synagogue. The mosque - the third-holiest site in Islam - is built atop the Temple Mount - the holiest site in Judaism, and which was once home to two Jewish temples. Mr Smotrich is Israel's finance minister and leader of the National Religious Party-Religious Zionism - which is another part of Mr Netanyahu's coalition. He is in charge of Israel's administration of the West Bank - the occupation of which is illegal under international law. He has also approved an expansion of settlements in the West Bank, and called for aid not to be let into Gaza. Mr Smotrich has recently said not "a grain of wheat" should be allowed to enter Gaza, saying it will be "entirely destroyed" and its people should be encouraged to leave in great numbers to go to other countries. What has the UK and its allies said? In a joint statement with foreign ministers from the four other countries who have announced sanctions, UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy said the two senior Israelis had incited "serious abuses of Palestinian human rights". The statement added: "These actions are not acceptable. This is why we have taken action now - to hold those responsible to account." Meanwhile, a Number 10 spokesman said the sanctions have been applied in the "personal capacities" of the two ministers and "not their ministries and departments". What has Israel said? Mr Smotrich, speaking at the inauguration of a new settlement in the Hebron Hills in the West Bank, spoke of "contempt" for Britain's move. "Britain has already tried once to prevent us from settling the cradle of our homeland, and we cannot do it again. We are determined, God willing, to continue building." Israel's foreign minister Gideon Sa'ar said it was "outrageous" that the UK had sanctioned the two ministers. He also said he had spoken with Mr Netanyahu and that an Israeli response would be decided at a "special government meeting early next week". The countries have used the Global Human Rights Sanctions Regulations 2020 to designate the ministers "involved persons". What can't they do?
