This England: Great-great-glam-ma
A care home resident aged 103 has become a social media influencer – giving make-up tutorials on TikTok to 300,000 viewers. Joan Partridge started by demonstrating how to blend blusher into her cheeks without white lines appearing. The great-great-grandmother, of Millcroft care home in Redditch, Worcestershire, said: 'I never thought I'd have gained so much attention.'
Birmingham Live (Daragh Brady)
Who's a precarious boy then?
A man became stuck in a tree attempting to rescue his pet parrot in Thurnby, Leicestershire. The fire service was called to Manor Field Play Park after the bird flew into high branches. Crews used an aerial ladder to reach the man while surrounding roads were closed for an hour and a half as the rescue was carried out.
BBC News (Robert Colls)
Off to a great start
The first train to run on South Western Railway after its renationalisation was replaced by a bus due to 'maintenance and upgrades'. The operator came under state ownership at 1.59am on Sunday 25 May, but the first service – the 2.27am from Guildford to London Waterloo – was cancelled. Instead, the timetable listed a bus to Woking, a train to Surbiton, a bus to Clapham Junction and then a train that arrived at Waterloo at 7.38am. The first train to run was the 5.36am from Woking, which was affected by bank holiday engineering works.
Times (David Lamming)
[See also: Things will only get incrementally better for Keir Starmer]
Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe
Related
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
I paid a psychic £130 to try and communicate with my dead mother... this is what happened
I don't know what I was expecting… but to be left crying and filled with regret at how much I'd paid wasn't it. A few weeks earlier, I decided to book an appointment to have a one-hour tarot card reading with a woman who describes herself as a psychic and medium. A friend had recently tried it and said how uplifting it was, and a year earlier I'd watched a woman on TikTok discuss her 'eerily accurate' reading. It just so happened they both went to the same place in London - I took it as a sign. Around 40 minutes before my appointment, the psychic - who I shall called Harriet - calls me to apologise that she's running late as there is an issue with the Tubes. Cue my friend's 'she didn't see that coming' text… Alas, another reason I'd wanted to give this a go was down to Michael McIntyre. In his autobiography, the comedian tells how on a whim his then-19-year-old mother goes to a tarot card reading with a psychic who tells her she's pregnant, it will be a son and he will be 'word-famous'. When we finally start, Harriet tells me how honoured she is to be giving me my first reading. Gentle music plays in the background and the room is full of crystals. 'The spirit brings me the right person at the right time.' Harriet assures me she won't deliver 'scary' or ominous news but that 'every message that comes through is what you need to hear' although 'sometimes not what you want to hear.' 'I see you looking out a bus window, wistfully,' she begins. Harriet wasn't kidding about it not always being what you want to hear. 'Most people come in when they are at a crossroads in their life. But you feel like you've got it. You've got an underlying sense of what is going to change and what's coming in. We need some reassurance.' Harriet begins with my career. 'I just get changes,' she says. 'But sometimes not in the way you want - and not in a good way.' Hang on, Harriet. I thought you weren't meant to deliver bad news… 'There's a feeling of 'I need to change'. Maybe relocation.' Hmm, I ponder, I am quite happy in London and have no desire to move from my lovely flat. So where did she have in mind? A cottage in the countryside? A villa in the sunnier climes of Portugal? 'Manchester,' Harriet signals her spirit guide is telling her. Oh. I've never thought twice about that part of the country. I am from the south originally, so Manchester seems quite a rogue choice but you never know in the distant future… 'Two months. End of August,' Harriet confirms. Crikey. I'm locked into a contract on my flat until next year so that could be problematic. 'You're about to jump on that train,' she continues. Note, I have upgraded from a bus. 'I feel like it's the same field, same kind of work but it's just broader. More of a place you can get to the top, that you can spread your wings and develop.' Ok, well this sounds more promising. 'It feels like you have a bit of a coach around you,' Harriet continues as she 'tunes in with my energy and her team of spirits'. 'This spirit pushing you and giving you all these wonderful words: 'that's the name of the game', 'we're going to go for it'. It feels like they've been with you for quite a while. It feels like a female spirit that's around you. Do you feel like that.' Er.. no I don't. 'Sometimes you might be given a message that this isn't the right time and you have to wait six months or so. But opportunities are coming sooner rather than later.' So what are the spirit guides telling Harriet my next career move could be? 'Behind the scenes, I see scripts,' she says. 'Have you ever worked in the theatrical arts? I'm seeing theatre and dialogue. It does feel like it's something unexpected. And colourful, I see a lot of colour around what you're writing. Explosions of colours around it.' I continue to listen, puzzled, I have never worked in theatre and it's never appealed to me. 'I'm also getting the message keep some mystery and secrecy around what you're doing. You've got some really good ideas that are not quite ready to be revealed.' I must already be doing such a good job of keeping some mystery, I'm leaving myself in the dark. 'I'm getting your mum,' Harriet then says. A lump forms in my throat. 'Feels like you have support there.' Now might be the time to confess another reason I found myself sitting in front of the psychic was because of my mum. She died last year from cancer and I have been bereft without her ever since and desperate to somehow feel close to her again. 'She steadies you,' Harriet says. 'Feels like a steady relationship. You can confide in her. And that will be stabilising. 'She feels like she can be an ally through this process. If nothing else really giving you some encouragement. But also she'll catch you if you fall is what I hear. You don't have a lot to lose by taking a leap of faith here. She's got your back.' At this point I'm feeling both emotional and awkward. My mum was all of those things, but I can't bring myself to say anything to Harriet. But then it gets worse… 'I'm seeing your mum again,' she says. 'Have you ever travelled with your mum? Maybe it would be a nice time for you two to go do something nice together, even if it's a long weekend. Because when you're around your mum's energy it does change your reality.' Ah the real kick in the teeth. I'm too polite to say anything. Could it get any worse? Yes. Harriet pulls out the death card… supposedly it doesn't represent death, but the end of something, it follows the marriage card. Reassuring. The card showing people being stabbed in the back also makes an appearance, plus the one showing a man barely able to walk and 'left outside in the cold'. I make a mental note to quiz my friend again who found her reading 'uplifting'. It dawns on me how foolish I was to think my mum would send a message to me via a random woman in a rented room in London, or how she could actually predict my future. I message my brother in tears feeling silly. He swiftly brings me down to earth. 'How much did you pay for that b*******?,' he replies. 'Everything she said is complete chance and guess work. It means nothing.' He's right. Sigh, what a waste of £130 - but a lesson learned*. *Unless in August I am working at a theatre in Manchester after going on holiday with my mum who has returned from the dead…
BBC News
3 hours ago
- BBC News
Lockdown businesses thriving five years after Covid
Five years ago, the Covid-19 lockdown was still in force, with wide-ranging impacts that are still being felt some, thought, it was a chance to try something different and launch a have they fared and was the gamble worth it? 'It was really something to keep me busy' This weekend Leah Sigsworth will open a pop-up shop in London's Fitzrovia to mark five years since the birth of Ethereal 23, from Northamptonshire, started the company in her parents' back garden during lockdown."When I started, it was really something to keep me busy. It was for my own mental health; it was something to do during the loneliness of the Covid lockdown," she September 2020, she had begun a creative writing degree at the University of Lincoln, and carried on with the business, working with her boyfriend, Hugh Walker, also now 23. "Then, when I graduated, I sat down with Hugh, and my parents and said, 'Can we do this full-time?' and we did."Leah, who was was state educated at Sharnbrook Academy, Bedfordshire, says: "I fell in love with being a business owner. I liked the freedom. It's given us so much;it's actually insane thinking about it.""We only launched on Tiktok Shop in November last year, which went crazy, I now have about 227,000 followers. "We've been to TikTok headquarters a couple of times since. It's probably about 70% of our business, with the rest through website sales and Instagram, where I have 27,000 followers." The business now employs four people, including her mother Cara Sigsworth and occasionally her father Richard and sister Sophie, 20."We're also looking at some new external hires as well," says year she decided to travel the world with Hugh while working remotely. "We were also saving for our own home. We found a cottage for sale when we came back from travelling, put an offer in, it was accepted and five months later, in December, we moved in." As the online face of the brand, she frequently appears in social media posts but prides herself on always being herself."I don't always have a full face of makeup, and my hair sometimes looks absolutely hideous, and I'll make videos in my pyjamas," she says."I think sharing every day on social media is sometimes tough because you are sharing when all the bad things happen, so I've tried to be really open and honest."I'll say 'Look guys, I'm really struggling with anxiety this week', or if we've had a really rubbish week because of an email a customer has sent me."Mostly, though, life is good."I've started a brand, it's given me a lot of hope and it all happened by accident," she says. 'Entrepreneurship could be a very rewarding career path' Oksana Koryak, a lecturer in entrepreneurship at Cranfield University, Bedfordshire, says the Covid pandemic created "a window of time for people to actually concentrate, and create the mindspace to think about something that might be a viable business idea".She says: "It was a catalyst for some entrepreneurial soul-searching."I think we all have it within us. It's not something that you're born with, it's a combination of the environment that you've been exposed to and opportunities that come your way."One thing for would-be entrepreneurs to remember, she says, is that younger people are very "TikTok-driven".She says: "It's creating a product that people might like and communicating what it is in the way that is relatable to that particular demographic; that is really important."I generally believe that entrepreneurship could be a very rewarding career path for many people."Even if we are in full employment, I think it's still important to be entrepreneurial, and to look out for opportunities on behalf of our employers, or even just as a side hustle." 'We've sold £1m worth of coffee and donuts' "It's been crazy," is how Aaron Shade, 34, from Bedford, describes the past five years. He and his fiancée Sarah Ball had successful careers in sales and to spend more time with their family, they started their own business within the travel industry. When Covid took hold, it was "wiped out", so they looked for a new challenge and started SAY Doughnuts in April 2020, from their now employs 18 people and has two shops, in Bedford and Hitchin, Hertfordshire"We started with just the two of us, selling to friends and family, and then it spread really quickly and organically, and we also sold wholesale goods to cafes and delis in surrounding towns like, Ampthill, Maulden, Woburn Sands, Newport Pagnell, Stony Stratford, Olney and Hitchin," says they outgrew the family kitchen in March 2021, they got the keys to a retail unit that they converted into a bakery. For a year they also had a shop in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, but it closed in late 2024. "We will expand again, but we have to be cautious. I would like to be in Cambridge," he says. "I'm still normal, I still live in my same house but we've sold over £1m worth of coffee and doughnuts.""It sounds like we should be flying, but that's not how business works."We've lost a lot in Berkhamsted and still have to live off this business with no salaries coming in from anywhere else."The business is "looking at the future", he says."We're a household name in Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire, with 16,600 followers on Instagram. "It's insane. Not many businesses get this far. We've lent on friends and family to get us here."It's been a bit of a rollercoaster. " Follow Northamptonshire news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
Scotsman
3 hours ago
- Scotsman
Why teachers need to talk about pornography to stop epidemic of sexual violence
Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... We need to talk about sex. Or at least the version of sex that our young people are devouring online. Sex where it is 'normal' for a man to choke a woman to the verge of her passing out. Sex where violence, including rape, is considered acceptable behaviour. Sex where young women boast about having group sex, preferably in front of a camera. Shocking? Certainly, but for many of our young people, perhaps the majority, this is how they perceive sexual relationships. For a generation raised on hardcore pornography, sexual abuse is mainstream. Normal even. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad I thought I was impervious to shock, but on Tuesday morning I sat in a room in central Edinburgh listening to a group of experts in sexual health and violence against women calmly explain how our children's minds are being distorted – literally – by the easy availability of pornography. While boys may have once passed round dog-eared copies of Playboy behind the bike sheds, today's young men have hardcore pornography in their blazer pocket, sadistic sex just one click away on their smartphone. Social media can provide easy access to pornography that rewires the teenage brain and is as addictive as cocaine (Picture: Matt Cardy) | Getty Images Porn stars on TikTok Easy access to pornography rewires the teenage brain. It is as addictive as cocaine. The dopamine hit from watching 'breath play' – a euphemism for strangulation – is as important to an adolescent as the junk food they crave. And it's not just boys who are affected. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad One of the most popular TikTok brands is the Bop House, a group of beautiful young women who share a Florida mansion where they make 'adult content' for OnlyFans. Many of their 90 million followers on social media are teenage girls, convinced that creating porn is an aspirational lifestyle choice. READ MORE: Majority of Scots want to see pimping websites banned The seminar organised by Beira's Place – the female-only Edinburgh support service founded by author and women's rights campaigner JK Rowling in 2022 – was no mere talking shop. It was designed with a practical purpose in mind, as the centre's chief executive, Lesley Johnston, explained: 'We hope to leave attendees with ideas for concrete action that can be taken in order to address the impact of pornography on levels of violence against women.' And while the evidence from the panel experts was at times profoundly depressing, it was countered with some optimism. Mary Sharpe, chief executive of the Reward Foundation, a charity which provides free training materials for schools and parents, pointed out that while internet pornography is one of the key drivers of the epidemic of violence against women and girls, there is hope that the trend can be reversed. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'The good news is that when users quit porn the brain settles down and appreciation of women often improves,' she said. Teachers self-censoring in class But how to get young people to quit what has become for many a daily habit? An expert in teacher education believes the answer lies in how teachers themselves are taught. Shereen Benjamin, a senior lecturer in primary education at the University of Edinburgh, told me that teachers and student teachers find it 'extraordinarily difficult' to discuss porn and its impact on children and young people. 'Frank discussions become impossible as people self-censor through fear of being seen as insufficiently knowledgeable, as prudish, or alternatively as knowing too much,' she said. And she suggested that any roomful of student teachers will almost certainly contain people who have been affected, and possibly traumatised, by their own experiences of online porn. 'This makes it even harder to raise the issues,' she said. Many schools deal with the difficult subject of pornography by inviting outside agencies to help deliver relationships, sexual health and parenthood (RSHP) education for their students, but Benjamin believes the use of external providers prevents teachers from developing ways of handling the topic in the classroom. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'Whilst it may be tempting for school leaders to respond by inviting outside agencies to deliver classroom input on porn, this does not tackle the problem of porn being a 'no-go area' for teachers, and there are risks associated with handing any part of the curriculum over to unaccountable outside groups,' she said. The way to equip teachers with the skills to handle challenging topics such as porn was by teaching them how to approach the subject with 'courage, openness and intellectual rigour', Benjamin argued. Abusive teenage relationships Another intervention may be as straightforward as banning mobile phones in schools. Conference delegates heard evidence that smartphones are used by boys, not only to access pornography or to blackmail a girl by threatening to send intimate material to her parents, but to control their girlfriends in the classroom. Anne Robertson Brown, executive director of Women's Aid in Angus, said that often boys will demand photographic evidence of where a girl is sitting in class. And the scale of abusive teenage relationships, often fuelled by porn, is such that Angus Women's Aid has established a project that supports girls under 18 suffering abuse. 'We have a major issue,' she said. 'It is not just in Angus. It is across Scotland.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Pornography is big business. Platforms such as OnlyFans and Pornhub earn tens of millions for their owners, and they are rapidly becoming an accepted part of our contemporary culture. And despite 30 years of campaigning by women's groups and significant changes in the law, sexual violence against women and girls is on the rise. The police recorded almost 64,000 incidents of domestic abuse in 2023-24, an increase of 3 per cent compared to the previous year. And 37 per cent of sexual crimes recorded in 2022–23 involved victims under 18. Weaning our children off hardcore pornography will not be easy. It will likely require a tougher regulatory framework for social media, a ban on mobile phones in schools, and more effective training and support for teachers so that they can cope with the epidemic of porn in Scotland's classrooms.
