Milton Keynes opens temporary Post Office after serious fire
Paul Mead, Post Office head of directly managed branches, said: "We are delighted to have restored Post Office services to the centre of Milton Keynes again with the friendly, familiar staff who worked at the previous location."Lauren Townsend, the Labour deputy leader of Milton Keynes City Council, said: "The space should be available for as long as it takes for the repairs to the Post Office permanent building to be finished."Thames Valley Police said the man had made threats to staff before returning and starting the fire.
A police spokesperson said the suspect had "a petrol can and poured a liquid onto the counter before igniting it and leaving"."The Post Office had a number of members of the public in the building at the time, but thankfully, nobody was injured," they added.Eight fire crews tackled the blaze, which damaged the shop and resulted in smoke logging to stairwells and flats above, according to Buckinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service.
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The Guardian
40 minutes ago
- The Guardian
‘Dodgy guys who dress just like him': meet the team behind far-right activist Tommy Robinson
The Tommy Robinson outriders were early to Epping. Wendell Daniel, a former Labour councillor who is now a film-maker for Robinson's Urban Scoop video platform, turned his microphone to a young woman on the edge of the protests in the Essex town. 'Look into that,' he said pointing to the camera. 'Talk to Tommy, tell him you want to see him coming down here.' 'Tommy,' she responded, 'I think you should definitely come down because you will help out the situation so much more.' Robinson, 42, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, was quick to respond: 'Hear you loud & clear, I'm coming to Epping next Sunday ladies & bringing thousands more with me,' he said on X. The actor and rightwing activist Laurence Fox was coming along too, he added. For days, Epping has been the scene of demonstrations outside the town's Bell hotel after the charging of an Ethiopian asylum seeker – recently arrived on a small boat – with sexual assault against a local girl. With the deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, and the Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, talking up the risk of the disorder spreading further, it had appeared the perfect opportunity for Robinson, with a so-called 'migrant hotel' providing the focus. Twenty-four hours later, Robinson appeared to have gone cold on the idea. It might not benefit him and it might not benefit Epping, he mused on camera. It might appear an awkward volte-face, but Lucy Brown, once a right-hand woman to Robinson, chronicling his every stunt and provocative comment for social media for two years, had seen it all before. It was, the 34-year-old suggested, an insight into both his frustrating tendency to act on instinct and a reliance on the colourful team behind him, an inner circle that includes the son of a Krays' gangster, the Canadian publisher of a far-right platform and a Sikh convicted of being part of a robbery in which a shop worker was threatened with having his throat slashed. 'He's very reactive,' Brown said of Robinson. 'It's often just what comes into his head. He's very quick to believe his own myth. It takes probably a bunch of messages from people saying, 'Don't do it'. And finally he has to begrudgingly say: 'Oh, maybe it's not a good idea'. 'He'll just rush in, straight away, whatever feels right at the time. He just does not think. Which is why he falls in [to] prison all the time, because he's always saying stuff that he shouldn't.' Brown was with Robinson at some of the key moments early in his rise, including escorting him to what would be a highly lucrative first meeting with Steve Bannon, the former chief strategist to Donald Trump. Bannon thought he was ex-army, a bemused Robinson disclosed to her at the time. Brown left Robinson's side after a bruising falling out, but suspects that his enthusiasm for Epping dulled when he was alerted by his entourage to appeals from leading figures in the local protests for him to stay away. Robinson may appear to be a one-man band, marshalling his significant following in the UK and a trans-national far-right community that is particularly strong in the US thanks to Bannon and Elon Musk. This week, Robinson sent out an email to followers to raise £106,000 to fund an upcoming demonstration, according to one recipient. In truth, the 42-year-old sits at the centre of an ecosystem of long-term acolytes and more recent hangers-on, who are key to facilitating what even his harshest critics will admit is a successful campaign to put himself at the heart of national debate. When Robinson judicially reviewed his 'detention in solitary confinement and treatment' at HMP Woodhill, where he was jailed for repeating false claims about a 15-year-old Syrian refugee in defiance of a court injunction, the judge ruled against him on the grounds that it was for his protection and he had enjoyed '80 social visits, not including those from family members'. On leaving prison, Robinson told a friendly podcaster that he had planned from his cell a 'Uniting the Kingdom' demonstration in London to be held on 13 September, all with the help of regular communication with his lieutenants. Who then is Team Tommy? Brown, who at one point moved to Bedfordshire to work more closely with Robinson, stopped working with him seven years ago, but the core around him has remained remarkably stable for at least a decade, according to Joe Mulhall, director of research at Hope Not Hate. On leaving HMP Woodhill, Robinson had words of thanks on the steps of the prison for Ezra Levant, the Canadian owner of Rebel Media, a social media platform similar to the better known Breitbart, for helping his family while he was in jail. Nine years ago, he had started paying Robinson £200 a video for Rebel. The platform generates revenue through donations from viewers and crowdfunding campaigns. Brown, who was the helping hand with the camera at the start of that relationship, said Robinson had become a big earner for the businessman. 'Ezra Levant is very important, definitely kind of like the show runner, and it's fascinating seeing him still around,' she said. 'He is the one that goes down to the court cases with [former Sun journalist] Dan Wootton and spins the story to make sure that everyone knows that Tommy's actually the victim, guys. He is perpetuating the Tommy myth despite seeing him up close and personal. But it is a business to him.' While it was with Levant that Robinson did his first interview after leaving jail, the second was on a podcast called The Dozen hosted by Liam Tuffs, son of Peter Gillett, a registered sex offender who was said by Reggie Kray to be his 'adoptive son'. Tuffs, who runs a security firm and has described his father as an 'animal' and 'narcissist', has interviewed figures such as Laurence Fox (in a episode entitled 'British Culture is under Attack') but he has also featured Adam Kelwick, the imam at the Abdullah Quilliam mosque in Liverpool (an episode entitled 'Death Cult or Peaceful Religion? Muslim Leader Quizzed over Radical Islam'). 'He's a friend of Tommy that now and again would go on stage and compere for him,' said Brown of Tuffs, who is regarded as a calming influence on Robinson, who has been diagnosed with ADHD. 'I've watched him sidle his way in. He likes to tell people that he helps Tommy get sober, but I'm not sure if we can trust that Tommy is sober, to be honest with you.' It was Tufts and Guramit Singh, a former leading member of the English Defence League (EDL), who was with Robinson at the Hawksmoor restaurant on London's Air Street last month when they were asked to leave because staff 'felt uncomfortable serving him'. Singh, from Nottingham, was sentenced in 2013 to seven years and three months in jail for his role in a robbery during which a shop assistant was pinned the ground and made threats to slash his throat if he did not hand over cash. There is a further tranche of Robinson devotees at Urban Scoop, the so-called 'independent journalism' website to which Robinson is a consultant. It was set up by Adam Geary, better known as 'Nem', and one of Robinson's closest advisers since the rough and ready days of the EDL. Robinson today emphasises the peacefulness of the protests he organises and the relationship with the police that he has sought to build. But Brown said that those who crossed him were well aware of his ruthlessness. In his biography, Tommy, the Hope Not Hate founder, Nick Lowles, reported how Robinson failed to visit his cousin, Kev Carroll, a former leader of the EDL, for six months when he was on remand after he was caught wielding a machete while standing on the bonnet of a car. 'I'm 52 years old and I've got nothing to show for it,' Carroll later wrote. 'You give Tom everything and he just wants more and more until you have nothing left to give. And then he doesn't want to know you.' Lowles recalled how Robinson doorstepped him at his home alongside 'self-confessed bomb-maker' Peter Keeley to accuse him of paying people to 'make up information about him'. His behaviour towards a female reporter at the Independent, after she investigated his finances, compelled her to apply for an interim stalking order. What, then, keeps people by Robinson's side? 'A lot of these guys around him seem to have the same kind of modus operandi of 'protect the source' – because I guess they'll probably make money as well from association with him', said Brown. 'Many of them have their own little YouTube channels, with varying degrees of success.' There was a darkness to her experience with Robinson, she said. She remembered 'the dodgy guys that look and dress just like him' and the drink and drugs binges. Her memoirs, The Hate Club, are expected to chronicle some of the sleazier moments in her time with him when she self-publishes next month. Robinson has admitted to past heavy drug use while denying claims that he used donations to buy cocaine and pay for the services of sex workers. But he has a charisma that lures people into his circle, said Brown, who is married to Sascha Bailey, the son of the photographer David Bailey. 'It's like being around Peter Pan or something,' she said. 'You just have to keep up the myth. You're either in or out. He wines and dines them all, you know. 'Come out. We'll go for drinks'. He schmoozes people, and he knows what they want. That's something I noticed when we were working together – he knows what people want to hear.'
Sky News
41 minutes ago
- Sky News
Gregg Wallace speaks out after MasterChef sacking
Gregg Wallace has spoken about his sacking from MasterChef after inappropriate behaviour while working for the BBC - but insisted he is "not a groper, a sex pest or a flasher". Wallace, 60, has apologised after a report, commissioned by the cooking show's production company Banijay UK, found 45 out of 83 allegations were substantiated. In an interview with The Sun, he said: "I know I have said things that offended people... I understand that now - and to anyone I have hurt, I am so sorry. "I don't expect anyone to have any sympathy with me but I don't think I am a wrong 'un." 1:34 MasterChef co-host John Torode also had an allegation that he used an "extremely offensive racist term" upheld, as part of the same investigation. Torode, who insisted he had "absolutely no recollection" of the alleged incident, has not had his contract for the show renewed. Wallace has now defended Torode, saying: "I've known John for 30 years and he is not a racist. "There is no way that man is a racist. No way. And my sympathies go out to John because I don't want anybody to go through what I've been through." At one point, Wallace became tearful during the interview when describing the impact of the investigation on his family. "I have seen myself written about in the same sentence as Jimmy Savile and Huw Edwards, paedophiles and sex offenders. That is just so, so horrific." In respect to the specific allegation of unwanted touching, Wallace denied groping a woman and said that, while he was attempting to flirt with her, he did believe the contact it was consensual. "She gave me her phone number. I considered that to be intimacy. It was 15 years ago. Me, drunk, at a party, with my hand on a girl's bum," he said. He also accepted he had briefly appeared with a sock on his private parts in front of four colleagues in MasterChef studio. But he said his is not a flasher, and people were either "amused or bemused" but not distressed. On the broader allegations about using inappropriate language, Wallace accepted the criticism and suggested that some of his conduct could be explained by his autism and his background. "I know I am odd. I know I struggle to read people. I know people find me weird. Autism is a... registered disability. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it's not real." He also blamed his former career: "I'm a greengrocer from Peckham. I thrived in Covent Garden's fruit and veg market. In that environment that is jovial and crude. It is learned behaviour." Wallace told the newspaper he is now scared to appear in public: "I go out now in a disguise - a baseball cap and sunglasses, I don't want people to see me. I'm scared."
BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
Peterborough shop worker threatened with weapons by shoplifters
A convenience store worker has described being threatened with weapons when challenging shoplifters as incidents increase across a county. "I've been threatened with knives, with hockey sticks, every day you're seeing something get worse," said Kieran Essex, 27, who works in a shop in Peterborough. Figures from Cambridgeshire Police show reports of shoplifting have more than doubled over the past five years and Mr Essex said it was a "pandemic". Darryl Preston, the Police and Crime Commissioner for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, said work was taking place to tackle the issue. Mr Essex has been working in retail for nine years and said there were now "countless" amounts of said he has experienced "physical contact" with offenders on numerous occasions. "I have had to tackle people at the door, have pursued them outside and have even had people drive off with me inside their car window."He said recently the shop was targeted by shoplifters over four days in a ten-day period."Everyone is just trying to survive," Mr Essex said. In 2020 3,006 shoplifting incidents were recorded by Cambridgeshire Police across the county, this figure rose to 3,161 in 2021, 4,331 in 2022, 6,046 in 2023 and 7,352 in 2024. Vidyut Soni, the owner of Premier City News in Peterborough, has been looking for ways to tackle the problem."It's brazen, not blasé, but brazen. Everything that we sell we have to account for. "We need to find ways to actually make it better, or otherwise it can potentially ruin the whole business."Trade is not easy. Things are very tight in the economy and we don't make much money anyway." Pep Cipriano, the chief executive officer of Peterborough Positive, a business improvement area organisation, said the city was not alone in having rising rates of shoplifting."Shoplifting in Peterborough, like most towns and cities, is on the increase."We work really closely with the police to try and combat it and we've just got the recent announcement about new police officers coming to the city centre... which means on a daily basis we'll see more police on the street." Preston said: "There are ongoing operations taking place to deal with these issues in a concerted way – an example of which would be the 1,600 shoplifting charges brought by [Cambridgeshire Police's] south spree offending team since its creation in September 2023."I continue to fund problem-solving posts in each of our county's community safety partnerships who are working with the police and other partners to tackle shoplifting. "The sharing of local intelligence through schemes such as Shop Watch and the provision of Safer Business packs are both helping to support retailers in preventing, responding and recovering from incidents." Det Ch Insp Christian O'Brien, from Cambridgeshire Police, said: "We are doing everything we can, working with the business community and with the courts."We're... trying to put in place criminal orders to try and prevent the people from committing the offences. "We also work with partner agencies to help the people committing these crimes, because a lot is fuelled by different addictions." Follow Peterborough news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
