Latest news with #Clacton
Daily Mirror
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
Sam Thompson ‘punched by kid' after visiting one of UK's 'worst seaside resorts'
Former Made in Chelsea star Sam Thompson admits he has never been on a caravan holiday, but has visited one UK seaside town that welcomes six million tourists a year Sam Thompson was 'punched in the b******s by a kid' when he visited the city dubbed one of the UK's worst seaside destinations. The former Made in Chelsea star says he was in Southend-on-Sea when he was struck by the youngster. The city was recently named among the worst seaside locations by consumer champions Which?. It propped up the table of seaside resorts along with Bognor Regis, Bangor in Wales, and Clacton. The I'm a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! winner opened up about his visit to Southend after being quizzed if he had ever been on a caravan holiday by pal Pete Wicks. On their Staying Relevant podcast, Sam replied: 'No.' It led to reality TV star Pete reminiscing about his childhood holidays to towns such as Frinton and Saint Osyth in Essex. The former TOWIE star said: '[We] used to go to the static caravan homes. 'You'd go there, there'd be a clubhouse where all that sort of s**t goes on, there'd be weird forced fun activities during the day that even as a child I'd be miserable to do, and you'd get to play in the arcades down at Southend. You'd go to Frinton and the beaches.' It prompted Sam to recall the moment he visited Southend. He replied: 'I've been to Southend. I got punched in the b******s by a kid.' Pete responded: 'Yeah…let's go back. Not for that reason. But a typical old-school staycation like that, I think is fundamental to growing up, especially if you don't grow up with a lot of things. 'They were f*****g brilliant. Like honestly brilliant. I used to love the caravan type of stuff.' It would seem that Sam isn't the only person who doesn't have fond memories of Southend. The Essex city was recently branded the 'worst place on Earth' by Which? readers. Its beaches scored a lowly two stars while the city's scenery only bagged one star. Despite the criticism however, Southend attracts around six million visitors each year. In September 2024, the city was branded a 'no-go zone' due to street drinking, reports EssexLive. While visitors and locals alike have taken to Tripadvisor to share their reviews of the beach in Southend. One wrote: 'Went with my family on a trip to Southend. A few years back this beach was in an absolutely horrible state, so we came back to this beach to see if there were any improvements. However, results were very unexpected and shocking." Another reviewer said it was the "worst place on Earth", adding: "Avoid the beach, avoid the city, avoid the people." Not everyone was critical however. One visitor to the city praised the beach, writing: 'The beach is generally kept clean and tidy, if you're local it's nice to visit early in the day or later in the evening when the tourists aren't swarming the place but on a sunny bank holiday it is absolutely packed with people from out of the area."
The Guardian
3 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Will Nigel Farage's attempt to copy and paste Trump's policies work in the UK?
A popular maxim on the American right is that politics is downstream from culture. In the UK, it increasingly feels like politics is simply downstream from the US. With Reform UK ascendant in the polls, Nigel Farage – officially MP for Clacton, unofficially Donald Trump's emissary to the UK – is setting the terms of the national conversation, and he is importing them directly from across the pond. Over the past few months, Reform has sought to launch 'Doge' initiatives (referencing Elon Musk's department of government efficiency), waged war on DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) employment schemes, and called for the UK government to embrace crypto and create a bitcoin digital reserve at the Bank of England, following Trump's lead. It seems the Brexiteers were right: Britain doesn't make anything any more – not even its own bogeymen. Reform's repeated attacks on DEI are particularly striking because DEI doesn't technically exist in the UK. The equivalent framework is called EDI (equality, diversity and inclusion), and it is nowhere near as prominent as Reform seems to think. At the national level, Reform has claimed that cutting such equality and diversity schemes could save central government £7bn a year – according to 2022-23 figures, the real figure is £27m. Farage nonetheless insists that the British left 'obsess about DEI and spend plenty of public money on it'. After Reform's success at the local elections in May, he warned that all those working in diversity for Reform-controlled councils 'better be seeking alternative careers very, very quickly'. But the sought-after image – woke council members walking out of county hall with their redundancy boxes while ordinary, hardworking Britons applaud the return to common sense – is unlikely to materialise. A recent investigation by the Guardian found that in Reform's 10 councils, the total number of jobs connected to equality and diversity amounts to fewer than five full-time positions and accounts for about 0.003% of their combined budget. Under Trump's presidency, Doge has vastly overestimated the scale of its government savings – in one notable instance it misfiled an $8m saving as an $8bn one – and DEI has been blamed for everything from a plane crash in Washington to wildfires in California to inflation. A sober assessment of the pros and cons of DEI initiatives – the benefits they can bring to companies, their approach to systemic inequalities that can be superficial box-ticking – has nothing to do with the rightwing backlash against them. Republicans aren't looking for alternative solutions, because attacking DEI gives them everything they need: a way to foment resentment against state bureaucracy, the left, marginalised groups and minorities – appealing to xenophobia and serving capitalist interests at the same time. Why ape US ideas so transparently, especially in a country where even many on the right are repulsed by Trump? One possible answer lies in semantics. Perhaps the hope is that DEI will sound like something new and scary to Britons who are no longer moved by mentions of previous bogeymen such as 'political correctness', 'the bureaucrats in Brussels' and 'the woke mob', just as Doge will sound slicker and more exciting than 'austerity' despite in practice meaning the same thing: stripping local councils down to their barest components – consistent with Westminster's orders for the past 15 years. But shiny US branding will not make cuts any easier. An analysis of Reform's 10 councils by PoliticsHome found that almost 80% of their combined spending is now taken up by social care and homelessness. Another explanation, however, is that Reform's rhetoric is the symptom rather than the cause of a broader Americanisation of the British right. It is telling that Farage's greatest asset in trying make DEI mean something has been GB News, itself a knockoff of Fox News, which has tirelessly warned of DEI's evils – in the NHS, the army, the civil service and so on. ('It's exasperating the number of hours I have wasted on various online 'training packages' on DEI topics,' an anonymous 'senior soldier' revealed in a GB News exclusive, giving Britons a sense of what's at stake.) GB News also recently announced plans to expand its coverage to the US with a nightly show about American politics from September. 'We've seen time and again this year that a decision made on one day in Washington DC is felt the next day in Washington, Tyne and Wear,' GB News's editorial director, Michael Booker, explained. Paul Marshall, the billionaire hedge fund manager who co-owns GB News, has deepened ties between the UK and US right through other ventures as well, such as UnHerd and the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship. Last year, after buying the Spectator, he also came close to purchasing the Telegraph with the help of Ken Griffin, an American billionaire who is one of the Republicans' biggest donors. Marshall's son Winston, a former banjoist for Mumford & Sons, is now a podcast host based in the US. At a recent press conference in Washington, he asked whether 'the Trump administration would consider asylum' for citizens affected by the UK's 'free speech issues'. Trump's press secretary said she would look into it. The special relationship forming between the UK and US right is tainted by the stark imbalances in wealth and power. Take away the vast wealth of its financial centre in London and the UK is poorer than each of America's 50 states. The attempts by the British right to import panic about DEI and dynamism through Doge reflect a desire for inclusion and imagining that the UK and the US are in it together. It's clear what Farage gets from this – the good graces of a US president who wants to be king and prizes sycophancy in his court above all – but the benefits to UK voters are naught. Farage has repeatedly declared his intention to give the British ruling classes a reality check through his success, implying that he alone knows what the UK wants. 'I don't think the Westminster politicians and journalists even get what's going on out there,' he said in a recent TikTok video. But the references to DEI and Doge should remind us that he hasn't a clue either. Samuel Earle is the author of Tory Nation: How One Party Took Over
Daily Mirror
09-07-2025
- Business
- Daily Mirror
Nigel Farage earns £144k from fan videos - but voters 'never see him' in area
Farage has raked in £144,000 filming videos for fans since becoming an MP. He sells personal messages on the US-based Cameo platform. In a single month he made £27,342. His outside earnings are detailed on MPs' Register of Interests. Reform leader Nigel Farage has made more than £144,000 filming videos for fans since becoming an MP. He sells personal messages on the US-based Cameo platform. In a single month he made £27,342. His outside earnings are detailed on parliament's Register of MPs' Financial Interests. The latest entries cover the first nine months of his tenure as the representative for Clacton in Essex. He was paid a total of £767,564, including more than £280,000 from Direct Bullion, a gold bullion dealer. His outside earnings also included £359,462 from the TV Channel GB News, £40,000 for a speaking engagement from investment firm Nomad Capitalist, £48,000-a-year for a newspaper column and benefits and donations of £108,599. That covered £27,616 for the second inauguration of Donald Trump as President, a £15,276 trip to Palm Beach in Florida, and £32,836 for flights and accommodation 'to support a friend who was almost killed and represent Clacton on the world stage'. The register suggests that he has made at least eight trips to the US. But he has not held one surgery for constituents. Payments for the personal video messages do not dip under £9,000 and he twice earned more than £17,000. He charges £71 for each 'shout out'; he has reviews from more than 1,700 customers. He recorded a personal message at 6.50 am the day after the election, just a couple of hours after winning the Clacton seat for his Reform party in last year's election. After seven failed attempts, he is now a member of parliament and earns has a basic annual salary of £91,346 plus expenses for his office and staff, and housing costs either in his constituency or in London. He was paid £97,928.40 a month by GB News Ltd for 32 hours work a month presenting on its TV channel, equating to an annual salary from GB News of £1,175,140.80, before he stopped presenting to campaign in the general election. He has since returned to that TV role. Mr Farage disclosed one further trip to speak at the National Conservatism Conference in Brussels in April, putting the cost for the single night visit to Belgium for himself, a staffer and "security provision" at £9,253.50. That trip was funded by George Cottrell, a former aide to Mr Farage. He spent eight months in jail in the US in 2017 after he was caught in an FBI sting operation telling undercover officers he could launder money for them. Last week, the Mirror's Ros Wynne Jones spoke to constituents in Clacton who wondered where Farage had been during his time as MP. Campaign group HOPE not Hate says that in the past year the Reform leader has spoken just 45 times in Parliament, fewer than any other leader with a seat in Westminster. Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has spoken 226 times. Julie Coleman owns the firm Julie's Alterations in Clacton. "We all had a lot of hope for Nigel," the 68-year-old said. "To be honest, I haven't seen a lot of change since the election. I know he's been in America." Nikki Barthelmy, 35, wanted to talk to her MP about fly-tipping. "And life saving rings too because there are no lifeguards on the beach here," she added. Rachel Richards, 38, runs schoolwear shop Uniform 7. "He's not engaged with me as a local business," she said of her MP. "I've never seen him." A spokesman for Nigel Farage said he had set up the first Clacton Business Surgery, helped raise more than £15,000 for local charity Sandy's Farm. He also gave advice in meetings with elderly residents losing their winter fuel allowance. He also writes a weekly column for the local paper. He was on 'back to back visits' last weekend, according to his Parliamentary team. "He is very popular in his constituency," they said. The Mirror also contacted Reform UK for a comment
Yahoo
06-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Panel Of 2024 Labour Voters Name The 1 Turning Point They Began To Like Farage
A panel of 2024 Labour voters said they started to like Reform UK after watching its leader Nigel Farage on I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here!. Back in late 2023 before he was elected to parliament, Farage caused a huge stir by appearing in the hit reality TV show. Even the programme's hosts Ant and Dec urged producers to take a break from having politicians as contestants. But, Farage still won over voters and ended up in third place. More than 18 months later, a panel of voters who backed Labour last July told pollsters that his appearance on the show marked the moment they started warming up to the MP for Clacton. In footage aired by the BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, one voter told pollsters More in Common: 'I really like Reform. 'I didn't [like him], but it was I'm A Celeb... which turned my head for Nigel. 'I really saw a different side to him and I think he's very misunderstood.' 'He's more relatable to people, to the average person,' another woman said. 'Whereas some politicians at the present seem far removed, they're so in another world, because they are public school educated, they can't relate to the average person.' However, a different person did jump in at this point, saying: 'Nigel Farage was publicly educated, while Keir Starmer is working class but he does present that. 'So Nigel Farage puts on this image of being one of the people, but actually he went to private school.' Even so, some voters suggested they would fire Starmer for his 'disappointing' performance over the last year unless he starts to 'try harder'. Good Morning Britain host Susanna Reid also told the BBC that this conversation demonstrated how voters 'need to feel a material difference in their lives'. She noted that they are still struggling with food inflation and cost of living, so the 'government are getting this wrong'. 'Perhaps Sir Keir Starmer needs to go on I'm A Celebrity... or Strictly, in order for voters to know who he is,' Reid suggested. 'The words that kept coming out of their mouths were: I don't know who he is.' "I'm A Celebrity turned my head for Nigel [Farage]"Some focus group members think Reform UK's leader is different from "public school-educated" politicians, but another points out Nigel Farage was privately educated and Keir Starmer was not#BBCLauraKhttps:// — BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) July 6, 2025 The focus group's findings were published to mark the anniversary of Labour's landslide victory in the general election as political pundits look at how Starmer has fallen down in the polls ever since. Sky News had its own devastating way of portraying Labour's first year in office with some brutal word clouds, again from More in Common. The pollsters asked the public: 'In a word or two, what would you say has been Labour's biggest achievement in government?' The largest word by a healthy margin was 'nothing', although – in much smaller fonts – NHS, welfare, winter, election and Ukraine were all visible too. Minister Warns Labour Rebels That Watering Down Welfare Cuts Came 'At A Cost' Former Labour Leader Comes Up With Brutal Farage Nickname For New Corbyn-Led Party Labour MP Accuses Government Of Behaving Like Flat-Earthers Over Waspi Women
Yahoo
04-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Nigel Farage's Vision For A Reform UK Government Leaves Everyone Scratching Their Heads
Nigel Farage's vision for what a cabinet led by Reform UK has stunned the internet over the last 24 hours. The MP for Clacton, who was only successfully elected to parliament on his eighth attempt, has claimed it's 'ridiculous' to fill the government with elected officials. Speaking to LBC on Thursday, he suggested putting successful business leaders in charge of the country instead. 'The way we run our country is ridiculous,' he said. 'We put cabinet ministers in charge of departments over which they have absolutely zero knowledge. 'They'll often last in that job for 12-18 months – barely time to get their feet under the table and understand the brief.' He claimed the UK is stuck in the mindset that the cabinet must all be politicians in the House of Commons. Farage said: 'Why? Why? Look at America. Scott Bessent has come in as the US Treasury secretary. Never stood for election in his life, but a very, very successful businessman.' Farage refused to name anyone he might want in his own cabinet, but said senior ministers would not have to be an MP at all. 'I do think, I really mean this, that you've got to think a little bit more about running the public finances as if you're running a business,' he claimed. This suggestion went down like a lead balloon on social media. Many critics could not help but point out that it sounded like Farage wanted to install 'unelected bureaucrats' into positions of power. Others questioned how the public are meant to hold such figures accountable unless they can vote them out. Isn't Farage supposed to be against unelected bureaucrats? — Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) July 3, 2025 Because they have to be elected members of parliament or unelected members of the House of Lords — Chris Bryant (@RhonddaBryant) July 3, 2025 So they can be booted out by voters if they're rubbish. It's a fairly fundamental democratic principle. — Kevin Schofield (@KevinASchofield) July 4, 2025 He's already saying that he wouldn't trust his own MPs to be ministers. He currently has 4. — Mark Jenkinson 🇬🇧 (@markjenk) July 3, 2025 — Colin the Dachshund (@DachshundColin) July 3, 2025 Because cabinet ministers are accountable to parliament, which approves (or not) the spending of our money. — Iain Martin (@iainmartin1) July 3, 2025 Man who campaigned against Bureucratic European technocracy for 3 decades now believes Britain should adopt the same system — Liberite🔶 🇪🇺 👩🏼💼 (@brownliberite) July 3, 2025 Reform UK is currently leading in the polls by a healthy margin, and is even on track to secure Downing Street in the next election according to YouGov's latest mega-survey. However, many of the party's policies have already been torn apart. Minister Sarah Jones told HuffPost UK that Farage's plan to ditch Net Zero was a 'con', while a tax expert said Reform's idea of offering a major tax break to the wealthy would cost the government £34 billion. Nigel Farage Has Attacked 'One Man Band' Political Parties And The Irony Is Off The Scale Rod Stewart Faces Backlash After Voicing Support For Nigel Farage In Run-Up To Glastonbury Exclusive 'Will It Be Children Up Chimneys Next?' Minister Blasts Nigel Farage's Plan To Ditch Net Zero
