Latest news with #Jukes
NZ Herald
13-05-2025
- NZ Herald
Outrage as Gisborne Cenotaph defaced with red paint
As well as the paint on the lions, red paint droplets and paint splashes have been left on the tiles around the Cenotaph surrounds. Police were notified on Tuesday morning and reported the attack to the Gisborne District Council. Recreational Services contractors immediately sent out staff to try to remove the paint. The Gisborne Herald understands the job proved difficult, as the lions are made of marble. The Cenotaph, a heritage site, had only recently been extensively refurbished before one of the biggest Anzac Day dawn services for years. Returned and Services Association president Trevor Jukes said the graffiti attack was an 'absolute disgrace'. 'It denigrates the ancestors of the people who did it,' Jukes said. 'Desecrating a memorial like that is desecrating their parents, their grandparents and extended whānau into infinity. 'When they meet their maker, the people they have offended will be waiting for them, and by crikey, they will deal to them,' he said. 'They have brought their family name into absolute disgrace.' The district council labelled it 'disgraceful' vandalism on its Facebook page. The post quoted Gisborne Mayor Rehette Stoltz saying it was 'extremely disappointing'. 'It's disgraceful to see this. We expect better for and from our community. It's a shame the behaviour of a few impact so many.' The post went on to thank those who reported the damage and 'we encourage you to continue to call out and report vandalism when you see it'. Members of the public spoken to by the Gisborne Herald on Tuesday expressed similar sentiments. 'The people who did this really are the lowest of the low,' one man said. 'Not a good look for Gisborne is it,' another said. 'How could someone even think to do that. It's like an attack on the community, and the memory of the veterans remembered on the monument.' Police are asking for information about the attack.
The Guardian
06-05-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Two top job openings in UK policing get one applicant each
Two of the most senior jobs in British policing paying more than £200,000 a year have attracted only one applicant each, the Guardian has learned. The roles were deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan police and chief constable of Merseyside police, based in Liverpool. Senior figures in policing and in government are concerned about a lack of talent at the top of policing. Rob Carden, the chief of Cumbria, will become the new leader of the Merseyside force. While he was the only candidate to apply, he would have been a strong contender had he faced competition. Matt Jukes, a Met assistant commissioner and head of counter-terrorism, was the sole applicant to be deputy commissioner of the London force, replacing Lynne Owens, who is standing down. While the formal application process for the Met deputy commissionership is yet to be completed, senior sources say it is a virtual certainty that Jukes will get the job on a permanent basis. The post of Met deputy commissioner carries a salary of more than £250,000 a year and is an appointment by royal warrant. The home secretary makes the selection having given due regard to the views of London's mayor. Jukes is already earmarked to serve as interim deputy commissioner and would have been a strong candidate even if he had faced competition. Becoming Met deputy commissioner will make Jukes a favourite be the next commissioner of the Met whenever Mark Rowley stands down. His most likely rival for the top job in British policing is Stephen Watson, the chief constable of Greater Manchester police. Rowley's five-year contract is due to expire by September 2027. Jukes's interim promotion means Britain will get a new head of counter-terrorism, a role to be filled for at least six months by Vicki Evans. Previously, the head of counter-terrorism had always come from the Met, but Evans previously served in the Cambridgeshire force and before that the Dyfed-Powys force in Wales, before being appointed as senior national coordinator for counter-terrorism. If Jukes becomes deputy head of the Met on a permanent basis, the role of Britain's top counter-terrorism officer will be advertised. Also stepping up is Richard Smith, a Met officer, who becomes acting senior national coordinator for counter-terrorism. A key part of that role is declaring when an act of violence, such as last weekend's crossbow attack on two women in Leeds, is an act of terrorism. Andy Marsh, the head of the College of Policing, said the quality of the pool of chief officers had been left to deteriorate to such an extent that at one stage 'a third of chief officer jobs were occupied by temporary office holders'. Marsh said recent changes had trebled the numbers coming through, but improvements would take time. 'The supply chain of qualified officers for senior jobs was woefully weak. The reforms should dramatically improve that. I am concerned about the low number of applicants for all chief officer jobs,' he said. Another senior policing source said there was a 'dearth of talent' among police leaders, and in part the system of police and crime commissioners was one reason for that. PCCs are elected politicians who oversee forces, often with limited experience of policing. The source said: 'There's no checks and balances on who they choose.' A government source said it was boosting leadership training and standards and added: 'It's essential to have a quality talent pool at the top of policing.' The Merseyside chief constable is appointed by the area's police and crime commissioner and earns a salary of more than £200,000 a year. Carden has served most of his career in the Merseyside force and is expected to be confirmed as chief constable next week by the area's police and crime panel. Emily Spurrell, Merseyside's PCC, said: 'There was only one candidate who applied for the chief constable role. It is important to note that senior policing appointments of this nature often attract a limited number of applicants due to the role's complexity, public visibility and the high level of responsibility involved in policing a high-performing force. 'The preferred candidate met the eligibility and experience requirements and was subjected to a rigorous interview process. Ultimately, the integrity of the process and the suitability of the candidate are what matter most.' The careers of the current Met commissioner, Rowley, and his new deputy, Jukes, are strikingly similar. Both served as chief constables before the Met, with Jukes leading the South Wales force and Rowley the Surrey force. Both were seen as modernisers, with Jukes's force pioneering the use of facial recognition technology, both have served as head of counter-terrorism and both are originallyfrom the West Midlands.
Daily Mail
24-04-2025
- Automotive
- Daily Mail
Nissan estimates £4BN net loss as it embraces major cost-cutting measures
The Yokohama car firm had originally predicted a net loss of ¥80billion (£426million) for the year ending 31 March 2025. Towards the end of last year, alarm bells were sounded at the company, which was described as being 'on the brink of collapse' with 'just 12 months to survive' amid a company-shaking sales slump in China and the US, its two biggest markets. On Thursday, it revised down its full-year sales volume reported in February by another 3.35million units. The Japanese auto firm, which employs 7,000 people in the UK and 17,000 in the US, has this month drafted in new chief executive Ivan Espinosa, who will spearhead a dramatic cost-cutting programme in an effort to rapidly turnaround its fortunes. Nissan said in November it would axe 9,000 jobs and 20 per cent of its global manufacturing capacity, as it scrambles to reduce costs by £2billion in the current fiscal year. It attributed the enormous rise in losses to the cost of the revival plan set out by Espinosa, including a ¥500billon (£2.6billion) reduction in the value of its production facilities and ¥60billion (£316million) in restructuring costs. It looks certain to be the company's largest ever loss and comes as its new CEO is expected to lower the axe on thousands of global jobs, reduce production capacity and shutter some of its vehicle plants. It has yet to rule out closing its Sunderland factory - Britain's biggest car producer - as part of its restructure. Thursday's report comes days after Alan Johnson, Nissan's senior vice-president for manufacturing, supply chain and purchasing, told MPs that the UK is 'not a competitive place to be building cars', citing energy and labour cost, as well as the lack of a local supply chain. Speaking to the House of Commons' Business and Trade Committee on Tuesday, he said: 'It is energy costs - it is the cost of everything involved in the cost of labour, [and] training. It is the supplier base, or lack of - all sorts of different issues.' Approximately 6,000 people are employed at the Sunderland plant. Last year, 282,124 vehicles - including Jukes, Leaf EVs and Qashqais - were built there. This output represented more than one in three (36.2 per cent) passenger cars made in UK factories in 2024. However, production was down some 13.2 per cent on the year previous. It was confirmed in February that a late shift on one of the factory's assembly lines would be closed, but no jobs were lost after some 400 affected workers were moved other production lines to 'maximise efficiency'. Ivan Espinosa took over as CEO on 1 April. A mechanical engineer who has been with Nissan since 2003 in a variety of strategy and planning jobs, he now has the monumental task of bringing the car maker back from the brink. In the company statement delivered on Thursday, he said: 'We are taking the prudent step to revise our full-year outlook, reflecting a thorough review of our performance and the carrying value of production assets. 'We now anticipate a significant net loss for the year, due primarily to a major asset impairment and restructuring costs as we continue to stabilise the company. 'Despite these challenges, we have significant financial resources, a strong product pipeline and the determination to turnaround Nissan in the coming period.' The Japanese car company estimates to end the fiscal year with almost ¥1.50trillion (£7.9billion) in its coffers. This is down on the near-¥1.55trillion (£8.2billion) it had at the end of 2023-24. The firm added that it expects to end the year with ¥1.9trillion (£10billion) of debt. Nissan and Honda ended merger talks to forge a £45billion car company in February. The deal broke apart due to Honda's proposal to make Nissan a subsidiary, sources have said. Nissan said it now expects full year operating profit of ¥85billion (£448million), around 30 per cent lower than it previously forecast. The automaker, which said it will forego a dividend for the full year, will report its earnings on 13 May.
The Guardian
12-04-2025
- The Guardian
Misogynistic content driving UK boys to hunt vulnerable girls on suicide forums
Young men and boys fuelled by 'strongly misogynistic' online material are hunting for vulnerable women and girls to exploit on websites such as eating disorder and suicide forums, senior officers have said. The threat from young males wanting to carry out serious harm is so serious that counter-terrorism officers are joining the National Crime Agency (NCA) in the hunt for them, fearing they could go on to attack or kill. Britain's head of counter-terrorism, Matt Jukes, told the Guardian that a joint taskforce would be set up between his force and the NCA to tackle those fixated with violence online, in what he called a 'decisive moment'. Jukes, the Metropolitan police force's assistant commissioner for specialist operations, said the new pairing would look for those consuming online material about killings or sexual abuse. Those who might go on to plot school shootings and other mass attacks, as well as those who encouraged women and girls to harm themselves, would also fall under their remit. The new taskforce will also tackle so-called com networks (online communities), which counter-terrorism policing (CTP) and the NCA said involved hundreds of boys and young men. They will also hunt for those viewing material inciting sexual abuse. The decision to pool the efforts of CTP and the NCA is being driven by the fear that it might be impossible to tell whether an obsession with violence and gore could turn into terrorism, a school massacre or other serious attack until it was too late. Jukes, who is expected to be a candidate for the deputy commissionership of the Met, said: 'What we've seen over the years is the characteristics of those cases looking increasingly similar.' Com networks grew sixfold between 2022 and 2024 and are mainly young males joining together online to carry out hacking exercises and hunt for victims to steer into sexual abuse or worse. James Babbage, the director general of threats for the NCA, said com networks were believed to have hundreds of people in the UK alone. 'We think they're mostly doing it for kudos, for notoriety … within their peer group online,' he said. 'In general, they are looking for victims who are already vulnerable. So they are looking at sort of suicidal ideation sites. They're looking at eating disorders forums.' Jukes said: 'Young people who might have felt very isolated in some of their ideas and interests might never even have thought of some of the things which they're now accessing … so people are getting both content and validation. 'We're going to go after the com networks. We are going to go after those who appear to be administrating and facilitating them.' The boost to the hunt for potentially violent young males comes after the Guardian revealed that the Southport attacker who murdered three girls at a dance class last July had been referred and rejected three times by the Prevent programme. Prevent exists to identify those at risk of supporting terrorist violence. The Southport attacker had shown insufficient signs of ideological extremism but did have an interest in violence, including school massacres. Babbage said: 'The violence-fixated individuals that are coming up on the radar for terrorism policing, the tech-enabled violence against women and girls that police are seeing and the com networks that we're seeing engaged in child sexual abuse and cybercrime – to some degree, this sort of young male community, it's sort of the same threat. 'People are spinning up and radicalising and getting into more extreme harm, and might spin out and end up presenting as any one of those things.' The material driving the young males to view horrific material and to potentially offend 'has a very significant dose of misogyny in it', Babbage added. Jukes said the internet had 'turbocharged' material triggering resentment among some young men: 'In com networks and in terrorist networks, the idea that the interests of men and boys have been relegated, and the interests of women have been elevated, leads directly to violent misogyny.' He said there were 'technological and engineering' solutions to the crisis, and that big tech could help by stopping the algorithms pushing extreme content to youngpeople who wanted it. They could also aid police in helping to detect young people searching for violent content. Jukes added: 'The scale we're talking about is beyond human intervention. There are too many users, too much traffic.' In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@ or jo@ In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organisations. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222 in England and Wales, 0808 801 0302 in Scotland, or 0800 0246 991 in Northern Ireland. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at
The Guardian
27-02-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
‘I was causing harm': author Helen Jukes on motherhood and our polluted bodies
When Helen Jukes told her friends she was writing about motherhood and pollution, they advised her against it and warned she might make pregnant people more anxious than they already were. But she disagreed. Mother Animal, a personal account of Jukes' pregnancy and early years of motherhood, details her growing realisation of how contaminated her body, and her baby, have become. And it's something she thinks all would-be parents should be more aware of. There are chemicals from human industry in breast milk, amniotic fluid and bones, she writes. Toxicologists have found 'forever chemicals' in embryos and foetuses at 'every stage of pregnancy … in lung tissues, in livers'. It is inescapable. Yet it is spoken about far too little. 'I find it quite disrespectful to think that mothers wouldn't be capable of handling [this] information,' she says when we meet at her home on the edge of the Peak District. Around the time she got pregnant, Jukes actively wanted to know what kind of world she was bringing her child into, reading, for example, David Wallace-Wells' The Uninhabitable Earth, about the scale of the climate crisis and how devastating its effects are and will become. But it wasn't until she had her daughter that she realised how much she had missed; how much pregnancy and breastfeeding manuals had left out. 'I did not learn about the human studies that found that high exposure to forever chemicals was significantly related to early undesired weaning, or not initiating breastfeeding at all – or that they might be present in the makeup I applied to my skin, and the waterproof coating on my raincoat and the stain resistant fabric on my sofa,' she explains in the book. It's the disbelief at all she didn't hear about that seems to drive forward her research and writing, which moves between a wild, controlled anger that is so intimately conveyed you feel you're in it with her and an unceasing determination to understand the state of play. Jukes says she took inspiration from Sandra Steingraber's, Having Faith: An Ecologist's Journey to Motherhood, which looks at the environmental hazards in pregnancy, and Lucy Cooke's Bitch: A Revolutionary Guide to Sex, Evolution and the Female Animal, which paints a picture of different animals' sexual identities and sexualities to challenge gender stereotypes. She also spoke to a lot of different experts, including a toxicologist who just so happens to be trying to have a baby. She asks the toxicologist an inevitable question: how does she hold motherhood and pollution in her mind at the same time? Her immediate answer is that she can't; they have to remain separate. 'In asking the question, I realised that I had been looking for reassurance: it's not as bad as you think. But it is that bad,' Jukes writes. If you look at her setup, Jukes' life might seem miles away from all of this. She picks me up from a small train station not far from her house. It feels remote in comparison to London, where I've come from. The train station is deserted, it looks as if it has not long ago rained, the air feels fresh and you can see lush greenery all around. I imagine the peace you might find living nestled among the trees. I wonder if she feels this, having moved here from Oxford and before that London (there was also a brief stint in Italy and the Welsh borders). Leaving behind her job in the third sector, now she works amid this rolling countryside as a writer and a teacher of writing. But I'm reminded when we speak not to romanticise the natural world as a place of purity. Part of the book is about showing this view of nature as a con, she says, an image that's created by culture. Jukes is softly spoken and carefully weighs up her answers to my questions. But her frustration is still palpable, sitting in the living room of the former worker's cottage she lives in with her daughter. What bothers her are the misconceptions around naturalness and motherhood. 'I don't think that had really landed for me before I became pregnant and suddenly I began to find some of the images and advertisements and the discourse [around pregnancy and breastfeeding] really horrifying,' she says. If the connection between mother, baby and contamination is mentioned at all, it's chalked up to personal responsibility: avoid cigarette smoke, eat less seafood. Mother Animal could have easily turned into a how-to book, and it isn't difficult to imagine how popular a guide to parenting amid the pollution might be. But Jukes knows individualism is not the answer; making the right choice, even if it were possible, she says, assumes a level of information and financial capability not available to everyone. Being a mother is not about creating a small environment where everything is safe, calm and pure, she explains. This doesn't exist. Take feeding your baby. There is not comprehensive global data on the likely level of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (Pfas, also referred to as forever chemicals) in different peoples' breast milk, with studies suggesting it varies internationally and domestically. If you are in an area of high exposure, for example through contaminated drinking water, some peoples' breastmilk can have a huge amount of toxins in it. Another recent study of Dutch infants, found a higher level of daily intake of Pfas were influenced by, among other things, exclusively breastfed babies, maternal age and if it was the mother's first-time breastfeeding. The other feeding option, formula, has problems too. One investigation found 85 chemical compounds defined as endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), which are chemicals that interfere with how hormones work, or suspected EDCs in different formula milks and containers, meaning individual low exposure to each substance. At the same time, polypropylene infant feeding bottles release high levels of microplastics, and it seems this increases when they're exposed to sterilisation and high-water temperatures. Owning up to her culpability was important for Jukes. 'Yes, on the one hand I was feeling achingly kind of full of care,' she explains, 'and on the other hand … I was causing harm.' She isn't only referring to the chemical burden she was passing on to her child; she was bringing stuff into their home, throwing it in the bin and from there it was going to affect other creatures and other parts of the world too. Nature, humans, other animals, she believes, are all intertwined. Jukes recounts taking some comfort in learning about the way other animals parent, detailing the wild complexity in how they care for their young in the book. She tells me about the caddis flies, whose larvae don't have any parental care; they create cases for themselves out of flotsam they find in their environment. Or the Australian three-toed skink, which can have eggs and live young in the same litter. These accounts make moments of this urgent book joyful and expansive. 'Who am I to say these simple creatures are not complex? The world is diverse and dynamic,' she says. 'These creatures are amazing'. But they are vulnerable too. There are pesticides in seabirds, flame retardants in humpback whales and industrial solvents in penguin eggs. Just like the pregnancy books, the research that she read about other animals parenting techniques often didn't cover this part. 'Mothering creatures evolve to fit the needs of their niche, but those niches are changing, and the extent to which the mothering creatures are able to adapt (rather than remain steady and unchanging) will be a key factor in determining which species survive into the future', she writes. With all that she knows, I wonder, how does she cope? How do you raise your child amid the toxicity, especially if you know you can't control it all? She says we have to channel our energies into collective change. 'We need to be writing to MPs,' she says. 'We need to be making the case that these chemicals should not be circulated at all.' Sign up to Down to Earth The planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essential after newsletter promotion By the time I get to the end of the book, it seems Jukes is not only railing against all the pollution we've created, she is also imagining how else we might have and raise children in this world. In her first book A Honeybee Heart Has Five Openings, a meditative, personal reflection on beekeeping, we leave Jukes as she's falling in love. In Mother Animal, we rejoin her when she's embarking on motherhood, we assume with the same person. But over the course of the book, she subtly indicates that their relationship has broken down. It feels like she's searching for a light in a storm; one of which might be all the animals who show mothering can be much more flexible than we realise. Rare though it might be in the animal world, she writes about mother lions branching off from their prides to raise offspring together and emperor penguins putting their young together in a 'communal creche' when they're out hunting. Maybe we take this variety seriously. Maybe all the responsibility need not fall on the mother. Maybe we think of raising children collectively. Despite this tentative hope, there is one part of Mother Animal I can't stop thinking about. Jukes speaks to a veterinary epidemiologist in Edinburgh who led a necropsy on an orca, Lulu, who came from a population where there hadn't been any offspring in 25 years. They found that Lulu had scar-like ovaries, which prevented her from having calves, and she had a level of polychlorinated biphenyls – a group of toxic chemicals used in paints, glue and other industrial products – in her body a hundred times over what is considered safe. These orcas may go extinct within our lifetime. In a world of such toxicity, a world where the climate and our natural world is in crisis, the epidemiologist admitted to Jukes that he'd chosen not to have children. I ask her about this; how did she feel when he said this? She explains that she respects this decision, and understands why people make it. But for her, despite all she knows, all she has learned and all she has written, she maintains that we cannot just stop. 'If we do', she says, 'they're winning'. Mother Animal by Helen Jukes is published on 27 February by Elliott & Thompson.
