Latest news with #LeeAnderson
Daily Record
23-05-2025
- Automotive
- Daily Record
New Blue Badge update for people making a first-time claim or due to renew this year
Local councils across Great Britain issue Blue Badges to people for up to three years. The UK Government recently confirmed that 90 per cent of all Blue Badge applications are being made through the online service. The Department for Transport also said it runs a 'programme of continuous improvement to the digital service to make online badge applications quicker and easier for applicants and local authorities'. Transport Minister Lilian Greenwood added that this programme also includes 'undertaking specific research and testing to identify innovative improvements to the online application process'. The written response came after Reform UK MP Lee Anderson asked what steps are being taken to 'reduce processing times for applications to the Blue Badge digital service'. The Blue Badge Digital Service offers a national online application and badge management facility through The latest statistics from the Department for Transport and Transport Scotland show there are currently more than 2.8 million Blue Badge holders in England (2.57m) and Scotland (235,779). The eligibility criteria for a Blue Badge was extended in 2019 to include individuals with non-visible disabilities such as Parkinson's, dementia and epilepsy to help more people park closer to the places they want to go when they travel as a driver, or a passenger. Most users will be aware their Blue Badge has an expiry date of three years from the point of issue, however, many may not be aware that renewal is not automatic and an application should be made 12 weeks (three months) before it expires to ensure the new permit arrives before the current one is no longer valid. Blue Badge holders could face a hefty £1,000 fine if they continue to display it after it has expired. This is because displaying an out of date Blue Badge is classed as 'misuse'. Transport Scotland guidance states: 'Misuse of a badge is a crime. You may be prosecuted if you misuse a badge.' Eligibility for a Blue Badge is also reviewed every time a renewal application is submitted. Guidance on explains: 'Your Blue Badge is not renewed automatically. You need to reapply for it every 3 years. 'Your eligibility will be checked every time you reapply. This is to make sure you can still get a Blue Badge. Your local council processes your application and decides if you can get a Blue Badge. 'You should reapply 12 weeks before your badge expires.' A Blue Badge costs £20 in Scotland, up to £10 in England and is free in Wales. You can reapply for your Blue Badge on the site here. How to renew a Blue Badge online You will need a recent digital photo showing your head and shoulders. You'll also need a photo or scan of your: proof of identity (such as a birth certificate, passport or driving licence) proof of address (such as a Council Tax bill or government letter) proof of benefits (if you get any) You will also need to know: your National Insurance number (if you have one) the details of your current Blue Badge You can start the application online and save the information you enter if you need to look for the required documents. You can easily return to it later and complete the process. Change of details You should contact your local council if there's a change to your: name address council area contact details Top 10 things to remember when using your Blue Badge You must follow the rules when using your Blue Badge, if you don't you are committing a crime You can only use your Blue Badge as a driver or passenger No-one else should use your badge if you are not in the vehicle with them If you are not getting out of the vehicle, you should not use your Blue Badge to get a parking space You must not let other people use your badge You must display your Blue Badge the right way up so the number can be seen clearly and your photo is face down You must apply for a new badge before your old badge runs out If your badge gets damaged you must apply for a new one Keep your badge safe. If it is lost or stolen, you must tell the police and the Local Council Check signs to make sure that Blue Badge holders are allowed to park there
Daily Mail
21-05-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mail
'He's the first through the e-gates': Keir Starmer mocks no-show Nigel Farage as Reform leader enjoys foreign holiday instead of attending PMQs
Keir Starmer joked that Nigel Farage was the first person to take advantage of his new EU Brexit deal today as the Reform boss ducked Prime Minister's Questions in favour of a foreign holiday. Mr Farage last night confirmed he was taking an overseas holiday, hours after he failed to appear in the Commons as the Prime Minister outlined an agreement bringing the UK closer to Brussels. Once of the benefits to Brits Sir Keir was keen to shout about was UK tourists being allowed to use EU e-gates to speed up airport transit. Mr Farage's absence was a surprise given his vocal leadership of the 2016 Leave cause in the referendum and his championing of the Brexiteer cause since. And he was again a no-show in the chamber today as the PM faced his weekly grilling, leaving it to Reform chief whip Lee Anderson to ask a question about data on deported foreign nationals. To laughter, including from the four Reform MPs present, the PM replied: 'It's very good he is standing in for the member of Clacton, I have to say. 'There was no sign of him yesterday at the EU statement - he was the first through the e-gates somewhere in the south of France.' And punning on the name of the French Mediterranean city, he added: 'Nice work if you can get it.' Mail Online can also reveal that while Mr Farage is on holiday the Reform leader and Clacton MP is still working hard on one of his outside money-spinners. Data from the Cameo website, which allows celebrities to record bespoke videos for fans for money, showed Mr Farage was up at 7.30am this morning recording them, charging more than £70 a time. Since he was elected last year he has made more than £130,000 from the site to top up his £92,000 MP salary. Mr Farage has been fiercely critical of the PM's newly signed agreement with the EU, including Sir Keir's extension of access to UK fishing waters for European fleets. But the Reform leader was not physically present in Parliament in order to challenge Sir Keir over the terms of his deal with Brussels. After being quizzed over his whereabouts, Mr Farage issued a statement to reveal he was out the country 'having my first overseas break for three years'. He added he would be back in Britain next week, although this is when MPs are on their week-long 'Whitsun' recess from Parliament. The Tories swiped at the 'part-time' Reform leader over his absence, claiming 'he clearly doesn't have the stamina to stand up to Starmer'. Data from the Cameo website, which allows celebrities to record bespoke videos for fans for money, showed Mr Farage was up at 7.30am this morning recording them, charging more than £70 a time. Mr Farage said in his statement: 'There seems to be great consternation in the press that they have not seen me for 48 hours. Well, they will have to wait some time. 'After months of touring the UK in the run up to our hugely successful local election campaign I will resume travelling the country next week as Reform moves to the next stage. 'Meanwhile I am having my first overseas break for three years, the jungle excepted. Well I say break.. plenty of articles and fundraising calls!'
New European
20-05-2025
- Politics
- New European
The ‘secret plan' to dim the sun
'The UK government is planning to block out the sun,' said one TikToker, in a post with hundreds of comments and thousands of likes. 'This isn't a joke'. Even a spoof local Facebook group for Wakefield joked: 'Keir Starmer says he will move further and faster to block the sun after 1 in 10 Brits suffered sunburn over the weekend leaving them reaching for the aftersun.' In recent days, most of the traditional media has been obsessed with Keir Starmer's plans and rhetoric on immigration. But across much of social media, a different UK story is dominating: that Keir Starmer is spending fortunes to dim the sun. Commenters across the internet are incensed. 'They been doing for years I'm sick of it!' said one. 'Government cannot even fix potholes but worried about the sun,' said another. A third took a sceptical, if woefully misinformed, stance: 'Block a sun that's millions of miles away the earths (sic) defo flat'. The issue is trickling through into the mainstream. GB News last month ran an online story headlined: 'Britain to approve £50m sun-dimming experiments in bid to prevent runaway climate change', while the Telegraph last week ran 'The secretive government unit planning to dim the sun'. It has even made it into parliament. During a recent energy questions, Reform MP Lee Anderson asked Ed Miliband 'The secretary of state thinks it's a good idea to fill our fields with solar panels at a cost of billions of pounds to the British taxpayer… so why is he supporting now a project to block out the sunshine?' A nonplussed Miliband, visibly baffled, offered up an answer on investment in solar panels, but had no response to the apparently ridiculous suggestion that the government was trying to block out the sun. The story is one that plays into the hands of conspiracy theorists everywhere; not least people convinced that special planes are spraying chemicals – visible in the form of 'chemtrails' – to either subdue and control the population, or else to alter the climate (the trails, actually 'contrails', are in reality mostly water vapour and are caused by the normal operation of planes' engines). The temptation is to sternly dismiss the stories as misinformation, worry about their effect on politics, and move on – but the situation in reality is more complex than that. For one thing, the story that the government is funding research to dim the sun is almost entirely true. One of Dominic Cummings's few lasting legacies from his time in government was the establishment of ARIA, the Advanced Research and Invention Agency – a quango modelled after the USA defence agency DARPA to fund cutting-edge research. Among its research priorities is investigating climate mitigation: technologies that could reduce global warming, potentially giving the world more time to wean itself off carbon. ARIA is unusually transparent by government standards, and has clear public documents explaining what it will fund in this area and why, plus how it will make decisions – and small-scale experiments on clouds are among those that make the cut. These include experiments to see if clouds at sea could be made more reflective, slowing the warming of the oceans, which act as long-term heat reservoirs. This would involve doing precisely what chemtrail conspiracy theorists have long claimed is already happening – using planes to spray chemicals to modify the climate. The actual plans are far more prosaic than the TikTok or Facebook posts suggest. Unsurprisingly, Starmer is not personally involved. The spending is around £50m – a lot of money to most of us, but only around one 250th of 1% of the government's total spending. The actual research being proposed is little more than a proof of concept – essentially a test of the theory to help compare the proposed solution to alternatives. How difficult is it to make clouds at sea more reflective? How much extra light do they reflect? Are there any unexpected consequences to doing so? A few tens of millions might help provide early answers to those questions. It will absolutely not dim the sun in any way that matters to anything. ARIA says the same thing, albeit more formally, in its public explanation of its research decision. 'We see a need for a programme that will accommodate small, controlled, geographically confined outdoor experiments on approaches that may one day scale to help reduce global temperatures,' it states. 'These outdoor experiments are intended to answer critical scientific questions as to the practicality, measurability, controllability and likely (side-)effects of the proposed approaches that cannot be answered by other means.' ARIA even talks about the need for 'public engagement' before such research is approved for funding, but appears somehow to have been caught off guard by the sustained interest from the public in a project that risks sounding like the secret plan of a Bond villain. Outside of its earnest, flowchart-laden, 'programme thesis' document, it has nothing on its site addressing recent concerns. This does suggest that no one within ARIA stopped to think what might happen if the agency funded a project exploring changing the climate by having planes spray something into clouds – despite there being a long-standing conspiracy movement that believes the government is already doing exactly that. It further suggests that the government itself isn't thinking about such things. At a time when Labour needs to persuade the public to radically change how we live over the next few decades – to avoid or at least mitigate catastrophic climate change – this is disheartening. It is all too tempting to piously complain about 'misinformation' or 'disinformation' in these kinds of contexts, but the terms would be misapplied in this case: the way the story is being told might be overblown, but the core facts are true – the government is indeed exploring this as one of many climate projects. The era when ministers and the lobby media could decide which issues would dominate the news on any given week ended long ago. Millions of people now get their news from social media, not newspapers or TV, and this is on their agenda. If No 10 can't learn how to spot stories like these as they emerge, and to speak to the people who are only reached by influencers about them, then government as we know it is, essentially, cooked. There is nothing malign about Labour's actual plans here – but the fact that they don't even seem to know they need to communicate that is itself deeply alarming. The government is stuck playing a shell game, focusing on what newspapers and the BBC say, and failing to notice that the whole system lost most of its influence years ago. Dimming the sun might not be a particularly important story in itself, but what it says about the loss of media control does matter. Westminster is toying with trials to darken the sky, but has failed to notice that the sun that's actually dimming is the one on the news stands.
Scottish Sun
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scottish Sun
Falklands heroes hit out after rainbow Pride flag wrapped around naval ship used in war
FALKLANDS War veterans have hit out after a landing craft used in the conflict was wrapped in a rainbow Pride flag. The facelift is to mark 25 years since the ban on gay people in the Armed Forces was lifted. 2 Falklands War veterans have slammed the Pride flag makeover on the landing craft used in the conflict Credit: PA 2 A landing craft carrying troops in 1982 Credit: Alamy Rear Admiral Chris Parry, who served in the South Atlantic in 1982, said: 'Frankly, this battle was fought and won 25 years ago when gays were openly allowed in the Armed Forces. 'The first gay officer in the Navy was on my ship. He was allowed to come out quite openly. 'This is something that has been fought and won. The drum doesn't need banging any more. 'It's quite divisive, I think.' Reform MP Lee Anderson also blasted the makeover, which is believed to be the first of its kind on a naval ship, as 'totally inappropriate'. He added: 'Pride flags have no place on naval ships, in our classrooms, or flying above Government buildings. 'Let's stop making everything about what you like to do in the bedroom and get back to work.' The craft — Foxtrot 8 — is on display in Portsmouth until September. Hannah Prowse, of the city's Historic Quarter, said: 'We're celebrating the inclusivity now present in our Armed Forces.'
The Sun
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Sun
Falklands heroes hit out after rainbow Pride flag wrapped around naval ship used in war
FALKLANDS War veterans have hit out after a landing craft used in the conflict was wrapped in a rainbow Pride flag. The facelift is to mark 25 years since the ban on gay people in the Armed Forces was lifted. 2 2 Rear Admiral Chris Parry, who served in the South Atlantic in 1982, said: 'Frankly, this battle was fought and won 25 years ago when gays were openly allowed in the Armed Forces. 'The first gay officer in the Navy was on my ship. He was allowed to come out quite openly. 'This is something that has been fought and won. The drum doesn't need banging any more. 'It's quite divisive, I think.' Reform MP Lee Anderson also blasted the makeover, which is believed to be the first of its kind on a naval ship, as 'totally inappropriate'. He added: 'Pride flags have no place on naval ships, in our classrooms, or flying above Government buildings. 'Let's stop making everything about what you like to do in the bedroom and get back to work.' The craft — Foxtrot 8 — is on display in Portsmouth until September. Hannah Prowse, of the city's Historic Quarter, said: 'We're celebrating the inclusivity now present in our Armed Forces.'
