Latest news with #RotherValley
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Sport
- Yahoo
Father and son take on 'adrenaline-fuelled' race
Those on a gentle weekend stroll around a South Yorkshire beauty spot may be surprised to hear revving throttles and crashing waves for the British Jetsport Championships. More than 50 water scooters will take to Rother Valley Country Park's main lake, with a father and son duo among the competitors. Harvey Booth, 53, and Harry Booth, 17, from Huddersfield, are members of the Sheffield and District Jet Ski Club. "It all started in the 1990s - I was always keen on it and I started racing, then when my family came along I stopped," says Harvey. "When my son got old enough we started again." He adds: "The easiest way to describe it is it's a bit similar to motocross on water." Harry joined Harvey on the water aged 11, when his father took his water scooter out of the garage and asked if he wanted a go. "I did my first race at the end of 2020 in the junior's class and I just loved it," he says. "I progressed into different classes and eventually now I'm in Ski GP." Ski GP is the fastest of the water scooting classes – which include vintage, modified, clubman and GP. Among the classes are juniors, novices and experts – ranging in age from 9 to 71. The series has six championship rounds a year along with a winter round. "It's just a real adrenaline rush, they're quite fast so it is a buzz," says Harvey. Though both claim the sport isn't dangerous, Harry has come away with a few "near misses" and Harvey's wife and Harry's mother Katy struggles to watch them. "She thinks it's a little bit dangerous," says Harvey. "She finds it a bit scary, but she's all for it as it makes me happy," adds Harry. Tim Atkinson, who is from Pontefract and is competing alongside the Booths on Sunday, is approaching 10 years of racing. "In any sort of sport collisions or incidents can happen," says Tim. "I've been fairly lucky over the years, I've never really seriously hurt myself but other people have had a few broken bones where they've come off." The 40-year-old tree surgeon says he's keen for more people to get involved in the sport. "It just seems to be sort of one of those hobbies and sports that's hidden," he says. The race in Rotherham is the fifth round of the championships, with all three Yorkshiremen feeling quietly confident. "It's our local round, it's our favourite, and obviously closest to home - so there will be plenty of friends and family spectating," says Harvey. Listen to highlights from South Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North Similar stories Swimmers jumping from pier rescued by jet skiers
BBC News
2 days ago
- Sport
- BBC News
Riders prepare for British Jetsport Championships in Rotherham
Those on a gentle weekend stroll around a South Yorkshire beauty spot may be surprised to hear revving throttles and crashing waves for the British Jetsport than 50 water scooters will take to Rother Valley Country Park's main lake, with a father and son duo among the competitors. Harvey Booth, 53, and Harry Booth, 17, from Huddersfield, are members of the Sheffield and District Jet Ski Club."It all started in the 1990s - I was always keen on it and I started racing, then when my family came along I stopped," says Harvey. "When my son got old enough we started again."He adds: "The easiest way to describe it is it's a bit similar to motocross on water." Harry joined Harvey on the water aged 11, when his father took his water scooter out of the garage and asked if he wanted a go."I did my first race at the end of 2020 in the junior's class and I just loved it," he says."I progressed into different classes and eventually now I'm in Ski GP."Ski GP is the fastest of the water scooting classes – which include vintage, modified, clubman and the classes are juniors, novices and experts – ranging in age from 9 to 71. The series has six championship rounds a year along with a winter round."It's just a real adrenaline rush, they're quite fast so it is a buzz," says Harvey. Though both claim the sport isn't dangerous, Harry has come away with a few "near misses" and Harvey's wife and Harry's mother Katy struggles to watch them."She thinks it's a little bit dangerous," says Harvey."She finds it a bit scary, but she's all for it as it makes me happy," adds Atkinson, who is from Pontefract and is competing alongside the Booths on Sunday, is approaching 10 years of racing. "In any sort of sport collisions or incidents can happen," says Tim."I've been fairly lucky over the years, I've never really seriously hurt myself but other people have had a few broken bones where they've come off." The 40-year-old tree surgeon says he's keen for more people to get involved in the sport. "It just seems to be sort of one of those hobbies and sports that's hidden," he race in Rotherham is the fifth round of the championships, with all three Yorkshiremen feeling quietly confident."It's our local round, it's our favourite, and obviously closest to home - so there will be plenty of friends and family spectating," says Harvey. Listen to highlights from South Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North
The Guardian
09-06-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Digital ID cards would be good for Britain – and a secret weapon for Labour against Reform
'Papers please!' Those words strike terror in a thousand war movies. Stasi or Gestapo officers are a breed apart from the unarmed plod who demands no ID cards from free British people. So when the government contemplates a universal ID, it sends instinctive twitches down some spines. Though not many. Times and public attitudes have changed. And so have the political imperatives, for it seems that, for a Labour government struggling to seize the narrative after a difficult year in power, digital ID cards – and the sense of national belonging they could strengthen – may just be the weapon needed to fight off the ever-rising threat of Nigel Farage's Reform. Look to Labour Together, the thinktank closest to government, which has just published a paper calling for a digital ID system – a 'verifiable digital credential downloaded onto a user's smartphone, which could be instantly checked by employers or landlords using a free verifier app'. One of its main virtues is simplification. There are currently 191 ways to set up accounts and access services on with 44 sign-in methods. A universal ID is popular: More in Common finds 53% in favour, with 25% strongly in favour and only 19% against, backed by a majority of supporters of Labour, the Tories, the Liberal Democrats and Reform UK, and across all ages. The co-author of the foreword to the report, the Rother Valley MP Jake Richards, talks in terms of 'the citizen taking back control of their own data and public services'. One portal, no more forgotten passwords, simple, safe, everything in one place for everyone. What's not to like? Some will protest at the apparent loss of a romantic freedom, the right to vanish and start life anew, the call of the open road. But that's a fairytale, a fantasy of a bygone era. Everyone knows everything already. As Richards puts it to me: 'Last night I drank a Guinness. This morning I'm getting ads for Guinness.' The algorithms catch us already everywhere. Buy a lampshade and lampshades chase you all over the internet (which suggests algorithmic cluelessness: I've already bought that lampshade). You may restrict what you let out, but AI will find you, assessing your age and address from a host of databases. Better to control everything from one government-run base. It seems clear to me that the report is fundamentally about immigration – Labour wants to make it easier to identify people with no right to live here or claim public services. The policies behind the 'stop the boats' and 'smash the gangs' slogans can never hope to guard every beach from every rubber dinghy, whatever politicians pretend, any more than they can 'end crime'. But ID would be a second line of defence against undocumented migrants who would find getting a job, renting a flat or using public services near impossible without one. Curbing benefit fraud is also cited as another argument in favour by poll respondents in the report; with ID cards for all claimants, those ever-suspicious of benefit cheats, despite the very low fraud levels at just 2.2%, might be reassured. ID cards, designed to guard borders, could calm some alarm at migration among those who wildly overestimate the numbers arriving undocumented. The report forcefully labels it the 'BritCard', the first of its kind since the second world war. With a groundswell of support among the new cohort of Labour MPs, Richards says it's not just red wallers in favour, but everyone who's alarmed by Reform's frightening advance. Former home secretaries back it – Alan Johnson, David Blunkett, Charles Clarke, Jack Straw, Amber Rudd, plus William Hague. Tony Blair has always advocated it, with a tortured history of trying to introduce a plastic 'entitlement' card. First tried in 2003, the idea was backed by the Met police commissioner, who called it an 'absolutely essential' tool in the war against terrorism. By 2010 it was briefly available to some, but abolished by the incoming coalition government. The cost was a killer: £85 for a combined card and passport. This time a universal digital ID would be free, say its promoters. The authors would make it mandatory – Jake Richards wouldn't. But that may make little difference once it became near-impossible to access anything without it. Real risks need to be resolved first, as a computer rejecting you unjustly would cut off access to everything. The Home Office would have to improve radically, given its track record. We cannot forget that some Windrush victims are still waiting for compensation while others dare not approach the untrusted Home Office, source of their trauma. Any system would need cast-iron guarantees that being denied services on the basis of not having a valid BritCard would be dealt with instantly by senior enough officials to make robust decisions with rapid appeal to courts not blocked by backlogs. But the political advantages are crystal clear. The almost 37,000 migrants arriving by boat last year signify a state's loss of control. It has been reported that some would-be arrivals in Calais choose the UK because it doesn't have ID cards, unlike most of the EU. Adjudicating who is entitled to be here is the state's first duty, controlling who shares in a democracy and the public services that voters pay into. ID cards are a social democratic cause, because they help define security not only as border controls for who comes in, but as the right for everyone here to share in our mutual social security. In truth this is a political rebranding of what's happening already. E-visas are rolling out to all foreign residents, with the existing One Login and Wallet doing the same digital identity work. Make it one ID system and the government can claim the political credit. Its promoters relish a public fight with civil liberties and privacy groups to prove Labour's seriousness about national identity. Watch the dash to leave the European convention on human rights (ECHR), promoted by the now near-identical Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage. Labour will rightly have none of it. No 10 is not yet committed on digital ID cards – but lest anyone think Labour lacks a pride and purpose when it comes to British identity, this is the time to bring in ID cards to endow everyone with proof of their national rights. Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
Daily Mail
03-06-2025
- General
- Daily Mail
When Yvette Cooper speaks it all feels so formulaic, it conveys nothing: QUENTIN LETTS
Biggest vote turner at present? Small boats. That explains the rise of Nigel Farage 's Reform. Yesterday Yvette Cooper arrived at the home affairs select committee for what was expected to be a showdown. She was set to be interrogated about 'the work of the Home Office '. MPs were bound to go big on the small boats crisis. Weren't they? Not this lot. It was an hour and a half before the matter was raised and it received just ten minutes. Questions during that low-energy period were reserved for Starmerites. Owing to the result of the General Election, select committees are heavily dominated by Labour. The MP given most of the questions was Chris Murray (Lab, Edinburgh East & Musselburgh). In addition to being as damp as a frogman's jockstrap he happens to be the son of Margaret Curran, a sometime Labour MP who is now minister for Net Zero in the House of Lords. You will not be amazed to learn that wee Murray displayed all the feral aggression of a Portobello tea-shop waitress. He marvelled at Ms Cooper's command of the crisis. She could not have been handling it better, Mr Murray plainly felt. 'And will ye be taking another pink dainty cake, madam?' he did not quite ask the Home Secretary. Yvette Cooper arrives in Downing Street to attend the weekly Cabinet meeting in London on June 3 Mr Murray's cosy family connections were trumped by those of another Labour MP. Jake Richards (Rother Valley) disclosed that his sister is Ms Cooper's chief of staff. Their father is Steve Richards, a Blairite columnist and BBC type. Nor does it stop there. Jake's sister is married to another Labour MP, the implausibly tanned Gregor Poynton (Livingston), who himself was previously married to an ex-Labour MP, Gemma Doyle. The People's Party outdoes the Borgias for nepotism. It makes the Pakenhams look grindingly meritocratic. All this helped Ms Cooper. She could jabber away without significant interruption, wobbling her head and affecting artful concern about the Liverpool parade crash, youth terrorism and other matters. Sitting some three yards to her left, at shoulder level, one was offered an unusual angle of the Home Secretary. Watching her side-on, I could see a stillness in her pupils and sense the cogs of her brain engaging before screeds of policy exposition were squirted past two primly drawn lips. She is an efficient, prating machine. The brow corrugates. The hands chop and push imaginary obstacles on the desk in front of her. The larynx aims for a low, almost masculine note. There are many emphatic nods. It all feels so formulaic that it conveys... nothing. No novelty or spontaneity. No flashes of humanity. Just a programmed product. Although in some ways impressive, it has a bleakness to it. Watching her side-on, I could see a stillness in her pupils and sense the cogs of her brain engaging before screeds of policy exposition were squirted past two primly drawn lips She wore no wristwatch. Two of her tiny fingertips were smudged by ink. Beside her sat her new permanent secretary, Dame Antonia Romeo. In previous positions, Dame Antonia has been a flashy customer, all Jackie O glasses and shaken tresses, bringing a whiff of ocean air and Roger et Gallet scent to any room. Now that she is working for Ms Cooper, Dame Antonia has gone conventual. She has abjured glamour. Said not a single word. She just gazed at her ministerial mistress with ostensible interest. Can the unquenchable Romeo really have been tamed? Shaun Davies (Lab, Telford), a blowy sort, apologetically asked if we might have more success in discouraging small-boat arrivals if we diluted European human-rights conventions. Ms Cooper shrugged that one off without effort. We did not want to upset the French and Germans. The committee's chairman, Dame Karen Bradley (Con, Staffordshire Moorlands) caught a few midges in her sagging jaw. Robbie Moore (Con, Keighley & Ilkley) scored a few runs by pestering Ms Cooper about grooming gangs. Paul Kohler (Lib Dem, Wimbledon) blew his nose in a vast red hanky and admired his long fingers. Peculiar. And in the Commons chamber there was discussion about drinking water being tainted by sewage, and one of the questions came from an MP called Mr Swallow.
