Latest news with #Rowley
Edinburgh Live
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Edinburgh Live
Eamonn Holmes' health heartache as he shares 'sad' update after fall live on air
Our community members are treated to special offers, promotions and adverts from us and our partners. You can check out at any time. More info Eamonn Holmes has shared a poignant health update with his followers, just days after a dramatic incident where he fell off his chair during a live broadcast on GB News. The 65 year old broadcaster also faced a hospital visit earlier this month following a fall at home. Expressing his frustration and sadness over his health struggles, Eamonn posted an image on social media from three years prior, showing him looking fit and well. Reflecting on the photo, he admitted to fans that it 'made him sad' as he lamented: "I could walk." Despite the challenges, Eamonn is determined to improve, stating: "Got to redouble my efforts." READ MORE - Edinburgh family join Channel 5's the Radfords on second Florida holiday in a month READ MORE - Friendless Rose West's life behind bars with unusual prison breakfast After a tough year of rehabilitation post-spinal surgery for severe back pain due to three slipped discs, Eamonn has been seen using both a walking aid and a wheelchair as his mobility has been impaired. Concerns were raised among viewers last week when Eamonn experienced a fall from his chair while presenting GB News Breakfast alongside co-host Ellie Costello. The incident occurred off-camera during an interview with commentator Charlie Rowley, prompting an audible reaction from Costello and Eamonn urging Rowley to "carry on", reports the Mirror. Following a short break, Holmes reassured viewers: "Welcome back. Good to see you again. Especially good for me to see you again. I am still alive, yes. "And they're very wonky wheels on chairs that we've got here, and matter of fact, we don't really like the chairs full stop, do we? They're a bit slippy and slidey and I've slipped and slid off mine there. "Not the first guest to have done so, we've had a few, they have to remain nameless because they're well known people, but they've hit the floor really badly, quite frightening. "And it was a bit of a shock for me because I've had a fall in my bathroom two weeks ago, which hospitalised me, and that hit me again right in the back. (I'm) really, really sore. Really sore." (Image: @GBNEWS) (Image:) (Image:) He later said the chair "gave way" which meant he was lying flat on his back. He added: "As the morning goes on, you feel aches and pains. The worst thing about this, of course, this was at a time when I was hospitalised two weeks ago for a very similar fall in the same area, back of the head, my neck, my shoulders. So it all came back, as it were." On X, formerly Twitter, Rowley wrote: "@EamonnHolmes YOU are the real hero for carrying on this morning. A true professional and National Treasure who I learn from each and every week. It's a privilege working with you, @elliecostelloTV and the rest of the @GBNEWS family. Take care!". On May 2, in an Instagram post that included a photo from the inside of an ambulance, Holmes thanked the crew who had helped him after he fell on his bathroom floor. Eamonn said he was lucky to have his phone within reach and was able to call for an ambulance. The former host of This Morning, who has been grappling with persistent health issues after dislodging discs in his back that once impinged on his sciatic nerve and hampered his right leg's movement, has often shared his challenges. He's undergone a spinal surgery, a double hip replacement, and spoken candidly about the difficulties he faces with walking and using a mobility scooter. Last year marked a significant change for Holmes as he and his wife Ruth Langsford, whom he married in 2010, made their separation public. In 2022, Eamonn Holmes disclosed that his ongoing health struggles had put a strain on his marriage to then-wife Ruth Langsford, a staple on Loose Women. He conveyed the challenges at home, admitting "Even my own family are bored of my moaning," and highlighting the marital tension with remarks such as "It has caused some strain and Ruth is fed up of hearing about it and of me saying I can't walk the dog or tidy up, but I can't help it. It's agony." After parting ways with Ruth, Eamonn is moving forward and is currently in a relationship with 43 year old marriage counsellor Katie Alexander. They took to social media earlier this month for their first pictures together. Alongside her pet pooch Dottie, Katie and Holmes, who was seated in a wheelchair, were seen enjoying each other's company in cosy selfies, which she captioned: "Lovely weather... lovely company.
Yahoo
7 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
The prolific criminals making a mockery of Britain's justice system
Each morning, on his way to work, Sir Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, reads a log of the incidents in which police have been involved in the capital over the previous 24 hours. On Tuesday, a significant chunk of his officers' time was spent 'chasing round a teenager who's been involved in machete attacks' and who had 'previously been arrested for firearms and machete offences', said Rowley. He went on to describe how, despite this being a repeat offence, the system had failed to keep this young man off the streets. 'We sought his remand in custody. Even under the current system he was eventually bailed,' Rowley said in an interview on Radio 4's Today programme. 'He skipped his bail on his tag, we've put massive resources into chasing him round; he's been caught with a machete again. That's going on day in, day out.' Rowley did not say how many times the teenager with the machete had been arrested before. But this example illustrates how Britain's criminal justice system has become a revolving door for the most prolific criminals. Ministry of Justice (MoJ) statistics show that just 10 per cent of criminals are responsible for around half of all offences. Meanwhile, thousands of prisoners have been released early under a Labour scheme that started in September last year to address an overcrowding crisis in prisons. Rowley put the issue of 'hyper-prolific' offenders at the centre of a remarkable public intervention by senior officers this week. Six of the country's most senior police chiefs, including the Met Commissioner, wrote an article in The Times newspaper, issuing a direct plea to the Government to make 'substantial investments to bolster police officer numbers, grow specialist police staff nationally and enact major police reforms'. Police have separately told the Government that they will need an extra £300 million in Rachel Reeves' first spending review on June 11. Without it, they argue, Labour's ambitious targets to halve knife crime and violence against women and girls in a decade will not be met. There are likely to be more challenges to come. An independent sentencing review by David Gauke, the former Conservative justice secretary, published last week by the Government, proposes that some prisoners should be released after serving just one third of their sentences and that custodial sentences of less than 12 months should be largely scrapped. As a result of Gauke's recommendations, which were accepted by ministers almost wholesale, even more policing power will be needed to tackle offenders who would previously have been in prison – and, many argue, should still be behind bars. Rowley said he does not take the decision to wade into politics 'lightly'. But a stretched police force is in no fit state to take on a new wave of early releases, given reoffending rates stand at around 30 per cent. 'Every time you put an offender in the community, a proportion of them will commit crime [and] will need chasing down by the police,' Rowley said. Meanwhile, the decision to release prisoners early, under the current scheme, was made 'without any analysis of the impact on policing whatsoever'. Worryingly, statistics show criminals with multiple offences are no more likely to be jailed than first-time offenders – a phenomenon dubbed 'more crime, less time'. According to research from the Policy Exchange think tank published in 2023, less than half of 'hyper-prolific' offenders (those who have 45 or more previous convictions) and less than a quarter of 'prolific' offenders (those with 16 previous convictions or more) are sent to prison when convicted of offences that are sufficiently serious to be tried in a Crown Court. Since 2007, roughly 50,000 career criminals with over 50 previous convictions have been spared jail, including 4,000 people who had over 100 previous convictions, according to MoJ data obtained via parliamentary questions. Astonishingly, when Conservative MP and shadow education minister Neil O'Brien crunched the numbers, he found that MoJ statistics show people convicted of theft, drug offences and common assault and battery were handed shorter sentences if they had a greater number of previous offences. 'A massive chunk of crime is caused by a small minority of criminals,' says O'Brien. 'A lot of these people will be the people who would be handed short sentences, which are now set to be banned. They will be out in the community, able to cause even more misery and commit even more crime… policy is going in literally the wrong direction.' Striking examples of hyper-prolific offenders avoiding jail include Tanya Liddle, who in October last year avoided prison for her 172nd conviction (most of which were theft-related), and Carey Lyons, who in 2023 was handed a suspended sentence after being convicted of 15 charges of possessing indecent images of children, despite having a staggering 100 previous convictions, many of them for sex offences. Craig Nicholson, from Gateshead, meanwhile, was given a community order rather than a custodial sentence for theft in 2023, despite 343 previous convictions. Similarly, Warren Russell, from the Isle of Wight, was in 2022 given an eight-week suspended sentence for theft, despite racking up 115 previous convictions, mainly for shoplifting. Is the solution simply more money for policing, as Rowley and his colleagues are appealing for? Many of the arguments made by the police chiefs on Tuesday have been made repeatedly over the last decade – albeit largely behind closed doors – to both Conservative ministers and their Labour successors. In the same radio interview, Rowley said policing is 'carrying the scar tissue of years of austerity cuts and the effects of that. Forces are much smaller when you compare the population they're policing than they were a decade or 15 years ago.' While the overall police budget has increased by 5 per cent (up to £889 million) for the next financial year, demand for police resources is rising by 5 per cent a year nationwide, according to Rowley: 'Five per cent more people are calling 999 looking for help from police. That's a massive number, and that compounds year on year.' O'Brien recognises the significance of this 'extraordinary' intervention from police chiefs, but disagrees that funding is the sole issue. 'What the police are doing and how their time is used is as relevant as total resources,' he says. 'It's not just non-crime hate incidents (NCHIs), but how much time police spend attending mental health incidents, sitting in A&E, and being stuck in bureaucracy.' Meanwhile, an increasing number of potentially dangerous 'prolific' offenders will be released early – or else, avoid jail entirely. 'There is genuine and widespread concern about the impact of the sentencing review on community safety in an already overloaded system,' says Ian Acheson, a former prison governor and director of community safety at the Home Office. 'The police have had more money, this is true, but compared to population growth per capita they are seriously underfunded.' Sir Keir Starmer came to power last summer with ambitious aims for the criminal justice system: to 'take back our streets', halve serious violence, and tackle violence against women and girls. The blame can't be placed solely at the door of the current Government for the status quo. 'We have a system that is falling apart – feral, violent, and awash with drugs,' says Acheson. 'Labour have inherited this mess – for once, that's true.' It won't be fixed, however, until more crime means more time, not less. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Spectator
28-05-2025
- Spectator
Met chief: release ethnicity data even if it 'emboldens' racists
To the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, who is now calling on forces to routinely release information on suspects' ethnicities – even if it 'emboldens' racists. In the wake of a recent attack in Liverpool, Sir Mark Rowley has urged police to be 'realistic' about handling information surrounding a crime and has made the case for earlier release of personal details given the number of 'half truths' already shared online. How very interesting. Rowley's comments follow a furore over the information put out by the Merseyside Police force about the man arrested after a car ploughed into a crowd of supporters celebrating Liverpool Football Club's record. Police announced they had taken a 53-year-old white British man into custody within hours of Monday's attack – before swiftly receiving criticism for specifying the driver's ethnicity. Speaking to the Beeb today, Rowley said that while the move hadn't pleased everyone, it was the best way to address arrests going forwards.
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Immigration is the reason our police seem more incompetent than ever
There are all sorts of downsides to an ageing society, but one of the upsides is supposed to be that it is a safer, quieter, more orderly society. But modern Britain doesn't really feel that way, does it? Yes, many forms of crime are down – although there is surely some ambiguity there. If you live in the jurisdiction of one of the many police forces which solves zero burglaries a year, how long before you no longer bother reporting such things? What about lower-level crime, such as shoplifting? So what happened? Mark Rowley, the Met Police Commissioner, has part of the answer: 'We're carrying the scar tissue of austerity cuts, and the effects of that. Forces are much smaller when you compare the population they're policing than they were a decade or 15 years ago.' Credit where credit is due: it's too rare for figures of authority to acknowledge when a problem is rooted (as so many are) in the Conservative party's last period in office. Rowley is quite correct that we'll be feeling the impact of short-sighted policing cuts under the Coalition for a long time. Too often, such comments are seized on by the Left as somehow conceding that any form of austerity was a bad idea. It wasn't, at least if you don't think that public spending can just increase forever. But George Osborne's strategy – avoid making any decisions and salami-slice every budget – was a disaster for the justice system. Not only did he cut thousands of police officers, but the Treasury also paid off thousands of our most experienced prison officers to retire early, with entirely predictable consequences. Rowley is, however, only acknowledging half the problem. The police-to-population ratio depends on two numbers, and officer strength is just one. The other reason that per-capita police numbers are so much lower than they were twenty years ago is the Conservatives' continual failure to get a grip on mass immigration. Actually, that sentence flatters the Tories a bit, because it implies they tried to grip it. Yet their record tells a different story. David Cameron fought two elections talking tough about bringing net immigration down to the 'tens of thousands', but in office was happy to let his home secretaries talk tough whilst the departments of Business, Education, and the Treasury continually bid up the numbers. As for Boris Johnson and Priti Patel, well, surely nothing need be said that googling the term 'Boriswave' doesn't cover. The impact of this is two-fold. A lower ratio of police to residents obviously has an impact on law enforcement (compounded by the courts backlog and prisons crisis). But a more atomised society with a high proportion of new arrivals – an 'island of strangers', as Sir Keir Starmer put it – also simply needs more police, as 'hard' policing has to compensate for the dilution of social norms which play a larger role in a more homogenous, higher-trust society. Sadly, it doesn't look as if the Government has learned any lessons. Rachel Reeves is reportedly locked in battle with colleagues over more police cuts, even as chiefs warn that it will make it impossible to hit Labour's vaunted crime targets. Just how hollowed out do forces need to get before ministers will accept the need to cut entitlement spending? I really don't want to find out the hard way. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
CDC: Lead from phone lines is highly concentrated in Springfield manhole muck
SPRINGFIELD — A sediment sample collected in January from a telephone worker manhole under Central Street turned out to be, frighteningly for workers, 3% lead. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Health Hazard Evaluation Program and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health said the muck had lead concentrations of 30,000 parts per million. To put that in perspective, the Environmental Protection Agency lowered last year its acceptable level of lead in soil from 400 parts per million to 200 parts per million. 'Now, it's in the company's court as to what it will do,' said John Rowley Sr., business manager of IBEW Local 2324. Local phone company Verizon, a successor to the Bell system that used lead to shield phone lines up until the 1960s, did not respond to questions this week. Verizon stockholders have a chance this week to weigh in on lead, though. The Association of BellTel Retirees Inc., owner of 214 shares of Verizon's common stock, is asking stockholders to force Verizon management to do a comprehensive independent lead study and release the results by December of this year. Rowley, along with scientists from Boston University and New York University and U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, have been investigating and publicizing the threat posed by old lead-sheathed telephone cables for more than a year. Sample swipes of workers' hands conducted on Central Street in January also showed the presence of lead, a neurotoxin. Rowley said he still awaits results of air and soil samples collected just last month from a manhole in the Forest Park neighborhood. Advocates, the union and Markey, a Democrat, also worry about federal cutbacks at NIOSH, the CDC and the Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which might hamstring efforts to protect workers. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told senators that NIOSH's work will not be interrupted. But Rowley said he's been told that, while there are reinstatements from Department of Government Efficiency-led layoffs, administrative and procurement staff responsible for obtaining test supplies are still gone. West Springfield buys old Walgreens for police station Target of Springfield eminent domain, 'Chicken Building' owners cry foul in court West Springfield gun buyback nets 34 guns Read the original article on MassLive.
