Latest news with #SpecialK
The Irish Sun
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Irish Sun
Irish star gets into heated altercation with stranger in public after he screamed at her kids in aggressive run-in
IRISH star Vogue Williams got into a heated altercation with a stranger on the street. The Howth native and her husband Advertisement 2 Vogue got into an argument with a stranger Credit: Instagram 2 Vogue was fuming after someone cursed at her in front of her kids Credit: Instagram Speaking on her podcast with her sister Amber, she explained: "I collected the kids from school and we went to get ice cream. "And then we were crossing the road because I was going to take them to this playground around the corner from where we live because they love it and we don't go there all the time." As the 39-year-old held onto her kids, who were all on the scooters, and attempted to cross the one-way road when a cyclist zoomed past. Advertisement read more on vogue williams Vogue said: "We were standing on the road ready to cross and then this bike whizzed by and your man screamed at me, 'For f*** sake!'. Amber sounded shocked as she asked: "In front of the kids?" Vogue shared her anger as she replied: "Yeah, and I was like, 'Don't you dare swear in front of my children!', I was forgetting I was right outside the school. "I was like, 'Don't you dare shout bad language around my children' and he was like, 'Watch your f***ing kids!' and I was like, 'You're on the wrong side of the road'." Advertisement Most read in Celebrity The mum-of-three, who was clearly taken back by the unpleasant encounter, added: "He was going the wrong way up a one-way road. So not only was he wrong he also screamed profanities at my children and then I just shouted at him and was like 'Oh, that's very close to the school!'. "I never said bad words to him. I just think people lose it so quickly instead of being like, 'You know what she's got three kids, she's trying to get across the road and actually I'm going up a one-way road the wrong way, even if I am on a bike I shouldn't be doing it'. Vogue Williams shows off her wedding outfit "And also, don't swear at people you don't know because it's really bizarre." Amber replied: "It's really just unnecessarily aggressive." Advertisement To which Vogue confessed: "Even though that's my truth corner, I don't feel guilty about it. I feel good." Vogue recently titled, Big Mouth - and it's safe to say she is leaving no truth untold. STAR'S STRUGGLE In the tell-all book, Vogue places a microscope upon her childhood, relationships and even her failed marriage with Westlife singer When it came to dissecting her teen years, the Irish model opened up about her Advertisement After a boy from her school called her "thunder thighs", Vogue told readers: "I then became obsessed with avoiding food." She added: "I used to pack a sandwich for lunch and whatever else my mum would be happy with and just not eat it. "Instead I would fill a sandwich bag with Special K and try and survive on just that for the day. I hadn't really learned much about nutrition and thought Special K plus very little else would make me skinny." The mum-of-three reminisced on her dieting experience, adding: "I wish I knew then what I know now. Advertisement "I genuinely thought eating nothing would make me lose weight and I was always hungry. It's sad to look back and think what a young girl who doesn't like her body will deny herself."
Forbes
6 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
How Data Clean Room Technology Can Show Marketing Impact
Last year, international food giant Kellanova (part of the company formerly known as Kellogg) was hoping to improve sales of its Special K cereal in the U.K. as competition increased. Their hypothesis: Targeted audiences would buy more Special K with messaging and content that focused on the quality and value of the cereal. In order to test the theory, Kellanova used data clean rooms, a high-tech and AI-powered way to penetrate deep into data. The company was able to show their targeting worked—sales increased 9% among price-conscious shoppers, and 36% among premium shoppers—and has been using clean room technology for more aspects of marketing. I talked to Kellanova's Global Senior Director of Insights and Intelligence Louise Cotterill and Chief Growth Officer Charisse Hughes about how they used clean room technology to find success in this campaign and others. This conversation has been edited for length, clarity and continuity. It was excerpted in the Forbes CMO newsletter. What have been some of the challenges Kellanova has recently faced in terms of getting information about their customers? Cotterill: Like all CPGs, we don't own that last mile transaction data, and so we're very often blind to the people who are buying our food. By the aggregated data, we can see what's going on in general, but we can't see the specificity of what's happening. What we wanted to do is really be able to lift that veneer and have a better understanding of how our shopper is interacting with our brands, with our food, with our retail partners. The way we've been able to do that is through clean rooms. The way that they work is we will license data from a partner—that can be a third-party loyalty card, Circana data or it can be a retailer directly. That goes through a hash sheet process that translates that [personally identifiable information] data, so it's 'ID 1234.' At the same time, I bring in other data sets, and I know this ID has also entered into the suite with something. I might pair that with retail location data. So I understand the geography of where you're shopping, and maybe I can understand a bit about your household and lifestyle. I don't know it's you, though. That gives us that granularity whilst also respecting people's privacy at the same time. As marketers, we've suddenly gone from having panel data—which has worked incredibly well for our businesses, but we're projecting the outcome based on 2,000 people—to actually looking at millions and millions of records that we can analyze with AI and start to understand that granularity that drives our commercial business; something that's different to help us better connect with those consumers. Kellanova Global Senior Director of Insights and Intelligence Louise Cotterill and Chief Growth Officer Charisse Hughes. How did you land on using clean room technology to do this? Cotterill: The most important thing to do is start with a business problem, because if you start with the technology, it will never land and never get embedded in the business. My role is to look at how do we better use advanced sciences in marketing. Media is by far our largest expenditure. We saw a 1% to 2% improvement in media effectiveness and efficiency. That's a significant improvement to our commercial bottom line. We started with that as the objective: How do we create more effective and efficient consumer connections? What that took us to was the role of data collaboration. Kellanova is one of the most trusted companies. We have to do it at the gold star standard of privacy. The gold standard is a clean room where we can anonymize that data as much as possible. And so that was really where it went. The crucial part is that it's very easy to be seduced by data, the idea of technology and these shiny objects. If you don't start with actually a problem that you're trying to solve, all you get is a very expensive tool that never gets used. What's been great about the clean room is that we have not only been able to demonstrate impact, it's repeatable into our processes and practices, and that's the key unlock for anything that we do in these AI and data science programs. Is this a platform that you can continue to use at Kellanova? How was it established? Cotterill: The technology of the clean room is with a third party. They have neutrality in that their core work is making sure that data is anonymized and protected. We then partner with different third-party data providers to bring in those different data sets, but within the clean room as an analytics environment. That analytics environment is accessed by our internal data scientists. What's critical, and I think the way we see this world moving, is that data will not be a differentiator, but models will be. Everyone will have Experian, everyone will have Circana and Nielsen data. But where the real IP will be in how you use that data and how you build those models to understand, in this use case, what is a high-value consumer. Our internal teams are building the models. They're working side-by-side with our marketing, media and creative teams, and that's where the success was for Special K. It really comes to life because we have the control over how we build the audience, but we're partnering with our external partners to bring it to life. When you embarked on this project, was there any pushback, confusion or hesitancy among the team to do something this high tech and bring so many data resources into it? Cotterill: It was a clear business need, so it was a much easier sell than perhaps it might be [if we said] let's just chase this shiny AI tool. It came with a solve for a problem, but I'll be totally transparent: We didn't knock it out of the park the first time. It wasn't a magic turnkey solution. We had senior leadership who believed in it. And so when we don't see the results the first time, we still have the confidence to keep going and the belief that that will drive a meaningful impact in our business. That's what we saw with Special K, and now that's embedded into many campaigns in multiple markets. The beautiful thing is these models just get smarter every time we deploy, every time we target, every time we get a result, we are getting smarter and more understanding. Hughes: When you think about this space that we're all operating in, which is new and unknown by many, it's uncomfortable because it's not how we've always done it. It's techy. All those dynamics, we faced those. Add to that in some cases, you're spending more dollars because you're targeting a smaller group of people. So your CPMs are arguably going up, but you're driving a better return on investment at the end of the day. For sure it takes some convincing and some test-and-learns. We failed at first, and this spirit of failure, and failing fast and failing cheap, has to be a part of what you're building in terms of the muscle of the organization. It definitely takes time. My prior life was in retail, and you're able to recover a little bit faster because you're naturally accustomed, moving at that pace and testing and learning and adapting. When you're a bigger organization like Kellogg/Kellanova, you're building more of the internal confidence and belief in what's possible. Then you're using this test-and-learn approach to demonstrate what's possible, but you build it through words, collaboration and a partnership, bringing everybody together to talk through the plans, and really build that allyship and confidence. We are really fortunate that we had Lu, is a digital marketer who comes from an agency background, who could be our champion and wave the flag around, and, from my standpoint at the executive level, is bringing my CEO and CFO along on the journey as well. Was there anything that was specifically challenging or surprising about the whole process? Cotterill: I think the reason that we weren't successful the first time is because we were kind of like kids in a candy store. We've never had this level of data. It was so exciting. And so what we did was try to change too much, and in changing too much, at the end it was too complex for us to separate out the results. We knew we needed to do is just simplify it right back down. It's really easy to get ahead of yourself and to raise this notion of nirvana of what you should be able to do, but you've got to meet the organization where they are in terms of capabilities and process. Everything's changing every day, but still there's a lot of manual work. If you've got multiple creative, you've got to traffic and tag all those ads. We over-complicated it. You can't overestimate the importance of measurement: Aligning up front what you say is success, so that when I come back and I say this is what happened, I'm held accountable to those standards and those goals. With Special K, we set really high standards. We said we want to drive sales and we're going to measure that through a clean room. As a CPG marketer, we never get to see the real impact of our creative. With a clean room, we can see that I showed [someone] this ad, then she went on to buy. We were very clear to drive sales, and we far exceeded any industry benchmark on those sales with increases of 9% with price-conscious shoppers and 36% with premium shoppers. The second challenge that we set was if we can drive short-term uplift, what about brand health? These metrics move really slowly over time. They're extremely hard to move in social, a very fast paced environment. Our business-as-usual approach saw no lift at all. In the clean room audiences, we see an uplift of three times industry average. Presenting those results is a joy and a great validation. We really believed we could get there, and it showed that we could. Hughes: You can imagine if you bring different functions to the table to talk about the business problem, everybody has a different point of view on it. The hard thing is getting everybody to see the problem the same way and to want to test a single hypothesis. There could be tons of hypotheses about why a business is declining, or not seeing volume growth and household penetration. But to get the sales team, the marketing team, the shopper team, the insights team, all those folks having a shared view on the problem. People have different data, so they're seeing different things and a different piece of the problem. If you can break down those silos and get everybody to the table to say, we all believe that this is the problem we're going to solve, then it becomes a lot easier. Now you're just setting up a test and how you're going to execute that. How do these results compare with ones you'd seen earlier, both through panels, but also through online data before privacy was such a widespread concern? Cotterill: The big shift is we know that we are respecting our consumers and shoppers' expectations. We've taken the due diligence to honor and respect—and exceed, where we can—any privacy rules. The biggest shift for us is the granularity that we're able to see what's going on in our business. Panel data has been fantastic, but often the exciting parts in marketing are on the fringes. That's where you identify the insight or the opportunity. Those edges have been softened out for a long time. Whilst you talk about the clean room potentially as a targeting tool, we're bringing it further upstream in our strategy and business planning process because it gives us an incremental visibility we've never had before. We can see things like geographic divides in how our food is sold, or price sensitivity. We can understand that, amazingly, not all women are the same. There's different nuances, and we can target and speak to those in different ways. Most exciting is the measurement piece: You're not just relying on model data. You've got actual real data. For me, it's really hard to go back to working because the precision you've got, it looks so illuminating and so exciting. As a marketer, you just want to lean into it as much as possible. Hughes: Being able to talk to our consumers more directly about their behaviors, versus taking a retrospective and constantly having to look back; actually seeing what they're doing and how they're reacting in real time [is great], but the measurement part is probably the most exciting. There are those people who believe marketing is just a line item in the P&L to be cut, that is not really delivering on what we know it can deliver: growth, engagement and long-term business and brand acceleration. Now, we can demonstrate the sales impact as well as the brand impact. Being able to communicate that you need both is critical. Now we have the data, we have the test-and-learns, we have the insights and the capabilities to do that better than ever. What have you been using this technology for since the case study, and where do you plan to use it next? Cotterill: We're rolling it out across lots of campaigns. I'm in the midst of deploying a whole set now, and I at the same time, there's a capability training that's going alongside. It's one thing telling people the theory, but when they sit alongside the data science team, when they see the impact it can have, that's just elevating the capabilities of our marketers. We're rolling out across many campaigns. We've got it now in multiple markets. We see a potential where it can go beyond. The simplest use case is targeting. The next level is creative targeting and measurement. And the next level is where we start to use it to break down some of those silos, in terms of helping us across different commercial domains: sales across, pricing across. That's an innovation dream for us. We want to make sure [we are not] getting over-complex too soon. We're embedding it at this level right now, but we see a huge potential where it could go and complement a lot of the work that we're doing in various areas. What advice would you give to marketers that are looking at this kind of technology and are trying to decide whether to use it? Cotterill: I have learned so much by doing. Clean rooms are a great tool, but they're part of a repertoire of tools that we have to target. You've got to make sure that you've got the right brief, the right problem to solve it with. Clean rooms offer more control. They're often more precision. They're not turnkey. If you try and just change the shiny objects, it will never ever work. But when we've been able to embed it in the process and solve the real business problem, that's when it worked the best.
The Irish Sun
30-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Irish Sun
Vogue Williams admits she got ‘obsessed with avoiding food' after cruel ‘thunder thighs' remark as teen
VOGUE Williams has opened up on her struggle with disordered eating as a teen. The 2 Vogue Williams released her first autobiography, Big Mouth, last week 2 Vogue opened up about her disordered eating as a young teen In the tell-all book, relationships and even her failed marriage with singer When it came to dissecting her teen years, the Irish model opened up about her relationship with food as a young teen. After a boy from her school called her "thunder thighs", Vogue told readers: "I then became obsessed with avoiding food." She added: "I used to pack a sandwich for lunch and whatever else my mum would be happy with and just not eat it. READ MORE IN VOGUE WILLIAMS "Instead I would fill a sandwich bag with Special K and try and survive on just that for the day. I hadn't really learned much about nutrition and thought Special K plus very little else would make me skinny." The mum-of-three reminisced on her dieting experience, adding: "I wish I knew then what I know now. "I genuinely thought eating nothing would make me lose weight and I was always hungry. It's sad to look back and think what a young girl who doesn't like her body will deny herself." The weight Vogue was losing. MOST READ IN THE IRISH SUN She said: "My mum then began to force me to sit down and eat my dinner, she wouldn't let me leave the table until I finished the food. "Eating food was the last thing I wanted to do, proper things like pasta and chips were everything I hated at the time." Vogue Williams shows off her wedding outfit Vogue explained that if she tried to unpack her disordered eating it all boiled down to her being "uncomfortable with her height". The star highlighted how she "always wanted to be five foot eight" and added: "Throw in a pair of stick thin legs and that would have been my dream." HSE Help & Guidelines for Eating Disorders If you've been affected by issues raised in this article please reach out to the HSE helplines listed below. If you think you may have an eating disorder, see your GP as soon as you can. If you have an eating disorder, your GP should refer you to an eating disorder specialist. It's hard to admit you have a problem and ask for help. It may make things easier if you bring a friend or loved one with you to your appointment. Visit for information and support about eating disorders. Vogue emphasised how food, health and nutrition are "so important" to her now. Today, the star has learned how to find a balance with food and exercise. The 39-year-old continued: "I train and eat healthily, I only follow the 80/20 rule and I never ever diet. "In a restaurant now, I will order what I want. I am a health freak so I do try to be careful about what I put into my body. "But I do have a sweet tooth so chocolate is always here to stay."
Scottish Sun
17-05-2025
- Scottish Sun
The ketamine kids ravaging UK town as dealers hit PRIMARY schools & teen girls draw business plans to become drug lords
Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) TWO teenagers high on ketamine sway like zombies on the canal path yards from happy Burnley fans fresh from watching their team clinch promotion back to the Premier League. While the Lancashire town is basking in football glory, it's also tackling a growing ketamine epidemic which has seen kids as young as 12 hooked on it, with fears child dealers are bringing it into primary schools. 11 Recreational use of the horse tranquilliser has doubled in a year in the UK 11 Addicts have self-harmed and attempted suicide in the former mill town Credit: Getty The Sun can reveal that one 13-year-old girl dealer even created a "business plan" to set herself up as a drug boss, complete with profit and loss estimates, and had recruited dealers and runners to peddle the popular party drug - also known as 'Special K' or 'Kit Kat'. Teenage girls are feared to have been sexually assaulted while high, and addicts have self-harmed and attempted suicide in the former mill town where the white powder can be bought for just £10 a gram. Recreational use of the horse tranquilliser has doubled in a year in the UK, and it is believed to be made legally in factories in India as well as illegally in China, Laos and Vietnam. The Class B drug is then smuggled to Britain via Belgium or Holland and sold by county lines drug dealers. According to the National Drug Treatment Monitoring System, the number of 18-year-olds in England entering drug treatment who identify ketamine as one of their problem substances rose to 917 in 2023-24 from 335 in 2020-2021. Ketamine is particularly damaging to the inner lining of the bladder, and heavy users can end up incontinent or needing to have the organ removed and replaced with a bag. The potent painkiller and sedative has become a hugely popular street drug due to its hallucinogenic and relaxing effects, but it can be highly dangerous. Hollywood actor Matthew Perry, who played Chandler in the sitcom Friends, died in 2023 after an overdose, and former RuPaul's Drag Race UK winner The Vivienne died aged 32 of a cardiac arrest caused by the effects of taking ketamine in January. In Burnley, tragic teenager Preston McNally fell into the Leeds-Liverpool Canal after taking the horse tranquilliser drug with three friends. His inquest heard that a witness saw them acting like "zombies" and could not control their legs. How ketamine can change someone's life at 'startling' speed revealed by Dr Catherine Carney 11 Tragic teenager Preston McNally died after falling into the Leeds-Liverpool Canal having taken the horse tranquilliser drug with three friends Credit: Facebook 11 Preston's inquest heard that a witness saw him and his mates acting like 'zombies' before he fell into the canal Credit: STEVE ALLEN 11 Local vicar Alex Frost has been campaigning about the dangers of ketamine Credit: STEVE ALLEN Local vicar Alex Frost, 55, who has been campaigning about the dangers of ketamine, told The Sun: "Tragically they could not help him as they were too out of it. "It's a pandemic here in Burnley. It's undoubtedly one of the ketamine hotspots in the country. "It's shocking the scale of it. It's due to the high levels of deprivation and also the cost of it." The married dad-of-three, who is the vicar of St Matthews Church, added: "We have seen 12-year-old kids being addicted. It's a pandemic here in Burnley. It's undoubtedly one of the ketamine hotspots in the country Alex Frost "And then the dealers groom kids with the latest trainers… the latest fashion gear, then they got in debt over it and have to sell more. "I know of one 13-year-old girl who did a business plan for selling ketamine. She had profit and loss margins - she had worked out how much she could get it for and then how much she sold it for. "If she had only managed to funnel that enterprise into something legitimate, that would be very impressive. "Her mother only found out she was involved in ketamine when she saw a picture of her daughter being held by her ankles and then dropped down the stairs of a house while they were all high on ketamine.' 'K-hole' The vicar, who turned to campaigning when a parishioner broke down in tears over the effect ketamine was having on her daughter, wants the drug to be upgraded to a Class A category. The synthetic drug's origins lie in the early 1970s, when it was developed as an easily administered anaesthetic for combatants in the Vietnam War. It became popular in the 90s as a clubbing drug alongside ecstasy. An excessive hit can cause temporary catatonia, known as a "K-hole". Former addict Finley Worthington, who racked up £22,000 debts over ketamine, told The Sun: "That's the ultimate hit. When you have experienced a k-hole, you chase it. 11 Ex-addict Finley Worthington raked up £22,000 debts over ketamine Credit: STEVE ALLEN 11 Eighteen members of a drugs gang who based their operation in Burnley, Brierfield and Nelson were jailed for almost 90 years in 2024 The 'heroin of a generation' Party drug ketamine has been dubbed the 'heroin' of a generation as users warn its true toll has yet to be fully seen. The potent painkiller and sedative has become a hugely popular street drug due to its hallucinogenic and relaxing effects. But for some, a party habit can spiral into a devastating addiction. Exeter University researchers who interviewed 274 ketamine addicts warn the drug causes 'high levels of physical health problems and psychological consequences'. They estimated that nearly half – 44 per cent – of British users suffering devastating side effects from ketamine do not get professional help. Sixty per cent had bladder or nasal problems, while 56 per cent suffered from organ cramps. Six in 10 interviewees had mental health problems and reported psychological issues including cravings, low mood, anxiety and irritability. One anonymous ketamine user in the study said: 'I feel it is the heroin of a generation. 'More information will only become available once more people my age begin to suffer so greatly from misuse that it can't be hidden anymore.' Another added: 'People know the risks of heroin and cocaine but not how addictive ketamine can become.' Read more here. "I have seen all sorts on the drug. One time I hallucinated that I was on a fairground ride in my bedroom and I was going round and round - it was crazy. "I chased that high to see that again." The 25-year-old was addicted to ketamine for six years and at times snorted more than seven grams a day. He said: "I was in hospital many times because of ketamine. It was very scary. "The pain was so bad that I ended up using ketamine as an anaesthetic. "Kids now take it in houses, parks or by the canal. You see them in clubs swaying like zombies." 'Hidden epidemic' Finley now works as a charity drugs counsellor and runs support group Ketamine Education Services. Shaking his head, he added: "We are seeing kids as young as 12 addicted to it but I'm sure it's being taken into primary schools and sold by kids just ten or 11. "It's shocking. It's a hidden epidemic.' One mum said her daughter's ten-month ket addiction was a nightmare. Kids now take it in houses, parks or by the canal. You see them in clubs swaying like zombies Finley Worthington Speaking to The Sun from her home, she said: "It was a living hell when she was suffering withdrawals. "She threw plates at us, attacked us and all sorts. My daughter self-harmed and talked about killing herself. It was a nightmare. "The Government needs to upgrade it to Class A. It is everywhere in Burnley - kids take it in parks and by the canals. "It's so cheap - they put pocket money in and club together to buy it." The devastating impact of ketamine Ketamine is a very powerful anaesthetic that can cause serious harm. Taking ketamine can be fatal, particularly if it is mixed with other drugs. Physical health risks In the short term, it can increase your heart rate and blood pressure, and make you feel sick. It can also make you confused, agitated, delirious and disconnected from reality. As it leads to loss of feeling in your body, paralysis of the muscles and loss of touch with reality, ketamine can leave you vulnerable to hurting yourself or being hurt by others. Because you don't feel pain properly when you've recently taken the drug, you can injure yourself and not know you've done it. The party drug can cause damage to your short and long term memory. Prolonged use can also result in serious bladder problems, causing an urgent, frequent and painful need to pee and blood stained urine. Although stopping using ketamine can help, sometimes the damage can be so serious that the bladder needs surgical repair or even removal. The urinary tract, from the kidneys down to the bladder, can also be affected and you may be left incontinent - meaning you can't hold in your pee. Abdominal pain, sometimes called 'K cramps', have been reported by people who have taken ketamine for a long time. Finally, evidence of liver damage due to regular, heavy ketamine use is emerging. Mental health risks The longer term effects of ketamine use can include flashbacks, memory loss and problems with concentration. Regular use can cause depression and, occasionally, psychotic symptoms such as hallucinations. Ketamine can also make existing mental health problems worse. Medical grade ketamine is now being researched as a potential treatment for severe depression, but it is too early to know the results of this research. Source: FRANK Ketamine is classified as Class B, with the maximum penalty for supply and production 14 years in jail. The Government said it was seeking expert advice on whether to reclassify ketamine as a Class A which would mean anyone supplying it could be handed a life sentence. Lancashire Police has launched Operation Shore to crack down on the supply of ketamine in Burnley and nearby Padiham. A boy of 15 was among those arrested in dawn raids. Cops are also cracking down on e-bikes and e-scooters being used to deal ketamine throughout the borough. Inspector Matt Plummer said: "We have seen a concerning rise in ketamine misuse across our communities, and it's vital that we respond both with enforcement and education." Dr Sakthi Karunanithi, director of public health at Lancashire County Council, said: "There has been an increase in ketamine use nationally so it is incredibly important for us to work together with our partners to help stop ketamine getting into our communities. "We are already providing support to those affected by ketamine and their families, as well as delivering sessions to children and parents to educate them about the dangers of ketamine. "In a very short period of time, ketamine can cause permanent damage to the body, including bladder problems, changes in mental health, memory, and damage to your nose, liver and kidneys." 11 Lancashire Police has launched Operation Shore to crack down on the supply of ketamine in Burnley and nearby Padiham Credit: Times Newspapers Ltd 11 Mobile police stations were set up as part of Operation Shore Credit: Lancashire Police 11 Finley says kids now take ketamine in houses, parks or by the canal Credit: STEVE ALLEN
Times
24-04-2025
- Business
- Times
UK politics live: Ed Miliband refuses to rule out regional energy pricing
Britain is prepared to slash tariffs on US cars and agricultural products such as beef and chicken to secure a trade deal. Rachel Reeves said on Wednesday that she wanted to see trade barriers between the UK and the US reduced as part of negotiations with the Trump administration. Ministers are understood to be willing to reduce long-standing UK import tariffs of 10 per cent on cars and 12 per cent on agricultural products. 'I want to see tariff and non-tariff barriers reduced between the UK and the US,' Reeves told the BBC before a meeting on Thursday with Scott Bessent, President Trump's most senior economic official. • Read in full: Chancellor considers reducing import tariffs The former defence minister Grant Shapps has said that he has 'some theories' as to why President Trump 'seems to support the tyrant' President Putin, but he is barred by the Official Secrets Act from sharing why. He told Times Radio: 'I don't think it's too much of a stretch, and many of your listeners will already know because it's publicly reported that he's had previous run-ins with Kyiv, unrelated to the war, and people may come to their own theories as to why he seemed to be in cahoots with Putin, who after all is a dictator who wants a completely different type of world to the one which has been constructed after the Second World War.' Shapps added that he found it 'really disgusting' that the leader of the free world is 'coming out as nothing more than a swaggering bully and choosing tyranny over democracy'. Nigel Farage has said he is 'eating the Tories for breakfast' before the local elections on May 1. In a post on X, the Reform UK leader shared a photo of himself eating a bowl of 'Special Kemi', a take on the popular breakfast cereal Special K. Farage tagged Sir Keir Starmer in the post. Ed Miliband has refused to rule out zonal pricing for parts of the country based on local energy supply and demand. The energy secretary told Sky News that he would make a 'calm and considered decision' on zonal pricing, which reportedly could lead to higher bills in places such as the southeast of England compared with Scotland. Miliband insisted his aim was to cut energy bills in a 'way that's fair'. Speaking to LBC, he added: 'I'm not going to take a decision that is going to raise prices in some parts of the country. That is not what I'm going to do.'
