Social media firms could face ban if they fail to remove harmful online content, warns Matt Hancock January 27, 2019 Social media firms face being banned if they fail to remove harmful content, health secretary Matt Hancock has suggested. "We are a nation state, parliament is sovereign – as we are discovering in the Brexit process – and we can legislate if we need to. It would be far better to do this in concert with the [...]
Millions of illegal cigarettes being traded on the black market are costing the UK £2bn in tax January 26, 2019 Millions of fake or bootlegged cigarettes are being sold throughout the UK on the black market to avoid paying duty on them. County councils in Hertfordshire, Durham and Lincolnshire have found illegal cigarettes stashed behind walls, hidden in toilet cisterns and in sweet boxes. The selling of fake cigarettes results in over £2bn of tax [...]
When We Have Sufficiently Tortured Each Other review: A play that somehow makes graphic S&M seem tedious January 25, 2019 Martin Crimp’s new play When We Have Sufficiently Tortured Each Other opened to giddy reports of audience members fainting during previews. And this strange production does shock and appal, but not for its uncomfortable themes or graphic depictions of violence, but for its total lack of coherence and crawling tedium. Somehow director Katie Mitchell takes [...]
A post-Brexit City: MPs ask the right questions January 25, 2019 City in the morning, Westminster in the afternoon – there was a time when this was the daily routine for a number of MPs. These days, alas, one is hard-pressed to find a parliamentarian who truly understands the Square Mile, but former corporate lawyer Nicky Morgan can claim to be one of them. As head [...]
Asphodel Meadows/The Two Pigeons review: A split evening of showcasing sharp contemporary Royal Ballet choreography and a sugary romcom January 24, 2019 This evening of two short productions is, as ballerina Laura Morera says in her programme notes, “everything the Royal Ballet is about.” The first part, Asphodel Meadows, was the first work by Royal Ballet artist in residence Liam Scarlett, originally staged in 2010 when he was just 24. Taking its title from the part of [...]
Arsenal v Manchester United: Marcus Rashford has found his “killer instinct” to pose Gunners a major threat in the FA Cup January 24, 2019 Manchester United manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has plenty of memories of facing Arsenal as a player during the era in which the teams’ rivalry was at its most fiery. The former striker scored the fifth goal in a 6-1 rout of the Gunners in February 2001 to send United 16 points clear at the top [...]
Apprenticeship levels up on last year but still hampered by 2017 levy January 24, 2019 More people started apprenticeships in the first quarter of the 2018-19 academic year than in the year before, but are still below equivalent figures reported in 2016-17 and 2015-16. There were 132,000 starts between August and October last year, up 15.4 per cent year-on-year from 114,300, according to Department for Education (DfE) figures published this [...]
Netflix leads the way as UK on-demand video subscriptions soar January 24, 2019 The number of UK homes that subscribe to an on-demand TV service has soared in the last year, with Netflix the most popular choice, new figures have revealed. A total of 11.6m UK households had a subscription to at least one of Netflix, Amazon Prime Video or Now TV in the third quarter of 2018, [...]
Young’s buys rival pub chain Redcomb in £34m deal as it expands in the south east January 23, 2019 Young’s today said it has bought pub chain Redcomb Pubs in a cash-free deal worth £34m. The pub operator said it has acquired Redcomb, which owns 15 pubs in London and the south east, as it looks to expand its presence in the area. Read more: Young's pubs boss Patrick Dardis: "Smithfields is the new Covent [...]
Is Stefanos Tsitsipas’s progress at the Australian Open a sign of a changing of the guard in men’s tennis? January 22, 2019 Men’s tennis has a habit of proclaiming a new era, and the events at the Australian Open over the last week have once again pushed the sport’s favourite topic into the spotlight. Stefanos Tsitsipas’s defeat of Roger Federer on Sunday and his subsequent progression to the semi-finals, where he’ll face another all-time great in Rafael [...]