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THE VAN IS COMING FOR YOU To ensure a regular income, the BBC runs enforcement operations under the TV Licencing trade name, the entity which is responsible for administering the system. Records are kept of licences and their expiry dates, and investigations are made into households suspected of owning a television who have not paid the requisite fees. To encourage compliance, TV Licencing regularly sends sternly worded letters to those who have let their licence lapse or have not purchased one. In the event this fails, they may arrange a visit from enforcement officers. These officers aren’t empowered to forcibly...

Video contradicts government assertion of overrun wards.. A woman in the UK was arrested by police after she filmed a video inside an almost completely empty hospital and posted it online. The clip shows the woman walking through virtually empty corridors and filming empty wards at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital. “This is a disgrace…it is so dead…all the people in our country desperately waiting for treatment, cancer treatment heart disease, honestly this is making me so angry,” she states as she films a row of empty waiting chairs. The woman expressed shock at how quiet the hospital was, saying she expected...

Supermarkets in England are to be barred from displaying unhealthy food and drinks at checkouts or using them in buy one, get one free offers, as part of a proposed government crackdown on obesity. The planned restrictions were praised by health campaigners as a “bold first step” in Downing Street’s promised campaign against obesity. The checkout restrictions will apply to other sales-boosting locations such as the entrances to stores or at the end of aisles. Similar rules will apply for websites, banning sales links to unhealthy foods on places such as homepages, or at checkout or payment pages. Restaurants will...

Sky News presenter Kay Burley is to stay off-air for six months after admitting breaking Covid rules during a night out for her 60th birthday. Political editor Beth Rigby and north of England correspondent Inzamam Rashid, who were among those with her, will be absent for three months. "I made a big mistake, and I am sorry," Burley wrote on Twitter. Burley was among 10 people who went to a restaurant on Saturday before she briefly went into another restaurant. She then moved on to a private residence where individuals from at least three households mixed, the BBC has been...

Tory MP Sir Charles Walker has raged at 'disgraceful and un-British' police officers as they bundled an elderly woman into a van for protesting outside Parliament. The former chair of the 1922 Committee told the officers that their actions were 'an outrage' as he walked across towards Portcullis House on Tuesday afternoon. Various reports said that the 72-year-old woman was participating either in an anti-lockdown protest or an anti-vaccine demonstration. Raising the incident as a point of order, Sir Charles told the Commons: 'I have just witnessed an elderly lady peacefully protesting with a handful of other people be arrested...

Burnley football club has apologized and vowed to hand out lifetime bans after a plane carrying a banner reading “White Lives Matter Burnley” was flown over the Etihad stadium ahead of the team’s match with Manchester City this evening. A private plane bearing the message flew over the stadium in Manchester just moments after both Burnley and City players took a knee to show their support for the Black Lives Matter movement. Jake Hepple, a Burnley local, has claimed responsibility for the stunt, sharing a video of the plane to his Facebook along with a refusal to apologize. Hepple wrote:...

Prince Harry has backed the moves to ban Swing Low, Sweet Chariot from rugby games due to its association with slavery. He has sung the rugby anthem many times since childhood and he is a fan and patron of the Rugby Football Union (RFU). Prince Harry has signaled support for the RFU’s review into the song, written by Wallace Willis, a freed Oklahoma slave, in light of the Black Lives Matter movement, The Sunday Times reported. The anthem rings around the stands at Twickenham and is being reviewed by the RFU, which has launched a wide-ranging probe into racism. Written...

Boris Johnson will warn the EU today Britain will choose a no-deal Brexit if a trade agreement is not struck by the end of next month. The threat comes despite the head of the World Trade Organization suggesting that doing so could slow the UK’s economic recovery from coronavirus, and that a deal similar to current arrangements would be better for jobs. WTO director-general Roberto Azevêdo highlighted agriculture and the car industry as two of the biggest victims if a deal could not not be struck, due to the heavy tariffs they would be subject to under trade rules. The...

Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage will no longer host his LBC Radio show "with immediate effect", the broadcaster has announced.

Conservative British politician and Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage has left his talk show at LBC radio after he made comments comparing the Black Lives Matter supporters to the Taliban. Farage faced a storm of backlash after tweeting about protesters demonstrating against police brutality and racial discrimination. Protests in the United States over the death of George Floyd, a black man who died while police custody, have spread around the world, including England. “A new form of the Taliban was born in the UK today,” Farage tweeted Sunday. “Unless we get moral leadership quickly our cities won't be worth living...

The Muslim population of England has passed the three million mark for the first time, according to estimates prepared by Whitehall. They said that Muslims are the fastest-growing faith group in the country — while allegiance to Christianity continues to decline. The figures were produced by the Office for National Statistics as part of a research project to try for the first time to make regular assessments of the size of different ethnic and religious groups. Until now, religious and ethnic minority populations could be gauged only once a decade using the results of the full-scale ten-yearly national census. According...

Nigel Farage says there is more he wants to do after Brexit - and he has registered the name "The Reform Party".

Downing Street rang Brexit Party candidates and offered them jobs in a bid to get them to stand down, Nigel Farage has claimed. The Brexit Party leader told Sky News: "Today, every single one of the Brexit Party candidates has come under intimidation. Thousands of phone calls, emails. "Even officials from Number 10 [have been] ringing up candidates and offering them jobs if they stand down."

BREXIT blowhard Nigel Farage finally exploded under the weight of his own pomposity yesterday. After delivering his last-chance ultimatum to Boris Johnson at the start of the election campaign, Mr Farage crumpled yesterday and ran away. He ordered the PM to dump his newly negotiated EU deal and give the Brexit Party a clear run in 150 strong Remain seats. Unless BoJo did as he was told, Farage threatened to split the pro-Brexit vote by standing in every constituency. But the PM just ignored him and watched poll support for the Brexit Party tick steadily downwards into single figures. Now...

Abortion and same-sex marriage are now legal in Northern Ireland after legislation passed by Westminster MPs has come into effect.

MPs and peers will return to Parliament later after the Supreme Court ruled that its suspension was unlawful. Boris Johnson is returning early from a UN summit in New York, while Labour cut its conference short in the wake of Tuesday's unanimous ruling. The PM, who has faced calls to resign, has said he "profoundly disagreed" with the decision but would respect it. Commons Speaker John Bercow has said there will be "full scope" for urgent questions and ministerial statements.

There were extraordinary scenes of chaos and anger in the House of Commons overnight as opposition MPs staged a protest against the suspension of parliament for five weeks – a prorogation that the Speaker of the House said represented “an act of executive fiat”. As John Bercow began proceedings to prorogue parliament, a group of opposition MPs carrying signs reading “silenced” drowned out Black Rod as she tried to address the Speaker, a ritual that initiates the suspension. Several MPs were also involved in altercation near the Speaker’s chair, as they attempted to prevent him leaving his seat and attending...

Boris Johnson’s fledgling ­premiership was in tatters last night after MPs kicked out his bid to call a general election to force through his no-deal Brexit. The PM suffered the defeat on only his third day in office – after Tories he brutally purged for voting against him on Tuesday joined opposition parties to reject his call for a poll. Mr Johnson had earlier lost a bid to block MPs from voting to take no-deal off the table. And it came a day after Tory rebels helped push through a debate to discuss the matter. Amid the backlash, it meant...

The Remainer 'surrender Bill' cleared its first hurdle by a big margin tonight as MPs backed it at second reading. The legislation made it through the stage by 329 to 300 - a slightly bigger majority than the 27 secured by rebels last night. The latest blow to Boris Johnson came as plotters insisted Brexit must be delayed before an election is called - in case he wins and tries to force No Deal on October 3

Nicholas Soames, the grandson of Britain’s World War Two leader Winston Churchill, will be expelled from the Conservative Party after voting against Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Brexit. The move against the Conservative Party grandee marks one of the most bizarre turns in the three-year Brexit crisis that has gripped a country once touted as a confident pillar of Western economic and political stability. Soames was one of 21 Conservative lawmakers who rebelled, including Ken Clarke, 79, the longest continuously sitting British lawmaker in the House of Commons, and former finance minister Philip Hammond. All are to be expelled.