Will schools reopen? And if so when? These are the questions on every teacher, parent and pupil’s minds.
Two government ministers – neither of whom are the hapless Education Secretary Gavin Williamson – have given very different answers on what will happen with secondary schools reopening.
Read MoreA new poll carried out by Survation and commissioned by We Own It has found that 59% of the public think that the way the government has handled procurement during the pandemic has been corrupt.
This comes in response to the ‘high priority lane’ identified in a National Audit Office report. This lane prioritised leads from Ministers, MPs, Peers and those with connections to government as more credible. These companies were ten times more likely to win contracts than those who were not in the high priority lane.
Read MoreThe Law Commission, the independent statutory body overseeing reform of the law in England and Wales has recommended scrapping the common law offence of misconduct in public office.
They are calling for two new laws to replace it – an offence of corruption in public office, and an offence of breach of duty in public office. The Commission says this will make the law clearer and easier to follow.
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As MPs arrived at Parliament this morning they were met by Extinction Rebellion groups sitting in the entrances.
The escalation of disruption followed the tabling of the Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill on Tuesday when the bill was put forward by Caroline Lucas MP.
Read MoreThe Liberal Democrats have elected the more moderate of the two candidates for leader. As Jennie Rigg said this morning, there was a choice between radical liberalism and pragmatic centralism. By a margin of nearly two to one, they opted for the latter.
Since taking part in the coalition government, the Lib Dems have struggled to be seen as a radical party. There has always been a tension within the party between their radical and more ‘small c’ conservative wings. This is usually resolved by their hyper-localism, which has long allowed them to be the party of both Moran and Davey.
Read MoreXR has announced a series of actions today throughout the UK. From an ‘elephant in the room’ roadblock in Bristol to a boat called Lightship Greta sailing from Brighton to London, to a feed-in of nursing mothers and older children the actions will be planned on a regional basis.
Read MoreA group of well-known medics have written to the government to demand more action to tackle the spread of anti-vaccination misinformation on the major social media platforms.
Former junior doctor turned bestselling author, Adam Kay, Dr Ellie Cannon, Dr Phil Hammond, and former star of Embarrassing Bodies, Dr Dawn Harper have co-signed a letter to Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden MP, Home Secretary Priti Patel MP, and Health Secretary Matt Hancock MP, calling on the Cabinet members to introduce legislation “to prevent dangerous lies about health and medicine being spread to millions.”
Read MoreFormer Trump advisor Steve Bannon has been arrested on charges of fraud. He is alleged to have been one of a group of four people who defrauded hundreds of thousands of donors in connection with the “We Build the Wall” campaign, which raised $25m (£19m). He has pled not guilty and will stand trial.
He is – of course – not the first Trump associate or advisor to fall foul of the law. The art of the grift has a strong seam running through the current US administration, with ex-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort , ex-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, ex-deputy campaign manager Rick Gates, political operator Roger Stone and ex-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn all having faced charges.
Read MoreThe World Transformed (TWT) – the festival of arts and ideas launched initially by the Corbyn-supporting group Momentum has announced a month-long online festival of events throughout September.
Now an established part of the Labour Party conference experience, TWT is now independent of Momentum, though their ties remain close and you can expect to see many senior Momentum members throughout the programme.
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