EXCLUSIVE Noel Edmonds is 'a coloniser who's come in like Lord Of The Manor': Furious locals slam TV star over pub plans and say they 'don't give a s***' about his fame. Now he gives HIS side of the story - and reveals 'earth angel' helping him cope
'What don't I miss? Congested roads. The pressure on education, healthcare and infrastructure. We don't have those problems here.'
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Daily Mail
12 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Death of the British summer holiday job: Hospitality job postings fall by more than 20,000 in a year as industry blames Rachel Reeves' Budget
Rachel Reeves ' budget has been blamed for killing the British summer holiday job with hospitality postings falling by more than 20,000 in a year. The drastic reduction comes despite a booming tourism industry which saw visitors in England spending £48.4 billion on day visits in 2024, a six per cent rise from the previous year. Job postings for temporary hospitality work is down 25% year-on-year, with 22,369 fewer unique postings for jobs this year compared to last, according to data from the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC). In 2024 there were 88,414 hospitality jobs on offer, but that fell markedly to 66,045 in a single year. Meanwhile, the number of tourism jobs have also been largely reduced. This year there have been just 15,650 unique unique job postings, a 14 per cent drop from the 18,118 last year. The fall in employment opportunities will largely impact students and teenagers looking for their first jobs and will threaten the temporary job market as schools and universities break up for the summer, according to UKHospitality, a trade body for the industry. It will put at the risk the skills provided by having hospitality as a first job, they claim. Allen Simpson, Chief Executive of UKHospitality, said: 'This is the time when hospitality businesses would be frantically hiring staff for the busy summer months, when the sector expects to welcome families to their hotels, and serve millions of people with ice cream on the beach, fish and chips on the pier, and cold pints in the pub garden. 'I know from personal experience how important hospitality summer jobs are for getting young people experience of work, however hiring this year has fallen off dramatically, with 22,000 fewer jobs available compared to last year. 'It is sadly reflective of the impact we have seen from increased costs over the past nine months – less employment, less opportunity and less growth in the economy. The reduction in hiring comes after Labour chancellor Rachel Reeves hiked the National Insurance rates for employers. The October budget also lowered the threshold for when employers must start paying the tax, as she looked to raise around £20 billion. It has resulted in £3.4bn in additional annual cost for hospitality businesses, with 84,000 job losses, UKHospitality estimates. Mr Simpson added: 'Unless the Government acts, we could well be seeing the death of the great British summer job. That's not good for the economy, for businesses, or for the people that need this flexible work during the summer. 'We need to see action at the Budget to reverse this damage. That starts with fixing NICs, lowering business rates and cutting VAT for hospitality businesses.' Neil Carberry, REC Chief Executive, said: 'Hospitality is one of the UK's biggest entry points into work, but right now, we are shutting people out before they even get a foot in the door. 'A drop of over 22,000 job postings as we reach the height of the summer season is not just a staffing gap, it is a red flag for the wider economy. It puts recruiters, hospitality businesses and customers under massive pressure to make the most of the short-lived English summer. 'We cannot keep loading new costs onto employers if we want vibrant high streets, thriving pubs and strong local economies.
Times
12 hours ago
- Times
Australia v British & Irish Lions live: score, commentary, updates
Will Kelleher, in Melbourne There we go, Joe Schmidt is asked on Sky Sports about how he's driving the week, and he says: 'Speaking of driving we're about 15 minutes late to the ground unfortunately because you couldn't drive very far in the traffic that's out there, which is indicative of the crowd that's gathering. It's a massive crowd, a huge venue and a massive night.' Gotta get that police escort, mate? Great Barrier Island sits in the South Pacific Ocean, a 4½-hour ferry ride out from Auckland, New Zealand. In summer there are daily crossings, cut down to three a week in winter. Named by Captain Cook, the volcanic island 62 miles away from the country's biggest city, out in the Hauraki Gulf, now hosts a touch more than 1,000 people, up a few hundred in the past decade, most of whom live off the national grid. It has only one informal rugby club — the Bushpigs — who play one proper match per year. With not enough players to form age-grade sides, if you are a kid of any shape or size, you get chucked into the mixer. This is where Jamison Gibson-Park's story begins. The end, for now, will have the Barrier-born Irishman in a British & Irish Lions team at scrum half for the second Test against Australia at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in front of nearly 90,000 fans. It will be a little more high profile than the start of his journey. • Read more Will Kelleher, in Melbourne It is filling up here, and we have the now-customary sight of one end being completely filled with red. The travel companies have put their supporter groups behind one goal for these Tests, and for this game the Aussies seem to have responded by placing gold hats on the seats at the other end. We have finally had the rain that we were expecting — although it is more of a light mizzling than a downpour. More from Michael Fish, next… Stuart Barnes England's first innings. Came out hard and fast with the openers rattling up a meaty opening partnership at around five runs per over. Thereafter eased off and took control. Lions did part one but made a mess of part two in Brisbane. Expecting more from both these teams today. Thank the Lord for Jac Morgan's selection. Or thank Lord Farrell, at least. Morgan's selection can give you faith. Legions of British & Irish Lions fans will be relieved and delighted that Morgan has been promoted to the bench for the second Test against Australia in Melbourne on Saturday. And, yes, a majority of them may be Welsh, but what is crucial here is to remember the position held by Andy Farrell, the head coach: that he won't allow his selection process to be swayed by national interests or any desire to keep all four nations represented. Rightly so, of course. Yet Morgan's selection for the second Test is important for reasons far more weighty than any kind of PR. It is only a bench spot, but it is representative of far more. It proves that it has still been possible to play your way into the team. • Read more from Owen Slot Alex Lowe, in Melbourne Tim Horan, the great Wallaby centre, is not soft-soaping things tonight. 'I reckon this is the most important rugby Test match for the Wallabies since the 2015 World Cup final. So much at stake for our game. 90,000 at the MCG. Australian rugby is in grave danger. They cannot compete when it comes to signing the best schoolboys and that battle will only get harder with the NRL due to expand by three teams. The Wallaby Schoolboys No8 has signed for Toulouse. One of the newspapers over here ran a composite XV of Aussie 'footie' players. Six Wallabies made it — Max Jorgenson, Joseph-Aukuso Suaalii and Rob Valetini — plus the front row 'because it is such a specialist position'.They are lucky to get six because the XV did not include league stars Cameron Munster, Angus Chrichton or Latrell Mitchell. Stephen Jones, in Melbourne Wallaby hopes for a revival today centre around the great Will Skelton. The lock is one of the greatest in his position I have ever seen live. I would rank him very close to Martin Johnson and Simon Shaw, also to Eben Etzebeth, and Patricio Albacete. He may not get the trip but 50 minutes of him could do wonders Will Kelleher, in Melbourne The Australian bus was 20 minutes late to the ground, but they have arrived, and then lost the toss. As someone who sat dead still for 15 minutes earlier today trying to get to St Kilda in a taxi, I feel the Wallabies' pain. Joe Schmidt has a real thing about late buses. In 2017 Schmidt's Ireland were late into Murrayfield — behind pipers and all — and then lost 27-22, and he blamed their late arrival. Australia really needed everything to go perfectly for them. So not a great start. Owen Slot, in Melbourne This is the reason the Wallabies will win. At least according to an Aussie I had a coffee with this morning. He explained that because the MCG is an oval, the touchlines aren't hemmed in by the sightlines that the Lions kickers will be accustomed to: the crowd and the advertising hoardings. The Wallabies, meanwhile, will have played in these ovals more often. It's a decent point and it will definitely take some adjusting to, though I'd imagine the Lions kickers will have been practicing with this in mind. I can't believe that my new Aussie chum is the only one to have thought about it, Anyway, I've just found my seat in the media tribune and the news is that one touchline does have an advertising hoarding all the way down the side of the pitch. So that's half the disadvantage removed immediately. I'm not sure if that's still enough. I'll go and find my Aussie friend… Whenever you talk about Will Skelton, you have to start with the bare facts. Height: 6ft 8in. Weight: anywhere between 135-150kg (21-23st). Shoe size: 19 (he gets his boots custom made in Japan, and they look like white tugboats). The British & Irish Lions forwards coach John Fogarty called him a 'menace', and 'destructive', his opposite lock Ollie Chessum — 6ft 7in himself — said he was 'a huge human being' while Maro Itoje, the captain and a former team-mate of Skelton's from Saracens called him a 'talisman' thanks to his 'dynamism, size and power'. Meanwhile the other Australian players joked about how the nutritionists sighed when he came back into camp, as the food bill took a battering. Skelton, 33, is a giant in a big man's game. Then you have to mention the medals. Skelton has been part of four Champions Cup-winning teams — two Saracens, two La Rochelle — and has one Super Rugby and two Premiership titles in his large back-pockets. This is why Joe Schmidt — who is not quite a card-carrying Skelton fan — has picked Big Will for the big one at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Saturday, the second Test of the Lions series. This pedigree that Skelton brings is alien to many of the other Wallabies. • Read more Will Kelleher, in Melbourne I've been telling anyone and everyone all week that the last time I watched sport here was when England bowled out Australia for 98 on Boxing Day 2010, and then piled on 500 and retained the Ashes. On Boxing Day there were 91,000 in, but more like 40,000 by tea when the writing was on the wall, and Andrew Strauss and Alastair Cook were settled. Do we get another shellacking tonight? Despite all reports of rain, thunder, lightning, storms and all, it is dry as a bone tonight in Melbourne. So all that stuff about a heavy night suiting Will Skelton may not come to fruition. The ground is slowly filling up. I'm fascinated to see how many we get in — it won't be the full 100,024 capacity, but anything over 84,188 makes it the record crowd for an Australia v Lions match, beating the attendance for the third Test in 2001. At the moment there are more seagulls than people up in the gods by our awesome press-bench seats. They're floating about looking for chips. Maybe we need a few of those shooting flames to clear them off! Just imagine how hard that confession must have been. Garry Ringrose's family have flown to Melbourne in anticipation of watching him on the grandest stage. The second Lions Test against Australia at the MCG, with an opportunity to win the series in front of 90,000 people, would be the biggest game of his career. Revealing the concussion symptoms would be likely to end his tour and he will be 34 by the next one. This may well have been his one chance to emulate Brian O'Driscoll and wear the Test No13 jersey. Ringrose spoke up anyway. In prioritising his own welfare, he also put the team first. Farrell said his first thought was that Ringrose had been 'unbelievably selfless' in coming forward. 'It's very easy to keep it to yourself and lie and not be honest and open. It was very big of him and the right thing to do, 100 per cent. For the team as well, not just for Garry,' Farrell said. • Read more from Alex Lowe Stephen Jones, in Melbourne Hello from the massive Melbourne Cricket Ground and our coverage will be coming to you from on high. Aircraft are circling lower than the media seats. There is a body of opinion in the city that an Aussie win will set up a fantastic last Test in Sydney next week. The hell with that. The Lions have messed up so many series over the decades, their followers should want a definitive performance and win this week, and a luxurious lap of honour next week. Let's see. The stirring midweek performance came in Melbourne on Tuesday from the First Nations & Pasifika (FNP) XV, whose pride and passion made this the best game of the tour. The result was in the balance to the final play. 'We've given ourselves a bit of a fright,' Andy Farrell, the Lions head coach, said after the game. The error-strewn Lions held out to win but they had been rattled by the FNP XV, who played with greater fire and physicality than Australia had mustered in the first Test. The Wallabies watching on from a corporate box at Marvel Stadium should have felt sheepish at the comparative lack of bite and brimstone they brought to the game in Brisbane. 'You need to take it to them head on,' FNP XV captain Kurtley Beale said. 'Playing rugby, you need physicality to lay the platform for your backs to play off. Hopefully we have inspired the Wallabies. • Read more Matt Cotton, in Melbourne We've been in the pub since 3.30pm local today. That's largely because it was the latest booking we could get in a bar anywhere near the east of the stadium. The power of the Lions again. We went to watch the AFL at the MCG on Thursday (no idea what was happening, and hopefully Alex Mitchell, sat several rows behind me, had a better understanding) and managed to snag the only free table (a tiny two-seater) at 4pm at Corner Hotel because, you guessed it, Lions fans were everywhere again. It's generating a wonderful atmosphere, though, and hopefully it can make Melbourne fall in love with Union again. It's a travesty that this great sporting city (which has the MCG, AAMI Park, and the Australian Open arenas such as Rod Laver, just to name a few, within a toddler's stone throw of one another) does not have an elite rugby union team after the Melbourne Rebels went bust. They love their sport here but they call everything 'footie'. AFL? Footie. Rugby league? Footie. Rugby union? Footie. Football? Soccer… Please enable cookies and other technologies to view this content. You can update your cookies preferences any time using privacy manager. Matt Cotton, in Melbourne This is my first Lions tour. I've been wanting to do this for years. All it took was my best friend (and basically only mate who likes rugby) moving his life to Melbourne and me marrying a woman addicted to going on holiday to make it happen. Easy really. I knew about the 'sea of red' beforehand. But even so, my mind has been blown by the amount of Lions merch and red about. I've been in Melbourne a week and it's genuinely about one in three people wearing Lions gear when you're out and about. We watched the first Test in a bar in St Kilda (which, to be fair, is like inverse Clapham in terms given the amount of Irish, English and Scots that live there) and, in the room we watched in, my other mate, a born and bred Aussie, was the only Wallaby fan in the area. It's beautiful. Which has me wondering: how badly do these fans smell? Do they have all the merch? Are they washing the same bit of kit every day? Either way, that stench is of rugger heritage, and I can't get enough of it. Joe Schmidt has prepared the Wallabies for a physical assault on the British & Irish Lions by picking Will Skelton and Rob Valetini, and opting for a 6-2 bench for Saturday's second Test. Schmidt criticised the Australians last weekend for being too 'submissive' when they lost the first Test at Suncorp Stadium 27-19, so has picked a beefed-up pack for the do-or-die game at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Skelton, the 22st, 6ft 8in lock, starts in the second row with the 6ft 4in, 17st 11lb back-row forward Valetini returning from injury too. Both had calf issues last week but trained fully before the first Test in Brisbane, although neither were selected. 'We don't want to be nice, and we don't want to be submissive. We don't have the intention this week of being submissive,' Schmidt, the Wallabies head coach, said. Andy Farrell's plan to field an all-Ireland midfield for the second British & Irish Lions Test against Australia was scuppered at the last moment when Garry Ringrose declared concussion symptoms at the end of training on Thursday. The head coach's starting team for the second Test in Melbourne includes nine Irishmen, with Ellis Genge dropping to a bench that includes Owen Farrell and the Welshman Jac Morgan. But it is the 11th-hour absence of Ringrose that forced the head coach into a rethink. Ringrose missed the first Test because he was going through concussion protocols, but he came through 65 minutes of Tuesday's game against a First Nations & Pasifika XV without any ill effects. But Ringrose informed Farrell and the team doctor that he had developed symptoms just minutes before the team was named. Hello and welcome to our coverage of the second Test between Australia and the British & Irish Lions in Melbourne. After victory in the first Test in Brisbane last weekend, Andy Farrell's side will be hoping to seal a series win at the MCG today, while the Wallabies will want to force a decider next week. Our writers will be bringing you commentary and analysis throughout the game.
The Sun
12 hours ago
- The Sun
Drivers stuck in huge queues as ‘Saturday scramble' begins with 3million drivers to hit the roads today
THOUSANDS of drivers have been caught in mammoth queues todayas Brits rush off on holiday. A staggering 3 million drivers are hitting the road today, as the dreaded 'Saturday Scramble' begins. 5 5 5 The first weekend after the end of the school term is one of the busiest times to be a driver. Millions of people make journeys on that hectic weekend, with that first Friday being nicknamed 'Frantic Friday' because of the road chaos caused by the huge number of trips. However, this holiday weekend is expected to be even busier with a staggering 2.7 million people hitting the roads yesterday. Today, that number is expected to skyrocket to 3 million in what the RAC has described as a "Saturday scramble". The huge surge in the number of drivers had led to massive queues across the country, not least at the Port of Dover. Thousands of Brits are stuck at the transport terminal, in mammoth queues which can be seen stretching into the distance. Even rows of lorries can be seen waiting to check-in at the terminals, as the queues continue to build. The chaos at the Port of Dover has continued throughout the week, after an estimated 13.9 million people hit the roads between July 21 and July 25. On Thursday, the queues became so big that drivers exited their cars and waited by the side of the road - despite warnings that this was unsafe. Doug Bannister, chief executive at the Port of Dover, has previously said that the organisation has been 'preparing for a busy summer'. Vehicles pile up at Dover for Bank Holiday weekend getaways He said: 'We know how vital it is to keep things moving, not just for holidaymakers but for our local community too. 'That's why we've boosted staff levels, strengthened traffic management, added welfare facilities and introduced AI-powered forecasting - all to minimise disruption and ensure both residents and travellers have the best possible experience during this busy season.' The Port is expecting a massive number of users over the weekend, with the estimated number of drivers expected to be as high as 40,000. Over the next six weeks, the Port of Dover expects 270,000 drivers. As one of the most popular ways of reaching France and the rest of continental Europe, the port welcomes thousands of ships a year. The busy port has undergone a huge renovation in recent months, which reportedly cost a £6 billion. Previously only able to accommodate ships with a maximum length of 320m, it can now allow boats of up to 350m to moor at Dover. 5 5
