Latest news with #Dorset
Daily Mail
12 minutes ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Shocking moment student brands Prince Harry a 'ginger f***' while William visits college
Despite living 5,462 miles apart, Prince William has been dogged by his brother ever since Megxit and a recent visit to meet south coast students was no different, MailOnline can reveal today. The Prince of Wales waved and was cheered wildly as he left Bournemouth and Poole College where the crowd left him in no doubt where they stood on the row between the rival brothers. A new video has emerged online and reveals that one rowdy student took his support for William too far - launching into an expletive-filled rant aimed at Prince Harry that his older brother probably heard through his open car window. The unnamed heckler can be heard yelling: 'Go on Will. I never liked Harry, the ginger f***'. Shocked people around him can be heard taking a sharp intake of breath, one spectator was visibly agog and a male voice, likely to be a teacher, said loudly: 'Don't you dare talk like that. Go inside. That's not on'. One woman said angrily to the sweary-student: 'Oi. Get in there now'. A third voice says: 'That is diabolical' as the convoy containing the future king sweeps away into the Dorset sunshine. William's visit was in the spring but has only just emerged on social media. The abuse aimed at Harry came at a time when he resigned 'in shock' from Sentebale, the African charity he founded in 2006 in memory of his mother Princess Diana. The student called Harry a 'f***' during a trip to Dorset by the Prince of Wales in March where he made a young royal fan's day after he gave her a warm hug. William, 43, embraced young Natasha Gorry as he visited Bournemouth and Poole College - just before the swearing about Harry. He was on his trip to the south of England, where was launching a new partnership between the Homewards programme, which he founded through the Royal Foundation, and Lloyds Banking Group, which aims to deliver homes in the region. Meeting Natasha Gorry, 24, outside the College, the Prince of Wales chatted to the royal fan who appeared starstruck. The future King then reached out to embrace Natasha, after which she seemed overwhelmed with joy. 'Go on, give me a hug. So nice to see you but you've got some lessons to go to now. I'm going to get you in trouble for keeping you out of your lessons now. You've got a free period now? When's lunch break? You've brought the sun out today, it's lovely,' he said. She said afterwards: 'I am so happy. He gave me a hug. I love it. I'm excited. It's my first time. I told him what course I was doing. He's an amazing guy.' William also met people who have experienced homelessness after suffering from mental health struggles. There, he joined CEO of Lloyds Banking Group Charlie Nunn who showed him around the 11-bed housing scheme. He also met with current residents supported by the organisation, who are being encouraged to develop skills that will help them live independently in safe and healthy spaces. Lloyds has pumped £50million into the project, which will go towards small and medium-sized housing providers and charities in areas where Homewards operates. William's solo visit came just a few days after he and the Princess of Wales embarked upon their first joint engagement in over a year after her cancer battle as they visited Pontypridd in Wales in early St David's Day celebrations.
The Guardian
4 hours ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
An entire village in Dorset is facing eviction – proof that private money holds all the power in rural England
Power hides by setting us against each other. This is never more true than in the countryside, where the impacts of an extreme concentration of ownership and control are blamed on those who have nothing to do with it. Rural people are endlessly instructed that they're oppressed not by the lords of the land, but by vicious and ignorant townies – the 'urban jackboot' as the Countryside Alliance used to call it – stamping on their traditions. Near Bridport in Dorset right now, an entire village is facing eviction, following the sale of the Bridehead Estate for about £30m. The official new owner, Bridehead Estate Ltd, is registered to the same address, with the same officers, as a company called Belport. The Telegraph reports that the estate 'was bought by Belport, a private equity firm, on behalf of a wealthy client last autumn', but no one knows who the client is. So far I've received no response to the questions I sent to Belport. The people of Littlebredy, a village of 32 homes, wholly owned by the estate, say they have been ordered to leave from January. At the beginning of this month, access to parts of the 800-hectare (2,000-acre) grounds, widely enjoyed by local people, was terminated, with red signs to this effect and padlocks on all the entrances. No one knows who is doing this to them. The sense of powerlessness is overwhelming. One person has been evicted already, to make way for an estate office. When she complained about her treatment on social media, the first reply stated, without a shred of evidence: 'You're being evicted so that young fighting age male refugees, who are escaping war in France, can have somewhere safe to live, who, as far as our government is concerned, have priority over you … VOTE REFORM!' That's how divide and rule works: never mind the anonymous plutocrat evicting her, the true culprits, somehow, are asylum seekers. We are lectured by rightwing parties and the rightwing media about the need for 'integration'. But that word is used only as a weapon against immigrants. It is not they who rip communities apart, tear people from their homes and shut us out of the land, causing social disintegration. It is the power of money. But look, a spider! The cosmopolitan city, swarming with immigrants and trans people, is coming to get you! It will terminate the traditions country people love and impose its own culture instead. It is drummed into our heads that what rural people want is different to what the oppressive urbanites desire. But it's not true. Embarrassingly for the self-professed guardians of the countryside, some of the evidence comes from their own surveys. Future Countryside – which tells us it is 'powered by the Countryside Alliance Foundation', the charitable arm of the Countryside Alliance – commissioned polling in 2023. Its question about a wider right to roam in the countryside was phrased in a way that made it sound threatening: 'To what extent do you agree that the public should have the 'right to roam' meaning that anyone can wander in the open countryside regardless of whether the land is privately or publicly owned?' Even so, there was almost no difference between the responses of urban and rural people: 55% of urban people and 54% of rural people agreed it was a good idea. Even more strikingly, when asked which political party 'would do the most to prioritise/protect/promote the countryside?', only 9% each of urban and rural people named the Conservatives, while 38% in both categories said the Green party. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these answers failed to find their way into Future Countryside's public presentation of the results. Instead, the only mention of a right to roam was a comment from an anonymous rural respondent: 'They weren't brought up in the countryside. They think they can wander across all the fields with the right to roam.' Links to both the raw polling data and the public presentation on the organisation's website currently show a '404 error' when you try to open them. Strangely, writing a year after these results were published, the chief executive of the Countryside Alliance, Tim Bonner, claimed that a wider right to roam is 'completely contradictory to what the public actually wants'. With admirable chutzpah, he accused those calling for it of waging a 'culture war in the countryside'. When YouGov framed the question more objectively, for a poll commissioned by the Right to Roam campaign, it found that 68% of urban people and 68% of rural people supported it. It also discovered, in stark contrast to the claims of certain rural 'guardians' who call it 'the social glue that keeps rural communities together', that opposition to hunting with dogs is strong everywhere: 78% of urban people and 74% of rural people are against it. As the access campaigner Jon Moses points out in an article for the Lead, 'the issues over which we're told we're most divided are often the issues on which we actually most agree'. That view is supported by some fascinating research published in the Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties. It found that while in several other western countries there is a stark political divide between urban and rural people, this does not apply in Britain. 'We do not find any evidence that rural Britons are more resentful, dissatisfied or 'left behind' compared to their urban counterparts.' On cultural issues, it found, 'ruralites are often less – not more – authoritarian than urbanites … and are less likely to support an undemocratic leader'. We are fundamentally the same people, despite the best efforts of the culture warriors to divide us. But we must be persuaded that other people don't want what we want: that we are the outsiders, the interlopers, the weird minority, pushing against the social current. In reality, the weird minority are the 1% who own half of all the land in England, and the subset of that group who hide their ownership behind front companies and opaque trusts. If the government's proposed changes to the Land Registry go ahead, it may become easier to discover the true owners of places such as Bridehead, though I suspect we will still struggle. On 5 July, the Right to Roam campaign will organise a peaceful trespass at Bridehead, to draw attention to the almost feudal powers blighting rural life. The real conflict is not town v country, but money and power v people. That holds, regardless of where you live. Never let powerful people tell you who you are. George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist On Tuesday 16 September, join George Monbiot, Mikaela Loach and other special guests discussing the forces driving climate denialism, live at the Barbican in London and livestreamed globally. Book tickets here or at
Daily Mail
9 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Paedophile Gary Glitter told hospital worker his Asia holiday to abuse girls was 'the time of his life'
Paedophile Gary Glitter boasted that a holiday to Asia where he abused girls was 'the time of his life', a health worker has revealed. The woman in her 30s, who cared for the shamed singer while he was having a knee operation at a hospital in Dorset in 2022, said he showed no remorse. She also said the 80-year-old was really 'pervy' with the female staff who were caring for him while he was handcuffed to the bed. Glitter, whose real name is Paul Gadd, was first jailed in 1999 for possessing thousands of indecent images of children. He then was locked up again for 16 years in 2015 for sexually abusing three schoolgirls between 1975 and 1980. Glitter was also expelled from Cambodia in 2002 amid reports of sex crime allegations. Speaking about the time she spent with Glitter, the woman told The Mirror: 'He tried to make friends with the nurses, talking about being in Cambodia and what a wonderful place it was and how he spent the time of his life there. 'I felt sick when I found he had been accused of abusing children there.' 'You would of thought he would have felt guilty about it but he was saying it was the best time of his life. It was chilling,' she added. Four years after he was kicked Cambodia, Glitter was convicted of sexually abusing two girls, aged ten and 11, in Vietnam and spent two and a half years in jail. He escaped serious charges of child rape — which carried a death sentence — and returned to the UK in 2008. The offences for which he was jailed in 2015 came to light as part of Operation Yewtree - the Metropolitan Police investigation launched in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal. He was forced to sign the sex offenders' register, but he was arrested once again in 2012 at his multi-million-pound home in Westminster. Police would later describe him as a 'habitual sexual predator who took advantage of the star status afforded to him'. In 2015 he was convicted of attempted rape, four counts of indecent assault and one of having sex with a girl under 13 in the 1970s and 1980s. The 80-year-old was automatically released from HMP The Verne - a low-security prison in Portland, Dorset - in February 2023 after serving half of his sentence. But just six weeks after walking free, he was dramatically taken back for breaching his licence conditions by allegedly viewing downloaded images of children. And he's remained inside since March 2023, having been refused bail in February 2024 when it was determined he remains a risk to children, who he had a 'sexual interest in'. Earlier this month it was revealed that Glitter will stay in jail for another two years after being told that his application to be released from prison had been rejected. Glitter's career grew at exponential rate in the early 1970s after releasing singles including Do You Wanna Touch Me, Rock and Roll, and I'm the Leader of the Gang. Rock and Roll was Glitter's breakout song, becoming one of the biggest hits of 1972, reaching number two in the UK charts and in the top ten in the US. He spent much of the next of the 12 months dominating the top ten, with singles I Didn't Know I Loved You (Till I Saw You Rock and Roll), Do You Wanna Touch Me (Oh Yeah), and Hello Hello, I'm Back Again all charting, according to a biography. Glitter's first number one came as 'Glittermania' peaked in the Summer of 1973 with the release of I'm the Leader of the Gang (I Am). He then hit number one again in the autumn with I Love You Love Me Love. By the time Glitter appeared on the charts again in 1984 with Another Rock and Roll Christmas and Dance Me Up, Glitter was playing more than 80 shows a year. Glitter no longer owns the master rights to his songs — meaning he no longer receives any royalties. In 2019, his song Rock and Roll Part 2 featured in hit movie The Joker, but rights holders insisted he would not receive any earnings.
The Independent
17 hours ago
- General
- The Independent
Activists illegally releasing beavers into wild say they are doing ‘God's work'
A secret underground network that is illegally releasing beavers into the wild says they are 'doing God's work'. Members of the activist group risk arrest and potential prison time by carrying out the unlicensed release of beavers. It is an offence under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 to release beavers into the wild without a license, and countryside groups have called on the government to take stronger action to manage illegal releases. However, Ben, who spoke anonymously to the BBC, said: "It is just essentially God's work. We're undoing the damage of hundreds of years ago and bringing back these extraordinary animals.' The government approved the release of beavers into the English wild earlier this year in hopes of cutting down on flooding risks and restoring nature. A licensing system has been introduced to allow the reintroduction of the semi-aquatic animals, whose dams, canals, and ponds enhance wildlife and offer protection against floods and droughts. There have only been two full applications to release beavers into the wild: The River Otter Beaver Trial from 2015-2020, and the recent National Trust's Purbeck Beaver Project, which released two pairs in Dorset earlier this year. Beavers, vital for shaping their environments, disappeared from Britain over four centuries ago due to hunting. They have since reappeared in England's rivers through escapes and illegal releases and were legally protected in 2022. However, Ben, whose name has been changed, told the BBC that legal routes to release beavers are "too bureaucratic", so they are taking matters into their own hands. The group operates under a shroud of secrecy to protect themselves from being arrested. "You don't want to be caught with a box of beavers in the boot, so you have to be quite quick," Ben said. "You open the door, do it and drive away. They are instantly much happier in the water." However, the National Farmers Union have said farmers are worried about the impacts beavers can have on their land, business and food production. NFU Deputy President David Exwood said: 'With existing legal and illegal populations of beavers expanding across England, government needs to take stronger action to manage illegal releases and develop in consultation its long-term beaver management plan before any further releases are permitted.' 'The NFU wants to work with the government in developing its approach and will continue to monitor existing beaver populations and policy developments to ensure that the right strategy, management options and support are in place to minimise any negative impacts,' he added. Conservationists have long advocated for licensed wild reintroductions to enrich the UK's biodiversity and benefit communities. Evidence from a five-year trial on the River Otter in Devon demonstrates that beaver-created habitats support diverse wildlife, including water voles and dragonflies. They also slow the flow of water, reducing the risk of flooding downstream, and can store water in the landscape during drought, as well as purifying polluted river systems, removing sediment and storing carbon. Dr Angelika von Heimendahl, beaver reintroduction manager at The Wildlife Trusts, said the organisation does not endorse releasing wild animals without a licence, but stressed the 'fantastic work that beavers do across our river systems' must be recognised. She added that The Wildlife Trusts hope to see a 'meaningful number of wild release licences granted going forward', as restoring beavers to the wild will play a key role in tackling the nature and climate emergencies. Natural England said it is important that species reintroductions are conducted carefully, to maximise benefits and minimise risks.
BBC News
17 hours ago
- BBC News
Dorset Police makes plea over time-wasting 999 calls
A police force has urged those making inappropriate 999 calls to stop "wasting valuable resources in our contact centres".Dorset Police said it received more than 6,000 calls to the number over the past two weeks, with some not relating to a crime or emergency. These included people wanting a telephone number for a taxi and someone whose car was blocked in by another vehicle at an Supt Julie Howe said the line should remain clear so officers could "quickly and efficiently respond to callers who may be in immediate danger or witnessing a crime." "These calls are wasting valuable resources in our contact centres - officers and staff waiting to answer calls from those members of public who do urgently need our help," she said. You can follow BBC Dorset on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram.
