Latest news with #LabourMP
Telegraph
2 days ago
- Politics
- Telegraph
Lake District mosque protesters are racist, says Labour MP
Lake District residents campaigning against the construction of a new mosque have been criticised as racist by a local Labour MP. Police were called as protesters, who support and oppose the new development, clashed on Saturday outside the building site for the controversial £2.5m mosque. Demonstrators holding placards with messages reading 'Muslims welcome here' were met with protesters holding Union flags with messages reading: 'No to the mosque' and 'Not racist! Just patriotic!'. Michelle Scrogham, a Labour MP for Barrow and Furness who attended the counter-protest, responded to the objections by saying: 'There's absolutely no place for racism in Cumbria.' She added: 'The comments that plague the social media pages constantly don't represent the people of this area. 'The people of this area have always been incredibly welcoming. We've had immigration on a mass scale for many, many years. 'Anybody that wants to come here and say you're not welcome, they're wrong. It's just utterly wrong.' Construction of the South Lakes Islamic Centre, situated in Furness, Cumbria, started in January this year. The centre will be the only masjid within a 50-mile radius, serving both the local Muslim community and visiting tourists. The group said the space would cater to the 40 to 50 practising Muslim doctors at Furness General Hospital and their families. Protests have previously taken place on the site, with both sides of the debate shouting at each other across the road last month as the anti-mosque group waved the Union flag. Paul Jenkins, who organised a counter-protest on behalf of Furness Stand Up To Racism, said: 'The protest against the Islamic Centre does not speak for the majority of people in Dalton or Furness. 'The majority of our people here are from Furness, including Dalton. We celebrate our multicultural, multi-faith community and defend the right of the Islamic Centre to be here.' Henry Goodwin, a demonstrator, said: 'There are five British values, which include tolerance of other people's faiths and beliefs. 'We're standing up for proper British values.' Opponents have criticised the development, saying it is not needed in Furness, although those demonstrating against the mosque refused to speak to reporters on the ground. Residents have previously voiced their concerns over social media about the construction of the mosque, calling it an ' absolute monstrosity '. Another said: 'Absolutely disgusting… total blot on the landscape … totally unwelcome … how on earth has this been passed in planning?' One other resident said: 'There goes the beautiful Lake District – with a huge building plonked there.' Planning approval for the mosque was granted in Dec 2022 after 30 objections were raised.
Telegraph
5 days ago
- Automotive
- Telegraph
Lib Dem-led council in row with motorists over double parking fines
A seaside town is the first in the country to trial doubling parking fines in a bid to tackle summer holiday traffic chaos. Incidents of rogue parking in Bournemouth include cars left on double yellow lines, pavements, verges, roundabouts and across private driveways. But visitors appear happy to take the financial hit of a £35 fine – only marginally more than car parking charges, which can cost £20 a day. Now, Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole (BCP) Council has been given permission by the Department for Transport to double their standard parking fine to match London rates, so the minimum fine will be £70, or £140 if not paid within two weeks. The move comes just weeks after the Lib Dem-led council about-turned on implementing residents' permits in the area, following a 'tsunami' of objections over the £70 cost to residents. The trial scheme will operate throughout August, which is the seaside resort's busiest time of the year. Already over 4,000 penalty notices have been issued over three 'heatwave' weekends this year. Tom Hayes, Labour MP for Bournemouth East, said: 'The parking fine fee has been capped for 20 years and it's frustrating for everyone. 'The hope is by having such a significant increase in parking fines it can really have a deterrent effect.' At the same time, the local authority will be required to provide enough legal parking spaces to cater for visitors. Residents have previously criticised BCP Council for it's 'war on motorists', after it sold a number of beach-front car parks, reduced the number of legal spaces available, and spent £3 million on cycle lanes that make access to driveways a 'nightmare'. The council insisted there are spaces available within a short walk of the seafront which have been left unused. The trial has prompted a mixed response as some residents insist the council is still not on their side. 'We will all be stung' Jim James, a resident, said: 'Finally, about time. Let's see their faces when they realise it's not a measly £30 any longer.' Another commenter posted: 'As much as locals think this is brilliant, it isn't. We will all be stung as a result. It is all about BCP making money. 'We should be welcoming visitors during the peak season and accommodating them sufficiently. 'There is not enough adequate parking as car parks are being auctioned off to the highest bidder. There are not any sufficient park and ride schemes. Local businesses will suffer as a result.' The local authority welcomed the trial as they said they had been calling for greater powers to tackle illegal parking for six years. Cllr Millie Earl, the leader of BCP Council, said: 'We welcome the fact the Government has recognised the problem we experience in Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole with illegal and irresponsible parking. 'We have been asking Governments for more than six years to let us impose higher fines and our parking team now await final details on the work required to implement the trial in time for the August 1 deadline. 'Even at our busiest last weekend, there were enough parking spaces within a short walk of the seafront across our three towns and when visitors make a choice to park illegally, we know that residents, and responsible visitors, want us to take robust enforcement action. 'We want to encourage and support visitors to our wonderful area but just ask them to consider the safety of others when parking; and a level of fines that reflects the true costs of patrolling and enforcing will help us to do this.'
The Independent
5 days ago
- Politics
- The Independent
I was once hit with a superinjunction and know how democracy dies in the dark
I was once smacked with a superinjunction … and lived to tell the full Kafkaesque tale. So I have a lot of sympathy for The Independent and other media organisations who, for nearly two years, have been forced to sit on a story which the British state didn't want told. My own experience of being gagged involved an unappetising company called Trafigura, which had been caught dumping toxic chemicals off West Africa in 2006. The company had shelled out more than £30m in compensation and legal costs to 30,000 inhabitants of Abidjan in Ivory Coast who claimed to have been affected by the dumping. Trafigura was keen to suppress the findings of an internal report, which could have proved embarrassing. So they obtained an injunction to stop The Guardian from publishing it – and then, for good measure, a further injunction to prevent us from revealing the existence of the original injunction. Welcome to superinjunctions, which were, for a while, sprayed around like legal confetti – often by errant footballers keen to keep their off-pitch escapades secret. The Trafigura case represented a novel application of the law to silence investigative journalism, seemingly contradicting the only dictum about the courts that most people are familiar with – the principle that the law must be seen to be done. Trafigura went one step further. When a Labour MP tabled a question about their use of a superinjunction, their lawyers, the unlovely company Carter-Ruck, even warned newspapers that they would be in contempt of court if they dared mention this parliamentary intervention. That was plainly ludicrous. Trafigura's legal pitbulls had lost sight of the fact that people risked their liberty and their lives to fight for the right to report what their elected representatives say and do. The super injunction collapsed like an undercooked souffle. And here we are 16 years later, discovering that, for 683 days, a tiny handful of lawyers, judges, politicians and civil servants had been silencing the press from telling the most extraordinary story of how a hapless MoD official caused a catastrophic data breach, putting the lives of thousands of Afghans in peril. The saga began in September 2023 when Mr Justice Knowles issued a gagging order contra mundum (against the world) forbidding anyone from revealing the leak, which named Afghans who had assisted the British forces in Kabul – and who might now be at risk of reprisals from the Taliban. The judge spoke in lukewarm terms about the importance of freedom of expression, but considered a blanket gag was essential to give MoD time to mitigate the harm. Since then, a growing number of journalists became aware of the story, and another judge, Mr Justice Chamberlain, held multiple hearings – many of them closed to outsiders – to decide how long the injunction should hold. At one point, about a year ago, he thought enough was enough, but was overruled by the Court of Appeal. It was only this week that the curtain was lifted and we were allowed to know that as many as 18,500 Afghans had secretly been flown to Britain at a cost variously estimated to be between £400m and £7bn (ie we don't know). British spies and special forces soldiers were also among the tens of thousands of people potentially put at risk by the catastrophic Afghan data leak. The clincher for Chamberlain was a risk assessment report commissioned by the current government from a retired civil servant, Paul Rimmer. Rimmer took a markedly different view of the ongoing risk and, said Chamberlain, 'fundamentally undermined' the case for the gagging order to continue. And so it was that, at midday on Tuesday, the jaw-dropping nature of what had been going on was finally revealed. Some might argue that, back in September 2023, there was a case for some kind of news blackout to give the authorities a chance to alert those most at risk, and to extricate as many people as possible. The question is, was it right to keep the gagging order in place for so long? Chamberlain clearly thought it was fine to discharge it a year ago. Was he right? Or was the MoD justified in arguing for more time? The first thing to be said is that the state (in the form of governments and Whitehall) will, in such circumstances, always argue for more secrecy. They will say they are acting in the national interest. But history tells us that the government of the day can often not be trusted in their judgment of where the national interest lies. In 1938, the government of the day attempted to use the Official Secrets Act to compel Duncan Sandys MP to disclose the source of his information about the state of anti-aircraft defences around London. Sandys later became defence minister. Historians now take a different view of those who opposed appeasement in the 1930s. Also in the 1930s, the appeasing government condemned the 'subversive' whistleblowers who were feeding Winston Churchill information about Britain's readiness for war. 'The damage done to the Services far outweighs any advantage that may accrue,' raged a now-forgotten war minister. He was wrong: Churchill and his informants were right. The government of the day tried in 1967 to prevent The Sunday Times, under its editor, Harold Evans, from publishing an accurate account of the case of former MI6 agent Kim Philby and his life as a double agent. The then foreign secretary, George Brown, having failed to prevent publication, publicly accused Evans of being a traitor and of 'giving the Russians a head start... for god's sake, stop!' It's not just a British instinct. In 2004, George W Bush talked The New York Times out of running a series of articles which revealed that the US National Security Agency [NSA] had been eavesdropping on the communications of Americans without any warrant. Bush told the editor: 'You'll have blood on your hands.' The editor spiked the articles. So Mr Justice Chamberlain was right to be a little sceptical about what the state's representatives were telling him during this two-year saga. As he pointed out, the potential sums of money involved (£7bn!?) and the sheer number of urgent migrants were entirely legitimate subjects of political debate. Even more troubling is the fact that members of parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) were also kept in the dark. In June 2024, a court of appeal judge suggested that the ISC might be allowed access to the issue. But the lead KC for the MoD poo poohed the idea. Lord Beamish, the ISC's chair, said the decision not to keep his committee in the loop was 'appalling'. He's right. The ISC is a statutory committee intended to scrutinise the work of Britain's spy agencies, including GCHQ, MI6 and MI5. Being told that the MoD doesn't trust them with 'certain pieces of information' calls into question the entire mechanism of oversight in the secret state. What else do the spooks not think they can be trusted to know? Ironically, the seven media organisations – including The Independent – that were in on the secret by the time the injunction was finally discharged all behaved impeccably in not breathing a word. It's a topsy-turvy world in which journalists can be trusted with knowing information that the ISC was denied. Lord Beamish is right to be furious – and no doubt his committee will want answers. They're not the only ones. There should be the fullest possible reckoning. As the saying goes, democracy dies in darkness.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
New secondary school plan on backburner as MP reacts to decision
WORCESTER'S MP has welcomed the decision to step away from a controversial plan for a new secondary school as he calls for a boost in SEND provision. Tom Collins, Labour MP for Worcester, has welcomed Worcestershire County Council's decision to step away from their controversial plans for a new school in Newtown Road, what he has called 'an inappropriate site in the city'. He said: 'I'm very pleased the county council is finally stepping away from their plans for a new school. The proposed location is simply not appropriate for a new school. I would like to thank local people who have spoken up against this plan. SHELVED: Plans for the new secondary school in Newtown Road, Worcester have been ditched as Worcester's MP shares his thoughts on the decision (Image: Worcestershire County Council) Mr Collins had previously called for a 'reset' after planning permission was granted for a new school in Worcester, despite the ongoing financial crisis at Worcestershire County Council. He spoke out against the location of the proposed school, raising concerns over safety, accessibility and a lack of strategic thinking around the future of the neighbouring hospital site. Mr Collins is now urging the county council to bring forward new plans that are grounded in local need and developed in partnership with the community. He added: "Now it's important that the county council make good decisions about the site, and about their plans for building new schools. "The council should now reach out to local partners, particularly including our local NHS trusts to make sensible future plans for the site." Mr Collins said he was particularly highlighting the need for urgent investment in Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) provision. "We also have a severe shortage of Special Schools in Worcestershire, which is contributing to our county's SEND crisis. The investment should be directed to a set of new special schools across our county to meet the needs of children close to where they live," he said. We reported on Thursday how building the school at Newtown Road is the 'least likely option' to increase secondary school provision in the city. Worcestershire County Council is instead set to increase capacity at schools including The Chase and Dyson Perrins, with some Worcester pupils facing a daily trip to Malvern. The council is also looking into the feasibility of building a new school on the County Hall site. At a cabinet meeting on Thursday (July 17), councillors were told that Worcester will need an additional 90 secondary school places by September 2026 and a further 120 by 2027. According to forecasts, demand for school places will continue to exceed supply from 2029 onwards. The previous Tory administration's solution was a new school in Newtown Road, which has already been given planning permission. But costs have spiralled and are now so high the project 'jeopardises the affordability of the whole education capital programme,' the council says. RECOMMENDED READING: Council to scrap plans for new Worcester secondary school RECOMMENDED READING: Worcester's new school and hospital multi-storey latest Dr Stephen Foster, cabinet member for education, said the council would need to borrow £33.6 million to pay for the £63.3m school. 'This is the least likely option to pursue,' he said, questioning the impact the project would have on the council's 'financial emergency'. More likely is the permanent expansion of three city schools - Nunnery Wood, Bishop Perowne and Tudor Grange Academy - plus The Chase and Dyson Perrins in Malvern. He said creating extra places at the five schools would cost £29.5m, of which £3.96m would need to be borrowed. A third option is to explore the possibility of building a new school at County Hall, which Cllr Foster said would mean borrowing of at least £7m.
BBC News
6 days ago
- Business
- BBC News
Renewed push to save crumbling Belper Mills
A Derbyshire MP has insisted that "real change" is on the horizon to save the crumbling Derwent Valley Mills from losing its heritage status and falling into further Mills, a key part of the Derwent Valley Mills Unesco World Heritage Site, are in "poor condition" having stood largely derelict for owners of the Georgian mills, First Investments Real Estate Management, are currently awaiting feedback from Unesco on their plans for the application to convert the mills into apartments, as well as ground floor commercial uses, was submitted to Amber Valley Borough Council in 2018 but not determined. Jonathan Davies, the Labour MP for Mid Derbyshire who recently set up a pressure group in Parliament for World Heritage Sites, said the owners had expressed in recent meetings that they were "confident" they will shortly submit plans to be decided on by the borough council in the autumn. "I hope that will be the moment where we can start to bring this work together to see the redevelopment of the site and to have it brought back into use," he said."There's [now] a better likelihood of it being brought into a state where it's going to be refurbished sooner, so I think that's all really positive stuff that will give Unesco some reassurances." Davies said First Investments had been "clear" the plans should be submitted in time for a decision in November."We have a moment now, in this year, to deliver this project," he said."If we're in the same position next year then there'll be questions to answer. 2025 is a very important year for the mills." First Investments told the BBC: "We anticipate that it may take a number of months to receive a decision from Unesco on our plans for the site, during which time we will continue to work closely with key partners, including Amber Valley Borough Council, with a view to the planning committee considering the application and the feedback from Unesco before the end of the year." Last year Unesco outlined "grave concerns" about the Derwent Valley site, with large-scale development cited as an wrote in a report: "It appears that the development pressure on the property, coupled with the inability of the management system to safeguard its outstanding universal value, has reached such a level that, if not urgently addressed, may confirm an ascertained or potential threat."It is understood representatives from the body had robust discussions with council officers in Amber Valley in a meeting last year about the prospect of the site's heritage status being taken away before the report was subsequent report was seen as a "warning" that the site is not far from suffering the same fate as city was stripped of its World Heritage status in 2021 because of developments perceived to have threatened the value of its waterfront. The leader of the Belper Independents group on Amber Valley Borough Council Ben Bellamy said it was "naive" to think there would be progress in 2025."What we really need is real money, and investment in our heritage from central government, or we will lose World Heritage status and the council and government will never be forgiven," he said. There are concerns among some in charge of planning decisions on Amber Valley Borough Council about the amount of money needed to invest to ensure any redevelopment is appropriate to the heritage have also expressed doubt about the owners' plans, fearing they will be too County Council has said it is not in a position to offer financial assistance but deputy leader Rob Reaney told the BBC: "We will be doing all we can to support it." A spokesperson for Amber Valley Borough Council said it was "keen to work closely with the owner to ensure its protection."Unesco has been contacted for comment.
