Latest news with #MarthaKearney
Daily Mail
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Charlotte Church reveals her surprising reaction after taking magic mushrooms: 'When you see that you can't unsee it'
Charlotte Church has revealed her reaction to taking magic mushrooms, claiming it made her 'relationship with nature blossom'. The singer, 39, spent her teenage and young adult years in high-demand, performing in loud arenas across the country with little rest. But now Charlotte is living a quieter, family-orientated life with her partner and three children at her home on the outskirts of Cardiff. The Call My Name singer even opened a green wellness retreat in 2023 in her home-country to help people 'reconnect with themselves and the natural world. In a new appearance on This Natural Life, a BBC Radio 4 podcast with Martha Kearney, 67, Charlotte opened up about appreciating nature as she gets older. 'My relationship with nature started to blossom partly when I had kids and then partly when I first took magic mushrooms for the first time,' she said. 'When I took magic mushrooms, everything, everything in nature just opened up and began communicating. 'When you see that you can't unsee it.' Martha then quipped: 'And there is a debate about the benefits and the harm, but we needn't go into all of that.' Magic mushrooms are a type of hallucinogenic drug which can affect a person's thoughts. They can either be eaten or made into tea. Charlotte previously revealed that she first took the drug more than a decade ago. In an interview with The Skylark, she said: 'When I was about 27, I took magic mushrooms for the first time. That experience created a different sort of connection, a deeper understanding, far more intrinsic and connected to patterns. 'You can never unsee or unfeel that connection once it happens. Ever since then I've been diving deeper and deeper into my spiritual journey - the idea of the unseen world, the wonder, awe, and power of nature. 'I had such a four-walls, boxed-in life, and so did my ancestors before me for quite a long time. When you're a working class family, the majority of your energy is spent doing the survival dance rather than the sacred dance.' In tune with Charlotte's new-found love of nature and the beginning of her spiritual journey was her decision to open her plush wellness retreat at a £1.5million mansion in the Elan Valley of mid Wales. The singer had to battle through a series of planning disputes before officially opening the resort in 2023. The makeover was turned into a documentary series on the Discovery Channel, titled Charlotte Church's Dream Build. The 'Dreaming' experience offers three day long stays both on the weekends and during weekdays. Guests are offered a wide selection of wellbeing activities. The activities include yoga, a sound healing ceremony, foraging, mythic storytelling, star-gazing, cold water immersion, singing at dawn, den building, sensory portal building, painting, dance, dreamwork, outdoor cinema, herbalism, woodwork, meditation, Qi Gong, silent disco and night time forest bathing. Speaking about what people can expect when coming to the retreat during an appearance on Nick Grimshaw and Angela Hartnett's Dish podcast in 2023, Charlotte said people can 'pick and choose' which activities they do to discover what their bodies need. She went on: 'Everything's supposed to be very much that you, it's like a buffet. You pick and choose. When you come there, you drop into your body and you, and you start to really feel out, what does your body need? What do I wanna do? 'For some people, they just need total radical rest 'cause their nervous systems are burnt out, for other people they need to go and explore and like really be captivated by nature, and almost return to that childlike wonder and awe. 'So, it's nature connection, sound healing - I'm a practitioner there and I go and do sound journeys and I do singing to the land. 'And then the third pillar of it is ceremony in terms of like rituals and ways of being, living really close to the land, and really seasonally.' Touching on why she decided to set up the retreat, Charlotte said she has been an activist for years and wanted to channel her 'values' into her work projects. She said: 'I really care about the future and the future of the planet, you know, I really think that we can turn things around and so I wanted to be involved in projects and I wanted to start projects, which was living my values really, and living my activism. 'We've got a water source heat pump and we've got the hydro mill, and we're gonna have a huge food growing project. 'So this year we'll have about an acre, an acre and a half of land in which to grow food, and then, In the next two or three years, that's gonna grow to like three or four acres.'
The Independent
03-06-2025
- Business
- The Independent
Fact check: Reform UK migrants claim and minister's inflation mix-up
This round-up of claims has been compiled by Full Fact, the UK's largest fact checking charity. This week (1-7 June) Full Fact is the subject of a nationwide radio appeal – listen today to broadcaster and journalist Martha Kearney explain how Full Fact works to find, expose and counter the harms of bad information. Has Labour 'allowed the biggest influx of migrants in British history'? Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice MP claimed in a newspaper column a few weeks ago that 'the statistics show without a doubt that this Labour government has allowed the biggest influx of migrants in British history'. It's not clear which figures Mr Tice was basing this claim on – we've asked him and Reform UK, and haven't had a response. But the statistics we've been able to check – both those available at the time Mr Tice made his claim, and those published since – don't appear to support it. And when we asked Oxford University's Migration Observatory about Mr Tice's claim, it told us: 'We cannot identify any data that support the assertion that the current government has been responsible for the biggest influx of migrants in British history, and we are unclear how Mr Tice came to this conclusion.' Mr Tice referred only to 'migrants' and did not specify that he was talking about any particular group of migrants, but some on social media have suggested he intended to refer solely to Channel crossings, which have been at record levels this year and hit the headlines again this weekend after almost 1,200 migrants were recorded as arriving via small boat on Saturday. Between January 1 2025 and April 27 2025 (the day Mr Tice's article was published), government statistics show 9,885 migrants were detected crossing the English Channel in small boats, and between January 1 and May 31 this figure was 14,812. Both these figures are higher than for equivalent periods in other years going back to 2018, when statistics for this measure began. But they don't support the claim Mr Tice made – firstly because they only refer to a small proportion of all migrants, and secondly because they don't cover Labour's full time in office. In the time between Labour forming a government on July 5 2024 and April 27 2025, 33,127 migrants arrived in the UK after crossing the Channel on small boats, according to government statistics. This isn't a record – the equivalent total between July 5 2022 and April 27 2023 was 38,600. In terms of overall migrant numbers, there are various different sets of data, but one of the most commonly cited is the estimate of long-term international migration published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The most recent such figures cover the year to December 2024, when 948,000 people are estimated to have moved to the UK. (Over the same period 517,000 people left, so total net migration that year is estimated to have been 431,000.) These figures can't tell us exactly how many have arrived under Labour, as they cover roughly six months of the last Conservative government and the first six months of Labour. The next set of figures, which will cover the year ending June 2025 and are expected to be published in the autumn, will more reliably tell us about the change under Labour. But overall the figures for 2024 were significantly down on the year before. In the year ending December 2023 around 1,326,000 people were estimated to have moved to the UK – a record high. (And 466,000 people left, so net migration that year was an estimated 860,000.) Net migration is estimated to have reached a record high of 906,000 in the year ending June 2023, when 1,320,000 people moved to the UK and 414,000 people left. So while the ONS migration estimates can't tell us specifically what the change in the number of immigrants coming to the UK has been under Labour, they appear to suggest that the 'biggest influx' of migrants on record so far took place under the previous Conservative government. The Migration Observatory believes this is the case, telling us: 'Data clearly show that the 'biggest influx of migrants in British history' took place under the previous administration.' School standards minister mixes up inflation and interest rates Speaking about the cost of living in an interview on Friday, school standards minister Catherine McKinnell MP claimed 'we've seen inflation coming down'. That's not what the latest inflation figures show, however, and the Department for Education has since told us she'd intended to refer to interest rates. While the Bank Rate – which is set by the Bank of England to influence the interest rates charged by banks – is currently one percentage point lower than it was when Labour came into government on July 5 2024, inflation (the change in prices for goods and services over time, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, or CPI) is higher than it was when Labour entered government. In the 12 months to June 2024 – the last full month of the previous Conservative government – inflation stood at 2%, while in the 12 months to July 2024 – the month Labour formed a government – it was 2.2%. As of April 2025, annual CPI inflation was 3.5%, 0.9 percentage points higher than the previous month's figure. Other commonly used measures of inflation show similar trends. This isn't the first time we've seen government ministers confuse interest rate and inflation figures. Earlier this year we fact checked the Prime Minister and Home Office minister Seema Malhotra MP after they both wrongly claimed interest rates had been at 11% under the previous government. As Ms Malhotra later made clear in an edited post, the 11% figure actually referred to the peak rate of CPI inflation in 2022.
Powys County Times
03-06-2025
- Business
- Powys County Times
Fact check: Reform UK migrants claim and minister's inflation mix-up
This round-up of claims has been compiled by Full Fact, the UK's largest fact checking charity. This week (1-7 June) Full Fact is the subject of a nationwide radio appeal – listen today to broadcaster and journalist Martha Kearney explain how Full Fact works to find, expose and counter the harms of bad information. Has Labour 'allowed the biggest influx of migrants in British history'? Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice MP claimed in a newspaper column a few weeks ago that 'the statistics show without a doubt that this Labour government has allowed the biggest influx of migrants in British history'. It's not clear which figures Mr Tice was basing this claim on – we've asked him and Reform UK, and haven't had a response. But the statistics we've been able to check – both those available at the time Mr Tice made his claim, and those published since – don't appear to support it. And when we asked Oxford University's Migration Observatory about Mr Tice's claim, it told us: 'We cannot identify any data that support the assertion that the current government has been responsible for the biggest influx of migrants in British history, and we are unclear how Mr Tice came to this conclusion.' Mr Tice referred only to 'migrants' and did not specify that he was talking about any particular group of migrants, but some on social media have suggested he intended to refer solely to Channel crossings, which have been at record levels this year and hit the headlines again this weekend after almost 1,200 migrants were recorded as arriving via small boat on Saturday. Between January 1 2025 and April 27 2025 (the day Mr Tice's article was published), government statistics show 9,885 migrants were detected crossing the English Channel in small boats, and between January 1 and May 31 this figure was 14,812. Both these figures are higher than for equivalent periods in other years going back to 2018, when statistics for this measure began. But they don't support the claim Mr Tice made – firstly because they only refer to a small proportion of all migrants, and secondly because they don't cover Labour's full time in office. In the time between Labour forming a government on July 5 2024 and April 27 2025, 33,127 migrants arrived in the UK after crossing the Channel on small boats, according to government statistics. This isn't a record – the equivalent total between July 5 2022 and April 27 2023 was 38,600. In terms of overall migrant numbers, there are various different sets of data, but one of the most commonly cited is the estimate of long-term international migration published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The most recent such figures cover the year to December 2024, when 948,000 people are estimated to have moved to the UK. (Over the same period 517,000 people left, so total net migration that year is estimated to have been 431,000.) These figures can't tell us exactly how many have arrived under Labour, as they cover roughly six months of the last Conservative government and the first six months of Labour. The next set of figures, which will cover the year ending June 2025 and are expected to be published in the autumn, will more reliably tell us about the change under Labour. But overall the figures for 2024 were significantly down on the year before. In the year ending December 2023 around 1,326,000 people were estimated to have moved to the UK – a record high. (And 466,000 people left, so net migration that year was an estimated 860,000.) Net migration is estimated to have reached a record high of 906,000 in the year ending June 2023, when 1,320,000 people moved to the UK and 414,000 people left. So while the ONS migration estimates can't tell us specifically what the change in the number of immigrants coming to the UK has been under Labour, they appear to suggest that the 'biggest influx' of migrants on record so far took place under the previous Conservative government. The Migration Observatory believes this is the case, telling us: 'Data clearly show that the 'biggest influx of migrants in British history' took place under the previous administration.' School standards minister mixes up inflation and interest rates Speaking about the cost of living in an interview on Friday, school standards minister Catherine McKinnell MP claimed 'we've seen inflation coming down'. That's not what the latest inflation figures show, however, and the Department for Education has since told us she'd intended to refer to interest rates. While the Bank Rate – which is set by the Bank of England to influence the interest rates charged by banks – is currently one percentage point lower than it was when Labour came into government on July 5 2024, inflation (the change in prices for goods and services over time, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, or CPI) is higher than it was when Labour entered government. In the 12 months to June 2024 – the last full month of the previous Conservative government – inflation stood at 2%, while in the 12 months to July 2024 – the month Labour formed a government – it was 2.2%. As of April 2025, annual CPI inflation was 3.5%, 0.9 percentage points higher than the previous month's figure. Other commonly used measures of inflation show similar trends. This isn't the first time we've seen government ministers confuse interest rate and inflation figures. Earlier this year we fact checked the Prime Minister and Home Office minister Seema Malhotra MP after they both wrongly claimed interest rates had been at 11% under the previous government. As Ms Malhotra later made clear in an edited post, the 11% figure actually referred to the peak rate of CPI inflation in 2022.
Yahoo
03-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Fact check: Reform UK migrants claim and minister's inflation mix-up
This round-up of claims has been compiled by Full Fact, the UK's largest fact checking charity. This week (1-7 June) Full Fact is the subject of a nationwide radio appeal – listen today to broadcaster and journalist Martha Kearney explain how Full Fact works to find, expose and counter the harms of bad information. Has Labour 'allowed the biggest influx of migrants in British history'? Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice MP claimed in a newspaper column a few weeks ago that 'the statistics show without a doubt that this Labour government has allowed the biggest influx of migrants in British history'. It's not clear which figures Mr Tice was basing this claim on – we've asked him and Reform UK, and haven't had a response. But the statistics we've been able to check – both those available at the time Mr Tice made his claim, and those published since – don't appear to support it. And when we asked Oxford University's Migration Observatory about Mr Tice's claim, it told us: 'We cannot identify any data that support the assertion that the current government has been responsible for the biggest influx of migrants in British history, and we are unclear how Mr Tice came to this conclusion.' Mr Tice referred only to 'migrants' and did not specify that he was talking about any particular group of migrants, but some on social media have suggested he intended to refer solely to Channel crossings, which have been at record levels this year and hit the headlines again this weekend after almost 1,200 migrants were recorded as arriving via small boat on Saturday. Between January 1 2025 and April 27 2025 (the day Mr Tice's article was published), government statistics show 9,885 migrants were detected crossing the English Channel in small boats, and between January 1 and May 31 this figure was 14,812. Both these figures are higher than for equivalent periods in other years going back to 2018, when statistics for this measure began. But they don't support the claim Mr Tice made – firstly because they only refer to a small proportion of all migrants, and secondly because they don't cover Labour's full time in office. In the time between Labour forming a government on July 5 2024 and April 27 2025, 33,127 migrants arrived in the UK after crossing the Channel on small boats, according to government statistics. This isn't a record – the equivalent total between July 5 2022 and April 27 2023 was 38,600. In terms of overall migrant numbers, there are various different sets of data, but one of the most commonly cited is the estimate of long-term international migration published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The most recent such figures cover the year to December 2024, when 948,000 people are estimated to have moved to the UK. (Over the same period 517,000 people left, so total net migration that year is estimated to have been 431,000.) These figures can't tell us exactly how many have arrived under Labour, as they cover roughly six months of the last Conservative government and the first six months of Labour. The next set of figures, which will cover the year ending June 2025 and are expected to be published in the autumn, will more reliably tell us about the change under Labour. But overall the figures for 2024 were significantly down on the year before. In the year ending December 2023 around 1,326,000 people were estimated to have moved to the UK – a record high. (And 466,000 people left, so net migration that year was an estimated 860,000.) Net migration is estimated to have reached a record high of 906,000 in the year ending June 2023, when 1,320,000 people moved to the UK and 414,000 people left. So while the ONS migration estimates can't tell us specifically what the change in the number of immigrants coming to the UK has been under Labour, they appear to suggest that the 'biggest influx' of migrants on record so far took place under the previous Conservative government. The Migration Observatory believes this is the case, telling us: 'Data clearly show that the 'biggest influx of migrants in British history' took place under the previous administration.' School standards minister mixes up inflation and interest rates Speaking about the cost of living in an interview on Friday, school standards minister Catherine McKinnell MP claimed 'we've seen inflation coming down'. That's not what the latest inflation figures show, however, and the Department for Education has since told us she'd intended to refer to interest rates. While the Bank Rate – which is set by the Bank of England to influence the interest rates charged by banks – is currently one percentage point lower than it was when Labour came into government on July 5 2024, inflation (the change in prices for goods and services over time, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, or CPI) is higher than it was when Labour entered government. In the 12 months to June 2024 – the last full month of the previous Conservative government – inflation stood at 2%, while in the 12 months to July 2024 – the month Labour formed a government – it was 2.2%. As of April 2025, annual CPI inflation was 3.5%, 0.9 percentage points higher than the previous month's figure. Other commonly used measures of inflation show similar trends. This isn't the first time we've seen government ministers confuse interest rate and inflation figures. Earlier this year we fact checked the Prime Minister and Home Office minister Seema Malhotra MP after they both wrongly claimed interest rates had been at 11% under the previous government. As Ms Malhotra later made clear in an edited post, the 11% figure actually referred to the peak rate of CPI inflation in 2022.
Telegraph
21-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Claudia Winkleman ‘honoured' to become British Museum trustee
, The Traitors game show host, has said she is 'deeply honoured' to join the British Museum 's board of trustees. The television presenter, who also hosts the BBC's Strictly Come Dancing series, is among five new members of the board from the worlds of history, academia, broadcasting and journalism. The other trustees are The Rest Is History podcast co-host Tom Holland, BBC Radio 4's Martha Kearney, Times columnist Lord Finkelstein, and author and academic Tiffany Jenkins. Winkleman, 53, said: 'The British Museum has been an integral part of my life since childhood: weekly trips with my father segueing to days of study through my university years and now regular visits with my own children. 'Its impact on me, mirrored in the experiences of hundreds of thousands of people every year. 'The museum's role in the cultural fabric of our country is unparalleled, its ability to educate through beauty and wonder, to connect us to humanity's shared past is unrivalled. 'I am deeply honoured to join the museum's board of trustees and hope that I can in some small way help it to continue its mission to curate, conserve and explain our history for the benefit and education of all.' Holland, 57, said: 'This is a museum I have been visiting ever since my eighth birthday, and the sense of wonder and excitement I felt then is no less vivid now. 'To serve the British Museum as a trustee is both an honour and a dream come true.' George Osborne, chairman of the British Museum trustees, said he was 'delighted' that an 'all-star collection of thinkers and communicators' are becoming trustees. The museum's board can comprise up to 25 members, one of which is appointed by the Crown, four by the Culture Secretary, five by the trustees and 15 by the Prime Minister. The British Museum, in central London, was the UK's most popular tourist attraction for the second year in a row in 2024 with 6.5 million visits, up 11 per cent from 2023.
