Category: #ukreport

Most people in the UK believe the government “has no clear plan” for dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a poll conducted following Boris Johnson’s announcement of a new three-tier lockdown system.

Only 20% of voters now think that Downing street has a strategy to tackle coronavirus outbreaks in Britain, while 64% of almost 3,000 adults quizzed by YouGov yesterday believe there is no plan, with the remaining 16% undecided.

The widespread disapproval of the government’s handling of the crisis is split across party lines, with 81% of Labour voters convinced that No. 10 has no strategy, compared with 54% of Tory supporters.

But even among Conservative voters, confidence in the government is low, with fewer than four in ten (37%) telling the pollsters that they do think Johnson and his team have a clear plan.

The new three-tier system for lockdowns has been met with fierce resistance from many political leaders in the North, who say they were left out of key planning discussions. The plan also been savaged by Labour leader Keir Starmer, who yesterday accused Johnson of losing control of the pandemic “long ago”.

And many voters seem to share that view. The latest results from YouGov’s government approval weekly tracker, from 5 October, shows 55% of Brits disapproving of Downing Street, with just 27% approving.

In late March, the government’s approval rating was as high as 52%.

But fast-forward to last week and Starmer continued to lead Johnson in the latest YouGov/Times “best prime minister” question, with 33% of respondents quizzed on 6 and 7 October backing the Labour leader, compared with 29% who still favour the current PM for the top job.

There is some good polling news for the Conservatives, however. Latest voting intention figures, also from last week, saw the Conservatives retake their lead over Labour, at 41% to 38%.

In the week beginning 28 September, both parties were polling neck-and-neck at 39% each.

France will show “no weakness” during crunch negotiations over Brexit fishing rights, President Emmanuel Macron’s Europe minister has warned.

As Britain and the EU prepare to return to the negotiating table in a bid to hammer out a free trade deal, Clement Beaune insisted that France “will not accept a bad deal and a bad deal in fisheries in particular. We will have no weakness on this issue of fisheries, that is clear.”

The warning follows a phone call on Saturday between Boris Johnson and Macron during which the UK leader threatened to quit the talks if the “shape” of a trade deal is not in sight by Thursday’s EU summit in Brussels, The Telegraph reports.

But a defiant Beaune yesterday told “the UK and his EU allies that Paris would not allow French fishermen to be sacrificed just to get the free trade agreement over the line”, the newspaper adds.

Some EU countries, including Denmark, Spain and the Netherlands, are expected to support France on the issue, but others, such as Germany, believe a zero tariff trade deal is more important than the demands of the fishing sector.

The dispute centres on the question of who will have the right to catch what and in which waters when the Brexit transition period ends on 31 December. Boats from member states land about eight times more fish in UK waters than British fishermen do in EU waters, but the UK is dependent on the European export market.

Brexiteers view fishing as “a symbol of sovereignty that will now be regained”, the BBC explains. And that means an industry worth a “minuscule share of GDP – an economic sprat, a mere tiddler – could still sink the talks” this week, says Politico.

“As things stand, a poisonous mixture of political over-bidding and technical complexity threatens to capsize the entire post-Brexit negotiation,” the news site adds.

A woman who stole pieces from the ancient Italian city of Pompeii has returned the fragments 15 years later with a letter explaining how they brought a “curse” to her life. The unnamed Canadian woman said she visited the Archaeological Park of Pompeii when she was “young and dumb”. Since she took the mosaic tiles, parts of an amphora and a piece of ceramic she has had a string of misfortune, including two bouts of breast cancer.

Man wins lottery twice in one day

A man in Michigan struck lucky twice when he won a $1 million (£766,235) lottery jackpot on the same day he won a $5,000 (£3,831) prize. The 24-year-old said that after he won $5,000 from a Super Bonus Cashword scratch-off ticket he was “still feeling pretty lucky,” so he “bought a couple Ruby Mine tickets and hit $1 million”. He plans to buy a new home and a new car.

Huge pumpkin wins California contest

A pumpkin weighing 2,350 pounds (1,066 kilograms) has won this year’s Half Moon Bay pumpkin contest. Travis Gienger’s specimen was the second-heaviest ever weighed at the 40-year-old California event. The heaviest of all time was recorded in 2018 when a grower in New Hampshire produced a pumpkin weighing more than 2,500 pounds (1,134 kilograms).

Having housed some of history’s most famed writers, poets, musicians and artists, New York’s legendary Chelsea Hotel is remembered for its wild, creatively fecund and often tragic past.

Andy Warhol famously threw up on the hotel’s dining room carpet during a fundraising luncheon organised by his patron Peggy Guggenheim. Leonard Cohen and Janis Joplin enjoyed a secret tryst here, as did Jack Kerouac and Gore Vidal. Stanley Kubrick penned 2001: A Space Odyssey at the hotel while Nancy Spungen met a grizzly end in Room 100 when she was stabbed by her lover Sid Vicious. From bohemian love-ins and spells of creative genius to decadent parties and death – the Chelsea Hotel has seen it all.

The hotel was closed to guests in 2011 for extensive renovation works which are still ongoing. Many of the 100 long-term residents who were allowed to stay have since moved on, but despite this exodus, it’s hard to associate the iconic address with a quieter tempo or as a place where A-listers might have curled up with a cup of tea, as opposed to drunkenly stagger around the place in a hedonistic whiskey haze – though perhaps that was just Dylan Thomas. The poet apparently drank 18 straight drams in his Chelsea Hotel room before slipping into a coma.

And yet – in more recent times at least – the Chelsea Hotel has possessed a softer, more relaxed identity, thanks to this one-time artistic community of residents, among them British-born painter David Remfry who occupied an apartment at the hotel from 1996-2016. Best know for his life-sized watercolours of urban scenes and night clubs, Remfry spent 15 years on a series of portraits that celebrate the relationship between dogs and their owners. Among his sitters are a string of high-profile names, including the actress Susan Sarandon who posed for the artist with her pups Penny and Rigby.

“I think there’s a little bit of a softness that comes into [the sitters’] demeanour when they’re with their dogs,” explains the 77-year-old Royal Academician. “Dogs have canny way of knowing how you are feeling and responding to people. They are floozies most of them! They just want you to love them and it’s not too difficult.”

Remfry’s portrait of a reclining Alan Cumming with his dog Honey (below) summons a sense of calm and reassurance. The artist has deftly captured the special language of trust that exists between the actor and his pet; in that moment, they are a unit: companions and inseparable sofa slobs.

His etching of a languid Ethan Hawke and his dog Nina (below) is similarly touching, The actor looks like he’s chatting to his furry friend while she is only half listening, her rigid pose betokening a sense of protectiveness.

The exhibition, titled We Think the World of You: People and Dogs Drawn Together by David Remfry is currently on show until 3 January 2021 at Woking’s Lightbox gallery. The show includes 18 portraits completed at the Chelsea Hotel.

Wouldn’t it be nice to think that one of these canine tributes might one day find its way home? While it’s clear that the Chelsea Hotel will never be the same again, the barking mad antics that went on behind its walls will surely never be forgotten.