A winter of resentment, that's what the British are calling the time right now. And by that I mean the largest wave of strikes that the country has experienced since the 1980s. The train drivers are on strike this Friday, according to the announcement, hardly any trains are running. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets on Wednesday: teachers, civil servants, university employees and many more. They all call for their wages to be adjusted for inflation, which is around...
British parents who wanted to take the train to work or take their children to school were better off staying at home on Wednesday: on what is probably the biggest day of industrial action in more than a decade, around half a million people went on strike in Great Britain - across several sectors . In addition to teachers and train drivers, university lecturers and border guards also stopped working. Seven unions coordinated the national day of protest they declared.The...
from Alexander Mühlauer, LondonThe week began for Rishi Sunak in the hospital. Britain's Prime Minister visited an emergency room in Darlington on Monday to unveil his plan to improve healthcare. There, in north-east England, Sunak not only promised more staff, more beds and more ambulances. He also admitted that this will take some time. Time that Sunak doesn't actually have. source site
English houses are really not made for winter, especially not for this freezing January. Parts of the UK are currently experiencing the coldest days since the 1980s so double glazing would obviously be an advantage. But you won't find them in many houses. Instead: zero insulation, leaking roofs, single glazing. There's nothing left to do but turn the heating up all the way. No wonder that the energy crisis is felt much more severely in Great Britain than in Germany,...
At the age of seven or eight he knew he had to be a writer. They sat at marble desks, staring into the distance, holding a golden fountain pen from which golden words would soon flow. When the flags for his first book came out a good dozen years later, they smelled a little like old clothes, "as if the rags used to make paper had been torn from the bodies of homeless people". He couldn't be happier.The vicar's son...
British culture minister Michelle Donelan has ruled out returning the Parthenon sculptures, the Elgin Marbles, to Greece anytime soon. In an interview with BBC Radio 4, she said the sculptures from the Temple of Athena on the Athenian Acropolis, which the British ambassador Lord Elgin had shipped from Athens to London between 1801 and 1812, belonged "in the United Kingdom". There they have been kept in the British Museum since 1816.According to Greek and British media reports, the museum's chairman...
Day 328 since the beginning of the war: The Ukrainian President is expecting key decisions from the allies at an upcoming meeting in Ramstein. All information in the news blog.The most important things at a glanceUkraine: Russians have few ballistic missiles12:30 a.m.: According to the Ukrainian Air Force, the Russian attack pattern shows that Moscow has only a small supply of ballistic missiles. Russia is increasingly using the S-300 and S-400 anti-aircraft missile systems to carry out attacks on ground...
Day 327 since the beginning of the war: A Russian jet has intercepted a German naval aircraft. Foreign Minister Baerbock promotes a special tribunal for Russia. All information in the news blog.The most important things at a glanceUN Secretary-General condemns attack on Dnipro8:04 p.m.: UN Secretary-General António Guterres has condemned the deadly attack on a residential building in the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro. Guterres said it was "another example of an alleged violation of martial law," his spokeswoman Stephanie...
In November 2021, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson sat in a committee room in Westminster to answer questions from the Liaison Committee about his work as Prime Minister. Tory MP Tobias Ellwood, a former captain and chairman of the Defense Committee, asked Johnson in an almost annoyed tone why he was reducing troop levels and not investing in war equipment. Doesn't he see the obvious threat on the Russian-Ukrainian border? "We have to recognize that the days of land battles...
Dhe Kremlin has denied any tensions between the Russian army and the Wagner mercenary group. "This conflict only exists in the newsroom," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday. Russia recognizes its "heroes who serve in the armed forces" as well as those "who come from the paramilitary group Wagner," he emphasized: "Everyone is fighting for their fatherland." The disagreements between the army and the Wagner group had come to the fore in recent days during the battle for the...
