United Kingdom

The destruction of our heritage continues. I went recently to watch Wicked Little Letters which was great.

I've heard that they've pulled out of saving the pub on the corner recently as well.

Rumours suggest the site will be levelled for a tower block.

Oh well.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/8519142

The UK’s largest water company was trying to strike a deal with the watchdog Ofwat that would give it permission to charge customers more to avoid having to be taken over by court-appointed special administrators, the Financial Times reported.

That plan would give Thames Water permission to increase bills by 40% by 2030, while also offering more leniency around regulator fines and rules around the dividends it can pay to shareholders.

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Last week, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) updated 30-year-old legislation on the special administration regime, which would allow existing shareholders to retain a stake in the company and make it less likely that failing water companies could be fully renationalised.

Edit: I would recommend checking out the original article just for the sake of seeing the pictures of what hock burn looks like on packaged chicken you would buy from the supermarket.

My TL;DR:

"Hock burn" is caused by ammonia from excrement. A sign of poorer welfare on farms, it can be seen on a third of birds in some supermarkets.

Hock burn is often associated with a high-stocking density of birds and is a result of prolonged contact to moist, dirty litter. It shows up on packaged and prepared meat as brown ulcers on the back of the leg.

Chicken with hock burn markings are still safe to eat. But the amount of hock burn within a poultry flock is an industry-accepted indicator of wider welfare standards on farms.

Red Tractor, the UK's biggest farm and food assurance scheme, sets a target rate for hock burn of no more than 15% of a flock.

Hock burn statistics from various supermarkets:

The BBC requested animal welfare data from 10 leading UK food sellers: Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda, Morrisons, Aldi, Co-op, Lidl, Waitrose, Iceland and Ocado.

Five of the companies - Asda, Morrisons, Lidl, Iceland and Ocado - failed to provide specific figures.

• Co-op, which is supplied with an estimated 30 million chickens a year, recorded hock burn in 36.7% of its poultry.
• Aldi's most recent annual figures revealed it had found hock burn in 33.5% of its chickens.
• Company animal welfare reports reveal Tesco recorded a 26.3% rate in its chickens in 2022/23.
• Sainsbury's found hock burn in one in five (25%) of its chickens.
• Waitrose had the lowest recorded annual figure of 2.7%.
• Lidl was one of the stores that did not provide data to the BBC. Volunteers found 74% of the chickens they checked had hock burn.

A power company that has received £6bn in UK green subsidies has kept burning wood from some of the world's most precious forests, the BBC has found.

Papers obtained by Panorama show Drax took timber from rare forests in Canada it had claimed were "no go areas".

It comes as the government decides whether to give the firm's Yorkshire site billions more in environmental subsidies funded by energy bill payers.

To see how easy it is for the wealthy to buy political access and influence, consider the story of the Tory donor Mohamed Amersi.

The owners of the Crooked House pub near Dudley have been ordered to rebuild it after the historic building was destroyed in a suspected arson attack.

Once known as "Britain's wonkiest" inn, the 258-year-old pub in Himley was reduced to rubble following a fire on 5 August 2023.

In a post on X, West Midlands Mayor, Andy Street, praised South Staffordshire Council, adding: "An enforcement notice has been issued against the owners for its unlawful demolition.

"They have been ordered to rebuild the pub back to what it was before the fire - just as we’ve been lobbying for."

Alexei Navalny once hit out at the "corrupt officials" living in London who allegedly help Vladimir Putin's regime stash dirty money, Sky News can reveal.

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He made the comments in an interview four years before his death in a penal colony north of the Arctic Circle.

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The interview was conducted in February 2020 and is believed to be one of the last that Mr Navalny would give while in full health.

In August that year he was poisoned while on a flight back to Moscow.

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The interview, acquired by Sky News and broadcast for the first time, was shot as part of an unaired documentary series, After The Fall, directed by Matthew Torne and produced by Andrew Duncan.

"The West does nothing at all, I would say. There are some ritual dances, but nothing really happens," Mr Navalny says.

"Why do corrupt officials still live in London? Because these corrupt officials feed a huge number of wonderful London lawyers.

"These people, they will appear very civilised, we will be pleased to chat with them if they sit next to us, they will be wearing a tie and fine manners, and at the same time they are serving the interests of utter, complete bandits."

A 1956 agreement that allowed British boats to fish in the Barents Sea has been ripped up, in the latest sign of growing tensions between Moscow and the West.

The fishing deal was signed by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, but Russian politicians have now claimed it was never in the national interest.

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Russia's parliamentary speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said: "The British need to study some proverbs - 'Russians harness the horse slowly, but ride it fast'."

He told politicians that "the unscrupulous British" had eaten Russian fish for 68 years - declaring: "Now let them lose weight, get smarter."

UK government agencies, think tanks, businesses and charities also appear in the leaked i-Soon data.

Other documents hint at successful hacks of public bodies and businesses across Asia and Europe, but it is not yet clear if any were compromised.

The identity of the leaker is unknown.

i-Soon is one of many private companies that provide cyber security services for China's military, police and security services.

It employs less than 25 staff at its Shanghai headquarters.