United Kingdom

Do you think he's right?

• Chancellor announces pay rise for over 3 million workers next year, as National Living Wage rises by 6.7%
• Pay boost worth £1,400 a year for an eligible full-time worker – a significant move towards delivering a genuine living wage.
• 18-20 National Minimum Wage will rise by £1.40 per hour - the largest increase on record - and marks first step towards a single adult rate.

The companies have been ordered to pay fines and costs in excess of £90,000 for causing trade effluent to pollute 3 kilometres of a Worcestershire brook.

ETC, a food manufacturer operating in Lower Broadheath, was fined £18,000 and ordered to pay prosecution costs of £52,000. CEPS, an engineering company in Bidford-upon-Avon was fined £4,000 and ordered to pay prosecution costs of £20,000.

The Court was told that the discharge caused the deaths of a significant number of fish and that it followed a series of human and corporate failings.

The fine is dissapointing to say the least, compared to the damage that had been done.

Compared with the screaming scare campaigns of the 1990s, anti-drugs messaging is thin on the ground these days. So the casual observer may not realise that Britain has, quietly but surely, lost its “war on drugs”. Amid a steep rise in drug poisonings, a particularly striking statistic emerged last week. Between 2022 and 2023, cocaine-related deaths in England and Wales soared by 30%. The figure is now around 10 times higher than in 2011.

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What is going on? One culprit is a precipitous rise in purity, which makes it easier to overdose by accident. Once cocaine was sold in a two-tier market: the cheap, heavily adulterated stuff, and the expensive, purer cocaine consumed by models, city traders and members of the Bullingdon Club. Now, according to the latest United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime report, cocaine in Europe has on average a purity of over 60%, compared with 35% in 2009. Today, even street cocaine rivals the top-end stuff of the 1980s.

This may in part be the unintended consequence of government crackdowns on cutting agents such as benzocaine, a dental anaesthetic. But the result is a drug that is often far stronger than users are expecting. This could be particularly true of generation X – now accumulating health issues – which came of age at a time of much milder cocaine: the highest rate of recent deaths in England and Wales is among men aged 40 to 49.

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It also means cocaine is more often mixed with other drugs, rather than consumed reverently, by itself, as a treat. This ramps up the danger. It is now so cheap and prevalent that drinkers use it to temper the effects of alcohol, in order to drink more. And to fill the gap left in the higher end of the market, there are complicated cocktails. Liam Payne, who died this month, had “pink cocaine” in his system: a drug that typically includes methamphetamine, ketamine, MDMA and crack cocaine. According to Harry Sumnall, a professor in substance use at Liverpool John Moores University, about 20% of the recently recorded cocaine deaths were in association with alcohol, and a third involved other drugs.

A former counter terrorism chief has described how he initially wondered if the poisoning of a former spy and his daughter could have been "an act of war".

Former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were exposed to the deadly nerve agent Novichok in Salisbury in March 2018.

Neil Basu, who led the counter-terrorism investigation, said the "true horror" of the "colourless and odourless" poison was not knowing how to warn people or what to look for.

In an exclusive interview with the BBC's Salisbury Poisonings podcast, he said: "To leave that lying around anywhere on foreign soil is the most unbelievably reckless disregard for human life I've ever witnessed."

Thoughts on this?

East Riding council promised to store Robert Bracegirdle’s possessions after his disappearance, but disposed of them

The Russian president closed this year's BRICS summit by addressing a variety of topics, including claims Russia is trying to create mayhem in the UK.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/25105380

Kevin Jordan and two other claimants argued the country’s climate adaptation plans were insufficient and unlawful