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Many in Tonypandy and Llanelli saw Churchill as someone who would use troops against workersTourists line up each day in Whitehall to enter Winston Churchill’s subterranean war rooms and Gary Oldman is a favourite to win an Oscar for his portrayal of the Prime Minister in The Darkest Hour. The Conservative leader was voted the “greatest Briton” of all time in a television poll in 2002 in which he was championed by Mo Mowlam, perhaps the most enduringly popular Labour figure of modern times. Wholehearted admiration for Churchill unites the UK – but not, perhaps, in Wales. Stories of his...

UK: Northumbria Police have warned that “offensive” comments on the Internet will not be tolerated, tracking down users who made “potentially criminal” posts on social media about grooming gangs. The force launched an investigation into comments left on its Facebook page in response to articles about the Operation Shelter scandal, in which young white British girls in were groomed, sexually abused and trafficked by mostly Muslim men of South Asian descent in Newcastle. Officers made a review of every comment on the page after a member of the public complained that a number of posts referred to the race and...

From her office window, Elizabeth O’Neill could see young men on scooters prowling for victims almost every day. “You’d see people waiting at bus stops staring at their phones as these lads were about to snatch them,” she said. “You’d think ‘don’t do it, put your phone away’. And then it happened to me.” O’Neill, a charity worker, was waiting for a bus “looking at my phone, figuring out where I was going”. It was all over very quickly. “Two lads on a moped snatched it out of my hand and rode off. I felt really stupid. “There was just...

Britain’s National Health Service has ordered hospitals to cancel as many as 55,000 planned surgeries amid chaos from a spike in winter illnesses. Instructions on Tuesday from NHS Medical Director Sir Bruce Keogh called for “all but the most urgent cases” to be canceled until at least February, which includes closing outpatient clinics for weeks, The Telegraph reported. The jump in flu cases has come at a time when many hospitals had almost reached capacity, and according to The Telegraph, frail patients are “facing 12-hour waits and some units running out of corridor space.” Metro reported that hospital occupancy rates...

Parts of London are being labelled ‘no-go zones’ for delivery drivers because of the volume of acid and knife attacks. Hackney, Camden, Stoke Newington, Bethnal Green, Stratford and Elephant & Castle were also listed among the danger zones. London has a higher number of acid attacks per person than any city in the world. According to The Sun, delivery drivers are now slashing their hours and refusing to operate in parts of the capital – gangs are targeting them for their mopeds, holding them up at knife point or spraying acid in their faces. It’s absolutely shocking that in Britain’s...

Important (for good or evil) as Brexit may be to the future of Britain, it is not without its importance for the European Union. Indeed, it was always essential for the Union that Britain’s departure should be an economic disaster for Britain: for if it were not, why have a union at all? It was therefore entirely predictable that the Union should drive a hard bargain with Britain, even a bargain economically harmful to itself, provided only that it was worse for Britain: for the self-preservation of the European political class is at stake. In the European Union politics always...

An Islamic fundamentalist plot to allegedly bomb a London Christmas market has been foiled, after police raided an “Islamic community centre” and arrested a number of men, with claims one could be a Syrian migrant. Armed police and MI5 were involved in the raids in Sheffield and Chesterfield, targeting a “bomb factory” above a chip shop and the Fatima Community Centre, also described as a mosque, where one suspect worked. The centre is run by the Muslim Association of Britain, an affiliate of the Muslim Council of Britain which is linked with the international, pro-caliphate Islamist group the Muslim Brotherhood....

FOLKESTONE, KENT, UK — A grieving woman plans to pay tribute to her late mother — by seasoning her Christmas meal with her ashes, and then eating them. Debra Parsons, 41, will sprinkle the cremains of her mother, Doreen Brown, on the turkey and dessert. “We will have a place laid for her and a picture of her on the table so she can be with us on the very special day,” Parsons says. The mother-of-two from Kent was left distraught when her mother died in May. She told The Mirror that consuming the ashes is “the only thing that...

According to an Old English manuscript chronicling the history of the Anglo-Saxons, a mysterious "red crucifix" appeared in the "heavens" over Britain one evening in A.D. 774. Now astronomers say it may have been the supernova explosion that sprinkled unexplained traces of carbon-14 in tree rings that year, halfway around the world in Japan. Jonathon Allen, an undergraduate student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, made the connection this week after listening to a Nature podcast. He heard a team of Japanese scientists discussing new research in which they measured an odd spike in carbon-14 levels in tree rings...

The European Union’s top five economies are warning the United States that its massive tax overhaul could violate some of its international obligations and risks having “a major distortive impact” on trade. In a letter to U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin, the finance ministers of Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Spain wrote they had “significant concerns” about three tax initiatives in particular. In the letter, seen by The Associated Press, the five wrote that “it is important that the U.S. government’s rights over domestic tax policy be exercised in a way that adheres with international obligations to which...

Theresa May’s leadership has been plunged into turmoil as she had to axe her second Cabinet ­ minister in seven days. Priti Patel, 45, quit over her damaging secret ­meetings with Israeli officials and PM Benjamin Netanyahu that could have left the impression Britain favours Tel Aviv over Palestine...Mrs May also had to deny claims she knew about some of her minister’s Israeli meetings earlier than thought and had told her to cover them up.

New research has revealed a shocking number of Brits don't know much about the birth of Jesus. The History Channel survey found 20 per cent didn't know Jesus birth was remembered on Christmas Day and one in 20 thought Jesus was born over Easter. Around one in 10 were unable to name Bethlehem as Jesus' place of birth while another 10 per cent were unaware he was born in a stable, despite the prevalence of nativity plays and Christian teaching in schools. A spokesman for the History Channel, which commissioned the research to mark the launch of its new show...

The British government is set to keep the UK in both the Single Market and the Customs Union until at least 2021 in a move that will cripple any real political change for years to come. [snip] Remaining in the Single Market will mean that the UK will unable to end freedom of movement, the key motivation for the millions of Brits who backed Brexit on June 23rd 2016. Uncontrolled mass migration will now be able to roll on into the 2020s. Staying in the Customs Union means that the UK will not be able to sign up and enact...

A planned “working visit” to the United Kingdom by U.S. President Donald Trump has been cancelled following Prime Minister Theresa May’s decision to publicly upbraid him over Twitter retweets. The prime minister said the president was “wrong” to share videos purporting to show Muslims committing acts of violence while on a visit to the Middle East, where she is attempting to curry favour with local dictators. President Trump did not hesitate to rebuke the British politician, telling her: “Don’t focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom. We are doing...

London Mayor Sadiq Khan on Thursday urged the British government to cancel any official state visit by U.S. President Donald Trump, after Trump retweeted a series of videos posted by the leader of an extremist British political group. The videos, which sought to portray Muslims as violent and dangerous, were originally posted to Twitter by Jayda Fransen, deputy leader of the Britain First group which demands that Muslims be removed from Britain. In a statement on Thursday quoted by Politico, Khan accused Trump of promoting a “vile, extremist group that exists solely to sow division and hatred.” “After this latest...

Archaeologists have pinpointed an obscure spot in Kent as the scene of the first encounter between Rome and ancient Britons. Pegwell Bay on the Isle of Thanet is believed to be where Caesar first attempted to land in 55 BC, and later more successfully in 54 BC. Now the site is more than half a mile inland - but at the time it was closer to the coast. The location matches Caesar's own account as it was visible from the sea with a large open bay and was overlooked by higher ground. His army immediately built a fort on the...

LGBT charities and campaigners have welcomed the Church of England’s new guidance for schools urging them to refrain from making pupils conform to gender stereotypes. The updated guidance for the church’s 4,700 schools, titled Valuing All God’s Children, and timed to coincide with anti-bullying week, followed advice issued three years ago that covered homophobic bullying. It has now been expanded to include transphobic and biphobic bullying. The guidance met with outrage in some quarters, drawing sceptical newspaper headlines and furious commentary from some conservatives. But the human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell said the guidance was “big progress for a church...

Ground-breaking research shows six in 10 Muslim wives in England and Wales are not legally marriedWhen Rukhsana Noor completed her online dating profile, she thought she had taken her first step towards finding love. In reality, she had set off on a path that would lead her to a lengthy legal battle that would cost her hundreds of thousands of pounds. Ms Noor had many good things in her life: a university education, a professional career and a good salary, but she had always dreamt of having children. As a single woman, she, like many other British Muslims, was...

The first is a trip down the river Thames and a look at the Pool of London, then one of the busiest ports in the world. Lots of steamships. The second, linked in the comments below, shows scenes along the Great North Road which was a major coaching road in the 18th and 19th centuries passing through lots of very old small towns and villages.

A pair of World War Two machine guns were among over 140 firearms handed in to police on the first week of the National Gun Surrender. The two weapons, which had been deactivated, were among five automatic guns handed in to the Metropolitan Police along with 31 shotguns, 11 pistols, 10 handguns, nine revolvers and six rifles. Some 3,859 rounds of ammunition were also handed in, as well as 48 air weapons, to the Met. The national gun surrender drive was launched on November 13 and ends on Sunday. Detective Superintendent Mike Balcombe, of the Met’s Trident and Area Crime...