Met asked to investigate reports of alleged breaches of Covid lockdown rules at No 10Coronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageThe prime minister has been reported to the police by Labour MPs over allegations there were at least two p…
Tetchy Boris tries to play down shortages as bumps on the Brexit road | John Crace
There had definitely been small print, it’s just that no one had got round to reading itRejoice. Queues at petrol stations. Food shortages. Gas price rises. If you thought they were a sign of the country falling apart then think again. They’re actually…
Britain’s broadcast media is too valuable to be the toy of politicians and moguls | Will Hutton
Rupert Murdoch launches a new channel, C4 is threatened and notions of impartiality seem up for grabs. Are we seeing a challenge to the old order?Britain’s stubborn attachment to non-Tory values infuriates and worries Conservative politicians to equal …
UK dials up the spin on data reform, claiming ‘simplified’ rules will drive ‘responsible’ data sharing
The U.K. government has announced a consultation on plans to shake up the national data protection regime, as it looks at how to diverge from European Union rules following Brexit. It’s also a year since the U.K. published a national data strategy in which said it wanted pandemic levels of data sharing to become Britain’s […]
After years of inaction against adtech, UK’s ICO calls for browser-level controls to fix ‘cookie fatigue’
In the latest quasi-throwback toward ‘do not track‘, the UK’s data protection chief has come out in favor of a browser- and/or device-level setting to allow Internet users to set “lasting” cookie preferences — suggesting this as a fix for the barrage of consent pop-ups that continues to infest websites in the region. European web […]
UK names John Edwards as its choice for next data protection chief as gov’t eyes watering down privacy standards
The UK government has named the person it wants to take over as its chief data protection watchdog, with sitting commissioner Elizabeth Denham overdue to vacate the post: The Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) today said its preferred replacement is New Zealand’s privacy commissioner, John Edwards. Edwards, who has a legal background, […]
Tory values? Urination, urination, urination | Stewart Lee
Conservative MP Andrew Bridgen knows the real reason for empty shelves is working-class people going to universityDid the Conservative MP Andrew Bridgen cultivate lagoons of urine in his rural Leicestershire constituency? In 2014, the Environment Agenc…
Taylor Wimpey profits show what a waste Sunak’s stamp duty giveaway was | Nils Pratley
The housebuilder and its rivals did not need help from the taxpayer to get through the pandemicFrom where Rishi Sunak sits, he might regard Taylor Wimpey’s bumper set of first-half figures as a triumph of policymaking. The chancellor threw subsidies at…