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Theresa May, the Prime Minister, told the Commons that the chemical that put in hospital Sergei Skripal, a Russian spy who had defected to Britain, his daughter Yulia, and the policeman who visited their home in Salisbury, belonged to a group of nerve agents called Novichok, developed by Russia. She said that Britain must take extensive measures, should there be no adequate explanation from Russia within two days; there was none. Some people criticised the tardiness with which Public Health England issued advice, a week after the crime, to up to 500 people who had used the same pub and restaurant as the stricken pair, telling them to wash ‘clothing that you were wearing in an ordinary washing machine’ and to ‘wipe personal items such as phones, handbags and other electronic items with cleansing or baby wipes’. Forensic teams in protective suits worked at the graves of Mr Skripal’s son Alexander, who died last year aged 43, and wife Liudmila, who died in 2012 aged 59.
Up to 1,000 children as young as 11 could have suffered at the hands of sex gangs in Telford, Shropshire, since the 1980s, according to an investigation by the Sunday Mirror, which said that ‘authorities failed to keep details of abusers from Asian communities for fear of “racism”.’ Dame Louise Casey, who wrote a report for the government on integration in 2016, said that a date should be set for everyone in Britain to speak English. Derryck John, aged 17, from Croydon, was jailed for ten and a half years for attacking six moped riders with acid while trying to steal their bikes. The Daily Mirror got hold of a video showing Jamie Carragher, a former footballer, spitting at a car next to his and succeeding in hitting a 14-year-old girl in the passenger seat; ‘It’s not something I’ve done before,’ he said, apologising.
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