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The key results from the 2018 local elections: The Tories win Barnet and hold Westminster and Wandsworth, despite predictions Labour could seize the two Tory strongholds Labour take control of Plymouth from the Tories The Lib Dems win Richmond and Kingston-upon-Thames, on a good night for Vince Cable Ukip's falling vote share hands the Tories control in Basildon and Peterborough.
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Campaign for real cricket Sir: Geoffrey Wheatcroft’s splendid article ‘Cricket, unlovely cricket’ (28 April) remonstrated against the threat to Test matches and the County Championship posed by the juggernaut of what he termed ‘Twenty20Trash’. He ended with the words ‘after the very successful Campaign for Real Ale, what about a Campaign for Real Cricket?’ As one of the four traditional beer lovers who founded Camra and as an MCC member, I wholeheartedly agree. We must rescue our beloved sport from the hands of the money-obsessed administrators who are foisting an apology for beach cricket on true lovers of traditional forms of a noble game.
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Home The prospect of Brexit in name only hovered on the horizon as the government contemplated an association agreement with the EU, which Jacob Rees-Mogg dismissed as ‘second-tier EU membership’. The cabinet’s Brexit sub-committee considered two ways of coping with the Irish problem: either a customs partnership with the EU, in which Britain would collect tariffs at the Irish border on behalf of the EU, or a combination of technology and trusted trader schemes to avoid a hard border. Peers voted 335 to 244 for an amendment, introduced by the Conservative Viscount Hailsham, to the EU Withdrawal Bill which would enable MPs to send ministers back to renegotiate with Brussels if parliament rejected the Brexit deal presented to it.
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Is this thing on? Sainsbury’s Chief Executive Mike Coupe was recorded singing ‘We’re in the Money’ as he prepared to go on ITV news about his company’s proposed merger with Asda. Other embarrassing microphone moments: — Ronald Reagan was preparing for his weekly broadcast on National Public Radio in 1984 when he joked to technicians: ‘My fellow Americans, I’m pleased to tell you today I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.’ The recording was later leaked.
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The local elections have thrown up a paradox. In theory, Britain has never had more devolution: we have assemblies in Edinburgh and Cardiff, city mayors in England, elected police chiefs and the supposed Northern Powerhouse. So, the run-up to the vote ought to have been dominated by local issues, with a new breed of local political heroes or villains in the media spotlight. Instead, apart from a few door-knocks and the odd leaflet, one could be forgiven for not even realising local elections were being held. This may be in part because of the sad decline of the local press and the dearth of reporters to cover the elections. But it is also because of the equally sad decline in the number of political volunteers willing to campaign, especially for the Tories.
From our UK edition
From our UK edition
Parts indicated in clues in italics must each BREAK NEW GROUND (1A 4A), creating entries at 6, 13, 26, 39 and 40; definitions of these entries are 2, 15A, 33, 27 and 20.
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In this week’s podcast, we discuss Theresa May’s impossible situation - how can she get herself out of the bind created by the Brexiteers and the Remainers? We also discuss the hostile environment policy, and ask, will Ireland appeal its Eighth Amendment? First, Theresa May finds herself in a real dilemma. Her cabinet colleagues, the EU and her advisors are all pulling her in different directions over the question of the customs union. While Remainers argue that a ‘customs partnership’ is the only way to avoid a hard border in Northern Ireland, Brexiteers believe ‘max fac’ (a maximum facilitation agreement, which includes a technology based border in Ireland) is the only way forward.
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Kill or cure An anti-war protester on a march against the Syrian missile attacks claimed that President Assad couldn’t be a bad man because ‘he’s a doctor, for heaven’s sake’. Some other qualified medics who provide counter-evidence for this theory: — Dr Harold Shipman GP in Hyde, Manchester, convicted of 15 murders in 2000, though it is thought that he may have killed more than 250 patients. — Dr Crippen US-trained homeopath and ear and eye specialist who dispensed medicines, though his qualifications were not recognised in Britain. He was hanged in 1910 for murdering his wife. — Josef Mengele Gained a PhD in anthropology, researched genetics, then gained a doctorate in medicine before taking a job as physician at Auschwitz.
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Resetting Brexit Sir: I agree with Fraser Nelson’s article ‘Brexit blunders’ (21 April). I am a Leaver, but immigration did not figure in my decision in the referendum. On the contrary, I recall many years ago hearing that some 240 languages were spoken in London and the UK, and for some reason it made me immensely proud. If Theresa May does not understand that immigration is not the issue, then we have the wrong leader. My suspicions in this regard are further strengthened by her stated but continually thwarted ambitions to have a special relationship with the EU bloc. Her attempts are relentlessly rebuffed and, because of the EU’s fear of ‘letting us off lightly’, I begin to fear that they always will be.
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After spending most of his presidency posing a nuclear-armed hothead, Kim Jong-un is now presenting himself as a man of peace. ‘I came here to put an end to the history of confrontation,’ he said on his historic visit to South Korea. Which might be so. But his real agenda may be to gain acceptance for North Korea's status as a nuclear power: holding an olive branch in one hand, and a seven-kilotonne bomb in the other. The visit to the south comes ahead of his trips to meet Donald Trump, who has referred to Kim Jong-un as a ‘little rocket man’ and tweeted a photo boasting that his own nuclear button was larger and more effective than that of the North Korean leader.
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Home No. 10 insisted: ‘We will not be staying in the customs union or joining a customs union.’ The undertaking came after a defeat for the government on the matter in the House of Lords and before a vote in the House of Commons. The government proposed two alternatives: one being a ‘customs partnership’ in which the UK would collect tariffs on the EU’s behalf on goods coming from other countries, and the other being a ‘highly streamlined customs arrangement’.
From our UK edition
From our UK edition
The unclued lights are (too many) TV COOKS, individually at 18, 21 and 28, and paired at 25/13, 27/1A, 30D/10 and 42/7A.
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From ‘News of the week’, 27 April 1918: The Navy has come altogether into its own again. The details of the gloriously daring naval enterprise at Zeebrugge and Ostend have taught the nation to remember that the Navy is not only the staple of our strength, but has a very positive power of aggression even under the conditions of this war. Ultimately our victory will depend upon the exercise of this power… The spirit of the Navy has always been true to the Nelson legend, and it was not the fault of the Fleet that sometimes the opportunities have been withheld from it of acting in accordance with its traditions.
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Sit the snowflakes down Sir: I was surprised to read Theo Hobson’s article about ‘snowflake’ Christians in the C of E (‘Holy snowflakes’, 14 April). What most struck me was the timidity of the clergy, who instead of explaining Christian teaching to their gay and other ‘snowflake’ parishioners, merely kowtowed to them by removing a collage depicting an exorcism. Clergy need to teach those who are easily offended that nowhere in the Christian Gospels — as my many readings tell me — does Jesus condemn gays. (That condemnation belongs to the Old Testament, where God commissioned Abraham and the Patriarchs to breed abundantly and build a nation.
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Much rot is spoken about how the young have it so bad. In fact, this generation is healthier, richer and better-educated than any before — as well as being better-behaved and more conscientious than their parents were. But the one area where they do struggle is in buying a house. The asset boom of recent years has disfigured the economy, sending property prices soaring and conferring vast wealth on pensioners while giving the young a mountain to climb. Home ownership rates stand at a 30-year low. And the proportion of 25- to 34-year-olds in private rented accommodation has almost doubled in the last ten years. This marks not just a dramatic socioeconomic shift in a country that was once strongly associated with owning your own home.
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Home Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary, apologised in Parliament for the treatment of immigrants from the Commonwealth from before 1971, known as the ‘Windrush generation’ (after the Empire Windrush, the ship that brought West Indian workers to England in 1948). The 1971 Immigration Act allowed Commonwealth citizens then living in the United Kingdom indefinite leave to remain, but the Home Office kept no records of these. Some had lost their jobs, others had been refused National Health Service treatment, and others threatened with deportation. Theresa May, the Prime Minister, apologised to Caribbean heads of government who were in London for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.
From our UK edition
From our UK edition
‘THE WRITING ON THE WALL’ (Daniel 5.5) at 12/22/41 was ‘MENE MENE TEKEL UPHARSIN’ at 23/16/26, according to Brewer, which also gives ‘IF YOU HATE GRAFFITI, SIGN A PARTITION’, at 19/1D/7, as an example of GRAFFITI. First prize C.V. Clark, London WC1 Runners-up Francesca Charlton, Sleaford, Lincs; A.R.