United Kingdom

Ministers failed to act on advice to tighten security laws that could have prevented an alleged Chinese spy from targeting Prince Andrew, a ­former attorney general has said.

Dominic Grieve, a former Tory MP who chaired the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) until 2019, said ministers were advised five years ago to introduce laws to criminalise foreign agents, but failed to do so. Similar laws already exist in the US and Australia.

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In 2019, the ISC recommended ministers make it a criminal offence to act as an agent of a foreign power without disclosing that fact. If parliament had adopted the new law, foreign agents could be arrested.

"If you are operating in the US and masquerading as a businessman but in fact you are on the payroll of the Chinese state and you don’t divulge that, then you can prosecute that person for being an undisclosed agent of a foreign power,” Grieve told the Observer.

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The Duke of York’s tangle with an alleged Chinese spy comes a month after Keir Starmer, the prime minister, said the UK needs a “strong UK-China relationship” after meeting Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, at the G20 summit.

Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, is due to visit Beijing in January for trade discussions, shortly before Donald Trump becomes US president for a second time and is likely to impose stringent tariffs on Chinese imports.

Prince Andrew, 64, has faced accusations that he used his position and his publicly funded official trips abroad as a cover to make money from private business deals and to promote his Dragons’ Den-style Pitch@Palace project connecting fledgling ­businesses with investors.

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Main ones I can think of:

1. Be attractive. If unattractive, at least be disabled in some way.
2. Dress as skimpily as possible. Show legs at all time if female.
3. Forget dancing, just throw your partner around. Get your face to her crotch at any opportune moment.
4. Make really inappropriate comments to each other during the talking phase. Really sell the idea you're having an affair on live camera.
5. Choose the shittiest pop songs you can find. Make sure it's not the original, but some shitty mock-soul cover.
6. If a presenter, give off the impression of fighting a sickly illness. Anorexia is desired if possible.

Any other rules I'm missing?

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/17547361

Archived

Britain's financial regulator is taking longer than usual to approve fast-fashion retailer Shein's IPO [Initial Public Offering] because it is checking its supply chain oversight and assessing legal risks after an advocacy group for China's Uyghur population challenged the listing, according to two sources close to the matter.

Britain's Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, a monitoring body of the interior ministry, has also raised concerns within government over a Shein IPO because of allegations about labour practices at its suppliers.

Singapore-headquartered Shein, which sells $5 tops and $10 dresses mostly made in China in 150 markets worldwide, filed confidentially with the Financial Conduct Authority in early June for a London listing.

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The FCA (Financial Conduct Authority in the UK] is under no obligation to assess evidence presented by civil society groups, and will generally let investors take their own position, said Lorna Emson, partner at law firm Macfarlanes. If it did find compliance concerns, it would tend to address these confidentially with the company itself.

But NGO pressure is unlikely to fade.

"Regulators are being given more to think about – and are required to do so under the watchful scrutiny of the increasingly well-funded and litigious NGO and activist community," said Lucy Blake, partner at law firm Jenner & Block. NGOs are not alone in raising concern over Shein's IPO.

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The Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner wrote to the Home Office and Department for Business in June about the IPO, according to previously unreported letters obtained by Reuters through a Freedom of Information request.

"Encouraging a company like Shein to float on the UK market inadvertently implies endorsement of poor labour practices and the prioritisation of attracting business to the UK over human rights abuses," Commissioner Eleanor Lyons wrote. The Home Office and Department for Business jointly replied that the FCA decides independently on listings and the UK has rules to guard against modern slavery.

Like other retailers, Shein must comply with incoming European Union regulations on forced labour and the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act in the U.S., both of which are considered stronger than Britain's Modern Slavery Act.

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Worker exploitation has been rife in supply chains of retailers and brands around the world, not just in low-cost fashion but also in luxury.

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A Chinese businessman described as a "close confidant" of the Duke of York has lost an appeal against a decision to bar him from the UK on national security grounds.

The man, known only as H6, brought the case after being banned from entering the country in March 2023.

Judges heard the businessman had formed a close working relationship with Prince Andrew, receiving an invite to his birthday party in 2020 and being told he could act on his behalf when dealing with potential investors in China.

Buckingham Palace declined to comment, saying only that they do not act for the prince, who is not a working royal.

An undercover police officer has denied that he set fire to a high street department store while masquerading as an animal rights campaigner, a public inquiry has heard.

Six witnesses have told the undercover policing inquiry that Bob Lambert, a police spy, was involved in an arson attack on a Debenhams that caused damage costing £340,000.

Testifying under oath, Lambert repeatedly maintained that all six were wrong. He also denied claims that he had submitted distorted intelligence reports to his supervisors to conceal his own role in the arson plot.

Lambert is the most controversial police spy to have been questioned so far by the inquiry, which is examining how undercover officers spied on more than 1,000 political groups over more than four decades.

As well as his alleged role in the arson attacks on Debenhams, Lambert deceived four women into sexual relationships while he spent five years undercover infiltrating animal rights activists and anarchists in the 1980s.

He fathered a son with one of the women, known as Jacqui, and then vanished from their lives. She has told the inquiry that her life was “absolutely ruined” after discovering the truth by chance more than two decades after their child was born.

I'll probably stick to asking for oat milk instead of "porridge water" or whatever the new mandated name will be. To be honest I do think calling it "milk" lets them inflate the price when it is essentially porridge water.

Typhoo Tea has been rescued by vape maker Supreme in a £10m deal which it said would keep the brand "in British hands".

The 120-year-old teamaker fell in to administration in November as its sales slumped and debts rose.

Manchester-based Supreme makes the e-cigarette brand 88Vape and distributes nicotine and home products to supermarkets.

Record number of deportees includes children who may have spent most of their lives in the UK

The last time house prices were this expensive relative to average earnings was in the year 1876, nearly 150 years ago.

Source: https://www.schroders.com/en-gb/uk/individual/insights/what-174-years-of-data-tell-us-about-house-price-affordability-in-the-uk/

If I wanted to take my family on a week-long trip to London during Easter, how much of the city would be shut down? Are the shops closed and so on?

I know Good Friday is a bank holiday, but I don't know what exactly it means beyond, I suppose, the banks being closed? 😁

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/5231417

Archived link

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy chair of Russia’s Security Council and a vocal critic of Western nations, has reportedly purchased a 3.5-million-pound (USD4.4 million, EUR4.2 million) luxury yacht manufactured in the United Kingdom.

The vessel, named Hurry Up, was produced by Plymouth-based Princess Yachts in 2024 and imported into Russia through a foundation allegedly linked to Medvedev, according to the investigative outlet The Insider.

The foundation, known as the Foundation for the Support of National Maritime Programs, facilitated the import through a related company, documents reveal.

The foundation is headed by Dmitry Ustratov, an associate of Ilya Yeliseyev, a long-time confidant of Medvedev and overseer of his financial interests.

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