Home
The RMT union decided to add a couple of rail strikes just before and after Christmas to those planned. Nurses, ambulance workers, driving test examiners, baggage handlers at Heathrow and bus drivers joined in. Postmen hoped to fit in another six strikes before the end of the month; Currys stopped using Royal Mail parcel delivery. ‘This is a time to come together and to send a very clear message to Mr Putin that we’re not going to be divided in this way,’ said Nadhim Zahawi, chairman of the Conservative party. ‘Our message to the unions is to say this is not a time to strike.’ Conor Burns had the Tory whip restored after being cleared of misconduct. He had been sacked as trade minister by Liz Truss after it was reported that someone claimed to have seen him touching the thigh of a young man in a hotel bar at the party conference; ‘It felt and smelt like a stitch-up,’ he said.
Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, said that the party would in its first term of office abolish the House of Lords and replace it with an elected chamber. He presented a report, A New Britain, by Gordon Brown, the former prime minister, which called for the transfer of 50,000 civil service jobs from London and the designation of 288 new economic clusters. Ian Blackford resigned as leader of Scottish Nationalist party MPs at Westminster; MPs elected Stephen Flynn to succeed him. Nine children since September had died from Group A Streptococcus infection. Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, in the face of Tory rebels, eased restrictions on onshore wind farms and dropped mandatory house-building targets. House prices fell 1.4 per cent from October to November, according to the Nationwide.
Lady Mone took leave of absence from the House of Lords ‘to clear her name’, from allegations that she benefited from a company she recommended for a contract for Covid masks and medical gowns. Lady Hussey resigned after 62 years as a Woman of the Bedchamber in the royal household. Her action followed a complaint from Ngozi Fulani, the founder of Sistah Space, a charity supporting women of African and Caribbean heritage who have experienced domestic abuse. Ms Fulani gave a long verbatim account of being asked by Lady Hussey at a Buckingham Palace reception where she ‘really’ came from. Queen Margrethe of Denmark celebrated her golden jubilee by visiting St Katharine’s Danish church near Regent’s Park; Prince Joachim of Denmark, her younger son, whose children were stripped of their titles, is moving to the United States. An egg was reported to have been thrown at the King during a walkabout in Luton.
Abroad
Russia launched its eighth wave of missile attacks on Ukraine in eight weeks, further damaging the energy infrastructure. President Vladimir Putin drove a Mercedes over the bridge that was damaged on 8 October linking Russian-annexed Crimea to the Russian mainland. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine visited Sloviansk in the Donetsk region. There were explosions at Russian military airfields at Saratov and Ryazan, hundreds of miles from the Ukrainian border; Russia blamed Ukrainian drones. Another drone strike hit fuel storage tanks at Kursk. The G7 and its allies set a cap of $60 a barrel for Russian oil and barred tankers from obtaining insurance if they carried oil for sale below the price.
China loosened its zero-Covid policy, but many older people remained unvaccinated. Leaders of the African National Congress, South Africa’s governing party, backed President Cyril Ramaphosa, who faced corruption allegations; an independent report had said he might have broken the law by covering up the theft of money hidden in a sofa. Protestors in the Druze-majority city of Suweida in southern Syria stormed the governor’s office. Indonesia’s parliament approved a new criminal code forbidding anyone in the country, including tourists, from extramarital sex. Mount Semeru in Indonesia erupted, throwing a plume of volcanic ash 50,000 feet into the air.
In Germany 25 were arrested on suspicion of plotting to overthrow the government. President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador said he had sent 10,000 troops to surround the city of Soyapango, eight miles from the capital, as part of a huge crackdown on drug gangs. England beat Senegal 3-0 in the World Cup, to meet France in the quarter-finals. CSH
Comments