£100m spent in England on failed efforts to block children’s Send support

Exclusive: Councils win just 1.2% of tribunals, as experts see signs provision is becoming a battle with desperate familiesAnalysis: Why England’s Send system is buckling‘Fobbed off and rejected’: Birmingham’s Send crisisMore than £100m was spent last year by local authorities and the government on failed efforts to block support for children and young people with special educational needs in England, according to analysis by the Guardian.The enormous cost in legal fees and staff resources came after councils won just 136 out of more than 10,000 tribunals in 2022-23, a success rate of 1.2%, as record numbers of families took to the courts to challenge councils over agreements known as education, health and care plans (EHCPs). Continue reading...

About 1 million people in UK yet to obtain eVisa days before deadline

Physical residence permits proving right to live and work in Britain will cease to be valid at end of DecemberAbout 1 million people who need to obtain eVisas to prove their right to live and work in the UK or return after travelling abroad have not yet done so even though the deadline to register is just over a week away.The eVisa programme set up by the previous government is a digital system to prove the right to reside in the UK for British residents who are not citizens or holders of British passports. No other country is known to be entirely ceasing to issue both physical entry visas and residence permits. Continue reading...

Magdeburg Christmas market attack: authorities received warnings about suspect

German government to investigate whether more could have been done to prevent car attack that killed fiveThe German government has vowed to investigate whether a Christmas market car attack that killed five people and injured 200 could have been prevented, after it emerged that authorities had received multiple warnings about the suspect.Amid mounting criticism of Germany’s security apparatus, the interior minister, Nancy Faeser, said on Sunday that the heads of the domestic and foreign intelligence services would be questioned by two parliamentary committees next week. Continue reading...

Photographs reveal first glimpse of uncontacted Amazon community

Exclusive: Automatic cameras in the Brazilian rainforest show images of the Massaco people, who are flourishing despite environmental threatsRead more on this story: New images show Brazil’s uncontacted people are thriving – but with success comes a new threatRemarkable images taken by automatic cameras in the Brazilian rainforest reveal an isolated community that appears to be thriving despite pressure from ranchers and illegal encroachment into the Amazon.The pictures, of a group of men, offer the outside world its first glimpse of the community – and give further evidence the population is growing. The group is known as the Massaco after the river that runs through their lands, but no one knows what they call themselves, while their language, social fabric and beliefs remain a mystery. Continue reading...

Small plane crashes into popular Brazilian tourist town, killing at least 10

Crash in Gramado kills all passengers and crew onboard, with more than a dozen people also injured on the groundA small plane crashed into a Brazilian town popular with tourists on Sunday, killing all 10 passengers on board and injuring more than a dozen people on the ground, Brazil’s Civil Defense Agency said.In a post on X, the agency said the plane hit the chimney of a home and then the second floor of a nearby building before crashing into a mobile phone shop in a largely residential neighbourhood of Gramado. More than a dozen people who were on the ground were taken to hospital with injuries including smoke inhalation. Two were said to be in critical condition. Continue reading...

Díaz and Salah double up as leaders Liverpool run riot at Tottenham

Well done, boys, good process. Liverpool stretched their lead at the top of the Premier League to four points, having played one game fewer than second-placed Chelsea, with the latest illustration of their remorseless cut and thrust under Arne Slot.It was an occasion when Tottenham, playing their way, the Ange Postecoglou way, with zero compromises, were taken to pieces. They conceded six but it could and should have been double figures. Time and again, Liverpool sliced through and a prominent detail at the end of a wild afternoon was the glaring nature of some of their misses. Continue reading...

Archbishop of York twice reappointed priest in sexual abuse case, report says

Stephen Cottrell admits situation ‘could have been handled differently’ as pressure mounts over David Tudor scandalThe archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, has come under increased pressure after reports that he twice reappointed a priest at the heart of a sexual abuse case.A BBC investigation found Cottrell renewed David Tudor’s contract as area dean in Essex on two occasions while Cottrell was bishop of Chelmsford. Continue reading...

Winds blow UK Christmas travel off course, with ferries and flights cancelled

More than 100 Heathrow flights cancelled, along with ferry services between Northern Ireland and ScotlandThousands of people in the UK are facing a Christmas travel nightmare after strong winds led to the cancellation of hundreds of flights and ferries.A Met Office yellow weather warning was in place until 9pm on Sunday from John o’Groats to Land’s End, with gusts of up to 60mph widespread and some as strong as 70mph on hills and around exposed coasts. Continue reading...

Staff at top London restaurants consider legal action over cover charges

Exclusive: unions could back legal action against firms such as Harrods that levy a charge that is not passed on to staffWorkers are considering legal action against a swathe of upmarket London restaurant owners including Harrods, the Savoy Grill, the Ivy and the Wolseley that add a cover charge to diners’ bills that does not go to workers.Legislation that came into force in October requires business owners to hand over all tips and service charges to staff. However, a number of restaurants add a mandatory cover charge as well as a service charge and only pass on the latter to workers. Continue reading...

Guinness raids its Irish reserves to ease UK shortages amid gen Z demand

Diageo also reportedly puts shipments for North America on standby for potential diversion to keep up with thirstGuinness is raiding its reserves in Ireland to boost shipments to the UK, where a social media-fuelled surge in demand has left some pubs facing shortages.The reserves – known as security stocks – are usually earmarked for Irish customers but are now being used to ease pressure on publicans in the UK who have struggled to keep up with new fans after a marketing push in recent years. Continue reading...

How far do Elon Musk and Reform UK share a political vision?

Immigration, culture wars and shrinking the public sector all feature highly on their agendasThe get-together last week of Elon Musk, Nigel Farage and Reform UK’s treasurer, Nick Candy, was not just a gathering of Donald Trump fans. It was a meeting of minds.Immigration, culture wars and shrinking the public sector all feature highly on their political agendas, developed under the umbrella of Trump’s Maga vision. Continue reading...

Assisi braces for visitor influx as Jubilee year for Catholics starts on Christmas Eve

Some in the small, medieval town famed for St Francis worry too many people will come because of ‘Millennial saint’ Carlo AcutisInside a souvenir shop in Assisi, the face of a boy with thick black curly hair smiles out from wall tapestries, fridge magnets and key rings, outshining the flying cherubim, snow globes and other religious trinkets that cram the shelves.But the owner, Elvira Boccacci, is struggling to explain to some intrigued tourists who Carlo Acutis, the boy in the image, is. “Americans have asked if he’s an Italian footballer, because of his tracksuit top,” she said. Continue reading...

‘The great capitulation’: why key US figures are seeking Trump’s favor

People from tech executives to foreign leaders and even some mainstream media figures are ‘acquiescing in advance’, experts say, because of greed and fearWhen “Justice for All”, a dirge-like version of the national anthem sung by defendants jailed over their alleged roles in the January 6, 2021 insurrection, was played last month at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, guests stood with hand on heart.Among them was Mark Zuckerberg, the billionaire founder of Facebook. Continue reading...

Tuesday Morning, Kentish Town: a short story by the award-winning author Kevin Barry

In this exclusive tale four generations of an expat Irish family share a London house, where they gossip and drink and dream as Christmas draws nearTwo Irish ladies in their high 70s sat drinking gin as they looked out to the great pall of winter: the drearier end of Kentish Town, late in the morning. There was a snap of rain on the wind, a lowering December sky.“You’re takin’ your life in your hands with them things,” said Annie. Continue reading...

Bad Tidings review – like Home Alone, if it starred Lee Mack and Chris McCausland

The two comics are warring neighbours left to fight off a gang of local thieves at Christmas. Let the family-friendly festive fun begin, ya filthy animals …‘If everyone else thinks Scott’s a nice, normal, easy-to-get-on-with bloke except you – what does that tell you?” says Neil’s exasperated wife, Laura. “That he’s winning,” snarls Neil. Such is the setup for this year’s Sky Christmas film, Bad Tidings.Scott, a blind man (played by the comedian Chris McCausland, who is also blind), is a recent arrival on the close who has quickly made friends with all the neighbours. Except Neil, who sees through his congenial act and just knows that the festive lights still up on Scott’s house (we open in March and move swiftly on to August with no change in domestic illuminations), despite Neil’s repeated requests to take them down as they shine into his bedroom, is an act of war. He knows Scott is laughing at him just as surely as he knows Scott keeps nicking his recycling bin. Neil is played by Lee Mack, giving great value as a kid’n’Christmas-appropriate version of his character “Lee” from Not Going Out. Continue reading...

Rob Brydon: ‘Ruth Jones is the closest thing I have to a sister’

The Gavin & Stacey actor on the last ever Christmas special, first working with his co-star Ruth Jones aged 14, and why he puts family before his careerBorn in Baglan, south Wales, in 1965, Rob Brydon’s father was a car salesman and his mother a teacher. He attended the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama but left aged 20 to work for BBC Radio Wales. Jobs followed on regional TV, shopping channels and advert voiceovers, before his break at 35 with his one-man sitcom, Marion and Geoff, and Human Remains, a series with Julia Davis; both were produced by Steve Coogan’s production company, Baby Cow. Today, he mixes primetime gameshow presenting with acting, and reprises his role as Uncle Bryn on Christmas Day in BBC One’s Gavin & Stacey: The Finale.Uncle Bryn, a role written for you by Ruth Jones and James Corden, is such a beloved character. Be honest: how much of you is in him? I think it’s probably quite a lot. But what I realised a while ago is that the best acting is when you see where you and the character meet – and I heard Al Pacino say this, so it must be right! Still, when Bryn is enthralled by something like technology, or when he’s a bit wide-eyed, I do wonder if that’s something they’ve directly observed in me. Continue reading...

Pitch perfect: why listening to cricket on radio soothes a world that won’t hear sense

Waves crashing. Cicadas singing. And always the burble of cricket on the radio, unifying summers and people with its gentle pleasures for an uncertain worldMy father was a man of his generation, which meant when summer rolled around and the cricket season started, he insisted on muting Channel Nine’s coverage and blasting the ABC’s radio commentary instead.Ours was a complicated relationship but one thing for which I’ll be forever grateful was the way my father shared his love for Test cricket with me. I grew up as a cricket obsessive. My love for the game survived childhood, adolescence, and even the realisation that, given I was batting No 11 for South Melbourne under-12s, my dream to open the batting for Australia was unlikely to be fulfilled. Continue reading...

Treasure Island review – dashing female pirates strike gold on high seas

Orange Tree, Richmond Playwright Hannah Khalil weaves the real stories of buccaneering women into Stevenson’s classic adventure story, in a show filled with youthful verveWhen two women offer their services to a crew setting off for adventures at sea, young Jim Hawkins expresses his surprise. They have always been there, the women tell Jim, but just haven’t been well documented. Playwright Hannah Khalil is rectifying this in her retelling of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic by combining his tale of buccaneers and buried gold with that of 19th-century female sailors – but without making it a jarring history lesson.It is structured as a relived memory for Jim, who is looking to the moment an old shipmate of Captain Flint enters his mother’s inn and dies. That death sets off the discovery of Flint’s map containing the location of hidden treasure, and the expedition to find it by a ragtag fleet of sailors. Among them is Long John Silver, the pirate disguised as a cook, and the two female sailors who scheme to mutiny and take control of the treasure. Continue reading...

‘A long-distance hug’: readers and gen Z on the joy – and expense – of sending Christmas cards

Sales of Christmas cards are down as soaring price of stamps means many people opt for digital festive greetingsThe soaring price of stamps has cast doubt on the future of Christmas cards, but despite the money and time involved it seems gen Z want to keep the festive tradition likened to sending a “long distance hug”.This year, sales of boxed cards are down 23%, and individual Christmas cards 15%, according to John Lewis’s annual shopping trends report, but people have embraced Instagram or WhatsApp to share festive greetings, or sent e-cards. Some send a combination. Continue reading...

Usyk stakes claim as best man in boxing after making Fury eat his words | Donald McRae

Boxing is full of unsavoury people but it also produces extraordinary men. The Ukrainian champion is one of themAs Oleksandr Usyk walked towards us just after three in the morning, resplendent in his purple tracksuit while carrying Eeyore under his arm, his promoter let slip a gentle cry: “Here he comes, the best man in boxing …”Alex Krassyuk is not a traditional boxing promoter, being a much more understated man than most of his contemporaries in this riotous old business. But his pride was understandable in the immediate aftermath of Usyk’s decisive second successive defeat of Tyson Fury. Continue reading...

Whose lunch is it anyway? Match the authors with their midday meal

You can tell a lot about a person from the food they eat. But can you match these seven writers to the things they devour?Before trying to guess which lunch belongs to whom, take a minute to meet the seven writers whose eating habits you will be interrogating…Francis SpuffordInitially a writer of nonfiction, Spufford published his first novel, Golden Hill, in 2016 and won a clutch of awards including the Ondaatje prize. His latest novel is Cahokia Jazz and he teaches creative writing at Goldsmiths. Continue reading...

Ange Postecoglou’s unserious Spurs exposed by serious Liverpool | Jonathan Liew

Spurs can win spectacularly and are fun but they could have had Arne Slot in 2023 and instead have the same pot of relaunched stasisLiverpool are serious about this. They’re not in London for souvenirs or sightseeing. They had a game four days earlier, they’ve got another in four days’ time, and so all they really want for Christmas is to get in, get the points and get out. They’d rather do it clean. But they’ll do it dirty if they have to.Above all, they know exactly what they want. Luis Díaz wants to spin off his man and run from deep, and Ryan Gravenberch wants to plug the gaps and get the ball moving, Dominik Szoboszlai wants you to commit, but not until he’s put you half a step off balance first, and Mo Salah wants to be Mo Salah. They can go short or long, hit you from every angle, hurt you from every bit of the pitch. Nine Liverpool players made a key pass in this game, including the goalkeeper and both full-backs. Continue reading...

Time for Tyson Fury to consider leaving the stage after Usyk defeat dims aura

The Briton stayed the distance against Oleksandr Usyk but after back-to-back defeats what is left for the 36-year-old to prove?In the end everyone runs out of road. It was probably necessary for Tyson Fury to say he was robbed in the Kingdom Arena on Saturday night. Boxing demands this level of irrationality. Logical multimillionaires do not willingly schedule a brain-jarring, soul‑shredding half-hour beating from one of the most effective practitioners of controlled violence ever to walk the planet. A basic suspension of reason is required. Without it no one would ever step in the ring.So Fury will maintain that all three judges were wrong to award a unanimous points decision in Oleksandr Usyk’s favour after 12 thrillingly intense rounds in Riyadh. Last time out Fury said he lost because of the war in Ukraine. This time he said it was because of Christmas. Nobody was robbed here. Fury, the challenger, needed to go out and actively take the heavyweight belts. In the event the champion always seemed to have his head above the water. Continue reading...

Amorim says Manchester United were nervous in rout by Bournemouth

Visitors enjoy successive 3-0 wins at Old Trafford‘I felt it from the first minute, there’s a lot of anxiety’Ruben Amorim has admitted Manchester United’s players were nervous on Sunday during their 3-0 defeat by Bournemouth, which left the club 13th and in the bottom half on Christmas Day for the first time since 1989.The defeat was a second in a row by that scoreline at home against Bournemouth, almost exactly a year after the first. United went behind to the seventh goal they have conceded in the past six games at a set play. Continue reading...

Nicolas Jackson denied as Chelsea’s winning run is ended by Everton

The immediate aim of the Friedkin Group is to restore stability to Everton after their takeover on Thursday. In some ways, Sean Dyche has beaten his new employers to it. High-flying Chelsea became the latest team to run into a royal blue wall and out of ideas as they lost valuable ground in the title race.Enzo Maresca declared himself content with a point at a ground where Chelsea had lost on five of their previous six visits, despite the end of an eight-match winning run in all competitions. The Chelsea head coach has insisted all along that his young side lack the experience and pedigree to sustain a title challenge with Liverpool. His argument gained credence here but Everton, he asserted, provided a valuable learning curve for a team that failed to score in a Premier League game for the first time since the opening day. Continue reading...

Vítor Pereira’s Wolves reign gets off to flying start against brittle Leicester

It took less than 45 minutes of Vítor Pereira’s Wolves tenure for the supporters to sing his name as he witnessed his new side thrash Leicester. The Portuguese will, however, want to take note of his opposite number, Ruud van Nistelrooy, who has gone from triumph in his first game to being booed off in fewer than three weeks.The atmosphere at Wolves has been dark in recent weeks. Mario Lemina lost the captaincy after an altercation with West Ham’s Jarrod Bowen, Matheus Cunha was charged by the Football Association for taking out his anger last weekend on spectacles belonging to a member of the Ipswich staff and Gary O’Neil paid with his job for securing only nine points from 16 games, but that was forgotten here. Continue reading...

Joe Cullen storms out of press conference at PDC worlds over lack of respect

‘I’ve been shown no respect … I’m going to go home’Ian White jokingly calls Luke Littler ‘Runcorn’s No 2’Joe Cullen stormed out of his post-match press conference after accusing the media of a lack of respect following a 3-0 second-round win over Wessel Nijman at the PDC World Darts Championship.The 2022 Masters champion, who will face the 2021 world champion Gerwyn Price next, gave short answers during a tetchy on-stage interview at Alexandra Palace. Bradford-born Cullen then vented his frustration at reporters backstage before departing prematurely. Continue reading...

Saracens serve Premiership notice with six-try victory against Northampton

Saracens 39-24 NorthamptonFergus Burke leads the way for home side with two tries It was a cold, bleak midwinter afternoon in north London but the race to be crowned as England’s top club side in 2025 is hotting up. Saracens also have key upcoming games against the Premiership pacesetters Bath and Bristol over the next fortnight and this emphatic win against the champions of last season underlined their ambitions to finish top of the tree in six months’ time.If it helped that Northampton, 24-0 down at half-time, were initially miles off the pace there was no doubting the hosts’ superior power, aggression and defensive line speed off the back of a couple of encouraging Champions Cup results. Their aerial game also heaped pressure on Saints’ rearguard and the upshot was six tries and third place in the table heading into Christmas. Continue reading...

Generation TikTok: how sportswomen set the bar higher than the men

Female athlete power on social media became ever more strident in 2024 – but the backlash also damaged careers and wellbeingLina Nielsen remembers the moment she had the idea. She was sitting around the Olympic Village in Paris with her sprinting teammates – and she was bored. “I said to Yemi Mary John: ‘I’m gonna make this TikTok’,” Nielsen recalls. She took herself to her bedroom, got out the flip phone each athlete had been given and typed into an Excel spreadsheet: “Where you at? Holla at me.”Her five-second spoof of Kelly Rowland’s music-video texting fail took hardly longer than that to make. It also got 8m views. “It’s funny that the videos that do that best are the ones you don’t put any effort in,” says Nielsen with a laugh. She is still trying to make sense of the fact that her TikTok channel was the most popular of any British athlete at the Games, beating even the knit-tastic Tom Daley in second place. At the end of the Olympic fortnight her channels had been viewed by more than the Australian and German teams combined. Continue reading...

I travelled up and down the UK this year. One album sums up what I saw | John Harris

Weariness, confusion, flashes of anger – for me, English Teacher’s lyrics evoke the texture of British life todayThe most revelatory experience I had this year happened at Glastonbury, on the festival’s Saturday night. I was at the Left Field, the 1,500-capacity big top where the afternoons begin with panel discussions about politics, and the evenings are given over to music. The penultimate attraction of the day was a quartet from Leeds called English Teacher, who played for an hour, and took my breath away: not just because their music was brimming with ideas and creativity, but because it also seemed to perfectly crystallise the state of the country. As the performance went on, the crowd received it all with an increasing feeling of rapture; by the end, it felt like everyone had concluded that they were experiencing something very special indeed.Their first album, This Could Be Texas, came out in April. Its songs do not achieve their feats with rhetoric or sloganeering, nor have much to do with party politics: their subject matter is too kaleidoscopic to be reduced to simple social or political commentary, and like the best zeitgeist-capturing musicians, English Teacher deal in poetic, impressionistic, often wonderfully strange language. The words written, sung and spoken by the singer and lyricist Lily Fontaine sometimes suggest fragments of conversations you might hear at bus stops, or in pubs or cafes, full of a sense of life having been upturned, but human beings somehow muddling on: “Shoes were bought, broken in / One new pair breaks the bank … Can a river stop its banks from bursting? Blame the council, not the rain / No preparation for the breakdown … That country is in a bad state / There’s a familiar atmosphere about the place”.John Harris is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

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