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Main story: English hospitals face £ 20m budget holes
Good morning and welcome to today’s briefing with me, Alison Rourke.
The NHS is facing a deficit of more than £ 1 billion to tackle the second wave of Covid-19, deal with the coming winter and restart routine operations, The Guardian discovered. Hospitals across England face budget gaps for the rest of the year of up to £ 20 million each, which they say is hampering preparations for winter. The NHS England is believed to have been forced to give trusts and clinical commissioning groups less than they calculated they needed to overcome over the next few months because the Treasury has given it less to shell out than it asked for. London’s NHS faces a £ 200 million gap and Greater Manchester faces a “significant gap”, according to officials. It raises questions about the chancellor’s commitment to give the NHS “all the resources it needs” to deal with the pandemic. Shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth said the funding gap “exposes the gulf between reality and Rishi Sunak’s deft turn on social media,” adding: “Ministers promised that the NHS would get everything what do you need. Now they must keep their promise to avoid a winter of misery for patients. “
In other coronavirus developments, an estimated 6 million small businesses in the UK supporting 16.6 million jobs are in a financially precarious position as a result of the pandemic, warned Kings Business School in London. Almost two-thirds of entrepreneurs felt their business might not survive the pressures of Covid-19, while more than half predicted that they would run out of money in the next 12 months. Overseas, China has detected 137 new asymptomatic coronavirus cases in Kashgar, in the northwest Xinjiang region, after a person was found to have the virus the day before, the country’s first new local cases in 10 days. The Australian city of Melbourne is finally beginning to ease its lockdown that has lasted for more than 100 days. You can stay up to date on this and all our news about coronavirus on our blog.
Oil tanker ‘hijacking’ – Seven stowaways were detained after the Special Craft Service raided a Liberian-registered tanker off the Isle of Wight, which they are suspected of attempting to hijack. The special forces gained control of the ship Andromeda within nine minutes after it was feared that the crew was no longer fully in charge. Hampshire police said all 22 members of the tanker’s crew were safe. The 228 meter tanker was expected to dock in Southampton on Sunday to pick up a shipment of gasoline, but its course in the English Channel turned erratic, prompting calls for intervention as it passed the southeast edge of the Isle of Wight. The ship left Lagos on October 6. Lloyd’s List, the maritime newspaper, said it believed seven stowaways had come on board in Nigeria.
School meals Downing Street is under mounting pressure to make a U-turn on free school meals during the holidays in England, with Conservative MPs angered by the refusal of No. 10 to back down on Marcus Rashford’s high-profile campaign. A Conservative MP told The Guardian that the problem had been a “political handling disaster” and that “they have never met so many Tory MPs and council leaders so angry.” Labor leader Keir Starmer turned up the pressure on Sunday and vowed to force a new Commons vote before Christmas unless the issue is reconsidered. Last night, at least 78 city councils had announced that they would activate medium-term food plans, either by offering food stamps or by providing additional financial and logistical support to local food banks and charities. Most of the city councils offering aid were run by Labor, including Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Newcastle, Bristol, Leeds and various London boroughs, with a small but growing number of Tory-run councils breaking ranks on the issue.
United States Election – Today begins a momentous week in the United States with the long-awaited confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. She would be the third person appointed by President Trump, something that has not happened in a single term since the 1980s. The Republican Party has become dramatically more illiberal in the last two decades and now looks more like the ruling parties in autocratic societies than their former center-right counterparts in Europe, according to a study by the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. . It found a significant change since 2000, in which the party has begun to demonize and encourage violence against its opponents, adopting attitudes and tactics comparable to those of the ruling nationalist parties in Hungary, India, Poland and Turkey. The change has led and been fueled by the rise of Donald Trump. The study found that the Democratic Party, by contrast, had changed little in its adherence to democratic norms, remaining similar to the center-right and center-left parties in Western Europe. In Covid, the US reported a second consecutive day on Sunday with more than 83,000 cases. It came as the Trump White House chief of staff made an unusually candid admission that the administration had no intention of containing the pandemic. You can keep up to date with all the news today and up to the November 3 poll on our 24-hour American blog.
‘Absolutely terrified’ – An Australian woman has recounted her ordeal when authorities took her off a Qatar Airways flight and strip-searched passengers while trying to identify the mother of a baby found in the Doha airport toilets. Kim Mills was one of nine women taken on the October 2 flight to Sydney. She said she was “absolutely terrified” when she was taken off the flight, but suspects she was not searched because she is 60 years old. But other women on the flight told her they were told to remove their underwear to be examined. The women were allowed to return to Sydney, but on Monday Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne said it was a “tremendously disturbing and offensive series of events.”
Frank Bough dies – The former presenter of the BBC rostrum has died at the age of 87. Bough, who also hosted the news magazine show Nationwide and Breakfast Time, was one of the corporation’s highest-paid and highest-profile television anchors in the 1970s and 1980s. He reportedly died last Wednesday in a residence. No further details have been released.
Podcast Today in Focus: 10 years of Instagram
This month marks 10 years since the launch of Instagram. Tech journalist Sarah Frier discusses how it went from a small startup to a multi-million dollar business and the impact the social media company has had on our lives.
10 years of Instagram
Lunchtime said, ‘I don’t wish anyone else cancer. But for me it has been a gift ‘
Singer and actress Olivia Newton-John talks about her third cancer diagnosis, taking cannabis and ayahuasca, having Karen Carpenter as her spirit guide, and why her hit movie Grease shouldn’t be accused of sexism.
Sport
Tao Geoghegan Hart has spoken of the “strange” feeling of becoming the fifth Briton to win a Grand Tour after his victory at the Giro d’Italia for Team Ineos Grenadiers, whose CEO hailed the victory as “comic book stuff.” Lewis Hamilton believes he can reach even greater heights, having surpassed Michael Schumacher’s record for Formula One racing victories following his victory at the Portuguese Grand Prix. Jamie Vardy came on as a substitute to score Leicester’s winning goal in their 1-0 Premier League win over Arsenal. Raúl Jiménez gave the Wolves the lead with 10 minutes to go before Jacob Murphy scored to beat Newcastle to a 1-1 draw, while goals from James Ward-Prowse and Che Adams gave Southampton a win by 2-0 over Everton, the league leaders’ first loss of the season. And England coach Simon Middleton paid tribute to his players after they retained their Six Nations Women’s title after their main rival France drew 13-13 with Scotland.
Deal
The global aerospace industry has endured the worst quarter in its history, with record minimum orders for new aircraft and 12,000 UK jobs already lost or at risk due to the collapse of travel caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Aircraft manufacturers received just 13 orders in July and August, according to defense and aerospace lobby group ADS. No orders were placed in September. That compares with 152 in the same period in 2019.
Big US tech companies are exploiting loopholes in global tax rules to avoid paying taxes of up to $ 2.8 billion (£ 2.1 billion) a year in developing countries, according to research by the charity. against poverty ActionAid International. Facebook, Google and Microsoft have all been accused of failing to pay a fair amount of taxes in poor countries where governments struggle to provide even basic health care or education to their citizens.
The pound is buying $ 1.30 and € 1.10.
The papers
Several of today’s newspapers carry news about the wrecked tanker on their front page. the guardian reads: “Elite Squad Assault Tanker ‘Captured’ Off South Coast” (but save the splash for “Johnson faces riot as Conservatives demand a U-turn on school meals”). the Times has a “special forces storm tanker off the Isle of Wight”; Subway leads with “SBS storm hijacker ship”; and the Telegraph says “Special forces retake ‘hijacked’ tanker”. Each of the tabloids goes their own way. the Mail sprinkles on “Twelve Minute Covid Testing in Boots”. the Mirror dedicates its cover to “children’s champion” Marcus Rashford, with the headline: “Marcus: Britain’s Pride.” the Quick leads with “Dementia Drug Scandal,” reporting that patients are being administered “dangerous” antipsychotic drugs to keep them sedated during the pandemic. the me Covid also leads, with the headline: “Vaccine Hopes Rise.” the FOOT focuses on the pandemic in the US and the president’s final electoral push with the headline: “Trump Claims Covid is ‘Turning Around’ Despite Increase in US Cases”
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