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The inquiry into the Grenfell Tower Fire has hired multinational consultancy KPMG despite the firm having millions of pounds of contracts with three of the main bodied potentially being investigated by the inquiry. KPMG has lucrative contracts with Rydon – the main contractor in charge of the refurbishment which installed the cladding blamed by many residents for the rapid spread of the blaze; with Celotex – which make the insulation which police said failed safety tests, as well as the...

Everyone apart from the Health Secretary seemed to see this crisis coming a mile off says union GMB, the union for NHS workers, has demanded Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt resigns as the NHS crisis tailspins into catastrophe. Already in 2018 tens of thousands of non-emergency operations have been postponed, while the latest NHS figures show in the final week of 2017 almost 5,000 ambulances had to wait more than an hour to handover the patient to hospital. Before Christmas, GMB...

Some of the lowest CO2 emitting countries in the world are the least likely to survive a climate change apocalypse – thanks to their fuel guzzling neighbours. New research has revealed countries in sub-Saharan Africa are the most vulnerable to the perils of a potential environmental disaster despite emitting some of the lowest CO2 levels in the World. China emerged as the biggest carbon criminal emitting a mammoth 9,040 metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year – nearly...

Experts in a city nicknamed Britain’s 'Brexit Capital' are predicting a spike in racist attacks when the country leaves the EU next year. The people of Stoke-on-Trent showed their strength of feeling when 69 per cent voted to leave the EU in the 2016 referendum. In the two months following the shock result, Staffordshire Police dealt with 227 complaints of racial abuse – compared with just 50 in May of that year. Experts fear racist attacks will rise again across...

Tens of thousands of ambulances were dispatched with single crew in Scotland over the past four years. Despite the Scottish government previously saying single-crewing should occur only in "exceptional circumstances", a FOI request has today revealed that paramedics were sent out on their own to 2,204 emergency call-outs in 2016/17, and 3,514 went out the year before. The numbers have followed an upward trajectory since the data was first collected in 2013, when 1,644 ambulances were sent out with a...

An investigation has been launched after a man died in a waiting room for Accident and Emergency in a hospital in Dudley in the Midlands. The person died in Russells Hall Hospital's emergency waiting room in November, the NHS trust confirmed today. BBC Midlands reported that  the man was a suspected cardiac patient with chest pains. News of the investigation into the death of the patient waiting to be treated comes as new figures revealed that last week a third of...

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has leapt to the defence of his Government’s new appointment to its universities watchdog as other prominent Tories have defended Toby Young too despite his appalling comments about working class students and women. "Ridiculous outcry over Toby Young. He will bring independence, rigour and caustic wit. Ideal man for job,” tweeted Boris Johnson - a man also renowned for crass and offensive remarks. Perhaps this is an example of Toby Young’s “rigour and caustic wit':  ...

Fertility treatment could soon become more effective after scientists developed an 'assault course'... for sperm. It uses an obstacle course to separate the 'men from the boys' - identifying the strongest and fastest swimmers. Appropriately dubbed SPARTAN, after one of the most feared military forces in Ancient Greece, it uses obstacles to select the fastest and healthiest sperm. Already available for use in the clinic, it is hoped it will be helping women to become pregnant with fewer cycles of...

Theresa May was at pains yesterday to insist that a national A&E meltdown and 55 cancelled ops is NOT an NHS crisis. Even though Jeremy Hunt apologised for it, then appeared on TV again, insisting actually it wasn't a crisis as at least it’s not like last winter when loads of operations were cancelled 24 hours before. The Prime Minister and Health Secretary’s insistence that the current debacle across hospitals all over the UK is an unforeseeable consequence of winter...