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Politics

UK spent £100m on zombie Brexit border inspection posts

Five of seven facilities in England and Wales never reached operational stage as Tories vacillated over plans to check goods The UK wasted at least £100m in taxpayers’ money to set up zombie Brexit border inspection posts that were never used, it has been revealed. The overall cost of Brexit was put at an estimated £4.7bn by the National Audit Office last year but this included years-long transformation of the software used for customs declarations and other systems built to cope with the UK leaving the single market. Continue reading...

The Guardian
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Politics

‘I just got AI emails rejecting my application – or no reply at all’: this is the soul-crushing reality of being a Neet | John Harris

Alan Milburn describes them as a ‘lost generation’. Those I spoke to just want to know what they have to do to finally get a job – and a chance in life Callum Atkinson is 23 years old, and lives in the Greater Manchester town of Rochdale. Until very recently, he was one of hundreds of thousands of young people in the UK reckoned not to be in education, employment or training: what officialspeak rather coldly terms a Neet, and therefore part of a huge national problem being investigated by the former New Labour high-up Alan Milburn, whose final report on young people and work is due any day now

The Guardian
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Entertainment

Iphigénie en Tauride review – stylised staging of opera of bloodthirsty priestesses and divine intervention

Coliseum, London English National Opera’s production of Gluck’s opera has strong leads in Christine Rice, Nick Pritchard and Jacques Imbrailo. But why is it sung in French? Human sacrifice first; ask questions later. The story of Iphigénie among the Taurians, adapted from Euripides by Gluck and his librettist Guillard in 1779, is being told at English National Opera for the first time. It’s sung in French – more on that later – and staged by Lyndsey Turner, whose sparky Noyes Fludde won the company an Olivier award back in 2020. Within the narrow rectangular frame of Soutra Gilmour’s set, Iphi

The Guardian
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