Andy Burnham accepted free accommodation at Glastonbury festival from a music royalties company months before the Greater Manchester Combined Authority paid it more than £35,000. Must have been a nice tent…
Burnham registered £1,000 of Glastonbury accommodation in June last year for two from PRS for Music LTD. Four months later, on 27 October, GMCA paid PPL PRS Limited £35,966.80 in “copyright collecting fees.” PPL PRS Limited is the joint venture owned 50/50 by PRS for Music and PPL…
The payment will likely be for playing the company’s music in public spaces or elsewhere on GMCA property. After reaching a certain age people really prefer the nicer “glamping” arrangements at Glastonbury, otherwise you get no sleep and a bad back – they are pricey though…
Eyebrows have also been raised after media company EY3 Media donated £45,000 of free promotional videos to Burnham during the 2021 and 2024 Manchester mayoral elections before receiving at least £338,400 from the GMCA for “publicity” and “other promotional services.” Reform’s latest advert in Makerfield accuses Burnham of “cronyism”…
Reform will begin sharing the video above across social media later today. It is party’s second attack ad of the Makerfield campaign. This time accusing Burnham of cronyism…
Burnham is accused of lending property developer Renaker millions in public money without full financial checks, with a tribunal warning taxpayer funds were left at risk of being ‘wiped out’. His team denies this, although the case reaches the Court of Appeal tomorrow. Nine days before polling day in Makerfield…
The White House is reportedly weighing up buying the Chagos Islands outright, though the idea is “not the leading solution” at the time of going to pixel. According to the Telegraph, US officials have drafted a paper of alternatives to Starmer’s surrender plan to hand the territory to Mauritius, with an outright purchase among the options raised directly with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent before reaching Trump’s desk. The stakes have obviously risen since the war in Iran…
Buying the islands wouldn’t bypass Britain cleanly, because Washington would first have to let Starmer’s deal go through, then negotiate with Mauritius once sovereignty had transferred. Given that deal is dead in the water, it isn’t hard to work out why this isn’t the White House’s first choice…
US food company Ingredion has just agreed to buy one of the oldest listed companies in the world, Tate & Lyle, for £2.7 billion. So ends its stint of almost a century on the London Stock Exchange…
The Victorian sugar refining company – founded in 1903 – has since switched to fibrous foods and sugar replacements. The LSE takes another blow after Schroders’ was snatched up by the US this year. And that’s on top of the IPOs London has missed out on…
The one policy announcement was: tech companies must stop children from sending or receiving naked images of themselves, or Starmer will change the law. Two other tidbits: AI tutors will be rolled out to 450,000 children on free school meals, and the government has launched a new AI jobseeking tool…
Former leader of the SNP in Westminster Ian Blackford told Times Radio why he believes Nicola Sturgeon’s claim that she spent no time in the kitchen and therefore didn’t see any of her husband’s purchases:
“She doesn’t have a passion for cooking.”
