New figures released by the Office for National Statistics show Britain lost 148.8 million working days to sickness absence. That is 9.8 million more than 2019…
The ONS reports: “The sickness absence rate was 2.9% for public sector employees and 1.7% for those working in the private sector. Compared with 2024, the sickness absence rate for the public sector remained unchanged, while there was a 0.1 percentage point decrease in the private sector.” The private sector is now back to where it was pre-pandemic…
Part-time sickness absence rose 0.2% while full-time was flat. The gap is now 0.9%. The Employment Rights Bill is about to extend rights to flexible and part-time workers…
Starmer spoke to Nick Robinson for the Today Programme on Polanski’s criticism of the Golders Green police officers:
“I want everybody just to imagine what it might be like. You’re trying to arrest someone who has already attacked two people and has no regard for life. We know that tasers were fired. I know from my own experience with the police, that there are only two shots in a taser, and once you’ve shot them, there’s nothing left. There’s a guy on the ground, he’s got a rucksack on. And I don’t know what was going through the mind of those officers, but if I was there, I’d be thinking, he’s going to detonate something. He’s going to blow me up and everybody around here. In those circumstances, I think you can quite see why what could have gone through their mind is, we need to do whatever we can to disable this guy…
Now, when I then see Zack Polanski come out and retweet or support a criticism of that, I think it’s disgraceful… He’s not fit to lead any political party.”