Speaker 1: And so we go to the UK reports for this
Speaker 1: morning and it's a terribly British start to the UK
Speaker 1: report gaming because we're going to talk about the weather.
Speaker 2: Good morning, is okay?
Speaker 3: We are indeed, yes our third heat wave of the
Speaker 3: summer so far this year. Now, the heat waves here
Speaker 3: are basically when you have a number of days over
Speaker 3: thirty celsius. And of course that may not sound terribly
Speaker 3: dramatic to you guys, but it is pretty big here
Speaker 3: because we're not sort of cut out and certainly nature
Speaker 3: here isn't cutout of noticing things dying back and dying
Speaker 3: off in the gardens and in the countryside as well,
Speaker 3: and a big shortage of water.
Speaker 2: I'll come to that in a minute.
Speaker 3: So yesterday wasn't as hot as they were predicting, but
Speaker 3: it was over thirty three degrees celsius.
Speaker 2: And Scotland.
Speaker 3: Recording temperatures over thirty two celsius, which is very unusual.
Speaker 3: That's the first time Scotland has exceeded thirty celsius in
Speaker 3: the last couple of years.
Speaker 2: But it's the fact that it's the third heat wave.
Speaker 3: Normally we might get one, but this time already before
Speaker 3: we've even got through to mid July, we're having three,
Speaker 3: which suggests of course.
Speaker 2: That they could be more on the way.
Speaker 3: In Europe, it has led to temperatures bordering on forty
Speaker 3: seven celsius in southern Portugal and southern Spain really really
Speaker 3: baking things there, and that of course has led to
Speaker 3: what some are saying could be many hundreds of undiagnosed
Speaker 3: deaths as it were, because of the heat wave. But
Speaker 3: what is also leading to here in the UK is
Speaker 3: that now we've got hose pipe bands, water restrictions for
Speaker 3: millions of people and that is obviously causing some concern.
Speaker 2: We are seeing seven million.
Speaker 3: Now in the area of Yorkshire that's in the northeast,
Speaker 3: Kent in the southeast, and Sussex in the south of England,
Speaker 3: all affected with restrictions on certain activities like watering gardens,
Speaker 3: washing cars, filling up paddling pools and a heft defying
Speaker 3: threatened for all of that Southeast. Water, which is the
Speaker 3: one that obviously governs down in the southeast of England,
Speaker 3: said demand for drinking water had reached record levels since May.
Speaker 3: We've not really had any substantial rainfall for some considerable
Speaker 3: time now here in the UK, and I'm afraid that's
Speaker 3: also meant as well quite a few wildfires. First of all,
Speaker 3: wildfire warnings across almost all of Britain, but in Scotland
Speaker 3: an extreme wildfire is in effect after cruise have been
Speaker 3: battling a blaze in Perth, and firefighters near me here
Speaker 3: in Surrey, to the southwest of London battling a blaze
Speaker 3: in a beautiful stretch of woodland south of Farnham, where
Speaker 3: that blaze eight hectors in size of last night. Local
Speaker 3: people being told to avoid the area and keep windows
Speaker 3: and doors shut.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my mum's been telling me about the heat and
Speaker 1: being outside in the garden and very very hot, she says.
Speaker 1: All right. Two men, both age twenty one, have appeared
Speaker 1: in court after a car crashed into a care home
Speaker 1: in Sunderland, in the north of England.
Speaker 3: Yes, so the pair were allegedly in a BMW three
Speaker 3: series car and this car was being pursued by police.
Speaker 3: Now we're not entirely sure what the pursuit was about,
Speaker 3: but all this will no doubt come out, and at
Speaker 3: very high speed the car smashed into a care.
Speaker 2: Home which was beside the road.
Speaker 3: I would have said, but actually some distance back from
Speaker 3: the road and left a gaping hole in it. Now
Speaker 3: that led to a number of the care home residents being.
Speaker 2: Taken to hospital.
Speaker 3: Others were evacuated, but police are also investigating.
Speaker 2: Was two days.
Speaker 3: Within a day after the crash, two of the care
Speaker 3: home residents died. Now, of course they are elderly, one
Speaker 3: in her eighties, one in her nineties. But could it
Speaker 3: be linked to the shock of having a car crashed
Speaker 3: through into the lounge or the area where you are.
Speaker 2: You know, it must have been quite.
Speaker 3: Terrifying, So the authorities are looking at whether there is
Speaker 3: a link between the crash and their deaths. Two twenty
Speaker 3: one year olds have appeared now in court. They're charged
Speaker 3: with robbery of a BMW three series and the kidnap
Speaker 3: of a woman selling the car who was in the.
Speaker 2: Vehicle for a test drive.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: Now one is of no fixed address.
Speaker 3: He's also charged with causing serious injury by dangerous driving
Speaker 3: and one of the care home residents suffered spinal fractures
Speaker 3: and they've both been reminded to in court later on. Now,
Speaker 3: as you can imagine, people are very curious as to
Speaker 3: what the police pursuit was about, potentially relating to these
Speaker 3: charges potentially something else, but also did the police really
Speaker 3: need to chase them often now there'll be an investigation
Speaker 3: by the police into their own conduct, saying was it
Speaker 3: dangerous to pursue this car the way in which they did?
Speaker 3: But either way, I don't know what speeds these cars
Speaker 3: were going at, but certainly they caused extensive damage to
Speaker 3: this caren sure.
Speaker 1: I'll be interested to see what was behind all of that.
Speaker 1: Campaign groups and charities say that they are going to
Speaker 1: look at legal challenges to the announcement that the UK
Speaker 1: is going to begin returning migrants who are arriving in
Speaker 1: small boats back to France.
Speaker 3: Yes, controversial this, but to put some context in it,
Speaker 3: since twenty eighteen when a figures began to beget that
Speaker 3: more than one hundred and seventy thousand people have arrived
Speaker 3: in the UK on small boats illegally, and numbers this
Speaker 3: year in the first six months of the year was
Speaker 3: over roughly twenty thousand, and that's fifty percent up on
Speaker 3: the previous year. So it's there and it's getting worse,
Speaker 3: and this government's successive government's been unable to find a
Speaker 3: way to stop it. What has been agreed with France
Speaker 3: is that we will now do a so called one in,
Speaker 3: one out deal. So that's when we will give back
Speaker 3: to France one of the asylum seekers who has arrived
Speaker 3: or one of the sorry, one of those who has
Speaker 3: arrived on small boats illegally, but in return the UK
Speaker 3: will then take one person who is an asylum seeker
Speaker 3: subject to security checks, who is in France, but crucially
Speaker 3: not an asylum seeker who has tried to make the
Speaker 3: crossing illegally. The reason I said crucially is because they
Speaker 3: are hoping this scheme will actors and a terrant but
Speaker 3: let me stress thre thousands acrossing a week and SJ
Speaker 3: it's thought this scheme could see fifty people a week
Speaker 3: being returned and that's what the critics are up in
Speaker 3: arms saying it doesn't do enough. And also some are
Speaker 3: saying this is a ridiculous scheme because we're now having
Speaker 3: to accept people legally that are here illegally if you'd
Speaker 3: like or would be coming illegally. So it was heralded
Speaker 3: with a big, big press conference by the French President
Speaker 3: Emmanuel Macron and our Prime Minister se Kirstama. But the
Speaker 3: charities and groups representing migrants are all over this saying no, no, no.
Speaker 2: This is illegal. You can't do this.
Speaker 3: It breaks these various conventions and we are going now
Speaker 3: to take this to court. And the Refugee Council says
Speaker 3: it's right for the government here to look at ways
Speaker 3: of targeting the smugglers business model, because of course people
Speaker 3: smugglers get all these people in others. Another charity, Asylum
Speaker 3: Matter that says this is an expensive, ineffective and dangerous
Speaker 3: gimmick and it's incredibly simple. The only way to stop
Speaker 3: this making the only way to stop this is to
Speaker 3: give safe routes for people to seek sanctuary. But well,
Speaker 3: this is going to be a tough test for the
Speaker 3: government because this is a big vote loser or vote winner.
Speaker 1: To Sweden now where that country is. Migration Minister Johann
Speaker 1: FCel has said that he shocked and horrified after learning
Speaker 1: that his teenage son was involved with violent far right
Speaker 1: white supremacist groups.
Speaker 3: Yes, this is a big, big headline for Sweden, and
Speaker 3: the Swedish papers are full of it. This weekend, basically
Speaker 3: a sort of anti racism watchdog group called Expo announced
Speaker 3: that there was a close relative of a government minister
Speaker 3: that had collaborated with a member of a neo Nazi
Speaker 3: group called the Nordic Resistance Movement. Now according to the
Speaker 3: watch dog, it said that relative had been involved with
Speaker 3: two other extremist groups, allegedly recruiting members into one of them.
Speaker 3: But we didn't know who the member of parliament or
Speaker 3: the cabinet member was. Now we know it is none
Speaker 3: other than the migration minister's son, who is sixteen. Johann
Speaker 3: Forsall has confirmed that now he is the migration minister,
Speaker 3: and he said he did not know about his son's
Speaker 3: activities until he was contacted by the country's security service
Speaker 3: a few weeks ago, and that he had followed all
Speaker 3: proper protocol. He says he won't be resigning, and he's
Speaker 3: been openly critical of political extremism and an advocate of
Speaker 3: greater parental responsibility when it comes to youth crime. So
Speaker 3: he hasn't directly addressed this with his son. Of course,
Speaker 3: it is very difficult. He's both a parent but he's
Speaker 3: also a politician. But he said that he and his
Speaker 3: wife had had long, important conversations with their son, who's
Speaker 3: now cut off contact with this group, and is deeply remorseful,
Speaker 3: but it's something that Sweden is very aware about, with
Speaker 3: a spike in gun and drug cran which has been
Speaker 3: fueled by migration I think into Sweden.
Speaker 1: Four people, including three teenagers, have been arrested by police
Speaker 1: who were investigating those cyber attacks that hit Harold's, emin S,
Speaker 1: Marks and Spencer's and the car Op group.
Speaker 3: Yes, so big retailers here in the UK have been
Speaker 3: having a tough time of it because of course of
Speaker 3: the Internet sweeping up with shopping, but even more here
Speaker 3: in the UK with a number of hacks into their system,
Speaker 3: and it has taken down some big names. As you
Speaker 3: mentioned Harrod's one of the most luxurious stores in the UK,
Speaker 3: but also Marks and Spencer well, a very very popular
Speaker 3: retail here, very similar to one of your chains over
Speaker 3: there I think as well, where you know, high end
Speaker 3: sort of the retail and it was hacked, meaning all
Speaker 3: their online Internet shopping was basically having to be put
Speaker 3: on hold. It was costing the company tens of millions
Speaker 3: of pounds. Indeed, Martin Spencer's chairman said to the MPs
Speaker 3: this week it had lost six sorry three hundred million
Speaker 3: pounds in lost profits already and now we discover that
Speaker 3: a twenty year old woman from the Midlands and three
Speaker 3: males aged between seventeen and nineteen had been detained in
Speaker 3: London and the West Midlands, arrested on suspicion of computer
Speaker 3: misuse offenses, black mail, money laundering and participating in the
Speaker 3: activities of an organized crime group. All arrested in the
Speaker 3: early hours of Thursday. Now we discover that the electronic
Speaker 3: devices that they had seized are being investigated by police.
Speaker 2: All are from the UK, with the exception.
Speaker 3: Of the nineteen year old who's from Latvia, and dozens
Speaker 3: of officers wearing balaclavas smashing their way into a family
Speaker 3: home on one occasion and taking these electronic devices away
Speaker 3: and obviously now questioning underway. But some retailers very very
Speaker 3: pleased and relieved. If this group is the group behind
Speaker 3: what's been.
Speaker 1: Going on, I don't know how I feel about this
Speaker 1: next story, Gavin. I've had conversations on this show before
Speaker 1: with the owner of a online luxury shopping website here
Speaker 1: called Luxety, where essentially people sell second hand designer goods,
Speaker 1: and often those secondhand designer goods are things like burkin bags,
Speaker 1: which we know. It's like the Kardashians have them, and
Speaker 1: very very wealthy people and apparently you have to be
Speaker 1: on a list to get the latest edition of the bag,
Speaker 1: and blahod blood blah, the original Burken bag has been sold.
Speaker 1: Can this be right? Seven point four million?
Speaker 3: I'm afraid it is, which of course means one hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty million South African.
Speaker 1: World I absolutely start raving crazy than a cut snake
Speaker 1: box of frogs. Mad.
Speaker 3: And I know, having of course met you back in
Speaker 3: Cape Town, that you and I are two of the
Speaker 3: most fashionable people.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, true, I wish you could say wearing now Gavin,
Speaker 1: me too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not a big fan of these very expensive
Speaker 3: fashion things. I suppose you can't stop people, but it
Speaker 3: seems extraordinary with so much poverty around the world. And incidentally,
Speaker 3: Live Aid and band Aids celebrating forty years pumping hundreds
Speaker 3: of millions into trying to feed people around the world.
Speaker 3: So a poignant thing to say, I suppose. But anyway,
Speaker 3: back to the story. So Jane Berkin, a French British
Speaker 3: singer in nineteen eighty five, was on a flight and
Speaker 3: sitting next to her was the boss of the luxury
Speaker 3: fashion house Hermes. Now Jane Berkin tried to get I'm
Speaker 3: going to I'm going.
Speaker 1: To have to correct you there, Gavin heermez Hermez.
Speaker 2: I beg your pardon it, I beg your father Sarah Jane.
Speaker 3: To carry out right of course, Yes, Hermes is yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's that anyway.
Speaker 1: And the Guildford that's the Guildford version.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's my version.
Speaker 3: She was on on this aeroplane next to the boss
Speaker 3: of that company and try to get something out of
Speaker 3: a bag, and all her contents spilled out over the floor,
Speaker 3: and she complained and said, why on earth don't you
Speaker 3: people make a bag that's big enough for what women want,
Speaker 3: which ne to be practical but highly desirable. Well, it
Speaker 3: became one of the most coveted accessories in fashion history.
Speaker 2: When they then made the burke In bag.
Speaker 3: Incidentally, the boss of the fashion house sketched out the
Speaker 3: design on the aeroplane sick bag that was in the
Speaker 3: seat hocket in front of him. So it is quite
Speaker 3: a lovely story. But these bags go for an enormous
Speaker 3: amount of money, and this one that sold in Paris
Speaker 3: to a collector of private collector from Japan went for
Speaker 3: seven point four million pounds, and that was almost twenty
Speaker 3: times the previous records sale. The auction house described it
Speaker 3: as an electrifying ten minute bidding war between nine determined collectors.
Speaker 2: I didn't see your name or my name on there,
Speaker 2: but that of course is you know, you got fees.
Speaker 3: And commission to pay as well. Southeby's did not publish
Speaker 3: a pre auction estimate. But yeah, it's a lovely story,
Speaker 3: but gosh, really for a bag, what it's going to
Speaker 3: sit behind a glass cabinet or something? Now? Yeah, so yeah,
Speaker 3: I quite agree in two minds about this story. But
Speaker 3: you're never going to be able to stop people spending
Speaker 3: money the way they want to, and indeed they.
Speaker 2: Should be allowed to spend it.
Speaker 3: But I do hope they are charitable people as well.
Speaker 1: I was just thinking that, I mean, it's it's a
Speaker 1: level of money. If you've got that amount of money
Speaker 1: to spend on as you say something that, I mean, no,
Speaker 1: they're not going to use that bag, are they. It'd
Speaker 1: be ridiculous. It's going to sit in a glass case
Speaker 1: in your house presumably. If that, If you've got that
Speaker 1: much money for an object that's going to do nothing,
Speaker 1: it makes me think that you've got I mean billions,
Speaker 1: billions and billions and billions, and the hope is that
Speaker 1: of those billions and billions and billions that somebody has
Speaker 1: some of it goes towards charitable you know, causes, because
Speaker 1: in any other event the world has gone completely mad,
Speaker 1: it has to be that. It can't be that you're
Speaker 1: now sitting there going, oh, well, we've got a lovely bag,
Speaker 1: but we you know, we live in a cardboard box.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's not what's happening, is that this
Speaker 1: is billionaires who, as we say, we hope that they
Speaker 1: are owners of companies who do a lot for charity
Speaker 1: and sustainability and social responsibility, and this is just one
Speaker 1: of their one of their frivolities, one of their things. Otherwise,
Speaker 1: I don't really know what to make of it. And
Speaker 1: we're off to the airport. Now, airport noises particularly tell me, yes,
Speaker 1: a bizarre story.
Speaker 3: This he throw has been in the news, the biggest
Speaker 3: airport in the UK, just outside of London, of course,
Speaker 3: been in the news for lots of bad reasons lately,
Speaker 3: including where I had to shut for a day because
Speaker 3: of an electricity outage. Not its fault, but you know,
Speaker 3: it was all bad news for them, and I don't know.
Speaker 3: This press release was just and is just bizarre. So
Speaker 3: of course when you're going through the airport, there are
Speaker 3: lots of different noises. There are of course announcements, there's
Speaker 3: the escalators and lifts, there's the baggage belts, there's the
Speaker 3: hubbub of people and rushed footsteps of people run across
Speaker 3: the tild floor trying to make their flight. But now
Speaker 3: the biggest flight hub here in the UK plans to
Speaker 3: make the experience even more realistic by playing a.
Speaker 2: Looped soundtrack of an airport.
Speaker 3: It's called Music for Heathrow and it is designed to
Speaker 3: help kickstart passengers holidays by quote reflecting excitement and anticipation.
Speaker 3: So yes, so you get your normal hubbub of the
Speaker 3: airport and they're going to add to that by using
Speaker 3: this soundtrack, which is going to be looped seamlessly and
Speaker 3: play throughout the airport's terminals this summer. Now they have
Speaker 3: invited a Grammy nominee musician, multi instrumentalist and producer, Jordan
Speaker 3: Rakei to create the soundtrack and it's the first ever
Speaker 3: created entirely with the sounds of an airport. The Heathrow
Speaker 3: saying The track will also feature sounds from famous movie scenes,
Speaker 3: including passengers tapping their feet in bend It like Beckham,
Speaker 3: and the beeps of a security scanner from Love.
Speaker 2: Actually.
Speaker 3: It's conceived as a tribute to Brian ENO's album called
Speaker 3: Music for Airports nineteen seventy nine, which is really seen
Speaker 3: as the big moment the growth in ambient music tracks,
Speaker 3: a genre that's supposed to calm listeners while also being
Speaker 3: easy to ignore. This story has not been easy for
Speaker 3: me to ignore because I'm just wondering how much money
Speaker 3: it's costing.
Speaker 1: I just don't really understand. Is this art? I don't art?
Speaker 1: Is everything well, this is what I asked the question,
Speaker 1: because everything's on these days. I simply cannot imagine the sounds.
Speaker 1: Imagine why you need to pipe the sounds of an
Speaker 1: airport into an airport. There's something that I'm that I'm
Speaker 1: I'm missing here. Yeah, and I wonder.
Speaker 3: I hope go on, I hope during the announcement s J.
Speaker 3: There isn't one announcement saying with Sarah J. Mccuala ke,
Speaker 3: please head for them.
Speaker 1: I will because I'm always rushing. I tell you what, Heathrow,
Speaker 1: I get so lured into usually boots clicks for those
Speaker 1: who for the South Africans, I get so lured by
Speaker 1: you know, hand creams and nonsense that inevitably I am rushing,
Speaker 1: rushing for the gate. But I don't know. I'm okay,
Speaker 1: I'm going to see if I can find this online
Speaker 1: and see if we can maybe sort of download a
Speaker 1: little bit of and and play it and and have
Speaker 1: people hear what it's all about. Because this, as you
Speaker 1: say this, I think the person who commissioned this is
Speaker 1: the same person that spent ten million dollars on a
Speaker 1: Burke second down birken bag. It's the same level of
Speaker 1: goes under the category of total waste of money, which you, Gavin,
Speaker 1: are not.
Speaker 2: Wouldn't that be a great story if it was.
Speaker 1: The same point, I know, that would be so good Gg.
Speaker 1: Thanks very much. Indeed, we'll chat to you again next week.
Speaker 1: Gavin Gray with the UK Report for US this morning.