The Week 1532

What happened The Government unveiled the biggest overhaul of the benefits system in a decade, which it said would save £5bn a year by 2030. Announcing the measures, which are expected to remove disability and incapacity benefits from up to a million people, Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall said the system was “failing the very people it is supposed to help, and holding the country back”. According to the DWP, 700,000 more working-age people are claiming incapacity benefits now than before the pandemic. The reforms include tighter eligibility rules for personal independence payments (PIPs), designed to cover the extra costs of living with a disability; a freeze on the health top-up to universal credit (UC) in real terms from next year, and a ban on under-22s claiming it. To…

What happened In a 90-minute phone call with Donald Trump on Tuesday, Vladimir Putin rebuffed a US proposal for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine, instead agreeing to a 30-day pause in attacks on energy infrastructure. Although Moscow broke that pledge within hours, the White House described it as the first step in a “movement to peace” that it hoped would eventually include a maritime ceasefire in the Black Sea and an end to fighting. Talks on those steps, it said, would begin immediately in Saudi Arabia. The Kremlin said that Putin had demanded that Ukraine be banned from rearming or mobilising during the partial truce, and had called for a “complete cessation” of Western military and intelligence assistance to Kyiv. Trump, however, denied that they’d discussed such aid. Trump proposed…

The astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore finally arrived back on Earth on Tuesday, after being stuck for nine months on the International Space Station. The pair had left Earth in June last year, for what was supposed to be an eight-day mission, but their Boeing capsule suffered a fault and Nasa decided it was unsafe for them to travel back in it. They ended up having to stay there for 285 days, while Nasa arranged for a SpaceX craft to bring them home. Storrington in West Sussex has been named as the UK’s first “stork village”, in the wake of a successful breeding programme at the nearby Knepp Estate. The wading birds vanished from Britain’s skies some 609 years ago, but are thriving again at Knepp, where 53 storks…

“Every new prime minister has an Elon Musk moment,” said Simon Jenkins in The Guardian: “a sudden attack of frustration” that makes them want to take a “chainsaw” to the British state. Eight months into the job, Keir Starmer has already reached this slash-and-burn stage. In a wide-ranging speech last week, the PM laid out his vision to transform what he calls our “flabby” and “unfocused” state, and take on the “cottage industry of checkers and blockers slowing down delivery”. He vowed to make the Civil Service leaner and more productive; to roll out AI across Whitehall; and to cut down on the number of quangos – starting with the abolition of NHS England (see page 20). Starmer’s speech could have come straight from the mouth of Dominic Cummings, “self-proclaimed…

One of London’s leading comedy clubs says it is banning punters who have had Botox. The Top Secret Comedy Club in Covent Garden says that having audiences full of people with faces that have been “frozen” by the injections alters the atmosphere in the venue, and that comedians can’t bounce off the audience’s reactions if faces don’t move. It says guests must now take an “expression test” on arrival. Virtual reality headsets have been included in the basket of 752 commonly bought goods that the ONS uses to measure inflation for the first time. Other additions include yoga mats, men’s slider sandals and precooked pulled pork. Gammon joints, DVD rentals and ads in local papers have been removed.…

King Charles, after his music radio show reached No. 1 in Apple Music’s podcast chart. In The King’s Music Room, released to mark Commonwealth Day last week, he introduced 17 songs that had meaning for him, ranging from Bob Marley and the Wailers’ Could You Be Loved to Beyoncé’s Crazy in Love and Dame Kiri Te Kanawa’s traditional Maori song E Te Iwi E. Gardeners, with news that this winter’s series of cold snaps and the recent dry spell are likely to lead to fewer slugs this year.…