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