The Standard

As TfL passes the latest deadline in discussions over government funding and unions continue to threaten strike action, the future of transport in London hangs in the balance. 

On Wednesday afternoon Transport For London said discussions with the DfT were “ongoing” and repeated calls for £927million to get through the rest of the year, as well as a long-term funding deal.

The company also accused unions of ‘undermining’ its bailout deal negotiations with further threats of strike action, which are planned for later this month.

The Evening Standard’s Political Reporter Rachael Burford explains what could happen next as discussions continue. 

And CEO of Centre For London Nick Bowes discusses how the situation has become so dire for TfL, and gives his predictions for what might happen next.

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The news that BP has reported record profits of almost £7billion has not gone down well with bill payers and campaign groups.

The energy firm’s highest profits in 14 years come as people in the UK are warned their annual energy bills could reach on average £3,300 a year by January.

It led to campaign groups calling the situation a “Cost of greed crisis”, and the words “don’t pay UK” trending on Twitter - a campaign encouraging people to cancel their energy direct debits in October.

The Evening Standard’s Business Editor Jonathan Prynn talks us through the situation, BP’s announcement, and what might happen next.

Plus we speak with Ruth London from campaign group Fuel Poverty Action, who are calling for a basic level of free energy for all, and are backing the ‘Don’t Pay UK’ campaign.

Follow us on Twitter for more news @EveningStandard 

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Following England women’s history-making Euros win at Wembley, there’s now a focus on how the tournament will impact the women’s game.

As well as the trophy, the Lionesses saw a record crowd at Wembley for a women’s home game of more than 87,000 fans, and the final also set the record for the most-watched TV broadcast of a women’s match, with the BBC revealing a peak audience of 17.4 million viewers.

We speak with Yvonne Harrison, CEO of Women In Football, a professional network supporting the women’s game.

She discusses the impact of the England Women’s Euro win, the barriers some women and girls still face in the industry, and what can be done to push the sport to the next level.

Follow us on Twitter for more news @EveningStandard

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We join Meta's northern Europe VP Steve Hatch in the company's new HQ at King's Cross. In this episode we talk about:

• The opening of the huge new office
• Why Facebook chose London for their new base
• What is the Metaverse?
• What can the Metaverse offer to SMEs?
• Why businesses need to constantly evolve
• Buying dog beds on the platform....

Listen to the full episode here

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Do you remember the Eighties and Nineties earworm theme broadcast from Down Under to television sets in millions of British homes on BBC One twice a day?

Now, it’s all over for Neighbours as the long-running Australian soap ends its 37-year run now amid dwindling viewing figures on Channel 5, after a total 8,903 episodes.

While these days you’ve got a never-ending on-demand buffet of online shows and films, but back in the late 80s it was four channels and pretty much everyone knew what was happening in Ramsay Street. 

Many thousands Londoners are set to tune in for the first time in decades for the last episode after it topped the ratings in Australia, watched by an average 1.2 million people.

Fans gathered to watch the final scenes at an outdoor big screen in Melbourne’s Federation Square, that’s the city where the show is set and produced.

All the big guns are back in Erinsborough for a last hurrah, including Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan.

The antipodeans were known by households throughout the UK simply by their first names, and who were so popular that over a third of the population tuned in to watch their characters’ wedding in 1988 - that’s 19.6 million people.

Now, the pair have joined Hollywood stars Guy Pearce, Margot Robbie and a host of other old, reassuring faces and references - including a tribute to Bouncer the dog - for an emotional extended finale show.

But despite an online petition of nearly 70,000 signatures to save the show, it was not to be, and now Neighbours has gone the way of Crossroads and Brookside to that modern soaps resting place, the internet.

To examine the significance of the poignant end of a pre-web icon, The Leader’s joined by Nick Clark, the Evening Standard’s deputy culture editor.

We discuss the big names from the once cultural phenomenon, reflect on the word-of-mouth hit show and hear from Kylie and Jason themselves, speaking from Ramsay Street.

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The discovery of the Lulo Rose, a pure pink diamond, in Angola is thought to be the largest such gemstone found in 300 years - and interest is already intense ahead of its sale.

The ancient gem was found in Angola at the Australian-run Lulo alluvial diamond mine, which focuses on scouring river beds, and so how important is this discovery? Well, just one in 10,000 diamonds is coloured pink, so finding one is very special indeed.

This monster is a type 2a diamond, which means it has few or no impurities.

The Lucapa Diamond Company hasn’t given a value for the uncut gem yet, but another such rock, called the Pink Star and weighing 132 carats, sold for over £58 million at a Hong Kong auction in 2017.

One carat equals 0.2 of a gram.

The Angolan mine is opencast, which means miners sift through thousands of tonnes of alluvial riverbed gravel from the Cacuilo River, hunting for rough diamonds that have collected in deposits over millions of years after eruptions forced them to the surface.

The world’s largest known pink diamond is the Daria-i-Noor, discovered in India in the 1700s, weighing in at 182 carats.

The largest clear diamond is the 3,100-carat Cullinan I found in South Africa in 1905, which is part of the Crown Jewels.

To discuss the importance of this historic find and what else lies beneath the Earth’s crust, The Leader’s joined by Robin Hansen, curator of minerals and gemstones at London’s Natural History Museum.

We also discuss the cutting process and how to check a gem’s provenance if you’re shopping for that special gift.

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It is another strike day and more travel chaos on railway services.

Once more there’s commuter misery as main lines into and around London are hobbled on the fourth day of nationwide rail strikes, with just a fifth of the usual services expected to run.

Industrial action has left many services grinding to a halt, and freight’s being given priority over passengers.

More than 40,000 RMT union members working for Network Rail and 14 of England’s 15 rail companies walked out for 24 hours until midnight tonight.

There’s more industrial action to come by the Aslef union on the railways on Saturday, while a Tube strike hitting Transport for London-run services is planned for next month.

Meanwhile, London has the highest proportion of travel complaints to the Ombudsman.

So, do rail strikes ever achieve their aim, and at what cost to passengers?

The latest row is over eight per cent pay rises - or the lack thereof - pensions and working conditions, but have these kinds of strikes ever achieved anything for its participants - are they effective?

To discuss why unions use strikes as a strategy, we’re joined by one of Britain’s leading transport experts, Tony Travers, professor at the School of Public Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

We discuss the complexities of the negotiating process, Mayor Sadiq Khan’s fabled “zero days of strikes” pledge back in 2016, government proposals to crack down on industrial action and what the future holds for passengers fares.

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Russia’s state-controlled energy giant Gazprom says it will severely cut gas into the European Union that’s delivered through its main offshore pipeline.

Gazprom says it’s stopping operation of a compressor turbine for Nord Stream 1 - which pipes Russian gas into Germany and is already operating at reduced capacity - due to what it calls the “technical condition of the engine”.

In an escalation of Europe’s energy crisis, the move means from 4am on Wednesday, gas supplies into Germany will drop to 33 million cubic metres each day, or just 20 per cent of capacity.

The Kremlin previously blamed shortfalls caused by maintenance issues on Western sanctions, and says a second compressor is also showing defects.

It adds to winter supply security worries for Germany, where the economy ministry say officials knew of “no technical reason” to reduce deliveries via Nord Stream 1, which stretches 760 miles under the Baltic Sea.

Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky and the EU accuse the Kremlin of gas “blackmail”, while in the early hours of Tuesday Russian missiles attacked coastal villages in the Odessa region.

The broken turbine is reportedly still awaiting arrival after maintenance by Siemens Energy in Canada, with Moscow saying it hopes the works will be done “sooner rather than later”.

Siemens Energy says there are customs issues delivering the repaired turbine.

To unravel this latest geopolitical twist, The Leader’s joined by Professor Samir Dani, an operations management expert at Keele University who specialises in global supply chains and the impact of the Russian-Ukraine war on oil and gas prices.

We discuss the EU’s strategy to wean off Moscow-backed gas, the impact on consumers, new sources for energy and how the world’s digital economy is “entangled” with the Russian state.

It follows talks on Tuesday, where EU members agreed to 15 per cent cut in the volume of gas used by member states between August and March, in order to help build-up reserves.

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The National Health Service faces what’s described as the “greatest workforce crisis” in its history due to severe levels of understaffing.

A report by the cross-party Health and Social Care Committee warns poor staffing levels are creating a serious risk to patient safety.

It comes as research by the Nuffield Trust shows the NHS in England is short of 12,000 hospital doctors and more than 50,000 nurses and midwives.

Projections suggest an extra 475,000 jobs will be needed in the health sector and an extra 490,000 jobs in social care by the early part of the next decade.

So what’s causing the crisis? Pay concerns, Covid, Brexit, workplace sexism and bullying are all being mentioned as contributing factors.

As patient waiting lists stretch over the horizon, what can be done to solve this workforce crisis - and what will happen if it’s not fixed?

We’re joined by Alan Lofthouse, a former paramedic and now a Unison union national officer, who reveals how emergency crews report ambulance waiting times outside hospitals of up to 20 hours.

The Leader also discusses the points made in the Health and Social Care Committee report, the impact of staff shortages on morale and whether the Conservative rivals battling for leadership have a good offer to improve the NHS.

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Taken from our How to be a CEO podcast.

We join AXA’s UK&I CEO Claudio Gienal to talk about his career at one of the world’s biggest insurance companies, and their research into the post-pandemic landscape for SMEs.

To hear the full episode click here.

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