Pic-1:Prime minister Theresa May has backed the plans for a '999 day' Pic-2: Pic-2:Paramedics have been praised for their work treating revellers at the Notting Hill Carnival (London Ambulance Service )
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The Prime Minister has given her backing to a new '999 Day' to pay tribute to all the people working in the emergency services.
Emergency Services Day, also referred to as 999 Day, aims to copy the success of Armed Forces Day, and will take place for the first time on September 9, beginning at 9am, to represent the 9th hour of the 9th day of the 9th month.
The charity National Emergency Services Memorial (NESM) has won the backing of Theresa May for the event as it hopes to raise £2 million to build the first national cenotaph dedicated to the courage and sacrifice of public servants.
The monument would honour the 7,000-plus personnel who have lost their lives in the line of duty and also give thanks to the more than one million people working in the sector today.
The Prime Minister said: "I'm proud to support this national memorial and the creation of an official Emergency Services Day.
"The men and women of our emergency services are there for us when we need them most.
"As a nation, we are indebted to them for their courage and their sacrifice and it is absolutely right that we should honour their incredible service in this very special way."
A special event to mark the first 999 Day will be held at Heaton Park in Manchester on September 9, to promote volunteering in the emergency services, educate the public about using the services responsibly, teach life-saving skills, and promote the work done on a daily basis.
A thanksgiving service will be held ahead at Manchester Cathedral on September 7, to be attended by police, fire and other 999 personal along with the Minister of State for Policing and the Fire Service, Nick Hurd.
Tom Scholes-Fogg, who founded NESM, said: "I am delighted that the charity and its aims have the support of our Prime Minister.
"The NESM, festival and 999 Day are a great opportunity for us all to honour the men, women and service animals who have given so much in the name of public duty."
An urgent review of police tactics to combat London’s wave of violence was launched by politicians today as six more people were stabbed in the capital.
The London Assembly’s Police and Crime Committee said it wanted answers about why the increase in violence was happening and “why policing tactics are failing and what can be done to keep Londoners safe”.
The committee said it would examine the Mayor’s knife crime strategy, including the effectiveness of social media and advertising campaigns and the knife detection wands being offered to schools in London.
Details of the review comes after a 44 per cent surge in murders in London, with the Met revealing there were at least six more stabbings last night.
Four teenage boys were among those knifed in separate attacks across the city:
Two teenagers, aged 16 and 18, were stabbed just after 3pm in the Nightingale Estate in Hackney;
Another boy, also 16, suffered stab wounds in his arm after an altercation on The Embankment in Twickenham;
At 5pm, police were called to Beresford Square in Woolwich where an 18-year-old man was stabbed in the leg in a fight. A man was arrested on suspicion of possession of an offensive weapon and taken to a south London police station, where he remains in custody;
A man aged 27 was stabbed outside West Croydon railway station at 6pm;
A 21-year-old man was stabbed in a doorstep burglary at his home in Greenwich at around 11.30pm;
None of those attacked are believed to be seriously injured.
Witnesses to the Hackney attack said a 16-year-old boy was dragged from a moped and set upon by up to eight youths said to be armed with machetes.
One resident said: “The boy was on a moped was going around the park and he got jumped by another group.
“They pulled him off the moped and it went from there. There were seven or eight guys around the boy on the floor. They had these long machetes.
“I came out of my flat and shouted ‘stop it’. They stood still and dropped the machetes to their sides. I think I may have saved his life.”
Police said officers found an 18-year-old man a short distance away suffering from a serious leg injury. He was also taken to hospital for treatment.
Today Tory London Assembly member Steve O’Connell, chairman of the Police and Crime Committee, said: “The Mayor and the Met need to take hold of the situation. We are determined to find out what is working and what is not.”
He added: “Enough is enough. Where is the evidence that the Mayor’s new taskforce is working? Did the Met take its eye off the ball on gun-related crime? Londoners deserve urgent answers.
“We need to unite and say this senseless killing must stop. We cannot have a summer of violence and bloodshed. The Mayor and the Met need to prove they can stop this surge.”
He questioned poster campaigns’ effectiveness, saying : “Violent criminals don’t watch adverts from the Mayor about knife crime. Many young people now live in a culture of fear and feel at risk. They want more than an ad campaign, they want to know concrete steps are being taken to protect them.”
A spokesperson for the Mayor of London said keeping Londoners safe was his top priority but said London’s police service was “overstretched and under-resourced.”
She said : “ Violent crime has been rising across the country since 2014 and the Government is failing in their basic duty to keep people safe – imposing cuts of £1 billion on the Met Police which risk sending police numbers to historically low levels. The Home Office’s own evidence shows you cannot keep cutting without consequences, and violent crime devastates communities and ruins lives.
“The Mayor is doing all he can to compensate for the failure of ministers. City Hall is investing an extra £110 million in the Met to keep police numbers as high as possible, and has also set up a new £45 million Young Londoners Fund to help tackle the causes of violent crime and support young people to turn away from criminality.
"Sadiq refuses to accept that nothing can be done to stem the appalling tide of violent killings we are seeing on our streets and together with the police, community groups, victims and their families and Londoners, will continue to work ceaselessly to tackle violent crime.”
The biggest reunion in music has finally been confirmed.
Swedish super group ABBA have announced plans to release new music, nearly four decades after they split.
Agnetha Fältskog, Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus and Anni-Frid Lyngstad confirmed the news in a statement on Instagram, saying it was an “unexpected consequence” of their decision to put on a “virtual reality tour”.
The four piece described their return to the studio to pen two new tracks as “an extremely joyful experience”.
The statement read: “The decision to go ahead with the exciting ABBA avatar tour project had an unexpected consequence. We all four felt that, after some 35 years, it could be fun to join forces again and go into the recording studio. So we did. And it was like time had stood still and that we only had been away on a short holiday. An extremely joyful experience!
“It resulted in two new songs and one of them I Still Have Faith In You will be performed by our digital selves in a new TV special produced by NBC and the BBC aimed for broadcasting in December.
“We may have come of age, but the song is new. And it feels good.”
I Still Have Faith In You will debut on the BBC in December.
Ulvaeus, 72,revealed earlier this month that virtual “Abbatars” are being created of the four singers for the upcoming digital tour, expected for 2019 or 2020.
The band will appear as they looked at their peak in 1979 using technology Ulvaeus described as “simply mind-boggling”.
The foursome, who formed in 1972, were famed for hits including Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!, SOS, Voulez-Vouz and Dancing Queen.
They hit international fame after winning the Eurovision Song Contest with Waterloo in 1974, before going on to sell 400 million singles and albums worldwide.
London is set to be hotter than Greece next week as temperatures soar to 25C in the capital.
Sun worshippers are set to enjoy a mini-heatwave as the mercury hits highs of 25C on Thursday, according to the Met Office.
The capital will be hotter than Athens where top temperatures will only reach 23C.
Glorious sunshine is set to make going back to work after the weekend easier as temperatures rise throughout the week.
Monday and Tuesday are set to see highs of 17C with clear skies and just the odd risk of scattered showers, forecaster Craig Snell told the Standard.
He said: “The looks set to shine as we start the working week with a pleasant day on Monday.
“Temperatures will reach 17C in London and the south east making it slightly warmer than Sunday.”
The mercury will soar to 21C on Wednesday before hitting glorious 25C temperatures on Thursday.
“It will be cooler by the Thames but inland and in particular in north west London its likely to get nice and hot.
“Anyone out and about on Thursday will need some sun cream,” Mr Snell added.
Temperatures will drop towards the weekend with highs of around 19C on Friday.
Some 40,000 runners taking part in the London marathon on Sunday are likely to see temperatures around 18C with a small risk of showers.
“It will be slightly cooler and cloudier than it earlier in the week which is good news for runners but it is slightly too early to predict whether we will have any rain,” the forecaster added.
Londoners enjoyed long-awaited spring sunshine on Saturday when temperatures hit 21C in parts of the capital.
Many hailed the “first day of spring” online with one person tweeting: “First day of Spring in #London and you want to start a new life full of sun.”
Another added: “The sun was out today and I didn’t know how to act.”
A third person said: “I always feel so emosh on the first sunny evening walk through London of the year and I'm not ashamed to shout about it.”
“The geeks shall inherit the earth” became a popular phrase 10 years ago when Amazon, Facebook and Google were fast becoming the mainstream.
This is now true in London where technology is snapping at banking’s heels to be the capital’s top industry.
Recent data shows that a high-achieving graduate can earn the same or more at a tech firm as he or she can at an investment bank.
The average starting salary at a bank is £46,000, whereas graduate coders can earn £51,000, according to research from jobs site Glassdoor.
Michael Drew, head of technology at headhunter Odgers Berndtson, says: “Both are level for compensation and are fighting for the top two per cent of talent. Tech has really shaken up the employment market in London and there are no longer just two or three paths to success.”
More than one in 10 new jobs created in London last year were technology roles, according to another recruitment firm Indeed, and banking has been shrinking ever since the financial crisis and, more recently, Brexit.
At London Business School, the percentage of those gaining an MBA who went into financial services fell to 26 per cent last year from 46 per cent in 2007 and the percentage going into technology firms more than tripled, from six per cent to 20 per cent over the same period.
Banks have responded by putting a heavier emphasis on quality of life than chunky remuneration.
The banking exodus is reflected in the London office market where Goldman, HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland and Deutsche Bank have been shedding office space for more than a decade — at present holding 3.6 million square feet.
In contrast, Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon are on the rampage, holding 3.1 million square feet, with analysts expecting this to rise to 5 million square feet within the next five years.
Tech firms are even encroaching on the Square Mile, an area traditionally associated with big banks.
In 2016, takeaway delivery app Deliveroo moved into Cannon Bridge House — on what used to be the trading floor of the London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange — and last year 5000 Amazon staff moved into Principal Place in Liverpool Street.
But some in the recruitment market are still sceptical and say that the tech industry has a long way to go before it can call itself a genuine competitor to banking.
Drew adds: “Technology is growing year by year but it is still not like the financial services hub. London needs to push forward before it can become a truly world-class hub, respected on the global stage. London is currently just a launch-pad market for US tech firms to go into the rest of Europe.”
Recruiters also say that salary data can be misleading, pointing to the fact that most people in banking receive huge bonuses which dwarf their salaries.
Despite heavy regulation, recruitment firms say top bankers can expect to earn four times their salary.
Richard Buckingham, partner at Leathwaite, says: “At a bank or a hedge fund, you’re working for your end of year bonus. Everything is bonus oriented. At tech firms, the salary and equity options are good — which when it starts vesting can result in a lot of money.”
But while the two industries slug it out for London’s top talent and office space, both face the same potential nightmare — Brexit. Banking and tech are alike in relying heavily on foreign talent and easy access to Europe’s markets, something that could be taken away by this time next year.
However, if the two industries can survive unscathed then the fierce competition between them means London could end up with two world-class industries in the near future.
