‘I thought I had pins and needles, but a week later I was paralysed’

A father-of-two who assumed a tingling sensation in his hands was just pins and needles woke up paralysed a few days later – and couldn’t even close his eyes for weeks.

Luke Pickering, a mechanic from Nottingham, went to work as normal when he first noticed the strange sensation in his hands.

The next day it had progressed to his toes and despite trying to carry on as normal, he soon took a turn for the worse.

“I was carrying my eldest down the stairs and I just felt weak, and I thought I was going to drop him,” Mr Pickering told the Independent.

He insisted that he was still able to go to work but his partner Alix, 31, realised he wasn’t well and took him to A&E where he was diagnosed with Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS) – a rare condition where the immune system begins to attack the nervous system.

From that moment in November 2023, Mr Pickering did not return home for another 94 days.

“I thought I’d be coming back out soon, but as the week progressed, I just got weaker and weaker. I went from using crutches to being put into a full hoist. I couldn’t do anything for myself,” he said.

“I was paralysed from the head down. Even my face was paralysed so I had to sleep with my eyes open for three weeks.”

Normally triggered by a virus infection, the condition usually causes tingling, numbness, or pins and needles in the arms and legs first before the symptoms spread to other parts of the body, causing muscle weakness.

However, Mr Pickering did not recall having any colds, fevers or stomach bugs before his symptoms hit.

The condition, which affects around 1,300 people in the UK a year, is treated through immunotherapy including intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) and plasma exchange.

Mr Pickering had IVIG, but his condition continued to deteriorate so doctors decided to transfer him to the Intensive Care Unit at NUH’s City Hospital.

“I could feel myself getting worse. I prepared myself to say my goodbyes to my family, but I wasn’t willing to say it. I just said ‘see you later,’” he added.

Mr Pickering was visited by his partner, their two-year-old son and their newborn baby every day and was determined to get better for them.

He said: “I was really hard on myself at the time, but the only way I was going to be happy was by getting home. I was determined to get out and walk again.”

The third round of IVIG and a blood plasma transfusion worked allowing Mr Pickering to start recovery at the Linden Lodge rehabilitation unit in Nottingham just before Christmas. There he had speech and language therapy and learnt how to walk again.

Recalling feeling “terrified” to stand and walk again, he said: “I knew my body wasn’t ready for it, but you just have to keep doing it.”

Eventually in February 2024, Mr Pickering learnt to walk again and now a year after coming home, he is living an almost normal life again, including being back fixing cars and tractors in his job as a mechanic.

Although he still can’t feel his toes, Mr Pickering said he is grateful for the treatment he received.

However, the small risk of his condition relapsing still hangs over him.

“If I wake up in the middle of the night with pins and needles, that’s it. I’m awake all night because I think it’s happening again,” he explained.

Following his recovery Mr Pickering has also become a patient ambassador for the National Rehabilitation Centre (NRC), a brand new 70-bed rehab facility.

In his voluntary ambassador role, Mr Pickering will support other patients going through similar rehabilitation.

Talking about his role at the centre, he said: “I just wanted to give back. When I was going through it, I wanted someone with a positive outcome to just talk to.”

UK set to be hotter than Corfu with temperatures up to 27C today

Temperatures could hit 27C on Saturday during the final weekend of the sunniest UK spring on record, before changeable weather is forecast next week.

A balmy end to spring comes as provisional figures from the Met Office show 630 hours of sunshine were clocked up across the country between March 1 and May 27.

While the warmer weather will be welcomed by sun worshippers, forecasters have also warned about the possibility of wind and rain.

Temperatures hit 25.7C at Heathrow on Friday, about 7C hotter than the average for the time of year, and it is due to continue into Saturday with highs of 27C potentially in some areas, Met Office meteorologist Zoe Hutin said.

She said: “For the south east of the country, it is going to be more warm and humid too, but it’s going to be the last day where temperatures are so high and humid.”

A band of rain will arrive on Saturday morning which will mostly affect Northern Ireland and Scotland, where there could be some heavy downpours, but the south and east of the UK will likely stay dry, Ms Hutin added.

On Sunday, temperatures will reach about 22C, and another band of rain will arrive in the north west of the UK.

There is a better chance of dry weather in southern and eastern parts, with some areas staying completely dry.

Monday, in the first full week of meteorological summer, is likely to be the driest day of the week.

Low pressure in the middle of the week will likely result in cloud and showers, according to Met Office meteorologist Alex Deakin.

“Looking pretty unsettled through the middle of next week,” he said, adding that winds coming in from the Atlantic are likely to bring moisture and showers, particularly in western areas.

There may be a “hint of a change” towards the end of next week, with wetter conditions becoming more confined to northern parts.

“But overall, next week looking pretty changeable to say the least. The winds continuing to dominate from the west or the south west, which will keep things reasonably mild, but also keeping things fairly wet, especially so in western areas.

“Complete contrast to the largely easterly conditions we’ve had for much of spring.

“And that hint, which is all it is at this stage, of something a bit drier in the south to end the week,” he said.

Inside the crackdown on London’s brazen Tube fare dodgers

In a desperate attempt to avoid the uniformed police guarding the exit to the tube station, a young man without a ticket sprints back down the platform steps.

But before he can jump back onto the train, officers circle him and have him restrained against a wall within minutes.

A search of his bag reveals he is carrying a lockable knife, and he is swiftly arrested on suspicion of possessing an offensive weapon and put in handcuffs.

The weapon is placed in an evidence bag, and he is marched through the station and into a waiting police car to be charged and remanded to appear at court the next day.

The knife looks small, but officers insist it could do serious damage, and they stress they do not know the man’s intentions for travelling with the weapon.

It is just one example of more than 480 instances where people carrying a bladed article, such as a knife, have been stopped by British Transport Police (BTP) in the past year.

The Independent witnessed several fare-dodging incidents while out on an operation with BTP from Stratford station in east London to Ilford on the Elizabeth line, as part of their crackdown on offenders.

The latest figures show almost one in 20 Tube passengers are dodging fares – at a cost of £130m – amid a surge in violence against the staff who try to stop them.

Ilford is one of many stations in the capital that has witnessed violence towards staff, with workers telling how they have been hit, spat at and subjected to racial abuse – all in the line of work.

This particular station was chosen for the operation because in December 2024, a railway worker died after sustaining a serious head injury after being assaulted.

Attacks on Transport for London (TfL) staff are not uncommon. More than 10,490 reports of work-related violence and aggression were made by TfL workers in 2023/24 – a 5 per cent increase on the previous year.

About half of these incidents came after they approached fare evaders.

“Frontline staff deal with members of the public on a regular basis, and we know that they do face a disproportionate level on occasions of verbal abuse, and at its worst, that can escalate to physical violence,” Superintendent John Loveless from BTP tells The Independent.

“There’s always a sense of fear or concern that you just don’t know who you’re dealing with, what they’ve got on their persons, whether that be a knife or something else, or just how they’re going to behave and react to you,” he adds.

The busy transport hub of Stratford – the fifth busiest station in the UK in 2023/24 – has a huge footfall and before officers even start their operation, they rush off to deal with drunk and disorderly passengers and several instances of anti-social behaviour.

As we interview a worker, a group of teenagers are causing disruption by running around and vaping on the platform. When they refuse to cooperate with police, one is physically restrained, pinned to concrete floor of the platform and can be heard yelling as police speak to them.

As we move onto the platform, a man guzzling a beer as he carries bag full of more alcohol is stopped for carrying an open container of alcohol – but he escapes a fine.

Fare dodging is described as a “gateway level offence” by officers on the operation, who say that while not all fare evaders are criminals, most criminals will avoid paying.

Within 20 minutes of getting off the Elizabeth line train to Ilford, police stop the young man with a knife.

Soon after another man approaching the barrier sees police and confesses he does not have his Oyster card with him. He is taken to one side, questioned and handed a £100 fine – the standard rate under TfL rules, which can be reduced if paid within 21 days.

Another man who tries to exit the barrier is fined on the spot for using a child’s travel card.

A group of five women travelling with children in buggies attempt to circle back down the steps onto the platform when they realise police are lining the exit.

Their suspicious behaviour is clocked by plain-clothed police officers who stop them for questions. The women, who spoke Romanian, could not speak English fluently, and a member of the station staff steps in to translate. It is soon revealed that they do not have any way to pay for their tickets and they are fined.

During the operation, officers issue 47 penalty fares of £100 and conduct seven stop and searches – finding the lock knife and two people in possession of cannabis.

Superintendent Loveless says: “London does have its challenges in terms of weapon-enabled crime, but whilst there might still be that sense of fear and concern do be reassured that it’s a really still safe way to travel.”

“We like to use the phrase that ‘whilst you may not always see us, it doesn’t mean that police are not always there.

“Talking to the knife carriers out there, the risk of you becoming a victim yourself if you are choosing to carry a knife is high. You put yourself and others at significant risk, and ultimately it can result in a life-changing injury or death.”

More than 55,000 knife crime offences were recorded in England and Wales in the year to September 2024, according to the Office for National Statistics.

British Transport Police recorded the biggest percentage increase of knife crime offences logged out of all UK forces last year, increasing 33.6 per cent.

Child killed in Russian strike on Ukraine after Zelensky accuses Putin of sabotaging talks

A nine-year-old child has been killed and a teenager sustained injuries after Russia struck Ukraine‘s Zaporizhzhia Oblast overnight.

Governor Ivan Fedorov wrote this morning that one house was destroyed, while several other houses, cars, and outbuildings were damaged by the air raid on Ukraine’s southern region.

Amid the barrage of missile strikes, Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of “doing everything it can” to ensure that a next potential meeting between the two sides brings no results.

Ukraine has not yet confirmed whether it will attend the talks in Istanbul on Monday. It said it was committed to peace, but that it was waiting for a memorandum from the Russian side setting out their proposals.

The Donald Trump administration has claimed that Britain will attend the next round of peace talks. Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, told US outlet ABC News that national security advisers from the UK, Germany and France would all attend the talks.

Last night, the US told a UN Security Council meeting that Putin should “take the deal” and agree to a pause in fighting for 30 days.

Union boss warns Starmer over ‘echoing the right’ on immigration

Britain’s top union boss has issued a warning to Keir Starmer and the entire left of politics that they need to reclaim the narrative on the immigration debate in the face of the threat from Nigel Farage and Reform.

Writing in the Independent, Paul Nowak, the secretary general of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), appears to both chide Sir Keir for his controversial speech on migration earlier this month, warning that the left “should not be echoing the right”.

In a week where the gloves have come off in the fight between Reform and Labour, Mr Nowak has urged the prime minister to confront the “dangerous and false” claims of Farage.

But, crucially, with chancellor Rachel Reeves trying to squeeze public finances in her spending review set to be published on 11 June, the union boss demanded that she finds the cash to properly fund the Fair Pay Agreement in social care and the Fair Work Agency which he believes are at the heart of part of the problems with immigration.

His piece comes just days after Mr Farage gave a speech overtly targeting Labour and leftwing voters, claiming Reform is “the party of the workers”.

That speech was followed two days later by one from Sir Keir, accusing Reform of having economic plans which would cause “a Liz Truss-style economic meltdown”.

With battlelines drawn Mr Nowak, whose unions are Labour’s biggest donors, has decided that the TUC needs to make its first intervention on the migration debate at the heart of Mr Farage’s message to working class people.

But in the piece the TUC official pointedly refers to care workers three times, a category that the prime minister has banned from getting work visas.

But he also noted that the left should “not compromise its values” and “should treat everyone with dignity”, saying the left “should not be echoing the right”.

It comes after the prime minister faced criticism for quoting the late rightwing Tory MP Enoch Powell’s infamous “rivers of blood” speech when he referred to “ an island of strangers”.

An ally close to Mr Nowak insisted that his words were more aimed at “offering leadership” rather than attacking the government.

But the TUC secretary general’s fiercest criticism for Mr Farage and Reform while not naming them directly.

He said: “The populist right has wasted no time in exploiting frustration —spreading baseless myths that blame migrant workers and asylum seekers for everything from cuts to the winter fuel allowance and disability support to the cost of living crisis.

“These claims are dangerous and false. But if the left doesn’t offer serious, workable solutions, those lies will continue to fill the vacuum.”

Mr Farage himself claimed that the attacks on him and his party were because they took a nine point lead in the polls this week and appeared to be on course to winning potentially the next general election.

He said: “They are in a state of blind panic. They don’t know what to do.”

However, Mr Nowak insisted that the British people “are not anti-immigration, they are anti-chaos.”

“The British public hasn’t turned its back on friends, co-workers, and neighbours from overseas— or on our proud tradition of offering sanctuary to people fleeing war and persecution,” he wrote.

“What they’re rejecting is a system that often feels chaotic, unfair, and out of control.

“A system where those seeking asylum wait years in limbo while hotel costs spiral. Where rogue employers exploit migrant workers with impunity. And where local services—schools, hospitals, housing—have been so underinvested in that communities feel abandoned.”

Instead the TUC secretary general wants to see proper funding for the Fair Work Agency which can end exploitative companies taking advantage of migrant labour.

He said: “Ministers must fully fund and properly empower the new Fair Work Agency. This body must have the teeth necessary to hold exploitative employers to account—particularly those who undercut wages and erode national labour standards by mistreating migrant workers.”

He also called for a more “humane” asylum system and said that those waiting to have their cases considered “should be allowed to work and contribute to the economy.”

He said: “Keeping people trapped in poverty helps no one. Letting people work would allow them to contribute, pay taxes, and start to rebuild their lives. It would reduce pressure on public services and allow us too to benefit from the skills that those fleeing persecution can bring.

“A fair system doesn’t mean gimmicks or cruel policies like the failed Rwanda plan.

“It means serious solutions like trialling humanitarian visas which would allow people to apply for asylum legally from abroad.”

Win a luxury ticket package for two to this year’s Wilderness Festival

Music fans can win a luxury package for two to this year’s Wilderness Festival, all courtesy of Audi.

Wilderness returns this year to the picturesque nature reserve at Cornbury Park, Oxfordshire, and will be headlined by rock band Supergrass, Nineties rave duo Orbital, and Brit Award-winning, Grammy-nominated indie-rock duo Wet Leg.

Completing the headliner lineup are Basement Jaxx, who are making their return to live shows for the first time in over a decade, as they celebrate the 25th anniversary of their groundbreaking album, Remedy.

The winner will receive a pair of complimentary festival tickets and boutique accommodation in a luxury cabin for two. They will also be treated to an Audi Kitchen experience and, for the ultimate luxury, your own private chauffeur to take you and your guest to the festival and return journey.

Enter the prize draw here.

Wilderness Festival is known for its eclectic music lineup, which this year includes performances from pop singer Lapsley, singer-songwriter Bess Atwell, Scottish musician Jacob Alon and DJ Craig Charles.

At The Sanctuary and Spa, guests will discover an oasis of calm, whether that means taking part in disco yoga or a workshop to explore your sensuality. Highlights include boating, massage treatments, sauna rituals, hot tubs, a wild sauna, Wim Hof method ice baths and wild swimming.

Gourmet food offerings can be found at Ben Quinn’s long table banquet in the woods, a once-in-a-lifetime experience set in the woods and lit by chandeliers. There, Quinn and his team will serve up a feast of flavour cooked right in front of you five courses of carefully curated, responsibly sourced, local and seasonal ingredients.

Elsewhere, attendees can join a number of talks, comedy sets and conversations, from Food Stories with Jay Rayner to a live recording of Jamie Laing’s podcast, Great Company.

Comedian, writer and NHS doctor Matthew Hutchinson will share a sharp and moving look at life on the frontline of British healthcare, while cultural historian Tiffany Watt Smith will uncover a bold and fascinating alternative history of female friendship.

The prize draw will open for entries at 3pm (BST) on 7 May 2025 and close at 3pm BST on 17 June 2025. Only one entry per person is permitted for the Prize Draw. Terms and conditions apply.

I’m gay – I don’t want to be surrounded by children on holiday

In a contested year for really bad ideas, this is a howler – or should that be howleur? Because the French have proposed a new law that would mean hotels and restaurants that don’t admit children could be prosecuted.

Quelle horreur. France’s high commissioner for childhood, Sarah El Haïry, said that the hospitality industry was showing signs of a “no-kids trend”, and that, she said, was “violence against children”.

She particularly took aim at adults like me, who object to being disturbed by other people’s kids when on holiday. “A child shouts, laughs and moves,” she said. “We’re institutionalising the idea that silence is a luxury and the absence of children is a luxury.”

Damn right we are – and it’s a luxury I won’t give up without a fight. Because such a ban on “adult-only” establishments would be inadvertently homophobic.

It’s an overlooked and under-discussed topic, and potentially taboo to say, but whoever proposed this ban hasn’t faced the microaggressions that gay people like me face daily – from children.

They can’t help it – they’re kids. But kids don’t have the same filter that fully socialised adults do. And that lack of filter can spoil my holiday, cherished time I take out away from the microaggressions of the everyday straight world.

They’re not things like outright hostility or violence; it’s the small things that add up to make you feel like you’re not welcome. They catapult you back to when you were treated as an outsider, a freak, a “queer”, just for being you.

When I’m affectionate in public with a partner, as everyone should be able to be on holiday – and the French, of all people, should get this – children who haven’t witnessed much same-sex affection will often stare. They sometimes point, whisper or giggle.

This is what I mean by a microaggression – and it’s one I can do without. You get tired of being someone else’s learning curve. That includes staring kids. I don’t blame them for doing it. But so many times, in places where kids are allowed, me and my boyfriend (who am I kidding? Holiday romance…) often end up self-censoring to the point we’ll refrain from even holding hands.

Recently, I got sick of reigning it in that this year, for the first time, I stayed in a gay-friendly resort in Mexico, the Spartacus Hostel for Men in Puerto Vallarta. It was a revelation. Surrounded only by other gay men, I… exhaled.

I was no longer in a minority. We could be as gay as we liked, without fear of upsetting or confusing conservative families with children. It was hugely liberating.

Under French plans, such places of freedom would be prosecuted. I would avoid France if it instigated such a ban. And we must raise our voices before an idea like this spreads.

It’s not just for people like me who want to be gay in peace. My female best friend is happily childless by choice. We both adore adult-only establishments. We live on opposite sides of the world so our quality quiet time together, without the interruption of kids, is important to us. She would resist such a mindless ban, given she gets judged enough for a choice she sees as empowering, when others see it, infuriatingly, as sympathy-inducing.

We love our friends’ children, but we need spaces where our own behaviour isn’t policed. Where we can swear, flirt, drink cocktails, tell sordid stories without having to live up to “child friendly” behaviour standards.

There are just a handful of magical “men-only” hostels and hotels in the world, catering to gay men like me who want to truly relax without worrying, for once, about upsetting anyone’s ‘innocent’ sensibilities.

In addition, there’s only a relatively small cohort of adult-only venues worldwide, designed for people who don’t hate kids, but simply desire a week or two without them.

According to most recent statistics, France is still the world’s most visited country. But it risks kissing goodbye to that top spot if it proceeds with this ill-considered and stigmatising ban. Well… mwah!

Can Reeves calm Labour’s troubled waters with her spending review?

The term “fiscal event” hardly does justice to the significance of the government’s comprehensive spending review, due to be published on Wednesday 11 June by the chancellor, Rachel Reeves. It’s been in preparation more or less since Labour took office last July.

It matters at least as much as any Budget because it sets out broad public spending plans for each area of government. These cover planned investment and current spending in areas such as wages, but exclude cyclical items such as unemployment benefits. So they are a strong statement of the Labour government’s priorities.

All the signs are that it’s been a difficult process, and the leaks and the spinning have already begun.

Trying to balance the books (in reality borrowing huge but manageable sums) is the answer to that. In an environment of great global uncertainty, alongside sluggish UK growth thanks to Brexit, and in a country with an ageing population, Reeves’s task is an unenviable one. In addition, she will have to balance the pressing political demands of colleagues with her determination to stick to her “fiscal rules”.

At the moment, backbenchers in the red wall seats in the North and the Midlands that Labour regained from the Tories at the general election are pressuring the Treasury to pour billions into much-needed investment in infrastructure, to make the most of the industrial potential of these neglected areas. This would also, of course, have a helpful electoral benefit for those MPs who are facing a challenge from Reform UK.

Reeves has hinted that she could adjust her rules on investment spending to facilitate tens of billions to be devoted to levelling up the regions.

Yes, indeed. Although Labour chooses not to use the loaded slogan “levelling up” about “left behind” communities, it is very much what Boris Johnson promised in 2019 and, for good and bad reasons, wasn’t delivered as expected in the last parliament.

Before that, George Osborne, Tory chancellor from 2010 to 2016, talked ambitiously about devolution, the “Northern Powerhouse”, and the “Midlands Engine”. There was even a red wall caucus of Tory MPs, named the Northern Research Group (NRG), who lobbied hard for successive Tory administrations to live up to their promises (most of the NRG members have since lost their seats).

The ultimate symbol of Tory failure was the cancellation of the HS2 rail project, launched with so much hope by David Cameron but miserably dismembered by Rishi Sunak at the 2023 Conservative Party conference. In Manchester. In a former railway station. Now, exactly the same dynamic is operating within the Starmer administration.

Yes: Angela Rayner, deputy leader and deputy prime minister, for one. Powerful as her office makes her, she also has an excellent case for expanding the “affordable homes fund”, because of the importance Labour placed on the housing crisis and its target of 1.5 million new homes to be built during its first parliament. This was always a tough one – so much so that it’s been reported that Rayner threatened to quit in exasperation and Tony Blair had to persuade her out of it (a story she denies).

She is also surely right to get some adequate funding into local authorities before many more fall into chaotic bankruptcy, which would look like carelessness if not incompetence on the part of Rayner. Other ministers putting up a fight are Yvette Cooper at the Home Office, Ed Miliband (Energy), and Steve Reed (Environment).

Liz Kendall (Work and Pensions) and Reeves will also need to persuade their backbench colleagues to back whatever welfare reforms they eventually settle on – ideally, restoring the pensioners’ winter fuel payment, lifting the two-child cap on child benefit, and ameliorating planned cuts to disability benefits. Defence and Health are the only areas likely to escape demands for “efficiency savings”.

The spending review is an odd beast, because unlike, say, a finance bill, it’s not legislation and doesn’t necessarily have to be voted on; and for that matter, a government doesn’t have to stick to it (even if it wants to). It’s just a “plan”, a statement of intent, and a series of signals about priorities. But some sort of backbench rebellion seems inevitable, even among the usually loyal 2024 intake, even if only by proxy.

At a minimum, they will certainly expect some signs of the imminent restoration of the pensioners’ winter fuel payment – the cutting of which was hated by the voters and would have saved little money – and on progress to end child poverty.

There’s talk of Rayner being pushed to the limits of her patience, again, and her resignation would be cataclysmic. However, in most cases of a politician wrestling with their conscience, their conscience usually loses.

Rayner would not be thanked for abandoning the administration less than a year into its life. Even worse, as the party is already suffering in the polls, she would thereby be hastening the onset of the ultimate catastrophe – a Farage-led government. She would attract at least as much scorn and blame for that as she would gain respect for standing up for working people, or whatever.

She might, as others have in the past, improve her chances of winning the leadership in due course by making a tactical move to the back benches now, but she’s said she’s not interested in the top job, and her treachery would probably cost her dear in any case. Having come this far, she’ll most likely stick with it.

Others, maybe some more junior ministers with an eye on the long game, might decide to leave office “on principle”. But this would not affect the outcome of the spending review, which is ultimately going to be more cuts.