Chile storm survivor reveals shock and guilt after friend’s death

A survivor of a snowstorm in Chile has spoken of his feelings of guilt and shock over the death of his friend who died that day alongside four other people.

Victoria Bond, 40, from Cornwall, went into hypothermic cardiac arrest after being rescued on a homemade stretcher, Christian Aldridge said.

She was among five people found dead last Tuesday after winds of over 120mph hit the Patagonia region in Torres del Paine National Park in southern Chile.

Mr Aldridge, 41, from Newquay in Cornwall, was with Ms Bond and three other British friends hoping to complete the O Circuit hiking trail. The five were part of a larger group of around 30 hikers who faced the storm that was equivalent to a Category 3 hurricane.

He told Sky News how he became separated from Ms Bond, but later managed to find some of the rest of the group.

At base camp, they realised some members were missing and organised a search party. The volunteer rescuers found three bodies.

“We’re relieved to be alive, of course, but devastated because we’ve lost one of our best friends and one of the most amazing people I’ve met,” he said.

“And we’re all carrying around with us a huge amount of grief, shock and guilt. We keep replaying everything that happened that day and asking, what could we have done differently? And it’s overwhelming and it still doesn’t feel real.”

Mr Aldridge added: “They recovered one of [the hikers] and she was still alive at the time and brought her down on a homemade stretcher that the rest of us in the camp made from sleeping mats, polystyrene and walking poles.

“There were fortunately medics in these volunteer groups, but unfortunately she went into hypothermic cardiac arrest. She was shot twice and they worked on her for an hour, but she didn’t make it through.”

Along with Ms Bond, two German and two Mexican citizens died, according to Chilean authorities.

Adam Walker, a friend of Ms Bond’s, described her death as utterly heartbreaking.

Mr Walker said: “Victoria was one of those rare people who made everything brighter just by being there.

“Kind, passionate and full of warmth, she was a little bundle of infectious energy and you couldn’t help but be lifted by her presence.”

Jimmy Cliff was so much more than the sweetest voice in reggae

Jimmy Cliff had one of the sweetest, smoothest voices ever to come out of Jamaica, but to think of him only as a reggae star would be to understate the breadth of his talent and ambition. The pioneering singer and actor — who has died aged 81 — was a restless soul constantly in search of unexplored territory.

Some questioned whether his life would have been easier if he had just stayed in Jamaica making reggae albums instead of journeying around Europe and Africa or traveling to Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Alabama to record soul and rock music.

“I felt, ‘If I put me in this one little bag, I’m going to be suffocated. How am I going to say what else I want to say?’” he told The Independent in 2003. “And that has been a big struggle in my career. They say, ‘You’re a Jamaican, you’re known for reggae,’ so you’re supposed to do that. But I won’t… Looking for the new, that’s fundamental to me.”

I first fell in love with Cliff’s rich, mellifluous voice when I was a schoolboy, after his laid-back but infectiously cheerful cover of Johnny Nash’s “I Can See Clearly Now” became an international hit in the early Nineties. The song was a three-minute dose of sunshine breaking through our gloomy British skies.

Cliff was still a schoolboy himself when he first launched his career. He was born James Chambers in the suburban parish of Saint James, north-west Jamaica, in 1944, then moved with his father to the capital Kingston at the age of 14. Not long after, he found an enterprising way of getting his music heard. Every day on his way to school he would walk past a restaurant called Beverley’s that sold vinyl records as well as ice cream. One day, he told the establishment’s three owners he had written a song called “Dearest Beverley”, and that they should record him singing it to advertise the place.

Two of them scoffed, but the third was impressed with the idea. That was Leslie Kong, who followed through and released the aspiring musician’s debut ska single “Hurricane Hattie”, with “Dearest Beverley” as the B-side, in 1962. Cliff’s songs launched both their careers, with Kong going on to record Bob Marley, Desmond Dekker and the Maytals as he became one of the most influential producers in early reggae.

Cliff didn’t hang around. At the age of 16, he traveled to New York to record with Byron Lee and met Island Records boss Chris Blackwell, who in turn convinced him to move to England. Cliff believed he would soon be as popular as his heroes The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, but initially struggled to find his feet. He wrote the powerful “Many Rivers to Cross” about his difficulties in 1969, following it with the joyful Top 10 hit “Wonderful World, Beautiful People” and the bouncy but direct “Vietnam”, which Bob Dylan famously rated as the most impactful of all anti-war songs.

Despite the undeniable quality of the music he was creating, Cliff hadn’t quite broken through to the level of acclaim his talent deserved. International fame truly arrived when he was convinced by the Jamaican film director Perry Henzell to play the lead role in his crime drama The Harder They Come. Credited with helping to popularise reggae around the world, the film was a huge success and Cliff’s soundtrack quickly became a cornerstone of the genre.

The protagonist’s path followed Cliff’s own journey from a rural suburb into the burgeoning Jamaican music industry; Cliff was perfectly cast as Ivanhoe Martin, the aspiring singer who turns to a life of crime. For anyone who knew Cliff for his peaceful public persona, it was striking to see the toughness and brutality he summoned in his performance. In one of the most memorable scenes, Henzell frames the camera on Cliff’s face during a knife fight as he methodically slashes his victim while intoning the words: “Don’t. F***. With. Me.”

Thankfully, in real life, Cliff was as gentle and grounded as his music suggested. When I interviewed him for The Independent in 2022, he was gracious with his time and playful in conversation.

We discussed Refugees, the last album he would release during his lifetime, and he giggled as he described recording the song “Punus”, based on a playground rhyme about the male anatomy. “I thought wow, Jimmy Cliff singing a rude song will probably get more notice than if he sings a clean, pretty song,” he said, laughing.

Even at 78, he had retained his childlike naughty streak. “We need balance in life,” he told me. “That’s what it’s all about.” Elsewhere on the record, he used his voice to draw attention to serious matters, such as the refugee crisis.

My brief but lasting impression has been mirrored in comments from those who worked more closely with him, such as Jorge Calderón, of El Rayo-X, who recalled on Instagram how the band had supported Cliff during the 1980s.

“He was so nice to us,” he wrote. “I have never forgotten his warmth and kindness. When you are a young opening act on the road, a lot of big name acts don’t want to be bothered with you. Not Jimmy, he knew what we were about and welcomed us. He was truly a beautiful cat.”

Yusuf/Cat Stevens, whose song “Wild World” was recorded by Cliff, added on social media: “His songs always had some message of peace – may he find it now and forever.”

Cliff’s determination to always keep “looking for the new” might have counted against his record sales in the end. Another Cycle, the 1971 country-soul record he made at Muscle Shoals with the Swampers (the backing band from a host of classics including Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” and Wilson Pickett’s “Mustang Sally”) wasn’t even released in the United States and still isn’t available on streaming.

However, his dream of matching The Rolling Stones did come to some sort of fruition when he sang on their 1986 record, Dirty Work. “He wrote some of the most beautiful ballads that ever came out of Jamaica,” Keith Richards said of Cliff to Rolling Stone in 2012. “Unbeatable songs, and the voice of an angel, you know?”

When I first heard Cliff had died, the memory that came back to me was of the night he headlined Jazz World at Glastonbury in 2008. He sang “You Can Get It If You Really Want”, and his lilting version of “Hakuna Matata”, and all seemed right with the world. Then he sang “I Can See Clearly Now”, and I was a child again, singing along in my mother’s car. Even though it was almost midnight, I could have sworn I saw the sun rise over the stage.

Flights cancelled as volcano erupts for first time in 12,000 years

A volcano in Ethiopia has erupted for the first time in nearly 12,000 years, sending a vast ash cloud across major air corridors in the Red Sea and forcing airlines in India and the Middle East to cancel or divert flights.

The Hayli Gubbi volcano, located in Ethiopia’s Afar region near the Eritrean border, erupted on Sunday for several hours, spewing ash up to 14km (nine miles) into the atmosphere.

Thick plumes were tracked drifting over Yemen and Oman before spreading across Pakistan and into northern India on Monday and Tuesday, according to the Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre and the India Meteorological Department.

Local officials said there were no casualties, but villages close to the eruption were blanketed in ash. Mohammed Seid, an Afar regional official, told reporters that while no people or livestock were killed, “many villages have been covered in ash and as a result their animals have little to eat”.

Residents said they heard loud explosions and shockwaves.

“It felt like a sudden bomb had been thrown with smoke and ash,” said Ahmed Abdela, a resident of the Afar region, where ash covered homes and stranded travellers heading towards the Danakil desert.

The Smithsonian Institution’s Global Volcanism Program says there is no known record of Hayli Gubbi erupting during the Holocene, the geological period beginning roughly 12,000 years ago. Simon Carn, a volcanologist at Michigan Technological University, said on the social media platform Bluesky that the volcano “has no record of Holocene eruptions”.

The drifting ash led to significant disruption across India’s western and northern airspace. Air India said it cancelled 11 flights on Monday and Tuesday to carry out precautionary checks on aircraft that had flown near affected regions, following a directive by India’s aviation regulator.

Akasa Air cancelled services to Jeddah, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi, while IndiGo diverted a Kannur-Abu Dhabi flight to Ahmedabad on Monday night.

KLM also cancelled a flight from Amsterdam to Delhi due to the volcanic ash plume.

Airports across Mumbai, Delhi, Jaipur and parts of Gujarat and Rajasthan warned passengers to expect delays and cancellations. Mumbai airport issued an advisory saying the ash cloud could affect some international routes and urged passengers to check schedules before travelling.

India’s directorate general of civil aviation instructed airlines to avoid affected altitudes, monitor real-time advisories and inspect runways for possible ash contamination. Airlines said they were prioritising safety while keeping operations under review.

The ash plume arrives in northern India amid already dire air quality, with several protests ongoing. There were some public concerns that the ash cloud could worsen air quality further, although experts said it was unlikely to impact the Air Quality Index (AQI).

The ash cloud travelled over Delhi overnight, according to Dr Mrutyunjay Mohapatra, the director-general of meteorology at the India Meteorological Department, and was travelling over Eastern India on Tuesday evening at a speed of 100-150 kmph.

It was expected to then pass over Bangladesh, parts of Myanmar and China and may reach the southern coast of Japan.

The Afar region, part of the geologically active Rift Valley where tectonic plates are slowly pulling apart, is prone to earthquakes and volcanic activity. The eruption comes near Erta Ale, one of Africa’s most active volcanoes, located about 15km away.

Idrissa Gueye sending off explained after fighting with Everton team-mate

Everton’s Idrissa Gueye was sent off just 13 minutes into his side’s match at Manchester United after slapping team-mate Michael Keane in an extraordinary incident that left the visitors down to 10 men at Old Trafford.

Everton went on to claim a stunning victory after playing for more than 80 minutes down to 10 men as David Moyes and his players held on to the advantage secured by Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall’s first-half strike.

But the big talking point came early in the game as Gueye became the first Premier League player to be sent off for fighting a team-mate since 2008.

The pair squared up after Gueye’s loose pass gifted a chance to United captain Bruno Fernandes, who fired wide. Gueye was irate and raised his left hand to slap Keane, with referee Tony Harrington immediately producing a red card, which was confirmed by VAR Paul Howard.

Gueye had to be restrained by team-mates, including goalkeeper Jordan Pickford and Iliman Ndiaye, as he eventually made his way down the tunnel. The 36-year-old midfielder attempted to get to Keane – who continued to berate him.

It was hardly a punch, but the laws of the game state that players should be sent off for “striking an opponent or any other person on the head or face with their hand or arm, unless the force used was negligible.”

On Sky Sports, Gary Neville argued the incident did not warrant a red card, adding: “They were not fighting, it wasn’t a scrap. It could have been dealt with by a yellow. I don’t think it needed to be a red.”

Jamie Carragher agreed that referee Harrington acted too quickly. “I just think: can a referee manage the situation a bit better?” he said on Sky Sports. “Can you get the two of them together and say, ‘Hey can you behave yourselves?’

But the Premier League said: “The referee’s call of red card to Gueye for violent conduct was checked and confirmed by VAR – with the action deemed to be a clear strike to the face of Keane.”

Gueye’s red card was the first time that a player had been sent off for fighting a team-mate in the Premier League since Stoke City’s Ricardo Fuller slapped team-mate and captain Andy Griffin during a defeat to West Ham in December 2008.

Another infamous example of Premier League in-fighting was when Newcastle team-mate Lee Bowyer and Kieron Dyer brawled with each other during the 3-0 loss to Aston Villa at St James’ Park in April 2005.

Gueye’s strike of Keane hardly reached those levels, but it left Everton in a sticky situation at Old Trafford. That said, Dewsbury-Hall scored a spectacular opening goal to give the 10-man visitors the lead at half-time, an advantage they held on to as they produced resilient performance of togetherness that defied Gueye’s earlier action.

It left delighted Everton boss Moyes, who claimed his first ever win at Old Trafford as an away manager, praising the spirit of his players and claiming: “I like my players fighting each other”.

Moyes said that Gueye had apologised to Keane and his team-mates and the Everton manager also felt that the referee had acted too quickly. “If nothing happened, I don’t think anyone in the stadium would have been surprised,” he said.

“ I thought the referee could have taken a bit longer to think about it. I got told that the rules of the game that if you slap your own player, you could be in trouble.

“But there’s another side to it: I like my players fighting each other, if someone didn’t do the right action. If you want that toughness and resilience to get a result, you want someone to act on it.

“I’m disappointed we get the sending off. But we’ve all been footballers, we get angry with our team-mates. He’s apologised for the sending off, he’s praised the players and thanked them for it and apologised for what happened.”

Match-winner Dewsbury-Hall said Gueye’s red card brought those on the pitch closer together as they fought to see out the win. Goalkeeper Pickford made some key saves, while there were also a number of blocks from the Everton defence that stopped United finding an equaliser.

“Rollercoaster game. I’ll sleep well tonight, put it that way,” Dewsbury-Hall said. “So genuinely happy for the lads and how hard they worked. A fantastic performance of gritting away, getting a goal and keeping that spirit. So glad we got the three points.

“We started really well – the situation happened. It was a moment of madness, avoidable. But all I can say is Idrissa has apologised to us at full-time, said his piece and that’s all he can do. We move on from it.

“The reaction from us, was unbelievable. Top tier. We could have crumbled but if anything, it made us grow.”

As Gueye was sent off for violent conduct, he will serve a three-match ban. However, the Senegal international will go to the Africa Cup of Nations at the start of December, so he may not play for Everton again for a couple of months.

Gueye later apologised for the incident in a social media post. “I want to apologise first to my teammate Michael Keane. I take full responsibility for my reaction,” he wrote on Instagram.

“I also apologise to my teammates, the staff, the fans and the club. What happened does not reflect who I am or the values I stand for. Emotions can run high, but nothing justifies such behaviour.

“I’ll make sure it never happens again.”

Graham Thorpe would still be alive if England cricket had helped more, says widow

Graham Thorpe would still be alive if his former employers provided the support he needed after his England sacking, according to his widow.

The late Thorpe, an England legend with over 100 Tests under his belt, took his own life in August 2024 just two-and-a-half years after an Ashes defeat saw him relieved of his duties by the ECB.

Amanda Thorpe, his wife of 17 years, is insistent that had Thorpe been offered means of staying connected to the cricket world in the pivotal months after his dismissal, “it is really clear (to her) that he would still be alive”.

“If he’d had just a little bit of the support framework there to lean on a bit to just transition a bit more, it would have made all the difference,” she said in an interview with talkSPORT.

At the inquest into his suicide, coroner Jonathan Stevens said the former England batsman’s exit “had a devastating effect on him” because he “had lost his cricket family”, with a 4-0 Ashes tour loss sparking his dismissal.

Spiralling into a depression after being sacked, an incident involving a leaked video of him mocking police officers in Australia that same year had also left him “absolutely gutted”, with Amanda saying he was “really teetering on the edge”.

While Stevens said there were “shortcomings” in his healthcare during the final months of his life, he could not “find any criticism in the ECB’s decision to terminate his contract”.

Having received mental health treatment for 18 months while still under contract, the ECB continued to provide this care after his dismissal, with Stevens noting that it had “funded treatment, hospital stays and extended his health treatment insurance”.

Ten online counselling sessions were organised as a three-month extension of his employee medical insurance, which was part of his severance package.

However, Amanda described the support provided by the ECB as “woeful”.

“As he went through these sessions, it was clear that he wasn’t coping. He was getting worse,” she added.

“We really did ask for help. I knew he needed more help than that. And, it wasn’t forthcoming.”

In March 2022, one month after his sacking, Thorpe’s counsellor made a written recommendation that he should be transferred to a residential home so to receive in-person care, which did not come to fruition.

Two months later, in May 2022, a failed suicide attempt left him in intensive care for two weeks. The ECB paid for a four-week stay in a north London hospital for neuro-rehabilitation upon learning this development.

Amanda believes this necessary level of support only came with Thorpe “five minutes from death”.

“It was too late, basically, after the crisis (in May 2022), he was very ill,” she said. “He nearly lost his life. He had a stroke. We don’t know how that affected his brain after that.”

Amanda noted that Thorpe was approached about an England scouting role by the ECB towards the end of 2022 – an offer she described as “tragic” and one that could have saved his life if it came sooner.

Demanding greater scrutiny on the manner in which her late husband was sacked, Amanda argues that while an employee’s medical privacy is important, it shouldn’t mean an employer is completely left in the dark about an illness.

“The ECB might say, well, we didn’t know how ill he was,” Amanda said. “Although the doctors he was under did know, but then they sort of said, oh, but there’s confidentiality. There’s got to be some connection (between the ECB and their doctors).”

An ECB spokesperson described Thorpe as ‘a deeply admired and much-loved person’, saying: “His loss has been felt deeply across the cricketing community and far beyond, and our thoughts and heartfelt sympathies remain with his wife Amanda, his children, and all those who loved him.

“Graham’s passing is a heart-breaking reminder of the challenges many face with mental health. His death was examined by a coroner; the inquest was held earlier this year with full support from the ECB. We have met with Amanda to discuss her concerns and have been in regular contact with her and the wider family.”

However, Amanda was left completely let down by her meeting with the ECB after Thorpe’s death, saying that she and her daughter left their encounter with the board in tears.

“It occurs to me that, unlike the other coaches’ wives who’ve told me they’ve been on the wrong end of the ECB treatment, I don’t have a husband who needs to work in cricket anymore… so I can speak up,” she said.

“But this is also about helping, you know, changing things and helping the next generation and making things better in the future.”

The Independent have contacted the ECB for comment.

Cruise through Cajun Country on this unforgettable Louisiana road trip

A circular route from New Orleans takes you north along the Mississippi through Louisiana’s River Parishes to Baton Rouge. Loop through Lafayette and Houma on Highway 90, before returning to New Orleans. Whilst the 300-mile road trip can be done in a week, a fortnight or more best suits the southern laidback spirit to truly discover treasures along the way.

Best planned for early spring, when Louisiana jumps to its feet with music festivals and parties, or in the calmer autumn months when food festivals, gumbo cook-offs, and fall colours light up the oak-lined avenues. Here’s what not to miss en route…

New Orleans gives main character energy, even though the state capital, Baton Rouge, sits just 80 miles west along the river. Start the journey here with a day (or night) lost in the French Quarter, where lacy iron balconies and pastel facades are the backdrop to Jackson Square street performers and jazz music on every corner. Grab a coffee and oh-so-light powdered sugar beignet at Café du Monde, to fuel exploration of the city’s great cultural institutions, such as The National WWII Museum or the evocative Historic Voodoo Museum. Ride the St. Charles Streetcar past moss-draped oaks and stately mansions in the Garden District, or explore the city by foot to find your own adventure.

For a quirky day trip, drive across the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway – the world’s longest continuous bridge over water, according to the Guinness World Records – to find Abita Mystery House in Abita Springs; a curious folk-art installation of animated miniature towns and oddities from the mind of local inventor, John Preble.

Follow the Mississippi River north towards Baton Rouge, with a few stops en route. Explore Houmas House Estate and Gardens: once one of the largest sugar plantations in the country, visitors can now dine at one of the many restaurants and take guided tours showcasing the extensively-restored manor house and expansive gardens. Whitney Plantation, about 30 miles downriver gives a heartbreaking and evocative account of enslavement, and visiting these two plantations gives a sense of how both sides lived.

Baton Rouge emerges like a stately figurehead, rocking on the porch at the top of the Great River Road. A hub for art, music and politics, Baton Rouge is also a food mecca with fine dining, soul food, and the Red Stick Farmers Market – filled with homemade goods on the weekend. The gothic inspired Old State Capitol museum wouldn’t look out of place in a medieval fairytale, whilst climbing the current State Capitol building’s tower unravels views of the Mississippi river snaking through the landscape below.

Drive 55 miles westward, and find yourself in Atchafalaya National Wildlife Refuge – halfway along Interstate 10. The conservation area protects over 15,000 acres of hardwood forest and swamp habitat; spot alligators paddling through the bayous riverways, bird watch for woodpeckers, wrens and warblers, or just take in the impressive scenery.

Follow the sound of zydeco music down the Interstate to the dance halls of Lafayette. The heart of Cajun and Creole country, Lafayette is the ultimate place to tap your feet to this blend of French accordion and Afro-Caribbean beats. Louisiana’s French history is very much alive, as French conversations linger in the porchlight or come to life in Vermilionville folk museum, the re-creation of a 19th-century Acadiana village. Lafayette is also a food lover’s paradise. Try spicy boudin sausage from a roadside meat market, feast on gumbo as dark as a bayou at dusk, or savor po’boys and crawfish étouffée stew at a local café.

U.S. Highway 90 takes you southeast to the coastal wetlands of Houma. If you like it spicy, make a stop off in New Iberia and follow the pepper-scented air to Avery Island, home to the world’s only Tabasco factory and the botanical Jungle Garden of conservationist and hot sauce founder, Edward Avery McIlhenny.

As you travel further south, sing along with the southern leopard frogs on a guided swamp tour, spot another alligator, or drop into Houma’s Bayou Terrebonne Waterlife Museum to hear the story of shrimpers, oystermen, and how this slice of coastline has been shaped by cultural, industrial and ecological events.

With a suitcase full of memories and joie de vivre, head back to New Orleans. Every mile offers a detour worth taking; from the turbulent history and uplifting music, to watery labyrinths and astounding swamp wildlife. A Louisiana road trip invites you to slow down and enjoy a journey into the true Deep South.

For more travel inspiration and information visit Explore Louisiana

A firestorm of controversy has ripped through the BBC – but no one will say why

It may not have been an actual coup, but whoever leaked the so-called Prescott dossier on allegations of BBC bias to the Telegraph three weeks ago – “Not Me Guv!” – certainly pulled off a PR coup.

You will remember the outpouring of seismic outrage earlier this month as The Telegraph skilfully dribbled out selected highlights from a report written by Michael Prescott, a former adviser to the BBC, suggesting that the national broadcaster was woke to its roots and more or less beyond salvation.

Former prime minister Boris Johnson – that paragon of journalistic integrity – threatened to refuse to pay the licence fee, and urged his readers to do the same. By the end of a week in which the BBC took a Trappist vow of silence the apparent crisis had escalated into a tsunami, with the Trump White House offering to shake down the corporation for $5bn while branding it “100% fake news”.

It was such an existential moment for the organisation that the director general and head of news walked the plank and a director resigned. A few stunned survivors could be seen picking their way through the smoking wreckage.

Cut to yesterday afternoon, when some of the central characters blinked their way into the daylight of the Commons Media Culture and Sport Committee to be interrogated about their part in it. “Interrogated” is not quite the right word. The questioning would not have been out of place at a rural Quaker meeting house.

After more than three hours of gentle nudging one could be forgiven for asking what all the fuss was about. One of the world’s greatest news organisations had been brought to the brink of corporate meltdown by… what exactly?

Prescott, nearly 25 years a PR man and not lacking in self-confidence, was at one point effusive in praise of the institution he was apparently on a mission to rescue from itself. “The BBC gets as close as any organisation in the world ever has [to be an effective and trusted arbiter of impartiality]” he gushed. Was it institutionally biased? No.

Wait? What? Hold on. But then why was your dossier used so gleefully as evidence that the BBC was a broken, liberal shadow of its former self? Why go to the bother of writing to the entire Board – and then Ofcom, the regulator – with the 20-page screed about Trump, trans, decolonised history, Israel and so on?

He conceded the now-notorious Panorama edit might have been an accident. “Tons of stuff the BBC does is world class, both factual programming and non-factual programming. I think the standard of BBC Westminster is exemplary, and that’s why I keep saying these were incipient problems. We were finding the odd problem here, the odd problem there.” He mumbled about “systemic causes”, which were apparently different from institutional bias. Of which there was none.

You had to trust him, he was a centrist dad, he had no political skin in the game. But he did think the Panorama programme – much of which consisted of fanatically loyal Trump supporters saying what a great guy he was – was aggressively biased against the would-be President. What he wanted, speaking as a centrist dad who had long ago given up journalism for corporate PR, was an equally “aggressive” programme about Vice President Harris.

And suddenly you thought two things: 1) Maybe it was a good change of career for you, Michael? Perhaps you weren’t cut out for a life of making nuanced editorial judgements at the highest level? And 2) How strange that a great journalistic organisation like the BBC – pretty much admired around the world for what it does – should have felt that you were just the chap to advise it on how to do journalism?

Rather more impressive was his fellow editorial adviser, Caroline Daniel, once of the Financial Times. In her view the BBC actively engaged in impartiality and was a “really healthy organisation”. She drily described Prescott’s selective use of material to compile his dossier as “a personal account rather than a comprehensive review”. She was not so subtly signalling to the committee that her colleague had cherry-picked the bits which suited his centrist dad world view.

Next up was Prescott’s friend, Sir Robbie Gibb, the former bone-dry Conservative spin doctor, who also denied having a hand in leaking the dossier to The Telegraph.

He, too, was adamant that the BBC wasn’t institutionally biased.

With him was the chair, Samir Shah, who spoke at some length about why the BBC, which employs around 5,000 people who are in the communications business, had said nothing at all during the first week of Telegraph outpourings.

The words came tumbling out, but it was not entirely clear what they meant. He was pressed as to why he himself had chaired two editorial committees – in January and May – which had decided not to take any action about the Panorama programme until a change of mind occurred when it found its way onto the front page of The Daily Telegraph in November. Again, his reasoning was not easy to follow.

Everyone agreed that Tim Davie was a simply outstanding DG and really shouldn’t have been allowed to leave. By the end of three hours it wasn’t really clear why he had, in fact, been allowed to do so.

There was much talk of “weaponisation”. The so-called dossier, such as it was, had been weaponised by people who wished the BBC ill. And Sir Robbie complained that it has been weaponised by people who thought he was a biased Tory spin-doctor whereas, in fact, that was only a small part of who he was, and he would instead be remembered as someone who had impartiality in his DNA. Like a stick of Brighton rock.

Someone mentioned his time as 100 per cent owner of The Jewish Chronicle, a paper denounced by one of its leading writers as “a partisan, ideological instrument, its judgements political rather than journalistic”. Oh, that was after my time, he said. And, besides, he had “no editorial involvement whatsoever”.

As her late Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II said so memorably of her daughter in law’s appearance on the Oprah show, “recollections may vary”.

His memory clearly differs from former JC reporter, Lee Harpin, who just a year ago wrote a rather detailed Substack column in which he recalled that Gibb “made a habit of calling into the office on print days early after the new owners took control to check up on what stories were topping the news list, and offering a view”.

Harpin also remembered being interviewed for the job of deputy editor by Gibb in plush offices just off Trafalgar Square. The role went instead to Jake Wallis Simons, later promoted to editor, in which role he presided over the exodus of its five most high profile columnists, who could no longer stomach what the paper had become.

Perhaps the committee chair, Caroline Dinenage, might like to put Mr Harpin’s recollections to Sir Robbie just to clear up what could well be a misunderstanding. It’s so important to get the record straight.

Though he cannot himself see it, Sir Robbie’s conflicts of interest are so glaring as to be visible from outer space. But, being a Boris Johnson appointment, he is, by some Alice in Wonderland logic, unsackable. So the BBC’s governance arrangements will have to be reconfigured to reduce his baleful influence.

Mr Wallis Simons, in his fun through-the-looking-glass way, yesterday described the changes as “the BBC taking bold steps to ensure that it is even more leftwing than it is already”.

But don’t blame Sir Robbie for Mr Wallis Simons. Like Macavity, he wasn’t there.

For the past two crucial meetings of the Editorial Standards and Guidelines Committee – during which they have discussed the BBC’s coverage of Israel-Gaza – he was the only external voice on the weird little four-person committee which sits in judgement on the work of 5,000 journalists.

But Sir Robbie cannot see a problem because he, himself, is convinced that he is the very embodiment of BBC impartiality. He was going nowhere. He had done nothing wrong.

So, at the end of three hours, there was nothing much to write home about. A force 10 typhoon had just ripped through a great national institution. But nobody could quite put their finger on why.

The odd problem here, the odd problem there are everything would be fine.

Trump abruptly pulls Obamacare extension after ‘significant backlash’

Just minutes before President Donald Trump was set to unveil a plan to avert a massive hike for Obamacare health plans on Monday afternoon the event was suddenly pulled – reportedly because of widespread Republican unease on the Hill.

On CNN, anchor Jessica Dean was forced to interrupt herself as she asked a question of a health expert to announce some breaking news as it came into her ear – that the event had been abruptly postponed.

Federal subsidies passed under the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act are set to expire at the end of the calendar year, and many Americans are already receiving notice that the monthly cost of their health care plans could jump by hundreds or even thousands of dollars for larger plans.

Democrats initially tried to avert those premium hikes by tying their extension to the party’s support for a continuing resolution to avert, and later end, a government shutdown. But despite that shutdown dragging out into the longest in U.S. history, Republicans refused to negotiate until the government re-opened; Democrats eventually voted to re-open the government without the extension. Earlier in November, the Senate voted down a bill sponsored by Democrats to extend the subsidies by one year.

Now the White House and congressional Republicans are scrambling to agree on a single strategy, while President Donald Trump has fed fuel to the fire with his own suggestions of scrapping the subsidies entirely and giving checks directly to Americans. That idea did not have any meaningful support in Congress.

On Monday, the White House was due to make a case for the two-year extension of the same subsidies which Trump had personally railed against, albeit with new income restrictions. But Republicans on Capitol Hill reportedly rejected the plan out-of-hand, forcing the administration to delay the announcement.

A White House spokesperson called reporting on the soon-to-be-released framework “speculation”, but the West Wing has not denied that an extension of subsidies is being considered.

The extent of Republican opposition to any extension of subsidies was far from speculatory, however, as numerous conservatives went on the record in opposition Monday.

“I would absolutely NOT be supportive of that,” Rep. Eric Burlison of Missouri told MS NOW. “Since I last checked, Covid has been over for some time.”

The outlet also asked Rep. Greg Steube of Florida whether he’d support extending the Obamacare subsidies; he replied simply, “No.” Other House Republicans who declined to give their names were less restrained in their responses.

“Fix health care for working Americans or don’t talk to me about subsidies,” said one.

Thomas Massie, one of only a few House Republicans willing to openly defy the president, had previously signaled his own refusal to support the plan. Massie’s opposition is far from a surprise, given that he did not support the GOP’s reconciliation package earlier in 2025 but is no less notable given the razor-thin majority the Republicans have in the House of Representatives.

He mocked reports of the White House framework’s details on Monday, writing on X: “Oh boy, more 4D chess? A vote to extend Obamacare… that’s the Republican solution to health care?”

In early January, that GOP House majority will shrink even further with the planned resignation of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.

As loathe as conservatives are to accept any extension of the subsidies, they may see such a plan pass regardless. Democrats have continued to express willingness to sign on to an extension of the IRA subsidies. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told reporters this week that she would wait for the full details of the White House’s plan to be released before taking a position, but indicated her own openness.

Trump and congressional GOP leadership could likely cut a deal with Democrats to secure an extension of the subsidies, but doing so would deepen the divide in the president’s own party. Avoiding the issue, however, would jack up prices for millions of Americans with less than a year to go before a midterm season where the Republican Party’s majorities will face a tough defensive battle in both chambers. The consequences of punting the issue now could be devastation for the party’s frontline members next year.

One House Republican described as a “senior” member of the caucus by Punchbowl’s Jake Sherman excoriated the White House in a text to the outlet on Monday morning.

“This entire White House team has treated ALL members like garbage. ALL. And Mike Johnson has let it happen because he wanted it to happen. That is the sentiment of nearly all — appropriators, authorizers, hawks, doves, rank and file,” wrote the senior Republican member.

“The arrogance of this White House team is off putting to members who are run roughshod and threatened. They don’t even allow little wins like announcing small grants or even responding from agencies. Not even the high profile, the regular rank and file random members are more upset than ever. Members know they are going into the minority after the midterms,” they continued.

The member went on to predict: “More explosive early resignations are coming. It’s a tinder box. Morale has never been lower. Mike Johnson will be stripped of his gavel and they will lose the majority before this term is out.”