FROM the major Home Office blunder that sent a 101-year-old away to get identification from his parents, to the saga of the "intrusive" viewing platform at Tate Modern, This Reporter brings you the news headlines on Thursday 13th February 2020.
A 101-year-old Italian man who has lived in London since 1966 was asked by the Home Office to get his parents to confirm his identity after he applied to stay in the country post-Brexit.
In what appears to be a major computer glitch, the Home Office thought Giovanni Palmiero was a one-year-old child and therefore required the presence of his mother and father when he made his application for the EU settlement scheme.
The computer appears to have misinterpreted his birth year as 2019 instead of 1919 but despite pressing evidence to the contrary, it took several calls to the Home Office over several hours to sort the problem out.
Mr Palmiero's son told the press: "It's like a humiliation, you've been here so long and then all of a sudden this happens...people of his age should not have to go through this process. They should just get it automatically."
Meanwhile, there appears to be a right old confusion over who paid for Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Christmas break with his partner Carrie Symonds in the Caribbean. Initially it was reported that the break was a £15,000 gift from David Ross, a Conservative donor who co-founded Carphone Warehouse.
The details of the ten day trip to St Vincent and the Grenadines, from 26th December, were recorded in Mr Johnson's entry in the Commons' register of members interests as a gift from Mr Ross.
Now it appears Mr Johnson may have been telling porkies after Mr Ross, who was forced to quit Carphone Warehouse in 2008 under a cloud of his own making, denied knowing anything about it. This Reporter would like to hear from anyone who can shed some light on who actually funded this holiday. Answers on a postcard please.
Earlier, in the House of Commons, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn launched what was branded "a scathing personal attack" on Mr Johnson over the way black and white children connected to class A drugs are treated by the government in the wake of the deportation of ex-offenders to Jamaica.
Mr Corbyn called Mr Johnson out over allegations of the Prime Minister's own drug use, saying: "If there was a case of a young white boy with blond hair who later dabbled in class A drugs, and conspired with a friend to beat up a journalist, would he deport that boy? Or is it one rule for black boys from the Caribbean and another for white boys from the United States?"
As point of clarification, Mr Johnson was born in New York and had admitted trying cocaine as a teenager - though you may recall he claimed he thought it was icing sugar - and conspired with a friend in 1990 to beat up a fellow reporter.
And finally, residents of luxury flats on London's South Bank who took legal action to stop "hundreds of thousands of visitors" looking into their homes from the Tate Modern's viewing platform have lost their latest appeal in court.
In what is proving an ongoing saga, the residents of four flats in the Neo Bankside development have made a number of attempts to force the gallery to erect screening to stop what they term a "relentless" invasion of their privacy. However, the Tate Gallery board argue the claimants "should just draw their blinds".
What has not emerged clearly from all these court proceedings, to This Reporter's mind anyway, is whether the Tate Gallery set up this viewing platform, as it claims, for visitors to benefit from "360 degree views of London". Or whether it was intentionally erected in line with the glass fronted apartments in manner of the ultimate living, breathing art installation labelled "a window into modern living", open brackets, close brackets, "Peeping Tom".
A 101-year-old Italian man who has lived in London since 1966 was asked by the Home Office to get his parents to confirm his identity after he applied to stay in the country post-Brexit.
In what appears to be a major computer glitch, the Home Office thought Giovanni Palmiero was a one-year-old child and therefore required the presence of his mother and father when he made his application for the EU settlement scheme.
The computer appears to have misinterpreted his birth year as 2019 instead of 1919 but despite pressing evidence to the contrary, it took several calls to the Home Office over several hours to sort the problem out.
Mr Palmiero's son told the press: "It's like a humiliation, you've been here so long and then all of a sudden this happens...people of his age should not have to go through this process. They should just get it automatically."
Meanwhile, there appears to be a right old confusion over who paid for Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Christmas break with his partner Carrie Symonds in the Caribbean. Initially it was reported that the break was a £15,000 gift from David Ross, a Conservative donor who co-founded Carphone Warehouse.
The details of the ten day trip to St Vincent and the Grenadines, from 26th December, were recorded in Mr Johnson's entry in the Commons' register of members interests as a gift from Mr Ross.
Now it appears Mr Johnson may have been telling porkies after Mr Ross, who was forced to quit Carphone Warehouse in 2008 under a cloud of his own making, denied knowing anything about it. This Reporter would like to hear from anyone who can shed some light on who actually funded this holiday. Answers on a postcard please.
Earlier, in the House of Commons, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn launched what was branded "a scathing personal attack" on Mr Johnson over the way black and white children connected to class A drugs are treated by the government in the wake of the deportation of ex-offenders to Jamaica.
Mr Corbyn called Mr Johnson out over allegations of the Prime Minister's own drug use, saying: "If there was a case of a young white boy with blond hair who later dabbled in class A drugs, and conspired with a friend to beat up a journalist, would he deport that boy? Or is it one rule for black boys from the Caribbean and another for white boys from the United States?"
As point of clarification, Mr Johnson was born in New York and had admitted trying cocaine as a teenager - though you may recall he claimed he thought it was icing sugar - and conspired with a friend in 1990 to beat up a fellow reporter.
And finally, residents of luxury flats on London's South Bank who took legal action to stop "hundreds of thousands of visitors" looking into their homes from the Tate Modern's viewing platform have lost their latest appeal in court.
In what is proving an ongoing saga, the residents of four flats in the Neo Bankside development have made a number of attempts to force the gallery to erect screening to stop what they term a "relentless" invasion of their privacy. However, the Tate Gallery board argue the claimants "should just draw their blinds".
What has not emerged clearly from all these court proceedings, to This Reporter's mind anyway, is whether the Tate Gallery set up this viewing platform, as it claims, for visitors to benefit from "360 degree views of London". Or whether it was intentionally erected in line with the glass fronted apartments in manner of the ultimate living, breathing art installation labelled "a window into modern living", open brackets, close brackets, "Peeping Tom".
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