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Local housing association Aster Group has been selected as one of Homes England’s strategic partners, securing funding of £114 million to deliver 1,550 new affordable homes across southern England by the end of March 2028 . Aster will use the funding from the government’s housing agency to build 51% of the homes for purchase using shared ownership, and the other 49% for affordable and social rent. Shared ownership is an affordable way onto the housing ladder. Buyers purchase a share of a property and pay rent on the remaining share. This reduces the size of the initial deposit required and if they want to, purchasers can buy more shares in their property (known as staircasing), eventually leading to outright homeContinue Reading

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Hello and welcome to SunSport’s live coverage of Man Utd vs Everton at Old Trafford in the Premier League. It’s fourth versus fifth here on matchday seven in the Prem, with both sides having won four, drawn one and last one in their opening six matches. The home side will be looking to bounce back after their 1-0 defeat to Aston Villa at Old Trafford last weekend, meanwhile Everton recorded a solid 2-0 victory over newly promoted Norwich. Both sides were knocked out of the Carabao Cup in their third round ties last week, with Utd losing 1-0 to West Ham and Everton drawing 2-2 with Championship side QPR, but losing 8-7 on penalties. Man Utd are without captain HarryContinue Reading

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El Hibri is worth waiting for in the Novice Stakes over seven furlongs of Wolverhampton tapeta tonight; ‘Super-Saturday’ is yet again all about too many non-descript handicaps which, for the most part, I’m simply not interested in because they involve guessing, a pointless and indeed a fruitless pursuit. A race (of sorts!) every five minutes, running in tandem with Premier/Championship League soccer, is a nightmare and betting shops must resemble madhouses; it was bad enough forty years ago, now they resemble gridlocked five-lane motorways with driverless cars and dysfunctional hybrids skidding all over the place. Bedlam doesn’t come close to describing the current fixture chaos. In these days of rapidly-declining standards England is still the best country in the worldContinue Reading

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OLE GUNNAR SOLSKJAER insists his decision to drop Cristiano Ronaldo for Manchester United’s clash with Everton today was simply to ‘freshen it up’. The Red Devils boss has left Ronaldo on the bench and decided to recall Edinson Cavani and Anthony Martial instead. 1 Ronaldo has been dropped for the first time since returning to the Premier LeagueCredit: Getty But Solskjaer played down Ronaldo’s omission from the starting line-up as they prepare to take on Rafa Benitez’s tough Everton side. Explaining the decision, he said: “Well Wednesday was a big effort, big emotional and physical output so needed to freshen it up. “Start of this game is very important, got big players coming on too,we believe it’s a team thatContinue Reading

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The Government are to announce the sites of three elective hospitals as part of a number of high-profile announcements in the coming weeks aimed at bolstering support for the Sláintecare programme. The hospitals will be located in Dublin, Cork and Galway, fulfilling a key recommendation of the original Sláintecare report, and are due to be announced next week, according to The Irish Times. Budget 2022 is also expected to include plans to reverse the pandemic’s effects on waiting lists, however, a five-year plan aimed at eliminating waiting lists more broadly is expected shortly after. The move comes as the Government looks to stabilise support for the Sláintecare programme following a number of resignations by senior members in recent weeks. TheContinue Reading

Affordable housing is a myth that worsens the housing crisis – but there is a fix

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In raising rents from social to affordable for council tenants, the cost burden for tackling the housing crisis effectively falls on those most in need Goldstamp | Shutterstock The UK’s housing crisis hardly requires an introduction. It affects people across the housing spectrum — from leaseholders stuck with flammable cladding to tenants in overcrowded housing. The past decade has seen an 141% increase in rough sleeping. And the National Housing Federation puts the estimate for council housing waiting lists at 3.8 million people. In his first move as housing secretary, Michael Gove is reportedly set to halt Boris Johnson’s contentious planning shake-up that critics fear will give more powers to developers. Labour, meanwhile, has pledged reforms of their own, includingContinue Reading

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SAN JOSE, CALIF. — A former lab director at Theranos acknowledged on Friday that he had plenty of opportunities to address his concerns about the company’s technology with former CEO Elizabeth Holmes. Adam Rosendorff joined Theranos as a lab director in 2013. He testified that he felt the healthcare start-up would become the next Apple. A year later, Rosendorff quit after growing uncomfortable and concerned with the high failure rate of the company’s blood-testing technology. Rosendorff has emerged as the government’s most critical witness yet. He said that Holmes knew the lab machines were not working as they advertised but pushed ahead with the launch. Under cross-examination on Friday, he told jurors he was “becoming frustrated in my inability toContinue Reading

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The hasty and badly organised US withdrawal from Afghanistan in August prompted fears among Washington’s other allies about the durability of US friendship. Kurdish troops in northeastern Syria, facing multi-pronged opposition from Islamic State fighters as well as the Assad regime and the prospect of Turkish incursion, have felt particularly vulnerable. So recent meetings between senior US officials and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which resulted in a pledge by US president, Joe Biden, that the US would not abandon them have gone a long way to allaying those fears. There are about 35 million ethnic Kurds living in Kurdistan, an area comprising parts of northeastern Syria, northern Iraq, southeastern Turkey and western Iran. At various times groups inContinue Reading

COVID vaccines for teenagers: what UK parents need to know amid a new wave of misinformation

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Roman Chazov/Shutterstock The UK has approved giving one dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine to all children aged 12-15, with vaccines largely being given within the education system. Schools are helping coordinate the rollout, including the consent process. Under-16s need parental consent to have the vaccine. Unfortunately, schools, parents and teenagers have also become the victims of anti-vaccination misinformation campaigns. For example, a fake vaccine consent form was recently sent to many UK schools in late September 2021. It reportedly arrived in an email disguised as being from the NHS, and a few schools believed it to be genuine and sent it to parents and guardians. The form contained a lot of misinformation and was evidently designed to dissuade parentsContinue Reading