Nigel Farage paid £189,000 last year by gold company to work part-time

Nigel Farage was paid £189,000 last year as a brand ambassador for a gold company, taking his total income since July’s election to just under £600,000.The Clacton MP and Reform UK leader declared the payment for four hours of employment a month with Direct Bullion since July, plus a back payment for work before the election.The Guardian reported last month that he had become a paid brand ambassador for Direct Bullion, in a third job alongside his roles as an MP and a presenter on the rightwing channel GB News.He promoted gold on a podcast sponsored by the company in November hosted by a fellow brand ambassador and influencer.The most recent register of MPs’ interests also shows Farage was paid £4,361

Nigel Farage paid £189,000 for part-time job as ‘brand ambassador’ for gold bullion firm– as it happened

Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, has been paid £189,000 for a part-time job as a “brand ambassador” for a gold bullion firm, it has emerged today.Rowena Mason revealed that Farage had taken on the job in a Guardian story last month, but we now know how much the MP is being paid because he has declared the job in the latest edition of register of MPs’ interests.Farage says, since being elected as an MP, he has been spending no more than four hours a month doing this job, although he was also working for the company before the election, he says.Farage also earns considerable sums as a GB News presenter and the Mail has calculated that, since the election, he has earned more than £500,000 from second jobs, in addition to the £91,000 a year he earns as MP for Clacton.The register also confirms that, as well as being broadly aligned politically with Elon Musk, Farage and some of his Reform UK colleagues earn money from Musk’s social media company X by providing it with popular tweets

Investigators in Bangladesh demand Tulip Siddiq’s bank account details

Anti-money laundering officials in Bangladesh have demanded bank account details for Tulip Siddiq, the UK anti-corruption minister, in the latest escalation of the inquiries into her family’s financial interests.The Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit (BFIU), which investigates money laundering and suspicious transactions, wrote to the country’s main banks on Tuesday asking them to provide account details for Siddiq and seven of her family members.Officials also asked for the bank account details of Siddiq’s aunt, Sheikh Hasina, who was deposed as Bangladesh’s prime minister last year after widespread protests against her rule.Siddiq’s mother, her sister and her brother were also named in the request, which has been seen by the Guardian.Bangladesh’s anti-corruption commission has begun an investigation into whether Siddiq, a close ally of the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, helped embezzle billions of pounds as part of a deal for a Russian-funded nuclear power plant

Lib Dems call for Kemi Badenoch to sack Robert Jenrick over ‘divisive comments’

The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, should sack Robert Jenrick for “divisive comments,” the Lib Dems have said, after the shadow justice minister doubled down on his comments about immigrants with “alien cultures”.Jenrick was challenged repeatedly on Tuesday morning for having failed to act on the outcome of an inquiry into grooming gangs while he was in the Home Office, despite now demanding one, and for rarely mentioning the issue in the House of Commons until this year.Badenoch had previously defended the shadow justice secretary’s right to make the comments, which have caused private disquiet among some Conservative MPs.“What I have said is that millions of people have come into our country in recent times, but some of them are coming from countries and cultures that have backwards attitudes to women,” Jenrick told Times Radio. “And that’s backed up by the evidence that we have seen from the Jay report and the testimonies of the victims

Labour apologises for TikTok video with ‘inappropriate’ soundtrack

The Labour party has apologised for using a soundtrack with “completely inappropriate” lyrics in a promotional TikTok video.The video features AI-generated animals including a hare dressed as a nurse, a bulldog in a police uniform and a hedgehog wearing dungarees.But the party took down the video when viewers swiftly translated the Portuguese-language lyrics to the backing track by DJ Holanda – which describe smoking marijuana and having sex with a “bitch”.The lyrics to Montagem Coral urge a “naughty young girl” to “sit” on the singer’s “pot-crazy dick” and ends with repetition of the line: “Just a punch in the young girl’s pussy.”“Perfect combination is sex, beer and marijuana,” sings DJ Holanda, whose real name is Lucas Holanda

Keir Starmer’s NHS plan: what are the key elements and can it succeed?

In Monday’s big NHS speech, Keir Starmer promised that by spring 2029 92% of patients waiting for planned care in England would once again be treated within 18 weeks, as they are meant to be already – but only six in 10 actually are.“This elective reform plan will deliver on our promise to end the backlogs,” the prime minister vowed, as he set out initiatives to fulfil a pledge that is a key part of his plan for change.Here we detail the key elements of the plan and assess their chances of succeeding.A network of CDCs across England was first announced in October 2021, to help the NHS improve waiting times after the huge disruption to care caused by Covid-19. They are meant to provide quicker access to X-rays and CT and MRI scans, and be in convenient locations such as shopping centres, thus improving earlier diagnosis of disease and reducing the pressure on hospitals