Day: December 22, 2017

    Once the UK has left the European Union, passports will no longer be required to conform to EU standards. In a move to symbolise the UK's national identity, the cover will be changing from the current burgundy colour to navy blue, which was the colour of the first UK passport to come in the form of a book in 1921. The design was changed to burgundy when the UK joined the European Union. The new blue passports will also be one of the most secure travel documents in the world with new features to protect against fraud and forgery. The current paper-based picture page on the burgundy passports will be replaced with a new, super-strength plastic polycarbonate material that will be more difficult to alter. Mr Lewis said: Leaving the EU gives us a unique opportunity to...

    Roof of double-decker bus completely ripped off by low bridge Incredible images have emerged of a double decker bus with its roof completely torn off after it drove under a low railway bridge. The top deck of the bus which was travelling through Bournville, Birmingham was totally removed in the crash, one paramedic reported from the scene. According to local reports, there is a sign on the bridge which is near Cadbury’s World warning drivers of its low height. There were no passengers on board the out-of-service National Express West Midlands bus at the time of the incident. Meanwhile, the driver escaped uninjured. But witnesses described being shaken by the smash. Amy Tunney wrote on Facebook: “So a bus just drove under Bournville Lane bridge and took the top cle...

    Police now believe the shooter in the lunchtime attack in Southport fired a shotgun from about a road's width away - spraying pellets across a street packed with terrified Christmas shoppers. Amazingly perhaps due to the gunman's carelessness in firing from a distance  the victim survived the attack despite suffering what are described as non-life threatening head injuries. Liverpool Echo It's now known that a bus driver who was stood in the street waiting to change vehicles also suffered minor injuries after being hit by one of those stray pellets. Tonight shocked locals are saying that it could have been much, much worse especially with so many children stood nearby at the time. And the gunman is still at large and the weapon yet to be recovered. In the immedia...

    The safest Christmas bet is that the workaholic Theresa May will not switch off for long during her mini-break. Her mind will soon drift back to the item at the top of her in-tray for the New Year: a Cabinet reshuffle. Before she sacked her deputy Damian Green on Wednesday, May’s advisers had been urging her to shake up her top team and bring some fresh blood into the Government’s junior and middle ranks. No decision had been taken and some advised May to keep a reshuffle up her sleeve until after next May’s local authority elections, when the Conservatives are likely to get a bloody nose, especially in London. Green’s departure has now made a January reshuffle inevitable, and it will probably be wider than expected. Although Green had known May since Oxford Univers...