This week's UK news: 23 September 2016
23 September 2016


Every week, we summarise the news to give you some insight into what is happening in Britain, and what people are talking about.

This week: UK does well in Paralympic Games, Great British Bake Off goes soggy, Winnie the Pooh gets a new friend and UK pubs are changing.

UK does well in Paralympic Games

The UK's Paralympic team won even more medals in Rio than it did in London four years ago. This year the squad won 147 medals in all, compared to 120 in London. The total of 64 Golds was more than at any Paralympics since the Seoul games in 1988 and the team won medals in 15 out of 19 sports.

One athlete, Kadeena Cox, became the first Briton to win Golds in two different sports since 1984. She won a Gold in cycling and all three medals in athletics. Sarah Storey, another cyclist, is now the British female para-athlete with most medals - she has 14 golds overall. 

Team organisers are pleased that the UK came second in the medal table in both the Olympics and the Paralympics. They say there has been lots of investment in sport from our national lottery, and they have taken lots of decisions on the best sports and athletes to target. 

 

Great British Bake Off goes soggy

One of the UK's most popular programmes is the Great British Bake Off. Each series has bakers competing in a tent each week to do the best baking of cakes, breads, biscuits and pies. We follow the successes and failures of the bakers and it's fun to watch.

But that's not the only reason why people love the programme. It has fantastic judges and presenters. Last week it was announced that the company which makes the show has sold it to a different TV network. The BBC which has shown the Bake Off from the start could not afford the fee the production company wanted.

The two presenters immediately said they would not stay with the show when it moved.

This week one of the show's two judges, Mary Berry, has said she will not go with the show either. This means that from next year the Bake Off show will only have one of its current presentation team, Paul Hollywood, which may make it much less popular. 

 

Winnie the Pooh gets a new friend

Disney films made worldwide stars out of the UK children's book, Winnie the Pooh. We all know about Winnie's friends, the bouncy Tigger, grumpy Eeyore and Piglet. But now he's going to get a new friend.

A new Winnie the Pooh story is being published by the family of the book's author, AA Milne. And it includes a penguin. Brian Sibley, who wrote the story to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the original book, says he was inspired by a photograph. The characters in the original Pooh stories were all based on toys owned by the author's son, Christopher Robin. Sibley saw a photo of Christopher and his father playing with a toy penguin, so included the penguin in his story.

 

UK pubs are changing

Real ale is traditional British beer.Surprisingly, overall British beer sales are falling, but real ale's sales are rising. And a new survey shows that traditional pubs are closing, but new ones are opening in strange places.

The Good Beer Guide says lots of new pubs are opening in old buildings, including in railways stations and parcel offices. And 200 new breweries have opened in the UK in the last year. Another big growth area is in "micropubs" which as the name suggests are very small bars, usually with no music or TV.

previous entry << >> next entry