This week's UK news: 31 October 2014
j0314269
31 October 2014


The job where you have to climb a mountain daily

As you know, here in the UK we are obsessed with the weather. It may not be surprising that we have special weather forecasts for our mountainous region. This is mostly for safety reasons. Lots of people climb the mountains for fun, and they include some of the UK's highest peaks. The weather can be much worse on the tops.

Now the special weather service for the area is looking for someone who can walk to the top of Helvellyn, the third highest mountain in the region, to report on weather conditions. Two people do the job, taking it in turns to walk up the 3,118 ft high peak every day for a week in the winter. Temperatures can fall as low as –16C.

 

Victoria Beckham most successful business person of the year

The fashion designer Victoria Beckham has come top in a list of the UK's most successful business people who have started their own company.

Beckham became famous as a pop singer in The Spice Girls. She became even more famous when she married footballer David Beckham. Five years ago she set up her own fashion business with five staff: now she has 100 with GBP 30m going through the business each year.

It is her second award in a few weeks. In September she came top of a vote to find the person with most influential style.

 

Halloween in the UK's biggest ever

The UK's shops will get GBP 330m out of this week's Halloween celebrations – up from GBP12m in 2001.

This year almost two in every three British people is expected to celebrate the festival. Halloween was celebrated in a small way in the UK (it used to be called All Hallows' Eve) until recently. It was a night to look forward to the start of winter, with stories of ghosts and death. The event travelled to America from Europe and became a huge festival there, and has become very popular here as well.

This year, the shops have been full of Halloween costumes and decorations, and pumpkins (large orange fruit which we put candles inside) had a poor crop and sold out early.

 

Man runs into prime minister

There was a lot of news coverage this week when a man out for a lunchtime run crashed into the Prime Minister and his security staff.

The man, Dean Balboa Farley, ran towards the Prime Minister in Leeds and was arrested. He was released very quickly.The Prime Minister had been leaving an event, and Mr Farley says he was running to the gym as he does most lunchtimes.

Mr Farley said he was on the news as a protester who had attacked David Cameron – but he had simply been running and was then grabbed by several police officers.

Some people said this incident showed that security round the Prime Minister was not tight enough.

 

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