This week's UK news: 29 April 2011
28 April 2011


Warmest April ever?

Weather experts say that we may have had the warmest April ever recorded. Temperatures last weekend reached 27.8C (86.3F) in the South of England. This was the hottest day since July 2010 and is very unusual for a spring day. It was hotter than Morocco.

The hot weather came at the same time as the Easter public holidays, which gave many people a four-day weekend. So more than 100,000 people went to south coast resorts such as Brighton and Bournemouth to spend some time on the beach. More than 90,000 ice creams were sold in Bournemouth at the weekend. Visit Britain says more than 10m people took "staycations" – holidays at home – in beaches and parks.

The weather has now returned to more normal April temperatures, just in time for another holiday weekend. This year the UK gets two four-day weekends in a row because Easter came very late and because the Royal Wedding, which has been declared a public holiday, has been added to the May Day holiday weekend.

Arguments over privacy cases

There are two popular new legal rulings in the UK: the injunction and the super injunction. An injunction is when a well-known person asks a court of law to prevent certain things being written about them. Sometimes it is also made illegal for anyone to say that there is an injunction at all. This is a super-injunction.

There is a lot of interest in this at the moment for several reasons. The first is that a lot of injunctions and super-injunctions have been granted recently, and a Member of Parliament, newspapers and a satirical magazine called Private Eye have been arguing that this is wrong. This led to one well-known journalist, whose injunction was being challenged in court, deciding to admit some of the story. Many of the injunctions seem to have been taken out by well-known married men who do not want details of their love affairs to become public.

People who know about the new injunctions have been hinting at the identity of the famous footballer, the actor and other celebrities involved. The woman who had the affair with the footballer has herself been on TV to complain that the injunction has not protected her and made her life very difficult.

It is also possible to go on the Internet and find out very quickly the names of the people who have injunctions. The Prime Minister has now said that he is not happy about the way the law is being used in these cases.

Prime Minister in trouble

One day a week, the Prime Minister comes to Parliament to spend time answering questions that other MPs have for him. Prime Minister's Questions is usually the most lively parliamentary session of the week as the Prime Minister does not know all the questions he will be asked.

This week David Cameron got himself into trouble during PMQ after a senior opposition politician said he had got his facts wrong. Mr Cameron told Angela Eagle to "Calm down dear," a phrase he repeated several times.

"Calm down dear" is a well-known phrase from a TV commercial for car insurance but many people thought the Prime Minister was patronising Ms Eagle. Cameron has also been accused of being "sexist" and behaving differently to a woman MP than he would to a man.

Young singer beats old records

Adele, a young singer-songwriter, has this week got her two albums at number 1 and 3 in the top-selling chart. Her album, 21, was previously at number 1 for 11 weeks where it beat Madonna's record for the longest period at the top for a female artist.

Adele just missed out on breaking the record for the longest time an album spent at number 1 when her record dropped to number 2 for just one week.

She has also recently become the first artist since 1964 to have two top five singles and albums in the charts at the same time. This record was set by The Beatles.

Susan@Englishuk.com

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