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Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has issued a bold statement to the Conservative's at this year's Labour Party Conference, saying education should be a gift from one generation to the next and not a commodity to be sold. The MP for Hayes and Harlington reiterated Labour's pledge to scrap tuition fees in today's speech, pointing to the astronomical amount of debt university students are being saddled with when leaving university - some £57,000 under in many cases. The Tories have tripled tuition fees during...

Shadow First Secretary of State Emily Thornberry trolled Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson at the Labour Party Conference today by suggesting he should get a "Brexit paternity test" to find out who is responsible for the broken promises of the Leave campaign. Bojo has come under fire of late after repeating the £350 million promise in a Daily Telegraph feature, despite it being found to be completely unfounded. Not only does the £350 million figure ignore the rebate secured by Margeret Thatcher,...

A Cotswold homeowner was stunned when she spotted an 'extinct' bird - in her back garden. The Lady Amherst pheasant was introduced to the UK from China in the 19th Century but there have been no reported sightings since March 2015. But Angela King was amazed to spot one of the birds strolling across her lawn in Crudwell, Wilts. She said: "When I saw it, I called for my husband to come and look too as I knew no one...

An acclaimed playwright has hit out at "dangerous" attempts to ban performances of one of her most celebrated works featuring a transgender Jesus. A Brazilian judge has shut down a performance of Jo Clifford's The Gospel According To Jesus, Queen Of Heaven. And a prominent Catholic bishop has been calling for the play, which depicts Jesus as a transgender woman, to be banned altogether. They argue the groundbreaking work is offensive to Christians with cast and crew of the Brazilian...

By Benjamin Jenkins At the Labour Party Conference this week John McDonnell is keen to demonstrate Labour’s economic credibility and the alternatives the opposition would offer in power. The big headlines so far have been about his vow to renationalise rail, water, Royal Mail and energy industries with "market value determined by parliament". - In opinion polls these are popular policies with the nation and would bring the UK back into line with many European countries, some of whose nationalised...

British fishermen are enjoying a 'black gold rush' as demand for cuttlefish hits all time high thanks to soaring demand from abroad - while it is virtually ignored as 'too ugly' to eat here. Fishermen from across the UK are flocking to the South West to land the inky mollusc - which is related to the squid - in record numbers. They are taking advantage of the lack of quotas with 100 tonnes being landed by just five or six...

Fish have "complex" personalities, according to new research. Scientists studied how tiny guppies behaved in various situations, and found complex differences between individual fish. The researchers tested whether differences could be measured on a "simple spectrum" of how risk-averse or risk-prone guppies were. But they found variations between individuals were too complicated to be described in this way. Dr Tom Houslay, of the Centre for Ecology and Conservation (CEC) on the University of Exeter's Penryn Campus in Cornwall, said: "The...

The site where Europe's first lunar mission crash-landed on the Moon 11 years ago has finally been located using CSI-style techniques. A detailed "Crash Scene Investigation" have revealed the last resting place of the European Space Agency’s first lunar mission, SMART-1. The spacecraft was sent into a controlled impact with the lunar surface in 2006. Although an "impact flash" was imaged at the time by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on the dark side of the boundary between night and day on...

New analysis published today has revealed it will take 45 years to stamp out the epidemic of zero hours contracts if the current trend continues. The latest ONS figures, released this week, show a drop in the number of workers on zero hours contracts of 20,000 compared to last year – from 903,000 workers to 883,000. At that rate of change, the number of people on zero hours wouldn't disappear until 2061. Ireland looks to be the next country call...