Each week, Ben Hopkinson looks back at a serious, crazy, and happy news story from the past week.
Serious News
London will be affected with various Tube Strikes as union RMT have announced dates that the 24-hour strikes will take place.
The action will be taking place after opposing the “condensed” four-day week over shift lengths, working arrangements and a potential drop on safety.
A spokesperson for the union says that bosses for the Underground were: “pushing ahead with a plan to compress a normal working week into four days despite the proposals being rejected by a majority of train operators”, while TfL have also said: “We shared our proposal for a four-day working week with our trade unions last year. Since then, we have been engaging with them on how best to implement the new working pattern. We have started talking with our unions about how to implement a four-day working week for train drivers on the Bakerloo line only”.
The strike dates are from 12am to 11:59pm the following dates:
- Tuesday 24th - Wednesday 25th March,
- Thursday 26th - Friday 27th March
- Tuesday 21st - Wednesday 22nd April
- Thursday 23rd - Friday 24th April
- Tuesday 19th - Wednesday 20th May
- Thursday 21st - Friday 22nd May.
Crazy News
VAR (Video Assistant Referee) in football is a very controversial topic – many fans do not agree with the idea as it causes too many stops, still has human elements of control and can slow the game right down and take quite a few minutes for the referee to make a decision. One group of fans took it upon themselves to get rid of the feature at a game in Germany.
In Germany’s Bundesliga 2 league, Preussen Munster were hosting Hertha Berlin when one of the host’s fans unplugged the screen so that the referee couldn’t make a call.
However, in cases like this, there is a booth with the VAR equipment in Cologne and the decision by one of the officials situated there gave the visitors a penalty which was converted.
The home team’s section in the stadium were holding up a banner just after the incident reading ‘Pull the plug on VAR’ so this was “a planned action” as per the statement released from Preussen Munster.
Happy News
A dementia choir in North London have professionally recorded a song.
Members of the Sam Beckman Choir partnered with music and healthcare practitioner Edmund Jeffrey to write and compose A New Beginning.
Each member wrote a line each week as ideas were built on until it was written and then recorded at a studio in Crouch End.
All of the members are living with dementia. One member is Ros who says: “It's a lovely song. We have spent a long time working on it – weeks and weeks. I'm very impressed with how it's turned out”. Viv added: “It has real feeling in it. We went over every single word and kept changing bits until it was perfect”.
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