Each week, Ben Hopkinson looks back at a serious, crazy, and happy news story from the past week.
Serious News
The Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) have announced a strike for civilian staff within the Met Police on bonfire night, one of the busiest days of the year for the force.
The reasoning is because the staff were refused a London weighting allowance by management – an increase to monthly wages of £1,250. The strike means that police officers are set to be redeployed at a higher cost to the taxpayer.
The general secretary for the PCS, Fran Heathcote said: “Rent, mortgage repayments, food prices and energy bills have been rising for everyone in London – so why does the Met treat its civilian staff differently to officers? The Met has deliberately ignored our practical solutions, aware that its continued commitment to a two-tier workforce would lead to strikes”.
A spokesperson for the force says that they “genuinely value officers and staff equally”, there are different pay and allowances to reflect the differences between roles and responsibilities, adding: “In a shrinking Met with a £260m budget gap, we cannot justify spending millions to give staff the £1,250 award. We've made a reasonable alternative offer to the trade unions to settle the dispute and remain open to finding a solution”.
Crazy News
Derbyshire Police were left with their heads in their hands as they thought that they were searching for a real crocodile – which turned out to be a stuffed one!
An appeal went out on their Facebook page after a member of the public alerted the authorities to a crocodile dumped in a canal in Willington.
On the Facebook page, the rural crime team posted: “We're going to go out on a limb and guess this little guy isn't native to Derbyshire and as such, if you can offer any information about the crocodile's whereabouts now, or have knowledge of how it ended up at that site, please drop us a direct message. For clarification, although we cannot claim to be medical professionals, we are acutely aware the crocodile is deceased”.
It turns out that another member of the public had gone fishing and had accidently caught a taxidermy crocodile instead!
Happy News
Scientists within the United States and China have developed a one-step method to turn plastic waste into petrol at room temperature and ambient pressure.
The transformation is designed to be scalable for industrial use and set to be used on PVC plastic too – used within packaging, containers, pipes, appliances, medical devices, and clothing.
The breakthrough is certainly good news for the environment by stopping the wastage from going into landfill, as well as saving animal habitats, all while going back to helping us to keep us moving. Especially as fossil fuels are limited and have an expiry date.
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