UK weather: ‘Treacherous conditions’ wreak havoc on travel – with more blizzards on the way

Published

2 years ago

March 10, 2023

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“Hundreds and hundreds” of stranded drivers have been stuck in “never-ending” miles-long tailbacks overnight in heavy snow – and forecasters say blizzards are on the way and will cause “treacherous conditions”.

Travellers have been warned of train and flight cancellations, while the Met Office says the cold snap is moving south, as Storm Larisa continues to batter the country.

Icy surfaces are also likely to develop, it warns, with snow drifts bringing “extra hazards” to the roads.

Motorists stuck for hours as snow and high winds bring motorways to a standstill – UK weather updates

The Met Office said the greatest depth of snow recorded was 27cm at Capel Curig in North Wales.

Four yellow warnings for snow covered much of the rest of the nation, with the exception of southeast England and western Scotland.

Heavy snowfall left drivers stranded for more than seven hours on the M62 motorway in Greater Manchester and Yorkshire.

RAC breakdown spokesman Rod Dennis said the situation on the M62 was likely to have been caused by a large amount of snow falling in a short period.

Greater Manchester Police traffic officers said on Friday morning that ploughing and gritting on the motorway had been severely delayed due to drivers illegally using the hard shoulder and red X lanes.

National Highways North-West estimated that congestion on the eastbound carriageway, between Rochdale and Saddleworth, at one point stretched to around eight miles.

One driver, Kelly, told Sky News earlier this morning: “We’ve been stuck now for six hours.”

Asked how many other motorists were on the road and how long the queue was, she said: “There’s, I would say hundreds and hundreds and hundreds. It goes back for 16 miles, I think, one way, and I have no idea how far ahead it goes.

“We have managed to keep the heaters on… I have got my 15-year-old son here with me. I think he thought I was being dramatic, but I was like, we need to take blankets, we need to take coats, just in case, so we were well prepared.”

Emma Hamilton, 28, who works for the NHS and is from Yorkshire, said she had been stuck for eight hours travelling from Manchester. She said: “It honestly feels never-ending at this point.”

Public transport has also been affected, with Network Rail saying multiple fallen trees have blocked lines between Manchester and Sheffield, meaning no trains can run.

Air travel was also affected with the majority of flights departing Liverpool John Lennon Airport delayed on Friday morning due to “heavy snow falls”, with passengers urged to check with their airlines for further updates.

East Midlands Airport was shut for around three hours while flights were suspended at Birmingham Airport to clear snow from the runway and there were also delays at Bristol Airport.

When will the cold snap end?

The weather is expected to clear by the end of Friday, before then being replaced by another low pressure system.

Met Office chief forecaster Jason Kelly said: “The worst of the snowfall in England is over for now, but further weather warnings will be in force to cover the further hazards brought by frost and ice.”

The agency has issued a number of yellow weather warnings for snow and ice:

• Two ice alerts – one covering parts of Northern Ireland and another across southern Scotland, northern and eastern England, parts of the Midlands and large parts of Wales – are in place until 10am on Saturday
• An alert for snow and ice covering large swathes of Scotland is in place until 9am on Saturday
• Another snow and ice warning issued from 3pm on Saturday until 6am on Sunday – across northern England and southern Scotland

Meteorologist Alex Deakin said next week could bring a “continued battleground” between colder conditions and milder air pushing in from the Atlantic.

He added there will be “colder interludes” and the “potential for further snow” next week. It isn’t unusual for the country to experience a cold snap in spring, when conditions are often “highly variable”.

Statistically, the UK is marginally more likely to get snow in March than in December, the Met Office said.

‘Gusts of 50mph’ and ‘treacherous conditions’

Met Office meteorologist Alex Burkill said the worst of the weather was expected in northwest Wales and northern England, where “gusts of easily 50mph” are on a collision course with “30 to 40cm of snow”.

A pocket of western Scotland covering Glasgow and the county of Argyll is thought to be the only region untouched by deluges and snowfall.

People living in southern England are expected to bear the brunt of the downpours.

Mr Burkill said: “The combination of heavy snow and gales is why we’re likely to see blizzards and drifting snow which causes extra hazards on the roads.

“In places covered by amber warnings, there will be very difficult, treacherous conditions.

“Ideally, avoid travelling in those periods – but if you have to head out then be aware that journeys could take significantly longer.”

Travel warnings

The RAC on Friday said it has seen a sharp rise in drivers stranded in the snow in Yorkshire – particularly Sheffield, Leeds, Bradford and Hull.

Breakdowns volumes are also very high in the East Midlands and north of London, as motorists attempt to start their vehicles.

Derbyshire Constabulary urged drivers not to travel in the Peak District on Friday morning “unless absolutely necessary” as most roads in the High Peak and Derbyshire Dales areas were “impassable”.

Parts of the A66 in Durham and the A628 Woodhead Pass in South Yorkshire were also shut overnight due to heavy snowfall.

UK

‘I’m deprived of my UK citizenship but I’m not a convicted terrorist’

Published

12 hours ago

August 24, 2025

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'I'm deprived of my UK citizenship but I'm not a convicted terrorist'

Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) went from a jihadist movement once aligned to al Qaeda to forming the official government of Syria.

It was a monumental transformation for them, their country and the wider Middle East.

But potentially too for British people who went to Syria – and who were stripped of their citizenship as a result, on the grounds of national security.

Tauqir Sharif, better known as Tox, went to Syria in 2012 as an aid worker. He was accused of being part of a group affiliated with al Qaeda, which he denies, and the then-home secretary Amber Rudd deprived him of his British citizenship in 2017.

“As of now, I am deprived of my UK citizenship but I’m not a convicted terrorist – and the reason for that is because we refused, we boycotted, the SIAC [Special Immigration Appeals Commission] secret courts, which don’t allow you to see any of the evidence presented against you,” he said.

“And one of the things that I always called for was, look, put me in front of a jury, let’s have an open hearing.”

HTS is still a proscribed terrorist organisation but the British government has now established relations with it.

Foreign Secretary David Lammy travelled to Damascus to meet the jihadist-turned-Syrian interim president – the man who swapped his nom de guerre of al Jolani for Ahmed al Sharaa.

If the UK government takes HTS off the terror list, what does that mean for those who lost their citizenship after being accused of being part of it?

People who joined HTS are only a subset among the scores of people who have had their citizenship revoked – a tool the UK government has been quick to use.

According to a report by the Parliamentary Joint Human Rights Committee, the UK “uses deprivation of citizenship orders more than almost any country in the world”.

The peak of that was in 2017, and mainly in relation to Syria – especially in the case of people joining Islamic State, perhaps most famously Shamima Begum.

And because people cannot be made entirely stateless, and need to have a second nationality, or be potentially eligible for one, there are worries of racism in who the orders apply to.

Countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh offer dual nationality, whereas other nations do not. In 2022, the Institute of Race Relations said “the vast majority of those deprived are Muslim men with South Asian or Middle Eastern/North African heritage”.

Legal grey areas

Sky News submitted Freedom of Information requests to the Home Office asking for a breakdown of second nationalities of those deprived of citizenship, but was refused twice on national security grounds.

The independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, Jonathan Hall KC, told Sky News there are issues around transparency.

“I do think there is a problem when you have people whose relationship with the country that they’re left with is really technical and they may never have realised that they had that citizenship before and may never gone to that country,” he said.

“Me and my predecessors have all said, owing to how frequently this power is used, it should be something that the independent reviewer should have the power to review. I asked, my predecessor asked, we’ve both been told no, so I agree there’s a lack of transparency.”

No automatic reversal

Even if the government does remove HTS from the terror list, it would not automatically invalidate decisions to deprive people of their citizenship.

Macer Gifford gave up a career as a banker in London to join the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) as a foreign volunteer between 2015 and 2017.

He told Sky News that decisions “made years ago in the interest of the British public have to remain”.

“We can’t sort of go through previous cases nitpicking through it, wasting time and money to bring it up to date,” he added.

“We can’t be naive because the intent to go out, the decision to go in itself is a huge decision for them. So it shows commitment when they’re there, they then, if they take an active participation in the organisations that they’ve been accused of joining, again, that involves training and perseverance and dedication to the cause.”

But those born and raised in Britain, who joined the same cause, and lost their citizenship as a result, might reasonably ask why that should remain the case.

UK

Criminals could be banned from pubs and sports grounds under new plans

Published

12 hours ago

August 24, 2025

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Criminals could be banned from pubs and sports grounds under new plans

Criminals face being banned from pubs, sports grounds and concerts under new government plans to give judges powers to pass tougher community sentences.

The new measures, which would apply to people in England and Wales, “should remind all offenders that, under this government, crime does not pay”, Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood said.

Offenders’ freedom could also be curtailed with limits on driving, travel bans and restriction zones confining them to specific areas, the government said.

Similar measures could also apply to prisoners let out on licence, while drug testing would be expanded to include all those released, rather than just those with a history of substance misuse.

While judges are currently able to impose limited bans for specific crimes, such as football bans for crimes committed inside a stadium on match day, the new measures would allow for such bans to be handed down for any offence.

The justice secretary said: “When criminals break society’s rules, they must be punished.

“Those serving their sentences in the community must have their freedom restricted there too.

“These new punishments should remind all offenders that, under this government, crime does not pay.

“Rightly, the public expect the government to do everything in its power to keep Britain safe, and that’s what we’re doing.”

The proposals are part of the Labour government’s efforts to tackle overcrowding in prisons.

Back in June, it emerged that prisoners were to be transferred to lower security jails in an effort to ease overcrowding, as part of a new measure quietly unveiled by the government.

Sky News reported earlier this month how the prison system was close to collapse on a number of occasions between autumn 2023 and summer 2024, according to an independent review by former chief inspector of prisons, Dame Anne Owers.

The report said there was a systemic problem which has led to recurring prison capacity crises over the last 18 years.

UK

Police separate anti-immigration and anti-racism protesters across the country

Published

1 day ago

August 23, 2025

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Police separate anti-immigration and anti-racism protesters across the country

Protesters have gathered across the country as groups demonstrated against asylum seeker housing and were met by anti-racism campaigners.

Demonstrations under the Abolish Asylum System slogan were held in England, Scotland and Wales, including in Bristol, Exeter, Tamworth, Cannock, Aberdeen, Mold, Perth, Nuneaton, Liverpool, Wakefield, Newcastle, Horley and Canary Wharf.

Counter-protests were also organised by campaign group Stand Up to Racism.

In Bristol, mounted police separated the two groups in the Castle Park, with officers scuffling with protesters.

Police kept around 200 anti-immigration protesters draped in English flags away from roughly 50 Stand Up to Racism protesters in Horley, Surrey.

One man, wearing a West Ham United football shirt, was held by police as he yelled: “You’re not welcome here, you’re not welcome here, you’re not welcome here” at anti-racism protesters.

Anti-immigration protesters also chanted: “Tommy, Tommy, Tommy, Tommy Robinson” in support of the far-right activist, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon.

The anti-racism protesters chanted “say it loud, say it clear, refugees are welcome here” and held signs calling for solidarity and to “stop deportations”.

The Stand Up to Racism protesters were shepherded into a smaller area as they continued to chant: “No hate, no fear, refugees are welcome here”, which was met with “No they’re f****** not” from the other side of the street.

In Perth, protesters gathered outside the Radisson Hotel.

The anti-migration protesters held up signs with slogans such as “Perth is full – empty the hotels” and “get them out”.

Stand Up to Racism Scotland said it had achieved “victory” in Perth, with more than 200 gathering to oppose the Abolish Asylum System demonstration.

In Liverpool, a dispersal order was issued to try and contain the protests.

Saturday’s events come amid continued tension around the use of the hotels for asylum seekers.

Regular protests had been held outside the Bell Hotel in Epping, Essex, which started after an asylum seeker housed there was charged with sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl on 10 July.

Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu, 38, was charged with trying to kiss a teenage girl and denies the allegations. He is due to stand trial later this month.

In the wake of those protests, Epping Forest District Council sought and won an interim High Court injunction to stop migrants from being accommodated there – a decision which the government is seeking permission to appeal.