A volunteer who flew out to Tenerife to help try to find missing Jay Slater has dismissed the final police search for the British teenager as a “massive PR thing”.

Paul Arnott, who has been sharing clips of his own search effort on TikTok, told Sky News last week that he flew out to Tenerife when he heard the 19-year-old’s family “needed help”.

Mr Slater was last seen on Monday 17 June after he told a friend he planned to walk from the northwestern village of Masca to his holiday accommodation in Los Cristianos in the south – a journey that would take 11 hours on foot.

Police on the island confirmed on Sunday that the search for Mr Slater had been called off nearly two weeks after his disappearance.

It came a day after police urged volunteers to come forward to help with a large-scale search in the Masca area.

Recording a TikTok video from the site on Saturday, Mr Arnott said: “So guys I’ve literally been waiting for absolutely ages now, this is a massive PR thing I’m telling you now… There’s people everywhere, literally people everywhere and nobody is doing anything.”

He added: “I’ve been up here for ages. Yeah there’s people everywhere, everyone’s still in their cars… I’m going to crack on with the search for Jay in the area where I think he is… I’ve been so quiet about this. I’m not doing it anymore people, I’m sick of this crap.”

In a follow up video, he says: “I’m so blooming stressed and annoyed about what’s just happened. I thought today was going to be so productive, I thought so many people were going to show up.

“I thought it was going to be really organised… I thought it was going to be massive and it’s not.”

A group of around 30 to 40 volunteers turned up to help rescue teams on Saturday – scouring a huge area of rugged and hilly terrain.

It came after Mr Slater’s mother, Debbie Duncan, his father Warren and brother Zak flew out to help police and mountain rescue teams search for the teenager shortly after he first disappeared.

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Ms Duncan told The Daily Telegraph last week that she has “every faith” in the police who have been trying to find her son.

She also said she couldn’t “thank Paul Arnott enough” for his efforts.

Police said they are keeping the investigation into Mr Slater’s disappearance open after they ended their search effort on Sunday.

However, they added they could yet open up searches in the south of the island, but have not provided an update.

‘I’ve seen no posters’

A British man who travelled to the island after Mr Slater’s disappearance told Sky News: “I was a little bit more scared about coming here than I would have been, and (me and my friend) have made sure we have each other’s locations, which we wouldn’t have done before all this happened.”

A British woman on holiday on the island said it was “disappointing” police had ended their search and added: “He’s a young boy that has a family, and to know that he is out there somewhere, it is quite terrifying.”

Another man from the UK who is holidaying in Tenerife said: “I’ve been here a week, I’ve seen no posters, hardly any police patrols going around, it’s like nothing’s happened really.”

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What were Jay Slater’s last known movements?

Mr Slater had been holidaying with friends in southern Tenerife before travelling to the northwestern mountain village of Masca with two people he met at the NRG music festival on Sunday 16 June.

After the event ended, he got in a car and travelled to a small Airbnb in Masca with two men, who police said on Saturday are “not relevant” to the case.

Mr Slater, from Oswaldtwistle near Blackburn in Lancashire, told a friend over the phone at 8.30am the following morning that he was walking back to his holiday accommodation after missing a bus.

He also said he was lost, in need of water, and only had 1% charge on his phone.

The last person to see Mr Slater was Masca resident Ofelia Medina Hernandez who spoke to the teenager on Monday 17 June.

Ms Hernandez said she told him a bus was due at 10am as he seemingly hoped to get back to his accommodation.

However, he set off walking – and she said she later drove past him while he was “walking fast”.

A GoFundMe appeal called Get Jay Slater Home was set up by his friend Lucy Law and had raised more than £43,000 as the police search came to an end.

Taylor Swift is getting her own exhibition at the V&A Museum in London this summer.

The show – titled Taylor Swift: Songbook Trail – will feature costumes, awards and items from her childhood – with many on display for the first time.

The temporary exhibition will be made up of different stops on a tour, each showcasing a moment in Swift’s 20-year music career, taking visitors on a journey through the permanent galleries at the museum.

Many of the objects are on loan from Taylor Swift’s own personal archive.

Swift is currently travelling the world with her Eras Tour, bringing an economic uptick and even seismic activity to the areas she visits.

Songbook Trail will feature 16 looks worn by Swift, which will sit alongside music awards, storyboards and previously unseen items from Swift’s archive which will explore her childhood and recording legacy, according to the V&A.

Among the items will be customised cowboy boots worn by Swift during 2007’s Soul2Soul II Tour, as well as the black ruffled dress worn in her recent music video for Fortnight, the first single from The Tortured Poets Department.

The exhibition promises visitors a chance to see costumes and archival material up close.

The installations have been designed by Tom Piper, whose other projects include the V&A’s 2021 exhibition Alice: Curiouser And Curiouser.

Swift’s worldwide domination is currently being compounded with her billion-dollar Eras Tour which features songs from albums including 1989, Red and Midnights, and her new double-album, The Tortured Poets Department.

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It’s travelled through the Americas, Asia and is now in Europe, with celebrity attendees including the Prince of Wales and his children, Hollywood star Tom Cruise and Fleabag favourites Andrew Scott and Phoebe Waller-Bridge.

Swift’s American football star boyfriend, Travis Kelce, also joined her on stage at one of her Wembley Stadium shows.

Kate Bailey, the V&A’s senior curator, theatre and performance, said: “We are delighted to be able to display a range of iconic looks worn by Taylor Swift at the V&A this summer – each celebrating a chapter in the artist’s musical journey.

“Taylor Swift’s songs – like objects – tell stories, often drawing from art, history and literature.

“We hope this theatrical trail across the museum will inspire curious visitors to discover more about the performer, her creativity and V&A objects.”

Taylor Swift: Songbook Trail opens on the 27 July at the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington, southwest London, and entry is free.

“We eat according to price rather than enjoyment,” Sarah Bowmer tells me when we meet on the high street of her hometown of Bakewell, Derbyshire.  

It’s a sunny day and the tourists have flocked to this picturesque market town in the heart of the Peak District.

Day-trippers wander around the souvenir shop and queues have formed to buy the famous Bakewell pudding, which has made this town famous since the 1820s.

But Sarah isn’t feeling it.

Food prices are still 25% more expensive than when I first met Sarah and Paul in 2022. She calls that period the “dark days”.

Sarah, 53, is a carer for 56-year-old Paul, who is registered disabled. They live in rented accommodation with their two sons Joseph, 17, and William, 15.

Back in 2022, they had just received a gas bill which had doubled from £240 the previous month to £490.

“When I read the letter from the gas company I just burst into tears. I had no idea how we would cope. It was terrifying,” said Sarah.

They turned the heating off and wore more jumpers. They cut back on shopping and batch-cooked food.

The cost of living crisis that was being talked about so much in the media had arrived at their door.

And this was all happening, in part, because of a rise in inflation in both the UK and the world in general.

But the economic hangover caused by the pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and trade difficulties caused by Brexit were also making things worse.

Sarah says she was putting on a brave face for Paul and the boys.

“I was trying to pretend that everything was fine, but it really wasn’t. We are heading into winter, and I have no idea how we were going to manage,” she said.

In October 2022, the government stepped in to prevent household bills from spiralling out of control, introducing a cap on average bills to help families out.

Sarah, like most people, welcomed it.

But eventually the cost of that scheme, as well as the billions spent keeping the economy alive during the pandemic, would lead to difficult decisions, with Chancellor Jeremy Hunt announcing £55bn in spending cuts during November’s autumn statement.

By now, British families are forecast to see the biggest drop in living standards since the war.

‘The problem is here now’

When I met Sarah and Paul again, it is early November, the days are short and there’s a cold snap on the way, with temperatures forecast to drop below zero.

We sit around their kitchen table and talk. Paul says their money is not going very far.

“We go for a normal everyday shop, which used to be about maybe £20 to £30 has now turned into £70,” he said.

“There are things we just don’t buy anymore, sweets for the kids or a nice pudding. The money we save has to go on heating the house or paying the bills.”

Sarah says she is growing more and more frustrated with politicians.

“I understand that the government has to look at the long term, but the problem is here and now for so many families, including ours. It’s getting through winter, that’s the biggie,” she said.

Over the next few months inflation begins to fall, offering Prime Minister Rishi Sunak a glimmer of hope this economic good news story could be harnessed to his advantage.

The prime minister announced there will be an election on 4 July and the nation is put on an election footing.

‘We are worse off now’

I met Sarah and Paul again and they tell me their political views have very much been shaped by their experiences of the last few years.

Sarah says: “Very little has changed for us. We are still struggling to make ends meet and we are still seeing that the price of food is still very high.

“In fact, I think food is more expensive now than it was a few years ago.

“I have watched politics stumble from one disaster to another and it makes me so angry.

“I don’t think they really care about how families like ours survive these times. They do appear to only care about themselves.”

Sarah comes from a Conservative-voting family and has voted Tory in the past. Paul says he leans more towards Labour, but there’s a problem for him.

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“As a leader, Kier Starmer doesn’t quite cut it for me. I cannot put my finger on it. But when I look at the Conservative record over the past 14 years, I have no choice really but to support Labour this time around.”

Sarah says: “We are worse off now. That’s something that we have to take into consideration with this election.”