The Best Way to Learn English-Real UK News Stories Ep 787
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Hi there and welcome to this podcast from Adept English. How about a news update today? We know you like these news podcasts.

And you get to learn English on useful topics at the same time. Today, I'll choose some UK news stories from last week to focus on. And of course, I'll explain any of the more difficult words. These news stories are specific to the UK, so you may not have heard them, but I'm sure some of the issues raised are being talked about in your country too. So let's cover some great English language vocabulary today about weather, politics,

and economics. Very useful. Hello, I'm Hilary and you're listening to Adept English. We will help you to speak English fluently. All you have to do is listen. So start listening now and find out how it works.

Are you stuck at the point of being able to understand English, but you're having difficulty speaking English? It's a common problem. Lots of people get stuck in that place. As well as continuing to listen to lots of English, two things you can do about this problem. First of all, consider our Most Common 500 Words course. This will help you practice and really get to know the basic vocabulary in English.

It'll make sure you've got all the essential words in your head. And if you can understand the 500 most common words automatically with practice,

It means they become automatic when you speak. You'll automatically be able to use them. And you can say a lot with the most common 500 words. A whole course, in fact. Why not try our course and find out? And actually, this course covers the most common 600 words.

which is even better. There's an extra section. And there isn't another course like this one that you can buy anywhere. And I said two things that can help. The second one, find yourself a language partner, someone to practice speaking English with, someone who's also learning. That will make it easier.

You can do this online. So buy our Most Common 500 Words course and set up lessons online with an English language partner, someone else who's learning English. Just see how much your spoken English will improve with those two measures.

So let's look at UK news items today. Well, there were lots of floods in the UK last week. That's flood, F-L-O-O-D. And a flood is when water, a lot of water, gets in the wrong place. So you can have a flood in your kitchen if your washing machine breaks. But a flood is also what happens

happens when there's heavy rainfall and the rivers get too big. There's too much water. We say of rivers, that's R-I-V-E-R, rivers burst their banks. That means there's too much water in the river and it cannot be contained anymore.

So last week, Storm Bert brought heavy rain and made conditions really difficult for many people in the UK. In South Wales and some places in England, homes were flooded, businesses destroyed. And Storm Connell didn't help following on from Storm Bert. As I speak today, the sun is shining and we have a respite, a gap in the wet weather. But there are still 70 flood warnings out for England and Wales.

including a danger to life alert in two places. So Storm Bert and Storm Connell, these weather systems are named by the Netherlands Met Service, KNMI. Met means meteorological.

About the weather, in other words. And the naming starts from A on the 1st of September each year. So we're only at Burt and Connell and already there are problems. There are calls for the UK government to do more about flooding. Currently, 5.7 million homes in the UK are built on floodplains.

areas of land that flood naturally. This doesn't seem to have been factored in, thought about in the design of the houses. This seems to me another example of what we call in English a lack of joined up thinking. Why are companies allowed to build houses on land?

land that is known to flood. Seems a bit crazy to me. Clearly, large companies who make money out of building these houses are not being stopped from doing so. And it's the people who buy these houses and live in them who suffer. Why isn't the government doing more? There are also some issues around flood defences, the way we stop the floods.

and the way that waterways are managed. Generally, it's not properly done in the UK because our water companies are private businesses and they're largely interested in making money for their shareholders. I'm not sure big dividends, big payouts should be coming from an essential service like water. Anyway, very frustrating this week for people whose homes and businesses have been affected by floods.

The UK is generally a great country to live in, but you'll hear my frustration sometimes when I'm talking about topics in the news. Our governments seem to make silly decisions, but I'm sure that in your country you don't always agree with decisions your government makes either.

The new Labour government in the UK has had a difficult start and is already unpopular, even though Keir Starmer only became our Prime Minister on the 5th of July 2024. People object to, disagree with many of the actions, many of the measures which the Labour government has taken so far. And now there is a petition with nearly three million names on it.

to hold another general election. A petition, P-E-T-I-T-I-O-N, that's where you collect people's names. You get them to sign their name, S-I-G-N, and a petition is asking for something different. In the UK, if you can get 100,000 names on a petition, it triggers a debate in parliament. Well, this petition has nearly 3 million names as it stands.

So why are the Labour government so unpopular? Well, their first move was to take away the winter fuel payment for many pensioners. Vocabulary here, a

A pensioner, P-E-N-S-I-O-N-E-R, that's someone who lives on a pension. Generally, an old person who is retired. And we're probably meaning here people who live on the state pension, the government pension. So these people don't have a lot of money.

But they were helped by the winter fuel payment. It's expensive to heat our homes at the moment. Electricity costs a lot, so does gas. So the winter fuel payment was helpful for many pensioners. So now it's been stopped for all but the poorest of pensioners. This happened in the budget at the end of October, B-U-D-G-E-T. And that's when the government announces its financial plan. Also in that budget,

the government announced that they were going to tax inheritance for farmers. The word inheritance, I-N-H-E-R-I-T-A-N-C-E, that's when your property passes from father to son. When the father dies or from mother to son or mother to daughter, father to daughter, that's all inheritance. And we have what we call inheritance tax.

tax in the UK. That's when they take part of what you own when you die before it passes to your children. Previously, farmers were exempt, E-X-E-M-P-T. That meant they didn't have to pay inheritance tax. Well, now they do. The problem is,

Farmers don't make very much money, and this was brilliantly illustrated by Jeremy Clarkson's series Clarkson's Farm. It seems almost impossible to make money out of farming in the UK. And yet, shouldn't we be worried about our food security? So farmers are now going to be

heavily taxed each time their land passes to the next generation. Farmers were out on the streets of London last week. Jeremy Clarkson was there, of course, too. He is a farmer, but actually he's very wealthy and is making a great deal of money from his TV series about his farm. Not quite in the same boat as many of the other farmers then.

Another measure, another action which has made the new Labour government very unpopular, they increased national insurance that employers pay. Again, some vocabulary. National insurance is just another form of

tax on your income, on what you earn. It just has a different name, as though you're perhaps not going to realise it's tax because it's called something different. But anyway, we all pay national insurance and you have to have a national insurance number to work in the UK. And employers are

They're businesses that employ people to work for them. So employers are the businesses and employees are the people. So the UK government increased the amount of national insurance that employers pay for each employee, for each person who works for them. This has already massively affected the jobs market. The UK economy has for years been resilient because the job market was good.

In particular, there was plenty of work for young people who are starting out, probably the lowest paid. But now employers can't take the risk, don't want the extra cost, and there are fewer and fewer jobs around.

I know several people looking for work who are finding it really difficult at the moment. We haven't previously had a problem with unemployment amongst young people. That means young people out of work, whereas now we might because of this government measure. The Labour government talk all the time about growing the economy. It's basic economics, surely.

that they don't seem to understand. It's not governments who grow economies, it's businesses. That's what the other party, the Conservative Party, say anyway. And I do agree with them on that. If you tax businesses too much, they don't employ as many people. You have more people unemployed and therefore the government has to pay for more people. It's not exactly a cost saving, is it? Or sensible.

The Labour government's answer? We're going to revamp job centres. So they're going to spend millions of pounds redoing government job centres around the country. They like state recruitment agencies. This just drives me mad. It's not government money that

means that there are jobs in the job agencies. And I actually don't know anyone who's ever been to a job centre. I went once when I was 21. Never been since. Never needed to. People find jobs other places. Surely this is the sort of thing that one would learn in A-level economics.

I hope someone somewhere in the Labour government has this sort of expertise. It's not currently evident, though. To be fair, I didn't really like the previous government either. But this government could do with taking an economics A-level, I think. Another piece of news from the UK. The UK car industry is in turmoil. The targets, that's T-A-R-G-E-T, targets in the UK for producing electric vehicles or EVs

Well, they rise every year. This year in the UK, electric vehicles must make up 22% of car sales and 10% of van sales. The problem is there aren't enough people who want to buy EVs or not at the price they currently cost or the type of EV currently available. So all of this has meant that in the UK, Vauxhall, V-A-U-X...

H-A-L-L. Vauxhall is cutting jobs. They can't make enough money to keep these people employed. So electric vehicles are 22% of car sales, 10% of van sales. And for every petrol car sale outside of those percentages, UK manufacturers have to pay a £15,000 fine. Next year in 2025, the targets are higher. 28% of

car sales must be electric and for vans it's 16%. So if there aren't enough people wanting to buy electric vehicles currently, the problem's just going to get worse next year. It is important to reduce carbon emissions and pollution, but you can't force people to buy electric cars that are still very expensive and aren't yet practicable.

The UK car manufacturing industry is going to be hit hard by these measures. Perhaps we need to rethink how we do this. So there you have it. Interesting topics in the news last week in the UK, weather, politics and economics, I promised you. Don't forget to share our podcast.

with anyone else you know who's learning English. And don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already. You don't want to miss anything. Enough for now. Have a lovely day. Speak to you again soon. Goodbye. Thank you so much for listening. Please help me tell others about this podcast by reviewing or rating it. And please share it on social media.

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