Insurance takeover is likely to cast a pall of uncertainty over Christmas for many staff of combined group
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Aviva has agreed to buy rival insurer Direct Line for £3.7bn, with up to 2,300 job cuts planned as the companies aim for £125m in cost savings.
FTSE 100 member Aviva, the UK’s largest insurer, said on Monday it will offer the equivalent of £2.75 for each Direct Line share in cash and shares.
In this week’s newsletter: embrace the outdoors over Christmas; last-minute gifts; and the perfect socks
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Have you seen The Holiday? I have. Fifteen times. Mostly against my will. It’s my wife’s favourite Christmas film, making it an annual fixture in our household. But this year, she’s been more interested in watching That Christmas, a new family-friendly Netflix animation about a particularly chaotic 25 December in a seaside village. Without giving too much away, the mayhem ends with everyone gleefully plunging into the sea for a festive dip as the credits roll.
Now, I’ve never done a The Holiday-style Christmas house swap before, so I can’t comment on its effectiveness as a form of seasonal escapism. The sea swim part, however, is something I can vouch for.
Gourmet gifts for foodies: 23 edible Christmas presents, from posh tinned fish to chutney
15 of the best men’s coats for winter – from puffers and parkas to trenches
The best whiskies: 10 tried and tested tipples, from scotch and single malt to blended and bourbon
The Atlanta rookie finally took over for Kirk Cousins and showed the Falcons what they have been missing for almost two months: a legitimate starting quarterback
It only took one drive to see the difference. The Falcons smoked the Giants 34-7 on Sunday behind a commanding performance from their rookie quarterback Michael Penix Jr.
It was Penix’s first start after the team ejected on the Kirk Cousins experience, with the Falcons expected to release the veteran this offseason. On the sideline, Cousins stood with his helmet on, looking like a dejected figure. On the field, Penix threw lasers, showing the Falcons what they have been missing for almost two months: a legitimate starting quarterback.
Research finds people who have more than four coffees a day have 17% lower chance of head and neck cancers
If the only thing getting you through a mountain of present-wrapping is a mug of tea or coffee, be of good cheer. Researchers have found people who consume those drinks have a slightly lower risk of head and neck cancers.
There are about 12,800 new head and neck cancer cases and about 4,100 related deaths in the UK every year, according to Cancer Research UK.
There is something inescapably bleak about a nation that relies on charity appeals to fix its social and economic problems
“Will Santa find me?” a subject line in my inbox asked last week. I wondered briefly if my niece had moved to email with her questions about the logistics of gift delivery. In fact, it was from Refuge: a Christmas appeal for children spending the holidays with their mums in a women’s shelter.
Over the past fortnight, I’ve seen more marketing for charities than supermarkets: from Instagram ads by Crisis hosting Christmas dinner and support for homeless people to X posts by Action for Children hoping to get gifts for kids whose parents can’t afford one.
Frances Ryan is a Guardian columnist
Houghton and Miedema are among 17 current or former WSL players signed up to A Licence course aimed at creating more female coaches
“Who is the spare player? Where’s the space? Yes, yes, let’s go!” is the shout, as Manchester City’s under-16s girls’ squad are put through their paces at the City Football Academy and the net ripples at the end of another slick move.
On this particular ice-cold December night, the future stars being developed are not only the youngsters but those in the tracksuits too. The next generation of coaches, participants on the latest Uefa A Licence course run by the Football Association, are leading the session and they are faces familiar to any Women’s Super League supporter.
Liverpool make a statement, Pep Guardiola tries to see the funny side and Sandro Tonali fires on all cylinders
Midway through Ruben Amorim’s post-defeat media conference the roof in the press room, located in the bowels of Old Trafford, did what some of the outside sections of the stadium do: leak. Spots of water hit a scribe perched in the front row, merriment ensued, and Manchester United’s head coach offered a wry smile, a fitting end to an afternoon on which Bournemouth had rained on his side’s pre-Christmas Day parade. Nine games into his tenure, the Portuguese’s coach record is poor – four wins, four losses and a draw – and the next four matches look tough: Wolves (away), Newcastle (home), Liverpool (away) and a trip to Arsenal in the FA Cup. Amorim, who continually repeats the need for victory, knows things have to improve. Jamie Jackson
We were promised a full refund but we’ve received nothing – and the host doesn’t reply
I used Vrbo to book a one-night stay at a flat in Hove where six of us were attending a family memorial service. Two days before our arrival, I was informed that the flat was no longer available and was offered an alternative. This turned out to be in a disgusting state. There were soiled and bloody sheets, rubbish and dirt everywhere, even a large knife inside the bathtub. There were also fewer beds than advertised.
We had to leave for the service before we’d got a response from the host. We were subsequently told we could use the property next door but when we returned at 1am we found the access code we had been given didn’t work. We ended up having to sleep in the filthy flat and, since the front door wouldn’t lock, we had to wedge it with a chair. We subsequently discovered that the place had been burgled three days before.
Sites such as film discovery platform Letterboxd promote a new way of film-viewing, eschewing sneering gatekeepers for a more open-minded and eclectic experience
Amid all the dire news to come out of the movie business this year – a box office slump, a slowdown of production, growing unemployment in Hollywood, the closure of a dozen cinemas in the UK – good news seems to have come from the unlikeliest of places: cinephilia, pronounced “dead” by Susan Sontag in 1996, is alive and well and sporting a Mubi tote bag among the very demographic, 18- to 25-year-olds, whose gif-shortened attention spans are usually held up as spelling the death of the medium.
A recent Wim Wenders retrospective including Wings of Desire and The American Friend took £225,700 at the box office – more than double its distributor, Curzon, expected. A North American rerelease of Chen Kaige’s 1993 Palme d’Or winner Farewell My Concubine grossed $350,000. Even a recent retrospective of the auteur’s auteur, melancholy Hungarian Béla Tarr – including the seven-hour Sátántangó – took £65,000. What makes these figures all the more surprising is that these films are readily available to audiences on DVD, BFI Player, the Criterion channel or other home entertainment companies such as Vinegar Syndrome. Even more surprising is the demographic they are succeeding with: a recent 4K restoration of Jonathan Demme’s Talking Heads concert film, Stop Making Sense, took almost $7m in its 2023 re-release by A24, with three-quarters of audiences seeing it in a cinema for the first time and more than 60% of its audience not yet born when the film was released in 1984.
The jockey had remarkable career triumphs but he’s still infamous for punching a horse and a rival rider
Davy Russell’s wife, Edelle, sometimes brings out a skeleton that resembles his battered body during her anatomy classes at school. The skeleton looks as if it has contracted measles because it is covered in red dots, with each dot marking a bone that Russell broke during his 21 years as a professional jump jockey. He had a remarkable career where he became Ireland’s champion jockey three times, won the Grand National twice, as well as the Gold Cup, while also being infamous for punching a horse and a rival rider before he finally stopped racing in 2023.
“It doesn’t bother me,” Russell says as he confirms that the skeleton is still wheeled out at Edelle’s school down the road from where he and I have lunch in his kitchen in Youghal, a small town less than an hour from Cork. “When there’s a quiz on the telly and they ask where is the ulna bone, your fibula or tibia, I know every answer.”
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