Daily Mail - 21.08.2019

Page 24

SCOTLAND Yard has nearly doubled its

flight budget to cover the escalating cost

of protecting globe-trotting royals on

official visits and holidays.

Taxpayers faced a £4.6million bill for

officers’ flights in the year to March 31, as

against £2.5million between 2015-16.

The revelation comes after a row over

the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s use

of private jets for holidays in

the Mediterranean.

The Royal Family’s carbon footprint for

travel has increased by 98 per cent over

the past year due to a series of overseas

tours. Buckingham Palace said all official

foreign travel was undertaken at the

request of the Government.

Protection officers accompany all roy-

als on flights. A Met spokesman said cost

is kept to a minimum. Some of the

expense covers officers’ flights for a

range of criminal investigations.

Yesterday James Roberts, political

director of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said:

‘This is a staggering increase when budg-

ets are supposed to be squeezed.’

Police costs soar for jet-set royals

UK’s zombie knife

epidemic laid bare

X-ray reveals near-fatal attack by teen thug

POLICE have released a shock-

ing image of a zombie knife

which was plunged so deep into

a man’s buttocks it had to be

surgically removed.
The victim was stabbed by Aaron
Toward-Parker, 18, in a showdown
between love rivals in a park.
Police released an X-ray of the embed-
ded blade in the unnamed victim after
the teenager was found guilty at Swin-
don Crown Court of wounding with
intent to cause grievous bodily harm.
Detective Sergeant Scott Anger of
Wiltshire Police said: ‘This was a violent
assault that could easily have had seri-
ous, if not, fatal consequences.
‘The victim had to be taken to
hospital by ambulance with the
knife still in place, then have an
operation to have it surgically
removed. Luckily, he has made
a good recovery.’
The court heard how Toward-
Parker’s friend Jack Parfitt had
arranged to meet his love rival –
a colleague of his pregnant girl-
friend – after becoming upset at
seeing the pair flirting.
Parfitt, taking Toward-Parker
for support, arrived at the scene
at Covingham Square, Swindon
on bikes around 9pm on Janu-
ary 20 this year.
Parfitt, then 17, identified his
target and opened fire with a

BB gun. After hitting his target,

he told Toward-Parker to ‘back

out the shank’ – an instruction

to his friend to get out his knife,

the court heard.

Toward-Parker, of Bath Road,

Swindon, attacked the love

rival’s friend, saying: ‘Don’t

think I won’t bore you out with

the knife’, before plunging it

into his buttocks.

He denied using those words

at the trial, claiming he had lost

his grip on the weapon as they

scuffled and it accidentally pen-

etrated his victim.

But a jury took an hour to find

him guilty and he was remanded

in custody for sentencing in

October, when he is expected to

receive a lengthy jail term.

Parfitt, of Swindon, admitted

unlawful wounding and pos-

sessing a firearm with intent

to cause fear of violence. He

was sentenced to a two-year

youth rehabilitation order as

he has already served eight

months on remand.

Now 18, Parfitt must complete

a weapons awareness course, do

a two-month night-time curfew

and 40 hours of unpaid work.

Judge Peter Crabtree said:

‘This was an attack which

involved a significant degree of

premeditation – the use of a

weapon and having Mr Toward-

Parker there for support.’ Det

Sgt Anger added: ‘The two

defendants went with the

intent to harm those they had

gone to meet.’

The Office of National Statis-

tics has revealed that knife

crime in England and Wales has

hit a record high, up 8 per cent

on last year, and that police

have recorded over 43,000 inci-

dents involving knives or sharp

objects in the year to March.

The number of women carry-

ing knives has risen by 73 per

cent in the last five years, while

in the past year in rural areas

knife crime has risen by up to

50 per cent.

By Izzy Ferris

Surgery: X-ray

of a zombie

knife plunged

deep into a

man’s buttocks

Nazanin’s ‘lifeline’ visits

from daughter cut back

By Larisa Brown

Defence and Security Editor

THE British mother jailed in

Iran on false spying charges

feels she could ‘suffocate’ after

her visiting hours were cut.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the

British-Iranian charity worker,

is now only able to see her five-

year-old daughter, Gabriella,

once a month.

She was previously allowed to

see her twice a week in what her

husband called a ‘lifeline’.

Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 40, is

also barred from making inter-

national calls, leaving her una-

ble to speak to her husband

Richard, who is in the UK.

Gabriella is living with her

grandparents in Iran and the

campaign group Free Nazanin

said Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe told

her family the restrictions are

‘cruel’ and ‘unjust’.

Nazanin said: ‘I am so upset. I

feel like I could suffocate. I can’t

even think what to do. I haven’t

cried so loud for ages.’

Mr Ratcliffe criticised Boris

Johnson for not meeting the

family since entering Downing

Street, and said he has not been

invited to meet Dominic Raab,

the new Foreign Secretary.

By Colin Fernandez

Environment Correspondent

Fracking blow – UK shale

gas ‘will last only 10 years’

HOPES of a fracking bonanza
could be misplaced after a new
study claimed there is 80 per
cent less shale gas below the
UK than first thought.
Estimates that we are sitting
on 1,300 trillion cubic feet of
shale gas led to hopes it could
supply the UK for 50 years.
But a new study of rocks from
Bowland in Lancashire sug-
gests there is only around 150
trillion cubic feet of gas, which
would last only ten years.
Lead author Professor Colin
Snape of Nottingham Univer-

sity said: ‘I think it’s fair to say

the resource is not going to be

on the scale of the North Sea.’

Estimates made in 2013 were

based on US rock. But the shale

at Bowland cannot hold the

same amount of gas.

Critics say the study only

looked at samples from two

locations. Energy firm Cuad-

rilla, which resumed fracking

in Lancashire last week, dis-

missed the findings.

Compiled by ETAN SMALLMAN

and ADAM JACOT DE BOINOD

DAY

ON THIS

August 21, 2019

FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE

AUGUST 21, 1948

TODAy Princess Margaret, the world’s most

watched and interesting teenager, officially

comes of age. She is 18 and emerges as a

strong-minded, strong-willed, young woman

of fashion, determined to fulfil elegantly and

composedly her part in public life.

AUGUST 21, 1993

WITH an ocean sunset behind them and a

circle of guests holding flaming torches,

Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger said ‘I will’

yesterday. The exact venue of the long-

rumoured wedding, on Long Island, had

been kept secret, even from guests until

they had accepted their invitations.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

DAME JANET BAKER, 86. The opera

singer from yorkshire is often cited as one of

the greatest voices of the 20th century. The

Mail’s Bernard Levin said: ‘No man may call

himself fully civilised if he misses an oppor-

tunity to hear Janet Baker sing.’ However,

her singing teacher was not so convinced of

her talent. Baker recalled: ‘She used to say

however hard I was trying, I always looked

like a lump of pudding.’

JULIE ETCHINGHAM, 50.

The newsreader (right) —

the first pupil from her

comprehensive to go to

Cambridge — presented

BBC’s Newsround before

becoming a host of ITV’s

News At Ten and the

channel’s Tory leadership

debates. She was so efficient

her former co-host Mark Austin nicknamed

her ‘Head Girl’. Etchingham says she can’t

walk past a stationery shop, adding: ‘I have

a total fetish for sharpened pencils, writing

paper and new folders and files.’

BORN ON THIS DAY

AUBREy BEARDSLEy (1872-98). The

English illustrator shocked Victorian Britain

with his erotic black-and-white drawings

before dying of tuberculosis aged just 25.

The largest exhibition of his drawings for 50

years will open at Tate Britain next year.

JOE STRUMMER (1952-

2002). The British punk

rocker (born John Graham

Mellor in Turkey) was lead

singer of The Clash, whose

record London Calling was

named the greatest album

of the 1980s by Rolling Stone

magazine — though it was

released in 1979. Strummer

(right) was embarrassed to

have been educated at a public school,

insisting it was ‘a kind of private compre-

hensive’. The band snubbed BBC’s Top Of

The Pops saying it was ‘manipulated’.

ON AUGUST 21...

IN 1888, U.S. inventor William Seward

Burroughs patented his adding machine,

the first commercially viable calculator.

IN 1942, Disney’s animated film Bambi

was released.

WORD WIZARDRY

GUESS THE DEFINITION: Guddler

(coined in 1894)

A) The leather strap to bind a hawk’s wing.

B) Poacher who fishes with just bare hands.

C) Scarecrow made of old garments.

Answer below

PHRASE EXPLAINED: Between a rock and a

hard place. To be stuck between two equally

bad situations. Phrases meaning the same

thing exist in many cultures. In Homer’s

Odyssey, Odysseus had to sail through a

narrow passage between a monster on a rock

(Scylla) and a whirlpool (Charybdis).

QUOTE FOR TODAY

We are human only through the

humanity of others.

Former South African president

Nelson Mandela (1918-2013)

JOKE OF THE DAY

What kind of tree fits in your hand?

A palm tree.

Guess The Definition answer: B.