the times | Wednesday February 16 2022 2GM 19
News
A diplomat who went missing and died
while under “extreme stress” working
on the Covid-19 task force was not
asked by his boss how he was coping, an
inquest was told.
Richard Morris, 52, a former ambas-
sador to Nepal, was so overworked at
the height of the first wave that he
“could not switch off”.
He disappeared after going for a run.
a week without leave. Longbottom told
the inquest she believed he was “going
the extra mile” willingly.
The inquest was told that on May 6,
2020, Morris made his wife, Alison, aA TikTok star and her mother are
among a group of five people charged
with murder after a fatal car crash.
Mahek Bukhari, 22, an influencer
with a following of 126,000 people, and
her mother Ansreen Bukhari, 45,
appeared at Leicester magistrates’
court yesterday in connection with an
incident early on February 11 on the
A46.
The pair were arrested after a vehicle
was “run off the road” before splitting in
two when it crashed into the central
reservation of the dual carriageway.
Mohammed Hashim Ijazuddin and
Saqib Hussain were pronounced dead
at the scene.
Another woman, Natasha Akhtar, 21,
and two men, Raees Jamal, 21, and
Rekan Karwan, 28, have also been
charged with murder.
The incident occurred near the Six
Hills junction in Leicestershire at
I felt diplomat was going the extra mile willingly, boss tells inquest
Will Humphries
Southwest Correspondent
Four months later his body was found
under a tree.
Julia Longbottom, 58, now the am-
bassador to Japan, was Morris’s boss in
the Foreign Office task force and told
an inquest yesterday that she had not
asked how he was coping, despite her
being a “wellbeing champion” and him
saying he was “exhausted”. She suggest-
ed that Morris, a senior co-ordinator,
had not shown signs of distress.
The inquest was told Morris was
working 15-hour days six or seven dayscup of tea at their home in Bentley,
Hampshire, and went for a run. His
body was found on August 31, two and
a half miles away in Alice Holt forest.
Giving evidence from Japan, Long-
bottom said: “[Morris] was saying he
was concerned the team did not have
capacity. I felt it was important to reas-
sure him on that rather than go into
questions about how he was doing.”
Alison Morris said her husband, with
whom she had three children, had
feared there was not enough time toprocess information in the fast-moving
period and if any information error got
past him the government “would be
torn apart in the press”. As a result he
was “desperate” to keep on top of what
was going on, she said.
Christopher Wilkinson, the senior
coroner, concluded that Mr Morris had
taken his own life after suffering severe
and acute stress. He described the task-
force in the early days of the pandemic
as “much like a plane being flown at the
same time as building it”.Richard Morris,
who worked on
the Covid-19 task
force, had had
almost no time offMahek Bukhari and mother Ansreen,
top, were in court yesterday. Saqib
Hussain, left, and Mohammed Hashim
Ijazuddin were killed last weekTikTok star on murder charge
after men killed in car crash
around 1.30am. Ijazuddin and Hussain
had been travelling in a silver Skoda
Fabia. Two other cars, a grey Audi TT
and a blue Seat Leon, were spotted near
the scene at the time and all three vehi-
cles were travelling “at speed” before
the collision, police said.
Mahek Bukhari, from Stoke-on-
Trent, models and advertises outfits for
clothing brands to her TikTok fans and
43,000 Instagram followers. She also
documents her travels and style tips
under the name May B Vlogs.
In a Q&A video Bukhari published
on YouTube in November, she was
asked by a follower whether she had
“some kind of beef with anyone?”
She responded: “No, I don’t. I keep
myself to myself when it comes to beef.
I would say beef was coming to me last
year and I cut off loads of people, lots of
Tik Tokers actually, which was good for
my mental health as well. Now I’m liter-
ally thriving and growing.”
Elsewhere, Bukhari has describedher mother, who is the managing
director of a security company, as a best
friend, sister and mother all rolled into
one.
At yesterday’s court appearance, Bu-
khari and her mother spoke only to
confirm their names. Akhtar, from Bir-
mingham, appeared briefly with the
pair. The three women will appear at
Leicester crown court for a bail hearing
tomorrow.
A 20-year-old man who was arrested
on suspicion of murder on Friday has
been released from police custody.
Leicestershire police said in a state-
ment: “The investigation is in the very
early stages and work is being carried
out to ascertain the circumstances of
the collision and what happened in the
minutes before.”
Detective Chief Inspector Tony
Yarwood added: “Anyone who was
travelling in the area in the early hours
and has any dashcam footage, we are
urging you to come forward.”Tom Ball
Two glasses
of wine have
more calories
than a burger
Two glasses of wine can contain more
than an adult’s recommended daily
limit of sugar and more calories than a
hamburger, experts have said.
The Alcohol Health Alliance UK
(AHA), which has published an ana-
lysis of the contents of various wines,
said that product labelling on alcoholic
drinks was “woefully inadequate”.
It looked at the calorie and sugar con-
tent of 30 bottles of red, white, rosé,
fruit and sparkling wine sold in the UK.
The alliance, which represents more
than 60 organisations, said that there
was a wide variation of sugar and calo-
ries but that with this information miss-
ing from most labels consumers were
“being kept in the dark” about what
they were drinking.
It said that government guidelines
recommended that adults should con-
sume no more than 30g of “free” sugars
per day but that it was possible to reach
almost this entire amount by drinking
two medium glasses of wine.
The analysis suggested that many of
the most sugar-packed wines had the
lowest alcohol strength. Consumers
opting for low-alcohol wines on health
grounds were therefore in danger of
being misled, the AHA said.
Wines with a high calorie content
tended to be higher strength. The AHA
said that none of the 30 products exam-
ined displayed sugar content on their
labels, which is a requirement for non-
alcoholic drinks. Calorie content was
displayed on only 20 per cent of the la-
bels examined.
Professor Sir Ian Gilmore, chairman
of the alliance, said: “Alcohol’s current
exemption from food and drink label-
ling rules is absurd. Shoppers who buy
milk or orange juice have sugar content
and nutritional information right at
their fingertips.
“But this information is not required
when it comes to alcohol — a product
not just fuelling obesity but with wide-
spread health harms and linked to
seven types of cancer.”
He called on the government to pub-
lish its planned consultation on alcohol
labelling without further delay.
“As well as calorie labelling and nu-
tritional information, we need promi-
nent health warnings and the UK chief
medical officers’ low-risk weekly drink-
ing guidelines on labels. Studies suggest
that this could help reduce alcohol
harm by increasing knowledge of the
health risks and prompting behaviour
change.”
Alison Douglas, chief executive of
Alcohol Focus Scotland, added: “Alco-
hol labelling is woefully inadequate in
this country and allows the alcohol in-
dustry to decide what information it
will and won’t include on its products,
despite alcohol claiming the lives of 70
people a day in the UK.”A
300ft wind
turbine
snapped in
50mph
gales and
came crashing down
“like thunder and
lightning”, waking
sleeping villagers (Will
Humphries writes).
The turbine
collapsed on the Pant
y Wal wind farm in
Gilfach Goch, near
Bridgend in south
Wales, on Monday.
It heralds the arrival
of two storms due to
sweep in to the UK.
Motorists have been
advised by the
National Highways
agency to travel only if
necessary.
Storm Dudley will
move across the
northern half of the
UK from tonight
into tomorrow
morning, followed
by Storm Eunice,
which could also
bring snow, on Friday.
The Met Office hasissued an amber
weather warning for
this evening for
strong winds. It
covers southern
Scotland, northern
England and part of
Northern Ireland,
with a wider area
covered by a yellowwarning for tomorrow
and Friday.
In Gilfach Goch,
Lydia Stephens, who
lives near the turbines,
asked: “How the hell
does a turbine fall
over?” Local residents
have demanded that
officials check thesafety of nine other
turbines on the wind
farm.
A spokeswoman for
Nordex, the turbine
manufacturer, said it
was investigating and
“all necessary safety
measures have been
implemented”. ANordex turbine
collapsed near Essen
in western Germany
last September.
Weather, page 53Turbine
collapses
as storms
hit UK
The massive turbine
cracked in strong winds
and crashed to the
ground, waking villagersfissu
we
th
st
c
S
E
No
wit
cove10 milesCardiffWALESMMMMBristolPant y Wal wind
farm where
turbine collapsedKRISTIAN HOYLE/WALES NEWS SERVICE