News from Pom

Finley Hassall saw a young boy drowning and encouraged him to swim on his back "like a starfish" to regain control of his breathing, helping him to stay calm until help arrived.

The 11-year-old, a pupil at Dingley Community Primary School in Dudley, had read the advice in a copy of the RNLI's Storm Force magazine.

Finley said: "I looked around and saw waves going over this boy’s head and he was splashing and struggling. He was clearly panicking.

"I’d read in my RNLI Storm Force magazine about how to float like a starfish so that’s what I asked him to do.

"I said I’d done this at my swimming lessons before and it will be fine if he could float on his back.

"He went onto his back and I was talking to him and trying to get him to take deep breaths to calm him down. (..)

Exactly 100 years ago, with his government embroiled in scandal after scandal that included the sale of peerages, the then prime minister, David Lloyd George, was brought down by Conservative backbench MPs. Now, with the current prime minister also having been unceremoniously dispatched by Conservative backbenchers, his attempt in his final weeks to create multiple new peerages is once again placing the House of Lords at the centre of scandal.

A confidential document prepared by CT Group, the influential lobbying firm run by Lynton Crosby which advises Boris Johnson, and which I have seen, makes no bones about the defenestrated prime minister’s aim to pack the House of Lords. The document proposes that Johnson ride roughshod over every convention and standard of propriety in an effort to secure political nominees who will vote for the Tory government, especially its bill to disown the international treaty it has itself signed over Northern Ireland. (..)