One Piece is known for reviving old enemies in fresh forms, and now that the series is approaching its final saga, speculation is at an all-time high about who among the old villains could reappear. One of the names being floated is certainly God Enel. Now that we’ve learned JoyBoy can grab lightning when he’s […]
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Kevin Porter Jr. took only 26 minutes to reach a triple-double — 10 points, 11 rebounds, and 14 assists — in the Milwaukee Bucks’ 134-107 rout of the Dallas Mavericks on Wednesday. In doing so, the trade deadline addition from the Los Angeles Clippers managed to make a little history of his own on a […]
The post Kevin Porter Jr.’s eye-popping feat proves Bucks got a trade deadline steal appeared first on ClutchPoints.
HUNDREDS of Santander customers have been left unable to make payments due to an outage that started earlier this afternoon.
Over 600 customers have reported problems with the high street bank’s services on the outage-tracking website Downdetector.
Over 68% of the issues reported related to customers reporting that they are unable to make instant payments.
A further 17% report that they can’t make card payments either.
The outage comes just hours after the Treasury Committee released its findings on the scale of recent IT failures.
Banks are not obligated to provide compensation to customers for service disruptions in the same way telecom companies are.
However, if you have incurred additional costs directly as a result of a service issue, you may be entitled to reimbursement.
For example, if a bill payment fails to go through due to an outage and you are charged a late payment fee, you should be able to claim that money back.
Similarly, if your credit rating is impacted or you are penalised with late payment fees because a transaction could not be completed, it’s important to keep a record of these incidents.
Banks will generally assess claims on a case-by-case basis, taking into account individual circumstances.
However, if you’ve been impacted you should lodge a formal complaint.
To do this, contact your bank and provide a detailed record of all instances where you faced additional costs, charges, or fees as a direct result of the service disruption.
This could include photocopies of bank statements showing missed payments, receipts, invoices, or other evidence of expenses incurred.
For more specific guidance, you can visit your bank’s complaints page.
If you are unhappy with the compensation offered you have the option to escalate your complaint.
This can involve taking your case to the Financial Ombudsman Service, which offers an impartial review of disputes between customers and financial institutions.
The FOS can usually get involved 15 days after you first raised concerns with the bank.
For IT system outages at a bank, the FOS says the compensation depends on your situation and if you lost out as a result.
But if it thinks your bank has done something wrong and treated you unfairly, the FOS can ask it to put things right on your behalf.
It could include telling the bank to pay compensation to:
It can also tell the bank to take steps to ensure you’ve not lost out any other way – for example by telling it to correct your credit file.
To launch a complaint with the FOS, visit financial-ombudsman.org.uk/consumers/how-to-complain.
SOME astronomical events we see often, like shooting stars, but these are only a fraction of the dazzling celestial wonders occurring over the vast expanse of time.
However, there are still four incredibly rare displays you can see in your lifetime.
The second-longest solar eclipse of the 21st century will take place on the 2nd of August, 2027.
Totality – when nearly all of the solar disk is obstructed by the Moon – will last around six minutes and 24 seconds.
The longest totality of the century was six minutes and 39 seconds on the 22nd of July, 2009, close to Japan’s Ishinomura-Kitaio Island.
No solar eclipse will be as long until the year 2114.
It will be visible from northern Africa – so start planning your summer 2027 trip soon.
The 99942 Apophis asteroid will brush past Earth at a safe but close distance of only 31,000 kilometers (19,600 miles) on the 13th of April, 2029.
The flyby, which will bring the giant space rock ten times closer than the Moon, is set to be visible to the naked eye against dark skies.
This hunk of celestial debris will be bigger than the Empire State Building.
Roughly two billion people from across Europe, Africa, and parts of Asia will be able to see it.
It will look like a bright star, moving quickly across the sky.
Apophis will be a magnitude 3.1 – which is what astronomers use to measure the brightness of cosmic objects.
That makes it much brighter than the North Star, also known as Polaris, which is the brightest star in the sky.
In November 2031, stargazers will be able to enjoy a spectacular version of the annual Leonid meteor shower.
After the Tempel-Tuttle meteor passes Earth in its 33-year orbit, it will leave behind a huge trail of debris.
This debris will result in a meteor storm of blazing shooting stars between 17 and 18 November, 2031.
This rare planetary alignment, dubbed a ‘Golden Conjunction’, occurs once every few hundred years.
And the next one will take place on the 8th of September, 2040 right after sunset.
Mars, Mercury, Venus, Saturn and Jupiter will all become visible in the same small, 10-degree patch of sky.
It will be visible across the world – so you only need to go as far as your back garden for this one.
The biggest supermoon of the century is due to take place on the 6th of December, 2052.
The lunar disk will appear 14% bigger and 30% brighter than normal, as the Moon transitions to its closest point to Earth.
The Moon travels around Earth in an elliptical oval-shaped orbit.
This means that there are points where the Moon is closest to Earth (perigee), and its furthest away (apogee).
Our solar system is made up of nine planets with Earth the third closest to the Sun. But each planet has its own quirks, so find out more about them all...
FOR over three decades, Kathleen Court, 74, a retired doctor’s receptionist from Hull, East Yorks, has been chasing her dream weight.
But despite years of calorie counting she still yearns to be slimmer. Here, she opens up on her lifelong weight-loss journey.
LEANING over my trolley to reach the packet of diet biscuits, I frown when I notice the price.
They’re now over £1 and it really bothers me that I have to pay more for an individually wrapped, low-calorie “treat” that isn’t even tasty.
But this is the price I’ve paid for spending my whole life trying to keep my weight around 9st.
And when I dare let myself dwell on the astonishing costs, that £1 pack of biscuits is a mere drop in the ocean.
A recent YouGov survey revealed that 61 per cent of women report feeling under pressure to slim down to have the perfect body.
I don’t think I’ve ever wanted the “perfect” body, but I have always hated the tops of my arms and would like my middle to be slimmer.
So now, as an active 74-year-old, weighing an acceptable 10st 7lb and a size 14, I am back on the weight-loss bandwagon.
Despite being on a diet for more than three decades of my life — that’s 9,450 days if you take off 50 days a year for holidays, Christmases, illness and “treat” days — I still want to be thinner.
And when I tot up the amount of cash I’ve thrown at trying to lose a few pounds, it comes to nearly £30,000.
It’s staggering. But I don’t regret spending the money, it has done me good, and sticking to the diets has kept me on the straight and narrow — as has going to the slimming clubs.
Over the years, my money has gone on clubs like Slimming World and Weight Watchers, with the longest stint lasting six years.
While £3 or £4 a week never felt a lot at the time, I reckon I’ve spent a couple of thousand on the weekly weigh-ins alone.
And at every one, I’ve treated myself to the club’s branded biscuits, crisps and chocolate.
At around £10 a week for those, that must be another £3,000-£4,000.
I’ve also piled thousands of low-calorie products into my supermarket trolley.
From Weight Watchers ready meals to low-calorie soups, jars of sauces and breads, there’s little I haven’t tried over the decades.
Some might argue that I would have spent the same amount on my usual supermarket shop. But niche products aimed at weight loss are invariably more expensive, then say, a comparatively cheap meal of stew and dumplings or a homemade pasta bake.
British women spend an average 21 years and eight months of their lives on a diet, according to research by weight-loss company Voy. During 2023 alone, they spent five months and one week cutting calories.
I can certainly relate.
In my teens and twenties I was naturally slim.
When I hit my forties, I weighed 10st 3lb and was a size 14 — the biggest I had ever been
Recently, when my husband, Norman, 78, a retired management consultant, and I dug out a box of old photos, I felt proud of how I looked.
I showed my daughter, Charlotte, 38, our only child, some of the snaps taken before she came along in May 1986.
“See, Charlie, your mother was slim once,” I told her.
“You’re pretty slim now, Mum,” she replied, shaking her head.
However, as kind as her words sounded, I’ve never felt quite slim enough.
After Charlie was born two weeks before my 36th birthday, I didn’t notice my weight slowly creeping up.
When I hit my forties, I weighed 10st 3lb and was a size 14 — the biggest I had ever been.
At 5ft 4in tall, I was starting to feel uncomfortable with my size, particularly the weight that had gone to my stomach, hips and bum. So in 1992 I signed up to Slimming World.
In the space of three or four months, I got to my target weight of 8st 7lb. I had never been happier.
I spent six years at that Slimming World club — paying weekly, buying its crisps and snacks at every meeting — and managed to maintain my weight for the entire time.
I was really strict with myself and would weigh everything, from cereal in the morning to rice, pasta, potatoes and meat for my evening meal.
I even kept a measuring jug of 250ml of skimmed milk in the fridge, which was my daily allowance for breakfast and cups of tea.
While I wasn’t obsessed with the scales, I looked forward to the weigh-ins. Losing weight each week spurred me on.
Of course I had breaks. Some weekends I let myself eat whatever I wanted and on holidays I would stop counting calories.
But whenever I came home, or every Monday after a treat weekend, I would tell Norm or Charlie I needed to start slimming again.
Norm always told me I “looked stunning”, but he did notice when I gained weight and said he thought it didn’t suit me. However he never put any pressure on me to lose it.
Eventually, life got busier, we moved house and I stopped the Slimming World meetings.
When I hit my fifties, I consistently weighed over 9st and, no matter what I did, I couldn’t lose those extra few pounds.
I felt disappointed that I couldn’t shift the weight, when I had been so successful before.
I despise exercise, so I went back to what I knew would work — Slimming World.
While I wasn’t obsessed with the scales, I looked forward to the weigh-ins. Losing weight each week spurred me on
The weekly classes held in a local church kept me in check and I could see the physical fruits of my labour on the scales each time.
I spent the next decade at Slimming World and later at Weight Watchers, following their diet plans, buying the meals and keeping my weight around the 9st mark.
Eventually I did get sick of all the restrictions and as I hit my sixties my weight slowly crept up to 9st 5lb. But I felt relatively happy with that.
We got a dog — a gorgeous wire-haired Fox Terrier called Ted — and I started walking regularly with him, averaging one to two miles a day.
It was an exercise I finally enjoyed.
By Lucy Gornall, personal trainer and health journalist
EXERCISE can be intimidating and hard to devote yourself to, particularly at this time of year, when the rain is as relentless as your craving for carbs.
So how do you find the right workout for you?
As a PT and fitness journalist, I’ve tried everything.
I’ve taken part in endless fitness competitions, marathons and I maintain a regime of runs, strength training and Pilates.
Fitness is so entrenched in my life, I stick to it even at Christmas!
The key is finding an activity you love that can become a habit.
My top five forms of exercise, especially if you’re trying to lose weight, are:
Every mother of the bride wants to look fabulous on her daughter’s wedding day, so when Charlie announced she was getting married in July 2016, I decided I wanted to get my weight down from the 9st 8-9lb I then weighed, to 9st 5lb.
So I joined Weight Watchers again, at a cost of about £5 a week, and got down to 9st 4lb for the big day.
When I saw the wedding photos, I was thrilled. Charlie and I really did look quite spectacular.
I kept on with the weekly weigh-ins and the diet plan and buying the products every week for the next few years, along with my regular dog walks, and I stayed at around 9st 5lb until I turned 70.
But recently, my weight has increased significantly and I just can’t seem to shift it. My metabolism is simply not what it used to be.
Last year I had a hip replacement and spent months sitting down and eating whatever I wanted.
Now, at 10st 7lb, my jeans are tight around the waist, my stomach sticks out and I have a tyre.
So I’m back to walking miles each day with Ted and I’m thinking of going back to Slimming World to see if I can shift half a stone.
The days of the scales hitting 9st something are well over for me.
But I’m not ready to give in to old-age spread just yet.
Tokyo, Mar 6 (SocialNews.XYZ) Jewher Ilham, the daughter of jailed Uyghur economist Ilham Tohti, has vowed to make people all over the world aware of the oppression that Uyghurs are suffering in the Xinjiang province...
The post Daughter of jailed Uyghur economist vows to highlight Chinese oppression appeared first on Social News XYZ.
PETER O’Mahony swapped his scrum cap for a backwards baseball one while filming an advert for Heineken Zero.
As if getting to seize up his acting chops wasn’t enough of a case of a fish out of water, he was joined by co-star…John O’Shea.
The Republic of Ireland assistant committed a bit more to the role based of his line reading but the whole thing is worth a watch as they promote the beer giant’s Matchday Experiment campaign.
O’Mahony will, however, have a playing rather than watching brief from the start this weekend as he’s been named in Simon Easterby’s XV to face France.
Captain Caelan Doris makes a welcome return from injury but Mack Hansen is a late write-off due to a quad problem he sustained at training during the week.
Versatile Jamie Osborne will take his spot on the right wing.
There are also recalls to the starting line-up for Bundee Aki, Hugo Keenan and Finlay Bealham with the former having been particularly impressive in turning the tide from the bench in Cardiff.
Osborne has reflected on how it was not a vintage performance by any means, either by the team — which featured seven changes — as a whole or by himself.
He threw a pass which was too low for Garry Ringrose to convert in the first half but redeemed himself when he touched down from Jamie Lowe’s tap down after the break.
Osborne, 23, said: “I think the team will learn from it.
“The first half was not how we wanted it to go — a lot of errors, including myself.
“But I thought the way we bounced back in the second half . . . we were five points down with a man in the bin and we managed to find a way to get back into it.
“It was probably not in the way that we were expecting to go out to play before the game.
“We went to a bit more of a kicking game and put pressure back on them and we learned a lot in that second half.”
On the butchered opportunity, he said: “I knew it should have been a try. I was definitely frustrated at the time.
“I didn’t want to let that cloud my judgement or anything for the rest of the game.
“There was a lot of rugby to be played after that.
“I wanted to come off the pitch being relatively happy with the performance so I think it’s best to drop the mistakes as soon as they happen.
“I was frustrated at the time but I tried my best to forget about it.
“I suppose I was pleased with some of the stuff in the second half.
“When you reflect, it could have been better but I was relatively pleased and happy to get the win.”
Ireland: Hugo Keenan; Jamie Osborne, Robbie Henshaw, Bundee Aki, James Lowe; Sam Prendergast, Jamison Gibson-Park; Andrew Porter, Dan Sheehan, Finlay Bealham; Joe McCarthy, Tadhg Beirne; Peter O’Mahony, Josh van der Flier, Caelan Doris (capt)
Replacements: Rob Herring, Cian Healy, Thomas Clarkson, James Ryan, Jack Conan, Ryan Baird, Conor Murray, Jack Crowley
ALDI Ireland has opened a major €3.8million store in a big city – and they have an exclusive range of Specialbuys to celebrate.
The supermarket was officially opened by the local team, led by Store Manager, Robbie Kavanagh and Munster and Ireland rugby player, Jack O’Donoghue.
The new store in Waterford City, located in City Square Shopping Centre, will replace the existing store at The Glen.
The Glen store, which opened its doors in 2006, was the first Aldi store in the county.
And the supermarket will be stocking an extensive range of Specialbuys including a 6.2L Air Fryer, Cyclonic Stick Vacuum, and Deluxe Air Bed for just €24.99 each as well as kettles, toasters, and mops to celebrate.
Aldi Waterford City Store Manager, Robbie Kavanagh said: “We are delighted to open our new store in Waterford City, continuing our support for the local community.
“Our team is excited to welcome customers to this new state-of-the-art store in Waterford City centre and provide them with the high-quality products and exceptional service that our customers know and love Aldi for.
“We believe this new store will be a great addition to the area, offering a wide range of products at unbeatable prices, and we look forward to continuing to serve the people of Waterford for many years to come.”
Munster and Ireland rugby player, Jack O’Donoghue, added: “It’s fantastic to be here today to see Aldi expanding its presence in Waterford.
“The new store right in the heart of the city will not only offer great value to shoppers but also strengthen Aldi’s ties with local suppliers and the community.
“Aldi’s commitment to making a positive impact in the communities it serves, to supporting local grass roots organisations and to helping make quality, healthy food affordable to all, is something I’m very proud to be associated with.”
Aldi has introduced self-service checkouts at the brand-new Waterford store which will feature nine self-service checkout terminals.
Existing staffed checkout lines will remain in operation alongside the new self-service tills, with Aldi committed to retaining this service for customers, while continuing to innovate with new initiatives.
There is 500 car parking spaces shoppers can avail of, five of which are equipped with electric vehicle charging stations.
Meanwhile, shoppers are rushing to buy a new Charlotte Tilbury dupe in the middle aisle this week – and it’s €44 cheaper.
The Luminous Filter Glamour Foundation will be back in stores around the country from March 9.
The 30ml beauty product is priced at €5.99 and comes in six shades.
The retailer said: “Get that glow with this Lacura Luminous Filter Glamour Foundation!
“The perfect addition to your makeup bag.
The foundation is a great dupe for Charlotte Tilbury’s Flawless Filter Foundation which is priced at €50.
The retailer will also have the Lacura Concealer With Vitamin C for €4.99.
Aldi said: “Give your skin a radiant boost and step out with glowing skin.”
The concealer comes in six shades and “stays put for up to 12 hours.”
Aldi says its “streak and crease-free finish reduces the appearance of dark circles, fine lines and wrinkles”.
The German discount supermarket chain came to Ireland in 1999.
Aldi’s first few shops opened in November 1999, with locations in Sandyford, Dublin, and Ballincollig, Cork.
By the mid-2000s, Aldi bosses had opened numerous stores, focusing on providing high-quality products at low prices.
As the recession hit 2008-2012, Aldi’s popularity grew as consumers became more price-conscious.
The supermarket giant continued it’s expansion in Ireland between 2013-2018, while refurbishing existing stores.
By 2018, Aldi had over 130 shops throughout the country.
The chain began to focus on expanding its range of Irish-made products and supporting local producers.
In 2023, Aldi had over 140 stores in Ireland.
The store invested in sustainability initiatives, such as reducing plastic packaging and increasing the availability of organic and eco-friendly products.
Aldi chiefs said: “At Aldi we are committed to supporting Irish suppliers. Developed in partnership with Bord Bia, Grow with Aldi is designed to help the very best Irish suppliers develop their brand.
“To date, we’ve invested €10 million in our Grow with Aldi development programme in a bid to find the very best Irish suppliers.
“As a result, for a limited time only there are over 47 new products, from 27 Irish suppliers available in store.”
Aldi have introduced technological advancements with self-checkout systems and contactless payment options.
AFTER falling heavily in love with a charming and caring man she met at a community centre, Alison found herself in an intense and passionate romance.
But, just as she was planning her future with Mark Cassidy, imagining a family life with children, he suddenly vanished from her life – leaving behind a letter saying he was leaving the country.
Searching for answers unearthed the shocking revelation that the man of her dreams was not who he said he was at all. In fact he was an undercover police officer.
This was no isolated incident but a top secret policy which saw a special unit of undercover police spying on members of the public for 40 years.
More than 60 women were deceived into deeply intimate relationships with officers who they had no idea were deployed in covert operations.
The officers had fake identities, shockingly using the names and birth dates of dead children.
The ‘spycops scandal’ is the subject of an almost decade-long £88 million public inquiry and now, a gripping three-part documentary series for ITV1 and ITVX. The Undercover Police Scandal: Love and Lies Exposed, which begins tonight, sees the women share their stories on camera for the first time.
Alison, a secondary school teacher, was in her late 20s and had become involved with a local community centre when one of the group brought along a new member she was immediately attracted to.
“He was burly with cropped hair, had a lovely (Liverpudlian) accent and told us his name was Mark Cassidy and that he was a joiner. I fancied him straight away,” she says.
“One night he drove me home from the pub and I invited him in for a drink and that was the beginning of the relationship.
“Mark was a great boyfriend. Because we were part of the same political group, we had that kind of shared perspective. He was interested in anti-fascism and family justice campaigns and really blended in.
“He had an old van and he used it to ferry people around in the group and take them home after meetings. He was really good fun. I filmed a lot of our time together.
“I had a young nephew and niece and he was absolutely natural with them. I sensed he would be a good father. I definitely saw my future with him and it was with children, but Mark didn’t have a big loving family of his own.
“His father had been killed in a road accident by a drunk driver and he was estranged from his mum. I didn’t want to poke at things that were upsetting, but I felt there was something he wasn’t telling me.
“One weekend Mark went out to the shop and I decided to have a look in the pockets of his leather jacket in the hall. I didn’t expect to find anything really but in the inside pocket was a bank card in the name of M. Jenner and the signature was his handwriting. I thought, ‘This is weird. What the hell is going on?’
“I heard him come back and I called, ‘Mark, can you come in here a minute?’ I wielded the card at him and he put his hands on his head and said, ‘Oh my God, I’ve been so stupid. It’s nicked and I bought it off a bloke in a pub. I’ve only used it once.’
“I got some nail scissors and chopped the card up and told him I couldn’t believe he could be so stupid. But I believed everything he told me, more or less. We believe people that we love and I trusted him.”
In 1999, after five years together, Alison desperately wanted to start a family but every time she brought the subject up, Mark refused to talk about it.
“He withdrew emotionally and I became deeply worried about him and his well-being and our future as well.
“I came home one day, expecting him to be there, but the house was silent. In the corridor I saw a letter on the table. Without even reading it I knew it was an ‘I’ve left you,’ letter. “My world had crumbled around me. I was hysterical and sobbing and shouting.”
Searching for answers or any sort of explanation, she turned to a friend who worked in the passport office.
“He said they could do a search on Mark’s details but when he got back to me he said it was a bit weird because when he put his name and details in, it flashed up ‘File stored in CE.’ He had no idea what it meant.”
It was only later revealed that CE was part of an undercover police squad that spied on left-wing campaigners.
A conversation with another member of the community centre left Alison’s head spinning.
My brother said, ‘He has left you because you’re a pain in the arse. You don’t have to come up with some James Bond theory to make yourself feel better.’
Alison
“We were in pub and he was asking me questions about Mark, like did he have a bank account or did he pay for things in cash? When I asked him why he was asking me these questions he said, ‘We just want to rule out that he’s not a spook – a spy.’
“I came out of that meeting and there was shift in my head. Spook? Hang on a minute. That makes sense. That’s why I had never met any of his family or seen any photographs of his childhood and that’s why he doesn’t want me to find him.
“But people were finding it hard to believe my theory that he was an agent of the state. My brother said, ‘He has left you because you’re a pain in the arse. You don’t have to come up with some James Bond theory to make yourself feel better.’
“I knew I had to try and move on, which I did, until I received a message from a woman called Helen Steel.”
Helen, a renowned animal welfare activist had had a remarkably similar experience to Alison. In the late 80s, working with a local campaign group, she got chatting to John Barker who shared her empathy with animals who were suffering.
Like Mark, he used to give people lifts home from demos and meetings in his van and had a lack of any meaningful family telling Helen he had grew up in the UK but moved to New Zealand as a teenager and had lost both his parents in a fairly short space of time.
“We grew closer and he told me he loved me. No one had ever really said that to me. I was blissfully happy. It felt like I’d met the person I was going to spend the rest of my life with.”
But she too was suddenly left with just a letter from him, saying he was having some kind of mental breakdown and was leaving her and going to South Africa to escape everything.
“I didn’t understand. Why, if he still loved me, like he said, did he disappear? It’s like a bereavement but you haven’t got a body. This person has just suddenly vanished.”
Her determination to find out where he was and what had happened led her to the General Register Office where she saw his name, John Barker, which matched when and where he was born, but it was a child who had died when he was eight.
Travelling to New Zealand and going through records in the local library made her convinced that he was married to a woman named Debbie. Back in London she established that he was actually John Dines and his marriage certificate stated he was a police officer.
This pattern of behaviour by the spy cops led Helen to discovering more victims, like Lisa who was involved in the climate movement and whose new boyfriend Mark Stone had a van he would give lifts to other members to.
‘Mark Stone’ approached an environmental group known as Earth First in August 2003.
He befriends them and is accepted into the group, getting the nickname “Flash”.
He spies on them, passing on information to his police bosses and MI5.
Kennedy, undercover, starts a relationship with ‘Lisa’ and could have had as many as 10 sexual relationships with other women in the group, including Kate Wilson and Eleanor Fairbraida.
By the summer of 2006, Kennedy entered the circle of people planning the first of the annual Climate Camp gatherings, helping to set up the encampment near the Drax coal-fired power station in North Yorkshire.
Suspicions about the real identity are raised when a passport with his proper name is discovered.
On October 21, 2010 six friends confront him, he confesses and breaks down in tears, saying that he is not the only cop working undercover.
‘Mark Stone’ was unmasked as Mark Kennedy.
The Investigatory Powers Tribunal found in January 2022 that his actions amounted to an “abuse of the highest order” and that he had “grossly debased, degraded and humiliated” Kate Wilson.
The inquiry is ongoing and expected to conclude in 2026.
Lisa fell madly in love with him until he “started to become apart at the seams” and then she discovered his passport saying he was Mark Kennedy and emails on his phone from other people of that surname calling him ‘Dad.’
It turned out that Mark was married, had kids and on his marriage certificate it said he was a police officer. When she put all this to him, he confessed that he worked for the National Public Order Intelligence Unit, which collected information on demonstrators. Then he left.
After the women spread word of what had happened, the story was splashed in the media and more and more women came forward with similar stories.
Helen garnered a group of women, including Alison and Lisa, to take legal action against the police to prevent such things happening to women ever again and met up with Harriet Wistrich, a respected solicitor who had been fighting significant miscarriages of justice for decades.
“The women were very supportive of each other because they recognised that the that they’d suffered in isolation were mirrored by each other,” Harriet tells us in an exclusive Sun interview.
“The investigative work they did was extraordinary. What the police probably hadn’t considered was that, if you just suddenly vanish from somebody’s life when you’ve been involved in a very long term intimate relationship with them, they’re not necessarily going to just accept that.
“These women were traumatized by disappearances that were not properly explained. There were excuses about having a breakdown or whatever and they were worried about them and felt compelled to find them, because the men had pulled on their hearts.”
As she built the case, Harriet and the women were frustrated by the police saying they would neither confirm nor deny anything on security grounds.
“It felt like we were raped by the state,” says Helen. “There was nothing about these men that was real. They knew, from the start, that we would never have consented if we knew who they really were. But they disregarded our right to make an informed choice.”
It was a police whistleblower, named Peter Francis who changed everything. He revealed he had worked for a special section of the National Public Order Intelligence Unit called the Special Demonstration Squad, spying on left-wing groups. He felt particularly bad about the policy of adopting the identities of dead children.
There was more shocking revelations to come. Stephen Lawrence had died in a racist attack and the family wanted the police to investigate his murder properly. But while they were trying to find out the truth of what had happened to their son, the police employed undercover officers to spy on their campaign.
“I was asked could I find out anything else that could be used to maybe get the public to not have as much sympathy for the Stephen Lawrence campaign,” said Peter Francis.
They were just expecting us to be the oil that greased the wheels that kept the operation turning. But actually, we turned out to be a great big spanner in the works.
Lisa
The then Prime Minister, Theresa May, ordered a public inquiry to investigate undercover policing which is still ongoing. Having lost the right to hide behind their “neither confirm nor deny” policy.
The police settled the legal case with the women out of court for an undisclosed sum of money, along with an apology saying that relationships like these should never have happened and that they were wrong and were a gross violation of personal dignity and integrity.
It is known that 139 officers have spied on over 1,000 campaign groups and more than 60 women have been in intimate relationships with undercover officers.
“They underestimated our intelligence,” says Lisa. “They were just expecting us to be the oil that greased the wheels that kept the operation turning. But actually, we turned out to be a great big spanner in the works.”
THE 'spy cop' scandal is far from the only scandal to have engulfed the Met. Here are a few others:
In 2021 serving Metropolitan police firearms officer Wayne Couzens kidnapped, raped and murdered 33-year old Sarah Everard after faking an arrest.
The case shocked the nation and led to widespread criticism of the Metropolitan Police, especially for their handling of the vigil held in her memory.
Couzens was handed a whole-life order in September 2021, meaning he will die in jail.
Rapist ex-cop David Carrick was jailed for a minimum of 30 years in Februrary 2023 for a string of violent sexual offences over a period of nearly two decades.
The former firearms officer admitted to 49 charges, including 24 counts of rape, against 12 separate women.
The case led to criticism of the police for failing to perform sufficient background checks, with the Met admitting sufficient intelligence checks had not been conducted.
A year-long investigation into the Metropolitan Police by Baroness Casey published in 2023 concluded that the force needed a “complete overhaul”, and that racism, homophobia and misogyny was rife.
The 363-page report also found widespread evidence of bullying and “boy’s club” culture, and that it was possible other officers like Couzens and Carrick were still serving.
In March 2022 it emerged that in 2020 officers had strip searched a 15-year-old girl at her school, after she was wrongly suspected to be carrying cannabis.
The girl had been searched without another adult present and while she was on her period, prompting an investigation that saw four officers served with gross misconduct notices.
The Metropolitan Police has come under fire recently for its handling of anti-Israel protests that have taken place in London over the last year, including accusations of soft-touch policing and allowing supporters of Hamas – a banned terrorist group – to act with impunity.
And in April this year, Campaign Against Antisemitism chief executive Gideon Falter was called “openly Jewish” by an officer, and threatened with arrest.
Numerous serving police officers have been disciplined or sentenced for sharing offensive messages, including racist, sexist, and homophobic jokes in groupchats.
In October it emerged that chair of the Met’s Black Police Association is set to face a hearing for sharing “racist and violent” messages over Whatsapp, while in December last year six former cops were handed suspended sentences over racist messages sent in a groupchat.
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