Afternoon briefing Monday 3rd November

0:00This episode of the Times Radio News Briefing is sponsored by PwCWC. Staying competitive means getting ahead, not just keeping up. So how do business leaders cut through the noise and focus on what really matters. PwC takes you further with tech, from optimising the systems that put your data to work, to scaling AI from proof of concept to competitive edge. PwC helps you meet tomorrow's tech demands so you can compete at a speed that rewrites the rules. Discover more at pwc.co.uk. This is the Times afternoon briefing on Monday 3rd November. A man has been charged over Saturday's mass stabbing on a train in Cambridgeshire.

0:4232-year-old Anthony Williams from Peterborough is charged with 10 counts of attempted murder over that incident on Saturday evening and another count of attempted murder over a separate incident at a DLR station in East London earlier that day. The Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander says safety measures on railways are being reviewed, but she told Times Radio incidents like this are rare. This won't mean much for those people who were on that train on Saturday night, but the railways are one of the safest forms of public transport that we have. It is a low-crime environment generally. For every one million passenger journeys that are made, it's 27 crimes are committed.

1:20So 27 crimes for every one million passenger journeys. Nigel Farage says he wants to deregulate financial services and says non-DOM changes are financial stupidity in his first major speech on the economy. My promise is that reform will not just think differently, But reform will do differently. We will sweep away these outdated conventions. We will become the most pro-business, pro-entrepreneurship government that has been seen in this country in modern times. The Reform UK leader says Brexit has been squandered. He's also rowing back on the party's£80 billion of tax cuts which were promised in the manifesto at the last general election.

2:07The government is planning to overhaul benefits so people who lose their jobs will get more money than people who have never worked. The Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden is drawing up a bill to introduce 6 to 12 months of higher payments which will only be available to people who have paid national insurance. Four people have been left with minor injuries after a train came off the tracks near Shapp in Cumbria. Avanti West Coast says the West Coast mainline to Glasgow is blocked north of Preston and it expects days of disruption. A pregnant teenager from County Durham has been freed unexpectedly from jail in Georgia, where she was facing drug smuggling charges.

2:42Bella Cully was facing a two-year prison sentence after£200 ,000 worth of cannabis was found in her suitcase when she flew from Thailand to Tbilisi in May. The 19-year-old, who is due to give birth before Christmas, says she was forced into it by a gang in Thailand. And teachers say more British primary school children are using American slang and even speaking in American accents. A survey of 10 ,000 staff by TeacherTap suggests a significantly higher number of young children are using them compared to secondary school pupils. Parents have suggested YouTube videos and transatlantic influencers are the reasons why.

3:18Professor of sociolinguistics Rob Drummond says it's just part of the natural evolution of language. I guess it's happening more quickly than it used to because young people have more access to different types of language than they ever used to. You know, in the old days, you know, when I was growing up, it would have just been from, you know, what, three, four TV channels. And that was it. And that was your exposure to English that wasn't from your own family and from your own friends. Don't forget to subscribe to The Times News Briefing on Spotify or listen live to Times Radio Online.

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