UK election still undecided

The UK voted for its new government on Thursday. By Friday afternoon most of the results were in, but what happens next is not clear.

The problem is that none of the political parties have enough members of parliament to form a government by itself. This is unusual in British politics. There has not been a minority government here for 30 years.

All three main party leaders made statements on Friday about what they may do next. Now there will be serious discussions about exactly what will happen. This is the biggest story in the UK at the moment with rolling news programmes discussing every development.

Patients laugh through their operations

Doctors in the UK have found a new way of doing knee operations on patients.

Many patients do not recover well if they are put to sleep for operations. The doctors wanted to do more knee surgery with patients who are awake but cannot feel any pain.

But the patients got bored after about an hour. So the doctors have put a DVD player in the operating theatre. The most popular DVDs are comedy and nature programmes. Dr Nick Pace said: “Some patients are quite disappointed because the operation is finished before the end of the film.”

Man reports himself to the police

A tiny Scottish island may have just had its first crime for 50 years.

The Isle of Muck has 40 residents who do not lock their houses because there is no crime. The last reported crime was in 1960 when two bottles of wine were stolen from the hotel.

But this week a man has reported himself to the police. People say he was involved in a fight with another man at a wedding. The two men later apologised to each other but the man has reported himself to the police.

British people watch more TV

New statistics show that British people watch even more television than a year ago.

Now people watch four hours and 18 minutes each day. This is up from three hours and 56 minutes last year. This also means people watched around 48 advertisements each day.

People may be watching more television because they have less money to do other things.

British children’s book to become Spielberg film

War Horse is the story of a young farm boy who goes to the front line of the First World War to find his horse. It was written as a children’s book. Recently it has been a very successful stage play in London.

Now Hollywood director Steven Spielberg has bought the story and plans to direct the film himself. He says it has a message for every country.

by Susan Young
susan@englishuk.com