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UK supermarkets spend hundreds of millions on promotions in price war

Nearly 30% of total spending by biggest chains over four weeks was on special offers and discounts, says KantarBusiness live – latest updatesSupermarkets are spending hundreds of millions of pounds on promotional deals for shoppers, as the grocery price war ramps up.Together, nearly 30% of total spending by Britain’s biggest supermarkets was on special offers and discounts in the four weeks ended 20 April, according to the market research company Kantar. Continue reading…

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‘I felt caught between cultures’: Mongolian musician Enji on her beguiling, border-crossing music

She started singing in her family’s yurt before a Goethe-Institut residency led her to jazz and life in Munich. The distance from home is ‘bittersweet’ – but both styles, she says, are about trusting your instinctGrowing up in the icy Mongolian capital of Ulaanbaatar, singing was as natural as speech for Enkhjargal Erkhembayar. “Every day after my parents came home from working in the local power factory, they would gather with a group of friends in our yurt to unwind and someone would always begin to sing,” she says. “Soon, we would all join in, singing old folk songs to keep warm and to express ourselves long into the night.”As Enji, 33-year-old Erkhembayar is now taking this music into international concert halls, having forged a beguiling hybrid of Mongolian folk music with acoustic jazz improvisation. She anchors her performances in the circular-breathing vocal style of Mongolian long song – a folk tradition where syllables are elongated through freeform vocalisations – her delivery tender and delicate, full of yearning emotion. Continue reading…

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My mum died in A&E last month – and the place was like a war zone | Zoe Williams

Amid the debate about trans people on hospital wards we have lost sight of dignity, respect and the horrifying reality of a health service in meltdownAnother morning, another absolutely bananas conversation about transgender people, without any trans people involved, following the supreme court ruling that permits the exclusion from single-sex spaces of anyone not born into that sex. On BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Emma Barnett was asking care minister Stephen Kinnock about wards in hospitals, and came out with the immortal line: “Do you think it’s right for trans people to be segregated from other patients, as an interim measure, or for the future?”Great save, that “for the future” – because if you’re going to interpret this ruling as a requirement to exclude trans people, what does that mean in practice? Trans women on men’s wards, trans men on women’s wards? This delivers dignity and respect to precisely no one; so, sure, “segregate” away, and it would have to be for ever, because it would otherwise be an interim measure on the way to what? The relentless demonisation of trans people has led us straight to a place where every choice is impossible, using words that recall, or should recall, the darkest days of prejudice and hatred.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading…

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