Jhoots Pharmacy chain could face insolvency after Lloyds Bank high court application
A struggling national pharmacy chain accused of owing its locums £670,000 in unpaid fees has been hit with an application to place the business into insolvency proceedings,Jhoots Chemist, which trades under the name of Jhoots Pharmacy, was named in a high court application to appoint an administrator, submitted on Monday by Lloyds Bank,The move comes after the company – which has run more than 100 outlets – was criticised in the autumn by MPs for not paying locum pharmacists who had worked at the company’s branches on a freelance basis,The chain is run from Walsall in the West Midlands by a businessman called Sarbjit Singh Jhooty,In an urgent parliamentary debate about the status of the group in October, MPs raised concerns about the behaviour of Jhoots pharmacies including over its failure to open branches, management of controlled drugs, and not paying staff, landlords and other suppliers.
During the session, the pharmacy minister, Stephen Kinnock, said: “Unfortunately there are some [pharmacies] that fall short of the standards that we expect and sadly the services provided by Jhoots are falling well below the mark.”The administration application also follows what appears to be a series of unsatisfied county court judgments (CCJs) issued against the company.A CCJ is issued when someone takes court action against an individual or a company saying they owe them money, and the alleged debtor has not responded.Pharmacies that have used the Jhoots branding have been owned by either Sarbjit or his brother Manjit Jhooty.Manjit Jhooty, who owns more than 20 Jhoots branches through his companies Pasab and Jhoots Healthcare, has said his branches were separate from his brother’s and remained “fully functional and continue to deliver services to the communities they serve”.
In December he rebranded his business as JHL Pharmacy and the Lloyds application does not apply to his operation.In November, Allied Pharmacies took over the running of 60 Jhoots stores.Jhoots Chemist, the business owned by Sarbjit Jhooty that is the subject of the Lloyds Bank high court application, reported creditors of more than £5m and a loss of almost £1.9m in its most recent financial year to the end of December 2024, according to documents filed at Companies House.The company owed £1.
7m to the banks via loans and overdrafts, with filings showing Lloyds holds 16 unsatisfied charges against it.The most recent accounts, signed off in March, included a note that read: “The directors have not identified any material uncertainties related to events or conditions that may cast significant doubt about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern.”Sarbjit Jhooty did not respond to efforts to contact him for comment.
Facebook slow to act on posts celebrating Bondi beach massacre, anti-hate group says
Facebook hosted terrorist propaganda that celebrated the murder of Jews and praised Islamic State, a leading anti-hate group has alleged.The posts included celebrations of the Bondi beach massacre that the Community Security Trust says Facebook has been too slow to take down. The posts were still on Facebook on 16 December, two days after the attack, and received shares and likes.Some accounts are Britain-based and those have been reported to counter-terrorism police in the UK as a matter of urgency.One post shows video of the aftermath of the Bondi beach attack, which was allegedly carried out by a father and son who were IS supporters, and says: “Allah is the greatest and praise to Allah
We must take control of AI now, before it’s too late | Letters
“When the AI bubble bursts, humans will finally have their chance to take back control”, says the headline on Rafael Behr’s article (23 December). I think it’s more likely that when the AI bubble bursts, the creators of the crisis, along with other wealthy economic actors, will be in the rooms with the politicians telling them how to “rescue” us all by transferring wealth in some way from average citizens to the already extremely wealthy. Just like they did during the financial crisis of 2008.We need to be ready with alternative plans. For example, world governments could coordinate to buy, for suitably low prices, majority shares in any crashing tech company that actually produces something useful, ensuring that those shares come with full voting rights
When swiping up doesn’t get you far | Letters
Speaking of odd habits as a result of using technology (Letters, 25 December), I once passed a bus shelter where a mother was waiting with her young child. The shelter had a huge poster of a new mobile phone and the toddler was leaning out of its buggy and desperately swiping the screen of the phone, presumably in the hope of getting cartoons.Ron BaileyNewcastle upon Tyne I read Joanna Rimmer’s letter on this subject and tried to “like” it.Heather BradfordWinchester Which tablet/ebook user hasn’t absentmindedly put their finger on a printed word they don’t know expecting to see the dictionary definition pop up?Tim MartineauWirral, Merseyside I don’t understand why, when reading a physical copy of the Guardian, the page doesn’t scroll when I swipe up. Can this be corrected, please?Geoff Skinner Kensal Green, London I once picked up a pencil to underline something on Wikipedia
Cryptocurrency slump erases 2025 financial gains and Trump-inspired optimism
As 2025 comes to a close, Donald Trump’s favorable approach to cryptocurrency has not proven to be enough to sustain the industry’s gains, once the source of market-wide optimism and enthusiasm. The last few months of the year have seen $1tn in value wiped from the digital asset market, despite bitcoin hitting an all-time-high price of $126,000 on 6 October.The October price peak was short-lived. Bitcoin’s price tumbled just days later after Trump’s announcement of 100% tariffs on China sent shockwaves across the market on 12 October. The crypto market saw $19bn liquidated in 24 hours – the largest liquidation event on record
‘This will be a stressful job’: Sam Altman offers $555k salary to fill most daunting role in AI
The maker of ChatGPT has advertised a $555,000-a-year vacancy with a daunting job description that would cause Superman to take a sharp intake of breath.In what may be close to the impossible job, the “head of preparedness” at OpenAI will be directly responsible for defending against risks from ever more powerful AIs to human mental health, cybersecurity and biological weapons.That is before the successful candidate has to start worrying about the possibility that AIs may soon begin training themselves amid fears from some experts they could “turn against us”.“This will be a stressful job, and you’ll jump into the deep end pretty much immediately,” said Sam Altman, the chief executive of the San Francisco-based organisation, as he launched the hunt to fill “a critical role” to “help the world”.The successful candidate will be responsible for evaluating and mitigating emerging threats and “tracking and preparing for frontier capabilities that create new risks of severe harm”
‘Why should we pay these criminals?’: the hidden world of ransomware negotiations
They call it “stopping the bleeding”: the vital window to prevent an entire database from being ransacked by criminals or a production line grinding to a halt.When a call comes into the cybersecurity firm S-RM, headquartered on Whitechapel High Street in east London, a hacked business or institution may have just minutes to protect themselves.S-RM, which helped a high-profile retail client recover from a Scattered Spider cyber-attack has become a quiet, often word-of-mouth, success.Many of the company’s senior workers are multilingual and have a minimal online footprint, which reveals scant but impressive CVs suggestive of corporate or government intelligence-based careers.S-RM now claims the UK’s largest cyber-incident response team
Two new subtypes of MS found in ‘exciting’ breakthrough
A&Es in ‘big trouble’ because of ‘normalised’ corridor care, says leading UK medic
To say ‘six-seven’ is to embrace idiocy | Letters
From Adolescence to the manosphere: has 2025 been the year of the boy?
Gen Z shunning the pre-flight pint for matcha green tea, airports say
UK medical regulator warns against buying weight-loss jabs from social media channels