‘The pain was unbearable’: the agonising cost of England’s ‘cowboy’ cosmetic clinics
Plans to cut down on “cowboy” cosmetic procedures have been introduced by the government, meaning that only qualified healthcare professionals will be able to perform high-risk treatments,Clinics administering fillers and Botox will need to meet strict standards to obtain a licence as part of the Department of Health and Social Care proposals to protect people from “rogue operators” with no medical training who often provide “invasive” procedures in homes, hotels and pop-up clinics,Officials said that people have been left “maimed” by beauty procedures, with some deaths linked to poor care,One woman who was left with significant injuries after such a treatment told the Guardian she had been left with issues that could last a lifetime,Triggs, 40, from Leeds, was left with significant bruising and swelling after paying £100 for a fake Endolift, a non-surgical laser treatment used for skin tightening and fat reduction on the face and body.
The laser works by inserting a thin, microoptical wire deep into the skin layer, which is used to boost collagen and melt little pockets of fat.Triggs said: “I had visited this particular clinic before, for other cosmetic treatments such as skin boosters and waxes, so I thought I was in safe hands when they offered me a treatment to tighten and lift my face.“As soon as the treatment began I knew something was not right.The pain was unbearable and the bruising started instantly.”Although the procedure was advertised as an Endolift, Triggs received a counterfeit version of the treatment, which usually costs about £2,000 when administered by a medical specialist.
EndoliftX® has said it has seen a 250% rise in non-medics administering counterfeit versions of its device over the past year.Triggs said: “I was left with significant bruising and swelling which lasted months, and I have now just found out that I have post inflammatory pigmentation issues which, if not treated by a professional, will last a lifetime.”She added: “It is so important to me to warn others about what to look for when booking in a treatment, and that undergoing an unregulated, counterfeit procedure will more than likely cause much more harm than good.Find a trained, well-established professional who has experience in the treatment you are looking for and has the knowledge on safety.I am now months down the line trying to fix my mistake.
”Dr Priya Verma, a registered EndoliftX® practitioner and aesthetic doctor, said that alongside a lack of regulation within the cosmetic industry, counterfeit laser machines were a rising concern,“Increasingly patients are seeking out non-surgical facelifting procedures or body-contouring procedures, and actually there’s a rise in the ability of people to acquire skin-tightening treatments on websites like Alibaba for as little as £400,” Verma said,“They’re fuelling the problem further because they are then training other non-medical practitioners in how to do these procedures unsafely,”Alice Webb, a 33-year-old mother of five, is believed to be the first person in the UK to die after a non-surgical Brazilian butt-lift procedure last year,Webb, who died at Gloucestershire Royal hospital last September, is believed to have had a procedure that involved dermal filler being injected into the buttocks.
In an interview with ITV News, Webb’s partner, Dane Knight, said her death could have been avoided if these regulations had come into place sooner,“Knowing the risks in the complications, it wouldn’t have happened,” Knight said,“I hope something gets put in place before it happens again and another family is ripped apart and destroyed,Because it will, if something’s not done sooner rather than later,”Knight added: “It’s a shame that it’s taken someone’s life for it now to be pushed out and for people in power to start listening and to enforce this law to stop other families and other people’s lives being destroyed.
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Bank’s base rate gift to borrowers is wrapped in an inflation warning | Phillip Inman
A reduction in interest rates by the Bank of England should rank as a joyful summer gift to borrowers weighed down by the high cost of mortgages and loans.Yet the latest quarter-point cut to the cost of borrowing, from 4.25% to 4%, is laced with so many warnings that any celebration will be muted.Most prominently, the Bank’s monetary policy committee (MPC) said in its latest assessment of the UK’s economic outlook that inflation is on course to peak at a higher rate in the second half of this year than previously forecast.Price spikes in food and energy and the higher cost of business services would push the consumer prices index to 4% in September, it said, before falling only slowly to an average of 3% in a year’s time
Another Bank of England rate cut this year less likely given inflation fears and split vote – as it happened
The chances of another cut to UK interest rates this year, to 3.75%, have fallen today, following the Bank of England’s warning that inflation will rise higher than expected this year.The closeness of this week’s vote to cut rates, with four out of nine policymakers wanting to hold rates at 4.25%, also appears to make further cuts in 2025 less likely.The money markets are now indicating that the next cut is not full priced in until February 2026
I spoke to the AI avatar of a Leeds MP. How did it cope with my Yorkshire accent?
As anyone with even a trace of a regional dialect who has had to pay a parking fine can attest, voice recognition services struggle with accents. Now, people in Mark Sewards’ constituency in Leeds are likely to find the same problem with his AI variant.A chatbot billed as the first AI version of an MP responds in Sewards’ voice with advice, support or by offering to pass on a message to his team – but only if it understands you.The website, a virtual representation of the MP for Leeds South West and Morley – complete with a Pixar-style cartoon – was launched by a local startup to field questions from his constituents, some of whom have broad Leeds accents.I was interested to see how “Sewardsbot” would handle a conversation with someone from only a couple of miles away from his constituency border
OpenAI says latest ChatGPT upgrade is big step forward but still can’t do humans’ jobs
OpenAI has claimed to have taken a “significant step” towards artificial general intelligence (AGI) with the launch of its latest upgrade to ChatGPT, but has admitted there are still “many things” missing in its quest to create a system able to do humans’ jobs.The startup said its GPT-5 model, the underlying technology that will power its breakthrough AI chatbot, represents a big upgrade on its predecessors in areas such as coding and creative writing – and is also a lot less sycophantic.It said the upgrade was being made available to all of ChatGPT’s 700 million weekly users immediately.Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, called the model a “significant step forward” to achieving the theoretical state of AGI, which the startup defines as a highly autonomous system that outperforms humans at most economically valuable work – or, in other words, can do their jobs.However, Altman admitted GPT-5 had not reached that goal yet
The ultimate test: watching this glorious sporting summer has given me a headache | Emma John
There is a crick in my neck, a rick in my back, and a permanent ache behind my eyes. A friend refuses to offer sympathy. “You did this to yourself,” she says as I pop paracetamol. Thousands of hours of medical research are ploughed into elite sport, but where are the studies into the physical and mental demands of keeping up with it?While winter may be fiercely programmed, it’s the multi-disciplinary bunfight of summer that is the ultimate test of a sports fan. Right when our diaries demand we’re at our most sociable, our most available, our most outdoors, the calendar loses all sense of perspective and dumps events on us like it’s trying to save them from a burning building
Emma Raducanu: ‘I hope Francisco Roig can help me beat the top players’
Emma Raducanu believes her new coaching partnership with Francisco Roig can help to take her game to the next level as she tries to continue her recent rise up the rankings. “First impressions are it’s going really well,” Raducanu said, speaking for the first time about the move in an interview with the Guardian. “We did a few days after Wimbledon together and I was really happy with how it went. I’m just so excited to have him on board, so much experience. I’m really looking forward to continuing
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What? They’re doing raves in the morning now? With coffee? At a cafe?