“You see that button that says ‘Front’ on it,” the fighter pilot said to me.
“Yes,” I answered from the back of the RAF Typhoon, somewhere in the skies above the North Sea.
“Push it, and then tell me what it says.”
From mogging to friendslop – words of the year revealed
Collins English Dictionary has unveiled its hotly debated top words of 2026, with Gen Z slang, influenced by social media and the manosphere, coming through into the mainstream.
Uses of mogging increased 210 per cent this year.
Mogging the other words
Anything can be mogged now.
Mary O’Neill, who works at Collins, told the term was “adopted by ‘looksmaxxers’, basically to say they were better and more handsome and more muscular than anyone else”.
It means “the act of outshining or outperforming someone or something” and was partly popularised by manosphere figures like Clavicular.
What else was on the shortlist?
- Aside from word of the year mogging, the other shortlisted words included bixie, carspreading, p(doom) and Manchesterism.
- Manchesterism refers to the political philosophy opined by Andy Burnham.
- And, depressingly, p(doom) is the estimate of how likely it is that AI will bring about the collapse of civilisation.
3 min read
Hair gets shorter, cars get bigger
- Bixie refers to the popular haircut between a bob and a pixie.
- Carspreading means “the tendency of manufacturers to build cars that are longer, wider and heavier”.
3 min read
Why job satisfaction across UK is at a record low
Analysis by the Resolution Foundation think-tank found that pay and flexibility have become key issues employees have with their working arrangements.
The key findings
The study found a significant decline in satisfaction at work among the UK population.
Job satisfaction fell from 81 per cent in 2015 to just 74 per cent a decade later, the lowest figure ever recorded in the British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey.
The number of people who reported being interested in their job or having the sense that they had opportunity for progression was also down.
Sir John Curtice, co-editor of the BSA report, suggested it has become more important for employers “to provide jobs that are both financial rewarding and have flexible work hours” in order to produce happier workers.
What does this mean?
Hannah Slaughter, of the Resolution Foundation, said: “This ‘dissatisfaction drain’ is self-evidently bad for workers, but it also doesn’t bode well for productivity and labour supply.”
Tenerife footballer dies aged 30 after on-pitch collision
Jesús de Miguel suffered a serious injury after colliding with the opposition goalkeeper in a match on Monday.
What happened?
The 30-year-old CD Tenerife forward was playing in a second-division match against Andorra, when he was struck in the chest by their goalie, Jesús Owono.
De Miguel suffered a cardiac arrest and was rushed to hospital. He died at 8am on Tuesday, according to his club.
6 min read
The sequence of events
- Owono’s knee appeared to collide with De Miguel while challenging in the midfield, according to reports.
- It occurred in the final minutes of the game, which at that point was drawn 2-2.
- The forward reportedly lay motionless on the pitch and distressed players called for medical aid. He was treated for more than five minutes on the pitch before being rushed to hospital by ambulance.
What the club has said
There are no words of comfort – there is absolutely nothing that can lessen this overwhelming sadness. We stand with his grieving family, with his loved ones, with all of Tenerife who mourn this cruel loss today.
CD tenerife, in a statement today
When the BBC licence fee could be axed
Ministers are set to announce proposals to reform the £180-a-year charge in a White Paper setting out the terms of a new BBC charter next month.
A few of the options
New charter by 2028
Insiders believe the licence fee could gradually transition to something new over several years.
Streaming tax
The Government is considering extending the charge to streaming services – which could cost £6.25 a month.
Broadband levy
This would cost £11 per month, £4 a month cheaper than the current licence fee.
What else is on the table?
- BBC director-general Matt Brittin has suggested that the BBC could use a German-style funding model.
All households in Germany pay €18.36 per month (£15.70) to fund all public TV and radio broadcasters across different states.
Brittin predicted the scheme would enable the current fee to be reduced by 20 per cent from its current level.
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport has looked at whether the BBC should be allowed to take advertising around some of its services.
A final option could be to let the licence fee continue its decline and give the BBC the commercial freedom to raise more funds itself.
A BBC spokesman said: “The current funding model is outdated and needs reform. We will continue to engage with government to secure a new charter.”
4 min read
Watch more from The i Paper
How rapid delivery services are ‘fuelling’ alcohol harm
A group of MPs, health leaders and charities have argued the availability of strong and cheap alcohol should be tackled via minimum unit pricing (MUP) in England.
What does the letter say?
- In a letter to Health Secretary Yvette Cooper, 55 experts said that the evidence from Scotland and Wales, where MUP has already been introduced, is “clear and compelling”.
- The letter reads: “Very strong, very cheap alcohol is available everywhere in this country, from our supermarkets to our corner shops and increasingly via online rapid delivery services.”
- They argued the current conditions allow for “escalating alcohol harm”.
4 min read
The story in numbers
Between 2019 and 2023, deaths in England increased by a “staggering”
42%
and have not returned to pre-pandemic levels since.
The authors said that alcohol harm is estimated to cost
£27.4bn
a year, with £4.9bn of this “shouldered by the NHS”.
Human and economic costs
Labour MP Cat Smith said: “The human and economic costs are now far too high to ignore.”
Professor Sir Ian Gilmore, chair of the Alcohol Health Alliance, warned England “is in danger of becoming the UK’s alcohol harm outlier”.
5 min read
Mahmood announces new immigration rules – what we know
The Home Secretary was forced to back down over proposals to make care workers wait 15 years to qualify for permanent residence.
What you need to know
Shabana Mahmood revised plans to force many low-paid workers, including carers, to wait up to 15 years before being granted indefinite leave to remain (ILR).
On Monday, she scrapped these plans for care workers. But other professions have not seen the same reversal.
3 min read
Why the change of heart?
Mahmood introduced the carve out for care workers after intense backlash from Labour MPs. Housing Secretary Angela Rayner called the retrospective plan “un-British”.
Workers in a set list of public service jobs – such as doctors, nurses and teachers – will also be able to qualify for ILR after five years, even if they do not meet the new salary threshold of £50,271.
Routes to settlement
Under the new system, legal migrants will be able to settle on the following timelines:
- 3 years: additional rate taxpayers earning over £125,141, as well as highly skilled individuals on Global Talent and Innovator Founder visas.
- 5 years: higher rate taxpayers earning over £50,271, as well as skilled public service workers.
- 10 years: the new standard route for everyone else.
- 20 years: anyone who claims certain benefits while in the UK or commits a visa offence.
Watch more from The i Paper
“It now says ‘Rear’,” I replied.
“You’re in control,” he confirmed.
Going by “Stuka”, courtesy of a risky diving manoeuvre attempted early in his career, the pilot had racked up more than 2,000 hours flying the Typhoon and was one of the Royal Air Force’s most experienced weapons instructors. I, on the other hand, had never been at the controls of any aircraft, yet here I was now steering one of the fastest and most agile planes ever built, worth more than £100m. The aircraft is also a key part of the UK’s first line of defence against any potential foreign – Russian – aggression.
Pushing hard to one side, I pulled a barrel-roll. Encouraged to “unwind” what I’d just done, I pushed the other way and repeated the trick. Pulling back on the stick, I attempted a loop-the-loop. As my bodyweight felt more like 320kg as a result, and the nausea grew in the compressed pit of my stomach, I failed to complete it at first. Stuka casually took over to save us from flying vertically into the ground.
“I’m not sure we want to turn into an Exocet missile [an anti-ship cruise missile],” he remarked, affably.
This was fun, but the exercise I’d seen in the hours prior was no game. The serious business of scrambling up and down the North Sea is vital to the UK’s security, while getting to witness it as a journalist from the air, as well as from bases on the ground, had taken over a year of delicate negotiation and planning for Sky News. This kind of access hasn’t been offered to a news organisation for the best part of a decade.
Cobra Warrior is the rather Hollywood-sounding name for the RAF’s top tier training, and engages many of its personnel in repeatedly sending jets on QRAs, or Quick Reaction Alerts. Before I was allowed to indulge in a spot of amateur aerobatics, we’d refuelled in mid-air, intercepted a plane that was pretending to misbehave and escorted said executive jet on to the tarmac of the nearest airport in Teesside.
The RAF won’t reveal how many aircraft take part or how often they do this for real but, as I saw in a bunker at RAF Boulmer in Northumberland from which they monitor the skies 24/7, they practise incessantly. Genuine alerts are occasionally to do with civilian and commercial aircraft forgetting to communicate as they should, the odd hoax or reports of misbehaviour on a tourist flight. The RAF always scrambles to have a close look and decide how to act. Reassuringly, I learned that Russian military aircraft have never flown into UK airspace uninvited, but the airspace the RAF polices is much bigger and, as you’d probably expect, the alert is near constant.
Even further afield, the force has been a lot busier. 12 Squadron, who I was flying with, co-operate with allies Qatar and had recently returned from the Gulf where they defended against airborne threats from Iran. The Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Harv Smyth, told me that in previous years their fighter jets might have deployed to a Baltic ally and scrambled about once a week to check on Russian craft. On a recent operation in Romania, it was practically every day. The threat is there, it has increased and it’s closer to us than it’s been for a long time.
The resources have changed, too. Compared to the end of the Cold War around 1990, the RAF now has roughly a third of both the fighter planes and UK bases it did back then. The onus is now on them to be our first line of defence because, as Ukraine has shown, controlling the skies above us is imperative for the security of the population below. Planning in advance of the Government’s Defence Investment Plan was focussed on what things would probably look like in the mid-2030s, but in the words of the air chief, that ambition has since “shifted left”. Clearly, sooner is better.
Back on the ground at RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire, after experiencing 4G and Mach 1.5 (more than 1,100mph) in the Typhoon, it was hard to comprehend what I’d been doing for the last couple of hours. It was once in a lifetime for me, but in terms of the complexity of what we’d done, Stuka put it at 2 out of 10. That’s the point. Many of us are relying on the years of practice and the accrued muscle memory these exceptional individuals possess to keep us safe. There will be plenty of other things to think about if, on our behalf, they do have to push themselves further towards danger.
Matt Barbet is a Sky News presenter. His full report is available to subscribers of the .