TikTok creating more than 500 new British jobs as UK users top 30 million
The Chinese-owned social media firm said its UK workforce would expand to 3,000 this year as part of its 'deep commitment' to the UK.
It will also open a new 135,000sq ft office in London's Barbican, which is set to open early next year.
The group already has its UK headquarters in Farringdon, London, which were opened in 2022.
TikTok unveiled the plans as it said it now has more than 30 million regular users in the UK each month, which makes the market is biggest user community in Europe.
Adam Presser, director of TikTok UK and global head of operations and trust and safety, said: 'Whether through direct investment in jobs and innovation, or the wider economic contribution from millions of British businesses on TikTok, we're pleased to be increasing our investment and presence here in the UK, an important hub for TikTok.'
But it comes after Cabinet minister Pete Kyle signalled he was looking at measures to restrict the amount of time children spend on their phones, including through a possible 10pm curfew.
Mr Kyle was asked on Sunday morning whether he would look at limiting the time children spend on social media to two hours per app after the Sunday People and Mirror reported the measure was being considered by ministers.
The Online Safety Act has passed into law, and from this year will require tech platforms to follow new Ofcom-issued codes of practice to keep users safe online, particularly children.
Hefty fines and site blockages are among the penalties for those caught breaking the rules, but many critics have argued the approach gives tech firms too much scope to regulate themselves.
TikTok's Mr Presser said that, as well as its UK expansion plans, the group also invests 'significantly' in safety.
He said: 'What underpins our continued growth is our deep commitment to safety and to creating an enjoyable and secure digital space to sustainably support creators, entrepreneurs and the wider economy, which is why we also invest significantly in safety.'
TikTok first launched its UK operations in 2018 and is financially incorporated in Britain.
The group was fined 530 million euro (£446 million) by the Irish data protection watchdog last month for breaching EU privacy rules around transferring user data to China.
The video-sharing app was also sanctioned for not being transparent with users about where personal data was being sent and ordered the platform to comply with data protection rules within six months.
TikTok said it would appeal against the decision.
The social media giant, which is owned by China-based ByteDance, has been under scrutiny from regulators around the world over how it handles personal data, and is also facing a ban in the United States over its China links, which the US government has said is a national security issue.
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The National
an hour ago
- The National
Palestine Action proscription sets dangerous precedent
Palestine Action's response was clear: 'Today we exposed Britain's direct involvement in the genocide, and how ordinary people can act to stop it. In response, the political establishment rushes to call us 'terrorists', while they enact the worst crimes against humanity. No amount of smears or intimidation tactics will waver our solidarity with Palestine. We will break every link in the genocidal supply chain.' They deserve all of our immediate solidarity. The basis of the 'outrage' is that moral authority rests with the state, with the military, and not with citizens, ordinary people – you and I. That is an absurdist claim to make given both the history of the British state and what we have been watching unfold before our eyes for many years, grotesquely intensified since October 7, 2023. The shocking level of state violence by Israel is now spooling outwards having legislative effects on its own backers as the level of internal repression in the West amplifies. Just as the 'conflict' is spreading throughout the region, the violence is coming home. A History of Authoritarianism THE roots of this descent into authoritarianism and the criminalisation of legitimate protest go back decades. When to date it from? The idea that at least 139 undercover officers spied on more than 1000 political groups between 1968 and 2010? The idea floated, amid her chaotic regime of 'domestic extremists' that was put out by prime minister Theresa May, including that people advocating a Scottish democracy should be equated with ISIS? (see On Separatists and Extremists – if you don't believe me). We know from the spycops scandal that this has a deep history. We now know that a body called the SPL (Subversion in Public Life) was established in the 1980s comprising senior civil servants, MI5 and Special Branch. This sought to control and blacklist trade unionists. READ MORE: UK Government 'set to proscribe Palestine Action after RAF protest' Whenever you put your mark in Britain's long descent into authoritarianism, cheered on by the rabid tabloids, we are where we are, and it is a Labour Government enacting this. The absurdity of it all would make your head swivel. As the writer Ben Wray has said: 'Britain is a country where those wanted by the ICC for war crimes write columns in The Times and those resisting genocide get proscribed as 'terrorists'. A deeply malevolent, authoritarian country.' If you can be proscribed as a terrorist organisation for vandalism and breaking and entering, then the UK is in a very dangerous place indeed, one where categories of behaviour, and real threat and criminality elide into a confusion, a mess of unfocused outrage. Except there is no outrage for what is being done on our behalf by a political elite divorced from reality, detached from the people, and wholly captured by powers they don't disclose. This is a travesty of contemporary Britain, but sadly, not a surprise. What is required of you is your silence, your obedience. What is required of you is a sullen compliance: do nothing at all, look away. Yet Palestine Action say simply: 'Ordinary people can take military planes out of service, destroy weapons inside arms factories and pressure companies to end their complicity. We are not powerless. Through direct action, we can break the global genocidal supply chain.' Isn't it funny how, if people stand up to tyranny elsewhere, far away, or long ago, we celebrate it – the crowd starting the boos against Nicolae Ceaușescu, the man standing in front of tanks in Tiananmen Square, the civil rights leaders opposing brutality in the south of America, the ANC fighting apartheid. Yet here we are, encouraged to criminalise protest against genocide and quietly being drawn into the condemnation. It's insidious how this happens, and how susceptible we are to believing that genocide is justified, that dehumanising people is acceptable, that war crimes should be ignored, that ethnic cleansing is a ... solution. Never again. But the brutal reality is that what is going on has been foreshadowed and everyone knows it. As I wrote a year ago: 'The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill has effectively ushered in a police state. Even as the undercover policing inquiry continues to reveal appalling abuses by police spying on peaceful campaigners – the police are being given new unprecedented powers of arrest and surveillance.' As George Monbiot has pointed out: 'These are the state-of-emergency laws you would expect in the aftermath of a coup. But there is no public order emergency, just an emergency of another kind, that the protesters targeted by this legislation are trying to stop – the collapse of Earth systems. We are being compelled by law to accept the destruction of the living world.' And so the much-derided 'omnicause' – a fantasy coined by the gammon right and its adjacent dullards pontificating from their blogs. or their Times columns. or the pulpits of outrage in various Scottish comics. The Omnicause is capitalism and no doubt you will be celebrating the latest 'crackdown' as you celebrated the last. A generation is waking up to the links between imperialism, settler colonialism, extractivism and the doomsday cult currently arguing in favour of 're-opening the coal mines' and 'drill, baby, drill'. This awakening is terrifying and the scribes and sycophants who man the newsbeat are springing into action to act out their duties. One of the things that is terrifying about people making common cause across struggles and causes is that, for far too long, the left has been hidebound by single-issue politics played out in isolation. Solidarity is terrifying to the ruling class. Consciousness, more so. Everyone who speaks out will be smeared. We know the playbook from the meakest mildest questioner to the more militant protester, they will all be dragged into the dirt. The targets are as varied as make the point, from Labour leaders such as Harold Wilson, Neil Kinnock, Tony Benn, Michael Foot or Jeremy Corbyn, to activists such as Greta Thunberg, Smári McCarthy, Julian Assange or protest movements from Greenham Common through to the Pollok Free State. You don't have to agree with these individuals or causes (or indeed give them a free pass on their individual behaviours) to see the connection between 'threat' and 'response', which is incompatible with living in a functioning democracy. Knowledge is Not Power UNLIKE previous atrocities and genocide, we know everything. Despite the media bias and the ceaseless Israeli propaganda, despite the front-loading of Western democracies with vast sums of dark money, despite the continual framing and curation of 'narrative', we still know everything. Our response is on a spectrum from internalising rage; reflective impotence; turning away; taking part in sometimes meaningless activities (clicktivism, petitions, letter writing); to marches and protests (also sadly, and brutally often meaningless); through to more direct actions. At the another end (sort of) of the spectrum is switching off; turning off; turning away; masking, or hyper-consumerism. But the chant of 'while you were shopping the bombs were dropping' as a 'J'accuse' of the hyper consumer is darkly poignant but also pointless. READ MORE: Labour blasted as 'deeply authoritarian' over plans to proscribe Palestine Action In this context, Palestine Action, like climate activists have taken a stand against the modern horrors, and been criminalised for it. From spray-painting buildings of those corporations most invested in fossil fuels through to spray-painting 'two military planes with red paint'. Our response to the Home Secretary proscribing Palestine Action as a terrorist action must be one of solidarity. This can be expressed by condemnation, financial support, or amplifying their voice. The alternative is giving up and giving in, remaining silent as our rights are stripped away. This is yet another Niemöller Moment. The Zone of Interest OUR response to protest has been conditioned by the media's shaping of climate action protests which we have learned to snear at and condemn. As the climate catastrophe accelerates, the relationship between 'reality' and the imagined world closes. Hot right now? When you realise that this will be the coolest summer you'll ever remember, that might hit home. Equally, as the level of state violence intensifies and the efforts to mask, hide or propagandise the horrors fail, the 'actionists', as they call themselves, must be criminalised and demonised. Systems breakdown and failure can only be responded to with violence and repression, it seems. It's not clear what course correction or event might change this feeling of inevitable descent. Nothing exemplifies this more than the idea of people resenting being able to 'go about their business' as if daily life can just trundle on amidst the horror. And it can, no doubt. As Paul Kearns writes in the Irish Times: 'June is here. Summer has arrived. And the beaches in Tel Aviv are full. Just an hour's drive away, two million Palestinians are on the brink of starvation. The incongruity of those few words and the bizarre contrast of imagery – the busy beach in Tel Aviv, the dystopia in Gaza – are hard to digest, I imagine, for many in Ireland. They are perhaps shocking, incomprehensible, and sickening even. 'This, however, is the reality of life, and of course death, here in Israel and nearby Gaza.' For Ireland, read Scotland. This is the ambience of atrocity and its mirror, the 'fascist feeling'. It is, and this is deeply uncomfortable to say, the land depicted in Zone Of Interest, the Academy Award-winning film by Jonathan Glazer which is a study in complicity, banality and the human ability to zone out and turn away from atrocity in pursuit of self-interest. The film is inspired by the real life of Rudolf Höss, commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp. The film follows Höss's idyllic domestic life with his wife Hedwig, and children, which unfolds in a stately home and garden immediately adjacent to the concentration camp. Glazer has described his characters not as monsters but as 'non-thinking, bourgeois, aspirational-careerist horrors, people who manage to turn profound evil into white noise'. READ MORE: Owen Jones: Opposing Israeli violence is 'extremist'? The world's upside down It sounds dismally familiar, though the class issue is a distinction worth noticing. Palestine Action reject being drawn into the Zone Of Interest, and urge us all to do the same. They may be imprisoned under a wave of collective indifference, but the issues aren't going away. They can be put in jail but what they are objecting to can't be so easily swept away. In our silo culture, different issues compete for our attention, the needle of our moral compass and our political energy. But in today's meta-crisis these silos are collapsing before us. These issues pervade not just our coming Holyrood elections but our wider society and all of the interactions we are supported by – the modern 'enslaved people' who support Western lifestyle; the colonial foundations of modern wealth; the reality of global south-to-north climate relations, and the witnessing of contemporary genocide in Palestine. As Pankaj Mishra, wrote in The Shoah After Gaza, published in the London Review of Books (in 2024): 'Every day is poisoned by the awareness that while we go about our lives, hundreds of ordinary people like ourselves are being murdered, or being forced to witness the murder of their children. 'Adding that, Biden's stubborn malice and cruelty to the Palestinians is just one of the gruesome riddles presented to us by Western politicians and journalists.' If we struggle to absorb these atrocities, it's hard not to buckle under the impression of helplessness, and turn away from the horror. That is the profound message of Palestine Action, and many others like them. As Naomi Klein writes of the film The Zone Of Interest's haunting message: 'It's not that these people don't know that an industrial-scale killing machine whirs just beyond their garden wall. They have simply learned to lead contented lives with ambient genocide. 'Glazer has repeatedly stressed that his film's subject is not the Holocaust, with its well-known horrors and historical particularities, but something more enduring and pervasive – the human capacity to live with holocausts and other atrocities, to make peace with them, draw benefit from them.' The situation on the ground is getting worse, if worse can be imagined. Israel's attack on Iran, and America's imminent 'support' (if that is the case) has given a cover of darkness and misdirection. Amnesty International yesterday stated that: 'With the world looking elsewhere, the militarisation of aid adds another layer to Israel's deliberate imposition of genocidal conditions against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip. Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed and injured at or near aid distribution points since Israel's weaponised 'humanitarian' aid distribution system was imposed at the end of May. Families are being forced into an impossible choice: die of hunger or die trying to get food. Seeking food should never be a death trap. Israel must end its genocide and lift the blockade now.' Palestine Action has decreed that, 'We will break every link in the genocidal supply chain', but what's becoming clear is that our silence, our indifference, is part of that supply chain. They challenge the very idea that Israel is insatiable, unstoppable and omnipotent and we are powerless and our position hopeless. In that they are hugely important, both symbolically and actually. The moment demands we learn from their example. And what next? The behaviour of Israel and our unconditional support seems to have no end, no threshold. The 'war' is escalating and we, 'Britain', are being dragged further into it, despite widespread public revulsion for it. As the journalist Jonathan Cook points out: 'The claim that Israel is 'defending itself' in attacking Iran – promoted by France, Germany, Britain, the European Union, the G7 and the US – should be understood as a further assault on the foundational principles of international law. 'The assertion is premised on the idea that Israel's attack was 'pre-emptive' – potentially justified if Israel could show there was an imminent, credible and severe threat of an attack or invasion by Iran that could not be averted by other means. And yet, even assuming there is evidence to support Israel's claim it was in imminent danger – there isn't – the very fact that Iran was in the midst of talks with the US about its nuclear programme voided that justification. 'Rather, Israel's contention that Iran posed a threat at some point in the future that needed to be neutralised counts as a 'preventive' war – and is indisputably illegal under international law.' If the proscribing of Palestine Action is an inflection point, so too is the idea that we might support Israel on a new front against Iran. This is a dangerous moment in which we must mobilise a peace movement that joins with the anti-imperialist movement and those fighting the war against nature and humanity.
The National
an hour ago
- The National
Ruth Wishart: Anti-abortion movement is well-funded and gunning for us
Her doctors and a midwife said such a course of action would be illegal under the then Irish law whilst a foetal heartbeat was detectable. Savita was just 31 when she died of sepsis in 2018. In the furore which followed, Ireland voted overwhelmingly to ditch the legal clause which prevented abortion. But it took six long years to pass the new amendment which did so. It became part of the Irish Republic's journey to unlock the stranglehold the church had previously held over the law, and subsequently, in 2015, another amendment endorsed same-sex marriage. READ MORE: Scottish Government announces £3 million in funding for 14 festivals More recently, when the US Democratic legislator Melissa Hortman and her husband were murdered by a self-styled evangelical 'Christian' earlier this month, police found a list of some 70 other potential victims in his vehicle. The link they shared is that they had all been vocally pro-choice. You might imagine it was enough for these ultras that they had killed off Roe v Wade in 2022, the landmark ruling which gave federal rights to termination in every US state. Evidently not. Since that ended, we have had tragic instances of rape, child and incest victims being forced to carry to full term, women bleeding to death in hospitals, and the better-heeled having to take flights to that handful of states which didn't take advantage of the new legal landscape and kept women's rights safe. It's almost as if all the male legislators who hollered loud and long for women to stay pregnant no matter the circumstances, collectively believed that all these pregnancies were somehow the result of immaculate conceptions. Unsurprisingly, there is not a four-deep queue of rogue fathers volunteering their financial or indeed any support. Men rule OK? Last week in the Commons, the weaker of two possible amendments was passed which 'allowed' women who self-terminated pregnancies, perhaps via online medication, to avoid prosecution. It did not exempt any medical staff who may have been involved. The author of the second, stronger amendment wrote in The Guardian that the House had chickened out of proper reform and had been altogether too timid. Yet again, some of the loudest voices raised in defence of the legal status quo belonged to men. Blokes like Tory Edward Leigh, whose features have always looked as if he were on the verge of apoplexy or worse. These men also have one thing in common. They will never, ever be pregnant. Which doesn't prevent them from telling women what they should think, or whether or not they should control their own fertility. So there is absolutely no reason to suppose that Scotland or the UK is safe from American lobbying. Just look at what happened when a modest law from Gillian Mackay MSP was passed stopping the Texan-based 40 Days For Life group assembling nearer than 200 metres from any facility offering terminations. Some commentators have suggested all they were doing was praying. Puleeze. Some of the professional posters displayed had come straight from the source of the protesting. Including pictures of aborted foetuses. And there was much shouting, not just at women but at the medical staff who worked there. READ MORE: Kate Forbes: Numbers prove that the world is ignoring those who talk Scotland down When a woman in her 70s was arrested, but never brought to court, she was immediately given heroine status by some US 'freedom of speech' groups. She had been picketing near Glasgow's Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, though not, to be fair shouting, and was demanding her 'right' to go to court despite the Procurator Fiscal recommending no further action. This is all of a piece with the well-funded, Europe-wide anti-abortion protesters who all demand their day in court to rubbish any laws to which they've taken exception. Rose Docherty's arrest, following police warnings about trespassing in buffer zones, came just days after the US vice-president, JD Vance, made a series of totally false accusations about the Scottish laws, including the assertion that people could be in trouble for privately praying in their own home. And referencing 'thought police'. All garbage of course, but not atypical of the current US administration's legendary inability to check their facts before their mouth is engaged. People who think getting rid of Donald Trump would herald a new relationship with the truth might consider that Vance is the constitutional heir apparent. Which is not to say that legitimate protest should ever be outlawed, including protests with which we fundamentally disagree. The Scottish legislation on buffer zones mentions the where of protest, but not the why. Its principal proposer received both death threats and abuse despite being pregnant herself. Nevertheless, it was the Irish nation rising up and voting for change which brought about two civilising laws in that country where the church had long held too much sway. Even in America, there are signs that decent folks are awakening from the slumber which brought us a second Trump term with all the many and increasingly obvious dangers that represents. Non-Elon-Musk-related social media is awash with images of a poorly attended military parade which 'happened' to coincide with the president's 79th birthday and contrasting these images with the millions across the USA who turned out for No Kings Day. The latter was a public riposte to Trump supposing that his presidential status gave him monarchical powers to do as he pleased. An assertion which followed a Time magazine cover this month featuring a back view of 'Trump' looking into a mirror where he wore a crown and lots of ermine. By long-standing Time artist Tim O'Brien, it was entitled King Me. The idea that the man who treats executive orders like bulk-bought confetti should be left to his own fantasies managed to unite and enrage millions of people, some of whom had sat on their hands on the day of the election. Hell mend them. It's become difficult enough to vote in America as it is without ignoring the hard-fought right to vote for which people once died. These barriers to polling rights have also crossed the pond, with new demands to present ID at polling stations despite there being minimalist evidence of voter fraud. No prizes for guessing which group is least likely to have a passport or driving licence. So we must stay alert at all times to prevent our own rules, regulations and values from being altered by foreign voices. Apart from Vance, Musk has also weighed in with his views on the UK Prime Minister and much else. The irony is that Musk himself is a migrant from South Africa, but the breath is not being held for those cuddly chaps from the US Immigration and Enforcement agency to deport him as they now have so many long-standing Americans who 'look foreign' (which is ICE speak for being brown.) If you think they're licensed thugs, you're not wrong. Meanwhile round about us, the world appears to be hellwards bound in any available handcart. There are many theories about why Trump is planning to take a fortnight before deciding whether or not to give more support to Israel by providing the necessary aircraft and their so-called 'bunker-busting' bombs to reach buried Iranian nuclear sites. I know the US president isn't much of a reader, but could I recommend several tomes which detail the effect of unleashing radio active materials from such sites? Not that he cares. It's a reasonably safe bet that the prevailing winds won't carry the nasties to the eastern seaboard in America. The bit that houses hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. Like Gaza, really.
Powys County Times
4 hours ago
- Powys County Times
Starmer puts skills training at heart of industrial strategy plan
Sir Keir Starmer will set out his industrial strategy on Monday as he seeks to kickstart the stuttering economy and reduce the UK's reliance on foreign workers. The decade-long plan for 'national renewal' will include £275 million in skills investment to train Britons to do jobs in growth industries which might otherwise require imported labour. The strategy will include specific funding to train people for work in defence, engineering, digital and construction roles. Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds said the strategy 'will help transform our skills system to end the overreliance on foreign labour and ensure British workers can secure good, well-paid jobs in the industries of tomorrow and drive growth and investment right across the country'. Monday's industrial strategy will be followed later in the week by a new trade plan intended to make the UK the best-connected country in the world to do business. The Prime Minister will launch the industrial strategy hoping it will help in his mission of delivering economic growth. The economy shrank by 0.3% in April, the biggest monthly contraction in gross domestic product for a year-and-a-half, as businesses felt the impact of global uncertainty caused by Donald Trump's tariffs and domestic pressure as a result of hikes to firms' national insurance contributions. Around one-in-seven young people are not in education or employment, and the number of people taking an apprenticeship has fallen by almost a fifth between 2016/17 and 2023/24. The Government hopes the growth sectors identified in the industrial strategy will create 1.1 million new jobs by 2035. The skills package includes capital investment from a £200 million fund which will support new facilities including 'technical excellence colleges' providing specialised training for local industries. The total funding is expected to train thousands more workers by 2029 including computer programmers, IT technicians, electrical and civil engineers. Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson said: 'Skills rightly run right through the heart of this industrial strategy because they are key to breaking the link between background and success for young people and delivering prosperity for our country.' Stephen Phipson, the boss of manufacturers' organisation Make UK, welcomed the skills announcement. 'We look forward to working with the Government to fix the skills gap in manufacturing, which has been the sector's Achilles' heel for decades,' he said. Other elements of the plan are expected to include measures to help cut energy costs for industries which have complained they are being forced to compete with rivals overseas who face lower bills. Meanwhile some £380 million will be spent on a range of projects intended to double private investment in the creative industries. Shadow business secretary Andrew Griffith welcomed the investment in skills but said 'the Government are stepping on the accelerator and the brake at the same time' by hiking national insurance for firms and introducing extra employment rights which could increase costs. 'This inherent contradiction cannot make for a feasible or serious strategy, and will hold the Government to account for it,' he said.
