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https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-66632226 Labour and the Liberal Democrats are vying to snap up Nadine Dorries' seat in a by-election this autumn, triggered after she quit on Saturday. The two parties ruled out any election pact as they look to contest the vacated Mid Bedfordshire seat. In her blistering resignation letter, Ms Dorries accused Rishi Sunak of running a "zombie Parliament". Government minister Johnny Mercer dismissed her scathing criticism, but said she was "entitled to that view". "I think people are tired of raking over the coals of the Boris Johnson government," said Mr Mercer, who is the government's veteran affairs minister. He told reporters on Sunday that he looked forward to the by-election campaign, but the Conservative Party would have to "work hard to get" constituents' votes, adding: "We've got work to do but we've got a good candidate." Ms Dorries - who was a Johnson loyalist - announced she would stand down on Saturday evening, 11 weeks after originally pledging to quit "with immediate effect" on 9 June. Labour's Anneliese Dodds said Ms Dorries' resignation was "a real relief for the people of Mid Bedfordshire" and that Labour was in "pole position" for the seat, despite not winning there before. "I think it really is all to play for for Labour with this by-election," she told BBC Breakfast. "They desperately need an MP who will be focused on them full-time." She added that "Labour won't be cooking up any deals". Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey said he was "increasingly confident we have a really good chance" of overturning Ms Dorries' huge 25,000 majority in the constituency, following the party's victory in Somerton and Frome last month. He said the Lib Dems had already been campaigning there, adding: "It's clear that the people of Mid Bedfordshire feel the Conservative Party is out of trust and they see the Liberal Democrats as the main challenger." Ms Dorries, whose salary as an MP is £86,584, had come under increasing pressure to act on her promise to resign, as she had not spoken in the Commons since June 2022. She submitted her resignation letter to the prime minister and published the eviscerating text on Mail Online. Nadine Dorries' resignation letter in full Senior Tory Caroline Nokes was left unimpressed by her remarks, telling BBC Radio 4's Broadcasting House: "I am not planning on wasting a second more of my life thinking about Nadine Dorries. "Nadine has turned her resignation into a psychodrama and sadly this seems more about gathering column inches for Nadine rather than a Conservative Party she claimed to be a loyal member of a few weeks ago." Sir Keir Starmer, Labour candidate Alistair Strathern , deputy Labour Party leader Angela Rayner and shadow Northern Ireland secretary Peter Kyle Sir Keir Starmer, Labour candidate Alistair Strathern, deputy Labour Party leader Angela Rayner and shadow Northern Ireland secretary Peter Kyle visited the Mid Bedfordshire constituency in July Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is expected to appoint Ms Dorries to the historical position of Steward and Bailiff of the Three Hundreds of Chiltern on Tuesday - the arcane mechanism by which MPs can leave the Commons before an election. This will enable the Conservative Party to call a by-election in Mid Bedfordshire. Blake Stephenson, the chair of the Mid Bedfordshire Conservatives, told the BBC constituents had been "looking for clarity" over Ms Dorries. "I'm certain that [the Conservative candidate] can win this campaign," he said. "But the circumstances in which we go into this by-election do make that more tricky." Despite saying in June that she would quit with immediate effect, Ms Dorries subsequently said she wanted to find out why she was refused a seat in the House of Lords. It was widely thought she would be made a peer by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson in his resignation honours list. In a lengthy statement Ms Dorries accused Mr Sunak of "demeaning his office by opening the gates to whip up a public frenzy" against her. This, she said, resulted in "the police having to visit my home and contact me on a number of occasions due to threats to my person". Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey visits The Cottage Bakery with Mid Bedfordshire by-election candidate Cllr Emma Holland-Lindsay, during a campaigning visit to Ampthill Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey says he's confident they can win the by-election In a criticism of Mr Sunak's leadership, she said: "Since you took office a year ago, the country is run by a zombie Parliament where nothing meaningful has happened. "You have no mandate from the people and the government is adrift. You have squandered the goodwill of the nation, for what?" She continued: "It is a fact that there is no affection for [Labour leader] Keir Starmer out on the doorstep. He does not have the winning X factor qualities of a Thatcher, Blair or a Boris Johnson, and sadly, prime minister, neither do you." presentational grey line Who is Nadine Dorries? Born in Liverpool, the mother of three says her childhood was warm and loving but she told the Guardian she also remembers having to "hide from the rent man as we couldn't pay him. Some days there would be no food." After school she trained as a nurse and her profession frequently informed the political issues she took up - from Group B Strep testing for pregnant women to pushing for the time limit on abortions to be reduced. She came late to politics and had considered joining Labour, but her views were swung by the Right to Buy scheme which had allowed her mother to buy her council house. Ms Dorries was elected MP for Mid Bedfordshire in 2005, although her decision to go on ITV's I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here in 2012 led to her suspension from the parliamentary Conservative party. She would later serve as a health minister before being appointed to the cabinet in 2021 when Boris Johnson made her culture secretary. Having written a series of novels, her latest book The Plot: The Political Assassination of Boris Johnson is due out in September

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/wild-monkey-sightings-florida-prompts-warnings-officials-rcna101401 Officials in Florida are warning people to keep their distance from wild monkeys that have been spotted around the city. Residents of Orange City, about 30 miles north of Orlando, have reported multiple sightings of wild monkeys within the city, the Orange City Police Department said Wednesday on Facebook. The department said at least one of the monkeys — spotted Wednesday at a Popeyes — was later identified as a Rhesus macaque monkey, a species that is native to Asia and can become aggressive when fed, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. A Rhesus macaque monkey. The police department received two additional reports of wild monkey sightings Tuesday, said Lt. Sherif El-Shami, who said officials are unsure whether all sightings involved the same species or monkey. Animal control officers and police haven't been able to locate the animals, El-Shami said. Police warned people not to feed or try to capture the monkeys and asked them to report sightings to the commission's Wildlife Alert Hotline. Feeding wild monkeys in Florida is a second-degree misdemeanor punishable by up to 60 days in jail and a fine of up to $500, according to information from the commission that the police department shared on Facebook, which says feeding wild monkeys can increase the likelihood of attacks, injuries and the transmission of disease. Wild monkey sighting in Florida prompts warning from officials A Rhesus macaque monkey was spotted roaming the streets of Orange City, Fla., in a photo police shared Wednesday. Orange City Police Department Rhesus macaques are one of two species of wild monkeys — along with vervet monkeys — that are reproducing in Florida, according to the wildlife conservation commission.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66632924 Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin has been confirmed dead after genetic analysis of bodies found in Wednesday's plane crash, Russian officials say. The Investigative Committee (SK) said the identities of all 10 victims had been established and corresponded to those on the flight's passenger list. Prigozhin's private jet came down north-west of Moscow on 23 August, killing all those on board. The Kremlin has denied speculation it was to blame for the crash. The SK said it was continuing a criminal investigation. "Molecular-genetic testing has been completed," it said in a statement. "According to its results, the identities of all 10 deceased have been established, and they correspond to the list published in the flight manifest." The victims include several senior figures in Wagner, a Russian mercenary group set up by Prigozhin and involved in military operations in Ukraine, Syria and parts of Africa. Among them was Dmitry Utkin, who managed Wagner's military operations. How Putin's long friendship with Prigozhin turned ugly What now for Wagner after Prigozhin's reported death? Was Prigozhin a dead man walking? The others on the Embraer Legacy plane - flying from Moscow to St Petersburg - included Wagner members Valery Chekalov, Sergei Propustin, Yevgeny Makaryan, Alexander Totmin and Nikolay Matuseyev. The plane was flown by pilot Alexei Levshin and co-pilot Rustam Karimov, and there was one flight attendant, Kristina Raspopova. The crash came two months after Prigozhin led a Wagner mutiny against the Russian armed forces, seizing the southern city of Rostov and threatening to march on Moscow. The standoff was defused after a deal was reached which led to Prigozhin and Wagner fighters relocating to Belarus. However, Russian President Vladimir Putin described the mutiny as a "stab in the back" and there has been speculation that Russian security forces were somehow involved in the crash. US officials quoted by CBS have said that the most likely cause of the crash was an explosion on board the plane, and the Pentagon said Prigozhin was probably killed. On Friday Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said rumours of foul play were an "absolute lie". Mr Putin has sent his condolences to the families of the victims. He described Prigozhin as a "talented person" who "made serious mistakes in life".

@Inmortal™ I have been promoted as project leader @-Ace Ϟ ™ Has Been Added To Our Team Welcome...

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https://www.gadgets360.com/mobiles/news/realme-c51-india-launch-specifications-features-listing-south-africa-website-4316750 Realme C51, which was launched in Taiwan last month, is all set to make its debut in the African market as well. The smartphone is listed on the company's African website with all the specifications. The smartphone comes with 64GB storage in Taiwan, however, in Africa, it will ship with more storage. The smartphone is listed to offer up to 8GB RAM, which also includes a virtual RAM of 4GB. The Realme C51 product page is now live on Realme's Africa website hinting at its imminent launch. However, the exact launch date is yet to be announced by the company. The listing reveals all the key details of the smartphone including display, storage, camera as well as colour options and design. The phone will come in two colour shades - Carbon Black and Mint Green. Realme C51 specifications The upcoming Realme C51 is confirmed to get a 6.7-inch HD (720 x1,600) display with a 90Hz refresh rate, 180Hz touch sampling rate, and 560nits of peak brightness. The smartphone is listed to be powered by an octa-core 12nm Unisoc T612 SoC paired with 4GB of RAM and 128GB of inbuilt storage expandable up to 2TB via a MicroSD card. The phone also features RAM expansion technology that allows users to use 4GB of unutilised storage as virtual RAM. Additionally, the Realme C51 is confirmed to get a dual rear camera setup headlined by a 50-megapixel primary shooter with an f/1.8 aperture and an unspecified secondary sensor. The phone will also house a 5-megapixel selfie camera with an f/2.0 aperture on the front. Just like the Taiwanese variant, the Realme C51 in Africa will pack a 5,000mAh battery with support for 33W SuperVOOC fast charging. It is listed to measure 167.2 x 76.7 x 7.99 mm and weighs 186g. The same variant could also make its way to India.

https://techxplore.com/news/2023-07-black-panther-game-marvel-games.html With all the recent Marvel video game announcements, one has to wonder if Marvel Games is creating its own gaming universe. We have Spider-Man and Wolverine on deck led by Insomniac. Meanwhile, Electronic Arts has an Iron Man in the works, and they've now added Black Panther to its plate. The Redwood City, California-based company announced that it's working with Cliffhanger Games on an original, third-person single-player Black Panther game. Cliffhanger is a new outfit led by Kevin Stephens, formerly of Monolith Productions makers of "Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor." That bodes well because that studio did a good job crafting a game with solid gameplay and innovative mechanics. "We're dedicated to delivering fans a definitive and authentic Black Panther experience, giving them more agency and control over their narrative than they have ever experienced in a story-driven video game. Wakanda is a rich Super Hero sandbox, and our mission is to develop an epic world for players who love Black Panther and want to explore the world of Wakanda as much as we do," said Stephens said in news release. What's notable about all four releases so far is that they're mostly third-person, single-player experiences developed in collaboration with Marvel Games. Motive Studio is developing the Iron Man project, and EA said it's also a third-person, single-player experience. Insomniac "Marvel's Spider-Man 2" is a third-person, open-world game. Little is known about the Wolverine game, but if Insomniac is at the helm, they've normally done third-person games. For all of this to work, there should be a mold to work from, but the more important thing would be to share characters across different properties, adding villains from one franchise to another would be the easiest way to do that. For example, Kraven from the upcoming "Marvel's Spider-Man 2" could conceivably appear in a Wolverine game. The harder thing would be moving protagonists from one franchise to another, but if they're built from the same foundation of a third-person perspective, it could be something that's more achievable and intriguing.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/forensic-watermarking-tool-embeds-trackable-info-in-every-frame Amsterdam-based Digital Rights Management (DRM) company castLabs has introduced what it feels is the next step in content protection through a new technique, dubbed "single-frame forensic watermaking". The concept behind the DRM system is to leverage the company's cloud-based "Video Toolkit solution", which processes and protects uploaded content (such as video, images, and documents) by adding "tunable watermarks", which are then redistributed alongside the (now-watermarked and monitored) content. The basic idea of the service is that it can be applied either standalone or alongside other DRM-protection mechanisms, while offering an additional layer of "tunable" security to any sensitive content. When the content is uploaded through the company's AWS-hosted solution, the company's software secretly embeds identifying information on each frame by "creating unique watermark IDs, [and] strategically hiding them within video frames or other visual digital assets." How strategic that hiding is, however, is unclear: the company does say that at least for video streaming, its service watermarks "every frame entirely", meaning that there must be included redundancies in how the data is encoded across frames. According to the company, a single frame that's been treated with its "forensic watermark" tech is all that's required to recover the original copyright information - even when attempting to recover data from a picture or video shot of the computer screen (one of the easier ways of defeating metadata-based protections). According to the company, this "blind extraction" capability (where the software detects existing watermarks without knowing whether or not the source file contains it) is one of its differentiators in the content-protection scene. The ability for its watermarking feature to survive digital-to-analog conversion is also relatively striking. The tool seems to be more geared toward enterprise and industrial-espionage use-cases. Tech companies, for instance, usually distribute advanced information on unreleased-products to journalists, influencers and, distribution partners that's provided under the terms of what are known as non-disclosure. But as the existence of leaks attests, even the existence of physical watermarks and a distribution list can lead to leaks - as soon as information leaves its origin, the Internet takes care of distributing it. The company's solution aims to alleviate this problem immensely. It's unclear when and if this technology could be used for other mediums. For instance, could this technology be applied to internal game builds, or gone-gold game releases? If this technology finds its way into games, then at least theoretically, anyone "streaming" a pirated version of a game could be caught unaware by the digital rights holder. The idea here might be to include an executable check that verifies online licensing for the game in question, activating the watermark in case of failure. To be clear, that's not happening here, and nothing says it will happen. But with gaming companies in particular being on the forefront of anti-piracy DRM techniques such as Denuvo, it sounds plausible that this sort of "forensic watermarking" would turn around some heads within that sector. Time will tell; but for now, it seems that per-frame watermarking that survives even media changes has arrived. We're wondering whether AI companies are taking a look at this technology; considering the difficulties in separating synthetic from emergent data for AI training, and these companies' own promise of introducing competent watermarking technology to Ai-produced content, we'd expect them to be craning their necks.

Nickname: @Inmortal™ Video author: ZARA FF Name of the game: Free Fire Link video: Rate this video 1-10: 9

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/mortal-kombat-1-narrates-its-gruesome-fatalities-to-you-with-new-accessibility-option/1100-6517036/ "Also, HOLY S--T #MortalKombat1 has a descriptive audio option for Fatalities and it is ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE." In the video, we're shown two Li Mei, with one of them about to perform a fatality on the other. As soon as the animation begins, a narrator begins to describe what Le Mei is doing to her opponent, and the narration sounds like something you'd hear in an animal documentary when a lion is about to eat its prey. What makes it even more funnier is how calmly the narrator describes these horrific actions. If you want to see even more videos like this and have a few minutes to spare, head over to the GamesHubDotCom TikTok account, where they captured footage of a handful of other fatalities with the same narrator describing what's happening. Mortal Kombat 1 is scheduled to come out later this year on September 14 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and PC.

https://gamingonphone.com/esports/pel-last-chance-qualifier-2023-for-pmgc/ PEL Last Chance Qualifier 2023 is the final shot that the Chinese teams will get in order to qualify to play in the PMGC or the PUBG Mobile Global Championship 2023, the highest level of competition in the Esports system of the game. The big giants such as Nova, 4AM, and STE will look forward to excelling in this competition and clinching the final available slot for the Chinese region in the Global Championship. PEL Last Chance Qualifier: Format The PEL or the Peace Elite League Last Chance Qualifier 2023 will serve the sole purpose of being a qualifier and will not hold any importance whatsoever in terms of the title and will not be a major title despite being an S-tier tournament. The tournament will consist of 15 teams competing for the top spot, anything else will not be enough. PUBG Mobile Global Championship PMGC 2023 cover impact The 15 teams participating in PEL Last Chance Qualifier will take part in 4 matchdays and will compete against each other in 24 matches, 6 matches per day, and will be contested in Erangel, Miramar, and Sanhok. The top 3 teams are based on the points accumulated from the two seasons of PEL in 2023. The top 3 teams, namely, WBG, TEC, and Tianba will not participate in the said qualifier. Also, RSG and JTeam won’t take part, being the worst-performing teams of the season so far. Barring these 5 teams, the remaining 15 teams will take part. And after 4 days, the team at the top will get a ticket to the PMGC 2023 in the later part of the year. PEL Last Chance Qualifier: Participating Teams The 15 participating teams of the PEL Last Chance Qualifier are: PEL LCQ Four Angry Men (4AM) TeamPai (PAI) ThunderTalk Gaming (TT) Six Two Eight (STE) KONE Esport (KONE) All Gamers Club (AG) Action Culture Technology (ACT) ShowTime (ST) LGD Gaming (LGD) Nova Esports (Nova) Tong Jia Bao (TJB) JD Esports (JDE) Vision Esports (VS) Wolves Esports (Wolves) The Chosen (TC) PMGC is on the sight for many of the teams Nova, the greatest team to participate in PUBG Mobile Esports will be playing with a handicap in the PEL Last Chance Qualifier, due to the absence of Paraboy, lauded as the best player to grace the game besides Order, who is his teammate. Also, 4AM, another fan favorite, missed out on the PMGC slots from PEL Summer 2023 as well. But only one team will be able to qualify, and it remains to be seen which team will do so.

https://www.pcgamer.com/modern-warfare-3-is-bringing-back-warzones-most-beloved-map-but-not-in-the-way-youre-hoping/ Call of Duty is going back to Verdansk, but not in the way most Warzone players would hope. Activision dropped the official campaign trailer for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 today, and while it's definitely another globe-trotting story, fans were quick to notice that at least part of the campaign will take place in locations from Warzone's first map. Near the start of the trailer, Captain Price and friends scale the exterior of a coastal prison, an iconic location on the Warzone Verdansk map. There are even glimpses of the interior that almost exactly match the layout of the old map, though we can probably expect some alterations (things tend to blow up in a CoD campaign, after all). The other big locale I noticed was Verdansk Stadium, the crown jewel of year one Warzone that was famously a closed off dome until a later update blew up its ceiling and added an interior. Well, it looks like Captain Price is gonna blow it up again. Nostalgia seems integral to Activision's playbook this year. Details in today's Modern Warfare 3 dev blog suggest the game won't be as ambitious as usual with its multiplayer, opting instead for cross-progression with last year's Modern Warfare 2 and a slate of maps that'll get people my exact age pretty excited—all 16 launch maps from the original Modern Warfare 2 (2009) will be there, reimagined and modernized for 2023. The only catch is that classic maps will be the only 6v6 Modern Warfare 3 maps at first. Lead studio Sledgehammer Games has 12 additional 6v6 maps in the works, but those will come in seasonal updates. Ground War will also make a return with three unique battle maps, and there'll be a big open-world Zombies map that kinda sounds like Black Ops Cold War's Outbreak mode. As for other multiplayer details, Sledgehammer's sequel is largely focused on tweaks to movement and rules. Sledgehammer's list of changes read like a wishlist written by sweaty players who didn't like Infinity Ward's efforts to slow down Call of Duty: You can cancel slide animations (i.e., “slide cancel”), but slide cancelling does not reset tactical sprint. You can cancel partial reloads during an animation (i.e., “reload cancel”) to immediately return fire. Mantling is faster, and you can mantle while sprinting. You can fire during and immediately after sliding. Tactical sprint durations are increased (the exact duration depends on the weapon being used). Tactical sprint recharges while sprinting. Classic minimap behavior, with red dots indicating when an enemy is firing an unsuppressed weapon. All chosen perks are available at the start of each match. The Covert Sneakers perk allows for silent movement (assuming you’ve chosen the correct footwear). Core multiplayer health is increased to 150, lengthening the yime-to-kill (TTK). Hardcore mode is not affected. Such is the cycle of CoD, even in these unprecedented times for the series: you can't get too attached to any one feature or mechanic introduced in a new CoD game, because it'll probably get backspaced the next year and never mentioned again. Sledgehammer is actually expanding on one feature that PC Gamer executive editor Tyler Wilde and I glommed onto last year—the canted laser sight attachment that allows players to ADS from the hip will return in the form of "Tac Stance," an aiming style that you can toggle at any time with seemingly any gun. Here's how it'll work: The operator unshoulders the weapon and holds it in a canted firing position. You can toggle in and out of Tac-Stance dynamically while aiming down sights. Tac-Stance trades precise accuracy for improved mobility and handling. Some spread to your firing will occur, best described as a middle ground between full ADS and hipfire. It is designed to be used in aggressive, close-quarter combat situations. By default, you fire in Tac-Stance while Sliding. Significant changes, though I'll be curious to see if nostalgic maps, cross progression, and movement tweaks will be enough to beat the impression by some that Modern Warfare looks like a glorified, $70 expansion of last year's game. Check out the full blog for a few other details shared, like expanded operator customization and more on the Zombies mode designed by Treyarch. The Modern Warfare 3 Steam page is now live, too. As for other multiplayer details, Sledgehammer's sequel is largely focused on tweaks to movement and rules. Sledgehammer's list of changes read like a wishlist written by sweaty players who didn't like Infinity Ward's efforts to slow down Call of Duty: You can cancel slide animations (i.e., “slide cancel”), but slide cancelling does not reset tactical sprint. You can cancel partial reloads during an animation (i.e., “reload cancel”) to immediately return fire. Mantling is faster, and you can mantle while sprinting. You can fire during and immediately after sliding. Tactical sprint durations are increased (the exact duration depends on the weapon being used). Tactical sprint recharges while sprinting. Classic minimap behavior, with red dots indicating when an enemy is firing an unsuppressed weapon. All chosen perks are available at the start of each match. The Covert Sneakers perk allows for silent movement (assuming you’ve chosen the correct footwear). Core multiplayer health is increased to 150, lengthening the yime-to-kill (TTK). Hardcore mode is not affected. Such is the cycle of CoD, even in these unprecedented times for the series: you can't get too attached to any one feature or mechanic introduced in a new CoD game, because it'll probably get backspaced the next year and never mentioned again. Sledgehammer is actually expanding on one feature that PC Gamer executive editor Tyler Wilde and I glommed onto last year—the canted laser sight attachment that allows players to ADS from the hip will return in the form of "Tac Stance," an aiming style that you can toggle at any time with seemingly any gun. Here's how it'll work: The operator unshoulders the weapon and holds it in a canted firing position. You can toggle in and out of Tac-Stance dynamically while aiming down sights. Tac-Stance trades precise accuracy for improved mobility and handling. Some spread to your firing will occur, best described as a middle ground between full ADS and hipfire. It is designed to be used in aggressive, close-quarter combat situations. By default, you fire in Tac-Stance while Sliding. Significant changes, though I'll be curious to see if nostalgic maps, cross progression, and movement tweaks will be enough to beat the impression by some that Modern Warfare looks like a glorified, $70 expansion of last year's game. Check out the full blog for a few other details shared, like expanded operator customization and more on the Zombies mode designed by Treyarch. The Modern Warfare 3 Steam page is now live, too.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-66428191 A black hole in local authority budgets continues to grow, a BBC investigation reveals, prompting fears some will not be able to provide basic services. The average council now faces a £33m ($42m) predicted deficit by 2025-26 - a rise of 60% from £20m two years ago. Unison said the situation meant some councils would not be able to offer the "legal minimum of care" next year. The government said decisions on the funding beyond the next financial year had not yet been made. The BBC's Shared Data Unit surveyed 190 upper-tier authorities in the UK to find out the extent of the financial difficulties facing town halls, which provide services from adult social care to bin collections and pothole repairs. It revealed council chiefs expect to be £5.2bn short of balancing the books by April 2026 even after making £2.5bn of planned cuts. At least £467m will be stripped from adult care services, which include elderly care homes, respite centres and support services for people with disabilities. This year, councils are closing leisure centres, reducing care packages and raising fees for services like waste collection and parking in order to break even. Unison's head of local government Mike Short said town halls were in the "direst of states". "This is not a sustainable situation," he said. "Local authorities simply don't have the funds to provide even statutory services." Councillor Shaun Davies, who chairs the Local Government Association (LGA), said inflation, the introduction of the National Living Wage, energy costs and increasing demand for services were adding "billions of extra costs just to keep services standing still". Gateshead Leisure Centre was opened in 1981 by Elizabeth II and featured a pool, a soft play and a gym, as well as badminton and basketball courts. But in November 2022, Gateshead Council recommended closing it, claiming it had no other choice "after government cuts". The centre, which had more than 480,000 visits a year and served an area with high levels of deprivation, closed in July. A community bid is being put together to raise £40,000 and take over the site - but so far it has raised £5,000. Mental health worker Layla Barclay, 39, from Bensham, led the campaign to keep it open. "Everyone is just horrified it's actually come to this," she said. "There is a lot of anger towards the council. We just feel that they didn't come to the community until it was too late." A pool has existed at the Alexandra Road site since 1941 and Wendy Arkle, 64, remembers first using it in the late 1960s as part of a Brownies swimming gala. "There is just this huge void now," she said. 'Unprecedented' savings Our investigation found on top of cuts, town hall chiefs are expected to use up £1.1bn of reserves to balance the books this year. Bradford Council said the authority was using reserves at an "unprecedented level" while Leicester City Council said it was going to run out during the next financial year. Several councils have called for financial support from the government. Among them Slough, Croydon, Thurrock, Kensington and Chelsea, and newly created Cumberland and Westmorland and Furness councils will share around £393m in government funding this year. Thurrock declared bankruptcy in December 2022 after a series of failed solar farm investments saw the council run up a £500m deficit - one of the largest ever reported for a council of its size. Slough was also forced to effectively declare bankruptcy after borrowing more than £700m to buy land and properties. Kensington and Chelsea has been given an agreement in principle to borrow up to £51.8m to help pay the compensation due to the survivors and first responders of the Grenfell Tower tragedy. In a statement, the council said it had "healthy finances" and had frozen council tax this year. Meanwhile other large councils have indicated being in financial distress. Birmingham City Council, Europe's largest local authority, halted all non-essential spending in June after announcing it was facing a bill for a £760m unequal pay claim. The £51m of savings being made at Shropshire amount to a fifth of its overall budget this year - the highest proportion for any council in the UK. A spokesman for the council said its financial position had been compounded by its "rural nature and sparse po[CENSORED]tion," which it said made it "more expensive to provide services like social care". Councils are funded through a mix of council tax, business rates, income from services like parking and social housing rent, as well as money from the government known as the Revenue Support Grant. That funding declined by nearly a third between 2010 and 2021, according to the Public Accounts Committee, which found council income was £8.4bn lower in real terms than it had been a decade before. Its chair Meg Hillier said the BBC study showed councils were at a "tipping point" where "only so many more savings" could be made. Ms Hillier, the Labour MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch, said: "These findings should have the dashboard flashing red across the board for the government." Despite high profile failures, many councils have continued to take risks on commercial investments to increase their income. A Freedom of Information request by the BBC found Somerset Council had bought more than £136m worth of retail property since the start of the pandemic, including a B&Q in Ayr and a Wickes in Birmingham. Analysis by Alex Forsyth, BBC Political Correspondent Stories about pressure on council budgets may not seem new. Local authorities were hit hard during the period of austerity. The government has made more money available to councils in recent years, but rising prices and the cost of delivering services for which there is growing demand means budgets remain squeezed. This research shows the future looks bleak for some authorities who have already cut back on what they offer local communities. Questions have been raised over investment decisions some councils have made, but beyond that there is a wider call for a rethink of the way local government is funded, to try and break what seems to be a cycle of pressure on the services on which so many people rely. Neil Crouch, from Harlow in Essex, has motor conversion disorder, severe arthritis and suffers from kidney disease. Essex County Council, which is set to save £36m this year, cut the 48 hours of weekly funded social care he received down to 42, and removed his eligibility for respite care. Previously, he was allowed two funded weeks a year at a centre that provides holidays for people with disabilities. "It's such a shame," said Neil, who is becoming increasingly immobile and relies on carers and his elderly parents for support. "It helps so much to have that respite care. "My mum and dad are both in the mid-70s now, and it's getting hard for them. It's not an easy process to look for after somebody with a disability." Neil, who said many others like him are suffering from having their respite eligibility removed, is urging councils to rethink such cuts. "They have holidays," he said. "Because we are disabled does it mean we're not entitled?" Essex County Council said, while it could not comment on individual cases, it still offered "significant support" to people needing respite care in the area. Currently, councils discover how much money they are going to receive from the government one year at a time. The LGA has repeatedly called on the government to change the way local authorities are funded. It has said multi-year settlements would give councils more clarity to plan effectively. A plan to allow councils to retain 75% of the business rates they collect instead of the current 50% was paused indefinitely in 2021. Councillor Tim Oliver, who chairs the County Councils Network, said: "We must remember that while inflation is beginning to reduce, these costs councils have incurred won't just disappear from our budgets overnight - they are now embedded into the future." A Department of Levelling Up Housing and Communities spokesman said that, as no decision on council funding levels would be taken until the Spending Review next year the predicted deficit figures for 2025-26 were "unsupported". He said the government had pledged to make £4.7bn available for the adult social care system in England in 2024-25 and confirmed there would be an increase in the Revenue Support Grant councils receive. The Scottish and Welsh governments said they had increased resources for councils this financial year. The government of Northern Ireland declined to comment.