Man warned to stay away from Royals’ home

Party focus on ‘bread and butter issues’

A MAN accused of trespassing twice at the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s Californian mansion has admitted he may have been “high” at the time.

Nickolas Brooks, 37, allegedly drove 2,300 miles across America from Ohio to Harry and Meghan’s home in Montecito.

He said: “I think I was high at the time. I don’t know why I went to their place, that’s kind of where I ended up. I drove across the country – I know it’s crazy.”

Brooks was arrested by Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Deputies on Boxing Day, two days after he was first given a warning on Christmas Eve for trespassing on the property.

It was reported that Brooks, who said he was warned to stay away from Harry and Meghan’s home but does not need to appear in court, was jailed in 2005 for taking part in an assault. Harry and Meghan raised security as one of their major concerns in their bombshell Oprah interview.

LIBERAL DEMOCRAT leader Sir Ed Davey has said his party is ready to “speak up” as he attempts to steer his party from the disastrous election results seen in 2019 to providing a “distinctive opposition” to the Government.

Ahead of the party’s spring conference this weekend, Sir Ed told The Yorkshire Post members were concerned about issues such as social care, and “not a lot of the sort of stuff that people at Westminster talk about”.

And he said: “It’s what I would call the bread and butter issues and what we need to be showing is that we have fresh ideas, new ideas, on those issues.”

Sir Ed did not hit out at Labour, who have been criticised by some for voting with the Government on many coronavirus measures, as he added: “All opposition parties have had to be constructive, because you can blame Boris Johnson for a lot of things, but you can’t say that he caused Covid.”

But he said: “I’ve been actually quite alarmed about the way that Government has failed.”

And he said it had been him at the forefront of tough calls including urging Metropolitan Police commissioner Cressida Dick to resign after the policing of the Sarah Everard vigil in Clapham, and he has also been pushing the

Government to commit to a date for a coronavirus inquiry.

“And I am going to speak up,” he said.

“It’s the job of politicians to speak up, and now we are a distinctive party. We are more liberal than other parties, and when I see civil liberties trodden over in that way, I’m going to speak up.”

He said: “I think we are providing distinctive opposition,and I’ve given you some examples. And we are going to these [local] elections and the months and years ahead,

I think in a stronger place.” Sir Ed said his party’s conference would focus on a putting recovery from coronavirus first, and he added: “I just don’t think that the Prime Minister knows what he wants to do. He doesn’t seem to have any plan whatsoever.”

He said: “We think businesses, particularly small businesses, and the self employed, should be getting much more support to both survive and to grow.

“And it’s not just businesses, local communities need that support, and we just think the Government is being nowhere near ambitious enough.”

Sir Ed said as the dust had settled on the Budget, it looked “increasingly like a holding statement, it doesn’t look like a strategy. It goes nowhere near far enough”.

Although the party has only 11 MPs in the Commons, Sir Ed said it had “led the way” in areas such as green policy, where other parties he said were only now catching up.

“One of the things I’m proudest of is the work that Liberal Democrats, with myself very much involved, did to push the offshore wind industry, and with the amazing investment we got to Hull when Siemens and ABP Ports invested £310bn in the port there and in the wind turbine factory, creating over 1,000 jobs.

“Obviously that was in Yorkshire and it was a Liberal Democrats that made it happen.”

MAJOR CHANGES could be made to a city centre junction as part of council roadworks plans.

Work is due to take place to improve the junction at Bootham Bar, Gillygate and St Leonard’s Place, in York.

York Council has drawn up two options and is asking people to have their say on which they prefer by March 31.

Option B will make more space for pedestrians but cut the road capacity of the junction by around 30 per cent. Designers say this option would cause “significant increases in general traffic delay at the junction and a large increase in queues”. It would see an extra pedestrian crossing built, traffic lights upgraded and the left turn lane of traffic removed in St Leonard’s Place at York Art Gallery.

Option A would see all traffic lights upgraded and the existing pedestrian crossings widened. Designers say the option will have a “negligible” impact on traffic and “slight improvements for pedestrians”.

York Civic Trust says option B “will offer a stronger sense of place” and a spokesman said it is pleased that the plans have led residents to discuss the setting of Bootham Bar.

He said: “An area such as this in York would be the envy of any other town and city in the UK, too good to be lost to street clutter, standing traffic at a dangerous, scruffy junction, and with barely enough space to walk along the pavement let alone admire the views or take a photo of them.”