Gail Downey: UK Correspondent on a life-threatening storm, Three thousand job cuts from Sainsburys, and Adele accused of sabotaging house sale

A potentially life-threatening storm is hitting the UK, with millions of people being urged to stay home. 

Three thousand job cuts are to be lost as UK supermarket Sainsburys closes its cafes, patisseries and pizza counters. 

And singer Adele has been accused of sabotaging the sale of $12 million home in which she once lived, by inferring it is haunted. 

UK Correspondent Gail Downey joins the show. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Gal Downey joins us now from the UK. How are go? Hello,
Hi there, You've got a pretty bad storm hitting you.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Oh yes, it's life threatening storm. It's red warnings which
are the most serious, and it's hitting the UK with
millions of people being urged stay at home. The hardest
hit places are going to be Northern Ireland and parts
of Scotland. And as I say, it's red warnings that
have been issued, which means a danger to life from
winds gusting up to one hundred miles an hour, So

(00:30):
schools in Northern Ireland are going to be closed, bus
services canceled, Belfast International Airport is warning of significant disruption,
and the supermarket Tesco has said it's closing its stores
today and all home deliveries will be canceled. The Irish,
in the Irish Republic, they are expected to have what's

(00:51):
going to be the worst storm of the century, so
all ferry operators across the Irish Sea have been canceled
and obviously Dublin Airport has been affected as well well.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
Okay, now, speaking of supermarkets, Sainsbury's is cutting three thousand jobs.
So what's the story then.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
Well, it's cutting the jobs. Is also closing its cafes,
petisseries and pizza counters. And what it's saying is, look, look,
we want to simply find the business. We're going to
make a twenty percent reduction in senior management roles with
the job losses as well as the closure of the
cafes and say cafes, per tisseries and pizza counter because

(01:30):
of a particularly challenging cost environment. Now this is a
second batch of job losses at Sainsbury's. Last year it
announced fifteen hundred jobs will go It recently, however, announced
annual profits expected to be in excess of one billion pounds.
Unions say the business should be ashamed for cutting jobs

(01:51):
while making millions of pounds in profits, and industry experts
believe this will be the first of many cuts as
retailers deal with increase costs as a result of tax increases.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
It's hard times. It's hard times all over the world,
and we have similar complaints about our supermarkets here. But
when you're talking about margins, and when you're talking about
costs as large as supermarket operators that a million pounds
or nothing, really it's not actually a huge profit at all.
So you need to really get through I get that.
Let's do some real estate news because Adele, the singer

(02:24):
who's you know, earned a bit of a slowdown right
now having done some incredible concerts. But Adele has been
accused of sabotaging the sale of a house.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
How now, this all has come about in a planning
application put forward to the local council by the owner
of the property. So she rented this property for about
six months and while she was there, she did an
interview on TV This is back in twenty twelve, and

(02:55):
in the interview she said, actually the property is a
bit scary. Really, it's all quite scary. I'm not rattling
around here on my own. It gives me the creeps,
is what she said about it. So in the submission
to the planning authority, the owner wants to convert it
into instead of just one big mansion, wants to convert

(03:16):
it into three units and a separate cottage. And he
says the reason is is because the comment by Adele
negatively impacted future marketing efforts and continues to affect the
property's reputation to this day. He said, after fourteen years,
he's only ever had one prospective buyer who pulled out

(03:36):
after hearing about its haunted status, although she never actually
used the word haunted.

Speaker 1 (03:42):
No, no, anyfect. There are some people. I don't know
this because you like the Gothic in England, and there'll
be some people who go, woar a house that haunted, Adele,
I want a piece of.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
Head you think it put the price?

Speaker 1 (03:56):
It could be, It could be all right, And I
thank you very much. And that is Gale down here,
who is reporting out of the UK.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
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