3 January – After a trial based on new forensic evidence, Gary Dobson and David Norris are convicted of the racist murder of black London teenager Stephen Lawrence, who was killed in April 1993.[1] On 4 January they are sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder, with minimum term of just over 15 and 14 years respectively.[2]
6 January – Mobile phone operator O2 announces plans to provide free internet to millions of residents and visitors in central London by launching Europe's largest free Wi-Fi zone.[3]
Five Muslim men go on trial at Derby Crown Court for calling for gay men to be killed, the first such prosecution under hate crime legislation.[5]
20 January – Press TV, an English language news channel owned by the Iranian Government, is forced off air in the United Kingdom after Ofcom revokes its broadcasting licence for breaching the terms of the Communications Act.[6]
21 January – Under new guidelines to come into force from 30 April, clinics which charge for pregnancy services including abortions will be able to advertise their services on radio and television after the Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice rules there is no justification for barring such advertising.[7]
23 January – John Anslow, a prisoner charged with murder following a fatal shooting in 2010, escapes from the van transporting him to a court appearance following an armed ambush near Redditch, Worcestershire.[8]
24 January – UK government debt has risen above £1,000,000,000,000 for the first time.[9]
25 January
Scotland's First Minister, Alex Salmond, sets out the question – "Do you agree that Scotland should be an independent country?" – that he intends to ask voters in a referendum in 2014.[10]
Official figures reveal that the UK economy shrunk by 0.2% in the final three months of 2011.[11]
9 February – The Bank of England agrees to extend its quantitative easing programme by £50,000,000,000, to give a further boost to the UK economy.[17]
17 February – Rupert Murdoch announces that a Sunday edition of The Sun newspaper, The Sun on Sunday, will be launched "very soon", effectively replacing the News of the World which was axed last summer due to the phone hacking scandal.[18] Its launch is confirmed on 19 February for the following weekend.
23 February – The Together for Trees environmental campaign is first publicly announced.[19]
24 February – Falkirk MP Eric Joyce is charged with three counts of common assault after a disturbance at a House of Commons bar.[20]
18 March – British journalists Gareth Montgomery-Johnson and Nicholas Davies-Jones, detained last month in Libya after being accused of entering the country illegally, have been released the country's Interior Ministry confirms.[29]
21 March – George Osborne delivers his 2012 United Kingdom Budget.
Fuel tanker drivers belonging to the Unite union vote overwhelmingly to take strike action in a dispute over terms and conditions.[33]
27 March – The cost of a first-class stamp will rise from 46p to 60p from 30 April while second class post will increase from 36p to 50p after regulator Ofcom lifts some price controls on Royal Mail.[34]
7 April – The 158th University Boat Race between Oxford and Cambridge is stopped mid-race due to a swimmer in the water. Cambridge go on to win when a clash of oars at the restart leaves Oxford with a broken paddle.[36]
12 April – Transport for London bans an advertising campaign due to run on buses by a Christian group; which was suggesting that gay people could be cured by therapy.[37]
22 April – 30-year-old Claire Squires collapses and dies while running the London Marathon, the tenth death in the race's history. She had planned to raise £500 for The Samaritans, but within a day members of the public have donated £219,000.[40] The end of the year would see this total rise to nearly £1M.[41]
Labour makes gains and wins the largest number of councillors in contested seats in England[44] and Wales[45] and the SNP making gains and winning the largest number of councillors in Scotland.[46] The estimated voting share is: 39% Labour, 31% Conservative, 16% Liberal Democrats and 14% other.[47]
Boris Johnson is re-elected as Mayor of London with 51.5% of the vote.[48]Ken Livingstone subsequently says it would be his 'last election'.[49] In the London Assembly, Labour becomes the party with the greatest number of seats, with minor losses for the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. The British National Party loses its only seat. Of 25 seats, the final tally stands at: Labour 12, Conservatives 9, Liberal Democrats 2, Green 2.[50]
16 May – The Office for National Statistics publishes figures which show that unemployment has fallen by 45,000 in the three months to March to 2,625,000, a rate of 8.2%. Youth unemployment has fallen to 1,020,000, a rate of 21.9%. Average weekly pay, including bonuses, grew by 0.6%. The claimant count dropped by 13,700 in April to 1,590,000, and the March figure is revised to show a fall of 5,400 rather than a rise of 3,600.[54]
30 June – The UK government announces an independent review of the workings of the Libor inter-bank lending rate in the wake of the Barclays scandal.[65]
3 July – Bob Diamond resigns as the Chief Executive of British bank Barclays following a scandal in which the bank tried to manipulate the Libor and Euribor interest rates systems.[66]
5 July – The Shard, the tallest building in Europe and the tallest habitable free-standing structure in the UK at 309.6 metres (1,016 ft), is officially opened.[68][69]
7 July – Britain's Jonathan Marray and Denmark's Frederik Nielsen win Wimbledon's men's double final by three sets to two. Marray becomes the first Briton to win such a match since 1936.[72]
17 July – The Office for National Statistics publishes its monthly inflation report. The consumer price inflation rate has unexpectedly fallen in June to 2.4%, its lowest level since November 2009. The retail price inflation figure shows a similar marked drop to 2.8%.[74]
18 July – The Office for National Statistics publishes figures which show that unemployment has fallen by 65,000 in the three months to May to 2,580,000 a rate of 8.1%. Average weekly pay, including bonuses, grew by 1.8% on the year. The claimant count rose by 6,100 in June to 1,600,000. With surprisingly good inflation and employment figures, the UK economy looks set to grow in the second half of 2012.[75]
27 July–12 August – London hosts the 2012 Summer Olympics, beginning with an opening ceremony, and making the UK capital the first city to host the Games for a third time. The closing ceremony is on 12 August.
August
3 August – Iftikhar and Farzana Ahmed are jailed for life after being convicted of the 2003 murder of their daughter Shafilea.[76]
4 August – Team GBwins six gold medals and a silver on Day Eight of the 2012 London Olympics, making it the greatest British success in one day at an Olympics since 1908.[77]
17 August – The death occurs of Winnie Johnson, the mother of Moors Murder victim Keith Bennett, the only victim of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley whose remains have not been recovered. Her death comes as police investigate claims Brady wrote her a letter revealing the location of her son's body.[84]
20 August – Former Polly Peck tycoon Asil Nadir is found guilty on three counts of stealing millions of pounds from his company by a jury at London's Old Bailey.[85]
29 August – Opening ceremony of the 2012 Summer Paralympic Games, which end on 9 September.
20 September – Dale Cregan, 29, is charged with the murders of WPCs Fiona Bone and Nicola Hughes in Greater Manchester. He is also charged with two other murders which occurred in the Greater Manchester area last month, as well as three attempted murders between May and August of this year.[88]
30 September – It is reported that an ITV documentary to be shown on 3 October in the Exposure series will reveal accusations that DJ and BBC TV presenter Sir Jimmy Savile, who died the previous year, sexually abused underage girls.[89]
October
1 October – Automatic enrolment to workplace pension schemes commences.[90]
3 October – The decision to award the rail franchise for InterCity West Coast to FirstGroup is scrapped by the government after what are described as "significant technical flaws" in the bidding process.[91]
8 October – Scientists warn of the dangers of using liquid nitrogen in drinks after an 18-year-old woman in Lancaster requires emergency surgery after consuming a cocktail containing the substance.[92]
11 October – Heavy rain in the United Kingdom causes flash flooding in the coastal village of Clovelly, Devon, damaging homes and pulling up cobbles in the street.[93]
12 October – The UK's largest independent investigation into police wrongdoing will be conducted following damning reports into the 1989 Hillsborough disaster.[94]
14 October
The Ministry of Defence says that five Royal Marines have been charged with murder over an incident involving the death of an insurgent in Afghanistan in 2011.[95]
The Ministry of Defence will hold an investigation after journalists from The Sunday Times posed as lobbyists for a defence manufacturer and approached several senior retired officers to ask if they would help them secure contracts.[96]
Essex Police begin an investigation after four children and their mother are killed in a suspicious house fire in Harlow.[99] A fifth child dies in hospital on 18 October.[100]
16 October – The BBC appoints the heads of two separate inquiries into the substantial sexual abuse allegations against the late Jimmy Savile that have come to light. Former High Court judge Dame Janet Smith will review the culture and practices of the BBC during the time Savile worked there, while Nick Pollard, a former Sky News executive will look at why a Newsnight investigation into Savile's activities was dropped shortly before transmission.[101]
19 October – Scotland Yard launches a "formal criminal investigation" into Jimmy Savile, after 200 potential sexual abuse victims come forward.[104]
20 October – Frankel retires as the world's highest-rated racehorse[105] after his fourteenth race in an unbeaten career.[106]
22 October – Surgeons have carried out the first ever robotic open-heart operations in Britain at the New Cross Hospital in Wolverhampton.[107]
23 October
Leader of Birmingham City Council Sir Albert Bore warns that cuts in government grants to the city could lead to "the end of local government as we have known it".[108]
30 October – Britain's first 4G mobile network is launched, offering high-speed mobile data services in eleven major cities.[110]
November
1 November – The Comet retail chain goes into administration after private equity firm OpCapita failed to revive the business.[111]
5 November – Prime Minister David Cameron orders a fresh investigation into allegations of sexual abuse involving a senior Conservative politician from the Thatcher era. The allegations concern sexual abuse at children's homes in Wales during the 1970s and 1980s.[112]
8 November – This Morning presenter Philip Schofield hands David Cameron an internet-generated list of suspects in the North Wales child abuse scandal involving a care home during a live interview and asks him to comment, resulting in ITV facing an investigation by the media regulator Ofcom.[114]
9 November – The BBC issues an apology after a key witness in a Newsnight report aired on 2 November wrongly identified a senior politician as a paedophile.[115]
10 November – George Entwistle steps down as BBC Director-General following the Newsnight child abuse broadcast controversy.[116]
11 November – Tim Davie, BBC head of audio and music becomes Acting Director-General following George Entwistle's resignation.[117]
Lord Leveson announces the findings of the Leveson Inquiry into the British media.[128] Prime Minister David Cameron says he backs the principles of the report's recommendations, but has "serious concerns and misgivings" about introducing any new legislation to underpin a regulatory body to oversee the media.[129]
3 December – St. James' Palace announces that the Duchess of Cambridge is pregnant with her first child. She is hospitalised at the King Edward VII Hospital in London with acute morning sickness.[132]
Despite beginning with drought in some areas, 2012 is the second-wettest year on record in the UK and the wettest ever in England.[137][138]
British new car sales reach a post-recession high of 2,040,000 with the Ford Fiesta being Britain's most popular car for the fourth year in a row. The success of Nissan'sBritish-builtQashqai crossover vehicle continues with more than 45,000 sales making it Britain's sixth-most popular new car. Mercedes-Benz enjoys a surge in sales, with its C-Class range achieving over 37,000 sales as Britain's ninth-most popular new car.
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