Concerns about London boarding school
Barnet Council has applied to the High Court for an injunction to shut down Heathside Preparatory School, which charges between £9,000 and £18,000 a year and intends expanding to a new Hampstead site. The school is currently scattered across six buildings, including a church and a synagogue, and its attempt to take over a seventh premises has prompted furious backlash from locals. Parents and ex-staff are pursuing legal claims over a string of management failures, including 15 pupils having to leave because Heathside was offering GCSEs without DofE permission. There are allegations that a staff member took Year 9 students off school premises and returned drunk, and in 2018 the head-teacher tried to block the publication of a damning Ofsted report flagging multiple safeguarding issues. Since the start of this academic year, pupils and teachers have been leaving ‘in droves’.
Afghan interpreters need British visas
In June 2018 the defence secretary announced that 200 British visas would be made available to Afghan interpreters and their families. He praised their ‘unflinching courage’ in serving alongside British forces in situations ‘fraught with great difficulty and danger’. But fifty translators are yet to receive their visas; so far only one has been told they can come to the UK under the new rules. The MoD said it is working hard to identify who is eligible for relocation, while a select committee acknowledged, ‘There is a broad consensus that the UK owes them a great debt of gratitude’. Meanwhile the interpreters are being stalked and threatened by IS and Taliban terrorists. At least six of them, including one still working with UK forces in Kabul, have been directly targeted by name through social media sites. Branded 'spies' and 'infidels', they were told to save themselves and their families by joining IS, or face being hunted down. See
Archbishop and social housing
The Archbishop of Canterbury expressed the hope that his commission on housing, Church and community would be imaginative, thoughtful, and radical when he spoke at its launch this week. ‘This isn’t a time for safe, nice words: it’s a time for a radical look at what enables people to live in communities, to build relationships’, he said. The commission, which will meet for approximately 18 months, will examine how the Church can develop its own housing policy as well as influence the national debate.
Trump calls EU brutal
The US president called Brussels ‘a brutal trading partner’ and criticised the EU's tough treatment of Britain after it gave the UK a further extension at the special Brexit summit. He finished his critique on a philosophical note, ‘Sometimes in life you have to let people breathe before it all comes back to bite you!’ Brexit talks remain locked, and Brussels has put more pressure on the UK to shift its position. Before the deadlock, former Brexit secretary Dominic Raab told the BBC that allowing a delay weakens the UK’s hand in the talks. Meanwhile many economists believe that as the EU has suffered monetary stagnation and enormous waves of migration, Brussels does not want to lose the UK, its second largest economy and financial centre.
