by | Apr 16, 2024 | The Guardian
Kids pausing their football so a friend can pray; theology chats over lunch – I’ve seen the richness that religious diversity brings to school life
A Muslim student at Michaela community school in Brent, north-west London, has
to the school’s ban on prayer rituals. As a Muslim secondary schoolteacher, I have to say I am disappointed – but not surprised.
The appeal was lost on the grounds that the school declares itself secular. This is something the headteacher, Katharine Birbalsingh, insists all students and parents know when applying. In the written judgment dismissing the student’s case, Mr Justice Linden went as far as to say that: “The claimant at the very least impliedly accepted, when she enrolled at the school, that she would be subject to restrictions on her ability to manifest her religion.”
Nadeine Asbali is a secondary school teacher in London and the author of Veiled Threat: On Being Visibly Muslim in Britain
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by | Apr 16, 2024 | The Guardian
Ronnie Hinds has a proposal for managing local authorities, John Clark says large city-based unitaries do not work for rural areas, and John Bullock believes that anyone standing for parliament should have a decade of local experience
Your editorial on local government (
) concludes by pointing up the tension between the economic benefits of scale claimed by proponents of large councils and the community benefits of small councils closer to those they represent and serve. After a lifetime career as an officer in local government, and having chaired two commissions overseeing council finances and electoral boundaries, I have come to wonder if the answer is to separate the council (ie those elected to represent their constituents) from the organisation that is responsible for delivering local services to people and communities (ie the council employees).
The present system treats these as one and the same, but their functions are different. I believe it would be possible to create a different relationship, whereby the elected, political body effectively commissioned services from the delivery organisation, run entirely on managerial lines. This would sever the current one-to-one relationship between them and allow a number of elected councils to be served by one delivery agency, holding out the prospect of achieving the economic benefits of larger operational scale and the political benefits of closeness between electors and elected.
by | Apr 16, 2024 | The Guardian
My sister Loujain has been placed under a travel ban and lives in constant fear of arrest. She is one of many
- Lina al-Hathloul is head of monitoring and advocacy at ALQST for Human Rights
Saudi Arabia is rebranding. Since 2016, when it first
to diversify its economy, it has poured billions into making the kingdom appear more progressive to outsiders. Women
and work in jobs they were previously banned from. Vast sums are being invested in futuristic, architectural “gigaprojects”, such as the Line – a sprawling, desert supercity – to attract global tourism.
And yet, inside the kingdom, its citizens tell a very different story. Against a backdrop of image-building projects, thousands of Saudi citizens,
, could be being blocked by the state from leaving the country with arbitrary and illegal travel bans. Their crime? Advocating for basic human rights.
Lina al-Hathloul is head of monitoring and advocacy at ALQST for Human Rights. She is co-author of the book Loujain Dreams of Sunflowers. Foz al-Otaibi, who also contributed to this article, is a social media influencer and a women’s rights activist who was indicted by the Saudi government for her social media activity and is now living in exile
by | Apr 16, 2024 | The Guardian
Our leaders are too eager to revisit the UK’s one-time role as police officer to the world. This isn’t the way to do foreign affairs
Britain’s
to defend Israel against Iran at the weekend was an emphatic intervention in the war in Gaza. It was more than Britain has done for Ukraine. And while the war in Ukraine does at least have implications, albeit distant, for Britain’s long-term defence, Israel’s dispute with Gaza has none. It is not Britain’s business. So why did we get involved? Better by far to stick to Britain’s sensible decision to keep open a diplomatic presence in Tehran, at least more influential than a few downed drones.
The answer shone through in the
, David Cameron, to the BBC on Monday morning. He could not resist reverting to Britain’s one-time role as police officers to the world, telling it how Britain expects it to behave. The eagerness of British leaders to cut a dash on the world stage, usually on the coat-tails of the US, seems irresistible. In the past decade, it has sent the
, the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea. This craving seems to be resisted by most other European powers (France being occasionally an exception), who sense no similar threat to their security. Britain has a craving to project “global power” that is unrivalled by most other European powers. It is costing British taxpayers billions of pounds.
Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist
by | Apr 16, 2024 | The Guardian
By voting for the tobacco and vapes bill, MPs have a historic opportunity to prevent disease and reduce inequality
- Prof Chris Whitty is the chief medical officer for England
Addiction to smoking traps then slowly disables and kills thousands of our fellow citizens, especially the most vulnerable. The great majority of smokers wish they had never started, but their choice was taken away at a young age by marketing that deliberately promoted addiction to nicotine.
About 80,000 people a year die in the UK as a result and many more are harmed. The burden of smoking-related diseases is very heavily weighted towards people living in areas of deprivation, with
in England living in the most deprived two deciles. Smoking is one of the most important modifiable drivers of the substantial inequalities in health we see across the country.
Prof Chris Whitty is the chief medical officer for England
by | Apr 16, 2024 | The Guardian
With a heavy focus on deterrence, the agreement shows how far Europe’s centre has shifted to the right
The Oscar-nominated
, now showing in cinemas, is a sensitive and moving portrait of the trials faced by two teenage boys as they attempt to reach Europe, via unofficial migration routes, from their homes in Senegal. The film is unsparing in its depiction of the violence and danger they face along the way – but what it doesn’t show is how the boys’ journey is shaped by European border policy from almost the moment they set off.
Their first stop, the people-smuggling hub of Agadez, Niger, is the capital of a country into which the EU has poured millions of euros in recent years to combat smuggling. It hasn’t halted the trade entirely, but it has forced it further underground. In Libya, where the boys are tortured and trafficked by armed gangs, European governments have striven to keep migrants in place – as painstakingly documented by Sally Hayden in her recent book
– despite the dire threat to their safety.
by | Apr 16, 2024 | The Guardian
The former PM’s book claims she was undermined by ‘establishment’ enemies. It instead shows exactly why her friends deserted her
So it wasn’t just a bad dream, then. Liz Truss really did become prime minister, and that brief ensuing moment of madness really did happen. It must have done because she’s written a book about it, though given the brevity of her stay at No 10 it’s arguably less a memoir of her time there than a kind of extended Tripadvisor review. (Great location for central London;
.) And while calling it Ten Years to Save the West may suggest faintly deluded levels of self-belief, given Britain had to be saved from the author
, it’s accidentally very revealing about the deeper reasons for that overconfidence and what they mean for the country.
Truss entered parliament in the golden Tory era of 2010, and prospered despite bosses who clearly grasped her faults. (Theresa May, she writes, wanted to sack her but didn’t feel strong enough; Boris Johnson’s allies have long suspected he promoted her to crowd the pitch for others he considered more of a serious threat.) In comparison with Labour politicians of the time, she was therefore playing politics mostly on the easy setting: one where the biggest newspapers bend over backwards to be kind, the City broadly shares your view of wealth creation, and a lack of serious challenge from the opposition makes it possible to believe that the facts of life will remain Conservative, regardless of what Conservatism itself actually morphs into.
Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist
