Enjoy the magic of university life
Zheng Zeguang should be applauded for reminding us how Britain and China joined forces to defeat fascism in the second world war (15 August). Let us hope that Britain will continue to work with the Chinese people to oppose genocidal, expansionist, totalitarian regimes wherever they might have taken root in the world since then.Christopher HughesProfessor emeritus of international relations, LSE
In St Andrews, the problem of gulls (Report, 19 August) has become so bad that one food outlet, The Cheesy Toast Shack, will insure your toastie for a small extra charge and give you a second one if a gull flies away with the first.Margaret SquiresSt Andrews, Fife
We've had their fish, now the gulls want our chips.Andy SharpScarborough, North Yorkshire
Looking forward to when I can cash in my walk to the pub for a pint (These exercise apps reward steps with freebies – but which ones are worth the effort?, 16 August).Noel CullinaneLeeds
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Telegraph
16 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Primary school pupils in white working-class regions ‘among worst performing'
Primary school pupils in white working-class regions are among the worst performing in the country, a report has suggested. The Institute for Government (IfG) think tank said disadvantaged white pupils in England have 'particularly poor educational outcomes' compared to their peers. In a report published on Wednesday, it found that councils in the bottom fifth for performance of disadvantaged pupils were 'disproportionately likely' to have large shares of pupils from white working-class backgrounds. Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, last week sounded the alarm over the 'national disgrace' of under-performance among the demographic. She warned that 'far too many' white working-class children were failing to get the exam results they needed to move on in life and risked being 'written off' by society. Pupils across England, Wales and Northern Ireland will receive their GCSE results on Thursday, a week after A-level results were handed out. This year's cohort were mostly aged 11 when schools were first closed during the Covid pandemic. The IfG report analysed pupil performance at Key Stage 2 – when children are around the same age, in their final year of primary school. It claimed that educational inequalities across England have 'grown wider and more pronounced' since the pandemic, with only 10 local authorities recording the same or better attainment levels last year than before the first Covid lockdown. Disparities have grown especially among the poorest children, in part because they were less likely to have access to laptops or quiet office spaces during the pandemic, the think tank said. It meant fewer than half of disadvantaged pupils – or around 46 per cent – met the expected standards in reading, writing and maths for Year Six last year. The results were particularly stark among regions with high rates of white working-class children, with only 41 per cent meeting the required standards for 11-year-olds last year. It included areas such as Knowsley and Blackpool, while almost all of the top performing regions in Key Stage 2 attainment were in London. Along with pupils from mixed white or black Caribbean backgrounds, white working-class children were the only pupils with attainment rates lower than the national average last year, the IfG said. By contrast, close to half of disadvantaged children from mixed backgrounds met that benchmark, with the figure rising to nearly 60 per cent for both disadvantaged black pupils and disadvantaged Asian pupils. The IfG cited previous research by the Commons education committee, which suggested that white British children's performance may be particularly vulnerable to disadvantage. It said this was because they were more clustered in rural or coastal areas with 'lower funding ... higher teacher vacancies, longer travel times and worse digital infrastructure'. The think tank suggested tackling high absence rates would help to improve performance among disadvantaged pupils. The Telegraph revealed last week that the Government was preparing a series of interventions to address low attainment measures among certain demographics in a white paper to be unveiled in the autumn. Measures being considered by ministers include plans to expand an AI-powered attendance tool, showing schools how they fare against those with similar demographic make-ups. The Department for Education currently publishes data showing school absence levels among minority ethnic groups, but is understood to be alarmed at figures for white working-class pupils.
Daily Mail
16 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Britain 'will send troops to defend Ukraine's skies and ports under security deal' - as Putin launches new attacks and NATO chiefs prepare to meet in Washington
Britain is ready to send troops to help defend Ukraine's skies and ports, but will not deploy them to the front line near Russia, the head of the armed forces will tell the US today. Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, chief of the defence staff, is taking part in NATO talks as military leaders from across the alliance gather to discuss what support can be offered to Kyiv. Thirty chiefs of staff are involved in the discussions, which are expected to shape what a future security deal for Ukraine could look like. Although Radakin is set to make clear that the UK will commit troops for logistical help and training, he will insist that he will not place British forces directly in harm's way. The focus will be on protecting Ukrainian airspace and ports rather than risking combat with Russian soldiers. Britain has not been involved in a major combat operation since the Afghanistan war ended in 2014. More recent missions have focused on training, protection and peacekeeping. Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin launched new savage attacks on Ukrainians overnight, casting doubts on his commitment to seek a peace deal. The terror strike was on Okhtyrka, some 28 miles from the border, where 13 homes were hit. Earlier, it was believed that as many as 30,000 troops had been talked about, but that number has been scaled back following concerns in Europe. NATO military heads are set to meet to iron out details of the security guarantees that EU leaders say are essential before any peace deal is made in the Ukraine war According to The Guardian, one official in the know said: 'Wednesday is a really important moment. 'Nothing happens in Washington without the president giving the green light, so Trump giving his support to security guarantees on Monday kickstarted a lot of activity.' The meeting today comes at a critical point where NATO chiefs are working out what security guarantees can be put in place for Ukraine, a step many in Europe see as vital to making any peace deal with Moscow possible. US president Donald Trump already signalled his backing during his meeting with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky and other European leaders on Monday. However, he has also said there will be no American troops involved in active combat in war-weary Ukraine. The recent attacks on Ukraine, which officials say were 'directed against the civilian population', will underscore the importance of security guarantees for the country. In the Odesa region, Russian strikes hit a Triton oil depot and port infrastructure in Izmail. A fire train was battling to extinguish the blaze after involving ballistic missiles and Shahed drones. In the Kherson region, the Russians wounded a woman pensioner,70, in an artillery strike on Bilozerka village. The strikes come after many critics have been left wondering what the security guarantees may be. Trump's envoy, Steve Witkoff, indicated that it may be based on the principle of Article 5, where an attack on one ally must be seen as an attack on all. Downing Street confirmed that Starmer hosted a call with more than 30 world leaders on Tuesday morning to update them on what had been discussed in Washington. Britain is expected to use today's session to underline to Washington what it is willing to do if a peace deal is signed. Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskyy told reporters on Tuesday that he expected agreements to be ready soon, saying he believed they would be finalised in the next 'week or 10 days.' Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskyy told reporters on Tuesday that he expected agreements to be ready soon Despite the optimism, there is growing doubt over how Moscow will respond - Vladimir Putin has long made it clear that he sees NATO's expansion into Ukraine as a direct threat. Russia has repeatedly warned that it does not want Ukraine to ever join the alliance, calling such a move unacceptable. Some European analysts believe Putin is unlikely to accept even a limited NATO deployment inside Ukraine, and that the ideas of security guarantees is just a way of putting him under more pressure. Hours ahead of their meeting on Monday, Trump told Zelensky that there would be 'no going into NATO by Ukraine' as part of a deal for peace.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
We criminalise the political stunt at our peril. It is a crucial art form that is impossible to ignore
We must ask ourselves: how would the heroic suffragettes or the remarkable Greenham Common women be regarded if active today? The answer is simple: they would be locked up. Just as they were locked up then. A century ago, women chained themselves to railings, set fires, endured prison and changed the world, and we celebrate their victories without thinking too hard about their methods. Yet today's laws would criminalise them on sight. Last month, the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, wore a commemorative sash celebrating the suffragette struggle. Yet this is the same Yvette Cooper presiding over an age of repressive laws and mass arrests. It's a paradox: we laud the rebels of the past while shackling the rebels of the present. I have been retracing these acts of protest for a new BBC Radio 4 documentary, Outrage Inc. I wanted to understand not just the anger, but the creative genius and conviction behind the stunt. Because at its best, a stunt isn't chaos. It's an art form – theatre with consequences. It's designed to provoke, timed to perfection and impossible to ignore. Those who stage them aren't amateurs: they storyboard, construct narrative, marshal resources. They are producers of disruption. Take the suffragettes. With their matchsticks, they weren't vandals – they were master tacticians who understood the media economy of Edwardian Britain. By the early 1900s, papers such as the Daily Mail and Daily Express were locked in a circulation war, selling millions of copies at a penny each. Their lifeblood was advertising and their oxygen was spectacle. Respectful reports of speeches and petitions did not move papers off newsstands. Outrage did. Emmeline Pankhurst and the Women's Social and Political Union knew this. They didn't smash Bond Street windows or torch postboxes for fun. They did it because they knew the placards outside kiosks would scream 'SUFFRAGETTE OUTRAGE', forcing the issue into every parlour in Britain. Editors vilified them, yes, but they printed the stories, because sensation sold. That was the economy, and the suffragettes exploited it ruthlessly. In today's parlance, they hacked the algorithm. The Greenham women weren't eccentrics, either. They were moral Boudiccas who turned protest into performance art on a national scale. Tents, banners, singing at the wire, cutting fences, dancing on missile silos looked anarchic, but it was a rolling installation, a piece of theatre that lasted nearly a decade. Some of it was planned, some improvised, but its genius lay in persistence. They kept the story alive, constantly reframing it so the cameras always had something to see and the public always had something to talk about. And then there's Peter Tatchell. He didn't simply 'make a scene', he made himself the scene. He has spent decades putting his own body on the line: attempting a citizen's arrest of Robert Mugabe, confronting police indifference to homophobic violence, interrupting Easter sermons. He has been beaten unconscious, arrested countless times, vilified and celebrated. Tatchell embodies conviction, turning his own suffering into testimony, forcing Britain to confront prejudice it preferred to ignore. Fast-forward to 2004 and the Yes Men's audacious Bhopal stunt. They posed as Dow Chemical executives on BBC World, announcing a $12bn compensation package for victims of the disaster. For a brief moment, the world believed justice had arrived. Dow's share price plummeted before the hoax was exposed. This wasn't chaos, it was conviction armed with wit, a mind bomb detonated live on air. Or take Germany's Centre for Political Beauty, which built a replica Holocaust memorial outside the home of the Alternative für Deutschland leader, Björn Höcke. The far right had claimed the 'wounds of the Holocaust should heal'. Its answer was unignorable concrete, a daily reminder that history isn't a wound to be closed for convenience. It was satire sharpened into steel, cutting deeper than any speech. And then there's Led By Donkeys, the post-Brexit guerrillas. They don't rant. They don't editorialise. They hold up a mirror, reminding politicians of words they have said, written or tweeted, and probably wished they hadn't. Their giant projection on parliament, Boris Johnson's lies replayed on the cliffs of Dover, their Covid memorial wall of thousands of painted hearts; these weren't stunts for novelty's sake. They weaponised the words of the powerful, replaying them until they choked their authors. Clarity, timing, simplicity. This is the lesson we keep forgetting. Protest isn't just confrontation, it's an imagination weaponised. A stunt is a mind bomb that plants itself in the national conversation. These acts of theatre marry humour and symbolism to conviction, creating ripples that travel long after the news cameras have moved on. Yet the cycle is always the same. At the time, protests are demonised, particularly by the right, who instinctively oppose change. Later, the very same acts are reappraised, rehabilitated or even lauded. The suffragettes, once branded terrorists, are now national heroines. The Greenham women, once derided as cranks in cardigans, are now honoured for their foresight. Time transforms outrage into heritage. Today, with Palestine Action banned and Extinction Rebellion dismissed as a nuisance, we're told that only 'lawful protest' is legitimate. But the suffragettes would fail that test, and so would Greenham. Their legacies endure because they didn't seek permission, they sought change. Their power lay in creativity, conviction and the audacity to place truth before power and performance before permission. Having examined the BBC archives for Outrage Inc, I believe we are at a crossroads. We can allow protest to be neutered into stage-managed civility, or we can acknowledge that it has always been outrageous, risky and profoundly creative. This is not a rallying cry for lawlessness. But we should reflect on the red-hot battles that forged our society. We call them stunts, but the word feels too trivial for acts that pushed the envelope and forced us to confront inequality and injustice. Because history shows this: the stunt is never a sideshow. It is the main act of change. Mark Borkowski is a crisis PR consultant and author. His BBC Radio 4 Archive on 4 documentary, Outrage Inc, airs on 23 August
