Latest news with #Jordan
The National
31 minutes ago
- Politics
- The National
Scotland's progress on LGBT+ education cannot be taken for granted
Ten years ago, Jordan Daly, a 19-year-old university student, and Liam Stevenson, a 36-year-old petrol tanker driver, launched one of the most successful grassroots campaigns this country has ever seen. A movement that would change Scotland's education system forever and cement Scotland as a pioneer in equality legislation on the world stage. The campaign was born in 2015 with the simple but revolutionary demand that LGBT identities, histories and issues be taught in Scottish schools, a normalised and visible part of every child's learning. A way of tackling prejudice at a formative age by preventing it from developing. Tie argued that when it comes to prejudice, prevention is better than cure and education has the unique power to transform attitudes early on. Tie knew exactly what it wanted and how to get it. READ MORE: Lesley Riddoch: No-one gets to broadcast for the BBC without having its outlook They didn't have a political machine behind them, or institutional weight of any kind – nor the financial means to underpin their vision – just the audacity to believe that things could be different. The grassroots talent and determination to build something better for the young people of Scotland. Powered by hope, Tie came to be. In 2015, I was on the board of the Young Scots for Independence when our convener at the time, Rhiannon, met Jordan. She immediately presented the policy idea to our youth conference where it was passed and adopted as one of our official policy positions. We campaigned hard and with the help of Liam and Jordan, Tie started to become a talking point within the SNP. In the spring of 2016, we presented the campaign to national conference. My first-ever conference speech was on my unwavering belief in Tie. An attempt to convince the wider SNP membership of why it should be a priority. It worked – conference passed the resolution and we got back to work, bringing a second and more refined policy to party conference the following year. By this time, Tie was no longer just a few grassroots activists making a noise, it was a movement, and it was gaining ground with every passing week. After much lobbying, Tie was announced as a policy objective in Nicola Sturgeon's Programme for Government. Fast forward a decade and in 2025, Scotland stands as the first country in the world to embed LGBT-inclusive education across the national curriculum. It quite literally put Scotland on the map. It's emotional to look back and see how far Tie has come since those early days when we were parading around conference with multi-coloured ties printed on our T-shirts. To reflect on how far Jordan and Liam have come – two men whose optimism and devotion to a better world have been a beacon to me for the past 10 years – and all of the lives they have changed simply because they dared to. But anniversaries are also moments for reflection, and there's pain to acknowledge among all the achievement. The world around us has changed since 2015 and in many ways, not for the better. When Tie launched, discourse around LGBT inclusion was in a much better place. It wasn't without its opposition of course, otherwise Tie would never have been a necessary campaign, but LGBT equality was almost an inevitable element of social progression back then. In the years since, driven primarily by a transphobic moral panic, an ugly resurgence of anti-LGBT rhetoric has gained traction. READ MORE: Donald Trump is now trying to silence UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese Rhetoric that is rearing its head not only on the fringes of opposition but in our parliaments, classrooms, social media feeds, justice system, healthcare settings. The same tired tropes of Section 28 are being dusted off and repackaged; concerns of protecting children, outcries about parental rights and indoctrination. It's a tale we have been told before and the fact that it has been so able to seep back into public acceptance is all of our shame. It's not just a Scottish problem. The widespread rollback of LGBT rights is under way across the globe. In Hungary, laws have been passed to ban the promotion of LGBT topics in schools. In parts of the US, teachers now face penalties for acknowledging the existence of queer people and LGBT books are being removed from libraries, banned from being read. It would be naive to think that we are protected from similar rollbacks here. With the threat of Nigel Farage looming, and a more hostile environment for LGBT people – particularly the trans community – than has been seen in decades, things are incredibly fragile here too. This is the hostile environment in which the legacy of Tie now lives and has to move through. I can speak from personal experience; I have been abused online for supporting Tie and I know of the abuse others involved have had to endure as well. I'm not talking about a strongly worded comment here or there. I'm talking about being labelled a danger to children, doxxed, families harassed. READ MORE: Edinburgh to host free festival on Scotland's colonial past, languages and gaming This space has become frightening, but it makes Tie's success all the more extraordinary, and its mission all the more of a necessity. Young LGBT people in Scotland still face disproportionate levels of bullying, mental health difficulties and isolation. For trans and non-binary youth in particular, the atmosphere has become dangerous. Public discourse about their lives is increasingly dominated by misinformation and cruelty – and the need for Tie is more apparent than it has ever been. Inclusive education is not about being 'woke' or meeting diversity targets or indoctrinating children. It's about making sure that the next generation grows up knowing that being LGBT isn't shameful or controversial, it's a human experience like any other. There's a despair that comes with realising the battles you thought you were winning are still being fought. But there's also power in knowing that we have done this before – and won. The Tie campaign itself is living proof that even in the face of extreme resistance and ignorance, grassroots activism works and changes lives. Tie was never just about the ins and outs of education policy. It was about rewriting the rules of who gets to belong. Who gets to be seen, heard, validated. It was about making space in the curriculum for stories that had been systemically erased so that those stories could lend a hand to Scotland's younger generations. So that they could build a Scotland free from the ugly prejudices of the past, setting an example for the rest of the world as they went. And it was about doing all of that from the bottom up, powered by ordinary people who dared to dream of a better future. That grit and commitment to justice is what made Tie not just another campaign for social change, but a blueprint for how to make change happen, and that's what we need to hold on to as Tie embarks on its next 10 years. Because if the past decade has shown us anything, it's that rights can be won – but they can also be lost. Progress isn't permanent or inevitable, and there will always be people ready and willing to come for it, given half a chance. No social progress in history has been won easily, we have to keep going. With people like Liam and Jordan heading the fight, I think we will be just fine.
Daily Mirror
2 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
Rizzle Kicks star lifts lid on growing crime that's 'devastating' teenage boys
Rizzle Kicks star and Jade Thirlwall's partner Jordan Stephens has opened up about filming his new sextortion documentary for Channel 4 - revealing the 'heartbreaking' real victims Rizzle Kicks star Jordan Stephens hasn't shied away from danger for his first-ever documentary - flying over 4,000 miles to confront a Nigerian sextortion scammer. The 33-year-old explores just how teenage boys are being impacted by social media sextortion, with scammers tricking young men into sending nude pictures of themselves before financially blackmailing them. In Channel 4 's Hunting My Sextortion Scammer, Jordan allows himself to be sextorted by a scammer over social media before using cutting-edge technology to locate and track down the faceless criminal alongside a security detail. Despite entering hazardous situations to interview those behind these crimes, Jordan found looking into the victims' stories even harder. 'Obviously I knew about scamming before but I was learning [about sextortion] in real time,' Jordan says of the investigation. 'To learn that boys are taking their own lives was heartbreaking and devastating. 'It's boys not understanding the consequences or risks of engaging online but with that panic, they can go from a normal life to not a life within half an hour and that is really scary.' The documentary speaks to the brothers of 15-year-old Murray Dowie, who killed himself after being blackmailed in a sextortion scam. The Dunblane student was catfished by a scammer posing to be a girl his age, who tricked him into sending intimate photos before threatening to make them public. 'He was just like every other teenager and then one day he was dead,' Murray's older brother Ryan, 19, says in the documentary. 'He never liked being the centre of attention. The fear for him, the panic was that he would have been the centre of attention. That must have just been awful for him. 'There is someone responsible for the death of my brother but I have absolutely no clue who. It's a faceless crime.' In a bid to raise awareness of the issue and bring at least one scammer to justice, Jordan - who is the boyfriend of singer Jade Thirlwall - set up several fake social media accounts in the hopes of being targeted by a sextorter. With many sextortion scammers asking for payment in gift cards, Channel 4 enlisted the help of a web developer to create a site that would locate a scammer when they tried to redeem the fake gift card. Attracting a sextorters turned out to be easy, but coaxing them into allowing the gift card site to use their location data proved to be much harder. When one criminal finally took the bait, the scam was interrupted by Instagram instead. 'Not only did he not accept it initially but his account was shut down in the middle of the extortion,' Jordan says. 'His account was disabled in the middle of the exchange. We thought, 'We were so close!'' However, the same sextorter made a new account and popped back up to continue to con, having been given an AI-generated selfie and the nude pictures of a consenting life art model by Jordan. This time, he began shouting abuse at Jordan over the phone, threatening to ruin his life if he didn't send the gift card. 'I literally had to coach him into accepting the revealing of his own location. That tech has not been shown before on TV.' Finally, a location pin came through via the website - showing the sextorter to be in Erunmu, a small village in Nigeria. The African state has become a hotspot for sextortion plots in recent years, with Meta shutting down 63,000 accounts connected to the crime just last year. 'It's difficult to wrap your head around the fact that that can all be occurring in this rural space and that one piece of technology with the potential to ruin a life that was 6,000 miles away,' Jordan says. With this new information, Jordan boarded a plane to Lagos to track down his sextorter, but not before he was met by his own security team and local cybercrime investigator Priye. 'We have very high rates of kidnap around,' he tells Jordan in the documentary. 'Always watch your back.' Jordan admits that he was sufficiently warned of the dangers ahead of flying - and was even told not to tell friends that he was travelling to Lagos. 'The security detail put a ridiculous amount of fear into me before the trip - there are dangers of course in most countries, especially one with that level of wealth inequality, but you have to use your common sense,' he says. 'They were just sending me really extreme news stories. I even bought a burner phone.' After sending Priye on a reconnaissance mission to identify their conman, they found their man - a barber in the village with a similar voice and the same username that was used to sextort Jordan. The Rizzle Kicks star confronted him over FaceTime after his security detail decided that it was too dangerous to do so in person. 'It was quite surreal. I'm 90 percent sure it was the guy. He was running his business and trying to get a little extra on the side,' Jordan says. 'Suddenly he couldn't speak English, suddenly he didn't understand the name or the number.' For those in countries like Nigeria where the exchange rate is weak, sextortion crimes can prove to be lucrative. In the documentary, Jordan interviews young Nigerian criminals who can pay a year of their rent just by blackmailing a Brit for £200. 'We spoke to some boys who didn't want to think about the consequences. One boy mentioned not having any support - he's 17. So you have 17-year-old boys extorting 15-year-old boys to try to survive,' Jordan says. 'It's the equivalent of a 15-year-old boy in the UK scamming someone and getting £35,000 if you were to change that exchange rate. That's why it's happening so often. As the rate of sextortion cases on the rise in the Britain, Jordan hopes that the documentary will send an important message to young boys and parents. 'The realistic thing is as a teenage boy, you're going to make mistakes. Another thing I want to change is the general conversation around sex when we're younger and understanding our bodies and our feelings. ' 'So if it's happened, it's just removing that sense of shame. Instead of that panic, you can 100 percent speak to a person and you can get past it.' He adds, 'The preventative measure is don't respond to any messages from anybody that you don't know in person. There should be more stringent measures on how you even get an account on social media, in my opinion.'
Arab News
2 hours ago
- Politics
- Arab News
Jordan, Saudi Arabia to boost archiving, documentation cooperation
AMMAN: Jordan's government has approved a memorandum of understanding with Saudi Arabia to enhance cooperation in archiving and documentation, the Petra news agency reported on Wednesday. The decision ratified an agreement between Jordan's Royal Hashemite Documentation Center and Saudi Arabia's National Center for Archives and Records. The agreement will set out a framework to preserve and catalog historical documents, and the exchange of expertise and technology. There will be joint training programs in document restoration, digitization, and professional development, Petra reported. The plan includes archival exhibitions, scientific seminars, and joint research projects. The agreement stipulates that shared documents and data may not be distributed to third parties without prior written consent, even after the pact ends. It will be in effect for an initial three years and automatically renewed unless one side opts out in writing at least six months before the expiration date.
Al Bawaba
5 hours ago
- Business
- Al Bawaba
Amideast Partners with Joramco to Support Careers in Aviation Program
Amideast/Jordan has announced the signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Joramco, the Amman-based maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) provider and the engineering arm of Dubai Aerospace Enterprise (DAE). This strategic partnership establishes a framework for collaboration under the "Careers in Aviation" program, a vital initiative aimed at empowering Jordanian youth through specialized training and direct engagement with the relevant MoU was formalized by Nour Alrasheed, Country Director of Amideast, and Fraser Currie, Chief Executive Officer of Joramco, taking place on 10th of July, 2025 at Joramco's the partnership, Amideast will provide comprehensive training to 60 youth participants, focusing on essential English language proficiency, critical soft skills, and digital literacy. This training is supported by Boeing and implemented in close cooperation with the Ministry of Youth, highlighting a multi-stakeholder commitment to youth Joramco will play a pivotal role in supporting the "Careers in Aviation" program by sharing its industry expertise, reviewing Amideast's training programs, and facilitating speaker sessions for the participants. Crucially, the MRO company aims to support the participants' career development by assisting in the hiring process, with a strong commitment to facilitating and securing employment of successful program graduates directly within on this significant partnership, Fraser Currie said, 'This partnership marks a cornerstone in our commitment to cultivating the next generation of aviation professionals in Jordan. By combining Amideast's proven expertise in youth development with Joramco's deep industry knowledge and employment opportunities, we are contributing directly to the growth and dynamism of Jordan's MRO sector.' Beyond the immediate scope of the "Careers in Aviation" program, this MOU also lays the groundwork for broader collaboration between Joramco and Amideast, allowing both parties to explore further areas of mutual interest, particularly in corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives and comprehensive workforce development programs.
Al Bawaba
5 hours ago
- Business
- Al Bawaba
Strategic partnership agreement between Orange Jordan and StarLink, the leader in digital transformation, to provide the latest technology solutions for businesses
In a significant step that reaffirms its market leadership in Jordan and strengthens its commitment to driving digital transformation in line with the national digital economy strategy, Orange Jordan announced the signing of a new strategic partnership agreement with StarLink, the leading regional IT solutions distributor based in Dubai, and part of the Infinigate group. This partnership aims to expand Orange Jordan's ICT portfolio and provide the business sector with advanced, secure solutions that meet the demands of the digital agreement was signed in the presence of Orange Jordan CEO Eng. Philippe Mansour, StarLink CEO Mr. Nidal Othman, and representatives from both partnership embodies Orange Jordan's strong commitment and continuous efforts to develop and enhance its technical capabilities by offering an integrated ecosystem of advanced solutions that support enterprises throughout their comprehensive digital transformation journey. Through cutting-edge cybersecurity services, cloud computing, and advanced data centers, in collaboration with leading global technology providers, Orange Jordan delivers the best technical solutions that meet customers' aspirations and keep pace with the demands of the digital Jordan CEO, Eng. Philippe Mansour, emphasized that Orange Jordan is proud to expand its partnerships with leading technology players in the region, such as StarLink. This strengthens our ability to provide integrated and advanced solutions that support the digital transformation of the business sector in Jordan. This partnership represents a strategic step towards empowering our customers to adopt the latest technologies with confidence and security, contributing to their business growth and enhancing their his part, StarLink CEO Mr. Nidal Othman, also emphasized the significance of the partnership, stating: 'We are excited to work with Orange Jordan to help accelerate the adoption of advanced technologies in the Jordanian market. Together, we aim to support organizations in navigating the digital landscape with confidence and resilience.' This strategic partnership reflects Orange Jordan's commitment to providing integrated and advanced ICT solutions that support the growth of the business sector in the Kingdom. It also reinforces the company's position as a True Responsible Digital Leader, driving innovation and digital transformation.
