Once the bustling heart of Christian pilgrimage, Bethlehem now faces shuttered hotels, empty streets and a shrinking Christian community, while Israel’s assault on Gaza and the tightening grip of occupation destroy hopes of peace at the birthplace of Christ, writes Father GEOFF BOTTOMS
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More than meets the eye with the New Schools Network
SOLOMON HUGHES probes the finances of a phoney ‘charity’ pushing the free schools and academies agenda
A teacher and students in a classroom
After years hidden away, Oldham’s memorial to six local volunteers who died fighting fascism in the Spanish civil war has been restored to public view, marking both a victory for campaigners and a renewed tribute to the town’s proud International Brigade heritage, says ROB HARGREAVES
The June 2025 attacks on Iran have heightened the risk of a wider war, exposed the fiction of a rules-based international order and left ordinary Iranians trapped between external aggression and internal repression, says the Committee for Defence of Iranian People’s Rights
While pretending to seek peace, Europe is heading toward a collision course with Russia – using security guarantees, troop deployments, expropriation and censorship as tools, writes SEVIM DAGDELEN
A WWI hero, renowned ornithologist, medical doctor, trade union organiser and founder member of the Communist Party of Great Britain all rolled in one. MAT COWARD tells the story of a life so improbable it was once dismissed as fiction
The long-term effects of chemical weapons such as Agent Orange mean that the impact of war lasts well beyond a ceasefire
SUPPORTERS of the free schools and academy programmes pretend this handover of Department for Education cash and resources to a bunch of businessmen, conservative and religious ideologues is some kind of grassroots social movement driven by “charitable” impulses.
But look at the accounts one of the key “charities” involved, the New Schools Network, and it is obviously all a government-funded front pretending to be from the “grassroots.”
The New Schools Network was founded in 2009 by Tory activists to promote Conservative education policy. From 2011 on it started getting government grants from the Department for Education. The New Schools Network was paid to promote academies and free schools.
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Martin Taylor, the hedge-fund multimillionaire who has poured millions into pushing Labour rightwards, helped finance Lucy Powell’s supposedly dissenting campaign — suggesting her victory was not the ‘soft-left’ rebellion some have claimed, says SOLOMON HUGHES
They’re the problem it’s them: SOLOMON HUGHES on the freeloading flunkies of the Labour Party hoovering up VIP tickets to musical and sporting events