For the past ten months, Alun Ebenezer has been whipping a secondary school in Monmouthshire into shape. When he first arrived at Caldicot Comprehensive from Fulham Boys (the free school championed by Boris Johnson), his methods went down badly with pupils and parents alike. A group of parents staged a protest at the gates; people would regularly pitch up in reception demanding to speak to him. “The first few weeks were hard,” says Ebenezer. “The parents kept coming up here, shouting at us, threatening us. But you have to hold your ground.”

Asked by the local authority to take over Caldicot, a 1300-pupil state secondary, in May 2024, it sounds as if the school had become a battleground. Staff staged walkouts over what they considered to be a failure to address the students’ violent and abusive behaviour. Members of one union – the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers – refused to teach certain pupils whom they deemed to be a risk to staff. Students, he has since learned, felt unsafe too – one told him recently they’d long been frightened to go to the bathroom. “My job was to come in and sort all that out.”

He believes we have made a mistake with the way we raise and educate young people. Where we should have been teaching them “resilience”, we’ve told them the most important thing is to be happy. “We live in a day and age where we indulge young people. ‘Do whatever you want to be happy.’ ‘Be whatever you want to be happy.’ But it hasn’t made them happy. It’s made them the complete opposite.” By focusing on happiness, we’ve made them “really miserable”, he says. “When young people realise life is hard, it’s a game changer.” The pandemic “taught young people things they would never have learned through test tubes and textbooks”, he says. “They had to go through things. You can’t learn resilience from a textbook.”

Rather than deal with behaviour, we diagnose. “When I came here, you had literally 100 young people hiding behind issues they didn’t have. They’re just naughty.” While some young people have “genuine problems”, Ebenezer suspects plenty don’t. The problem, he says, is the way “we now hide behind labels”.

After 27 years in education, he says one of the biggest challenges facing young people today – alongside phones, which he considers “a huge problem” – is overdiagnosis. “When did ‘I’m a bit nervous’ become ‘I’ve got anxiety’? When did ‘I’m a bit fed up’ or ‘it’s a bit hard going’ become ‘I’ve got depression’? We have to distinguish between those things so that people who have got real anxiety and real depression get the help they need.”

The school environment should matter to everyone, from parents to politicians, he says. “We can have the next generation we want. We can have the society we want... We all want safe streets, well mannered young people. We want characteristics like effort, perseverance, can-do attitude, resilience. None of us have a magic wand to make it happen.” Discipline, he says, might be a good place to start.

It also had a map of the park with a red circle labelled 'This is not a cruising ground'. The poster encouraged dog walkers and residents to 'walk in the red area' and to 'take back West Heath'. The term refers to the practice where individuals, often in public spaces, seek out sexual encounters with others. Historically, men have been 'cruising' on the site since the 19th century and 200 years later it remains one of Europe's most notorious spots. It started as a response to sodomy and indecency laws.

Lucy Marsh, from the Family Education Trust, told MailOnline: 'Hampstead Heath is a much-loved public park and a green space that is enjoyed by families, especially those who don't have their own gardens. Parents should be able to enjoy a walk or a picnic without worrying about them seeing gay men having sex in a public place. It's not 'bigoted' to believe that people should not be engaging in sexual fetishes in public, especially in a park where children are likely to be present."

Reacting to the figures, Richard Tice, Deputy Leader of Reform, told The Telegraph: “Top tip if you want to earn more at the BBC: don’t be a straight, white male. Do something to change this. Be woke. People should be appointed and paid based on merit, not on their ethnicity or sexual preference.”

The BBC has committed to equal pay, but the figures have led some to question how equal the licence fee funded pay scales are in light of the details emerging. According to the 23/24 annual report, those who identify as LGBT earn 15.6% more than their straight colleagues. Similarly, senior members of staff from black, Asian, and other ethnic backgrounds (Bame) earn, on average, 12.6 percent more than their white counterparts.

Those with a recognised disability earn around 8% more than colleagues without one, whilst women earn 5% more than men. Auntie’s obsession with diversity, equality and inclusion has resulted in the very discrimination that it was supposed to protect against. The BBC needs to foster a culture of meritocracy, not one of virtue-signalling.

There is no doubt that European leaders feel extremely threatened by Russia fighting a war on the edge of the EU. Just the pictures of smashed Ukrainian cities, which besides the onion-dome churches could architecturally be practically anywhere in central Europe are enough to make us all nervous. Understandably: it conjures just too many bad memories.

A really effective military is the one that never has to fight any battles, it successfully deters all challengers. The ultimate deterrent is the nuclear bomb, so potent even a low dose is enough to convert one of the most fearsome empires in history into a nation of cartoon-loving celibates. Allegedly.

The question of the bomb is coming up with increasing frequency. Russia looms large. Can the West survive Moscow’s empire building? Perhaps more to the point, can civilisation survive a nuclear-armed Germany? Russian bombing of Ukrainian cities recalls terrible memories for Europeans, but so too does a rapidly rearming Berlin. Sorry, Germans. We love you really, but where’s the basis for trust?

Muslim elected leaders with deep ties to radical Islamic organizations are prioritizing Islamic identity over American values, steering Paterson away from its historical roots. Every policy change, symbolic gesture, and political appointment moves the city closer to becoming an Islamic enclave.

The latest development? The Hilal Lighting Ceremony, a city-endorsed event marking Ramadan, held in the heart of “Little Palestine” — Palestine Way. This was no mere religious event but a thinly veiled political rally for Palestinian nationalism.

Officially renamed in 2022, Palestine Way cements Paterson’s transformation into a de facto Palestinian enclave, complete with flags, street signs, and businesses mirroring the very nations many residents supposedly fled. The area is home to an estimated 15,000 Arabs, dominated by Palestinian presence. Main Street, now a mile-and-a-half-long strip lined with Palestinian flags, Arabic signs, and halal restaurants, is more than cultural representation — it is a territorial claim. What is happening in Paterson is not an isolated case but part of a nationwide pattern, where Islamic enclaves increasingly exert influence over local governance and public spaces.

The video featured the Democrat admitting that the US had “not sat on the sidelines” during the unrest. Murphy also recalled that “we have been very much involved,” with top US lawmakers and officials attending the protests on the Maidan square. He further explained that “the Obama administration passed sanctions [against Ukrainian officials]… I really think that the clear position of the United States has in part been what has helped lead to this change in regime.”

Murphy also noted that the US had a vested economic interest in Ukraine’s turn to the West, which was the key goal of the protesters. “If Ukraine is part of the European Union and thus is part of this new trade agreement with the United States, that could result in billions of dollars in new economic opportunities for the US,” he explained. “We shouldn’t be shy about making clear that interest.” Musk responded to the clip, writing on X: “Still very few people know about this.”

“In view of the increasing threat situation, it is clear to us that Europe – and with Europe, the Federal Republic of Germany – must now very quickly make very big efforts to strengthen the defence capability of our country and the European continent,” Merz told reporters at a hastily convened news conference.

“We are counting on the United States of America standing by our mutual alliance commitments in the future as well,” he said. “But we also know that the funding for the defence of our country and alliance must now be expanded significantly.” The necessary decisions “no longer tolerate any delay, at the latest since the most recent decisions by the American government,” Merz said.

“Our moral duty is clear: Bring everyone back home, in any way possible and as quickly as possible,” he added, addressing the families of the Israeli captives held by the Palestinian resistance in Gaza. Halevi made a speech during the ceremony, calling for the establishment of a commission to probe the events of 7 October 2023.

“The establishment of a state commission of inquiry is necessary and vital. Not to find someone to blame, but first and foremost to reach the source of the problems and allow for repair,” he said. “On 7 October, the IDF failed. It was a deep failure. But such a failure on this scale cannot only be investigated in the IDF and the Shin Bet.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has consistently blocked such a commission from being formed.