Medical tribunal suspends James Gilbert for eight months for the ‘serious misconduct’ it uncovered
A transplant surgeon found to have sexually harassed four colleagues has been suspended for eight months.
Three of the women James Gilbert, 47, harassed were trainees at the Oxford Transplant Centre, a medical tribunal heard.
Continue reading...Indian high commission made claim bronze depicting Tirumankai Alvar which it believes may have been looted
Oxford University has announced it is to hand back a 500-year-old sculpture of a Hindu saint to India.
The almost 60cm-tall bronze statue, which depicts Tirumankai Alvar, had been on display at the university’s Ashmolean Museum.
Continue reading...Oxford and Abingdon MP’s extended family among those sheltering in besieged Holy Family church in Gaza City
“I fear my family under siege by Israeli forces in a church in Gaza will not survive until Christmas, between the snipers and the lack of water.”
Those were the stark words of Layla Moran, the MP for Oxford and Abingdon whose extended Christian Palestinian family members are among those who have been trapped inside the Holy Family church complex in Gaza City for 60 days.
Continue reading...Leading property firms also call for more tax breaks and improved transport links to hubs ahead of autumn statement
The UK needs to build more laboratory space, improve transport links and offer more tax breaks to achieve Rishi Sunak’s ambition of becoming a science superpower, two leading property firms have argued ahead of the autumn statement.
Demand for laboratories in the UK is growing fast, with lab vacancy rates of just 1% in Cambridge and London, and 7% in Oxford, according to a report by British Land, one of Britain’s biggest property developers, and the upmarket estate agency and advisory firm Savills.
Continue reading...Members of the Unite union will picket in London, Brighton, Bristol and Oxford after ‘pitiful’ pay offer
Workers at the homelessness charity St Mungo’s will begin a month-long strike on Tuesday in a dispute over pay.
Members of Unite who work at the organisation will mount picket lines outside its head office in Tower Hill in London and in Brighton, Bristol and Oxford. The union said the industrial action was over a “pitiful” pay offer of 2.25%, which was made in April 2023.
Continue reading...Former professor who argues trans people cannot expect all rights afforded by biological sex is due to speak at Oxford Union
Kathleen Stock, the gender-critical feminist whose forthcoming address to Oxford university students on Tuesday has prompted planned protests, has insisted that she is a “moderate” and has a right to upset people.
Before her contested appearance at the Oxford Union, Stock said it was her trans activist opponents, who want the event cancelled, who were extreme.
Continue reading...Ronson Chan was preparing for stint in UK before being arrested for allegedly obstructing a police officer
The head of Hong Kong’s journalist union has been arrested, weeks before he was due to leave for an overseas fellowship at Oxford University.
Ronson Chan, the chair of the Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA), was arrested for allegedly obstructing a police officer and disorderly conduct in a public place.
Continue reading...Hourly bus serves local villages and brings staff – and sometimes customers – to Michelin-starred restaurant
With rural buses in long-term decline and a funding crisis putting more routes in peril, a surprising service has appeared on the English transport menu: the No 46 bus to Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons.
Raymond Blanc’s celebrated restaurant and hotel in the heart of the Oxfordshire countryside may not appear classic bus territory. The Michelin-starred establishment’s seven-course dinner with matching wines starts at £350 a head, rising to just over £1,000 if you want to drink the good stuff.
Continue reading...The addition to baptism and confirmation ceremonies thought to be first of its kind in UK
Christians being confirmed or baptised in the Oxford diocese will henceforth be asked to commit to protecting the environment as part of the church’s formal liturgy.
The addition to the ceremonies is supported by the Right Rev Steven Croft, bishop of Oxford, and asks people being baptised or confirmed to “strive to safeguard the integrity of creation, and sustain and renew the life of the Earth”.
Continue reading...Cotswolds food producers argue case illustrates disconnect between planners and farmers’ need to make living
He left the meeting in a right old huff, chuntering that it was a bad day for farming and dismissing one of the planning officials as a comedian, after his scheme to build a hilltop restaurant on his Oxfordshire farm was flatly turned down.
But Jeremy Clarkson, petrolhead turned farming reality TV show star, may be heartened by the concern and interest in his case that rippled through the Cotswolds this week.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Oxfordshire-based Emergex gets go-ahead for trials in Switzerland for skin patch vaccine
An Oxfordshire-based company will soon start clinical trials of a second-generation vaccine against Covid-19, an easy-to-administer skin patch that uses T-cells to kill infected cells and could offer longer-lasting immunity than current vaccines.
Emergex was set up in Abingdon in 2016 to develop T-cell vaccines, the brainchild of Prof Thomas Rademacher, the firm’s chief executive and professor emeritus of molecular medicine at the University College London medical school.
Continue reading...After growing up in a Zimbabwe convulsed by the legacy of colonialism, when I got to Oxford I realised how many British people still failed to see how empire had shaped lives like mine – as well as their own
There was no single moment when I began to sense the long shadow that Cecil John Rhodes has cast over my life, or over the university where I am a professor, or over the ways of seeing the world shared by so many of us still living in the ruins of the British empire. But, looking back, it is clear that long before I arrived at Oxford as a student, long before I helped found the university’s Rhodes Must Fall movement, long before I even left Zimbabwe as a teenager, this man and everything he embodied had shaped the worlds through which I moved.
I could start this story in 1867, when a boy named Erasmus Jacobs found a diamond the size of an acorn on the banks of the Orange river in what is now South Africa, sparking the diamond rush in which Rhodes first made his fortune. Or I could start it a century later, when my grandfather was murdered by security forces in the British colony of Rhodesia. Or I could start it today, when the infamous statue of Rhodes that peers down on to Oxford’s high street may finally be on the verge of being taken down.
Continue reading...In wide-ranging interview, PM says jobs furlough not healthy and urges restraint as pubs open
Boris Johnson has expressed opposition to removing a statue of Cecil Rhodes from Oxford University, in a rare newspaper interview in which he also said the jobs furlough scheme was not “healthy” for the economy in the long term and would end soon.
Speaking to the Evening Standard, the prime minister said he did not agree with the decision of Oriel College to take down its statue of the Victorian imperialist, as he was “in favour of people understanding our past with all its imperfections”.
Continue reading...In a district once ranked bottom for reading, the revamped attraction aims to awaken children to the joy of storytelling
For fans of children’s literature, it is an unmissable sight: Philip Pullman’s own alethiometer, a detailed realisation of the magical symbol reader described in Northern Lights, gleaming with secrets – or possibly even particles of “Dust” – on display at the new Story Museum in Oxford.
An unforgettable peek at the mysterious compass-like device is just one of the unique literary experiences on offer when the children’s museum reopens next month, after a £6m redevelopment.
Continue reading...Protesters ranged from students at the prime minister’s old Oxford college to retired teachers, children and activists
In Cambridge’s Market Square, a crowd of families, young people and silver-haired academics listened as Percy Bysshe Shelley’s The Masque of Anarchy was read out. Many joined in, from memory, making a collective appeal for non-violent resistance: “Rise, like lions after slumber... Ye are many – they are few.” There were moments of more garrulous protest too. During a speech criticising Boris Johnson, someone shouted: “Off with his head!”
From Bodmin to Berlin, Bristol to Oxford, tens of thousands of people took to the streets in towns and cities across England, Scotland and Wales on Saturday to vent their fury at Johnson’s plan to suspend parliament. Around 1,200 people attended the rally in Cambridge, where they booed the prime minister and his adviser Dominic Cummings as though they were pantomime villains.
Continue reading...Friends cite lack of support in university town for those with mental health and addiction problems
A spate of deaths has rocked the homeless community in Oxford, sparking warnings that a lack of housing and support for people with mental health and addiction problems in one of Britain’s most affluent cities is contributing to fatalities.
Bereaved friends of four men and a woman who have died suddenly in the university city since November said the losses are the worst they have known. They fear further deaths among rough sleepers amid freezing temperatures.
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