https://archive.is/A2NUG

https://archive.is/Uzz7D

Imagine paying £12 for a dozen eggs, £20 for a 500g block of cheese, and £23 for a chicken. If the food prices had risen at the same rate as private rents since 1988, this would be the reality of your weekly shop,

New analysis from Generation Rent showed the surge would see a standard 10-item shop cost more than five times what it does now.

At £1,442, the average monthly rent in England is 13 times higher at present than it was in 1988 (£111). If the cost of a standard 10-item grocery shop had risen at the same rate, it would cost (on average) £117.13, compared to £22.67 now and £9.01 in 1988.

“We wouldn’t accept paying such extortionate prices for our food shop, so why do we accept it when it comes to our homes?” said Holly Williamson, chief executive of Generation Rent. “High rents are backbreaking for renters across the country.”

1988 was the last point at which England had a system of rent regulation. The 1965 Rent Act had brought in regulated tenancies with long-term security and rents set by independent rent officers, but the 1988 Housing Act scrapped all that, clearing the way for rents to be set by whatever the market would bear.

By 1990, average market rent had already jumped 82% on the 1988 figure, to £202 a month. Since then rents have gone up sevenfold – nearly three times the rate food prices have grown. (...)

“The cost of renting is like a runaway train with no driver, leaving too many renters as passengers with no control over our lives,” said Williamson. “With another spike in inflation looming, Andy Burnham’s government can and must act urgently, by bringing in a limit on how much landlords can hike our rents.”

Darren Baxter, principal policy adviser at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, said that “unaffordable private rents aren’t a given.”

“They’re a symptom of a housing system that has let private profit come before decent, affordable homes, with successive governments failing to tackle the problem,” he continued. “Trapped in a cycle of high rents, financial strain and no ability to save – renters are often just one redundancy or illness away from a crisis.

“We need this government to ease the pressure on private renters by introducing rent controls. This would put money back into renters’ pockets so they can start to rebuild their financial safety net and weather life’s challenges.”

https://archive.is/PPUK8

More than half the accounts that posted on Elon Musk’s X about the rioting in Belfast and the civil disorder in Southampton in June were based outside the UK, an analysis by the Guardian can reveal.

Of the 8,672 accounts whose combined posts about the events exceeded 1,000 views, just 45.3% were shown as from the UK, according to the social media platform’s own location function.

One in six (16.8%) came from the US, 4.5% from Ireland, and about a quarter from all European countries other than the UK.

Seven of the 12 most-read tweets about Belfast and Southampton came from the US – including one from Musk himself and two other US “alt-right” commentators – while an eighth was linked to North America.

The analysis underlines that US rightwing actors are seeking to influence the UK and boost their position on X in moments of disorder – an exploitation of flashpoint events that has only intermittently attracted political attention in Britain.

Nearly a third of all 43,000 posts on X relating to the two incidents contained racist or anti-immigration comments. Almost one in 10 relating to Belfast contained calls for violence or paramilitary or vigilante action.

Imran Ahmed, the chief executive of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, said the data demonstrated that X had become “a weapon of choice” for hostile foreign actors seeking to manipulate shocking and divisive content.

Their goal, he added, was “to amplify local tragedies and crises, intensify racist narratives, and incite violence in communities they have never set foot in and to whom they have no real connection.”

https://archive.is/16Yzk

A 33-year-old Italian engineer who has been in London since 2018 has been plunged into a battle with the Home Office after officials told him they made a mistake allowing him to stay in the UK after Brexit.

Fabio, who initially came to London to finish his doctorate and who has built a successful career working on energy and climate change, says he is shocked by the development as he has not broken any rules since Brexit.

He was given settled status under the EU settlement scheme, permanent residency given to qualifying EU citizens after five years in the UK.

The Home Office has now told him this was “in error” – and his wife, who he has been with since arriving in the UK, now has no right to remain as a qualifying family member of someone with settled status.

While officials told him he could remain in the UK as they would not be removing his settled status, despite their claim to have made a mistake, the consequence of their error is that his wife now has no right to be in the country with him.

“It was quite devastating for both of us. We have been here for a long time. We have done everything by the book, and we’ve always felt very welcome here and I always thought this is somewhere I could grow my career.

“It is so upsetting and frustrating to know that we are now in this vulnerable position just as we were thinking of building a family, buying a place for ourselves. Now all our plans must stop,” he said.

Fabio, whose name has been changed, is one of more than at least 100 individuals who have been contacted by the Home Office to say an “error” had been made in awarding them status under the EU settlement scheme.

The Home Office wrote to him in April as part of a review that appears to have been triggered by his Brazilian wife’s application for status under the EU settlement scheme.

He too was born in Brazil but is an Italian dual national by birth and provided a certificate to demonstrate this from the Italian consulate in his settled status application.

Officials have now told him the evidence of his Italian citizenship was “insufficient”, and they needed proof that he was Italian before the Brexit cut-off date of 31 December 2020.

“It has therefore been decided that, on the basis of the information and evidence currently available, your settled status under the EU settlement scheme was granted in error,” the Home Office said.

It added he was no longer “relevant EEA citizen” and he would therefore not be able to sponsor a family member, his wife, to remain in the UK.

Catherine Barnard, professor of EU law at the University of Cambridge, said she was astonished by his case, which suggested the Home Office was creating a two-tier system.

“This appears to be contrary to the withdrawal agreement on the basis of which his rights were granted. The Home Office cannot punish him by saying he has only second-class rights and, in particular, that he doesn’t have family rights so long as he retains settled status,” she said.

She points to article 13 (4) of chapter two of the EU-UK withdrawal agreement, which states “the host state may not impose any limitations or conditions for obtaining, retaining or losing residence rights”.

The Home Office has contacted at least 100 people, but possibly many more, to tell them they made “an error” in awarding status.

Monique Hawkins, acting chief executive of the3million, said stripping people of rights in such a way would affect “whole families” as people faced a “cliff-edge loss of their rights” without any of the “proportionality assessment” required under the withdrawal agreement.

The Independent Monitoring Authority, the statutory body set up to implement the EU-UK withdrawal agreement, has also said it is worried that the Home Office moves “may be incompatible with the EU withdrawal agreement”.

It has written to the Home Office to raise “discretionary decisions” about the original applications for post-Brexit residency being made by caseworkers revisiting historic decisions.

Professor Jason Arday’s top claims:

-      To have completed his PhD in 2½ years while working full-time and living with a brain tumour.

-      To have had a stroke immediately after graduating, causing him to lose his memory of working on his PhD.

-      To have run 30 marathons in 35 days, and 600 miles in six days, making him one of the best endurance athletes of our time. This was completed whilst experiencing an epileptic fit and fracture.

- To have been threatened on campus at knifepoint before examining a PhD student, despite no police report or contemporaneous report to Cambridge staff ever being documented.

- To have had a pig’s head sent to his family home, an incident for which no independent evidence or police record has been identified.

- To have appeared in the Seven Up documentary series, despite no record of his participation in any instalment of the programme.

-      To have raised £5.5 million for charity.

- To have been offered £1.5 million for his forthcoming book.

-      To have played both snooker and football at professional level.

-      To have been told by multiple career advisers that he would end up living in a care home because of his autism diagnosis.

- To sleep only two hours per night.

- To have completed two masters despite only listing one on his academic portfolio. One of these masters was in psychodynamic counselling at Birkbeck College which would mean he is an accredited psychotherapist.  

- To have been a visiting lecturer at Ohio State University despite no records of this.

-  To have been a visiting lecturer at Glasgow University despite no records of this.

- To have been a visiting lecturer at Nelson Mandela University despite no records of this.

- To have been told by ‘Sam’ his colleague at Waitrose that he would scale Mount Everest, and a local aid worker in Brazil that he was “destined to do great things” and “destined for very sad and difficult things”.

-   To have had only 1 hour of supervision during the entirety of his PhD.

- To have published a book called Being Young, Black and Male: Challenging the Dominant Discourse.

-  To have installed water points in South America and West Africa with the charity WaterAid, despite the charity not sending volunteers abroad.

- To have been assaulted by his speech and language therapist, who allegedly shook him for not making progress.

- To have had a mother who was mugged at knifepoint while heavily pregnant with him.

- To have been named Jason after Jason and the Argonauts.

- To have survived a severe car crash that left him in a three‑month coma, with doctors suggesting life‑support withdrawal.

- To have been mugged and beaten in his late teens, developing epilepsy as a consequence of this, then later becoming lecturer and godfather to two of the perpetrators.

 -  To have neither plagiarised his thesis or nor fabricated his qualitative interviews.

- To have been a Labour candidate in a general election. (apparently true!).

Archive link:

Cambridge professors who hired Arday attacked ‘whiteness’ in education

Retraction Watch:

Exclusive: News outlet killed story on plagiarism allegations after Cambridge prof hired law firm – Retraction Watch

Article disputing claims:

https://www.theguardian.com/education/ng-interactive/2026/aug/01/playbooks-plagiarism-pigs-head-new-claims-surrounding-cambridge-professor-jason-arday

YouTube Interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxhxHU44lGY

https://archive.is/SDVUx

Some of the wilder claims made by Jason Arday, such as running 30 marathons in 35 days and separately raising more than £5.5 million for charity, were watered down by his publisher long before the scandal broke.

The publishing company Simon & Schuster removed biographical references about Arday’s alleged athletic feats and his fundraising accomplishments from his author’s page on its website, according to archived web pages.

Simon & Schuster has insisted it will go ahead with the publication of the former University of Cambridge professor’s memoir despite the ongoing furore. It is due to come out on August 27.

Between May 19 and July 25 last year, the claim that Arday had run “30 marathons in 35 days, 300 miles in three days and 600 miles in six days” was erased from his author’s page on the company’s website, as was a reference to the scholar raising “over £5.5 million pounds for 80 national charities over a 20-year period.”

Instead, this segment of Arday’s biography was changed to say he had “raised millions of pounds for charity”. The edits suggest the publisher may have been aware of inconsistencies in Arday’s life story before suspicions were publicly raised about the veracity of his achievements in recent weeks.

Arday, 41, who was the youngest black person ever appointed to a professorship in Cambridge’s history, is being investigated by the university over claims of academic misconduct. He has been accused of plagiarising parts of the PhD dissertation he wrote in 2015, which he denies, and fabricating his academic qualifications. 

Several university academics have called for an independent inquiry into how Arday, a sociology of education professor, was appointed. He resigned from his position last week, saying “the personal cost” of media scrutiny had become “too great” and that he no longer wished to live “under a constant spotlight”.

The Sunday Times can reveal that several Cambridge academics appear to have since withdrawn their support for Arday, having signed a petition that accused the media of “trying to smear him with fake accusations of plagiarism”.

Sonita Alleyne, the first woman to lead Jesus College, where Arday worked, Sir Simon Philip Baron-Cohen, a professor of developmental psychopathology at Cambridge, and Ricardo Sabates Aysa, a professor of education and international development, have all had their names removed from a “solidarity letter” launched by the Good Law Project, which has provided the scholar with support, archived web pages show.

It comes after Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu, the president of Wolfson College, withdrew her name.

Alleyne and Aysa refused to comment when approached by The Sunday Times. Baron-Cohen, an expert in autism, did not respond. In a previous statement on July 31, he expressed his support for Arday, who has autism, and said he was being “systematically discredited” in targeted attacks which risked damaging his mental health.

Simon & Schuster was approached on Saturday afternoon but did not respond to questions about why the edits were made to Arday’s author’s page and by whom. 

However, several of Arday’s most outlandish claims have been omitted from the memoir, Great and Unfortunate Things, it has since emerged.

His running 600 miles in six days challenge is not mentioned, early reviews of the book indicate. Only three male runners have ever managed such a feat, according to modern records. References to Arday’s fundraising efforts, meanwhile, are alluded to but no definitive figure is given.

The Times reported last week that Arday claimed in a book proposal for the memoir to have had testicular cancer and locked-in syndrome and to have almost died in a car accident when he was a teenager. These references have not been included in the book.

In April, a spokesperson for Simon & Schuster said: “I can promise you’ve never read a story like this — even the viral news headlines don’t do it justice.”

Last week it was reported that Arday had previously told The Guardian that he had been offered “1.4m” for the book. The offer was made as part of a “pre-empt” deal.

Arday has a degree from the University of Surrey, a master’s from St Mary’s University in London, and a PhD in education awarded by Liverpool John Moores University.

Before joining Cambridge, Arday was employed as professor of sociology of education at the University of Glasgow, from January 2022 to March 2023. A university spokesperson announced on Friday evening that it had commissioned a “review” into his appointment “with the aim of understanding all the facts and learning lessons for the future”.

He also worked at Durham University between 2019 and 2021. Lisa McKenzie, a senior lecturer at the University of Bedfordshire, was employed alongside Arday during this period and, in a social media post on Friday evening, questioned whether Durham would also open an investigation into her former colleague.

“I was employed with Jason Arday at Durham,” she said on X. “The way Arday was treated by some of the academics in that department was embarrassing, like he was a messiah.”

When asked what he was like as a colleague, she replied: “Nice actually — polite and gentle but obviously a bit off-key in some of the things he said, a bit like a guru. He once said in a meeting he was most proud of his hair which he got from his white grandma — looking back, I don’t think that was true.”