Student rent strike campaigns gathering pace against 'exploitation'

It is the start of a new academic year at Goldsmiths, University of London, and first year students are moving into the Raymont Hall residences.

Student ambassador Shannon Howard is there to greet them with a smile. She is a second year PPE (Philosophy, Politics and Economics) student who spent nine months living in the same building.

During that time responsibility for the maintenance and upkeep of Raymont switched from the university to a private company, Campus Living Villages (CLV).

Image Caption:Student Shannon Howard has withheld her rent since January

"It was such a lovely place to live," said Ms Howard. "Everybody was really nice, we had such lovely group of people that lived here."

For the past six months, Ms Howard and a number of Goldsmiths undergraduates have not paid their outstanding rent, either to the university or to CLV.

"I stopped paying rent because I wanted to make a statement about how unfair it is, and how exploitative it is to expect students to pay going on £170 a week for a room," said Ms Howard. 

On Friday afternoon at a nearby community centre, she met up with other student activists as they prepared for a weekend workshop. The focus of the two-day event was going to be developing strategies for running successful rent strike campaigns at campuses across the UK.

The ultimate model for success for many of them was University College London (UCL), where around 1,000 people refused to pay rent for roughly five months and captured national headlines earlier in the year.

Jason Murugesu was one of the strike's chief negotiators. He and roughly 20 other activists worked to win concessions from the university's administration, including rent freezes, rent reductions and a £350,000 accommodation bursary for those with limited means. 

"Especially in London you struggle so much just to afford to live," said Mr Murugesu, who is studying neuroscience at UCL.

"Students felt very much that this was the only way to force a situation."

Image Caption:Student demonstrators at University College London 

Over the summer Mr Murugesu used a Freedom of Information request to find out about the comparative cost of his first-year rent.

UCL told him that that 20 years ago, an equivalent room to his own had cost just £57.75 per week. Five years later, it was £20 more expensive, and by 2006 it had jumped another £30. Now, rent for this academic year is set at over  £177 per week.

Those numbers dramatically exceeded inflation - but so did the London property market.

George Spencer, CEO of Rentify - an online letting agent for private landlords, said: "The percentage increase of rent may seem like it's too high.

"We're seeing 40 and 50% increases in rent since 2010, but ultimately the rents are starting at a much, much lower level than they are in the private sector."

He added: "These are students who are unwilling to pay their rent, not unable to pay their rent. If they were unable to pay their rent then the market would correct itself, and we'd see more affordable accommodation built."

Over the summer holidays, the private sector - in the guise of her former landlord - has been pursuing Ms Howard, sending her letters, emails and leaving voicemails.

In one, the company contacting her wrote: "Your balance outstanding is £1,471.24 pence. We are a debt collection agency working on behalf of our client, Campus Living Villages UK Ltd. We have been instructed to collect the above amount, and we have sent you a letter to this effect." 

CLV told Sky News that Ms Howard should not have received such a letter if she is formally registered by the university as a rent striker, as she claims to be.

In a statement, Goldsmiths wrote: "We use a six figure grant to subsidise rents and offer a range of prices to meet all budgets... for this academic year we've frozen prices on more than 100 of our cheapest rooms while there is a below-inflation rise for a further 400 rooms."

Ms Howard says such practical measures are welcome, but there has always been a principle at stake for her in these discussions.

"We should put people and people's welfare before profit, and I think the reason why we have decided to go on rent strike, and have been on rent strike, is because we believe that that hasn't been the case." 

Both sides in the Goldsmiths dispute says they will continue to talk. Students at other universities across the country are likely to follow the conversation very closely. 

Student rent strike campaigns gathering pace against 'exploitation'

It is the start of a new academic year at Goldsmiths, University of London, and first year students are moving into the Raymont Hall residences.

Student ambassador Shannon Howard is there to greet them with a smile. She is a second year PPE (Philosophy, Politics and Economics) student who spent nine months living in the same building.

During that time responsibility for the maintenance and upkeep of Raymont switched from the university to a private company, Campus Living Villages (CLV).

Image Caption:Student Shannon Howard has withheld her rent since January

"It was such a lovely place to live," said Ms Howard. "Everybody was really nice, we had such lovely group of people that lived here."

For the past six months, Ms Howard and a number of Goldsmiths undergraduates have not paid their outstanding rent, either to the university or to CLV.

"I stopped paying rent because I wanted to make a statement about how unfair it is, and how exploitative it is to expect students to pay going on £170 a week for a room," said Ms Howard. 

On Friday afternoon at a nearby community centre, she met up with other student activists as they prepared for a weekend workshop. The focus of the two-day event was going to be developing strategies for running successful rent strike campaigns at campuses across the UK.

The ultimate model for success for many of them was University College London (UCL), where around 1,000 people refused to pay rent for roughly five months and captured national headlines earlier in the year.

Jason Murugesu was one of the strike's chief negotiators. He and roughly 20 other activists worked to win concessions from the university's administration, including rent freezes, rent reductions and a £350,000 accommodation bursary for those with limited means. 

"Especially in London you struggle so much just to afford to live," said Mr Murugesu, who is studying neuroscience at UCL.

"Students felt very much that this was the only way to force a situation."

Image Caption:Student demonstrators at University College London 

Over the summer Mr Murugesu used a Freedom of Information request to find out about the comparative cost of his first-year rent.

UCL told him that that 20 years ago, an equivalent room to his own had cost just £57.75 per week. Five years later, it was £20 more expensive, and by 2006 it had jumped another £30. Now, rent for this academic year is set at over  £177 per week.

Those numbers dramatically exceeded inflation - but so did the London property market.

George Spencer, CEO of Rentify - an online letting agent for private landlords, said: "The percentage increase of rent may seem like it's too high.

"We're seeing 40 and 50% increases in rent since 2010, but ultimately the rents are starting at a much, much lower level than they are in the private sector."

He added: "These are students who are unwilling to pay their rent, not unable to pay their rent. If they were unable to pay their rent then the market would correct itself, and we'd see more affordable accommodation built."

Over the summer holidays, the private sector - in the guise of her former landlord - has been pursuing Ms Howard, sending her letters, emails and leaving voicemails.

In one, the company contacting her wrote: "Your balance outstanding is £1,471.24 pence. We are a debt collection agency working on behalf of our client, Campus Living Villages UK Ltd. We have been instructed to collect the above amount, and we have sent you a letter to this effect." 

CLV told Sky News that Ms Howard should not have received such a letter if she is formally registered by the university as a rent striker, as she claims to be.

In a statement, Goldsmiths wrote: "We use a six figure grant to subsidise rents and offer a range of prices to meet all budgets... for this academic year we've frozen prices on more than 100 of our cheapest rooms while there is a below-inflation rise for a further 400 rooms."

Ms Howard says such practical measures are welcome, but there has always been a principle at stake for her in these discussions.

"We should put people and people's welfare before profit, and I think the reason why we have decided to go on rent strike, and have been on rent strike, is because we believe that that hasn't been the case." 

Both sides in the Goldsmiths dispute says they will continue to talk. Students at other universities across the country are likely to follow the conversation very closely. 

Chatterbots bid to show their human side in artificial intelligence test

Computers will be hoping to finally vanquish humans today, in a contest at Bletchley Park.

A series of chatterbots will attempt to fool judges - including me - into thinking they are also human.

No computer has ever triumphed at the Loebner Prize - a version of the Turing Test, first proposed by the computer scientist Alan Turing, who worked at Bletchley codebreaking during World War Two.

But the chatterbots are coming on strong.

Steve Worswick is the person behind Mistuku, a bot anyone can chat with online and which was judged the best system in the 2013 contest. He returns this year.

"It's slowly becoming more and more involved in our everyday lives," he told Sky News.

"At the stage we're at at the moment, I don't think we need to be fearing about people's jobs.

"The use is in call centres, frequently asked questions on websites.

"I get a lot of people who practice for English as a second language.

"I also get quite a lot of people who use it for companionship.

"People who are elderly and on their own, they'll say it to things like 'I wish my daughter would visit more'. It's quite sad to see that in the chatbot."

Mr Worswick added: "The thing that sets my bots apart is that I've got a huge database of common objects and attributes associated with those objects.

"If you say to it 'Can I eat a house?' it will say something like 'You can't eat a house because houses are made of bricks and bricks aren't edible.

"It's a common sense database."

Understanding natural language has been a challenge for computer scientists since Turing's time.

Increasingly, though, they are making the their way into the real world.

And that brings the possibility of a new user interface for technology - your voice.

Apple's new AirPods, bluetooth headphones that thanks to microphones and special chip inside them, can allow users to control their phones just with their voice.

And this week, Amazon launched the Echo in the UK.

It's a bluetooth speaker you chat with, finding out news and train times, for example, but also for more complicated services, like ordering takeaway or adding items to your shopping list.

Amazon Echo vice president Michael George told Sky News: "I don't think what we're doing with voice is going to replace the phone or a touchscreen tablet or a laptop anytime soon.

"I do think that voice as a user interface will get you the opportunity to control all kinds of complex technologies in a much simpler way."

Echo is powered by an artificial intelligence (AI) called Alexa - George insists Alexa is a "she" not an "it".

Amazon has opened up Alexa so third party developers can build it into their own products and services.

Voice services will only get more capable.

So the next time you shout at your computer in sheer frustration, it might well end up shouting back.

Pakistan: Suicide bomber kills 16 in Mohmand mosque

A suicide bomber has killed at least 16 people and wounded 35 others while they were attending prayers at a mosque in a northwestern Pakistani tribal area, officials say.

Friday's bombing occurred in the village of Anbar Tehsil in the Mohmand tribal district bordering Afghanistan where the Pakistan army has been battling the Pakistan Taliban.

"The Friday prayer was in progress at the mosque when a suicide bomber blew himself up killing at least 16 worshippers and wounding 35 others," a senior tribal administration official told AFP news agency.

MoD 'extremely sorry' over Iraqi boy drowned in canal in Basra

The Ministry of Defence has apologised for the death of an Iraqi boy who drowned after being "forced" into a canal in Basra by four British soldiers.

Ahmad Jabbar Kareem, 15, died in the Shatt Al Basra canal in May 2003 after being stopped by British troops who suspected him of looting near the Basra General Hospital.

He and three other suspected looters were forced into the water by the soldiers for a "soaking" - but the boy got into difficulty and drowned.

The soldiers were tried in a British court for manslaughter and were acquitted in 2006.

The apology comes after a report by former High Court judge Sir George Newman, head of the Iraq Fatality Investigations (IFI) set up in 2013, found the teenager was "aggressively manhandled and assaulted" after his arrest before being taken to the waterway in an armoured vehicle.

It said the soldiers' failure to help was the "plain and certain" cause of the boy's death.

"His death ensued because he was forced by the soldiers to enter the canal, where, in the presence of the soldiers, he was seen to be in difficulty, and to go under the water," he said.

"Notwithstanding the unlawful treatment involved in getting him into the water, his death could have been avoided because he could and should have been rescued after it became clear that he was floundering."

Image Caption:Ahmad had been taken to the waterway with three other suspected looters

The report said the southern Iraqi city had descended into a "state of chaos" following the toppling of Saddam Hussein in April 2003 and it was left with an ineffectual police force and a court system that could not deal with law breakers.

The report said the soldiers' actions gave rise to "grave concerns" about their ability to cope with their orders and the adequacy of the resources available to them and highlighted serious concerns about the roles imposed on them. 

An MoD spokesman said: "This was a grave incident for which we are extremely sorry. 

"We are committed to investigating allegations of wrongdoing by UK forces and will use Sir George's findings to learn lessons to help ensure nothing like this happens again."

Farage: Archbishop of Canterbury 'should go'

The outgoing UKIP leader has said the Archbishop of Canterbury should go because he is not prepared to "stand up for Christian values".

Speaking to Sky News as he prepared to give his last conference speech as leader of the party, he rounded on Justin Welby, who criticised him for giving legitimacy to racism during the EU referendum campaign.

Mr Farage accused the Archbishop of failing to do his job properly, claiming he had not adequately protected Christian values in the UK.

He said: "It's a great shame that the head of our established church is not actually prepared to stand up and fight for our Christian culture in this country.

"He's somebody else who should go too."

As the party prepared to announce its new leader, Mr Farage also launched a blistering attack on the party's only MP, telling Sky News: "He doesn't support anything we do".

Douglas Carswell, who defected to UKIP in 2014 and was re-elected last year, was accused by Mr Farage of not contributing to the national party.

He said: "I don't know why he joined. Genuinely, I don't know why he joined.

"He doesn't seem to support anything we stand for - t's very odd."

The pair have an uneasy relationship and have disagreed strongly on wide-ranging policy issues, most notably the approach to the EU referendum when they supported different Brexit groups.

He praised Boris Johnson for "taking the brave decision" in backing Brexit.

However, Mr Farage branded former chancellor George Osborne as "absolutely disgusting" for "trying to basically terrify people" during the referendum campaign.

hope we never see his face again in public life," he added.

Mr Farage admitted that the pressures on his family and his health played a part in his decision to step down as leader.

"If you do a job with this level of strain, it affects every aspect of your life and everybody around you in a detrimental way."

But, despite resigning twice before as UKIP leader, he insisted that this time it was final.

He said: "I'm not giving up politics entirely - I'm just giving up leadership of a political party."

UKIP will elect a new leader today at their party's conference in Bournemouth.

The contenders are former Hartlepool parliamentary candidate Philip Broughton, Cambridgeshire town and district councillor Lisa Duffy, MEP for the West Midlands and Dudley councillor Bill Etheridge, former businesswomen and healthcare professional Diane James and deputy chair of UKIP's London Lambeth branch Elizabeth Jones.

Year-Long Wait For Brits Over Portugal Burglar Death

A year on, a British man and his son are still waiting to hear if they will face a manslaughter charge after a burglar died as they grappled with him in their Portuguese home.

Trevor Taylor, 61, and his son Scott, 31, were questioned by police as suspects and, if charged and convicted of negligent homicide, could face up to five years in jail.

Mr Taylor, a retired businessman, said this week: "I haven't heard anything at all. I've got no news, I'm sorry."

He said he had no idea when he would be told the outcome of the investigation.

A British couple who chased the same burglar from their Vilamoura holiday home as he stole their money a fortnight earlier said they could not understand the delay.

Sue Harbertson, from Whitley Bay, said: "The Taylors didn't set out to harm him intentionally. They were protecting themselves and their property. It's just unfortunate this happened but it wouldn't have happened if he wasn't there breaking the law."

Image Caption:Trevor and Scott Taylor

Her husband John Harbertson, a retired miner, said: "You're not allowed to say it, but this was a tragedy, as much a tragedy for the English family. They've had to go through this for a year now."

At Loule court Pedro Rodrigues de Figueiredo, the deputy prosecutor in charge of the investigation, let me read a redacted version of the 350-page case file, but I had to agree not to divulge any detail. 

It will be his decision either to charge one or both of the Taylors, or tell them there will be no further action. He would not say how long he will take to make up his mind.

The autopsy report and toxicology tests took many months to complete, but were eventually delivered in May. The police investigation was wrapped up in July.

Portuguese criminal lawyer Joao Centeno said: "This could take a long time, justice is slow here. It would be faster only if the Government invested more, particularly in the jobs to carry out autopsies, reports and evaluations that are needed to help investigations.

"There are not enough people providing those legal services and that can hold up investigations for years.

"Only in urgent cases, where suspects are kept in jail, is justice quicker."

He said Portuguese legislation on self defence was similar to British law and the issue of "excessive force" would be the crucial factor.

It is understood the Taylors, who suffered minor injuries, have told the prosecutor they were trying only to restrain the burglar, Paulo Brito, a local man with previous convictions.

When police arrived at the villa they found Brito, 35, lying on his back in the kitchen with his hands bound and a foot tied to a table leg.

Trevor Taylor was on top of him and his son Scott had him in a neck lock. He appeared lifeless and died as paramedics tried to revive him. The initial cause of death was asphyxia.

Brito's sister Ana said her brother had had a "troubled past", but on the night of the burglary was not armed and did not deserve to die.

She has seen the autopsy report and says it shows her brother died "very violently".

The Taylors, who are Portuguese residents, are under few restrictions but must tell prosecutors if they plan to leave their home for more than five nights.