London Borough of Tower Hamlets

As Alex said, I now work in Guernsey and have done that, working in education improvement for the last seven years.

Previous to that, I was a primary school teacher and then head teacher in Tower Hamlets in East London, in two schools generally.

I also worked as a school improvement partner a bit as well.

Why writing is a really interesting question.

There are places that feel a bit like that in Britain.

There's Bradford, there's Tower Hamlets in London, there's cities in the Midlands.

We had the Aston Villa scandal.

I don't know how many people here were aware of that, how much it made the news over here.

And I walked around.

I spent at least two days walking.

I walked around up and down the Edgeware Road through Tower Hamlets.

I even went into SOAS.

Nothing else, and even then that's a challenge.

And then I had a look at w- what does it cost to rent somewhere in sort of Hackney and Tower Hamlets, who have the highest areas of child poverty, almost one in two, so almost 50% of kids living in those boroughs, um, are living in child poverty.

A minimum rental, I'm not talking about council house, starts at 2,100 pounds a month.

Now, if you are a private renter, you need to be earning at least 60,000 pounds in order for that, for you to be considered to rent a property.

Yeah

... multiculturalism that you can just disappear into Tower Hamlets, into Holborn and St. Pancras, into Birmingham, into Bradford, and there is no need to integrate whatsoever.

In fact, you are actively discouraged from integrating.

And even if you weren't, the question of demographic security re- re- rears its head at every single turn, because that is ultimately what we are questioning here.

Ilford is probably nearly there.

Tower Hamlet maybe have that as well.

And these are blessed places that that happens.

And may inshaAllah Haringey become like that as well.

We've been warning about it for some time and I think our warning is justified.

Then just a small item, let's go back to London where Tower Hamlets Council is holding an Islamophobia conference.

Nothing new.

By the way, this month is anti-Islamophobia month.

But hey, why let that confuse you? You're confused enough.

But this conference is to be held at 11 a.m. on the 11th of November.

And if you know that, that is exactly the time that the remembrance... bells sound and we go silent i mean i used to do that all the time we fall silent on the 11th of the 11th to commemorate the end of the first world war and remember deaths in the first second world war and sins but for tower hamlets islamophobia is way way way more important And tied in with that is some more news from Sweden.

I'm not going to apologize for having news from Sweden all the time, but some of you have been in touch with me.