Evening Standard comment: Our campaign to help children in war zones; White House whispers; Burberry burns no more

Evening Standard Comment6 September 2018

Imagine what it is like to grow up in a war zone. To spend your childhood in danger, without a secure home, without a right to education, and perhaps forced apart from your family.

That is what life is like for one in six children around the world today — those who live in conflict areas such as Yemen, Iraq and Syria. They risk being conscripted into armies or thrown out of the temporary shelter of refugee camps.

But like all young people they also want to know about the world, to learn and build better lives — and of course they have extraordinary stories to tell others.

That’s why today the Evening Standard is proud to launch Learn To Live: a campaign that will shine a light on the lives of young people by building links between schools in London and those in in conflict areas.

Newspapers and websites such as the Standard thrive on encouraging communication and the sharing of knowledge and ideas. That is what will happen as a result of this ambitious new scheme.

Working with partners including the charity War Child, the British Council and the Department for International Development, we hope to encourage empathy and understanding.

Four London schools have already signed up to partner with schools in Iraq, Jordan and the Central African Republic.

Children will be able to communicate through Skype and by writing and take part in a shared art project.

We will follow their stories throughout the coming weeks and watch as their friendships grow and their understanding of each others’ lives expands.

“London schoolchildren will get an insight into what it is like to live in areas where life is constantly at risk,” says Andria Zafirakou, the London teacher named this year as the world’s best in a global competition.

“They will learn what education means to children who are fighting for their future prospects at the same time as protecting their physical safety”.

We hope many more schools in London and across the country will come forward to take part.

There is more information online at warchild.org.uk/learntolive — and we look forward to telling the stories of the children involved in this inspirational project.

The Evening Standard launches its Learn to Live campaign with War Child

White House whispers

Another day, another sensational revelation describing life inside Donald Trump’s White House.

This week has already brought jaw-dropping extracts from a new book by Bob Woodward, the Washington Post reporter who helped bring down President Nixon.

Now the New York Times has published an anonymous piece by someone they call only “a senior official in the Trump administration” who describes how many in his team have formed an organised resistance to block an “impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective” President.

He is, the author writes, “anti-trade and anti-democratic”. He was “reluctant to expel so many of Mr Putin’s spies as punishment for the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain”.

“We have sunk low with him”, the piece concludes.

A guessing game has begun to name the author. But what matters more is what it will do to President Trump’s hold on his job.

Everyone who already loathes him will have their certainties strengthened. The many voters who like him (and his approval ratings are not much lower than Bill Clinton and Barack Obama’s at the same point in their first terms) may dismiss it as more of the same.

Either way, it is an extraordinary and frightening insight into a fraught presidency.

Burberry burns no more

British fashion brand Burberry takes a welcome step towards common sense today, announcing that it will no longer burn clothes that it can’t sell .

Just because fashion is about ostentation doesn’t mean it has to cause waste, as campaigners are proving.

The firm also says it won’t use real fur in its latest collection: a sign, perhaps, of a changing industry ahead of London Fashion Week.