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The Clarion, 23 June 2026

The Clarion, 23 June 2026
FloFest/GloFest rocked Florence Park. (Photo by Roger Close.)

Red hot news from (ahem) cool writers. Including this week: the climate emergency, cows that are far away, Oxford's first Hindu temple, a new strategy for SEND, Ozymandias, an owl, two unicorns, two sheriffs, and lots of advice on how to stay safe in the heat (we can do public service journalism too). Getting this under the word limit so your email client doesn't cut it off was a minor miracle. Enjoy.

This week’s short reads

FloFest/GloFest rocked Florence Park once again, and our photographer Roger Close was there to capture the atmosphere. Can you spot yourself in the pictures?

FloFest & GloFest rock Florence Park once again
The much beloved local festival, FloFest & GloFest, rocked Florence Park this weekend. Running since 2013, the annual festival brings together live music, community groups, and local residents for a day—and night—long event. Our photographer Roger Close was there to capture the atmosphere. FloFest is the daytime event, volunteer-run
Oxford ClarionOxford Clarion

How are you all holding up in the heat? We took a look at the 'Cool Spaces' movement, and share some ideas on how to beat the heat locally.

Cool spaces for hot days
We’re in to our second heatwave this year, and it’s only June. With predicted summer heat becoming more frequent and severe, residents and tourists may find that there’s a need for accessible, reliable cool spaces. Prolonged exposure to high temperatures can be risky, particularly for older people, young
Oxford ClarionOxford Clarion

This week’s top stories

800 new homes are being lined up for the former North Oxford Golf Club, opposite Oxford Parkway. The ‘Land West of Oxford Road’ project, described as “a sustainable urban extension to the city”, is being brought forward by Oxford University’s development arm plus Exeter and Merton colleges.

The plans promise to “optimise density given an exceptionally sustainable location next to Oxford Parkway”, with buildings of up to four or five storeys. Much of the surrounding area is already earmarked for development, such as OUFC’s new stadium, a supercomputer campus, and housing at Water Eaton.

The cycle track along the A4165 Oxford Road would be upgraded, while streets within the development would “prioritise walking and cycling with slow traffic speeds creating safe, green and sociable spaces”. The existing footbridge over the railway could be upgraded to a cycleway at a later date.

Oxford University Developments are “undertaking an assessment of golf needs in the area… initial findings are that, given the number of remaining golf courses, there is no need for a replacement”. Frieze Farm was initially suggested for a new course, but is now proposed as a supercomputer campus.

Golfers, however, say they have been betrayed by Frieze Farm landowner Exeter College. Campaign group GreenWay commissioned a report which they say proves “a clear need for a local replacement”, and indeed for a second course to be added in the future. David Young said: “Our club was effectively forced off its leased land by university landlords. Massive housing development in the area will increase the need for golf – where will local people be able to enjoy outdoor open space?”

Consultation drop-in sessions took place at the weekend, and OUD has posted details on its website. An Environmental Impact Assessment screening application, the first step in the planning process, is now with Cherwell District Council.

The Diocese of Oxford has issued an “unreserved apology” to families harmed through forced adoption in Church of England homes, including two in Oxford: St Mary’s House/Lawn Upton House in Littlemore, and Skene House in Clark’s Row. Tens of thousands of mothers were connected to such homes nationally.

The Diocese says research is limited to date, and it is investigating its role. Its three bishops wrote: “All too often, the women who stayed in these homes were made to feel shame. The shame is not theirs, but that of the church, the state and society which took away their dignity and choice.”

The Church has issued a national apology and published research into the period from 1949 to 1976, during which around 185,000 children born to unmarried mothers were put up for adoption.

Inspecting the cattle (photo by Roger Close).

There’s a new Sheriff in town. Cllr Linda Smith (Lab, Blackbird Leys), officially made the annual inspection of Port Meadow and its livestock on Friday.

As Sheriff, Councillor Smith has responsibility for the conservation of Port Meadow, one of Oxford’s most historic and significant natural assets. The Meadow, which is mentioned in the Domesday Book and is owned by Oxford City Council, has been used for grazing livestock for centuries. Only the Freemen of Oxford and Wolvercote Commoners hold the historic right to graze livestock on the meadow: the Freemen's collective right to graze their animals was first recorded in the Domesday Book in 1086.

Representatives of both groups joined the Sheriff for the inspection. Unfortunately on this occasion the cows weren’t small, just far away, so the inspection remained ceremonial. It was followed by the traditional visit to the Plough in Wolvercote for an Aunt Sally match between the Sheriff’s party and the Freemen of Oxford team. (We look forward to seeing Cllr Smith at the Aunt Sally World Championships at the Charlbury Beer Festival this weekend.)

Around the city

  • Oxford's first Hindu mandir (temple) officially opened this weekend at Court Place Farm in Marston, in a ceremony attended by over 300 people including Oxfordshire's High Sheriff Jawaid Malik and Lord-Lieutenant Marjorie Glasgow (pictured above, middle and right alongside secretary Dharmaraj Gupta). Mandir secretary and trustee Mark Bhagwandin said: “The great thing about this wonderful county is that it does not tell those who arrive here to leave their culture at the door. Instead, it says come, bring it in and place it on the table alongside all the other cultures… and it is this which gives Oxfordshire this beautiful and rich social tapestry which we all enjoy today.” (Have a skim through this video footage, it is glorious.)
  • Oxford United have sacked their manager Matt Bloomfield. He was appointed in January in an attempt to save OUFC’s place in the Championship, a mission which ultimately ended in failure in April.
  • Trading Standards is asking for the licence of Baweja Superstore, on Abingdon Road, to be revoked. An inspection in October revealed unsafe fireworks displays, 55 counterfeit packs of Marlboro cigarettes and 34 packs of smuggled Benson & Hedges cigarettes from Nigeria. The owner of the shop, who also runs stores in Windsor, Hungerford and Hemel Hempstead, claimed that the shop worker on duty at the time “was giving the counterfeit cigarettes for free to girls” and had already been dismissed. However, “he admitted there was no evidence to support this”. During questioning, the owner “was asked whether he had been through an interview under caution process before, [and] said no… when challenged about his 2024 prosecution, he answered he had in fact attended an interview, but that was in relation to Baweja & Brothers Ltd, not Baweja Superstore Ltd”. Trading Standards (which is part of Oxfordshire County Council) has asked Oxford City Council to revoke the premises licence “given the supporting precedent and recent history of non-compliance”.
  • A fix may finally be on the way for EE mobile reception in Oxford city centre. The operator says that it expects to start erecting its new mast “by the end of June” and will then confirm a projected on-air date. Reception has been poor, verging on non-existent, since EE’s previous mast was removed as part of the Clarendon Centre redevelopment, as we reported more than two years ago.
  • The Goldfish Bowl on Magdalen Road, Oxford’s aquatics shop, has announced its closure. Proprietor Barry Allday said “I am well over my retirement age and really need to hang up my net,” adding that Oxford transport changes and increased running costs were also factors. The Oxford Sausage interviewed Barry in 2024. There are aquatics stores in Yarnton and Wheatley.

Feeling hot, hot, hot

The Met Office has issued a rare weather Red Warning for Oxfordshire. Here's what you need to know.

  • GWR have warned against non-essential travel on Wednesday and Thursday. Speed restrictions will be in force across the rail network, with rails at risk of expanding and buckling as temperatures rise to 38°C. Timetables between Paddington to Reading are being redrawn to minimise the number of times that trains use points to move between tracks. The 1990s Turbo trains used for stopping services between Didcot, Oxford and Banbury are expected to be particularly unreliable.
  • People in Oxfordshire are urged to take care in the sun, with the county due to be hotter than Barcelona. Oxford University Hospitals recommend drinking more water than usual, staying out of direct sun, and avoiding extreme exercise or exertion between 11am and 3pm. COO Felicity Taylor-Drewe said: “Please take care and keep an eye out for elderly or more vulnerable relatives and friends. People are often more comfortable at home than in hospital, and we want to avoid preventable trips to hospital wherever we can.” South Central Ambulance Service have urged the public to keep 999 free for life-threatening emergencies, and not to keep calling back asking when an ambulance might arrive.
  • Oxfordshire fire crews are asking people to reduce wildfire risk in the heatwave. Last year they were called out to four major wildfires (>10,000m²). They advise:
    • Don’t discard lit cigarettes or throw them from your car.
    • Take rubbish home: glass bottles reflect the sun's rays and start a fire on dry grass.
    • Never leave a lit barbecue unattended.
    • Gardeners should take note when burning unwanted plant waste: any fire should be at least 18m away from houses, trees, hedges, fences and sheds. Don't build your bonfire more than 3m in height, keep buckets of water or a working hosepipe nearby, and don't leave it unattended.

Around the county

  • Consultation has opened on a new strategy for Special Educational Needs & Disabilities in Oxfordshire. The plan aims to “shift from reactive responses to a more preventative system, while responding to rising demand and increasing complexity of need”. Oxfordshire’s SEND service was failed by Ofsted after a 2023 inspection. The new strategy envisages that children will be excluded less often from school; that needs will be identified earlier, resulting in fewer formal complaints; and that families will find the system “easier to navigate”.
  • The Butchers Arms in Balscote near Banbury, owned by Hook Norton Brewery, has been voted CAMRA Oxfordshire Pub of the Year for a second time. Real ales at the Butchers are served direct from casks behind the bar. It has been a Hook Norton pub since 1878: there was once a slaughterhouse on site, hence the name.
         Four pubs made it through to CAMRA’s Pub of the Year competition for Oxfordshire. Oxford CAMRA’s choice was micro-pub the Crafty Pint in Witney. The King’s Arms in Wantage was chosen as the Vale of White Horse branch winner, and South Oxfordshire’s champion pub is the Cross Keys in Wallingford. The Butchers Arms now goes forward into a regional competition with the top pubs in Gloucestershire, Herefordshire and Worcestershire. The winner of that round has a chance of being named top pub in the UK.
  • The Liberal Democrats have regained their majority on Oxfordshire County Council, with former cabinet member Ben Higgins rejoining the party. (We stand by our May assessment that this makes not a lot of difference to the day-to-day functioning of the council.)
  • Excavations are complete at the illegal Kidlington waste dump. Over 17,000 tonnes (700 lorry-loads) of waste have been taken from the site since April, with the remainder stockpiled and awaiting collection. To date, four people have been arrested in conjunction with the tipping. Work to return the site to its previous condition will get underway next month, including boundary and drainage inspections by National Highways (which runs the adjacent A34), and removing fencing, sandbags, and the site compound. The aggregate base will be reused elsewhere. Meanwhile, an Oxford University waste management researcher has suggested that satellite-based methane monitoring and drone images could be combined with AI to spot patterns and “detect unusual waste accumulation” quickly.
  • In local government cheese news, Oxfordshire’s two Labour MPs have decried the collapse of talks to form a (deep breath) Thames Valley Foundation Strategic Authority, calling it a “significant missed opportunity”. Meanwhile, council scuttlebutt is that the upcoming change of Prime Minister could result in a delay to the decision on unitary councils, previously expected for July. (Our Secret Cheesemonger wrote last week on why the decision might not be a foregone conclusion.)

Oxfordshire politics

Following the resignation of Keir Starmer, Cambridge University could finally have a chance to overtake Christ Church in the ‘most Prime Ministers’ table. Cambridge, where Andy Burnham studied (at Fitzwilliam), and ChCh are currently tied on 14 each. The University of Oxford has 31 in total.

The last Cambridge-educated Prime Minister was Stanley Baldwin, who left office in 1937 (full list). Keir Starmer graduated from Leeds in 1985, then received a postgraduate Bachelor of Civil Law degree from St Edmund Hall in 1986. (Our Bluesky commenters wondered whether a bit more diversity might not be a bad thing.)

Enquiring minds wonder what the implications are for our Oxfordshire MPs. Anneliese Dodds travelled north to campaign for Burnham twice. Could a Cabinet return be on the cards? Starmerite Sean Woodcock posted a statement saying the PM should have been given more time to turn things around. He recently started a role as a Parliamentary Private Secretary in the Cabinet Office – what might an impending reshuffle mean for him? The county's LibDem MPs will be tantalised by Burnham’s talk of proportional representation, while they (and the Conservative Police & Crime Commissioner whose role was abolished) will no doubt be alert to signs of a potential general election.

Our national representatives have been busy this week but so has the news – so we have space for the very top activities only. Here we go…

#MoreInCommon
  • Banbury MP Sean Woodcock, marking the anniversary of the murder of Jo Cox MP, hosted a Great Get Together event. He said it was “a powerful reminder of the importance of community spirit, bringing people together for meaningful conversation”.
Whooooo are you voting for?
Dodds at the opening of Oxford's Hindu temple
Moran at Oxford Pride.
Van Mierlo at the National Emergency Briefing.
  • Henley & Thame MP Freddie van Mierlo attended a National Emergency Briefing screening in Watlington, saying: “When politicians take action on climate there is often huge pushback from vested interests and deniers. Tories have fought measures in Oxfordshire to reduce emissions and increase active travel. So we also need the public to back politicians when they take action.” We’ve heard surprising little from our MPs on the National Emergency Briefing, so this comment stands way up on the biggest emergency podium we can construct.
  • Thames Valley Police & Crime Commissioner Matthew Barber has published his latest Annual Report highlighting progress made against his Police and Crime Plan. Highlights include a 6.2% reduction in neighbourhood crime, 12% reduction in knife crime, 34% reduction in rural crime, and over 350 active Community Speedwatch schemes, which have observed and recorded over 146,000 speeding vehicles since 2020.
Is there no end to this cat's talents? Photo by Josie Stern via Dinah Rose. (If you're new here, this is Ozymandias, Magdalen's furry fellow. We love him.)

University and research

  • Filthy rich? A new study by researchers at the University of Oxford says that the world's highest-consuming 10% cause up to $5.7 trillion in environmental damage a year. Biodiversity loss is the single largest contributor to the global damage bill, followed by climate change; the scale of the damage bill illustrates the potential revenue if polluter-pays principles were applied to high-consuming groups. The researchers stress that pricing is one tool among several, and does not justify or compensate for the damage itself. Paul Behrens at the Oxford Martin School said: “These damages are real costs being borne somewhere – by ecosystems, by communities exposed to drought and pollution, and by people least able to insulate themselves from a destabilising environment.”
  • The Shadow of the Sun, a new choral piece by composer Nico Muhly, received its world premiere on Saturday at Christ Church Cathedral. The seven-movement work was commissioned to mark the 500th anniversary of the Cathedral Choir. It took its inspiration from the stained glass windows at Oxford’s cathedral, with most of the text supplied by an anonymous 17th century poem in praise of the windows (from page 157). Wordless repetition from the choir underlaid remarkable baritone solos and, at one point, two interweaving treble voices, interspersed by hymn-like verses quoting Charles Wesley and George Herbert. The piece was drawn to a close by a quietly sung quote from Christ Church’s own Lewis Carroll – “Let’s pretend the glass has got all soft like gauze, so that we can get through.”
  • Banning children from social media will disempower teenagers, according to a governance expert at the Oxford Internet Institute. Dr Victoria Nash warns that children will be denied positive social interactions online and cut off from online news and learning.
  • Oxford femtech entrepreneurs came first and second in the regional NatWest Accelerator Pitch final, hosted in Oxford on 18 June. They were selected from five finalists and 600 entrants by a panel of expert judges. The winner, Oxford local and former midwife, Nina van Schaick, founded MedTech company Peripear which developed a patented device to reduce perineal tearing during childbirth. She won £70,000. In second place, Oxford alumna Lucy Hope won £20,000 as founder of Daughters of Mars for her pioneering work developing a bioactive tampon, designed to prevent bacterial vaginosis.
  • Repairs to risky concrete structures at the Grade I listed modernist buildings of St Catherine's College will take a little longer. Planning permission for a temporary marquee, originally granted in 2023, has been extended for another year while RAAC remediation continues.
  • Quantum news: Oxford researchers have contributed to advances in quantum sensors that will help the hunt for dark matter, dark energy and gravitational waves with a differential atom interferometer that makes two simultaneous measurements instead of one. By measuring two clouds of atoms with a single ultra-stable laser and comparing results, a clear signal could be found – whereas measuring a single cloud, the signal was lost in noise. Simulated signals for dark matter or gravitational waves could also be detected. DPhil student Jesse Schelfhout said: “It is marvellous to see the injected signals faithfully recovered despite the high levels of simulated laser phase noise. I find the physics underlying the experiment fascinating – that an atom in two places at once can be such a nifty sensor.” The paper is open access at Nature.

Trains and buses

  • Banbury and Bicester North will get five extra daily trains to and from London Marylebone in December. Chiltern’s newly acquired ‘Explorer’ trains are a larger fleet than the trains they replaced, enabling the service to go half-hourly throughout the day. Early birds will also benefit from a new 0540 departure from Banbury to Oxford, and there’s a new morning departure to Stratford-upon-Avon, returning early afternoon.
  • You can buy a train ticket to Chipping Norton once again. Pulhams’ 801 bus through the Cotswolds has been adopted as part of the rail ticketing system, meaning through tickets to ‘Chipping Norton Bus’ are available.
  • An Oxfordshire bus plan, OxBus 2040, will follow the County Council’s recently published rail plan. The document could recommend “new rapid transit corridors”, more evening services, simpler fares, county-wide electric buses, and investment by major employers.

Charity begins at home

  • A 90-year-old Magdalen alumnus is water-biking 100 miles on the Thames, from Oxford to London, in an attempt to raise £100,000 to help build Europe's first rainforest research station. Our intrepid reporter ran alongside him on Sunday.
         Robin Hanbury-Tenison OBE is an explorer, conservationist and author and has spent a lifetime exploring rainforests. In an attempt to bring back British rainforests, he will pedal a marathon a day for four days (plus at least 31 locks). He says: “Britain has rainforests. Or rather, it did. Ancient, moss-draped, extraordinarily biodiverse temperate rainforests that once clung to our Atlantic coastlines. One of the most remarkable rainforests in the world was right here, on our own doorstep. Now it's almost gone.”
         The money raised will go to the Thousand Year Trust, who work to protect Britain's temperate rainforest and help fund Europe's first temperate rainforest research station as a permanent home for the science and conservation of Britain's rainforest. Film star Russell Crowe is match funding £25,000 in donations, meaning that every donation made from now on will be doubled, pound for pound. The challenge finished yesterday, International Rainforest Day.

Notes from Clarion HQ

It’s the season of disconnect between headline writers and picture editors, as every heat-related story about travel warnings, water safety and school closures is coupled with a photo of happy beachgoers soaking up the sun. Of the five former broadsheets, only one (the Guardian) has climate change on its homepage right now. Do we just drop the ‘this is fine’ dog meme in here?

At the weekend Team Clarion were variously around Oxfordshire, mainly on bikes, escaping the heat where we bumped into friends also trying to escape oven-like homes. Many of our oases are looked after by unsung council officers and fought for by councillors, week in, week out: parks, splash parks, street trees, cycle paths, licensing the places that sell us cold drinks and ice cream. Our favourite sight was a tiny kid at Hinksey Park, in full sun suit, hat and bike helmet, drenched, hooning round the balance bike track next to the splash park spraying water behind him and squealing with joy. To all those who make this happen, we salute you.