This evening I attended an interfaith event at the St Clement’s family centre on Cross Street.  Canon Bruce Gillingham of St. Clements’ Church opened the event and the topic of discussion was “The founders of our religions”. We heard some excellent talks both from Dr Richard McCallum of the Centre for Muslim Christian Studies in Oxford and from Mr Abdul Ghani Jahangir Khan.  I was delighted to accept a cheque for the Lord Mayor of Oxford’s charitable trust, which came frrom the good works of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community nationally.  The event was chaired by Ch Waseem Ahamad, National President of the Elders of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Association.

I am impressed that the Ahmadiyya Muslim community UK has been doing great work for 100 years and that the Oxford chapter has been active for about 30 of those. I think it’s great that the community puts such emphasis on education, values, peace, harmony and service to humanity and it is an example to all people in our City, be they of other faiths or none. I was particularly pleased to hear that the centenary activities include making regular contributions to feeding Oxford’s many homeless people and that so many members are donating generously to charitable activities in Oxford and beyond. It is a sign of a healthy, compassionate and committed community that it is engaged in humanitarian efforts in other parts of the world too, under the auspices of its own national community, and I want to thanked all involved for their current fundraising efforts for the victims of the Syrian humanitarian crisis.

Drug and substance abuse, antisocial behaviour, gang culture, violence and promiscuity are all plagues of our time on the younger people of our society and I am grateful for the work the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community does in encouraging our youth to take alternative, more healthy and wholesome pathways.

I think we really benefit from a multi-faith approach to such issues in jointly showing our youth that there are better ways to live a fulfilled life. In any faith, evangelism is important so I was interested to see that the Oxford chapter of the Admadiyya Muslim Community has visited nearly 30,000 homes in Oxford to spread the peaceful message of Islam with leaflets – I joked that maybe I should invite some of them out for election campaigns! Spreading peaceful messages is so important in these times of terrorist threat and it does a huge amount to help the public resist the temptation to be suspicious of all Muslims just because a tiny minority have some radical views that they express as hateful terrorist actions. There have been plenty of radical Christians in history too and I hope we can all agree that all religions of peace have no place for radicalism, hatred and terrorism. These peace symposia, held in Oxford since 2011, are very useful in spreading the “love for all, hatred for none” motto.

We ended the evening with some wonderful Asian food, prepared on the premises for us.

I had a really lovely email today following my last-minute attendance at the Oxford-Léon link meeting and AGM from the organiser, sent to me and to the Lord Mayor’s PA Anjana who organises our engagements:

“I would like to thank you both for Thursday evening: Anjana for organising Tony to deputise at our meeting at short notice, as Cllr Sinclair, the mayor was ill and Tony for stepping in. It was clear that Anjana had efficiently forwarded the notes – and that Tony had read them. Your system for dealing with these situations clearly works.

Tony, I appreciate that it must have been difficult with little notice, but your speech was excellent and thank you for staying for the meeting and taking an interest in our work. Thanks especially for your technical help with the Skype link. It was (again) a tad embarrassing that the problems were at this end and that Oxford City Council’s technology was out-done by that of a small NGO in a developing country. Our contacts in Leon were very amused by this.

I’m glad that, with your help, we were able to establish the connection and speak to Jane and Andrew. It is a pity that there were no speakers, as we requested so even had we got Skype working on time, the audience would not have been able to hear them as intended.

All in all it was a good meeting and making £70 on the raffle was an added bonus.”

Receiving such messages is wonderful and really makes it feel worth making the effort to attend everything I am invited to as Deputy Lord Mayor.  I feel honoured and very blessed.

This was another last-minute engagement due to the Lord Mayor being unwell.  I was invited to speak and indeed did so the minute I was through the door!

I am a great advocate of town-twinning activity and in my time so far on the council have made some great friends in Bonn, another City with which Oxford is privileged to be twinned.

The link with León in Nicaragua is different to all Oxford’s others because Nicaragua is a developing country and this Association and Trust raises funds for important projects in that country. It’s a real credit to everyone involved that the link has been alive and doing great work since 1986 – nearly 30 years. I am pleased that two of my councillor colleagues, John Tanner and Mike Rowley were able to visit León as part of the delegation back in February.

Of course fundraising should also be fun and indeed many in Oxford had great fun earlier this year swimming at Hinksey Pool, our wonderful heated outdoor pool just down the road, in the sponsored swim. It raised much needed funds for a pipeline to carry clean drinking water into a Nicaraguan community where the previous supply was contaminated with Arsenic.
I know there are plans to bring two young people from León to Oxford next year and I think that’s a really great thing to do to strengthen then link. I’ll certainly do what I can to get the City Council to support this.

I also thanked the Association for the gigantona (giant puppet woman) that was a gift from León to Oxford. I know it was used in the Cowley Road Carnival this year and provided great entertainment and delight for many people – I hope Oxford can use it much more as time goes on!

We were treated to a Skype link conversation with some volunteers actually in Nicaragua and indeed some rather delicious Nicaraguan Rum.  I also bought some fair trade coffee that had been got as part of a project running also in Léon.  There was also a raffle but I didn’t win anything!

This event was a last-minute stand-in as the Lord Mayor was ill.  It was a great privilege to see this building and its opening as it really is stunning. Speeches were made by the Vice Chancellor of Oxford University and by David Willetts, the UK Minister of State for Universities and Science, as well as the Head of the Department, Sam Howison.  I was treated to a wonderful tour by the department’s head of administration and hugely enjoyed the visit.  The building is quite amazing in that it has all sorts of mathematical quirks built in, including the Penrose paving, based on a non-repeating pattern discovered by famous Mathematician Sir Roger Penrose, and two “crystals” which are based also on mathematical structures.

The building provides more than 300 offices in a range of sizes, identifiable space for graduate taught course students and 4th year undergraduate students working on projects, an extensive suite of teaching and seminar spaces as well as a range of meeting rooms, breakout spaces and a large departmental common room. It provides workspace for a diverse community of more than 500 mathematical researchers and support staff, including faculty, research fellows and postgraduate students. It is a centre for the academic life of approximately 900 undergraduates.

The project incorporates Ground Source Heat Pumps which will supply heat in winter and cool the building in the summer. This is achieved by submerging pipes deep into the ground that can transfer the temperature to the building by use of pumps. The Institute building was designed by Rafael Viñoly Architects.