Thursday, March 28Royal Holloway's offical student publication, est. 1986

Tag: Surrey

Student Safety On Campus
Opinion

Student Safety On Campus

On the 13th of December, at 4:30 am, Surrey Police were called to campus, here at Royal Holloway, to attend to what has now been revealed as a stabbing. The incident occurred outside the SU shop, and whilst the victim is not in a life-threatening condition, nor a student here, it is enough to make some students question the safety of our campus. Is there more that the university could be doing to prevent incidents like this one? Shortly after the incident was reported, the staff at the university issued a statement claiming we are “still one of the safest universities in the UK”. However, currently, the Times Higher Education survey 2018 has placed Royal Holloway as only joint 49th for being ranked as the ‘safest’ university in the UK. Clearly, students do not agree. Having spoken to nu...
Dogs at Risk in Surrey
News

Dogs at Risk in Surrey

Locals to the Englefield Green area have been warned to be extra vigilant of their dogs after several cases of potential dognapping have been reported. Cases started being compiled mid-April when an increasing amount of reports were taken from local residents saying strangers had been paying particular attention to their pets or had been caught attempting to lure them away from their owners. Runnymede Beat (Surrey Police) took to Facebook on Friday 13 to warn followers that at around 20.45 that evening a resident had witnessed a man on her driveway showing a great interest in her Jack Russell which had got out into the front garden. The owner described the man to be Chinese or mixed raced and in his mid-40s. He spoke with a ‘local accent’ and was wearing jeans with a dark grey t-shirt ...
Residents Versus Students?
Opinion

Residents Versus Students?

For those that haven’t yet joined Englefield Greenies, the Facebook Group for all residents of Englefield Green, it is the battlefront on which the war between students and residents is being waged. Daily occurrences of noise complaints regarding student houses, upset about lack of parking due to commuting students, and general animosity are rife. But do the Greenies have a point? What once was a traditional Victorian village has been overrun by a good chunk of our 9000 students and according to our 2013-2020 strategy that number is only set to rise. Is their disdain the result of years of poor treatment and a convenient discourse we have spun dismissing them as an intolerant community? Do all Greenies hate students? We spoke to some to get the real story. Time and time again on Engl...
Offenders Sentenced in Sexual Exploitation Ring
News

Offenders Sentenced in Sexual Exploitation Ring

A sexual exploitation ring has been discovered in North Surrey and West London. Two people were convicted by a jury in Guildford Crown Court in April, finding them to be guilty of the exploitation of teenage girls in the surrounding areas. Between January and February of 2016, 21 year-old Daniel Pusey and 40 year-old Diane Chilcott would attempt to lure young girls to hotels in Staines, Twickenham, Tolworth and Heathrow. The victims were aged between 13 and 15 at the time of the incidents. They would first consume large amounts of alcohol and smoke cigarettes at Chilcotts House in Chertsey before being driven by the two perpetrators to various hotels. Upon arriving at these hotels, Pusey would subject them to sexual abuse. During the trial, Pusey was found guilty of seven counts o...
Armstrong Gun Burgled
News

Armstrong Gun Burgled

An Englefield Green pub favoured by students for its quizzes and karaoke nights has been burgled. The Armstrong Gun, situated on Victoria Street, was broken into overnight on Wednesday 1st March. The theft happened as the manager slept upstairs. Money was stolen from the fruit machines and the till, and an iPad that was kept behind the bar also went missing. Speaking to local paper Get Surrey, the pub’s manager, Daniel Freeman, said: "It happened overnight without us realising, I only knew there was something wrong when I went downstairs and saw the devastation. I was very shaken up but it is just lucky that we weren't downstairs at the time of the break-in. We will need to replace the locks and the rear door of the pub as that was what was used to break-in." The break-in comes ju...
Royal Holloway Lecturer Sparks Backlash from ‘Get Surrey’
News

Royal Holloway Lecturer Sparks Backlash from ‘Get Surrey’

A Royal Holloway professor has provoked a response from a local paper after he referred to Egham as “a very boring place to live”. Get Surrey, who cover local news and events pertaining to the county, published a defensive article entitled “8 Reasons Egham is actually Pretty Great”. The article is justified as a response to a councillor's derogatory comments on the small Surrey town in which the university is officially based. The accused councillor, of the Labour party, happens to be Jason Brock, who also teaches modern history and the history of political thought at Royal Holloway. He was discussing the move of 250 Procter and Gamble employees from Egham to Whitley, a nearby town just south of Reading. Brock said of Egham: "I oddly enough work in Egham and have lived in Egham for s...
Runnymede Borough Council to Switch Off Night Street Lights
News

Runnymede Borough Council to Switch Off Night Street Lights

Anna Robinson reports on the recent council plans to turn off street lights in Egham and Englefield Green between midnight and 5am From 1 December 2016, Surrey County Council implemented a new ‘part-night lighting’ policy, which proposed that street lights in many residential areas across the county would be switched off between midnight and 5am every night. Runnymede Council have announced that this county policy will be instated in the Borough of Runnymede from February 2017, affecting the areas of both Egham and Englefield Green. This will stretch from Staines Upon Thames, all the way up to West Byfleet. This is causing concern for students in the area, as it could mean the walk home from work, the library, the train station, or an evening at the SU, will be in the pitch black. As...
Missing: Woman in Egham Now Found Safely
News

Missing: Woman in Egham Now Found Safely

Yesterday afternoon (February 2) a woman in Egham was reported missing by her family, and Surrey Police were put on the case. Carol Davies, a 58-year-old resident from Englefield Green, had last been seen leaving her home in a Black Audi early on Thursday morning wearing an oversized grey sweater, and grey trousers. Officers from Surrey Police were growing increasingly concerned for her welfare, as her family stated it was very "out of character for her to be away from home for this length of time without making contact". The news was spread quickly online, via social media, in the hope of increasing awareness and bringing Carol back safely. Update: in the early hours of this morning (February 3) Carol Davies was found safe and well. No further details have been released regard...
Firefighters battle fire threatening luxury property
News

Firefighters battle fire threatening luxury property

A million-pound home in Egham has been saved by firefighters after a “fast-moving” fire threatened to destroy it on the morning of Thursday, 3rd November. The luxury wooden house, on Green Road, had flames coming out of the roof when emergency responders managed to find and extinguish the fire. They had been called from as far as Epsom and Dorking, after crews from Staines and Chertsey realised more personnel were needed at the scene. In total, 60 firefighters were present to deal with the blaze. Watch Commander Jason Patrick, from Egham fire station, explained the urgency: “The call came in at 11.25pm. It was a house fire in Green Lane, Egham. It had gone through the roof. We arranged breathing apparatus so we could get a jet in and fight it from the first floor. “We had fo...
Football fraudsters ordered to payback £1m
News

Football fraudsters ordered to payback £1m

Two convicted criminals have been ordered to pay back nearly £1m thanks to successful orders made under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002. The pair who illegally sold access to Premier League football coverage are required to make a payback of £992,947.60 following a number of successful confiscations and forfeiture orders following a hearing at Guildford Crown Court on Friday (September 30). They have to pay back the money by January 3 2017, or at risk of serving a further six years behind bars. Hopkins, 47, of Park Road, Stoke Poges, Slough, Berkshire and Passlow, 58, of Broomfield Drive, Ascot, Berkshire were both pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud between January 2008 and September 2012, in a prosecution by the Football Association Premier League (FAPL). Through the work of ...