Israel The Arab parties within Israel are now the kingmakers in the country's parliament. They have power, but the tale of the Israeli Palestinians has been a long and bitter battle to deny them representation. For the first 18 years of modern Israel's existence, the Palestinians remaining in the new state's borders were subject to military rule. Villages were razed. Palestinians were penned in camps behind barbed wire. There were sporadic massacres. Gradually, however, the Palestinians clawed back their rights and they learned to use those rights to protect and advance their cause. Rather than fight the system they decided ...
Madra Salach - Dirty Dog in English - are a contemporary Irish folk band and Ribbon Factory, released as a single last month, will be on their debut album when it comes out in January. The Guardian says they bring a feral, snarling energy to the country's latest folk revival. Their sound builds ably on some of the architects of that resurgence - the eerie shruti box droning and carefully layered instrumentation of Lankum, the shimmering wails of Lisa O'Neill. Add a hint of Liam Gallagher to the mix - frontman Paul Banks's voice has an astonishing force and clarity, ...
The latest edition of my email newsletter about work in Parliament, A Lord's Eye View, is out and you can also read it in full below. But if you'd like to get future editions emailed direct to you as soon as they are published, sign up now: Welcome to my latest update on work in the House of Lords, which returns to the question of House of Lords reform. The 1911 Parliament Act was meant to be an interim solution pending the introduction of democracy, but we are still waiting for that to happen. Will Labour make the Lords democratic? ...
The Independent reports that Reform has lost more councillors in five months than any other party. The paper says that September and October, in particular, saw a flurry of Reform councillor resignations, suspensions and defections - some in the wake of the ITV Exposure documentary, which revealed party members making racist and sexually explicit comments: According to Open Council Data UK, Reform has lost 41 councillors since 1 June, down 1.8 per cent from 2,342 to 2,301. That is more than any other major party. Labour lost 35, but from a starting point of 4,616 councillors in June, down 0.8 ...
I was the first to arrive at the Gateshead Lib Dem action day this morning in Chowdene ward. That meant I had the first choice on which patch I was to deliver. Somehow I ended up with the biggest patch which also contained a huge number of houses with long flights of steps just to get to front doors. The good news is that I managed to get the whole patch delivered.
There was a by-election in Penn Hill in Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole on Thursday. The result was:Lib Dem - 1,278, 43.6% (+0.9)Con - 764, 26.1% (+1.0)Reform - 521, 17.8% (new)Labour - 135, 4.6% (-6.7)Restore - 106, 3.6% (new)Green - 65, 2.2% (-6.5)Ind1 - 55, 1.9% (new)Ind2 - 7, 0.2% (new)So what do the by-election tea leaves have to say?The Conservatives seemed rather excited about this
When it comes to famous clashes of philosophers, Cambridge has Wittgenstein's poker and Oxford has the night that Elizabeth Anscombe bested C.S. Lewis in debate. Reviewing A.N. Wilson's biography for the London Review of Books back in 1990, C.H. Sisson took seriously the idea that this rout had much to do with Lewis's turn to writing for children:Lewis was unpopular 'in the English Faculty in Oxford, and indeed in the University at large'. 'He disliked his colleagues at Magdalen.' 'Even colleagues who were Christians ... noticed that his variety of Christianity did not extend to meekness, or even necessarily to ...
"More than 74,000 people have been killed in Gaza according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, and up to ten thousand are missing under the rubble. More than a hundred thousand Palestinians have managed to leave. The survivors are corralled into a concentration area along the coast, living in dense tent encampments among ruined buildings, mountains of rubbish and rivers of sewage, under the constant hum of drones."Eyal Weizman reviews Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor's film Naza. Gaby Hinsliff says the Russell Brand verdict is a landmark in the judicial system's understanding of consent: "For too long, cases involving young ...
The confetti has settled, the champagne is flat and the celebratory balloons have floated to the ground. The midterm elections are over. MAGA and Trump have been well and truly trounced. Now is the time to worry about what Donald J. Trump will do in the next two months while he still has a sycophantic Republican Congress for the next two months—especially in Iran. The new Democrat-controlled Congress does not start business until January 3rd. One of its first orders of business will be to start circumscribing the president's war-making capabilities. The Constitution gives Trump considerable leeway in foreign and ...
Horton is a very pretty little village in South Gower, set on a steep hill that stretches down to the beautiful beach. It shares the bay with Port Eynon which is located at the Western end. Like many Gower villages its roots are mainly agricultural, but Horton also has a long connection with the lifeboat and Methodism. In the centre of the bay are two orange buoys that mark the remains of the Prince Ivanhoe. The Prince Ivanhoe was used a pleasure craft, but on the 3rd August 1981 it hit something just off the edge of Port Eynon Point. ...