Robbie (Jon Whiteley), an orphaned 6-year-old boy in care, escapes into the London streets and takes shelter in a derelict bomb site, where he stumbles across Chris Lloyd (Dirk Bogarde) and the body of a man Lloyd has just killed. Aware that Robbie is the only witness to his crime, Lloyd realises that he will have to get out of London and that he has no option but to take the boy with him. Yes, it's another children-and-bombsites film for my collection. Hunted was released in 1952. It's one of Dirk Bogarde's best early films, while Jon Whiteley gives a ...
Brendan May tweeted this video today, adding: Some of us remember how Opposition leaders trying to become Prime Minister used to actually lead. This despite strong euro scepticism in his own party. Watch & weep. This was 1996. A year later, a landslide and 3 terms. Leadership, not pandering to fear.
A good rule of thumb is that the more involved you are in politics, the more you over-estimate how much everyone else knows about politics.
The idea that justice should not be administered promptly may go back as far as Magna Carta (1215), clause 40 of which promises "To no one will we delay justice." A more modern version was expounded by that great Liberal William Gladstone, who in the House of Commons in 1868 coined the phrase "Justice delayed is justice denied." So why is it that in the UK, for years seen as a beacon of democracy, fairness and respect for human rights, it has become commonplace for victims to wait years, on some occasions decades, for justice? In the Hillsborough Disaster of ...
"For all that countless artists, musicians and writers from the 50s to the 80s saw government as the enemy and thought they were mavericks railing against the system, the flourishing culture of the period was very much a product of the welfare state and its nurturing social infrastructures." Alex Niven says Britain's harsh welfare system means that now only the rich can afford to make art. Alastair Campbell argues that the Metropolitan Police's decision not to stop responding to mental health call-outs is a very dangerous development. Mark Boylan condemns the Department for Education's culture of secrecy and expediency over ...
Target seat parliamentary candidates don't have much time to read books. But they ought to find time at some point before the election to read How Westminster Works...and Why it Doesn't, by Ian Dunt (Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2023), to warn them how dysfunctional they will find Britain's Parliament and government have become, Some Liberal Democrats will be familiar with Ian Dunt from his previous book, How to be a Liberal, which came out in 2020. His analysis of Westminster, based on extensive research and interviews with current and former parliamentarians, staff, civil servants and outside observers, is devastating. Parliamentary sovereignty, ...
When Rishi Sunak made the decision to scrap house building targets in the face of a rebellion from backbench MPs, he did so in the knowledge that many apparently safe Tory seats in the so-called blue wall, were under threat from a vocal electorate, keen to preserve green spaces and protect their own property values. As the Independent reports, the change made a centrally determined target to build 300,000 homes a year a "starting point" or "goal". Councils can propose building fewer homes if they faced "genuine constraints" or would have to build at a density that would "significantly change ...
Residents will recall that, some months ago, there was unfortunate recent vandalism of the footbridge over the rail line south of Harris Academy. The repair has taken some time for the council to arrange as it requires a rail line possession agreement with Network Rail. We are pleased, however, to advise that the council's City Development Committee recently approved the tender to allow works to proceed. Michael sought and obtained at committee an assurance that every effort would be made to ensure repairs are completed and the footbridge re-opened in advance of the school returning after the summer holidays.
