"Easy though it is to mock the quality of the Tory leadership hopefuls, enabling and encouraging the worst impulses of the far-right carries dangers for our country and our democracy, as we have seen just this week. We need a serious government, but we also need a serious opposition. Right now the Tories cannot and will not fulfil the latter role." Alistair Carmichael says the Tory leadership contest is revealing that the party's lurch to far-right is terrifyingly real. Lauren Crosby Medlicott on what life's like inside a UK women's prison and the need to find other ways of dealing ...
If we are to continue to have free speech and a free media in the UK, and I hope that we always will, we need to recognise the responsibilities that free brings needs in terms of care, compassion and candour ... Continue reading →
This is from the 1952 US Presidential election, animated by Roy Disney, nephew of Walt. Quite fun - and also a healthy reminder about slipping into believing that politics now is awful compared to an imagined previous Golden Age.
As a box ticking exercise it is difficult to beat the Great Green Wall of Africa. For those not familiar with this incredibly important and ambitious project, the Great Green Wall (aka GGW) is an international undertaking to prevent creeping desertification in Africa. It proposes to plant and maintain on the southern border of the Sahara Desert a nine-mile wide forest stretching 4,831 miles from Dakar on the Atlantic to Djibouti on the Red Sea. It is estimated that the GGW will create 10 million jobs in one of the most poverty-stricken regions of the world. That means 10 million ...
I thought the sisters from Our Lady of the Ballot Boxes might turn up again. If you're wondering whether they are Catholic or Protestant, an open or a closed order, then the answer is that they are Church of Rutland. And they have clearly watched The Sound of Music too. Thursday The wet summer means the woods, meadows and hedgerows of the Bonkers Hall Estate are positively brimming with flowers and herbs. Not only will you find the Wise Woman of Wing and the Elves of Rockingham Forest out gathering them, you may also encounter the sisters from Our Lady ...
Michael Medwin is one of those actors who often turns up in old British films and always makes them better. He usually, but not always, played cockney characters. He also went on to have an influential second career as film and theatre producer. He was the producer behind Lindsay Anderson's If.... and O Lucky Man! and behind the first production of Julian Mitchell's play Another Country, which helped establish the careers of Kenneth Branagh, Rupert Everett, Colin Firth and Daniel Day-Lewis. But I come from a generation that knew him as Don Satchley, the smooth boss of Radio West in ...
Innocent There is a tradition dating back well over 1000 years that any person accused of a crime is presumed innocent until proved guilty. In other words, an accusation doesn't make someone guilty, it a court that hears the evidence and decides, either magistrates or, for serious offences a jury. There is a worrying tendency today to pronounce someone guilty merely on the basis of an accusation and to demand that that person be treated as a criminal, losing their job and being shunned by society. Take Huw Edwards. He was accused of dreadful crimes involving children and has, after ...
From the Curator of Museum Services at the University of Dundee : We've recently been working with medical students on a project to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Ninewells Hospital. The students have created a mini exhibition in the School of Medicine (outside the Deanery on level 8). They have also put together an extensive online display exploring Ninewells' pioneering history. You can see this at http://tiny.cc/Ninewells-50 The photo is of the official opening of Ninewells Hospital on 23rd October 1974 and features the late Queen Mother.
The Guardian reports that the National Pensioners Convention has urged Rachel Reeves to reverse her "ill-advised" decision to strip most pensioners of their winter fuel payments, or risk millions of people being forced to choose between turning on the heating or preparing a hot meal. The paper says that Jan Shortt, the general secretary of the Convention, one of the UK's biggest campaigning organisation for older people, has written to the chancellor, noting many older people may "not survive to see the spring or any other season" after the payments are cut: Reeves said she was making "difficult decisions" after ...
