The blurb on YouTube explains: In 1977, Gay News, UK, was committed to trial at the Old Bailey for publication of a blasphemous poem, entitled "The Love That Dare Speak its Name" by James Kirkup, which featured a Roman centurion having sexual fantasies about Christ on the cross. Media morals campaigner, Mary Whitehouse, initiated the charge against Gay News for the publication of a blasphemous poem. The programme features re-enactments of the scenes in court as the trial progressed, as well as interviews with Mary Whitehouse and Gay News editor, Denis Lemon. This dramatisation of the trial was formed an ...
In Kibworth the other day, I visited Daker Books and bought a second-hand copy of John Russell Taylor's Anger and After, a book about the British theatre in the late Fifties and early Sixties. I think the Fifties were a more interesting decade than we now imagine - the centrality of live theatre to the culture being just one reason. As Sebastian Millbank pointed out in an article on The Critic, it's noteworthy that the modern left shows no affection for a decade that saw full employment, widespread union membership and rising wages. When I got Anger and After home, ...
'Gimp play is a craft': how a Canadian writer went from fetish sex work to creating powerful BBC drama runs a headline on the Guardian website. And if it marks the birth of a way to a showbiz career that doesn't involve the Cambridge Footlights, then it's nothing but good news. No, it's the first paragraph of the article below that worries me: When the Canadian playwright Jordan Tannahill moved to London in 2016, it was the week after the EU referendum. "For my partner at the time, who was British, it was a devastating kind of discombobulation," Tannahill says. ...
A dozen principal authority council by-elections this week, with 11 Lib Dem candidates, up three on the last time these wards were up. Only four counts overnight with the other eight counted on Friday. So let's do the overnights first, starting with another case where Reform's intervention seems to have helped Labour defeat the Conservatives: The Nedge (Telford & Wrekin) Council By-Election Result: [IMG: 🌹] LAB: 33.8% (-20.6) [IMG: 🌳] CON: 33.0% (+7.0) [IMG: ➡] RFM: 22.7% (New) [IMG: 🌍] GRN: 4.5% (New) [IMG: 🙋] IND: 3.2% (-6.6) [IMG: 🔶] LDM: 2.8% (-7.0)Labour HOLD.Changes w/ 2024. — Election Maps UK ...
I attended the meeting of the Sunniside Hub Group last night. On the agenda was the Christmas lights switch-on. This will be taking place at 5pm on 30th November. Sadly I will not be able to make it as I have another event in my diary at the same time. It means there will be no goats cunningly disguised as reindeer at the event. The Christmas tree meanwhile will be erected in the garden of
Shelter Cymru have just published a shocking report that lays bare the housing crisis facing local councils in Wales. The report says that demand for temporary accommodation in Wales has grown dramatically in recent years. In March 2021 there were 3,729 households in temporary accommodation, by March 2024, this had risen to 6,447 households. Currently more than 11,000 people are living in temporary accommodation in Wales, including almost 3,000 children: Across Wales local authorities are struggling to cope with the impact of this level of demand, and many have shared with Shelter Cymru the challenges of finding suitable temporary accommodation ...
