The news that the Jodrell Bank telescope may soon be no more sent me back to a piece by Jonathan Meades: Concorde was seen in the sky over West London for the first time in late June 1969. Less than a month later Neil Armstrong stepped from Apollo 11 onto the moon. The future had arrived. It was tangible, it was thrilling, it was now. We came to believe that we were all part of an adventure without end. This was just the beginning, the new beginning. What we didn't realise was that this was it. A peak had been ...
Britain's universities aren't just getting rid of the arts and humanities: they're getting rid of collegiate governance too. Here's Krzysztof Nawratek, senior lecturer in humanities and architecture at the University of Sheffield, writing in Times Higher Education: I started my university career in Poland in 1988, a year before communism collapsed. I joined an underground anti-communist student association, went on strike and saw my hierarchical, conservative university slowly crumble. However, even within the oppressive communist regime, Polish universities held on to one core belief: the university belonged to its academic community. Rectors and deans were elected. Senates and faculty councils ...
On Saturday 25 July, I attended the counter-protest at Glasgow Green in response to the so-called "Unite the Clans" demonstration. I did so because I believe Scotland is at its strongest when we stand together against hatred, division and extremism. Our country has a proud tradition of welcoming people from different backgrounds, cultures and faiths, and those values must be defended peacefully and democratically. During the event, there were several reports of threats being made towards those intending to attend the counter-protest. Such intimidation has no place in a democratic society. Every person has the right to express their views ...
Sunniside is fortunate to have the Tanfield Railway, the world's longest running steam rail system, right on our doorstep. Recently I spotted an advert for an event at the Tanfield: fish and chip aboard the train. I couldn't resist. We had a great time!
The Government's intention to have the biggest Council House building programme since the 1940s and 50s will give immediate hope to the 134,210 homeless households, including 176,130 children, living in temporary accommodation and the 4,793 people sleeping rough. And as the "right to buy scheme" still, at the time of writing, applied in England (but not in Scotland or Wales) could get them on the housing ladder. ...Although former Council Houses have been notoriously difficult to sell. The programme will create work for some of the 1.01 million young people between the ages of 16 and 24 who are not ...
Tue 28th
10:25
Book Review: Young Aleister Crowley and the Magicians' Revolt by Lon Milo DuQuette and Jim Bratkowsk...
This review appears in the new issue of Liberator, which you can download free of charge from the magazine's website. Young Aleister Crowley and the Magicians' Revolt Lon Milo DuQuette and Jim Bratkowsky Weiser Books, 2026, £14.99 The year is 1900 and a young Aleister Crowley - poet, mountaineer and Cambridge chess Blue - is keen to learn the mysteries of London's leading occultists, but he arrives in this fashionable circle to find it riven by a power struggle. The old guard of MacGregor Mathers and his wife Moina, who were real historical figures, are being challenged by a new ...
I never know how much of Lord Bonkers' reminiscences to believe. In this case, I suspect he should have gone back for his Panama. Thursday The orphans and Cook have taken to the cool of the caves for which Trescothick Bay is noted, but I am happy here on the beach even though I have left my sun hat back at the boarding house. Today I have been thinking of Emlyn Hooson, an inspirational leader of our party in Wales and a source of wise counsel on any matter touching upon the Principality. His phone would ring at all hours ...
Jodrell Bank is a national institution. The observatory was established in 1945 by Bernard Lovell, a radio astronomer at the university, to investigate cosmic rays after his work on radar in the Second World War. It hosts a number of radio telescopes as part of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester. It has since played an important role in the research of meteoroids, quasars, pulsars, masers, and gravitational lenses, and was heavily involved with the tracking of Soviet and US spacecraft of the Space Race. However, it is now under threat. The Guardian reports that ...
A film about farming and the harsh winter of 1946/7. In particular, about the flooding that hit the Fens when the snow finally thawed and the efforts to recover from it. Those floods form the background to Malcolm Saville's book The Luck of Sallowby. Here's his description of the fight against the floodwaters: Now they were close against the wall they saw it was only a few inches higher than the rising water which stretched before them in a turbulent brown lake, whipped into waves by the gale. And these waves beat against the wall ceaselessly and the spray from ...
I am in the midst of what I self-mockingly describe as a Frank Sinatra-esque farewell tour from the Town and Parish Council sector. What with my tenure on Creeting St Peter Parish Council fated to be terminated next May, I've taken the view that an organised handover of my various posts was a necessity, predominantly for the organisations concerned. And so, I advised my colleagues on the Board of the Suffolk Association of Local Councils (SALC) that I would stand down as our representative on the National Assembly of the National Association of Local Councils (NALC) on 31 July, allowing ...
Adam Webster, full-time father and part-time Associate Professor in Law and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, argues that the government must rethink how Britain conceives work, care and family life. As he says in an 'expert comment' issued by the University of Oxford's media people, we have built a world where parents are expected to be simultaneously working and present for family. It's all good stuff, but I was struck by this sentence: In the 1950s, 80 per cent of mothers in the UK stayed at home and the school run was part of their domestic routine. ...
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch is right about one thing: social care reform demands serious thought. But she is wrong to insist that the answer cannot involve asking those with the broadest shoulders (the very richest) bear the biggest burden and contribute a bit more through taxation. If we are serious about fixing one of Britain's greatest public policy failures, there will be a cost. We must be honest about that. For me, this is not an abstract political argument. It is deeply personal. In July 2022 my mum died two days after waiting eleven hours for an ambulance following a ...
Five principal authority by-elections took place last Thursday, across four councils. The Liberal Democrats were not defending any seats, and though we did not win a contest during this relatively quiet week we still came out with some very strong results. East Devon DC, Exmouth Brixington Conservative: 537 (35.2%, -2%) Lib Dem (Andrew Colman): 450 (29.5%, -3%) Reform UK: 439 (28.7%, new) Green Party: 101 (6.6%, -2.1%) Conservative HOLD Well done to Andrew Colman and the local team for a very strong second place in East Devon. Being only 88 votes off winning must have hurt. But keep your heads ...
Two recent reports have drawn attention to what human rights organisations and UN investigators describe as one of the defining features of Israel's assault on Palestinian life: the systematic targeting of Palestinian children. The first report, published by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry, examines violations against Palestinian children since the beginning of the genocide in Gaza. The second, by the leading Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem, documents the killing of children by Israeli forces and settlers in the occupied West Bank. While focused on different contexts, the reports paint a strikingly similar picture. They reveal a pattern in ...
As ever, Lord Bonkers was ahead of the curve on the climate crisis. Perhaps the sands at Trescothick Bay remind him of the deserts of southern Rutland? Wednesday They say these heatwaves will soon render the South of England uninhabitable, which is a bit of a facer seeing as we Liberals have worked so hard to ensure we don't have MPs anywhere else. But don't despair: the arid south of Rutland is simply teeming with life - human life included. Of course, if the Home Counties do turn to desert it will require changes to the way we fight elections ...
Parliament is now fully in recess until September – the House of Lords sat for an additional week – and now there's not much "politician on politician action" for five weeks, leaving the field open for commentators and journalists to speculate on what might come next. And, given that the line between reporting and comment is now so blurred, it becomes increasingly hard to separate the two. Now I'm not the sort of person who tends to don rose-tinted spectacles and opine about how much better things were in the past – improvement is very much in the eye of ...
The Times reports that Reform UK's bank account was frozen during the last election after the party received potentially illegal donations from the mother of George Cottrell, the criminal who bankrolled Nigel Farage. The paper says that the party was unable to make or receive payments through its account with Arbuthnot Latham, a London private and merchant bank, for a two-week period that included polling day on July 4, 2024: The Reform treasurer at the time repeatedly asked the bank for an explanation, urging it to unfreeze the account. However, Arbuthnot Latham refused. It said it could not unfreeze the ...