Whatever Rishi Sunak did or didn’t say or did or didn’t mean in his interview with ITV, the debate over the value of the arts and of artists in our society and economy has been front and centre recently. And rightly so. The UK’s creative industries are estimated to contribute around £13 million to the […]
My ears pricked up when I heard that the Prime Minister had committed to “protect 30 per cent of the UK’s land by 2030”. The pledge, made at a UN summit on biodiversity, sounds both ambitious and a welcome response to the environmental challenges facing the planet. With Johnson, however, the disappointment is usually in […]
Despite claiming to ‘Back British Farming‘, parliament voted down Lords’ amendments to the Agriculture Bill which would have ensured food imports meet domestic standards of food and animal welfare.
A hotel in Tintagel has been flying the QAnon flag. What on earth is going on at the Camelot Castle? Some of the strangest TripAdvisor reviews ever written are of a hotel dramatically sited on a rugged headland at Tintagel on Cornwall’s north coast, the Camelot Castle Hotel. Among the oddest of these are from […]
The shallow waters around the Isles of Scilly are peppered with the hulls of the boats that have met their demise on shallow rock reefs. With sea levels rising, the settlements on the islands are at risk of joining the sunken ships. What does climate change mean for the Isles of Scilly? It isn’t hard […]
Last night, your government and mine voted against – yes, against – enshrining the UK’s food and farming standards in law. Instead, we are asked to trust in their manifesto promise to maintain said standards and not to compromise them in any trade deals they might finally (and without the say-so of parliament) strike with […]
I wander around in a daze wondering how it came about. I spend much of every day thinking about the beautiful relationship I had, but it was all taken away from me by lies and deceit, not on my part, but by others. I have known since the 23rd June 2016 that the divorce was […]
This article is reproduced from Miles King’s blog by kind permission of the author. Ten years feels a bit like a significant anniversary – and a long time. Perhaps the last ten years feels longer than many decades have, given what has happened (and is about to happen) over that period. Ten years ago I […]
Editor: We are putting this out on #WorldMentalHealthDay because we feel that this short piece from the heart sums up what so many people are feeling right now. There has to be a better way and we have to do more than hope. We must be the change. We shared a tweet last week that […]
Thursday 8October saw ordinary people across the country taking part in the European Movement’s ‘No to no deal’ campaign. Established in the aftermath of World War Two by Winston Churchill, the European Movement is the UK’s longest standing pro-European organisation with a network of over 100 local groups. Their latest campaign is the most urgent […]
The once autocratic King Lear, now stripped of power and exposed to the storm, ushers the poor Fool into the hovel, then kneels and prays: Poor naked wretches, wheresoe’er you are, That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm, How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides, Your looped and windowed […]
World Mental Health Day is on 10 October. This year, as we all try to navigate the emotional uncertainties of Covid-19, learning to manage our mental health is an essential skill. I hope this personal story helps to highlight the importance of finding and embracing some individual means of dealing with symptoms of poor mental […]
Several recent events have raised urgent questions about the threat to our democracy from unscrupulous digital operatives. Disturbingly, these questions remain largely unanswered by a report this week from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). Last week, Channel Four reported on a data leak from Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign that revealed how ‘Team Trump’ had worked […]
We like to bring you Twitter threads which you might miss because you aren’t on Twitter! Here’s one from a reader in the USA ahead of Monday’s Agri Bill vote, responding to a UK reader’s thread. We’ve added her thread, too. I’m an American, I lived in the US for 30 years and worked in […]
Normally Mondays bring on a bout of the blues, but 5 October bucked the trend. It was a day for rejoicing, because the Lords inflicted a string of defeats on the government’s controversial immigration bill. Two of the amendments, both proposed by Lord Alfred Dubs, concerned children. You’d think amendments safeguarding children would pass unanimously, […]
This year, of all years, people have become much more aware of their local surroundings; in particular, places they can visit to experience nature in their everyday lives – or at least those who were physically able to get out of their houses and weren’t stuck inside shielding. The Covid lockdown threw into sharp contrast […]
Why should additional needs limit your craving for adventure? Journalist Dawn Sanders, who has a visual impairment, argues impaired sight should not get in the way of free- spiritedness. Two years ago I met a kindred spirit where I would never have expected to: at the Royal National College for the Blind. Before going to the […]
The dead hedgehog was clearly the previous night’s roadkill. The body was fresh, judging from the staining on the asphalt. It had been hit ten or so feet away from where it had died, its last short, slow journey made, I imagine, in agony. The place where it died is now marked by a ghost. […]
Farm animals voice their concern about whether the House of Commons will take the opportunity when reviewing the Lords’ amendments to the Agriculture Bill on Monday 12 October to honour the commitment – as stated the Queen’s Speech of October 2019 – to recognise animals as sentient beings.
Here’s the thing, Priti Patel. You bang on about the activist lawyers and the do-gooders all you like, but you’re forgetting something. Most people are actually decent. Most people prefer being kind to being cruel. Most people do not want to live on a diet of hatred and fear. And most people, when faced with […]
Let’s give a little credit where it’s due. The ‘Lifetime Skills Guarantee’,set out by the prime minister on 29 September, is aimed at the right target. It seeks to tackle two linked issues that threaten future prosperity: rising unemployment fuelled by the Covid crisis and the long running UK problem of low productivity. But let’s […]
After a weekend call with Ursula Von der Leyen, Johnson capitulates on his own deadline and extends the Brexit trade talks by another month.
I left London in 1973-74. I left a place and society that I saw as fragile and dysfunctional; a sort of fools’ paradise’. During my two years as a policeman in the West End, I questioned so much of what I saw around me, aided and abetted by E. F. Schumacher, G.I. Gurdjieff, Rachel Carson and […]
With Johnson likening his fitness to that of a butcher’s dog for the second time this year, the Association of Butchers’ Dogs (London Branch) calls an emergency meeting to discuss his defamatory statement.
Anti-expert Michael Gove got October off to an interesting start, with a quite extraordinary answer to a question from Opposition MP Hilary Benn. Mr Benn, Chair of the Select Committee on the Future Relationship with the European Union, had the previous day taken evidence from Neil Hollis, Regulatory Affairs Manager at the world’s largest chemicals […]
Wildlife in the UK is struggling with more than half of our native species in decline and one in seven facing extinction. Faced with these depressing forecasts, it is sometimes easy to forget that many of us can actually do something to help slow the decline, by making our outside space more nature-friendly. Anna Andrews […]
There is something especially hypocritical about this, of all governments, telling schools that they should not use material that could ‘undermine the fundamental British values of democracy [and] the rule of law’ It was, after all, this government that firstly broke the law by seeking to prorogue parliament and then, having been judged guilty, announced […]
Hey Russ, didn’t you just do #TheWeekInTory on Monday? Yes. Yes, I did. But you’re having to do another on Thursday? I don’t make the rules. And apparently, Boris Johnson doesn’t either. Anyway, here we go again… 1. Boris Johnson said “The rules are very simple” 2. Then he got the rules wrong 3. Then […]
Priti Patel’s plan to use decommissioned ships as “processing centres” for asylum-seekers recalls one of the darkest chapters of British history. On Wednesday, the Financial Times reported that home secretary Priti Patel had asked officials to explore the construction of a “processing centre” for asylum seekers on Ascension Island, a volcanic outcrop in the South […]
When asked whether he would be producing any new episodes of his famous satirical show, ‘The Thick Of It’, Armando Iannucci replied that British politics was now so silly, it was beyond parody. One artist who has, nonetheless, successfully satirised not just British politics, but populist politics around the world over the past four years […]