The Anglo-German Family History Society (AGFHS) is a well-established group for all those who are interested in researching their roots among people from the German speaking parts of Europe, who have emigrated over centuries and settled in Great Britain or Ireland. We have developed considerable expertise and resources, and new members are always welcome. Here […]
The Labour leadership can and must do better Imagine your son came home from school one day making derogatory comments – clearly picked up in the classroom – about a refugee kid in his class who had just acquired a new British passport. Knowing your son was well-meaning but easily led, you might encourage him […]
Set against so much worrying and negative news, the situation in Spain is very encouraging! We’ve just come back from two weeks there, and as so often in recent years we’ve observed a country that’s going places – in a very positive direction! A spate of articles recently, such as in the Independent, The Week […]
“To members of the judiciary: you are all climate judges now… Lawyers have a responsibility to adopt a climate-conscious, not climate-blind, approach in daily legal practice”, UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen told the UK Bar Council in 2021. While some lawyers and judges took her words to heart, others didn’t. Climate campaigners have won some […]
“It’s almost impossible for a machine to convey the same message that a professional interpreter with awareness about the country of origin can do, including cultural context.” That was the concern expressed by Uma Mirkhail, a volunteer with Respond Crisis Translation, after seeing the effects of using AI-powered translation tools to vet applications from Afghan […]
Let’s break down a few things, both about ID cards and Labour’s ill-advised tactics on “fighting Reform”. First off, I personally don’t think ID cards would work in UK, because we are objectively bad at things like this, but they work elsewhere so this isn’t about them per se. Fairly obviously ID cards have zero […]
Elon Musk doesn’t like it. Stronger legal measures are in the pipeline to rein in the spread of dangerous lies and misleading claims on social media platforms including X, YouTube, Facebook, TikTok and Google. The racist riots last summer, following the Southport murders, didn’t only show how social media disinformation can provoke real-life violence on […]
It has been more than three years since we first wrote about the dramatic humanitarian crisis at the Polish border with Belarus. After a year of the new government, you might be wondering what has changed there. To quote our new minister of justice: “We have the paradoxical situation that all the critics are being […]
The past few days have seen a new low in British politics, where one of the most sensitive and most troubling crimes – child abuse – has been politicised by two parties, the Conservatives and Reform. Any person with an iota of common decency will acknowledge that child abuse, in any of its forms, by […]
Going on the evidence of the Daily Mail’s behaviour over the festive season, the answer to the question is not looking good… On the ‘Betwixtmas’ weekend, I happened to find myself in WHSmith’s in Bournemouth. Walking up the stairs from the book department, I could hear a family near the newspaper stand, which is next […]
T’was the week before Christmas and while the rest of us were preparing for the season of goodwill to all mankind, the Telegraph was busy creating headlines designed to get people OUTRAGED at all the workshy, lazy, benefits scroungers. Bah Humbug and all that! “Majority of Britons receive more in benefits than they pay in […]
Press release from Andrew George, MP for West Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly: The government’s announced planning policy risks putting “greed before need” and is “destined to fail”. Deputy Prime Minister, Angela Rayner, launched changes to the National Planning Policy Framework, which the government says will meet its ambitious housebuilding targets – one and […]
We’ve all seen them, haven’t we? The earth-shade painted, faux-timber-clad housing estates with their strips of fake grass, their crescents of executive homes in the best spots, and, overall, the dead, sterile look of a film set for the Stepford Wives. This pop-up townlet and its maze of little ‘streets’ boast dreamily bucolic names, often […]
You almost had to feel sorry for the far right. Having planned an afternoon rally in Torquay on Saturday, November 30, the handful who turned up found themselves vastly outnumbered by a crowd of around 200 counter-protesters, mainly from local unions and anti-racism groups. Outside the town hall, amid dozens of banners and placards proclaiming […]
If you’ve looked at a local news website lately, you may have got the feeling that something’s not quite right. Seeking stories about your own area, you click on an interesting headline and find yourself reading about a completely different place. You probably see a lot of content about motoring, shopping and so on, but […]
Knot in the stomach. Sharp intake of breath. Then comes the M word. “Masculinity.” For some, it evokes ideas of strength, protection, and leadership. For others, it conjures images of harm, domination, and outdated ideals. What’s clear, however, is that masculinity is at a crossroads. Across the UK, and here in the West Country, young […]
Dear Editor I cannot thank you enough for your ongoing support over the years for 3.8 million UK taxpayers who were excluded from parity of Covid-19 financial support by the previous government. There are so many ExcludedUK members, like me, who are still far from recovered from the pandemic and are still struggling to claw […]
Plastic Free Axminster has been carrying out a ‘slow-burn’ campaign to raise awareness in the community about the dangers of cigarette littering. We have been talking to retailers, hospitality outlets and businesses in the town about this and encouraging them to display our posters, to make customers, clients and staff more aware of the dangers […]
Did you get a Co-op card despite being very resistant to having more plastic in your wallet and absolutely hating the ‘privileged’ pricing blackmail from other stores? Did you get a card because you really liked the idea that you would be helping to raise money for small local charities? That’s why I got mine, […]
Shire Hall Museum in Dorchester is hosting an emotive photography exhibition from Robert Golden, offering an intimate insight into the lives and experiences of the Windrush generation, 25 years after their arrival in the UK. Opening on Friday 27 September, Searching for the Motherland features over 50 photographs of London’s Windrush generation and their families […]
There is a rather wonderful story about billionaires. According to this story, a small number of exceptionally gifted and hard-working people, through their own talent and dedication, create and build businesses which both enrich themselves and hugely benefit the rest of the world: their customers, their employees, their suppliers and the rest of society (via […]
Twitter’s full of people trumpeting near zero understanding of English law or of the convictions in respect of the violence of the last 10 days or so. Nor does the US First Amendment mean what many (often Americans) seem to think. Frustrated? Maybe this will be some use. “Incitement” has been an offence under English […]
I am an apostate. This is the term given to people who leave religion. It is not a term I particularly like, but it is the one that most people understand. As a counsellor and peer supporter, I also have professional experience of the needs of apostates. I work with apostates from high control, high […]
As we brace ourselves for the barrage of self-congratulatory rhetoric from our government and the unelected Prime Moistiness about the “achievements” over the past 14 years since they seized power in May 2010, let’s pre-emptively dissect their record. Behold! The comprehensive list of their so-called “achievements” that we’ve been subjected to while they’ve ostensibly “been […]
The government’s recent proposal to drop any cap on the number of pupils that state-funded faith schools can select on the basis of their parent’s belief has brought arguments back into focus about the role religious organisations play in running parts of our education system. The UK is one of only four OECD countries that […]
There are many arguments for taxing the extremely wealthy more. Perhaps the simplest is that while most normal people pay tax of up to 40 per cent on their income (or more), the very wealthy can easily pay less than one per cent on their true economic income. To most people that seems very unfair. But […]
Fellow citizen-journalist editor, Peter Shearn of Totnes Pulse, contacted me to see if I would like to interview the secretary of state for education, Gillian Keegan. Apparently she had elected to kill two birds with one stone and give a ‘puff’ to the government’s free childcare for two-year-olds, and (presumably) to the re-election chances of […]
Marketed as a way to help those seeking to give up smoking cigarettes, vapes are now considered trendy, especially among teenagers, and with the range of flavours, one would think one was choosing sweets rather than something that causes harm to the environment and to human health! According to the UK Government website, “use among […]
On Thursday April 18, 2024 at 8:30am, a group of Dorset residents sat outside Bournemouth Crown Court holding what has become the most contentious sign in the UK legal system. They joined hundreds of others around England and Wales as part of the growing Defend Our Juries campaign, as they did in December 2023. That […]
We delivered our 20 hearts to Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council (BCP) on April 14 2024, to call for an all-at-once rollout of a 20mph speed limit. BCP council is proposing some limited extensions to 20mph areas, like the one currently out for consultation in the Boscombe area. We’re in an environmental emergency and a […]