On Saturday 22 August, thousands of activists and campaigners came together across the UK – in a socially distanced manner – for Make Votes Matter’s action day to call for change to the UK’s electoral system. Make Votes Matter, a cross-party grassroots campaign, seeks to replace the antiquated first past the post (FPTP) system with […]
Let me share a state secret with you. Somewhere in Mayfair is a six-star hotel where once a month a group of middle-aged men along with a couple of token women gather in its basement. They wear silk and ermine robes, eat exquisite food and sip the finest wine. This Body of Souls (BOS) consults […]
The government’s disingenuous drivel about being tough on the EU and getting world beating deals is enough to make anyone want to run a mile. And trade deals may seem to be unrelated to anything in our daily lives. But with just over 130 days until the end of the transition period, trade deals – or the lack of them – are about to become very relevant to all of us.
Women have been hit hardest by the pandemic, and largely excluded from decision-making.
It is possible that these two facts are connected
Your child has just got their A-level results. Are you happy as Gavin Williamson crowing on Twitter about how much better your child has done compared to their predicted grades? Or is your child devastated that their predicted high grades have been downgraded, stripping them of their university places at Oxford, Cambridge and many of […]
Juvenile, bed-wetting, ham-fisted Etonians never endeared themselves to John Bercow, nor to Dilyn whose aptitude for calling out the disgraceful, the corrupt and downright deceitful almost matches that of the former speaker. No surprise then that he scoffed when Len McCluskey suddenly woke up to employment figures and Keir’s popularity ratings soared just as rumours […]
For 24 hours last week, an ordinary black woman took centre stage following a moment of spontaneity after the Black Lives Matter protest. Marc Quinn’s statue ‘A Surge of Power (Jen Reid) 2020’ was never meant to be permanent, yet it had meaning and was erected to elicit debate about the future of the plinth […]
Gossip from Viktor Vova, the No 10 rat, a confidant of Prime Ministers’ pets from time immemorial. As dogs go, Dilyn is pretty loyal even if he isn’t above slipping into Foreign office banquets to taste the nibbles. See all, hear all and say nowt – except when needs must, which is pretty much all […]
So are we, as Boris Johnson claims, ‘all in this together’? When our prime minister contracted coronavirus he was able to quarantine in a flat, have meals brought to his door, before being rushed to hospital when his symptoms got worse. The same options were not available to Kayla Williams, mother of three children, who […]
Brighton has always had a flourishing arts scene and cultural history. Including the Fringe, Brighton Festival is second only to Edinburgh Festival in terms of scope, size and ambition, and is the largest and most established annual curated multi-arts festival in England. This year the Festival was due to celebrate its 53rd birthday with poet […]
It seems strange looking back on the first half of 2020 now. As the New Year fireworks popped, the atmosphere for most of us was one of celebration. Yes, there were undoubted obstacles to face, not least the definitive date for Brexit a month later, but a new year, let alone a new decade, symbolised a fresh start. At that point […]
As an erstwhile stand-up comedian, used to noting down ideas for my set, I’d never have imagined trying to write, instead, a comparison between real life and its substitute. In common with many other performance arts, live comedy has been totally shut down by the Covid-19 pandemic and possibly will remain so until next year. […]
What do you know about farming, a friend asked? The answer is … not much. But I have a passion for locally produced food and worry about the looming threat of Brexit. The more I’ve looked into it, the more it has made me an ardent campaigner to lessen the impact of leaving the EU […]
In late 2016, Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror episode NoseDive painted a dystopian future, where people can rate each other and these social media scores affect how you can live your life. Nosedive was aired in October 2016, just past the June Brexit vote. We had little idea of the years of turmoil ahead of us. […]