Letters: Brooks is back - and a threat to our culture
“Brooks is back to spearhead Murdoch’s battle against the BBC” (3 September) and “It is expected that The Sun will bring down its paywall, placing it in direct competition with the BBC”.
“Brooks is back to spearhead Murdoch’s battle against the BBC” (3 September) and “It is expected that The Sun will bring down its paywall, placing it in direct competition with the BBC”.
Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour opponents are resigned to him being elected leader of their party on 12 September. No one will know for sure until the votes are counted, and the Corbyn camp plays down expectations of a knockout --winning more than 50 per cent of the first preference votes of the 550,000 members, registered supporters and trade unionists taking part. “We think it will go to penalties,” said one Corbynista –a reference to the preferential voting system in which the bottom candidate drops... Читать дальше...
Jamie Oliver is an excellent crusader, a man who never lets practicality or fine detail get in the way of a passionate argument. He’s 100 per cent right: the amount of sugar we eat is way out of control and damaging our health. But is a tax the best way to curb our addiction?
There was something “How very dare you”, about Jeremy Corbyn’s recent temper tantrum in rebuttal of the charge that the company he kept reflected badly on him. “The idea that I’m some kind of racist or anti-Semitic person is beyond appalling, disgusting and deeply offensive,” he said.
When you first glance at Stella Creasy’s latest video upload, of her reading out some of the emails she receives daily, you could be forgiven for dismissing it as yet another self-congratulatory piece of political propaganda. But then the “Parental Advisory” warning pops up at the top of the video, and you know you’re in darker territory.
Just now, a few more of the commuters at Liverpool Street Station in London who hurry past Frank Meisler’s statue The Arrival may stop to think about what it means. A quotation from the Talmud runs beside the group of fugitive children. It reads: “Whosoever rescues a single soul is credited as though they had saved the whole world.”
Next week the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet David Cameron on a state visit to London, his first since the 2014 offensive on Gaza.
Over the last 20 years, cities like Wakefield rose to the challenge of becoming cities of sanctuary. I had the privilege of presenting UK citizenship certificates to a Kosovan family at Wakefield Town Hall in 2010. They were accompanied by their support worker, now a family friend, who wept tears of joy for them. She knew just how much they had suffered and lost to reach this milestone.
Bar tenders and waiters have been sharing stories of the most awkward dates they have ever witnessed.
Step out in classic, elegant flats this autumn. IndyBest find pairs for work and play
Researchers at an American university have claimed that humour is a key factor in human “sexual selection”, with women appearing to be more attracted to men who make them laugh.
There’s a pattern emerging in international politics. In America, Donald Trump is scaling the polls with the basest rhetoric against Mexicans. Narendra Modi climbed the greasy pole of Indian politics with sectarian appeals for Hindu solidarity. Benjamin Netanyahu invoked the imagery of Arab hordes to galvanise right-wing Jewish voters in Israel’s general elections earlier this year. In Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan continues to hypnotise voters with atavistic spectacles of Ottoman pomp.
As someone who has lived with cerebral palsy since birth, I know one thing: disability costs. If you won’t take my word for it, take the word of Scope, which set up the Extra Costs Commission to look into the extra costs disabled people face in daily life. The report found that on average, disabled people spend £550 per month on disability costs alone.
I am a 20-year-old black man who was raised by women: my mother, my sister, my aunties and my female cousins. I never thought this was abnormal. Then one day a close friend said something that really took me aback. She suggested that growing up without men in my life had “feminised" me.
There are many different types of sexually transmitted infections, some of which people have better awareness of than others, for example chlamydia, gonorrhoea and genital warts. Here are some of the lesser known infections which can affect people, how they can spot the signs, and what treatment involves.
David Cameron’s muted response to the refugee crisis is disgraceful. The number of people who have died trying to cross the Mediterranean has been on a steady rise since the start of this year; more than 2,500 people – children, women and men – have died so far in 2015. It is no big leap to suggest that many of these deaths were avoidable. Just months before the British Government were warned this would happen when they decided to withdraw support for search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean. Читать дальше...
Once again, Pope Francis tries to practice what he preaches in his statement about women and abortion. In a letter published by the Vatican on Tuesday, Francis has announced that priests have the discretion to formally forgive women who have had abortions and seek absolution during the Roman Catholic church's upcoming Holy Year.
Comes amid growing public pressure for a change in European policy
“Here is your mission, should you decide to accept it: we would like you to create a side-splittingly funny romantic comedy with a transgender person as the central character. As well as being hilarious, the storyline should help to educate the masses in transgender issues - and you need to do all of this while being careful not to offend the notoriously touchy trans community. Oh, and it needs to be suitable for a 9pm BBC2 weekday audience. Good luck out there!”
Laura Wade, Sarah Waters and I are sitting in a cafe talking about dildos. “Honestly they are so common these days they are practically a Mother’s Day gift,” says Waters. Wade and I are less convinced. “Yes, and of course they crop up all the time on the stage,” chips in Wade. “There was that recent production of Faust…”
Men who pay for sex share similar traits to rapists and sex offenders, according to new research.
I usually take pictures of old London from Sir William Davenant, a wonderful Twitter account whose owner shares my loathing of the Walkie-Talkie building in the City. But this photograph of 4,000 refugees, Basque children fleeing the Spanish civil war, being welcomed in Southampton May 1937 is a fitting historical record for today.
Interest-only mortgages are a "ticking time bomb" for nearly a million homeowners in the UK who may have no way off paying off the money they owe, Citizens Advice has warned.
The pursuit of happiness is a noble one – if not always fun, and certainly not to be confused with wealth and fame. Happiness, however, is apparently to do with parenting. A lifelong study conducted by University College London reveals that those who perceived their parents as more caring and less psychologically controlling during their childhood were likely to be happier and more satisfied throughout their lives.