When a headteacher is involved it’s kind of hard to tell, isn’t it? Amanda Buck, who heads up Scott’s Park Primary School near Sundridge Park, stopped visitors from parking at the designated polling station this morning. Chairman of Bickley Conservatives, Kevin Taylor, said he went down to the school after receiving several complaints from locals. He thinks it was a deliberate attempt to deter voters and believes it may have…
Campaigners called for immigrants to be required to sign a declaration promising not to subject their daughters to genital mutilation before being allowed into Britain. /facepalm Professor Hazel Barrett of Coventry University warned against relying solely on a declaration, because it could become a “well intentioned piece of paper”. She warned it might encourage families to have girls cut before coming to the EU. It could also confuse matters for…
Language and mores change over the years and what was acceptable in the past is no longer acceptable now. That’s not to say that the likes of the current round of sex cases from forty years ago being dredged up by the police are innocent, but, at the time it was an accepted attitude for the ‘glitterati’ to behave with their adoring fans. Being basically mobbed by fans and taking…
Owen Hatherley frets over housing space: How much space should we be expected to live in? Some institutions – the Homes and Communities Agency, the Greater London authority – have talked about resurrecting minimum space standards, which, like rent control, is entirely normal in the rest of Europe. … What has been lost in all of this is the idea that space is a right, a good in and of…
It has been a long-term rumour overcrowded London councils were moving people on their housing lists into cheaper accommodation in Essex, but Newham’s response is the FIRST admission it has been going on. Oh, indeed! But did anyone ever really believe their protestations that this wasn’t going on anyway? I mean, consider the source… It insisted Thurrock Council was notified in writing of each placement. But furious Thurrock bosses said…
England may be a green and pleasant land, but getting around it on foot is proving harder than ever as council cuts leave footpaths blocked, run-down and overgrown, according to a report. A report by The Ramblers, no less (it seems they’ve dropped the ‘Association’ from their title as part of a rebranding exercise). The organisation used the Freedom of Information Act to discover that more than 30 per cent…
Jake Bowers, the ‘Guardian’s Romany correspondent, on the expected Roma influx: As January 2014 approaches and the anti-immigration lobby warns of the arrival of millions from Romania and Bulgaria, it’s essential that progressive politicians – and I’m assuming Blunkett considers himself one – understand why 200,000 Roma migrants have already fled poverty, persecution and discrimination to live in the relative comfort of British cities. Whoops! Guess no-one told Nick Clegg.…
Antony Loewenstein becomes yet another ‘do Australia down’ columnist for the ‘Guardian’: This silence, which stretches across the country only to reach the highest levels of the political and media elites, is arguably Australia’s greatest outrage, and a stain on our projected global image as an egalitarian state with justice for all. This ‘silence’ being, it would seem, the silence of white Australia to the awful news that the prison…
Another school term, another fuss over uniform requirements and another case where you wonder who is the adult, and who the child: Holly-Mae Donaldson, 13, was told to go back to her Hester’s Way home on the first day of term because her skirt conflicted with the academy’s uniform code. Diane Donaldson, from Lee Close, called the decision to ban her daughter from classes “appalling”, and said she was disgusted…
Ian Birrell has had his (unrealistic) hopes dashed: Tomorrow marks one year since the Paralympics, that glorious festival of sport, began. It ended with highfalutin speeches and proclamations of a seismic change in attitudes. We were told people would never see disability in the same way after witnessing the dazzling exploits of David Weir. And you believed that? Really? Good lord! The sad reality is little has changed. Yes, there…
It seems H G Wells was right. Over in France, the Eloi are starting to realise the Morlocks are among them: In recent years, with the EU’s relaxation of travel restrictions across mainland Europe, hundreds of thousands of Roma gipsies, mostly from Romania and Bulgaria, have travelled west in search of a better life. As many as half a million are estimated to be living in France, according to the…
Wealthy gay dad, Barrie Drewitt-Barlow, says he and his civil partner Tony will go to court to force churches to host gay weddings. He told the Essex Chronicle that he will take legal action because “I am still not getting what I want”. Slippery slope..? Nah. That couldn’t have been predicted, right? H/T: TabithaBrowne via Twitter
The lesson from this weekend should be that we are stronger when united. It is tempting to see a conflict between the kind of protests we saw on Saturday, and attempts at dialogue, such as when York mosque invited EDL protesters to sit down for tea and biscuits. But they’re both necessary: when people are angry and want answers, talk to them. When fascists try to intimidate us by marching…
…via Aditya Chakrabortty: It’s a good question. Don’t surveys repeatedly show Sweden as one of the happiest countries (certainly a damn sight cheerier than Britain)? Isn’t it famous for its equality, its warm welcome to immigrants? Whatever happened to Stockholm, capital of progressivism, the Mecca towards which Guardianistas face for their daily five minutes of mindfulness? We all know the cliches, but the reality is they no longer fit the…
Or just more woeful handling of public money, mixed with a little soupcon of identity politics? A controversial plan to scrap the free parking enjoyed by more than 10,000 Blue Badge holders in the New Forest is today at the centre of a new row. Civic chiefs have been accused of wasting public money after accelerating plans to replace equipment installed only nine years ago. It seems they need to…
Latest Comments