Politics (Page 78)

When I was a young and reckless foreign correspondent I had a sweary encounter with a prime minister which could have gone horribly wrong. It taught me to take care with language. The Caribbean island of Grenada had just been taken over by communist rebels in a Cuban-backed military coup. My foreign editor ordered me to get to nearby Barbados and charter a light aircraft to cover the evacuation of 200 British holidaymakers. It turned into a trying day. As the rebels had closed Grenada’s airspace only an equally reckless ex-Vietnam fighter pilot would take me. We nearly crashed on landing. Revolutionary guards arrested me and bundled me into a car which was stopped at roadblocks every few miles soContinue Reading

CCTV footage shows officers seizing the dolls. Youtube/SWNS The landlady of a pub in Essex has been expressing bemusement about the complaints of “snowflakes” after her display of golliwog dolls attracted the attention of the county’s police – only for them to be told, reportedly by the home secretary Suella Braverman, that they shouldn’t be wasting their time on such “nonsense”. Six years ago, a not dissimilar incident unfolded in a café at the foot of the South Downs in Sussex, where the proprietors’ insistence on displaying a golliwog behind the counter prompted a complaint from a dismayed member of what Braverman terms the tofu-eating wokerati (namely me). On that occasion, however, it was the proprietor who called the policeContinue Reading

For the first time since the cold war, Moscow has accused a US journalist of espionage. Evan Gershkovich, a reporter with the Wall Street Journal, was arrested in Yekaterinburg on March 29 by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB). The reporter, a Russia specialist, insists he was there to report on the Wagner Group, a mercenary organisation that fights for Russia in Ukraine. But the FSB has charged him with spying on “one of the enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex”. Not surprisingly, the Wall Street Journal vehemently rejects the allegations. On April 11 the US secretary of state, Anthony Blinken, announced that Gershkovich has been “wrongfully detained” and called for his immediate release, condemning Russia’s “ongoing war against truth”. SittingContinue Reading

If this polling has it right then just a quarter of American adults now a favourable view of Donald Trump and this really puts into question whether he has any chance at all of making a comeback. The images that have been widely circulated of his court appearance before Easter have been dreadful and even large parts of his base are struggling to go on backing their man. Yet WH2024 betting punters appear not to have noticed and he’s still rated by the betting markets as having a 38.5% chance of returning to the White House. I’m now betting that he won’t win next year’s election. Mike SmithsonContinue Reading

News headlines tell you little about the realities of divorce for most couples Prostock-studio/Shutterstock It’s no wonder many people think divorce involves going to court, huge legal fees and decades of spousal payments, considering these are the cases that dominate our headlines. However, the kinds of divorce cases reported in the news involve the very rich, and are far removed from the reality for most couples. The Law Commission of England and Wales, the body responsible for law reform, recently announced a review of the law of finances on divorce, with a scoping report due in September 2024. Review of this law is much needed, given the legislation governing how couples in England and Wales sort out their financial affairsContinue Reading

Alan Denney/Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA As slurs go, the word “Paki” has a long, dark history in the UK. A video has emerged of the YouTuber, KSI, using the term frivolously – followed by a burst of raucous laughter by his peers. KSI has subsequently apologised. However, this has brought back disturbing and hurtful memories for many people. As BBC broadcaster and DJ Bobby Friction, AKA Paramdeep Sehdev, put it on Twitter: I had this racial slur thrown at me & got physical beats by racists for my entire childhood. Genuinely upset that @KSI (a guy my children love) did this & thought it was funny. This has also highlighted the mistaken and enduring assumption that the term is a simpleContinue Reading

iSOMBOON/Shutterstock “I don’t listen to adults when it comes to this sort of thing”, a 17-year-old told me. We were discussing how digital technology affects his life, as part of a long-term project in the west of England that I carried out with colleagues to explore young people’s mental health – including the impact of digital technology on their emotional wellbeing. There is a widespread perception that being online is bad for young people’s mental health. But when we began the project, we quickly realised that there was very little evidence to back this up. The few in-depth studies around social media use and children’s mental health state that impacts are small and it is difficult to draw clear conclusions.Continue Reading

Oleg Shakirov/Shutterstock Suppose you are in a pub with friends. You drink a few beers, have a good time, and head home. The following morning you realise your headache is milder than usual. You then discover that you were part of an experiment where the glasses at the pub were 25% smaller. In their landmark 2008 book, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness, behavioural economist Richard Thaler and legal scholar Cass Sunstein defined a “nudge” as an intervention “that alters people’s behaviour in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives”. Imposing higher alcohol taxes is not nudging, because it changes the costs to the drinker. Offering smaller glasses, by contrast, is. ItContinue Reading

Warning: this story contains graphic descriptions of violence. Pseudonyms are used to protect the interviewees’ identities. Angela had already been in the UK as an asylum seeker for nine years and four months when we interviewed her. She was still in a state of limbo, unsure whether asylum would be granted, and her story was disturbing to hear. Angela told us she had left Nigeria after an appalling terrorist attack. Her father was a high-ranking regional politician, a Christian in a mainly Muslim area. Following a political dispute, the family compound was attacked by members of the militant Islamist Boko Haram organisation. Angela told us that her father, her husband and others were killed – and that she was shotContinue Reading