Tag: United Kingdom

Image Description – Young person at rally holding a sign Whilst an amendment to lower the voting age to 16 was rejected in Parliament, it has revived the long-standing debate amongst media over the desirability of lowering the voting age. Three questions need to be answered before: 1) whether it is worthwhile to make such […]

Image description: Helsinki Cathedral at sunset, 2016 This week, I came across a report by The Guardian into Helsinki’s approach to solving homelessness. The report praised the radical approach, named Housing First, taken by Helsinki’s authorities with the intent of solving the homelessness crisis that the city faced. Inevitably, I thought of our city of Oxford […]

Image description:  CAAT campaigners protest against Farnborough International arms fair, 2016 On the 2nd of October 2018, Jamal Khashoggi got assassinated by Saudi Arabian agents in Istanbul. This assassination has led to a rampant increase in scrutiny of the UK’s continued sale of armaments and military equipment to Saudi Arabia. With the pressure upon the […]

Image description: Vince Cable, leader of the Liberal Democrats Famously dubbed the biggest electoral event that would definitely happen this year, the local elections have attracted a surprising homogeneity among the commentariat and wider media. “The Liberal Democrats are back.” I don’t know for how many hours I saw this spattered across Twitter in smug, […]

Image Description: Leicester town hall, one of the mayoralties contested in the election The 2019 UK local elections have presented voters, election-watchers and newspaper pundits with an interesting set of results to pore over: from over 248 councils electing councillors on Thursday, the Conservatives have lost over 1200 councillors, with the main beneficiaries being the […]

Image Description: Belfast during the Troubles, 1970-2 (Kaspar C) On Thursday evening, riots broke out in Mulroy Park and Galliagh areas in Derry in Northern Ireland. Earlier that evening, police vans had entered the area to investigate dissident republicans believed to be planning attacks in the city. As the riots escalated to include use of […]

Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood, the judges of the Great British Bake Off, are the revered monarchs of the show and in many ways define the it as the unique creation that it is. It is only right that the core values of the show – good baking, British humour, and the slightly clichéd everyone-is-welcome […]

“This royal throne of kings, this scepter’d isle… This other Eden… This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land, dear for her reputation through the world, is now leased out… England, bound in with the triumphant sea whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege of watery Neptune, is now bound in with […]

This may be my first year living in Oxford, but from what I can gather Trinity Term is truly the term of tradition. Michaelmas has matriculation and Oxmas, Hilary has torpids and half way hall. But these have nothing on May Day, Ascension Day and trashing, which is to name just a few traditions that […]

The Conservative Party’s relationship with Scotland has been turbulent to say the least. In 1955, they gained a majority of the Scottish vote – the first time this had been achieved by a party since the introduction of universal suffrage. In the 1959 election, they won the most votes, but Labour took the most seats. […]

At best the results for Labour in this year’s elections could be described as ‘mixed’, but for a party which has spent six long years in the Opposition benches, and are supposedly enjoying the revitalising effects of a new revolutionary leader, ‘mixed’ isn’t quite good enough. Whilst Corbyn may point to the fact that Labour […]

Have you ever wondered whether Groundhog Day is more than just a fiction? The 1993 film features Bill Murray as a selfish weatherman forced to relive the same day over and over again until he learns the error of his ways. In the meantime he engages in mindless hedonism and ends up driving himself off […]