14 February 2019 Measuring Happiness The importance of friends. By Lynda Goetz There is plenty in the news currently, from the no-progress Brexit to the stalemate in Venezuela via the dying days of the Caliphate, so it may seem somewhat frivolous to be discussing happiness at this time. However, this is, interestingly, an underlying theme
14 February 2019 The Year of the Pig Squealer’s blog (with apologies to George Orwell). By Neil Tidmarsh If George Orwell was writing today, would his Animal Farm insurrection be an anti-establishment, alt-right uprising rather than a socialist revolution? Would the pigs Napoleon and Snowball be populist, nationalist rabble-rousers rather than communist dictators? Squealer, their
14 February 2019 Diary of a Corbynista Still Playing Chicken by Don Urquhart 7 February Yesterday’s Metro contained an article about increases in offences involving anti-Semitism. On no grounds whatsoever they managed to turn it into a Labour Party issue with an image of the party leader smack bang in the middle. 8 February Ipsos-MORI
7 February 2019 Lens on the Week UK ARE YOU HOT? No this isn’t a teenage dating game but something we should all be worrying about because if you are not hot now you soon will be. New met office forecasts show climate change accelerating faster than previously thought with predictions of 1.5 C above
7 February 2019 Beware: Steamroller Loose Business and Brexit. by J R Thomas If you are one of those readers who look through Lens on the Week before grappling with the heavier stuff lurking further down, you might have noticed an odd passing remark in this week’s Business Section. Diageo, that behemoth of alcohol, still
07 February 2019 No Deal The risk to the EU. By John Watson They are difficult times indeed. German growth was down to 1.5% in 2018; Italy is on the edge of recession. And is it all because of the possibility of a no-deal Brexit? Of course not. The weakness of the global economy is
07 February 2019 Blame it on Brexit A universal scapegoat. By Frank O’Nomics Brexit, according to most media reports, is responsible for all of our woes. News that Nissan has reconsidered the production of its new X-Trail car, deciding that making it in Japan makes much more economic sense than Sunderland, is being used as
07 February 2019 Freeing Speech Government acts at last. By Lynda Goetz It has been a long time coming, but finally the Government has published a 53-page document setting out uniform Guidance on the issue of free speech in universities. This, as those who have an interest in such things (and of course those who read
07 February 2019 Zayed Sports City Politics, sport, religion. By Neil Tidmarsh It isn’t often that world politics, sport and religion all occupy the same space at more or less the same time, but consider these three very recent events: On January 22, a man was arrested for wearing the wrong shirt, and could now
7 February 2019 Diary of a Corbynista Venezuela back in Fashion by Don Urquhart 31 January We got through a whole Question Time without the key issues – Hamas, Hezbollah and the IRA, getting a mention. But Hurrah! There was a question about Venezuela and this allowed Tory MP Helen Whateley to point out that
