Benedict Cooper

Journalism | Copywriting | Travel | Photography

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  • Home
  • Journalism
  • Copywriting
  • Travel writing
  • Photography
  • Contact
  • About
  • 2020 Visions project

I am a freelance journalist and copywriter with fifteen years’ experience covering politics, social affairs and business for national newspapers, consumer publications, travel magazines, trade journals and online. To discuss feature and news shift commissions, or copywriting contracts, you can get in touch via the links below.

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  • Journalism

    Hospitals must give staff better ‘psychological PPE’

    Listening to Prof Neil Greenberg, consultant occupational psychologist and forensic psychiatrist at King’s College London, you might think he is describing the psychological conditions of a war zone, not the NHS in 2021. He talks about “frontline psychiatry”; the threat of “moral injury” in the line of duty; the need for a military-style covenant to protect traumatised NHS staff; the importance of camaraderie, psychological action plans and a supervisory “buddy system” for beleaguered NHS workers. Before he joined King’s College, Greenberg spent 23 years in the armed forces, studying and developing new methods of treating the victims of battlefield trauma. His work in the field of trauma risk management (TRiM),…

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    Related Posts

    Yes Mr Hunt, this is unacceptable

    February 14, 2017

    The refugee crisis/medical angle

    December 3, 2015

    Comment piece

    August 31, 2018
  • Journalism

    Care homes ‘working blind’ after potentially unsafe coronavirus test kits pulled

    A story I wrote for The Mirror, about the impact of the withdrawal of Covid testing kits on care homes in the UK, based on accounts from the managers of a home in Nottingham who said they had been left “stranded”. EXCLUSIVE Staff were forced to put a vulnerable, elderly patient with dementia into isolation after the withdrawal of potentially unsafe testing kits A care home was forced to place a vulnerable elderly patient with dementia into isolation after the withdrawal of potentially unsafe coronavirus testing kits. Staff at a home in Nottinghamshire had choice but to place the newly-arrived patient into “barriered nursing”, meaning complete isolation, for 14 days,…

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    The city’s ancient hill

    December 1, 2018

    The NHS whistleblower

    January 21, 2019

    ‘How the EU is making NHS privatisation permanent’. New Statesman, December 2013

    January 20, 2014
  • Journalism

    Coronavirus tests pulled over safety fears supplied by firm who donated £160k to Tories

    My exclusive story for The Mirror, uncovering the fact that a recipient of a major government contract to deliver Covid testing systems – since withdrawn over safety concerns – is a considerable donor to the Tory party. EXCLUSIVE Ministers halted the use of test parts supplied by Randox Laboratories with immediate effect and until further notice. Coronavirus tests given to thousands of Brits and supplied by a firm which has donated £160,000 to the Conservative Party were pulled last night over safety fears. Care homes in England were ordered by the DHSC to halt using the testing kit produced by Randox Laboratories, on the grounds that they “may not meet…

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    ‘How the EU is making NHS privatisation permanent’. New Statesman, December 2013

    January 20, 2014

    “I have never seen much point…

    June 3, 2013

    Lost children of Empire

    July 7, 2019
  • Journalism

    Our motives for quoting George Orwell must be as scrupulous as he was

    This article originally appeared in the Daily Telegraph, in July 2020. The author of Animal Farm is eminently quotable – and that is why he has been co-opted on both sides of the political spectrum. “If Liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” This quote by George Orwell, which is engraved next to his statue outside the BBC headquarters, makes Billy Bragg, the musician and left-wing activist cringe. Writing in the Guardian last week, Bragg expanded by highlighting a tendency to cite Orwell and this quote in particular, among the “reactionary right”, and those, he says, “who have…

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    Related Posts

    ‘Into the powerhouse’

    July 7, 2014

    Open Democracy: Our NHS

    June 8, 2014

    Hospitals must give staff better ‘psychological PPE’

    January 21, 2021
  • Journalism

    Orwell and the ILP

    This article first appeared on the website of Independent Labour Publications (ILP). On the 70th anniversary of his death aged 46, BENEDICT COOPER assesses George Orwell’s relationship with the ILP and its effect on his life, writing and politics. When a sentry reported to John McNair, leader of the Independent Labour Party’s (ILP) Spanish Civil War contingent, that a “great big Englishman is here to see you”, he didn’t think much of it. This was late December 1936; thousands of foreign volunteers were pouring into Catalonia to take up arms for the Republic. McNair still wasn’t impressed even after the new arrival had been shown in. The ungainly figure standing…

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    Related Posts

    Care homes ‘working blind’ after potentially unsafe coronavirus test kits pulled

    July 21, 2020

    Whistleblowing doctors

    February 20, 2016

    Corbyn vows fightback

    September 9, 2017
  • Journalism

    The future of regional journalism is “being looked at” by the BBC. It would be a fatal error to cut such vital community ties.

    Everyone in Shirebrook knew there was something seriously wrong at the Sports Direct factory down the road. How many ambulances had they seen hurtling towards the plant in recent months? It was hard to tell. Sometimes they were called out more than once in a day. When a local BBC Inside Out team looked into it the figures were as stark as the human stories behind them were bleak: 76 emergency callouts to the site in Derbyshire, in less than two years; reports of workers, afraid of the consequences of calling in sick, collapsing at work, suffering convulsions and strokes on the factory floor; heavily-pregnant women still grafting on the…

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    Junior doctors are warning us

    January 20, 2016

    The Corbynite legions have become the Tories’ most valuable allies

    July 11, 2016

    On the trail…

    April 2, 2015
  • Journalism

    The Hunt shows how little we understand Orwell today

    This feature, on the ways in which Orwell is mistreated and misunderstood by popular culture, appeared in The Telegraph in March 2020. “You’ve read Animal Farm?” So says the female villain of The Hunt, Blumhouse’s slasher-cum-satirical film, to the unlikely heroine, a Mississippi hick she’s nicknamed Snowball. As she learns to her cost, during their showdown, she has a bad case of cognitive bias. Despite Snowball’s lowly identity – in the eyes of her hunter at least – our heroine, real name Crystal, has read a book or two. Briefly, the background, and the premise of the film. Crystal is the last survivor of a human hunt that targets a group…

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    Lost children of Empire

    July 7, 2019

    Business as usual?

    October 8, 2014

    In Pictures: London Z1

    February 3, 2015
  • Journalism

    Talk of the town: On the road in Worksop with Lisa Nandy

    This profile piece of Labour leadership candidate Lisa Nandy appeared in The House magazine, the in-house magazine of The Houses of Parliament, and Politics Home in February 2020. After 85 years as a Labour seat, the Nottinghamshire constituency of Bassetlaw witnessed the largest swing from Labour to the Conservatives in the country at the general election. Benedict Cooper joins Lisa Nandy on a trip to the area to hear first hand how she plans to reconnect with the party’s former heartlands   It’s a bright, crisp winter’s day in Worksop, and in the café of The Crossing church and community centre the lunchtime trade is under way. As I cross…

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    Related Posts

    Medical politics in 2014

    February 6, 2015

    The end of the Theatre Writing Partnership: Left Lion, June 20122

    June 29, 2012

    tnt magazine: Belfast

    January 29, 2015
  • Journalism

    Byline Times: Can Labour fight against infighting in its leadership contest?

    A report from the Labour leadership hustings held by Open Labour in January 2020, originally posted on Byline Times. There was a conspicuous lack of discord and disharmony at the Labour leadership and deputy leadership hustings in Nottingham. For the past four years, gatherings of Labour members have tended towards the truculent wherever debate is involved. Or, when Jeremy Corbyn has been present, they have been love-ins; orthodoxies of uncritical faith and untempered affection. There was, of course, some liveliness. It is hard to bring a number of Labour members together without hearing that accusations of anti-Semitism against the leadership were “illegitimate” spurious “smears” against Jeremy Corbyn – up to…

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    Junior doctors are warning us

    January 20, 2016

    The school protest bigots in Birmingham would love Labour to trigger Jess Phillips

    October 7, 2019

    NHS Reinstatement Bill

    March 11, 2015
  • Journalism

    The school protest bigots in Birmingham would love Labour to trigger Jess Phillips

    It will make a lot of Labour members in Birmingham Yardley, and beyond, extremely happy if their MP Jess Phillips is ‘triggered’ in a vote tonight.  Phillips is one of Labour’s most prominent working class female MPs, one of the few MPs whose appeal reaches out to the wider electorate; a member of the Women and Equalities Committee, who came into politics to do more to protect victims of domestic abuse; and in the last fortnight alone has stood out for standing up to Boris Johnson in the fight to keep the Domestic Abuse Bill alive.  But none of that matters in the Labour party today if you’re not a Corbynite.…

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    Related Posts

    Election special: PRN Magazine

    May 6, 2015

    “I have never seen much point…

    June 3, 2013

    The city’s ancient hill

    December 1, 2018
  • Journalism

    Driving the winds of change

    A feature I wrote for leading real estate trade journal Property Week, on the strides being made in sustainable energy infrastructure investment. Click here to view the full article. Tweet

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    Related Posts

    Byline Times: Can Labour fight against infighting in its leadership contest?

    January 27, 2020

    There is no closure – just grief

    August 30, 2015

    The blind faith of the right (+what’s left for the left)

    May 28, 2015
  • Journalism

    ‘The Ministry of Truth’ at Five Leaves Bookshop

    ‘1936 was the year in which Orwell himself said that “history stopped”; in The Ministry of Truth, Lynskey adds that “history stopped, and Nineteen Eighty-Four began”.’ From my write up on the Orwell Society blog up of ‘The Ministry of Truth’ by Dorian Lynskey, who came to talk at Five Leaves Bookshop last week. George Orwell left London for Catalonia on December 22nd 1936. He fled Barcelona in fear for his and Eileen’s life six months later, hastily across the French border at Perpignan, through France by train, “away from the mountain and the vine, back to the meadow and the elm”, and was back in the family home in…

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    tnt magazine: Belfast

    January 29, 2015

    Culinary Adventures on the Trans Siberian Foodway – October 2012

    November 3, 2012

    Privatisation is unravelling

    January 9, 2015
  • Journalism

    Lost children of Empire

    In the 1980s a Nottingham social worker uncovered a “government-approved programme of betrayal, institutional abuse, colonial callousness, racism and deceit”. Here’s my feature for @LeftLion on Margaret Humphreys and the child migrants scandal https://www.leftlion.co.uk/read/2019/july/margaret-humphreys-home-children-child-migrants-trust/#.XSSJYUsxjv4.twitter Gripped with terror, a young mother races along the crowded platform at Liverpool’s Lime Street station, her eyes wildly scanning for any sight of her son. She hasn’t lost him in a moment of lapsed attention – her little boy has been taken from her. Then suddenly, amidst the tumult and the smoke, there he is. Her only child, helpless and confused, on board a train that in a few seconds is going to grind into…

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    Related Posts

    We tried

    May 8, 2015

    Whistleblowing doctors

    February 20, 2016

    ‘Clause 118 would leave no hospital in England safe’, New Statesman, January 2014

    February 6, 2014
  • Journalism

    Farwell, The Maze

    The Maze is Closing For Good 19 April 19 words: Benedict Cooper (link to feature on LeftLion) Gaz and Steph Peacham have announced the closure of much-loved pub and venue The Maze. You have until the end of June to get your last orders in. Here’s the full story in their own words… Gaz Peacham can still remember the moment, to the beat, when he knew The Maze could be something really special. November 12 2007, Israeli funk band The Apples were just getting into their set, building up slowly, climactically, to one of those rare indescribable moments you get in live music; when the crowd and the venue and…

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    Comment piece

    August 31, 2018

    tnt magazine: Belfast

    January 29, 2015

    Our motives for quoting George Orwell must be as scrupulous as he was

    July 14, 2020
  • Comment,  Journalism

    “F**k’em”

    What used to be said, disdainfully, of Leave voters – ‘They were duped…they didn’t know what they were voting for.. things have changed etc.’ – has been reduced to a single sneer over the past few weeks: “Fuck’em” (that’s a direct quote). But isn’t turning over the referendum going to destroy millions of people’s faith in democracy? “Fuck’em.” Isn’t stopping Brexit a gift for the far-right? “Fuck’em. They shouldn’t have voted Leave.” But aren’t these the people who are going to be most hurt by no-deal? “Fuck’em. Serves them right.” Every day for the past 1000 days, there are those who have woken up refusing to accept the result of…

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    Related Posts

    Let’s drop the myth that Corbyn is the Messiah, then maybe we can make some progress

    September 9, 2016

    Hunt thinks junior doctors lack “professionalism…

    September 29, 2015

    Mourning isn’t enough

    May 24, 2017
  • Journalism

    What we might have lost

    A fire at the Cattle Market in November wrecked four buildings and damaged several more. But it could have been worse. We went down to see what Notts would be missing if the whole thing had gone up..  www.leftlion.co.uk The blaze at the Cattle Market was so intense, and the flames so high, that looking out of the skylight in my flat on Forest Road, a hazy orange aurora hung behind the city centre, casting Nottingham in a strange, ominous backlight. If it hadn’t been for the direction of the wind, and the rapid response from the emergency services, we might well be ruminating on what we lost the night…

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    Related Posts

    ONE TOUCH OF NATURE

    February 21, 2015

    Confessions of an ex-Londoner

    July 26, 2013

    The end of the Theatre Writing Partnership: Left Lion, June 20122

    June 29, 2012
  • Journalism

    The People’s Vote movement is playing with far-right fire

        Take a placard calling for a ‘People’s Vote’, spin it around. You might well find the reverse bears another slogan: ‘Stop Brexit’. Keep spinning: Stop Brexit – People’s Vote – Stop Brexit – People’s Vote – Stop Brexit, until the two phrases blur into the political axiom of the day. Ostensibly – and perhaps practically, if it comes to it – they don’t mean the same thing at all. But assuming, as the post-referendum Remain camp confidently does, that a re-run vote does lead to Brexit being overturned, what then? Addled and vile as they are, the thugs caught on camera abusing Remain MP Anna Soubry outside Parliament…

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    Related Posts

    The NHS whistleblower

    January 21, 2019

    Driven to suicide by payday loans

    November 27, 2013

    ‘Into the powerhouse’

    July 7, 2014
  • Journalism

    The NHS whistleblower

    This article appeared in the Guardian Society section in October 2018. I was left to fight alone for NHS whistleblowing protection Blowing the whistle in the NHS is meant to be easy. Medical bodies such as the Department of Health and Social Care, the General Medical Council (GMC) and individual hospital trusts all encourage the practice – on paper. But when Chris Day, a junior intensive care doctor, raised numerous concerns about understaffing and safety at the intensive care unit of Queen Elizabeth hospital in Woolwich, he found out all too quickly the toll it would take on his career. Day says he made a “protected disclosure” to hospital management…

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    Related Posts

    The refugee crisis/medical angle

    December 3, 2015

    The quiet exodus of GPs

    July 10, 2015

    The city’s ancient hill

    December 1, 2018
 Older Posts

Recent Posts

  • Jan 21, 2021 Hospitals must give staff better ‘psychological PPE’
  • Jul 21, 2020 Care homes ‘working blind’ after potentially unsafe coronavirus test kits pulled
  • Jul 16, 2020 Coronavirus tests pulled over safety fears supplied by firm who donated £160k to Tories
  • Jul 14, 2020 Our motives for quoting George Orwell must be as scrupulous as he was
  • Jun 15, 2020 Orwell and the ILP
  • Jun 10, 2020 The future of regional journalism is “being looked at” by the BBC. It would be a fatal error to cut such vital community ties.
  • Apr 03, 2020 The Hunt shows how little we understand Orwell today
  • Apr 03, 2020 Talk of the town: On the road in Worksop with Lisa Nandy
  • Jan 27, 2020 Byline Times: Can Labour fight against infighting in its leadership contest?
  • Oct 07, 2019 The school protest bigots in Birmingham would love Labour to trigger Jess Phillips
  • Sep 27, 2019 Driving the winds of change
  • Jul 13, 2019 ‘The Ministry of Truth’ at Five Leaves Bookshop
  • Jul 07, 2019 Lost children of Empire
  • Jun 10, 2019 Farwell, The Maze
  • Mar 29, 2019 “F**k’em”
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