To a deafening crescendo of revving engines, the ashes were then carried up the famous steps, through the main entrance, and straight to their new home in a glass-fronted enclave made especially in the rock god’s honour.Read More →
Civil Service World, Summer 2024 Naming and blaming has undeniably harmed the relationship between officials and ministers in recent years. What will it take to restore trust, after so much tension? In the post-Brexit referendum atmosphere of 2019, a revealing comment by Dominic Cummings made its way into the papers. Any civil servant who, in his view, “snubbed” Brexit should be purged. Cue a bloody period of resignations and sackings. Cue a “hit list” of officials marked for moving on. Cue the emergence of, in the words of a senior civil servant quoted in the Guardian, a “poisonous, horrible atmosphere” in Whitehall, “a feeling thatRead More →
Junior doctors walked out of work today for the first of seven days of planned industrial action Junior doctors from around the East Midlands came out on strike today as part of coordinated national action in a long-running dispute with the government over pay. Doctors formed a picket outside the main entrance of the Queen’s Medical Centre, the largest hospital in the East Midlands, to highlight what they say are ‘real terms salary cuts amounting to a 26% reduction in pay since 2008’. It is the eleventh time junior doctors have come out on strike nationally since the current dispute arose 20 months ago. TheRead More →
Nottingham World, June 13th 20124 Political and civic leaders met at a small dignified ceremony today, to mark the first anniversary of the Nottingham attacks. Nottingham MPs Lilian Greenwood and Nadia Whitthome were joined by new City Council leader Neghat Khan, newly-elected Mayor for the East Midlands Combined County Authority Claire Ward, and senior officers from Nottinghamshire Police, to pay their respects at a vigil at St Peter’s Church. It is the site where, just hours after the brutal attacks which left three people dead, on June 13th last year, an impromptu vigil was held for victims Grace O’Malley-Kumar, Barnaby Webber, and Ian Coates. WithinRead More →
I woke with a jolt at 5:30am, unrested and irritable, the sun blazing through the open skylight of my already stifling loft bedroom. After trying and failing for two more agitated hours, I gave up on the idea of getting any more sleep. Sitting up I reached for my phone and – though it is a hated early morning habit – opened Twitter. The first post, from a local reporter, caught my tired eyes: ‘Chaos in the city centre’, accompanied by a series of photos of one of the busiest rush hour jam spots in Nottingham cordoned off by police tapes, deserted. The tweet wasRead More →
This list is guest-edited by Benedict Cooper, freelance journalist and trustee of the Orwell Society, who wrote an article for the i newspaper about the remarkable number of misquotations attributed online to the original railer against fake news. 1. “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” Appears to have been first used, without the “universal”, and mistakenly attributed to Orwell, in Partners in Ecocide: Australia’s Complicity in the Uranium Cartel, by Venturino Giorgio Venturini in 1982. 2. “A people that elect corrupt politicians, imposters, thieves and traitors are not victims, but accomplices.” This precise phrase does not appear inRead More →
This feature appeared in the i newspaper in March 2022. “The people will believe what the media tells them they believe.” As one of the most revered and prescient authors of the past century, George Orwell is the source of many famous quotes. Like this one, they are often bold statements that seem to cut to the heart of modern society’s problems. People often feel a sense of satisfaction in sharing them to support their own viewpoints – especially when they have a conspiratorial air. There’s just one problem: the sentence above isn’t an Orwell quote. A graphic bearing these words, with the author’s nameRead More →
“The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it.” This famous Orwell quote is ubiquitous: in the media, on placards at demos and rallies, and of course in meme form, repeated and shared on social media, millions of times over. There’s just one problem: this isn’t an Orwell quote. The author of Nineteen Eighty-Four never wrote, said, or even noted this down. It was written in 2009. Orwell is one of those writers who are well worth quoting. Every day, in the press, on social media, and in TV talk shows, Orwell’s thoughts, words, and sharp observationsRead More →
This article appeared in the Nottingham Post in March 2022. Vladimir Putin is using historical “tricks” to justify war against Ukraine, an expert in European history at the University of Nottingham has said. Dr Liudmyla Sharipova, assistant professor of early modern European history in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Nottingham, says she is in a “state of shock and horror” seeing events unfold in her country of birth, where her elderly mother is still trapped and extremely vulnerable in the capital, Kyiv. Dr Sharipova says that the Russian President is deliberately using false allegations and spurious historical documents allegedly dating back toRead More →
The slow progress of Putin’s invasion forces in Ukraine is no cause for celebration. Nor are reports of blunders, even major strategic errors, or a “depressed” mood in Moscow. Nor should the unassailable win Ukraine and President Zelensky have in the courtroom of world opinion, or the scorn that has fallen on the Russian leader, be mistaken for real victory. Putin will not accept failure in Ukraine. He is all in. There will be some terrible victory, of a kind, or this will be his downfall. Putin knows that the fulcrum nation of Ukraine is increasingly looking towards Europe and away from his glare. RussianRead More →