Category: Current Affairs
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From Russia, With Chaos
Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been re-reading Peter Pomerantsev’s book Nothing is True and Everything is Possible, each page pushing me towards the same, slightly counterintuitive conclusion: if you want to understand Trump’s America, you need to look to Putin’s Russia. I first read the book when a colleague – a history teacher I’d…
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A Gandhi for the West?
I watched Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi this week. I remember being taken to it by my parents back in 1982. There was an intermission half way through as the reels were changed. I was 10 years old and as the film opened with his assassination, then jumped back in time, I remember being blown away by the…
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Body-Cams for Teachers
Absolutely nothing terrifyingly Orwellian about this then. I think the key issue here is about creep in terms of use. “The cameras are not on all the time. Where there is a perceived threat to a member of staff or pupil for example, they are used. It’s not like a surveillance camera.” That, I think,…
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Inaugurate Something… and Make Trump Irrelevant Again
My suggestion for marking Trump’s inauguration would be to inaugurate some amazing thing, some small seed of action that’ll build bridges and tear down prejudice. At the moment, the three most troubling words I know are ‘God,’ ‘bless,’ and ‘America,’ and every time I hear them in sequence part of my brain freezes. Can anyone tell…
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Next Up, Capitalism Is Killing Us
Lead stories on the radio this morning: How a third of fathers want a less stressful job so they can actually spend time with their kids. Eight people in the world have more wealth than the poorest 50% The UK’s National Institute for Clinical Excellence rejects a life-extending cancer drug for use on NHS because…