How to Politicise a Murder

According to the press and politicians, “the State” must be kept safe from public opinion by Cameron De Chi Simon Jenkins’ declaration in the Guardian that social media urgently needs a “policing regime” should make chilling reading for everyone. Even after Thomas Mair was confirmed to have links to the far right, politicians, journalists and public intellectuals have found a way… Read More

Forget Labour’s List – There’s a Tally of Government Incompetence to Keep Track Of

by Kiri Kankhwende    You’ve probably heard all about Labour’s list, leaked to the Times, which ranks party MPs on a spectrum of supportive to hostile. On the face of it, it’s easy to understand why, even when you’ve won a resounding mandate from party members but a group of MPs seem hell-bent on undermining… Read More

Robbing disabled Peter to pay privileged Paul

by Maurice Mcleod Gorgeous Gideon has just delivered his 8th budget. Normally, at this stage of our five-year-long ‘democratic’ cycle, chancellors feel at ease to hand out some pain knowing they have four years for the myopic electorate to forget. This time though, Osborne knew he had to curry a little favour with the referendum… Read More

Fan or not Baroness Warsi’s resignation is no cause for celebration if you value diversity in public life

by David Wood Politics is a tribal business. It is a strange world where you can virulently disagree with somebody in private, but because they are ‘one of us’, to coin one of Margaret Thatcher’s favourite expressions, you would not be able to get a fag-paper’s worth of difference in opinion when expressed publicly. This… Read More

Extraordinary Careers: The path to PhD

by Dr Ru Kaur In late 2012 I obtained my PhD in human evolutionary, molecular, population and medical genetics. I specialised in human genetic diversity in sub-Saharan Africa. Prior to this I spent a year studying for my Masters in Medical Parasitology and Infectious Diseases; as part of this degree I lived in the Philippines… Read More