Josephine Rust tackles LGBT adoption Recently a Catholic adoption agency won the right to be exempted from legislation which would have forced it to consider homosexual couples as parents. Catholic Care, which serves the dioceses of Leeds, Middlesbrough, and Hallam in South Yorkshire, claimed it would be forced to stop its work finding homes...
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David Clarke recalls the spirit of  change of 1997 “Things can only get better”. Did they? Perhaps, but it all seems a long time ago. D:Ream, the band behind New Labour’s election anthem is now best known for the former membership of Brian Cox, who currently presents programmes about physics on the BBC. The highly...
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Sarah Dean considers our future care. As a student old age seams a far and distant fate, detached in almost all ways from the lives we are currently living. However during my gap year I found myself working at a care home and giving home visits to elderly and disabled people in my area. This was...
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Alexandra Khoo looks at the patriarchal bias in the fight against poverty. The portrait of poverty is often given a female face, and it is a fact that women are over-represented in poverty. Yet, women’s agency is rarely given much thought in poverty-reduction projects. It is falsely assumed that they benefit equally in regaining control...
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The Guardian’s Greg Freeman looks at an unusual election. Libservative … Cleggeron … Con-Dem-nation? Whatever term you come up with to describe the new coalition government – and there have been quite a few others – there is a sense that no one knows quite where we are heading for yet. Just as we didn’t...
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As arms manufacturer BAE systems faces a record fine relating to the allegedly corrupt Al-Yamamah arms deal, Freddy Vanson makes a passionate critique of the arms industry. The arms industry is one of the biggest global industries; the world spends some $1,000 billion annually on the military and military expenditure out strips nearly every...
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Dominic Mantle asks what the effect of having too Mandy lords can be on democracy. Today one of the most influential politicians in the country, Peter Mandelson is treated as a near cult figure by the media. He initially contributed to the landslide electoral victory of New Labour in 1997, and he has now...
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Sam Cooke tackles the tensions of the academic world. This spring, my university proposed the closure of my department. It’s a recession, I am prepared to accept that some departments may be financial dead weights and should be cast off. That, however, was not the issue the University took with my department, but instead...
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Huw Halstead casts his eye over European corruption scandals. Imagine. The Church of England, using its overbearing influence on the political system, has scandalously swapped vast tracts of worthless land it owns in the Yorkshire moors for prime real estate in the heart of London, in a deal with the government that will lose...
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Lizzie Beardsley sniffs out scandal in the European Union. ‘A unique economic and political partnership between 27 democratic European countries’. Unique is one way to describe it. Perhaps the uniqueness of how easy it is for MEPs to exploit money from the system. Or most importantly unique because it has been able to hide...
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