This really doesn’t seem an apposite title for a blog post as we head, in a matter of hours, into May 6th and a possible hung parliament or worse, a Tory victory. But it IS the title of my latest published article; for anyone interested in our rich radical past, please read my New Statesman… Continue Reading
Author Archives: Melissa Benn
On Burma and Bigotgate……..
Read Melissa Benn’s latest pieces on the web. Further comment on ‘bigotgate’ in Public Finance, and a piece on one of Burma’s most celebrated activists, the poet and comedian Zarganar, recently sentenced to thirty five years for criticising the government’s handling of cyclone Nargis in 2008, on the Guardian’s Liberty Central section of Comment is… Continue Reading
Election matters, and why this election matters so much
Two excellent pieces today on separate aspects of the election campaign. Francis Gilbert has written a cogent piece on Comment is Free on why Tory policies for schools will spell disaster for our education system. In the main paper Natasha Walter analyses the deeper reasons for the absence of women from the front line of… Continue Reading
Recommended
Very good piece by Seumas Milne in The Guardian today on what Tory plans, particularly on education, might really mean. Continue Reading
The single mother’s manifesto by JK Rowling
‘David Cameron says the ‘nasty party’ that castigated people like me has changed. I’m not buying it’ says JK Rowling in The Times this week. Continue Reading
Regressive, Stagnant and Contradictory: Fawcett’s damning verdict on parties’ Manifesto
For the duration of the election campaign I am posting items in the news I find of interest/relevance to our understanding of what this election really means. Below, a press release from the Fawcett Society on what the main party manifestos promise – or fail to promise – in relation to women. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:… Continue Reading
Recommended
Good piece by Alice Thomson in The Times yesterday on how those who work in the NHS deserve gratitude as much as English lessons. Continue Reading
Something to believe in…
….or is it? Am I being too optimistic in my latest post– more of a note – in Public Finance? You tell me. But the Labour manifesto, as drafted by Ed Miliband, and much discussed, even derided, in recent weeks, seems to contain some very good things. Now if only there had been more about… Continue Reading
The case for voting Labour……
…not that you’d know it from the slightly odd headline on the piece in the latest issue of Red Pepper, in which I debate the choice facing us in the upcoming election, with Mike Mansfield QC, he of the extraordinary court room confidence and flowing locks. In short, MM thinks the current system and New… Continue Reading
The Mother Load
I really liked this piece in today’s Observer. Too many mothers deal with their own insecurities/competitiveness by focussing on the all too human failings of others. But mothers also need each other, particularly in the early years when it is all so bewildering and overwhelming. Motherhood unites, but it also divides, women or the competitive/… Continue Reading
Latest writing
THE CRISIS OF THE MERITOCRACY
The crisis of the meritocracy: Britain’s transition to mass education since the Second World War PETER MANDLER, 2020 Oxford: Oxford University Press 361pp, hardback, £25, ISBN 9780198840145 Cambridge historian Peter Mandler has a fundamentally optimistic story to tell about the growth of universal education in Britain over the last seventy years and one can sense… Continue reading…
Latest news & events
A Cold War Tragedy
Melissa will be in conversation with Anne Sebba about her new book, ‘Ethel Rosenberg – A Cold War Tragedy.’ Weds 15th September 2021, 5-6pm, in the Robert Graves Tent at the Wimbledon Book Festival. More information here. Continue reading…
