Another one of my ongoing series * in which I highlight articles or speeches that I admire so much I – kind of – wish I’d written or given them! So, to kick this particular series off: a terrific comment page piece by David Edgar in today’s Guardian about the values and innovation underlying the… Continue reading…
Writings
Goldie and Toby’s laugh-in
Read Melissa Benn’s latest comment piece in today’s Independent. and on a similar theme, read her latest blog on the Public Finance website. Continue reading…
Reasons to be cheerful (1)
One of the many things that currently keeps me cheerful is the unswerving committment of so many thousands of parents to their local state school and the hard work that they put in to support and extend the work that the school does. These efforts are largely unsung and often wrongly pigeonholed as a form… Continue reading…
Read all about it…
Below, three links to Melissa’s latest journalism: * Opinion piece in this week’s Public Finance on why neither party can win the class war. * An in depth interview in The Guardian today with Mary Foley, an extraordinary woman, who has forgiven her daughter’s killer. * A review in this week’s New Statesman on Kate… Continue reading…
Divide and school
Read Melissa Benn’s latest post on the Guardian’s Comment is Free website on the emerging two tier exam system in our education system. Continue reading…
Do the maths………..
Excellent article by Will Hutton also in today’s Observer about class and private education, the great taboo – yes, still – in public and political debate. For the moment, I will simply refer to one statistic quoted by Hutton. Ten million people in this country earn £15000 a year or less, and there are a… Continue reading…
Go Ed!
I’m glad to see Ed Miliband, in his Observer article today, nail the lie that there remains a yawning gap between so called aspirational citizens and so called core Labour voters. Miliband talks instead of self interest and shared interest, and the need for Labour to build on common values rather than make a lame… Continue reading…
When does post feminism shade into pre feminism?
Interesting piece by Rachel Cusk in the Guardian review yesterday, musing on the theme of A Room Of One’s Own, prompted in part by new editions of both Woolf and De Beauvoir, in which she suggests that women who make fiction out of the reality of most womens experience, that is, of the ‘repetitions’ of… Continue reading…
Politics between the covers
Listen to Melissa Benn, one of several contributors to Mark Lawson’s recent Radio Four programme on the representation of politics in fiction and the arts. Continue reading…
2001: how it really turned out
I have just been to see 2001: A Space Odyssey with my family: part of a Darwin season – yes, really – at our new local cinema. The film itself provoked a storm of discussion within our little group with opinion divided between those who pronounced it ‘complete and utter tosh’ and those who argued… Continue reading…
