Blogs

Let’s be honest, Christmas in Britain today is a messy shambles as a religious occasion.

The original story of an unknown Jewish family struggling with tyrannical life in Roman-occupied Palestine has been almost tinselled to death. Layers of cultural interpretation over two thousand years have brought us to a grossly consumerist ‘celebration’ which is totally soaked with meaningless stress, tat and emptiness. We are already saturated with plastic gifts paid for by debt through plastic money. When gross images of Father Christmas urge us to spend more and more, the red-robed Santa...

Over 400 years ago a ‘terror’ cell in London headed up by Robert Catesby planned an extreme act of violence (blowing up parliament) as a reaction to the intolerance and persecution inflicted on his community by what was felt to be a very oppressive monarch (King James I). What had initially been a plan for regicide was transformed into a plot to destroy the government in one single explosive event. We commemorate this every year with our own fires and fireworks on November 5th.

Much has been said emotively about ‘extremism’ in recent months. The word has been linked with those who...

The NHS in Devon has warned it might have to restrict certain treatments and operations and stop others completely because of the financial crisis it finds itself in.

The Devon Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), the new organisation set up to commission (buy) care on behalf of the public, is facing a £14.7 million deficit this year and the situation is only expected to get worse.

Among the measures it is considering are:

- Ending completely IVF treatment for couples finding it difficult to have a baby, in spite of the official national guidance from NICE (The...

The Commons Culture Media and Sports Committee on which I sit is currently doing an inquiry into the balance of arts funding in England. This was prompted by a number of recent independent reports showing that both Government and lottery support for the arts and culture is skewed massively in favour of London and that regions like the South West lose out.

At a recent hearing of the Committee, the Chairman of the Arts Council agreed that the current situation was unfair. In fact, every witness who has given evidence has accepted that – except the Arts Minister himself, Ed Vaizey....