It’s rare to hear Liverpool fans boo these days. Manchester United? Oh, they boo a lot. At their manager, players and owners. Manchester City? They boo the referee, they boo Uefa – their fans regularly boo the injustice of not being allowed to buy all the trophies in football, just most of them. And Everton? Well, what else is there to do? But Liverpool fans are a pretty upbeat bunch at the moment, with their team winning the FA Cup at the weekend. It would not have been unusual, therefore, to wake up the next morning to see the press rabidly discussing the club. However, the coverage wasn’t all positive. A significant number of Liverpool fans jeered Prince William, the president ...

The plan to axe 91,000 civil service jobs within the next three years looks like the sort of back-of-the-envelope policy which appeals to headline-grabbing politicians. Is there any substance to it at all? The pace at which the civil service has grown in the last few years is a problem. Sure, some of it is down to the peculiar demands of Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic, and it is reasonable to expect that these demands are sharply diminishing and should diminish further. Much of the expansion, however, arises from the ever-growing range of government functions. The fastest growth has been among senior civil servants (driven in part by the usual departmental reorganisations that no government seems able to resist) and policy ...

Speculation has been rife since the beginning of “beergate” about who would take Keir Starmer's place as leader of the Labour Party should he be forced to resign. As the hot takes and bookies’ odds continue to churn, let’s name the giant elephant in the room. The Conservatives have done it twice. The Liberal Democrats have done it. The Greens have done it. The SNP, Sinn Fein and the DUP have done it. But Labour is the only major party in the UK not to have chosen a woman as leader -- and it's high time it asked itself why.   This is the UK’s party of the left, the party that pioneered Sure Start and all-woman shortlists for parliamentary candidates. The ...

The Daily Mail and the rest of the right-wing press is having a jolly time highlighting how the BBC’s climate editor, Justin Rowlatt, made some incorrect statements in a Panorama documentary about extreme weather disasters and deaths. He was pulled up by the BBC executive complaints unit (ECU) for two misstatements. Firstly, Rowlatt's statement that “the death toll is rising around the world and the forecast is that worse is to come” risked giving the impression that the rate of deaths from extreme weather-related events was increasing, concluded the ECU. The frequency of floods, storms and drought has increased significantly in the past 50 years, research by the World Meteorological Organisation has shown, but the number of deaths caused by them ...

Whenever the economy is tanking and food-bank use is in the spotlight in Britain, there’s always a right-wing politician who suggests the hungry citizen is to blame. The crux of the argument is usually something to do with the cheapness of porridge, or how home-cooked healthy meals from fresh produce are better value than junk food, actually. During the post-crash austerity years, the Tory peer Anne Jenkin had to apologise for saying “poor people don’t know how to cook”. In 2014 she partially blamed an inability to cook cheap, healthy food for a rise in use of food banks. “I had a large bowl of porridge today, which cost 4p," she said. "A large bowl of sugary cereals will cost you ...

Saturday night, time for a family board game. I pull out the old 1984 version of Scruples we played when I was young. In Scruples players draw a card with a dilemma on it and ask another player what they would do in that situation. The dilemmas are supposed to provoke debate, with questions on which reasonable people might be expected to disagree. First up: “You are smoking at a meeting. Someone is coughing and showing discomfort. Do you finish your cigarette?” The children looked baffled. People smoked at work? Inside? Then it got more disturbing:  “You are a high school head teacher. Will you hire a teacher you know is gay?” “Your teenage daughter is dating a boy of another colour. Do you encourage ...

Less than twelve months ago Britney Spears told her story in court. In her harrowing testimony, she spoke of her lack of bodily autonomy, with the conservators who had control of much of her life refusing to let her remove her own IUD. It was because of this that millions of people campaigned to #FreeBritney. That is, until Britney used her freedom in a way people didn’t like. Her crime? Posting naked photos to her Instagram account. There were always going to be trolls, but most concerning is the way in which her supporters have changed their tune. “Please have a little respect for yourself and your children,” one Instagram comment reads. “Anyone else legitimately concerned?” another asks. “Starting to think those ...

The UK government could have used the Queen’s Speech to warn – as scientists have done today (10 May) – that the world only has a perilous “50-50” chance of staying within a safe limit of global warming. Alternatively, it could have taken the opportunity to announce action to reduce the country’s dangerous and expensive fossil fuel emissions (a new home insulation programme would have been a good place to start). Instead, the Conservative administration clamped down further on those calling out the urgent need for reform. In other words, it chose to turn off the fire alarm instead of putting out the fire. A new Public Order Bill, announced in today’s parliamentary address, will propose a further wave of anti-protest ...