Opinion

So today is the day Theresa May fritters our future away, the jesters will sing. What seemed like a triumphant independence day back in June has become a running joke ever since, and those who championed it are the ones left sporting cap n' bells carrying a mock sceptre. Onwards and downwards chaps, onwards and downwards. Despite half of the country voting to remain and only a slightly more (proportionally) opting to leave we are being asked to unite as a country...

By Neil Thorns Director of Advocacy at CAFOD The day is upon us. Article 50 has been triggered, firing the start gun on the negotiations between the UK and the EU. Soon, the focus will shift to another set of negotiations: those on Brexit Britain’s trade deals. And so whatever our opinions on the rights and wrongs of Brexit, the issue now becomes one of protecting rights and preventing wrongs – making sure that the impact of trade deals on...

Militant Hinduism is on the rise in India with the RSS-BJP coalition demonstrating that the far right is growing worryingly active. Rooted in Hindutva - an ideology seeking to establish the hegemony of Hindus and the Hindu way of life - the ruling parties have been adopting economically disastrous policies as well as encouraging militant activities against minority communities, especially Muslims, while providing incentives for deepening the crisis of casteism inside the Hindu community. In Uttar Pradesh, a state that has...

For most people living outside London taking the capital's average salary of £48,023 a year home would be an eye-watering sum, but the reality of the viscous lure put in front of aspirational workers is far from what it seems. With the cost of commuting into London at its highest ever level and renting costs spiralling young Brits are starting to think twice about the fat pay cheques on offer in the Big Smoke and instead considering cut-down wages without all the add-ons....

Following the breakout of fake news, craftily edited viral vids and the various other bits of clickbait bollocks circulating social media the next big thing getting brainless users in a tizzy is the logical fallacy of reductio ad absurdum. Reductio ad absurdum, as the Big Bang's Sheldon Cooper so adequately describes, is the notion of extending someone's argument to ridiculous proportions and then criticising the result, and in his words, we do not appreciate it. As if making news that is completely fake...

It was a freakish coincidence. At almost exactly the same time as Khalid Masood began his murderous attack on the Palace of Westminster, I was whizzing by the building on the south side of the river. My taxi must have missed him by minutes. As soon as I heard the news – a BBC News text update – my first thought was of my former colleagues in the Houses of Parliament. I had long expected the attack to come. After...

Dr Anastasia Filippidou, Lecturer, Centre for International Security and Resilience, Cranfield University Another tragic attack in a major city. The attack follows the familiar pattern of unsophisticated, high impact attacks, as we have seen in Nice, Berlin and Ohio State University. There is nothing new in this approach. From ancient times, terrorist attacks involved lone attackers – the Sicarii for instance – inspired by one doctrine or another, using just a dagger. The difference now is the scale of the...

Of all the disturbing photos, live video reports and sensationalist news accounts of the shocking events at Westminster yesterday satirist site News Thump was the rag that got it right this morning. The people of London, it reported, showed their defiance by "stoically remaining unfriendly and really quite impatient" on their way to work, with one woman heard shouting ‘Oi, do one you cycling dickhead’, as if it was a normal day. In times like this it is important that we...

By Josh Coates Yet another man decided the world simply wasn’t fair and that it was time for him to take matters into his own hands today. He got in his car and drove to the seat of power in the UK to teach us all a lesson. Unfortunately for him he just came across as a pathetic coward who needlessly took the lives of three innocent people and injured around many others. Luckily for him he also died. He...