Politics

By Jack Peat, Editor of The London Economic  Al Arish Road winds along North Africa’s north coast from Cairo, the largest city in the Middle-East and the nucleus of the Arab Spring. From Tahrir Square it’s a five hour drive to the Israeli border, passing through Arish, the capital of North Sinai and arriving at the gates of Palestine and into one of the most volatile regions in the world. Israel lies to the South East and Jerusalem, Hebron and...

By Luca Foschi The bus I am riding in has come from Jerusalem, the occupied capital. It stops in front of Shuhada Street, where a rain of stones are lobbed towards the check point which has separated Hebron into two sections from 1997: H1, under the rule of the Palestinian Authority of Ramallah, and H2, controlled by Israel. 150,000 Palestinians live in H1. In H2 there are 60,000 Palestinians, a small mass trapped by the Oslo ‘93 agreements within the...

What’s right with the left, is what’s left of the right, right?   By Joe Mellor, In house Reporter  When I was a child growing up watching political programmes on a Sunday morning (I know, I should have got out more) I believed that Labour and Tory politicians would not talk, let alone socialise together outside of work. I imagined Neil Kinnock would elbow drop Nigel Lawson in the cloisters of the Houses of Parliament, after the Chancellor’s autumn statement....

By Cagri Cobanoglu – the foreign news editor of Akşam – a national Turkish daily After more than a decade in power, the AK Party of Turkey is facing its biggest crisis yet. After a massive corruption scandal involving sons of three cabinet ministers broke out on 17 December, the government has had to deal with several accusations from different political circles. It was equally telling that prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan could not stop investigation against his ministers’ sons...

By Drew Nicol 2013 has been a historic year for women’s sport. TV presenter Clare Balding, prophesised back in January that: “When the history of sport is written in 100 years’ time they will look back at 2012 and the Olympics and Paralympics and see the impact in 2013.” – How right she was. The legacy of the Olympics has galvanised millions of people who previously had little or no knowledge of women’s sports beyond the mainstream to become active...

By Pieter Cranenbroek – International Politics Blogger It has been an eventful year for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community (LGBT). Germany recently became the first European country to add an extra gender box on forms, which gives recognition and expression to intersex and transgender people, whereas same-sex marriage laws have entered into force in four countries this year. However, in the week that the UK announced the official date for same-sex marriage to be allowed in England and Wales,...

By Joe Mellor, In house Reporter  When the smoke turned white from the chimney perched above the Sistine chapel I and many others thought “here we go again”. Another Pope who hates homosexuals, cosies up to the wealthy and ignores sexual abuse claims within catholic clergy. How wrong we were. The man who replaced amateur goalkeeper and former Nazi youth member Benedict XVI was Argentina’s Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the first non-European pope for 1,300 years (the last being Pope Gregory...

By Jack Peat, Editor of The London Economic The British army employs more than 400,000 people to protect our small island, almost two people for every square kilometre in the country. Compared to say, jobseekers’ allowance (£4.91 billion) or housing benefits (£16.9 billion), the cost of fielding our soldiers abroad in conflicts we started is huge. It costs $60.8 billion to maintain the UK’s armed forces; only Russia, China and the US spend more per year. A damming study entitled...

By Drew Nicol Britain’s education system is failing thousands of young people every year by neglecting to emphasise the importance of learning a foreign language, according to the British Council. The British Council’s ‘Languages for the Future’ report conclusively states that “it is a widely held – if not undisputed – view that the UK is lacking in the necessary language skills for the future”. The report claims that the increasing numbers of British graduates will struggle to compete in...