Allotments are a wonderful British institution that should be protected and extended. Demand may have fallen but it is still very high. But let’s not kid ourselves they reduce food miles or increase food security. The case for allotments is spiritual and psychological, not economic or environmental.
ReadImagine being young and having to do up to seven years of unpaid work experience before you could get gainful employment. This is not a doom-laden prediction for the future but a factual description of a lot of apprentices from the middle ages to the industrial revolution
ReadSandel has raised a much-needed alarm, and even if how we respond to it may not be clear, respond we must. To do so, Sandel argues we need a serious public debate about what values we want our politics to build and defend. That means dropping the illusion that politics is about no more than efficient management of the economy: it’s about nothing less than competing visions of the good society.
ReadNIGHT WAVES, BBC RADIO 3. Read a 5-minute essay on the inconceivable on the May 20 programme, which you can listen[…]
ReadAdrian Raine is surely right that we cannot ignore the evidence that points to the importance of neurological factors in violent crime. If he shouts a little too loudly about the brain’s role, it is because that voice needs to be heard. In The Anatomy of Violence, it comes across clearly, powerfully and often persuasively.
Read