In this week’s furore over NHS pay, Nadine Dorries is front and centre again. Whenever the government needs someone to loudly defend the indefensible (in that tricky two day gap between announcement and U-turn), they invariably send Nadine over the top.
Building healthcare resilience against future pandemics Yesterday, shadow health secretary and Labour MP for Leicester South, Jonathan Ashworth gave the keynote address at the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) webinar on building healthcare resilience. Central Bylines was on hand to take notes and put together this summary. Unprecedented not unpredictedThe Covid-19 pandemic may be […]
To celebrate this international women’s day, we wanted to identify an eminent woman from the Midlands. Given the current Covid-19 pandemic, we could pick none better than Dr Janet Lane-Claypon, a pioneer of epidemiology. She was born in Boston, Lincolnshire in 1877 and studied at the London School of Medicine for Women. She was the […]
Mansfield today is waking up to the stunning news that their headline-hunting MP, Ben Bradley, has been appointed to the Women and Equalities Committee in the House of Commons.
In Derby, a property that houses asylum seekers and run by Serco – yes, that Serco – is in such appalling condition that the city council is arranging an urgent inspection. According to the Guardian, photos show missing ceilings, an unusable shower full of rubble and with cracked or missing tiles, rusted pipes and walls […]
In my East Midlands, progressively-inclined corner of the internet, I come across daily complaints by members of the public that their Tory MP has blocked them on social media.
Some of you may already know of Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians. More, I suspect, will not. She wasn’t somebody we learnt about at school, unlike Boudicca or Joan of Arc. I confess that I know of her mainly through ‘The Last Kingdom’ – the BBC/Netflix adaptation of Bernard Cornwell’s novels. But Æthelflæd should be […]
Last autumn, Jake Berry (MP for Rossendale and Darwen, good mate of East Midlands’ very own Robert Jenrick) and fifty other Conservative MPs sent a letter to Boris Johnson. The NRG was born.
Executive chairman Peter Cowgill did not mince his words when he spoke to Radio 4’s World at One on Tuesday. The company is reeling from the effects of increased costs and administration. Cowgill believes that none of this was adequately explained to businesses prior to our departure seven weeks ago.
Levels in Rutland have doubled over the past week whilst Corby currently has the highest number of cases of any area in England. Of the 15 areas in England where cases are currently rising, 7 of them are in our region – Corby, Kettering, Boston, Rutland, East Lindsey, North Lincolnshire and North East Lincolnshire.
Dangerous Desmond Desmond Swayne, the MP for New Forest West and blackface enthusiast, is receiving a certain amount of opprobrium this morning. To put it another way, he’s getting a right pasting. An incendiary report from Sky News reveals that back in November, Sir Desmond told an anti-vaxxer group that Covid-19 figures about NHS capacity […]
Today, there will be an opposition day debate on this issue in the House of Commons, followed by a vote. Perhaps mindful of the damaging and on-going fallout when most Tory MPs voted against the motion on free school meals, the government is urging them to abstain today.
The free school meals saga chunters unedifyingly on. Yesterday, social media was full of debate about what exactly was being provided in the £30 food parcels that an eligible child receives once every two weeks. High profile celebrity activists such as Marcus Rashford and Jack Monroe have yet again been asking the awkward questions that never seem to occur to th
Yesterday saw one of the worst breaches of security in the history of the United States of America (US). A mob of supporters of the out-going US president, Donald Trump, stormed Capitol Hill. Within the US parliament building itself, the results of last November’s election were being certified.
Under cover of both the pandemic and Brexit, the government has already given itself the ability to make laws with only nominal parliamentary involvement, in other words without asking you.
Mr Johnson hopes that “with a fair wind in our sails” the vaccination will have been offered to the top four priority groups by the end of the lockdown. Even his own words betray that the likelihood of this being achieved is frankly remote.
The members of the House of Lords now number more than 830. This is ridiculous. It’s supposed to be 600. Boris Johnson has been Prime Minister for twelve months and has appointed 52 new peers.
Photographs by Rob McDonald Photography, with permission. Living Advent Calendar: This year, the community of Harpur Hill, on the south side of Buxton, has created a living Advent calendar. Every evening during Advent at 6.30 pm, another house in the neighbourhood lights up a numbered window. Ours was number 8. People have put in a […]
The East Midlands is the very heart of England and from Glossop to Grimsby, from Boston to Brackley, every town celebrates Christmas in its own special way. This year, some cherished traditions have been put on hold (Melton Mowbray’s Christmas tree festival) while some new innovations have taken off (Leicester’s They Can’t Cancel Christmas short film). Here at […]
Jason Evans is the founder of the Factor 8 campaign group. His father died in 1993 when Jason was only four years old. For years, he has been trying to find out exactly what happened.
Unluckily for Gove, Covid-19 has not gone away and now irate Tories are demanding to know why the Nightingale hospitals aren’t being used. They are pointing out that he can hardly claim that the NHS is on its knees when the Nightingales are empty.