Same sex relationships: a very modern morality tale
The publication of the 34th British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey report today chronicles another chapter in the remarkable liberalisation of attitudes to homosexuality during the last 25 years. In this very modern morality tale we are increasingly choosing liberalism over conservatism and the pace at which we are doing so shows no sign of abating. […]
Sprinklers: find the money and start on Monday
What a wretched week. In a year where tragedy has hardly been in short supply, Grenfell Tower has marked a new low. An accident waiting to happen born out of a scandal hidden in plain sight. These are clichés and yet they are for once entirely apt. Their very paucity seems to capture the most […]
Late call: married at last
In Angus Wilson’s 1964 novel, Late Call, Ray, the grandson of its hero, Sylvia Calvert, is a gay man. Wilson was one of Britain’s first openly gay writers. I was 14 when the novel was serialised on television in 1975.
Making sense of Manchester
When the news started filtering through from Manchester 24 hours ago I feared the worst. Like so many of us, I hoped first that there wouldn’t be fatalities. Then I hoped that the numbers wouldn’t keep rising. And all the while I hoped that it wouldn’t be terror.
The day the new dawn broke
‘A new dawn has broken, has it not?’ I remember that dawn and the speech but I wasn’t there to hear it. I had left the Festival Hall shortly before Tony Blair arrived. As I said good morning to the night and headed away from the revelry I had another new horizon on my mind. […]
The party’s over
‘It really is all over!’, was the message I received from one of my oldest friends when I switched on my phone after a day-long meeting on Friday. Fortunately, he wasn’t referring to our friendship. That’s withstood a fair bit over the years like any close friendship has to. Rather he was referring to the […]
Tim Farron: Keep calm and carry on
Travelling back from Glasgow to Edinburgh yesterday evening I found myself cheek by jowl with a couple of guys having a drink. Quite a lot of a drink in fact. There was so much whisky involved that I felt quite intoxicated. It was a curious predicament towards the end of a curious day. And then […]
PrEP: a sweet pill to swallow
It’s not often that I shed a tear at a public policy announcement. But today I did. I cried when I heard that Scotland had become the first of the UK nations to approve the provision of PrEP (Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis) by the NHS to prevent HIV. The announcement was made by the Scottish Medicines Consortium […]
A way to go: Jog Scotland’s new partnership
‘From the Colorado mountains, To the California sun, I won’t stop until I get there, I will run, run, run.’ I’ve been running for a long time. And the lyrics to Michelle Lewis’ song Run, Run, Run, get right under my skin.
A letter to Lawrence
I went to see you this week. On Thursday in fact. I hadn’t intended to when I woke up that morning but 12 hours later I was stood in front of our old front door in Stoke Newington. The house looked as sturdy as ever. They built them to last in the Victorian housing boom […]