All posts tagged: disaster

Prison is a disaster for women – here’s what would work instead

Prison is a disaster for women – here’s what would work instead

Published by Sam

The early days of the new Labour government have given prison reform advocates reason to be hopeful. Two announcements – the appointment of James Timpson as prisons minister and an expanded early release programme – are promising steps towards repairing a criminal justice system that has been devastated by cuts and neglect. Prison overcrowding is the most pressing issue, with the current population standing at more than 87,000. This significantly exceeds the Ministry of Justice’s “safe and decent” capacity of 79,695 inmates. England and Wales have one of the highest rates of imprisonment in western Europe, almost twice as high as Germany. Approximately 4% of people in prison in England and Wales are women, and in 2020 72% of female prison admissions were for non-violent crimes. As someone who studies women’s prisons, I hope that plans for change will include revising how we punish and rehabilitate women. Timpson has said that prisons, especially for women, are a “disaster”. He has noted correctly that prisons often lead women back into the cycle of offending. Women released …

After Rishi Sunak’s D-day disaster Labour need not worry about Tory tax claims | Larry Elliott

After Rishi Sunak’s D-day disaster Labour need not worry about Tory tax claims | Larry Elliott

Published by skeptic

Any lingering doubts about the result of next month’s election have been dispelled by Rishi Sunak’s inexplicable decision to leave last week’s D-day commemorations early. Only the scale of the Tory defeat remains in question. Last week was supposed to be the start of the Conservative party’s fightback. The idea was to go hard on Labour’s tax and spending plans in the hope that it would make voters forget that they are poorer now than they were at the start of this parliament. The strategy got off to a decent start, mainly because it clearly rattled a Labour party still haunted by its traumatic defeat at the 1992 election. Want to know why Rachel Reeves is so obsessed with getting the national debt on a downward trend? Look no further than Neil Kinnock snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in one of the biggest poll shocks of modern times. Finding it hard to understand why Labour was so desperate to rubbish the claim that taxes would need to rise by £2,000 a household if …

Sunak’s D-day failure is a campaign disaster – and a sign he’s forgotten the very recent past | Jonathan Freedland

Sunak’s D-day failure is a campaign disaster – and a sign he’s forgotten the very recent past | Jonathan Freedland

Published by skeptic

But is it art? Could that explain Rishi Sunak’s campaign – that it is, in fact, a piece of daring, innovative performance art in which the prime minister deliberately conducts himself so haplessly and with such a tin ear that it prompts us to reflect on the state of the nation? Is his future not, as most predict, wearing a zip-up fleece and making squillions in Silicon Valley, but rather as a groundbreaking conceptual artist, one who invites his audience to see 4 July less as an election day and more as the unveiling of his boldest ever installation? It’s as good an explanation as any. Otherwise it’s near-impossible to comprehend his decision to make an early exit from the memorial ceremonies marking the 80th anniversary of D-day, subbing in his foreign secretary to stand alongside the leaders of France, the US and Germany as they remembered those who died to free Europe from fascism. We shall fight them on the beaches, said Churchill. We shall leave them on the beaches, said Sunak. It turns …

How an eco-campsite in north Wales rescued our family holiday from disaster | Wales holidays

How an eco-campsite in north Wales rescued our family holiday from disaster | Wales holidays

Published by skeptic

Everyone has a good holiday disaster story, don’t they? Even experienced travel journalists. Ours was a twist on the classic passport fiasco, that saw us having to “exchange” a two-week trip to the sunny Cinque Terre on the Italian Riviera for sitting on a compost toilet in Wales. Map for Llyn peninsula camping trip Like all good stories retold among friends, that is a bit of an exaggeration. But after “passport-gate” – once the blame and threats of divorce had subsided – Bert’s Kitchen Garden, an eco campsite on a five-hectare (12-acre) farm in the Welsh village of Trefor on the Llŷn peninsula, became a half-term life-saver for our family of four. The panic started just 24 hours before we were supposed to depart, with our six-year-old daughter remarking that she still “looked like a baby” on her passport. Yup, it was out of date, and this set off several stages of rapid-fire grief, which we had to cycle through before I could land on “acceptance” and start hatching an emergency plan to rescue half-term. …

“Complete disaster”: Legal experts say lawyer grilling Stormy Daniels “made it worse” for Trump

“Complete disaster”: Legal experts say lawyer grilling Stormy Daniels “made it worse” for Trump

Published by skeptic

Hindsight is 2020, but as Judge Juan Merchan explained to Donald Trump’s defense team on Thursday: If you didn’t want a problematic alleged sexual encounter with your client openly discussed in a Manhattan courtroom, you shouldn’t have brought it up on the first day of trial by denying any such interaction ever took place. And when Stormy Daniels began testifying, recounting in excruciating detail her claimed hotel-room rendezvous with the former president, it was the defense counsel’s job to stand up and say what they believed was out of bounds, Merchan said. “For the life of me,” Merchan said at the end of Thursday’s proceedings, per ABC News, “I don’t know why Ms. [Susan] Necheles didn’t object.” Those failures led the judge in Trump’s criminal hush money case from granting a defense motion for a mistrial. But observers of the cross examination that took place earlier in the day can understand why the former president’s lawyers would try. As former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance commented, the defense interrogation of Daniels was a “master class in …

Jurors won’t like it”: Experts say Trump lawyer’s victim-shaming of Stormy Daniels was a “disaster

Jurors won’t like it”: Experts say Trump lawyer’s victim-shaming of Stormy Daniels was a “disaster

Published by skeptic

Trump defense attorney Susan Necheles did not listen to her critics. Instead of dialing back the aggressiveness she showed Tuesday, when she first began cross-examining Stormy Daniels, she leaned into it on Thursday, deploying what an NBC legal analyst referred to as the “nutty and slutty” attack. Daniels earlier in week discussed in at-times mortifying detail an alleged sexual encounter she had with Donald Trump in 2006. Her account was in fact so detailed as to upset the judge, who said some of her testimony went beyond what should have been said in the courtroom. Necheles could have moved on, content to show that Daniels has no idea whether the former president falsified business records to cover up the $130,000 hush payment received. Instead, as NBC’s Lisa Rubin noted, she engaged in a “constant” effort to paint Daniels as promiscuous and unreliable, quizzing her about everything from sexual partners to a side hustle involving tarot cards. “You claimed to be able to speak with people’s dead relatives, right?” Necheles asked, to which Daniels responded: “I …

The Guardian view on hope and despair in Gaza: attacking Rafah will compound this disaster | Editorial

The Guardian view on hope and despair in Gaza: attacking Rafah will compound this disaster | Editorial

Published by skeptic

Men, women and children danced in the streets of Rafah on Monday after Hamas said it had approved a ceasefire deal. There was little to celebrate. Hours later, Israel ordered 100,000 in the city to flee and protesters took to the streets in Israel warning that the government was endangering the lives of surviving hostages taken on 7 October. Shortly afterwards, Israeli forces took control of the Palestinian side of the crossing with Egypt – the key entry point for aid – and shut off supplies. Hopes of a deal have been raised and dashed repeatedly. There are differing accounts of what precisely Hamas agreed to, including the timing of hostage releases and – most painfully – whether their figure includes the dead as well as the living. Continued fighting does not negate negotiations to end a conflict. But the end of the war is likely to mean the end of Benjamin Netanyahu’s prime ministership and polling suggests that while most Israelis prioritise a deal to release hostages over military action in Rafah, that is …

PM fears Britain heading towards ‘disaster’ hung parliament | Politics | News

PM fears Britain heading towards ‘disaster’ hung parliament | Politics | News

Published by skeptic

Rishi Sunak has warned Britain could be heading towards a “disaster” with a hung parliament. After last week’s local elections that saw the Conservatives losing hundreds of councillors, the Prime Minister has warned that Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party could end up as the biggest group in the House of Commons. The Prime Minister however believe Sir Keir would have to be propped up by smaller parties such as the Liberal Dmoecrats or Green Party. Speaking to The Telegraph, Sunak said: “These results suggest we are heading for a hung parliament with Labour as the largest party. “Keir Starmer propped up in Downing Street by the SNP, Liberal Democrats and the Greens would be a disaster for Britain. “The country doesn’t need more political horse trading, but action. We are the only party that has a plan to deliver on the priorities of the people.” Academics also believe Britain is on course for a hung parliament, altough they also forecast Sir Keir will fall short of an outright majority in the Commons. A Downing Street …