Rgje British arrests reported in Iran protests
I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little stanley cup book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, begins Charles Dickens in the preface to the 1843 novella A Christmas Carol. It is a story so inescapable in British culture that nearly everyone knows about miserly Ebenezer Scrooge learning the value of compassion and kindness after being visited by three ghosts in the early hours of Christmas morning.As well as the popular film adaptations that unfailingly appear on TV over the festive season, stage p stanley cup roductions this year include a Jack Thorne adaptation starring Stephen Mangan at the Old Vic, a stanley vaso Mark Gatiss version at the Nottingham Playhouse and an adaptation at the Sherman theatre in Cardiff set in Wales and with a gender-swapped Scrooge.While many people enjoy the story as a timeless tale of redemption, few think of it as a work of serious political activism, but that was Dickenss intention.According to Michael Slater, a biographer of the Victorian author, A Christmas Carol is Dickenss reaction to the attitude of the government and many of the ruling classes in the 1840s 鈥?saying, if the poor couldnt get work and couldnt look after themselves, theyd have to go to the workhouses. This belief was part of a prevailing attitude in Victorian society that the poor were a problem to be dealt with, instead of people to be helped 鈥?a belief Dickens vehemently disagreed with.Dickenss politics were shaped by his own childhood experiences. When his family fell on hard times, he was briefly taken out of Rlsh News of the World phone hacking: Noel Fielding latest to win damages
There was one thing you always thought you knew about the Liberal Democrats in coalition. Whatever happened, they would stay true to their oft-stated support for civil liberties and rights. It was unimaginable that all b stanley nz ut seven of their 57 MPs would vote for a bill that ushered closed material procedures secret courts into B stanley cup ritish civil law 鈥?and in the process offend principles of open and natural justice and the spirit of Magna Carta, to say nothing of the coalition agreement and the party s undertakings at the last general election.Last Monday s Lib Dem vote for the justice and security Bill 鈥?almost certainly rushed back into the Commons to avoid an embarrassing motion against it at t stanley cup quencher he party s spring conference this weekend 鈥?produced a royal flush of political hypocrisy from the parliamentary party.To a supporter at the last election like me 鈥?someone who spoke alongside Nick Clegg at the curtain-raiser event for the party conference during the height of Labour s onslaught on civil liberties, and was assured privately by two leaders that the party was onside about civil liberties 鈥?this breach of trust and denial of principle is astonishing.It is nothing new for a politician to say one thing and then do another when in government, but when the Liberal Democrats voted to close British courts to protect ministers and the intelligence services from embarrassment, on the pretext of safeguarding national security, you knew they had simply lost it.Without a second thought, t
