Was 'Political Correctness' Really To Blame For Unthinkable Rotherham Inaction? Media coverage of the systemic sexual abuse of 1,400 children over 16 years in Rotherham has honed in on one aspect - the claim that the perpetrators got away with it because they were not white.
Yesterday's damning report, which described cases of children in the Yorkshire town being "doused in petrol and threatened with being set alight, threatened with guns, made to witness brutally-violent rapes and threatened they would be next if they told anyone", dominates today's front pages. The youngest victims were 11. Rotherham Council and South Yorkshire Police were accused of "blatant" failures in not stopping it. Victim, 15, Trafficked For Sex, Doused In Petrol And Threatened To Be Set AlightShaun Wright's Resignation Now Looks Inevitable After Labour Party Tells Him To Go The 159-page report described their inaction and outlined how senior figures feared that acknowledging the "vast majority" of offenders were of Pakistani descent would be seen as racist. Was 'Political Correctness' Really To Blame For Unthinkable Rotherham Inaction?
A Point of View: Why tyrants are afraid of art and beauty. 23 January 2015Last updated at 12:02 ET Beauty - and art - may seem unnecessary luxuries, but they're are as essential to our survival as food and water, argues AL Kennedy.
A while ago I was at my mother's house and - as I walked into the hall - there was a tray set out and on the tray was a dish of rose petals. A single petal wasn't in the bowl, it was on the tray. Without thinking, I put the petal into the bowl because I'm anal retentive and controlling and don't really enjoy, or even understand ornaments. I live in hotels a lot - mostly the only ornaments there will be a kettle. The thing was, at the time of my visit, my mother was still a teacher, but after decades of pursuing what was a true vocation, she could no longer enjoy her job. I moved the petal, just to be neat, but then I heard my mother say - very quietly and as if she might be wrong - that she'd meant it to be where it was. I should have known better - I'm her daughter. But why talk about this now? Bamiyan Buddhas. How Palestinian democracy has failed to flourish.
Viewpoint: Would Athenian-style democracy work in the UK today? 20 January 2015Last updated at 00:55 ET Ancient Athens operated a unique system of direct democracy in which all citizens could vote on laws themselves rather than electing representatives to do it for them.
Could such a system operate in the modern UK, asks historian Paul Cartledge. We're all democrats now. "We" in the liberal, late-capitalist West, that is, whether we are upper-case democrats (Christian Democrats, US Democratic Party supporters, etc) or lower-case. And we have been that since roughly the mid-19th Century. During the course of the long and horrendous 20th Century, we recovered some of the original ancient Greek term's ideological resonance. Against any simple, straightforward application of ancient Greek democratic ideas and practices to our modern democracy, however, there stands the apparently insuperable obstacle of incommensurable differences of scale.
Continue reading the main story About the author Power to the people Annual, monthly and daily religious festivals. Government Responds To Attack On Our Freedoms With New Plans To Curtail Our Freedoms. David Cameron today vowed to give security services more powers to curtail Britons' freedom in response to the latest terrorist attack on our freedom.
"These terrorist attacks are an attack on our way of life - which is why the only way to respond to them is to change our way of life," said the Prime Minister. "We will give the security services whatever they need, including the powers to override our right to privacy - a freedom which the terrorists just don't understand. " Confirming that he will introduce the so-called 'snooper's charter' if he is re-elected in May, Cameron added: "Millions of Britons have expressed their support for the people in Paris, so it's very important that the British people are listened to. Preferably 24 hours a day, through surveillance equipment. " SEE ALSO: Should You Be Worried About The Snoopers' Charter? 14 Myths About Britain That We'd Like To Dispel For Americans (And Others)