Carina Trimingham loses privacy case Link to this video Carina Trimingham has lost her high court claim for damages for alleged breach of privacy and harrassment against the Daily Mail.Mr Justice Tugendhat on Wednesday morning issued a written judgment finding against Trimingham, the partner of Chris Huhne, in the case she brought against Daily Mail publisher Associated Newspapers following a series of articles about her.Associated Newspapers had contested the case on the grounds that there was an important public interest in the stories the Daily Mail published about Trimingham.Tugendhat said: "Ms Trimingham was not the purely private figure she claims to be. Her reasonable expectation of privacy has become Limited."This is mainly by reason of her involvement with Mr Huhne, both professionally as his press ... Continue reading →
'Singling out IVF to be the front-runner of a deserving and undeserving health service is an unpalatable notion.' Photograph: David Jones/PA Evil scientists have just announced plans to bleed the NHS dry by forcing taxpayers to fund wizened old selfish harlots in their quest to swamp the country with bespoke, trophy babies. Actually, all that really happened was this: the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) announced it was recommending the extension of NHS IVF fertility treatment to women aged between 40 and 42, in recognition of new research suggesting they would benefit. But you wouldn't have been able to tell that, given the hostility of responses on radio phone-ins and internet comment sections.What is it about fertility treatment that causes so much ... Continue reading →
Does it bother you if a man earns less than a woman? Commenting on BBC Radio 4 this morning, novelist Tony Parsons said that his 'penis literally would have dropped off' in a long-term relationship where his partner earned more than him. If you're heterosexual, does it bother you in your relationships if the the main breadwinner is female? Continue reading →
In this week's podcast, we explore the relationship between landscape and literature in the UK. The British Library's Writing Britain exhibition opens today, and we take a tour round the books and artworks with curators Jamie Andrews and Tanya Kirk, moving from the moors of the Brontës to JG Ballard's suburbia. We chart the growth of the urban landscape as well, beautifully characterised in Bernard Kops's poem, Whitechapel Library, Aldgate East, and take a sneak peek at the Fay Godwin photographs that inspired the poems in Elmet, Ted Hughes's collection of poems about the Calder Valley in Yorkshire. We finish by dabbling our feet in the UK's water writing, accompanied by the splash and gurgle of Graham Swift's Waterland and Alice Oswald's riverine poem, Dart.Reading ... Continue reading →
Britain's 1.9 million single parents and their three million children are, statistically speaking, the poorest in society. Photograph: britstock images/Alamy After the rhetoric comes the bite. Today 124,000 single parents whose youngest child is five or six were moved from income support (IS) to jobseeker's allowance (JSA); they were told only eight weeks ago. The age of one's children when one moves from care to work has bounced down a slide since New Labour; now it lands at five, when In The Night Garden is still the news.Britain's 1.9 million single parents and their three million children are, statistically speaking, the poorest in society: 46% sit below the poverty line, compared with 24% of families with two parents. They contain a disproportionate number of disabled ... Continue reading →
Tony Blair at a question and answer session on the future for Scotland in 1999. Photograph: David Cheskin/PA Tony Blair's considerable political skills have been put to great use since he resigned as prime minister. Since then he's been busy bringing peace to the Middle East, and now he's going to save the union. Alistair Darling has confirmed that he will play a major part in the campaign against independence. As the Scottish independence campaign prepares for launch on Friday, many in the Yes camp see Blair's arrival on the scene as a gift from the gods.The suggestion that Blair should have a role in this campaign could only be made with any seriousness by a Labour party leadership with no real idea about what ... Continue reading →
