Viewing all items in Resource Category: Looking at your Community

In the 1990s a stream was a small river, the web was what spiders built in your shed, a net was something you used to catch things, the cloud brought rain, and tweeting was what birds did. Not anymore.  In recent years these words from the ‘natural world’ have been so overtaken by technology that...

Here’s a New Year Resolution for your dog: don’t eat the postman (or woman). The Royal Mail’s recent request, that dog owners distract their pets by feeding them before the postman comes, follows a surge of dog attacks on postmen and women, averaging out at 47 a week for the past year.  In all, nearly...

Our appetites are killing us.  Hospitals are now treating 5,000 type 2 diabetics a day.  The head of the NHS, Simon Stevens, blames “our ever-expanding waistlines”, as obesity is the major cause of Type 2 diabetes. More than 1.7 million people were admitted to hospital last year with type 2 diabetes.   That cost the NHS...

If you are ashamed that you need to take antidepressants, don’t be, as even the Archbishop of Canterbury is now taking them. Speaking at a recent event on mental health at Lambeth Palace, Archbishop Welby said: “I carry an inhaler everywhere.  I take an antidepressant every morning. Big deal.”   He went on to say that...

Working mothers are now too busy to join Parent Teacher Associations, and in any case, people are now less ‘community-minded’ than they used to be. So says a leading headmistress who is president of the Girls’ Schools Association (GSA). Over the past two decades there has been a steady decline in attendance at PTA meetings...

All in the month of DECEMBER World Aids Day – 1st December A life for a life The writer who gave us Treasure Island and Kidnapped  The poet and hymn-writer who gave us ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ Nancy Astor – first woman MP in the House The News Quiz for 2019 Answers to the News...

It was: 300 years ago, on 31st Dec 1719 that John Flamsteed, British astronomer died.  He was the first Astronomer Royal, and founder of the Greenwich Observatory. 150 years ago, on 31st Dec 1869 that Henri Matisse, the French artist, was born.  He became leader of the Fauvist movement. 125 years ago, on 3rd Dec...

It is just over 30 years since World Aids Day first began, in 1988.  It was the first ever global health day, and there is still very much a need for continuing an informed and united fight against AID-related illnesses. Worldwide, there are now an estimated 36.7million people who have the virus.  More than 35...

When do you think capital punishment was abolished in Britain? It was actually 50 years ago this month, in December 1969.  It ended the macabre ritual of a judge donning a black cap, solemnly declaring that the accused was found guilty and would ‘be taken hence to a place of public execution…and there to be...

Robert Louis Stevenson died 125 years ago, on 3rd December 1894. The Scottish novelist, short story writer, poet and travel journalist was best known for novels such as Treasure Island and Kidnapped. He travelled widely, but always suffered from serious bronchial trouble. During his early years his parents and nurse immersed him in Presbyterianism and Calvinism,...

Christina Rossetti, British poet and hymn-writer, died of cancer 125 years ago, on 29th December 1894. She was 64. Christina was the youngest child of poet and Dante scholar Gabriele Rossetti, who emigrated to England from Italy in 1824, and the half-Italian Frances Polidari, who he married in 1926. Christina was also sister of the pre-Raphaelite...

It was 100 years ago, on 1st December 1919, that Lady Nancy Astor became the first female Member of Parliament to take her seat in the House of Commons. She was not the first woman MP – that was Constance Markievicz, an Irish Republican who, although elected in 1918, did not take her seat. Nancy Langhorne...