By Joe Mellor Deputy Editor Last week a group of MPs and peers have called for an overhaul of the way the rental industry is run to provide better protection for families who do not own their own home. Well until that is sorted out (don’t hold your breath) www.rentalraters.com are the TripAdvisor of the rental market, to alert you to dodgy landlords. It is an on-line community that praises the best and (literally) rubbishes the worst. We have compiled...

By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor  “Everything you can imagine is real” said Pablo Picasso, a concept which contemporary auteur Danny Passarella has embraced. He has just unveiled his first ever art exhibition, Fantasy Scenes, in The Gallery at Forge & Co this summer. While Danny is noted for his Passarella Death Squad project spanning fashion and music, his Fantasy Scenes show consists of science fiction-esque images that evoke the wonder of adolescence. These ‘Fantasy Scenes’ themselves are ten hyper-real coastal...

By Jack Peat  In an information economy where our personal data is wilfully publicised, recorded and used for political and corporate gain, the question of whether we are living the prophesied dystopian theories of Nineteen Eighty-Four is more poignant than ever. George Orwell’s timeless work paints a frightening picture of official deception, secret surveillance and manipulation of history by a totalitarian, authoritarian state. A world where language is a heretic tool that be controlled and used. Words with negative meanings...

  By Jo Walker, Senior Press Officer, Beating Bowel Cancer We all spend a fair bit of time on the loo over our lifetimes but tend to avoid talking about any problems we might have there, which can lead to life- threatening illnesses going unchecked. Londoner, Stephen Browne, was a healthy 45-year-old when he was diagnosed with bowel cancer in 2012. Each year 41,600 people in the UK get diagnosed with bowel cancer – that’s someone every 15 minutes. Early...

  By David de Winter - Sports Writer Saturday sees the start of the 101st edition of the world’s most famous bicycle race, the eponymous Tour de France. And where does this three week lycra-clad epic begin? Paris? Non. Some chic, picturesque village in the south of France? Absolutement non. The Alps or Pyrenees? Of course not. Yorkshire? Mais oui. Quite why the organisers of a French race have decided to hold ‘le grand départ’ in England is beyond me...

  By Luca Foschi You do not fix history with a drone. What we are witnessing today in Iraq is the slow collapse of a century-long geopolitical partition drawn up in a secret document by United Kingdom and France, in one of their last acts as imperial powers. In May 1916 diplomats Mark Sykes and François Gorges Picot signed an agreement that reshaped the Near East, previously ruled by the Ottoman Empire who were siding with Austria-Hungary and Germany during the First...

  By Valentina Magri “Money doesn’t make you happy” is the typical saying that you state when you want to raise the spirit of people dissatisfied with their personal finances. But if you live in the UK, you should forget it, cash is king. Money and happiness Basically, there are two main views over the link between money and happiness. According to Easterlin, happiness comes from money until a saturation point (Easterlin paradox). Once you overcome this boundary, the correlation...

At the High Court on May 13th 2009, Fisher Athletic were wound up. The debts had begun to mound and results hadn't been going their way since a player exodus preceded a thrilling season in which Wayne Burnett’s (current Dagenham & Redbridge manager) missed out on the Conference after losing to Hampton & Richmond Borough in the play-offs. Following a meeting it was decided that a supporter’s trust would take charge of club matters moving forward, a trust that reluctantly...

By Toby James The Illusion Of Choice And Big Business’s Position In Food And Drink There is a lot of money in necessities. The food and drink industry commands vast amounts of capital, yet much of this is under the control of a surprisingly small number of brands. Coca-Cola claims ownership of at least 13 other brands, each the king of its respective sector of the soft drinks industry. Fanta, Sprite, Dr Pepper, Schweppes. Many of these brands have ‘diet’ or...