Opinion

Chris Hobbs is a former officer of the Metropolitan Police who served for 32 years including targeting gang crime on Operation Trident   It is a sad fact of life that when responding to stabbings or shootings in London, police officers are very often on the scene before paramedics.  A recent example was the horrific gang stabbing of four teenagers in Camberwell which left one of the victims disemboweled. While the hands of police officers are frequently bloodied when tryng to save lives,...

When Pope Francis visits Ireland this weekend he can expect a rather less warm reception than John Paul II had on the last Papal visit to Ireland in 1979. Then over a million people – almost a third of the country’s population at the time – welcomed John Paul II in Dublin’s Phoenix Park. Modern Ireland has since woken up to the horrors the Church had committed. This weekend considerably fewer people are expected to attend the mass in Phoenix...

Cash incentives from the government that allow home owners to rent out a spare room at £6,000 a year tax free are creating a short-term let bubble that strangles the availability of lodgings in the city. Back in the day, lodgers, as they were known, often became hugely important members of the family as surrogate aunts or uncles. And even though we certainly must beware of being too nostalgic for a lodging culture, it did provide housing for single people...

In August 2013 The London Economic was founded as an online newspaper designed to offer a genuine alternative to the mainstream press. In the following years we have worked tirelessly to support a liberal, progressive and inclusive voice at a time when the media landscape has veered dangerously to the right, reclaiming lost ground from the moguls and millionaires that have divided the nation with a brazen narrative that favours their own interests. As the saying goes, when the British working...

By Nigel O’Mara Nigel O’Mara is a veteran campaigner for child abuse survivors. He has waived his right to anonymity as a core participant in the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. Please imagine the scene.... even though it's not nice... your child is abused in school by a teacher. Other teachers see that something is wrong. They notice the signs, perhaps your child has even told them that they have been sexually abused. Nobody tells you and nobody tells...

Filmmaker, writer and activist Ukrainian Oleg Sentsov is 94 days into a hunger strike after being sentenced to 20 years of hard labour on charges of plotting terrorist attacks in Crimea after the Russian Federation annexed it in March 2015.  He has allegedly been beaten and threatened with rape in order to extract a confession. He has been stripped of his Ukrainian citizenship and will be on trial as a Russian Citizen now Russia occupies Crimea. After being initially in...

They're not just whispering it any more. Boris Johnson's supporters are openly talking about him as the next prime minister. Everything is going exactly as Johnson planned. His article in the Daily Telegraph caused precisely the controversy he wanted. Boris' tasteless jokes about Muslim women's attire were carefully chosen to create the maximum outrage in the right places. Demands for an apology were always going to lead to a loud defence from his allies in the media and the Tory...

The Conservatives have pledged £100 million to "end rough sleeping on England's streets by 2027" after the number of people left homeless due to austerity cuts has soared.  Last year, around 4,800 people were estimated to be sleeping rough in England. This is 15 per cent higher than in 2016, and more than double the estimate of 1,800 for 2010 The pledge comes as communities secretary James Brokenshire acknowledged that efforts to tackle homelessness had "not been good enough", adding that...

In the early hours of Thursday, August 9th, Argentina’s Senate narrowly voted down a bill to legalise elective abortion. Senators debated for more than 15 hours before voting 38 to 31, with two abstentions and one absentee, not to allow abortion in the first 14 weeks of pregnancy. Women’s rights activists had been optimistic that the passing of the bill in the lower Congress in June was a sign that times were changing in the majority Catholic county. So this...