Opinion

By Annicée van Engeland, Senior Lecturer in International Security, Centre for International Security & Resilience, Cranfield University There was a murmur of agreement around the room when a Ministry of Defence expert, who’d come in to the University to discuss the UK’s counter-terrorism planning, outlined the basic challenge involved: “we just don’t know what they’ll do next”. This is the problem with the UK’s current thinking, at the time of Parliament’s current Counter-terrorism inquiry. We do know what’s next, there’s...

New research of the Electoral Commission spending figures show the Conservatives paid over 50p more per vote than Labour, with Theresa May's embattled party outspending Jeremy Corbyn on all fronts. Each vote cost the Tories £1.36p compared to just 80p for Labour, with the Lib Dems having to shell out a whopping £2.86p. The Conservatives put considerably more cash behind Facebook, Google and direct mail, but Labour's spend was much more effective. As the graph below demonstrates Labour spent 72 per...

Credit where it is due to Theresa May. Her latest tough stance towards the Russia allegations may be rash, it may have resurfaced Cold War tensions and it may not be in the national interest, but it has done no damage to her approval ratings. A swathe of positive sentiment has been seen following her recent dealing with Spygate, with the in vogue politician even getting a first pump from well wishers in Salisbury. It only takes a brief glance...

By Rupert Read This winter, now finally ending, has seen disturbing early signs of the Earth’s climate starting perhaps to go out of control. The fierce cold snap in the UK occurred because the Arctic’s normal weather came down here; meanwhile, the Arctic was off-the-scale warm. Such events concentrate the mind. But then they ebb away, and we return to the normal fare of Brexit, Corbyn, the settlement of the campus strike, and everything else that takes up 98% of...

By Dr Roger Cottrell To listen to the selective media coverage and political sound bites regarding the poisoning, on March 4, in Salisbury, of Russian defector Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, you might for a moment start to believe that Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Amber Rudd planned to do something about it beyond throwing their toys out of the pram. After all, the implication of the Kremlin and of Vladimir Putin’s “murder incorporated” in this heinous and actually...

By Rupert Read and Bennet Francis It’s time we faced up to reality: humanity is almost certainly going to have to learn to live in a world that has been radically damaged and transformed by human-triggered climate change. We are – virtually all of us, either softly or (less often) explicitly – in climate denial. The greenhouse gases we have polluted the atmosphere with have already set us down a path of serious and possibly irreversible environmental disruption, and the...

 There’s an old adage that trust has to be earned. Ironically for the National Trust that’s something that seems to be in short supply among anti-hunt campaigners. After a highly controversial vote at last year’s AGM, which may face a legal challenge over what many regard as an inappropriate use of proxy votes, the Trust decided to continue to permit hunting on its land. This was in the face of highly vocal opposition from ordinary members, some of whom threatened...

Lynda Lang began her career in 1987 after a chance encounter with an old school friend who was training to be a sergeant.

Brexit poses wide-ranging risks to animal welfare, including a shortage of vets, costlier veterinary medicine, and an increase in the numbers of animals used in research, according to a new report by the Green Party's Animals Spokesperson. Keith Taylor MEP, who is also Vice Chair of the European Parliament's Animal Welfare Intergroup, launches his 'Animals and Brexit' report as the Green Party gathered for its Spring conference in Bournemouth. The release comes as the US dairy industry ramps up its...