Opinion

Loneliness is an epidemic. The launch of the Jo Cox Commission on Loneliness report today marks a significant moment in our ambition to end this looming social crisis. Throughout 2017, the Commission has highlighted the impact that loneliness has on diverse groups. From older people to refugees, to young people to carers: it is clear that loneliness can no longer be ignored. The health impacts of loneliness - both physical and mental – are devastating. Loneliness is as bad for...

With the EU and UK making "sufficient progress" to move Brexit negotiations on to the next stage a clear picture of life outside the union is starting to emerge. So far Britain has conceded on the cost of the Brexit divorce bill, the Irish border, European Court of Justice rulings, a free trade deal, EU payments and many other terms of the break-up with little coming back in return. With the election pledges of the Leave campaign such as the NHS fallacy and...

A blog post about Tory Britain is going viral after it brutally exposed the hardships many have to endure on a day-to-day basis. The post, which signs off with "if you aren’t angry as hell, then there’s something very wrong with you", documents a chance meeting with a woman in Cambridge who has been forced into prostitution to cover her rent. It was documented a month after the same person passed a homeless girl in tears of rage and misery because someone...

The EU referendum and the question of whether we sever ties from union with our neighbouring countries has divided both politics and households. Nothing could persuade many die-hard Europhiles that remaining in the EU might be a better option for the UK. Britain Thinks found 37 per cent of Leave voters are 'Die-hards' who want out of the EU at any cost. However, this implies that 63 per cent of the 17.4m, like myself, who voted to leave the EU (16.1m voted...

I wanted to give politics a rest for a few days. It's mentally exhausting even keeping up with the news nowadays. But then, as usual, something else unthinkable or cataclysmic happens. This. This, this...THIS. I genuinely don't know whether to be pleased or not. On one hand, I'm glad the smokescreen is coming apart - that finally the leaders of Brexit are showing their true colours. Only days ago, Julia Hartley-Brewer mocked me on Twitter for suggesting Trump/Trump supporters and...

Your new care robot has a dilemma. You’re worried about the side effects your medication is having, and decide you can’t take the pills anymore. The robot knows that according to the drug instructions this is going to harm your health. It could a) respect your wishes and await developments; b) insist you take them and pressurise you by emphasising the dangers; c) find a way to get the medication into you without your knowledge, in food or drink, or...

My name is Sepi Maulana Ardiansyah, but my friends call me “Davi”. I am born and raised in Indonesia but this week, with World AIDS Day on Friday, I had the chance to come to London. I am here to tell the UK Government my story and why more people like me need the UK’s continued support. When I was 17, in my last year of high school and about to take my final exams, one of my teacher’s sexually...

Over half a century ago, Dwight D. Eisenhower penned his Presidential memoirs, Mandate for Change. The former army general, who served as the United States President from 1953 to 1961, documented his time as head of state and disclosed the US’s geostrategy, including his decision to interfere in Iran’s burgeoning democracy: “Another recent development that we helped bring about was the restoration of the Shah to power in Iran and the elimination of Mossadegh. The things we did were ‘covert.’...

By Robert Seiler Earlier this month, more than 100 UK millionaires were outed as tax dodgers by the Paradise Papers, which have blown yet another lid off the secret offshore structures where the elite hide their wealth. The list of British investors read like a rollcall of the institutions at the heart of the establishment: the Duchy of Lancaster, the UK parliamentary pension fund, the endowments of Oxbridge… and last but not least, the estate of the Queen herself.  The Paradise Papers, like the Panama Papers...