Category Archives: headline

Minister condemns riot but urges review of police anti-racism guidance following Henry Nowak death – UK politics live

Sarah Jones appeals for calm after rioting over the death of Nowak, who was handcuffed while dying from stab wound

Yesterday Gavin Stephens, chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, said that, althought the NPCC would listen to concerns about how the anti-racism commitment was worded (see 9.29am), the overall intent behind was sound and justified. He said:

It is essential that we police without fear or favour in keeping the peace and enforcing the law. We must do so to earn the confidence of all communities.

This historic and ongoing mistrust between the police and black communities risks, for example, people not reporting things to the police if they are in trouble, or aiding our efforts to catch criminals, fight crime and protect all communities.

Everyone should be treated equally under the law and I think it’s right that they are reviewing this document and looking at the language.

This particular document is a values document, it’s quite a short document and I don’t think it forms the basis of any training or any police activity.

Producing equality of policing outcomes for people from different ethnic groups by responding to individuals and communities according to their specific needs, circumstances and experiences, with understanding that these will be racialised and with the aim of reducing harm.

It does not mean treating everyone ‘the same’ or being ‘colour blind’ (racial equality).

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UK media websites given power to block Google using their articles in AI search

Watchdog makes ruling on search summaries after publishers complain about drop in click-through traffic and revenue

Online publishers and news organisations are now able to block their content appearing in Google’s AI summaries in UK search results, the British competition watchdog has announced.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said the new requirement would “put publishers, like news organisations, in a stronger position to negotiate content deals with Google”.

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Ambivalence by Brian Dillon review – an odd man out

The critic’s memoir’s is a portrait in determination to go against the grain and ‘pursue a life in words and ideas’

Brian Dillon lost his parents early, his mother when he was 16, his father at 21. He writes of them in passing here, as he did in his first book, In the Dark Room, but with little overt display of grief. Narrated in the third person, with young Dillon a removed he rather than an emotionally manipulative I, this isn’t a weepy orphanhood memoir. It describes instead his awkward Dublin education, as he struggles to carve out an identity for himself and to accommodate his passion for avant garde music and literature within academe.

He grows up surrounded by the books acquired by his father, who left school early and went to university late. He reads them avidly and adds to them with library borrowings and purchases of his own. But, to begin with, his greater attachment is to music magazines and to David Bowie, whose excitingly ambivalent sexuality echoes his own. His father speaks of duty – to homework, weekly mass and getting a decent job. But his commitment is to jouissance, if only he can find it.

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Madfabulous review – Callum Scott Howells shines as flamboyant aristocrat in hedonistic period romp

Howells puts in a strong turn as Henry Paget, a Victorian marquess who blows his inheritance on hosting wild parties and staging gender-defying theatrical performances

Playing the shy Colin in Russell T Davies’s 2021 TV drama It’s a Sin, Callum Scott Howells had to be the humble caterpillar compared to Olly Alexander’s extravagant butterfly. But now Howells gets an upgrade to full butterfly status in this high-spirited and good-humoured drama from screenwriter Lisa Baker and director Celyn Jones, reclaiming a forgotten chapter in queer Victorian history.

With a moustache resembling that of Proust, Howells amusingly plays the flamboyant aristocrat Henry Paget, 5th Marquess of Anglesey, a delicate consumptive and aesthete who, in the late 19th century, blew his vast inheritance on colossal private theatricals, wild parties and jaw-dropping performances in which he would appear in gender-challenging costumes, including a diaphanous veil he wore as a “butterfly dancer”. He caused scandal with his behaviour and apparently unconsummated marriage to first cousin Lily (Ruby Stokes), whose attitude to him here is perhaps more affectionate and tolerant than it was in real life.

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