Yom Kippur this year, the Jewish day of atonement. While on a driving holiday through the Kentish countryside, news of the Manchester Synagogue attack came over the radio. In the crisp, autumnal days that followed, a surreal element crept into my tour of England’s historic castles and stately manor houses. I was seeing old...
Continue readingIDAHOBIT Day
While it sounds like an arcane ritual from a race of inhabitants of Middle-earth, this mangled acronym stands for the ‘International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia”. Its genesis was in the campaigns of the 1970s and 80s for equal rights for gay and lesbians to end long-standing pervasive and state-mandated discrimination and often...
Continue readingAboriginal Deaths in Custody
Every year since at least this side of the millennium we have had recounted across our towns and cities something akin to a national jeremiad. It takes place on a date that is growing in infamy. Our annual lament fuels this growth, eroding foundational claims and, in the unstructured residue, draws strength for its...
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