Composite: Guardian Design
Statues of historical figures are lazy, ugly and distort history. From Cecil Rhodes to Rosa Parks, let’s get rid of them all
Tue 1 Jun 2021 01.00 EDT
Having been a black leftwing Guardian columnist for more than two decades, I understood that I would be regarded as fair game for the kind of moral panics that might make headlines in rightwing tabloids. It’s not like I hadn’t given them the raw material. In the course of my career I’d written pieces with headlines such as “Riots are a class act”, “Let’s have an open and honest conversation about white people” and “End all immigration controls”. I might as well have drawn a target on my back. But the only time I was ever caught in the tabloids’ crosshairs was not because of my denunciations of capitalism or racism, but because of a statue – or to be more precise, the absence of one.
Last modified on Thu 27 May 2021 07.45 EDT
If you are a fan of putting your name to inconsequential things that have no real impact on the world, I have good news. There is a new online petition to sign. It’s called “Allow Coogan and Fielding to present an episode of The One Show”, and, at time of writing, it has just over 1,500 signatures. This makes it slightly less successful than a petition by the Brimscombe Port Community Interest Businesses in Gloucester, who are trying to get a six-month lease extension for a municipal skate park.
The Coogan and Fielding petition, as you might expect, concerns the television series This Time with Alan Partridge. The show, broadly, spoofs magazine programmes such as The One Show, and so the creator of the petition wants Steve Coogan and his co-star, Susannah Fielding, to host a real episode of the actual One Show, presumably in character. This is a very bad idea and should never be allowed to happen.
This timeline covering the Bashir scandal at the BBC details how over 25 years dogged journalism exposed a cover-up and the actions of a rogue reporter
Broadmoor staff have revealed what it s really like to work at the high-security psychiatric hospital treating the criminally insane.
From a patient torturing and killing another inmate to stopping obsessive fans visiting high profile murderers with their children, mental health professionals open up about their harrowing experiences in a new Channel 5 show airing tonight at 9pm: Broadmoor: Serial Killers & High Security.
Located in Crowthorne, Berkshire, Broadmoor Hospital has housed dozens of sadistic killers since it opened its doors in 1863, including Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe, gangster Ronnie Kray and rapist Robert Napper.
Professor Pamela Taylor, who worked as head of medical services at the institution, reveals how women would get solicitors to fight for their right to visit sex offenders with their own children in tow, and sent so many love letters to Sutcliffe that he couldn t answer them all.