Julian Marryshow (right) and colleagues of 602 Spitfire Squadron, Sumburgh, January 1943. Photo © Royal Air Force Museum
Six weeks after the start of the Second World War, the British government lifted the colour bar on military recruitment. But the announcement, on 19 October 1939, made clear that the change in policy would last only for the duration of the war. The air force recruited six thousand West Indians. The army and navy, however, claimed that Black people could not meet their high standards for entry. The War Office and its generals insisted that the shortcomings of Black West Indian soldiers during the First World War was proof they made ‘poor fighting material’. Given Britain’s desperate need to recruit and train an effective fighting force, they argued, the army could do without the distraction of having to carry an ineffective regiment of West Indians. It didn’t matter that tales of the weakness of West Indian troops in previous wars were simply untrue. The lies were accepted across Whitehall – even at the Colonial Office, which had been lobbying for West Indian recruitment but only for political reasons, to pacify a Caribbean population keen to play its part in the war.
Ara Darzi released his report on the English National Health Service last month. To no one’s surprise, he finds that the service is ‘in serious trouble’, with crumbling buildings, demoralised staff and slipping standards in key areas such as maternity care. More than 7.6 million people are on waiting lists. Only a third of dentists are accepting new NHS patients, and DIY dentistry kits are for sale in pound shops. Yet Darzi also insists that the ‘vital signs’ of the NHS ‘remain strong’ and his report outlines strategies for the new Labour government to adopt.
You can tell a lot about the state of the contemporary university by looking at something peripheral: the parking. You might think there is only so much that can be said about parking. You would be wrong. Parking at my university is an issue of surprising intricacy and strong passions. Presumably this was not always the case. There may have been a time, not so long ago, when you could simply drive to work, park and work. But those days are gone.
A judge in Georgia recently struck down the six-week abortion ban. But total or near-total bans are still in place in sixteen other states. Florida, where I grew up, enacted a six-week ban in May. ‘We don’t want to be an abortion tourism destination,’ Governor Ron DeSantis said.
A building destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in Choueifat, south-east of Beirut, on Saturday, 28 September 2024. Photograph © AP Photo / Hussein Malla / Alamy
On Friday, 27 September, we felt the whole of Beirut shake. A huge plume of smoke was visible across the city. Israeli jets had dropped more than eighty bombs, flattening six apartment buildings in Haret Hreik without warning. Their target was one man. The rest of the still uncounted dead – many hundreds incinerated – were collateral damage.
When Israel bombarded Beirut on 27 September, killing hundreds of people, the BBC headline was ‘Beirut rocked by multiple blasts’. ITV News had ‘strikes hit Beirut’ and Sky ‘Beirut hit in multiple blasts’. None went for al-Jazeera’s straightforward and accurate statement: ‘Israel attacks Lebanon’ (which remains its main tag for the crisis). Yesterday evening, by contrast, the BBC headline was: ‘Iran launches barrage of missiles at Israel.’
Incapacitants. Photo © Yoshitaka Shirakura
The Tokyo-based duo Incapacitants deploy feedback, vocals and ‘various electronics’ to generate noise for the sake of noise.