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I’m looking forward to reading Take back the land (NI 540).
I would also like to add that Oxfordshire Community Land Trust is taking land and homes into community ownership in order to ensure there are permanently affordable homes here for people in housing need, often the key workers who keep things going – retail, hospitality, infrastructure as well as the teachers, doctors and nurses we so often speak about. We’ve just started building our first eight affordable eco apartments in Cumnor and have just launched a community share offer with Ethex to support it.
Key point of difference
Thank you for a fascinating article on land ownership (Keynote, NI 540). I learned a lot. I wonder why there was no mention of the vast difference of land ownership between men and women? This seems to me to be a critical consideration in the discussion.
Diversion
Farooq Tariq calls for cancellation of Pakistan’s debt (Currents, NI 540). Perhaps he should also call upon the Pakistani government to divert some of the funds from their nuclear weapons programme towards flood relief.
Passenger located?
Re: Christine McMilan’s letter, NI 540.
As a young child, I listened every Saturday morning in the second half of the 1950s to BBC radio’s ‘Children’s Favourites’. One popular song was ‘The Runaway Train’ in a version sung by the English singer Michael Holliday, who had a deep easy-listening voice (likened to that of Bing Crosby) and was a popular singer in the UK around that time. I am sure he is the person being referred to in the letter.
Parallel lines
Upon reading your report on the Zimbabwe government’s harassment of journalists (NI 540), I was reminded of Narendra Modi’s India. Here most of mainstream media is in the hands of crony capitalists, resulting in fawning subservience towards the party in power and the promotion of its divide-and-rule agenda in terms of provoking communal disharmony. The few independent outfits that dare to criticize the government face tax and police raids, troll armies on social media and spurious law cases, often with pre-trial detention.
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Why I...
...campaign to end births in prison.
Last year myself and several other mothers set up No Births Behind Bars to demand an end to pregnancy and early motherhood in British prisons. We’ve held feed-ins outside parliament, the Ministry of Justice and Bronzefield Prison in the south of England. We formed the group after the horrific death of two babies when their mothers were left to give birth alone in their cells – despite several calls for help. Prison can never be a safe place to be pregnant, or a suitable place for babies to grow up. We’ll keep campaigning until the MoJ and the Sentencing Council stop this barbaric practice.
