The Joy of Six 1581

Tom Gordon, Liberal Democrat MP for Harrogate and Knaresborough, argues that we must stop avoiding the subject of student finance if we are to win back younger voters.

Margaret Hartmann reports that Trump's interference in the plans for his White House ballroom has produced a design that is a menace to public safety: "McCrery informed the White House that Trump’s ballroom design did not meet fire safety codes, which require the majority of guests to be able to quickly exit through the main entrance during an emergency ... The architect also pointed out that alternative emergency exit routes out of the building were insufficient, and that there was little in the design to prevent a kitchen fire from rapidly spreading into the event space on the floor above."

"We want children to become physically competent, but we also want them to become confident decision-makers, good communicators and effective collaborators. We might want them to learn how to deal with mistakes, take responsibility and work things out for themselves. None of this is guaranteed simply because a child participates in sport." Children’s sport is great at keeping them busy but, asks Jose Castro, are they learning?

"Born Tomáš Sträussler in Zlin in Moravia, before becoming a triply displaced refugee boy. Having been taken to Singapore as a two-year-old, two days before the Nazis invaded, he was to speak his first words, in Czech, in East Asia, but was soon to forget his mother tongue. Aged four he was again on a boat, this time to Bombay, two days before Singapore fell to the Japanese. So many of his earliest memories were of Darjeeling, in British India, where his mother met Major Kenneth Stoppard, marrying him in Calcutta, before they traveled to Southampton and then Derbyshire, where the young brothers Petr and Tomas became anglicised as Peter and Tom Stoppard." Sunder Katwala reflects on the shifting identity of the playwright Tom Stoppard, who died last year.

Amy Louise Burney says it doesn't have to be Jane Austen. She suggests five other 18th-century writers with whom TV could have a wonderful love affair.

"This is the early 1960s and the physical changes taking place in the city centre, wrecking balls and cranes visible in many shots, mirror wider societal upheaval. You suspect that when Liz (Julie Christie) gets off her train in London, the world will be in colour, not monochrome." Graham Rickson on John Schlesinger's Billy Liar (1963).

The Joy of Six 1575

Zöe Franklin celebrates the 98th anniversary of the Equal Franchise Act, which gave women equal voting rights with men and calls for further reforms: "Today, barriers remain for women, disabled people, people from ethnic minority backgrounds and others who are underrepresented in public life."

Abandoning the triple lock on pensions  is more likely to condemn today’s younger generations to an old age of poverty than help them, argues Mark E. Thomas.

Josiah Mortimer on a study that finds the introduction of mandatory voter ID has damaged trust in British elections, not improved it.

"It’s not hard to see the appeal of a creed in which worldly success is a sign of God’s blessing to uncontrollably rich individuals like Marshall. And for a church that has become smaller and older, it offers energy, confidence and – perhaps most importantly of all – money." James Bloodworth says the weakening of the Church of England has empowered a new evangelical elite that includes Sir Paul Marshall.

"It’s become a cliché to talk about Ballard’s prescience – the so-called 'seer of Shepperton'. But it’s also an inescapable fact that even in his 80s, he could identify currents in our culture that were yet to break. " Louis Pattison finds that J.G. Ballard’s Kingdom Come, which depicts an England’s sliding towards fascism, makes uncomfortable reading today. 

Melanie Bell examines the careers choices made by Julie Christie: "Always uncomfortable with stardom – which she later admitted she found ‘terrifying’ – her choice of films increasingly became a conscious decision on her part to exercise some control over her career, turning down high-profile roles in commercial cinema in favour of independent/auteur-driven projects with narratives that dramatised the contradictions of contemporary life, many of which were sharply gendered."