The Joy of Six 1196

"Animal factories are amongst the worst atrocities ever perpetrated by humanity. Animal factories are inherently cruel and create massive suffering for billions of animals, destroy the environment and even undermine our health." Jane Goodall and Koen Margodt make the case for adopting a plant-based diet.

Iain Sharpe (Mr Dorothy Thornhill) reflects on how elected politicians can hold experts to account in the light of the Post Office Horizon scandal: "Among the reasons for my dear wife's longevity as Elected Mayor of Watford was a willingness to keep asking questions until she got an answer she understood and a sixth sense for when someone's story wasn't stacking up, the latter skill perhaps deriving from her previous career as a schoolteacher." 

"Giving control to Network Rail would lead to the railway being run to suit its needs, rather than those of the passengers. Trying to get Network Rail to change its spots is unrealistic. The railways must be run in a customer-focused way, and that must be at the heart of any structure the Labour Party devises." Christian Wolmar gives his ideas about how a Labour government should reform the railways.

Oliver Wainwright celebrates the survival of the brutalist Park Hill estate in Sheffield: "The current state of the place – still completely derelict at one end, spruced up at the other – reads as a surreal diagram of how attitudes to postwar architecture have shifted over the years, and how an estate can be scrubbed up for sale in different ways".

Kyle Chaka explains why every coffee shop looks the same - it's the tyranny of the algorithm.

"In 1968 Schulz noticed the Civil Rights movement, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and read a letter from Los Angeles schoolteacher Harriet Glickman. She had a question for Schulz: would he include a black child in the Peanuts gang?" Flashbak explains how Charlie Brown acquired a black friend.