The Joy of Six 1364

"We are not yet a year on from the appalling events in Southport and the violence which followed. That violence was largely based on misinformation and lies and a campaign of mendacity which polluted social media. ... It is in this context that Merseyside Police took the virtually unprecedented step of identifying the ethnicity of the suspect within hours of the incident taking place - a 53 year-old white British man, local to the Liverpool area." Lewis Goodall says the far-right voices complaining about this decision by Merseyside Police are the same ones that made it inevitable.

Fintan O'Toole explains why, despite widespread buyer's remorse about Brexit, Nigel Farage is the rising figure in UK politics: "Brexit was a terrible solution to the problem of English identity. It did nothing to allow ordinary people to 'take back control' of their lives. Its only achievement has been to wipe about four per cent off Britain’s GDP."

"Something strange is happening in England. There are more children in care and fewer people waiting to adopt them. In 2024 there were 83,630 in the care system, a 23 per cent increase from 2014. Simultaneously, between 2013 and 2023, the numbers of “approved families” dropped by 60 per cent." Martha Gill looks at the reasons why prospective parents are no longer queuing up to adopt children in care.

James Breckwoldt argues that unaffordable housing has helped to sink the Conservative Party.

"More so than any of Hitchcock’s prior works about the lengths men will go to satiate their twisted appetites, Frenzy marks a new echelon of sexual sadism in his filmography." Steph Green looks back to 1972 and Alfred Hitchcock's brazen British homecoming film.

Olivia Rutigliano enjoys the wit and wisdom of Dorothy L. Sayers: "I always have a quotation for everything - it saves original thinking" (Have his Carcase, 1932).