The Joy of Six 1505

Bee Boileau, Lucas Conwell ans Peter Levell find that Help to Buy schemes don't help the people who most need it: "The affordability gains from the equity loan schemes were concentrated among higher-income individuals. Since these individuals would normally be expected to be able to save for a minimum deposit quite quickly even without Help to Buy, it is likely that these schemes accelerated their first home purchase by a few years rather than making the difference between becoming a homeowner or not in the longer term."

"Rebekah Pierre, deputy director of the charity Article 39, said ... posters advertising payments of 'up to £932 per week per child' 'stopped me in my tracks' when she encountered them in a local shopping centre." Joanne Parkes on criticism of a fostering recruitment campaign by Croydon Council, arguing that its messaging risks reducing children in care to a "price tag".

Emma John reports that some researchers say that the common framing of ADHD as a characteristic for success can be unhelpful for those who are struggling.

James Cracknell says that AI is being used to undermine real local journalism: "North London News features stories about Enfield and Barnet and other boroughs that are put together by AI bots using existing stories published on other websites, including our own. This is bad enough – but what's worse is that they are also adding fake quotes, fake people (including fake councillors), fake organisations and fake facts into these stories as well. Whatever AI system they are using, it is massively flawed."

"Several startling passages of dialogue have sent me scrolling through the week’s listings to unveil an author. Katie Hims can nail a character through their choice of confectionery: of course, the trad Jim Lloyd would go for wine gums. Nick Warburton scripted a bonkers visit by a character obsessed with train timetables and pebbles, then cleverly had one of the most stolid residents complain that the incomer was a bore." Susannah Clapp praises The Archers scriptwriters.

"In Britain hauntings occur in ancient manor houses, old inns, and Gothic asylums – places whose very age makes them groan and creak, where shadows sit deep, and which are scarred by the lingering imprint of lives lived and lost. And yet arguably the most famous British ghost story of the 20th century took place somewhere quite different: in a humble council house, only half a century old, in Enfield, north London." Ray Newman considers the haunting of social housing.

The Joy of Six 1463

Schuyler Mitchell talks to Mark Bray, a Rutgers University professor and expert on Fascism, who has fled the US with his family after being targeted because of his work: "The next day, we managed to leave – but not before being searched and interrogated by federal officers, despite facing no charges whatsoever. I’m not suspected of any crimes. I’m just a professor."

"Ofcom has repeatedly allowed GB News to broadcast biased news. Ofwat allows water companies to jack up prices enormously whilst pouring shit into our rivers and sometimes not even delivering water. And Ofgem allows electricity companies to charge some of the highest domestic and industrial electricity prices in the world." Chris Dillow on regulatory capture – the tendency of big corporations to take control of the regulators supposed to police them.

JP Spencer looks the success of the Manchester Mill news website and the potential of its model across Britain: "With the decline of many news titles, it is welcome that local democracy is getting the attention and scrutiny it deserves. ... As a big believer in the power of local decision making, we are going to need new forms of media to report on key decisions and other issues that will keep the public informed and grease the wheels of democracy."

"They didn’t poll residents about whether they felt 'interested but concerned' about automobiles. They showed them the future and made them want it. Today’s planning profession has inverted that approach. Instead of selling a vision, we survey people about their willingness to adopt one. People self-identify based on current conditions, reflecting limited beliefs about what’s possible. ... The results are predictable." Andy Boenau says campaigners should aim make freedom of mobility so compelling that people demand it.

"These files make it clear that Our Friends in the North's path to transmission would make a drama in and of itself. It had taken more than a decade for it to be successfully adapted by Peter Flannery from his own Royal Shakespeare Company play of the early 1980s." Paul Hayes digs into the BBC's archives to uncover the production history of the award-winning political drama.

Hyungwon Kang explains how 5th-century Roman glassware came to be found in high-status burials in Korea.

After three years online, Leicester Gazette launches a print edition

Leicester Gazette is one of a new generation of local news outlets born out of the collapse of local newspapers and the right-wing bias of most national ones.

It began almost three years ago as a website – Reece Stafferton wrote a guest post for this blog outlining the Gazette's plans a few months before it launched.

Now comes news that the Gazette is to launch a print edition.

An article on the Gazette site says it will have 32 pages and be a unique "half Berliner" size – slightly larger than a magazine but with the feel and look of a traditional newspaper:

Creating a print edition is a new thing for us. Our core team is made up of trained journalists, but we have limited experience in print. If you notice any mistakes, please let us know – and please be gentle with us!

For our inaugural issue, we’ve included a mix of old and new. You'll find striking features from our regulars like Margaret Brecknell and Joseph Herbert, as well as reports from the local democracy reporting service. Our hope is that it gives new readers a taste of what we're all about.

Our first print run is 5,000 copies, with plans to publish quarterly and increase circulation with each issue.

I wish this exciting development well.

The Joy of Six 1440

"The 'peace deal' that America is now attempting to force on Ukraine, is not like Neville Chamberlain’s betrayal of Czechoslovakia at Munich; it is far, far worse," says Jonty Bloom.

Sam Bright on the right-wingers who claim to love Britain, but want to destroy all its institutions: "The whole of Britain has become one big Oxford restaurant after a Bullingdon Club dinner: the tables upturned, the glass smashed, the staff left to sweep up the mess while the lads stumble out laughing, having dumped a bag of cash on the table by way of compensation."

"This feels partly like a sidelining of Wales in the national agenda, but also something more than that: a kind of disaster ennui. Floods aren’t new any more. They have become commonplace: but the way they are disregarded by some of the media and the government is deeply dangerous." Jude Rogers asks why the floods Storm Claudia caused in Monmouthshire received so little coverage.

Jack Walton remembers the lost world of Greater Manchester’s newspapers: "The Manchester Evening News is now the only local newsroom in Greater Manchester that has more than a handful of staff reporters, but go back 25 years and it would have been one of a dozen. Grand old titles like the Oldham Evening Chronicle and the Bolton Evening News used to inhabit imposing buildings which were buzzing with staff. In 2011, the Chronicle had 22 journalists and 76 total staff at its Union Street offices."

Colin Thurbron gave the eulogy for the writer Gillian Tindall at her memorial gathering last week: "'Houses and barns,' she wrote, 'gate posts, hedgerows, field slopes and the lie of paths, persist and persist, even when people that created them are earth themselves'.  In effect cities and buildings become, in her work, a palimpsest, in which the past lingers beneath the surface of things, and continues to shape them."

"Twain eventually came to believe that his idyllic childhood in Hannibal – immortalised in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer – had been only a dream, from which he had awakened to inescapable loss and misery. The boom and bust so redolent of American life haunted Twain, as it would F Scott Fitzgerald." Edward Short reviews a new biography of Mark Twain.

The Joy of Six 1213

Closing the educational achievement gap should be a priority for the next government, argues Kevin Latham: "This includes ... making a long-term commitment to funding a national in-school tutoring programme, like that set up during the pandemic. It includes reversing real terms cuts to key educational budgets targeting disadvantaged pupils in schools through the Pupil Premium, and reversing changes made to school funding in 2018 that disproportionately benefited schools in less deprived areas."

Caspar Hughes became a human bollard to enforce a bus gate when the authorities wouldn't: "We don’t need one LTN in Exeter, we need every residential neighbourhood turned into an LTN, protected cycle lanes on all main roads, and regular, cheap, and reliable public transport. At the same time, we need to acknowledge that people have become so accustomed to the privilege of driving, it feels like it is a right. For them, equality must feel like oppression."

Joshi Herriman took his worries about the declining quality of local newspapers to a House of Lords select committee.

The Victorian way of financing new railways was better than the one we use today, say Padraig McKee and Chris Colvin.

Claire Meadows celebrates Roman Polanski's Macbeth (1971): "I’m glad that the film has enjoyed a critical appraisal. Because I think it is a minor masterpiece. The casting - with Jon Finch and Francesca Annis playing against the historical norm as a younger and beautiful couple - is inspired. It feels new, yet acutely traditional.

"In typical Pym fashion, a series of amusing encounters ensues, comprising dinner parties, church bazaars and chance meetings, all of which show Rupert to be a slightly pompous, tactless man lacking in self-awareness. For an academic who studies human behaviour for a living, Rupert seems to have precious little understanding of how to apply this knowledge to his relationships with women!" JacquiWine enjoys Barbara Pym's An Unsuitable Attachment.