Peter Kernwein posted a photo:

Peter Kernwein posted a photo:

Progressive nationalist parties now hold power in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast. That will be a challenge for the United Kingdom’s overcentralised state

When the Scottish and Welsh parliaments were created on the eve of the millennium, the then Labour government in Westminster believed that it had engineered a win-win situation. Devolution, it was hoped, would see off any nationalist threat in Scotland and Wales. Meanwhile, the Labour party’s longstanding political dominance in both nations would see it take comfortable control of the two new parliaments.

That was then. Last week’s devolved elections left Scottish and Welsh Labour battered, bruised and humiliated. Plaid Cymru’s historic victory in Wales, and a fifth successive triumph for the Scottish National party (SNP), mean that pro-independence governments are now set for the first time to rule in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast (where Sinn Féin won in 2022). The starting gun has been fired on a new and constitutionally contested era in the politics of the UK.

Continue reading...

After five years of deliberation the global south has forced the question that defined the Covid crisis: who will get the vaccines?

The Covid-19 pandemic did deep and lasting damage to the international political system. Countries in the global south are keenly aware that the established order let them down. They received vaccines later, in smaller numbers and often at a higher price than rich countries, resulting in avoidable death and suffering, and extended economic malaise. Last week, a coalition of those countries made their displeasure known by continuing to stonewall negotiations on the vaunted pandemic preparedness treaty of the World Health Organization (WHO), sending a clear message that when the next crisis arrives, they will not accept the same status quo.

An international treaty is sorely needed. But five years into negotiations, it is clear that the western backers of this plan, especially in Europe, have consistently presented it as a fait accompli, while avoiding the most basic and obvious political impasse before them.

Continue reading...

Was Adolescence unstoppable? Did Alan Carr pull off the best moment? Here are all this year’s winners of the most coveted prizes in British TV

• Bafta TV awards 2026: on the red carpet – in pictures

A Thousand Blows (Disney+)
Blue Lights (BBC One)
Code of Silence (ITV1) WINNER
This City Is Ours (BBC One)

Continue reading...

PARIJS (ANP) - Een van de Fransen die aan boord was van het Nederlandse cruiseschip Hondius vertoont symptomen van het hantavirus. Dat schrijft de Franse premier Sébastien Lecornu op X. Alle vijf de Fransen die zijn gerepatrieerd vanaf Tenerife zijn in "strikte isolatie geplaatst tot nader order".

Het is voor veel ouders een zware opgave: de smartphone in de zak houden, terwijl de kinderen willen spelen. Hoewel iedereen weet dat aandacht belangrijk is, wint de macht der gewoonte het vaak van de pedagogiek. "Kinderen kunnen het gevoel krijgen: ik word niet gezien, ik word niet gehoord", waarschuwt gezinstherapeut Linda Wedding.

Marcel van Roosmalen trof bij het Grachtenmuseum een Amerikaans echtpaar dat het geduld met Europa had verloren.

The professor says of his student's writing, quoting Tennyson, that it is 'Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null, Dead perfection; no more'.