What's happening in Beeston, Belle Isle, Cottingley, Holbeck, Hunslet, Middleton and Stourton
On Christmas Eve I found myself sitting with my daughter, both professed atheists, in St Mary’s church in Beeston for the Crib Service. I thoroughly enjoyed it. We sang some rousing carols (the reason we had gone), listened to a story I’m very familiar with and there was loads of
I’ve never been very taken by the idea of ornithology, or bird watching or ‘twitching’. It’s always seemed a bit obsessive, like train spotting (the hobby, not the film). But seeing flocks of unidentified sea birds wheeling over the sands as the tide goes out, or skeins of geese flying
Did you see Hilary Benn’s speech to parliament at the end of the Syria debate? It was quite a barnstorming performance, fantastic rehetoric, brilliantly argued. Unfortunately he drew the wrong conclusions and voted the wrong way. I was going to use this column to reflect on South Leeds Life’s fifth
Our story about aliens landing at New Bewerley Community School caught a lot of attention this week. The story’s been viewed nearly 3,000 times. We usually only get that sort of traffic for crime, planning or jobs reports. It can’t have hurt to have the word ‘alien’ in the headline,
Wednesday was Remembrance Day, it’s a day full of contradictions that I always find difficult. The first question is who are we remembering? It varies from ‘those brave young men that made the ultimate sacrifice to defend democracy’ through to ‘all victims of all wars’. The second definition I can
I was rather taken aback last Friday when Johnny I’Anson tried to call me Jezza on Radio Leeds. Oh dear that looks like name dropping. Johnny’s a great journalist and presenter, but he’s hardly an A list celebrity is he? I wasn’t meaning to name drop, but he did get
What does Cockburn School’s decision to convert to an academy tells us about what’s happening in education? I was one of a select number of people at Cockburn’s public meeting this week when the Headteacher and Governors set out their reasoning for the change. Elsewhere in the country over the
It’s been relatively quiet in Beeston these last few days. No cars being driven into houses or people shot in the street. You see there’s a family feud playing out on our streets. I don’t know the full facts, but one the more persistent and plausible rumours is that an
Earlier this week I started writing an article about Leeds City Council’s current Site Allocations consultation ‘Your city, Your plan’. You won’t have seen it yet, as I haven’t managed to finish it. I read the Council press release and it looked pretty dry and full of jargon. I though
The refugee crisis continues and public opinion seems to swing one way and then another. Throughout the year people have been drowning in the Mediterranean. Sometimes it gets in the news sometimes it’s ignored. Katie Hopkins was able to get away with saying she “Didn’t care if migrants drowned”, then