Nov 10
My fingers are sore from typing thank you emails, and I still have dozens to write; the swift campaign to save the City of Edinburgh Music School this past fortnight has garnered enormous support, and we are all immensely grateful to everyone who was prepared to stand up and recognise that Edinburgh City Council’s proposal …
Oct 28
Sub-text: the vital importance of teaching young people how to engage effectively with politics … Are you sitting comfortably? If you have a spare 2 hours (I know, I know … who does? But this will be worth it!), then watch this hot-off-the-press webcast of the Edinburgh City Council Finance and Resources Committee meeting on …
Sep 01
The annual Edinburgh International Festival came to an end last night with a bang – literally, in fact, as explosions of fireworks rained down on the castle, watched by thousands. The night before, however, there were explosions of a different kind, as the Dloko High School Choir gave the last of its vibrant and powerful …
Jun 13
This week’s Sunday Telegraph magazine, Stella, contained an uplifting article by Sally Howard, which I have yet to find online; if you can find it and read it, do. In it, she describes a visit to Shraddhanand Mahilashram, an orphanage for girls in Mumbai, India, where girls are taught to be independent, confident young women, …
Jun 04
What historic times we are living in! Yesterday – the day of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee on the Thames – may have dawned grey and cold, and the rain may have caught up with us all before the afternoon was out, but there was no denying the fact that everyone who was present on the …
Feb 23
On my way back from Australia, I picked up a copy of the International Herald Tribune at Singapore’s Changi airport and read a truly shocking story on the front page – a story that was subsequently picked up in the New York Times. It described the practice of ‘baad’, which despite being denounced by the …
Nov 01
Before I travelled to Bangladesh, I knew that child marriage had been identified as a key issue in the country. According to UNICEF’s 2011 State of the World’s Children report, about a third of women in Bangladesh aged 20-24 are married by the age of 15, and 66% of girls will wed before their 18th …