Dilip Simeon's blog

Labour’s new push for  a second referendum  is the right call and at the right time. Jeremy Corbyn has challenged the next prime minister to back putting his deal or no deal to the public with Labour campaigning for Remain  in a new referendum . The shift brings to an end what critics have called Labour’s “constructive ambiguity” and fence-sitting over Brexit. Labour is certainly unambiguously opposed to a Tory-fuelled Brexit. The party is making the right call. Public support for Brexit continues to weaken since 2016. More voters see Brexit  as a mistake  with 51 per cent  supporting Remain  and only 44 per cent for Leave. The will of the people has  shifted undeniably  as Brexit negotiations have stalled. A second vote would almost certainly have a different result.  The pro-Remain majority grows as the risk of a no-deal Brexit increases. While neither Boris Johnson nor Jeremy Hunt have given a consistent guarantee that Brit...

By Nerilie Abram, Matthew England, and Matt King  Almost all ( around 93% ) of the extra heat human activities have caused to accumulate on Earth since the Industrial Revolution lies within the ocean. And a large majority of this has been taken into the depths of the Southern Ocean. It is thought that  this effect could delay the start of significant warming   over much of Antarctica for a century or more. However, the Antarctic ice sheet has a weak underbelly. In some places the ice sheet sits on ground that is below sea level. This puts the ice sheet in direct contact with warm ocean waters that are very effective at melting ice and destabilising the ice sheet. Scientists have  long been worried about the potential weakness of ice in West Antarctica because of its deep interface with the ocean A  record start to summer ice melt in Greenland  this year has drawn attention to the northern ice sheet. We will have to wait to see if 2019 continues to...

Donald Trump  pulled out of the  Iran nuclear deal  to spite his predecessor  Barack Obama , the UK’s former ambassador reportedly suggested in a new leaked diplomatic memo. Sir  Kim Darroch  claimed the US president’s actions amounted to “diplomatic vandalism” and were fuelled by “personality” reasons, according to a document seen by  The Mail on Sunday . The ambassador’s comments are said to have been made in May 2018 after  Boris Johnson , who was foreign secretary at the time, made a failed trip to the White House in a bid to change Mr Trump’s mind on leaving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. The latest revelation came as police identified a suspect behind the leak, according to  The Sunday Times . Just hours earlier, Mr Johnson and Tory leadership rival Jeremy Hunt  criticised Metropolitan Police  assistant commissioner  Neil Basu  for warning journalists they could face prosecution for publishi...

The 21st century has hardly begun and the great promise of globalisation and “liberal inclusion” of the last century is fading. The world’s powerful states, heretofore wedded to internationalism, are turning inward and seeking their primeval identities. Nations are seeking identities away from multiculturalism and wish to protect themselves by banning immigration. Borders are being closed, and those who had crossed them decades earlier as welcome guests are being treated with intolerance. Anthropologist Akbar Ahmed has found the rise of identity politics in Europe interesting enough for him to undertake a journey to Europe to experimentally see if his earlier theses on the subject jibe with what is happening now. His Journey into Europe: Islam, Immigration and Identity is a kind of culmination to his three earlier examinations of “tribal” identity. As Ahmed surveys the identity-seeking Europe, he is reminded of the “inclusive” state of Abdur Rahman in al-Andalus (Iberia), in the ...

Subscribe for free ! Editorial: Democracy and Psychoanalysis:  MINDING THE GAP Democracy, psychoanalysis, and ROOM share a powerful connection. They were created to contain and facilitate the many voices that comprise (and conflict with) our polities, ourselves, and, in the case of ROOM, the space between ourselves and our societies. This is not coincidental. As Jill Gentile explains in her book  Feminine Law: Freud, Free Speech, and the Voice of Desire , there is a resonance between the method of free association underlying the work of psychoanalysis and the right of free speech which is the bedrock of democracy. And how does Room fit in? Right in the middle. ROOM could not exist outside of a democracy in which free public speech was possible, nor would it exist without the analyt...

The assembly of a surveillance state is helped by a number of willing private companies, and today, there are discussions about having AI systems watch CCTV footage, while building 360-degree profiles from our different social media profiles on  Facebook ,  Twitter , and  Instagram . Some plans are  limited to specific states , or  particular agencies , while others are more national  in their scope. And new projects are  being developed  and implemented at a worrying rate, even as the government drags its feet on actually implementing the  Draft Data Protection bill . Here are five of the latest develop-ments in government surveillance that should have you worried about where things are headed. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts of students should connect to the HRD Ministry A circular from R Subrahmanyam, Secretary, Ministry of Human Resource Development, sent to the heads of all Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs) earlier t...

We’re having a “ crisis of childhood ”, according to research from the charity Action for Children. Doesn’t sound good – but it’s not a new phenomenon. It doesn’t seem like a day goes by when we aren’t given yet another warning about the bloated horror of modern childhood. Exams, bullying, gaming, social media, climate crisis, the end of human employment, the  Momo  hoax  … everywhere you turn something is threatening our youngsters. But in many ways there has never been a better time to be a child. It’s not that social deprivation doesn’t have a terrible effect on a young person’s ability to enjoy their early years – it always has and it always will, and growing inequality is among the greatest threats to children’s wellbeing. But as parents and professionals improve their understanding of what it means to raise a child well, the day-to-day things that once affected many children irrespective of social status – such as being smacked, being seen and not heard, being ...