Abraham Armstrong

Council-organised funerals have more than doubled in Lambeth — raising concerns about deprivation and the soaring cost of dying in the capital.


‘Public health funerals’ are carried out by local authorities when no prior arrangements have been made and there are no relatives willing or able to pay for a service.


According to data on Lambeth Council’s website, the number of public health funerals has risen from 55 in 2022-23 to 114 in 2023-24.


The increase forms part of a wider growth in...

Young people are abandoning the Labour Party. Anger over Gaza, repeated U-turns, and internal purges of the left have all contributed to youth membership plummeting from 100,000 to 30,000. 

So, who are the remaining young people in the Labour Party – and what do they think needs to change?

The number of people on social housing waiting lists has increased by more than 150% over the past decade in some London boroughs, amid an investigation into how local councils allocate their housing stock.   


The London Assembly Housing Committee is seeking to understand variations in social housing allocation policies, and whether they are applied fairly and make best use of current supply.  


Chair Zoë Garbett said the committee chose to examine allocation policies following discussions...

Russian students at CEU continue to feel the personal and professional consequences of the university being designated an ‘undesirable’ institution by the Putin regime.

In October 2023, CEU joined a list of over 100 organisations deemed a threat to Russian national security, in accordance with a 2015 law handing Russian prosecutors unprecedented extrajudicial power to declare foreign organisations ‘undesirable’ and close their domestic operations.

Recent news about the volume of compensation claims from Romani women to the Czech Health Ministry, as part of a scheme for victims of a state-sponsored involuntary sterilisation program, has refocused attention on the litany of daily injustices faced by the community.


The Roma population of the Czech Republic stands at around 250,000, with approximately 9,000 in Brno. Despite being recognised as a national minority in the 1990s, the social and economic standing of the community has deteriora...

Putney MP Fleur Anderson held an event on Monday to celebrate one of the constituency’s most famous residents – former Prime Minister Clement Attlee.


The gathering was attended by Lord Attlee, Clement’s grandson, as well as the Mayor of Wandsworth and Wandsworth Council leader Simon Hogg.


Speeches by Anderson, Lord Attlee, and the mayor took place by a commemorative plaque on Portinscale Road where Attlee was born, marking 80 years since the 1945 general election which brought him to power...

Last week, senior Czech politicians and academics participated in a two-day conference in Budapest, focused on the rise of populism and how to strengthen democracy in Europe.


The Budapest Forum took place at the former building of the Central European University, where talks on sustainability and the green transition in Europe were held against the backdrop of serious flooding in the city and wider region, with water from the nearby Danube spilling over local flood defences and submerging pav...

Keir Starmer, like many before him, has made reducing the number of people coming into this country a central mission of his government. The prime minister has pledged repeatedly to bring down net migration, the difference between the number of people coming into the country and the number leaving. In May, he announced a set of measures to drastically cut new arrivals, including higher salary thresholds for workers and shorter timeframes for international students to find work once they’ve compl...

What, exactly, should one be hoping for while on their way to a Bob Dylan concert in 2024?


Historically, the safest bet has been to prepare for disaster. The 83 year-old has long harboured a reputation for putting on shows incomprehensible to even the most loyal followers, bizarre rearrangements of old songs paired with an indifference bordering on disdain for his audiences. Generations of bewildered fans have left concerts echoing the words of the critic Greil Marcus, who, after listening to...

In Mulberry, Tim Key – ‘a celebrity shorn of his fame, reduced to government-issued pyjamas’ – recounts his experience of lockdown-life via a series of surreal poems and stories. ‘I decided to spend some time in the hall bit, in-between the bathroom and the bedroom. It was not a bad area.’ It is this strange liminal space into which we are invited for the following hour, trapped with Key in his flat as he wanders around the stage in a stripped Velour tracksuit, sipping from a can of beer and rea...

Since December 2023, the Prague-based collective Kino Palestine has hosted a series of film screenings and discussions across different venues in the Czech capital. The events aim to platform Palestinian voices “unapologetically”, amplify Palestinian narratives, and strengthen cultural solidarity with Palestinians and Palestinian artists.  


The initiative began as a two-month program of screenings, in collaboration with Prague’s Garage Gallery, but met with such enthusiasm that it has now exp...

Sunday evening saw the close of the ŠTETL FEST festival of Jewish Culture in Brno. Over 100 events were held over the four-day period, marking the biggest year of the multi-genre festival since its inception in 2022. 


This year’s theme, ‘Jewish Trauma in Art From Kafka to Barbie’, sought to explore issues of generational trauma, the reflection of Jewish identity in artistic expression, and the relationship between society and the individual. While the majority of events were held in Czech, ma...

This Thursday will see the opening of the third annual ŠTETL FEST, the largest festival of Jewish culture in the Czech Republic. From 29 August to 1 September, more than 110 exhibitions, concerts, discussions, and theatre performances will take place across the city, with the aim of celebrating and commemorating Jewish life in Brno.


The theme of this year’s festival, ‘Jewish Trauma in Art from Kafka to Barbie’, seeks to explore “the trauma of an uprooted people connected to tradition as well...

Since moving to the country in 1997, Reginald D. Hunter has become a stalwart of the UK comedy scene. The Georgia-born comic was nominated for the prestigious Perrier award in both 2003 and 2004, and awarded the Writer’s Guild Award for Comedy in 2005. At his best, Hunter is an outstanding performer – charming, funny, and brimming with intelligence. He has proved an astute commentator on race and class in both the UK and America, and manages to draw insightful comparisons between the two while a...

In-keeping with the atmosphere of the Fringe thus far, Josie Long begins her new show Re-Enchantment by telling the audience simply how happy she is to see everyone: ‘I’m so proud of you for being here! I want to give you all a big hug! Is it safe? Don’t think about it.’ For most comics such an opening would be unremarkable, but Long’s enthusiasm is so genuine that you can feel it spread instantly through the room and put the audience at ease. By now, Long is an experienced performer – her first...

Brno City Council has announced plans to increase funding for two music and theatre festivals, as well as a host of landmark cultural institutions. 


Following changes to the budget of the Ministry of Culture, many centres of creative industry in Brno have been faced with the prospect of reduced funding. Cuts to state support programmes will, in particular, mean a reduction in assistance for theatres, choirs, and symphony orchestras. 


In response to the budget cuts, the Brno City Council ha...

In Angell Town, Brixton, work is underway on a new community hub for local residents in south London.

upCYCLE is a social enterprise established in July 2020, when founder Philip Dobson began fixing bikes destined for landfill and donating them to charities, in the midst of the pandemic and Black Lives Matter movement.

The organisation began running bike maintenance classes, with young participants given a refurbished bike for free at the end of the session.

upCYCLE now also provide free mentoring and employment skills programmes, alongside the repair workshops.

Dobson said the new hub will offer cycling lessons and community repair days, where young people can share what they’ve learnt with local residents.

He added he wanted the location to be a cultural hub for Angell Town, hosting gigs, film and poetry nights for the community.

Watch below to find out more.

For his fourth outing at the Fringe, Josh Pugh delivers an hour of funny and surreal stories about trying for a baby, fatherhood, and his myriad flaws as a boyfriend. Winner of the Birmingham Breaking Talent Award (2015) and English Comedian of the Year Award (2016), Pugh is a charming and generous performer who knows his craft well and wins the audience over with ease from the outset. Pugh has amassed millions of views on social media – his Twitter feed is a veritable goldmine – though this doe...

In the aptly named ‘Wee Room’ at Three Sisters, Niamh Curran and Louisa Keight take to the stage in Banana Split for an hour of clever and assured stand-up comedy. Both comics are alumni of Cambridge Footlights and bring with them a confident stage demeanour, putting the audience at ease despite the tiny cramped room and poor air conditioning (what Curran refers to as the ‘karaoke-themed sex dungeon’). There is an audible performance going on next door, and Keight jokes that as a result they hav...

A moving homage to the Fringe


Jack Docherty begins this excellent one-man show sitting cross-legged, playing himself as a child in the late 1960s. Full of innocent wonder, he is eagerly awaiting the arrival of a clown at a friend’s birthday party. The young Docherty is so excited, in fact, that he shits himself. This embarrassment is compounded by the deflating discovery that the lauded clown is just his friend’s father, poorly dressed and incapable of performing the most basic magic tricks....