There are a million ways to see a city. For some places, it takes living there to get a true sense of their identity. With others, you can simply glide through on a high-speed train and get a decent view of their character. Last summer, I spent a fabulous...
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Thomas Bartley reviews Isobel Campbell's latest release, 'Bow to Love'.
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How do you review a podcast? It is a question I, and I should suspect most of my colleagues in this section, have found ourselves asking repeatedly. It is somewhat of an erratic art form, some repetitive bordering on plagiarism, others almost beyond the confines of explanation. Many will stick...
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Whilst many football fans still prepare for a major international tournament by poring over the pages of FourFourTwo, World Soccer or When Saturday Comes, or by plastering their Panini sticker book full of shiny players, tastes have undoubtedly changed. Podcasts are increasingly a staple of the sport’s fan diet for...
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A non-league team from Stockton in Teesside have been met with criticism after voting to abolish all tiers of their women’s teams. Thornaby FC, whose men’s team play in the tenth tier of English football, decided by a majority of their committee to get rid of their under 7s, 8s,...
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Few can claim to have helped launch a newspaper. But for Birmingham-based journalist, Kate Knowles, and co-founder of new online outlet The Dispatch, it is an honour she carries with pride. The Birmingham Dispatch burst onto web browsers and into inboxes back in October, joining Mill Media stablemates The Liverpool...
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Spectres are a powerful force in politics, and not always in the way you might think. Political parties battle to define themselves both with and against their past. In the case of Keir Starmer’s Labour Party, the desire to depart from its past under Jeremy Corbyn could not be clearer....
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Amidst grave financial difficulties, Thomas Bartley discusses the factors driving The Body Shop's decline.
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It hasn’t been the easiest of years for Birmingham. Back in March, its city council announced swingeing cuts following bankruptcy, resulting in a whole range of belt-tightening from the sale of community centres to the dimming of street lights. Just a few days earlier, production ceased on the BBC soap...
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I resist fads like the plague. Jumping on a bandwagon is too much for my entitled sanctimony, and so, I much prefer to spend the first six to 12 months of any new trend ribbing the gullible participants. Pokemon Go, loom bands, Wordle: the peak of their popularity had to...
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A Conservative peer has been forced to pay ‘substantial damages’ after accusing a University Challenge contestant of antisemitism. Jacqueline Foster, Baroness Foster of Oxton, 76, was forced to make a public apology to Melika Gorgianeh, a second-year PhD astrophysics candidate at Oxford University, after suggesting that the student had engaged...
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Layoffs, Strikes and More... Thomas Bartley covers the latest on unionisation within the games industry.
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Thomas Bartley discusses how Franz Ferdinand's eponymous debut has stood the test of time.
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