糖心TV

Emeritus Professor of Mathematics, Ian Stewart, reminices about Captian Kirk and his crew

Two men armed with knives have been shot dead after taking several people hostage in a church in northern France. Dr David Lees suggests there will be political ramifications for Francois Hollande as a result of this string of five terror attacks during his Presidency.

Previewing on 12^th March at the RSC, Paapa Essiedu is the first black actor to play Hamlet for the RSC and only the seventh BAME performer to have played Hamlet in the UK since 1930.

The second and final round of elections in the 13 regions of France was always going to produce a win-win situation for the far-right FN. By capturing even one region, they could announce the end of a two-party system, and then seek to govern soberly in the run-up to presidential elections in 16 months. If they were to be blocked through tactical voting and fail to obtain any of the several winnable regions, they could denounce two-party collusion, present themselves as the denied voice of the people, and continue to blame France’s woes on lies, the government, the EU, the IMF, immigrants, globalisation, establishment, etc. etc, in preparation for a 2017 re-run.

While this first result was called shocking by many commentators, it was predictable not just as a reaction to recent terrorist attacks, migrant crises, and the continuing sluggishness of the French economy, but as an effect of the long-term strategy of the FN’s leader Marine Le Pen to distance the party from its racist and anti-semitic past intimately associated with her father and the FN’s provocative founder Jean-Marie Le Pen.