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How the UK can learn from Dutch and Norwegian prisons

  Yesterday, I went to the cinema in the Dome prison in Haarlem. This monumental building is one of more than 20 Dutch prisons that have closed in the past decade. The Dutch have seen their prison population decrease by more than 40% over the past 20 years. At the other end of the spectrum, Britain has the highest rate of incarceration in western Europe, and is struggling with an unprecedented prisons crisis. Britain's prison minister, James Timpson, calls the Netherlands a source of inspiration. The Convict Marcus C. Stone (1840-1921) Photo Credit: York Museums Trust [Public Domain]   What could the Dutch system teach the rest of the world? First, the declining prison population is not actually the result of recent policies by visionary politicians. Much of it is due to changes in reported crime and the nature of crime. As in many other western countries, the number of violent crimes has significantly dropped in the Netherlands in recent decades... The Dutch criminologist, Francis
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The Experience Economy

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  I am an instinctive sceptic of what we have been taught to call "the experience economy". The 21st-century, business analysts inform us, has witnessed an important shift in middle-class spending, from the material to the intangible. Instead of watches and sofas, we prefer to spend our money on concerts, festivals, immersive theatre and - here I struggle to suppress a shudder - novelty dining experiences... "Experience" - heady, hedonistic, living on eternally in memory - is the precious, effervescent, quicksilver stuff of which a well lived life is made... In London, the Evening Standard reports there has been  "a huge surge in ultra-expensive restaurants" charging £150 or more per head for a meal. The demand comes not only from the wealthy but from the aspirational middle class, from whom a dinner is no longer merely a meal but another opportunity for memorable experience. Hence 12-course tasting menus and viral social media chefs ostentatiously garnish
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Britain and Germany

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 Sir Keith Starmer is not the first Labour leader to hanker after a closer relationship between Britain and Germany. Jim Callaghan snuggled up to the chancellor Helmut Schmidt in the 1970s, and ever since there  has been a sense among the social democratic left in the UK that there is much to be learned from Germany's biggest economy. The Germans, it has been said repeatedly down the decades, have a superior model of capitalism: based on good design and skilled workmanship; stable, long-term funding arrangements between businesses and the banks; a more consensual system of industrial relations; a network of medium sized companies,  many of them family owned; a top notch system of vocational and technical training that ensures a steady supply of skilled, productive workers. Street Scene in Frankfurt, Germany George Jones (1786-1869) Photo Credit:Nottingham City Museums & Galleries [CC BY-NC] There is a reason Germans work fewer hours and enjoy higher living standards than the Br
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Michael Sheen

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  ... The Assembly was a Q & A session in which he took questions from a group of  young neurodiverse people. Sheen didn't have a clue what would be asked, and no subject was off limits. It made for life-affirming telly. The 55-year-old Welsh actor was so natural, warm and encouraging as he answered a series of nosy, surprising and inspired questions... "The Assembly's had more response than anything else I've ever done," Sheen tells me. "Almost every day someone will come up to me  and mention it, particularly people who have children with autism... I had a fantastic time." He replays some of his favourite moments: the young man who took an age to start talking and then delivered the most beautifully phrased questions about the influence of Dylan Thomas on Sheen's life... Arenig, North Wales James Dickson Innes (1887-1914) Photo Credit:Tate  [CC  BY-NC-ND]  Six years ago he swapped life in Los Angeles for Port Talbot, the steel town where he gre
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Paying more tax?

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 ...  We think we can have the low tax levels of the Anglosphere with high northern European levels of public services, and we can't. In Britain, the tax take - tax as a percentage of GDP - at 33.5 per cent is closer to the Anglosphere than to northern Europe. In the US, it is 26.6 per cent, in Australia 28.5 and in Canada 33.2. In Germany, meanwhile, the tax take is 39.5 per cent, in Scandinavia it is 43.7 per cent on average and in France it is 45.1 per cent. Britons, however, have high expectations of what the state will provide for them. - in some areas,  higher than those of the Europeans. Even the French are required to contribute to the costs of their healthcare, but no politician in this country dares suggest Britons should fork out a penny to see a doctor because they know they would be out on their ear at the next election. Health and Wealth Walter Richard Sickert (1860-1942) Photo Credit: Yale Centre for British Art [Public Domain] The reach of British public services is
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Dyslexia

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Many children could be misdiagnosed with dyslexia as almost half of experts believe myths about the learning difficulty, research suggests. A study led by Durham University has found that many of those diagnosing children believe that letters jump around or words appear in different order for those with dyslexia. These indicators have been discredited, the research says. Academics say there is significant variability in the methods used by professionals for identifying dyslexia. They conducted an investigation of 275 UK professionals involved  in assessing students for dyslexia - including educational psychologists and specialists. This probed their assessment methods and what they believed to be signs of dyslexia, which mainly causes problems with reading, writing and spelling. It found that almost half of dyslexia professionals who were surveyed believed at least one unproven indicator for dyslexia...  The study ... warned that the misconceptions could influence assessors' judgem
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Who Are You?

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  A recent viral meme involves asking OpenAI's ChatGPT to scrutinise - or "roast" - our Instagram feeds. According to NBC, over 310,000 people have participated in the meme, which is shared through an Instagram Stories template... It's pretty fun. Not too mean, but it doesn't go easy on you either. The desire to be "roasted" online isn't totally new. We all want an unvarnished, un-sugar-coated opinion of who we really are, and the internet is one of the better places to search for answers. Whether it's asking Reddit to roast us or taking personality quizzes, we're always looking for hidden aspects of our character.   With AI, it's like we finally have the opportunity to ask: "Do I look fat in this?" and receive what seems like an honest answer. A Fat Man Pointing to a Woman with Her Hands Clasped Pieter Huys (c. 1520-1581 (after) Photo Credit: Wellcome Collection [Public Domain] Personality quizzes, in particular, have long been
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