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Articles by Lavinia Thompson

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About Lavinia Thompson

A university lecturer for many years, both at home and abroad, Lavinia Thompson retired in 2008 and has since taken up freelance journalism. She is currently studying for a distant learning degree in geo-political science and lives in Norwich with her partner. More Posts

Reflections upon the death of HM The Queen

I suspect like many Rusters over the past week, I have taken the news of the Queen’s death last Thursday – and watched all the resulting consequences, including the carefully-rehearsed-down-to-the-last-detail administrative and ancient (and some not so ancient) preparations, traditions, [...]

September 15, 2022 // 0 Comments

He’s back! Grace – but not much favour I’m afraid …

Yesterday saw the return of actor John Simm as Detective Superintendent Roy Grace to our television screens on ITV. There is a long and stout tradition of location-specific fictional sleuths – think Morse (Oxford), Rebus (Edinburgh), Taggart (Glasgow) and Leeds (DCI Banks) to name but a handful [...]

April 25, 2022 // 0 Comments

When time-honoured legal principles collide with modern life

My contribution today concerns two matters relating to the laws of England and Wales that I’ve come across recently and thought I’d share with my fellow Rusters. As is my traditional practice I shall open my discourse with a disclaimer and/or perhaps that should be “declaration of (non) [...]

March 19, 2022 // 0 Comments

Casting to type – an interesting aspect of modern sensitivities

In these modern times of saturation-coverage of fashionable issues such as  “levelling up”, diversity, equality, transgender rights versus those who argue these affect “women born as women” (if I’m even allowed to use that phrase) – just “wokedom” [...]

February 5, 2022 // 0 Comments

Hypocrisy in politicians and public figures

As I contemplate any cause célèbre scandal, such as that which engulfed Government Health Secretary Matt Hancock yesterday after The Sun published him snogging one of his close advisers Gina Colodangelo in the office, one of the first things that always comes to my mind is the phrase “Let he [...]

June 26, 2021 // 0 Comments

I guess you could make it up …

As, apparently right on cue, summer’s weather arrived in the UK last weekend it occurred to me that the Global Covid-19 pandemic is going to be dominating the news pages for a long while yet. During my occasional excursions out into the wider world of shopping and other “normality” since [...]

June 3, 2021 // 0 Comments

Far less than its billing …

For my sins, dear reader, yesterday I deliberately sat down at 9.30am in order to watch Dominic Cummings’ appearance before the joint inquiry of the Health and Social Care Committee and Science and Technology Committee at the House of Commons. Before doing so I went out for a brief “breath [...]

May 27, 2021 // 0 Comments

The meaning of words and statements

The saying “There are  three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics …” has been around for a long time. For the purposes of this post I looked it up on the internet and it seems that nobody really knows who or where it originated – apparently Mark Twain, who was [...]

March 19, 2021 // 0 Comments

Stark food for thought on the radio

Shortly before I rose from my bed overnight I was listening to the Stephen Nolan Show (2200 hours to 0100 hours) on Radio Five Live leading up to 1.00am. He was interviewing a gentleman whose name I did not catch and may (or may not) have been a Kiwi but – as far as I could tell from the [...]

February 6, 2021 // 0 Comments

Coming home to roost?

Overnight – in my terms at least, given my standard waking schedule involves me going to bed at 8.00pm and getting up for my day shift somewhere between midnight and 1.30am – the big “breaking” news has been centred around the massive row developing between the EU and Britain over the [...]

January 30, 2021 // 0 Comments

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