As reported exclusively in The Mancunion last week, the number of sex attacks is on the rise in student areas of Manchester. What, then, can be said of the number of convictions? Or the sentences these offenders are likely to receive? Earlier this year, new plans for a consultation on sentencing reform came under fire […]

The government plans to slash the legal aid budget by £350m, yet legal aid will remain in almost all criminal cases or cases that involve areas which are protected by law such as domestic violence, forced marriage or child abduction. The current budget for legal aid in the United Kingdom stands at £2bn, which is […]

Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke’s proposals for legal aid reform may sound fairly reasonable when written down; it is hard to argue that “unnecessary litigation” could ever be a good thing (Ministerial Foreword: Proposals for the Reform of Legal Aid in England and Wales). However, what he deems to be “unnecessary cases”, which the public should […]

Privatisation works by opening up services to a free market, which drives down prices and leads to innovation and improvements in customer service. These improvements over a nationalised system are born out of competition between different providers. The telecoms industry is an excellent example of where privatisation has worked to effect improvements; numerous providers offer […]

Fahim Sachedina explains how the late Colonel Gaddafi wasted Libya’s oil riches – but looks forward to a brighter future for a neglected people

Thomas Turner takes a look at the race to win the French presidency with less than six months until polling day

In Britain it is accepted wisdom that female circumcision on minors (now widely referred to as female genital mutilation) is in effect child abuse. How else could you describe carrying out an unnecessary, risky, painful surgery to remove parts of a child’s genitalia? But why do our infant males’ genitals not receive the same protection […]

Circumcision is a practice which has been debated for thousands of years, but to forcibly prevent it from happening would be wrong.

In the wake of the much-publicised Roscoe occupation, Jak Dyehouse assesses the rationale behind the seemingly unstoppable spread of occupations to cities across the world

Maya Oppenheim rejects government proposals to criminalise squatting in the context of a housing crisis in an era of rampant unemployment

Zeina Ramadan shares her experiences of growing up in Nablus, Palestine

Some soared, others flopped as the three major parties gathered for their annual conferences

Doing our bit to annoy everyone else

Andrew Williams heads our review of this year’s party conference season – and he is crying out for an end to this “outdated and obsolete charade”

Oliver Johnstone explores parallels between student protests in Chile and here in the UK

On 23 September Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and head of the Palestinian Authority, officially submitted a bid to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon for Palestine to be recognised as a state and granted full membership of the United Nations. This bid has precisely a zero per cent chance of succeeding. […]

“With our souls, with our blood, we will defend Palestine,” cry those for whom Western rhetoric has become a rare beacon of hope in the ongoing battle for Palestinian statehood. Tired of the empty rhetoric of Barack Obama and others, and determined to bring an end to this most enduring of conflicts, President of the […]

Ben Moore in defence of the University, and city, of Manchester

The financial crisis currently afflicting the Eurozone economies is being exacerbated by a bureaucratic European Union that is degenerating into a rudderless ship, argues Kevin Bennett

Vladimir Putin’s latest statement of intent doesn’t only have implications for President Medvedev – it will have a great impact on Russian democracy and the wider international community