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Today, I have to choose to believe that there is nothing that I can’t do.  It is a conscious and bold choice, flying in the face of reality.  Yesterday, with grace and poise, Elizabeth Warren announced that she would no longer be a candidate for President of the US. A few months ago, I made the argument that Joe Biden or someone like him should be the Democratic nominee in the United States of America, because I was so tired of the insidious sexism that was emerging from the highest office in both their land and ours, the United Kingdom.  Their misogyny in leadership was enabling our misogyny in leadership, and I felt weary to my

“Dear people of London, it’s 28 degrees here in Middlesbrough, that’s right, that place further north than York, but a bit below Durham, 28 degrees. Nothing good to wear, obviously. Don’t believe the capsule wardrobe lie. Boiling” I was frustrated by my own foolishness. In a desire to make my Middlesbrough, dispersed asylum seeker experience as authentic as a white, middle class woman from Tunbridge Wells could, I packed a small rucksack with clothes. My only non-jeans option was a black T-shirt dress. I had worn it for 3 days in row and I was sweaty and grumpy. It wasn’t just that I was warm, although I was, it was that I didn’t feel like

At the time of The General Election 2017 (GE 2017), I was away from London, spending three weeks in Middlesbrough asking questions about migration. Middlesbrough has become famed as a post industrial, dispersal area for asylum seekers. I was here to talk about migration, and yet all of my conversations were GE17 and Brexit. Middlesbrough and its neighbouring town of Stockton on Tees voted to leave the European Union in 2016. As two of the highest asylum seeking dispersal areas in the country, they are in contention with Nigel Farage as the poster boys connecting Brexit to immigration. Of the top 20 asylum dispersal areas in the UK 15 voted to leave the European Union,