An Eye from the Protestors Side - Who Threw the First Stone at The Bristol Protests

So to answer who threw the first stone at Bridewell... the police did. Much like with other historic events, it was the police who transgressed first. A group of people then decided the reaction to this would be to resist - which led to vans being set alight and spray painted, and the police station window being smashed. All of this is repairable and replaceable; what is not repairable or replaceable is the trauma that the police inflicted on people that day.

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Inequality, Political Participation and Political (Il)literacy in the UK

According to the National Literacy Trust, 12% of adults in Wales, 16.4% of adults in England, 17.9% of adults in Northern Ireland and 26.7% of adults in Scotland have very poor literacy skills. This means that “they can understand short straightforward texts on familiar topics accurately and independently, and obtain information from everyday sources, but reading information from unfamiliar sources, or on unfamiliar topics, could cause problems.”

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Politics, OpinionGuest User
Living Your Life Like It’s 1999

As time passes trends come and go, but I’ve noticed that the 90s are back in a big way. It’s not uncommon that we yearn for our childhood and adolescent years, when things were not as hard and your mum did all your laundry for you. This sense of nostalgia can cause past fashions to recur every so often, however this 90s resurgence has been going on for a long time and although I’m not mad at it, it makes me wonder...why?

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OpinionGuest User
Who is Chula?

In the UK alone, 49% of children have missed a day off school because of their period. Almost one in four young women ‘didn’t know what was happening when [their] period started’.

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The Categorisation of Personality at School

My sister once overheard a girl at our school unironically tell a friend that they must wear pink on Wednesdays. But unlike Mean Girls, these categories that we are put into, and put ourselves into, are not obviously stated or well defined. And sometimes, maybe even most of the time, are completely arbitrary and unhelpful.

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OpinionGuest User
How Much Does Your Socio-Economic Background Affect Your Confidence?

But in developing this understanding of confidence, I began to question to myself; can everyone afford to be the most authentic version of themselves? Of course, I know that many external and internal challenges can influence or even challenge this ability to live ‘confidently’ (as I understand it). For one, I’ve never had to hide my sexuality or second guess my actions for fear I was being treated differently because of the colour of my skin or because I’m disabled.

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OpinionGuest User
Periods in South Asian Culture

Periods. Every woman in my contact book – perhaps every single one on the planet – despises them. They’re messy, painful, and agonising – some ordeals come with extra details uncalled for: from migraines to vomiting episodes.

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WellbeingGuest User
Not Mother's Day

I always felt a bit itchy about it, and Valentine’s Day for that matter. Tokens of love can sometimes feel cheap when you spend too much money on them! And that dear readers is why I’m not a very successful businesswoman!

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OpinionGuest User
Is Counselling Only For the Rich?

With rent prices in cities increasing drastically in the last decade, millennials complaining that they are struggling to put any money on the side on a monthly basis, starting salaries being excruciatingly low, particularly in cities like London where the job market is extremely competitive, and few of us being offered private health insurance through work, it is hard to believe that many have the opportunity to spare £300 a month for counselling.

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OpinionGuest User
Contracting an STI From a Trusted Partner Whilst Being Queer

My heart ached for the girl, more likely girls, who had ostensibly been caught in the same trap as I had. My partner had an innate knack for making me feel like a rare acquisition, but clearly, this was simply one more talent distributed with abandon. I felt angry for them by proxy, too. They would never, in all probability, have knowledge of the betrayal which ensnared them like flies in a spider’s web.

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WellbeingGuest User
Word To My Mother

Word To My Mother is a personal project I have been working on for the past 8-9 years where I process the loss of my mom and my life without her since then in the form of letters addresses to her personally. She passed away in 2004 when I was 14, just when we had started building our mother-daughter relationship.

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