Catherine Meyer-Funnell

I have just finished watching Michaela Coel's magnificent 12 part series I May Destroy You , and while it is rare for television shows to live up to such extraordinary hype, this one certainly does. It has everything that excellent TV in recent years has incorporated and uses them to make something completely new. The story centres around London-based writer Arabella who is spiked and sexually assaulted on a night out, taking a simple whodunnit premise and forcing the viewer to confront the thorniest and most controversial issues that we now face. It's hard for TV to shock these days, as sex and drugs and crime pepper our most prolific shows, yet Coel has managed to shed light on all those drak tricky parts that the entertainment industry - indeed society as a whole - likes to ignore, giving us the perspective we have been lacking for so long. To completely dissect the show would be to spoil it for those who have not yet watched, but in a post MeToo world it still feels fresh...

The absolute dominance that COVID 19 has had over the news over the past months is understandable, if somewhat draining. However, many other otherwise headline-grabbing issues have been relegated into second or third place on our Twitter feeds. Just in case you missed them, here is a brief overview of some of the more important topics - and some more positive stories in case you need reminding that it's not all bad. Hong Kong and China Last year protests in Hong Kong kicked off over China's plan to extradite Hong Kong citizens back to the mainland, a move many feared would affect judicial independence and allow China to have greater control over the population in Hong Kong. This would be a violation of the "one country, two systems" policy put in place when the British returned Hong Kong to China in 1997. It allows Hong Kong more autonomy and freedom from some of China's influence. The extradition bill was suspended last September but protests continued - a...

Now that a steady stream of students are starting to trickle back into school and plans are being put in place for everyone to return come September, a stripped back version of the curriculum is currently being debated. Education Secretary Gavin Williamson has insisted that this will not be the case, despite guidance from his own department suggesting that there will need to be a focus on maths and English in some areas to cover any gaps in pupil knowledge. The priority to get children back in school and back to learning is an understandable one, particularly since home schooling has proved to be somewhat challenging, to say the least. But if the push for core subjects above all else really does go ahead, we are at risk of alienating children from their education even more than COVID 19 has. What this issue highlights is the problem with the way education is defined in our current system, and how it should be defined in an individual rather than collective sense. Like many areas o...