Joanna Williams

Remember the Coldplay kisscam couple? Loved-up Andy Byron and Kristin Cabot were caught embracing at a Boston concert, only to pull away and duck for cover once they realised, with horror, that they had been spotted. The drama, intrigue and cringe-factor surrounding the pair, who were both married to other people at the time, ensured

Does Bridget Phillipson think that every child has learning difficulties? The government’s long-overdue overhaul of provision for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) has now been unveiled, revealing a deeply troubling vision of schools. Today’s big announcement about SEND reform reveals Labour’s impoverished vision for schools Announced this morning is an additional £4

It’s been a while, but student censors are on the march once more. This time, they have Reform UK firmly in their sights. With eight MPs in Parliament and a huge lead in opinion polls, Reform has rapidly become a key part of Britain’s political landscape. But denial is the current vibe on campus, and

Agreeing with David Cameron was not on my bingo card, but politics in 2026 is a funny old game, and so here we are. The former prime minister has blasted the Labour government for taking ‘a spite-laden wrecking ball’ to school reforms that raised standards, improved education, and benefited children from the least well-off backgrounds.

‘It’s a girl!’ New parents, after a long labour or at a mid-pregnancy scan, take huge joy from discovering the sex of their baby. Imagined futures fall into place as the newborn becomes a son or daughter. Relatives are told whether they have a niece or nephew, a grandson or granddaughter. These things matter. Not,

The Supreme Court’s ruling that the legal definition of ‘woman’ is ‘biological female’ should have meant game over for trans rights activists. One would have thought that following last summer’s judgement, there would be no more men in women’s toilets or changing rooms. But in the clearest sign yet that women cannot give up the

‘I know not how to abstain from reading,’ wrote Samuel Pepys back in the seventeenth century. Were he by some miracle still alive, Pepys would discover that this is a problem entirely alien to most people today. Indeed, his own diaries, avidly pored over by generations gone by, have now been condemned by today’s moralists

At last, some good news: Stonewall, the charity behind so much of the gender insanity that has gripped Britain in recent years, is going broke. Accounts seen by the Daily Telegraph suggest the organisation reported a net deficit of more than £906,000 at the end of the last financial year. A fall of over £2

Take my advice and steer clear of your local university. It is not just the flu that’s spreading on campus. Last month, an outbreak of trigger warnings occurred at the University of Essex. Up they popped, warning literature students about ‘violence, slavery, racism, and suicide’ in Hamlet, A Clockwork Orange and Nineteen Eighty-Four. Those infected

In 1984, I was Middlesbrough’s most eager Brownie. Such was my enthusiasm, I happily chomped my way through raw potatoes after an older girl, having failed to light the campfire, ordered us to tell Brown Owl: ‘This is how we like them!’ That was sisterhood, and I was deeply committed. So imagine my horror upon

You don’t need a PhD to see that censorship thrives in universities. In the past few weeks alone, a professor has been banned from the University of Manchester and described as a ‘potential risk to colleagues’ for having allegedly used ‘the n-word’ in a disciplinary meeting; a sociology lecturer at Abertay University has been subjected to

Readers who woke to Radio 4’s Today programme at around 6:30 a.m. can be forgiven for leaping out of bed in alarm. ‘There has been a coup at the BBC!’ cried presenter Nick Robinson, or words to that effect. Clearly, as we lay snoozing, a hostile takeover of our state broadcaster was underway. ‘These are not,’ Robinson

The national Covid-19 inquiry rumbles slowly onwards. Module 8, examining the impact of the pandemic on children and young people, drew to a close last month. Blast-from-the-past appearances from Matt Hancock and Boris Johnson meant the decision to shut schools and stop exams from going ahead for the best part of two years was subjected

Remember when feminists rallied behind the mantra ‘Believe All Women’? It was back in 2017, at the peak of the #MeToo movement that rightly brought down serial sex offenders such as film producer Harvey Weinstein. But then the net was cast more widely, tripping up men like comedian Aziz Ansari for boorish behaviour on a date

How best to commemorate the horrors of October 7th, 2023? How to mark the day on which hundreds of Hamas terrorists invaded Israel, slaughtering almost 1,200 people, injuring thousands more, and taking 251 hostages? For students at the University of Liverpool, the answer seems to be a ‘bake sale’. That’s right. In remembrance of the worst

‘I have never hated someone so much.’ ‘I hope you commit suicide.’ These are just two of the messages I received back in 2020, when I argued that schools should remain open despite the pandemic. Now that the interminable national Covid-19 inquiry is finally getting round to considering the experiences of children, school closures are