Seventeen years after losing her council job due to needing endometriosis surgery, Michelle Dewar’s campaign for paid menstrual leave gained 50,000 signatures in a week, reports ELIZABETH SHORT
THE role of a local councillor is a strange hybrid position, caught somewhere between the voluntary and employed sectors.
Since being elected as a Labour councillor for Wanstead Village in the London Borough of Redbridge last May, the myriad nature of the role has continued to fascinate and frustrate.
On the one hand we are treated as if employed full time in the council role. For example, councillors have to book time off, if they are going to be away and not on call for residents.

Labour councillor PAUL DONOVAN wonders why the right-wing party gets so much more media attention than it seems to merit

PAUL DONOVAN relishes the spectacle of a 1950s detective in pursuit of a 500-year-old murder mystery

From Gaza protest bans to proscribing Palestine Action, political elites are showing a crisis of confidence as they abandon Roy Jenkins’s apologetic approach for Suella Braverman’s aggressive ‘hate march’ rhetoric, writes PAUL DONOVAN

PAUL DONOVAN is fascinated by a deep dive into contemporary social crises, that examines how they are manipulated by elites