Village people

The official added: 'I cannot say that he is a stupid or a sick man. I know that he is a married man, he has children. … [Read more...] about Doctor’s husband shoots five people dead for ‘making too much noise’ outside his flat during coronavirus lockdown in Russia

This “shit but real” versus “polished but soulless” dichotomy was borne out in Hackney in London in 2009, when the borough’s mayor, Jules Pipe, condemned opponents of regeneration for wanting to “keep Hackney crap” – prompting a tongue-in-cheek campaign proposing to do exactly that. The sad irony is that local community groups calling for positive state intervention to regenerate a local area – for example, to make a local park safer, improve litter collection or fix transport – will often have to wait for the area to become more affluent and “desirable” before those changes will take place. And in a grim example of the law of unintended consequences, where urban communities do succeed in changing their neighbourhood for the better, the result is often higher rents, more interest from developers, and the gradual displacement of the very people who forced those changes into being. … [Read more...] about Gentrification X: how an academic argument became the people’s protest

Arriving at the Cinnamon Velifushi Maldives resort on 22 March for what was supposed to be a six-night stay, the newlyweds were soon the only two guests left when their home country, South Africa, closed its airports in response to the pandemic and they were unable to leave. … [Read more...] about ‘Self-isolate’: Dalek surprises residents of UK fishing village

For the next two years, they had a long-distance relationship between London and Paris. “It was in the days where it cost about £600 for a return trip to France. Sometimes we’d use the ferry to save costs,” says Christine. Over time, they realised the lifestyle wasn’t sustainable and she made the decision to leave her job and move to rural France. “It was in the days where men made more money, so it made more financial sense.” … [Read more...] about How we met: ‘I took an instant dislike to him’

The reaction over the past week has been almost universally positive, said Kálmán Kovács, a trumpeter in the orchestra who has been driving one of the cars. An elderly woman conducted from her balcony, a trio of young foreigners danced “as though they were in a nightclub” to a Strauss waltz, and a truck driver wound down his window and asked for the volume to be increased as cyclists stopped to listen. … [Read more...] about Drive-by Strauss: Hungarian orchestra airs concerts from cars