Bob Woffinden
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Bob Woffinden
Robert Woffinden (31 January 1948 – 1 May 2018) was a British investigative journalist. Formerly a reporter with the '' New Musical Express'', he later specialised in investigating miscarriages of justice. He wrote about a number of high-profile cases in the UK, including James Hanratty, Sion Jenkins, Jeremy Bamber, Charles Ingram, Jonathan King, and Barry George. In 1999, he was instrumental in winning a case against the Home Secretary that established the right of prisoners in the UK claiming wrongful conviction to receive visits from journalists. Woffinden was the author or co-author of ''New Musical Express Book of Rock 2'' (1977), ''The Beatles Apart'' (1981), ''Harmony Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rock'' (1976), ''Miscarriages of Justice'' (1987), ''Hanratty: The Final Verdict'' (1999) and ''The Murder of Billy-Jo'' (2008). For many years he produced the TV documentary series '' First Tuesday'', and wrote for several British media publications, including ''The Guardian'' ...
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Birmingham
Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the West Midlands metropolitan county, and approximately 4.3 million in the wider metropolitan area. It is the largest UK metropolitan area outside of London. Birmingham is known as the second city of the United Kingdom. Located in the West Midlands region of England, approximately from London, Birmingham is considered to be the social, cultural, financial and commercial centre of the Midlands. Distinctively, Birmingham only has small rivers flowing through it, mainly the River Tame and its tributaries River Rea and River Cole – one of the closest main rivers is the Severn, approximately west of the city centre. Historically a market town in Warwickshire in the medieval period, Birmingham grew during the 18th century during the Midla ...
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Lichfield
Lichfield () is a cathedral city and civil parish in Staffordshire, England. Lichfield is situated roughly south-east of the county town of Stafford, south-east of Rugeley, north-east of Walsall, north-west of Tamworth and south-west of Burton Upon Trent. At the time of the 2011 Census, the population was estimated at 32,219 and the wider Lichfield District at 100,700. Notable for its three-spired medieval cathedral, Lichfield was the birthplace of Samuel Johnson, the writer of the first authoritative ''Dictionary of the English Language''. The city's recorded history began when Chad of Mercia arrived to establish his Bishopric in 669 AD and the settlement grew as the ecclesiastical centre of Mercia. In 2009, the Staffordshire Hoard, the largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver metalwork, was found south-west of Lichfield. The development of the city was consolidated in the 12th century under Roger de Clinton, who fortified the Cathedral Close and also laid ou ...
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Newcastle City Council
Newcastle City Council is the local government authority for the city and metropolitan borough of Newcastle upon Tyne. The council consists of 78 councillors, three for each of the 26 wards in the city. It is currently controlled by the Labour Party, led by Nick Kemp. Karen Robinson serves as the Lord Mayor and Veronica Dunn serves as Deputy Lord Mayor and Sheriff. The council is a member of the North of Tyne Combined Authority. Political control election, there are 52 Labour councillors, 20 Liberal Democrat councillors, three Newcastle Independent councillors and three Independent councillors. Wards Newcastle has 26 electoral wards. Each electoral ward has three councillors, representing and elected exclusively by the voting population of each ward. Following an electoral review in 2016, the current wards and boundaries were introduced in May 2018. See also * Newcastle Upon Tyne Youth Council *List of Lord Mayors of Newcastle-upon-Tyne This is a list of mayors a ...
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Richard Webster (British Author)
Richard Webster (17 December 1950 – 24 June 2011) was a British author. His five published books deal with subjects such as the controversy over Salman Rushdie's novel ''The Satanic Verses'' (1988), Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis, and the investigation of sexual abuse in Britain. Born in Newington, Kent, Webster studied English literature at the University of East Anglia and lived in Oxford, England. He became interested in the problem of false allegations partly due to reading the work of historian Norman Cohn. In ''A Brief History of Blasphemy'' (1990), Webster discussed the Muslim response to ''The Satanic Verses'' and argues against unrestricted freedom of speech. The book was praised by Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury. In Webster's subsequent book ''Why Freud Was Wrong'' (1995), he argued that Freud became a Messiah figure and that psychoanalysis is a disguised continuation of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. The book was praised by several commentators. In ' ...
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Gateshead
Gateshead () is a large town in northern England. It is on the River Tyne's southern bank, opposite Newcastle upon Tyne, Newcastle to which it is joined by seven bridges. The town contains the Gateshead Millennium Bridge, Millennium Bridge, Sage Gateshead, The Sage, and the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, and has on its outskirts the twenty metre tall Angel of the North sculpture. Historic counties of England, Historically part of County Durham, under the Local Government Act 1888 the town was made a county borough, meaning it was administered independently of the county council. Since 1974, the town has been administered as part of the Metropolitan Borough of Gateshead within Tyne and Wear. In the 2011 Census, town had a population 120,046 while the wider borough had 200,214. Toponymy Gateshead is first mentioned in Latin translation in Bede, Bede's ''Ecclesiastical History of the English People'' as ''ad caput caprae'' ("at the goat's head"). This interpretation is consis ...
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Jack Straw
John Whitaker Straw (born 3 August 1946) is a British politician who served in the Cabinet from 1997 to 2010 under the Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. He held two of the traditional Great Offices of State, as Home Secretary from 1997 to 2001, and Foreign Secretary from 2001 to 2006 under Blair. He was a Member of Parliament (MP) for Blackburn from 1979 to 2015. Straw was born in Essex and educated at Oaklands School, where his mother worked as a teacher, and later at Brentwood School. He studied Law at the University of Leeds before having a career as a barrister. He served as an adviser to cabinet minister Barbara Castle and was selected to succeed her as MP for the Blackburn constituency when she stood down at the 1979 United Kingdom general election. From 2007 to 2010, he served as Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain and the Secretary of State for Justice throughout the Brown ministry. Straw is one of only three individuals to have served in Cabinet ...
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Murder Of Helen McCourt
Helen McCourt (29 July 1965 – c. 9 February 1988) was a 22-year-old British insurance clerk from Lancashire (now Merseyside), England, who disappeared on 9 February 1988 in the village of Billinge, Metropolitan Borough of St Helens, Merseyside, shortly after getting off a bus less than five hundred yards from her home. Her body has never been found. Ian Simms, a local pub landlord, was charged with and convicted of her murder. The case is a rare example where a murder conviction has been obtained without the presence of a body, and was one of the first in the UK to use DNA fingerprinting. In 2015, Helen McCourt's mother, Marie, began a campaign to change the law regarding the conviction of killers such as Simms, requiring them to reveal the whereabouts of their victim's remains before being considered for parole. The campaign led to the announcement of plans to introduce a "Helen's Law" in May 2019. On 5 July 2019, David Gauke, then Secretary of State for Justice, confirmed ...
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Michael Howard
Michael Howard, Baron Howard of Lympne (born Michael Hecht; 7 July 1941) is a British politician who served as Leader of the Conservative Party and Leader of the Opposition from November 2003 to December 2005. He previously held cabinet positions in the governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major, including Secretary of State for Employment, Secretary of State for the Environment and Home Secretary. Howard was born in Swansea to a Jewish family, his father from Romania and his mother from Wales. He studied at Peterhouse, Cambridge, following which he joined the Young Conservatives. In 1964, he was called to the Bar and became a Queen's Counsel in 1982. He first became a Member of Parliament at the 1983 general election, representing the constituency of Folkestone and Hythe. This quickly led to his promotion and Howard became Minister for Local Government in 1987. Under the premiership of John Major, he served as Secretary of State for Employment (1990–1992), Secret ...
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House Of Lords
The House of Lords, also known as the House of Peers, is the Bicameralism, upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Membership is by Life peer, appointment, Hereditary peer, heredity or Lords Spiritual, official function. Like the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster in London, England. The House of Lords scrutinises Bill (law), bills that have been approved by the House of Commons. It regularly reviews and amends bills from the Commons. While it is unable to prevent bills passing into law, except in certain limited circumstances, it can delay bills and force the Commons to reconsider their decisions. In this capacity, the House of Lords acts as a check on the more powerful House of Commons that is independent of the electoral process. While members of the Lords may also take on roles as government ministers, high-ranking officials such as cabinet ministers are usually drawn from the Commons. The House of Lo ...
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Forensic Science Service
The Forensic Science Service (FSS) was a government-owned company in the United Kingdom which provided forensic science services to the police forces and government agencies of England and Wales, as well as other countries. The UK Government announced the closure of the FSS in December 2010, citing monthly losses of up to £2m as justification. The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee - Seventh Report (FSS) took evidence between 23 March 2011 and 27 April 201Science and Technology Committee The FSS finally closed on 31 March 2012. The FSS archives – a collection of case files and retained casework samples such as microscope slides, fibre samples and DNA samples – has been retained to allow review of old cases. Forensic work is now contracted out to the private sector or carried out in-house. History Originally the Aldermaston laboratory was known as the Central Research and Support Establishment and was part of the Home Office. As well as having a Forensic L ...
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Macmillan Publishers
Macmillan Publishers (occasionally known as the Macmillan Group; formally Macmillan Publishers Ltd and Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC) is a British publishing company traditionally considered to be one of the 'Big Five' English language publishers. Founded in London in 1843 by Scottish brothers Daniel and Alexander MacMillan, the firm would soon establish itself as a leading publisher in Britain. It published two of the best-known works of Victorian era children’s literature, Lewis Carroll's ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (1865) and Rudyard Kipling's ''The Jungle Book'' (1894). Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Harold Macmillan, grandson of co-founder Daniel, was chairman of the company from 1964 until his death in December 1986. Since 1999, Macmillan has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Holtzbrinck Publishing Group with offices in 41 countries worldwide and operations in more than thirty others. History Macmillan was founded in London in 1843 by Daniel ...
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