Many, many thanks to everyone who has contributed to ABC Tales via Just Giving this year. We literally wouldn't be here without you! Just Giving no longer provide us with names of donors unless they leave a message with their donation. We could obtain the list of names but we would have to pay a monthly fee of £15 for that, and it would eat into ABC's funds. So, if you donate, please do leave a message on our Just Giving site, or email jane@...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000bh0j/storyville-one-child-nation I’ve been pondering the difference between affect and effect. The former is a verb. The latter is a noun and verb. The etymology of affect suggests it has its roots in ‘a little like love’. The effect of China’s implementation of a one-child policy for couples, men and women, in the early 1980s was nothing like love. It was a top-down, Communist Party, misogynistic policy...

Long story. I was in Dalmuir library yesterday. For some reason I wanted to check out Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Diaries . As you know Gramsci was leader of the Italian Communist Party. Gramsci writes about how capitalism mutates and appropriates art and literature to establish a cultural hegemony. If that sounds pretty long-winded it’s probably because I don’t understand it either. Gramsci did. And it’s increasingly relevant today. The working...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000b8p2/climategate-science-of-a-scandal Our ancestors believed that the sky was round and the earth was square, the sun and all the planets circled the earth. All these things were self-evident. When emails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of Cambridge were hacked in 2009 the theory that global warming was a hoax gained credence and the sky really was round and the earth square...

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Below the typeface of David Wilson’s name is the tag ‘The UK’s Leading Criminologist’. Fourteen other books written (or co-written) by Wilson about well-known criminals and criminal justice system are listed inside the cover. It was only when I had neared completion of the book, and the Chapter Theory into Practice: Interview with a Murderer, I realised this was a programme on Channel 4 that I’d watched. Here we had encapsulated everything...

I do hope you're not paddling in flood water but if you're dry inside - stay there and curl up with ABCtales to take your mind of the unncertain weather. There's so much to enjoy this week. A feast of poetry which made it very difficult to choose one to be poem of the week - but I've gone with Agnosticnun's stunning take on the IP: The Language of Dead Flowers https://www.abctales.com/story/agnosticnun/language-dead-flowers Prose is just as...

There are countless wildlife programmes harkening back to the mists of time, but there’s only one David Attenborough. He’s the gold standard of natural history and been doing it a very long time. There he is onscreen, popping up in Borneo in 1964, when it was mostly jungle, now it’s not. There are wildlife sanctuaries, as soon as you say that you know something has gone drastically wrong. Here we have it, Seven Worlds, One Planet, has a didactic...

Situated along the River Liffey, past the Temple Bar area of Dublin stands Smock Alley Theatre. Founded in 1662 as a Theatre Royal (the only one ever built outside of London) under Charles II, it has assumed many guises including a reconsecrated Church in the Victorian era. Falling into ruin after the 1916 rising and independence from England it was recently restored to its full glory including an impressive theatre space in 2012. For the next...

Storyville: Inside Lehman Brothers, BB4, BBC IPlayer, Director Jennifer Deschamps. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0009tpx/storyville-inside-lehman-brothers-the-whistleblowers Lehman Brothers was one of the first dominoes to fall in the 2008 crash which brought down the world’s financial systems. Debts for Lehman Brothers were around $630 billion. Take a little time to think about that. It’s like the idea of infinity. Your mind shies away...