Posts tagged UK
Audrey Gillan reports from a ‘guilty plea’ magistrates’ court in Essex

Southend’s Early First Hearings Court begins the day at 10am, and all those who appear before it are expected to plead guilty. A total of 30 cases are heard, though a small amount of that work is shared with court four, the not guilty plea court. Early First Hearings is presided over by three lay magistrates – a chairman (who is actually a woman) and two assistants colloquially known as ‘wingers’.

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Life is Sweeties

Christine Gillan is a sales rep with a difference. For 35 years she has been selling sweeties to the corner shops and cafes of Glasgow, Lanarkshire and Dumbartonshire. Hers is the world of the Polly PanDrop, the Chocolate Russian Caramel, the Soor Ploom and…

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Life is sweet

olly Pan Drops, Soor Plooms, Chocolate Italian Creams, Rich Butter Treacle, Cinnamon Balls, Liquorice Comfits. The names of the sweeties reel off my tongue, taking me back to summers spent in my mum’s car, when I “helped” as she sold boilings, toffees, chocolates and fudges to the corner shops and cafés of the west of Scotland.

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How Wootton Bassett became the town that cried

You hear the sound of the engines first. Then the lights of the C-17 military transport aircraft appear as it dips across the evening sky, making ready to land on a runway just out of sight over the hill. Ken Scott is watching through the window of his mobile home. The sight of these planes returning from Afghanistan, often with a tragic cargo, has brought this old soldier to the realisation that wars will continue well beyond his lifetime. Yet he tracks the planes in the sky like an excited boy.

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After Basra, a fight for life: story of a ‘broken soldier’ of the Iraq war

The electric pruners make light work of the bare cox’s apple branches as David Bradley strips them back, preparing the orchard for a new season and the harvest to follow. The farmer cuts and thins out the trees but when he removes the chamois leather glove protecting his right hand, the loss of his index finger, ligaments and skin tissue is laid bare.

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