Graham Watts is Chief Executive of the Construction Industry Council; chair of the Industry’s Competence Steering Group; and co-lead of the Construction Leadership Council’s Building Safety workstream. He is also Chairman of the Dance Section of The Critics’ Circle and of the UK National Dance Awards. He was appointed OBE in 2008.
Judging by the welcome uplift in commentary around the second anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the popular western view appears to be that the war began on 24 February 2022. However, that aggression – the largest incursion by one European country on another since the Second World War – was just an explosive
The acting commander of the Azov brigade, Major Bohdan (pronounced Bogdan) Krotevych, is a hero in Ukraine. In last year’s Siege of Mariupol, he and 2,000 men – together with civilians and other units of the Ukrainian armed forces – held out for almost three months as defenders of the Azovstal Iron and Steel works.
Tucked in the margins of the recent Eurovision Song Contest was Jamala’s 30-second cameo of 1944, her winning song from 2016. Recently ranked third by The Guardian in the all-time list of Eurovision winners, her song almost didn’t make it to the contest when Russia tried to have it banned. Jamala’s lyrics referred to Stalin’s
Throughout the Cold War, ballet was the gilded bridge that connected the USSR to the West. World leaders visiting Moscow were routinely taken to the Bolshoi Theatre, a stone’s throw from the Kremlin, to see the great Russian dancers, such as Galina Ulanova and Maya Plisetskaya. The latter described her experiences as being a bird
Michael Gove’s building safety announcement today addresses the two contrasting problems of the cladding scandal, but fails to provide any convincing solutions. On the one hand, the Secretary of State for the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (with the unmemorable acronym DLUHC – apparently pronounced ‘de-Luck’) has finally brought to an end the
The government’s Building Safety Bill has been a long time coming, but its publication today offers little certainty for residents caught up in Britain’s cladding scandal. For leaseholders, the bad news is this: many will remain trapped in buildings cloaked in combustible external wall systems. Despite the housing secretary Robert Jenrick’s insistence that the new system
The death of Liam Scarlett was confirmed in a brief message from his family on 17 April. On the previous day, the Royal Danish Theatre had announced the withdrawal of the 35 year-old English choreographer’s Frankenstein from their coming season due to allegations of inappropriate behaviour dating back to 2018/19. It was the last of
