The Know Daily - Monday 12 June 2023

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English Heritage has launched a series of gardener-led tours which focus on the sights, sounds and scents of 12 historic gardens. Visitors are encouraged to stop to smell flowers and listen to the crunch of footsteps, to help them experience and connect with historic places in an immersive and mindful way. What a sensational initiative!

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Why the SNP is in crisis

Scotland’s First Minister Humza Yousaf is under pressure to suspend his predecessor, Nicola Sturgeon, from the Scottish National Party (SNP) following her arrest yesterday.

What happened on Sunday?
Nicola Sturgeon, former first minister of Scotland and leader of the SNP, was arrested by detectives investigating claims of financial misconduct by the party. She was then released without charge, pending further investigation.

She later tweeted her “shock” and “distress” at the situation, saying that she was “innocent of any wrongdoing”.

What’s the background?
In 2021, Police Scotland launched Operation Branchform in response to allegations that £600,000 in donations for a future independence campaign was misspent by the SNP.

In early April, Sturgeon’s husband and former chief executive of the SNP Peter Murrell was arrested at their home before being released without charge. Police searched the couple’s home and back garden, removing documents and computers.

Later that month, Colin Beattie MSP, the party’s then treasurer, was arrested and released without charge.

At the time, Sturgeon denied that the investigation had played a part in her decision to resign as first minister in February. “I understand the view that some people might have, that I knew this was all about to unfold and that’s why I walked away. Nothing could be further from the truth,” she said.

What does this mean for the SNP?
Sky News’ Scotland correspondent Connor Gillies described Sturgeon’s arrest as a “hammer blow” for the SNP and current first minister Humza Yousaf, following a “nightmare year” for the party.

But political scientist John Curtice told the BBC that Sturgeon’s arrest may not have that much impact on voters, pointing to polls which show that levels of support for the SNP have remained broadly unchanged since Murrell was arrested in April.

🎒 Are “sir” and “miss” too old school?

Students at a London sixth form have been told that they should no longer refer to teachers as “sir” and “miss” in a bid to curb “cultural misogyny”.

What’s the story?
Executive principal James Handscombe told students at Harris Westminster Sixth Form that the honorifics were “deeply unequal”. Instead, students will now be required to address staff by their surname - e.g. “Mr Handscombe” - or simply as “teacher”.

What’s the reasoning behind it?
While “sir” is evocative of heroic knights, “miss” is how you refer to “a small girl, or an Edwardian shop assistant”, Handscombe told pupils.

“I don’t think that any of you are being actively woman-hating when you call ‘Miss’ over to get help with your chemistry, but we’re all feeding into a view of the world that diminishes women.”

Does everyone support the change?
Far from it. Writing in The Independent, journalist Ryan Coogan described formalities like “Sir” and “Miss” as “a thin blue line between respect and chaos”. “I don’t love the idea of using the classroom as a testing ground for some half-baked ideology that only sounds viable on a surface level,” he said.

What’s the bigger picture?
While the switch at Harris Westminster Sixth Form is designed to fight the misogynistic implications of “sir” versus “miss”, some campaigners have argued that schools and workplaces should go further by using only gender-neutral terms.

In 2022, the Educate and Celebrate charity suggested that schools should be moving towards a “gender free model”, where “Mr” or “Mrs” would be replaced by the gender-neutral “teacher” and titles such as “head boy” would be replaced by “head pupil”.

Do you agree that we should be moving away from “sir” and “miss”? We’d love to hear from our readers - hit reply to let us know.

✍️ The Partygate’s (almost) over: The Commons Privileges Committee’s report into whether Boris Johnson misled Parliament over lockdown parties held in Downing Street will be finalised today and likely published later this week. The former PM quit as an MP last Friday after he was sent an advanced copy of the report, accusing the committee of trying to “drive him out of Parliament”.

🇺🇦 Ukraine latest: Ukraine has claimed the first victories of its long-awaited counter-offensive, saying it has liberated four villages in the south-east of the country. Moscow is yet to confirm the news.

📱 Reddit blackout: From today, thousands of the social media platform’s communities - or “subreddits” - will go dark for 48 hours as part of a protest against Reddit’s plans to charge third parties for access to data.

🚭 Unpacking list: People heading to Glastonbury festival next week have been urged not to bring disposable vapes with them. Some estimates suggest that about 1.3m of the electronic devices are thrown away each week in the UK.

⛆ Weather warning: Parts of the UK are set to be hit by heavy rainfall and thunderstormstoday following the weekend’s heatwave, the Met Office has said. Four yellow thunderstorm warnings have been put in place from 12pm-9pm.

Trivia answer: B) The proportion of young students playing the recorder dropped to 28% in 2014 and to 15% in 2020. The pandemic and the declining popularity of wind instruments in general are thought to have played a part.

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