Sean Ash

Tracing the roots of Israel and Palestine’s conflict back to a rejected UN plan and a refusal of diplomacy Whatever your views, I stand by laws, principles, and democracy. I believe in the mission of the United Nations as a force for good. Resolutions are opposed all the time, but when they are, we do not then fire rockets or murder innocent civilians. That, for me, is the true beginning of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict: Arab nations refused to accept a UN resolution and instead took up arms, targeting Jewish civilians. Every conflict has roots, and we should never ignore them. Why did the 1947 partition plan even exist? Because after centuries of persecution, culminating in the Holocaust, the Jewish people needed a homeland where they could live securely. Their genocide did not begin in 1948; it was the tragic result of centuries of antisemitism. It is worth noting that many Arab nations supported the partition of India that created Pakistan in 1947, seeing it as a just solution to...

How poor accessibility in toilets, bars, clubs, and restaurants costs billions while excluding disabled customers By Sean Ash  Across the UK and globally, businesses are losing billions every year by failing to offer accessible toilets and facilities for disabled people. According to Scope, disabled consumers in the UK alone control an annual spending power, known as the “purple pound,” worth approximately £274 billion. When businesses do not make their premises, including toilets, accessible, they shut out a significant portion of this spending power (Scope). From personal experience, the impact of inaccessibility is immediate and obvious. On a recent visit to Deal, I found that many places lacked suitable disabled-accessible toilets or even basic step-free access, which put me off going altogether. Similarly, when visiting the West End, I found many clubs had stairs and no lifts, making them completely inaccessible and excluding me from taking part. The same is true for pubs, ...

  Without enforcement, international law is a hollow promise. It’s time the UN and ICC stopped pretending and started acting. By Sean Ash  I’ve been thinking a lot about international law, and I’ve come to a difficult but honest conclusion. Right now, it’s a useless mechanism. Not by design, but in practice. It was meant to protect nations from chaos, to hold the powerful accountable, to create a rulebook that applies to everyone. But instead, it has become a hollow promise. A polite suggestion. A courtroom with no judge, no bailiff, and no one to stop a thief when they walk through the door. When Russia invaded Ukraine, when it rolled into Afghanistan before the Americans ever got there, it did so while claiming the language of law and defence. When the United States bombed targets in Syria, Iraq, and Libya, or talks about destabilising Iran over uranium enrichment, it does so not with open guilt, but with righteous justification. Every violation of law is dressed as its prot...

Border Controls Are Becoming Obsolete in a Digital World – So Why Are We Still Pretending Otherwise? By Sean Ash  Today I took a simple day trip to Calais with my dad and my son. We went to the local Hypermarché, picked up some chocolates, grabbed a few cans of booze, filled some duty-free bags, and headed back toward the UK. As we queued up at passport control, something struck me. The process was so basic: a man checked my passport, looked at my face, then opened a gate. And I couldn’t help but think, why is this even necessary? Why do we still rely on human beings to perform actions that technology can already do more efficiently and securely? Facial recognition can identify us in seconds. AI can match faces to databases, flag anomalies, and authorise passage without a single word exchanged. So why, in an age where technology tracks nearly every movement we make, do we cling to the theatre of border control as though it’s still 1950? That moment made me reflect not only on how m...