Just how do you get to Australia without stepping foot on a plane?

We returned to the office from a snow-covered Easter to an exciting week of events.

We kicked off on Wednesday with Rt Hon Jack Straw MP who spoke to a heaving Great Room about building community confidence in the criminal justice system. The lecture was a great opportunity to launch the RSA's new Prison Learning Network and we had some excellent questions from the audience, you can listen again here.

Later that evening we screened No End in Sight. Nominated for an academy award for best documentary feature the film was the first of its kind to chronicle the reasons behind Iraq's descent into guerilla war, warlord rule and anarchy. Director Charles Ferguson spoke about making his first documentary film and what led him into the gritty world of documentaries from an earlier career in software technology.

Finally we wrapped up with this week's RSA Thursday, by welcoming slow-traveller Ed Gillespie to the RSA to prove that you don't have to get on a 747 to holiday in Australia you just need a lot of time....Read his blog about his 361 days of slow-travel global circumnavigation here.

We draw a quick breath before we launch into the Spring programme. No rest for us as we have just announced our April events, you can see the full list here but highlights include: Julian Barnes, Tim Harford, Jonathan Powell and Charlie Leadbeater.

Hope to see you all at JAS soon

Comments

[Steve Nimmons]

I very much enjoyed the lecture given by Jack Straw. In the discussion Mr. Straw quoted a number of statistics indicating incarceration rates in the United Kingdom are high compared with other European nations. I would be very interested if anyone reading has further insight into the actual computation and collation of such data. Is this a true deduction based on comparative crime rates and detection rates ‘levelled per capita’? Or is it the case that there is more crime in Britain?