Weekend Woman's Hour: Anti vaccine mandate, Witchcraft, Helen Pankhurst
A midwife from a maternity unit tells us why she and over thirty of her colleagues are refusing to have the Covid jab. We hear from the Royal College of Nursing who want the Government to pause the vaccine mandate for NHS staff immediately because of the threat to an already understaffed NHS. And we speak to Professor Ian Jones, a Virologist at the University of Reading about the science of infection and transmission. Almost 300 years after the Witchcraft Acts were repealed, a bill has been bought forward in the Scottish parliament to pardon those convicted. This comes after a two-year campaign to clear the names of nearly 4,000 people accused of witchcraft. We are joined by Zoe Venditozzi, co-founder of the campaign, and Marion Gibson, Professor of Renaissance and Magical Literatures at the University of Essex. Helen Pankhurst, the great-granddaughter of Suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst, talks about the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill which the House of Lords will debate on Monday. Reflecting on historical and global parallels, she talks about the role of protest in the fight for equality. Skin issues in adolescence can shape lives. We speak to Dr Tess McPherson, the current president of the British Society of Paediatric and Adolescent Dermatology, and Maia Grey, an acne positivity blogger who has lived with acne since her early teens. We are joined by British actor Adjoa Andoh and the award-winning British composer Julie Cooper, who have collaborated on the title track of a new album called Continuum. Julie wrote the music and Adjoa responded with a poem called "Hold out the Heart", capturing the emotions of the pandemic.