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Woman's Hour: Plus ones, Swifties, Scotland rape rule, Long-lost siblings

Plus ones, Swifties, Scotland rape rule, Long-lost siblings

BBC Radio 4 - Woman's Hour, Plus ones, Swifties, Scotland rape rule, Long-lost siblings

The complicated etiquette of asking to take an extra guest to a wedding.

Scotland's most senior law officer has asked nine of the country's judges to overturn an 87-year-old rule on evidence in cases involving rape and other sexual offences. Since she became Lord Advocate in 2021, Dorothy Bain KC has often spoken of her desire to improve the criminal justice system for victims, particularly women and girls. She is now seeking radical changes which would allow more rape cases to reach court. Anita Rani talks to David Cowan, BBC Scotland's home affairs correspondent.

A group of state secondary schools in Southwark, south London, has decided to act as a collective and shift their pupils away from smartphones. Children's use of smartphones, particularly in schools, continues to be a hot topic issue, and many schools have decided to create new policies to try and tackle what they call the damaging effects of smartphone use. One of those schools is Ark Walworth Academy in Southwark, and their headteacher, Jessica West, joins Anita to talk about the plans.

This evening, Taylor Swift will take to the stage at Murrayfield in Edinburgh for the first part of her UK tour. It is the first of 17 UK dates, which will finish in a record-breaking eight-night run at London's Wembley Stadium. By then, she will have played to almost 1.2 million UK fans. Her international Eras tour is expected to make more than $2 billion (£1.5 billion) by the time she performs her final show in Canada this December. Jolene Campbell, reporter at The Daily Record, talks to Anita about the Swifties who have descended on the city.

As a newborn baby in 1968, Helen Ward had been wrapped up warmly in a tartan bag and abandoned in a phone box in Ireland. She would spend years searching for her biological mother, but what she found instead were two full siblings who had also been abandoned as babies. Helen talks to Anita about the story she's spent a lifetime unravelling.

As we enter wedding season, some listeners will be spending every weekend for the rest of summer at either a hen do or a wedding. But what is the etiquette when it comes to plus ones? Anita talks to Liz Wyse, Etiquette Adviser for Debrett's and journalist Rebecca Reid.

Presenter: Anita Rani
Producer: Rebecca Myatt
Studio manager: Tim Heffer

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