title: New Public Management

text: The basic principles of NPM can best be described when split into seven different aspects elaborated by Christopher Hood in 1991. Hood also invented the term NPM itself. They are the following:


title: New Public Management

text: Because of its belief in the importance and strength of privatizing government, it is critical to have an emphasis on management by engaging in hands-on methods. This theory allows leaders the freedom to manage freely and open up discretion.


title: New Public Management

text: Its critical to preserve express measures and measures of execution in a workforce. Utilizing this strategy advances clarification of goals/intent, targets, and markers for movement.


title: New Public Management

text: The third point acknowledges the "shift from the use of input controls and bureaucratic procedures to rules relying on output controls measured by quantitive performance indicators". This aspect requires using performance based assessments when looking to outsource work to private companies/groups.


title: New Public Management

text: NPM advocates frequently moved from a bound together administration framework to a decentralized framework in which directors pick up adaptability and are not constrained to organization restrictions.


title: New Public Management

text: This characteristic centers on how NPM can advance competition within the public sector which may in turn lower fetched, dispose of debate and conceivably accomplish a better quality of progress/work through the term contracts. Competition can too be found when the government offers contracts to the private segments and the contract is given in terms of the capacity to provide the benefit viably, quality of the merchandise given, subsequently this will increment competition since the other private division which did not get the contract will make strides to make strides the quality and capacity subsequently encouraging competition.


title: New Public Management

text: This viewpoint centers on the need to set up short-term labor contracts, create corporate plans or trade plans, execution assentions and mission statements. It moreover centers on setting up a working environment in which open representatives or temporary workers are mindful of the objectives and intention that offices are attempting to reach.


title: New Public Management

text: The most effective one which has led to its ascent into global popularity focuses on keeping cost low and efficiency high. "Doing more with less" moreover cost reduction stimulates efficiency and is one way which makes it different from the traditional approaches to management.


title: New Public Management

text: There are blurred lines between policymaking and providing services in the New Public Management system. Questions have been raised about the potential politicization of the public service, when executives are hired on contract under pay-for-performance systems. The ability for citizens to effectively choose the appropriate government services they need has also been challenged. "The notion of choice is essential to the economic concept of a customer. Generally, in government there are few if any choices." There are concerns that public managers move away from trying to meet citizens' needs and limitations on accountability to the public. NPM brings to question integrity and compliance when dealing with incentives for public managers – the interests of customers and owners do not always align. Questions such as managers being more or less faithful arise. The public interest is at risk and could undermine the trust in government. "Government must be accountable to the larger public interest, not only to individual immediate customers or consumers [of government services.]"


title: New Public Management

text: Although NPM had a dramatic impact in the 1990s on managing and policymaking, many scholars believe that NPM has hit its prime. Scholars like Patrick Dunleavy believe New Public Management is phasing out because of disconnect with “customers” and their institutions. Scholars cite the Digital Era and the new importance of technology that kills the necessity of NPM. In countries that are less industrialized the NPM concept is still growing and spreading. This trend has much to do with a country's ability or inability to get their public sector in tune with the Digital Era. New Public Management was created in the public sector to create change based on disaggregation, competition, and incentives. Using incentives to produce the maximum services from an organization is largely stalled in many countries and being reversed because of increased complexity.


title: New Public Management

text: Post-NPM, many countries explored digital era governance (DEG). Dunleavy believes this new way of governance should be heavily centered upon information and technology. Technology will help re-integrate with digitalization changes. Digital Era Governance provides a unique opportunity for self-sustainability; however, there are various factors that will determine whether or not DEG can be implemented successfully. When countries have proper technology, NPM simply cannot compete very well with DEG. DEG does an excellent job of making services more accurate, prompt and remove most barriers and conflicts. DEG also can improve the service quality and provide local access to outsourcers.


title: New Public Management

text: AM Omar (2020) challenged DEG by integrating the governance approach with social media technology. The work on Brunei's Information Department titled "Digital Era Governance and Social Media: The Case of Information Department Brunei. In Employing Recent Technologies for Improved Digital Governance" works to provide the theoretical and practical basis to substantiate the claim. The work concludes that digital dividends can be secured through the effective application of Social Media in the governance process.


title: New Public Management

text: The New Public Service (NPS) is a newly developed theory for 21st-century citizen-focused public administration. This work directly challenges the clientelism and rationalist paradigm of the New Public Management. NPS focuses on democratic governance and re-imagining the accountability of public administrators toward citizens. NPS posits that administrators should be a broker between citizens and their government, focusing on citizen engagement in political and administrative issues.


title: New Public Management

text: New Public Management is often mistakenly compared to New Public Administration. The New Public Administration movement was one established in the USA during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Though there may be some common features, the central themes of the two movements are different. The main thrust of the New Public Administration movement was to bring academic public administration into line with an anti-hierarchical egalitarian movement that was influential in US university campuses and among public sector workers. By contrast, the emphasis of the New Public Management movement a decade or so later was firmly managerial normative in that it stressed the difference that management could and should make in the quality and efficiency of public services. It focuses on public service production functions and operational issues contrasted with the focus on public accountability, 'model employer' public service values, 'due process,' and what happens inside public organizations in conventional public administration.


title: Baroque painting

text: Baroque painting is the painting associated with the Baroque cultural movement. The movement is often identified with Absolutism, the Counter Reformation and Catholic Revival, but the existence of important Baroque art and architecture in non-absolutist and Protestant states throughout Western Europe underscores its widespread popularity.


title: Baroque painting

text: Baroque painting encompasses a great range of styles, as most important and major painting during the period beginning around 1600 and continuing throughout the 17th century, and into the early 18th century is identified today as Baroque painting. In its most typical manifestations, Baroque art is characterized by great drama, rich, deep colour, and intense light and dark shadows, but the classicism of French Baroque painters like Poussin and Dutch genre painters such as Vermeer are also covered by the term, at least in English. As opposed to Renaissance art, which usually showed the moment before an event took place, Baroque artists chose the most dramatic point, the moment when the action was occurring: Michelangelo, working in the High Renaissance, shows his David composed and still before he battles Goliath; Bernini's Baroque David is caught in the act of hurling the stone at the giant. Baroque art was meant to evoke emotion and passion instead of the calm rationality that had been prized during the Renaissance.


title: Baroque painting

text: Among the greatest painters of the Baroque period are Velázquez, Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Rubens, Poussin, and Vermeer. Caravaggio is an heir of the humanist painting of the High Renaissance. His realistic approach to the human figure, painted directly from life and dramatically spotlit against a dark background, shocked his contemporaries and opened a new chapter in the history of painting. Baroque painting often dramatizes scenes using chiaroscuro light effects; this can be seen in works by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Le Nain and La Tour.


title: Baroque painting

text: The Flemish painter Anthony van Dyck developed a graceful but imposing portrait style that was very influential, especially in England.


title: Baroque painting

text: The prosperity of 17th century Holland led to an enormous production of art by large numbers of painters who were mostly highly specialized and painted only genre scenes, landscapes, still lifes, portraits or history paintings. Technical standards were very high, and Dutch Golden Age painting established a new repertoire of subjects that was very influential until the arrival of Modernism.


title: Baroque painting

text: The Council of Trent (1545–63), in which the Roman Catholic Church answered many questions of internal reform raised by both Protestants and by those who had remained inside the Catholic Church, addressed the representational arts in a short and somewhat oblique passage in its decrees. This was subsequently interpreted and expounded by a number of clerical authors like Molanus, who demanded that paintings and sculptures in church contexts should depict their subjects clearly and powerfully, and with decorum, without the stylistic airs of Mannerism.


title: Baroque painting

text: This return toward a populist conception of the function of ecclesiastical art is seen by many art historians as driving the innovations of Caravaggio and the Carracci brothers, all of whom were working (and competing for commissions) in Rome around 1600, although unlike the Carracci, Caravaggio persistently was criticised for lack of decorum in his work.


title: Baroque painting

text: However, although religious painting, history painting, allegories, and portraits were still considered the most noble subjects, landscape, still life, and genre scenes were also becoming more common in Catholic countries, and were the main genres in Protestant ones.


title: Baroque painting

text: The term "Baroque" was initially used with a derogatory meaning, to underline the excesses of its emphasis. Others derive it from the mnemonic term "Baroco" denoting, in logical "Scholastica", a supposedly laboured form of syllogism.


title: Baroque painting

text: In particular, the term was used to describe its eccentric redundancy and noisy abundance of details, which sharply contrasted the clear and sober rationality of the Renaissance. It was first rehabilitated by the Swiss-born art historian, Heinrich Wölfflin (1864–1945) in his "Renaissance und Barock" (1888); Wölfflin identified the Baroque as "movement imported into mass", an art antithetic to Renaissance art. He did not make the distinctions between Mannerism and Baroque that modern writers do, and he ignored the later phase, the academic Baroque that lasted into the 18th century. Writers in French and English did not begin to treat Baroque as a respectable study until Wölfflin's influence had made German scholarship pre-eminent.


title: Baroque painting

text: Led by Italy, Mediterranean countries, slowly followed by most of the Holy Roman Empire in Germany and Central Europe, generally adopted a full-blooded Baroque approach.


title: Baroque painting

text: A rather different art developed out of northern realist traditions in 17th century Dutch Golden Age painting, which had very little religious art, and little history painting, instead playing a crucial part in developing secular genres such as still life, genre paintings of everyday scenes, and landscape painting. While the Baroque nature of Rembrandt's art is clear, the label is less used for Vermeer and many other Dutch artists. Most Dutch art lacks the idealization and love of splendour typical of much Baroque work, including the neighbouring Flemish Baroque painting which shared a part in Dutch trends, while also continuing to produce the traditional categories in a more clearly Baroque style.


title: Baroque painting

text: In France a dignified and graceful classicism gave a distinctive flavour to Baroque painting, where the later 17th century is also regarded as a golden age for painting. Two of the most important artists, Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain, remained based in Rome, where their work, almost all in easel paintings, was much appreciated by Italian as well as French patrons.


title: Ben Mitchell (EastEnders)

text: Ben Mitchell is a fictional character from the BBC soap opera "EastEnders", who has been played by six different actors since his on-screen birth on 21 March 1996. Matthew Silver appeared as an infant Ben between 1996 and 1998, and Morgan Whittle played him as a toddler between 1999 and 2001. After a five-year absence from the series, Charlie Jones assumed the role of Ben in 2006. In 2010, the character was recast with Joshua Pascoe in the role, who made his first appearance on 13 December 2010. Pascoe quit the role in 2012 and Ben departed on 24 August 2012. Ben's return was announced in May 2014 with actor Harry Reid in the role; Ben returned on 22 September 2014. Reid was written out of the series in 2017 and Ben departed on 12 January 2018. The character was reintroduced in 2019 with the role recast to Max Bowden. Ben returned on 1 April 2019.


title: Ben Mitchell (EastEnders)

text: Ben's storylines include: a feud between the show's Mitchell and Beale families for his custody; developing a love of dance and the arts, which is a source of tension between him and his father, Phil Mitchell (Steve McFadden); being physically and mentally abused by Phil's girlfriend Stella Crawford (Sophie Thompson); struggling to come to terms with his homosexuality and then attempting to hide it before coming out; being imprisoned for manslaughter after unintentionally killing Heather Trott (Cheryl Fergison); having a daughter, Lexi Pearce, with Lola Pearce (Danielle Harold), finding out his mother Kathy Beale (Gillian Taylforth) is still alive after faking her own death, relationships with Paul Coker (Jonny Labey) and the closeted Callum "Halfway" Highway (Tony Clay), coming to terms with Paul's death in a homophobic attack, being shot by Hunter Owen (Charlie Winter), blackmailing Martin Fowler (James Bye), losing his hearing after sustaining an injury during the boat crash and going into crime with Danny Hardcastle (Paul Usher). In April 2022, it was announced Ben is set to feature in a male rape storyline, in which he is raped by Lewis Butler (Aidan O'Callaghan).


title: Ben Mitchell (EastEnders)

text: As played by Jones, Ben received generally poor reviews from critics. Grace Dent of "The Guardian" wrote several negative opinion pieces on the character, and contacted the BBC with a list of suggestions for humorous storylines in which he could be killed off. However, the storyline where Ben was abused by Stella won "Best Storyline" at the 2007 "Inside Soap" Awards, and was nominated for the "Best Soap Storyline" accolade at the "TV Quick" and "TV Choice" Awards. In 2012, Pascoe was nominated "Villain of the Year", but lost out to Andrew Lancel ("Coronation Street"). Lisa O'Connell, also writing for "The Guardian", was complimentary of Ben's later, protracted coming out storyline, which she called "a perfect foundation for years of dramatic conflict".


title: Ben Mitchell (EastEnders)

text: Ben is born to Phil Mitchell (Steve McFadden) and his then wife Kathy Beale (Gillian Taylforth) in March 1996. Ben becomes ill and is rushed to hospital, where he is diagnosed with meningitis and he is left partially deaf in one ear. As Kathy gives Ben all her affection, Phil turns to alcohol and has an affair with Lorna Cartwright (Janet Dibley), resulting in the breakdown of their marriage. In 1998, Kathy moves to South Africa and takes Ben with her. He accompanies her on two return visits in 1999 before returning with her to South Africa in early 2000. In 2001, Kathy marries a man named Gavin Sullivan (then an unseen character; later played by Paul Nicholas). The same year, Ben briefly returns to stay with Phil who then takes him back to South Africa.


title: Ben Mitchell (EastEnders)

text: In 2006, the residents hear that Kathy and Gavin have been killed in a car accident, so Ben (now played by Charlie Jones) returns to England to live with his half-brother, Ian Beale (Adam Woodyatt). He eventually moves in with Phil, after Phil wins a long custody battle. Ben dislikes Phil's new girlfriend Stella Crawford (Sophie Thompson), who in turn feels that Ben is intruding on their relationship. She abuses Ben physically and psychologically, from burning him with a hot spoon, also attempting to spoil his friendship with Abi Branning (Lorna Fitzgerald) when she discovers this, to threatening to kill Phil if Ben tells anyone about her actions. Phil and Stella become engaged. On their wedding day in July 2007, Ben admits that Stella has been abusing him; she commits suicide by jumping from a roof. Phil, a recovering alcoholic, begins drinking again in the aftermath, but resumes a life of sobriety for Ben's sake.


title: Ben Mitchell (EastEnders)

text: Unbeknown to Phil, Ben develops an interest in dancing. He secretly takes classes, passing a dance exam, and is ultimately able to gain Phil's approval. In March 2010, Phil's daughter Louise Mitchell (Brittany Papple) comes to stay with the Mitchell family. She steals Ben's diary and fakes an entry which suggests he is gay. In retaliation, Ben burns Louise's hand the same way Stella burnt his. He later locks Louise in a summerhouse for a day in May 2010, then pretends to find her to earn approval from his father. Louise blames Jordan Johnson (Michael-Joel David Stuart), an acquaintance of Ben's, but when Phil sees burn marks on Louise's arm, she reveals that Ben is to blame. Phil worries Ben is copying Stella, and punches him when he catches Ben about to burn Louise again. Questioned as to why he hurt Louise, Ben claims that Jordan is bullying him. Phil advises Ben to fight back; soon after, Ben attacks Jordan with a spanner, leaving him with a fractured skull. Phil warns him against admitting to the attack, but Ben confesses and moves in with Ian. After hearing from Crown Court Ben could spend time in juvenile detention, Phil plans to send him to live with his brother Grant Mitchell (Ross Kemp) abroad, but Ben refuses thanks to his grandmother, Peggy Mitchell (Barbara Windsor), making him change his mind, after Phil's girlfriend Shirley Carter (Linda Henry) overhears Phil discussing the plans to Ben and receives an eight-month sentence as a result. In July 2010, Phil indeed blames Peggy for Ben's sentencing. Ben tells Peggy and Phil he is coping despite being bullied by Cal Childs (Danny Barnham), and when the Mitchell family discovers this Ben asks them not to visit him.


title: Ben Mitchell (EastEnders)

text: Ben, (now played by Joshua Pascoe) is released, and arrives home to discover Jay Brown (Jamie Borthwick), the foster child of Phil's relative Billy (Perry Fenwick), has usurped his place in Phil's affections. Ben is jealous of Jay initially but does develop a 'brotherly' relationship with him. Ben vents his anger at those who cross him, punching Phil in the face and pushing Phil's aunt Glenda Mitchell (Glynis Barber) down a flight of stairs for ruining his home coming party.


title: Ben Mitchell (EastEnders)

text: Ben attends a gym and shares his first kiss with boxer, Duncan Willis (Steven France). When they are seen kissing by shopkeeper Patrick Trueman (Rudolph Walker), Ben throws a brick through Patrick's window and tries to intimidate him into not going public about his homosexuality. Phil observes and misinterprets their altercation, believing Patrick is assaulting Ben. He launches a vendetta against Patrick. After Duncan confronts Ben about his victimisation of Patrick he tells him their kiss didn't mean anything and cuts ties with him, Ben confesses to Phil. Disgusted his son is gay, Phil pushes Ben away, terrified his homosexuality will ruin his reputation. Ben develops feelings for Christian Clarke (John Partridge), who is also gay but engaged to his boyfriend Syed Masood (Marc Elliott). Ben tries to split them up and attempts to kiss Christian. After being rejected, Ben claims Christian touched him inappropriately as revenge. Phil goes into a violent rampage, hitting Christian with a baseball bat, which prompts Ben to admit the truth. In the wake of this, Phil tries to accept Ben's homosexuality. Billy's granddaughter, Lola Pearce (Danielle Harold), offers to have sex with Ben to test his sexuality. Ben loses his virginity to Lola in October 2011 and concludes that he is definitely gay. Ben is later concerned to discover Lola is pregnant, however she denies he is the father.


title: Ben Mitchell (EastEnders)

text: Ben continues to feel angst towards Phil for rejecting him. He anonymously stalks Phil, terrorising him with evidence about his past crimes, including a newspaper clip of the death of Steve Owen (Martin Kemp). DCI Jill Marsden (Sophie Stanton), who has been attempting to imprison Phil for over a decade, opens an investigation. She interviews Ben regarding Stella's death in 2007. Ben tells her that Phil forced Stella to jump off a building on threat of being pushed. Phil plans to flee the country before arrest, but is stalled by Ben, who reveals himself as his father's stalker. Phil is charged with Stella's murder and when the Mitchell family discover Ben's involvement in his father's arrest, they disown him. Ben's brother Ian eventually discovers Ben lied to DCI Marsden and informs the police. Phil is released; however, Ben mistakingly believes he has been betrayed by Heather Trott (Cheryl Fergison), who also knows he set Phil up. He confronts Heather in fear and desperation, and hits her over the head with a metal picture frame, killing her. Phil returns from prison moments after Heather's murder. Feeling responsible for his son's behaviour, Phil covers up Ben's involvement with Jay's help, who was present when Heather was killed. Shirley, Phil's fiancée, discovers Heather's body, and as she was her best friend, she vows to find the killer. Worried she will discover the truth, Ben convinces Phil to break-up with Shirley and she is thrown out of their home, while Jay is so traumatised by Heather's murder that he moves out of the Mitchells'. Ben and Phil wrestle with guilt and argue regularly, with Phil turning to alcohol. Needing to confide in someone, Ben admits his crime to Ian; the confession contributes to Ian's mental breakdown, and amidst threats from Phil to stay silent, Ian absconds, leaving Phil and Ben searching for him to no avail.


title: Ben Mitchell (EastEnders)

text: Ben fails to dispose of the photo frame and it is taken by Jean Slater (Gillian Wright), who is collecting for charity. It is put into the charity shop and later is discovered by Shirley, who realises it is the murder weapon. Tracing it back to the Mitchell house, she confronts Phil, believing him to be the killer, but Ben gives himself away during the argument. Shirley is furious and nearly drowns Ben, but Phil intervenes and convinces Shirley to talk to Ben about why he killed Heather. However, they find Ben gone and he confesses to the police. DCI Marsden does not believe him at first, but he is later arrested for murder. He is charged the next day, and Phil's solicitor Ritchie Scott (Sian Webber) informs Phil that Ben could face up to 10 years in prison. Phil tries to persuade Ben to change his statement, however Ben insists that he needs to be punished. Ben refuses to have any contact with anyone until he is released. In October 2012, Ben's murder charge is dropped and Phil is told he will be tried for manslaughter, to which he will plead guilty. Ben then agrees to a visit from Phil, and Phil plans to tell Ben that he is the father of Lola's daughter, Lexi Pearce, though he decides not to. Ben is sentenced to four years imprisonment and discovers he is Lexi's father after a visit from Lola.


title: Ben Mitchell (EastEnders)

text: After witnessing Ian's grief following his daughter Lucy Beale's (Hetti Bywater) murder (see "Who Killed Lucy Beale?"), Phil decides to get in touch with Ben; however, Ritchie reveals that Ben was released the previous month. Phil cannot get hold of him, although Jay has seen Ben twice since his release. In September Ben (now played by Harry Reid) returns to Walford when he learns that Phil is having an affair with Shirley days before his wedding to Sharon Rickman (Letitia Dean). Ben initially tries to convince his father to reunite with Shirley, but forms a bond with Sharon when she accepts him into the family and acts as Phil's best man at the wedding. After the wedding, Shirley shoots Phil whilst struggling with Sharon. Ronnie asks Ben and Jay to get rid of the gun. Ben meets Johnny Carter (Sam Strike) and is attracted to him, but when Johnny makes a move Ben reacts badly and says he is not gay and that his interest in men was a phase. He then starts a relationship with Abi in an effort to prove it to Phil and Johnny. When Johnny later leaves the square, he tells Ben not to hide who he truly is. Although Ben continues to deny his attraction to men, he later misinterprets a brotherly moment with Jay and tries to kiss him. Jay later tells Abi, but then lies and says he made it up when he sees how upset she is. Ben eventually confesses to Abi that he's still attracted to men but, desperate to keep him, Abi decides to stay with him, saying their relationship is about more than sex. However, Ben is later seen looking at a gay contacts app on his smartphone.


title: Ben Mitchell (EastEnders)

text: Ben had instructed Jay to bury Lucy's purse and phone, which has been missing since her death. Denise Fox (Diane Parish) digs them up in Patrick Trueman's (Rudolph Walker) allotment and takes them to Ian, who calls the police before Ben convinces him that he found them on Good Friday in a bag in the Square and had no part in Lucy's murder. Ian lies to the police and protects Ben. When Phil is arrested on suspicion of attempting to kill Ronnie, he puts Ben in charge of his garage. Max Branning (Jake Wood) starts helping him with deals, only to trick Ben into signing over the garage to him as revenge for the death of his girlfriend Emma Summerhayes (Anna Acton), which Max has blamed Phil for, though Phil eventually gets the garage back. Ben then starts a sexual relationship with Paul Coker (Jonny Labey), whilst maintaining his relationship with Abi. Ben grows frustrated with Abi's controlling behaviour, and she is suspicious, so Ben has sex with her to allay her fears. Phil catches Ben and Paul half-naked together at the car lot, and angrily tells Ben to leave as he broke his trust, both in hiding his homosexuality and being loyal to Abi. Ben ends his relationship with Paul, leaving Paul heartbroken. Paul tries to speak to Ben on numerous occasions, but fails to win Ben's affections over. Ben and Abi decide to find their own home after realising they can no longer stay with Phil after Sharon leaves him. Ben and Paul flirt and arrange to go to the cinema but when Abi finds them and leaves in anger feeling Ben is not taking their plans seriously, Ben follows her, leaving Paul alone. Paul later tells Ben that he loves him and says Ben must decide who really wants and accept who he really is. To give himself more time, Ben books tickets for Abi to visit a friend on holiday, and then tells Paul he loves him back. Jay sees them kissing, and tells Ben to admit to Abi that he loves Paul. When Phil is later sent to hospital and informed that he will be dead within 12 months unless he has a liver transplant, Ben, alongside Sharon and Jay, refuse to visit him, and Sharon has him change the locks on the house so Phil cannot enter when he is discharged.


title: Ben Mitchell (EastEnders)

text: Ben comes to terms with the fact that his mother Kathy has returned to Walford after faking her own death at the hands of her husband, Gavin. He initially refuses to talks to her, disgusted at the fact that she pretended to be dead for almost ten years, but they reconcile. After Abi returns from her trip to Paris with her friend, she realises that Ben may be having an affair with Paul. Ben plans to break up with Abi, but Abi has been manipulated by Babe Smith (Annette Badland), who tells her to announce she is pregnant so that Ben will not leave her. Abi does this publicly and then plans to get pregnant for real but Ben says they cannot have sex because he thinks he may have caught an STI from a stranger, so Abi resorts to having sex with Lee Carter (Danny-Boy Hatchard) to try to get pregnant. Ben discovers he has chlamydia, and Abi also has it. She later fakes a miscarriage in an attempt to end her pregnancy lie, but when she upsets Babe, Babe writes Ben a letter revealing the truth. The letter is read by Louise (now played by Tilly Keeper), who has returned, and to keep her from showing it to Ben, Abi allows her to use Phil's credit card. When Ben finds the card, he confronts Abi, but she believes he found the letter so inadvertently reveals she was never pregnant and says that Louise was blackmailing her. Ben takes revenge on Louise in The Queen Vic by putting her head in the toilet. He then seduces Abi and takes her top off, but then drags her into the main bar of the pub, revealing via a karaoke microphone that she invented the pregnancy. Ben then resumes his relationship with Paul with the support of most of his friends and family. Following an agreement with Les and Pam, who make plans to retire and leave Walford, Ben and Paul make arrangements to become the new managers of Coker and Sons. In celebration, they spend a night out together, and are not seen again the next day. Ben's family are alerted by the police that a dead young man whom they believe to be Ben has been found, having been involved in a fight, but upon inspection, the victim is revealed to be Paul. Ben is found by Buster Briggs (Karl Howman) after managing to make his way back to Walford, albeit with major injuries. He explains that he and Paul were cornered by four large men and chased after coming out of a night club, and were separated when running away. When informed of Paul's death, he lashes out in a violent rage, before breaking down in tears in Kathy and Phil's arms.


title: Ben Mitchell (EastEnders)

text: Ben later visits the Queen Vic to join his neighbours in a toast to Paul's memory, but Paul's grandmother Pam Coker (Lin Blakley) blames him for Paul's death and dubs him the worst thing to ever happen to Paul, wishing he had died instead. Ben wishes the same, and later confesses to Johnny (now played by Ted Reilly) that he and Paul were victims of homophobic namecalling, and despite Paul insisting they ignore the culprits, Ben confronted the men, causing the attack, and thus blames himself for Paul's death. Johnny encourages Ben to report this to the police, and Ben recognises one of the attackers outside the police station. Using the man's car registration number, he gets an address and demands a gun from Phil to seek revenge. Phil tricks Ben and does not get a gun, so Ben goes missing. He returns, having failed to find the man. Paul's body is released, and Ben realises Jay has been using cocaine. Jay and Ben decide to help each other move on from their problems, so Ben decides to let the police find the attackers. However, Ben and Jay change their minds, agreeing to take revenge and then leave Walford together. Louise worries that Ben may be about to get into trouble so asks help from Paul's grandfather, Les Coker (Roger Sloman), who tells Ben not to put his family through what he and Pam are going through, as Ben could be killed too. Ben does promise not to track down Paul's killers but when Jay finds an address and says Ben will regret doing nothing, Ben and Jay leave. They return to Walford after Louise calls to the police, but are then kidnapped by the attackers at the Mitchell home. Ben is rescued by his uncle, Grant, and Grant's son Mark Fowler (Ned Porteous). Jay, who the killers trapped in a van, flees when the police appear. Ben later says a farewell to Jay, who leaves Walford shortly after Paul's funeral and Jay says that they will always be brothers. However, he returns not too long after. Not wanting Phil to die, Ben decides to donate part of his liver to him, but a doctor tells them it will still take time. Despite Ben's discovery that Phil has cut him out of his will, he proceeds with his plan to donate part of his liver, but he is refused by the hospital who are unsatisfied with his answers and emotional responses when interviewed. However, Phil eventually gets a liver transplant.


title: Ben Mitchell (EastEnders)

text: While Phil and Sharon are on holiday, Ben and Jay move to their own house (18 Albert Square). On Ben's 21st birthday, Jay throws the pair a housewarming party, where Ben and Johnny have a one-night stand after getting drunk. The next day, they both worry that the other wants a relationship but are relieved to realise they just see each other as friends. After Louise suffers severe burns following a disaster at a school prom, against Sharon's request Ben calls Phil who is Italy recovering from his transplant. Ben signs the paperwork for The Arches when Phil decides to hand it over to him and Sharon is left stunned when he decides to give Jay the car lot land. Kathy insists to Phil that he justifies his reasons to Ben about giving Jay the car lot land that is worth more than The Arches. Ben finds a solicitor's letter of Phil's that mentions Raymond and after confronting Phil, Phil tells Ben that Raymond is his half-brother. Ben is angry with Phil for making him feel second best to Phil and Sharon's other children. Ben learns that Phil offered Jay the car lot out of guilt for killing his apparent biological father, Alan Hall, a victim of the car lot fire that Phil had caused 23 years previously in an insurance scam. After a fight with Jay, they make amends.


title: Ben Mitchell (EastEnders)

text: Ben meets Luke Browning (Adam Astill), the son of James Willmott-Brown (William Boyde), who raped Kathy 30 years previously but is unaware of his identity. They end up kissing and start a sexual relationship, until Ben learns of Luke's family background when Willmott-Brown secretly visits Kathy, and Ben goes to visit Luke with the intention of confronting Willmott-Brown. When Ben meets Willmott-Brown in his office, he confronts him over his actions towards Kathy with a crowbar. Willmott-Brown tells Ben that the sex was consensual and convinces him that he should doubt Kathy's honesty. Ben almost attacks Willmott-Brown but Luke stops him. Feeling that Ben does not trust her, Kathy considers leaving Walford. Ben reluctantly decides to end his relationship with Luke due to the conflicts of interest between Kathy and Willmott-Brown. After a heart to heart with Ben, Kathy decides to remain in Walford and gives Ben and Luke's relationship her blessing. Ben plays a prank on Luke, which backfires when Luke grabs Ben's wrist and threatens him. However, Luke later apologises. Ben accidentally takes Luke's wallet and finds a business card with the words 'Project Dagmar', and confronts Luke about the project as the Dagmar was the bar that Willmott-Brown owned and Kathy worked in when he raped her. Luke lashes out at Ben and physically threatens him. Realising that Ben is a risk to the project being exposed, Luke ends their relationship. Hurt and confused, Ben asks Abi's sister Lauren Branning (Jacqueline Jossa), who works for Luke's firm, Weyland & Co, about the project but she does not know about it. Luke tries to apologise to Ben by buying him a car but Ben continues to reject Luke and he attacks and brutally beats Ben, so Phil asked his old prison cellmate Aidan Maguire (Patrick Bergin) for help and have Luke kidnapped and he is not seen again; it later transpires that Luke was brutally killed by Aidan despite Phil's merely requesting that they scare Luke and not kill him.


title: Ben Mitchell (EastEnders)

text: Following Luke's death and Willmott-Brown's eventual downfall, Phil joins Aidan in a planned heist and they use The Arches to steal the money. However, the stolen money and jewellery goes missing and it is revealed that Ben realized what was going on and stole it from the funeral home where it was being hidden. He sells the jewellery but keeps one necklace, giving it to Kathy, and then plans to leave the country. He leaves after writing a note for Jay. He is cornered on the ferry by Ian's former wife Mel Owen (Tamzin Outhwaite) who warns him to give her the money or he will soon be dead. Ben refuses, saying he only took what he deserved. Mel makes a phone call to someone, telling them that Ben is all theirs. When Ben arrives in France, he is stunned to find the money has been replaced by newspapers. However, he is relieved to discover an envelope full of cash in his pocket. Ben gleefully heads for a new life, unaware that Aidan's former wife Ciara (Denise McCormack) is watching him.


title: Ben Mitchell (EastEnders)

text: When Phil and Keanu Taylor (Danny Walters) end up in some trouble in Spain, Phil forges Ben's signature, causing Kathy to call Ben to come home, Ben (now played by Max Bowden) returns with Lola and their daughter, Lexi, and after seeing the trouble Phil is in, he agrees to help him. However, it is soon revealed Ben is planning to steal Phil's money and leave him broke and he makes Lola follow every instruction, causing him to get annoyed when she ignores him and ends up kissing Jay in The Queen Vic, however it's soon revealed Lola has a fiancé called Ewan.


title: Ben Mitchell (EastEnders)

text: Ben secretly witnesses Callum "Halfway" Highway (Tony Clay) attempting to harm himself in the playground. After Ben talks to Halfway about the incident, Halfway then purchases a van from Ben as a gift to his girlfriend Whitney Dean (Shona McGarty), although he is later pulled over by the police, who inform him that the van is stolen. Halfway confronts Ben and demands a refund; when Halfway attacks him, Ben realises that Halfway is attracted to men, which Halfway denies. He then punches Ben when he mocks him. The two later share a kiss. Halfway continues to deny his attraction to men while Ben knows he is living a lie so Halfway proposes to Whitney and she agrees. When Ben learns that Phil has replaced him with Keanu in his will, he is furious. However, he later witnesses Stacey Fowler (Lacey Turner) attack Phil with a wrench, to stop the latter from killing her husband Martin Fowler (James Bye). He tells them to leave the scene, saying he will sort it out. Martin and Stacey go on the run to avoid prison. Ben incriminates Keanu in the attack which leads to the latter's arrest. Ben later attempts to kill Phil in hospital, but is stopped by Jay. When Phil regains consciousness, Ben tells him that Keanu, who has gone on the run with Louise, who is pregnant with his child, attacked him. However, Phil does not believe him and Stacey's cousin Kat Moon (Jessie Wallace) tells him that she attacked him to stop him killing Martin, thereby covering for Stacey. Ben later admits to Phil that Keanu had nothing to do with the attack and that he framed him because he knows about Phil's will. Furious, Phil disowns Ben.


title: Ben Mitchell (EastEnders)

text: On the day before Halfway and Whitney's wedding, Halfway confesses to Whitney that he kissed Ben, leading her to call off their wedding. Just as Whitney is about to expose Halfway's secret to the packed pub, all of the residents are held hostage by Hunter Owen (Charlie Winter), who has escaped prison. Ben is shot in the siege, but is revived by Sonia Jackson (Natalie Cassidy). The attack on Ben leads to Phil forgiving his son and Ben and Halfway also get together. Martin soon returns to Walford to care for his daughter, Bex Fowler (Jasmine Armfield). He pleads with Ben to dispose of the wrench Stacey used to attack Phil, so that she and his kids can return home. However, Ben blackmails Martin into getting involved in criminal jobs for him, saying he will let Stacey come home when he wants to. Ben does dispose of the wrench but further blackmails Martin with footage of him stealing a car. An angry Martin punches Ben and it is then that a past incident of Martin dangling Ben from a railway bridge when he was a child is revisited. Ben says that he is bigger now and will not back down easily. Martin turns to Jack Branning (Scott Maslen), who has recently rejoined the police for advice, and he gets Ben and his accomplices arrested. Ben is however released on bail. He confronts Martin and the next morning, he tells Martin that he is sorry for what he has put him through and that Stacey is free to return to Walford. However, that evening, Ben and his henchmen kidnap Martin and hang him off the railway bridge, just as Martin did to Ben when he was younger. Ben threatens to have Stacey and their kids killed if she does not stay away and if Martin does not continue working for him.


title: Ben Mitchell (EastEnders)

text: Phil, who was told by Louise's mother Lisa Fowler (Lucy Benjamin) that Sharon's unborn child is not his, coerces Ben and Keanu to kidnap Jack, who he thinks is the father of the baby. After several hours of interrogation, Phil has a bloodied and bruised Jack released and Ben takes him home, witnessed by Halfway, who becomes suspicious. Ben tries to reason with Phil, who wants to kill the father, but relents and agrees to help Phil. A few days later, Halfway questions Ben about his encounter with Jack and where their relationship is going. To protect Halfway from the Mitchells, Ben breaks up with Halfway, claiming that he does not love him. On Christmas Eve, after hearing identical stories from Keanu and Sharon about a hotel, Phil works out that Keanu is the father and Ben vows to have him killed. On Christmas Day, Ben orders Martin to kill Keanu. However, a hungover Linda Carter (Kellie Bright), who on Christmas Eve had drunkenly fallen asleep in the back of the van Martin uses to kidnap Keanu, saves Keanu's life and helps Martin fake the recording of Keanu's "murder" later shown to Ben. Unaware of this, Ben begins to feel guilty about causing Keanu's "death" and when Halfway returns and proclaims he wants him back, Ben admits his part in having Keanu killed, causing a stunned Halfway to storm out on him.


title: Ben Mitchell (EastEnders)

text: During the 35th Anniversary week, the Queen Vic boat crashes due to a fight between Keanu, Phil and Ben. When the boat goes down, Ben hits his head and damages his hearing aid. This created the storyline about Ben becoming permanently deaf.


title: Ben Mitchell (EastEnders)

text: Having previously appeared as a baby and a toddler, Ben returned to "EastEnders" in 2006 played by child actor Charlie Jones. Jones was cast alongside Megan Jossa, who would play his cousin Courtney Mitchell. While Ben is partially deaf, Jones is a hearing actor. "The Guardian" Rebecca Atkinson suggested that, as only the second disabled character in "EastEnders" history, Ben was introduced to fulfil a BBC quota. She criticised Jones' casting, and opined, "The use of able-bodied actors to play disabled characters is endemic. Maybe in theory there's nothing wrong with that, but while real disabled people are invisible it is downright offensive to persistently cast able-bodied people in disabled roles." Scott Matthewman of "The Stage" sympathised with Atkinson's complaint, but defended Jones' casting: "it's hard enough to find good child actors who can cope with a soap opera environment at age 10, let alone ones that fit a character's physical requirement set out the best part of a decade earlier." Journalist Charlie Swinbourne, himself deaf, welcomed Ben's re-introduction for increasing high-profile deaf representation on television.


title: Ben Mitchell (EastEnders)

text: During Jones' tenure, Ben was portrayed as being physically weak. McFadden described him as unable "to look after himself" when Ben was on the verge of being sent to a young offenders' institute. He subsequently took boxing lessons, and "TV Mag" Gemma Quade noted that Ben "refuse[d] to take the coward's way out" and flee the country with his father, but nonetheless was reduced to tears upon receiving a custodial sentence.


title: Ben Mitchell (EastEnders)

text: In May 2010, it was announced that Ben would be written out of "EastEnders" as part of the show's revamp by executive producer Bryan Kirkwood. A spokesperson said that his departure would be "one of the biggest storylines of the summer", with long-lasting repercussions. Confirmation followed that Ben would be recast; Joshua Pascoe assumed the part and expressed his enthusiasm to "[make] the role of Ben [his] own." Pascoe first appeared on 13 December 2010. Allison Maund of "Inside Soap" observed upon Ben's re-introduction that he bore "very little resemblance to the naive young boy he was before being sent down." A later comment in the same publication contrasted the two portrayals; it described the character under Jones as "sweet young Ben, dancing around to Girls Aloud songs", and observed that as played by Pascoe, he seems "to be dancing to the Devil's tune these days".


title: Ben Mitchell (EastEnders)

text: Pascoe took a break from the series in May 2011, during which Kirkwood stated that viewers may have failed to connect with his portrayal of Ben, as it differed significantly from Jones'. He deemed Ben a "very complex character" and said, "we will see a softer side to Ben when he returns, but the character has evolved. The character has been brutalised in his young offenders' institute and he's also the son of Phil." Considering the character's potential, Kirkwood envisioned Ben and Jay Mitchell (Jamie Borthwick) becoming the new generation of Mitchell brothers, following on from Phil and Grant.


title: Ben Mitchell (EastEnders)

text: In May 2012 it was announced that Pascoe would be leaving the role at the end of his current storyline. Pascoe made his last appearance on 24 August 2012 when Ben went to prison for manslaughter. On 14 May 2014, Digital Spy revealed Ben would be returning, with another recast later in the year. Harry Reid's casting as Ben was announced on 18 July. Reid made his first appearance in the role on 22 September 2014.


title: Ben Mitchell (EastEnders)

text: On 2 October 2017 it was announced that Reid would be leaving the show after the character was axed by Executive Producer John Yorke. He confirmed that he would finish filming in December 2017. He made his final appearance on 16 January 2018. One-year later, in January 2019, it was announced that Ben would be returning to the show with the role recast again to Max Bowden who began filming that same month. He made his first appearance on 1 April 2019. Bowden's incarnation of Ben remained hard-edged and struggled to find a softer side. Bowden believed that the most interesting story was about finding who Ben is "deep down". Ben has "a lot of bravado and a lot to be said about who he portrays himself on the outer, but there's so much history and so much darkness." But he believed that there is a softer side to Ben which he hoped could be fully explored.


title: Ben Mitchell (EastEnders)

text: Shortly after Ben's birth in 1996, he became the second character in "EastEnders" history to contract meningitis—the first being Vicki Fowler in 1989. As a result, he lost his hearing in one ear. This launched a storyline which highlighted "the depth of ignorance surrounding HIV and Aids in Walford", when Ben's parents blamed HIV-positive resident Mark Fowler (Todd Carty) for causing his illness. Phil and Kathy's marriage collapsed by the end of the year; jealous of having to share his wife's attention with Ben, Phil became an alcoholic, and at one point snatched Ben and abandoned him beside a fire. In April 1998, Kathy took Ben and moved to South Africa, where her brother Ted lived. For many years afterwards, Ben and Phil had a long-distance relationship. This led Kate Lock, author of "Who's Who in EastEnders" to assess in 2000 that away from his father's influence, "the chances of Ben developing normally are probably better than most."


title: Ben Mitchell (EastEnders)

text: In 2007, Ben was part of a storyline in which he, his father, Ian and Peter Beale (Thomas Law) were involved in a car accident, when the Range Rover they were travelling in crashed into a lake. The scenes cost £1 million to produce and were filmed in Surrey over four days, partly in a specially designed stunt tank. Jones had both a stunt double and dummy to supplement his scenes. Despite being one of the most expensive stunts ever filmed by a soap opera, the episode drew "EastEnders" lowest ever audience share and second lowest ratings due to a scheduling conflict with ITV's "Emmerdale".


title: Ben Mitchell (EastEnders)

text: "EastEnders" scriptwriters worked closely with the NSPCC on the storyline which saw Ben abused by his soon-to-be stepmother, Stella Crawford (Sophie Thompson). According to Thompson, the best aspect of the storyline was that she and Jones "felt so safe and comfortable with each other as actors. And obviously we knew that we were both just telling a story and it was far from real." Explaining the motivation behind Stella's abuse of Ben, she revealed: "As far as Ben's concerned, she sees him as an obstacle which she has to overcome to get what she wants. And the fact she doesn't understand unconditional love, the fact she's never experienced it, goes a long way in explaining why she's treating Ben the way she is. Ultimately, Ben's in her way and she realises that she has a hold over him and she'll use that power to get him out of the way and to get that ring on her finger she has longed for."


title: Ben Mitchell (EastEnders)

text: It was reported in July 2011 that Ben would come out as a homosexual. He became the third gay character in the series at the time, and the sixteenth in its history. Kirkwood commented, "For "EastEnders" viewers, it was never a question of if, but more like when Ben Mitchell was going to come out as gay. The Mitchells represent the spirit of "EastEnders" – tough, loyal and uncompromising. To see a man like Phil learn to deal with, and ultimately accept, his gay son, is a valid story for a drama like "EastEnders" to embark on." McFadden stated that Phil had never considered the possibility of Ben being gay, rather, he held an idealised view of his son and hoped he would become more like Jay, interested in "normal macho things". He explained that, while Phil could see his son was in turmoil, he was unaware of the depth of it, and believed Ben to be confused about his sexuality because of a prison assault. In contrast, Kirkwood stated his belief that Ben's coming out would not be a surprise to Phil, and that he had "probably been dreading this news for many years." Scriptwriter Christopher Reason said that Ben's storyline would be a long-running one, which would see him "learn wrath" from his father.


title: Ben Mitchell (EastEnders)

text: It was announced Fergison would be leaving "EastEnders" in 2012. Daniel Kilkelly of Digital Spy later reported Heather would be murdered by Ben during an argument at her flat. Kilkelly revealed further details of Heather's exit on 11 March 2012. He reported that Heather would die when Ben hits her with a picture frame, causing her to fall back and hit her head on a kitchen counter. In May 2012, it was announced that Pascoe had decided to leave the role. It was confirmed that the truth would come out about Heather Trott's (Cheryl Fergison) murder which would ultimately lead to Ben's departure, but how the truth would be revealed was being closely kept under wraps by "EastEnders" bosses although they did say it will be the outcome everyone is hoping for. He made his final appearance on 24 August 2012.


title: Ben Mitchell (EastEnders)

text: On 2 October 2017, it was announced that Ben would be written out of the soap again as part of an "explosive storyline". A show spokesperson confirmed the departure and commented, "Harry has been a great addition to the cast and we wish him all the best for the future." Following the news of Reid's departure, "EastEnders" fans started to launch a petition to save Ben Mitchell from the axe and "don't lose the best Ben" that "EastEnders" had. After stealing a large sum of money, Ben leaves Walford for Calais after departing on a ferry. Ben's departure and Reid's final episodes in the role is originally broadcast on 12 January 2018. Reid explained that Ben leaves following the deaths of Abi and his boyfriend, Paul Coker (Jonny Labey), and a failed relationship with Luke Browning (Adam Astill). The actor believed that Ben had made the correct choice about leaving, but admitted his method was not ideal. He added that Phil would feel "very angry" and "betrayed" if he discovered Ben stole the money. Reid was pleased with his exit storyline and told Kilkelly ("Digital Spy") that he would miss portraying "a very layered character".


title: Ben Mitchell (EastEnders)

text: Bowden began filming with the show in January 2019. Ben returns with his daughter, Lexi Pearce, and her mother, Ben's cousin Lola Pearce (Danielle Harold). He returned in the episode broadcast on 1 April 2019.


title: Ben Mitchell (EastEnders)

text: Producers lined up a new romance story between Ben and Callum "Halfway" Highway (Tony Clay), who is in a heterosexual relationship with Whitney Dean (Shona McGarty). The story was part of senior executive producer Kate Oates' plan to further diversify the show with more LGBT stories. She also believed that Callum was ideal for a story about exploring sexuality. Their involvement begins when Ben witnesses Callum injuring himself to avoid going back to the army. Ben sells a stolen van to Callum which is later detained by police. Callum confronts Ben about the scam and an argument ensues. The scene becomes sensual as the pair get close and Ben realises Callum's attraction to men. Ben teases Callum, who denies the accusations and states that he is happy with Whitney. Callum becomes violent and punches Ben when he continues to mock his sexuality. The scenes were not publicised in advance spoilers and came as a surprise to viewers. The following day at the British Soap Awards, Clay revealed that the story would be explored further. He said that the scene demonstrated that "something's clicked there, and something's sparked between them."


title: Ben Mitchell (EastEnders)

text: The story progressed rapidly over a weeks worth of episodes. Ben taunts Callum over his sexuality and he fears that Whitney will discover the truth. Callum asks his brother Stuart Highway (Ricky Champ) for help. Stuart locates Ben and threatens him to leave Callum alone. Writers also created scenes to get Ben and Callum closer, which play out at the latter's house warming party. Callum's flat was previously occupied by Ben's dead boyfriend Paul. Ben gets drunk and goes into Paul's old bedroom where he confides in Callum about how Paul's murder affected him. The show soon aired the pair's first kiss after Callum admits to Ben that he is lonely. They get into a passionate embrace and begin an affair.


title: Ben Mitchell (EastEnders)

text: Clay told Daniel Kilkelly from Digital Spy that the Ben and Callum's affair would create typical "EastEnders" drama with "a bit of a fallout". He described the kiss as a "moment of ecstasy" and Callum felt "wonderful" with Ben. When the realisation of his infidelity occurs, Clay believed Callum feels ashamed for his treatment of Whitney. Callum's guilt spurs him on to proposing marriage to Whitney. Clay explained that there is "a massive contrast" between Ben and Callum but noted they shared some similarities and connections. He added "Callum may not just be someone that Ben can toy with – there's something there." Ben and Callum may be "polar opposites" but they both have a difficult relationship with their fathers. Bowden told Kilkelly that the "most interesting thing" is exploring their family backgrounds with similar upbringings. He stated that "they have common ground and Ben sees that. It is the first time I've been on the square and I've found common ground with someone." Bowden also believed that Callum never really found "common ground" with another character until he met Ben. Clay agreed and added that their understanding of each other creates their romantic connection.


title: Ben Mitchell (EastEnders)

text: The story provoked an instant positive reaction from media and viewer interest. "Metro's" Lindsay branded them "soap's most exciting couple in years." He opined that "vengeful and bitter" Ben getting together with "awkward chap" Callum "sounds preposterous". But their "electric" kiss scene sent "fans wild". When asked by Lindsay about the "fandom", Clay stated "I'm ready, bring it on! I'm prepared! [...] It's really exciting to be part of a storyline in EastEnders that grips people."


title: Ben Mitchell (EastEnders)

text: In 2007, Ben's abuse by Stella won Best Storyline at the "Inside Soap" Awards, and was nominated as the Best Soap Storyline at the "TV Quick" and "TV Choice" Awards.


title: Ben Mitchell (EastEnders)

text: Ben as played by Jones received generally negative reviews from critics. "The Guardian" Grace Dent called him a "spooky little git", and her fellow "Guardian" writer Daniel Martin deemed him "gormless". As part of an "EastEnders"-themed drinking game, "Digital Spy" Alex Fletcher instructed players to drink beer every time Ben "is spotted whimpering on the stairs". Dent suggested that Phil and Ian's fighting over custody of Ben would turn him into "the next Jeffrey Dahmer", and in an article on the future of Britain's soap opera adolescents, noted that: "Albert Square will no doubt reap what it's sown with tiny, cursed, abused, accident-prone, 11-year-old Ben Mitchell. Oh it's going to be fun and games when Ben turns 16 and finds his inner anger." Continuing this theme, Dent questioned "how far are they going to push this little boy?". She listed the many setbacks and problems Ben had encountered, and suggested that within five years, he would be "on top of the community centre with a rifle using [Peggy's] wig as target practice." Dent later criticised a string of storylines which saw Ben endangered, from his abuse by Stella, to a car accident in which he almost drowned. She stated that his numerous pitfalls were becoming "a touch daft" and likened Ben to the often-killed "South Park" character Kenny McCormick. Dent hypothesised that the "EastEnders" scriptwriters "cheer themselves by conjuring up fresh ways to dispense with [Ben]" and said she had contacted the BBC with her own suggestions for creative deaths that might befall him.


title: Ben Mitchell (EastEnders)

text: Kevin O'Sullivan of the "Daily Mirror" commented on "ballet-loving Ben's obsession with West End musicals, Judy Garland and dancing," and in 2008 suggested that Ben was gay, pre-dating the character's coming out by three years. "The Guardian" Lisa O'Connell welcomed the eventual decision to have Ben come out, and called the plot "a perfect foundation for years of dramatic conflict", which would "no doubt test the filial relationship to the limits." The November 2011 storyline which featured Ben's false molestation accusation against Christian, and Phil's subsequent attack on him, drew criticism from singer George Michael, who stated that "EastEnders" depiction of homosexuality was "insulting to the gay community." A BBC spokesperson responded, ""EastEnders" reflects a wide range of issues. All soap characters face their own trials and tribulations in order to create drama, however "EastEnders" viewers will know that this is a story about Phil Mitchell who, while struggling with his own relationship with his son, will do anything to protect him."


title: Ben Mitchell (EastEnders)

text: On several occasions during his tenure, bookmakers have offered odds on Ben's storylines. In 2010, William Hill named him the 11/4 favourite to be found responsible for the whodunnit murder of Archie Mitchell. The culprit was revealed during the series' first live episode – Jones was in third place at 7/1 odds to make a mistake during transmission. After Jones' departure was announced, despite confirmation that the role would be recast, Ben became the favourite to be the next character killed off. In May 2022, Ben Mitchell was raped by Lewis Butler, but his husband, Callum Highway, thought that he had sex with Lewis consensually, for that he broke up with him. Ben went down a very dark path, and took drugs. He had a heart attack as a result.


title: Lou Taylor Pucci

text: Lou Taylor Pucci (born July 27, 1985) is an American actor who first appeared on film in Rebecca Miller's "" in 2002. Pucci had his breakthrough leading role in "Thumbsucker" (2005), for which he won a Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and the Silver Bear for Best Actor at the Berlin Film Festival. Pucci then starred in "The Chumscrubber" (2005), "Fast Food Nation" (2006), "The Go-Getter" (2007), "Explicit Ills" (2008), and "Carriers" (2009). Pucci had starring roles in the 2013 "Evil Dead" remake, as well as "The Story of Luke" (2013) and "Spring" (2014).


title: Lou Taylor Pucci

text: Pucci was born in Seaside Heights, New Jersey. His mother, Linda Farver, is a former model and beauty queen (Miss Union County), and his father, Louis Pucci, worked as a guitarist for the bands The Watch and Leap of Faith. He has two brothers. At the age of two, he moved to Keansburg, New Jersey. He is a graduate of Christian Brothers Academy in Lincroft, New Jersey.


title: Lou Taylor Pucci

text: He first acted at the age of ten in a hometown production of "Oliver!". Two years later he acted as an understudy on Broadway playing Freidrich in "The Sound of Music". He can be seen in Arie Posin's "The Chumscrubber", the HBO miniseries "Empire Falls", and starring as the lead in Mike Mills' film "Thumbsucker", for which he received the Special Jury Prize for Acting at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival and the Silver Bear Award for Best Actor at the 2005 Berlin Film Festival. He also played "St. Jimmy" in Green Day's "Jesus of Suburbia" music video.


title: Lou Taylor Pucci

text: In 2009, Pucci had three films that screened at the Sundance Film Festival: "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men", directed by John Krasinski; "The Informers", with Billy Bob Thornton, Winona Ryder, Kim Basinger and Mickey Rourke, based on Bret Easton Ellis' collection of short stories of the same name; and "The Answer Man" (formerly "Arlen Faber" and "The Dream of the Romans") with Jeff Daniels and Lauren Graham. Pucci was also a juror for the short film competition.


title: Lou Taylor Pucci

text: Pucci had roles in multiple indie films for the latter part of the decade, and had a leading role playing an autistic man in "The Story of Luke" (2013), alongside Seth Green. He also had a starring role in the "Evil Dead" (2013) remake, based on Sam Raimi's 1981 original and played one of the leading roles in the thriller "Spring". In November 2014, Pucci starred as Teddy Courtney in a ""-"Chicago P.D." crossover.


title: Lou Taylor Pucci

text: He also portrayed Ben in the horror film "Ava's Possessions." In 2016, he starred alongside Michael Shannon in the western thriller "Poor Boy", which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in April 2016.


title: Lou Taylor Pucci

text: In 2018, Pucci guest-starred in the first 3 episodes of Lifetime's thriller series "You" as Benji. In 2019 he guest-starred as Nock Nock in the FX comedy series "You're the Worst", then went on to play a recurring role in "".


title: Philosophy, politics and economics

text: Philosophy, politics and economics, or politics, philosophy and economics (PPE), is an interdisciplinary undergraduate or postgraduate degree which combines study from three disciplines. The first institution to offer degrees in PPE was the University of Oxford in the 1920s.


title: Philosophy, politics and economics

text: This particular course has produced a significant number of notable graduates such as Aung San Suu Kyi, Burmese politician and State Counsellor of Myanmar, Nobel Peace Prize winner; Princess Haya bint Hussein, daughter of the late King Hussein of Jordan; Christopher Hitchens, the British–American author and journalist; Will Self, British author and journalist; Oscar-winning writer and director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck; Philippa Foot and Michael Dummett, philosophers; Harold Wilson, Edward Heath, David Cameron, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom; Hugh Gaitskell, William Hague and Ed Miliband, former Leaders of the Opposition; former Prime Ministers of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto and Imran Khan; and Malcolm Fraser, Bob Hawke and Tony Abbott, former Prime Ministers of Australia. The course received fresh attention in 2017, when Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai earned a place.


title: Philosophy, politics and economics

text: In the 1980s, the University of York went on to establish its own PPE degree based upon the Oxford model; King's College London, the University of Warwick, the University of Manchester, and other British universities later followed. According to the BBC, the Oxford PPE "dominate[s] public life" (in the UK). It is now offered at several other leading colleges and universities around the world. More recently Warwick University and King’s College added a new degree under the name of PPL (Politics, Philosophy and Law) with the aim to bring an alternative to the more classical PPE degrees.


title: Philosophy, politics and economics

text: In the United States, it is offered by over 50 colleges and universities, including three Ivy League schools – the University of Pennsylvania, Yale University (under the designation Ethics, Politics and Economics), and Dartmouth College -- and a large number of distinguished public universities, including the University of Michigan, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the University of Virginia. In 2020, in addition to its undergraduate degree programs in PPE, Virginia Tech joined the Chapman University's Smith Institute as among the first research centers in the world dedicated to interdisciplinary research in PPE.


title: Philosophy, politics and economics

text: Several PPE programs exist in Canada, most notably the first endowed school in the nation - the Frank McKenna School of Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Mount Allison University. In Asia, Tsinghua University, Waseda University, NUS, Tel-Aviv University and Ashoka University are among those that have PPE or similar programs.


title: Philosophy, politics and economics

text: Philosophy, politics and economics was established as a degree course at the University of Oxford in the 1920s, as a modern alternative to classics (known as "literae humaniores" or "greats" at Oxford) because it was thought as a more modern alternative for those entering the civil service. It was thus initially known as "modern greats". The first PPE students commenced their course in the autumn of 1921. The regulation by which it was established is Statt. Tit. VI. Sect. 1 C; "the subject of the Honour School of Philosophy, Politics, and Economics shall be the study of the structure, and the philosophical and economic principles, of Modern Society." Initially it was compulsory to study all three subjects for all three years of the course, but in 1970 this requirement was relaxed, and since then students have been able to drop one subject after the first year – most do this, but a minority continue with all three.


title: Philosophy, politics and economics

text: During the 1960s some students started to critique the course from a left-wing perspective, culminating in the publication of a pamphlet, "The Poverty of PPE", in 1968, written by Trevor Pateman, who argued that it "gives no training in scholarship, only refining to a high degree of perfection the ability to write short dilettantish essays on the basis of very little knowledge: ideal training for the social engineer". The pamphlet advocated incorporating the study of sociology, anthropology and art, and to take on the aim of "assist(ing) the radicalisation and mobilisation of political opinion outside the university". In response, some minor changes were made, with influential leftist writers such as Frantz Fanon and Régis Debray being added to politics reading lists, but the core of the programme remained the same.


title: Philosophy, politics and economics

text: Christopher Stray has pointed to the course as one reason for the gradual decline of the study of classics, as classicists in political life began to be edged out by those who had studied the modern greats.


title: Philosophy, politics and economics

text: Dario Castiglione and Iain Hampsher-Monk have described the course as being fundamental to the development of political thought in the UK, since it established a connection between politics and philosophy. Previously at Oxford, and for some time subsequently at Cambridge, politics had been taught only as a branch of modern history.


title: Philosophy, politics and economics

text: The programme is rooted in the view that to understand social phenomena one must approach them from several complementary disciplinary directions and analytical frameworks. In this regard, the study of philosophy is considered important because it both equips students with meta-tools such as the ability to reason rigorously and logically, and facilitates ethical reflection. The study of politics is considered necessary because it acquaints students with the institutions that govern society and help solve collective action problems. Finally, studying economics is seen as vital in the modern world because political decisions often concern economic matters, and government decisions are often influenced by economic events. The vast majority of students at Oxford drop one of the three subjects for the second and third years of their course. Oxford now has more than 600 undergraduates studying the subject, admitting over 200 each year.


title: Philosophy, politics and economics

text: Oxford PPE graduate Nick Cohen and former tutor Iain McLean consider the course's breadth important to its appeal, especially "because British society values generalists over specialists". Academic and Labour peer Maurice Glasman noted that "PPE combines the status of an elite university degree – PPE is the ultimate form of being good at school – with the stamp of a vocational course. It is perfect training for cabinet membership, and it gives you a view of life". However he also noted that it had an orientation towards consensus politics and technocracy.


title: Philosophy, politics and economics

text: Geoffrey Evans, an Oxford fellow in politics and a senior tutor, critiques that the Oxford course's success and consequent over-demand is a self-perpetuating feature of those in front of and behind the scenes in national administration, in stating "all in all, it's how the class system works". In the current economic system he bemoans the unavoidable inequalities besetting admissions and thereby enviable recruitment prospects of successful graduates. The argument itself intended as a paternalistic ethical reflection on how governments and peoples can perpetuate social stratification.


title: Philosophy, politics and economics

text: Stewart Wood, a former adviser to Ed Miliband who studied PPE at Oxford in the 1980s and taught politics there in the 1990s and 2000s, acknowledged that the programme has been slow to catch up with contemporary political developments, saying that "it does still feel like a course for people who are going to run the Raj in 1936... In the politics part of PPE, you can go three years without discussing a single contemporary public policy issue". He also stated that the structure of the course gave it a centrist bias, due to the range of material covered: "...most students think, mistakenly, that the only way to do it justice is to take a centre position".


title: Danville, Virginia

text: Danville is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States, located in the Southside Virginia region and on the fall line of the Dan River. It was a center of tobacco production and was an area of Confederate activity during the American Civil War, due to its strategic location on the Richmond and Danville Railroad. In April 1865 it briefly served as the final capital of the Confederacy before the South surrendered.


title: Danville, Virginia

text: Danville is the principal city of the Danville, Virginia Micropolitan Statistical Area. As of the 2020 census, the population was 42,590. It is bounded by Pittsylvania County, Virginia and Caswell County, North Carolina to the south. It hosts the Danville Otterbots baseball club of the Appalachian League.


title: Danville, Virginia

text: Danville had an African American majority during the Reconstruction era and had African American political representatives of the Readjuster Party until after the Danville Massacre and Democrats regaining control locally and statewide. The area again saw violence during the civil rights era.


title: Danville, Virginia

text: Numerous Native American tribes had lived in this part of the Piedmont region since prehistoric times. During the colonial period, the area was inhabited by Siouan language-speaking tribes.


title: Danville, Virginia

text: In 1728, English colonist William Byrd headed an expedition sent to determine the true boundary between Virginia and North Carolina. Late that summer, the party camped upstream from what is now Danville. Byrd was so taken with the beauty of the land, that he prophesied a future settlement in the vicinity, where people would live "with much comfort and gaiety of Heart." He named the river along which they camped as the "Dan", for Byrd felt he had wandered "From Dan to Beersheba."


title: Danville, Virginia

text: After the American Revolutionary War, the first settlement developed in 1792 downstream from Byrd's campsite, at a spot along the river shallow enough to allow fording. It was named "Wynne's Falls", after the first settler. The village developed from the meetings of pioneering Revolutionary War veterans, who gathered annually here to fish and talk over old times.


title: Danville, Virginia

text: In 1793, the state General Assembly authorized construction of a tobacco warehouse at Wynne's Falls. This marks the start of the town as "The World's Best Tobacco Market", Virginia's largest market for brightleaf tobacco. The village was renamed "Danville" by an act of November 23, 1793. A charter for the town was drawn up February 17, 1830, but by the time of its issue, the population had exceeded the pre-arranged boundaries. This necessitated a new charter, which was issued in 1833. In that year, James Lanier was elected the first mayor, assisted by a council of "twelve fit and able men". By the mid-19th century, William T. Sutherlin, a planter and entrepreneur, was the first to apply water power to run a tobacco press. He became a major industrialist in the region.


title: Danville, Virginia

text: Several railroads reached Danville, including the Richmond and Danville Railroad (completed 1856), and the Atlantic and Danville Railway (completed 1890). These enabled the export of Danville's manufacturing and agricultural products. The major growth in industry came in the late 19th century, after the war. The Southern Railway, successor to the Richmond and Danville, built a grand passenger station in Danville in 1899, which is still in use by Amtrak and is a satellite facility of the Virginia Museum.


title: Danville, Virginia

text: At the outbreak of the Civil War, Danville had a population of some 5,000 people. During those four years of war, the town was transformed into a strategic center of Confederate activity. Local planter and industrialist William T. Sutherlin was named quartermaster of its depot, the rail center was critical for supplying Confederate forces, and a hospital station was established for Confederate wounded. A network of batteries, breastworks, redoubts and rifle pits defended the town.


title: Danville, Virginia

text: A prison camp was set up, with the conversion of six tobacco warehouses, including one owned by Sutherlin, for use as prisons. At one time they held more than 5,000 captured American soldiers. Malnutrition and dysentery, plus a smallpox epidemic in 1864, caused the death of 1,314 of these prisoners. Their remains have been interred in the Danville National Cemetery.


title: Danville, Virginia

text: The Richmond and Danville Railroad was the main supply route into Petersburg, where Lee's Army of Northern Virginia was holding the defensive line to protect Richmond. The Danville supply train ran until General Stoneman's Union cavalry troops tore up the tracks. This event was immortalized in the song, "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down".


title: Danville, Virginia

text: In 1865 Danville hosted the Confederate government. President Jefferson Davis stayed at the mansion of William T. Sutherlin from April 3 to 10, 1865, and it became known as the last "Capitol of the Confederacy". Here he wrote and issued his last Presidential Proclamation. The final Confederate Cabinet meeting was held at the Benedict House (since destroyed) in Danville. Davis and members of his cabinet left the city when they learned of Lee's surrender at Appomattox, and moved to Greensboro, North Carolina, making their way south. On the day they left, Governor William Smith arrived from Lynchburg to establish his headquarters here.


title: Danville, Virginia

text: In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, tobacco processing was a major source of wealth for business owners in the city, in addition to the textile mills. Wealthy planters and owners built fine houses, some of which have been preserved.


title: Danville, Virginia

text: Given the falls on the river, the area was prime for industrial development based on water power. On July 22, 1882, six of Danville's residents (Thomas Benton Fitzgerald, Dr. H.W. Cole, Benjamin F. Jefferson and three brothers: Robert A., John H., and James E. Schoolfield) founded the Riverside Cotton Mills, making use of cotton produced throughout the South. Both the Riverside Cotton Mills and Danville itself grew tremendously during Fitzgerald’s leadership of the company as President. In its day it was known nationally as Dan River Inc., the largest single-unit textile mill in the world.


title: Danville, Virginia

text: The Southern Railway constructed a railroad line to the city in the late 19th century and had facilities here, which contributed to the growing economy. In 1899 the company completed a grand passenger station, designed by its noted architect Frank Pierce Milburn. For many years, passenger traffic was strong on the railroad; it also operated freight trains.


title: Danville, Virginia

text: A serious train wreck occurred in Danville on September 27, 1903. "Old 97", the Southern Railway's crack express mail train, was running behind schedule. Its engineer "gave her full throttle", but the speed of the train caused it to jump the tracks while on a high trestle crossing the valley of the Dan River. The engine and five cars plunged into the ravine below, killing nine and injuring seven. The locomotive and its engineer, Joseph A. ("Steve") Broadey, were memorialized in song. A historic marker at the train crash site is located on U.S. 58 between Locust Lane and North Main Street. A mural of the "Wreck of the Old 97" has been painted on a downtown Danville building to commemorate the incident.


title: Danville, Virginia

text: The industrial town grew rapidly in the late 19th century, attracting many single workers, and associated gambling, drinking, and prostitution establishments. By the early 20th century, the city passed laws against gambling, but it continued in small, private places. On September 9, 1882, Danville Mayor John H. Johnston shot and killed John E. Hatcher, his chief of police. Hatcher had demanded an apology for a statement Johnston had made regarding unaccounted fine money. Johnston was charged with murder, but he was acquitted at trial. The Southern "culture of honor" was still strong and jurors apparently believed the killing was justified.


title: Danville, Virginia

text: In 1882 the biracial Readjuster Party had gained control of the city council, causing resentment and even alarm among some white residents, even though the council was still dominated by white members; the city had a majority African-American population. The Readjuster Party had been in power at the state level since 1879. What is called the Danville Riot took place on November 3, 1883, a few days before the election, when a racially-motivated street fight turned to shooting after a large crowd gathered; five men were killed, four of them black. A local Danville commission found African Americans at fault for the violence on November 3, but a US Senate investigation decided that white residents were to blame. No prosecution resulted from either inquiry.


title: Danville, Virginia

text: The Equal Justice Initiative included the deaths in the Danville Riot in its 2015 report of lynchings in the South from 1877 to 1950. There were five lynchings in Danville, the second highest total of any independent city or county in the state, led only by Tazewell with 10.


title: Danville, Virginia

text: Afterward Democrats forced African Americans out of office and suppressed their voting rights. In November 1883 Democrats regained control of the state legislature by a large majority, and pushed out the Readjuster Party.


title: Danville, Virginia

text: White Democratic legislators interpreted the Danville events as more reason to push blacks out of politics. In 1902 the state legislature passed a new constitution that raised barriers to voter registration, effectively disenfranchising most blacks and many poor whites, who had been part of the Readjuster Party. They excluded them from the political system, causing them to be underrepresented and their segregated facilities to be underfinanced.


title: Danville, Virginia

text: On July 15, 1904, the Danville police successfully broke up a lynching party by firing warning shots above a crowd. About 75 white men had gathered at the jail to take Roy Seals, an African-American man arrested as a suspect in the murder of a white railroad worker. The police saved Seals and the city quickly indicted some of the lynch mob; several men were convicted, fined and served 30 days in jail. The killer was found to have been another white man, who was prosecuted.


title: Danville, Virginia

text: On March 2, 1911, Danville Police Chief R. E. Morris, who had been elected to three two-year terms and was running for a fourth term, was arrested as an escaped convicted murderer. He admitted that he was really Edgar Stribling of Harris County, Georgia. He had been on the run for thirteen years.


title: Danville, Virginia

text: On October 13, 1917, Walter Clark was lynched. He was an African-American man who had fatally shot a policeman while resisting arrest for the killing of his common-law wife. Clark held off the police for two hours, but a mob gathered and set his house on fire. He was shot multiple times and killed as he left the house. His was the last lynching in Danville.


title: Danville, Virginia

text: Heightened activism in the civil rights movement in Virginia occurred in Danville during the summer of 1963. Since the early 20th century, most blacks had been excluded from voting by the state constitution, which had created barriers to voter registration. White Democrats had imposed legal segregation after regaining control of the state legislature following the Reconstruction era, and Jim Crow laws maintained white supremacy. On May 31, representatives of the black community organized as the Danville Christian Progressive Association (DCPA), demanding an end to segregation and job discrimination in the city. They declared a boycott of white merchants who refused to hire blacks and marched to City Hall in protest of conditions.


title: Danville, Virginia

text: Most of the marchers were high school students. Police and city workers, armed with clubs, beat the young protesters and sprayed them with fire hoses. Around forty protesters needed medical attention, but the marches and other protests continued for several weeks. Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), came to Danville and spoke at High Street Baptist Church about the police brutality. He said it was the worst he had seen in the South. The date of one protest on June 10, 1963, later came to be referred to as "Bloody Monday".


title: Danville, Virginia

text: The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) sent organizers to Danville to support the local movement. They helped lead protests, including demonstrations at the Howard Johnson Hotel and restaurant on Lee Highway. The hotel was known for discriminating locally against blacks as customers and excluding them as workers. A special grand jury indicted 13 DCPA, SCLC, and SNCC activists for violating the "John Brown" law. This law, passed in 1830 after a slave uprising, made it a serious felony to "...incite the colored population to acts of violence or war against the white population." It became known as the "John Brown" law in 1860 because it was used to convict and hang abolitionist John Brown after his raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859.


title: Danville, Virginia

text: By the end of August, more than 600 protesters had been arrested in Danville on charges of inciting to violence, contempt, trespassing, disorderly conduct, assault, parading without a permit, and resisting arrest. Because of the large number of arrests on these charges, often the jails were overcrowded, and protesters were housed in detention facilities in other nearby jurisdictions. The demonstrations failed to achieve desegregation in Danville at that time. Town facilities remained segregated until after passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. African-American residents were mostly unable to register and vote until after the federal government enforced their constitutional rights under the Voting Rights Act of 1965.


title: Danville, Virginia

text: Since the late 20th century, the textile industry has moved to offshore, cheaper labor markets. The Dan River mill has closed and many of its buildings have been torn down, with the bricks sold for other uses. "The White Mill" of the Dan Mill complex, considered historically and architecturally significant, is being renovated in the early 21st century as an apartment complex.


title: Danville, Virginia

text: In the late 20th century, the restructuring of the tobacco, textile, and railroad industries all had an adverse effect, resulting in the loss of many jobs in Danville. The decline in passenger traffic caused the Danville railroad station to fall into disuse. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1995, and has been renovated by a combination of public and private funding. Today part of the station devoted to the first satellite facility of the Science Museum of Virginia. Related spaces have been developed for a park with amphitheater, a community meeting and recreation facility, and the Danville Farmer's Market. The city used ISTEA funds in association with the Virginia Department of Transportation, and partnered also with Amtrak, Pepsi-Cola, and other private sources. The station renovations were completed in 1996. This project spurred investment in other warehouse properties, "which have been redeveloped into offices, commercial spaces, apartments, lofts, and restaurants. The approximately $4 million of federal grant money initiated the redevelopment and leveraged additional funds from public and private sources."


title: Danville, Virginia

text: The city and region continue to work to develop new bases for the economy. The losses have made it difficult to preserve the city's many architecturally and historically significant properties dating from its more prosperous years. In 2007 Preservation Virginia President William B. Kerkam, III, and its Executive Director Elizabeth S. Kostelny announced at a press conference held in Danville at Main Street Methodist Church that the entire city of Danville had been named as one of the Most Endangered Historic Sites in Virginia. It is working to preserve and redevelop the River District as a center for the community and to stimulate heritage tourism. In 2020, the city approved a referendum to open a Casino at the site of the old mill, which is slated to open in 2024.


title: Danville, Virginia

text: Danville is located along the southern border of Virginia, south of Lynchburg and northeast of Greensboro, North Carolina, via U.S. Route 29. U.S. Route 58 leads east to South Hill and west to Martinsville.


title: Danville, Virginia

text: According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which is land and (2.3%) is water.


title: Danville, Virginia

text: Danville has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen "Cfa"). Winter nights usually average below freezing, with air frosts being abundant during that season. During summer, it is influenced by the strong sun and convective air masses, providing both hot temperatures and frequent thunderstorms.


title: Danville, Virginia

text: "Note: the US Census treats Hispanic/Latino as an ethnic category. This table excludes Latinos from the racial categories and assigns them to a separate category. Hispanics/Latinos can be of any race."


title: Danville, Virginia

text: As of the census of 2010, Danville had a population of 43,055. The racial makeup of the city was White Non-Hispanic 46.7%, African American 48.3%, Hispanic 2.9%, Asian 0.9%, American Indian or Alaska Native 0.2%, and two or more races 1.3%.


title: Danville, Virginia

text: 25.4% of the population never married, 46.6% were married, 5.4% were separated. 11.6% were widowed and 11.0% were divorced.


title: Danville, Virginia

text: Prior to the recession of 2008, the City of Danville and its partners began a major project focused on the revitalization of the Historic Downtown and Tobacco Warehouse districts, now coined "The River District." The project continues with a new momentum as the public sector has joined the movement. See Danville River District.


title: Danville, Virginia

text: Millionaire's Row has many homes built in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by successful tobacco planters, who gained their wealth in this commodity crop. The mansions are in an area of many street trees and often have their own well-developed landscaping.


title: Danville, Virginia

text: The entire area of "Penn's Bottom", the nickname for the part of Main Street that was developed as the first suburb of Danville during the tobacco boom of the late 19th century, has been designated as a historic district. Other recognized historic districts include The Old West End, Tobacco Warehouse, Downtown Danville, Holbrook–Ross Street, and North Main.


title: Danville, Virginia

text: Also located in this district is the "Sutherlin Mansion", now used as the Danville Museum of Fine Arts and History. This Italianate mansion was the plantation home of Major William T. Sutherlin, a major tobacco processing industrialist, banker, politician, and Confederate quartermaster. In April 1865, he offered his mansion to President Jefferson Davis and his cabinet as the site of the last "Capitol of the Confederacy" after the fall of Richmond. The museum and its grounds occupy a block in this district. In the late 19th century, Sutherlin's surrounding plantation was subdivided and developed to create the surrounding residential neighborhood.


title: Danville, Virginia

text: Danville is known as "the city of churches" because it has more churches per square mile than any other city in the state of Virginia.


title: Danville, Virginia

text: The City of Danville has a council–manager government in which a city manager is hired by council to supervise the city government and ensure that the ordinances and policies made by the city council are carried out in an effective manner. The city council consists of nine members elected from single-member districts representing residents. The city council selects the mayor and vice mayor from among its members to serve two-year terms. The city council has the power "to adopt and enforce legislative and budgetary ordinances, policies, and rules and regulations necessary to conduct the public's business and to provide for the protection of the general health, safety and welfare of the public."


title: Danville, Virginia

text: The Danville Braves were a minor league baseball team in Danville from 1993 to 2020. They competed in the Appalachian League as a farm team of the Atlanta Braves. The Braves played their home games at American Legion Field. In conjunction with a contraction of Minor League Baseball beginning with the 2021 season, the Appalachian League was reorganized as a collegiate summer baseball league, and the Braves were replaced by the Danville Otterbots in the revamped league designed for rising college freshman and sophomores.


title: Danville, Virginia

text: Danville was once the home of WDRL-TV 24, a station that was an affiliate of the WB and United Paramount Network before changing ownership from 2007 to 2014. Today, it is known as WZBJ, a sister channel of WDBJ and is owned by Gray Television.


title: Danville, Virginia

text: Amtrak's Crescent train connects Danville with the cities of New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Charlotte, Atlanta, Birmingham and New Orleans. The Amtrak station, built in 1899 by Southern Railways, is situated at 677 Craghead Street.


title: Danville, Virginia

text: U.S. Route 58 (Riverside Dr/River St) parallels the north bank of the Dan River traveling east–west through Danville's main commercial district while the US 58 Bypass route bypasses the city's center to the south via the Danville Expressway. U.S. Route 29 splits into a business route and a bypass at the North Carolina/Virginia border. The business route enters the heart of Danville via West Main Street and Memorial Drive and exits via Central Boulevard and Piney Forest Road; US 29 Business travels relatively north–south. The bypass (future Interstate 785) takes the eastern segment of the Danville Expressway and rejoins the business route north of the city near Chatham, Virginia.


title: Danville, Virginia

text: U.S. Route 360, which connects Danville with Richmond, enters the city from the east concurrent with U.S. Route 58 (South Boston Road), continuing along U.S. Route 58 Business at the Danville Expressway interchange, and terminating at the North Main Street intersection just north of downtown.


title: Danville, Virginia

text: U.S. Route 311 in 2013 was expanded from North Carolina to terminate just outside Danville's western limits at U.S. Route 58.


title: Danville, Virginia

text: North Carolina Highway 86 becomes State Route 86 once it crosses the state line into Danville as South Main Street. It continues north to its terminus at US 29 Business/Central Boulevard.


title: Danville, Virginia

text: State Route 293 was created in 1998 to mark the route of old US 29 Business, which was rerouted to the west. SR 293 enters Danville's downtown historic district as West Main Street, then Main Street, and then crosses the Dan River to meet US 29 Business as North Main Street.


title: Danville, Virginia

text: State Route 51 parallels US 58 Business as Westover Drive from its western terminus at US 58 Business at the Danville's corporate limits to its eastern terminus at US 58 Business near the Dan River.


title: Danville, Virginia

text: "It's a mighty rough road from Lynchburg to Danville," says the classic Wreck of the Old 97 song, memorializing the September 27, 1903, event that became arguably the most famous train wreck in U.S. history. The Richmond and Danville Railroad, as "the Danville train," is also referenced in the popular folk-style song "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down".


title: Ravi Shankar Prasad

text: Ravi Shankar Prasad (born 30 August 1954) is an Indian politician and lawyer, from the Bharatiya Janata Party. A Member of Parliament since 2000, first in the Rajya Sabha (2000-2019) and then in the Lok Sabha (since 2019), Prasad has served as Union Minister multiple times: As Minister of State, he served in the ministries of Coal (2001-2003), Law and Justice (2002-2003), and Information and Broadcasting (2003-2004) under Atal Bihari Vajpayee's premiership; as Cabinet Minister, he held the Law and Justice (2014, 2016-2021), Communications (2014-2016, 2019-2021), and Electronics and Information Technology (2014-2021) portfolios under Narendra Modi's premiership.


title: Ravi Shankar Prasad

text: His term as Union Minister was marked with the repeal of 1500 archaic laws, the landmark resolution of the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi dispute, handling of litigation over the purchase of Rafale fighter planes, and digitization of 15000 trial courts. On the other hand, his tenure also saw controversy over the proposed National Judicial Appointments Commission, constant friction between the judiciary and the executive, and rows with social media platforms Twitter and Facebook over local rules.