In my first ever post for Backbench, I wrote about how the Labour Party faced an extremely perilous position in its northern seats, seats which had previously been safe for the party for years.

Yesterday was the 8th of March, also known as International Women’s Day. 8th of March has always been a date for me to look forward to, being born and raised in Norway. It’s known for having speeches and processions and sometimes protests, and I’ve always seen it as an important day to highlight women’s rights and battles.

The other day, while narcissistically examining myself in the bathroom mirror, I found a grey hair. Then, I found another. Then, another. Before I knew it, I was pulling them out of my head like a mother chimpanzee (I know they actually pull bugs and dirt out, but it was the best comparison I could come up with).

It´s 2017 and here I am adding on to the continuously growing manifesto. Another one of the millions of fed up women who just want the one thing we should have earned the second we were born: equality. In the spirit of International Women´s Day, we are going to talk about the one word that seem to terrify and disgust people more than pineapple on pizza. We are going to talk about feminism. So what is it that transformed the perception of such an empowering movement into some kind of lesbian whining committee?

Just a quick note to say the 2017 Student Publication Association are now open until March 20 and it would be great to see some winners from The University of Kent this year!

It's pretty much the only full set of awards students can enter their journalism too now, after the closure of the Guardian Student Media Awards last year.

Today, ahead of tomorrow’s budget, it has emerged that Philip Hammond will set out a payment of £320m for 140 new free schools, some of which could be grammar schools.

It’s still very much an open question as to whether the Conservatives will lift the ban on opening new grammar schools and this is a very controversial subject.

Particularly in Kent- one of the major areas of England which has an abundance of grammar schools.

At the start of the year I made a vow to myself to lose weight. Two months have passed and the failure to do so was as sad as it was predictable. But if I’m anything, I’m resilient. So earlier today I took a trip into Chatham’s high street and made to my way to Poundworld to rinse their supply of cherry Tango. You see cherry Tango has a surprisingly low calorie count for such a delicious carbonated drink at 33 calories for a 330ml can. Compare that to the 139 calories in a can of Coca Cola and the benefit of cherry Tango to my diet becomes clear.

Britain’s grammar schools are shining examples of what children can aspire to achieve and work towards. Yet there are people out there who wholeheartedly disagree with the very concept of them, and that’s fine, but I feel it’s my duty to defend the way I was educated.

Buzzfeed's "I'm Adopted but I'm Not..." video

In 1995, Denmark was approved to receive international adoptees from China. In the summer of 1996, a round-headed 9-month-old Chinese girl crossed the Danish border for the first time. My name is Lærke, and I am adopted from China.

Out of sheer curiosity, I decided to type the phrase ‘can journalists have tattoos?’ into Google.

Okay, maybe not only out of curiosity. There is perhaps a touch of paranoia in there too. That possibly the tiny red lines on my little fingers will hinder me from getting a job, or that by putting my hair up to reveal the tattoo on the back of my neck I somehow would then be unable to do said job correctly.