Last updated: 30 June 2022
What’s a cookie?
A cookie is a tiny file that stores a fragment of information on your computer/mobile. Cookies are used on almost all websites.
When you visit a website, that website is able to store cookies on your device for future reference. When you return to the website, the information stored in those files can be accessed by the website.
We use a number of cookies on this website. They can be categorised in the following way:
Strictly necessary cookies
We use these cookies to make the website function. They are vital to the website working properly.
Functional cookies
These cookies make the website better for you. They store things such as whether you like subtitles being on or off when watching a video. If they are turned off, the website will still function. However, the website won’t work as well as it did.
Performance cookies
We use these cookies to improve the website. For example, they help us to learn which pages are popular, and which are unpopular. We can use that insight to make the website more interesting or useful for visitors like you.
More details about the cookies in these categories can be found further down this page.
How to control cookies
You can control which cookies are saved on your computer/mobile. Please be aware, making changes to essential cookies may stop the website functioning correctly.
One way to change the cookies in use is to use the cookie control installed on the website. It can be opened by selecting this graphic which is on the bottom-right corner of every page:
Another way to control cookies is by changing the settings of the browser (e.g. Chrome) that you’re using. You can find more information about this on the All About Cookies website.
Cookies set by other websites
Sometimes we embed a feature from another website. An example of this would be adding a YouTube video to a page.
We do this to make the most of the funds our supporters give us. It’s expensive to host videos for playing on websites. If we use YouTube or Vimeo we can save the money of our supporters.
Embedded features sometimes store cookies on your computer/mobile phone. We have less control over these cookies – as they are saved in a different location on your device. With this is mind, we have highlighted these cookies when they come up. They are called ‘third party cookies’.
More about strictly necessary cookies
We employ the following cookies to help the website function. These cookies remember your preference for subtitles on videos, they let you pause and restart podcasts, they even remember your cookie settings!
These are the cookies that fall into this category:
We employ the following cookies to help the website function. These cookies remember your preference for subtitles on videos, they let you pause and restart podcasts, they even remember your cookie settings!
These are the cookies that fall into this category:
CookieControl
This stores the preferences you set with regard to cookies so they can be followed in future.
Type: first-party cookie
Lasts for: 1 year
More about functional cookies
These cookies are used to support website features that help visitors.
visitor_info1_live
Used by YouTube to store your preferences when watching videos.
Type: third-party
Lasts for: 6 months
ysc
Used by YouTube to track views of videos embedded in websites.
Type: third-party
Lasts for: the visit
vuid
Used by Vimeo to track how many times a video is watched
Type: third-party
Lasts for: 2 years
player
Used by Vimeo to store the user’s preferrered settings when watching videos.
Type: third-party
Lasts for: 1 year
__cf_bm
Used by some Vimeo videos to provide a smoother playing experience
Type: third-party
Lasts for: 30 minutes
_GRECAPTCHA
Used by the CAPTCHA functionality that reduces spam comments on posts
Type: third-party
Lasts for: 6 months
_abck
Used by the our email marketing provider, Mailchimp, to add you to our mailing list.
Type: third-party
Lasts for: 24 hours
ak_bmsc
Used by the our email marketing provider, Mailchimp, to add you to our mailing list.
Type: third-party
Lasts for: 2 hours
ak_bmsc
Used by the our email marketing provider, Mailchimp, to add you to our mailing list. This is stored at a separate domain to the previous listing.
Lasts for: 26 hours
Type: third-party
bm_sz
Used by the our email marketing provider, Mailchimp, to add you to our mailing list.
Type: third-party
Lasts for: 4 hours
In future, this may change as we make changes to the website. If that happens we will update this page to detail the cookies concerned.
More about performance cookies
Cookies related to Google Analytics
Imagine if a business didn’t know how many customers it had. How would it know if it was serving its customers well?
This is where analytics cookies are so useful. They help us to understand what people like you think of the website. They help us to see which pages no one visits, and which pages are a roaring success. We use Google Analytics for this purpose.
_ga
Used to tell users apart by Google Analytics. Note this doesn’t identify individuals. Rather it is used to report that 30 people visited a web page yesterday rather than 3 or 300.
Type: first-party
Lasts for: 2 years
_gid
This is another cookie that is used by Google Analytics to calculate individuals who are visiting one of our web pages.
Type: first-party
Lasts for: 24 hours
_ga_6X1486418D
Used by Google Analytics to calculate the number of times a user has visited our website and to record dates for the first and most recent visit.
Type: first-party
Last for: 2 years
Learn more about Google Analytics cookies from the Google Developers website.
More about cookies
You can learn more about cookies at the All About Cookies website.
If you have questions about the way we use cookies on this website do contact us.