Last Wednesday in Manchester, a 64-year-old man with learning disabilities, David Askew, collapsed and died after two youths broke down his garden gate and tampered with his mother’s scooter. He had not been physically assaulted, but had been the subject of a campaign of intimidation by a gang of local yobs. Neighbours described the harassment as “like bear-baiting” and claimed that he had been “called names by children as young as eight who threw eggs and bricks at his house, kicked the door, and took his money and cigarettes”. Tom Shakespeare, an academic who has restricted growth (and nowadays, paraplegia), wrote in an online article for the Guardian last Saturday that he had faced persistent harassment over the years and that this spate of attacks on mentally impaired people had convinced him that hate crime was a real problem, while a letter in today’s paper suggests that young people need to be confronted with the hurt that this kind of harassment causes.
Today I found a post at the blog The Answer’s 42 alleging that the so-called burqa was to blame for the increased incidence of vitamin D deficiency in Asian women in the UK and resulting rickets in their children. The author linked a discussion between Nigel Farage and Salma Yaqoob on the Radio 4 Woman’s Hour in which women’s health was not even discussed (I didn’t hear it, but if previous form is anything to go by, it hinged on social interaction and security). The theory is pretty simple: covering your whole body keeps the sun off it, which means you don’t get as much vitamin D as you need. However, the reality may not be quite as simple.
About 24 hours ago, Muhammad Tantawi, the shaikh of al-Azhar in Cairo, died of a heart attack at Riyadh airport.
Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’oon.
Formalities over …
37 years of solitary confinement: the Angola three | Society | The Guardian
I had heard of the Angola Three before today, but this article puts the whole case into very clear detail for anyone else not familiar (and I wasn’t). Two African American men, Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox, have been held in solitary confinement at the Closed Cell Restricted (CCR) block at Angola prison in Louisiana since 1973. The author, Erwin James, is a convicted murderer and spent his first year in prison in a high-security part of a prison where the cell doors were opened only for “slopping out” (of the toilet buckets that were in common use in British prisons at that time) and meals and, sometimes, half an hour’s exercise:
The cells were 10ft x 5ft, with a chair, a table and a bed. You could walk up and down, run on the spot, stand still, or do push-ups and sit-ups – but sooner or later you had to just stop, and think.
As the days, weeks and months blur into one, without realising it you start to live completely inside your head. You dream about the past, in vivid detail – and fantasise about the future, for fantasies are all you have. You panic but it’s no good “getting on the bell” – unless you’re dying – and, even then, don’t hope for a speedy response. I had a lot to think about. When the man in the cell above mine hanged himself I thought about that, a lot. I still do. You look at the bars on the high window and think how easy it would be to be free of all the thinking.
Such thoughts must have crossed the minds of Wallace and Woodfox more than once during their isolation. They are fed through the barred gates of their 9ft x 6ft cells and allowed only one hour of exercise every other day alone in a small caged yard. Their capacity for psychological endurance alone is noteworthy.
Last week, Umar Lee posted his parting message to the Muslim blogging community, after his blog had been offline for some weeks. His reasoning was twofold: one is that all the best blogs (Sunni Sister, Izzy Mo, Tariq Nelson, Amir of Mujahideen Ryder etc) have been closed down or become inactive and the medium and community are no longer as vibrant as it was, and the other is that all the people who stand for action in the Muslim community are actually out doing things and practising Islam in mosques, while the internet has long been the domain of irreligious and anti-religious modernist types.
Today the Guardian carried a front-page story about how various Tory MPs and activists are being given training by an offshoot of the party’s youth wing, Conservative Future, named the Young Britons’ Foundation ([1], [2]). The group’s leadership regards the NHS as a waste of money, disbelieves global warming and condones waterboarding on the grounds that it “doesn’t do the prisoner any permanent physical harm although he may be reluctant to shower or use a flannel again in the future when/if he is freed”. A number of senior figures in the party have spoken at its events, including Michael Gove, John Redwood, David Davis and Ed Vaizey, and its president is Daniel Hannan, who denounced the NHS to American right-wing television.
The group’s chief executive, one Donal Blaney, has said, “we have been described as a Conservative madrasa, so we bring the next generation out to the States and bring them back radicalised”. Whether this is said by the group’s enemies or its leaders, I find the comparison to Muslim madrasas offensive. Madrasa is simply Arabic for school, and as used outside the Arabic-speaking world, it means any place of Islamic religious education, regardless of the political or sectarian stripe of the people running it. It does not usually mean an extremist training camp of the sort found in some parts of Pakistan; it usually just means a Sunday school where children (or adults, for that matter) are taught to recite the Qur’an and how to pray.
They are using this term in a similar way to how gangsters use al-Qa’ida imagery to make themselves look hard, but they are appropriate a term which scares others but is neutral or positive to us. If they want to call themselves a Tory radicals’ training camp, much as one offshoot of the Countryside Alliance, formed to defend fox-hunting, called itself the “Real CA” (as in Real IRA), that’s their business, but let them use a term which means what they are trying to say.
One of the two men who were convicted of the murder of James Bulger as boys was recalled to prison about a week ago, something the public found out yesterday and was all over the papers today. There is a lot of speculation about why this happened; it could have been down to a breach of his parole conditions, but the Daily Mirror’s “source” tells us that the person formerly known as Jon Venables had a fight with a colleague at work who subsequently reported him to the police, presumably not knowing who he was. The Government will not tell us why he was taken back into custody, and one minister let slip that it might prejudice any future criminal proceedings.
Yesterday I had a brief exchange of tweets with Organica, who told me of her enthusiasm for the British comedian, Ricky Gervais, best known for writing and starring in The Office, his stand-up shows, and most recently the critically very unacclaimed film titled The Invention of Lying. She was enjoying learning British English from him, including words like bloke, daft, quid and “going about”. There was a time, a few years ago, when the man could do no wrong and looked like the plucky outsider who won over America, but more recently his stand-up shows have given the impression that David Brent was only partially an act. What caused me to really lose respect for Ricky Gervais, however, was this:
Tags: lynn gilderdale, ricky gervais
A few months ago, Transport for London published a set of advertisements aimed at encouraging people, particularly women, not to take the unlicensed “minicabs” which attempt to pick up passengers by the side of the road, because it could lead to them getting attacked. Just this past week, an American blog, Sociological Images, picked up the ad (HT: Womanist Musings) which found fault with it for using violence against women in advertisements like PeTA commonly do, for being potentially upsetting and for ignoring potential risks for men in using unlicensed cabs. (There are a lot of complaints about it at the British-based F Word blog too.)
The London Evening Standard yesterday had a two-page feature on a forthcoming fatwa by the leader of the Minhaj-ul-Quran group, Dr Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri, which unequivocally condemns suicide bombings. The feature is dominated by a picture of an al-Muhajiroun demonstration, but features a long article by Allegra Mostyn-Owen, a former wife of Boris Johnson who is now married to a much younger Muslim man who is associated with Qadri’s organisation; a shorter article is by Douglas Murray of the “Centre for Social Cohesion”, a London think-tank notorious for hostility to Muslims and Muslim organisations. Mostyn-Owen’s article includes an interview with Dr Qadri himself in which he makes some sweeping generalisations about Muslims outside his group; both articles grossly overestimate his influence. (More: Brian Whitaker @ Comment is Free, Salman @ Rumoured.)
I heard the public apology by Tiger Woods last Friday on the BBC London evening news show, and was kind of satisfied when fate had me go through a long stretch of tunnel during that story on the way back from east London to Heathrow. I find it odd that Tiger Woods has to apologise to the rest of us for cheating on his wife. It is his wife that got hurt. We were just a bit disappointed (actually, I wasn’t; I didn’t care).
It’s not as if Tiger Woods is a priest or someone else who makes his living preaching about such matters. He plays golf for a living, and while golf may be known as a “gentleman’s sport” without tolerance for the boorish antics other sports are notorious for, golf is notorious as the sport of the rich and privileged, of those very so-called gentlemen. In some places, golf courses are known for environmental damage, for being built on stolen land and for using scarce water. A few years ago George Monbiot wrote these two articles ([1], [2]) about the involvement of Gary Player, a renowned South African golfer, in a golf development in Myanmar (Burma) and in other countries in the Far East where golf is the sport of corrupt and oppressive elites.
I’m not sure what reputation sportsmen have in America; in this country, footballers in particular are rapidly acquiring a reputation for being overpaid, unsportsmanlike prima donnas. But when one has a domestic crisis, whether it’s his or her fault or not, I don’t see why they should have to retire from public view and then make a grovelling apology to the public. Unless (as with the recent John Terry scandal) it may affect his relationship with his team-mates, it’s got nothing to do with sport.
I submitted a comment to this effect to this post at Shakesville, and for some reason (and no, the “prima donnas” bit wasn’t in it) it got deleted although my comment list at Disqus still lists it.
BBC News - Heathrow armed robbery accused on run from London court
Today a guy who was on trial for an armed robbery at Heathrow airport in 2004 jumped bail after having left the Royal Courts of Justice in London, ostensibly to consult his lawyers. This is his third trial; the previous two collapsed because of suspected jury tampering; the trial is the first non-jury criminal trial in England or Wales for 350 years. (Courts in Northern Ireland don’t have juries.)
He has been described as dangerous and the public are advised not to approach him. Has it taken them this long to realise this, given that he or his associates managed to nobble two juries in the past? Apparently the prosecution opposed granting him bail, but given his apparent record, it should have been a good reason to refuse him bail.
Various newspapers have reported that two sculptures to be erected at both ends of Brick Lane in east London, a narrow street which has become a trendy hang-out place and which is supposedly full of Bengalis, have been dubbed the “hijab gates” and have become the focus of a lot of local opposition. Quoted in the Guardian, broadcaster John Nicolson objected to a supposedly specifically Muslim image being used to represent a diverse area, while one “local Muslim woman” is quoted as calling the design “divisive” and saying that it creates “a stereotypical image of Islam” and endorses “the practice of the veil that not all of us are happy with”, while another, herself in hijab, was quoted as saying:
It is a huge waste of money. There has been enough conflict and tension since Brick Lane started developing after the yuppies moved in. This looks to me like a tool of aggravation and is taking a step backwards.
The other day I had a debate with Clair Lewis, a British disability activist and blogger, about the public reaction to the Kay Gilderdale case. Lewis was appalled by the show of public sympathy towards Kay and the way she was let off the hook after what she regarded as a 30-hour assault on her daughter, Lynn, after she discovered that she had taken what was intended to be a fatal morphine overdose. The Tory MP Ann Winterton had entered an early day motion in Parliament condemning the “pro-euthanasia bias” of the BBC, who broadcast the Panorama programme which was highly sympathetic to Kay Gilderdale, but also Terry Pratchett’s pro-euthanasia lecture (Pratchett has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s). At the time of writing, only ten MPs had supported her motion. (Lewis has since written another article on the Inglis and Gilderdale cases.)
Tags: lynn gilderdale
Last Thursday BBC Radio 4 broadcast a Report programme in which they attempted to “investigate” the links between British university Islamic societies (or ISocs) with terrorism, on the basis that Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalib, who attempted to blow up a plane near Detroit last Christmas, had been president of the ISoc at University College London. In doing this they turn to some of the familiar talking heads, Ed Husain among them, giving the societies themselves a voice only at the beginning. (Available on iPlayer apparently permanently.)
At the end of December there was an article by Hadley Freeman in the Guardian, characterising the past decade as a decade of fakery: fake science, fake politics and fake friendships connected only by Facebook. At the time, I criticised the article, but things I’ve learned over the past couple of weeks have put the issue of online friendships into sharper relief as there are people to whom this could be the only means of having any social life.
Tags: hadley freeman, lynn gilderdale
In 2002 Teresa May, the chairwoman of the Tory party appointed by Iain Duncan Smith, told the party’s conference that people called her party the “nasty party” and that their base was too narrow as were their sympathies on occasion. Norman Tebbit noted that this “nasty party” won three general elections but that it was never really a nasty party but a party which “took some very hard decisions”. However, besides its reputation (particularly towards the end) of a party which closed hospitals and taxed the poor, it also became widely associated with the bigoted remarks of a few of its MPs. Among them was David Evans, MP until 1997 for Welwyn and Hatfield, who gave a speech to sixth-formers in his constituency in which he referred to “some black bastard” who raped a schoolgirl, said he believed the Birmingham Six were guilty (they spent fifteen years in jail for an IRA bombing but were cleared on appeal) and said of his female Labour opponent, who was a school inspector and a magistrate, “she’s a single girl, lives with her boyfriend, three bastard children, lives in Cambridge” (i.e. out of the constituency).
Does anyone remember what Robert Kilroy-Silk was like before he wrote that column in the Daily Express — AKA Daily Spew — saying that the West owes Muslims nothing, being as we are all limb-choppers and women-repressers etc., and then tried to make a name for himself by getting involved with UKIP?
A YouTuber who suffers from ME has published a recording of his chat show from the early 1990s, in which ME is discussed over 40 minutes with various medical professionals including a neurologist, a psychiatrist, Dr Anne Macintyre (who interviewed the Gilderdale family for a separate documentary in the early 1990s) and various ME sufferers and their relatives. Kilroy talks over them incessantly, in at least two cases jumping in on them before we could hear the point the speaker was trying to make, and generally raising the pitch until people are shouting over each other. And this is all about ME, a condition which makes people sensitive to noise among other things.
It was said of Hilary Lister, the quadriplegic lady who sailed solo round the coast of Britain and is liable to stop breathing from time to time as a result of the condition which causes her disability, that if she were to die suddenly, it is better that it happens when out on the waves than in front of daytime telly. This video shows how bad British daytime telly can be.
It’s in five parts: [Part 1], [Part 2], [Part 3], [Part 4], [Part 5].
Those women with cut-glass accents are a blast from the past as well. You don’t hear that much anymore. I thought I remembered the early 1990s well, but there’s a lot I’ve forgotten, it seems.
I’ve been following the media coverage of the Lynn Gilderdale attempted murder trial with some interest as I found it quite emotionally affecting, and have found most of the coverage to be sympathetic to Lynn’s mother, Kay Gilderdale, who was acquitted last Tuesday. It now turns out that Panorama, the BBC documentary series, had been following Kay Gilderdale on and off for about a year, as well as interviewing others associated with the drive to liberalise Britain’s assisted suicide laws, such as Jane Campbell (AKA Baroness Cambpell of Surbiton, a title I find quite amusing) who has spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) and is passionately opposed to such changes in the law. The Daily Mail has covered the story extensively, mostly sympathetically although there have been a couple of critical voices there. I have also come across a blogger and a Guardian columnist who were exactly the opposite.
Tags: anne atkins, daily mail, kay gilderdale, lynn gilderdale, panorama
Last week, Apple launched its long-awaited tablet computer, which was something of a surprise to me as I had read that Steve Jobs had earlier given an explanation, at length, as to why he thought tablet computers were not a good idea. Now that Apple have made a success of their iPhone, they’ve upscaled it and produced a machine with the same OS but is just a bit bigger. Naturally, the launch had the fanboys raving, while others made a mockery of the name, saying it sounded like a “lady product” and that a later version of it might have wings.
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