Quick blog before bedtime …
Just watching a programme called Someone to Watch Over Me, which is about social workers in Bristol, which features a 14-year-old girl called Nadia, who was out of control at home, put in care...
Monthly Archive: November 2004
Got my Sun machine working
Last month I bought (through eBay) a Sun workstation – an Ultra 5, which is a late 1990s machine. I really bought it for the nostalgia of using a “real” Unix machine like those...
Tartars and Arabs in Poland
I found a translation of an article in the Polish magazine Rzeczpospolita (meaning Republic) on a blog belonging to a Norwegian called Bjorn Staerk. The article is about a conflict between two groups of...
Stupid American lefties
Every so often I come across something that reminds me of exactly why the left in certain countries don’t quite get enough support to get enough votes to actually win an election, rather than...
Interesting blog piece on Ukraine
There is an interesting blog piece on the election in Ukraine here which gives some information on the criminal past of the so-called winner Victor Yanukovich: Yanukovych has always seemed perfectly fitted for this...
Jon Gaunt: Oik
Jon Gaunt's show this morning demonstrated how much respect has gone out of our society and how anti-intellectualism has come into fasion – perhaps not to the same extent as in the USA, but...
David Blunkett policy maker
The Register has linked this marvellous David Blunkett policy generator page – a site which can generate “draconian rhetoric, whenever you need it”. It may generate real Plonkett policy. (Hat tip: Roger Whittaker at...
Bad diet … bad behaviour
Further to my earlier remarks about diet and behaviour at the bottom of this entry, the BBC has a piece about a report indicating that malnutrition leads to low intelligence, irritability and bad behaviour...
The Olympic bid
Am I the only person in London who gets thoroughly annoyed at the “Back the Bid” propaganda which is being displayed all over town? I was on the District Line today and saw these...
New Apple Centre
A new Apple Store has opened up in London’s Regent Street, which is the first to open in Europe. It’s been very eagerly awaited, and it’s said that some people decided to sleep outside...
Yet another new virus
There’s a report at the BBC’s site about a new virus which “comes back from the dead” if you don’t delete all of it. One thing struck me when reading this report: The infectious...
Nada Jarrar on Khouri and other horror stories
There is an article in today’s Guardian by the Lebanese-Australian novelist Nada Jarrar, about the phenomenon of horror stories about the life of Muslim women being published in the west, with particular focus on...
Disruptive children and special schools
This morning on Jon Gaunt’s show they were talking about the recently announced government policy of moving “excluded” (expelled) children into the more popular schools, so that such kids don’t end up being concentrated...
They’re going for Mosul now
The BBC is reporting that the Americans, having “secured” Falluja, are now working on taking out “insurgents” in Mosul. Ahem, what happened to those Kurdish insurgents which the Americans were supposedly supporting before this...
MPACUK: Do the Saudis own Eid?
MPACUK (Muslim Public Affairs Council, UK) have three articles in response to the annual repeat of the “moon fitna” at the beginning and end of Ramadan: When Exactly Was Your Eid? Do the Saudis...
Travellers undressed by Heathrow X-ray machine
Reuters reports that Heathrow Airport, the biggest airport in the UK, has been doing a 4-month trial of an X-ray machine which produces an “atomically detailed” black-and-white picture of what someone’s like under his...
Gary Younge: Why Should Muslims Integrate?
Gary Younge, in the Guardian today, has an opinion piece on the tendency of the liberal left to criticise religious people, as in America, while overlooking their own fundamentalism in opposition to religion. Towards...
The “outrage machine” strikes again
I was listening to Radio 4’s Feedback programme this afternoon, and there was a feature on the response to a piece on the BBC’s From Our Own Correspondent programme. The piece, Yasser Arafat’s unrelenting...
Who’s asking for special treatment?
Jon Gaunt, BBC London‘s notorious morning talk show presenter, had a feature today about two issues affecting Muslims in the UK. One was about a shopping centre in Birmingham supposedly banning Santa Claus in...
Reaction to Berkshire train crash
Last Saturday a high-speed express train from London to Plymouth hit a car which had been driven, or become stuck, on a level crossing west of Reading (pronounced Redding) in Berkshire. The radio phone-in...