How to go west when you live in Kingston
When I was a kid growing up in Croydon, there were two types of buses: red ones and green ones. Red ones were run by London Transport, green ones (including the green and white...
Monthly Archive: March 2006
Sheikh Mazhar tries it on Galloway
Guardian Unlimited – Gold teeth: a sure sign of a media sting I've not normally got much time for George Galloway and his party nowadays, but my attention was drawn to this story about...
Melanie Phillips soundbite of the week (3)
I was going to blog this clanger in Mad Mel's latest diary entry, but PhobeWatch and Saracen beat me to it. This is Mel excoriating "Britain's man of straw", the man MPACUK wanted to...
Mourning the decline of French
In today’s Guardian, Marcel Berlins approves of Jacques Chirac’s walk-out from the opening session of the EU spring summit last week, prompted by a speech in English by the French leader of the EU...
Bunting: Enlighten me
Comment is free: Enlighten me Madeleine Bunting on how the "hard liberals" misuse the Enlightenment, and how many of their its key thinkers were in fact religious believers: Something didn't seem to be adding...
Cycle route 75
Following my entry on dumb cycle lanes in which I linked to some pictures at the BBC news site of cycle lanes through phone boxes and the like, I've posted a few pictures of...
Another weekend, another rally
Yesterday there was another rally in London’s Trafalgar Square: this time at the end of a so-called “March for Free Expression” at which a gaggle of people assembled to hear speeches defending people’s right...
Why can’t they lay off Norman Kember?
On Thursday you probably all heard that Norman Kember, a British peace activist who had been held hostage in Iraq by some rebel group or other, was freed by soldiers of various countries including...
PhobeWatch: Free Speech march leader back-tracks
Martin Sullivan at Islamophobia Watch notes that the organiser of the upcoming "March for Free Expression" has backtracked on his earlier enthusiasm for his followers to bring placards bearing copies of the Danish cartoons...
So, Shabina has lost
Today the House of Lords, effectively the UK’s supreme court, allowed an appeal by a school which had excluded a Muslim female pupil, Shabina Begum, because she insisted on wearing an Arabic-style jilbab, which...
Ken steps in it again
It looks like Ken Livingstone really does love the feel of bullets in his foot. I didn't think the concentration camp thing was the big issue it was made out to be, but this...
How Iraq’s money was frittered away
The Guardian on how $23billion of money entrusted by the UN for the redevelopment of Iraq was lost to waste, theft and fraud: Because the Iraqi banking system was in tatters, the funds were...
Yet another anti-war demo
Yesterday the Stop the War Coalition organised yet another of their marches in London against the Iraq war and against any expansion of it (into Iran, for example) (more from the BBC here). While...
Does this lady look angry to you?
Clipping of picture of a Muslima in niqab from today's Observer This picture appeared in the Observer today, on page 19 of the Review section next to this article by Miranda Sawyer. The article...
On Chishti defection and Sands sacking
Via Pickled Politics, with their memorable headline "Labour lose brown person to Tories", someone I knew as a union activist at Aberystwyth has joined the Conservative party just months after standing against the party...
Melanie Phillips soundbite of the week (2)
In response to the civil union in the Netherlands involving a man and two women, Mad Mel wonders where all this liberalisation is leading us: [Charles] Krauthammer, however, sees all these developments merely as...
Pictures: dumb cycle lanes
A great set of pictures of stupid cycle lanes, like the 15-mile cycle route alternative to a six-mile road journey, the cycle ride straight into a phone box, and this one from Middlesbrough: I...
Tamil Tigers funded by worldwide extortion
The BBC reports that "Tamil people around the world are being intimidated and threatened into giving money to Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels, according to a new report" from Human Rights Watch. The extortion...
Iraq is not Bosnia
The title of this entry rather sounds like stating the obvious, but of course Iraq and Bosnia have something in common, namely a recent or fairly recent western intervention. David Aaronovitch, in yesterday’s Times,...
Giving it out, but …
The BBC reports that Isaac Hayes, the singer behind the 1971 hit *Shaft*, has quit the American TV show *South Park*, in which he “is the voice of the lustful Chef”, because it ridiculed...