Author: Matthew Smith

The need for a representative academia

Last week the BBC’s File on 4 ran a feature on affirmative action, the American academic policy of taking aspects of an applicant’s background, including their race, into account when awarding university places. This...

Well, you did mention the guns

The other day I was reading a discussion on a forum I belong to, and someone mentioned that her husband had bought her a handgun the day they married. The discussion quickly moved on...

Thank a Boomer?

A while ago I saw a long Twitter thread aimed at young women whom its author accused of ‘ageism’ and of forgetting the sacrifices and struggles of previous generations of women, in particular the...

Just how deep-rooted is antisemitism, really?

This week the Guardian published a cartoon (above) by its regular cartoonist Martin Rowson, depicting the resignation of the former BBC director-general Richard Sharp. The cartoon is entitled The Copros Touch (a pun on...

Diane Abbott and racism then and now

Today (Sunday) the Observer printed a letter from Diane Abbott, the Labour (well, now suspended from the party) MP for Hackney and Stoke Newington in inner east London, who is Black, opining that white...

Not fine at home, not fine in school

Last week there was a piece on the BBC News website by Terri White (a “journalist, author and broadcaster” though this was the first time I’d heard of her) on the importance of school...

Is this abuse?

Yesterday the Observer carried a story about pupil protests in some schools in England against school rules around shorts, short skirts and locking toilet doors during lessons so that pupils are only able to...

Clients made Twitter what it is

Today it was finally made official that third-party Twitter clients are to be locked out of the system, rendering them useless unless they are rewritten to use other social media platforms, such as Mastodon...