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 […]
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 […]
Continue reading about The real value of online friendships (Hadley Freeman revisited)
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 […]
Continue reading about Panorama and other media coverage of the Gilderdale affair
I didn’t watch the Muslim Driving School programme, which was on BBC2 last Tuesday (at the right time to clash with Defamation, which I reviewed in my last entry), but I finally got round to seeing it just now, and I was pleasantly surprised. It was all shown in the north of England around […]
Continue reading about Muslim women driving, and contrasts on niqab
Recently some of my Facebook friends joined a group called something like “I won’t buy the Independent again if Rod Liddle becomes editor”, and I thought briefly of joining. But I haven’t. The simple reason is that I almost never buy the paper anyway, because it’s boring. It’s a paper consisting of […]
The noughties are defined by fakery | Hadley Freeman | Comment is free | The Guardian
Hadley Freeman, normally a fashion columnist for the Guardian and someone I normally agree with fairly readily, opines that this decade has been defined by ‘fakery’:
The noughties, or whatever we end up calling them, were surely defined by […]
For anyone setting up a new self-hosted Wordpress blog (not on wordpress.com or any similar hosting service), here’s a tip on getting your permalinks set up and getting rid of the queries in the links.
When you select a permalink pattern from the list of options (default, day and name etc.) and then select “Save changes”, […]
I, too, mourn good local newspapers. But this lot just aren’t worth saving | George Monbiot | Comment is free | The Guardian
And he mentions the Cambrian News … this was the local paper in Aberystwyth, where I studied from 1995 to 1998, and at the time was a rather grand broadsheet and, as I […]
Continue reading about Local papers letting the powerful off the hook
It’s been reported that, after a bit of a tiff with a couple of his online followers, the comedian Stephen Fry is thinking of giving up on Twitter (more here). This all makes me think, “who cares?” — why would anyone want to keep up a running commentary on everything they do and condense […]
Gary Younge in today’s Guardian traces the upsurge in anti-Muslim bigotry to Jack Straw’s attack on the niqab in 2006:
Three years ago this month Jack Straw argued his case for urging Muslim women who attend his MP’s surgery to remove their niqab. He said that he wanted to start a debate. In this, […]
Continue reading about How the 2006 niqab affair popularised the BNP
The Guardian revealed yesterday and the day before that several British tabloids accepted stories about various celebrities which were demonstrably false from an undercover documentary maker who was filming them. The stories included one about Amy Winehouse’s hair catching fire and one about Guy Ritchie getting a black eye from juggling cutlery, and they […]
The BBC is being called on to investigate how two senior members of the British National Party were allowed to appear semi-anonymously on the youth-targeted Radio 1 Newsbeat programme. Mark Collett, BNP publicity director, and Joseph Barber who runs the BNP’s record label Great White Records, were presented as simply “Mark and Joey”. […]
Continue reading about BNP on the BBC: stupidity or deception?
Back in late 2008, I got contacted by Emel magazine, a British Muslim lifestyle magazine, for a feature on Muslim bloggers. The process of getting the material over there took months, and I dealt with two different sisters as the first one left the magazine, but I finally got word last week that it […]
Continue reading about Hey Emel, what have you done to my avatar?
UPDATE 1-O’Brien sees London’s Independent closed by Dec | Industries | Technology, Media & Telecommunications | Reuters
Denis O’Brien, the second largest shareholder in the Independent News and Media group, has said that the Independent newspaper, the weakest of the four ‘quality’ London dailies, will close by Christmas:
“There’s no point in us as a […]
Continue reading about London Independent ‘gone by Christmas’
Turning a Blind Eye to Misogyny | Standpoint
Standpoint magazine, a right-leaning commentary magazine published by the Social Affairs Unit, has ran with a front-page feature on how the western left supposedly turns a blind eye to misogyny and honour killing among Muslims, both in the west and elsewhere. The two main authors are Clive […]
Continue reading about Standpoint runs front page Islam bash
New Statesman - Bias and the Beeb
Mehdi Hasan, the NS’s senior politics editor, on how the recurrent claim that the BBC has some sort of liberal bias does not stack up when you consider that their political editor was formerly chair of the Young Conservatives, their editor of live programmes was deputy chair of the […]
Continue reading about Mehdi Hasan on the BBC’s ‘liberal’ bias
The Guardian today reported that Rupert Murdoch is planning to make the websites for his Times and Sun newspapers, and no doubt his foreign titles as well, a paid-for resource rather than a free one at present. This comes after his empire suffered a £2bn loss for the financial year to June 2009. […]
Continue reading about Murdoch plans to charge for online content
Recently the papers and talk shows have been abuzz about a woman in her thirties who has had thirteen babies, all of whom have been taken away from her — most of them at birth — and put up for adoption. Her early ones suffered severe neglect and some were born with disabilities. […]
Continue reading about Sterilisation: it wasn’t just the Nazis
The Guardian has dedicated its G2 supplement today to comedy, and the lead feature is about the new tendency towards offensiveness in comedy. This includes jokes about Muslims (we’re all queer), Chinese people, Gypsies, Hitler and rape among other things. The article notes that after a couple of decades when “politically correct” comedy […]
Last Wednesday, the Guardian had a feature from “inside Twitter HQ” based on interviews with the founders of the service. The article gave potted histories of the founders, two of whom were formerly involved in Blogger, and mentions the fact that Twitter isn’t making money. The following day, they printed a selection of […]
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