The best places to be average
A study commissioned by Halifax (part of the big HBOS banking group but formerly a mutual building society) has found that the district of Hart in Hampshire is the best place to live in...
Category: News
Royal fake news?
So, yesterday it was announced that Prince Phillip, the 95-year-old Prince Consort to the Queen, was retiring from public royal duties as of this coming autumn. This followed an awful lot of speculation after...
Should we ban harmful bequests?
This week, a woman who had been cut out of her late mother’s will in favour of three animal welfare charities lost her legal battle to claim a large share of the estate. The...
Castro saved his country
Years ago, there used to be a common explanation for why communism didn’t work. It was all nice on paper, people would say; the state would share all the wealth around and make sure...
Sarah Vibert and her daughters: reunite them!
This morning I read a news report and a blog about a single mother who is fighting to keep her two daughters out of the foster care system in Alberta, and find them a...
Why do you believe her?
Last Tuesday a British soap actor, Michael “Le Vell” Turner, was found not guilty of multiple counts of rape and sexual assault on a child (now 17). There has been some suggestions that his...
The rush to judgement on Oscar Pistorius
The story of Oscar Pistorius’s shooting of his girlfriend has been going on for a week and a half now, and last Friday, after a four-day bail hearing, he was released on bail of...
Jimmy Savile at Duncroft: who to believe?
The past week or so I’ve been following a series of posts by the blogger “Anna Raccoon”, who I earlier came across in her articles about the Court of Protection and her championing of...
‘Bonfire of standards’ may cut access in new buildings
Government orders building standards review | Politics | The Guardian The government has ordered a review of building standards regulations, with a view to reducing the number of regulations, ostensibly to facilitate a revival...
Jimmy Savile: the benefit of hindsight
I watched Wednesday night’s Exposure documentary in which the claims that have been made about his molestation of young girls in the BBC studios and at a special boarding school in Surrey in the...
Thusha Kamaleswaran, disability and anti-Black hostility
Last Monday, three men were found guilty of a shooting in south London that left a 5-year-old girl of Tamil origin, Thusha Kamaleswaran, paralysed from the chest down, and injured an Asian man, Roshan...
City status: Croydon loses out again
Yesterday, three towns — one in England, one in Wales and one in Scotland — were awarded City status by the queen (i.e. the government). This is a status which is purely symbolic and...
George Carey only defends Old England
Recently there were two court cases which further established the secularism of the British state, despite its nominal Christian character: one involved an atheist councillor in Bideford, Devon, who resigned from a council after...
Pauline Pearce: why jail drug mules?
“Hackney heroine” tells why she confronted rioters (from last Monday’s Guardian) Pauline Pearce was the woman caught on camera lecturing rioting youths in Hackney that they should “fight for a cause” rather than tearing...
Johnson’s pupil referral plan is ill-informed
Boris Johnson in tough units call for young rioters - Crime, UK - The Independent Boris Johnson has called for school children involved in the riots last week (and presumably any future similar incidents)...
Hysteria follows anarchy
I have held off writing about the wave of rioting and looting that hit London and some other English towns and cities early last week partly because I was busy (work, Ramadan and an...
Devastation in Colombia
There is an article in today’s Guardian about the ongoing civil war in Colombia, in which government-sponsored paramilitaries kidnap and murder ordinary people in the countryside and dress them up like FARC guerrillas, so...
So Misbah could come back, after all
From a life of luxury in Pakistan to a modest house in Blackburn: Molly, a teenager torn between two cultures | Mail Online “Molly”, real name Misbah Rana, is the girl who ran away...
Charity pressure II: “Poppy Fascism”
Following on from my earlier post about being under pressure to give money to charity, another row has broken out about the decision of a British news presenter, Jon Snow, not to wear a...
How much can we blame al-Awlaqi?
So, Roshonara Choudhary, the stupid woman who tried to murder the MP, Stephen Timms, has received a 15-to-life sentence. Today, the Guardian (and probably other papers) printed transcripts of her interviews with the police...