A pile of mud won’t save Oxford Street
The other day a Twitter friend posted a picture of a large mound which had been erected (temporarily) on the island next to Marble Arch in London and said she hoped this was a...
Indigo Jo Blogs Blog
False neutrality
Last week the European Court of Justice ruled that employers have the right not to allow employees to wear ‘religious’ clothing (in this case, as is usual, the hijab or headscarf worn by Muslim...
Relaxing drivers’ hours is a bad idea
Last week the transport secretary, Grant Shapps, announced that the government were going to be temporarily relaxing the maximum daily driving hours for truck drivers in the UK by an hour. Normally the daily...
The wrong time to end the mask mandate
Yesterday, the government announced that most if not all the current rules and restrictions aimed at preventing the spread of Coronavirus, including the requirement to wear masks in enclosed public spaces and to keep...
Conservatorship is a disability issue
A theme I keep coming across in discussions of the Britney Spears conservatorship case is the presumption that she is in this predicament because she is a woman. Yesterday I came across a meme...
“Have you tried boarding?”
The other day a parent I follow on my social media, whose autistic daughter has been out of school for much of the past several years, mentioned a programme that was on Radio 4...
How our road rules feed road rage
A couple of weeks ago I saw a video shared of a driver of a large car using his vehicle to damage someone’s bike (nearly injuring the cyclist’s leg in the process) before driving...
Dad names his child after his nana. World goes wild.
Last week Prince Harry’s and his wife Meghan’s second child was born, and they named her Lilibet Diana. The second name refers to Harry’s mother; the first to his grandmother, the Queen. The name...
Bye bye Holby City
Last week the BBC announced that the long-running hospital drama Holby City is going to be terminated next March. The reason given was that the BBC was looking to produce dramas that “better reflect,...
What3Words, 999 and faulty geography
Earlier this week it was reported that the mobile app What3Words, used to generate ‘unique’ three-word codes for any location so as to direct rescuers or the emergency services and is used by some...
How we still let our learning disabled down
A couple of weeks ago there was a documentary on BBC1 that exposed how, in the 50s and 60s, young Black children were routinely sent to schools for the “educationally sub-normal” because of the...
Zionism and the politics of suspicion
The “politics of suspicion” is a term often heard in Muslim circles: it means a culture in which people are held responsible for the deeds of those with the same beliefs as themselves, and...
Sadiq Khan’s new doughnut stragegy
Today I learned that Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London who has had his term extended for an extra year because of the pandemic and who is standing for another four-year term, plans a...
Unbefitting of a democracy
Yesterday (Friday) the BBC broadcast a Feedback programme largely dedicated to the public reaction to the corporation’s decision to suspend most of its programming the Friday before last to broadcast the announcement of Prince Philip’s death and not resume normal programming for several hours and in some cases days.
National mourning?
Today Prince Philip died. Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark was the Queen’s husband and had the title Prince Consort and was known as the Duke of Edinburgh. He was probably best known for...
Avoiding some common scams
The other day the British radio presenter Shelagh Fogarty tweeted asking her followers if a text she had received, telling her she had a parcel to collect but to click a link and “confirm...
‘Free speech’ irrelevant to Batley cartoon row
This week a teacher at a school in Batley, Yorkshire was suspended after showing his year 9 (aged 13-14) pupils, some of them Muslims, a cartoon originating with the French magazine Charlie Hebdo depicting...
The link between street harassment and bullying
Last week, in the wake of the murder of Sarah Everard in London, for which a police officer has been charged and is in custody, a lot of women have been sharing stories about...
Burning your child’s past
Last night I saw a thread on Twitter from an individual called “Autismomum” in which she talked of burning the documents about her child’s school life in case they were discovered by the child...
The Queen’s gardens
This past week it’s been suggested by the writers Yasmin Alibhai-Brown (or Alibi-Brain as she’s known in these parts) and Simon Jenkins (in the Guardian) that the Queen should make some of her vast...