On Ubuntu ditching Unity
Yesterday Canonical, the company which develops the Linux distribution Ubuntu, for a long time the most popular distribution (or 'distro') and the basis for Linux Mint, possibly the most popular distro at the moment,...
Indigo Jo Blogs Blog
Brexit: Back to the 16th Century?
Last Tuesday, there was a programme on BBC Radio 4 in which Jonathan Freedland, a Guardian columnist who was a strong Remain supporter, compared the present Brexit situation with the Elizabethan era, in which...
On the problem of proving hate
Yesterday I saw a post on the Disability Hate Crime Network group on Facebook about a crime in which a 'vulnerable' man was kept captive and tortured for more than a week by a...
The electronics ban: malice or stupidity? Protectionism or security?
Yesterday, the Trump administration announced that 'large' electronic items such as tablets and laptops were to be banned from US-bound flights on some airlines, all based in the Arab world or Turkey, from airports...
But it’s not Unix!
A friend recently posted on Facebook this video in which tech columnist Matt Weinberger explains, in a minute and a half or so, why he switched to a Surface Book laptop running Windows 10...
Nothing ‘neutral’ about the hijab ban
Last week, the European Court of Justice ruled that workplaces in Europe could ban workers from wearing "any political, philosophical or religious sign" if a company has a policy requiring "neutral" dress, a judgement...
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...
If in doubt, blame Corbyn
The other day I saw an exchange on Twitter between some Labour activists in which Jeremy Corbyn got the blame for Theresa May's announcement that the ban on new grammar schools was to be...
Melanie Phillips has her history wrong
There is an article in the Times today (paywalled) in which Melanie Phillips proclaims that the Scots and Northern Irish have no right to secede at the expense of the "authentic", "ancient" British nation...
Why should disabled people work for peanuts?
Last week Rosa Monckton, wife of Dominic Lawson (son of Nigel and former editor of the Sunday Telegraph when it emitted four of Will Cummins's Islamophobic rants in as many editions — and before...
Big hospital or small unit, bad care is bad care
On Wednesday night, Channel 4 aired a Dispatches special, Under Lock and Key, which exposed the abuse and neglect of patients at St Andrew's hospital in Northampton, an enormous campus which started out as...
Short memories
One of the signs that you're getting older is that you start to become aware that there are adults who weren't even born when you became an adult, or at least don't remember the...
Milo is just a professional jerk
Last week Milo Yiannopoulos (AKA Milo Andreas Wagner), once the darling of the "alt-right" and of a sizeable chunk of the American Right, suddenly fell from grace as a result of someone drawing attention...
Foreign criminal scum!
The Sun are OUTRAGED this morning because an “American strangler”, as they call him, has been deported from the USA to this country after serving nearly 40 years in a New York state prison...
Time for a rethink on third rail?
Last Thursday a major (for this country) storm brought strong winds and rain, bringing down trees and power cables across coastal areas and central and eastern England and Scotland. Virtually all the major railway...
Review: Has Political Correctness Gone Mad?
Has Political Correctness Gone Mad? at Channel 4 Last night Trevor Phillips, the Daily Mail's regular Token Black Man who has had two similar documentaries on Channel 4 in the past few years, had...
Why is age discrimination in housing allowed?
This blog entry is by a friend of mine who is being evicted from her father's flat where she has been living for some time. She has long-running mental health problems and is a...
Blair not the man to lead Brexit fightback
The former British prime minister, Tony Blair, today gave a speech in the City of London in which he declared that Brexit could be defeated if the people who opposed it "rise up" (the...
On the “Muslim Luther” fallacy that won’t die
Last night on BBC's Newsnight, there was a two-minute slot by a Canadian journalist called Graeme Wood, who claimed that the rise of the "Islamic State" was equivalent to the Christian Reformation spearheaded by...
How prevalent is FGM in the UK really?
Last Monday was apparently FGM Awareness Day, and that means there were a lot of FGM stories in the media with vain attempts to interpret figures in a new way to make a story...