People’s Assembly: a review
Yesterday the People's Assembly Against Austerity, which has been holding "rallies" (I'd call them meetings, rather than rallies which I always thought were held in the street or at least in the open) around...
Author: Matthew Smith
Alex Spourdalakis: an atrocity, not a tragedy
Last week I heard the news that a 14-year-old boy with severe autism, Alex Spourdalakis, had been murdered by his mother and another female carer in a suburban area near Chicago after they had...
EDL versus Muslim extremists: Moore’s double standards
Woolwich outrage: we are too weak to face up to the extremism in our midst – Telegraph The above bit of EDL apologism by Charles Moore appeared in yesterday's Daily Telegraph, and it also...
Graffiti and the brutal conformity of the gang
Laurie Penny has an article in the latest New Statesman (not online yet) in which she bemoans the lack of graffiti on the trains and buses in London, which she says is ubiquitous on...
Let’s get the EDL banned
Proscribe English Defence League (EDL) – e-petitions This is a petition to proscribe the English Defence League. This will not force the EDL out of existence, of course, but it will mean no more...
Huge impact? Hardly.
Yesterday a 21-year-old Somali woman from London was given a community service order for posting an offensive tweet about the soldier Lee Rigby after his stabbing last month (but before the full facts about...
London Bravanese mosque firebombed
Police probe mosque blaze amid fears 'firebomb attack' is Woolwich revenge – London Evening Standard Last night a mosque in Muswell Hill, north London, was firebombed and the letters "EDL" were spray-painted onto the...
Britain’s mosques are not a ‘swamp’
As the dust settles on the Woolwich murder, so the vultures are starting to circle and the ground is being prepared for generalised attacks on the Muslim community, however much it was made clear...
No, Google can’t censor all the child porn
In the wake of the conviction of Mark Bridger yesterday for killing April Jones, a 5-year-old girl he kidnapped from a green on a housing estate in Machynlleth, mid Wales, last year, the focus...
Anjem Choudary is not Gerry Adams
In the wake of last week's Woolwich stabbing, there have been renewed calls to ban "hate preachers" from appearing on TV, most notably Anjem Choudary, the leader of al-Muhajiroun. Muslims, including myself, have for...
What’s an imam to do?
Last Friday at 1pm, Jeremy Vine had a slot about Islam and Muslims on his talk show on BBC Radio 2 — nice timing. This was, of course, prompted by the brutal murder of...
Grooming: Loss of liberty does not equal safety
Letters: We need an inquiry into sex abuse cases | Society | The Guardian This letter from Anthony Stansfeld of Thames Valley police appeared in yesterday’s Guardian, and attributes the grooming and rape of...
Woolwich knife attack is not terrorism
Yesterday a British soldier was attacked by two men with butchers' knives on a street in Woolwich, south-east London, and killed in broad daylight in public view near to a primary school not long...
Taj Hargey is wrong on grooming
Last week seven men from Oxford were found guilty of various sexual offences, including rape, for ‘grooming’ young girls and ultimately raping and allowing other men to rape them. Many of them were in...
Hawking, the boycott and the Israeli CPU
Last week Professor Stephen Hawking pulled out of a conference in Israel, reportedly as part of an academic boycott of Israeli institutions on the grounds of it operating an Apartheid-type regime against its Palestinian...
The British Social Model of Disability and its drawbacks
"I'm not a 'person with a disablity', I'm a disabled person" (from xojane by Lisa Egan) Recently I've noticed that a number of blogs by disabled people in the UK insist on referring to...
Let’s not over-hype the UKIP ‘phenomenon’
Yesterday there were local elections in large parts of the UK and the news reported the fact that UKIP had made significant gains, with their number of councillors rising from eight to 147 and...
Jordan Sheard’s sentence will be appealed
I received a letter today from the Attorney General’s office, in response to an open letter I had sent (which many readers of this blog had signed) regarding the sentence of Jordan Sheard, who...
Rosa Monckton, learning disabilities and independence
This post is part of Blogging Against Disabilism Day 2013 Rosa Monckton, as I have written on this page before, is an extremely privileged lady. I do not mean privilege as in white or,...
Can’t eat on £1 a day? Cheat!
BBC News – How to eat healthily on £1 a day This rather hilarious article represents a BBC journalist's ostensible attempt to live on £1 worth of food a day. You'll notice that the...