Idiotic response to a positive proposal
Five Chinese Crackers covers the tabloid response to the recent NUT faith education proposal. I did start writing a piece after reading the Guardian's write-up of it, by which account it seems to be...
Author: Matthew Smith
Omar Bakri expresses dim view of Amir Khan
Today's Sun (Murdoch-owned London tabloid) led with a front-page story about something Omar Bakri said about Amir Khan. Omar Bakri is the former leader of the disbanded al-Muhajiroun, who ran noisy demonstrations and street-corner...
Tobacco display ban: beyond the easy parodies
Over the weekend the government announced that it was considering banning the open display of cigarettes for sale, as is commonly found in any tobacco shop, whether a local corner shop or a supermarket....
Who are the “Scargills of Islam”, then?
Charles Moore, well-known writer for the Telegraph and Spectator and known among us for articles like this one from 2005, calling for the Muslims to bring forward a Gandhi (my response here), gave a...
What about our children?
It was reported today that a paedophile who was taken to Australia at the age of five (he is 61 now) has been deported back to England. He is not by any means the...
More tabloids admit: we printed garbage
British Muslim Initiative: The Sun and Daily Mail withdraw unfounded allegations by Policy Exchange Hot on the heels of the Daily Spew grovelling to the McCanns yesterday, the Sun and the Daily Mail (or...
Daily Spew admits: we printed garbage
The Daily Spew and Black Hole today printed front-page apologies to Gerry and Kate McCann, whose daugher Madeleine went missing in Portugal last year, for printing false and defamatory stories about them on numerous...
A healthy obsession?
Comment is free: Hygiene obsession Katherine Ashenburg (author of a forthcoming book, Clean: An Unsanitised History of Washing) on American toilets (sorry, bathrooms) and the various methods deployed to prevent people getting their hands...
No great courage
Ed Husain showed up again in last Sunday’s Observer (which I have finally got round to blogging after three days of early starts and long driving shifts), blowing the trumpet for an Egyptian preacher...
Stealing the view
From the Guardian: a letter and an article about Stonehenge I’m sure you’ve all heard of Stonehenge – a ring of ancient standing stones, on the Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, which you see by...
Yobs and military uniforms
BBC News report on abuse of soldiers This morning, the BBC made a big fuss of a report about incidents of verbal of abuse of air force servicemen in Peterborough by people opposed to...
It’s not just Jersey
Over the past couple of weeks, a scandal has emerged of a serious culture of child abuse at a major children's home on Jersey, Haut de la Garenne, which was closed several years ago...
Nazir-Ali’s unsatisfying explanation
Yesterday afternoon, I dropped a line to the Bishop of Rochester's public email box (bishop.rochester at rochester.anglican.org) questioning the claims he made in last Sunday's Telegraph. I included my home address and mobile number....
Next stop, Helsinki?
London buses headed in the same direction as Helsinki’s high-tech transport system – The Guardian The Guardian today had a feature, on the front of its technology supplement, on the recent introduction in London...
The death penalty in light of the recent murder convictions
The last three working days in a row, there has been a man convicted for acts of violence against women. Last Thursday, it was Steve (or was his actual name Steven?) Wright, the man...
Times non-story about Muslim eating scruples
Last Friday the Times published a story claiming that "senior Muslim figures" had expressed shock that a number of Walkers crisp products had contained alcohol. The fact was "discovered" by one Besharat Rehman, the...
Put up or shut up, Nazir-Ali
Michael Nazir-Ali ([1], [2]) has been lent yet another adulatory interview by the Sunday Torygraph, with the same claims about death threats and one about his claim of no-go areas being “based on evidence”,...
A country for a plaything
Recently there has been a flurry of stories about foreigners being jailed in the United Arab Emirates for unbelievably petty drug “offences” which would not be detected, yet alone prosecuted, anywhere else. The story...
Brain dead technology
In today’s Guardian Media supplement, there was a familiar range of complaints about the new DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting, or something like that) radio system, among them the fact that the radio units are...
The fallacy of multiculturalism helping terrorism
Last week the Royal United Services Institute, "the leading forum in the UK for national and international Defence and Security" founded by the Duke of Wellington, published a report from a panel which included,...