Politics, tech and media issues from a Muslim perspective
On Wednesday, Simon Wessely, notorious for promoting psychological theories about ME, was jointly awarded a new prize for courage in “standing up for science” by Sense About Science. Nature published the statement by the...
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...
Over the years that the Internet has existed as a mass medium (which is more or less my adult life — I first got online at university in 1995, before Google and just as...
This post is cross-posted to Same Difference, and you can comment there or here. Captchas are a method websites use to tell whether a visitor is a person or a computer. This is typically...
On Tuesday the Home Secretary, Theresa May, announced that the computer hacker Gary McKinnon would not be extradited to the USA to face charges of hacking into NASA’s and the Pentagon’s computers before and...
This post is also published at Same Difference, and you can comment there or here. Back in August, a blog was set up titled “Dave on Wheels”, purportedly by a young disabled man called...
Today the Daily Telegraph reported that the government were considering introducing a system of "smart cards" for benefit payments, which recipients will only be able to use to spend on "essentials" such as "food,...
I’ve been following the response among my friends, most of them activists in the disability community, to David Cameron’s speech at the Tory party conference today (a full transcript of it is on the...
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...
Epileptic Jess McGee, 19 Ordered Off Bus After Driver Calls Her Illness A ‘Pisstake’ The other day my new Asperger’s job consultant in Kingston asked me if I had a Freedom Pass (a free...
Means-testing pensioner benefits is a political rather than practical policy – Telegraph I wrote the Telegraph a letter on Monday in response to Max Pemberton's article on the issue of mental health stigma in...
The BBC recently conducted another ‘exclusive’ interview with the family of Thusha Kamaleswaran, the (then) 5-year-old Tamil girl shot and paralysed in a gang-related incident in south London last year. There is a written...
Why few dare tackle the psychology of ME at the Telegraph website This article is by Max Pemberton, who has earlier written in the same paper about why ME sufferers are wrong to object...
ME is probably a mental illness after all – but that does not mean that it is not real – Mail Online – Michael Hanlon’s Science blog: From The Cutting Edge This is one...
S4/Clic O’r Galon: Fy Chwaer a Fi S4C is a Welsh-language TV channel that only broadcasts in Wales, although you can get it on satellite (not cable) and online, and it offers subtitling of...
Last week Stephen Sumpter posted an article comparing the situation facing disabled people in the UK today with that facing them in Germany in the 1930s under Hitler. The Nazis ran a programme to...
How to commit blasphemy in Pakistan | World news | The Guardian This is a fairly comprehensive assessment of the situation surrounding the blasphemy law in Pakistan right now. While I am not against...
Last night it was announced that the actor Michael Clarke Duncan, best known for playing John Coffey in the 1999 film The Green Mile, based on the Stephen King novel of the same name,...
ITV Player: Tonight — Don’t Hate Us Last Thursday ITV broadcast a documentary on the rise in hate crimes against people with disabilities which has occurred since the coalition government came to power and...
Tony Nicklinson died on the morning of 22nd August 2012, having contracted pneumonia over the weekend. Last week the British High Court ruled that the courts could not allow doctors to end the life...