Category: Media

There is a piece in today’s Guardian, The reality of l’affaire du foulard (headscarf affair), about the inconsistent and hypocritical treatment of Muslims by the French state. She also mentions the speech Shirak gave...

At last! Someone’s written a cogent article on the state of the British press, and its effect on politicians. Douglas Hurd’s headline article in this week’s Spectator focuses on the Daily Mail, but also...

David T at Harry’s Place has replied to my last piece, Harry on IDS and Cohen on Livingstone (Again), taking issue with my definition of a religious community; he seems to think I define...

Nick Cohen has had yet another article printed in the Observer, attacking the mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, for his connections (a meeting or two and a hug) with the Muslim scholar, Yusuf al-Qaradawi....

There’s a report in today’s Observer about the violence in Colombia surrounding the cocaine trade, which is supplying an increasinly sociably respectable drug to middle-class Brits. They talk to a 19-year-old girl who was...

The Guardian has posted a comment piece by Simon Jeffries, advocating that the UK adopt the French policy on religion in schools, by abolishing both religious schools, fee-paying schools and allowances for religious dress...

Yesterday I was alerted (via al-Zawiya) of an astonishing article by Stephen Schwartz, known as a follower of Shaikh Nazim, in the Weekly Standard which is edited by William Kristol (former leader of the...

Did anyone hear the BBC’s loudmouth talk-show host Jon Gaunt rant on this morning about how everyone’s become a “barrack-room lawyer” who thinks they know everything? This was about a woman who was pulled...

Every so often we hear a new outrageous statement allegedly by Omar Bakri Mohammed, the leader of the defunct al-Muhajiroun group. This time he is accused of telling British Muslims they should join al-Qa’ida,...

I’m just in the middle of watching a BBC programme, Abroad Again in Britain, about Brighton Pavilion, an oriental folly in Brighton built by King George IV. The presenter makes much of the incongruity...

There is a letter in today’s Daily Telegraph (The Simple Solution to the Sun-Lounger Crisis) regarding the difficulties British tourists have when travelling abroad. David Taylor reckons that British tourists are, for the most...

The British parliament is currently debating bringing in a law banning incitement to “religious hatred”, in order to plug a loophole in an existing law banning incitement to racial hatred. The latter law is...

She had gone to bed early claiming that she couldn’t stand the bulls**t. She was right, there was a lot of bulls**t, but Sandy’s wife would have detected bulls**t in a house brick, as...

There is a film being released this week, Vera Drake, about the career of a back-street abortionist in the slums of London in the 1930s. The film has won awards from film critics in...

I’d like to start off by saying I have no familiarity with the life and works of the recently departed Susan Sontag (apart from having merely heard of her), but I couldn’t help noticing...

Listening to how people in the British broadcast media pronounce names of people who are very much in the news, you wonder why the organisation does not find out how they are pronounced, and...

I’ve been meaning to write something about the debate about weapons laws in the letters page of the Spectator for as long as it’s been going on, but have never got round to it,...

I just saw an ad on ITV for Ariel non-bio washing powder. The advert featured an African woman, traditionally dressed and with her scarf tied around her hair, kissing a little boy goodbye and...

On the subject of windbags, Daniel Pipes crows about Tariq Ramadan giving up his professorship at Notre Dame University, after the US revoked his visa for reasons unknown (no doubt, behind-the-scenes pressure). Even more...