Brianna Ghey and stable-door logic
A few years ago I wrote an article on what I called “stable-door logic”: the tendency, after a disaster or atrocity, to look for ways to make sure that said disaster could not have...
Category: Politics
“Never such depravity”
Last week I listened to the BBC’s File on 4 programme about the murder of Brianna Ghey last year in a village outside Warrington after the two teenagers responsible had been sentenced. Brianna was...
Genocide shouldn’t be divisive
Last night the Green party group on Lambeth borough council in south London tabled a motion to the full council meeting calling for, according to My London (a website containing stories from local papers...
The London school fighting its own pupils
Currently there is a court battle between a London state school with close connections to the Tory party and to its allied think tanks and some of its own pupils. The battle started when...
Tories show their repressive side with ban on HT
Yesterday (Monday), out of nowhere as far as I could tell, the Tories announced that they were going to proscribe Hizb ut-Tahrir, a political party founded in Palestine whose name means Liberation Party, as...
Thanks Wes, but take a stand on Gaza!
Last week a Muslim primary school in Ilford and a mosque also in east London received threatening letters. The letter sent to the school is addressed “Dear pedophiles” (sic) and signed “your terrorist friend”;...
Why Labour are losing Muslims
Since the genocide in Gaza began in the aftermath of the 7th October attacks, politicians on both sides of the house in both the US and UK — Tories, Labour, Republicans and Democrats —...
Nick Timothy itching for a fight
In yesterday’s (Monday’s) Daily Telegraph, there was an opinion piece by Nick Timothy, former chief of staff at 10 Downing Street when Theresa May was PM, giving a caricature of the pro-Palestinian protests in...
Sunak’s doughnut strategy
It’s party conference season and last week it was the Tory party’s turn, and this is likely to be their last before the next general election. Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, unveiled a sharp...
Labour should have won Uxbridge
Yesterday three by-elections were held to replace three Tory MPs, including the former prime minister Boris Johnson, who resigned last month for reasons including the ‘partygate’ scandal (involving politicians who held parties while everyone...
There’s a limit to age-based mitigation
Recently there have been a series of controversial cases in Scotland, where men have had their sentences for extremely violent crimes reduced because they were under 25 when they committed the acts on the...
Who really “hates the NHS”?
Yesterday (Saturday) I saw, on the front page of the BBC’s News app, an article by Laura Kuenssberg titled “Like it or hate it, the NHS is here to stay”. Kuenssberg is a BBC...
Boris Johnson: goodbye, and good riddance
Last weekend, the former prime minister Boris Johnson stepped down from parliament in anticipation of a committee report that was expected to find that he had misled parliament over his activities during the Covid...
What part of ’32 weeks’ don’t people understand?
Today (Monday), a woman in Stoke-on-Trent in England was sentenced to 28 months’ imprisonment for aborting her pregnancy at between 32 and 34 weeks. She did this by deceiving a major abortion provider, the...
The need for a representative academia
Last week the BBC’s File on 4 ran a feature on affirmative action, the American academic policy of taking aspects of an applicant’s background, including their race, into account when awarding university places. This...
Well, you did mention the guns
The other day I was reading a discussion on a forum I belong to, and someone mentioned that her husband had bought her a handgun the day they married. The discussion quickly moved on...
Thank a Boomer?
A while ago I saw a long Twitter thread aimed at young women whom its author accused of ‘ageism’ and of forgetting the sacrifices and struggles of previous generations of women, in particular the...
Diane Abbott and racism then and now
Today (Sunday) the Observer printed a letter from Diane Abbott, the Labour (well, now suspended from the party) MP for Hackney and Stoke Newington in inner east London, who is Black, opining that white...
Why are children in care being sent miles from home?
In today’s Observer, there is an investigation into children in care in England being sent sometimes hundreds of miles from home for lack of care placements in their home areas; they note that children...
What is ‘snitching’? When is it bad?
Earlier this week the blind YouTuber Anthony Daniels (right), whose channel is called Third Eye Visions, did a video on ‘snitching’ and on whether it is OK to inform on bullies or on people...