Busybodies and common sense
BBC News – Should a teenager be left to babysit a toddler? Lately I’ve seen a few stories about parents receiving cautions or fines for “child neglect” which consisted of leaving a young child...
Category: Politics
Suzanne Moore, Newsnight and the EDL
If the Left is to rise again, it must lift the official silence on race and culture | Suzanne Moore | Comment is free | The Guardian This weekend the so-called English Defence League held...
ME, mental health and victim blaming
Yesterday afternoon there was a debate on ME at Westminster Hall, an annex to the House of Commons, whose main participants were Ian Swales (Lib Dem, Redcar) and the Tory health minister Paul Burstow....
Is the Holocaust really unique among genocides?
This morning, I heard a discussion on the Vanessa Feltz show (which I don’t listen to much now, except when I’m in the shower — that’s what comes of being out of work!) about...
Celyn Vincent and the problem of invisibility
This morning the papers reported that Riven Vincent, the mother of a daughter named Celyn (pronounced Kellin, Welsh for holly — and some newspapers thought the public was too stupid to process that, so...
Review of “Mental” from BBC Four
One of my contacts on Dreamwidth requested that someone in the UK review this history of British mental health care since the 1950s, which originally went out in May 2010 and was repeated last...
Just don’t call it evil
Today Sarah (of Cat in a Dog’s World) pointed me to this Slate article about the present tendency to quickly assume someone is mentally ill if they commit an outrageous crime, such as the...
Jack Straw wields the wooden spoon again
So, the vicious old creep Jack Straw has yet again stirred up trouble for Muslims in the UK, this time with comments on the recent “Asian grooming scandal” involving groups of men of Pakistani...
Racial stereotypes exaggerated in ‘grooming’ reports
Child sex trafficking study sparks exaggerated racial stereotyping | Law | The Guardian Anyone read the extensive coverage of the issue of Asian men grooming white girls in northern towns that has dominated the...
The offender and the offended
Warning to the US: Don't Play by Islamic Rules (from Standpoint magazine) This article is Douglas Murray’s treatment of the so-called Ground Zero Mosque controversy, in which he smears Muslims by equating them with...
The prejudicial coverage of the Yeates murder
A loss of faith in the morality of the British press | Minority Thought I must say I never had much faith in it to begin with, but this article exposes some of the...
Just as long as he’s on our side
A couple of weeks ago I read an article in the Guardian by Hannah Pool about sexual harassment, which according to the author was a common experience for women in public places which she...
Review of “Jeff Brazier: Me and My Brother”
BBC Three – Jeff Brazier: Me and My Brother (available until Saturday, UK only) I just finished watching this programme on iPlayer; it features a BBC presenter named Jeff Brazier trying to bully his...
A sad day for parliamentary democracy
Last night a set of “scandals” broke in which various senior Lib Dem politicians made statements which were not conducive to the love-in between their party and the Tories which has caused so much...
North Korea gaffe should sink Palin
Yesterday I was having a discussion with my aunt, who asked me if I had heard of Sarah Palin making that ridiculous statment about their North Korean “allies”. She was concerned that this would...
Asian pimps, Channel 4 and the BNP
Julie Bindel has an article in the current edition of Standpoint regarding the issue of the Asian pimp gangs that exist in some midland and northern towns in England, who exploit mostly local working-class...
The need for dedicated care for sensitive patients (updated)
Earlier today I got an update from the family of Emily Collingridge, a lady from south London who wrote a book on living with Severe ME, based partly on her experiences (she has been...
Will we ever punish cops who kill?
Last night I saw a Crimewatch appeal for information regarding the murder of PC Keith Blakelock, a policeman who was murdered during riots on the Broadwater Farm estate in north London in 1985. Blakelock...
The NHS versus American insurance-based healthcare
Six-month delay by NHS cost woman a cancer lifeline | Mail Online This got flagged up on Facebook today, and the person who posted it also linked an article about boys getting inappropriately medicated...
Labour and free speech
The Labour Party in the UK has rules that state that any member who stands in an election against the labour candidate, or who openly supports a candidate opposing a Labour candidate, is automatically...