On responding to anti-vaxxers
Today I saw two new articles on the issue of the measles epidemic in the USA which has been caused by the failure of parents, under the influence of anti-vaccine pseudo-science and ideology which...
Category: Politics
What ‘lessons’ will be learned from the Amy el-Keria case?
Yesterday the Priory Group, which owns a number of private mental-health units in the UK which treat patients on contracts from the NHS as well as their ‘flagship’ private unit in Roehampton, was fined...
More than one kind of hate
Last Wednesday there was a joint article by Mehdi Hasan and Jonathan Freedland, both well-known journalists and columnist (the latter a Guardian regular), on the “common enemy” Jews and Muslims both have in white...
Claire Greaves inquest
Yesterday the inquest into the death of Claire Greaves, who took her own life on a Cygnet-run eating disorder in Coventry in February 2018, concluded and recorded an open verdict (i.e. it was not...
Jon Snow should not have apologised
There is a slogan used by racists throughout recent history: “nothing wrong with being white” (or some variation on that theme). Any celebration of Black or Asian culture is presented as a slur on...
Policing the boundaries
During the launch of the Independent Group, while it was still a breakaway faction from the Labour party, there was an exchange on a morning TV show between Tom Bowers, the author of book...
What good will splitting the Labour party do?
So, last week it finally happened, the split that had been rumoured for several months: seven Labour MPs, initially, resigned the whip. Rather than forming a new party or just joining the Liberal Democrats,...
Yes, we do talk about the family
Why won’t Remainers talk about family? (Giles Fraser, Unherd) In this article the Anglican clergyman talks about how modern British society has palmed off the duty of caring for its elderly on to paid...
George Galloway should not be readmitted to the Labour party
A longer post on the new ‘independent group’ formed by breakaway Labour and Tory MPs is in the works but I heard something today which has disturbed a lot of people that I know...
Mail’s Corbyn exposé is pathetic
Today, the Mail on Sunday devoted more than a dozen pages to a new ‘exposé’ of Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, in a feature which declares him “unfit for office”, most of it culled...
Why aren’t more young women feminists?
Earlier this week I saw a piece on the BBC news website asking why more young women do not identify with feminism or as feminists. According to a 2018 YouGov poll, 34% of women...
The EU is not slavery
So, poorer Brexiters voted to be worse off? There’s nothing wrong in that by Gary Younge (the Guardian, Friday) This piece makes the case that working-class Leave voters were voted by ‘values’ rather than...
Is it really so difficult to track down this rapist?
Earlier this week there was a story in the Daily Mail, among other places, about an autistic woman who contracted HIV while living in a care home in north-west London some time between 2006...
Brexit is a matter of life or death
After my last-but-one post about the behaviour of Corbyn supporters on social media, a long-standing friend cut contact with me as I explained in my previous entry, and I had another exchange with the...
The Corbynites and the ‘Spinsites’
Earlier today I had a conversation with a friend on Twitter who said that some people believe everything the Tory press spews out about the Labour party and its leadership. Both of us have...
About that Gillette ad …
So, yesterday the razor manufacturer Gillette published an advertisement contrasting examples of harmful expressions of masculinity, such as fighting and sexual harassment, accompanied by fatalistic or enabling attitudes such as “boys will be boys”...
Remainers, the “elite” and Corbyn
I’m a remainer. So why do I feel more and more sympathy for leave voters? by Joseph Harker (the Guardian) This piece, published today on the Guardian’s website (probably for the Observer tomorrow), reiterates...
Foreigners, foreigners and more foreigners
One of my biggest complaints about Remainers is that, when discussing the issue of the end of free movement between Britain and the EU, instead of emphasising the benefits to Britain and British people...
Let’s not be intimidated by Brexiteer thugs
Yesterday we saw a group of thugs in yellow vests, clearly acting in imitation of the fuel protesters in France, intimidate the political writer Owen Jones, the journalist Dawn Foster (who wrote about the...
Do we need “a debate on mental health”?
This is a claim I have seen being made in the media on a fairly regular basis. Usually it’s about general mental health issues, and often includes a strong element of blame towards those...