Indigo Jo Blogs Blog

Review of “This is England”

This is England is a film about skinheads in the English Midlands in the early 1980s, written and directed by the British director Shane Meadows (interviewed here) and set mostly on a council estate which turns out to be in Nottingham, although no reference to Nottingham is actually made anywhere in the film; some scenes are shot in Grimsby, an east coast port and seaside resort. It mainly revolves around the character of Shaun, a 12-year-old boy who has recently lost his father in the Falklands war, and who is partly based on Meadows (and some of the other characters are also partly based on people Meadows knew).

Mission creep

BBC NEWS | UK | Organic move to cut food flights The Soil Association, the organisation which advocates for and certifies organic food in the UK, is considering stripping organic status from food which...

Mad Mel’s short memory

Melanie Phillips delivers her usual denunciation of what she calls "two egregious additions on British television to the demonisation of Israel and the consequent furtherance of Jew-hatred", one of them being a Channel 4...

Bye bye, Faisal

Abdullah Faisal, the extremist Muslim preacher who was jailed in 2003 for delivering speeches which incited murder and racial hatred, has been deported to Jamaica after serving a large part of his sentence. I...

Brown’s betrayal of democracy

Brown's betrayal of democracy (Guardian letters) The latest in my occasional series on the impending "divine-right succession" of Gordon Brown to become British Prime Minister: the letters in today's Guardian, which show why it...

Hypocrisy over divestment

muslimmatters.org » Beware the Do-Gooders in Body Armor: The True Motives of those in Support of Divestment in Sudan A number of articles and blogs recently have picked up on the inconsistency of those...

‘Ed’ Husain and the Muslims’ dirty linen

Last Saturday the Guardian printed a full-page interview with “Ed” Husain (full name, Muhammad Mahbub Husain, as has already been established elsewhere on the Internet), the author of a memoir entitled The Islamist, recently published (although not that widely available, since I’ve yet to see it in any bookshop other than Foyles) in the UK to praise from, among those named by Madeleine Bunting, Martin Amis, Simon Jenkins, David Aaronovitch and Melanie Phillips, who published two blog entries ([1], [2]) telling us all to read it. I wrote a letter in reply on Monday (perhaps too late), but since it is Thusday and it has not yet been printed, I will reply here, insha Allah.

Why chip-tagging kids is a bad idea

In the wake of the recent disappearance, as yet unresolved, of Madeleine McCann on the Algarve in Portugal, nobody who listens to the British media could have missed the flood of smug mums and...

The martyrology of the smoker

Is the smoking ban a good idea? | The Guardian | Guardian Unlimited In a few weeks' time, smoking in enclosed public spaces will become illegal in the UK; such places include pubs and...

Mars now using animal rennet

The Guardian: A Mars Bar a day? No longer an option if you are vegetarian It’s not a rumour this time – I’m well aware how annoying these food rumours are which do the...

A great anti-dog article

[A man’s best friend is his dog? Are you barking?](http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2078427,00.html) This is a fantastic article which sums up most of the reasons why I hate dogs, and in particular, stupid dog owners: >In the...

United bigots of the “mega-mosque” campaign

BC Radio last week broadcast a programme called Turning Right, which probed the British National Party’s lame attempts to hide the thuggish and criminal natures of a number of its major activists, including its leader, Nick Griffin. Griffin made little effort to conceal his real opinions, asserting that he now believed what he had to, because he would otherwise be extradited to France (“otherwise”, for example, includes maintaining his devotion to Holocaust denial). The programme also gave airtime to an outfit called the Christian People’s Alliance, which they claim drove down the BNP’s support in its white, working-class east London “heartland” by concentrating on local issues. However, the CPA and the BNP are on the same side on one issue: opposition to the so-called “mega mosque”, which is proposed for a site near to the main Olympic stadium. An examination of material issued by the CPA, however, reveals its reliance on misinformation and bigotry.

My new computer

A couple of weeks ago I got myself a new computer – or rather, a new old computer. I did not actually want to, because apart from one particular habit, my computer was performing...

What use is the Council of Europe?

George Monbiot, in today's Guardian, on the deafening silence of European politicians as Serbia takes the chairmanship of the Council of Europe, the body, entirely independent of the European Union, which runs the European...

Atatürk’s wife’s hijab

Various Muslim blogs have published pictures of the reprobate founder of the Turkish republic and his wife, wearing the standard hijab that his followers in modern Turkey want to ban – see Tariq Nelson,...

“Dancing slags” and pied pipers

Catherine Bennett on terrorism (from yesterday's Guardian) Last Monday, five young British Muslim men were sentenced to life in prison for a plot to set off large fertiliser bombs in southern England. The targets...

Salma Yaqoob: abolish postal votes to cut fraud

Comment is free: The secret to success Salma Yaqoob (Birmingham Respect party activist) is calling for the postal vote to be abolished in order to cut out the electoral fraud which plagued recent elections...

Express stokes hysteria over “Shari’a Court”

Islamophobia Watch – Home – 'Now Muslims Get Their Own Laws' This is a response to the shocking lead story in today's Daily Express, a disreputable newspaper which routinely leads with scare stories of...

Al-Qa’ida and Muslim hearts and minds

Matthew Parris, writing in the most recent edition of the Spectator (part 1, part 2) in reply to David Selbourne, who claimed that American power is past its prime, that Islam is what has...