Politics, tech and media issues from a Muslim perspective
On Thursday the Guardian reported that the government had ignored official advice to review a massive road-building programme on environmental grounds; taking such advice has been a legal requirement since 2014. This revelation forms...
I saw a piece by Freddie Sayers (former editor-in-chief of YouGov, now at UnHerd) billed as a look “inside the Zero Covid campaign”, a report from the conference of the “Covid Community Action Summit”,...
Last Thursday the BBC radio programme Woman’s Hour (10am, Radio 4) interviewed Zara Mohammed, the new secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain and the first woman to be elected to that role, and...
Earlier this week Captain Sir Tom Moore, a World War II veteran who raised £33million for NHS-related charities by walking miles in the form of multiple lengths of his back garden during the first...
I saw a tweet earlier this week from the political scientist Matthew Goodwin, a noted media and Twitter Brexiteer, hailing the “devolution deal” that came into force this past weekend which paves the way...
Someone on Facebook shared an article from Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper, on how immigrant (or immigrant-descended) Muslims in Germany react to Holocaust education efforts such as trips to concentration camps. The article notes that...
Sneering scientists won’t win over anti-vaxxers by Giles Fraser (UnHerd) This article is sub-headed “Public intellectuals risk alienating religious believers” and the author is a vicar in an inner London Anglican church with, as...
Last week, following the publication of a report into the abuse of women incarcerated in church-run institutions in Ireland in the mid-20th century, I saw series of tweets assigning guilt to the men who...
Recently my Twitter feed has been buzzing with talk of “fronted adverbials” with tales of children losing marks in their school English work for not using enough of them, parents having to ask their...
In the most recent episode of the BBC tech series Click, it was revealed that the new US president Joe Biden is seeking to repeal the law that indemnifies “big tech” from what people who use their services say.
Murderers are not a section of society that is held in great respect in our society, much as in others. Until the 1960s if convicted they were hanged; since then they have been subject...
Earlier this week a mob of Donald Trump’s supporters, whipped up by Trump’s baseless claims of ‘fraud’ in last November’s presidential election, invaded the houses of Congress in Washington, DC, with the apparent help...
So, the Tories finally negotiated a deal to take Britain out of the EU single market and customs union a little over a week before the transition period ended (the end of the year)...
The same weekend the government signed a wretched trade deal with the European Union which preserved the zero-tariff regime on goods but sacrificed almost every other advantage we had from being an EU member...
In today’s Guardian there’s a news story that there is a dispute between local politicians in Gloucestershire and South Wales about a plan to rename the old Severn Bridge. The Welsh want it renamed...
There is an article on the Guardian website by Owen Jones, probably due for publication in the print/daily edition tomorrow, blaming those he calls “hard Remainers” for the current threat of no-deal Brexit (and...
This week the inquest into the death of Thomas Rawnsley, the young man with Down’s syndrome and autism who died in 2015 in a privately-run care home, Kingdom House, where he had been placed...
There was talk yesterday that the “Eat Out to Help Out” scheme, which ran through August and saw restaurants subsidised to offer a substantial discount on meals eaten in on weekdays, might be revived...
Yesterday I saw a thread by the American comedian Jeremy McLellan (known to the Muslim community for opposing some Islamophobes a couple of years ago) which identified what he saw as the main difference...
This week a video appeared on social media and in some newspapers of a Hermes van driver picking up a cage full of parcels and throwing them with great force into the back of...