Some of my recent photography
Besides blogging, amateur landscape photography is an interest of mine and I recently joined the National Trust, a charity which manages a large body of stately homes, gardens and places of natural beauty across...
Indigo Jo Blogs Blog
Does London need an official Holocaust memorial?
Last week the prime minister, Theresa May, joined her four living predecessors to make a video promoting a project to build a permanent Holocaust memorial and education centre in Victoria Tower Gardens, a small...
Why I defend Jeremy Corbyn on anti-Semitism
Two things happened last week which gave rise to a lot of opinionating on the current state and future of the Labour party. One was another ‘revelation’ about Jeremy Corbyn displaying anti-Semitism, in this...
Dear Muslims, stop cringing
Ramadan starts next week, and for the first time in a long while, the fasting days will be getting longer as the month progresses; most of the days will be long, starting (depending on...
Why are St Andrew’s passing the buck?
Yesterday it was reported that Katie Fisher, the chief executive of St Andrew’s Healthcare, a charity which runs four hospitals including a large psychiatric institution in Northampton, had “spoken out” after an internal review...
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...
Debenhams: another big British chain in trouble
Today it was announced that the British department store chain Debenhams was to close 50 of the stores it operates in the UK, leaving it with 116 (in other words, nearly a third of...
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...
Assange should be nobody’s hero
Now that Julian Assange has finally been evicted from his refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, a whole lot of his old admirers seem to have taken a trip back down memory lane...
Muslim leaders should not serve Israeli propaganda
For a long while, Israeli sympathisers have been trying to nurture a generation of Muslim leaders and influencers who might try to sway Muslim opinion towards, as they see it, a more ‘balanced’ view...
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...
Who decides what is ‘consent’?
This Monday a judge in the Court of Protection, a British court that decides the affairs of disabled people who are not able to do so for themselves, made a remark which caused a...
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...
And he wasn’t even Muslim
Last month a film-making group called “Error in Terror”, founded by a group of “highly-skilled film-makers” after the Westminster and Borough Market terrorist attacks in London to “create content which aims to tackle all...
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...
Not the good old days
In today’s Guardian, there is a feature on people’s experiences from the early years of the public Internet, in the mid 1990s to the very early 2000s; the feature consists of user-submitted stories edited...
Mind the gaps (not just the gender gap)
Earlier today someone flagged up an event taking place next Monday by which female travellers on the Berlin public transport system will pay 21% less than men (€5.50 rather than the usual €7.00) to...
Christchurch: Reckoning for the Right
Last Friday, in the early hours of the morning UK time but in the early afternoon local time, a far-right terrorist entered two mosques in Christchurch, South Island, New Zealand, with automatic rifles emblazoned...
Good manners won’t save us from hate
Yesterday a Muslim YouTuber who goes by the Scottish Revert Teacher published a video saying that Muslims really were not really doing enough to improve the image of Islam in terms of the way...
Autism, driving, and changes to British notification rules
Last weekend, by chance, some of us found out that people with autism spectrum disorders (principally Asperger’s syndrome) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) were required to notify the DVLA (Driver and Vehicle Licensing...