A lesson they’ll never forget
Every time there's a mass shooting in the United States, the anti-gun-control lobby insist that the right way to stop such incidents is for there to be more guns rather than less; that the...
Indigo Jo Blogs Blog
Why Aditya Chakrabortty (may have) called himself Paul
This morning I saw a Twitter thread (starts here, ends here) from Haringey councillor Joe Goldberg, purporting to expose the middle-classness and inauthenticity of the pro-little-people and anti-establishment stance of the Guardian columnist Aditya...
If you don’t like trucks, don’t buy stuff
A member of Kent County Council has called for trucks to be banned from roads in Kent, claiming they cause "more damage than 10,000 cars" driving through his village. Seán Holden, council member for...
Zac Goldsmith, an authority on FGM?
Earlier today, BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour featured a 6-minute segment on FGM, tomorrow apparently being "International Zero Tolerance on FGM Day" and who better to invite on than the co-chairs of the All-Party...
Review: Silent Witness, “One Day”
Silent Witness is a series based on the work of police pathologists: the "witness" refers to the body of a murder victim. It's been running since 1996 and the stories are always in two...
It’s not just the Far Right
Yesterday (Friday), Darren Osborne, who drove a van into a crowd of Muslims after a night-time prayer (taraweeh) last Ramadan and killed a 51-year-old worshipper, Makram Ali (right), who had collapsed prior to the...
Dr Hadiza Bawa-Garba, racism and the appeal to authority
Last week the High Court ruled that a doctor whose mistakes contributed to the death of a young boy in 2011 should be erased from the medical register for life. Dr Hadiza Bawa-Garba had...
Esther McVey and the Samaritans: a conflict of interest
This week it was revealed that Esther McVey, the new work and pensions secretary (after Justine Greening refused the job) in the Tory government, was on the advisory board of the Samaritans, the charity...
Who’s behind “Survivors Against Terror”?
I don't mean who's at the front of it: the public faces of it are on their website and include Brendan Cox, the widower of the murdered Labour MP Jo Cox, and some survivors...
Polygamy and “violent societies”
I saw this video being tweeted out by the Economist, a London-based weekly news magazine, this morning. It posits the idea that polygamy is strongly linked to violence in a society. Polygamy is still...
One lesson from Richard Handley’s inquest
Shitstorm. | Who By Fire The inquest into the death of Richard Handley (right), who died of faecal impaction in Ipswich in November 2017, is ongoing and is being live-tweeted on the account @HandleyInquest,...
Charities “refusing” Presidents’ Club donations
In light of the revelations about sexual harassment of hostesses at the men-only Presidents' Club dinner, an annual event for very wealthy men at which expensive prizes (e.g. flash cars, cosmetic surgery, flights in...
Review: Panorama, “White Fright”
Last night a 30-minute Panorama programme was shown on BBC1 that looked at Blackburn, a town of about 140,000 in Lancashire (north-western England) where the white British majority live largely separate lives from the...
It was the Muslims
So, last Friday the school in Newham, a borough in east London with a large Asian and Somali Muslim presence, which had introduced a ban on girls under age 8 wearing the hijab or...
“I’ve stopped fighting for Britain”
BBC Radio 5 live on Twitter: "“I’ve stopped fighting for Britain” Olaya has worked as an NHS nurse for fifteen years. Now she and her family are moving to Spain becaus… https://t.co/5X3puABDbN" An interview with...
Please sign this petition: leave our hijab alone!
Petition · Lyn Brown MP: Make Neena Lall remove the hijab and fasting ban at St Stephens in Newham! · Change.org This is a petition to the local MP in Newham, east London, against...
The men alive because we can’t hang them
The past two weeks it was separately announced that one serial rapist who preyed on women in London was to be released after serving nearly ten years and another, who attacked women and girls...
What’s “not Canada”?
This is a front page from today's Toronto Sun about the 11-year-old girl who was attacked in the street by a man who cut her hijab with a pair of scissors as she walked...
The “Workers’ Brexit” delusion
Yesterday, there was a letter printed in the Guardian from one Sarah Ansell about the notion that many of those who voted for Brexit in June 2016 are now experiencing "buyer's remorse" after Larry...
Review: House of Saud, episode 1
So, last night the first episode of a three-part series on BBC2, House of Saud: A Family at War was broadcast. I commented on the trailer last night as the language had been troubling...