Following in Grandpa Phil’s footsteps
It's long been a cliché that Prince William represents a "new generation" of British royalty who are unencumbered by the prejudices and stifling customs of their grandparents in particular — the ones who got...
Indigo Jo Blogs Blog
Anti-Catholic prejudice? Really?
400 years on from Guy Fawkes, Britain’s Catholics still face prejudice | Catherine Pepinster, the Guardian Currently on the BBC there's a serial about the Gunpowder Plot, in which a group of Catholics in...
Felix Ngole and social work: free speech versus diversity
Last week a man who had been studying for a social work degree at Sheffield University lost his appeal against the university's decision to expel him for remarks he made on Facebook in a...
Catalonia: 2017 is not 1936
Yesterday someone I'd never heard of, but apparently gets TV show appearances in the US, posted a tweet containing a ridiculously irrelevant observation about the current situation in Catalonia, the province of Spain whose...
If in doubt, blame Putin
Last Sunday there was a Nick Cohen article in the Observer about Russian influence and how, for example, Russian "dark money" is suspected of funding the Leave campaign now that it appears Arron Banks...
Before we even think of expanding Heathrow …
So, Heathrow expansion is in the news again, with another round of consultations being by the government this week and a report, the Airports National Policy Statement, being released which, according to the Daily...
On British Muslims and US racial politics
Recently I've noticed a trend among Muslims in the online community of associating Muslims and Islam with 'brown-ness' and in opposition to 'whiteness' as well as the uncritical parroting of dogmas which are in...
Review: Unrest
Unrest is a film about ME, made by Jennifer Brea (right) and which tells the story of her life with the condition since it forced her to cut short her degree. It also tells...
Hijabi versus liberal Muslima
The other day Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan, a popular Muslimah poet and blogger, drew my attention to an advertisement she'd seen in a mosque in Birmingham. It was from a BBC radio producer looking for "an...
No, the Vegas shooter wasn’t a terrorist. Get over it.
Last week a white man shot dead 59 people who were attending a country music show in Las Vegas from the window of his hotel room at the Mandalay Bay hotel/casino. Already people have...
Labour, anti-Zionism and the past
The controversy over supposed anti-Semitism on the left of the Labour party continues, with the Times publishing an article (paywalled) the other day proclaiming that Jeremy Corbyn had been called upon to throw out...
On Stephen Kinnock and regulation of labour markets
Earlier today I saw a Twitter thread posted by the Labour MP Stephen Kinnock (son of Neil) who is a member of the Brexit select committee in Parliament (starting here, ending here, claiming among...
Review: TomTom Go Professional 6250
If you're a truck driver nowadays, you'll need a HGV-aware sat-nav (GPS unit). There are many stories about truck drivers getting their vehicles stuck down back alleys, teetering on the edges of cliffs or...
280-character Twitter just isn’t Twitter!
So, last night Twitter announced that they are trialling a new 280-letter Twitter format, and that certain people had been selected to try it out (I wasn't one of them). The company's blog post...
May’s speech rewrote history
So, last Friday Theresa May, the British prime minister, gave a speech in Florence (full text here) in which she told us what sort of Brexit she hoped she could achieve, notably rejecting both...
Who’s celebrating Uber’s eviction from London?
Earlier this week the minicab firm Uber, which allows people to hire cabs using an app which calculates the fare to their destination, lost its licence to operate in London and will have to...
Anti-Zionism versus Anti-Semitism
I'm a Muslim and an anti-Zionist. The latter means I support the right of the Palestinian Arabs to their country: all of it. Right now, part of it is a settler state that allows...
Justice for LB: Southern Health pleads guilty
In another chapter of the ongoing battle to bring to book those responsible for the death of Connor Sparrowhawk (known as Laughing Boy or LB) in a bath in an NHS learning disability facility...
Why ‘platooning’ is a bad thing
I'm a truck driver and for the most part I enjoy my job. I get to see different parts of the country every day and much of what I see apart from roads (and...
Persecution of the Rohingya is nothing new
The persecution of the Rohingya in Burma (Myanmar in the main native language) has picked up in the last few weeks, with obvious signs of genocide or as the UN has called it "classic...