In defence of the friends of Nabra Hassanen
Early last Sunday morning in a northern Virginia town, a young lady was kidnapped off the street during or after the taraweeh prayer (the night-time prayers held during Ramadan) having gone to get food...
Indigo Jo Blogs Blog
Jail for poor taste, and May and ‘autism’
Somebody has already been imprisoned for offences relating to the Grenfell Tower fire in west London, and it's not someone who signed off on the dodgy cladding; no, it's a local who had been...
Tory press is Tory, and on packing bags
So, after the intial flurry of sympathy and devastation for the people affected by the Grenfell Tower fire last Wednesday, by Friday evening the Tory press had started to show their true colours: as...
Labour, Tories and fire regulations
Grenfell Tower: Tory minister declined to include sprinklers in fire safety rules as it could discourage house building | The Independent This pretty much sums up why I'll be supporting Labour in any repeat...
Grenfell Tower fire: not terrorism
This shouldn't need to be said, but … In the wake of the fire in the Grenfell Tower, a 24-storey public housing block in west London, in which at least six people have died...
Election 2017: Hope, but not victory
So, the election results are in ([1], [2]), with only one seat remaining at the time of writing. The Tories have lost their majority, coming 8 seats short of the 326 needed to form...
Protect your rights — vote the Tories out
This will be the last blog post I make before the election starts tomorrow (Thursday) morning. The front pages of the two biggest-selling newspapers are full of propaganda against the Labour leadership, branding them...
What’s wrong with telling people you’re safe?
Last Saturday night there was a terrorist attack in London, and as often happens in these situations, Facebook activated its "safety check" or "I'm safe" feature, by which people identified as living in London...
Nefarious Tories?
One of the enduring weaknesses of the liberal left is a sense of moral piety: we assume that our values are superior, that we care about the weak and the vulnerable more than the...
No, the mosques don’t know
Following the van/knife attacks on and near London Bridge last night in which seven people were killed (plus the three attackers who were shot dead by the police) which have been declared a terrorist...
Corbyn’s dreadful interview
I didn't see Jeremy Paxman's interview with Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May last night which social media was agog over, but I did hear his interview with Emma Barnett on Radio 4's Woman's Hour...
Manchester: an attack on women and girls?
In the aftermath of last Monday's terrorist attack on the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, the British feminist writer Karen Ingala-Smith wrote a blog entry claiming that it is "essential that we view the...
Good story 1, Facts 0
The other day I came across a story which a lot of people were sharing on my social media feeds since the appalling terrorist attack in Manchester on Monday night. The story, published on...
Lousy parenting advice
Last Sunday Mariella Frostrup answered a letter from a father whose son wanted to drop out of school and become a rock star. He complained: Our son has given up on study. He has...
Facebook, “fake news” and junk news
Since the 2016 election in particular, there has been a lot of discussion about how social media helps to disseminate "fake news", often without really enumerating what that term means. Last week Facebook asked...
On Ian Brady and the death penalty
Last week Ian Brady, a serial murderer of children from the 1960s, died in a "special hospital" (a high-security hospital which takes criminals who are mentally ill) aged 79. He had been convicted of...
On Corbyn, trains and renationalisation
Earlier today I heard Owen Jones, the Labour-supporting Guardian columnist and author of Chavs and The Establishment, on Radio 4's Today programme defending Jeremy Corbyn's plans to "re-nationalise" the railways if he became prime...
Adult education versus university tuition fees
Earlier this week Jeremy Corbyn announced that if Labour wins the election next month, they will abolish university tuition fees, which were brought in under Labour in 1998 and were increased dramatically by the...
On hijab, ‘neutrality’ and threat
Last week I heard a conversation between Shelina Janmohammed, the author of Love in a Headscarf and Generation M and a columnist for The National, a Dubai-based newspaper, and the LBC presenter Sheila Fogerty,...
Before you trust the Tories on mental health …
So, today it was announced that Theresa May has promised new legislation on mental health if her party wins next month's election, which will "rip up" the 1983 Mental Health Act under which people...