Name the problem: White Bigotry
There are some themes which will be familiar to anyone who follows or is involved in feminist discourses about rape and other violence against women and children: that the perpetrators often go unnamed while...
Indigo Jo Blogs Blog
Jeremy Corbyn, ‘Islamists’ and women-only carriages
Earlier this week Jeremy Corbyn (right) gave his support to considering reintroducing women-only carriages on trains, which were found in the UK until the 1970s and still in a number of other countries, particularly...
No, we can’t hold all air shows by the sea
I heard the most extraordinary and ridiculous interview on Radio 4's Today programme this morning. John Humphrys was interviewing John Turner from the British Air Display Association about the accident outside Shoreham, West Sussex...
Review: The World’s Worst Place to be Disabled
The World's Worst Place… is a documentary featuring Sophie Morgan, a British model and TV presenter who has been a wheelchair user since being paralysed in a car accident twelve years ago, travelling to...
Fear-free healthcare, revisited
Back in 2012, I published on this site a manifesto of sorts, calling for healthcare in the UK to be free of fear. Back then I was heavily involved in ME activism and three...
Why does Amnesty need a policy on prostitution?
Last week, Amnesty International adopted a policy supporting the decriminalisation of the sex trade after a debate in which it was subjected to intense lobbying from two groups of feminists (amid renewed mud-slinging between...
Review of Wanted: A Very Personal Assistant
Wanted: A Very Personal Assistant is another part of BBC Three's ongoing season of programmes about disability, Defying the Label. In this two-part series, four young people with mobility impairments of differing severity were...
Yes, we do get rid of ‘hate preachers’
‘If you hate the migrants in Calais, you hate yourself’ | Nick Cohen (in today's Observer) People have been sharing this feature by Nick Cohen since it first appeared online yesterday (and I had...
There’s more to the Binladins than OBL
Yesterday a light aircraft crashed when attempting to land at Blackbushe airfield near Farnborough. The airfield is a former RAF base which has also been a passenger airport, but these days is used for...
On Jeremy Corbyn: no, it’s not about purity
The Labour Party are currently holding their leadership election following the resignation of Ed Miliband after he lost the general election in May. The four candidates are Andy Burnham, Liz Kendall, Yvette Cooper and...
Review: Don’t Take My Baby
Don’t Take My Baby is an hour-long BBC drama, broadcast on BBC Three (which is likely to be removed from digital TV and only shown online as of next year, something one review says...
Anti-FGM crusade brings out the busybodies
The crusade against FGM is out of control – Spectator Blogs Brendan O'Neill wrote the above article on the incident reported recently in the British press, in which Baroness Jenny Tonge took a flight...
On feminists and girls’ school uniforms
Last Thursday Woman's Hour, the 10am slot on BBC Radio 4, had a feature on the growing trend in the UK for schools to ban girls from wearing skirts (it starts at 32:25, not...
‘Hadith 38’ isn’t about war
The BBC reported today that Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez (right), the gunman of Kuwaiti origin who murdered five US marines in Chattanooga, Tennessee, last week, had sent what it called a "war text" to a...
Close the units down?
Last Wednesday the BBC's Call You and Yours programme on Radio 4 held a feature on the 'progress' in getting long-term residents out of assessment and treatment units (ATUs), the type of short-term mental...
Price tags on medication: why it’s a stupid, callous idea
Yesterday the government announced that labels on drugs prescribed by the NHS in England that cost over £20 will have the cost printed on them along with the words “funded by the UK taxpayer”....
Review: Kids in Crisis
Kids in Crisis was a programme about children with severe mental health problems in the UK who are being transferred a long way from home, sometimes hundreds of miles, because there is no inpatient...
Who’s sorry?
NHS staff told to say 'I am sorry' to patients for medical blunders | Society | The Guardian Recently the health blogosphere and Twitter has been buzzing with talk of NHS managers' and other...
Hard come, easy go
Over the past month the BBC has been running a four-part series called Protecting Our Foster Kids, which went out late at night and featured a series of children in Dorset (a mostly rural...
No, we’re not “quietly condoning” ISIS
Last week, in a speech to a gathering of security chiefs in Bratislava, Slovakia, David Cameron accused Muslims of pointing the finger at everyone but themselves for some Muslims being attracted to ISIS. The...