Word from the local Lib Dem office
Earlier today I left a message on the local Lib Dem constituency office’s answerphone, as our MP, who is defending his seat, is the Lib Dem Energy secretary Edward Davey. I asked him what...
Indigo Jo Blogs Blog
Sometimes it’s the miles. Sometimes it’s the care. Sometimes it’s both.
This post is part of Blogging Against Disablism Day 2015. Phill Wills, the father of Josh Wills, an autistic boy from Cornwall who has been in a hospital unit in Birmingham since 2012 and...
Lib Dems must understand why they are hated
As I think I've said here in the past, I live in a Lib Dem constituency — specifically, Ed Davey's constituency, Kingston and Surbiton, a constituency where the only main challenger is a Tory...
Don’t go back
Last week the former Prime Minister, John Major (right), popped up to have a go at the Scottish National Party, which opinion polls suggest is likely to get a majority of the seats in...
The Sun on migrants: vagrants, cockroaches, a disease
Yesterday the Sun published an article by Katie Hopkins, former Apprentice contestant and professional loudmouth and bigot, suggesting that we "use gunships" to tackle the problem of migrants coming across the Mediterranean in unsafe...
No, ‘patriarchy’ isn’t killing the planet: the modern lifestyle is
Patriarchy is killing our planet – women alone can save her – The Ecologist Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, an investigative journalist best known for work on Muslim civil rights and terrorism, wrote the above article...
Will the wheels fall of Maajid Nawaz’s bandwagon now?
In today's Daily Mail there is a report that Maajid Nawaz, the founder of the so-called counter-extremist Muslim organisation Quilliam and Liberal Democrat candidate for Hampstead and Kilburn in the forthcoming election, was filmed...
A new speed limit at midnight
Tonight at midnight, the speed limits for trucks on roads in England and Wales go up by 10mph: the maximum speed on single-carriageway roads to 50mph, and on dual carriageways to 60mph (in practice,...
Leaders’ debate: my impressions
Last night there was a big debate featuring the leaders of the seven major political parties in next month's elections (Labour, Tories, Lib Dems, Greens, UKIP, Plaid Cymru and the SNP). I was driving,...
Stable-door logic
Last week a GermanWings airliner was crashed into a moutainside in south-western France, killing everyone on board. The evidence seems to suggest that the co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz, crashed it deliberately, and investigations have turned...
Muslim women silenced on Muslim women’s dress
Last Saturday, the Guardian published a long-winded screed by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown (or Alibi-Brain as we call her) claiming that "the veil" as worn by Muslim women constitutes a "rejection of progressive values". It's basically...
Race: Things we can’t say (except when we can)
Last Thursday Channel 4 broadcast a 65-minute-long discourse by Trevor Phillips, former head of the Commission for Racial Equality and then (after its amalgamation with all the other equality bodies) the Equality and Human...
Yet another thing to carry around: Apple, slimlining versus portability
'Power users' need to shut up (from OSNews) This article links to one at iMore, in which someone who calls himself a 'power user' but says he hates the term, tells 'spec monkeys' to...
The lawyer who doesn’t know a man from a dog
I don't know what sort of dignity these people have, because a lot of them are just thugs who got where they are by killing people and kicking people's heads in. It's more apt...
Another reason to remain in the EU
A Twitter friend just flagged up this story from a Canadian newspaper. It's about a Muslim family who are Canadian citizens being barred from boarding a flight to Florida so they could go to...
ISIS and the “three silly girls”
Recently three young girls, British Bangladeshis from east London, left the UK for Turkey apparently intending to join ISIS in Syria, and the media have been up in arms about the fact that someone...
Thomas Rawnsley: funeral today
The funeral of Thomas Rawnsley, the young man with Down’s syndrome and autism who died at the Kingdom House unit in Sheffield earlier this month, where he had been held on a Court of...
Gender, ‘censorship’ and campus free speech
Last Sunday there was a letter in the Observer, the Sunday sister paper to the Guardian, from a long list of people (the principal signatories being Beatrix Campbell and Deborah Cameron; the others appeared...
Where were you?
Today the Guardian published a long article on the late Lucy Glennon, who wrote for the paper, most memorably about her condition (epidermolysis bullosa or EB), but also about food and about the effects...
Review: 100 Days of UKIP
UKIP: The First 100 Days (Channel 4; viewable for next 29 days in UK only) Last night, Channel 4 screened a programme which imagined what the first 100 days of a UKIP government would...