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,...
Indigo Jo Blogs Blog
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...
Of course the ‘FGM doctor’ was innocent
Last Wednesday a doctor who had been charged with inflicting FGM (female genital mutilation) on a woman in the UK was found not guilty after a trial lasting two and a half weeks and...
LB on Newsnight while BBC plugs Southern Health unit
So, last night Newsnight did a feature (34min in) on the ongoing ‘effort’ to get people with learning disabilities and challenging behaviour out of assessment and treatment units (ATUs), more than two years after...
Thomas Rawnsley (1994-2015): abuse, separation, unexplained injuries … heart attack
Updated 5th February Yesterday I learned that a young man with both autism and Down's syndrome whose family were fighting to get him out of a 'specialist' hospital back to his family in Bradford...
No rape culture except Muslim rape culture?
Shelina Zahra Janmohamed, author of the book Love in a Headscarf, earlier posted a link to a ridiculous article by one Liam Deacon (whose other writings are at the Huffington Post) which was briefly...
Review: The Theory of Everything
The Theory of Everything is a bio-pic of Professor Stephen Hawking, the British professor of theoretical physics and former Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge university, who is best-known for his book A Brief...
“Due process”: the baneful legacy of Magna Carta
This year marks the 800th anniversary of the sealing of Magna Carta, the treaty which protected the rights of the Norman barons during the reign of King John, and has since become a byword...
Message to the animal rights lobby: women aren’t vermin
These days a regular annoyance is getting an email from a petition-hosting organisation (having absent-mindedly signed up for their emails when you signed a petition once) asking you to free someone who’s been “caged”...
No, not “regrettable errors”. Lies. #FoxNewsFacts
Fox Correction: "We Have Made Some Regrettable Errors On-Air Regarding The Muslim Population In Europe" | Video | Media Matters for America Fox News, on which a number of ludicrous and obviously false claims...