What’s so great about TomTom?
Last week I bought a new sat-nav, a TomTom Pro 5150 Truck Live, which is a specialist one for truck drivers which has information about vehicle size limits and truck speed limits (normal sat-navs...
Indigo Jo Blogs Blog
Mehdi Hasan’s phoney apologetics
British Muslims should stand up and say it: there is nothing Islamic about child marriage (at the New Statesman and also the Huffington Post) Mehdi Hasan argues that it is British Muslims' responsibility to...
Renewed harassment of McDougalls is indefensible
On Sunday I read, via Sarah Ismail, that the McDougall family (Mark and Kerry McDougall, née Robertson, and their sons Ben and Lochlan) have faced renewed “investigation” since they have returned to Dunfermline, their...
Maajid Nawaz plays to groundless fears over niqaab
Why I, as a Muslim, believe the veil must be barred in our schools: A provocative view from Islamic thinker fighting for Glenda Jackson's seat Maajid Nawaz, the former member of Hizb-ut-Tahrir who was...
CyanogenMod and ungrateful users
Recently, as I posted here last week, I upgraded my main phone (a Nexus 4) to run CyanogenMod 10.2 which is based on Android 4.3 — they are starting work on the next version...
Taking care of business
The last few weeks I’ve not been blogging as much as I used to, and there’s one important reason for this: I’ve been working on getting my HGV (truck) licence. You have to do...
CyanogenMod 10.2 and the Nexus 4
I bought a Nexus 4 a couple of months ago when it was reduced to clear, having previously been using a Galaxy Nexus which ran CyanogenMod 10.1, which was based on Android 4.2. This...
A fortnight of upgrades
The past couple of weeks, I've upgraded the operating systems on all three of the computers I own (not including my mobile phone and tablet). I've a Mac, a desktop PC and a laptop...
Obama urged to show more clemency than we do
Barack Obama urged to show clemency to Briton deported from US | World news | The Guardian Philip Hartley-Wall is a 42-year-old man born in the UK whose family moved him to the USA...
“Either HS2 or more motorways!”
We must invest in high-speed rail or new motorways, warns HS2 chairman (from the Guardian) The Guardian reported yesterday that Douglas Oakervee, the chairman of the HS2 project (the new high-speed railway line from...
Rachel Reeves’s “toughness” will strengthen apathy
Labour will be tougher than Tories on benefits, promises new welfare chief (from the Guardian) Rachel Reeves, “Labour” MP for Leeds West, former economist at the Bank of England and now Shadow Secretary for...
Quilliam out of their depth with Tommy Robinson
This week Tommy Robinson (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon), the erstwhile leader of the English Defence League, announced that he was leaving the organisation he helped found to start some kind of new anti-extremism organisation...
We don’t need another Crystal Palace
Last week I read that a Chinese businessman has presented plans to rebuild the old Crystal Palace on its old site at the top of Crystal Palace Park in south-east London. Ni Zhaoxing, chairman...
What breeds anti-intellectualism?
From the Archive: Paul Johnson on the Know-Nothing Left This article first appeared in the New Statesman in 1975 when Paul Johnson was still associated with the British political left (in the late 1970s...
Roman Polanski raped a young girl. Not much nuance there.
Roman Polanski and the sin of simplification (in today's Observer) Victoria Coren Mitchell tries to make a case that the situation of Roman Polanski, the subject of a book published by the woman he...
FGM and the fallacy of symbolism
Sarah Sands: We cannot lose the battle for liberal values – Comment – London Evening Standard Sarah Sands is the editor of the London Evening Standard, and this article by her appeared in yesterday's...
Letter to the Guardian on Niqaab
I wrote this letter last Thursday after seeing a series of very hostile letters in the Guardian following Kira Cochrane's article in which she interviewed women who wear the niqaab (who had been conspicuously...
A suspected war criminal to settle a hostage crisis?
The BBC just reported that the trial at the Hague of William Ruto, the Kenyan deputy president, for crimes committed after the 2007 general election, has been suspended so that he can go back...
Coalition is not “Britain’s new normal”
Coalition Governing Could Be Britain’s New Normal Despite Liberal Democrats’ Troubles (from the New York Times) This article claims that the "successful" Tory-Liberal Democrat coalition that was formed after the 2010 election has changed...
Outbreak of media splaining over niqaab
The recent wave of media interest in niqaab that resulted from the Birmingham College and niqaab-in-court affairs has, as previously noted, featured a lot of opinionising from almost everyone except for wearers — plenty...