Can we stay in Afghanistan for the women?
Raising hope for women in Afghanistan | World news | The Guardian This article, by Samira Ahmed, is about how the war in Afghanistan has been framed as a “feminist experiment” and the plight...
Indigo Jo Blogs Blog
Steve Jobs’s death leaves me cold
So, Steve Jobs, the man who invented the Mac, the NeXT box and then merged the two together, is dead. Actually I’m sure a few people helped Jobs on the way, like actual programmers...
British schools: the leaving age and “Apartheid”
Chris Woodhead, the former chief inspector of British schools, has been in the news twice this week, the first occasion when he proposed that the school leaving age should be 14, so as to...
Free Kimberley Robbins!
While I’ve been following the case of Ayn Van Dyk, the autistic girl seized from her father for ridiculous reasons in British Columbia in June and still in care (see earlier post), there has...
Feel the autism?
OK, so after posting that long article criticising disabled and/or autistic self-advocates for forgetting how hard it was to raise a profoundly disabled or severely autistic child, I had this tweet today: Yesterday,a daycare...
Can anyone speak for all disabled people?
Many years ago, there lived a scholar who asked an old rabbi what could be learned from the Talmud. The rabbi told him of two men who fell down a chimney. One arrived at...
Remember Kercher, prosecutor tells jury
BBC News – Amanda Knox appeal: Jury told to remember Kercher Italian prosecutors have urged a jury considering an appeal by two convicted murderers of British student Meredith Kercher to remember her family. …...
The human and financial cost of ME
Last week, the University of Bristol published a study partly funded by Action for ME which highlighted the economic cost of ME and "Chronic Fatigue Syndrome" (more accurately, the cost of illness to service...
Flather’s attack on Muslims is not brave
UK immigration: Polygamy, welfare benefits and an insidious silence | Mail Online This article by former Tory peer, Baroness Shreela Flather, appeared in the UK Daily Mail on Friday, and consists of a broad-brush...
Government planning individual voter registration
Shocked MPs told electoral plan could remove 10m voters | Politics | The Guardian The Government is planning to introduce voluntary individual registration for coming elections alongside massive changes to electoral boundaries, to replace...
Is £500,000 worth it for Dahl’s hut?
A shrine for Saint Roald and Saint Rowling (from today's Guardian) Roald Dahl's family is seeking £500,000 (US $790,300 at current rates) to transfer the hut in which the late author wrote some of...
Facebook troll jailed — why can’t people be adults?
BBC News – Reading man jailed for dead girl 'trolling' insults A man has been jailed for 18 weeks for posting insulting messages on Facebook pages dedicated to young people who had died, in...
Eurabian nightmare
The end of Eurabia – FT.com Ths image is from the Spectator, the British political magazine, and represents what passed for journalism on the European and American right during the post-9/11 era. The occasion...
Blood donation rules: no sense then or now
On Thursday it was announced that the rules governing who can give blood in the UK was changed; previously, any man who had ever had sex with a man was permanently excluded; the new...
Ayn Van Dyk: where child protection defeats itself
BC Local News: Abbotsford dad still fighting to have daughter returned home Over the past few months I’ve been following the case of Ayn Van Dyk, a 9-year-old autistic girl from British Columbia (Canada)...
Vivint vote appeal, ME and mental illness
Yesterday it was announced that the Whittemore-Peterson Institute in Reno, Nevada had won a long-running campaign for a $100,000 grant from the Vivint home security company (formerly APX Alarm) called the Vivint Gives Back...
Charges against saline case nurse dropped
BBC News – Stepping Hill saline deaths: Nurse Rebecca Leighton charges dropped Remember the case of the several people who died after someone spiked the saline at a Manchester hospital two months ago? And...
Why I support banning the EDL’s march
Of late I've seen a number of tweets and blog articles questioning why some "good liberals" suddenly go hard-line when it comes to allowing the English Defence League to have their marches, and start...
Pauline Pearce: why jail drug mules?
“Hackney heroine” tells why she confronted rioters (from last Monday’s Guardian) Pauline Pearce was the woman caught on camera lecturing rioting youths in Hackney that they should “fight for a cause” rather than tearing...
What makes appropriate school dress?
School skirt ban is just the latest battle in the uniform wars | Education | The Guardian Recently a secondary school in Ipswich (the third in the town) changed its uniform code making trousers...