Politics, tech and media issues from a Muslim perspective
Over the past summer, a number of newspapers and broadcast outlets claimed that some so-called ME researchers had been receiving death threats from so-called militant ME sufferers, such that some had abandoned the field,...
I recently received my copy of the conference DVDs from Invest in ME, which had its annual conference in London in May, but held up distribution of the DVDs because one of the presentations...
My favourite radio station is BBC London. I’ve been listening to it for years, and while there are a fair few presenters I don’t like, there are some highly interesting programmes about local issues...
Supreme Court overturns non-EU young spouses ban (from BBC News) The UK Supreme Court has ruled that a government ban on British citizens bringing spouses under the age of 21 from outside the EU...
Recently I installed the new version of Ubuntu (actually, it’s still in development as the final version is only due out on the 13th). It was sort of forced on me in one case,...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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. …...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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)...