Press attitudes and bureaucratic nightmares
Teenager who doesn't exist: Birth certificate blunder in Spain means British girl can't get passport or even a bus pass | Mail Online The above report is about a young girl who was born...
Indigo Jo Blogs Blog
Inaccessible world beyond London
Note: if you can see Lynn Gilderdale below (that’s the lady with the feeding tube), reload or click the title to read the entry. You should see a still of a footpath through grass....
Hacked or not, Fraser Brown story is wrong
The Sun today was very proud to declare that Gordon Brown was wrong to accuse them of hacking his phone, or illegally accessing his voicemail, to make their "scoop" in November 2006, and that...
Blast from the past: the “Islamic” marriage contract
The new Muslim marriage contract will help empower women | Tehmina Kazi | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk About three years ago, I wrote a response to a new "Islamic marriage contract" which had...
CIA vaccine scam endangers vaccines worldwide
CIA organised fake vaccination drive to get Osama bin Laden’s family DNA | World news | The Guardian The Guardian today reported that an investigation by the paper had uncovered a fake vaccine programme...
News of the Screws — screwed
It was with much satisfaction that I learned that the News of the World, the British Sunday tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch, was going to publish its final edition today. This happened, for those...
Dawud Adib: letting it eat away?
An evil man in the community | Peace, Bruv The "evil man" in question is Dawud Adib, the African-American "salafi" preacher, who delivered a lecture some weeks ago at a "salafi" conference in New...
Why I expect Google Plus to succeed
Recently Google launched their Google Plus social networking system, and as I write I haven’t been able to get into it, as I still need an invite, despite them having launched the Android client...
Court tells disabled woman: just wet yourself
This post is also available at Where's the Benefit, and you can comment there or here. Ex-ballerina Elaine McDonald care ruling 'shameful' (with video) I wasn't aware of this case until I read earlier...
Simon Baron Cohen, autism and empathy
I recently got hold of two books by Simon Baron-Cohen which focus on the subject of empathy. The earlier, The Essential Difference, focusses on the difference in empathy and systemising between men and women;...
The dangers of over-generous parental rights
Pregnant? Wait till the boss hears | Life and style | The Guardian This article was about a woman (Danniella McClain, right) who worked for an upmarket estate agent's in west London, who informed...
Don’t hurt aspies, then play the aspie card
This past week it was reported in the news that Ryan Cleary, who had been arrested and charged over an alleged role in cracking the website of the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca), which...
Sri Lanka: who makes the rules of war?
Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields – 4oD – Channel 4 Last week I saw a programme on Channel 4, broadcast late at night (no doubt because it contains footage of people being killed), which purports...
As long as they’re anti-western
Left and libertarian right cohabit in the weird world of the genocide belittlers — George Monbiot, The Guardian (the version with references is on Mobiot's website here.) This is about a tendency among the...
Emmerdale, assisted suicide and the drama imperative
I don’t plan to watch the Terry Pratchett assisted suicide show that is on tonight, but I did watch the sequence of episodes in Emmerdale in which Jackson Walsh, who sustained a spinal-cord injury...
Why the smartphone is no substitute for a computer
How the smartphone is killing the PC | Technology | The Guardian Charles Arthur is the Guardian’s tech correspondent (he used to edit the Thursday Technology supplement, but then they ditched it), and this...
Trailer for new film about severe ME
This is a trailer for Voices from the Shadows, a film about severe ME by Natalie Boulton, who edited the book Lost Voices (reviewed by me here), and her son Josh Biggs (her daughter,...
Shocking exposé of violence at Bristol hospital
Panorama last night broadcast an hour-long exposé of a locked ward for adults with learning disabilities and autism (although I did not notice anyone who seemed to have autism) on which the carers seemed...
ME Awareness month round-up
I know, ME Awareness week was a couple of weeks ago and work took too much out of me back then. However, the month ends in just under two hours (British time) and I...
First impressions: Fedora 15, GNOME 3
For many years, GNOME has been the default desktop for most Linux users — it’s developed a reputation for almost boring stability, and generally stayed out of the way and didn’t offer too much...