Review of “Mental” from BBC Four
One of my contacts on Dreamwidth requested that someone in the UK review this history of British mental health care since the 1950s, which originally went out in May 2010 and was repeated last...
Indigo Jo Blogs Blog
Cloud coup-coup land?
OK, my title isn’t exactly original — it was a nickname for the Comoros islands in the Indian Ocean, which for some time had coups on a fairly regular basis (often engineered by the...
Facebook friends and “real friends”
Friendship, Facebook-style | Aditya Chakrabortty | Comment is free | The Guardian This appeared in today’s G2 (the A4 supplement to the Guardian) and it yet again raises the issue of the difference between...
Just don’t call it evil
Today Sarah (of Cat in a Dog’s World) pointed me to this Slate article about the present tendency to quickly assume someone is mentally ill if they commit an outrageous crime, such as the...
Jack Straw wields the wooden spoon again
So, the vicious old creep Jack Straw has yet again stirred up trouble for Muslims in the UK, this time with comments on the recent “Asian grooming scandal” involving groups of men of Pakistani...
Wot no spam?
It was reported last week that there had been a substantial drop in the level of spam on the net since last August and a precipitous drop since Christmas, which a Symantec analyst put...
Racial stereotypes exaggerated in ‘grooming’ reports
Child sex trafficking study sparks exaggerated racial stereotyping | Law | The Guardian Anyone read the extensive coverage of the issue of Asian men grooming white girls in northern towns that has dominated the...
The offender and the offended
Warning to the US: Don't Play by Islamic Rules (from Standpoint magazine) This article is Douglas Murray’s treatment of the so-called Ground Zero Mosque controversy, in which he smears Muslims by equating them with...
Google versus Facebook
Facebook started as a geek’s hobby, now it’s more popular than Google (from the Guardian) Facebook is now a bigger company than Google, in terms of its user base (Facebook has yet to disclose...
Review of my 2010
This is, as far as I remember, the first time I’ve ever posted a review of a year to my blog, and that’s probably been because no old year has been as different from...
The prejudicial coverage of the Yeates murder
A loss of faith in the morality of the British press | Minority Thought I must say I never had much faith in it to begin with, but this article exposes some of the...
Just as long as he’s on our side
A couple of weeks ago I read an article in the Guardian by Hannah Pool about sexual harassment, which according to the author was a common experience for women in public places which she...
The blue magic-marker fetishists
Since I’ve been a kid I’ve been something of a road geek. I was always fascinated by roads and road signs, road numbers, street lights and so on (although the last faded when I...
Clamp down on imaginary Islamisation, says Torygraph
Islamophobia Watch – Documenting anti Muslim bigotry – ‘David Cameron must face the challenge of Islamisation’ says Torygraph The Telegraph published an interview with Marine Le Pen, daughter of the French far-right politician Jean-Marie Le...
Western Extension gone
As I start writing this entry, the western extension to the London congestion charge ceases. The charge is being suspended over Christmas and New Year, and will return after that in its original boundaries...
Review of “Jeff Brazier: Me and My Brother”
BBC Three – Jeff Brazier: Me and My Brother (available until Saturday, UK only) I just finished watching this programme on iPlayer; it features a BBC presenter named Jeff Brazier trying to bully his...
A sad day for parliamentary democracy
Last night a set of “scandals” broke in which various senior Lib Dem politicians made statements which were not conducive to the love-in between their party and the Tories which has caused so much...
BBC Radio 4 – Young, Muslim and Black
BBC – BBC Radio 4 Programmes – Young, Muslim and Black I heard this advertised on Radio 4 last week, and feared the worst when I heard the presenter, Dotun Adebayo, enunciate the word...
Year of the Droid
I got the phone I started writing this on about a year ago, just before Christmas 2009. It has really changed the way I use my phone and the way I use the net....
The perils of suspicion
Last weekend I witnessed an ugly incident on Facebook, which led to a relationship breaking up and the two erstwhile partners both retiring from the site (and Twitter) over accusations that seemed flimsy at...