What’s with the new Pret?
For some years I’ve been a regular at the Pret a Manger café in Kingston. Yes, it’s part-owned by MacDonalds, but it had comfortable seats, the coffee was nice enough, your coffee wasn’t made...
Indigo Jo Blogs Blog
The big lie
BBC NEWS | England | London | Murder claim politician faces ban The BBC reports that a London Assembly member from the British National Party may be banned from the council for six months...
Disability and brutality
One of the most distressing stories to be in the news last week was an inquest into the murder-suicide of a mother and her disabled daughter in Leicestershire. The family, consisting of the mother,...
The music teacher and the teenage lesbian
School teacher Helen Goddard jailed for 15 months for lesbian affair with teenage pupil | Mail Online A judge yesterday jailed a (now former) music teacher for fifteen months for carrying on a lesbian...
London Independent ‘gone by Christmas’
UPDATE 1-O’Brien sees London’s Independent closed by Dec | Industries | Technology, Media & Telecommunications | Reuters Denis O’Brien, the second largest shareholder in the Independent News and Media group, has said that the...
Wheelchair access at Green Park is money well spent
There is an article in the current issue of The Spectator by Andrew Gilligan, attacking a project to make Green Park station, an important London Underground interchange, wheelchair accessible or, in London Transport jargon,...
Rubbishing the ‘Islamification’ myth
Mark Steel: So has anyone really been ‘Islamified’ against their will? – Mark Steel, Commentators – The Independent Mark Steel tears into the ridiculous myths about the ‘Islamification of Europe’ peddled by some on...
The pollution of argument: Zionists and HRW
Judge Goldstone and the pollution of argument | Comment is free | The Guardian Antony Lerman in today’s Guardian on the ongoing smear campaign against human rights activists who criticise the state of Israel,...
Head injury, and disabled and black perspectives on Serena Williams
BBC – BBC Radio 4 Programmes – Saturday Live, 12/09/2009 This programme features an interview with Jade Bracey, a young woman who suffered a head injury after being hit by a car on her...
BBC feature on Welsh ‘Degmo’
BBC Radio 4 had a lovely feature this morning about the Degmo Centre, a farm in Wales where Somalis from Britain’s inner cities come to learn about their rural roots. In Somalia, families often...
Former K-Towners who leave Islam
Recently sister Safiya (Outlines) posted an article about the situation of women who got hurt in the Kharabsheh or “K-Town” community in Jordan; this is the community of Shaikh Nuh Ha Mim Keller’s students...
Another attack on a Muslim in Tooting
BBC NEWS | England | London | Man hurt in mosque ‘race’ attack Another Asian man has been attacked near a mosque in Tooting: this time, a 30-year-old, attacked by ‘youths’ after taraweeh at...
Control orders: try them or release them
Bring these men to trial — or revoke their control orders, from today’s Guardian Afua Hirsch (the Guardian’s legal correspondent) on the recent change of mind regarding a British-Libyan man who had been under...
Standpoint runs front page Islam bash
Turning a Blind Eye to Misogyny | Standpoint Standpoint magazine, a right-leaning commentary magazine published by the Social Affairs Unit, has ran with a front-page feature on how the western left supposedly turns a...
Media shame over Dugard frenzy
When a slavering press brands kidnap victims such as Jaycee Lee Dugard 'sex slaves', it shames them | Hadley Freeman | Comment is free | The Guardian This article attacks the media for the...
Welcome home, Hilary
We're all rehearsing for the presidency … I always wanted to be commander-in-chief of my one-woman army — Ani DiFranco, Not So Soft Yesterday evening, just before 7pm, a lady called Hilary Lister completed...
Mehdi Hasan on the BBC’s ‘liberal’ bias
New Statesman – Bias and the Beeb Mehdi Hasan, the NS’s senior politics editor, on how the recurrent claim that the BBC has some sort of liberal bias does not stack up when you...
Shisha ‘as harmful as cigarettes’
BBC NEWS | Health | Shisha ‘as harmful as cigarettes’ Why does anyone assume that shisha is less harmful than smoking cigarettes? Becuase it’s such a “cultural” experience, or because the smell of shisha...
If it looks like a bloke …
Last week, a South African female runner who won the gold medal by a very clear margin (albeit because of a surge in the last minute or so) in the World Athletics Championships in...
My thoughts on Lockerbie ‘bomber’ release
Today, Abdul-Basit Ali al-Megrahi, the man convicted of planting the bomb which destroyed a Pan Am jet over Lockerbie in Scotland in 1988, was released on compassionate grounds as he is terminally ill with...