Shamima Begum, ‘grooming’ and responsibility
Last week it was revealed (or rather, re-reported, as this matter had been known for some time) that the man who helped Shamima Begum and her two friends over the Turkish-Syrian border to join...
Indigo Jo Blogs Blog
Tories gunning for cyclists (during climate and cost-of-living crisis)
In today’s newspapers there is a story that the Tories have proposed requiring cyclists to have mandatory insurance and number plates, the same as cars and other motor vehicles, and could face licence points...
Rushdie, Khomeini and Muslims here and there
I was a child, and a long way from becoming Muslim, when the Rushdie affair happened. My mother was in college going through teacher training, and one of her college friends had a sister...
What is oppression? Who is oppressed?
The other day I saw a tweet quoted comparing the oppression of Black Americans versus that of women, in the context of Rachel Dolezal, who disguised herself as Black and (among other things) gained...
Ukraine, disabled people and the war
Last Tuesday the BBC showed a 24-minute documentary, Ukraine’s Stolen Lives, about the treatment of people with real or apparent learning disabilities in Ukraine’s ‘orphanages’ and other institutions and how this has dramatically worsened...
Tunisia and tyranny: just part of life?
The Guardian reported today that the electoral commission in Tunisia, controlled by the president who staged a coup against his own government and the country’s elected parliament last year, has reported that more than...
On the Tories and Britain’s minorities
In the current New Statesman there is an article by Tomiwa Owolade, “a New Statesman contributing writer and the author of the forthcoming This is Not America“, on the notion advanced by the lawyer...
Are democracies’ economies weaker?
Arabs believe economy is weak under democracy (BBC News) Last week the BBC highlighted the results of a survey conducted in a number of Arab countries which found that people are losing faith in...
Freedom of expression a British value? Really?
This weekend it was revealed that Qari Asim, an imam who had worked with the government as some sort of anti-extremism consultant since 2019 when Theresa May was still PM, had been sacked for...
Let’s put a stop to the dashcam vigilantes
In recent years a genre of videos has emerged on YouTube: compilations of dashcam clips, showing everything from actual crashes, some of which look like they must have been fatal, through hair-raisingly stupid and...
Should Labour be chasing Hindu fascist votes?
In the most recent local elections in the UK, Labour gained a couple of flagship councils from the Tories but lost two councils it had held for some years to the Tories, namely Croydon in the south and Harrow in the north-west.
Who will be criminalised in the post-Roe USA?
Last week a draft of a ruling by the conservative majority on the US Supreme Court was leaked to the American news site Politico (PDF of the document itself here) which indicated that the...
Review of Jimmy Savile: A British Horror Story
Netflix has released a two-part series on the British TV presenter Jimmy Savile, who over a decades-long career as a club DJ, radio and TV host, charity fundraiser and adviser to politicians and royalty,...
Did Putin do Brexit to us?
In the years since the Brexit referendum in 2016, it has become fashionable among Remainers to blame the result on manipulation. While the racist and xenophobic motives were plain from some of their advertisements...
How ‘fair’ is mandatory water metering?
This week my family got a letter from the local water company, Thames Water, telling us that water meters are going to be installed on our street some time this month and that they will be coming to dig up our street to do it.
No excuse for racism
As soon as bombs began falling on Kyiv, the country’s capital, people began fleeing, mostly to the western borders with countries like Poland and Romania; more than a million refugees have fled the country. Among them are foreign students and others from African and Asian countries, and numerous stories have emerged of racist treatment they had received from border guards, the police, shopkeepers and others while attempting to leave the country.
Travesty of justice, travesty of science
I recently bought and read the autobiography of Jennifer Msumba, an autistic YouTuber, musician and film-maker who lives at a group home in Florida who spent seven years at an institution in Massachusetts, the...
Why the Tories broke the Covid rules
This past two weeks or more, the news here has been dominated by revelations about the behaviour of Boris Johnson and his friends during the two lockdowns in Spring 2020 and Winter 2021 (January...
Loyalty is part of Islam
Last year, it was discovered that two men had been spying on major Islamic organisations in the USA and taking money from a hate group run by someone known since the 90s for spreading...
What is and what isn’t eugenics?
As more and more of the British population has received vaccination against Covid-19, it has been reported that most of the people who are still becoming very ill with the virus are the unvaccinated,...