Symbol of aspiration or WAG in chief?
Yesterday, while Barack Obama was discussing how to save the world economy with Gordon Brown, Berlusconi et al, Michelle Obama put in a planned, but mostly unannounced, visit to a girls’ school in Islington,...
Indigo Jo Blogs Blog
Legal lottery?
Today a man was jailed for four years for the manslaughter of a man his partner accused of jumping a queue in a Sainsbury’s supermarket near Wimbledon, south London. The woman called up Tony...
The government’s preferred Muslim spokesmen
Gary Younge has a fantastic piece in today’s Guardian which rips apart the government’s attitudes towards representatives of the Muslim community: Somewhere out there is the Muslim that the British government seeks. Like all...
Target culture and the low rape conviction rate
Technorati Tags: kirk reid Last Thursday, for the second time in a month, a man was jailed for a series of sexual assaults, including rapes, on women in south London, and among the major...
Jade Goody: built up, knocked down, built up again
Yesterday morning, Jade Goody, the British reality TV “star”, died of ovarian cancer, so ending the last phase of her roller-coaster media career. Goody first appeared in the third edition of Big Brother in...
The sick whore of Fleet Street
That is how the Sun, which is of course a world-renowned upholder of journalistic standards, described the Daily Mirror when it printed pictures of the late Princess Diana working out in a gym, secretly...
Stupidity about health targets and cancer
In today's Guardian, a senior NHS doctor, using a pseudonym, talks about the target culture which led to the scandal at Stafford Hospital yesterday, in which 400 more patients died in three months than...
Wrongly jailed man freed after 27 years
BBC News: Conviction quashed after 27 years A man has been freed after spending 27 years in jail for the murder of a woman who was strangled in her car in 1979. The man...
Muhajiroun versus Luton white trash
I’ve never cared much for the MuhajiGoons, but seeing this display of “patriotism” by a wannabe lynch mob of Britain’s “finest” made me a bit more sympathetic. They did not seem to be saying...
No sad goodbye
BBC News: Sad goodbye to 'cosmopolitan' Cairo The BBC laments how the old nightclubs and belly-dancing joints of Cairo have either closed down or are shadows of their old selves. The problem is that...
Provincial Tory attacks free speech
In case anyone was really thinking that the Tories had become the party of civil liberties in the UK (rather than the party which started the ball rolling on bringing in laws restricting the...
Muhajiroun disrupt Luton army parade
A small group of young men from al-Muhajiroun (or Muhajigoons, the Voice, the Ears and Eyes of the Morons) yesterday caused a commotion at a parade in Luton by soldiers returning from Iraq. The...
Thug pupils ruining teachers’ careers
BBC Radio's File on 4 put out this programme last week about how teachers' careers are being ruined by false accusations, particularly of assault, often coming from pupils with a history of violence themselves....
IJ gets a mention in the Spectator
I was browsing through the Spectator the other day, and noticed that Melanie Phillips had contributed a piece about a "new axis of Islamists and Evangelicals" against Israel. The subject was nothing other than...
WCPI @ Trafalgar Square: it was tiny after all
I managed to get to the WCPI "One Law for All" rally in Trafalgar Square yesterday afternoon, and as others had advised me it would be, it was tiny after all. I took some...
The anti-Semitic holiday destination
New Statesman – You’re Jewish? You can’t be English I read this in this week’s New Statesman, by one Rhoda Koenig, a theatre critic on the Independent and Punch, who lives in London but...
England people not very nice
Letter: Why I’ve withdrawn from National debate | Stage | The Guardian A letter from Rabina Khan (this one, possibly) on why she’s pulled out of the debate on the National Theatre play, England...
William Dalrymple on Sufis in Pakistan
William Dalrymple charts Pakistan’s descent into chaos | World news | The Guardian This appeared in the G2 supplement in the Guardian yesterday. Dalrymple has in general been sympathetic to Pakistan in his writings,...
Organise against the WCPI “One Law” campagin
There is a rally to be held in London this coming Saturday, organised by the so-called One Law for All campaign, against “Shari’ah courts” (i.e. voluntary Shari’ah councils which arbitrate in some family and...
Cerrie Burnell: what’s the problem?
In the Shade of the Veil: What’s the problem here? Last week, there was a huge controversy over the use of a presenter with one hand missing on a children’s TV channel run by...