Ingrid Mattson on Woman’s Hour
BBC – Radio 4 Woman’s Hour – Ingrid Mattson This is an interview I heard today while out driving; Ingrid Mattson (president of the Islamic Society of North America and the first female, first...
Indigo Jo Blogs Blog
Gary Younge: Europe wasn’t all fine until the Muslims came along
Guardian Unlimited: To believe in a European utopia before Muslims arrived is delusional Gary Younge (regular Guardian columnist on race issues) on the tendency of the European chattering classes to ascribe all sorts of...
In denial about our speed habit?
We motorists are in denial about our terrible speed habit (The Observer) This is an article about speeding and speed cameras. The author got a speeding ticket and was given a place on a...
Missing canoeist charged with deception
Canoeist charged with fraud and deception (The Observer) I kind of got the impression that this disappearing act was a scam, if not from the moment he turned up, then not long after. The...
A case for agency workers’ rights
BBC NEWS: EU stalemate on workers’ rights I heard this being discussed on the radio this morning, with a discussion on the Today programme between representatives of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) and...
Online terrorism and stupidity
This morning they were talking on Today about the woman who called herself the “Lyrical Terrorist”, who wrote ghoulish poems about slicing people’s heads off and was convicted of possessing material “likely to be...
Today programme embarrassment
Technorati Tags: gillian gibbons Last Thursday morning, Ed Husain and Massoud Shadjareh (of the Islamic Human Rights Commission) appeared on the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 – you can download it until next...
Message in a gunboat (Sending in the SAS)
Technorati Tags: gillian gibbons In the further discussion of the Gillian Gibbons case on the radio this morning, the question of whether the teacher should be militarily rescued was discussed. Vanessa Feltz said she...
London’s where we do stuff, innit?
This week it’s appeared that serious consideration has been given to building a third runway, and a sixth terminal, at Heathrow Airport. The project will require the destruction of an entire suburban village, blight...
Insult, what insult?
Technorati Tags: gillian gibbons Just when the latest round of knock-ons from the Undercover Mosque hatchet job were starting to fade away, the story of the British teacher jailed in Sudan for a supposed...
Zimbabwe and racism
Yesterday I passed by the Zimbabwean embassy in the Strand, London, where there was a small group of protestors, black and white, who asked me to sign their petition, which I did. I struck...
Ofcom supports “Undercover Mosque”
Last Monday, the British media regulator Ofcom published a ruling that the Channel 4 documentary Undercover Mosque was not in breach of its code of conduct (PDF here; it’s on page 9). The complaints,...
So we lost
If anyone's not heard yet, the England team lost a football match against Croatia last week, which means England won't be in the Euro 2008 tournament next year. Boo hoo. The manager (Steve McClaren)...
Woman killed for rejecting proposal on chat show
Woman killed after rejecting TV marriage proposal – Guardian Unlimited This is a story about a woman who was murdered in Spain after rejecting a marriage proposal from her violent partner, delivered on a...
A “big gun” fires blanks for Amis
Today, the Guardian printed a defence of Martin Amis, in response to Ronan Bennett’s deconstruction of Amis’s anti-Muslim remarks in his interview with Ginny Dougary. Entitled Martin Amis is no racist, the article took up the bottom half of two pages, with the top half empty apart from the headline. It seemed that a big gun had to be brought in to defend Amis – someone of Amis’s own supposed stature – but the arguments were astoundingly flabby.
What came before “PC” policing?
This morning’s potboiler issue on the Vanessa Feltz show was that the Metropolitan Police had scrapped its mascot, a 9-foot-high figure of a Police Community Support Officer (the recently introduced police-lite) called Steve, because...
Martin Amis’s “adumbrations” deconstructed
Ronan Bennett on Martin Amis's threatening remarks about Muslims | The Guardian | Guardian Unlimited Ronan Bennett takes apart the attacks made by Martin Amis on the Muslim community, including that in the Ginny...
NHS hymen repairs
The other day, Vanessa Feltz brought up the issue of the NHS offering hymen repairs to women of certain ethnic origins who need to appear to be virgins on their wedding night. Apparently, according...
Underwhelming St Pancras
This afternoon I had the opportunity to take a look at the new, redeveloped St Pancras station, which is now used for the Eurostar trains to Paris and Brussels (and a few other places,...
Panic stations at St Pancras
Comment is free: Panic stations Christian Wolmar (British railways commentator) on the ridiculous security arrangements at the new St Pancras railway station in London, the terminal for trains to Paris: St Pancras, which reopened...