There was a great documentary by Kirsty Wark on the BBC last week called "Blurred Lines: The New Battle of the Sexes". (Still on iPlayer if you want to watch it.) The title is from the hugely popular online video last year, with teh naked ladies dancing. (I point this out because I'm so clued up I hadn't even heard (of) it when it came up in last ( Read more... )

I just posted on Twitter the perhaps depressing truth that “At this stage I assume that any party with the word "English" or "UK" in the title is racist until proven otherwise.” And received from a random human being the, I hope you’ll agree, amazing reply: “So you are not pro England or Britain, but favour the rest of the world? That makes you the ( Read more... )

There's a very thoughtful opinion piece on the BBC website entitled "Is Barack Obama black?". It's a response to comments about Obama that frankly I hadn't even been aware of. I think the article makes some very wise points about artificially absolute definitions of race, and also the societal nature of the labels we apply to people. And indeed ( Read more... )

I don't normally embed videos, but I was emailed this today by Avaaz.org, and I'm sure this will be doing the rounds.

Click to view

It's a quite nice, positive video underlining America's place in the world (rather than apart from it). The email claims "The ad doesn't tell people who to vote for" (I assume they had difficulty saying this with a straight face ( Read more... )

This atheist bus advert is funny, sensible and positive. Really the mildest, nicest of messages. Amusing, then, to see how divisive it's proving on the very Guardian comments section that inspired it.

( Warning: Contains Atheism )

I'm sure this rumour about Paterson Joseph being cast as the new Doctor is utter bollocks, like 99.99% of all Doctor casting rumours, but I'd love it to be true. Ever since he played the flamboyantly Doctor-like Marquis de Carabas in the BBC's Neverwhere I've thought he'd be fantastic in the role. Along with Peter Capaldi he was the best thing ( Read more... )

This is a fantastic dissection of a particularly odious anti-Muslim story in the generally extremely odious Daily Express ( Read more... )

Brigadier: "Well naturally enough the only country that could be trusted with such a role was Great Britain."
The Doctor: "Well, naturally. I mean, the rest were all foreigners."
Doctor Who - "Robot"

Depressingly but unsurprisingly, "Britons believe too many people, especially immigrants and asylum seekers, take advantage of the Human Rights ( Read more... )

Predictable perhaps, but some the comments on this BBC news story about the entirely admirable move to vaccinate girls from 12 to 18 against cervical cancer really do betray both astonishing ignorance about medicine and neolithic head-in-the-sand attitudes to sexuality. The same levels of ignorance were equally in evidence in emails to BBC News 24 ( Read more... )

It's really depressing to see one of the pioneers of modern science spouting a load of racist nonsense. It's rather like hearing Sir Patrick Moore blame women for falling standards at the BBC a few months back. Something in me wrongly assumes that people of science should be less prone to irrational prejudice, but of course we're all flawed in ( Read more... )