I sent the following email to Jeremy Corbyn, asking him to give his MPs a free vote on Article 50. I used email rather than a written letter because Corbyn's office make it clear that they do not accept letters (or phonecalls) from people who are not part of Corbyn's constituency.

( email, contains Brexit and other politics )

So siderea is writing a thesis on the history of gay people's experiences of psychiatry. She has posted a summary of her research on the removal of homosexuality from being classified as a mental illness. Go and read it.

This reminds me of the people who talked about papersky's Small change books and said, gosh, how awful it would have been if we lived in an ( Read more... )

So, there's a US election coming up. I have not said anything about it, because I generally believe that the citizens of a sovereign democracy have the right to choose their leaders without interference from ignorant foreigners. At this point, though, I've lost faith that the US is going to hold free and fair elections and abide by the result ( Read more... )

Author: Salman Rushdie

Details: (c) Salman Rushdie 2005; Pub Vintage 2006; ISBN 0-099-42188-7

Verdict: Shalimar the clown is powerfully written but depressing.

Reasons for reading it: I'm a big fan of Rushdie anyway, and this book got some good press when it came out.

How it came into my hands: Useful Cambridge charity shops. And it turns out ( Read more... )

I have been going back and forth about whether I should say anything about the recent stuff about antisemitism in the LJ fandom community which turned into a huge sprawling kraken of nastiness. I kind of wasn't going to, because I'm not really in fandom, so why should I get involved and attract a portion of the horribleness to myself? Still, ( Read more... )

OK, I really need to get on with work, not joining in the fun and multi-valent discussion on my dating post. But I want to start unpacking the tangle in this thread, starting from pw201's comment that violence against women is so often taboo (even among men who might be violent to other men, I think) that I was shocked to learn that women genuinely feel ( Read more... )

I don't normally get involved in American politics, but I think these need further publicity.

Two heinous examples of abuse of statistics for political ends, via lyssiae:

- The left have been leaning heavily on a study showing that abortions increased since Bush was elected in 2001. Turns out that more comprehensive studies contradict this (rather ( Read more... )

I woke up this morning to news of the Labour victory. Well, to be honest, I knew when I went to sleep last night that Labour were going to win, and really, I was pretty certain when I voted at 9 o'clock yesterday morning that Labour were going to win. And it's not exactly like I'd be dancing in the streets if the shambolic, unelectable band of ( Read more... )

So, according to that political survey thingy that's doing the rounds, I'm at (-4.8, 1.6), defined as 'fairly internationalist and rehabilitationist' and 'fairly free-market and pro-war ( Read more... )

In March this year, Jerry Duggan was killed after admitting to being Jewish in a hostile environment. I heard about this because Jerry was a friend of my brother Screwy. Yesterday, The Times published an account of the inquest, which quashed the suggestion that Jerry's death was a suicide. There is also some analysis in the same paper. The ( Read more... )