Tensions have been mounting between Iran and Saudi Arabia in recent weeks. Saudi’s intervention this month into the long-running and long-underreported Yemeni civil war – attacking Shi’ah Houthi rebels fighting against the government of a predominantly Sunni country – has drawn sharp criticism from the other major power in the region. “Those who pour oil [...]
Walking through security at Portcullis House, the fabulously expensive building standing adjacent to the Houses of Parliament, is a bit like going through any airport anywhere in the world. But making your way through the spacious courtyard, past green trees and sun-dappled water features under the enormous sparkling glass dome towering overhead, you could be [...]
Yesterday’s Iraq war memorial service can’t have been much fun for Tony Blair. Not only did he get called a war criminal by the father of a soldier who was killed in the conflict, he also had to sit quietly through the Rowan Williams’ polite denouncing of those who ‘look for short cuts in the [...]
The rabbi of Britain’s oldest synagogue, Bevis Marks in the East End of London, has been suspended over his participation in a protest against banks charging high interest rates.
At the risk of sounding like a dreadlocked gap year twat, I have spent the last week travelling Spain, attending, whilst in Madrid, the 2009 Gay Pride parade and celebrations. As one might expect in a Western European country subject to a stifling degree of cultural, social and sexual repression until comparatively very recently, it [...]
Great news from The Times, who report an upsurge in support for gay liberation and equality. Yet the article’s headline - ”Church ‘Out of Touch’ as public supports equal rights for homosexuals “- regurgitates an idiotic and irrelevant cliche. On the question of sex before marriage, homosexuality and a host of other issues, we are constantly told [...]
There was an interesting judgment relating to faith schools today. The Jewish Free School was told by three senior judges that its admissions procedures were illegal, as the test of ethnicity amounted to racial discrimination. Now, I’ll start by saying that I think all state-funded faith schools are a fucking terrible idea. There’s absolutely no [...]
The integration of minority communities, particularly Muslim minorities, into majority British society has been a hotly contested subject in recent years. For all the attention it has received in the press since 7/7, however, the role of faith schools in hindering integration in multicultural societies has been overlooked too long. Last year, the NUT finally [...]
Recently I came across an evangelist trying to give me some section of the gospel. As I politely made clear that I was uninterested, I suddenly the remembered the far less polite manner in which I would have responded a few years ago. Like a lot of cocky left young men, I probably would have [...]
