A year since the Charlie Hebdo attack

Today is a year since the attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris and the murder of some of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists, as well as related attacks on a kosher supermarket. A year down the line it seems to me impossible to conclude anything but that the attack was a roaring success and that the terrorists have, by any metric you choose, won. I’m not going to really say anything which other people haven’t already said better, but the claim of “Je Suis Charlie” was weak from the start with few people or publications actually prepared to show … Continue reading

Insanity prevails

I will get round to muttering about more high-profile vents in due course (probably, unless I don’t) but mean time a slow burning bit of insanity that I’ve muttered about before continues. It seems that Leicestershire Police have become the 9th police force to decide that “subculture” is a definition for a hate crime category. The Sophie Lancaster charity think that “alternative subcultures” deserve treatment from the police. Now as one of those dodgy alternative types and someone who had the pleasure of joining Leicesters knife crime statistics you might think that I’d welcome this development, but as you might … Continue reading

Straight men can’t wear dresses #NUSWomen15

I honestly thought that the Yesterdays article would be all I had to say about the NUS Womens conference – it’s certainly more than I really wanted to write. I’d actually stopped following the #NUSWomen15 tag, when as is the manner of these things this gem ambled across my gaze: Which rather puzzled me as I had seen the motion in question yesterday and had mentioned it in my previous post, it was this one: The motion was that ‘cross-dressing” for fancy dress was to be condemned and that unions should ban events that “permit or encourage” cisgender people to … Continue reading