My nephew asked me what my thoughts were on the stay/remain refferendum. This is a copy of the E=mail i sent him.

Some thoughts on the debate, EU Stay or Leave, plus some links you might find interesting.

As I said my views are still uncertain, one view is to vote leave to embarrass the government, who probably thought that they would have not won the election, at least not outright, so would not have needed to call a referendum.

My other view was not to have joined in the first place, remaining with EFTA, as the EEC which was to have been simply a trading club, [so we were told] and not as we found out later, a political union. As I said when we had a similar referendum in 1973 I voted to leave. 

">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T37AAsE-Ekw]

Last week the above video went viral when a 15 year old spoke out as part of a public speaking competition for so eloquently speaking about Palestine.

British-Palestinian Leanne Mohamad, a 15-year-old student, won a regional final of the Jack Petchey Speak Out Challenge with her speech ‘Birds not Bombs'.

Online people applauded the eloquence of the speaker and many congratulated her both for the content and her success.

Not everyone.

Cue the Israel supporters and trolls going on their own mission to victimise this young speaker.

I complained over the quality of coverage by BBC News recently and especially on its focus on attacking Jeremy Corbyn no matter what the actual local election results suggested - they had a narrative from before the results had been declared and IMO stuck to that narrative even when the result contradited it. The whole aim was to make Jeremy Corbyn look bad no matter what the outcome of the elections.

The BBC has sent me the following response:

From The Independent:

A teenage Catholic girl who converted to Islam has been banned from attending a school in the eastern Paris suburbs because her skirt is too long.

Women must not be told what to wear unless they choose to wear something we do not like seems to be the mantra.

"Je suis hypocrites".

Over the weekend, it has emerged that David Cameron has written another set of identikit letters to various communities in London in support of the Conservative candidate for Mayor, Zack Goldsmith.

Previously there has been controversy when David Cameron wrote identikit letters to multiple regions as part of his charm offensive. Most regions found it offensive as the letters were all the same, but with the names of the regions changed - this was exposed by the Yorkshire Post which refused to go along with the charade.

For the first time the BBC ran and article [once[ on the news criticises what the Saudis are up to in Yemen. This led me to do a little research, it appears that the House of Saud is getting a lot of criticsm. Could this be the start of the fall House of Saud? Still the UK can always give them asylum if needed.

Saudi 'economic bomb': Running out of money

http://awdnews.com/economy/saudi-economic-bomb-running-out-of-money

Saudi Arabia may have to start taxing its people

Now Saudi Arabia can't pay for all those benefits. It ran a deficit of nearly $100 billion last year and expects something similar this year, if not worse.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/the-pope/9960168/Pope-washes-f...

We are now into Holy week, Maundy Thursday saw the Pope washing feet of a few people [including a few bemused migrants] Our Queen as stopped doing this many years ago and gives out specially minted money instead.

We stripped the alter in our Church after having a service which symbolises the betrayal of Jesus, by his trusted disciples, to the legal Authorities?  Leaving their leader to face the consequence on his own.

Good Friday will be a quiet day with a simple mass and a talk about the show trial and execution of Jesus.

The news is full about the horrendous acts of mass murder that occurred in Brussels on Tuesday.

Following the attacks, some commentators from the right or far right wing were quick to link the tragedy recent Syrian refugees which have recently arrived in Europe in large numbers. Some even suggested that those that supported a humanitarian response to the events in Syria had blood on their hands.

Today it has been confirmed that the bombers were Belgian citizens who had not travelled from Syria - one had attempted to travel but was arrested and then returned to Belgium by Turkey last summer. These individuals were delinquents already known by the Belgian Security Services for petty crime

Some thoughts on the Revival Webb site

Some thoughts on the Revival Webb site, I have dropped by on this site for some time now and found it most interesting. I accept its main aim to reach a Muslim audience who are mainly in their teens and twenties.

As the Magazine says on its front page “Voice of the Muslim Youth”. The magazine goes back to 2005. I have looked through articles in the magazine, finding some both controversial, yet thought provoking. But don’t take my word for it have a look for yourself.

Do you use ad blockers?

I never used to, but recently on my home PC I started to use a modified hosts file to stop the PC from connecting to malicious ip addresses. This hosts file also blocked many advertising urls and ip addresses too.

One thing i have noticed is that the brwoser has become a lot more stable since I have started to do this and sites load faster too.

It has had such a big impact that at work when I got annoyed by some browser freezes, I gave in and installed "ublock Origin". Since then I do not think I have experienced a slowdown, freeze or crash.