I Beg Your Pardon?

'Dramatic'? *adopts Paul Hogan accent* That ain't dramatic, mate...this is dramatic! 

And, worryingly, a road I know well! What sort of speed you'd have to be doing to end up there I can't imagine.

Facts Or Feelings?

Is there any evidence of this 'trauma'?

Rob DesRoches, founder of Forest Gayte Pride, said the organisation would work with Newham Council to repair or replace the flags, adding: "We feel that people have been traumatised by the repeated vandalism, which needs to be sorted out now. The healing process needs to take place."

That's a 'no' then. I assume. I mean, it's not like the BBC can be bothered to send down any reporters to stop a few people and ask them. I mean, they might say anything. Better to just regurgitate a press release from an activist group as if it was Holy Writ.

What do the police say?

Det Insp James Rush said the force was keeping an "open mind" as to whether the latest report of vandalism was actually an attempt to "cover up the previous defacement".

I'm no detective, James, but if so, wouldn't they have used rainbow paint?  

Mr DesRoches said the organisation would work with the council to expedite repairing or replacing the flags.

Does that mean you're going to pick up a paintbrush yourself, Rob? I suspect it doesn't. 

Pretty Sure Most Are Just Getting On With Their Lives...

...like the rest of us. It's the tiny and unrepresentative minority of activists that are losing it, mostly in fear they'll have to make a proper living now:

“There is strong evidence that minorities experience greater levels of stress when their rights are being debated,” said Dr Adam Jowett, the chair of the British Psychological Society’s Sexualities Section.

“The mental health of the trans community has been affected not just in the past week but over the past few years: by the perception that the government is hostile to trans rights, the sense that they are not protected and the fact this is happening against a backdrop of hate crime and transphobia on the rise”.

Well, tough luck, Adam. Women aren't going to give up their rights and access to female-only spaces to help your patients. We aren't going to silence ourselves either.   

I'm Not Sure That's The Right Word...

'Misery'..? Really..? I mean, yes, it's an inconvenience, but...this is something you can already do when you buy stuff online.

It is hoped the software, by British firm Anthropics Technology, will reduce the environmental impact and £7billion cost of returning online orders in the UK.

The catch? The subscription service charges around £15 per outfit tried, or £135 a month.

Ha ha ha ha ha! A fool and her money are soon parted, eh? 

An Intensive Care Consultant Writes...

My enduring memory of that time was emerging from a fitful sleep to see the nurses who'd been on night-shifts, their weary faces bearing the angry pressure marks of their PPE.

They reminded me of Spitfire pilots returning from battle in World War II — and, certainly, they were engaged in a daily life-or-death struggle.

Funny, I don't remember Pathé newsroll of pilots doing dances in their flight suits while bombers headed for London. 

And I'm pretty sure if Algie and Ginger had been the size of some of our NHS TikTok stars, they'd never have gotten their crates off the ground, what? 

"Tally ho, Algie?" 

"Ooh, hang on, Ginger, those are Heinkels, we're only doing Messerschmitts this month.."

So I think I'll remember the true unsung heroes of the pandemic - the shop staff, power station workers, refuse collection and delivery drivers who kept the country running and fed while the NHS screamed blue murder and closed down to anything but covid.

And How Did You Get To Granada, Barbara?

A British woman living in Spain who helped 11 Syrian asylum seekers who were left homeless and hungry on the streets of Madrid after being forcibly removed from the UK has said she is ashamed of the UK government’s behaviour.

...

“As a UK citizen I am ashamed that our government would leave asylum seekers on the streets with absolutely no support. As I see it the only difference between me and this group of people is luck. ”

Apart from the fact that you legally flew into Granada airport waving a passport and clutching a job offer, you mean? 

Say, what do you do there, anyway?

...an adviser to corporate companies about social responsibility, who is based in Granada...

Perhaps they might want to reconsider hiring you. You're more of a parasite than any economic refugee. 

Devaluing Hell....

Ms Attala, 43, of Old Shoreham Road, Portslade, said she and her daughter Isabella, 12, had been held hostage in their own home by the noise.

She said: “They started major, loud works, which included industrial machines and floodlights, right next to my house from 10pm on Thursday to 2.30am the following morning.

“These included disc cutters for the metal pipes, a generator and crew of five to six men chatting and whistling through the night.

“I had to get up for work at 6am and my daughter had to go to school.

“We had hardly any sleep at all and it was a living hell with my daughter and I crying and trying to sleep at 2am.”

So, basically, you were kept awake for 4 and a half hours, while the vital work to keep you supplied with water went on? And that's 'a night of hell'..?

It's A Day With A 'Y' In It....

...so it must be time for yet more 'poverty' bollocks from the dear old 'Grauniad':

Paula Snowdon, who runs the Hub House, a converted end-of-terrace community centre on Seventh Street, describes malnourished families begging for food.

“Most had received benefit sanctions and were basically starving when they came to us,” she said. Others turned up wanting little more than a chat.

“We had individuals who hadn’t spoken to another person for days, sometimes weeks. Solitude is a major issue.”

'People are starving!' is a great hook, 'people need a chat!' not so much...

Some asked only to sit on the Hub’s sofa; private landlords lease homes without furniture in the numbered streets, forcing many tenants to live without the luxury of settees. Some arrived seeking refuge from the network of drug dealers that has infested the village: one resident on Eleventh Street counts six dealers among its 54 red-bricked properties.

Wait, people can't afford furniture, but can afford drugs? So much so, there's an increase in supply to mean the demand?

Yet what astonished Snowdon most was the prevalence of mental illness. “The actual way of life around here causes problems. I would say that 85% have a mental health illness such as anxiety and depression, or post-traumatic stress disorder. Children are born into deprivation and high unemployment: people feel forgotten about.”

So they can also afford children? And the luxury of 'mental illness', most of which falls into the 'excess of self-indulgence' category?

Next month, a delegation from the trust will meet the minister responsible for the “northern powerhouse”, Jake Berry, to discuss a proposition to build industrial and commercial space that will allow small businesses to flourish. Officials believe that £30m of state funding over four years will bring in three times that amount in direct investment, along with a sustainable income of £2m each year that will be invested to deliver bespoke projects like the Hub House.

And this can all be cured by throwing yet more taxpayer cash at them?

How Long..?!?

Mr Thomas told the court: “The incident happened on November 24 last year at Mr Gardiner’s property in Llanllwch.

“The complainant, Simon Morris, had been there previously and was aware of the dog - a Weimeraner.

“The dog was not on any Royal Mail list of dogs for postmen to be aware of.” The court heard Mr Morris had gone to the back door of the property to deliver a parcel. It was then that the 10 year-old dog, named Travis, ran out in front of Mr Gardiner who was going to greet the postman.

Mr Thomas said Mr Morris tried to fend off the dog hitting it with letters he was holding.

Ah, that 'postman attacked by dog' story is such a beloved one of local newspapers...

“Mr Gardiner was shouting for the dog to come away and it was then that it bit the left forearm of Mr Morris.”

Mr Gardiner took hold of Travis and immediately apologised to the postman - offering a hot drink and bandaging the wound.

A sensible, properly apologetic owner! Wonders will never cease!

At hospital Mr Morris was treated for the puncture wound and was off work for five weeks, along with follow up care.

Wait, what? Five weeks? I only took one week off when I broke my arm!

Are we sure this was a Weimeraner, and not a great white shark?

The Left Suddenly Think Collective Guilt Is Fitting After All...

Two things caught my attention yesterday. The first was this column in CiF in the morning:

Criminal responsibility for terrorism is a notoriously tricky subject. There were some discrete events for which Muslims had little direct responsibility. However, it was Muslims who breathed toxic energy into the spirit of disorder that engulfed the city. And so I return with a message. I write this for my fellow Muslims, the mindless majority who have yet to be blamed, yet are guilty by joint enterprise.

...

The truth is, as a national religious community it is time to start taking responsibility for our members. The reality is that the corpus of Muslim culture, however much it has improved, still requires surgery. A bit of honesty is desperately required. So let us recap. Muslims turned up in huge numbers to an English city in a country in the middle of a state of emergency. .. They paraded flags bearing the names of the small towns and cities whence they came. They prayed excessively and they sang abusive songs, about Islam, about the English, about anyone who was not Muslim...

An imam who has seen the light?

No. I've changed a few things. This is Tom Walker, a Cardiff barrister, writing about England football fans and the culpability he thinks they all share for those who commit violence abroad. I guess if you are mostly white and British, you can be blamed for anything and everything.

This was followed by the afternoon's shooting of an English Labour MP, and the immediate seizing on initial reports that her (mentally deranged) attacker was reported to have shouted 'Britain First'.

This was gleefully used to good effect by those who really should have known better, even as paramedics worked on the woman:

We need more female MPs for a 'kinder, gentler politics', don't we..?

The death brought out the worst in the sort of people who'd damn anyone who might suggest that inflammatory rhetoric from Muslim hate preachers might drive Muslims to acts of terror, all suddenly convinced that this murder must be linked to politics, all without a shred of hard evidence. 

The same people that probably scoured the news reports of Omar Mateen's killing spree and sighed with relief when it transpired he might be bi-polar will be demanding you overlook the clear signs of mental illness and vote for Remain, or 'the fanatics will win'...

Truly, if it wasn't for low standards, the progressive left would have no standards at all.

Pray For Canvey...

How much more can they take..?

Suffer The Little Children Sixth Form Students!

Orli Vogt-Vincent (a 16-year-old student and writer) wails ‘S’not faaaaaaiiiirrrrr!’

I don’t know of a single fellow GCSE pupil that goes to bed earlier than 10pm any more. Coursework, coloured flashcards and compiled organisation for maybe 11 or 12 subjects – if I’m under the covers by midnight, I’ll be surprised and pleased. But if you think that’s bad, it’s about to get a whole lot worse. George Osborne announced in his 2016 budget that the days of schools ending at 3.30pm are over, and that a £1.5bn package of funding will be put into lengthening the school day and making all schools into privately run academies in England.

Are you sure it’s schoolwork keeping you up, Orli, and not writing competitions?

One of the greatest flaws in human nature – especially exemplified by this government – is finding irrelevant factors to blame instead of addressing what’s really going on. If we truly have £1.6bn to spend on education, why not focus on the real problems that causes the UK to be 20th on the global education league tables? It’s not that we need more time in school – it’s the outrageous workloads of teachers and staff shortages; it’s the lack of teaching and focus on paperwork; it’s the targets and assessments; the criteria and mark schemes that cause young people to feel under immense pressure.

Oh, the poor little dears! *rummages around for tiny violin*

Adding mental and physical exhaustion to the list of ailments affecting today’s stress-infused teenagers is a terrible breach of Osborne’s power.

Yes, he’s doing it because he’s a big meanie, Orli…

It’s claimed that these reforms will give children the best start in life. But let’s take a quick look at Finland, rated sixth on the national league tables. Finland has a focus on learning rather than testing, with no real exams until about 17, no league tables, and crucially the least number of hours in class in the developed world.

OK, you’ve convinced me. Let’s ship you and your chums out to Finland.

Osborne can change the timetable, but he can’t change the attitudes. Nothing productive can be achieved by burned-out pupils at 5pm.

You don’t seem to be doing so badly, do you?

The Invasion Is Starting…

It’s over. Emotion has triumphed. Here begins the fall of another great civilisation.

The government has been defeated in the Lords as peers voted to allow 3,000 unaccompanied child refugees into the country. Peers voted by 306 votes to 204, a majority of 102, to amend the immigration bill in order to require the government to let the children, currently in Europe, come to Britain.

I wonder how many the peers will be taking into their own homes?

Labour peer Lord Dubs, who proposed the amendment to the bill, said the step would protect children from exploitation, people trafficking and abuse. Dubs, who was rescued as a child as he fled the Nazis, called on the government to remember the spirit of the Kindertransport and take the lead in Europe in giving homes to child refugees traveling alone.

The Kindertransport involved genuine children fleeing genocide, not ‘children’ of indeterminate age fleeing …. refugee status in Calais?

To draw a parallel between the two is grotesque.

They described their anger and frustration after meeting boys such as 12-year-old Kareem from Afghanistan, who told them he was exhausted after a night spent trying to hide in the back of lorries to get to England. “He wanted to keep hugging people, he wanted comfort. He has no one looking after him. He is about the same age as my son,” Cooper said.

Is he? Are you sure?

They also met Majid, 17, from Syria, who has spent the past year trying to reach his mother and brother who are already in Birmingham. He showed them the scars on his hands from barbed-wire injuries incurred during his nightly attempts to board trains to get to England. He told them he was hoping to return to school and wanted to study to be a surgeon in England.

Yes. Of course he does. He’d hardly tell you he wants to spend the rest of his life smoking weed, on benefits and committing street robbery, would he?

But which is most likely?

Don't Mention The War Truth!

Zac Goldsmith’s mayoral campaign team is investigating a claim that one of their canvassers made an Islamophobic remark about the Labour candidate, Sadiq Khan.

Gosh! What did he say?

That Muslims are behind most of the wars in the world today? That their system of government is vile and misogynistic? That they increase tensions in communities with their incessant demands for capitulation to their (alien) culture?

The unidentified man was said to have been distributing leaflets for the Conservative candidate when he allegedly referred to Khan as “the Muslim” in a doorstep exchange with Perry Pontac, of Streatham, south London.

Ummm, so....isn't he a Muslim, then?

Are we supposed to not notice?!?

Pontac told the Guardian that the exchange occurred at lunchtime on 22 December. He said that as he returned home from shopping, he saw a white, middle-aged man standing in the front garden who indicated he was distributing leaflets.

Pontac said he opened the door and picked up the “Back Zac” flyers before offering to hand them back to the canvasser. “I told him: ‘You can have these back because I’m not voting for him, I’m voting for the MP for Tooting [Khan],’” he said.

He claimed the man replied in a disdainful tone: “You’re voting for the Muslim?”

So, it was his tone he objected to? Did he really expect any other response, when he mounted his high horse, strapped on his buckler of Righteousness and sallied forth?

Pontac, who was born in the US but is now a naturalised UK citizen having lived in Britain for 45 years, said he had never met Khan and lived just outside of his constituency.

He said he was a Labour voter and was once a party member but dropped out when Tony Blair took the UK into the Iraq war.

As a writer, he said, he was careful with words and was sure that he did not mishear the canvasser. “I am very careful about what I say because I don’t want any holes to be picked in what I say ,” he said.

No, I bet. I hope getting your name in the Guardian for this provides you with the warm glow of (self)satisfaction you're clearly searching desperately for, Mr Pontac.

‘Homeless’ – You Keep Using That Word…

…I do not think it means what you think it means:

Homeless people are camping out on a Southend beach because they have nowhere else to go.

Oh noes!

Tents and sleeping bags have been spotted on the beach opposite the Premier Inn on Eastern Esplanade.

Hmmm. Hang on. Doesn’t that happen every summer, when the weather’s nice?

Camping out on the beach were mum and son Jacqueline and Paul Williams, who have come from Northamptonshire.

Paul, 33, said: “My mum was recently made homeless and I’m travelling with her to make sure she’s OK because she’s recently been diagnosed with cancer.

“Everyone’s been cool with us being here, though we had a bit of hassle with someone saying we weren’t allowed to camp on the beach.

“We will probably stay another four or five days, depending what the weather’s like. I want to see all the coasts of the country.”

Right. So that’s more of a camping holiday, isn’t it? Only the mum is supposedly homeless. We have no data about the son.

One of the groups working with people sleeping on the seafront has been Southend Street Spirit. Member Caroline Fricker said: “We go out Saturday nights and we did help one person to move their tent off the beach because everything was wet inside.

“A lot of these people are looking for somewhere to hide because it’s getting very difficult to find anywhere that’s safe and away from the crowds.”

So they come to a crowded beach resort in high summer..?!?

Who is it they are supposed to be ‘hiding’ from, anyway? Is it the JobCentre?

If Only Professional Agitators Found Themselves In Poverty, Ally…

Ally Fogg weeps for those in ‘poverty’. What? No, not the Sudan, in the UK!

When is poverty at its most dangerous? It is not, as you might think, when we begin to notice the frequency with which we step over rough sleepers on our way to the shops. It is not when we hear of children going to school hungry. It is not even when people begin to die from hunger, from cold or in desperation, at their own hands. On the contrary, poverty is at its most deadly when we no longer notice, we no longer care, we no longer even question it.

I question it. I question it all the time, mainly because ‘poverty’ conjures up an image of starvling waifs scrabbling though a dump for food in some Third World hellhole.

Clapham High Street scene...

When what we are actually talking about is children not having their own bedroom.

Allow me to summarise a few of the stories that have passed under the radar in the UK over the past week or so. In Nottingham, a food bank has closed its doors – not through lack of demand, but because it alleges that the city council was referring desperate and vulnerable people to its service as a first port of call, thereby allowing the council to deny residents statutory hardship payments and other services.

So, that should neatly scotch any ideas that these are genuine charities concerned with the ‘starving’, shouldn’t it, if they can shut up shop just to make a political point?

The news came a few days after a report into food banks was published by a consortium of charities, including Child Poverty Action Group, Trussell Trust and Oxfam, which found that the number of people accessing three days’ worth of emergency provisions had risen from 128,000 in 2011-12 to 913,000 in 2013-14.

Shocker! If you offer free stuff, someone will take advantage of it!

Scouring the press releases sent out by the Labour party in the past week, it is all but impossible to find mention of poverty, inequality, homelessness or hunger. Instead, there are countless volleys in the race to the bottom over immigration and benefit claims.

That’s hardly surprising, since they want to win an election, and ‘Vote for us so we can give yet more of your hard-earned cash to newly arrived Fatima from the Sudan, her granny & her 7 kids!’ isn’t much of a vote-winning strategy.

Nor is ‘Vote for us so even more feckless wasters can get ‘free’ stuff while you work all the hours god sends!’…

It seems we have drifted to being a nation of coarse indifference – or perhaps defeatism – to the bleak reality of poverty. Like the state of poverty itself, it becomes difficult to envision an alternative, a route of escape. We are not the first generation to face austerity. But we do risk becoming the first generation to declare itself indifferent to its horrors.

If we’re indifferent, it’s because they so often aren't horrors at all, but merely consequences…

Attention, Women: Don’t Be Whiny Little Bitches Who Write Pointless #FirstWorldProblems Articles…

Lindy West is concentrating on the major issues of 21st century life for women:

I was writing in a quiet corner of a Starbucks on Monday when a young blonde woman with a book took a nearby seat. She hadn’t even been there five minutes when a man, probably 20 years her elder and clearly a stranger, grabbed the chair next to her and started talking. About absolutely nothing. Dude literally opened with, “Mondays. The worst, right!?” It somehow got less interesting from there.

It didn’t matter to him that this woman’s response was tepid at best, or that she was busy reading – an act that explicitly says: “I am choosing not to be in this universe right now.” He wanted her attention and it was her place to provide it. The guy was friendly, gregarious, poised (as if he’d been through these motions before) and even though he didn’t say a single sentence with any substance whatsoever, his delivery was studiously, unimpeachably innocent. He couldn’t be violating anyone’s boundaries – he was being “nice”!

What’s next – are the feminazis going to outlaw smiles!?

Well, since they seem to think this is a problem solely experienced by women and perpetrated by men (the mad old bag who tried to engage me in conversation on yesterday’s train must have been in drag…), it wouldn’t surprise anyone…

And just in case you were thinking that she couldn’t top this, oh, believe me, she can!

Why is it that interrupting someone in a quiet moment, wilfully oblivious to their verbal and physical cues, is considered friendly, but rebuffing such an interruption is considered rude? Interrupting is objectively worse than not wanting to be interrupted. We only get one life. Wasting someone’s time is the subtlest form of murder.

I...

I just....

And Yet, You Look Like You Can Handle Yourself...

“It held me prisoner in my own property.“

Frankly, that's the sort of hysteria you expect from a 'Guardian' reading New Man, not a 53 year old dock worker from Canvey Island!

“My wife, Christine, even threw a pan of water at it. She is terrified.

“I couldn’t get any closer than four feet to it. What happens if it bites me?“

What, from four feet away?

Mr Tappin, who works at Tilbury Docks, was unable to go to work while he tried to sort the problem.

/facepalm

One Swallow Does Not Make A Summer…

Frances Ryan weeps and wails in CiF:

I’ll resist calling Clapson’s death a tragedy. Tragedy suggests a one-off incident, a rarity that couldn’t be prevented. What was done to Clapson – and it was done, not something that simply happened – is a particularly horrific example of what has, almost silently, turned into a widespread crisis. More than a million people in this country have had their benefits stopped over the past year.

And have a million people starved to death?

No?

It’s a tragedy then.

First They Came For The Primates…

…and I didn’t stand up. Now it’s the turn of the pygmy hedgehog:

In the past six months there has also been a 5% rise in UK ownership, according to the African pygmy hedgehog registry. As a hedgehog ecologist, I really hope this trend doesn't take off again, despite the very real cuteness of these animals, and the undoubted pleasure of being able to handle one.

Of course you do.

Leaving aside the ethics of the exotic pet industry, there are some important reasons why we should not encourage the pet hedgehog craze in the UK. Firstly, there is a depressing inevitability that unscrupulous people will pick up wild hedgehogs and try to sell them on (there is evidence that they already have).

Well, at least we don’t have that issue with the primates!

Secondly, people get bored of their pet hedgehogs. They are nocturnal, like to move around a lot and need a wheel on which to run. They also tend to poop as they run and end up smearing the wheel and themselves in faeces that will need to be cleaned up every day. Boredom with your pet will result in a desire to get rid of it. Even though APHs are a different species to the hedgehogs we have in the UK and unsuited to the British climate, people tend to release them into the wild, or hand them in to hedgehog carers. Already overstretched, these volunteers end up with another mouth to feed – and one that cannot be set free.

This is, once again, no different to people who neglect their cats, dogs, horses, etc.

But the main reason why this trend should not be encouraged is that we already have hedgehogs that are in need of help. The UK's hedgehog population has fallen by 37% in the past 10 years – a faster rate of decline than that being experienced by tigers in the wild.

Hmmm, and hasn’t that decline gone hand in hand with the rise of the badger? Who tends to find hedgehogs rather delicious?