There Are Plenty Of Foolproof Methods

All it takes is the courage to stand firm against the squeamish:

Last night, we entered uncharted territory when Christa Pike survived Tennessee’s effort to execute her with lethal doses of pentobarbital. It was the first time someone received a drug intended to kill them but did not die.

There would always have been a first time somewhere and sometime, but that doesn’t invalidate the sentence. 

Robin Maher, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, told the New York Times: “This event is the worst we’ve seen and unlike any other botched execution in the modern era … There is no precedent.” Moreover, there is almost no precedent for what should happen next. Whatever fate awaits Christa Pike, one thing is clear. The state of Tennessee should not be allowed to try to execute her again.

Why not?  

Beyond that, it is time to give up on the fantasy that this country will ever be able to find an execution technology that is safe, reliable and humane. We have not found one yet, and we never will.

We've found plenty, what we’ve lost is the will to carry it out, because we think if we make it bloodless the bleeding hearts will stop campaigning..

What happened to Pike was gruesome. No one deserves what she went through, not even those who commit horrible crimes.

Really. Let’s remind ourselves what she did to get it, shall we? 

“Pike lured Slemmer to a wooded area near the University of Tennessee’s Agricultural Campus with the promise of marijuana. With the help of … [her boyfriend], Pike tortured Slemmer before beating her to death with a chunk of asphalt. A pentagram was also carved into her body.”

Leaving out, as many left-leaning media did, that she took a piece of the murdered girl’s skull as a trophy.  

The Enemy Within...

There are more than 200 staff networks, which cover a range of characteristics, including veganism and paganism. However, there is little oversight of their activities.

And this is focussed on the Home Office, but I have it on good authority that they exist in every department of the civil service.

Now, the Policy Exchange think-tank has raised concerns about police neutrality after the official body representing Muslim cops in Britain published a report defending Hamas and attacking Israel.

Why do we allow Muslim police in the UK? 

Last year, the National Association of Muslim Police (NAMP) complained of 'unverified stories about acts of violence by Hamas' during the October 7 terror attacks in a 39-page document. The same report, written by the association's then-vice-president Khaldoun Kabbani, also described the Israel Defence Forces as a 'Zionist terrorist group' and compared Israel's treatment of Palestinians to the Holocaust.

NAMP went on to drop the document, called 'Confronting Anti-Muslim Hatred and Promoting Human Rights', from its website. It said the views expressed were those of Mr Kabbani, who had since left the association. But Policy Exchange said the document's publication raised concerns about the impartiality of police officers, who are required to treat all members of the public equally under the law.

Those questions existed long before this latest example of how debased our police has allowed to become! 

Policy Exchange's report also accused the National Police Chiefs' Council of watering down proposed rules on police impartiality for staff networks.

Its authors have called for a new 'Police Impartiality Act', setting out requirements for police forces, associations and members.

More legislation to tinker at the edges, instead of ripping out the root cause root and branch. 

In an endorsement, Baroness Falkner of Margravine, the former chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission said: 'Too often, as this paper shows, we see staff networks straying into contested ideological, religious or political territory. If the public no longer believe they can trust that the police will always... act without fear or favour, we would see risks to the rule of law itself.'

Too late, Baroness, we already believe that, because we've seen too much. 

When Do We Start Calling These 'Depraved Areas'?

Children as young as 13 in the UK have been referred to a specialist clinic for a “devastating” bladder condition linked to sustained use of ketamine. Medics at Alder Hey children’s hospital in Liverpool opened the first ketamine clinic in the UK for young people amid a surge in urology problems linked to addiction of the drug. Now analysis of the first patients to use the service shows some are as young as 13, with most being girls and most living in deprived areas.

'Deprived'..? Think that's a typo!  

Excessive use of ketamine can cause serious health problems as the drug and its breakdown products sit in the bladder for a long time, where they can damage the lining and muscle tissue. Ketamine-induced uropathy – also known as ketamine bladder – is a severe and painful condition caused by the drug damaging the bladder, urinary tubes and kidneys. Symptoms include frequent urination, loss of bladder control and blood in the urine.

Lovely, it makes crack and heroin look like minor league habits. 

“By looking at factors such as age, where they live, their background and their life experiences, we can start to build a much clearer picture of who is being affected and how we can best support them. 

“This problem is preventable. Understanding more about the young people who are presenting to us is an important step towards preventing further harm,” Corbett said.

I think perhaps a little less understanding and a lot more condemnation would give better results! 

Analysis of the clinic’s first 60 patients by researchers at Alder Hey and Lancaster University showed their average age was 14, ranging from 13 to 15.Of the 60, 16 had autism or ADHD, or both. One in five had experience of the care system. Almost three-quarters (72%) had experienced emotional trauma during childhood.

Is the fact that they are all 'victims' of something what is preventing them being put into the criminal justice system, where they deserve to be, then? 

The clinic at Alder Hey takes a “non-judgmental” approach, Isba said. “We want to give young people a safe space to talk about what is happening in their lives and work with them to develop a plan to stop using ketamine and prevent further damage.”

Looks like it.  

Urban Areas Have Their Dangers Too, Love...

This bizarre headline is due to that most contentious issue for modern families, school places.

Laura has been told she will not be offered free transport to Helmsley Primary School, which her eldest daughter already attends, and is challenging the decision.At the heart of her case is the way North Yorkshire Council calculates a child’s nearest suitable school using the shortest available walking route.

And like everything councils do, it’s based on the easiest option. 

Laura believes the approach simply does not work for isolated rural communities.

Well, you chose to live in one, were you unprepared for the inevitable downside? 

“I understand that in an urban area, in towns and cities, the shortest available walking route probably works, and it probably works really well,” she said. “But I think for rural areas like where we are, it’s just not fit for purpose.” She says the route being used in her daughter's case crosses challenging moorland.

’Challenging moorland’? Your kid is walking to school, not delivering jewellery to a Dark Lord accompanied by your gardener! 

“In winter you’ve got the snow, and it is a grouse moor, so during shooting season you’ve got people up there shooting and in summer there's adders — and you’re expecting a four-year-old to walk up there.“Even with an adult, I still don’t think it’s safe. You just wouldn’t do it. Surely it’s a welfare issue.”

And in urban environments she’d have to deal with diverse youth machete fights, loose bloodsport dogs, road traffic (probably equally diverse and thus unlicensed) and peadophiles.  I’d take the adders any day. And grouse shooters will be aiming a little too high to bother a four-year-old.

Her experience is one of a number being highlighted by campaign group STAG as North Yorkshire Council continues to implement its revised home-to-school transport policy, which it introduced in a bid to reduce its annual school transport bill of more than £52m.

52mil? What are they using, Lamborghinis? 

How About 'No'!

BBC News should be on streaming sites and social media to justify a new universal levy, the head of the corporation has said.The BBC is predominantly funded by the £180 annual licence fee, which is currently under review. Director-general Matt Brittin, the former head in Europe of Google, believes the corporation is 'held back' by the fee, which is 'no longer fit for purpose', and has suggested a household levy could be an alternative funding option.

So, to combat the fact that fewer and fewer people are paying for your service (legitimately or not) you want to force everyone to pay for it instead by putting it on general taxation? Congratulations on beating big Hollywood stars, young socialists and trans men to the top of the entitlement charts.

He told the BBC's Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg programme: 'What we need to look at is the current model. 'You pay the licence fee if you watch live TV or you're on iPlayer. I'd like to see reform that allows us to be where audiences are. 'I think BBC content should be on Netflix, on YouTube, on TikTok, on Spotify, and Instagram, and everywhere where audiences are. 'Particularly news, actually, which I think is part of disinfecting misinformation. It's our job to be everywhere.'

The BBC claiming to be against misinformation is a sick joke. 

Mr Brittin clarified that the universal household bill is just one of a number of ideas that are being discussed during the renewal process. He said that the model has been used in many other countries to fund public media and would ensure a level of fairness.

Are you considering a subscription model, so those who want your service can buy it? That’s the fairest option, surely? 

And when asked why everybody should pay the proposed charge, Mr Brittin said: 'Ninety-four per cent of households every month are consuming BBC content. That's incredible, yet only 80 per cent are paying. 'So there's a fairness issue there in terms of how we fund the BBC and I think that the principle is if we want a BBC that's for everyone, then it needs to be funded by everyone, and how you get that modernisation is critical.'

I'm not as hopeful as Longrider that the green paper conclusions will be heeded in the face of such rapacious entittlement. What say you, Reader? 

Narrator: 'It Can't'

Certainly not if it listens to people who write to the 'Guardian':

Your youth unemployment editorial (18 September) sees the crisis clearly, but reaches for the wrong tools. Placements, apprenticeships and work coaches cannot conjure jobs that do not exist. We need macro solutions to macro problems. Youth unemployment is not a crisis of skills or geography. It is insufficient government deficit spending. There is not enough money circulating to employ everyone who wants to work and that is a policy choice, not an accident.

O..kay…. 

Macroeconomists divide the economy into three sectors: government, households and businesses, and the rest of the world.

That’s four sectors, isn’t it? I mean, I’m not too good at maths but…

One sector’s spending is another sector’s income. Put simply, government spending is income for the non-government sectors.

With the UK running a persistent current account deficit, money flows continuously abroad.

 I hesitate to encroach on Tim’s territory, but this doesn’t sound right even to me…

Indeed, unemployment has long been used deliberately as an inflation management tool. As the US economist Stephanie Kelton notes, orthodox economic policy assumes that a certain amount of unemployment is necessary.

So what should Labour do? Not pay employers £3,000 to hire someone that the market won’t touch (an admission that demand is absent), but become the employer directly. A job guarantee, publicly funded and locally administered, would offer anyone a job at a living wage doing socially useful work.

Who decides what constitutes ‘socially useful’ work? 

It is not welfare. It is work.

Simon Ripton Co-founder, Resilient Economy CIC

But not all their readers are insane: 

It doesn’t take a graduate qualification in economics to see that Rachel Reeves’s increase in employers’ national insurance contributions has reduced their ability to take on new people. She has also created a timebomb – as, by reducing the number of new people getting jobs, she has also reduced the number of people able to start paying into pensions.

Susan West Quorn, Leicestershire

What pensions? They won’t be worth claiming if Bodybags isn’t kicked out of No 10! 

Tweet Of The Month

And it's a bumper crop again!

Blog Comment Of The Month

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Post Title Of The Month

Longrider on Ring doorbell cams:

Quote Of The Month

Tom Paine reminisces on our finest generation:

"My father’s father was funny too – on a good day. When a friend asked if he was “norry” (local dialect for bad-tempered) because of his injuries, he cheerfully replied that no, he had always been norry. His main problem with being crippled (he loathed the euphemism “disabled”) was that it stopped him playing sports. He had played football for his town, cricket for his county and table tennis (“don’t call it ping-pong”) for his country. Losing the ability to play was a serious blow to his competitive nature."