Well, At Least It’s Not The Krays…

A midnight phone call from a High Street crime gang, threatening to kill crime investigator Mandy and burn her house down, was just the start of a campaign of intimidation that would eventually force her and her husband to move home. She faced escalating threats from a Kurdish crime gang, that had been selling illegal cigarettes and nitrous oxide canisters in mini-marts across the UK.

And why do we have Kurdish organised crime in the UK? It’s a good question, isn’t it, Reader? Clearly, our own homegrown OCGs aren’t considered exotic and enriching enough…

Mandy is one of 24 Trading Standards officers who have shared details of the daily intimidation and violence they face from criminal gangs running mini-marts and vape shops, as they try to investigate unfair trading, illegal business activity and enforce consumer protection laws.

In some areas, half of all mini-marts and vape shops, and up to a third of American candy stores are thought to have links to organised crime, the survey results also suggest.

I think that’s what you call a ‘conservative estimate’! 

The UK government told us it was "working with the police, the National Crime Agency and Trading Standards to take the strongest possible action against these criminal businesses".

Oh, good, I feel much safer now the UK Government is stepping up… knowing it’s probably infiltrated by their friends.

Sorry Ted, You're A DInosaur!

Hundreds of rogue police officers face the sack after Scotland Yard used an artificial intelligence spy program to unearth misconduct, corruption and criminality.

Oh, dear...

In an unprecedented crackdown, Britain's biggest force secretly unleashed the AI tool to root out bad behaviour - letting it loose on internal systems which monitor sickness levels, overtime, expenses, entry to buildings and public complaints. The controversial tool was supplied by the US tech company Palantir, which also works for the Israeli military and Donald Trump's ICE operation.

Now unleash it on the benefits system!  

Senior officers had been abusing Met systems for years, logging false claims for overtime, scamming systems to get extra days off, lying about working from home and hiding their membership of the Freemasons.

Their union is furious!  

But the move has angered the Police Federation, which represents rank-and-file officers. It called the approach 'automated suspicion', saying: 'Officers must not be subjected to opaque or untested tools that risk misinterpreting unsustainable workload pressures, sickness or overtime as indicators of wrongdoing.'

Good luck with that!  

The Modern Day Scourge Of The 'Influencer'

An influencer has been charged after allegedly headbutting a charity worker who refused to let him film himself handing food to the homeless. The incident, which happened at Homeless Project Scotland's Glassford Street shelter on Thursday just after 11pm, saw an influencer allegedly turn violent after his request for a photo opportunity was refused.

These young folk, with their TikToks, eh?  

A 49-year-old man was arrested at the scene at 11.38pm and then charged in connection to the alleged incident. He will appear in court at a later date.

Isn't that a bit old to be an influencer?  

It is not known who the 49-year-old influencer is, but it is understood that he was staying at the House of Gods Hotel in Glasgow, where rooms start from about £150 per night. The charity claimed that House of Gods hotel staff attended the scene and asked their guest to return.

Wow, that's good hotel service if it includes negotiating a way out of chokey for you!  

The Morning After…

Well, as I write this, it’s 5:15am, I'm just sipping my morning cuppa, and enough of the results are in that we know that, as predicted, Labour have suffered crushing defeat in their traditional heartlands, and Starmer’s political career is now measured in days, if not hours.

 TGIF! 

It's not all good news (it never is), the Green Party looks to have picked up too many seats for my liking, and what replaces Starmer is poroably even worse. 

Update: sadly, my area remaind solidly Labour despite (or perhaps because of?) the huge demographic change it's endured over the recent years?

It's D-Day!

Local elections, and a chance for people to cast a vote to give the people in charge a good kicking. but don't forget! 

Don't draw a cock on your ballot paper - last time, one got into No 10!

And never, ever vote Green!

My polling station is just two streets over, a short walk away so passport in hand I'll take a stroll on this, the last day of my impromptu holiday, and do my civic duty.

Update: A much longer walk than I’d thought - my local one is usually in a school, but the schools are all open, so it had been switched to a church hall several streets away. And to rub it in, on the walk there I passed another polling station in a community hall, much nearer! And inevitably, not the usual polling station means not the usual polling staff, three black women, and when I gave my address the one operating the iPad said she couldn’t find it, until I leaned over and pointed it out on the sheet of streets on the desk in front of her!

Losing Their Long Time Allies...

Migrant workers and the UK’s largest union will carry out a mass leafleting campaign in Shabana Mahmood’s Birmingham constituency to protest against a planned change in immigration policy. The Labour-affiliated Unison union says the changes will adversely affect migrant care workers. About one-third of all care workers and one-fifth of all NHS workers are migrants.

Real migrants, I'd hope, not the modern use of that term. 

Union members hope to leaflet about one-third of the home secretary’s approximately 55,000 constituents in the Ladywood area of the city. Union sources say it is the first time such a large Labour-affiliated union is lobbying en masse against a key party policy.

When even the unions are fed up with you, you know it's all over... 

Although the earned settlement proposals, which have been outlined in a white paper, call for a doubling of settlement time to 10 years, in some cases migrants may have to wait longer than that if they entered the UK illegally or have claimed benefits here.

If they entered the coutry illegally, they should be deported!  

The union is also calling for a change to sponsorship rules for these visas. At the moment, these workers must be sponsored by their employer, which officials say can lead to exploitation. There are calls for this to be replaced with a sponsorship scheme managed by a public-sector body.

Ah, that's the union's real goal - jobs for the public sector boys. 

We Can Start By Being Honest About What They Are...

Yards from the Thames, in the churchyard of All Saints, which dates from the 12th Century, is the final resting place of the Victorian poet Matthew Arnold. In fact, the village of Laleham in Surrey is pretty much as quintessentially sleepy old England as you can still find.

Well, THAT won't do. Have some 'progress': 

So locals whose children attend the Church of England primary here were surprised in recent weeks to find a young Afghan man repeatedly loitering outside, approaching female pupils – and becoming aggressive when spoken to.

 As anyone would be!

According to one group of parents, he spat at them, and seemed to suggest that paying to be smuggled into Britain by dinghy gave him free rein. ‘I’m allowed to stand where I want – I paid £3,000 to be here,’ is what locals say he told them.

Some 'asylum seeker' - isn't that rather a large sum of money in his country of origin?  

Calls to the police followed, and after the asylum seeker ignored warnings, he was last week arrested and detained under the Mental Health Act.

Of course. The only surprise here was that they didn't arrest the complaining parents, too!

Only then did it emerge that the Afghan, in his 20s, had last month been placed in a 1920s semi along with five other migrants, at the behest of the Home Office. The house had been purchased by north London businessman Joshua Grunt, 48, in October for £500,000, who immediately let it out via an agent to house migrants.

However, the local authority, Spelthorne Borough Council, insists it had neither been informed nor consulted over the arrival of any migrants, saying: ‘The Council has written to the Home Office asking for an explanation and an assurance that this will not happen again.’

Waste of paper - they are far more arrogant and entitled than the fake refugee and will do it again sure as the sun rises in the east.

Yet a Daily Mail investigation has found that such sudden arrivals of migrants in villages and towns are about to happen on a huge scale – all over the country – as a direct result of Labour’s promises to close migrant hotels. And the only people celebrating will be those making fat profits as a result. At taxpayers’ expense.

Why are they always referred to by every branch of the MSM as 'migrants' when they are 'Illegal immigants'..?  

How Is It Possible?

Banksy has confirmed that a huge new statue which mysteriously appeared in central London is his work.

Then arrest him. No, not for his tedious sixth form 'artwork' but for arranging its installation in the middle of the most surveilled capital city in the west, which is currently on high alert.

Commentators on Banksy's Instagram site speculated the work was about 'blind patriotism', and walking directly into danger. They also questioned how he had managed to pull off such a stunt in such a busy area of central London. It is located along Pall Mall, near the Athenaeum Club and the Crimean War Memorial.

Throw him in a cell at MI5 and sweat him until he gives up his collaborators. Or we are not serious about security in the capital.

It’s Not 'Jurassic Park', But I'll Take It...

Colossal Biosciences, the company trying to resurrect the woolly mammoth, has set its sights on another extinct animal – the bluebuck. This species of antelope thrived in Southern Africa until just 230 years ago, when it was hunted to extinction for its unique silvery slate–blue skin.

Yes, Reader, if the name rings a bell, it is indeed the same company that attempted to convince the world they had recreated an extinct dire wolf a while ago. But there’s better basis for belief this time: 

The company plans to modify the genes of the bluebuck's living relatives – the roan and sable antelopes – to make a hybrid that closely resembles the extinct species.

Two of the worlds most striking antelope species, and two personal favourites of mine, though sadly rarely seen in captivity in UK zoos, with the exception of Marwell, which has a small herd of roan, and had sable years ago, when I first visited.

Although Colossal Biosciences doesn't have a timeline for the species' return, it is working to find 'rewilding' sites in South Africa where the bluebuck could be released.

Those techniques will not only be useful for bringing back the bluebuck, but also in aiding conservation projects for antelopes currently on the brink of extinction.

And I for one wish them well in this latest endeavour. 

The Man Who Defines 'Anti-Nominative Determinism' Opines...

Yes, James, they do it EVERY BANK HOLIDAY.

The Conservative MP yesterday was seen walking in the field near the site and posted a video on Facebook to demand that action be taken. 'This is why we have got to take action to make sure that building work like this, taking place outside office hours, clearly seeking to game the system, that we are able to take decisive and quick action,' he said.

How many years did the 'Coneervatives' spend in power? And never once did anything about this. 

'Because the local community here knows that this is going to be disruptive to them, and anyone who has tried to get a builder to start work after hours on a Friday on a bank holiday weekend will know that there's something not right about this.'

No, there isn't, but it's as regular as the first bluebell of spring. 

It came just hours after Mr Cleverly suggested there was 'two-tier justice' when it came to applying rules and laws to travellers.

There is. Undoubtedly 

There had been criticism ahead of the weekend that the district council took no preemptive measures, such as placing what is known as an Article 4 Direction, which bans any usually permitted development such as putting up fences, on the land, after it heard of the plan to concrete the field. Others said it could have tried to obtain an emergency injunction banning any development, so if work started it would be a criminal offence.

And what would the police have done? Nothing. The need to gear up like a military force to raid these encampments, and they are too terrified of the accusations of 'racism' to act. 

An insider, who has assisted the traveller community in winning retrospective planning permission, said the recent wave of development was in part caused by some travellers renting out part or all of their sites to migrants and homeless people, a phenomenon recently reported on by the Daily Mail.

Nice try, but painting them as philanthropists isn't going to work. We all know what they are. Even the failed MPs who are trying to pretend they don't,