Happy 30th Birthday, Little Japanese Time Sink!

During the first wave of Pokémania in the late 90s, Pokémon was viewed with suspicion by most adults. Now that the first generation of Pokémaniacs have grown up, even becoming parents ourselves, we see it for what it is: an imaginative, challenging and really rather wholesome series of games that rewards every hour that children devote to it.

And even those who didn't grow up with it (as I was never a console kid, but rather a PC gamer), now feel the call and like me, take a day off work and travel to the Excel Centre in London to take part in mega-events like The 2026 EUIC.

Over the three decades since the original Red and Blue (or Green, in Asia) versions of the video game were released in Japan in 1996, Pokémon has earned a place among the greats of children’s fiction. Like Harry Potter, the Famous Five and Narnia, it offers a powerful fantasy of self-determination, set in a world almost totally free of adult supervision. In every game, your mother sends you out into the world with a rucksack and a kiss goodbye; after that, it’s all on you.

 No kidding! 

It was designed from the beginning to be a social game, encouraging (and indeed necessitating) that players traded and battled with each other to complete their collection of virtual creatures and train their teams up into super-squads. Today, the internet has entirely normalised the idea of video games as social activities, but in the late 90s this was a novel idea.

Not for us PC gamers, of course, we had MMORPGs like Ultima Online and Everquest...but for the console kids, hooking up to a fellow player's machine - via physical cable! - to play co-op or evolve a 'mon was revolutionary!

But it hasn't all been smooth sailing... 

Today, Tajiri is a reclusive figure. Almost everything we know about him comes from a single 1999 interview with Time magazine. The tone of Time’s piece is shockingly dismissive. Declaring the series “a pestilential Ponzi scheme” it describes the “delinquent” and “criminal” behaviour of young Pokémon fans, and the moral bankruptcy of the whole craze – which, it comforts, is likely to peter out soon, like it did for the Power Rangers. Now that Pokémon has become one of the most enduring and successful entertainment properties of all time, this alarmist attitude seems ridiculous. But the scaremongering was very real.

Thankfully I missed all that, as it was 2016's smartphone accessible 'Pokemon Go' that hooked me in, followed by my first ever console (barring a Playstation 2 I bought to play Cabelas's Hunting games and soon ended up using as a DVD player), the Switch, and recently the much more powerful Switch 2. 

Perhaps understandably, given the disrespectful and, presumably, hurtful tone of that Time interview, and the moral panic that Pokémania unwittingly ignited, Satoshi Tajiri has shunned the limelight ever since. Now 60, he remains at Game Freak and is still involved in the creation of each new Pokémon game (as of 2025, there are 38 in total), though he reportedly stepped back from day-to-day development in 2012.

They haven't all been winners, the most recent, 'Pokemon ZA' changing the combat to real time rather than turn based didn't sit too well with older less nimble-fingered players like me, but the upcoming 'Pokopia' (which I got a chance to play a demo of yesterday at EUIC) looks far more my idea of a cosy and relaxing game to pick up after work.

Pokémon’s story speaks to an important truth about video games: they are a powerful vector for connection between people. Millions are united by these imaginary creatures, born from one boy’s love of the natural world.

Indeed so. If any of those 'Time' writers are still around I hope they now realise just how wrong they were. 

FULL SPEED AHEAD....

 ...AND DAMN THE TORPEDOES*! 

* Sadly, Reader, there are no torpedoes. Nothing can seemingly prevent this dead-on-its-feet government from fatally wounding the country as it thrashes around in its death throes...

The Judicial System Of Great Britain - Protecting The Rights Of UK Citizens?

No, not really.

Pakistani national Sheraz Malik, 28, was found guilty of raping a 'vulnerable' teenage girl whom he and a friend pounced on in a park in the constituency of Reform MP Lee Anderson. Mr Anderson first exposed Malik as an asylum seeker last year after he was arrested for targeting the 18-year-old woman when she was alone in Sutton-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire.

But a judge stopped the public from being told about the rapist's asylum status by gagging the Press from reporting it until the end of his trial, it can now be revealed.

A jury on Monday convicted Malik of two counts of rape after just a few hours of deliberation at Birmingham Crown Court.

Who imposed the order? One of those 'diverse' judges we were told we desperately needed to 'improve' our justice system, of course: 

At a hearing at Nottingham Crown Court in September, Judge Nirmal Shant imposed a reporting restriction postponing publication of Malik's immigration status until the end of the trial, to avoid a 'substantial risk of prejudice to the administration of justice'.

But don’t focus all your opprobium on her, Reader, the old white male judges are really no better:  

In court Malik was asked why he took advantage of the victim, and replied: 'What else was I supposed to do?' Asked how he arrived in Europe, Malik protested that the question was not relevant – prompting Judge Simon Ash to intervene and side with the defendant.

Malik will be sentenced at a later date.

The entire edifice needs sweeping out like the Augean Stables. For the same reason.

Boy, Was Joe Jackson Right...!

"Don't you know that it's different for girls?"

Harry Potter being a work for children, about children, starring children. Good grief, If a male star had reported that he employed a Hermoine Granger stripper at his stag do, we'd all be looking for his name to pop up in the Epstein Files.

Margot said: 'So we all had a weekend in London when the job was done. And of course, we went to Infernos, and within about 15 minutes, we got kicked out. 

'And while we're getting dragged out by security, I was screaming, “but this is Infernos, you can’t get kicked out of Infernos.” 

'And the bouncer was like, “Look, we allow most things, but when your friend does [redacted], then we kick you out”. 

And I was like, “okay, fair enough!”' Margot did not reveal what her friend had done to alert security, but went on to admit: 'Most of the clubs in Clapham, I'd say, have kicked us out.

Ugh. Am I the only one that wishes we could go back to the times when movie studios employed people to ensure the public didn't find out their stars were degenerates? 

Bet You Won't See The Elites Eating It Though...

“If we’re going to address the world’s insatiable craving for animal meat, we’re going to have to replace like for like.” That means cultivating meat from cells in brewery-like factories or making taste-identical plant-based meats. In both cases, for people to buy them, the products must also cost the same or less than conventional meat.

In most cases, for people to buy them, you'd have to hold a gun to their head. Or maybe that's just me?  

These alternative proteins are the electric vehicles (EVs) of food, Friedrich says; the same experience, but better: “Just like a car doesn’t now need a combustion engine, a phone doesn’t need a cord, and you can take pictures without film, you can make meat without the need for live animals.”

It's Frankenfood. I suppose it's a natural progression from the 'science' that seems to believe it's possible to change women into men and vice versa. 

But such progress will require governments to ramp up their support for the scientists overcoming the obstacles in this still-embryonic field. They have done it before for previous transformative technologies, from penicillin to the internet to renewable energy, Friedrich says.

All vastly useful inventions, that had no viable alternative at the time, or like this, did but it suited governments and lobbyists to pretend the viable alternative had become problematic.  

If China went all-in for example, he says, conventional meat could be all but history by mid-century: “They took EV sales [at home] from 1% to more than 50% in the 10 years to 2025, and that’s a tougher tech challenge and scaling challenge than alternative meats.”

China? You're pinning your hopes on China?! The population of which eats everything with wings that isn't a airplane, and everything that with four legs that isn't a table? Well, good luck with that!

Friedrich is a compelling advocate for his goal of ending industrial agriculture, with answers for the many criticisms: “It’s just a shockingly inefficient way of producing food. It takes nine calories of crops to get one calorie of chicken, 10 or 11 calories of crops to get one calorie of pig meat or farmed fish and 40 to 100 calories of crops to get one calorie of beef.”

That's industrial factory farming. But - for example -  lamb and goat can be produced on land that is useless for any other type of food production.

Frequently raised is the “yuck factor” of cultivated meat. This is overblown, Friedrich says. “People are not eating meat because of how it’s produced,” he says. “They’re eating meat because it’s delicious and affordable. All of the polling indicates significant enthusiasm for cultivated meat, especially among people who eat the most meat.”

Who are you polling, Friedrich ? Is it the people who are expected to eat this? Because, let's face it, this stuff isn't going to be on the menu at Davos or the Oscars, is it? 

I Find It A Perfectly Acceptable Risk...

 ...and so, I suspect, would most people: 

Requiring transgender prisoners to be held in jails matching their sex at birth would breach their human rights and create an unacceptable risk of suicide, a court has been told.

Oh, well...the suicide risk for those not in prison is pretty high too, due to their mental condition,  so *shrug* 

The case follows a Supreme Court ruling on the definition of a woman in equalities law in April last year. The Scottish government insists it respects that judgement - but said it did not override the need to uphold the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

The sooner we elect Reform and junk this bloody thing, the better!  

The Scottish government's KC, Gerry Moynihan, said the ECHR meant transgender people had the right to live their lives in their acquired gender. He added there had long been recognition in the UK that this included the right to be held in prisons aligning with that.

He said trans women also had vulnerabilities and needs, and the government's judgement was they were best dealt with in the female estate "assuming they don't pose risks to others". He said this offered them "protection against mental health difficulties and the route to rehabilitation," noting that a "trans woman will return to the community as a trans woman".

They will return to the community a man, because that's what they are and what they always will be... 

O'Neill told the court on Tuesday that there was "incredible sensitivity" to the rights, dignity and privacy of trans people, while the rights of "incredibly vulnerable" female prisoners were not factored in. He said the government wanted to retain the flexibility to put "a totally non-violent trans-identifying man" in the women's estate but questioned why female prisoners had to "bear the risk" of this and act as "human shields". O'Neill continued: "What is required is the preservation of women's only spaces. 

"All I am interested in, because of the situation of women, is the preservation of women's dignity, security and sense of safety vis a vis men - that's all."

Spot on. How have we come to this as a nation? Still, we are at least marginally ahead of the open air asylum that is Canada: 

Van Rootselaar was understood to have used his mother's name, Strang, socially and at school. He was named by Royal Canadian Mounted Police on Wednesday and described as a woman.

But he wasn't.  

Amid questions over how Van Rootselaar was described in alerts, McDonald said police “identified the suspect as they chose to be identified” in public and in social media.

The Trans 'community'  is reacting with all the decorum you would expect from a crowd of narcissitic men in frocks, of course:

                            

 

Perhaps French Children Have Changed..?

In French culture, seven is known as “l’âge de raison”, the age at which children know right from wrong and can take some moral responsibility. France’s national rail operator, it seems, puts the age at which a child can be trusted to behave in a non-annoying way onboard a train a bit higher.

Well, yes. 

In launching its new Optimum plus tariff earlier this month, offering spaces onboard its weekday TGV trains between Paris and Lyon with bigger, more comfortable seats, fancy food and no under-12s, SNCF was trying to appeal to the many business travellers who make that journey.

Perish the thought! Unusually for the 'Guardian', who usually feels there's no desire so niche that it shouldn't be satisfied, the desire to not have your work commute enlivened by unruly brats is considered beyond the pale, and they found a columnist who agrees. 

But the move has sparked a backlash and a philosophical debate about the place of children in society, against the backdrop of a worrying decline in French birthrates. “We can’t on one hand say that we are not having enough children and on the other hand try to exclude them from everywhere,” argues Sarah El Haïry, France’s high commissioner for childhood.

And the name of the high commissioner is itself a clue to the social change, I suspect...

SNCF’s move was certainly a surprising one in a country that has a reputation for being family-friendly and respecting children’s right to take part in the rituals of everyday life, starting with the elaborate three-course meals they are served in school canteens. My own half-French children, growing up in Paris, have had customs such as politely greeting neighbours and shop workers drilled into them from babyhood, not to mention sitting patiently in a restaurant and chacun son tour (taking turns) on the swings in the park.

Perhaps the influx of 'new French' don't feel the same obligation that you felt to adapt to the social mores of their new homeland. 

A society that cannot bear the presence of children is “worrying”, El Haïry argues. The former minister has spoken out before about the “no kids” trend, whereby restaurants and hotels are increasingly targeting child-free grownups who are seeking peace and quiet and have deep pockets.

Is it because they have acquired a loathing of well-behaved children with their fortunes? Or is it because well behaved children are no longer the norm? 

One To Watch...

Police have seized two dogs in Havering following a distressing incident in Raphael Park where a two-year-old girl was injured and required hospital treatment. The incident has caused significant concern among local families and park users, with officers confirming that enquiries are ongoing.

The mutts were initially identified as Cane Corsos, but they turned out to be rottweilers...with a reputation in the area for past attacks. As always, social media fills in the blanks:

Not the usual chav with a vicious dog if he gave his details, though of course he didn't wait around for the police.

Well, well, well. Wonder why the police haven't acted before? 

Oh. Never mind. 

Then Make Them Personally Accountable

The family of a 15-year-old boy who was stabbed to death at school by another pupil has said her son’s murder was “senseless and avoidable” and that a report ordered by the school showed too many “red flags” were missed.

Thisis, of course, the family of Harvey Willgoose, stabbed to death by an enricher at his school. One with the now-expected history of poor behaviour that was no doubt excused by well meaning liberal teaching stagg on account of his race.

“I’m determined that no other family should be sitting in court listening to how their child was killed, have to read a report that lays bare how their child could have been protected. I want to use my voice for Harvey’s memory to push for real change.”

Such as? 

There needed, she said, to be better record-keeping and training in schools nationally. The family have called the report “damning” and said it should be published in full so other schools can learn from mistakes that were made.

You don’t think enough mistakes have been made that they should have already learned from, then? I certainly do. 

Yogi Amin, the head of public law and human rights at Irwin Mitchell, which represents Harvey’s family, said the review had identified “weaknesses in leadership”, failure to implement national policy and “serious shortcomings in record-keeping that meant weapons-related concerns and escalating behaviours were not acted upon effectively”.

Maybe start asking why they weren’t? 

Maria Turner, Harvey’s grandmother, said “all the red flags were missed” including one, she said, that identified 130 incidents in Khan’s records which included “violence, weapons, gangs and anger … and the school did not seem to pick up on this”.

Caroline Willgoose and her family are now campaigning for all schools to install knife arches to help prevent another stabbing.

Yes, by all means, let’s start installing elephant proof gates on our schools but never, ever address the elephant in the room, oh dear me no. 

Another Choirboy, I Presume..?

A 15-year-old boy has been accused of attacking a female teacher with a kitchen knife after asking for help with work, a court heard. A schoolboy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, allegedly launched the assault on the teacher at Milford Haven Comprehensive School on Thursday afternoon.

And if the court refuses MSM applications to name him after conviction, we'll never know..

He was charged with attempted murder, grievous bodily harm, and possession of a bladed article on education premises. He was remanded into youth detention over the weekend and will appear at Swansea Crown Court on February 9.

What the hell is going on in our schools? And our country?