Well, You've Only Yourselves To Blame...

Broadcasters must urgently adapt to an existential threat from “creator journalism” that is causing audiences to shun traditional television news, the former boss of BBC News has said.

Because they are more immediate and trustworthy than the MSM?

Deborah Turness, who resigned from the BBC alongside the then director general, Tim Davie, last year, said consumption was “collapsing” for traditional television news, which was facing “a profound moment of disruption”.

She said that a new habit of following personality-led journalism on digital platforms such as YouTube, TikTok and Substack was now in the process of replacing traditional news.

Least anyone forget why this useless creature is no longer employed by the BBC: 

In her first intervention since stepping down from the BBC after the corporation’s edit of a Donald Trump speech...

If you're goung to follw someone making up the news, it might as well be the guy down the road. He's less likely to be a nonce, after all... 

They Should Never Have Been Given This Power!

Little Rowan Antolovi, who has a rare genetic eye disorder, is struggling to manage in the classroom because of his failing eyesight. But when his concerned NHS hospital consultant referred him for urgent assistance to help him cope, he was turned away when the local council found out he went to a private day school.

This is of course in Scotland, where gesture politics override even safety concerns, but who gave a local council the power to refuse service on the NHS in the first place?  Weren't we subjected to endless sneering on social media last week at Reform's policy on the NHS, and assured that local council elections had no bearing on it!?

Now Rowan's furious mother Virginia Osborne has accused them of discriminating against a little boy who needs help because 'of a decision we made as parents about where to educate him'. 

'We are not rich. We are an ordinary working family as are most at his school. We have saved money for the government by sending our child to a private school.' 

'As a result of our choice we are now precluded from accessing council provision for children even though we have also paid all of our taxes which pay for those services.'

Many funding decisions of local councils seem power-crazed or shortsighted - this is one that seems truly evil! 

 

DEI Kills...

Paramedic Colleen Gibson, who was the first emergency responder to arrive on the scene, is also said to have failed to tell police and fire crews who arrived shortly after her that Saffron Cole-Nottage was within a crucial 30-minute time period when her life might still be saved.

Giving evidence today, Ms Gibson said she had been involved with four previous water incidents before Ms Cole-Nottage's but she hadn't been trained to take command of a multi-agency emergency.

And clearly, unless you are training people to do something, or better yet, recruiting those of that persuasion, you can’t expect them to step up and do it when needed 

The two-week inquest into the death of Ms Cole-Nottage has already heard how a 999 operator didn't establish the mother-of-six was at risk of drowning due to the incoming tide until seven minutes into a call with the teenager who raised the alarm.

The emergency services are always telling us how ‘every second counts’ but when it comes down to the crunch, you’re at the mercy of people unable to act as if it really does. 

Police bodycam footage showed officers who arrived shortly afterwards asking Ms Gibson if anything could be done to save Ms Cole-Nottage and she replied: 'No.'

Why did she say that? Well, that’s a very good question to which the answer was…

Questioned by inquest counsel Bridget Dolan KC about why she didn't tell emergency services colleagues that the opportunity to save the patient's life potentially extended for another 10 minutes, she said: 'I don't know.'

Imagine that - knowing where she is and that she’s giving evidence in an inquest, she couldn’t even come up with a plausible reason! This is not someone who fears for her future job, it seems...

When Ms Dolan told her police 'said that if they'd been told a rescue was possible they would have tried', she added: 'I don't believe that to be safe. I wouldn't be able to reach down into the rocks head-first with the water.' Ms Dolan replied: 'Nobody is saying you should have tried. The police have said if they knew there was a possibility of rescuing Saffron they would have tried.'

You can almost imagine the frustration in her voice, can’t you? How did someone get to be a paramedic while being so clueless and hapless?

Expert witness Matthew England, a nurse and paramedic who sits on a group that advises the Home Office about emergency services working together on incidents, said Ms Gibson should have taken command of the scene as the first responder there. She should also have communicated with Coastguard, police and firefighters there but it 'did not appear very coordinated in terms of what was going on', he added.

You don't say!? And it's not just the on-scene responders who failed:

The 999 call was placed at 7.52pm but it was not until 7.59pm that the call handler established how quickly the tide was coming in. Christopher Strutt, a call handler team leader, told the inquest the fire service should have been contacted by the ambulance service within seconds when it was known that someone's head was trapped. But he said controllers had to go through an algorithm, asking questions prompted by their computer, and were discouraged from raising their own queries until the list was completed. The revelation prompted coroner Darren Stewart to suggest the 'rather clunky' system had contributed to a 'muddled response'.

God forbid anyone uses their own initiative!  

Now. there's often a fair amount of 'Monday morning quarterbacking' anout inquests, it's true. But sometimes, they throw a harsh light on policies and procedures that hamper, and not help. Although this one hasn't concluded yet, I'd  venure to suggest it already has done so, and not to modern Britain's benefit.

Arrogance...Or Playing The Mental Health Card?

A man charged with false communications over an alleged bomb hoax at a Peter Kay show has been removed from court after repeatedly talking during a hearing on Monday. Omar Majed, 19, was ordered to go down to the cells part-way through an 11-minute proceeding at Birmingham Magistrates' Court.

Could go either way, frankly, these days. 

Majed, of Saltley, Birmingham, was charged with allegedly making false communications that a bomb was present in the arena.

And he continued his disruption tactics into court. 

After confirming his address and date of birth at the start of the hearing, Majed was repeatedly asked to be quiet by District Judge Michelle Smith, who was appearing in court via a video-link. District Judge Smith also made several requests for Majed to sit down.

Eh? The judges are now appearing by video link as well as the accused?!  

After Majed shouted that proposed bail conditions for him were "not acceptable", he was taken down to the cells before the end of the hearing. He did not make a plea to the single charge of communicating false information to police and was refused bail.

The judge said she was "satisfied that the case should be dealt with in the crown court" in June.

Did she say which June?  

Thing Fall Apart, The Centre Cannot Hold....

That they do, Yeats, that they do...

A Green councillor in Hackney has quit within days of winning his seat because he was voted in against electoral rules.James Tilden was elected to represent Hackney Central ward with 1,681 votes following the council elections last Thursday (May 7), but his party failed to realise this breached electoral law before making him their official candidate.As a primary school teacher in the one of the borough's community schools, Mr Tilden is legally an employee of Hackney Council. Under Section 80 of the Local Government Act 1972, teachers cannot become a member of a local authority if they are employed by or their job is confirmed by the same local authority.

Meanwhile:

Scotland Yard has been urged by the Tories to investigate Zack Polanski after he admitted he failed to pay council tax while living on a houseboat in east London. The Green Party leader was branded a 'hypocrite' after he apologised on Monday for the 'unintentional mistake' and said he had 'immediately taken steps to pay any council tax' owed. The Conservatives and Labour have both referred Mr Polanski, who is a member of the London Assembly, to the City Hall sleaze watchdog over his council tax arrangements.

Are we uniquely blessed in this country with hapless politicians? What happened to the apparatus of state and local government that’s paid well to oversee the process and stop this sort of thing happening?

Mind you, with the current incumbent of No 10 clinging on like a limpet despite everything, are the Greens really the worst of a bad bunch?

Gosh, Sounds Fun And Not At All Pretentious!

This year’s Venice Biennale has been tearing itself apart for months: countries not showing up, artists getting fired, exhibitions being cancelled, funding getting pulled. There were petitions and protests months before a painting was on a wall. The jury quit in the days leading up to the opening, then Iran quit, then the European Commission quit. There were protests against Israel and Russia during the preview, artists went on strike and artworks were replaced with installations of Palestinian flags. The whole thing was a massive mess of conflicting politics, personal tragedy and unresolvable ideological differences from the very beginning.

And all this without even mentioning that the curator, Koyo Kouoh, died last year and wasn’t able to see her artistic vision through to completion.

And presumably is now rolling in her grave at what's on offer/ 

Kouoh’s idea for her biennale was to chuck aside the ire and invective of outright political art, and focus on quiet, contemplation and healing.

And how, you may ask Reader, is that expressed? As you would expect, considering the source...

A gathering of glazed creatures by Peruvian artist Celia Vásquez Yui transforms another gallery into a little slice of jungle. Among the endless, anonymous abstractions, there are a bunch of great paintings. Mohammed Z Rahman’s tiny images on matchboxes of shells, flowers, condoms, knobs and skulls are excellent depictions of queer heartbreak. Tammy Nguyen uses her huge, complex canvases to expose links between the cold war and Vietnam. Wardha Shabbir takes the tradition of Pakistani miniature painting and blows it up to maximal scale, resulting in some head-spinningly gorgeous paintings of flowers and foliage.

Well, the glazed animals are cute, looking as they do like garden ornaments from the 'Past Times' catalogue...but it can't last!

The Denmark pavilion is a hi-tech sperm bank, Luxembourg’s features a singing turd, Japan’s forces visitors to look after fake babies. There’s a lifesize chocolate Russell Crowe in the Malta pavilion

And then there's the Austria pavilion...don't ask what's in that, for your sanity's sake

It’s brilliantly obscene and vile.

Ah, art. 

The Likeliest Story In A History Of Likely Stories...

A Ukrainian man has admitted setting fire to a car that once belonged to Keir Starmer for £3,000, after telling a court he had been being threatened by a “powerful” Russian-speaking man using the pseudonym El Money.

The Russians were behind it all!

Asked by James Scobie KC, defending, what made him conclude that he meant business, he said: “He told me he is a high-profile person. Maybe he had some connections, maybe he is connected to politics. He said he is like a person with a high status. He just told me he is a person in power.”

So powerful he wasn't up to date on the car ownership. If a thriller writer offered this as a screenplay it'd be laughed out of the Green Room.

The trial continues.

The farce continues, more accurately. 

The Experts Can't Stand To Be Wrong And Worse, Unneeded...

Marine biologists and whale experts have stepped up their criticism of a privately funded operation to release a humpback whale that was stranded for weeks off Germany’s Baltic coast...

They never stopped, from the forst moment it looked as if their advise was going to be ignored. 

... after it emerged that a tracker fitted to the whale was not working.

Seems a strange thing to be so concerned about... 

The whereabouts and health of the young male whale – nicknamed Timmy after one of the sandbanks it was stranded on – remain unknown three days after it was transported in a water-holding barge pulled by a tugboat to waters off the coast of Denmark.

A rescue that the experts all deperately wanted to see fail, bevause fot it to succeed would prove them wrong. 

The rescue initiative, estimated to have cost about €1.5m, was funded in part by Karin Walter-Mommert, the owner of one of the largest racehorse portfolios in Europe.

The whale was first spotted stuck on a sandbank on 23 March near the city of Lübeck, on Germany’s Baltic Sea coast, before freeing itself and then becoming stuck again several times.

The environment minister for Germany’s Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania state gave the green light for the attempt to save the whale, despite some warnings from the scientific community that it may be too much for the animal.

...whale researcher Fabian Ritter told German media... that if it was not possible to determine if the whale had died then the entire operation would have been in vain.

Au contraire, if it dies out at sea that's better than the huge clean-up operation that would have been needed to dispose of a health hazard on shore. 

The whale was last photographed swimming in the strait of Skagerrak.

And the experts are furious. 

There were also confusing reports surrounding the decision to release the whale. Kirsten Tönnies, a vet who had been on board the Fortuna B, one of two rescue ships accompanying the whale, was reportedly barred from witnessing the second and final release attempts. Tönnies said that tensions had been high between the experts on board and the ship’s crew. She said she disagreed with how the whale was released backward from the barge and with the fact she had been barred from giving the medical all-clear beforehand.

The one thing 'experts' cannot abide - that they aren't listened to. 

They Don't Seem To Have The Same Worries Over Other Procedures....

Leah Spasova, a psychologist from Oxfordshire, spent a decade fighting to obtain female sterilisation at her local trust. She was denied the procedure, which blocks or seals the fallopian tubes to prevent pregnancy, with the care board citing potential regret and costs as its reasoning.

Personal regret? When did that start to concern them? 

Now the health ombudsman has found in her favour and criticised the Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire West Integrated Care Board for its inconsistent approach.

The investigation found that the ICB had denied women NHS funding based on the risk of 'regret' while not applying the same a criterion to vasectomies. It concluded the policy was unfair as well as inconsistent and based on subjective reasoning.

At last, some common sense. Can we please see it expanded to other procedures?  

Paula Sussex, of the PHSO, said: 'The issue highlighted in Leah's case about the commissioning and managing of services by ICBs is not an isolated one. 'We are concerned that there may be similar wider problems affecting multiple areas of healthcare, and we have concerns that the system is not consistently meeting people's needs and is letting patients down.'

Not consistently meeting people’s needs? The could be the very strapline of the NHS!

Let's Not, After All, Because It's Too Hard...

Schools also know that enforcing such a ban is anything but straightforward. In February, research by Birmingham University found that staff at English schools with “restrictive” smartphone policies – those that require pupils to turn phones off and place them in a bag or hand devices in – spent more than 100 hours a week enforcing those rules. That’s the equivalent of a week’s working hours for three full-time members of staff. Researchers concluded that at a potential cost of £94 per pupil, enforcement was a “huge drain” on already stretched resources. The question then is, will the government increase school funding considering this reality?

This is the mad idea, beloved of authoritarian nut jobs everywhere that smartphones should be banned in school. And having suggested that, its ‘job done, trebles all round’ and onto the next idea, but it seems enforcing that is going to be quite the task. Not that that's their concern, after all.

The problem of enforcement will not magically disappear. Some teachers, too scared or tired of the disruption that will come when they ask for a pupil’s phone, will continue to “tactically ignore” the ping of WhatsApp notifications.

Well, that’s a disciplinary then, isn’t it? Punish all the teachers for the infraction of one, you know it makes sense, eh? 

A head of year working at a school with a “restrictive” smartphone policy told me of the typical reactions of pupils caught with their phones: “denial and resistance”, “verbal abuse” and “serious hostility”. They spoke of one colleague who was forced to “lock themselves in their office” when confronted by a raging student demanding the return of their phone.

Then there were the students who carried multiple phones so that when challenged by a teacher, they could offer up a decoy and appear compliant with school rules.

They've allowed the children to dictate to the adults for so long that this cannot get off the ground. And you can’t rely on the parents, who are often every bit as violent and ignorant as their spawn.

In another school, an assistant head recently told me that a parent, furious at the school’s confiscation of their child’s mobile, called the police.

And it’s all for nothing anyway: 

While schools can curb the use of phones during the day, they are powerless to enforce those boundaries beyond the school gates. Pupils compensate for their daytime sobriety with heavier phone use at home.

It is to laugh…