Wednesday, 25 March 2026

Oh, Jonathan, Of Course That's The Point Of Them...

 

Don't you understand? 

Consider this month alone. On 6 March, four men were arrested in London and Hertfordshire suspected of gathering information on potential targets: synagogues and individual Jews. Over the following days, gunmen opened fire on three synagogues in Toronto. The day after that, it was the turn of a synagogue in Liège, targeted by a bomb. On 12 March came the attack on Temple Israel in Michigan, followed the next day by the arrest of four youths on suspicion of exploding a device outside a synagogue in Rotterdam. The next day, a bomber struck a Jewish school in Amsterdam. The day after that, French prosecutors launched an investigation into two brothers said to be plotting a “lethal and antisemitic” attack. Inside their car were found a loaded semi-automatic weapon and a bottle of hydrochloric acid.

The perpetrators carefully not identified. 

And I am thinking of the progressives who suggest attacks on Jews are not, in fact, antisemitism, but merely opposition to Israel. So that, say, a brick through a window of a London shop associated with Jews, blood-red graffiti painted on its walls, is something other than a threat to Jews and Jewish life. That it’s really about international capitalism or tangential associations with a country thousands of miles away.

Well, Jonathan, you won't have to go far to find some of those, will you? the 'Guardian' cafeteria will suffice, after all. 

Is This Police Report To Be Believed?

A 12-year-old boy has been charged with sexual assault after a woman was found with serious injuries at an address in Birmingham.

12 years old? Well, I'm sure no-one will disbelieve the police, will they? I meany they said this guy was 23...

 Being a juvenile, he'll be treated with kid gloves, of course...

The accused, who cannot be named legally due to his age, was also separately charged with intentional strangulation in connection with a woman being confronted in a street last month, police added.

"The boy, who cannot be named due to his age, is remanded to appear before Birmingham Youth Court tomorrow, March 24."

And it's not just boys. 

Three schoolgirls, aged 12, 13, and 14, have been charged after a teenager was 'stabbed five times in her back, back of her neck and arm'. The 14-year-old victim had returned home covered in blood after allegedly being stabbed in a village park in Whittington, Worcester, at around 7.40pm September 21 last year. The child was then rushed to Birmingham Children's Hospital following reports of 'screaming' from neighbours, where it was later confirmed she had no internal damage but was left with scarring.

What is going on with youth crime in the UK?  And when will the authorities get a grip on it?

Tuesday, 24 March 2026

So Much For The Wisdom Of Crowds, Then

 That's if this is true, and since it's in the 'Guardian', caveat emptor...

Political elites are out of step with the public appetite for net zero, according to analysis that identifies rightwing media narratives as fuelling a false backlash against climate action. Media coverage of net zero is more than twice as likely to be negative than public attitudes and is driving a false perception that net zero policies are unpopular with voters, the analysis found.

They probably are, until the bills start to mount up. 

This echo chamber of elite opinion, the analysis says, has led to a situation where MPs significantly underestimate public support for climate policies and overestimate public opposition to local clean energy infrastructure projects.

As if public suppotrt matters to prospective (and standing) MPs anymore. Of course, the people pushing this theory are the lanyard classes again..

Becca Massey-Chase, the head of citizen engagement at the Institute for Public Policy Research, who coauthored the analysis, said the research showed claims of a voter backlash against net zero were “largely a political myth”.She said: “The British public continues to support climate action.... The real danger is not public opinion – it is elite division and media narratives creating a false sense of risk.”
The analysis, jointly prepared by the IPPR, a progressive thinktank, and Persuasion UK, a non-profit that researches influences on public opinion, noted that the UK’s increasingly assertive far right caricatured net zero as a threat to UK sovereignty.

See?

...a strong core of 40% of voters remain strongly behind net zero, almost double the 24% who are implacably opposed to it.

 Until they have to pay for them, then they change their tune. But by then, the song's over amd the musucians have packed up their instruments and gone home.

"Turn It Off, Sarge, It's Doing The Job Too Well! "

Essex Police has paused the use of live facial recognition cameras (LFR) after a study found they identified more black people than other ethnic groups.

Identified them incorrectly? No, dear Reader, not at all

The cameras are mounted on vans and designed to identify people on watchlists if they pass by.They found it correctly identified around half of those on the watchlist, and that it was "extremely rare" for someone to be flagged up if they weren't on the list.

So, it worked. The only problem was, it highlighted how many criminals are black. and in today's modern police farce, that's a crime in itself. 

But the study found it was "statistically significantly more likely" to correctly identify black people than other ethnicities. It was also "more likely" to spot men than women.

Well, these days, so many men are pretending to be women, its hardly a surprise!  

Monday, 23 March 2026

Knock Yourself Out, Frances, They Still Exist.

Frances Ryan has found another thing wrong with modern society:
...when it comes to watching films on the platforms, I am one extortionate paywall away from buying a DVD player off eBay and Googling: “Does Blockbuster still exist?

What’s the problem? 

It is not simply that Netflix and co are killing cinema – although, yes, that is a thing that is objectively bad. It is that the advent of streaming has made watching a movie in your own home more costly, more restricted and often incredibly annoying.

Really? Is this part of Frances' disability then? 

Nowadays, if you rent a film that has recently been released it’ll cost you up to £20, far more than if you saw it in most cinemas – plus you’re paying the electric and heating bills.

Rubbish! I watched 'Zootopia 2' at the weekend, a film that was in the cinema at Christmas, on Disney+, it cost me nothing extra, whate sort of niche vieeing is she after?

When I fancied rewatching Sense and Sensibility recently, it struck me how it had become the norm to have to search through Netflix, Prime and Disney+ to work out which one currently owns the rights to each film. I eventually unearthed it on iPlayer. I think it was quicker for Jane Austen to write the novel.

You can just google that, you know... 

My personal loathing is what I pettily insist on calling Prime’s “double paywall”, in which Amazon blocks off popular films from its own subscribers unless they stump up a £3.49 rental charge on top of the £8.99 we’re already paying monthly.
I just want to be able to rewatch a beloved film without helping Jeff Bezos buy another yacht.

What do you care what he spends his money on? Is that the real issue? 

But Your Story And Experience Doesn't Match Up With It

Bafta-winning actress Wunmi Mosaku says she found parts of herself "I thought I had lost or tried to dim as an immigrant trying to fit in" as she took the best supporting actress prize for her role in the film Sinners.

She's playing a Voodoo priestess, but what exactly in her own history makes this an 'authentic experience'..? 

The 39-year-old, who was born in Nigeria and grew up in Manchester, has drawn widespread acclaim for her role as Hoodoo priestess Annie in the musical horror film.She moved with her family from the historic Nigerian city of Zaria to Manchester when she was a one-year-old baby.

The only thing they would appear to have in common is their skin colour. Isn't that, well, racist? Not to mention cultural appropriation? 

Mosaku said: "I found a part of myself in Annie, a part of my hopes, my ancestral power and connection, parts I thought I had lost or tried to dim as an immigrant trying to fit in."

Not trying very hard, then, clearly. 

Speaking at the winners' press conference, she said: "It always feels good when you feel like your story and your experience is being represented with integrity and creativity. She said she had been pleased to see "the response of black women feeling seen, loved, valued, treasured, and the power of our ancestry and the spirituality".

What a load of bollocks!  

Saturday, 21 March 2026

What’s Up With Firearms Licensing In Scotland!?

I caught the BBC documentary on Dunblane last weekend and it raised a few issues I was previously unawere of. 

The first being I'd always assumed that the petition to ban handguns was led by the bereaved paerents but no, the documentary showed it was set uo by three women unconnected to the tragedy except by living in Dunblane, of a type we would now dub 'Karens', who took it upon themselves to run the petition which eventually was succesful in banning handgun despite the official Cullen inquiry not suggesting such a step was necessary. 

The second thing was that there was no mention of the perpetrator 'at the request of the interviwees' and so the programme was rather incomplete. of course, no mention of the perpetrator meant no mention of the culpability of those authorities you were begging for help from!

Then in the week, this story caught my eye:
A gamekeeper who trapped a rare bird of prey in a cage before beating it to death was caught out by a covert surveillance operation.Russell Mason, 49, lured the protected goshawk into a baited trap before battering it several times with a cosh to cause its agonising death.
Mason was previously placed on the sex offenders register after being spotted carrying out a solo sex act in his car by a resident of a sheltered housing complex.

To be a gamekeeper requires that one hold a shotgun license doesn't it?  What are the police doing that they are handing a registered sex offender a firearms licence? Didn't they learn that lesson 30 years ago

.

And Hopefully, You've Learned A Lesson...

An experienced magistrate has been given a warning for misconduct after making a 'racist' comment on WhatsApp during a discussion about Winston Churchill. Derek Muhammad JP made the comment in a private message group during an 'intellectual discussion about the complex legacy of Winston Churchill and the colonial history of Britain'.

Oh ho ho. How I love to see people hoist on their own petard...

But, another member of the group complained it was 'racially prejudiced' and left them in a state of 'distress'.

Deploying the ultimate weapon of the once-great British judicial system: 'I'm offended!'

Bedfordshire-based Mr Muhammad, who has been a magistrate for almost 20 years, denied the comment was racist and claimed it had actually been a 'criticism of colonial exploitation'. He added that he could not be prejudiced against people 'with whom he shares ancestry'. But, despite his protestations, Mr Muhammad has now been given formal advice for misconduct.

I wonder if at any time throughout this process he had second thoughts on the wisdom of becoming part of such a captured enterprise as the modern judicial system. I do hope so.