Well, We Can Rule Out A Polar Bear...

..but does Paddington have an alibi?

In a rare kind of attack, a bear killed a man in Crystal, New Mexico, on Thursday, local police said. Authorities shot the bear, and the creature fled into woods near the scene of the attack. They said they ultimately found the bear and “neutralized” the animal.They neither identified the victim nor said what type of bear had killed him.

The only known species in the area is the black bear, Ursus americanus. 

North America generally has only a handful of fatal bear attacks annually.

That's not a lot of comfort for the deceased's family in this case, it it? 

As The UK Heatwave Dissipates, The Forces Are Marshalling for Next Year..

The El Niño event that is developing over the Pacific Ocean is likely to be the strongest in living memory, the Met Office has warned. The powerful natural climate phenomenon pushes up global temperatures and can increase the risks of extreme weather. Added to the effects of human-induced climate change, the Met Office is warning that it is "very likely" to mean 2027 is the hottest year on record.

I'd be worried, if I didn;t remember all the forecasts the Met Office made that didn't materialise.... 

There is growing evidence that weather patterns around the world are already being affected, with below-average monsoon rains in India and suppressed hurricane activity in the Atlantic Ocean. El Niño could put the UK at greater risk of a wet, stormy autumn.

Given monsoons and hurricanes kill people, isn't that rather a good thing? And a wet stormy Autumn is a typical season in the UK, isnt it? 

"We should be clear that this is an unprecedented event", said Prof Adam Scaife, head of long-range forecasting at the UK Met Office. "I have never seen an El Niño signal this intense in our forecasts."

Well, we'll see.  

Well, They Would Say That, Wouldn't They?

The programme, titled The Great ADHD Myth?, was broadcast on Tuesday and its host, NHS psychiatrist Dr Max Pemberton, concluded it was "a social construct, not a disorder of the brain". ADHD UK filed a complaint, saying: "ADHD is not a myth. It is not a social construct."

The Royal College of Psychiatrists also warned against "invalidating the condition".

Understandably, they have a business to protect. 

Channel 4 defended the show, saying there is "considerable public debate on various aspects of ADHD" and it "is legitimate for that debate to be explored and for conventional understandings to be challenged".

Once it would have been, but in 2026 that can be a risky business, as one professor has since found out. 

Another charity, ADHD Embrace, raised concerns with Channel 4 in advance, warning the programme risked "perpetuating misinformation about ADHD as a condition and discrimination against those families whose lives have been severely impacted by the condition".

But Channel 4 was not to be cowed... 

Channel 4 said: "Whilst the film does not seek to provide answers from one family's experience, their experiences have opened up discussion around whether today's world is equipped to accommodate ADHD behaviours and the ethics of medicating these, particularly in children and particularly when the long-term effects remain unknown."

Meicating children with little thought to the long term conseqequrances seem to be the way forward these day, that door has been well and truly opened.

Diagnosis rates of ADHD and autism have soared, and waiting lists for assessments on the NHS in England are at record levels, with lists even closing in some areas due to the huge demand. Research from University College London suggests nearly a 20-fold increase in the number of UK adults diagnosed with ADHD between 2000 and 2018.

Reduce the benefits and allowances associated with it if you want to see rates fall. 

Bodybags Sure Can Pick 'em!

The new farming minister fainted while visiting a refrigerated storage unit full of beef, it has been revealed.

Od dear. What was her name?

Stephen Morgan has been on a tour of farms and suppliers since being appointed.

Oops!  

...he felt ill when stepping into the room filled with shelves of meat from slaughtered cattle at a food processing plant in the Lake District. One local farmer, who knew about the incident, said: “He’d been shown large chunks of beef as well as some steaks but then he felt faint. 

“He said something like, ‘I don’t feel too well — I need a moment.’”

But it's OK, he may know sod all about farming, but his background in sociology and politics has made him a master of implausible excuses: 

The Portsmouth South MP explained of his wobble: “I felt unwell moving between the extreme heat and cold storage, and I’m grateful to all the staff at Lake District Farmers. 

“Hats off to the brilliant ­people working in these conditions and temperatures to keep the nation fed.”

When's that election? There was someone more incompetent that Starmer after all! 

Well, You've Overseen The Change Of Every Other Aspect Of British Culture..

In this fragmented but supposedly mild country, watching and talking about the weather forecast is meant to be a reassuring, unifying activity.

We've done it for years, after all, until it's become as much a sign of British culture as queuing for things.  

Yet like the traditional British climate, that common weather culture may now be evaporating.

It can join all the other things that're disappearing, like queuing for buses, offering a seat on the train or bus, saying 'please and thank you' and tolerance. 

As the climate crisis has affected this country in more and more unmistakable but uneven ways, TV weather forecasters have increasingly struggled to find the right language to describe this transformation’s daily consequences.

Across all the British TV broadcasters, sometimes within the same bulletin, or even the same sentence, weather forecasters now present sunshine as welcome and oppressive; high temperatures as miraculous and unbearable; rain as an inconvenience and desperately needed; cloud cover as depressing and a relief.

Constant sunshine and heat IS oppressive, when it goes on too long in a country where houses aren't buillt for it, and rain IS a relief when the countryside is a tinderbox with nearly empty reservoirs, due to the influx of immigration with no forward planning. 

Tanned forecasters in sundresses, emphasising the positives for domestic holidaymakers of another record-breaking summer, alternate with grim-faced forecasters suggesting we are experiencing a weather apocalypse.

This year, parts of the country have experienced such contrasting summers – wetter than usual in western Scotland, desert-like in southern England – that we can no longer say they share broadly the same northern European climate.

Yet only from 2015 did an “Apocalyptic genre” of heatwave articles begin to become dominant; and a “Romantic genre” of celebratory coverage remains. In a country where many people still spend much of the year feeling cold, the idea of hot weather as a liberation is likely to linger, for some, for decades to come.

Not for me, I will never enjoy the heat as some do, but then, I never sought out foreign holidays for the heat either. I'd far rather visit somewhere cold and interetesting than lie on a beach all day.

During the record heat of 2022, “weather forecasters faced unprecedented levels of trolling”, the BBC reported, including “hundreds of abusive tweets or emails questioning their reports and telling them to ‘get a grip’… ‘it’s just summer’”. Some of these climate crisis deniers described advice on how to stay cool as “pandering to the ‘woke brigade’”, and accused the BBC and Met Office of “scaremongering” to help the then Conservative government impose unneeded green policies.

This summer, some of these conspiratorial arguments have re-emerged. But with the Tories having in effect turned against net zero, joined by Reform UK, Restore Britain and most of the rightwing media, disagreeing with weather forecasters who express alarm about our changing climate has become more mainstream. Discussing the weather is no longer just small talk, but also a battlefield in the culture wars.

EVERYTHING is now... 

“The climate of the 20th century has now gone,” says Mike Kendon, a Met Office scientist and co-author of State of the UK Climate in 2025, published last month. So far, this year’s weather has been more extreme. Even more than the heat, summer drought and winter floods, its key feature has been the weather getting stuck in one state for months – a characteristic of harsh continental climates, rather than the changeable one around which our society has been built.

That change will be lost amid all the other, bigger changes. 

All Part And Parcel Of Life In Our Capital City, Eh, Mayor Khan?

A man has been arrested after a woman was fatally stabbed on a street in London, and another rushed to hospital. The Metropolitan Police have launched a murder probe following the alleged attack in Shepherd's Bush, west London, on Tuesday. Officers responded to reports of a stabbing at around 8.19am on Askew Road, where two women, aged 52 and 32, were found with stab wounds.The 52-year-old was pronounced dead at the scene, despite the best efforts of medical staff.

Just another example of imported savagery on the capital's streets? We'll know as soon as the names are revealed.

A man, 48, was arrested on suspicion of murder and attempted murder at the scene of the incident.

Detective Inspector Richard MacKenzie, who is leading the investigation, said: 'Our enquiries continue at pace as we work to establish the full circumstances of this deeply tragic incident. 

'Our thoughts are with the family and loved ones of the victim and injured woman. 

'We believe this to be an isolated incident within a residential address, but we know it will cause concern locally. Our officers will remain in the area throughout today.'

So a domestic? And probably not a surprise to the neighbours either...

Should You Be Breeding If This Is Your Attitude To Your Babies Health?

Twenty-week-old Grayson easily could have become one of the tens of thousands of British babies left unvaccinated against polio. His mother, Lily, agrees with the principle of immunisation. But overwhelmed by the early weeks of motherhood, and suffering from post-partum depression after a traumatic birth, she was daunted by the prospect of a long journey to a doctor's surgery.

"I've been through the trenches, awake all night. You don't want to leave the house, or go to a different town."

Not even to protest your newborn against fatal disease? I know better than to wonder why the father couldn’t have taken the kid! 

Weeks ticked by, and eventually Grayson missed the polio and diphtheria jabs he was supposed to get at eight weeks old. By that point he was officially classed by the NHS as "overdue" for vaccination; effectively, he was on his GP's naughty list.

Then Lily realised there was a clinic practically on her doorstep - at a location she hadn't expected.That clinic - in Keighley, west Yorkshire - runs from a vacant retail unit at the Airedale shopping centre, a 1960s-era precinct that locals say has fallen on hard times in recent years, with plenty of empty, boarded-up units. The staff who created the clinic thought: why not use one of those vacant units to administer vaccines?

Well, marginally better than a self-immolating vape shop or Turkish barber VAT fraud outlet, I guess....

It's an imaginative solution to a national problem. Over the last 15 years, childhood vaccination rates have fallen across Britain. The share of five-year-olds in England who have received a four-in-one jab (which protects against viruses like polio and tetanus) is now 81%, down from 89% in 2014. About 84% have received both of their recommended MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) jabs, down from 88% a decade ago.

And no, the culprit isn't what you'd expect, either:  

Beccy Baird, a senior fellow at the King's Fund think tank, says that despite colourful media reporting around "anti-vaxxers", most parents who turn down vaccination are not ideologically opposed to it. Convenience plays a big role, she says; vaccination rates are highest when parents regularly interact with medics, who can remind them to get their children jabbed and tell them exactly where to do it.

Then make sure the GP service is there for them to do it, and not ring-fenced by barbed wire and dragon-like receptionists that make it impossible to get an appointment! 

There's Lily, the 18-year-old who finally gets her son Grayson his polio and diphtheria jabs. And there's Keeley, an assistant in a ceramics shop, who arrives with her baby Luca, and is impressed by the clinic's convenience, with no need for an 08:00 phone call or complicated online form.

See? Why aren't the GPs run like this?  

Most of the young mothers have come across online anti-vax posts. "I see these things on Facebook where it's like, don't give your child vaccines because it's got ADHD in them," says Lily. Indeed, Hussain says she still hears parents asking if the MMR jab causes autism, a full 28 years after a link was suggested in a now-discredited paper by the former doctor Andrew Wakefield.

And you'll no doubt hear it until a more convincing arguement for the cause of the rise in the disorder is discoverered. 

The clinic - which serves a relatively poor community - has vaccinated hundreds of infants since 2023, helping to boost coverage in an area that's historically had a low rate of immunisations. As of March this year, 88% of the children registered with Modality AWC (the GP practice that runs the clinic) now receive their first MMR dose by the age of 18 months, up from 78% three years ago.

Is it a 'poor' area in monetary terms, or educational ones? 

Oh, Wales...

A 102-year-old great-grandfather with dementia died days after he was allegedly pushed off stage in his local pub after making a noise complaint.

A 56-year-old man from Llanelli, Carmarthenshire, was arrested on suspicion of inflicting grievous bodily harm, and remains under investigation.

Another act of midless savagery from the Land of the Dragon Bully Dog... 

Philip is understood to have been visiting the pub for a drink when he went onto a stage in the venue to complain about the volume of the music.

Robert said: "He just asked them to turn the music down." He said his father turned around to come back down off the stage when he was pushed, and that resulted in a broken hip."[That's] the most upsetting part. He wasn't going to live forever but it's not a nice way, obviously in pain," he said. "We want to see justice, of course. "They must have known he was an old man. It makes you wonder what the world is coming to."

Frequently, yes... 

Det Ch Insp Shelley Comley, senior investigating officer for Gwent Police, said: "We understand the public interest in this incident but want to remind people that, not only is this an active criminal investigation, but there is a family at the heart of it processing the loss of a loved one." She urged people to "consider the impact that inaccurate or speculative comments" including "online commentary" could have.

This boilerplate has to be stuck onto every police statement now, doesn't it? 

The First Burnham Victim Goes Under The Bus....

Step forward, victim:

Ms Haigh serves as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and First Secretary of State, effectively making her Andy Burnham's deputy. The Prime Minister appointed the convicted fraudster to her powerful role, as well as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, after she masterminded his victory in the Makerfield by-election in June. Her position in the higher echelon of Mr Burnham's administration comes less than two years after she was forced to resign from former PM Keir Starmer's Cabinet.

And now we know why he took such a step, so he'd have someone to blame when things went tits up. 

Louise Haigh signed off on a nationwide emergency wildfire alert that startled millions of people across the country. Ms Haigh, who is head of the Cabinet Office, is understood to have approved the alert, which led to panicked Britons jamming 999 lines and startled drivers swerving across motorways.

Bullshit! Don't tell me a decision like this never crossed the PM's desk. 'Meet the new boss, same as the old boss', as the song goes...

The Conservatives, who devised the system more than a decade ago, said the alert was only intended to be used in cases where there was an imminent, direct and mainly localised threat to life.A Cabinet Office report explicitly warned against its use for 'lower level' incidents for fear of creating a 'cry wolf' effect, in which phone users either disabled or ignored the alert in cases of genuine emergency.

Indeed, I first heard this fot real as I headed out to a restaurant in Edinburgh for a birthday meal, because extremely high winds were predicted - and materialised! - the next day. 

The Government had initially considered sending a targeted alert to the areas which were most affected or at risk of wildfires. However, by the afternoon, Ms Haigh's department decided to release the alert across the country following calls from the Fire and Rescue Service, The Telegraph reported.

A request they soon had cause to regret. 

But the plea from fire chiefs soon came back to haunt them as emergency switchboards became overloaded by members of the public accusing their neighbours of having a barbecue.

But every cloud has a silver lining for someone: 

One unlikely benefit of the disruptive alerts was that dozens of prisoners had their hidden mobile phones seized after the loud noises blared out from inside their cells on Friday evening.

Oh. well. 

Is This Unusual?

 

Well, It IS Ireland, maybe they dom't bother over there if the cause of death is so blindingly obvious...

A seven-year-old boy is among four seriously injured people in hospital after a crash in County Kildare in which five teenagers were killed while driving the wrong way down a motorway. Two women are in a critical condition, while another woman and the boy are in a serious condition after the head-on crash. It's believed the injured family - two women aged in their 30s and one in her 20s, and the young boy - were travelling to the airport to go on holiday.

And this wasn't a case of teenagers driving like that because they got confused as some elderly drivers do, or were being cgased by police - it was deliberate. 

The five teenagers have been named locally as Joe Carthy from Athy, County Kildare, Alex McCarthy from Carlow, Kamil Pustkowski from Limerick, Jeremy O'Brien and Jack Kennedy, according to Irish broadcaster RTÉ News.

Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister) Micheál Martin said his thoughts and prayers were with the injured and the death of the five teenage boys brought untold grief.

Social media immediatly gave the lie to that, wirh many people quite happy that these hooligans had deleted themselves from the world, being notorious as thorough nuisances in their town, and the sympathy went to the innocent victims who were just trying to get away on holiday. 

Garda Commissioner Justin Kelly described it as a "horrific incident" and "irresponsible and dangerous driving". "What makes this reckless behaviour even more appalling is that in some cases it is being done for social media likes regardless of the potentially devastating impact it might have on innocent people and themselves."

Ireland's Minister for Justice Jim O'Callaghan said on Monday that he condemned "in the strongest possible terms" the "reckless criminal behaviour". "I also want to emphasise that anyone who makes the decision to drive a vehicle deliberately the wrong way down a motorway is engaged in lethally dangerous behaviour and it must stop," O'Callaghan said.

But why would they stop, whrn the police are powerless - or unwilling - to stop them, and they lack the brainpower to realise the consequences of a crash ayyspeed?