This Amount Of Organisation And Planning, And Yet No Motive?

CCTV footage has captured the moment a 26-year-old man flees for his life from a teenager armed with a knife just minutes before he was stabbed to death. Afghan refugee Suliaman Tajzai, 18, of Welsey Road in Leeds, pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey on Friday to murdering Farmanullah Sherzad in Westminster in March this year.

And because of the guilty pleas, no questions are being asked. No one seems to care why he did it. 

Footage published by the Metropolitan Police following Tajzai’s conviction has now revealed how the events leading up to the murder unfolded — beginning hundreds of miles away in Leeds. Wearing a blue, white and black jacket, Tajzai is seen entering a corner shop and calmly taking a knife from the shelf on Friday, March 27.He then approaches the counter, where CCTV captures him laughing and chatting with the cashier as he buys the item. Later that day, Tajzai travelled to London and waited outside Farmanullah’s address for him to return from work.CCTV footage then captures the moment Farmanullah sees Tajzai and attempts to flee, as the teenager gives chase armed with the knife he had bought earlier that day.Officers were called at around 10.15pm on March 27 after Farmanullah was found with stab wounds by a member of the public. Emergency services rushed to the scene, but despite their efforts, the 26-year-old was pronounced dead around 20 minutes later.

Seems as if thanks to technology, we know all the details, except the motive. This was not some random killing, this was a targeted one, with considerable planning involved.

CCTV footage later revealed that Tajzai had travelled to London in the weeks before the attack to scope out Farmanullah's home address and where he worked.

Detective Chief Inspector Wayne Jolley, who led the investigation, said:"While no outcome can undo the suffering caused by his death, we hope today's conviction provides some measure of closure and reassurance that the person responsible has been brought to justice."  "This is a devastating case in which a young man lost his life after being subjected to a brutal and senseless act of violence.

Tajzai is due to be sentenced at the Old Bailey on September 18.

He got life. Which means he’ll serve a few years and be released, and probably not be deported. So I think the motive should be investigated a little more thoroughly, don’t you?

What Did I Tell You?

 Mote details of Greta Gerwig's adaptation of the Narnia novels have been released over the weekend. And as predicted when I first heard about it, it's gone down like a sold cup of sick with fans of the beloved children's novels. 

Predictably, the luvvies are riding to Greta's rescue, scoffing at the idea that an artist has any responsibility to adapt a work of literature faithfully. But that’s not why she’s doing this, is it? This is why:

Will I watch it when it launches? Sure, because I always have the Disney versions to fall back on. They were perfect!

Of Course He's Vegan ...

The only surprise is it's taken him this long to announce it.

The actor has been on a tour to promote his new documentary, How to Live on Earth. “The irony is not lost on anyone,” he says. “We’re living in the results of climate breakdown so stepping outside is – literally – a call to action.”

What action? 

His film launches on YouTube this month and the actor hopes it is a “blueprint” for how we interact with our besieged planet in the future. It features Cumberbatch delivering monologues from the cavernous halls of the Natural History Museum in London, in between short films showing how activists, scientists and even chefs are learning a “new way to live on Earth” – one that could stop humanity damaging it.

Chefs? 

Cumberbatch has spent the last two decades trying to reframe his relationship with the planet: he’s tried to live more gently on Earth and became vegan. However, this was a problem during the shooting of The Courier, in which he plays captured British spy Greville Wynne, who languishes in a Russian jail. “They said, ‘You can’t have any fibre in the last two weeks. You need to eat lean meat.’ And I was like, ‘I’m vegan!’”

Once again, I’m reminded of Sir Laurence Olivier’s advice to Dustin Hoffman on the set of ‘The Marathon Man’

No fibre for two weeks must have been tough on the bowels? “Yes, it was, but it was much less than what the character I was portraying went through, because it was a true story.” Although he went straight back on the vegetables, the extreme diet caused his blood sugar to plummet and he became unwell. “People were saying, ‘You should think about eating a little bit of meat now, because your body doesn’t really work under these conditions – you’ve lost so much weight.’”

One must suffer for one’s art, mustn’t one? 

Now, Cumberbatch tries to source the meat he does eat ethically, opting for venison, which in the UK needs to be culled as the country has an overpopulation of deer.

So, he’s ditched veganism, but would he get a private jet? “No,” he says, but adds the caveat: “We just waste our energy if we’re naysaying and calling people hypocrites. The fashion industry is a bigger polluter than aviation, and the food industry massively. That’s all of us, that’s everyone.” Not just movie stars.

Well, after you! 

The 50-year-old has long been an environmental campaigner. He visited the Extinction Rebellion protests in 2019 and has been dismayed by the recent government crackdowns on climate protests, with long sentences given to people who have blocked roads and smashed windows for the cause. “We should have the right in a democracy to peaceful action, even if it is direct action,” he says.

Do you need a dictionary? Smashing windows and attacking police isn’t ‘peaceful’ and we don’t have ‘a right’ to it! 

Cumberbatch and company discuss some blue-sky thinking in the documentary, which to the jaded viewer could seem unrealistic.

Translation: to any normal human, not a dweller in the rarified atmosphere of the luvvies, will seem like unrealistic bollocks! 

“Nature that’s alive is actually far more valuable to us than dead nature,” Cumberbatch says. “So an elephant’s tusk is not worth as much as the elephant alive, in terms of what it brings to the savannah, to make the savannah work as an ecosystem.

Imagine what it’s worth to a trophy hunter, who will pay through the nose for the chance to shoot it, which will have to be done anyway when numbers get too high, because too many elephants destroy an ecosystem very efficiently.

Cash-Strapped Local Councils?

Give me a break! They seem to have plenty of money, so long as it's spent on politically correct foolishness:

Children too anxious to attend school are being represented at their desks by £3,500 robots that let them join lessons from home. The AV1 robot has a camera, microphone and speaker enabling a child at home to see, hear and speak to classmates via an app.

So, a robot that's doing the job of a cheap laptop equipped with a webcam, eh? And it seems to only come in white.

There'll be calls for brown and black models before this thing has booted up, mark my words...

More than 2,000 are being used nationwide, many by children with 'emotionally based school avoidance', or EBSA – a chronic refusal to go to school driven by anxiety.

The robot was developed by Norwegian firm No Isolation, initially to keep children in hospital connected to their classrooms.

A noble cause, I wonder how they feel about seeing it put to use not to support genuinly sick children, but to pander to the latest fad diven by social contagion and weak parenting? Probably don't care so long as the money keeps rolling in... 

Last year Devon County Council bought 16 robots for pupils who struggle to attend because of 'worry, anxiety and overwhelm'.

The authority is one of at least 80 to have taken the AV1 since the Department for Education commissioned it in 2019. The robots are used for EBSA pupils in areas including Somerset, Dorset and Haringey and Islington in London, according to council documents seen by The Mail on Sunday.

 All areas with a large proportion of middle class ineffectual parents, I see....

The number of severely absent pupils with additional 'social, emotional and mental health' needs has more than tripled in six years, from 8,453 to 27,442. A record 151,000 pupils missed at least half their schooling last year, from a pre-pandemic low of 60,247.

Well, well, well, another side effect of the Covid insanity, eh?  

All Fried Food?

There will be a boost for fresh fruit and vegetables and deep-fried food will be banned in what the government has called the biggest shake-up to school dinners in England in over a decade.

Will it include samosas, onion bahjis and gulab jamun as well as the fish and chips then? I wonder…

Under new school food standards, fibre and wholegrains will also be increased, and breakfast clubs will have to follow nutrition rules for the first time, with schools also being monitored.

That’s not going to be cheap, unless they plan to add it to OFSTED inspectorate tasks… 

The Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) welcomed the changes, but said they hoped the new rules would not become "another stick with which to beat head teachers".

The changes will come into effect from 2027 and be funded with existing money for schools, the government said.

Then they DO plan for OFSTED to take it on, instead of creating another inspection regime. 

Education Secretary Lucy Powell said they were "once-in-a-generation changes" which would "transform school food for children across the country".

I’m sure we all expected a government to busy themselves with that, instead of protecting the country’s borders, when we entered the ballot box, didn’t we?

Pepe Di'Iasio, ASCL general secretary, said parents would feel "reassured" that schools were providing children with a healthy diet.He said schools needed "more investment" in catering facilities and in the "professional development" of school chefs to develop menus that "meet the ambitions" of the government.

The ambitions of this particular government? One would hope they would be a little more statesmanlike, but in vain…

Breakfast clubs will undergo one of the biggest changes. Historically, there has been no guidance on what they should provide, but from next September pastries and fried-eggs will be off the menu and there will be a sugar cap when it comes to cereals.The government said Coco Pops would no longer be an option and chocolate spread was "not permitted".

No croissants, that’s not very European of us, and whatever happened to ‘Go to work on an egg’? 

Well, You Are How You Feel, Eh?

Being sent a shiny new phone in the post that you were not expecting may sound great, but it could well be a sign you have just been scammed. Criminals might have got into your account, added a new handset to your bill, before asking you to "return" it - to their address. Nearly 30,000 cases like this were recorded last year of what a telecommunications boss described as "at scale, organised crime".

Organised, yes, but like any good scam, reliant on the naivety and/or greed of the mark. As Longrider has frequently pointed out...

So, what sort of greedy naive idiot has fallen for this one? 

The Reverend Jenny Seggar, rector of the Two Rivers Benefice near Ipswich, fell victim to this type of fraud last year and told the BBC's Scam Secrets podcast how the "very plausible" technique unfolded.

There follows a story few people wouldn’t have smelled a rat with! 

When Seggar contacted Tesco Mobile, staff told her the QR code led to a private address - meaning the fraudsters had bagged themselves a brand new iPhone and Apple Watch. "I got back into the car and I thought, 'Oh, I think I've just been really stupid. I don't like how this feels'," Seggaar added.

Yes, you have. 

Seggar's experience is part of a pattern of increasingly sophisticated scam activity across the telecommunications industry. 

Not really that sophisticated at all  

Well, Yeah...

Only one confirmed member of the species is known - a cat living in a rescue sanctuary in Bolivia - but scientists believe others exist.

You don't have to be a scientist to know that, do you? 

Sunday Funnies...

I feel as if a warning on No 12 that a Tom Cruise film 'isn't hisorically accurate' is somewhat redundant.

That's Modern 'Customer Service' These Days...

A retired soldier has revealed his shock at an exchange with a member of staff at the gift shop during a recent visit to the museum in south London.My 11-year-old daughter asked if there would be a veteran's discount,' the former serviceman told the Mail. The reply stunned him. 'The woman at the till said, 'We have nothing to do with the military - that's not who we are'.'

Where were they trying to visit? Why only the Imperial War Museum in London! And there was no description of the menmber of staff in question, but I think we can guess, can't we? 

The IWM said it had begun an investigation. A spokesman said it was 'very sorry to hear about this visitor's experience' and apologised 'if he or his daughter felt unwelcome during their visit'.

Should be a very short investigation, and it should begin in your HR department. 

OK, Boris, Here's An Idea For You...

...let's push for this, and if Pakistan wants a swetener to consider it, we extradite Tulip Siddique. 

Deal? 

He is, of course, Imran Khan, the former prime minister from 2018 to 2022, and his suffering is now becoming a global scandal. Since leaving office he has been subjected to a barrage of politically motivated cases, designed to eradicate him permanently from public life. These charges have been so blatantly without merit that they have mostly collapsed – all except one: an accusation that Imran Khan’s government steered some UK government cash towards a certain property developer, who then made a handsome donation to a university that had connections to Imran and his wife.

Are we expected to meddle in every foreign court case regarding the misappopriation of UK funds, because there's lot of them...

Even if it is true that Imran has some sort of case to answer in the so-called Al-Qadir case (and it is far from clear to me that he does), he has done nothing to deserve the kind of mental and physical torture he is getting. Above all, he deserves to have his appeal heard speedily and by an independent court. Instead he is being left literally to rot to death in jail. That is because this case was never about corruption, since he has been in fact one of the most open and transparent Pakistani politicians of modern times.

Imran Khan tried to change the way Pakistan works, and paid a price. That is essentially why he is in jail.

Thet is, undoubtedly, still a matter for Pakistan, and not for the UK. 

You can object to some of the attitudes he struck, and to his teenage anti-Americanism, but nothing he said or did can conceivably justify the brutality with which the Pakistani generals are treating the former PM: banged up in foul conditions, with deteriorating health, no date for a new trial and no apparent hope of release. Why are they doing it? Simple: they are scared of him. Imran Khan is one of the greatest cricketing heroes Pakistan – or the world – has ever produced. He led his country to its first ever test victories over both India and England, and in 1992, at the age of 39, he steered Pakistan to its first World Cup victory.

Sorry, Boris, but the fact he's pretty good at sport - and boring sport at that - is no better reason to take an interest.