Well, Nesrine, If So, It's A Hole He Dug Entirely By Himself

It's not often she makes sense, but I like to highlight it when she does: 

He is in a hole that is too deep to climb out of. The prime minister’s persistent unpopularity is best understood as the result of abundance: there is simply, in Starmer, something for everyone to deplore.In policy, he has taken stances that have established him in the minds of many people as devoid of principle and compassion.

He's still got the shovel in his hands, Nesrine, and there's no sign yet that he's finished... 

On Gaza, Starmer got it wrong from the start. From his early assertion that Israel had the right to cut off water and power, to refusing calls for a ceasefire and then cracking down on protest (a move now judged as unlawful by the high court), the prime minister positioned himself against a huge domestic swell of distress.

'Huge domestic well', Nesrine? Hardly. Only emanating from those people we should really be looking to remove from the country at the first opportunity, the ones we regret ever inviting in.... 

And then there is Starmer himself. Personality alone does not make a politician, and God knows we have suffered enough from big personalities such as Boris Johnson – but you need something. Not necessarily fireworks and charm, but at the minimum just a sense of tangibility.

Starmer is impalpable; not in the sense that he isn’t there, but that he is hiding. He doesn’t dream, he says, nor does he have phobias, nor favourite novels. He communicates in only the most generic terms, in staccato sentences using repetitive themes – “change” or his working-class roots – connected by meaningless “let me be clears” and “make no mistakes”

I agree here, it is strange that someone who was a lawyer could be such a poor public speaker. 

Who is this person’s constituency? Not the left, to which he has made clear in policy and in purges that this is not its Labour party. Not the right, which will never be at home in Labour, no matter how many people it deports or how much capital it courts. And not the centre any more, for which Starmer’s incompetence and lurching from one debacle to the next is becoming increasingly hard to rationalise.

His constiturncy appears to be himself.  

Another One Of Those 'Isolated Incidents'.

A man who was fatally stabbed in a triple stabbing in Croydon was named by detectives as his family spoke of their heartbreak. A murder investigation has been launched after 22-year-old Lorik Abazi was killed in the early hours of Sunday morning.

Just another day in Mayor Khan's London, as our wonderful enrichment kills each other off with depressing regularity, and the police do their best to sweep it under the carpet, so as not to frighten the tourists. 

Police were called to Hesterman Way at around 1.15am following reports of a stabbing. Three men with stab wounds were attended to at the scene, but despite best efforts from the London Ambulance, Mr Abazi died at hospital.Two other men stabbed in the incident, both aged 21, were also taken to hospital. They have since both been arrested on suspicion of affray. One man has potentially life-threatening injuries in hospital, while the other has been taken into police custody. In total seven people have now been arrested.

Just don't mention the gang war!  

“I know a tragic incident like this will concern people locally. We believe this to have been an isolated incident and I hope the fact we have a number of suspects in custody provides some reassurance to people in Croydon. We have increased patrols in the local area and I would ask anyone with concerns to speak to my officers.”

There's an awful lot of these so-called 'isolated incidents'... 

Only Effective If They Are The Type Used In The Ukraine War

Specialist pilots are to deploy drones to catch crime gangs fly-tipping waste in London and other parts of the country. The team of 33 pilots will use 54 unmanned aircraft fitted with laser mapping technology to track from the air illegal waste dumps in the South East and other regions.

Unles it's given these types of drones it's doomed to failure:

London has the highest rate of fly-tipping in the country, according to recent data, at more than twice the English average, with Croydon the worst affected borough.

Really? Worse than my own dear borough, where I cannot walk the 10 minutes to the local station without seeing the overnight activities of my diverse and enriching 'neighbours'?

Ugh...

  

The new Environment Agency (EA) squad will target criminal gangs behind large-scale waste dumping rather than individuals involved in opportunistic and smaller scale fly-tipping.

So, ignoring the 'Broken Windows' effect that did so much to clean up New York, before the idiot Democrats went and elected someone who turned it back into a crimeridden literal shithole again? 

Officers from the agency will also be able to swiftly scan and cross-check lorry licence applications against waste permit records, using a new screening tool.

It's staggering that this is a new thing, and not something implimented from the get -go. 

Now I'm Even More Eager To See It Open...

Pro-Palestine vandals daubed the words 'Free Gaza' and threw red paint over a newly opened branch of Gail's, as activists accused the bakery chain of 'funding Israel'.

I will spend SO MUCH here...

I've been eagerly waiting  this branch's opening day to open in Stratford where I work, as I love the one in Wanstead (the cheese & chive scones are better than I can make myself!) and the news I'll be sticking it to the mad Paeleostinian supporters will make the lunchtime coffee and cake even sweeter!

Gail's has previously faced accusations of being Israel-owned or backing Israel's 'war machine'. The chain was founded as a wholesaler in the 1990s by Israeli baker Gail Mejia and was rapidly expanded by Israeli entrepreneur Ran Avidan from 2005 - but both are no longer linked to the business. It is today owned by Pizza Express entrepreneur Luke Johnson and American investment firm Bain Capital. Bain was among 500 other venture capital firms that signed a letter in support of Israel following the Hamas terrorist attacks on October 7, 2023, and it has investments in Israel, including in AI, cybersecurity and software companies.

Not that that will matter to the insane people in this activist group domestic terrorist group one little bit!  

A spokesperson told The Guardian in 2024: 'Gail's is a UK-based business with no specific connections to any country or government outside of the UK and does not fund Israel.'

Shame.  

It's Also Very, Very Easy Not To .. Millions of Children Manage It!

Jodian remembers her son as a happy child, eager to learn, but she suspected something was wrong when Daejaun's behaviour changed in his early teens. She believes friends from secondary school introduced Daejaun to older boys who, in turn, groomed him into selling drugs. It can be all too easy for teenagers in inner city areas to get involved in this lifestyle, says Michael Jibowu, a former gang member from Woolwich.

The description of recruiting into a gang being described as 'grooming' crops up a lot in these stories lately. Is it because it absolves the perpetrator of responsibility, I wonder?

"Imagine being a young boy and you want to make money. The drug dealers are about, they have cars, they have chains, they have watches," he says. "It's very, very easy to get involved in selling drugs... Sometimes you can say literally nothing and they will approach you.

Then isn’t the appropriate response to continue saying nothing until they give up and go away? 

"Daejaun always wanted to be wealthy, says Jodian. She remembers telling him he had to find ways of making money legitimately: "But then you find that the influence on the outside was greater than mine."

Then you managed to raise a child with no morals. 

Daejaun had made a choice, she says, but adults were exploiting him for their own financial gain.

Of course, it couldn’t possibly be that you raised a defective child, could it? Perish the thought! It must have been outside influences that did it! These people never admit to their own responsibility in anything! 

Not that there isn't a lot of blame for the supposed 'authorities' who have swallowed the 'ethnicity equals victimhood' tropes.

In 2023, Jodian raised her concerns with his school, Woolwich Polytechnic for Boys. It arranged counselling for Daejaun and asked Greenwich Council to provide help for the family. However, Jodian says she remains critical of the school for not sharing important information with her about who Daejaun was mixing with. Some of his friends had been barred from school grounds, but the school did not tell Jodian why. She says she later found out it was because of their links to drug distribution and weapons.

Shocker!  

Woolwich Polytechnic's head of safeguarding, Jo Lumbis, says: "I wouldn't have been able to tell her about the drugs and the knives because that child is entitled to confidentiality. I can't give that information to parents."

I think you may need to rethink your title, Jo, if your concern is all for the privacy of future knife-wielding hoodlums...

Many experts believe the system for dealing with child criminal exploitation is not working properly at present, and children are slipping through the cracks.

Undoubtedly, but let's nor ignore the effect of poor parenting, or no parenting. It's a shame we don't hear from the boy's father in this article, after all. 

Ooh! Oooh! I Can Guess The Answer!

 And I'll have to, as it's behind a paywall.

Could it possibly be 'We stopped doing this' and started dieting..?

Wildlife Campaigners: 'No, Starve Them Instead, It's More Humane'

Culling deer in England will be made easier under a long-awaited government 10-year plan to deal with a population explosion that threatens woodlands, newly planted trees and farmland.The government has unveiled a deer management strategy that will identify priority culling areas and make it easier to carry out licensed night-time and closed-season shooting. Farmers could also be given new legal rights to shoot them to protect their crops.

At last, a sensible and wortehile government decision. Who could possibly object? 

But some animal welfare campaigners said culling was inhumane and not effective in the long term.

Oh. Of course!  

🙄

...a spokeswoman for the animal rights campaign group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) said that culling wild deer would not resolve the problem of overpopulation. "Removing deer from the landscape doesn't stop their numbers from rebounding, and, in many cases, a temporary reduction in population leaves more food available per animal, which can increase breeding rates in the survivors," she said.Instead, PETA called for "humane and sustainable" options to be used, including habitat modification, appropriate fencing and limiting access to artificial food sources.

So it's more humane to slowly starve them to death than it is to cleanly shoot them? Well, I suppose that's the sort of 'logic' you can expect from an organisation that's studiously ignored halal and kosher slaughter...

H&S is an issue too:

More than 74,000 deer are involved in collisions with vehicles each year, killing between 10 and 20 people and injuring more than 700, according to the RSPCA.

And don't forget, this is a crisis that has no downside, unless you're a vegetarian: 

The government said it also wanted to promote and support a domestic market for the venison from culled deer, including pushing for more to be bought and served up by schools, prisons and hospitals.

Why 'push' - legislate!  

Coming Over Here, Picking The Pockets Our Home Grown Artful Dodgers Won't Pick....

A Chilean pickpocket who preyed on Tube commuters was caught carrying a contactless card reader in the first case of its kind. Daniel Maldonado Paulson, 35, had only been in the UK for two weeks when he carried out his “ghost tapping” crime spree at South Kensington London Underground station.

Hurrah! Isn't it nice to read a 'good news story' about crime in London for once?  

Plain-clothes British Transport Police spotted Maldonado Paulson scouting the Piccadilly line for victims at 7.30pm on February 7. They swooped when the thief displayed behaviour typical of a professional pickpocket and stopped him on the platform.As police escorted him up the escalator, Maldonado Paulson attempted to flee but was subsequently arrested and handcuffed. He was found to have Sophie Halford’s £1,300 phone which had been reported stolen just 20 minutes earlier and an electronic card reading device.

They haven't said exactly how this worked so presumably, they don't want to encourage copycats. 

The handset was returned to Ms Halford just two hours after Maldonado Paulson took it.

Lucky lady. Let's hope the courts did their part!  

At Westminster Magistrates’ Court on February 13, Maldonado Paulson pleaded guilty to two counts of handling stolen goods and resisting arrest by PC Alison Levi. The defendant, of Alvey Street, Southwark, was jailed for six months.

*sigh* 

Well, I Suppose They Did At Least Get The Species And Breed Right This Time...

 ..which, let's face it. is good going for this particular member of the MSM!

Germiran Bryson, 26, showed up at Las Vegas’ Harry Reid International Airport with her two-year-old goldendoodle earlier this month, only to be turned away when she didn’t have the proper paperwork to bring the pup aboard as a service animal.

*sighs* A two year old dog is in no sense 'a puppy'... 

Sunday Funnies...

 Frankly, I often do think that, no matter the film...