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! 

This Needs To Stop...

Calls to leave the ECHR will double after this, and no wonder:

A double murderer who took a prison officer hostage and demanded the release of hate preacher Abu Qatada has been awarded a £240k taxpayer-funded payout. Fuad Awale was transferred to a special separation unit for dangerous convicts after he and another convict ambushed a jail worker and threatened to kill him. Awale used Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) to claim his segregation - designed to prevent him harming officers and radicalising inmates - had breached his right to life.

What Home Sec would be idiot enough not to appeal thi... 

David Lammy, the Justice Secretary, has now agreed to pay £7,500 compensation and £234,000 legal costs after the convicted killer stated he had suffered 'severe depression'.

Oh. Of course. I forgot. 

The High Court has ruled in favour of Awale's appeal to the ECHR, with a judge saying there had been a 'significant degree of interference with the claimant's private life', The Telegraph reports.

I know what you’re going to say, Reader, ‘who was the judge?’ It was, of course, the judge who let Harvey Willgoose's murderer go free early, Justice Naomi Ellenbogan!

Robert Jenrick, Conservative shadow justice secretary, has branded the decision a 'sick joke'. He said: 'Labour are cowing to terrorists and the human rights brigade. They must introduce emergency legislation to carve these monsters out of the ECHR immediately. If they don't, we will as soon as Parliament returns.'

Now, it's being reported on Twitter that he'll 'only' see about £7k of that, the rest going to the bloodsucking leeches  lawyers acting for him. But even that's too damn much! And yes, I get my news from Twitter now, and will do, until the MSM starts doing its job properly.

I Thought The Aussies Were Blunt By Nature?

An Australian doctor who raised the alarm about Erin Patterson has been sanctioned by the medical regulator over disparaging comments made about the triple murderer.

Can you actually 'disparage' a convicted triple murderer? 

Chris Webster was a key witness in Patterson's trial, at which a jury found her guilty of killing three relatives and attempting to kill another with a deadly mushroom lunch in 2023. After the verdicts, Dr Webster told BBC that Patterson - now serving a life sentence - was a "heinous individual" and called her a "disturbed sociopathic nut-bag" in an interview with the Herald Sun.

And what's wrong with that? Aren't Aussies famous for calling a spade a spade? 

The Medical Board of Australia found his actions were inappropriate and ordered that the general practitioner undergo ethics, privacy and social media training.

Apparently, they received complaints from members of the public! Australia, what happenred to you?  

Dr Webster told the BBC on Friday that he understood and accepted the decision from regulators - who have not publicly commented on his case but listed the conditions on a public register. "As far as my comments go, I stand by them," said Dr Webster, who still works as a GP in Patterson's home town of Leongatha, in regional Victoria. He said that regulators did not find any breach of patient confidentiality, as he was talking about matters that had been openly discussed in the murder trial. "I was found to be inappropriate in my professionalism," he said, "and that has to do with the use of salty language and my use of social media."

If he'd killed a few patients by incompetence, he'd probablv have got off lightly. After all, they don't seem to care as much about having living patients as they do about having unoffended patients.

The Aphra investigation concluded that Dr Webster must do at least eight hours of training in topics including professionalism and ethics, professional communication, privacy and confidentiality, and social media. He must also be mentored by another doctor for five hours a month for a period of one year, Dr Webster says. He called it an "onerous condition", which might require him to take one day off each week to travel to Melbourne, and could mean he has less time with patients. "Ultimately, the community is getting punished as well, and that's disappointing," he said."There's never been any question about my competency and skills as a doctor. It's all about my attitude and presentation, and maybe in this modern world, that kind of thinking might be a bit archaic. Doctors are human beings."

It seems Australia is even further down the road of progressive nonsese than even the US and UK.... 

“Free speech is clearly under attack. Nobody is really safe… the public needs to see what’s happening, and be shocked.”

So why aren't they? Do they think this sort of thing won't happen to them?

Julian Foulkes, from Gillingham in Kent, was handcuffed at his home by six officers from Kent Police – the force he had served for a decade – after challenging a supporter of pro-Palestinian marches on X. Police body-worn camera footage captured officers scrutinising the 71-year-old’s collection of books by authors such as Douglas Murray, a Telegraph contributor, and issues of The Spectator, pointing to what they described as “very Brexity things”.

I spent Saturday binge watching 'Zero Day' on Netflix, and the reaction of the American people to Bob De Niro's character getting a bit too fascist in his hunt for cyberterrorists was quite a contrast to the supine way the UK public treat outrages like these ones. Yes, it is fiction, but my god....

Mr Foulkes’s house was searched, with officers seizing his electronic devices and removing them to a waiting police van. Officers also rifled through his most personal belongings.After his home was searched, the retired special constable was locked in a police cell for eight hours and interrogated on suspicion of malicious communications.

And I think no-one really knows how they'd cope with that, or what they'd do to get out, no matter how wise in the ways of the law they might be... 

Fearing that further escalation could impact his ability to visit his surviving daughter, who lives in Australia, he accepted a caution despite having committed no offence.

Hard to blame him. 

The incident took place in November 2023. This week, Kent Police admitted the caution was a mistake and deleted it from Mr Foulkes’s record.

Because of the 'Telegraph's interest? 

On Saturday, a Kent Police spokesman told The Telegraph the force had “concluded that the caution against Mr Foulkes was not appropriate in the circumstances and should not have been issued”. The spokesman said “Kent Police expunged the caution from the man’s record and was pleased to facilitate this correction”, adding that a further review of the matter would now be carried out “to identify any learning opportunities”.

Ah, if only. They appear incapable of that. 

A Home Office spokesman said: “This incident occurred under the previous government.

A (nominally) Conservative government, remember. 

H/T: Chris Parry via Twitter

More Worthless Tick-Boxing Drain On Retailers Time

Retailers will be required to report suspicious or bulk purchases of knives, and those caught selling blades to under-18s will face tougher sentences under a new raft of measures to clamp down on young people’s access to weapons labelled Ronan’s law.

Who? 

Named after Ronan Kanda, the 16-year-old killed in Wolverhampton in 2022 by a teenager carrying a 22in ninja blade he had ordered online, the new laws are part of a raft of anti-knife crime plans announced by the government on Wednesday.

So, not a teenager carrying more than one knife? So why the bulk purchase thing?

A government-commissioned review has found that age verification for buying knives online is “a huge vulnerability”, and that 15 illegal dealers had sold more than 2,000 knives in an 18-month period.

Metropolitan police commander Stephen Clayman, the national lead for knife crime who led the review, said: “I could go to a legitimate dealer and buy 300 knives, and the dealer has no obligation to tell police that someone’s just bought that, or the fact I bought five knives each week for the last 10 weeks.

Well, no, of course not, you idiot! Because what's more likely, that they bought them to sell off individually to Shaniqua and DeWayne to settle beef in the ends, or that they are supplying chef's shools and catering colleges? It seems we hadn't quite scraped the bottom of the 'knife crime idiocy' barrel after all....

“We need to plug that and understand who is buying these knives. Because they are then selling indiscriminately to children and young men, predominantly men, because there are no age verification safeguards.”

How many of them? And how many are not? So you're going to start investigating legitimate business to catch the one, maybe two, people misselling? That doesn't sound likr a good use of time to me. As a wise woman once pointed out:

 

The home secretary, Yvette Cooper, said: “It is horrifying how easy it is for young people to get hold of knives online even though children’s lives are being lost, and families and communities are left devastated as a result.”

And how horrifying is it that they don't have to, because there's multiples in every kitchen in the country. Gosh. Maybe it's not the method, maybe it's the person, Yvette? 

Ronan’s mother, Pooja Kanda, said her son “didn’t stand a chance” against the weapons. “How was this allowed? A 16-year-old managed to get these weapons online and sold them to other people,” she said.

“We welcome the government’s plans to tackle the online sale of these weapons, and the proposal of a registration scheme, which will continue to implement stricter measures on the online sale of bladed articles. We have so much work to tackle knife crime; this is a much-needed beginning.”

Because we all know they aren't going to stop at this idiocy...despite being very well aware of where it's going to lead: 

The prison sentence for people caught selling weapons to under-18s will be increased from six months to up to two years, and both the individual who has processed the sale and the chief executive of a company face being charged. The measure will be implemented even after an official review found that longer incarceration had driven the country’s justice system to breaking point, and that successive governments had prioritised longer prison sentences over cutting reoffending.

We really are governed by morons, aren't we? 

Or You Could Design Rubber Tips For Them, Idris?

Idris Elba has called for kitchen knives to have their ends rounded off in a bid to tackle the UK's violent gang crisis.

Oh, not this old chestnut again... why is this overpaid mummer flapping his gums anyway? 

Speaking ahead of the release of his documentary... 

Ah! 

...Idris Elba: A Year Of Knife Crime later this year, the 52-year-old actor made a number of suggestions to help bring an end to knife crime. The Luther star said that whilst banning the sale of zombie knives was a positive step in tackling the issue, he also believed ninja swords should be outlawed and suggested kitchen blades have their sharp point removed.

Prisoners in jail are pretty inventive about sharpening toothbrush handles to make shivs, but I'm sure this wouldn't happen elsewhere, eh, Idris? Not that any manufacturer of kitchen implements is going to take a blind bit of notice.  

He told the BBC: 'Not all kitchen knives need to have a point on them, that sounds like a crazy thing to say. But you can still cut your food without the point on your knife, which is an innovative way to look at it.'

I looked up the term 'innovative', Idris, and...

Maybe you should manufacture little rubber tips that people could buy to apply to the hundreds of thousands of knives in kitchens in the country, Idris, make a bit of cash on the side?

The award-winning screen star also believes young people in London gangs are 'not big and scary', adding it is 'sad' that society has 'turned our back on them'.

I think it's the gangs who have turned their back on society, isn't it? 

He also felt big tech and social media needed to take more responsibility over the issue, saying: 'When it comes to big tech, there needs to be accountability within their own policies, and their policies need to be educated and driven by what society deems is right or wrong.

'It's great that you're a big company, you make a lot of money, got lots of social media followers, that's fantastic.

'But by the way, we don't like knives, we're not going to tolerate you advertising knives to young people, please.

The tech companies aren't doing the 'advertising', that would be the thugs making TikTok rap videos, Idris.... 

'We don't like porn, we don't like this, we don't like bully dogs, it can be done in a society, and in my opinion, where democracy leads, it takes a village.'

And this one is clearly missing its idiot. He seems to think everything - tools, social media - is to blame for violent gang stabbings except the violent members of gangs doing the stabbing.