Another Choirboy, I Presume..?

A 15-year-old boy has been accused of attacking a female teacher with a kitchen knife after asking for help with work, a court heard. A schoolboy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, allegedly launched the assault on the teacher at Milford Haven Comprehensive School on Thursday afternoon.

And if the court refuses MSM applications to name him after conviction, we'll never know..

He was charged with attempted murder, grievous bodily harm, and possession of a bladed article on education premises. He was remanded into youth detention over the weekend and will appear at Swansea Crown Court on February 9.

What the hell is going on in our schools? And our country?  

What’s Wrong With The Existing Law Then?

A woman who was filmed giving CPR to a man fatally injured in a road crash is calling for photographs and videos of crash sites to be made illegal.

Oh, presumably because the grieving relatives saw it on social media before being formally advised? Well, actually, no: 

I've since spoken to Dominic's family and they learned from the police initially," Ms Ferris said. "But very soon afterwards they received a message saying, 'I'm so sorry to hear about your cousin' and the video attached - of him lying in the street, in the dark, in the rain. "How that must have felt? I can't even imagine."

Once again, 'feelings' are prioritised by the emotionally incontinent and legislation is demanded to soothe them, with no thought for how such legislation is supposed to work.... 

The mother-of-two is calling for legislation to make it a criminal offence to record at such scenes. "Having been in a video in such tragic circumstances, it beggars belief why people want to do that," she said.

I agree, bur what beggars MY belief far more is why you think you have the right to demand new legislation when there's existing legislation, and it works:

There is already a law in place which makes it an offence to improperly use the public electronic communications network. Last month, a woman was arrested over the alleged sharing of images of a pedestrian who was knocked down and killed in Newry city centre.

See?  

The Perfect 'Rebellion' For The Modern Generation...

Fan fiction is democracy in its purest, most chaotic form. It’s the people seizing the means of production. Every “what if?” is a tiny revolution.

Yes, some blue-haired nose-ringed creature leeching off a genuine creative to make up a wish-fulfillment screed is a sign of the times, of course. And it's only fitting the 'Guardian' should consider it worthy of a column. 

Because fan fiction isn’t just rewriting, it’s repairing. It’s giving yourself the closure you need when the author won’t.

How very DARE an author write the story they want to write!  

It’s deciding that pain can end differently, that love can be louder, that characters who were doomed in print get to live this time. It’s literature written by people who refused to move on and sometimes these people spell really badly (and that is completely OK). And yes, it’s rebellion.

No it's not. The people of Iran are showing you what rebellion is. It's risk and heartache and peril, not scribbling a different ending to a classic or popular story because it didn't end the way you wanted.  

Against gatekeeping, against prestige, against the assumption that stories only count when they make money. Fan fiction exists because readers loved something so much they refused to let it die.

Who IS this moron, anyway? 

Urooj Ashfaq is a Mumbai-based comedian, writer and actor.

Ah.  

New Ways To Tell Everyone That You're A Snowflake Who Can't Handle Life

Are you overly sensitive to rejection? Do you take it particularly hard when you’re criticised, playing the moment over and over again in your head? Are you constantly on the lookout for mild disapproval from others? If so, you might have Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria.

Or you might just be a terrible human being who cannot cope with life… 

Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, or “RSD”, is just one of the latest buzzwords that has become associated with autism and ADHD following the uptick in diagnoses for both conditions. Between 2019 and 2023, there was a fivefold increase in the number of open suspected autism referrals in the UK, while prescriptions for ADHD medication saw a 51 per cent increase over this same time period, according to the Nuffield Trust.

But we mustn’t sneer at this and consider it to be a case of people being eager to gain a tick in the box, even if the Health Secretary has his doubts too! 

As awareness increases (or overdiagnosis, depending on your view), the standard ADHD or autism diagnosis has become insufficient for some sufferers, who are seeking more niche subsections of the condition they can identify with. RSD, for example, is understood to be an extreme emotional sensitivity to rejection or criticism. It’s a fairly recent addition to the mental health lexicon, having been coined by psychiatrist William Dodson in the 2010s.

Of course, one everyone has it, you’re not special any more and have to find something else.

An equally popular cluster of ADHD/autism symptoms is Pathological Demand Avoidance, aka PDA, which is when an individual experiences an extreme resistance to doing something that is requested or expected of them. This can include anything from big tasks to everyday demands, like the mere act of going to work, as per the UK-based PDA Society, which defines PDA as “a determined avoidance of so-called ‘common’ demands of life.” Despite PDA being coined by psychologist Elizabeth Newson in the 1980s, it’s important to note that neither of these terms is included in formal diagnostic systems.

But they are proliferating in the places these people go to find validation of course: 

That hasn’t stopped them from taking root on TikTok, where users are embracing the terms with open arms.

’Users’ being a very apposite term for these people…