Oh, Yes, We Should Trust These People To Run A No-Jury Court System

Disabled people are being failed by a “fundamentally unfair” and secretive fast-track court system which needs to be investigated by Parliament, a new report has found. The Single Justice Procedure (SJP) was invented a decade ago in a Conservative Party-led cost-cutting drive, allowing magistrates to dish out fines for low-level crimes in private hearings instead of open court.

The SJP system now deals with more than half of all criminal cases - around 800,000-a year - and has recently been mired in controversy thanks to a long-running investigation by The Standard into its deep flaws

And despite the emphasis, it'd not just disabled people at risk.

“The most disturbing aspect of this story is that in ten years, the system has been subject to so little official scrutiny”, the report concluded.“No parliamentary committee has looked in detail at the SJP, the government has published no social research and very little data.”

Well, of coutse not. You don't peek under the carpet when you know damn well what you've brushed under there! 

Last year, the Chief Magistrate had to overturn more than 59,000 criminal convictions for rail fare evasion after it emerged that train companies had spent years bringing unlawful prosecutions through SJP.

It seems that the main cause of this is that our judges and magistrates are not bright enough to understand the system they've preusably been trained to use: 

Teenagers have been unlawfully prosecuted using the SJP system, with magistrates and legally-trained court officials apparently not noticing that defendants under the age of 18 cannot be dealt with in the fast-track courts.

 Anothet good reason to never agree to the removal of the jury system. These people cannot be trusted. And nor can the politicians pushing this.

I Hate To Say ’I Told You So’…

Actually. I love it, after all. it hsppens so often. Though rarely so quickly:

Public disorder broke out in Ballymena in Northern Ireland, with police saying a number of missiles had been thrown towards officers after crowds gathered near the site of an alleged sexual assault in the town. The unrest follows a protest in the area, about 30 minutes’ drive from the capital city of Belfast, earlier on Monday evening, the police statement said, adding damage had been reported to a number of properties.

More people unwilling to trust to the authorities' claims that the forces of law and order should be their only recourse? Stands to reason it would come first from a community long harbouring a distrust of government and its false promises.

Protesters gathered after two boys appeared in court after an alleged serious sexual assault in Clonavon Road, media reported. On Sunday, police announced that detectives investigating a serious sexual assault on a teenage girl in the adjacent Clonavon Terrace area of Ballymena had charged two teenage boys.

Those 'teenage boys' requiring the assistance in court of a taxpayer-funded Romanian interpreter. Which little nugget may go some way towards rxplaining the action taken by the community.

It's going to be a long hot summer. Isn't it , Reader?

Wrong Simile – Try ‘Shoved Down Our Throats’ Instead

Artificial intelligence will be “mainlined into the veins” of the nation, ministers have announced, with a multibillion-pound investment in the UK’s computing capacity despite widespread public fear about the technology’s effects.

Government wants it, so 'public fear' isn't even a bump in the road or a pothole to navigate... 

Keir Starmer will launch a sweeping action plan to increase 20-fold the amount of AI computing power under public control by 2030 and deploy AI for everything from spotting potholes to freeing up teachers to teach.

Promises, promises... 

The government plan features a potentially controversial scheme to unlock public data to help fuel the growth of AI businesses. This includes anonymised NHS data, which will be available for “researchers and innovators” to train their AI models. The government says there would be “strong privacy-preserving safeguards” and the data would never be owned by private companies.

And we believe them, don't we, Reader? 

Technology companies including Microsoft, Anthropic and OpenAI welcomed the plan as Starmer said the “AI industry needs a government that is on their side”.

So do the voters, but... 

The prime minister is also aiming to accelerate investment in new miniature nuclear reactors as it seeks to power the energy-hungry technology.

If he's facing down the NetZero nutters for this, it has to be a bad idea... 

Just Without The Killer Robots Of The Delos Corporation This Time..?

The FTC report published on Thursday looked at the data-gathering practices of Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube, Discord, Reddit, Amazon, Snap, TikTok and Twitter/X between January 2019 and 31 December 2020. The majority of the companies’ business models incentivized tracking how people engaged with their platforms, collecting their personal data and using it to determine what content and ads users see on their feeds, the report states.

This doesn't often turn out well for the watchers... 

The FTC’s findings validate years of reporting on the depth and breadth of these companies’ tracking practices and call out the tech firms for “vast surveillance of users”. The agency is recommending Congress pass federal privacy regulations based on what it has documented.

Because regulations fix everything. Well, I'm sure one day it'll work. anyway... 

'Of No Appearance'...?

Just an ordinary Lars, Malthe or Anker? Well, no:

An attack on the Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, which left her “shaken” and with a whiplash injury, was probably not “politically motivated”, Danish authorities have said.

A 39-year-old Polish man, who was apprehended after allegedly hitting the prime minister on Friday evening, was remanded in custody until 20 June after appearing before a Copenhagen court, the prosecutor Taruh Sekeroglu told reporters.

“It is not our guiding … hypothesis that there is a political motive here. But that is something that the police of course will investigate,” Sekeroglu said.

What else could be a motive for a Polish man to come to Denmark to assault a politician, then? Expect to see more of this, whatever it is... 

"Ah, Plucky Little Ukraine..!"

Wait, what..?

A list passed to this newspaper by a Kyiv government source identifies 29 such retribution killings, with 13 more assassination attempts that left some targets wounded.

Well, hopefully the Ukrainian government will get a grip on such war crimes. After all, they won't want to show they are just like their Russian enemy, will they? 

‘A hunt has been declared on collaborators and their life is not protected by law,’ said Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to the interior ministry.

‘Our intelligence services are eliminating them, shooting them like pigs.’

Oh... 

Well, hopefully they won't do it with anything we've sent them? Because they would make us complicit, wouldn't it?

Gosh, What Could Possibly Be The Reason For This?

Police forces in the UK and across Europe are suffering from a growing “culture of extremism”, according to a report that warns of an increase in officers sharing racist and far-right content online.

...

In France, Belgium, Germany and Hungary former high-ranking police officers have become extreme-right mayoral and parliamentary candidates.

Could it be because they are sick and tired of seeing the pandering that goes on to feral 'communities' and have decided to do something about it? 

In the UK, a series of recent cases involving the Metropolitan police have further damaged the reputation of a force long accused of being “institutionally racist”. They include officers sharing images on WhatsApp of two murdered black sisters. Another group of officers, at a central London station, were found to have joked about rape, killing black children and beating their wives.

Those officers were dealt with under existing Professional Standards guidelines. Are the authors of this report saying that the example of a few means the majority are wrong 'uns? 

Because with Telford and Rochdale once again in the headlines for child abuse in certain 'communities', that's a bit dangerous, isn't it? 

The report also warns that the “thin blue line” avatar and hashtag are still seen on the Twitter feeds of police officers, including a safer neighbourhood team in London, and they have been observed on the uniforms of officers in Manchester.

In the US, the thin blue line avatar and “blue lives matter” movement are associated with white nationalism, with serving and retired officers implicated in the Capitol Hill siege.

This isn't the US. It's Britain. And I didn't see the authors of this report getting out of bed to criticise the flying of Pride flags, did you Reader? 

Fekete warned that the thin blue line had become a “besieged and misunderstood minority group” with a proliferation of victim narratives that represent rank-and-file officers as the aggrieved party in debates on police racism and use of force.

Because they often are! Can an 'aggrieved party' no longer speak out about what they feel aggrieved about, Fekete? Because there goes a hell of a lot of the progressive press... 

The report also warns of a link between racist attitudes and operational practice, particularly in relation to predictive policing and racial profiling. Last December, concerns were raised about the Met’s Operation Pima in which 61% of individuals identified within intelligence reports as the “most prolific or violent offenders” in London were black.

Ah, once again, unfortunate reality leaps out from a dark alley waving a knife and demanding you hand over the evidence, Fekete... 

Translation: "Gibs Us De Moneh!"

Lisa Hanna, Jamaican MP and UN Development Programme goodwill ambassador, showing us some....well, maybe not goodwill:

What we now need is for the west, especially the United Kingdom, to seriously engage with us on this matter. And, it’s not just lip service that we require. Flowery words and artful symbols not only do not placate us, but words without action will also offend us. We need leaders in civil society, in politics and in the monarchy to not only acknowledge historic exploitation and the consequences thereof but to begin to make concrete steps to rectify it.

Oh, and how? 'Dr Who' isn't real, sweetie, we can't go back in time... 

The evils of slavery cannot be forgotten.

Well, no, not while grifters like you keep getting appointed to these positions... 

Wait 'til we send the bill for the Royal Navy's actions in halting slavery...

When we in Jamaica say respect, we mean it. We respect you. We respect Prince William and Catherine. We respect the British people. We respect your leaders.

Really?  

When you visit Jamaica, we are polite to you. We are cordial to you. We give you the time of your life on holiday.

And you make 'the time of your life' a short time, sometines. 

I Thought It Wouldn't Be Surprising...

...that the Tories would win the (uncontested) election following the terrorist murder of Sir David Amess. 

But I was wrong: 

Thousands of voters in the uncontested Southend West by-election spoilt their ballot papers with messages directed at the government, according to local BBC reports.

A bit of hyperbole here - the actual total was 1084. 

But even so, given the turnout was the third lowest since 1945, that tells us something... 

The Tyranny Of The Aggrieved...

Two items in the 'Mail' this morning show where we're heading...

Dr Erin Pritchard, a lecturer in disability and education, told supermarkets that the term midget was 'a form of hate speech'.

Dr Pritchard acknowledged that some people may think the change is part of 'cancel culture' but argued 'when people scream the name at you in the street, it is only right that it is removed'.

'The change should have happened years ago. It is easy for people not called the word to think its removal is wrong,' Dr Pritchard, who also appeared in Channel 4's Dating with Dwarfism, said.

She added that she had asked Amazon to remove novelty items which use the term but acknowledged it would not be possible to rename items no longer in production such as the MG Midget car or the Daihatsu Midget minivan.

No doubt removal of any mention of them will be the next demand...  

And elsewhere:

The incident comes a week after a jury cleared four people of criminal damage despite the fact they did not deny pulling down the statue of slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol.

Earlier tonight, the man said the statue should have been taken down in the past. 'If this happened decades ago, I wouldn't be here would I?' he told the negotiators.

Predictably, like Pritchard, it's 'Me, me, me,,,' all the way through. Emboldened by the verdict, no doubt. 

Owen King, 52, who works in marketing, was cycling past when he saw the man chipping away at the statue. He said: 'I saw all the police and I presumed he was protesting about Eric Gill and his background. Then the fire brigade were here as well. People are just wondering, 'why don't they take him off the sculpture?'

'So I think they're just waiting for him to come down. He's got this tiny little hammer and he's bashing away at the leg there. Not much is coming off and he seems to be resting a lot.'

Well, since the police stood around like they usually do, paralysed by the thought that taking action might rebound on them if the miscreant was injured (which is why neighbours' lives are disrupted for a fourth day in Coventry), he had plenty of time. 

And no, he's not supported by anyone outside the unhinged: 

He added: 'Someone shouted to him, 'get off it, you ugly person, an ugly person desecrating a beautiful thing'. And he shouted 'you paedo'. And then everyone was laughing at him. I think you (should) separate art from the person.'

Responding to the man's comments calling people paedophiles, he added: 'I think it's really reductive.' Moments later one woman, who was walking past the scene, shouted: 'Art should be separated from the person. You should spend your energy and time with something else. Art can be beautiful by itself.'

Why are we allowing people who don't represent the will of the majority to ride roughshod over the rest of us due to the cowardice of the state and the corporations? 

Bringing You Tomorrow's Technology-Led Miscarriage Of Justice Today...

iPhones will send sexting warnings to parents if their children send or receive explicit images – and will automatically report child abuse pictures on devices to the authorities, Apple has announced.

A trio of new safety tools have been unveiled in a bid to protect young people and limit the spread of child sexual abuse material (CSAM), the tech giant said. While the measures are initially only being rolled out in the US, Apple plans for the technology to soon be available in the UK and other countries worldwide.

Of course it does! 

The iPhone maker said the new detection tools have been designed to protect user privacy and do not allow the tech giant to see or scan a user's photo album.

*hollow laughter* I think they forgot to add 'Yet'...

Say, who's providing the data that it's going to match against?

Instead, the system will look for matches, securely on the device, based on a database of 'hashes' - a type of digital fingerprint - of known CSAM images provided by child safety organisations.

Oh. Organisations whose very existence depends on the existance of the thing they are planning to find. Well, I can't see any inherent danger in that, can anyone else? 

The company reiterated that the new CSAM detection tools would only apply to those using iCloud Photos and would not allow the firm or anyone else to scan the images on a user's camera roll.

Until they can figure out how to do it? 

If You Won't Listen To The Public, Will You Listen To The Experts?

A feminist artist has been cancelled by the Royal Academy after trans activists complained about her 2019 blog in which she called a woman 'an adult human female' and criticised LGBT charity Stonewall.

That's the charity that's being dropped like a hot potato by government. 

She had also warned that the 'ideology' of gender politics enforced censorship akin to that found in her birthplace - the East German police state - and had a detrimental impact on the rights of women and girls.

A warning from personal history of the victim's own country? That sounds rather familiar, doesn't it? 

In a statement published on Instagram today, the RA said it had received complaints for selling works 'by an artist expressing transphobic views' and said that Miss de Wahls's work 'will not be stocked in future'.

The academy added: 'The RA is committed to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion and does not knowingly support artists who act in conflict with these values. We would like to reiterate that we stand with the LGBTQ+ community'.

No, you're standing with a tiny minority who shout the loudest and who are now finding that cancel culture can be used against them, as well as by them. 

The Mistake Would Be To Think That It's Just Amazon...

Ross Douthat, a columnist with the New York Times suggested Amazon was 'conducting an experiment in what they can get away with.'

Well, they are, yes. Because they - and all other large corporations - can get away with a hell of a lot, after all, so long as they are with the cancel culture mob, and not against them... 

The author responded with fury to Amazon's explanation of the ban, saying the company had relied upon mischaracterizations from his critics.

'Amazon appears to have never read my book, but relied on hit pieces. As I pointed out before: “Please quote the passage where I ‘call them mentally ill.’ You can’t quote that passage because it doesn’t exist,"' tweeted Anderson.

'Gender dysphoria is listed in the APA’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which Amazon sells. So the real deciding factor seems to be whether you endorse hormones and surgery as the proper treatment or counseling,' wrote the author.

We long ago left logic behind, sadly. 

Well, They Have The Right Name...

The Slow Factory Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to social and environmental justice, this week issues a warning about digital blackface, describing it as an online phenomenon where white and non-black people share GIFs and photos of black people to express emotion, and stating that it often perpetuates negative stereotypes that they are 'aggressive, loud, and sassy.'

Slow in the pejorative sense, that is... 

Some praised the organization for raising awareness for digital blackface, while others felt the inclusion of memes was going too far and actually a form of black erasure.

As Longrider points out, there's really only one appropriate response to this nonsense.  

 

Stereotypes Exist For A Reason...

Scarlett, who is considering taking legal action following her dismissal, said: “I can only assume I got racially stereotyped as being the angry person in this situation even though I was the victim of something. I also got told by colleagues my manager said I got fired for being divisive when actually I got along with the vast majority of people.”

Just 'the vast majority', eh? What about the others? 

...a number of colleagues complained and claimed they felt pressured into expressing support for BLM by Scarlett.

Ah.  

She had burst into tears and fallen to the floor and, when the manager came to ask what was going on, Scarlett said she did not want to speak to her.

Because that works, right? HR always recommend hysterics during discipline interviews... 

Scarlett was among 50 young black Britons interviewed by the Guardian following anti-racism protests this summer.

Well, let's take a look at what she had to say then, shall we? 

I was always quite angry at school. I always felt anxious and didn’t feel like I belonged. That’s not only to do with race but also my queerness as well.

You really couldn't make it up, could you? 

Those Who Thought Coronavirus Was The Scariest Thing Of 2020...

...well, you ain't seen nothing yet.

All statues in Labour councils across England and Wales, and across London, will be examined for links to slavery and plantation owners, their leaders have said, as an east London authority took one down off its plinth on Tuesday evening.

No consultation. No worrying about cost at a time when the councils are supposedly crippled due to the costs of the pandemic.

Just instant capitulation to a howling mob. With the promise of more to come:

Earlier, the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, said the capital’s landmarks – including street names, the names of public buildings and plaques – would be reviewed by a commission to ensure they reflect the capital’s diversity, with a view to removing those with links to slavery after Black Lives Matter protesters tore down a statue of slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol.

I think the last word goes, as always, to Twitter.

The people cheering this on are too thick to understand history, but might just have watched TV...