No, 'We' Didn't, Unnamed Neighbour...

"We left two people in a very vulnerable situation and it could've worked out a lot worse than it did."

It was the people taking taxpayer's money to do a job that caused this. We're just the mugs left with the bill regardless.

The man had been due to be housed in a property with other asylum seekers and arrived in the North East on the evening of 20 June.

He spoke very little English and it remans unclear which country he had come from or how long he had been in the UK.

He spoke enough English to claim asylum, though, you'll note...

Mears Group said it was investigating what had happened and had met the asylum seeker on site as soon as staff knew he had arrived.

...

The company's annual report shows its 22% increase in revenue in 2021 was "largely driven" by its work finding hotel accommodation for asylum seekers.

It's money for old rope, isn't it? 

H/T: CJ Nerd via email

He's Not The Only One, Mihir...

Mihir Bose is the author of Dreaming The Impossible: The Battle to Create A Non-Racial Sports World, according to his 'Guardian' bio. He also seems to be a bit of an idiot.

For too long, senior leaders in cricket have been in denial about race. When I interviewed the veteran cricket administrator Tim Lamb for my book on creating a non-racial sports world, he said he had found no evidence of racism in the game. When I asked him about Yorkshire having a separate cricket league run by Asian Muslims, he did not see it as a problem.

Did you not wonder why there was a Black Police Association, Mihir? Did you not see that as a similar problem? 

“The fact of the matter is, rightly or wrongly, there are Asian cricketers and Asian clubs that feel more comfortable playing with their own kind,” he said. “I mean there are cultural differences.”

Are you denying that, then, Mihir? 

Then he said something that really rocked me: “Throughout our conversation we’ve talked about racist behaviour on the part of white people against black people, but I’m sure you wouldn’t deny that there is reverse racism by non-white people towards white people.”

I'd argue that. Because it's not 'reverse racism', it's just racism. But Mihir doesn't mention how he answered that question, does he, Reader? 

Within women’s cricket, racism is also evident. Of the 161 female players at professional level, players are disproportionately white, with only two Black British, four mixed/multiple ethnicity and eight South Asian female players.

Fancy! A team being disproportionally white in a country which is disproportionally white! 

This Isn't 'Clumsy Language', Sussex Police...

...far from it:

West Sussex local policing Superintendent Nick Dias said: 'Keeping the public safe and feeling safe is paramount and our officers and PCSOs work hard to tackle crime and anti-social behaviour, often in challenging circumstances.'

This one didn't. This one didn't work at all, did he? 

'We [work] closely with local retailers and partners to help prevent and respond to anti-social behaviour and assaults on shop workers.'

You didn't 'prevent' and you certainly didn't 'respond'.... 

'We are sorry for the clumsy language used by the PCSO in this exchange and acknowledge the public's concern.

'A police unit was dispatched to the scene as a matter of priority. Our response to this incident is being reviewed.'

Let's hope that PCSO's career is, too... 

'The sea doesn't care about your feelings.'

'The RNLI, sitting in their plush head offices in Poole, Dorset, are ruining the institution with their latest woke crusade.'

The whistleblower added: 'I am speaking because I can't stand what's going on here any longer.

'The sea doesn't care about your feelings. You need a solid boat, a strong pair of hands, and a belly for it,' they said.

And if you're in peril on the sea, do you give a damn who turns up, what colour or creed they are, who they like to go to bed with? 

The RNLI said earlier this month that it saved 108 Channel migrants' lives in 2022. It launched 290 times to rescue migrants, mainly from the South-East coast, including Hastings.

Oooof, that's not really the stunning rebuttal you might think it is... 

'A thorough investigation has taken place into behaviour at Hastings Lifeboat Station and appropriate action has been taken based on the findings.

'Local management continue to work closely with the station to create a positive environment to continue saving lives at sea.'

I'd have thought 'a positive environment' in one of these kind of workplaces was about teamwork, courage, fortitude, etc. But that's not the priority of the RNLI anymore: 

It added: 'At the RNLI we aim to be truly inclusive, valuing diversity and appreciating everyone for their individual contribution to saving lives at sea.

'To help us achieve this we are members of Stonewall's Diversity Champions programme, an advisory service based on the Equality Act, which assists employers to embed LGBT+ inclusion across their organisation.'

This organisation is going to prove as pernicious and devastating as the government response to covid, isn't it?  

Gosh, A Music Video, Eh..?

A 15-year-old boy and 23-year-old man have been killed after a horror night of violence in Archway.

Police were scrambled to Elthorne Road just after 11.30pm on Thursday. The boy died at the scene while the man was taken to hospital where he was pronounced dead. A third man, aged 28, was found at a nearby address with a stab injury which is not being considered life threatening.

Witnesses said a music video was being shot when violence flared.

They don't mention the genre. I wonder if it was easy listening? Rock? Pop? Country music, even...

A resident who knows the family of the 15-year-old boy described him as “a lovely boy from a lovely family.”

They always are, aren't they? 

It's Schrödinger's News Report!

Well, 'Mail', which is it?

Nailed It Again, Matt...

As you always do...

H/T: The Jannie via email

Sunday Funnies...

The BBC one doesn't really surprise me as much as it should have...

When Genuine Concern Translates As 'Hate Speech' To Crazy People...

A good example of the insanity that drives the current trans movement is encapsulated in this Tweet that I saw on Monday morning:

 

Intrigued as to what poor MsRowling could have done now to stir up the crazies, I read on:

The cognitive dissonance is to be expected - every one of the people in this thread believes they are right and everyone else is wrong. and furthermore, they'll be proven right at some point in the future. 

If Denmark had Twitter back in the 1930s, this is what a discussion on any dissent about the policy on sterilisation of mentally ill people would look like...

So at this point, I backtracked to find out what, exactly, had been retweeted. Had it been something controversial? 

Reader, it was this:

That's not only not at all a controversial view, it's a warning from a medical professional about the dangers of the 'treatment' other doctors are gaily indulging in. 

'Treatment' that leads to cases like this one:

A couple told of their horror after discovering teachers were aware their autistic teenage daughter was taking sex hormones when they had no idea. The parents said they were put in an 'impossible situation' after staff hid her 'social transition' from them. They had met the headteacher at her large secondary in south-east England and made it clear they did not agree to her being called a boy's name or pronouns.

But then they found out some teachers had been calling their daughter, now 16, a boy's name. Horrified, they hired lawyers to demand to see the school's records. These revealed some staff knew the pupil was taking cross-sex hormones to make her body more masculine and using a chest binder to flatten her breasts.

Ms Rowling must look back on her body of work and wonder if Voldemort was perhaps too tame a villain, considering what real life is showing people are capable of... 

I Thought 'The Vulture' Was Just A Spiderman Villain...

...but turns out there's a lot more of them at Marvel Comics. Whole flocks are gathering...

In a row that began before Lee died, his chief artistic collaborators, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, always claimed they had far more of a hand in the comics than the illustrations they were credited for. Last week, after the release of the documentary, the family of Kirby, who died in 1994, said Lee had “the fortunate circumstance to have access to the corporate megaphone and media” and made himself “the voice of Marvel” – overshadowing the parts other people played.

He founded the company. Of course he was its voice! 

Kirby’s son Neal told the Observer: “If you were to look at a list and timeline of Marvel’s characters from 1960 through 1966, the period in which the vast majority of Marvel’s main characters were created, you will see Lee’s name as a co-creator on every character, with the exception of the Silver Surfer, solely created by my father. Are we to assume Lee had a hand in creating every Marvel character?” Are we to assume that it was never the other co-creator that walked into Lee’s office and said, ‘Stan, I have a great idea for a character!’?”

Do you understand the term 'co-creator'...? It doesn't sound to me as if you've really grasped it, have you? 

The families of both Kirby and Ditko – who died a few months before Lee in 2018 – have been calling for more formal recognition for their part in creating the characters, especially now that Marvel is owned by Disney.

And this is purely motivated by concern for their legacy. And not, heaven forfend, filthy lucre...

One person gets it: 

Mark Millar is a Scottish writer who worked for both Marvel and its rival DC in the 1990s. For the former, he created with artist Bryan Hitch the series The Ultimates, which was heavily borrowed from for the first Avengers movie.

For Millar, his generation of comics creators went in “with their eyes open”. He says: “We knew that if we were working on characters owned by a company, we would never have any claim on them. It’s like if a decorator comes into your house. It’s their work and it looks great, but they don’t own your house!

Nice analogy. Accurate, too. 

“For people who came on board at the same time as me writing for Marvel was satisfying a childhood dream, but it also gave us an audience so we could create our own comics.”

Why did Kirby and Ditko not do that? Perhaps they didn't feel as aggrieved as their relatives do. It's funny how their relatives waited until they died, isn't it?